Sea-Level Executives
Casey:
You can use that Marco Arment plus 30-minute skip button at this point if you're not interested at all.
Casey:
By the way, great idea, huh?
Casey:
Wouldn't it be great to have a plus 30-minute skip button?
Casey:
You get to John Syracuse's second bullet point.
John:
Singleton, Boston.
John:
That's all I have to say.
Casey:
Oh, you are such a baby.
John:
The chances of me going to that one are much higher.
Casey:
Oh, they're still mediocre at best, let's be honest.
John:
No, I would say they were over 50%.
Casey:
Wow.
Marco:
If they did it next door to your house, would it be a 60% chance of you going?
John:
I mean, I guess it really depends on the timing of OS X releases.
John:
Because this year, even if it was in Boston, while you guys were there doing your thing in Singleton, I was doing review stuff.
John:
So that review stuff would not have gotten done if I was there.
Casey:
Since you brought it up, how's it going?
John:
so they made the announcement of the october 22nd whatever ipad whatever apple special event with no mention of a price or a date uh at this point i am resigned to the fact that i'm not going to know a price or a date until the public knows and when will the public know maybe they'll know on the 22nd maybe the release mavericks on the 22nd so i just have to plan for that so the current plan is
John:
uh act as if apple is going to announce on stage on the 22nd oh and by the way mavericks is available for download now at such and such a price and that means i have to have you know an ebook ready to purchase on the 22nd which means i have to submit the book probably tomorrow uh which means i had to get all the information finalized in the review
John:
Make sure it's somewhat coherent, even though it does not contain information about pricing.
John:
Because it can't, because I don't know.
John:
And so that's what I did before the podcast was got that e-book ready.
John:
I haven't actually submitted it yet because I'm waiting on one last pass of copy editing.
John:
And then tomorrow I'm going to submit it.
John:
Got it.
John:
I don't know if you guys have ever used iTunes Producer.
Casey:
Nope.
John:
Just like Apple, too.
John:
I mean, I haven't used iTunes Connect, but is iTunes Connect, is that an app that you run on your Mac as well?
Marco:
No, thank God.
Marco:
Although, it's, you know, actually, I don't know if that would make it better or worse.
Marco:
I mean, you could make a pretty terrible native app, too.
John:
I was going to say that this, like in any other system, for example, like Amazon or whatever, and their things have their own terrible problems, but you would expect this to be a web app.
John:
Hey, there's a store somewhere on the internet where you can buy digital media, and if you're a producer of digital media, you can upload things to that store and put them for sale, and you totally expect that to be a web application, but instead it's this native Mac application, not a particularly nice native Mac application, with tons and tons of fields, with insufficient room to type in them, and not very nicely laid out, and
John:
You have to go be looking through the giant PDF documentation to figure out what all the fields mean.
John:
And just, you have to do all this stuff locally and save it into this big giant package file and then hit this thing that uploads the whole package to Apple.
John:
Versus being like a web application where you piecemeal add the metadata, add the data and slowly get the book ready like online where you can see what it's going to look like before you finally submit it here.
John:
It's just do everything at once and then press a button and then it just like shoves the whole thing up to Apple.
John:
And then if you want to modify any information, I think you have to modify it locally again.
John:
But only certain fields you can modify and then shove it back up?
John:
I don't know.
John:
This experience is not confidence-inspiring, and it is definitely a little bit scary that you have to do all this stuff locally and then press one button, and then the thing sails off into the sunset.
John:
And then presumably it's rejected.
John:
I'm assuming that's the next phase.
Marco:
Nice.
Marco:
Well, that isn't actually that different from the way Xcode apps are uploaded now.
Marco:
Back three years ago or so, it was basically just a web form, and there was a separate uploader app that you could use to upload for submissions, but you didn't have to use it, and you'd only ever use it, I think, if it was above a certain size where the web form would time out or something like that.
Marco:
Now, though, I think you have to always use Xcode's built-in native uploader.
Marco:
And it's actually kind of nice because you still do all the metadata entry on the web interface, which is probably good because...
Marco:
even though it's a pretty terrible web interface, I can't imagine the native version would be substantially better because the reason iTunes connects it to a terrible web interface is not because web interfaces have to be terrible.
Marco:
It's because Apple doesn't really care that much about it being good.
Marco:
And so obviously they could have the same problem with native app.
Marco:
But it is nice to have, like for an app,
Marco:
they run a whole bunch of validation steps locally, and they run a whole bunch more on the server side as soon as you submit.
Marco:
And so it can have a nice little feedback mechanism there.
Marco:
Also, it takes care of some of the code signing stuff way better than it did before.
Marco:
So it is nice having that blend of native and web for this kind of thing.
Marco:
I think it's more just a matter of...
Marco:
how much Apple cares about getting it right.
Marco:
And with iTunes Connect, they've had a pretty bad record of that.
Marco:
It's not that it's always terrible, but it's never great.
John:
Yeah, a lot of my trepidation about this is because this is my first one.
John:
So obviously after I do the first one, I'll sort of know what to expect.
John:
I'm pouring over the documentation to make sure.
John:
For example, the on-sale date of the book, I have to make sure that's editable after I submit.
John:
And the documentation says it is, but I would like to say it in bold with arrows pointing to the thing and saying, yes, totally, you can submit a book.
John:
with a for sale date in the future.
John:
And then if, for example, Mavericks is not released on the 22nd, I need to change the sale date because I can't put the thing on sale until Mavericks comes out and so on and so forth.
John:
So that seems to be the case.
John:
I think everything is all in line for that.
John:
Although I may set the date to the 23rd just in case, because if the date really is editable, I can always set it back to the 22nd, right?
John:
But if the date isn't editable, at least I have the 22nd to run around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get Apple to, you know, make sure the book doesn't go for sale on 23rd.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, if it works for anything like the App Store, the way people try to do controlled releases there, you can either do the hold for release and then you click a button and then it starts going.
Marco:
But the other thing you could do, which helps a little bit to avoid some of the cache delays, is to release it with an availability date way in the future.
Marco:
And then when you're ready to release, set the availability date way in the past.
Marco:
And then it updates and it gets submitted automatically.
Marco:
It becomes available faster than, I think, any other method.
Marco:
But I'm not entirely sure on that.
John:
So what system do they have for setting the price?
John:
Do you have to set the price in all the various regions that the store is in?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
You set the price tier, which basically is the first digit of the price in the U.S.
Marco:
And then they have this big chart to show what that is and all the different other currencies.
Marco:
So you pick...
Marco:
Tier 1 is $0.99 in the U.S., and so on to everyone else.
Marco:
So that's why all the prices are pretty much locked into that and are all the same.
John:
It's the same thing with the tiering and the iTunes producer, but it does it in a native Mac GUI with this sort of having all the fields.
John:
I think they're all independently editable, but then you have to select them all and then do a mass edit to edit all of them.
John:
For example, I picked the wrong...
John:
type for the book the choices were new release digital only and other and you know being the being the typical person that i am instead of stopping and going to the documentation and seeing which one it was i'm just like well i'll just pick a new release for now and then i looked up what it was later i said oh actually i should have picked the digital only so i went to change it to digital only and digital only was the only choice in the pop-up menu when i selected all the items so i had to select each individual territory and change that pop-up menu 200 and something times so that was fun
Casey:
Nice.
John:
Yeah.
John:
It's not like, it's not the experience I want for, I feel better in general.
John:
I feel better when I'm using a web form to edit information that's on a server, kind of like, you know, the, the server is the source of truth.
John:
And then I'm just editing it versus having some local thing that I edit and then submit.
John:
And then like, I can edit the local thing again and resubmit.
John:
And what happens is like the diffs get applied of, you know, or maybe just totally replaces the content.
John:
It's just, I feel more comfortable.
John:
picking away at something, slowly making it better when it's all, you know, uploaded a piece at a time into a web interface and then finally hitting a button versus doing all of that locally, which of course I can only do on a single machine unless I put the thing in my Dropbox and I don't know.
John:
We'll see how it goes.
Casey:
So have you gotten to the point that you are writing four different versions of the pricing paragraph or paragraphs or section or whatever based on $10, $20, $30 and free?
John:
Yeah, I wish it was only that section because the other parts of the review make oblique reference to the price in various places.
John:
So yeah, I have a version of three different versions.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And then plus all the other places in the review where I allude to those versions.
John:
And I tried to make the illusions vague enough that they could fit no matter what the price ends up being.
John:
But it's all just very annoying.
John:
This is a new complication because in every past year, they've always announced the date and the price well in advance.
John:
And this year, they're not for some reason.
Casey:
I think it's just to troll you, if I'm not mistaken.
John:
It is pretty annoying.
John:
If you say, how could you annoy me the most?
John:
This would not have occurred to me.
John:
But it is pretty darn annoying.
Marco:
I have to imagine if somebody really tries to annoy you, it can't be that hard to come up with a way.
John:
Well, you know, last year was Amazon stuff.
John:
And I'm sure I fully predict this year when we upload the book to Amazon, it will also inexplicably not be downloadable onto the iPad.
John:
Because the odds of Amazon having fixed this problem seem slim to me.
John:
Because last year when I went through it all, I heard from lots of other people like, yeah, that totally happened to me.
John:
It's been happening for a long time.
John:
Like it's not.
John:
I wasn't the first person this happened to.
John:
And I'm sure I won't be the last.
John:
In fact, it may happen to me again.
John:
Why did it happen?
