A Weird One
John:
When a Skype call begins, I'm against saying hello.
John:
Because that makes it like a telephone.
John:
We're bringing all of the traditions of the crappy previous generation communication system to the new one.
John:
You pick up the phone to say hello, but Skype, it should be like IM.
John:
You don't begin every IM conversation with people that you know with a greeting or something or a hello.
Casey:
Well, if you're an AM, you start an IM conversation with YT?
John:
What does that stand for?
Casey:
You there?
Casey:
You didn't know that?
John:
No.
John:
If anyone did that to me, I would be like, what are you doing?
Casey:
Yeah, it's terrible.
John:
It's like people saying hello on Skype, but it's worse.
John:
Here's worse than YT.
John:
Your name with a question mark.
John:
That is the worst way to begin an IM conversation.
Casey:
No, disagree.
Casey:
It has to be YT.
John:
No, your name with a question mark is the worst.
John:
Trust me.
John:
I've had them all done to me except for YT.
John:
See?
John:
No, because YT is like, yes, it's terrible, but it's better than, Casey?
John:
Like, what is the – yes, you know who your IM – Casey?
John:
Are you there?
John:
I mean, it's almost the same as you there, but the Casey, it's like, Casey?
Casey:
Is this Casey?
John:
No, it's like, Casey, I'm expecting something from you, and I can't believe I'm not getting it.
Casey:
Do we want to talk about the event, or do we want to just dive straight into the review?
Casey:
Because I'm thinking, let's just say, screw the event, let's talk about the review.
Marco:
Wait, hold on, there's a lot in the event, though.
John:
I think we should do the event because it's more timely.
John:
The review is not going anywhere.
John:
The review is part of the event because one of the things I talk about in the event is Mavericks.
John:
I think we should do the event.
John:
I say this even though I've only seen half of the event, but I more or less know what happened.
Marco:
I think we can fit both.
Marco:
We have a long show.
Marco:
Let's just be honest.
Marco:
This is going to be a long show.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Let's talk about the review.
Casey:
Do you want to cue the piano background music?
John:
I thought we were starting with the event.
John:
We just agreed to do both of them.
Casey:
Sorry.
Casey:
I said review.
Casey:
I meant event.
Casey:
I'm tired, too.
John:
You guys got to get on your game here.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
I got to put on my game.
John:
Have an extra cup of coffee or whiskey or whatever it is that you two have.
Casey:
I have water.
Casey:
I'm pulling a John, for God's sakes.
Casey:
All I have is water.
Casey:
Maybe that's the problem.
John:
Maybe you need a Sprite.
John:
Yeah.
John:
You need the extra sugar.
Casey:
That's it.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Let me try this all over again.
Casey:
So why don't we talk about the event?
Casey:
And now, Marco, you can cue the silly piano music.
Casey:
So what did you think, John, of the parts that you saw?
John:
Well, my first question for both of you is did either one of you or both of you see the whole event?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
We actually live – or not live.
Marco:
We did a no-spoilers policy between ourselves at the track that day and yesterday, I guess it was, right?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And we didn't check Twitter or anything.
Marco:
I didn't even check my email.
Marco:
In fact, my phone vibrated in my pocket once.
Marco:
I didn't even check to see the notification.
Marco:
I just didn't care.
Marco:
Like, just –
Marco:
It can't be anything important.
Marco:
And then in the car on the way back, we had already pre-subscribed to the Keynote podcast on our phones so that we wouldn't even have to go to Apple's website or find the feed.
Marco:
We downloaded the recording of it from the Keynote feed on the way back, on the drive back to Richmond, so on this five-hour drive.
Marco:
Downloaded the video of it and watched it and streamed it over the car speakers.
Casey:
So yeah, so I didn't see the first...
Casey:
two-thirds of the video at that point because i happened to be driving at the time and then underscore didn't see the ipad portion of the video because he was driving afterwards but i did re-watch the whole thing this evening and finished your entire review and read the blog post about the review so i did a lot of prep for the podcast that's not supposed to have any prep wow i just want to clarify for the listeners by the way when they say they were at the track they weren't betting on horses
Marco:
In case anyone suspected that that was the most likely explanation of that phrase from me and Casey.
John:
You know what the idle rich do.
John:
Go to the track, bet on the ponies.
Casey:
Yeah, so we all did see it in some capacity.
John:
All right, so I'm the only one who missed part of it, and the reason I missed most of it is because as soon as I said it was available today, I had to stop watching, stop listening, and start doing the things I knew I needed to do.
Casey:
All right, now really quickly to interrupt, were you at home or at work when this was going on?
John:
I was at home.
Casey:
Okay, so you knew enough to plan for the inevitable possibility that you might have a busy afternoon.
John:
Yep.
Casey:
Now, so were you like – was it one of those things where you were like, I may or may not work this afternoon?
Casey:
Or did you just say like two weeks – a week ago, I guess, Tuesday afternoon, I'm going to need that off because stuff is going to go crazy?
John:
Well, I mean it basically worked out to just be a late lunch because like ours actually held the review.
John:
They held it until the event was over because that's usually what Apple does in terms of like things don't go on sale until the event is over, store doesn't come back up, whatever.
John:
So the review was ready to go.
John:
Within minutes of everything was ready to go within minutes of them announcing the price and that it was available today.
John:
And then it was just a matter of holding it until the event is over and then it goes up.
John:
So that's really all it took of my day at that point.
John:
And then after work, it was just, you know, the deluge of a million emails, tweets and everything else.
John:
And, you know, so it was it was a full day.
John:
But the actual publishing, I was well prepared.
John:
I had everything ready to go for everything that was announced.
John:
I was not surprised by anything.
John:
Everything worked as well as could be expected.
John:
Maybe in a show or two from now, we can go through the blow-by-blow of all the different moving parts and how it went better this year than last year.
John:
But I think that's more of a meta-topic.
Casey:
Now, I don't know if you want to get into this at this moment, but did you have any of the pricing options already in the review, or did you just have a big blank space?
John:
I had something ready to publish which said the price isn't known.
John:
I mean, that's what I pushed up to the iBook store with –
John:
you know the the version that was ready to go at any moment you can say yes i can publish this right now it just it basically didn't have information about the price didn't even it didn't assert that any price was the price just we don't know what it is but i think it's going to be this and blah blah blah and like that version had a graph of the price and instead of the graph going down to zero for 10.9 it was a light gray line going down to zero with a question mark on it but the graph still went to zero like that was my guess
John:
But the text said, we don't know.
John:
And so I had the free version all ready to go free paste, paste, paste, paste, paste on the, you know, upload and there it went.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So I did a very good job of steering us to the review we didn't want to talk about.
Casey:
So about the event.
Marco:
I think it was it was interesting that was it just me or did all the speakers seem a little bit sloppier than usual?
Marco:
I completely agree.
John:
A lot of people are saying that, and I'm only up to Eddie Q at this point, whose clothing was a little crazy.
John:
But up to that point, they seemed fine.
John:
I don't think they were off their game as much as everyone said.
John:
I think it's not that they were off, because they always stumble over stuff.
John:
It was that the atmosphere in the room, which is hard to tell when you're not there, so we should really talk to someone who was actually there, but the atmosphere in the room seemed like...
John:
There wasn't any electricity in terms of excitement about anything, and the presenters weren't able to muster enthusiasm about the announcements, and the audience wasn't feeding it back to them, so it was just kind of like going through the motions of announcing things quickly through slides or whatever.
John:
But I don't blame the people who presented.
John:
It's just, I mean, maybe there was not anything that exciting.
John:
For example, imagine if the Mac Pro had not been announced at WWDC.
John:
It would have been a very different vibe in that room with the exact same announcements.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Just because nothing there was a surprise, really, to anybody.
John:
Right.
Marco:
Yeah, pretty much everything.
Marco:
If everyone took their best guesses as to what was going to be announced, that was exactly what was announced, and really nothing more than that.
Marco:
It was like, all right, everyone's best guesses.
Marco:
What do you think it is?
Marco:
And then it was just that.
John:
Yeah, and it really hurts you when you have parts of the event that you've told people about before.
John:
You've told people about Mavericks.
John:
We're going to go through it again.
John:
You've told people about this Mac Pro, which is awesome and everything.
