Swimming In 16 GB Gold
Hey, how's the review, John?
I changed a bunch of stuff in DP8.
Had to change a bunch of stuff, make new screenshots.
I'm sorry.
Still no ship date, still no price.
So have you been drinking things other than water lately?
Have you, like, gotten some soda to get over the angst?
Nope.
Maybe a Diet Pepsi or something?
What was your treat drink, like a Sprite?
Diet, yeah.
Sprite is my restaurant drink when I go out.
The only time I ever have Sprite is when I go to a restaurant.
That's what I get.
If I get anything, sometimes I still get water restaurants, but Sprite is my go-to.
I've learned the difference between living in Richmond, Virginia, and living in a major metropolitan area like Boston or New York.
Because I went into the Apple Store to do the easy pay thing.
And I needed to pick up a lightning cable for my parents who were visiting and they had only one lightning cable with them and it was busted because it was a third party one, blah, blah, blah.
So I went to do the easy, easy pay thing.
And I ended up just by pure happenstance seeing a friend of mine in there.
So I get to talking to the guy.
And then one of the Apple employees in a blue shirt kind of does a double take and says, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Are you Casey?
And I was like, yes.
You should not have said yes.
You know what the correct answer to that question was.
Of course.
Who the hell is Casey?
Yeah.
There's the one opportunity to say that in a legitimate context.
Oh, my God.
I'm so mad at myself.
I didn't even think about it.
So anyway, so it gets better, though, because I lose track of this individual because I was talking to my friend for a little bit.
And then all of a sudden, and I don't know this for sure, but all of a sudden, two other blue shirts come swooping in from the middle of nowhere.
Were there people inside of them?
Yeah, it was weird.
No, no.
So there were there were people inside the blue shirts.
So anyway, so these it almost seemed like the first individual went into the back room to say, oh, my God, guess who's here.
And then the other two came swooping out.
And it was the most flattering and ridiculous thing I've ever seen.
And so it's good.
It's good to live in a smaller town.
And so, John, when you go in with your busted or is your wife's busted cinema display or whatever Thunderbolt display that I'm very jealous of and you don't get special treatment.
Well, I didn't get special treatment.
Special treatment.
I just don't want to have to drive back to my house and get my ID that I forgot.
Like, that's it.
That's all.
The one time I didn't... And it wasn't, like, it's not to flatter my ego.
It's for, like, practical purposes.
Like, most of the time, I do not want to be recognized.
I don't want a special show.
I want to get in.
I want to get out.
But this one time, just this one time... And, yeah, it is depressing that I have literally never...
Been recognized in an Apple store, but that's okay.
Don't you know who I am?
I'm a professional complainer.
Like, I just didn't want to get back in the car, but it's like you drive out, you make a trip, you know, bring the whole thing, you drive out there.
I don't want to get back in my car and drive back.
It's my fault.
Like, I'm the one who forgot my idea.
I'm not blaming the staff of the store for it at all, but like...
Boy, I just wanted it this one time to save me a car trip, and it did not work.
So now I will never, ever forget my ID again.
I still have to bring the thing back.
I almost brought the display back again because I thought my warranty that I had extended was about to run out, but it turns out I have another year.
So I'll continue to let it sit here with a broken camera because I said I better get it in for repairs and get it back in time for my Mavericks review.
But now when I learned I had an extra year, I'm just going to wait until the review is done to send it in again.
Yeah, so in summary, Andrew and Scott, I believe were their names.
Thanks for being nice to me and saying hi.
If this actually ends up in the show, which it doesn't because it's boring.
It probably will.
I think we made it fun enough.
Fair enough.
All right, so anything happen this week?
Oh, anyway, hold on.
We got a crud load of follow-up.
We do?
Yeah.
Is it in the document that I'm not looking at?
Yes, it is.
Do we want to skip it since we have a busy night, or do we want to do it?
Well, we aren't allowed to do it at the end.
That is true.
We established that because some moron asked if you could do follow-up at the end, and clearly that's just totally unacceptable.
Can we even entertain this topic?
Is this far enough into the show that we can't do it anymore?
Have we crossed the follow-up threshold?
No, you can still do follow-up at this point.
You are the arbiter of all kinds of follow-up.
All right.
So actually, this is mostly your portion of the show, John, is it not?
In the sense that you have the most follow-up.
Well, there's snappy cam stuff that Marco should talk about, but since he's totally unprepared for this, then he can't talk about it.
So he'll save that for another time.
Well, yeah.
So the developer of SnappyCam emailed us and gave us a lot of great information.
I don't know how much of it is that relevant to read out on a podcast, but it was basically... Our statements about it being awesomely engineered sound like they were pretty accurate.
He built quite a system there, and he believes that...
That he has not been Sherlocked and that there is a bright future ahead.
And I was wrong, actually, when I said I thought 120 FPS was on one of the slides.
Turns out 60 FPS was on one of the slides, and that was referring to the capabilities of the iPhone 5 hardware.
So besides that correction, although now I believe the NDA is officially up as of today, right?
Yeah.
I believe that's right, which is why we have a busy show.
So now we can talk about all the stuff that we had been holding back by the NDA, which actually isn't that much stuff, but I'm sure that we will make it big.
I mean, we've had entire shows where we've said, oh, yeah, we only have two things to talk about.
And then 90 minutes later, we're just finishing the second thing.
Wasn't that like the last three episodes?
Well, not the very last episode, Neutral, but like the three prior?
I think it's every episode.
All right.
So, John, you want to talk about the Synology for a couple minutes?
Yeah, we talked a lot about Synology a couple shows ago, but one topic we didn't get to at all that a couple people asked about is my favorite hobby horse, Data Integrity.
And people are asking, so now you've got all this storage, aren't you worried about data integrity and bit rot and all those things?
And the answer is yes, I am still worried about that because Synology does not currently support ZFS unless you use it as an iSCSI device.
Because, of course, if you use it as an iSCSI device, then it's just like it's directly attached storage as far as your computer is concerned.
And if your computer supports ZFS, then you could format it however you want.
Of course, using a Mac, that's a problem for me because OS X solutions for ZFS are not great, not particularly stable.
Although it was the new OpenZFS project, but that's really sort of a conglomeration of existing projects.
But anyway, the upshot is that Synology runs, I think it's ext4.
You could probably...
change it to something else if you want.
And again, if you use it as iSCSI, you can format it as whatever you want.
And ext4, to my knowledge, does not have any features like ZFS that do checksumming on all data and metadata, let alone things like duplicating blocks and all that stuff.
That's not the one that was written by the murderer, was it?
I know.
That's riser FS.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
Which also doesn't have data integrity features as far as I know.
Obviously, the guy has no integrity.
Yeah.
A lot of file systems will do metadata checksumming, but very few of them do complete checksumming of data and metadata.
And ZFS's big thing is that it's not just checksums of the stuff.
It's end-to-end data integrity.
So it's checking everything to make sure your data makes a healthy round-trip
All the way through your entire storage system, through your drivers, through the network, through all the firmware on the disk, through all the caching, through all the RAID stuff, whatever things are in the way, ZFS makes sure that your data is making a round trip and it's safe.
So...
You know, obviously I would prefer it if it had ZFS on it, but not so much that I'm going to go the ISCSI route because we've just discussed in previous shows that I don't want to install a kernel extension.
I don't want to pay for a kernel extension.
I'd rather use it as network-attached storage because there's more flexibility and the performance has been great and everything.
And because even if I did that, then I would be forced to try to deal with whatever ZFS for OS X software is out there and deal with all its bugs and how well it works and everything like that.
So I'm not ready for that.
The one thing this analogy has going for it over me just having a bunch of external disks is that I have slightly more faith that EXD4 will not corrupt itself in the way that HFS Plus routinely does in terms of losing track of which blocks are allocated and how many files are in which directories and all that stuff.
During the course of normal operation, of course, I don't have enough experience with the ext4 to say this for a fact, because I've used ext2 extensively.
I haven't used ext3 was there even an ext3 probably was.
But this is my first use of ext4.
But I feel confident based on my experience with ext2 and my vast experience with HMS plus that at the very least, this is not a bit rod issue.
But at the very least, the file system should not corrupt itself to the point where I lose data due to that reason.