John:
What makes it happen?
John:
What fixes it?
John:
Who knows?
Marco:
Yeah, if Amazon's system for uploading e-books is anything at all like their system for Kindle publications and publishing a magazine on the Kindle, I feel very sorry for you because that was miserable.
John:
Well, the good thing about the Amazon system is you submit, and then a reasonable amount of time later, it appears.
John:
I don't think a human ever looks at it.
John:
So it's somewhat predictable in that respect, but because a human never looks at it, you probably have a difficult time getting a human to fix something about it, which was the problem last year.
John:
And the other thing is, I don't know how long that delay is going to be.
John:
I think it's like 24 hours or something like that.
John:
but you can't pick a for sale date.
John:
So you submit and then wait, wait, wait, and then it's for sale, which really doesn't go well with not knowing the release date.
John:
Because if someone gets on stage on the 22nd and says, Mavericks is out today, then I can submit to the Amazon store and then wait 24 hours for the Amazon version to be available, which is not ideal.
Casey:
Yeah, this is kind of a world of hurt for you, isn't it?
John:
Yeah, I don't know why it has to be so difficult, but really, nobody cares about the one guy writing the reviewer.
John:
If it's good for customers and good for developers, if you have the hierarchy of what's good for Apple, then what's good for its users, and then maybe some other stuff, and then what's good for developers, and then everything else in the universe, and then what's good for the one guy writing a review about one of our products we see here.
Marco:
Nice.
Marco:
Well, let's change gears for a second to a company that does care about its customers and John Syracuse.
Marco:
It is Transporter by Connected Data.
Marco:
So Transporter, here's the thing about Transporter.
Marco:
It's a little hard to describe for a second.
Marco:
So give me a second here.
Marco:
If you like Dropbox, then you'll love Transporter.
Marco:
So, Transporter is basically a hard drive enclosure with network connectivity.
Marco:
And software that goes on your Mac and your iOS and Android, I think.
Marco:
Android?
Marco:
I should check on that.
Marco:
At least your iOS devices.
Marco:
What do you guys check on that, please?
Marco:
Software that goes on your Mac and various mobile devices.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
it behaves like Dropbox in it's in the nice finder integration and being able to share a link with people and automatic syncing to other transporter devices.
Marco:
But you own this enclosure and you own the hard drive within it.
Marco:
And all the data is stored on that hard drive.
Marco:
It's not stored in their servers somewhere.
Marco:
It's not, you know, stored somewhere the NSA can, can, you know, get a secret request and get in without you knowing, uh,
Marco:
And all transportation of the data between transporters and over the internet and everything is all encrypted, end-to-end encryption.
Marco:
Oh, and thanks, Casey.
Marco:
Yes, apparently the apps are also available on Android.
Marco:
You can tell how many Android devices that we use in this podcast.
Marco:
But so Transporter, they used to do this major 2.0 software update about a month ago.
Marco:
And they really made it much more nicely integrated with the Finder.
Marco:
And you can share a folder with other Transporter users.
Marco:
You can share files with anybody.
Marco:
You can just get a link to share.
Marco:
It's really...
Marco:
Everything you can think of that's cool about Dropbox, the public links, the sharing, the collaboration, you can do with Transporter, but with so many better features.
Marco:
And you can get way more space on the Transporter for way less money.
Marco:
Dropbox charges, let's say you wanted a terabyte of data.
Marco:
A one terabyte Transporter costs about $300.
Marco:
Dropbox charges about $500 per year for that.
Marco:
Oh, excuse me.
Marco:
Dropbox charges $500 a year for half as much storage.
Marco:
If you want to store more than a few gigs on Dropbox, you're probably going to have a substantial savings if you want to move that to Transporter.
Marco:
So you can buy as many of these things as you want.
Marco:
You can buy one for your home.
Marco:
You can buy one for your work and it'll automatically sync.
Marco:
You can buy one for your work, one for your parents' house, have it sync there to have an off-site backup, multiple people on a team.
Marco:
Our team, the three of us, we all live in different places.
Marco:
We can all collaborate by putting files on our Transporters.
Marco:
And they will all, you know, we can have a folder that's like the ATP folder that syncs between all of our devices.
Marco:
So we have all these, you know, all these capabilities.
Marco:
Even if you just have one, you can still have, you know, your own computer accessing it, you accessing it from your mobile device from anywhere you are as long as your home internet connection works and being able to email the share links and all these other features.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
Really, it is quite good.
Marco:
They even have a thing where they can, similar to the Dropbox app, where you can launch it on your iPhone and there's a feature where it can upload all your photos to the Dropbox.
Marco:
Well, Transporter has a similar feature, but unlike the Dropbox one, they upload their photos in full resolution because they have a lot more space to play around with because you have these terabyte drives in there.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
If you want to get your own transporter, which I highly suggest, they sell it.
Marco:
It's an enclosure, so they sell it empty, and you can supply your own 2.5-inch drive, any capacity.
Marco:
They sell it empty for a special price right now, because through November 11th, they're having a sale for us.
Marco:
If you use coupon code ATP50...
Marco:
Special sale, $50 off from their store.
Marco:
This is pretty good.
Marco:
This is the biggest sale I've seen them do.
Marco:
They've been sponsoring great podcasts for a while, so that's saying a lot.
Marco:
Anyway, they sell it empty.
Marco:
You supply your own hard drive for just $149 with this sale.
Marco:
Regular price is $199.
Marco:
This is $50 off.
Marco:
Or you can get it one terabyte for just $2.49 on sale and two terabytes for just $3.49 on sale.
Marco:
And again, that sale is valid through November 11th, 2013 using coupon code ATP50 at checkout from filetransporter.com slash ATP.
Marco:
So once again, it's Transporter.
Marco:
It's awesome.
Marco:
You want it, go get it.
Marco:
It is filetransporter.com slash ATP, coupon code ATP50, all uppercase.
Marco:
Thank you very much to Transporter for sponsoring the show.
John:
I'm going to ask in the chat room why it's a 2.5 inch drive instead of a 3.5, because you can get more space for less money in a 3.5.
John:
I don't think people realize how small these things are.
John:
It is not a big gigantic thing the size of a bowling pin, the kind of shape it is.
John:
It is very small.
John:
And not only is it small,
John:
It is silent, which I like.
John:
So unlike Apple's, you know, what do you call it?
John:
The new wireless hub thing that's like a giant shoebox turned on its end and has a fan in it.
John:
This does not.
John:
Or if it does have a fan, I can't hear it.
John:
We're just saying something.
John:
And these things are tiny.
John:
Like you could, you know, I was talking about it on a past show, having a whole bunch of these things like all over your house and all over your office.
John:
You could do that because they connect to power and Ethernet and they are very small and they're silent.
John:
So that's why they're 2.5.
Marco:
They do glow, though.
Marco:
I will warn you.
Marco:
I wouldn't recommend putting it, like, right next to your face in a bedroom.
John:
But it's a pleasant glow.
John:
It's not like one of those, like, this, you know, this has a light that changes color around the circle, but it's not like one of those blue LEDs that, like, you know what those are like on electronics that shine right in your eye?
Marco:
I'm so glad that era of electronics design is over.
John:
Oh, it's not, because I just got a new dishwasher, and it lights up the room in the dark with its blue LEDs in the front of it.
John:
Not that I care, because, you know, it's running at night when nobody's in there, but it is bright.
Casey:
That's a feature.
Casey:
So when you go downstairs, you see where you're going.
John:
I kind of have been using it.
John:
It's like a nightlight now.
John:
The dishwasher is running.
John:
You can see it, but it's an eerie blue glow.
Marco:
Anyway, thanks for Transporter for sponsoring the show.
Casey:
Well done.
Casey:
Okay, what else we got to talk about?
Casey:
So there's a new Apple employee joining an executive who finally is a woman, which is excellent.
Marco:
Although still has an unpronounceable name.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
You'll notice I didn't try.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
No one looked that up?
John:
I figured at least one of you would have looked that up.
Casey:
Nope.
Casey:
I figured you would.
John:
It's Angela.
Casey:
Very well done.
John:
Angela Arendt.
Casey:
That seems reasonable.
Casey:
Yeah, it sounds right to me.
John:
Here's the interesting thing about her.
John:
They hired the CEO of another company to be the not CEO of their company.
Casey:
I thought that too.
John:
Which does not happen that often in the corporate world where someone leaves a CEO position of like a significant company, like your CEO of your five person company, right?
John:
A CEO of a big company.
John:
basically it's taking a step down she used to be the one in charge now she's not uh and granted they seem to be throwing lots of money at her but that's that's a little bit of the magic of apple or any high profile company where you can you can pull a ceo away from another company that is very difficult to do so it really must have been a heck of a pitch and they must have really wanted her and you know she must have bought it that yeah she's going to go there and stop selling sugar water and change the world right
John:
except in this case it's what plaid scarves yeah no i didn't i didn't know what this store was i had to google burberry because i'd never heard of it before uh well i i'd heard the name but if someone had told me that burberry sold electronics or like housewares i would have believed them because i had no idea what that store was about did either of you know what the store sold i still don't i honestly did i think it's closed right
Casey:
What?
John:
It's closed.
Casey:
Oh, I thought you said closed as in not open anymore.
Marco:
No, it's all closed.
Marco:
CEO left, they're just shutting down.
Marco:
Yeah, seriously.
Marco:
Sorry, giving up.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
No, my understanding, and I didn't think to look this up or ask about it, so I'm sure I'll get a thousand emails, email Marco.