John:
We're going to go through it again.
John:
And even the stuff like the new MacBook Pros, well, we already have a line of Haswell computers.
John:
So the Haswell...
John:
excitement of wow look at this battery life is already there like there was so little that it was new and and those ones where you're going over stuff that everybody already knows that you yourself told them previously that just kills the energy i think of the presentation but i'm so thus far in watching i don't think it was bad it was just kind of like man like the products they're announcing i'm looking at the products i'm going this is a good product and now i'm looking at the videos this video of the mac pro is being made this is a cool video like all thumbs up all around but uh
John:
Having known so much beforehand and so much of having been announced beforehand really undercuts the excitement.
Marco:
Yeah, and I think it was weird, too, that they spent so much time on the iOS 7 goofy video about their design philosophy, which, okay, that's nice, but we've seen that twice or three times already.
Marco:
Because didn't they use it at the iPhone event also?
John:
Yeah, you can't keep going back to that video.
John:
It's a nice video.
John:
It's a good video, but how many times can you use it?
John:
It would be like showing the... I mean, the only way they kind of got away with that is they showed Think Different a lot.
John:
That kind of works because it was more abstract, and this is more concrete, and it seems more tied to iOS 7, and it's got the words that you read and everything, and it's just kind of like you can't – I hope they don't show that again.
Marco:
Yeah, I think they've driven it into the ground.
Marco:
But also a lot of the time was videos and fairly boring demos.
Marco:
They did have a lot to announce, but the pacing seemed a little bit slow to me.
Marco:
And I know it's always a little bit slow because it's mainly for the press and it's Tim Cook talking, but still, the pacing of the whole thing seemed especially slow this time.
Marco:
And it seemed...
Marco:
It seemed like they were less prepared.
Marco:
Maybe they had rehearsed less than usual.
Marco:
And they were less comfortable.
Marco:
You're right that part of it was kind of a lack of excitement because they weren't really announcing anything surprisingly dramatically new.
Marco:
But part of it was also, I think, like...
Marco:
It almost seemed like they were a little more uptight, maybe, because when they would stumble over what was obviously a scripted line that was made to sound unscripted, rather than just rolling with the mistake they made, they would go back and re-say what they were supposed to say the first time.
Marco:
They would just retry the failed line.
Casey:
I thought the same thing.
Marco:
It was kind of awkward.
Marco:
It felt very stiff.
John:
to me like i said i'll have to keep watching because i'm only updated q at this point although one thing that that i noticed about it was that you say it went slow i felt a lot of the demos especially the software demos that i had seen like up to the point of garage band seemed rushed and in the way that because if you're used to the steve jobs era
John:
He would have done the same presentation, but he would have picked, like, either one application or, like, a couple features of two applications and just spent what seems like way too long if you were looking at the stopwatch.
John:
Remember when Steve Jobs would get obsessed with, like – I mean, imagine he had picked, like –
John:
the slow motion feature in iMovie or the drums or something.
John:
He would do these in-depth demos of some obscure feature that, like, tickles his fancy, and he would be there.
John:
But the thing is, if you look at the clock, like, he's going to sit there and play with the slow motion feature for five minutes?
John:
Are you kidding me?
John:
But he was so obviously so jazzed about this feature that he was showing.
John:
It was almost like watching a kid who was, like, really excited about that.
John:
I got to show you my toy.
John:
Look, check this thing out.
John:
And that enthusiasm, as corny as it might be, like...
John:
you could connect with it and he would go in depth about some one obscure feature and this would seem like oh we've got these things and look at this and this does this and this is that and you get even the one they tried to go in depth for look you can use drummers and go like this isn't that cool but when he says isn't that cool Steve Jobs would be like closing his eyes and getting into it and going you know like like Marco does with fish I imagine you know
John:
with his fancy headphones on.
John:
And he would really get into it.
John:
And you may not be into it, but you could say you were convinced that Steve Jobs was really into whatever it was.
John:
Even if it was like, look at the wood on these amp cases and this UI.
John:
That was missing because these people were just like,
John:
go through the features, show them one after the other, maybe go a little bit in depth with this, but none of them, again, thus far up to any queue, have been able to convince me that they are obsessively in love with any aspect of these programs.
Casey:
Yeah, and I thought the queue demo was rough.
Casey:
It was something that was supposed to be cutesy and funny, but was neither cutesy nor funny.
Casey:
Like with his album cover or whatever it was, or band poster.
Casey:
Right, yeah.
Casey:
Specifically what it was.
Casey:
You know, oftentimes Apple will do something that, yeah, it's lame, but it's kind of adorably lame, whereas this was just straight up lame in my opinion.
Casey:
And I thought it –
Casey:
It was awkward.
Casey:
I think Eddie was trying too hard to be funny.
Casey:
And I don't blame him for that.
Casey:
But I don't know, like where Craig can be the nerd and generally speaking, be funny, with the exception of what was the line?
Casey:
Actually wrote it down.
Casey:
We want to go door to door with a bag of hearts.
Casey:
Huh?
Casey:
What?
Casey:
That was early on when he was talking about how nerds will make everyone happy by writing code.
Casey:
But generally speaking, I think Craig does a very good job with the cutesy funny and the kind of lame funny.
Casey:
And I don't think Eddie does well with that at all.
Casey:
And I thought his demo was very rough.
John:
yeah you can only do so much with the material you have i mean like think about a wwc like we were this first time we're seeing ios 7 and it was a mixture of like shock and discomfort because it was like remember we first saw ios 7 up there with those crazy icons and like the video was cool and they show us these screens that we've never seen before and we show us these icons and no one knows what to think the whole room is going nuts and the mac pro same type of thing like what the hell is this it's a circle and they show it next to the mac pro like
John:
Being knocked, being knocked, coming, being hit from the side in an unexpected direction, being knocked off kilter, even when it's in a bad way, when people are like, oh, God, what the hell is up with this iOS 7 thing?
John:
Like, that makes for a memorable, interesting experience.
John:
And they didn't have any of that here.
John:
So all you're left with is, I mean, like, say you got a really good shuck and jive guy to do a more polished delivery on these same products.
John:
I don't think it would have come off any better.
John:
And I think the things they announced are good.
John:
It's just that none of them knocked us on our ear like a couple of the past announcements have.
Marco:
Let's talk about the things they announced.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Isn't it eschew?
Marco:
Is it?
Casey:
I should not be the authority on such things, but I think that's the case.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
So a really quick real-time follow-up.
Casey:
I'm told via the chat that it wasn't bag of hearts, which is what I could swear I heard on two different occasions, but bag of parts, which doesn't really make the joke any better to me, but apparently I completely misheard that.
Casey:
And also the chat room says it is Eshoo, which is, you know, one victory for me in a long line of defeat when it comes to the English language.
Casey:
So I'm going to hold on to that for a while.
Casey:
Anyway, you were going to start walking through what they talked about.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
I've worked on a bunch of notes on everything.
Marco:
We'll see what's actually interesting enough to get to.
Marco:
I do want to save a lot of time for John.
Marco:
Biggest thing... So the Retina MacBook Pro update was the first thing they did, right?
Marco:
And...
Marco:
what's it's not that interesting what's very interesting about it well what's kind of interesting about it is the price drops all around the the retinas all saw a price drop of i think two hundred dollars for the entry prices which is really great i mean because i don't think have they actually let me double check did they update the non-pros at all yet or probably not right
Marco:
Yeah, it looks like they still offer just the 13.
Marco:
The 15 is gone.
Marco:
They offer just the 13-inch non-retino one for only $100 less, and it looks like it's using an old CPU.
Marco:
So, yeah.
Marco:
So they still have it.
Marco:
It's probably on its way out, or they're going to keep it around for one more cycle.
Marco:
Anyway, so $200 less on all the retinas is really great because this is really showing, like, they're serious about the retinas replacing the other ones.
Marco:
The other ones are not going to be around for much time.
John:
I wonder if they even cut their margins at all.
John:
It could be that their margins had gotten large on those and they had the headroom to cut the price without hurting their margins because, like, they've been pulling parts out of these things.
John:
You know, SSDs are expensive and everything, but, like, they're smaller and simpler than hard drives, and they probably get good deals on flash at this point.
John:
And, you know, just pulling out the optical drive, there's one part you don't have to pay for at all and all the stuff.