All the bits that are on there still could be randomly fluffing themselves.
My data could be corrupting itself and then duplicating that corruption onto all my other disks and then duplicating that corruption into the cloud.
That is all still entirely true.
I have not reached ZFS-based nirvana, but I'm waiting patiently.
I filed a feature request with Synology on their web form that said I would like some features that do data integrity checking.
I would love it if they could support ZFS natively and do all that stuff, and we'll see if anything ever comes to that.
And on the topic of waiting for ZFS, I also wanted to point out that I was listening to the Debug podcast with Guy English and Rene Ritchie.
It's a very good show.
You should all be listening to it.
And number 20, they were interviewing Ryan Nielsen.
He was formerly a, I believe, product or project manager.
I don't know the difference, and I know there's a big difference, and I don't know which one he was.
Formerly on the OS X team.
And he very briefly talked about John Syracuse and file systems and ZFS.
And, you know, ex-Apple people can't really say a whole lot, but it sounded like the implication was that it's never going to happen.
That ZFS support on Mac OS X will never be worth the incredible effort required to really do it properly.
Well, his take, and he was clearly on the bad side inside Apple, his take was that they asked about file systems, like what's the holdup or whatever, and he was like, well, you know, HFS Plus works okay, and changing it would be a difficult transition, and this...
The advantages of changing it and the resources it would take to change it, the number of engineers you need out, the amount of time, how you'd have to deal with customers in the transition phase, that's a big cost on one side.
It's in the con column.
On the pro side of the column, he's like, well, those pros are outweighed by the cons.
And he saw that as being the case, I don't know, in perpetuity, but certainly now.
And, you know, so that's...
i can understand that perspective but it's a little bit crazy to have that uh position sort of an absolutist type position because so many things that apple has done and will do in the future uh you know are completely counter to that philosophy like you could take all the arguments he had against why apple has not and should not currently switch to new file system and apply them to oh i don't know uh why should we make an entirely new operating system that's barely backward compatible with the previous one like it's
His entire job and the existence of his entire project on Mac OS X is based on an effort with a tremendous number of cons and the pros that are many years off in the future and potentially only theoretical and may not ever come to pass.
Mac OS X itself is the best example of that.
It was a huge undertaking with huge risks.
Talk about a transition, like a potentially company-destroying transitional period, but it had to be done.
You can't just keep going with the old thing forever, and that is entirely true of HFS+.
It's a little bit different, though, in that the OS X transition had to happen because they were in severe pain without it.
Their old OS was really, really outdated to a point where they were losing a lot because they were losing sales, they were losing people, they were losing developers.
They were in terrible shape, so the pain level was high there.
In this case, it seems like the pain level really isn't substantial.
And so what do you think would ever motivate them to make a big change like that?
The pain level is only smaller in proportion to the size of the feature.
So it's like the entire OS, and then there's a large pain level to go with it.
And then you have something small like the file system, but I think that the file system is in just as bad technical shape as the OS was.
It's just that the file system is only one small part of an OS, so obviously it's less important.
But if you just look at that particular view, like how big of a portion of the entire experience is the file system, and then how terrible is it, versus how big a part of the entire experience is the operating system, and how terrible is it, I think...
probably hfs plus is more terrible in proportion to its importance than mac os 9 was because mac os 9 was terrible but the os is like all important whereas the file system is only minor importance but it's just it's much more terrible than os 9 was i think it's just i mean it could be that you know i you don't have to go to zfs like zfs could say oh that's just an incremental step this is just another kind of regular file system maybe we need to skip something entirely to some sort of
you know, virtualized storage model where everything is memory mapped and it's all just one big giant open field of RAM from the perspective of your application and everything is solid state behind it.
Who knows what they switch to, right?
But you need to change to something.
You can't go with HOS Plus forever.
It's just not tenable.
In the same way that you can't go with OS 9 forever.
point you reach a breaking point you could say we're not at that breaking point now but even now i would say as the volumes of data that we deal with go up not having any control over like whether that data is good into the future but merely just copying it around and just you know crossing your fingers and hoping for the best and just like saying that occasionally it'll get corrupted you might lose some things whatever uh you can't go on that path forever and all their competitors are ahead of them
by varying amounts in terms of the file system technology they're using so there is a gap there as well uh and the other the other examples like hfs to hfs plus apple did that transition for a very incremental gain like you know because they had to quote unquote because the block size they didn't have enough blocks you had to make like
32 kilobyte minimum block size because hard drives were getting bigger.
Like it was kind of good.
They gave them the kick in the pants to do that, but they have this exact same problems.
How do you deal with people not being able to read your discs?
You try to do an in-place translation of a file system, which was terrible with HFS to HFS plus.
Like these are all problems we know about.
Like, and maybe the Apple will even go through it again with another, uh, architecture transition.
If they ever go to arm or something like these type of transitions are painful, but they're also necessary.
So I don't fault someone for saying at various times this came up, uh,
We decided that the pros outweighed the cons.
But once you say, and it's never going to be important enough to change, that's where I part ways and say, no, never is a long time.
Something will replace it.
And if you don't plan for something to replace it, if you don't take an active role in the eventual replacement of every piece of technology you're dealing with, it will sneak up on you and you will have problems.
So best to plan for it.
And to Apple's credit, I think they have been planning for it.
They were looking at ZFS.
They went so far as to put it up on webpages on their website to say it's coming.
Didn't work out for, you know, reasons beyond their control, legal issues, blah, blah, blah.
Maybe even technical issues.
Who knows?
That's fine.
But that's not an excuse to say, well, we're never going to look at file systems again.
You know, you really do just love any excuse to talk about file systems, don't you?
I do.
If I was on that podcast, I like everything he said.
But when he said, like, you know, it's never going to be important enough.
Never?
No.
I don't even know if he said never.
Like, the implication was that the time has come and gone for that, but it's just like HFS Plus forever.
It's not HFS Plus forever.
It's going to have to change.
And if Apple doesn't take a role in changing it, they'll find themselves in another crisis situation.
I would love if you were on that show with him at that moment.
I mean, the show already, the conversation was so long, I had to split it into two episodes.
I would imagine if you went on there, it would have been at least three or four.
This is the only thing I had a quibble.
Everything else, I loved hearing about all the details.
I loved everything I said, comparing the cultures between Microsoft and Apple in terms of their development systems and everything.
It's all great.
All right.
So to keep moving along, because we do have a lot to talk about, another piece of quick follow-up, and I think the last piece about the Synology, I had asked Marco what it was like using the Synology for photograph storage as a photographer, because I know a couple of friends have asked me about it.
And Mark Gabaltz, I don't know if I butchered that.
I probably did.
I'm sorry, Mark.
But anyway, he said,
I used Lightroom with the library residing on a Synology for a few years, and it works just great.
At first, I was even connected to it through Wi-Fi, just a little too slow to be fun, so I finally drilled a hole through the wall to connect with an Ethernet cable.
But FYI, according to Mark, it works great.
And that's all the follow-up I had.
Actually, one more brief thing on this analogy with the ZFS bit.
This is yet another reason why you might want to build your own ZFS, you know, free BSD, whatever, you know, build your own NAS.
All the people who build their own NASes and who are willing to sink the time into that to get it done.
In exchange for their time and possibly their sanity, they will end up with a solution that has data integrity.
And you can't get that if you buy a Synology List.
Another plus one in the column of building your own thing.
Although, as the person who sent in this email, one of the emails about this topic said, taking that route, trying to build your own nest is kind of a time vampire.
And I think that's a good description of it.
Nice.
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The no credit card with free trials?
That was like a business innovation back when Squarespace started doing it.
But at this point, why doesn't everybody do that?
Well, because at some point, everyone knows.
The same reason, why don't they just drop the price instead of doing mail-in rebates?
Because they know that some percentage of people are going to forget, and they'll make a little bit more money.
That's why companies do that.
It seems like an anti-pattern, though.
I understand the concept of, oh, I'll forget that it's there, and I'll get charged.
But you hate companies that do that.
And it seems like this would have come around by now, that people would be like, we don't want people to hate us.
Some companies do want you to hate them.
I understand, like, why scummy companies do it.
Because that's their business model, right?