Casey:
I thought it was – it's a clothing store, sure, but it's kind of focused around a particular pattern, and it's like a plaid-ish pattern.
Casey:
And, yeah, and that's kind of their thing.
Casey:
Just like their – what is the purse with the Louis Vuitton where you always see like the L and the Vs?
Casey:
Well, that's like their only pattern or so it appears.
Casey:
Well, this is – they have that one plaid that's their only pattern.
Casey:
We're going to get in so much trouble.
Casey:
I know.
John:
Email markup.
John:
Unlike the L and the V, my understanding is that this pattern is actually –
John:
is an old thing.
John:
The L and the V, I believe, is new, and I think they did that because you can't copyright a fashion design, but you can copyright a logo.
John:
So that's why everybody puts a logo all over their stuff, because that's the one thing you have some legal recourse to protect from.
John:
By the way, the chat room is trying to correct our pronunciation of this song, saying it's Burberry, not Burberry.
John:
Burberry or whatever, but they're going to have us saying aluminium soon.
John:
So I don't know if we can take any pronunciation advice from the people over there.
Casey:
Well, no, aluminium is patently wrong.
Casey:
But a friend of mine, Eric Wielander, put in the chat a picture to the plat I'm referring to.
Casey:
And so if we remember, we'll put that in the show notes.
Marco:
I can make it the episode artwork for this week.
Marco:
You should.
Casey:
Actually, I'm not even kidding.
Casey:
That would be really funny.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I mean, what's interesting is, you know, so she's being brought into this job of retail chief, which is basically like the job of doom at Apple.
Marco:
Like, how many people have had this job in the last decade?
John:
that's not like ron johnson was the guy right he he's the he's the one who made that job an important job because previously apple didn't have a retail store so he was the guy and then they brought in another guy from the uk right the guy who was uh the head of dixon's or something or i don't know if he's the head of it or whatever but i also didn't know what that store was even if i'm remembering the name correctly uh and they brought him in and that didn't work out and he went away and so and they were looking for somebody else for a long time and now they found someone else well that's a lot
John:
i mean it's not good but when they brought that guy in everyone said oh boy we predict doom for this guy and they were like oh yeah because the stores he ran were not apple type stores they were kind of like more uh you know not not as premium high-end type of stuff like well but who knows he must be a great guy apple you know their apple must be good at hiring they wouldn't just hire some random guy and he did the things john broward was his name thanks chat room and he did the things that people expected him to do that
John:
If you think of someone who runs a retail store, just the average person who runs a retail store chain or whatever, the things they do are not Apple-like things.
John:
It's just a bunch of workers.
John:
You try to pay the workers as little as possible.
John:
You try to sell the customers gold USB cables like Marco had to do.
John:
You try to do all these terrible things because that's how you get ahead in retail.
Marco:
To be fair, I'm not sure I sold a single one.
John:
Well, the ones you refuse to sell.
John:
So that's what we think of when we think of retail.
John:
But it's not what we think of when we think of Apple retail.
John:
So it's like, well, it must be difficult for them to find someone who does retail.
John:
Because if you bring in the best retail guy in the world, they're going to come into Apple's thing and say, oh, no, you're doing it all wrong here, Apple.
John:
You're paying your employees too much.
John:
You have too much staff in the store.
John:
All sorts of things.
John:
I can show you how you can cut your costs in half, and it won't hurt your business at all.
John:
You'll see.
John:
And so he came in and did a bunch of stuff that made the retail store employees angry and made the experience of being in the Apple store worse, and then they canned him.
John:
So maybe this person has a better chance of not doing all of those things that regular retail stores do.
Marco:
I mean, you would think it'd be kind of like a dream job for somebody who is well-minded in the sense that normally retail is just a terrible business because everything's all about just these very, very – usually very thin profit margins, very cutthroat business.
Marco:
You've got to have –
Marco:
as many people as possible not working full-time so you don't have to pay their benefits.
Marco:
And then you've got to shave off hours so you have just enough people to run the store, but no more than that so that you aren't wasting money on labor.
Marco:
And you have all these terrible high school and college kids running everything, and they have no training and no time for training, and everyone steals everything.
Marco:
It's just a terrible business.
Marco:
Whereas in the Apple Store, because they have some profit margin to play with,
Marco:
And because they value things like customer experience and service wait times and quality of the stores and stuff like that, then it feels like somebody who wanted to make a really good retail store would see this as a dream job because they have the resources to actually do things well and to do good quality things and to do the regular things well.
Marco:
Whereas in most other companies, you don't have that kind of power because they can't afford it.
Casey:
Yeah, but wouldn't you think that she would be handcuffed by what Ron Johnson did while he was at Apple?
Casey:
What I mean by that is the Apple stores seem to have a pretty good thing going right now and a pretty good kind of feel to them.
Casey:
And of course, there's always room for improvement, but why mess with what is working?
Casey:
And so if she's brought in and has all these grand visions, which she very well may have,
Casey:
Is she going to be allowed to do them or is it wise to do them if Apple retail is doing pretty well?
John:
Well, here's the thing about Apple retail.
John:
It's the curse of success.
John:
This is true of if anyone has ever been an employee of a company that finds itself being very successful.
John:
That is an extremely dangerous situation because as I believe – who was it?
John:
It was –
John:
Ed Catmull said in his talk that I promoted heavily on Hypercritical, but whose name I can't remember right now.
John:
I think he was talking to some business people at Stanford or something.
John:
Success hides problems.
John:
So Apple has been very successful in the past, you know, seven, 10 years, which means that more and more people are going into Apple retail stores and buying stuff.
John:
And you keep seeing the statistics about how the number, the amount of money made per square foot of store space is so high in Apple stores and Apple sells tons and tons of stuff.
John:
And you can do all sorts of terrible wrong things during that period.
John:
As long as your sales keep going up and up and up, everyone's like, hey, thumbs up, boy, you are a great retail chief.
John:
Look at our sales numbers are doing great.
John:
And how much is that?
John:
Is that because of you or in spite of you?
John:
Because when you're on that rocket ship, it's hard to tell.
John:
Is this because of what I'm doing?
John:
Is it because these stores are so awesome?
John:
Or is it because Apple's products are so awesome?
John:
Or is it just like the strange coincidence of events?
John:
And if you look at the trend in Apple stores, lots of things have gotten worse since the beginning.
John:
I mean, in the beginning, they were paying people obscene salaries to be geniuses.
John:
So you'd get like, you know, people who are real experts in the technology field leaving their tech jobs for similar salaries to be a genius at the genius bar.
John:
You didn't see employees who were like typical retail employees, like Marco said, you know, the high school students or college students.
John:
There's nothing wrong with those people, but you saw like real experienced people making good salaries doing this.
John:
And over time,
John:
The Apple store has become more like a regular retail store.
John:
Now that I'm saying they're paying people like you get paid at Walmart or Target, but it is nothing compared to the original days of Apple retail, where they were just paying tons of money to get really senior expert people in there.
John:
This transformation has happened little by little, slowly, you know, over many, many years.
John:
During that time, Apple stores have been doing great, right?
John:
Because they've been selling tons and tons of stuff.
John:
So it's like, well, have they been slowly trying to see how much of the rug can we pull out from any of these retail thing without breaking it?
John:
Like, is that the goal of the retail chief?
John:
Is it the goal to...
John:
kind of sort of see how much cost you can pull out of the Apple retail stores without impacting the user experience.
John:
And then like the brow guy just went too far.
John:
Like, I don't know what the, uh, the mandate is for the new retail chief, but it doesn't seem like the mandate is make our like spare, no expense, make our stores the best experience.
John:
We don't care if all of our stores lose money because the whole point of our stores is to be ambassadors for our products and we'll make up the money elsewhere.
John:
Like that doesn't seem to be the mandate.
John:
I don't think that was ever the mandate, even the good old days of Apple retail.
John:
Um,
John:
And I wonder under Tim Cook if the mandate isn't, let's see how much cost you can pull out of these stores without breaking them.
John:
Don't make the employees angry.
John:
Don't make the experience worse.
John:
But see what you can do about, you know, pull a little cost out.
John:
And I worry about that.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Now, what do you make of the thought that she is well-positioned to get Apple well-positioned in China?
Casey:
So I ask because from what very little I've had a chance to read about all this, apparently Burberry, whatever, I don't care what it's called, that thing, is doing fairly well in China and expanding pretty significantly.
Casey:
Do you think that this is yet another play on China like everything Apple does is in the media these days?
Yeah.
John:
That can't hurt, right?
John:
I mean, it's probably, if you are in charge of any big retail, worldwide retail chain, chances are good that you have more locations in China than Apple does, simply because Apple doesn't have that many stores when compared to, you know, Walmart or whatever, some other big, or McDonald's, you know what I mean?
John:
How many locations does Apple have in China?
John:
Half a dozen or something?
John:
It's not a lot for a country that big.
John:
A lot of people put up the big map saying, Burberry has all these locations in China.
John:
It's way more than Apple.
John:
That's true, but a lot of places have way more locations than China.
John:
It doesn't hurt.
John:
Anybody coming to work for Apple for anything...
John:
probably has to, you know, dealing with China, the, you know, potentially largest market in the future for all of Apple stuff.
John:
Uh, any, any triangle is good, but I don't think that's why they hired.
John:
I think they're trying to hire a person and I guess they think this is the right person.