John:
And getting rid of buses that were there previously...
John:
the peripherals used to be connected to, you know, those buses were just there dangling and they can get rid of those.
John:
Like what's inside these things is getting smaller and more stuff moving onto the CPU package with the Haswell and everything.
John:
I wonder if there, if the margins are, you know, if these price drops are just maintaining the margins of like two generations ago, uh,
John:
And they just figured, well, we can sell more of these if we just maintain our current margins.
John:
And the best example that we'll get to later is compare and contrast with the iPad 2, which they did not do that with.
John:
But yeah, but the price drops, I mean, that's the way it's supposed to work.
Marco:
It's really good, though.
Marco:
That means more people getting into retina screens.
Marco:
And that also means that... Because the screens are exactly the same as they were already.
Marco:
But I think this means that retina screens are getting cheaper, basically.
Marco:
And that's really good for the rest of the line getting retina screens, which we will also talk about later.
John:
Four gigabytes RAM, though, standard on a couple of these models, it's no good.
Marco:
Yeah, that's a little weak.
John:
Especially with integrated graphics, despite the Mavericks changes integrated graphics.
Marco:
Yeah, there's that.
Marco:
There's also the compressed RAM, which I actually should ask you how well that works in practice.
Marco:
I haven't actually read your review yet.
Marco:
Sorry, I haven't had time.
Marco:
But I'm going to read it tomorrow.
Marco:
Don't tell anybody.
Marco:
I do like that they finally have a no discrete GPU option on the 15, like we talked about in the past.
Marco:
um what's interesting though is that it doesn't appear to make any price difference whatsoever if you actually configure that they have two parts they're like a low end and a high end uh line to start with and you can configure the low end with all the options that the high end has except the gpu and if you if you configure it to match on the other specs it's the exact same price regardless of whether it has the discrete gpu or not which i think is kind of funny
John:
And the 13 doesn't get discrete at all.
John:
So if you look at the chart, it's like integrated, integrated, integrated, integrated, and only at the very right-hand side of the tech specs.
John:
They say, oh, and by the way, you can get a discrete.
John:
So the way it's presented is kind of like the MacBook Pro only uses integrated graphics, except for if you get the super-duper high-end, you can opt for the apparently no-cost discrete.
Marco:
Right, exactly.
Marco:
Although the 13 never had it.
Marco:
But yeah, that's a very good point.
John:
I know, but there's no reason they couldn't also have a high-end 13 for people who want that form factor.
John:
I witnessed the Retina Mini, which is kind of like the high-end different form factor in iPads.
John:
At various times, they've done that, where each line, you can crank up to the highest level.
Yeah.
John:
They've chosen not to.
John:
And so Discreet is only – it's kind of like towards the end of life when the 17 was the only one that got the super-duper stuff.
John:
Like they would just shove the most powerful things into the 17.
John:
Like, well, you want the most powerful thing?
John:
You got to get this big boat.
Marco:
So moving on, what do you think about the – what I believe was next or at least the next most important thing is what do you think about the iPad Air?
Casey:
Oh, hold on.
Casey:
You're skipping a lot of stuff here.
Casey:
So what about the Mac Pro?
Casey:
Is there anything interesting you wanted to add to that?
John:
It's interesting that when we were walking out of the keynote and we said, what do you think of the price of Mac Pro?
John:
And Marco and I both said $2,999.
John:
And then we changed our minds up and down over various months or whatever.
John:
But it turns out the first slide Apple put up with the price next to that thing was $2,999.
John:
Uh, so kudos to first, uh, to our, you know, our instincts there.
John:
Uh, and so I'm, the pricing is what I think what we expected.
John:
I think they, I think they could have gone lower if they really wanted to, uh, but they didn't want to.
John:
And I'm glad that there's a two in front of that number, even if no one's ever going to buy that particular model.
John:
I just hope I have the, the build to order flexibility to mix and match to a greater degree because like they showed the little canned configs.
John:
And it's like, OK, well, can I get like the second fastest low number of core CPU, but with the big honking GPU, but with the, you know, the medium sized SSD or whatever?
Marco:
The answer to all of those is, well, I don't know about the SSD, but the answer to the CPU and GPU from their tech specs page is that you can mix and match any combination of those.
John:
Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm assuming.
John:
And I was wondering, again, what is it going to cost to upgrade the standard 256 gig SSD to the top end terabyte one and dreading what it might be?
Marco:
If you look, though, the new MacBook Pro, the retina MacBook Pro has a one terabyte SSD option for either 500 or 800, depending on whether it's the high end or the low end.
John:
That's what Rich Siegel pointed out to me today.
John:
He's like, I know what the price is going to be.
John:
I said, how do you know?
John:
And he showed me the choices to upgrade from 256 to 512 or 1 terabyte for both the iMac and the MacBook Pro.
John:
And the prices were always $800 for the 1 terabyte and $800 1 terabyte.
Marco:
But it is $500 on the high-end retina MacBook Pro.
Marco:
So I'm guessing it could be either.
Marco:
It could be $500 or $800.
Marco:
Either way, $800 is a little bit pushy.
Marco:
$500 for a 1 terabyte SSD is pretty good.
John:
But it's not that they always do that for you.
John:
It's not 500 for one terabyte SSD.
John:
It's 500 for an additional 768 gigabytes.
John:
You know what I mean?
Marco:
Like they always do that.
Marco:
That's true.
Marco:
But but from Apple, first party, fully supported and integrated into this crazy case where you can't put your own in.
Marco:
That's pretty good.
Casey:
Well, now stop.
Casey:
Stop right there.
Casey:
What did you just say, Marco?
Marco:
This crazy case where you can't put your own in?
Casey:
Right.
Marco:
I don't think that's true.
John:
The RAM is user-serviceable, they said in the video.
John:
Is that what it is?
John:
Yeah, they were saying that the memory is... I mean, the SSDs are user-serviceable, too.
John:
The question is, where are you going to find whatever weird PCIe form factor connector thingy that goes in there?
John:
Probably Otherworld Computing will sell them in a year or so, but it's not going to be a bargain.
Marco:
Right, because the SSDs are in a slot.
Casey:
Right, that's exactly what I was driving at.
Marco:
Yeah, the question is, like, what's... Because, like, I mean, remember, when the Retina MacBook Pro came out, it took OWC, like, six months or something to be able to find something and make something that could fit that.
Marco:
So, you know, it might... I think John's right, it might be a while.
John:
Well, they do that neat thing, though, where they give you, like, a little cheapy aluminum external case for you to... The one you take out so you don't have to just throw it in the garbage.
John:
You can stick it in this little case and have a tiny little bus-powered SSD.
John:
Third-party opportunity.
John:
But yeah, since they didn't announce Retina displays, maybe I will take that extra money and throw it into a bigger SSD when I buy a Mac Pro.
Marco:
It's nice that they went standard 12 gigs on the RAM.
Marco:
The Mac Pro, so far, the Mac Pro has, until this point, had 3 gigs standard, which is embarrassing.
John:
Well, but 12 gigs is embarrassing, too.
John:
I feel like 16 is the nice round number we all wanted, and they give you 12 just to make you feel inferior.
John:
Like, well, I guess I have to grade for 16.
Yeah.
Marco:
What's the configuration to get 12 gigs in the dims?
John:
Three fours, maybe?
Marco:
That's so weird.
Marco:
But there's four slots, and it's quad channel.
John:
Yeah, well, I've got a thing with triple channel memory on my desk, and it's got four dim slots on it.
John:
Who knows with Apple in there?
John:
I don't know.
John:
I don't know what this configuration is.
Marco:
Yeah, it's kind of weird.
Marco:
And we don't know RAM pricing either.
Marco:
We don't know CPU pricing either.
Marco:
Obviously, I have a lot to say about the CPUs.
Marco:
Probably more than anybody cares, so I'm not going to do it all here.
Marco:
I'm going to make a blog post.
Marco:
But the short version is the base CPU, the 4-core 3.7.
Marco:
That is an E5 1620.
Marco:
It's a $300 CPU.
Marco:
It is not a high-end CPU.
Marco:
It does not turbo very easily and very far.
Marco:
It's probably a pretty crappy CPU.