Like, even getting up to, like, you know, PayPal or Facebook, like, they kind of want you to hate them.
Like, so they'll do the scummy things, right?
But for these, like, sort of dot-com-y startup, kind of cool, trendy companies that appeal to nerds, anybody with advertisers, everyone should copy Squarespace's free trial with no credit card.
Because there's nothing worse than when I go to sign up for something to try it out and they want a credit card.
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I just, most of the time I turn back.
So why would, you know, you're just turning customer ways.
Everyone should copy Squarespace.
That's free advice for all people who are listening to the show.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, even before they were a sponsor, when I was building the site for Neutral, because they actually ended up sponsoring the entire show.
But when I was building the site for that, I was looking around and, you know, I'd heard about Squarespace and other podcasts and everything.
And that's, the no credit card trial is actually the biggest reason, I think, why I signed up.
Because you're right, like, I'm the same way.
If I see something that's like, oh, free trial, just,
Create an entire big account.
Give us all your personal information.
Give us your phone number.
Give us your mother's maiden name.
Give us your entire credit card number and everything.
And if you don't cancel, we're going to charge you $100 in a week.
And it's like, yeah.
And then you assume you have to, like, talk to some – like, either call someone on the phone or do some sort of online chat to cancel the service.
Like, I had to deal with Adobe support recently, and they love making you talk to those people in the chat.
It's just –
I canceled my go-go Wi-Fi in the plane plan because last time I flew somewhere, I was like, you could pay some amount for the flight or you could pay less than double that for a whole month.
I was like, well, I'm going to fly here.
I'm going to fly back.
Let me do that.
I'll sign up for their stupid plan and then cancel when I get home.
And yeah, I had to talk to the online chat bot.
They're not technically a bot, I don't think, but they might as well be.
And it was a whole ordeal.
I got to convince them.
They try to upsell you.
Oh, well, you can keep you on this plan.
And are you sure you want to cancel?
All this stuff.
Terrible.
Although, pro tip, if you buy from GoGo before you get on the plane, it is a few dollars cheaper, I believe.
I've heard that, but I never remember to do it.
Then you can fail to get a usable connection for less money.
That's true.
The other problem is, too, a lot of times I don't know if I'm going to actually have that available.
One flight I took, it was either on Virgin or JetBlue, where they usually have the Wi-Fi, but on one flight, it was just down.
It just broke, and they were like, sorry, we don't have it this flight.
And so if I would have bought it in advance, then I would have had to go back to that same chatbot person and say, oh, sorry, I need a refund.
And they'll do it, but it's a pain in the butt to do all that.
Or you just hold on to that code for the next flight, but I'm with you.
So to keep things moving, John, at the end of the last episode, after the episode, you got a little upset about something.
Do you want to explore that a little bit?
Didn't we already do that, though?
I thought Marco put that all in the episode.
I put just a reference.
It was a pointer.
It was a 64-bit long pointer.
It was a pointer to this so that you can discuss the storage capacity issue.
Yeah.
How do you feel about the storage capacities in the new iPhone?
I feel bad about it.
Everyone should feel bad about it because this is a bad situation.
No storage shift.
What I'm talking about here is that Apple offers three sizes in terms of flash storage on its iOS devices, the
Low end one has 16.
The middle one has 32 and the big one has 64.
And, you know, in typical Apple fashion, I have to find some way to put most of their margins.
They put a lot of it into the storage capacity because like the 64 costs a hundred dollars more than the 32.
And I think the 32 costs a hundred dollars more than the 16.
And for anyone who knows anything about pricing a flash memory, those numbers do not reflect the cost of goods in any rational way.
You know, it's extra 16 gigabytes of flash does not cost a hundred dollars in any universe.
Right.
Uh,
So that's fine.
Whatever.
That's how they segment their stuff.
But for years and years, I've been buying the middle model, 32 gigabytes.
And I think the very first one I ever bought was 32.
Maybe that was the high end at that point.
I forget.
And that's kind of like barely enough to hold all my stuff.
But as the years pass, I would expect that they would shift just as they did once before.
Because there used to be an 8 gigabyte model, I think, on one of the phones.
There used to be a 4.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I don't remember how small they want the original iPhone because I wasn't buying the original iPhone.
It was 4 and 8.
Yeah.
They have to shift the line.
So then the 16 goes away.
The 32 becomes the smallest one.
The 64 is the middle one.
And then a 128 is the highest.
Or whatever sizes you want.
It doesn't have to be doubling or whatever.
It could be 16, 32, and... No, 32...
50, I don't know, make up any numbers you want.
I just want to see the storage shift.
And on the Mac line, they've done the same thing.
It used to be that Macs came with, you know, whatever minimum amount of RAM it was going to be.
One megabyte, two megabytes, one gigabyte, two gigabytes, four gigabytes.
And on the Macs, it was terrible for years because they would give you so little RAM, especially with Mac OS X. They were like, okay,
mac os 10 will boot on a system with two gigs of ram and coincidentally that is the minimum configuration of whatever mac you wanted to buy and i would just beg people if they were buying it back do not buy it with the default amount of ram because mac os 10 with with the minimum supported amount of ram was terrible it would just thrash the disc all the time especially in the early versions and the discs are really slow it's like buy more ram and don't buy it from apple because they gouge you on it right
Well, so here we are.
I don't know.
I didn't look this up on Wikipedia, but what year are we in of the 16, 32, 64?
It seems like we're in like the third year in a row.
Is it the fourth year in a row?
Whatever it is, it's way too long.
And I was hoping that this would be the year where they would do a storage shift and move everything down the line.
But they didn't.
64 is still the top of the line.
32 is still the middle.
And so once again, like my wife is probably going to get a new iPhone.
We'll talk about that later in the show.
Maybe she's going to end up getting a 32 because 64.
It's obscenely expensive, an extra $100 over the extra $100.
You're already paying over the $16.
The $16 is too small, so you're going to end up with $32 again.
And this is another thing that Apple should really move on with.
I mean, at the very least in the iPhone 6.
This is now my number one feature for the iPhone 6 next year.
They'd better do a storage shifter.
Because you can't just keep selling 16, 32, and 64 forever.
It's kind of like HFS+.
At a certain point, it just becomes embarrassing.
You have to change.
Maybe they won't even be able to get 16 gigabytes of flash anymore because no one will sell flash that small in a few years because cereal boxes will come with 16 gigabytes of flash inside them.
Wow.
Well, I can tell you that my 4S is 64 gig, and I don't think the 4 had that as an option, but I'm not 100% sure.
I believe that's correct.
So it's at least been, what is that, 4S, 5, and 5S, that's three years now?
I mean, you're right.
It's a long time.
It's too long.
I think one year is too long because from year to year, prices go down.
So one year is probably too long.
But like, okay, fine.
You're Apple.
You want to bring every last penny you can out of these things.
So maybe hold on for two years.
But three years?
No, that's way too long.
Now I say no.
They have to shift.
And they also – they did add a 128-gig iPad, I believe, last year.
It was not with the iPad launch.
It was like a few months later, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, but, like, they didn't shift it, though.
That was just, like, a new super high-end.
Right, they just added, right, for, like, another $100, I think.
Every storage room is another $100.
If they add one gigabyte, it would be like, well, we have a 64-gigabyte model, and then a 65-gigabyte model for $100 more.
Like, no matter how little they add, it's always $100.
Yeah.
We have to change the storage at all.
It's $100.
And especially now, the cameras are just getting better, and they're shooting 120 frames per second, 720p video.
Yeah, that burst mode is crazy.
Seriously, you're giving us new ways, and iTunes Match, and the cloud sync, all these new ways to get tremendous amounts of data, retina graphics and all our games and everything, onto our iPods, and yet the storage doesn't change.
It's just...
pressing people up against the limits of their iOS device storage.
And as we talked about in last shows, dealing with storage and iOS and backups and photo stream and all that stuff is already a pain.
They're just applying more pressure to the problem by keeping the storage capacity as low, especially when like the people who are price conscious, they're getting 16s and they're not knowing like maybe 16 will be fine with them.
But if they have any pension for video, 16 will not be fine and they'll be sad.
And that's a bad experience for customers.