John:
I'm just, I'm a little, you know, gun shy about Apple's hiring because, uh,
John:
It's not been that great over the past several years and not just Tim Cook, but who's the guy at Paper Master, the guy that Steve Jobs wanted, right?
John:
That didn't work out well either.
John:
So it's kind of, I mean, maybe that's true of all hiring.
John:
Like sometimes it just doesn't work out, but when it's a high profile position, we get to see all of the wreckage.
John:
Whereas if it's just some other person no one's ever heard of, they come and go and nobody knows about it.
Marco:
You've got to figure this is also a tough job to sell to somebody.
Marco:
Obviously, with a handful of people having had it recently, if you're some CEO of a big company or some really high-ranking person at a different retailer...
Marco:
you're very qualified, you know, you're very expensive, you can kind of pick what you do at that point, and maybe this just isn't that appealing to, like, kind of be absorbed into Apple and hope you do well, but if you don't do well, you know it will be very, very public, and it will probably end your career.
Marco:
Like, that's not good.
John:
But these people never think they're going to fail.
John:
If you're not, like, from Papermaster to Broward, like, if you would ask them, they thought, I mean, it's just one of those...
John:
successful people never think they're going to fail.
John:
And so they all don't worry about that.
John:
It won't be.
John:
I know the last guy kicked him out.
John:
Boy, he wasn't he a loser, but not me.
John:
It's not going to happen to me.
John:
So no one thinks it's going to happen to them.
John:
So I don't think that examination is in there.
John:
And if you're a fan of Apple, which I bet a lot of people are just a fan of their products and admire the company, that goes a long way.
John:
That and, you know, a $56 million signing bonus or whatever the heck she got.
John:
Like, you know, that goes a long way.
John:
But the money thing always confuses me in this sort of rarefied air of C-level executives, because I'm assuming she already, you know, doesn't have to worry about money ever.
John:
She's multimillionaire, very rich, very powerful.
John:
Like money is not a big thing.
John:
And yet you still have to end up paying.
John:
It's like, that's just what the market will bear.
John:
I mean, if you're a business person, you just say, well, look, this is what I'm worth.
John:
So you need to pay me what I'm worth.
John:
but something i don't i mean i don't know maybe we'll have to try this experiment make me that rich and see if i demand that much money for the next job that that i get it seems like it would just be like i guess you have to do it so it doesn't seem like you're you're not getting what you're worth because this is a supply and demand situation but really how much is that 56 million dollars it seems like so much to us it seems so obscene but how much is going to change her lifestyle probably not at all right
Casey:
I would assume not.
Casey:
And I agree.
Casey:
I guess once you make some salary, even if that salary is stupidly large, you're not often going to want to go backwards.
Casey:
So I don't know if she's paid $11 gajillion now.
Casey:
She's probably going to want $12 gajillion next.
Marco:
Well, it's also part of career branding where you don't want – if there's any chance of anybody else learning your salary, which for a CEO, it's usually public.
Marco:
For a high-ranking executive or director at Apple, that's usually public too.
Marco:
So since your salary is either public or at least somewhat easy to find out –
Marco:
You don't want it to look like you're on your way out career-wise.
Marco:
You don't want it to look like you're on your way down.
Marco:
That just looks bad on you.
Marco:
So you want to keep getting those upgrades.
John:
Yeah, and most of this, I'm assuming, is in stock.
John:
And that does make sense where you give the compensation to top-level executives in stock because that presumably motivates them to, at the very least, make the stock price go up, which hopefully is in some way related to their performance in their job.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And so it's not options.
John:
I think they're giving RSUs, which have an immediate value as opposed to a potential value in the future.
John:
But yeah, that's usually the way that these people get compensated.
John:
Tons and tons of stock.
John:
And bringing in someone at this point where Apple's kind of like...
John:
It's not at its stock peak, but it's kind of on its way down from its peak.
John:
It's not like it was five or ten years ago where there was a huge potential upside because Apple's already, you know, the biggest company in the world or close to it.
John:
So how much bigger could they possibly get?
John:
So, yeah, you know, you get RSUs and then those are worth money now.
John:
That's real money now.
John:
Don't have to worry about the stock price doubling.
John:
You're already filthy rich just from what we're giving you.
Marco:
Yeah, I definitely wouldn't enjoy being in a position where my financial well-being depended on Apple stock going up dramatically.
John:
I have a real-time follow-up from my wife from a few minutes ago.
John:
She says that she used Googling to try to prove me wrong, and she found that the Louis Vuitton logo, they've been using that on their thing since the 1800s.
John:
And so she thinks it's not because you can copyright a logo, but not a pattern.
Yeah.
John:
it has to line up right is that that one or is that the other one the seas i don't know i do not know that the amount that all our collective knowledge of fashion is close to zero i love that but i love that we're devoting like half of the show to it well apple needs to start hiring people from things that we know about
Marco:
They just started hiring people like us to manage their fashion lines.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
Well, that's the other thing about this.
John:
So they hired the guy from the French company whose name we're not going to pronounce, a fashion type thing, and they're hiring this person from a clothing company.
John:
It's just the smoke surrounding wearable items from Apple is just...
John:
It's everywhere.
Marco:
No, I don't think that's it.
Marco:
I think it's just that Apple is trying to hire somebody to manage their very high-end retail stores, and it just so happens that most other very high-end retail stores are in the fashion business.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Where'd there smoke this fire, Marco?
John:
Something that you can wear.
John:
I mean, they already have.
Marco:
We can't even pronounce this smoke.
John:
It doesn't have to be pronounceable.
John:
Something that you wear.
John:
They already do make things that you wear.
John:
They make iPods with little clips on them.
John:
You wear them, sort of.
John:
It's one short step from there to something that you slap around your wrist.
Marco:
Like a slap bracelet?
John:
Put through your belly button piercing or whatever they're going to do.
John:
Whatever the kids these days do.
Casey:
This is going nowhere good quickly.
Casey:
All I have to say is I'm very much looking forward to WWDC shirts this year because they're clearly going to be phenomenal given all these fashion people that are being hired.
Marco:
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Thanks, guys.
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They will always have a special place in my heart for sponsoring Neutral.
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Yeah, they sponsored all of Neutral.
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Now, in the past, and forevermore.
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There's something vaguely Catholic about that.
Casey:
Oh my goodness.
Casey:
So before we eliminate all of our listeners, do you want to talk about Touch ID for a minute?
Marco:
Yeah, I finally used it a lot this weekend, and I turned it off as soon as I got in the car to go home.
Casey:
Really?
Casey:
Man, I do not see why everyone does not like it.
Casey:
I really like it a lot.
Marco:
Well, I liked it when I was using it, but if I don't have to be using it, it's not that transparent that I can just use it all the time.
Marco:
It's very close, but it's a little bit too slow, and it misses a little bit too often.
Marco:
Mine would refuse my finger about maybe...
Marco:
one every 20 or 30 tries.
Casey:
And that's enough to get you that grumpy?
Marco:
Well, it would happen maybe twice a day or something.
Marco:
And that's just enough that it reminds me, oh, this kind of sometimes sucks.
Marco:
And so it was just a little bit...
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
It's very close to being good enough for my ridiculously picky standards, but not quite.
Marco:
It's a little bit too slow and just slightly too unreliable.
Marco:
Again, it's close, but I would say...
Marco:
I would say if my false positive rate stayed the same and it just got maybe half the time, if it got fast enough that it could do it in half the time, I would turn it back on all the time.
Marco:
So maybe the iPhone 6 or whatever will be faster at it.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
But for now, I think I'm just going to turn it on when I know I'm going to be out in public a lot like a conference.
Marco:
But for my day-to-day use where I'm around nobody except my family and my dog, I don't think I'll leave it on.
John:
That's the letter you should have read, that guy scolding you about keeping your phone unlocked because someone's going to steal it from you and get access to all your information.
Marco:
I did read that.
Marco:
First of all, he was under the impression that I live in New York City, which I don't.
Marco:
So basically, I don't want to pull it up now, but the gist of his response, which was on point for the most part, I think, and most of it I agree with, the gist of it is that it's kind of like your ethical duty
Marco:
as a responsible technology owner to lock your phone, because not only do you have your own data to protect, but you also have everyone in your address book, you have their data to protect as well.
Marco:
And if somebody has possession of your phone, they can do quite a lot.
Marco:
If they can open up your email, if they can receive email, then they can do things like receive password resets for pretty much any service.
Marco:
And
Marco:
and then log in as you and other services, they can take your whole address book, they can take everyone's names and phone numbers, even if you're friends with any celebrities or internet celebrities, then their private information could be taken too, and that could be inconvenient at least for them.
Marco:
Right, even MC Hammer.
Marco:
Exactly, even MC Hammer.
Marco:
I don't even know if he still uses that phone number.
Marco:
But anyway, so I agree with him that that is a risk.
Marco:
However,
Marco:
I think most people probably grossly overestimate how much I go in public and how many people are there when I get there.
Marco:
I really pretty much stay in my small town and the town next to us most of the time, and there's rarely any people around.
Marco:
I rarely even have my phone out of my pocket, and it's not even a dense enough area that I'd be pickpocketed.
Marco:
It could happen.
Marco:
I'm not saying it can't happen, but I think the chances of it happening are so astronomically low that it's just not worth it for me.
John:
Yeah, that's always what I thought when I saw people use their iPhones with even just the four-digit code.
John:
Like, cause you know how often people check their phones.
John:
Like people are just obsessive about it.