John:
It's 3.7, so what do you think it's going to turbo to?
John:
I mean, it's already pressing.
Marco:
Well, I looked all these up.
Marco:
It turbos to 3.9, but with only one core active.
Marco:
If you read Intel's weird turbo numbers, where it's like numbers slash numbers slash numbers, it's three zeros and a two.
Marco:
So it hardly turbos at all.
Marco:
But if you look...
Marco:
Most of the CPU options, so I looked up, you know, you can figure out by elimination exactly which models these are, so you can look up other stats.
Marco:
And so it's basically the whole E5 16X line.
Marco:
It's the 1620, 50, 80, and then the 2697 at the high end, the 12 core.
Marco:
And
Marco:
These all turbo to roughly the same 3.9 gigahertz.
Marco:
And if you look at how they ramp up, they all have pretty much the same range.
Marco:
Because they all have the same TDP.
Marco:
They didn't go high enough to have the W chips.
Marco:
For a while, the last few Xeon families have had these special models ending in W for workstations.
Marco:
And they've used more power and run faster.
Marco:
And the current 2010 Mac Pro that I have...
Marco:
The 3.336 core is one of those chips.
Marco:
They can't use those.
Marco:
I guess they can't cool the extra heat, so they're not using them.
Marco:
That would have been nice.
Marco:
I wish they were.
Marco:
And the 12-core high-end one, the part from Intel costs $2,600.
Marco:
So I'm guessing that's going to be like a $5,000 option on the Mac Pro.
Marco:
And what's funny is that it hardly turbos at all.
Marco:
So that's not likely to be a very fast chip for almost anything except extremely parallelizable tasks.
Marco:
The best option is probably going to be the 8-core.
Marco:
But what's sad is that the 8-core they picked, the E5-1680 V2, it's a $1,700 chip.
Marco:
So that might be like a $2,500 to $3,000 option.
Marco:
For $300 more from Intel, there's a better one that uses the same power.
Marco:
It's the 2667.
Marco:
It uses the same power, same heat, higher speeds all around.
Marco:
And I don't know why they're not offering that.
Marco:
I'm kind of sad about that.
Marco:
But otherwise, overall, these look like reasonable options.
John:
The same cache sizes on those two?
Marco:
Yeah, exactly the same.
Marco:
I believe 25 megs on both.
John:
Yeah, I might go for the cheapy CPU and trade that money for SSD, because I don't have much that's CPU-bound.
John:
And if I can put more money into the GPU, if that ends up being better for gaming, I think a game that's CPU-bound on the quote-unquote low-end Xeon, it's probably going to be fine.
John:
People are running i5s and i7s most of the gaming world, so...
John:
I think the Xeon, even the crappy Xeon will hold its own.
John:
Is there a 4-core or something that starts at 3.9 and turbo's faster, or am I imagining?
Marco:
I don't think so.
Marco:
I don't have the full chart in front of me now, but I don't think so.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure that the highest Xeon speed is at 3.7.
Marco:
That is the base CPU.
Marco:
But it's like you're stuck at 3.7.
Marco:
You don't get anything higher than that.
Marco:
There is the 6-core in the middle.
Marco:
Intel's price is only just under $600, so Apple might offer that for an extra $1,000.
Marco:
And that is going to be substantially faster, but not by a massive, like, huge jump.
John:
Wasn't that the prices they actually gave?
John:
It was, you know, $3,000 for the 4-core and $4,000 for the 6-core, right?
Marco:
Oh, I forgot.
Marco:
Yeah, they did tell us that, didn't they?
Marco:
It's $1,000 more?
Marco:
Yeah, okay.
Marco:
Yeah, so CPU is $600.
Marco:
So the CPU is a $300 upgrade.
Marco:
They're charging $1,000 for it.
Marco:
So that also has higher-end GPUs in that configuration.
John:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
That's what I'm saying.
John:
Like mix and match, you could probably, if they let us mix and match, you know, you can make a machine that's the way we want it to be.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So we'll have to see when the configurator goes up, what, you know, how these prices actually are.
Marco:
I'm actually thinking though, so as you mentioned a second ago, they didn't launch retina displays, like external desktop size retina displays.
Marco:
I'm actually thinking I might skip this generation because there's a new Xeon generation on Intel's roadmap coming out in one year.
Marco:
It's the Haswell EP line or whatever it is.
Marco:
That's scheduled to come out in third quarter of 2014.
Marco:
And it's not likely to be a massive upgrade.
Marco:
It's likely to be another 8-10% maybe of performance.
Marco:
It's the same process size and everything, so it's not going to be a huge jump.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
they're probably going to update the Mac Pros in a year or roughly a year.
Marco:
And so maybe I might wait for that one.
Marco:
Maybe they'll have retinas then.
Marco:
Maybe people will have worked out the version one bugs with this weird new architecture.
Marco:
You know, who knows?
John:
I can't wait that long.
John:
I've been waiting so long already.
John:
I've got to get this.
John:
It's like when the dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 came out.
John:
It had a front-side bus.
John:
It was like 133MHz.
John:
At that point, I was like, hell yes, I'm getting this machine.
John:
So I just can't wait anymore.
John:
What I'll have to wait for, obviously, is monitors.
John:
So I'll be using this fancy new Mac Pro with my ancient 23-inch non-LED backlight, but matte Apple Cinema Display.
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Casey:
All right, do you want to do the iPad stuff, then we'll mosey our way back into Mavericks?
Marco:
Yeah, let's do that.
Marco:
Honestly, I don't think there's that much to say about the iPad.
Marco:
I think the iPad Air is interesting.
Marco:
It's a terrible name.
Marco:
It is a horrible name.
Marco:
I mean, I think we can all agree on that.
Marco:
But it's interesting that they're pushing really hard to get everyone talking about the new full-sized iPad again.
Marco:
That is the new product for this fall.
Marco:
The Retina Mini is great, and it's probably going to be the one we all buy.
Marco:
But what Apple wants us to think about, obviously from this presentation, Apple wants us to think about the big one again.
Marco:
And skeptically, it's probably just because it has way bigger margins.
Marco:
It's a much higher priced product that has mostly the same hardware as the small one now.
Marco:
So I think you can look at that and you can say, this is obviously just them trying to boost the attention back to their more profitable product.
Marco:
But it was interesting.
Marco:
I saw some of the hands-on reports from some of the reporters who were there at the event say that it really is surprisingly small.
Marco:
The low weight is really nice, and a lot of them say it's actually now very competitive with the Mini, and they might even prefer it.
Marco:
So I think that's really interesting that Apple might have actually succeeded in getting everyone to buy the big one again.
Marco:
Probably not.
Marco:
I'm guessing the Mini will still remain the most popular one, but I think it's possible.
John:
I still think the Mini was popular because it was cheap first and small second.
Marco:
Yeah, that's very possible.
Marco:
And so on that note, the Mini was updated.
Marco:
There's now a Retina Mini at $400.
Marco:
And the old Mini sticks around for $30 less at $300.
Marco:
I think that's exactly what we predicted last time, but close enough.
Marco:
Anyway...
Marco:
What I like a lot about the Retina Mini is that it has the A7.
Marco:
So the Retina Mini and the iPad Air both have the exact same CPU, the A7.
Marco:
And they basically have all the same internal hardware, except the iPad Air has the bigger screen.
Marco:
So you're literally just, I think you're, isn't that right?
Marco:
I think you're just paying an extra $100 just for the bigger screen.
Marco:
Is that right?
Marco:
And the bigger battery that's behind it.
Marco:
Right, that's true.
Marco:
And do we know Retina Mini battery life numbers yet?
Marco:
I mean, obviously what Apple tells us, but do we know real world numbers yet?
John:
I don't think so.
Marco:
I'm curious to see when the full-size one went Retina, they had to put a massive battery in it, and it produced a lot more heat.
Marco:
I'm curious to know if the Retina Mini will have that same problem.
John:
so here's one unambiguously as far as i'm concerned bad thing about the ipad air and probably the only well the only two only one of two bad things about the ipad air from my perspective one i talked about last show that the you know making the frame thinner but i'll have to try that to see how that works out in practice but two it lost the beautiful original smart cover with the metal hinge instead it's got that flappy twisty ipad mini smart cover with the hinge that does not align and drives me insane
Marco:
Yeah, but the metal one scratches the laptop next to it in the bag.