And like, well,
You got the 16 because it was the cheapest, but now you're having a lousy experience.
Yeah, well, I mean, I think iTunes Match is actually designed to help with this because the principle goes that you can just stream or download on the fly, whatever you want to listen to.
But in general, you're completely right.
And Aaron has a 16 gig for us.
And we haven't talked much about what we're going to do come Friday.
And I think all three of us should talk about this.
But I suspect I'm going to get her 32 just to future proof.
And even though, strictly speaking, I don't think I need a 64, I might do it just because I don't want to regret it later.
So, with that in mind, let's talk about what we're getting and how we're getting it.
So, obviously, I just told you I think Erin's going to get a 32, although I haven't completely concluded.
And obviously, she has input on this, but generally speaking, when it comes to things like this, she just says whatever you think is best.
Um, and I'm going to be probably getting a 64, both space gray, both five S's.
My plan currently, and we'll see what I end up doing is to wake up at three Eastern and that's when they go on sale, attempt to buy the two phones from Apple online cry as I usually do when it doesn't work as it usually doesn't.
And then potentially go back to that Apple store at three in the morning and get in line.
I'm curious to hear what the two of you are going to be doing, especially you, John, since you said that, that Tina might be getting a new one, but let's start with Marco.
Well, um,
So I'm going to try to get one.
My flaw, though, in my usual plan of usually if it's a preorder, yeah, I'll wake up at three in the morning and try it.
But I'm not as willing to do that.
I'm not as willing to get up and wait online in front of a store forever.
Usually I'll just go and get on the line like 20 minutes before the store opens, not like six hours ahead of time.
Just get wherever the line is.
Get on the line 20 minutes before the store opens.
And I've always been able to get one.
It's never been a problem.
I've never not gotten what I wanted.
Now, hold on.
Now, is that at the Fifth Avenue store or is that at various different stores?
It was mostly at the Fifth Avenue.
The last one I did here in Westchester at the mall.
But yeah, but I've done the Fifth Avenue store before, and even I got the original iPad at one of the other Manhattan stores, the one that's around 14th Street, wherever that one is.
So, you know...
My theory has always been, and I believe this will hold true now, we've heard a lot that the 5S might be supply constrained because of some of these really advanced components it has.
That will probably be true, but that's true of almost every new iPhone that comes out.
I think the 5C is the exception this year, where the 5C is helping to kind of dampen some of the demand for the 5S, and that's easy to make because they have all these components from the 5 they've been making for a year.
But normally, your best bet, you know, everybody, every single iPhone and iPad release, especially iPhones, everybody is always like, oh, I know this one little Verizon store that no one knows about.
I'm going to go there.
They have like this plan.
They're going to go to like this little obscure carrier store that they know about or like a Best Buy where they know somebody who works there or something like that, you know, something that's not an Apple store.
And the problem is, yeah, nobody knows about those.
Nobody goes there.
But Apple doesn't usually send them any stock either or they'll get like one or two units.
You know, so like the chances that you're going to get one there are pretty low.
Whereas if you go to one of Apple's flagship stores, the chances you're going to get one are pretty good.
That's why I would always go to the Fifth Avenue store because I knew like if anyone's going to have a lot of stock, it's the Fifth Avenue store.
Yeah, and more than that, what if you go to this random AT&T or Verizon store and they get one 64 gold and one 16 gig white, and you really wanted Space Gray?
Now what?
Exactly.
Now you're not so smart anymore, are you, guy?
Exactly.
So, yeah, I completely hear you.
And the problem that I'm running into with us is that you may not know the geography of Virginia, but suffice to say,
Most of the population is in the greater D.C.
area, which is way in northern Virginia.
Which part is the south?
I would – we're getting into a nuanced conversation now, but I would say – All of it.
No, not all of it.
Please email John.
Spend some time in D.C., and it's not quite the south.
But anyway, the point is there's Virginia Beach, which is way on obviously the coast.
There's D.C., there's Richmond, and then there's not a lot of civilization outside of that.
And even Charlottesville, which is a reasonably large city an hour west of us, they don't have an Apple store yet.
So for like two-thirds of the state of Virginia, you could pose a legitimate argument that my Apple store is the nearest Apple store.
So I'm really worried that if I don't get online at like 3 in the morning, there's zero chance that I'm going to get one.
We'll see what happens.
The number of people that get on the line relative to the time until the opening of the store accelerates a lot as that time approaches.
It's similar to the WBDC keynote lines where you can get online at midnight the night before, but you could also just go at 7 in the morning and be not that far back.
Not that different from if you went at midnight the night before.
Yeah.
So that's why I've always just gone, you know, like a half hour to an hour before they open.
In fact, the iPad one launch, I even went, I was late and I got there like 15 minutes after they opened the doors and I still got one.
And, you know, Apple stocks their stores a lot, especially if you're in a major city, I don't think you're going to have any problems.
I mean, I would say if you're anywhere that Apple has Apple stores, I don't think you're going to have any major problems.
There was one time when the iPad 3 came out, I was forced to either not get one or get a 64 gig when I was looking for a 32.
So I chose to just, you know, screw it, I'm already here, I've waited online, I'll get the 64.
So that does happen where, especially with the iPad where you have so many models, I guess now the iPhone's going to be the same way.
There's so many models, so you have to be prepared that
If you want the 16-gig black one, you might have some problems if you get there late.
But the reason why I go through all this on day one is because historically with these things, with iPhones and iPad releases, generally speaking, Apple has been producing these for a while.
They produce as much as they can for launch weekend.
That way they can not only get a bunch of them in people's hands and get a bunch of buzz, but then they can announce these big numbers saying, on launch weekend, we sold millions and millions of phones, right?
So meanwhile, though, after launch weekend, that whole stock is then blown out and they got to like then trickle them in as they're made after that.
So you generally have a much better chance of getting one on launch day than you do for like the next two weeks.
It's way, way easier to get one on day one than it is to get one on day two, three, four or five.
So that's why I'm actually flying to go to a conference.
I have to leave for the airport at like 1 p.m.
And I'm actually going to go to my mall, to the Apple store, try to get there for the 8 a.m.
opening, maybe a little bit before, and see if I can get a phone, get out of there by like 11 in the morning, which I might.
I don't know.
There's a good possibility I might have to just...
I'll be standing online near the front at 11, and I might have said, sorry, I've got to bail out.
I'm out of time.
We'll see.
That would stink.
I've thought about waking up at 3 to try the online ordering, but I don't have any faith that would actually work.
I don't either.
I suspect I'm going to have to get in the car.
And if I'm waking up at like 6 to go to the store and get online, also waking up at 3 would not be great for my mood that day.
So we'll see.
But I do plan to get – Tiff and I are both upgrading this year.
I do plan to get the 64-gig black.
which is now space gray, which I've expressed so far my like for that color and my dislike for the previous slate black that the iPhone 5 had.
So I'm going to get the black 64 AT&T.
Tiff is getting the white 64 AT&T.
We both treat ourselves to 64s on iPhones, but not on iPads because we use the iPhones way more and we actually do take tons of photos and videos.
So we have space issues on the smaller devices.
So
and AT&T simply because Verizon does not work in our house.
Yeah, and we're sticking with AT&T as well.
We went AT&T from Verizon when I got my iPhone, which was my first iPhone, which was a 3GS.
And to be honest, we don't really have any issues with it.
So we're sticking with it as well.
And I should point out that a friend of the show, Jason Snell, said in the chat,
China's getting it the same day that we are this year.
So perhaps some of that gray market stuff.
So the bad news is they're going to get a lot of stock.
Yeah, that's the problem.
But the good news is you won't have a bunch of gray market buyers competing for the stock that you and I are going to want, if that makes any sense at all.
Oh, yeah, that's actually a good point.
Well, not from China, but what about other countries that aren't getting it on day one?
I mean, China was always a big one.
Right.
But I think we're still going to see a lot of people who are looking to scalp them.
Yeah, we'll see what happens.
So anyway, I'm sorry.
So, John, we haven't given you a chance.
So tell me about what's going on in the Syracuse household.
Actually, the first thing, thinking of you two waking up at 3 in the morning or going to the store when it opens and getting in line, the interesting thing that I want to know on launch day is for the poor suckers at the end of the line, when they run out of stock or when the stock starts to get low,
What do those people hear?