John:
They're constantly looking at their phones and you'd see them doing it.
John:
And you'd also see them entering their little number over and over and over again, which seems so annoying to me.
John:
And not only so annoying, but like, if you wanted to steal that person's phone,
John:
Spend five minutes next to them.
John:
Wait for them to check their phone 900 times.
John:
Watch them type in that same four-digit code over and over and over and over again and see where their fingers are.
John:
Like, this is not rocket science.
John:
And then take their phone.
John:
It's like an extra five-minute investment.
John:
At least with Touch ID, you have to make more of an effort to fake it out.
Yeah.
John:
My wife got her phone and I played with the Touch ID.
John:
I think I would probably enable it because I couldn't bring myself to do the four-digit code thing because I was just too much of a burden.
John:
Even when I'm out of the house, not that I have an iPhone, so it's not an issue, but if I did have an iPhone, I don't think I would enable the four-digit one unless I was going into an area where suddenly my risk of losing my phone was getting much higher.
John:
But I think I would enable the fingerprint thing every time I went outside.
John:
Although...
John:
That's not in control center, right?
John:
I'd have to actually go into settings and turn on the fingerprint thing.
John:
So that might be a little bit of a hassle.
John:
But I think I would give it more of a go just because it passes my threshold for, like, I'm going to endure this annoyance for the slight added safety.
John:
Because for some reason, I mean...
John:
Once you accept that there is this step in the process of taking out your phone that is unlocking it, if you can make that step pretty easy, I'm willing to accept that as a step in the process.
John:
If you're not willing to accept that as a step in the process, then it's just like it better be zero time or it's constantly annoying me.
John:
And I think I could get with the program with Touch ID.
John:
But I enable it on my wife's phone.
John:
I don't know if she's already enabled it, disabled it.
John:
We'll see.
John:
We'll see how long she lasts.
John:
She never used a lock on her previous phone.
John:
She always had it completely unlocked.
Casey:
Now, to be clear, you have to use a passcode of some variety when Touch ID is on because if you reboot, for example, it won't let you do Touch ID to unlock.
Casey:
You have to use the passcode.
Casey:
And there were some other circumstances I don't recall.
Casey:
Well, if you can't get in via Touch ID, you have to fall back on a passcode.
Casey:
I don't think it has to be four-digit.
Casey:
I think you can use like a crazy alphanumeric one.
Casey:
Right.
Marco:
I just did a password.
Marco:
Like you can either do the simple passcode, which is four digits, or you can just have it put up a text box and enter whatever you want with the regular keyboard.
John:
Yeah, the regular keyboard is at least slightly more difficult to shoulder surf from somebody.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And actually, I should point out, I have not tried this, but earlier on, Double D in the chat said, hey, the way I fixed all the issues with not registering my finger is to...
Casey:
have the same finger as two entries in the Touch ID registration.
Casey:
You know what I mean?
Casey:
So say take your right thumb, you register your right thumb as two independent fingers, and that makes it a lot better and a lot less likely to mess it up, which I have not tried, but it sounds reasonable to me.
Marco:
That's interesting.
Casey:
Yeah, I thought that was interesting.
Marco:
I'm surprised it would even accept it.
Casey:
Yeah, I don't know.
John:
Sure, it'll accept it.
John:
It's just a question of when they tell you to put your thumb on it in all sorts of different positions.
John:
You just do a different set of positions the second time, and then you have just more data.
Casey:
Yeah, I mean, my experience with it has been great.
Casey:
Certainly, it fails sometimes, but I guess the difference is I look at it the same way John does, which is, you know what?
Casey:
There is another step in this process that at least 80% of the time for me, I don't even notice it.
Casey:
I don't even think about it.
Casey:
And then the other...
Casey:
small portion of the time, 20% of the time I do notice it, you know, maybe I have to try again, but my data in principle is that much more secure.
Casey:
And that's a price I'm willing to pay much more so than, than the price of having even a four digit simple lock code, which I never liked.
Casey:
And it frustrated me every time I turned it on, which was basically only when I was at conferences.
Casey:
So I give two thumbs up as terrible as that pun ends up being, I give two thumbs up to the touch ID.
Casey:
I think it's been really good.
Casey:
One thing I wanted to ask you guys about though,
Casey:
is do you think this is coming to both MacBook Pros and the desktop Macs, I guess specifically perhaps the iMac?
Casey:
And I assume we all agree that it's going to be on iPads as soon as possible.
Marco:
I'm going to say no on the Macs.
Casey:
Even the portables?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Because right now, I mean, first of all, you know, they sell so many fewer Macs, the motivation to bring cutting-edge features to them is way lower.
Marco:
I mean, look, we still don't even have built-in cellular modems on the Macs.
Marco:
And that's like, even when they launched one called the MacBook Air, and they didn't build in an Air card.
Marco:
I mean, that's crazy.
Yeah.
Marco:
Obviously, putting new hardware features on the Mac is obviously a lower priority.
Marco:
But also, I think it's just because the design of it requires that secure enclave thing.
Marco:
And if you look at what this is, if you look at the NN Tech article on the A7, you can kind of see what that means.
Marco:
And it's this pretty deeply integrated architecture as part of the new ARM architecture, whatever it is.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
I don't think they would do it in a way that wasn't just as secure as the phone in regards to not only just recognizing your fingerprint, but in regards to not letting anything else access fingerprint data, like no other software on the computer, not even the CPU, stuff like that, doing the hashing and then even locking the hashes down super tightly in this secure area.
Marco:
So this is all enabled by special hardware features of the new ARM architecture.
Marco:
and as far as I know, I don't think there's anything like that on Intel, but who knows?
Marco:
Intel's always worked in little features like this, like in their specs, and then nobody ever uses them, so they might have them, but I don't think they do right now, and so I don't think it's going to come to the portables anytime soon, and even coming to the iPads, obviously I think it's only going to come to iOS devices that have the A7 or better, and right now the iPad mini is on the A5,
Marco:
So the question is, if they're about to do a Retina iPad Mini, which I think is pretty likely, it's certainly possible, but I'd say it's even pretty likely at this point.
Marco:
If they're about to release that, you have to ask, what's the price point of that thing going to be, and can that even support... The Mini's already cheap, so can that support...
Marco:
an a7 and a retina screen in one year i'm guessing probably not i'm guessing the retina uh ipad mini is probably going to have an a6x chip and not the a7x which doesn't exist yet but they're probably going to call it that and then i'm guessing the full size ipad will have a7x and touch ID because first of all also apple needs some segmentation here apple needs some reasons for people to buy the big one
Marco:
And because the big one, they make way more money on it.
Marco:
And there's a lot more room there for upsells as well.
Marco:
So I think we're going to see that come to the iPad this fall as big iPad only.
Marco:
And the Mini won't have it this year.
Marco:
That's just my guess.
John:
Well, yeah, I kind of agree that it's not likely that we're going to see this in Macs anytime soon.
John:
But for the secure enclave stuff, if Intel doesn't already have something like that, they will soon.
John:
Because Intel wants into all the businesses that ARM is into.
John:
And this is even ignoring the possibility of a Mac based on an ARM system on a chip.
John:
These type of features...
John:
Not only can Apple get it if they want it a couple years down the line, but Intel is going to want to offer it because they're going to want to offer their chips to people who do things like this.
John:
And because Apple has some fingerprint thing in their thing that seems to be reasonably successful, like we haven't heard all crazy backlash or no late night jokes about how fingerprints don't work.
John:
Like it's more or less had a launch the best that you could have hoped for.
John:
And again, this is a forward-looking technology and blah, blah, blah.
John:
Like, this is the cutting edge.
John:
But a couple years down the line, when it's less cutting edge, if it turns out to be something that people like, laptops have the same exact problem in that you should use a screen lock whenever you're, you know, away from your laptop and stuff like that.
John:
But a lot of people don't because it's annoying to keep typing in your password over and over and over again, even though you have a real keyboard in front of you.
John:
I do it at work.
John:
It's
John:
Screen has a password lock on it, and I'm sick of typing it all day every time I get up and leave my computer and come back down to it.
John:
If I could put my finger on some little spot, that's faster than typing my password, and I would do it.
John:
So if this convenience becomes addictive to customers, it's only a matter of time before it shows up everywhere.
John:
Because there are so many instances where you have to enter credentials on the Mac...
John:
you know, purchasing stuff, authorizing, you know, admin access if you're a nerd user or whatever.
John:
Hell, I would use it for, like, my SSH, you know, key passcode stuff if I could.
John:
The opportunities for integration seem great.
John:
Now, the point about the 3G is a good one.
John:
Like, that seems like a no-brainer.
John:
Everyone has to come up with all sorts of crazy theories about why isn't Apple putting 3G in any of its Mac products?
John:
Is it some sort of thing with the carriers or they don't want – like,
John:
I don't understand why either, but the simplest explanation is the most compelling.
John:
Like Marco said, it's just, nah, they don't care that much.
John:
Maybe they'll do it someday, maybe they won't.
John:
But that's another feature that... Can you think of anybody who buys the MacBook Air and travels a lot who would not opt for the 3G option or 4G option if it was like it is on the iPad, where you pay per month and the extra hardware is, you know...
John:
100 extra bucks or whatever, people will buy that in a second.
John:
That would be an amazing sell.
John:
And it would make the machine more useful.
John:
So that argument is against Touch ID because it's a feature, no matter how convenient it is and how much people want it, Apple can't be bothered because the volumes are too low or it doesn't seem that important.