John:
Don't just leave your things rattling around in your bag.
John:
What are you doing?
John:
Are you putting your iPhone in your pocket with your keys?
John:
Come on.
Marco:
No, but you could put a smart-covered iPad next to the flat side of a laptop in a skinny laptop pocket.
John:
I would much rather have a hinge that works properly than a hinge that is padded properly.
John:
so that it doesn't damage other items when they're jostling around.
John:
I do not like that hinge.
John:
It's upsetting to me because that smart cover is one of my favorite things about the iPad 3 that I use.
John:
It works so nicely.
John:
It's so pleasing in practice to flap it shut and open.
John:
Other than the stupid finger grease streaks that it leaves on the screen because of the bendy thing, but I do use the little bendy triangle thing when I prop it up.
John:
disappointing and that big the big case that they put around it looking at the pictures that looks the same kind of the same as design as the existing big case and those big cases are terrible too
John:
i don't think i've ever actually seen one of those like obviously i've seen the regular one without with just the front but i've never seen the full back case yeah i've seen them in the apple store i've never seen a real person have them but they are not they have sharp edges and they're not attractive they don't feel good in your hands yuck well remember the ipad one case that was a disaster like everyone got it anyway because that thing was like straps and flanges and seams yeah it was very bad
John:
So no Touch ID in any of these things, even though they have the A7.
Marco:
That's a weird decision.
Marco:
You have to wonder why they did that.
Marco:
Obviously, I was thinking maybe they put Touch ID just in the big one to make more people want to buy the big one, but they didn't put it in either of them.
John:
Yeah, and when I see that they didn't even put it in the big one, but not putting it in the mini makes sense if you're just trying to keep the price down and stuff like that, especially since it's...
John:
it has day seven but like you're you're spending so much money that many right so but for the big one you're like why they have 128 gigabyte model for crying out loud why not put it on the big super fancy one and it makes me think they don't have enough of those little fingerprint sensors at this point that's what it makes me think
Marco:
Very possible.
John:
Because there's one and only product in the entire world that has that, and they're going to sell a bajillion of them, and that product is still supply-constrained.
John:
And of course, none of us know why it's supply-constrained.
John:
Still, I'm seeing things of like, hey, I was at the mall at the Apple store, and they had a sign out front that said, no more iPhone 5Ss today, come back tomorrow.
John:
That's still happening now.
John:
And so it's not like they're making bazillions of them.
John:
It's not like they can't make any of them, but...
John:
we have no idea which part it is that's making it so they can't so that those signs still are going up at apple stores you know weeks after launch and i think could it be the part that has never been in an apple product before it could be you know because it's certainly not the screen which is more or less the same and the case is just a bunch of aluminum and the a7 well that's already going in the minis and the ipads so i'm thinking you know fingerprint sensor now are either of you going to get either of the new ipads and if so which one
John:
After the, uh, I didn't watch the event and I don't think my wife did either, but she knew of the things and she came to me and said, I want a new mini.
John:
She wants the retina one.
John:
So I don't think she's getting one, but that clearly, clearly that sale, she just got a five S and got the fancy 64 gig one over her.
John:
So she can wait, you know, um,
John:
I would love to have the new iPad, but again, I will wait.
John:
This is my strategy for buying things that she does not adhere to, which is wait for the product that you want.
John:
The first iPad I got was the iPad 3 because it was the first Retina one.
John:
Because I knew Retina ones were coming and I was willing to wait and I've been so happy with my iPad 3 in ways that I wouldn't have been because my wife got the iPad 2.
John:
I'm like, nope, I don't want an iPad 2.
John:
You don't want to get one too?
John:
Nope, I don't want to get one.
John:
I'm waiting for Retina.
John:
And I did.
John:
And I've been very happy.
John:
And so...
John:
I would say wait, like Marco was entertaining doing with the Mac Pro.
John:
If it's not the product you want, don't just buy it just because it's there.
John:
Wait, if you can possibly wait.
Marco:
Your thing with not getting the first iPad Mini, I went the opposite direction of that and got the first iPad Mini, and I think it ruined the iPad for me for a year because I hated the iPad Mini screen.
Marco:
But I loved its size.
Marco:
And so it made the iPad 3 feel heavy and big and outdated.
Marco:
But I hated using it because the screen sucked.
Marco:
So I ended up just – I've barely used an iPad at all for the last year.
Marco:
I have used it more for Verizon tethering than any other purpose.
Marco:
And so now with looking at these, I'm wondering –
Marco:
Do I get the Retina Mini or even the iPad Air?
Marco:
Because I actually kind of like playing games on the bigger screen.
Marco:
I just don't like carrying that giant old thing that the iPad 3 was.
Marco:
But I think I'm actually going to have to go to a store and feel them both in person before I decide.
Marco:
Because maybe I just don't have a place for an iPad in my life right now, and I shouldn't get any of them.
Marco:
But maybe I should get the Retina Mini that combines everything that I like from both sides.
John:
I kept hearing that story when the mini first came out of all my nerdy friends going, Oh, I totally, I just used the mini.
John:
Now everything else is crap or whatever.
John:
And then my wife got a mini and I'm like, is that going to happen to me?
John:
Am I going to use her mini and be like, Oh, I can't use the big one.
John:
But I very quickly found out I like the larger iPad.
John:
I use it when I would, when I would used to sit down and read things on my computer, I always go and just lay down on the couch or on the bed or something.
John:
And I read it on my iPad.
John:
Like my iPad is my preferred iPad.
John:
device for reading long things now my red and my big red and iPad not the small one you know and I don't know why I love the big one so much I mean I don't it's not like I'm doing anything with that big screen I just I guess I just like it because it's bigger it looks plenty sharp and there's more stuff and it's not some tiny little thing that I'm pinching it's more like sitting with like a magazine on your lap than sitting with like a big deck of oversized playing cards in your lap
Marco:
That's why I think maybe the Air might do better than we expect.
Marco:
I mean, because it really does, you know, it still has the exact same size screen as the former big iPad, but with a substantially lighter case and substantially smaller.
Marco:
So I'm really curious to see how that is in practice.
Casey:
Yeah, to answer my own question, so I currently have a iPad 3 that is Wi-Fi only that we bought and then work gave me a while back or lent me, long-term lent me a while back.
Casey:
an iPad mini, also Wi-Fi only.
Casey:
And I don't think I'm going to get any of the new ones.
Casey:
Remind me of this in like a month.
Casey:
But if I were to get one, I think I would get an iPad mini
Casey:
I would get one that's LTE.
Casey:
And given the news today that T-Mobile had that they have really, really, really competitive pricing on LTE service for iPads, I would really consider getting a T-Mobile one.
Casey:
I'm not sure that I would, but I'd really, really think about it.
Casey:
But again, I'm not sure I'm going to do any of the above.
Marco:
One thing that kind of ruined stuff for me a little bit is that I got that awesome Logitech keyboard case for the iPad 3, and I used it on a couple of plane rides.
Marco:
An iPad propped up on a keyboard case is a really fantastic plane tray table computing device.
Marco:
It's even better, I think, than the 11-inch MacBook Air, which is normally the king of that category.
Marco:
It's really, really good, and the battery life is insane.
Marco:
You can watch videos, or you can type on Twitter and stuff like that if the plane has Wi-Fi, so that was a lot of fun.
Marco:
Then I got the Mini, and of course, the keyboard case doesn't fit it.
Marco:
If I get the Air, the keyboard case still won't fit it, but I think looking at future keyboard cases, I think having the extra length of the iPad Air, height in portrait, having that dimension still be...
Marco:
much bigger than the Mini, would probably make for a much more usable keyboard case.
Marco:
So if you're a keyboard case kind of person, the Air is probably going to be the better pick.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Anything else from the event before we meander our way to Mavericks?
Casey:
iPad 2, lol.
Casey:
What is up with that?
John:
What is that?
John:
What must the margins be on that by now?
John:
I guess the LCD still kind of costs a little bit of money, but it must be like 70% margins.
John:
It's just crazy to me.
John:
And the thing is, they must know that they can get away with that.
John:
It must be selling and those people must want something big and they want something cheap and they're willing to pay $400 for it, I guess.