Because I remember back like in the iPhone 4 days, what all those people heard is, I'm sorry, all you've got left is white 64 gigs.
Remember that?
The white 64 gigs were like, those were the last ones to go.
And we don't know if it's because of the ratios they predicted or whatever, but like across the entire country was like, what's left?
White was the unpopular color and it's always like the super expensive whites.
Or maybe it's like white 16s and white 64s, the white 32s go, you know?
So that's what I'm most interested in.
Because we don't get breakdowns by color or capacity or anything interesting from Apple.
But we get our own little research by everyone going to the Apple stores on launch days, waiting in lines.
And if the lines are long enough in the very popular stores, the people at the ends of those lines start to have to make those hard choices.
Like Marco had to get a 64 because that's all they had left.
What are the undesirables?
Is there one color that like every store has a bunch of golds left or every store has a bunch of whites left?
Is there one capacity?
That's what I'm watching for on launch day.
And that's all I'm going to be doing on launch day because I'm not waiting online.
I'm not ordering anything on the internet.
I'm not doing anything on launch day for myself or for my wife because neither one of us is going to get up at three in the morning to get a phone or anything like that.
We're probably just going to wait until like stocks go back up.
Like,
We wait a month.
Maybe we have to wait until the new year.
Any of those things is fine, as far as I'm concerned, because I'm not getting anything.
And my wife is planning on getting a new 5S.
I don't know what color she wants.
She has said that she likes the gold.
I don't know.
She may have been shamed by the internet into not getting a gold.
I don't know.
We'll see what happens.
By the way, how funny is it that Gruber's review units were a pink 5C and a gold 5S?
That is fantastic.
There's nothing funny about pink.
Are people saying make fun of pink as if it's like a color that he shouldn't have?
It's perfectly fine.
I think the pink is not particularly attractive because it's kind of more of like a dirty, chalky, like Pepto-Bismol pink.
But if you like that color, it's fine.
I don't think there's any reason to make fun of it.
The gold, on the other hand, I do find...
Yeah, we didn't talk about this in the old gold shows, but I finally put my finger on – well, I don't know if I put my finger on it.
I just found a connection with why don't I like the gold one, having not seen it in person?
And the thing that it gives me bad flashbacks to is back when the Lexus first came out with the LS400.
This always turns into neutral.
Sorry, guys.
It was Toyota's luxury brand, and around then, all the Japanese makers were making their luxury brands.
Nissan had Infiniti, Toyota had Lexus, and Mazda was going to have Amadi, but didn't.
Anyway, Lexus, their cars came out and wanted to make them look fancy, so they tried to make them look a lot like Mercedes S-Class.
But one thing Lexus offered on, I think it was all of its initial run of models, or maybe this wasn't even a factory thing, maybe it was a dealer-installed thing, is that you could get the car...
With gold trim on it.
So instead of on the back, it would say LS400 in like the fake silver plastic letters, like every car says in the back of it.
You could get all that stuff in gold.
The little tiny accent lines around the window.
On Long Island, this gold trim was very popular.
And it was the tackiest thing in the entire universe.
And I just could not stand it.
And I couldn't imagine anybody.
Because otherwise, the cars looked fairly distinguished, you know, and nice looking.
And it wasn't a lot of gold.
It was just a little bit of gold.
But all the accents were gold, and it looked terrible to me.
And that's all I can think of when I see pictures of the gold iPhone, that it's just like you could have got a regular iPhone, and you just opted for the gold trim, and it just makes the whole thing tacky.
Again, I say this not having seen one in person.
You know what you've just done is you've told me that there's an arrow in the FedEx logo in the negative space, and now I'll never be able to not think of the LS400 when I see a gold iPhone.
I think we did it for the S300 as well.
And again, I don't even know if this was a factory auction or just a dealer installed option for Long Island because many things on Long Island are tacky and this fitted right in with them.
No, I saw those too.
They were everywhere.
Oh, yeah.
All right, before you tell me about something awesome.
So, John, I thought your wife already had a 5, no?
No, she has a 4S.
We finally broke down and got her an iPhone.
4S was the best one you could get.
That's what she got.
She keeps trying to want to trade in her 4S.
She's like, oh, Verizon will give me $200 for my 4S.
I can practically get a free 5S.
And Gazelle will give me this much and all these things.
I'm like, no, you can't sell it.
It has to...
We have to keep it goes into the museum and it's mostly because I really like that form factor.
As I mentioned in the last show, I really like how that thing looks as a, as an object, not so much as a phone that I hold in my hand, but as an object, I really like it.
I even like the bumper that she's got on it.
So we're definitely keeping that one.
I want to add also, Stephen Hackett, our friend in the chat, pointed out a little bit ago that, before we move on, that Apple's been doing this thing with the last couple of releases where if you wait on the lines in front of the stores, they go around and they pass out little cards.
They ask you what you're waiting for, how many, what model, and they give you a card to represent that model.
And I think the implication is that they have the right number of cards that represent their stock.
so that they can then tell you, like, okay, just bring this ticket to the front, and we still have enough that you'll get one.
Consequently, if you're too far back in the line, they will be able to tell everybody, like, after this point, sorry, we're not going to have any more for you.
Like, by the time you get there, they'll be gone, which is nice, actually, because then you won't be waiting online for hours, you know, for something that you'll end up not getting.
Yeah.
So then early in the morning, you'll know, okay guys at the back of the line, what we've got left are 16 gigabyte white five S's and you know, like whatever the unpopular ones are.
And then you just have to watch the people at the back of the line squirm and go, Oh, do I buy it?
Do I really want to have a phone today?
Or do I want to come back?
And, and by the way, for the people making those choices, unless you are like Marco about to get on a plane and you need to have this phone, come back a different day because you'll have to live with your choice.
Unless, unless they're urging you to get the bigger model, because if they're urging you to get the bigger model and you can actually afford it, uh,
that's fine but if but if you find yourself getting like a 16 or a color that you don't want you will suffer through that either by looking at an ugly phone that makes you sad or by not being able to fit your stuff in for you know your two-year contract or whatever you have so stay strong if for whatever reason i was forced to choose i would choose gold before i choose 16 gigs
Strong language there, but you should choose neither.
I could at least put a case on it or send it to one of those anodizing services or something.
16 gigs, you suffer every day.
Every time you take a picture or try to download a podcast, you suffer.
You know, I should point out that someone is either your wife, John, or masquerading as your wife in the chat, trying to enlist the chat room to argue with you about how you're running out of space in the museum.
LAUGHTER
The iPhone 4S is tiny.
That's what I said.
But still, I do find it awesome.
The 5 is thinner.
It's not big.
And by the way, I'm surprised no one complained.
I just spent a while complaining that it's $100 to move up to the next storage size, and yet I'm willing to forego $200 simply to keep an old phone.
It's the principle of the matter.
No, it's just that's how my priorities work out.
What's more important?
You know what I mean?
I don't want to pay the extra $100 for the 64, and by not paying an extra $100 for the 64 over the course of many years allows me to afford to keep my $200 resale value phone in my museum.
Really quick.
So you're not going to take your wife's old 4S and put it on some sort of plan that you're going to use it?
No, you can't go back to that screen after using the iPhone 5 size screen in my touch.
Plus the thing is like twice as thick.
Yeah, you can't go back to that.
This screen is nicer than her screen in all ways.
I can't go back.
Fair enough.
All right, Marco, after long delay, would you tell me about something else that's awesome?
Absolutely.
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All right.
Do we want to talk about chips or do we want to talk about post-NDA stuff?
Chips.
I had a feeling you would vote that way.
Well, the big news today is that a lot of people have iOS 7 and nobody except for like 10 reviewers has iPhone 5Ss.
Yeah.
So, I don't know.
Is there much more to say about that particular issue?
Actually, there is.
Watching, I mean, obviously by the time this, we're going to try to publish this episode tomorrow, so on Thursday, but already there's this thing on Mixpanel.com.
They're measuring iOS 7 adoption, like basically by the hour, by 15 minutes.
So as of right now, iOS 7 is already at 19.94%.