John:
Who knows?
John:
But...
John:
if touch id continues to be even like you know middle of the road successful people don't love it but it's still more convenient than typing in something it's got to spread because the technology required to do that will become cheaper will spread to more different vendors it will just will just be everywhere so i'll let the report back in five years and we'll see if touch id has spread outside the ios realm but i would not be surprised
Marco:
I would say also the need for Touch ID on laptops is lower.
Marco:
And they discussed this in the keynote when they unveiled it for the iPhone.
Marco:
Nobody locks their phone because it's hard.
Marco:
It has frequent inconvenience.
Marco:
So nobody does it.
Marco:
So on the laptop, even though I'm all picky about my inconvenient phone...
Marco:
On my laptop, I've always used full disk encryption, using FileVault.
Marco:
I use full disk encryption, and I have the passcode required on every wake-up and a pretty aggressive sleep timeout.
Marco:
And the reason why is because I don't sleep and wake my laptop that much.
Marco:
It's not like a phone where you might sleep and wake it 30 to 50 times in a day, at least.
Marco:
Probably more than that.
John:
That's because you don't work in a public office.
John:
Like every time anyone walks away from their desk at work, you lock your screen.
John:
Not just because it's work policy, but because if you don't, your coworkers will send emails that say you forgot to lock your computer and do other terrible things.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
They'll go to your wallpaper.
Marco:
But still, I mean, how often do you get up from your desk at work?
Marco:
Like how many times per day compared to how often you unlock a phone?
John:
I'm thinking about all the other things too.
John:
Like, uh, you know, how many times do we go to a web forum and we want it to autofill?
John:
I mean, I guess they kind of autofill automatically, but the extra bit of security of having a fingerprint thing to autofill stuff versus like, Oh God, if someone gets to my unlocked computer, they have acts, they can log in as me at Gmail.
John:
Cause I don't use two factor auth or something.
John:
And because my browser will just autofill it.
Uh,
John:
This is, again, a case where you're adding security where none existed before, because now if you get to someone's unlocked Mac and they save their passwords, you can just go to the webpage, it will autofill, and you will just log right in as them and have access to all their stuff.
John:
So we all love keychain and we love the convenience of one password remembering our passwords, but having it be so easy for someone to get access to all your passwords just because they have access to your unlocked Mac is not good for any kind of security-sensitive situation.
John:
If it could be as simple as putting your fingers on something and, hey, when you're using a Mac, your fingers are already on the keyboard and there's lots of keys there, it seems like a natural fit.
John:
But eventually, I mean, it's like 3G.
John:
It's got to happen eventually.
John:
Eventually, some Mac laptop has to have
John:
cellular wireless in it.
John:
Maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but eventually it has to happen because soon it becomes so cheap that kids' toys have it in them.
John:
It just has to happen.
John:
So if this fingerprint stuff continues to be useful and nothing better replaces it, it'll be in Macs eventually and we'll use it for all the things that we currently use passwords for.
John:
And we'll like it.
Casey:
Somebody actually pointed out to me on Twitter a while back that perhaps if there is a Touch ID in
Casey:
The portables, perhaps it would be under the touchpad.
Casey:
So the whole touchpad would be one big sensor, which I thought was interesting.
Marco:
That sounds unrealistic, though, because the sensor in the phone is super high resolution.
Marco:
And to make one that large at the size of these giant touchpads that are on the modern Mac laptops, that's probably cost prohibitive.
John:
Putting it in a key cap is certainly the easier one with current tech, but it depends on how many years out in the future you go, because things just get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, and eventually maybe putting it in the whole trackpad isn't as crazy as it is today.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Now, it occurred to me just a moment ago that this is our last show before the October 22nd event.
Casey:
So I feel like it would be remiss of me not to ask you to any other thoughts on what will be announced.
Casey:
I'll start with myself.
Casey:
I didn't think that there would be a Retina iPad Mini until the last week or so.
Casey:
I'm starting to lean toward there being one.
Casey:
And so I'll go on record and saying, I think that there will be a retina iPad mini.
Casey:
And I also was just thinking to myself, if there isn't a retina iPad mini, I kind of wonder if we'll get, um, iPad mini in colors, a la the iPad or the iPhone five C. So, you know, Hey, we didn't give you the retina you always wanted, but we've got these sweet colors.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
Uh, and so that would be kind of your, uh, your, the second, the next best thing.
Casey:
But, uh, in terms of everything else, I mean, I, I suspect and hope, I really hope we see updates to the laptops.
Casey:
What is it?
Casey:
Haswell that we're waiting on.
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Um, I would hope that we'll see that.
Casey:
I think we'll get more information about the Mac pro.
Casey:
I obviously we'll get more information about Mavericks, but I'm going for yes on the retina iPad mini, uh, Marco, how about you?
Marco:
I'm going to modify your prediction of the iPad Mini slightly.
Marco:
First of all, I think it's pretty clear that we've seen parts leaks, not to the level that we see before a phone launch, but I think we've seen enough parts leaks that it looks pretty clear that they're not doing plastic, that the case for the Mini looks pretty much the same as the old one, but a little bit thicker, which pretty much suggests Retina.
Marco:
My guess is...
Marco:
We see a Retina Mini, but they keep the old one around at a cheaper price, and the Retina price goes up.
Marco:
Because right now, they have the iPad Mini at $329.
Marco:
And, right?
Marco:
That's the current price?
Marco:
I believe that's right.
Marco:
So, that is cheap enough that they sold a butt-ton of them this year.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
everyone's still undercutting the crap out of them.
Marco:
And Apple's not going to try to match the Kindle Fire crap box price, but they can at least try to reduce the gap, just like they did by releasing the Mini in the first place.
Marco:
So I'm guessing the old Mini sticks around for another year, the same way they used to do with phones.
Marco:
and still kind of do so i'm guessing the old mini sticks around at a little bit less maybe it becomes 300 instead of 330 you know so like or maybe maybe even like 279 something like that but you know not like a massive jump less not 200 bucks but less
Marco:
And then the retina comes in at a higher price.
Marco:
Basically, I'm agreeing with R, Joe, and Z in the chat room.
Marco:
I'm saying non-retina goes down to $300-ish.
Marco:
Retina goes up to about $400-ish.
Marco:
Because I think they're going to need a little bit more margin to pull that off well.
Marco:
Obviously, you can look and you can see the newest big Kindle Fires and the newer Nexus 7.
Marco:
You can look at some of these other cheap tablets that have very high-res screens.
Marco:
You can look at those, and they're able to cram in those high-density screens into these cheap price points.
Marco:
Obviously...
Marco:
It's possible to do that, but Apple tends to build in better cases, better screen types, better angles and color and stuff like that.
Marco:
And then they usually have a more powerful GPU.
Marco:
So there's all these things.
Marco:
So I'm guessing Apple can't comfortably do a good Retina Mini at 329 this year.
Marco:
So they're instead going to split it and go lower for the non-Retina and higher for the Retina.
Marco:
I'm guessing the Retina will also have...
Marco:
The A6X, as I said a few minutes ago, and not the A7, primarily for cost concerns.
Marco:
And then the iPad 5 is going to be a little bit smaller and really fast and probably have the A7X, but who cares because it's too big.
Casey:
All right, John?
John:
Yeah, I'm kind of upset about the smaller frame around the iPad, whatever number it's up to now, the big one.
John:
Because I like the big one.
John:
I like the bigger screen.
John:
I don't like the mini.
John:
And one of the things I don't like about the mini is the edges are so small.
John:
They want you to hold it not by the frame, but rather around the back of it.
John:
And so they're shrinking.
John:
If all the parts leaks are to be believed, and I do believe them, they're shrinking the frame around the iPad 5.
John:
uh which is kind of a shame it's still big i guess i'll have to try it out but uh anyway that's that's the ipad that i'll want someday or something like that to replace my ipad 3 although my ipad 3 does feel like it weighs a ton but it's it's still pretty solid for me it stutters a little on ios 7 i finally did upgrade it um but yeah i'm looking forward to the big ipad
John:
The mini has to be Retina this year.
John:
It just has to be.
John:
And if it's not, they will get slammed in the press, and they will deserve it.
John:
Because, like, fine, you've launched on Retina.
John:
You've got to do what you've got to do.
John:
You've got to protect your margins.
John:
It wasn't that big a deal.
John:
Now everybody has a Retina little tablet.
John:
And like what Marco said is true, maybe they're using cheaper displays or whatever, but some of them are not that bad.
John:
I've seen a lot of these 7-inch tablets.
John:
They do not look like crap displays.
John:
It's not like they're shipping with those crazy pen tile things that don't even have real RGB pixels.
Marco:
Which I think some of them are.
John:
Some of them are, but the name brand good 7-inch Android or Kindle tablets, they're like $200 and they're Retina.
John:
And they're not bad products.
John:
Yes, they have wimpy GPUs and maybe slower CPUs and they don't use the Apples, but absolutely, positively, Apple must ship a Retina Mini.
John:
Whether they keep around the old one, like Apple is running this experiment with the iPad 2 where they wanted to figure out
John:
do people keep buying the iPad 2 because it's cheap or because it's big?
John:
And so then they made a small one that was also cheap.
John:
And so it's like, okay, now you have the choice.
John:
You have the cheap big one and the cheap small one.
John:
Now, presumably, Apple has enough data to know whether or not they should include the, you know, keep around the non-retina mini.