John:
And it's just – it's not a bad kid computer because my daughter and my son play with our iPad 2 and they play games on it and they do things or whatever.
John:
But I would never buy one for $400.
John:
If anyone – people out there, you're nerds, you're listening to a nerdy podcast, help your family not get the iPad 2.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I know it didn't work out for us.
John:
Marco couldn't stop his mom from getting the free iPhone 4.
John:
Sometimes he can't do it, but just tell people.
John:
Give them the extra $100 to get one of the good iPads.
John:
Just donate to them.
John:
What was the iPad 2?
John:
A5?
Marco:
Well, yeah.
Marco:
What's funny is that it's the exact same hardware as the original iPad Mini, which is now still for sale for $30 less.
Marco:
So the original iPad Mini is all the exact same hardware.
Marco:
Same screen resolution, just smaller dimensions, smaller physical screen.
Marco:
And it's all the same stuff for $100 less.
Marco:
And so the iPad 4, or the iPad 2, rather, God, that's so old.
Marco:
I mean, think about it.
Marco:
That came out in early 2011.
Marco:
That is almost three years old.
Marco:
And not only are they still selling it new, but they didn't even drop the price.
Marco:
I don't understand that.
Marco:
It just doesn't make...
Marco:
Well, the theories I've heard, which I think are plausible, is that schools are buying a ton of them and that anybody who still needs a dock port – like somebody in the chat room said a few minutes ago – sorry, I forgot who – that a lot of people have custom hardware that uses the dock port that they integrated with iPads for some part of their business.
Marco:
So that kind of makes sense.
John:
But schools don't pay $3.99.
John:
They get the education price, which is lower.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Well, but think about it also –
Marco:
If they made, let's say they dropped the price at $100, then it would be the exact same price as the iPad Mini.
Marco:
So it's like you have two things with the exact same hardware, except one's bigger, and at the exact same price, that would be kind of weird.
John:
Drop it $50, drop it $70.
John:
That's not yet to take $100 off it, although they could at this point.
John:
But come on.
John:
And I think it's, like, you're an iOS developer.
John:
Like, does it feel good to keep selling?
John:
I guess you've got to deal with the Mini anyway, but it's just...
Marco:
That's the thing.
Marco:
Even if they drop the iPad 2 out of the lineup, we as developers would still have to support the A5 forever because they're still today selling the iPhone 4S and the iPad Mini, the original one, which both use that CPU.
John:
Yeah, just think about it.
John:
Fast forward three years and you're going to be in the same situation with the 64-bit.
John:
You're going to be like, oh, there's just one non-64-bit CPU left.
John:
Some crappy device still has an A6 in it and we have to keep supporting that and it's annoying us.
John:
Why can't Apple go all 64-bit?
John:
Well,
John:
That's coming up.
John:
That's the next moaning about the crappy old computer.
John:
But this is the early era of moaning where you just keep some slow device around for too long, like the 3GS before it.
Marco:
What's interesting, too, Degusta in the chat pointed this out.
Marco:
So the iPad Mini original and the iPad 2 are the same hardware.
Marco:
One's bigger, $100 more.
Marco:
The Retina Mini and the new iPad Air are also the same hardware.
Marco:
One's bigger, also $100 more.
Marco:
So they have that exact same gap with both product families.
John:
yeah there's plenty i mean when you if you go into an apple store like the like the script or the spiel or whatever they have to say which device do you like do you like big do you like small do you have a lot of money do you have a little you know like there are it's a good it's a good spread to get everybody to get everybody something they want at a price they can kind of feel okay with while still having that you know kind of smooth little ramp that they get the wedge in where you like you're like you decide on the machine that you want and you end up getting the little bump and you end up oh and that bump is 100 bucks more you're like sure why not like
John:
Apple stores and Apple's products and pricing are great at herding you towards the thing that you think you want and then making you pay $5,200 more than you thought you were going to pay for it and then leaving the store happy.
John:
That's the magic of the Apple store.
John:
Even if it's just the case, you're like, oh, and of course you'll want a case.
John:
Yes, of course.
John:
And you don't even blink at that $40 case, which you were just hemming and hawing over a $50 difference between Model A and Model B. But the case is like, oh, free money, $40.
John:
Yeah, sure, throw it in.
Yeah.
John:
AppleCare Plus, throw it on.
John:
I don't know how well they do with that.
John:
But cases, people are like, oh, I got to have a case.
John:
Give me the pink one.
John:
Here's 40 bucks.
Casey:
Oh, goodness.
Casey:
Yeah, the iPad 2 is weird.
Casey:
And was it last show or the show before where I thought I was being all bright and pointing out that we were darn near done with dock devices?
Casey:
And clearly I was just way wrong with that.
John:
They're going to add a dock port to the non-written iPad mini.
John:
Just think of the family.
John:
And this is our big-mouth bass family for people with old peripherals.
Marco:
They just must be selling a ton of those iPad 2s.
Marco:
I mean, they must be selling way more than we can possibly imagine.
John:
Yeah, I don't know.
John:
Every time there's any kind of event where iPads can be talked about at all, it's like iPad 2 Death Watch.
John:
Like the iPad Classic.
John:
Everyone just waits for that one.
John:
It's like, you know, still for sale.
Marco:
is it still for sale i didn't look after yesterday ipod classic yeah i think so at this point like i i mean i was one of them i predicted for years every single ipod event oh the ipod classic is gonna is gonna die right you know at tomorrow's event or whatever and every time it goes by and it's still around it's never it's not mentioned it's just still quietly around for sale i think now like now the surprising thing would be if they do kill it like now it just seems like this this like undead zombie product that just cannot possibly die
John:
Isn't it only available in one color or one or two colors?
John:
They don't even bother.
John:
It's just like, this is it.
John:
It's a high-five classic.
John:
There are no options.
John:
Take it or leave it.
Marco:
No, no.
Marco:
Actually, wait a minute.
Marco:
There's two.
Marco:
There is a silver and a dark gray.
Marco:
Well, there you go.
Marco:
They're probably calling black.
Marco:
But yeah, they actually have both.
Marco:
And they're both on the same capacity, same price, $250, 160 gigs, which I think has been that way for like three or four years now.
John:
Yeah, and compared to, and I heard this on Back to Work today of all shows, they were talking about the tech stuff and keynotes.
John:
Someone, this is third hand now, but they saw someone on the web link to something that said the number of possible SKUs of one of the devices, it might have even been the iPhone, was like 40 or something in terms of carrier, storage size, color combinations.
John:
You end up with 40 SKUs for the iPhone.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
When you think about it, that is by far Apple's most popular and most profitable product, so they can afford to satisfy every possible need with it.
John:
I know, but it's similar.
John:
Maybe they were even talking about the iPad.
John:
It's similar because they do offer the two colors with the iPads, and you can get them with the cellular and without and with Wi-Fi and in different sizes.
John:
It multiplies out pretty fast.
John:
We all like this sort of – it's like build to order, but not really because nothing is build to order.
John:
They just have to make all sorts of different varieties, and you just pick the one you want.
John:
well, I don't want the white, you know, Verizon 32 gig, you know, mini retina.
John:
Like, that's a lot.
Marco:
I will say also, now that we're on the subject of people who are going to ask, if you're going to buy an iPad, I would evaluate your own needs.
Marco:
However, I always highly encourage people to get a cellular model.
Marco:
I think it makes a big difference in how you can use it.
Marco:
Personally, I get the Verizon one.
Marco:
It's up to you which one you get.
Marco:
Just because for me, having an iPad work in my house on cellular is not necessary, but having it work everywhere else is awesome.
Marco:
Then I have Verizon on the iPad and AT&T on the phone.
Marco:
And I have tethering available on both.
Marco:
So whenever I go on a trip, I can just pick the one that is better reception wherever I am.
Marco:
Usually it's the Verizon one and use that to tether my laptop and it's awesome.
Marco:
So I do recommend getting a cellular one.
Marco:
I get 32 gig capacity on iPads.
Marco:
I don't get 64.
Marco:
I get 32 just because that's the way I use it.
Marco:
It's up to you how you use it.
Marco:
But definitely I would recommend cellular.
Casey:
I would agree with that.