So basically 20% adoption, you know, a mere hours.
I mean, what's it been like five or six hours since it's been officially released?
So, you know, hours after its release, it's already at 20% here.
And then our friend underscore David Smith is also running one at david-smith.org slash iOS version stats.
Also running one just among his apps and the data that he collects from his apps.
And he's already at, let me see, I believe it's just about 9% now.
So he's already seeing among people who use his apps already have 9% adoption, which I would assume means they've not only downloaded the update, but have already launched one of his apps in the meantime.
So this is amazing for day one to have between 10% and 20%, or possibly even more than that, mere hours after its release.
Well, I'm sure KitKat will be easily twice this in half as much time.
Because isn't that how Android goes?
It's instant adoption across the entire hardware line?
Oh, yeah, because right now everyone's using 4.3, right?
John, do you want to tell me who's fabbing the A7?
Nobody knows, do they?
I haven't kept up on the news, but there were some rumors earlier in the week that, like, well, maybe Intel's doing it, because people are doing back-of-the-envelope calculations.
I'm like, well, they gave us the number of transistors, roughly, and they gave us the die area, and we can do some math and say, well, the only way they could fit that number of transistors in this die area is if I just, you know, take a proportional scaling from the previous thing, and it's got to be 22 or 20 nanometers, and the only person who could fab that is Intel, so maybe Intel's fabbing the A7.
I don't know who's fabbing the A7, but...
But it's kind of a shame that Antec did his review of the 5S, because I basically agree with everything he said in there, and I would have looked a lot smarter if I could have said it before he published his review.
But we didn't record then.
But yeah, I agree with his guess.
that it's 28 nanometers uh i don't know who's fabbing it i don't think it's intel uh but even if it is it's 28 nanometers it's not a big deal uh i don't think it needs to be 20 or 22 to fit in that die area because you can't just do that kind of math like transistor the space transistors take up on a chip depends on how they're laid out you know
It's not like you can't just do a number of transistors per unit area because RAM has a different density than regularized structures like repeated GPU cores has a different density than core logic has a different density than the cache areas and hand layout versus auto layout.
And there's so many factors that go into how many transistors can fit in a particular unit area.
I don't think you can do any math that can prove conclusively that this thing is 20 or 22 nanometers.
It's probably 28.
And if Intel was fabbing it,
I think we would know by now by some kind of leak.
But anyway, I don't care who's fabbing it.
All I care is what the feature size is.
And I don't think it's 20 or 22.
I think it's 28.
And somebody on Twitter – I'm sorry.
I forgot who.
Somebody was replying to us talking about these rumors saying that there hasn't been –
massively ramping up their capacity.
And if they were going to do something like take on, like be the only manufacturer of the next flagship iPhone's CPU, they would probably have to add substantial capacity.
Well, Intel has been saying that.
Intel has been adding fab capacity that appears to be out of proportion with how many of their own chips they're going to make.
So there's been a lot of over the past several years, like it looks like Intel might start getting more into the business of fabbing chips for other people.
And that's why like all these Apple Intel rumors have been swirling around.
It's like, okay, well that kind of makes sense for Intel to do because it's like hedging their bets.
Like if they can't win this architecture war in mobile with the, with their x86 chips, um,
their hedge is that, hey, we're still the best fab in the world.
And that's not a terrible business to be in either, especially since they have basically no competitors at this point.
Taiwan Semiconductor is still behind them, maybe kind of nipping at their heels, but I don't know.
They have a bad track record there.
But Intel is number one with the bullet, right?
So they want their chips to be the best in the world and be everywhere.
But if they can't make that work, their fallback plan is, well, we're still the best fab in the world.
And ideally, they'd like to be both.
So I'm guessing that no deal has been struck for the A7 and the negotiations continue for the A8 or whatever.
That review, which we should put in the show notes, the 5S review, talks a lot about the A7.
It has to do a lot of guesswork in terms of testing it and running software against it because no one has sliced the thing open yet.
So we don't know for sure, but it looks...
Like it's dual core, you know, cache measurements is like it has double the L1.
He was trying to estimate pipeline depths.
It's a lot of guesswork at this point, but it's pretty much what we expected it to be.
No big surprise there.
Actually, I think there were a couple of surprises when they were doing the benchmarking to see the areas where it regressed versus the A6.
Yeah, especially the GPU, because it's a different architecture.
That was a big one.
Yeah, or even, like, yeah, the different architecture on the GPU was, like, you know, instead of having a full-featured, repeated cores that has just lots of shader hardware, but not repeating the entire, you know...
entire gpu core merely just repeating the shader hardware to give you uh good performance on shader type things but not quite as a good performance and triangle setup and other and other type of things which is a good trade-off to make in terms of power consumption everything but on artificial benchmarks does show some regressions and even i think there were some benchmarks that were just like simple scalar math type things uh where it was falling behind due to like 64-bit issues and stuff like that but that just goes to show that synthetic benchmarks like that that
Yeah.
Where can we actually regress and use less and wimpier hardware?
And in exchange for that, put that time, energy, resources, die area, power consumption into another part of the chip to make it faster.
And that's what you want it to be.
If it had been like a shrink to 20 nanometers, then you can have your cake and eat it too.
You're like, all right, we don't have to chew any trade-offs.
We're going to get lower power.
We're going to get everything.
And it'll be faster in all possible ways.
But the A7 is not that chip, especially since they went up to 64 bits at the same time.
So basically what you're saying is chip design is like the MP3 codec.
Oh, you can't hear that anyway, so screw it.
Let's cut it out.
Well, in this case it is because they made trade-offs.
It's pretty amazing what they've been able to achieve of getting more or less double real-world performance in several end-user application areas while not being a massive shrink and not using double the power.
It's a pretty amazing balancing act.
to get such a huge performance boost with almost no downside.
It is more power-hungry than the A6.
They have to compensate for that for giving it a bigger battery, and it still comes in a little bit behind in a few energy usage areas than the A6.
But overall, it's a pretty amazing achievement, what they've done with the A7.
Oh, yeah.
Especially reading that awesome Anantech review, the more we learn about this chip, the more impressive that it looks.
These performance gains are incredible.
I've been looking into what are the differences between the 32 and 64-bit instruction sets.
When the desktop CPUs went through this, AMD basically took Intel's instruction set and just extended it.
They added to it to make it work and to make it backwards compatible.
The ARM V8 instruction set does not do that.
It's actually a whole different instruction set, and the chip just switches modes between the two, and it can switch modes without much of a penalty, and the chip just implements both.
In the future, it doesn't have to, but right now they will for backwards compatibility, and that's just incredible to have this kind of
technology like in a mobile chip that is performing as well as desktops did like three or four years ago or four or five years ago performing like to those kind of levels and being able to have these advanced features like 64-bit and hardware accelerated encryption instructions and the and two different instruction sets that can switch between on a whim like that's that's just awesome like this is really advanced stuff
Well, there is one equivalent in the x86 to x86-64 transition, and that's floating point stuff, where the old x86 had stack-based floating point, and the x86-64 did all that stuff with its own SSE instructions and everything.
And so, yeah, the stack-based floating point was still supported, but every compiler that targeted x86-64 was like, look, don't ever generate stack-based floating point code.
And so there was a kind of similar instance where it's like two instruction sets for floating point calculations.
And as soon as you didn't have to use the old one anymore, compilers stopped emitting that code.
And so it was kind of like the same thing where you have the ARMv4 or whatever the instruction set is, the old 32-bit one.
yeah v7 uh that one is like off to the side and like we'll just turn off the hardware when it's not in use and ideally it will never be in use because no one who's who's emitting code for a 64-bit thing will ever emit code for that because it's an entirely different instruction set well same thing on x86 no one is putting out stack place folding point code anymore and so even though that area needs to be on the chip they don't need to make it good doesn't have to be fast it can be powered down most of the time uh
So that's one small corner of that transition that's like the ARM transition.
But yeah, it's a little bit easier to do what they did, like make it backward compatible with ARM32 while kind of having a unique implementation of 64 because as weird as the 32-bit ARM architecture was, it's nowhere near as weird and byzantine as x86.
Well, it's much younger.
It had a lot of the advantage of hindsight in its design.
Yeah.