John:
I just don't know what the answer to that question is.
John:
They know because they can look at their sales figures because now they've run the experiments.
John:
They're sort of controlling for the variables.
John:
They have, you know,
John:
two non-retina devices one big one small both cheaper than everything else which one is selling more what what do people say about why they buy it or whatever so uh i would not be surprised if they didn't keep around the old one because i think the result of the experiment uh my guess is that people wanted the cheaper price not so much the bigger size but only apple knows for sure so we'll see for the for the macbook pros uh
John:
I'm, I'm assuming they're going to be announced.
John:
I haven't paid enough attention to Intel's timelines.
John:
Again, we talked about in previous shows.
John:
The thing I'm really looking for is, uh, these are talking about the retina MacBook pros because you know, obviously the, the other line has already been updated this year.
John:
Uh,
John:
Will it have a discrete GPU at all in any of the model choices?
John:
Or will it be, you know, the Iris Pro graphics up and down the line?
John:
Because as we said before, Apple could say no discrete GPU in any of the MacBook Pros and spin it with some marketing mumbo-jumbo and some graphs that show, see, it's not really that bad.
John:
It's about the same as it was before.
John:
And look at this extra battery life you get or whatever.
John:
Or will there be a last gasp of the discrete GPU?
John:
And on either some or all the models, it'll still have discrete GPUs.
John:
but you'll use it less and less, except for maybe when you're gaming, because Iris Pro is just that good.
John:
So that's what I'd be looking for there.
John:
The Mac Pro, I would like a price on that, but I'm not holding my breath.
John:
I have no idea what the timeline looks like for the Mac Pro.
John:
Again, I don't quite understand at this point why they wouldn't announce...
John:
pricing i mean they've pre-announced the product so far in advance anyway why not just tell us how much it's going to cost surely you know by now there's no part of it that you're waiting for pricing on you have pricing for cpus from intel you have all the other parts all that good stuff well wait a minute is intel cpu pricing public
John:
Well, I mean, the deals have to be signed by now.
John:
Like, barring any unforeseen fabbing difficulties, Apple has to know what their supply costs are for this machine and, you know, pick a price.
Marco:
Well, yeah, but maybe they aren't allowed to reveal the pricing of a thing using this new, still kind of unreleased Intel chip yet.
John:
Intel doesn't stop Apple from announcing prices of its products.
Marco:
Apple does what it wants.
Marco:
We also haven't seen, as far as I know, the CPUs used in the new Mac Pro, the Xeon E5 V2.
Marco:
I don't think we've seen any of them in the wild anywhere else yet.
Marco:
No one else is selling those CPUs yet.
Marco:
So it's possible Apple's just waiting on Intel to deliver enough of them.
John:
Yeah, I'm talking about shipping.
John:
I'm just saying, like, you know, to have us a price and, you know, we'll be on sale later this year or whatever.
John:
Retina's displays are linked with the Mac Pro.
Marco:
Please, please, please.
John:
Yeah, we all want them, but I get a feeling that maybe not this year.
Marco:
Yeah, I'd give that maybe a 50% chance of being this year.
John:
No matter how much we want, watching them doesn't make it so, so that's a shame there.
John:
Mavericks, I mean, we all know that Apple shipped out the GM.
John:
They like to give developers some time to get their applications ready for Mavericks and put them up into the store and stuff like that.
John:
How much time?
John:
Not that much.
John:
I mean, how long do they usually give developers?
John:
Like, what, iOS 7 went GM in, like, two weeks before?
Marco:
Usually you have one week on iOS.
John:
Yeah, so it's not outside the realm of possibility that Mavericks, the price is announced and they say, hey, go to the store after we get off the stage and you can get it today.
Casey:
Yeah, I tend to think you're right about that.
Casey:
You know, something that just occurred to me, I don't think this is going to happen, but is Apple currently selling any iPhone with the dock connector anymore?
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, the 4S is still for sale.
Casey:
Ah, bummer.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Well, what I was going to say is, what if they said, you know what, the only iPads we're selling are the current-gen Mini, the next-gen Mini, the one that's going to be new in a week or less than a week.
Casey:
The iPad 4 is now the cheap, big iPad.
Casey:
The iPad 5, obviously, is the new, big iPad.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
If it wasn't for the 4S, which already ruins my argument, I was going to say, hey, look, we're all off the dock connector.
Casey:
The dock connector's gone.
Casey:
And then what if they did the same thing with, hey, we're doing a new iMac with either 4K or Retina display.
Casey:
Obviously, with that comes the Thunderbolt display upgrade, which is now Retina.
Casey:
Oh, and by the way, there's a Retina MacBook Air, and we've already got Retina MacBook Pro.
Casey:
So lookit, everything is Retina, and everything is on the Lightning connector, and everyone is happy.
Casey:
I don't think that'll happen, but it would be a neat storyline for the event.
John:
that's next year by the end of next year is your only chance of getting because getting a retina into the air is difficult from a battery perspective and the iMac is difficult from a cost per se we're just marco and i just want it for the pro i mean crying out loud for the bazillion dollar top end device can you get around because like it can drive them apple said it can drive the displays uh and if apple doesn't offer displays you know what are we gonna do buy a retina display elsewhere
Marco:
What do you think of that rumor?
Marco:
Did you see that rumor about the potential 12-inch Retina MacBook Air?
John:
I did not see that rumor.
Casey:
I did.
Casey:
I don't understand why that would be useful.
Marco:
Well, I think it's interesting.
Marco:
So, John, basically, we'll have to finally do it.
Marco:
The rumor is that it came out this week, and the rumor is that they're working on a 12-inch Retina Air that would potentially replace the existing Air lineup with just the one model of the 12-inch.
Marco:
And it would be substantially smaller and thinner than the current Retina lineup, which is pretty impressive.
Marco:
And apparently it's like even, you know, like redefining portability even further than the original Air did.
Marco:
Something like that.
Marco:
So here, here's the link in the chat.
Marco:
Thank you to Derjanator.
John:
It says mid-2014.
Marco:
Oh, yeah, I'm not saying right now.
Marco:
I was just talking in general that this rumor exists.
Marco:
I think, first of all, this is just an analyst predicting this.
Marco:
Oh, did I tell you I'm an analyst now?
Marco:
I changed myself on Twitter.
Marco:
So, obviously, this is really more of speculation in all likelihood than an actual tip.
Marco:
And certainly, it's pretty far from credible or likely, given the sourcing.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I think it's an interesting thing to consider.
Marco:
And if they did it, I think it would be really cool.
John:
It makes sense from a segmentation perspective.
John:
And I see this at work as people are getting newer laptops.
John:
When I see someone with a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, if you had showed me that before the Air existed, I would be like, oh, that must be the new MacBook Air.
John:
Because the Pros, now that the opticals are gone and the spinning disks are gone, they're getting thinner and smaller.
John:
So you need some way to...
John:
further differentiate the air because that the 13 inch pro is is like creeping up on air territory like if you if you had an original macbook air and the current retina 13 inch pro 13 inch pro is bigger it's thicker but not that much bigger and not that much thicker like yeah it doesn't taper or anything but they're both pretty darn portable so if you want the air to continue to have the reputation of the super light thing it makes perfect sense to say okay we're seeding the 13 inch realm to the macbook pro because
John:
It's not as thin as a 13-inch Air would be, but it's thin.
John:
We really want to emphasize super-duper portability.
John:
11-inch is a little bit squinty, so maybe 12.5 or something.
John:
I don't give any credence to these roommates either, but consolidating the Air line downrange to further emphasize its super-duper portability is a good idea if you continue to have the 13-inch Retina because the 13-inch Retina is getting thinner every year.
John:
It's a pretty nice machine.
Marco:
Also, this rumor, if it's completely true, which, as I said, is very unlikely, but if it's completely true that they would actually replace both 11 and 13 with this one Super Slim 12, that could be interesting because right now the 11 and 13 are very different sizes.
Marco:
You wouldn't think so if you just look at a picture head-on, but in practice there's a substantial gap between them.
Marco:
And the 13 is very thin, but not that small.
Marco:
And the 11 is really small, but you can't fit anything on that screen.
Marco:
Like, it is impossible to fit or see anything on that screen.
Marco:
And so to have something that's a little bit bigger than the 11, but not as big as 13, I think really could be better than both of them.
John:
The other thing you can do is the traditional thing of reducing the spacing around the elements.
John:
There's a crash protection issue there as well, but that's the easy way to shrink the 13 without actually shrinking the screen size.
John:
They have a lot of options with the Airs, but in terms of Retina, it's always been battery.
John:
The thicker case on the mini rumors, the same thing happened with the iPad.
John:
The iPad 3, it got thicker too.
John:
You just need more battery for that Retina display.
Marco:
And that's why they'd have to do this new design.
Marco:
I think it says in here that it's shaped more like the Retina MacBook Pro, where it's not wedge-shaped anymore.
Marco:
It's square.
Marco:
It's flat.
Marco:
And I think the problem with the 11-inch Air, until the most recent one with Haswell, I think it's improved substantially.
Marco:
But the 11-inch Air, in addition to having a really tiny screen, also just has a substantially smaller battery than the 13, just because there's no room to put one.
John:
Yeah, it gets crappy battery life, too.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
And so if they made it not tapered, if they just made the whole thing a uniform thickness, that would give tons more space up front under the wrist rest to put a nice, big, thick battery pack.
John:
Yeah, the taper is a conceit that you can afford maybe when you're making a design statement.