Casey:
I've only ever had Wi-Fi iPads, and especially the last two, which I acquired roughly the same time, which was the iPad 3 and the Mini, I've really regretted not having a cellular one.
Casey:
And I think up until today, I would have said I would absolutely get the Verizon one, just like you, to offset the AT&T phone that I have.
Casey:
That being said, like I alluded to earlier, T-Mobile announced some really interesting cellular pricing,
Casey:
uh i'm gonna butcher the details but it was something along the lines of you get 200 megs free every month and then it was pretty cheap to add in i think it was day or week passes at reasonable capacities it was not ridiculous oh that's really good for travel exactly but the only problem is if i'm reading things right it's i believe it's only on their 4g network which is basically in metropolitan areas and that's it so it is a pretty big trade-off it's much cheaper
Casey:
But it may not be as available, especially in the case of something like Verizon.
Casey:
But I would definitely look into that.
Casey:
And just like Marco said, evaluate your own needs.
Casey:
But if it were me, I would probably get a 32 gig iPad mini Retina, either T-Mobile or Verizon.
Marco:
If your iPad never leaves your house, then Wi-Fi only is probably fine.
Marco:
But if you bring it with you either every day on your commute or if you bring it on trips more than zero times a year, having the LTE one is great because not only can you tether all your other stuff with it if you want to, and the battery life when you're just tethering is awesome.
Marco:
You can use it pretty much all day.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
It just changes the way you use it.
Marco:
It's just like a phone, when you always know that it's always online.
Marco:
Rather than having to go on your phone, turn tethering on, have your iPad connect to your phone through tethering.
Marco:
Whenever you add those steps, it reduces the likelihood that you're going to pull it out and use it for something.
Marco:
For me, I've always found that I will use the iPad more when it has the radio than when it doesn't.
Casey:
Yeah, the only thing I would say, though, is I am not sure if T-Mobile does tethering with these plans.
Casey:
They very well may.
Casey:
I just I really don't know.
Casey:
That would dramatically change my enthusiasm for T-Mobile because half the reason I would want a cellular iPad is in order to tether, just like you were saying.
Marco:
Do you want to move on to the Mavericks stuff?
Casey:
Yeah, I'd like to briefly start by making an observation, and then I will leave the floor to especially John.
John:
What are you leaving the floor to me?
John:
You guys got to ask me questions.
John:
I just wrote this entire review.
John:
I'm not going to read the review on the air, you know.
Marco:
Wait, you're not?
John:
No, I'm not.
Marco:
We have about 15 more minutes, 20 more minutes.
Marco:
You can fit it in there, right?
John:
I don't think so.
John:
Are you going to do an audiobook release?
John:
No, I'm not.
John:
I mean, like, you can make Mac OS X read you webpages, you know.
John:
Like, it's part of the OS.
John:
You don't need me to do that for you.
Marco:
Yeah, but it's not the same.
Marco:
It has to be – remember when we did the audible read?
Marco:
It has to be in the author's voice to really have maximum effect.
John:
If I read something that I wrote, it just makes me – it just reminds me how bad the writing is.
John:
I'm like, oh, it just doesn't – no.
John:
It takes – it's a certain skill to read.
John:
To read the written word is different than just speaking or giving a speech or anything like that.
John:
It's very different and, yeah, not in my skill set.
Casey:
It's funny you say that, though, Marco, because earlier as I was reading the review, I thought to myself, I wonder if we could take like recordings of the, what is it, naturally speaking software that you use, whatever it is, the dictation software you use, and piece together the review just from the recordings that you made in the process of writing the review.
John:
Yeah.
John:
You could not, because I interleave typing and speaking, which you really shouldn't do and is inefficient, but that's just the way I work.
John:
And it's just nonsense.
John:
It's just fragments of sentences bursted out, and then I go back and edit things and put in two sentences by hand and then speak some more.
John:
It is not a pretty process.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Well, now you guys are giving me a taste of my own medicine.
Casey:
I wanted to make a quick observation before we got to that.
Casey:
It was one of the recent – I think it was a WWDC either this year or in 2012, and I didn't have the chance to go look it up and figure out exactly what one it was.
Casey:
But I remember leaving that event, whatever the event was, and thinking to myself, my goodness, half of this event was a big screw you to Google.
Casey:
And it might have been the one where they introduced Apple Maps, which as it turns out, wasn't as much of a screw you as we thought.
Casey:
But whatever event it was, there was one event where I left thinking, my goodness, that was just a big screw you to Google.
Casey:
After this event, I had a similar feeling, but it was for Microsoft.
Casey:
Because during the event, Apple killed, well, you could argue that Apple killed paid OS upgrades, or really paying for your OS in any context.
Casey:
particular capacity.
Casey:
They killed Office to some degree by making the iWork suite free.
Casey:
And they killed Office 365 and kind of Google Docs by having the iWork on iCloud beta or whatever it's called
Casey:
Now, granted, when I say killed, none of these things, Office and Google Docs, aren't going away.
Casey:
But I thought it was really, really interesting that a lot of this was both an implied and in some cases explicit
Casey:
Screw you to Microsoft.
Casey:
And the explicit case I'm thinking of most obviously is when they had the picture of Windows 8 or Windows 8 1 or whatever it was, the picture of the box for that, and they said, you know, this is what the other guys are doing, and we don't believe in that, so we're going to make it free.
Marco:
They blew it up.
Marco:
They blew up the box because in all the new keynote stuff, they at least kept that transition.
Casey:
Right, right, exactly.
Casey:
And so I just – I don't know if there's much else to say about that, and I'm curious if you guys have any thoughts.
Casey:
But I just thought it was interesting that they're going after Microsoft with this because that was a direction I didn't really expect.
John:
Well, they're going after the old Microsoft with that because, like, there was an article on Wired about this too that quoted me because someone sent me an email asking for a take on this, and I sent them a paragraph in the middle of the OS X stuff.
John:
I don't know why I did it, but I did it mostly because I knew exactly what I wanted to say on this topic.
John:
Like, the article was –
John:
Apple just killed the market for paid OSs or whatever, some similarly sensational headline.
John:
And I sent back a paragraph and said, this is what's happening.
John:
And it's basically because of vertical integration.
John:
If you make the hardware and the software, you can decide where you want to take your profit.
John:
And the lazy way to do it has been like, okay, we'll get most of our profit from hardware.
John:
Let's make a little profit from software too.
John:
But that's a dumb move because if you can just shift that profit over, just take that little bit you're getting from software and put it into hardware and make your software free.
John:
Free is a magical price point.
John:
There are so many like papers and books that you can read about the experiments that show the magic of free.
John:
You know, one cent difference going from one cent to two cent does almost nothing.
John:
But going from two cents down to one cent does almost nothing.
John:
But going from one cent down to zero cent, unbelievable results.
John:
Like free is magic.
John:
And so why in the world would you get like, you know,
John:
2% of your profit from software and 98 from hardware, when your results getting 100% of your profit from hardware and zero from software are just phenomenal.
John:
And so if you make both of those things, you have that option.
John:
And you can do the reverse, I suppose, as well.
John:
But it's really hard to give people free hardware, especially when you're talking about big, heavy things made of metal and silicon chips and stuff.
John:
They're more expensive.
John:
So if you have to make a choice, where are you going to put your profit?
John:
Really, really hard to put all your profit into software and give people free hardware, although...
John:
You know, Amazon is almost kind of doing that.
John:
You know, they're trying to give everyone free everything.
John:
But anyway, but on the Apple side, the choice is clear.
John:
It's always been the big monies in the hardware and the software is cheap.
John:
And now Apple is finally realizing, look, we make the whole thing.
John:
We can shove all the profit into the hardware and give the software away for free.
John:
And Microsoft couldn't do that before because they didn't make the hardware.
John:
And so now the new Microsoft is we want to do that.
John:
We want to be vertically integrated.
John:
We want to make the hardware and the software.
John:
And once Microsoft does that, they will finally have the freedom to shift the profit wherever they want.
John:
And I think they're going to end up in the same place because you can't give people free Surface Pro 2s or whatever they're selling now.
John:
Those cost money to make.
John:
They're physical goods.
John:
You've got to ship them.
John:
People have to buy them and build them.
John:
But you can make the software free.
John:
So I think Microsoft knows where they're going.
John:
They're saying, oh, we're going to make our own hardware.