And it's risky.
It's not a CISC instruction set where you have to deal with these crazy things that blow up into a million micro-coded instructions on the real architecture that the chip has made.
I will say, though, looking at various lengths and supporting things, it really does look like, going back for a second, that Intel is almost certainly not fabbing this, that it's almost definitely Samsung 28nm.
but it's worth talking about why that would be a big deal.
If Intel was fabbing this, using, say, what are they at, 22 nanometer for their high-end CPUs now?
Or 20?
22.
If they're at that kind of feature size, then they... Assuming that they struck some kind of deal with Apple where...
they wouldn't fab anyone else's mobile chips for a couple years, say, then Apple could basically be an entire generation or two ahead of what everyone else in the smartphone and tablet space was doing with regard to power efficiency.
So they could have either twice the CPU battery life or they could have twice the performance of the same battery life.
That kind of level of...
of a difference there and they could maintain that as long as they had intel as their manufacturer and no one else was having intel as their manufacturer it's a really big deal so here's the problem with the scenario and probably the reason it hasn't happened intel would rather that apple use its x86 space chips in its tablets and phones yep and that is not right now intel's not ready to give up on that
nor should they be, because if you look at those Anatech benchmarks, they've got Baytrail in there, which is their Atom processor, and that's a tablet processor, not a phone processor, so it's not really a fair fight, but it's not a desktop processor, right?
And Baytrail matches the A7 and beats it in a few benchmarks.
Granted, Baytrail's not shipping, and again, it's a tablet instead of a phone thing, but the question is, how good is Intel getting at making low-power x86 parts that could conceivably be in a tablet or phone?
And the answer is,
They're getting really close, because this amazing A7 that we think is all wonderful and everything, Intel has a chip that's not out yet, but will be out soon, that gives it a run for its money in tablets, if not in phones.
And Intel, like Apple, is nothing if not determined.
This is not the end of the line.
They've finally gotten religion about low-power chips, and they're finally targeting things.
So once Intel turns its attention to a market, kind of like how they...
lost track of the ball with the network's market architecture and the Pentium fours and chasing clock speed.
Once they put their mind to it and came out with the core architecture, like they just blew everyone away.
So Intel is currently turning the company around and saying, we need to make chips that can fit in phones.
and tablets, and you can be sure they're going to Samsung and Apple and everybody else and saying, here's our roadmap.
In two, three years, we're going to have a 14 nanometer chip and it's going to have this power and whatever.
Compare that to your internal roadmap, Apple.
We think you should put x86.
This is the flip side of the thing we talked about.
Oh, 64-bit ARM chips, they're going to put them in a MacBook Air.
The flip side is, Intel says, no, no, no, no, no, Apple.
Don't put ARM chips in your MacBook Air.
Put x86 chips in all your iOS devices.
And
you know that's not crazy like there's an appeal to that which is hey same instruction set on mac and ios like that's good right everyone likes that and if intel can say no one is going to be able to match the power and performance that we're going to have two or three years out because look at this roadmap that's credible coming from intel like given their track record you can't say oh forget about that apple will always be able to do something better with its own arm architecture
Of course, Apple likes controlling its destiny more than Intel will let it control its destiny, so that is an ongoing negotiation, I'm sure.
But I'm not writing them off.
I'm not writing off x86 or Intel in this space until I see what they have to offer.
They're just beginning to be competitive, but seeing those Bay Trail numbers up against the A7...
By the way, Intel is out there, and they're a giant 800-pound gorilla, and they know what the heck they're doing.
And maybe not this year.
Don't worry about it this year.
But next year, they should be on your radar.
So that's what I'd be watching for.
That's the flip side of the, oh, MacBook Airs with 64-bit ARM CPUs in them story.
So do you feel like that we're going to come to the point where we're just waiting for this marriage like we did in the United States between Apple and Verizon?
Does that question make sense?
Well, Apple already married Intel for the Macs.
And what everyone's waiting for now is a divorce.
Like, oh, they're going to split up and Apple's going to make ARM CPUs everywhere and everything like that.
But we have to see how this turns out.
Like, it's not a slam dunk that Intel is going to have chips that beat everything that Apple does.
They're just barely starting to be competitive now.
And x86 does have a disadvantage being disgusting and all.
Even the 64-bit variants compared to the ARM things.
And Apple is a control freak and does really prefer getting an architecture license from ARM and then doing everything themselves.
Apple would prefer if they could just do everything themselves and get Intel to fab them with their super awesome fabs that in two or three years' time would be 14 nanometer, right?
And Intel prefers x86 everywhere because that's something that they can own and control.
to some degree, or to a larger degree than ARM.
So we are in a transitional period, and I would love to be in the multi-year-long boardroom meetings between those two companies trying to negotiate how this is going to turn out.
It's actually very interesting.
I will point out, though, before we leave this topic, that the Baytrail CPUs that Intel has not only are not yet in a phone-compatible power envelope, but I just looked up on Wikipedia, and they are using 22 nanometer.
So the idea that Intel is only able to basically match the A7 in most ways in performance, they're only able to match it, not beat it,
using this entire generation ahead of process technology and using more power than the A7.
That's significant.
That's a substantial difference.
Well, they used to be even crappier.
Like, if you look at Antel's previous efforts to do anything low power, like...
They have come a really, really long way.
Like I said, they're not there yet, but I wouldn't count them out.
They should be doing better than they are.
For years, it's like, Intel, what's your problem?
Why don't you just make a decent mobile chip?
They're like, well, we have these Atom processors, and they're kind of good and cheap PCs.
No, no, we need something that fits in a phone or a tablet.
Okay, we'll make something.
Like, they've just been making crap.
They haven't really been putting their A-team on it.
And so now they're finally waking up.
And there are other issues in terms of doing system-minded chips versus individual CPUs that Intel needs to gain expertise in.
So there is a bit of a learning curve there.
Yeah.
But, you know, like their roadmap, and Tech has done a couple of articles on this as well, like look at the roadmap three chips down, what Intel says they're going to have on the low end and on the high end, and how they kind of start converging into a continuum of chips that go all the way from phone power envelopes all the way up into, you know, Mac Pro power envelopes, and how Intel sees eventually a unified architecture that spans that range.
Uh, and you can't, you can't count them out.
You can't, you know, I don't, I don't look at those slides and, and say, I'll forget it.
That'll never happen.
Because if you had said the same thing when they were, when they had the Pentium fours and it looked like AMD was kicking their butt and they showed you the core architecture thing, you'd be like, man, whatever.
I'll believe it when I see it.
Well, they did it there.
So, uh, I have faith in Intel still.
I don't know.
I would have severe doubts that Apple would ever give up that control again.
For Apple to have done the A7 and the whole A series, to have all this chip design in-house where they're making exclusive chips that... Intel can go sell their chips to Samsung and everyone else.
They don't care.
For Apple to have exclusive chips that are totally under their control and they can have...
pretty much anyone they want within a very, very small group of people who are capable of it.
But they can have anybody they want manufacture it.
They can set their own schedule for the most part.
They can get a lot of price gains by being the designers and basically just using somebody else as a dumbfab.
I don't see... It's different in the Macs.
In the Macs, Apple hardly sells any Macs relative to the number of iOS devices they sell.
The Mac business, they can... And there's no really good alternative in the Mac and PC space besides Intel right now.
But for them to give up such an important component
to go backwards in the direction they've been trying so hard to go, to switch to someone else's processor and system on a chip and to let anybody else sell the exact same chip in their own phones.
I don't see Apple ever doing that.
Well, that's all part of the negotiation.
Who's to say that Intel would let anyone else buy that chip?
Wouldn't that be part of the negotiation?
And the other thing about, oh, well, Apple can now have anybody fab it.
So far, they've been having Samsung fab them, which is not good.
You know, like Apple does not want Samsung.
Apple wants, you know, Taiwan Semiconductor to fab them, and they're not online yet, right?
So it's an uncomfortable situation for everybody.
Everyone's got something to offer, and everyone's got something they don't want to give up.
Apple wants to get off Samsung.
They want to have someone else fab their stuff.
They want to retain complete control, but they would also like to be fabbing things at competitive or superior levels.
And Intel wants to get into this space.