John:
But as the years pass, it's like, remind me again why it gets thinner on one end.
John:
Because it's not actually all that thick at the other end either, and we're sacrificing a whole big wedge of lithium-ion battery space that we could have.
John:
Especially when it's sitting there on a desk in front of you, you don't really care that it's thinner in the front than it is at the back.
John:
It looks cool when it's closed, but when you're carrying it...
John:
Yeah, it's a difficult trade-off, especially with the 11-inch, which just feels like you would think the 11-inch is going to have, well, this has such amazing battery life because it's so small and light.
John:
But no, it's got the same class of CPU as in the 13, and it eats up just as much battery.
John:
I mean, smaller screen, but a layperson might think that the 11-inch would have better battery life than the 13, but it does not.
John:
And it can't with the current technology they have in there.
John:
So need more battery.
John:
Send battery.
Yeah.
Marco:
While we're on the subject, we never got a chance to talk about the rumors about the A7 potentially being brought to the Mac.
Marco:
That's why it's going 64-bit and the potential for ARM-based Mac laptops in the future.
Marco:
One of the reasons why I didn't think that really held a lot of water is because the CPU design doesn't actually have that massive of an impact on the overall battery life.
Marco:
You're not going to go to an ARM CPU and have the laptop last a month.
Marco:
You still have the screen, the RAM, the disks, everything else that you have to power, and the screen being a pretty big one.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
Now that we see, as Intel's upping their game, and with Haswell doing not only a big CPU power reduction, but also a lot of other components on the motherboard being more smart about their power usage, I don't really think there's that much of a need.
Marco:
to make the CPU dramatically lower-powered in a laptop to the point where it would be worth an architecture switch that would be disruptive.
Marco:
And by the way, a switch to a slower architecture, which would make emulation difficult to do well, unlike every other architecture switch they've done.
Marco:
So I don't...
Marco:
I don't really see it happening, and I don't really see what it would gain that would be totally worth it.
Marco:
I mean, if you already have 8 or 12 hours of battery life on a laptop using a fast CPU, how much demand really would there be for that?
John:
Well, we did talk about this before, right, Casey?
John:
I'm not crazy for misremembering this.
Casey:
I thought we did as well.
John:
We did.
John:
I talked about Baytrail and Intel, how Intel is getting in on, you know, arms area of super low power CPUs and how they're kind of meeting in the middle.
John:
And it's just a question of, as they meet in the middle, who ends up coming out the victor?
John:
But two things on that.
John:
First, the CPU...
John:
isn't always using the most power in the system, but it has the highest dynamic range of any component in the system.
John:
Because when you're really burning, especially with big multi-core things, when you're really burning up and using every ounce of the CPU, it uses a tremendous amount of power, way more than the screen, way more than an SSD, way more than the RAM.
John:
And...
John:
So that's why it's a problem.
John:
Not that it's always going like that unless you're playing a game or something, but when it does, it has the potential to really suck down your battery.
John:
I mean, I think the current Haswell and the Airs or whatever, its max power dissipation is like 25 watts and the battery is like 54 watt hours or something.
John:
So you are not getting 12 hours of battery life out of your MacBook Air if you are running that CPU at max power all the time.
John:
And the second thing is that
John:
You're not looking for an ARM CPU so much as you're looking for an ARM system on a chip.
John:
And that's why the Haswell MacBook Airs and everything have such great powers, not just because they're better power management in the CPU part, but because they move more crap onto the CPU die or package.
John:
So the GPU goes onto that, no more discrete GPU, and the...
John:
what is it, the PCH thing?
John:
Moving more components into the chip.
John:
That's why you can have the A7 system on a chip.
John:
It's not just the CPU.
John:
It's like the entire system on a little chip.
John:
And yeah, there's a big gap between where Haswell is and the A7 system on the chip.
John:
But again, they're meeting in the middle.
John:
And so as the Macs try, you know, as time goes on, more and more components are going to get shoved into whatever the chip is that is
John:
We call the CPU and the Mac, but really will eventually become a system on a chip.
John:
And the same thing with the phones and everything.
John:
Chip consolidation will happen.
John:
It's just a question of when it happens and where it happens first.
John:
So if you were to stick an A7 to a Mac laptop, you'd get a big advantage because the max power dissipation of the A7 is way lower than the max power dissipation of a Haswell.
John:
And the chip is slower and everything, too.
John:
And so you say, well, 12 hours seems like it's plenty, right?
John:
Well, if it was 24 hours, does that change the equation?
John:
If it's 48 hours, does that change the equation?
John:
At a certain point, it's a discontinuity where it changes the nature of the way you work with things.
John:
We're not even at that point with phones.
John:
Everyone plugs in their phone at night now because the odds of you going two days without charging your phone.
John:
You know, you just feel like, well, just in case, I'd better plug it in every single night.
John:
Even if you barely use it, it's just a good idea.
John:
We're not at the point where you just use your phone and charge it every week or whatever or every two days or every three days.
John:
Laptops are the same way.
John:
If you use it all day on battery, you're going to have to plug it in at night.
John:
If they can cross that next hurdle, you know, as the phones get better and as computers get better, if they can cross that next hurdle, it's worth it for them to do it.
John:
But like Marco said...
John:
You have to weigh that against the, you know, the architecture change and a lot of stuff.
John:
And Intel's not standing still.
John:
So we should be watching both of these things, watching how much better phone battery life gets, you know, how much more they can ring out of this little system on a chip things.
John:
And then also watch Intel and how much better are they getting at making low power chips?
John:
Because by the time...
John:
and an ARM-powered system on the chip is powerful enough to not be embarrassing inside a Mac, I suspect Intel will also be at that same price in PowerPoint, and it'll be more of a fair fight between the two.
John:
Well, not that fair, because Intel will say, hey, everything you have is already compiled for us.
John:
And like I said in the show where we talked about Bay Trail, Intel's going to be saying to Apple, don't put ARM CPUs in your Macs.
John:
Put Intel CPUs in your iOS devices.
John:
Then you'll have one architecture across all your products, and it will be great, and we'll make tons of money come with us.
John:
So that's Intel's end game plan.
John:
We'll see how it works out.
Casey:
Also consider that of all the people that I know that use Macs, almost every single one that isn't an indie Mac developer that isn't Marco or equivalent, every single one of them runs either Parallels or VMware on a regular basis to do either their jobs or something they absolutely have to do in their personal lives.
Casey:
And that's made a lot easier.
Casey:
And I think one of you alluded to this earlier.
Casey:
That job is made a lot easier because everything is Intel.
Casey:
The chip is Intel.
Casey:
Windows is Intel.
Casey:
OS X is Intel.
Casey:
Everything is Intel.
Casey:
And if the chip suddenly became ARM, then you'd be going back to the god-awful PowerPC days.
Casey:
Wasn't there a time where you would put a full PC motherboard, not physically full, but all the bits of a PC motherboard, like an expansion slot in order to make virtualization possible?
Yeah.
Casey:
I don't want to have anything to do with that.
Casey:
That did exist.
Casey:
Right.
John:
I don't think you have to worry about that in the days when even the Mac Pro has no internal slots anymore.
Marco:
So that's not coming back.
Marco:
We have a Thunderbolt PC.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
But you know what I mean.
Casey:
You know what I'm driving at.
Casey:
It's just that if you change the processor architecture, that could make getting a Mac a lot harder an argument for a lot of people, myself included.
Casey:
I mean, I work on Microsoft stuff all day.
Casey:
And I basically live in VMware Fusion most of my workday.
Casey:
So that would really shut the door on that, or maybe not shut the door on it, but make it a lot uglier.
John:
Both sides of that have big pluses and big minuses, and they're on a collision course.
John:
We just sit back and watch.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
We good?
Marco:
Let's wrap it up.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our two sponsors this week, Squarespace and Transporter.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
They didn't mean to.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Casey:
All right, do you want to do titles?
Casey:
I really like Syracuse County Mall.
Casey:
That is pretty good, actually.
John:
No Syracuse County titles, come on.
Casey:
I will allow a veto, but I do also agree that that is really good.
Marco:
That was my suggestion.
Marco:
You have to find a better one to override it.
John:
Irish pro graphics.
Casey:
When did you say that?
John:
Iris.
John:
It's me mumbling the word iris as in your eye, the colored part of your eye.
Casey:
Accidental fashion podcast.
Casey:
I don't think that should be the winner, but that is kind of funny.
Casey:
It is pretty good.
John:
No one has been trying to correct us on using false positive instead of false negative or whatever.
Casey:
I almost corrected you, and then I was like, I'm crazy, and I'm missing something.
John:
I kind of like C-level executives with the C spell drunk, too.
Casey:
What is it with you and the stupid puns?
John:
I don't know.
John:
I'm on a DCE run.
John:
Everyone I pick, it's been his suggestion.
John:
He's on a roll today.
John:
What can I tell you?
John:
I like his suggestions this week.
John:
C-level executives look good.
John:
It makes me think of the sea lion slide from WWDC.
John:
It was the big sea lion executive.
Marco:
God.
Marco:
Yeah, I might just do shoulder surfing or the pulling the rug out one.
Marco:
That's fine.
John:
Or C-level executives.
Casey:
I'm not doing that one.
Casey:
What is wrong with you, John?
John:
Because they're like, it's C-level.
John:
You get it?
John:
They're not up on a mountain.
John:
They're not in Death Valley.
John:
C-level executives.