So maybe Intel and Apple could reach a deal and say, okay, we will...
we'll fab your ARM chips for you.
And then the next year, you promise to buy our chips.
But we'll only sell you the system on chip.
We won't sell it to anyone else.
It'll be an exclusive contract, provided you can provide such and such a volume.
The business deals to be made here, there are sort of win-win scenarios for Apple and Intel if they could just figure out the right balance of control versus money versus guaranteed sales versus volumes versus not helping our competitors and the whole nine yards.
And if Apple won't talk...
Intel is surely talking to Samsung as well and everybody else.
So it's a delicate dance between these giants in the phone business to see who is, you know, everyone negotiating for a superior position down the line.
You know what I think is most cool about all of this, though, is that this mobile space is interesting from the hardware straight through the software.
It's not like there's any part of this ecosystem that's boring.
Everything is in flux.
Everything is moving in very quickly, and it's a heck of a lot of fun to watch.
That's for sure.
Much better than the PC space where it was just like Windows and Intel for so long and then AMD kind of made it interesting briefly before Intel smushed them.
Yep.
All right.
And with that, let's wrap it up this week.
Thanks a lot to our two sponsors, Squarespace and MailRoute.
We'll see you next week.
Now the show is over.
They didn't even mean to begin.
Cause it was accidental.
Oh, it was accidental.
John didn't do any research.
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Cause it was accidental.
Oh, it was accidental.
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C
The titles are lacking today.
What the hell is wrong with the chat room?
I guess we weren't that funny today.
I guess not.
Swimming in 16 gigabyte gold is pretty good.
You just got to decide whether you have the space after the 16.
Yeah, non-breaking space.
Don't put anything like that into podcast titles with strange characters as they get mangled.
But I'm so disappointed with RSS feed readers because now that I have an RSS feed on my hypercritical site, which, you know, never gets updated because I never post anything to it.
But anyway, I get complaints and say, oh, your feed is broken.
And my feed is so not broken.
Everything shows up as one giant paragraph.
The feed has p-tags in it.
It validates.
It's a valid Atom feed.
Wait, but are the p-tags direct descendants of the Atom tag, or are they encoded as HTML?
I'm using the namespace support in Atom, where you can say, in the item, this section that I'm going to tell you now is HTML namespace.
I'm not making this stuff up.
I'm following the standards.
The problem is the readers don't follow the standards.
The readers are sort of...
you know, half-assed heuristic kind of like they're, they're not following the standard.
The standard provides a way for you to put HTML inside there without escaping it, because that's the other thing you can do.
Like, okay, well I'm just going to escape everything.
It's going to be ampersand, LT, semicolons all over the place.
Right.
Then you have to worry about the readers not correctly unescaping that.
Right.
Right.
So I was trying to avoid that by saying, look, I'll make it easy for you.
There's a way in the Atom standard to put HTML in there and have actual HTML tags and tell, you know, with XML namespaces.
Used to be you were looking at Atom feed.
Now you're about to look at HTML.
And all that's in the HTML is P tags and, you know, whatever.
And things just swallow it up and don't show the breaks between paragraphs.
Some of them do.
Some of them read it fine, but other ones don't.
And so...
It's just this constant struggle to find the authors of these feed reader applications, send them the URL of my feed, tell them that it's valid, tell them that their thing should render it correctly, and then never hear from them again.
Yeah, how does that work out when you do that?
occasionally like there was there were a couple bugs that were easier to find didn't have to do with formatting that uh i think the reader guy i sent in stuff about that he's like oh i found out that's a bug i think it was like actually it wasn't the feed itself it was subscribing they'd click on a little link to subscribe and uh they couldn't handle it because my subscription things didn't have like a file name extension or some other crazy thing or no their their url parsing didn't recognize dot co as a like as a domain specifier and so would treat the entire thing as a search string
I didn't even know you could do this in this feed.
I'm looking at your feed.
Yeah, the way you just embed the HTML directly.
I had no idea you could even do that.
Run it through an Atom validator.
It's a miracle.
Here's your problem.
You have two problems.
First of all, your link in your header is RSS, and the feed's actually Atom.
That's against all standards.
Second of all, Atom's terrible.
That's your problem right there.
See, the reason why Atom is terrible to parse is – and not like parse the XML, but I guess the reason why it's terrible to interpret the tree that is parsed is that you can do a million different things in Atom.
And a lot of it – because Atom – RSS was designed by a couple of crazy people.
And so it's really simple, and it works, and it's really easy to deal with.
Atom was designed by a committee in response to limitations in RSS.
So it was doomed to be this ridiculous, bloated thing that could encompass every possible thing you might ever want to do with anything in a feed.
But Adam is a closed standard.
It's not like you have to interpret 8,000 different date formats.
Adam defines what the format is, and if you just follow the Adam standard, you're fine.
That's why I picked it.
Well, but for somebody implementing a feed parser, following the standard, first of all, you have to have a bunch of weird fuzzy logic and exceptions to deal with feeds that aren't properly formed.
But second of all, dealing with Adam, it's just such a pain because there are so many different possibilities.
Like to say, all right, well, what is the date that I should display for this article?
Well, there's like 16 different ways to represent dates, and they all have slightly different semantic meanings.
And some feeds will have one or two of them.
Some feeds will have none of them.
Some feeds will have these three, but one of them will be 60 years in the future for some reason.
You've got to deal with that.
Well, that's RSS you're describing, not Adam.
Yeah.
Well, RSS, there are a lot fewer value types.
It's a lot simpler of a structure.
Atom tries to represent every possible thing.
It's very complex as a result, and the possible...
The range of possible situations and meanings that can be encompassed by Atom is so much bigger that in practice it leads to not only much harder to write parsers for it, but a lot more likely errors if you are relying on it being parsed properly.
I think it's harder to write an RSS parser because I think it's more Wild West.
I'm not using esoteric Atom features.
You can look at that Atom feed with your eyes and understand every single piece of it.
like it's not i'm not i'm not even doing any set of attachments or anything like that it's very simple and straightforward and there is no ambiguity there's no data in there that could possibly be in any other format and so it appeals to me and no i don't think the fact that the text of the link says rss has anything to do with it this is so like this perfectly represents you versus me right here
Like you are the Atom feed and I'm the RSS parser.
Like mine's like all like pragmatic and simple and, you know, not technically that correct, but it just works.
And you're like, you're like, well, what about this?
Yeah.
It doesn't just work.
RSS feeds have tons of problems all the time because people produce junk RSS feeds.
I'm totally a proponent of don't put out junk and make people have to handle it.
That's the whole thing of Postel's law of be liberal in what you consume and conservative in what you output and parsers that die as soon as they find something that's invalid versus parsers that just stumble along.
I think HTML5 is the correct approach, which is
Don't immediately die if you encounter any error, but document your error handling precisely so that everyone can render it the same way.
And I think the web has proven that that model is the correct one.
Because the old one where everyone was just writing crap and then parsers doing whatever the hell they want was untenable.
And the one where you don't show anything on the page if a single thing is broken, it's also untenable.
And the correct solution is to have a well-defined standard all the way down to how you handle error conditions so that everybody can implement their parsers in exactly the same way that don't blow up when you have an error, but that all pages still look the same.
And so I think it's perfectly possible to implement an Adam parser using that same thing.
All right, go for it.
I don't want to.
Who wants to parse Adam feeds?
No.
It was an accident Accidentally podcasted Accident It was an accident He accidentally podcasted John Tiracusa Wise old soul Saving his pennies for a smack bro Marco Arment He's a product man Let's sell him off just as fast as he can Casey Who the hell is Casey?
Who the hell is Casey?
Who the hell is Casey?
It was an accident
Podcasted.
Well, hopefully two of the three of us will have new phones next week.
And all of our wives will.
Yeah, hopefully.
Not next week.
Like I said, Tina's probably not going to get hers until they come back.
Until it's boring.
That really was her.
I checked her IP.
I love how that's how you find out.
Can we please put that in the show?
Absolutely.
How else are you going to know?
I'm going to get up from it.
She's not in the room with me.
There's another part of the house.
Couldn't have sent her like a text message or something.
Jesus Christ.
Could have asked her.
Oh, that's fantastic.