John:
We're going to buy Nokia.
John:
We're going to make our own stuff.
John:
We're making our own Xbox or whatever.
John:
uh you know os upgrades for the xbox are not uh 29 or 100 or whatever they're free you just get the new you know you update your software so everyone's going in the direction that direction everyone's becoming vertically integrated and apple can take its swipes now but i think microsoft is considering the recent microsoft moves they are well on their way to becoming that kind of company already and apple just gets to get some final digs in you know before everyone arrives at the same spot
Casey:
Sure, sure.
Marco:
I think developers are going to read into this free stuff a lot more than the market will.
Marco:
And I would also say, you know, with regard to these things like, you know, quote, killing these other companies.
Marco:
I mean, I would say, like, my favorite weapon in Worms, the old... I was a big fan of Worms, the 2D versions, back before they went 3D and ruined the whole thing.
Marco:
But my favorite weapon in Worms is always the prod.
Marco:
Because it's just like you walk up to somebody and just poke them off a cliff or something.
Marco:
It's like you expend the slightest effort possible and cause them some catastrophe to happen.
Marco:
So I would say Apple prodded Microsoft and Google with these things.
Marco:
I don't think they really are killing anybody.
Marco:
I don't think it's that big of a deal to the industry.
Marco:
What it really is is these Apple products are appliances.
Marco:
At least Apple wants you to think of them that way.
Marco:
Apple wants you to just buy the Apple product and just always have the latest version.
Marco:
That's something that Google cannot offer on all their stuff, on Android and everything.
Marco:
Google can't offer it because they don't really control enough of the ecosystem.
Marco:
Microsoft can't offer it because it kind of bites their business model in the butt.
Marco:
But the fact is...
Marco:
No one with Android phones really ever upgrades anyway, even if they can.
Marco:
And even PC users don't usually upgrade their OS.
Marco:
Usually they get the new OS by buying a new PC.
Marco:
So they're not really attacking these business models as much as it might seem.
Marco:
The iWork in the browser stuff and the collaboration features...
Marco:
That would have been really fantastic if Google Docs didn't exist.
Marco:
But now it's like Apple is really trying to play catch up with Google Docs.
Marco:
And to date, they've done a very bad job of it.
Marco:
We'll see how this is.
Marco:
I don't have high expectations because their reputation in this department is very, very bad.
John:
Casey should think about his feeling coming out of the Apple Maps.
John:
presentation this is the same thing hey wait well remember that you know we don't have much faith that and in terms of being able to control everyone's versions of stuff everyone's got a little foot in their camp like google's got its chromebooks and the chromebook the whole big deal is like you always have the most recent version of everything and google chrome which they offer for lots of different platforms same type of deal where you know google chrome is notorious or uh you know i don't know if you don't call it notorious i actually like this i'm just like look it's gonna update itself
John:
you're going to have the latest version if you connect to the internet you're going to have the latest version of chrome right and chrome os is like an entire machine that's like that you have no choice you have the latest version of everything no options you're just going to have it android they can't do that with because of carrier crap and that's kind of you know the whole thing they're doing and similarly for microsoft with xbox i mean i think you have the option not to upgrade but it's like they're not charging you and they will strongly encourage you oh hey the new xbox is out i mean i don't know if they go so far as to say you can't connect to live after a certain point if you haven't upgraded to the latest xbox and
John:
microsoft console owners would know better than i but everyone who has control of any hardware platform wants to do that thing where it's just where they want to keep everyone up to date it's just that apple is like they're already there they've been camped out in that zone for just for just decades and it's like we have the hardware we
John:
have the software and they were like they're fighting with one hand tied behind their back trying to charge $29 so it's 10 upgrades it was like why why are we doing that we're just we're just punishing ourselves and maybe it took iOS to convince them like oh yeah we can just make it free and add $29 to the margins of our max problem solved
Marco:
So, John, switching gears for a minute, probably for the rest of the show, do you think Mavericks, do you think everyone should install it?
Marco:
Well, not everyone.
Marco:
Have you installed it on your main computers?
Marco:
Are you using it full-time on your main and work computers?
John:
Yeah.
John:
In the review, which you haven't read, I said at one point that every new version of OS X, I've been upgrading to sooner and sooner, usually after publishing my review.
John:
And I said, maybe by the time you read this, my whole house will be all on Mavericks.
John:
Unfortunately, a week before Mavericks was released, my work switched VPN products from one that used to work with the OS X built-in VPN.
John:
to one that required a terrible third-party product, and now I'm stuck until the VPN software, because I kind of need it, until the VPN software is supported in Mavericks, and God knows how long that will be.
John:
So unfortunately, I was not able to execute my plan to get everybody up to Mavericks and to get my main machine up to Mavericks, but...
John:
uh it's it's pretty darn safe like you know again i say in the review please people back up your stuff like do a real backup confirm that it's okay maybe do two backups just in case because if you screw it up then your backup is the only one place your stuff is you know just do backups right and do a couple google searches if you know you have high-risk software that tends to break in os upgrades say you're running pgp whole disk encryption which you shouldn't be because you just should just be using the
John:
OS 10 is built in encryption.
John:
See if that's compatible.
John:
If you're running some crazy extension or a kernel extension or a driver, like go to the manufacturer's website, send an email to the support thing.
John:
Say, Hey, it's like, it takes an extra week or so to get all these answers, but you'll be much happier when you do.
John:
It's not like you just wait some magical period of time to upgrade, but you know, check your software.
John:
If you're just only running box stock, Apple stuff,
John:
and things from the mac app star yeah upgrade today again back up but you'll be fine but yeah this it seems really low risk in terms of compatibility right down to the fact that it doesn't even eliminate any hardware compatibility like if you can run mountain line you can run this so uh it's pretty safe
Casey:
I know that a handful of my coworkers have already upgraded.
Casey:
And granted, all of my coworkers are kind of nerds, but some of them are not the kind of nerds that I necessarily would have expected to upgrade an OS so quickly.
Casey:
Not to say they wouldn't do it, but just to do it so quickly.
Casey:
And I haven't heard any negative feedback from any of them, but I only just got back to work today.
Casey:
I have not done it on either of my machines yet.
Casey:
I will at some point once I get some double sure backups going, especially since we just went on this trip, I want to make sure that I kind of get through the processing of all those files and make sure those are all squared away and in more places than just the Synology.
Casey:
And then I will probably upgrade like over the weekend or something.
John:
The other reason to worry about upgrades is not that things aren't going to work, but, you know, features are added and changed.
John:
And so that's why, you know, maybe reading a review and knowing what you're in for, because say you really liked the old way that full screen worked because you're a crazy person.
John:
The new way that it worked is different.
John:
And so you upgrade and go, oh, no, I missed it.
John:
I mean, one of the people's complaints that I didn't actually talk about earlier is like they changed the way the power button works on laptops or instead of bringing up a little dialogue where you can sleep and do all that stuff.
John:
Just hitting it sleeps, but you have to hold it down to get a dialogue.
John:
And that seems like a small thing, but that's a change.
John:
And it's not like your computer doesn't work anymore, but people will upgrade, and that's the thing that they'll say.
John:
I upgraded to Maverick and it ruined my computer.
John:
Now I have to hold down the key to get the dialogue box to come up.
John:
And you accidentally hit it because it's near the delete key on my laptop.
John:
It puts my Mac to sleep.
John:
And, you know, they have to wait a week to find out some way to disable that with some...
John:
You know, keyboard shortcut.
John:
Stuff like that is, in the real world, what people decide to condemn or praise a release for.
John:
And they'll be praising it again if they hated the old full-screen mode and they liked the new one.
John:
Or if they have multi-monitors and they like having the menu bar in both places.
John:
Stuff like that is what people end up...
John:
becoming attached to it.
John:
Whereas what I'm thinking of is like, oh, is it going to, you know, hose your computer and not let you get your work done and stuff like that.
John:
And that's a more of a software compatibility thing.
John:
But yeah, read or view, you can see the features.
John:
Some features are different than they are in mountain lion, not better, not worse.
John:
It's up to you to decide, but they're different.
John:
Find out what those are and see if you like them.
John:
But I think one of the reasons people are upgrading is because, like, you go to any computer with Mountain Lion, and you launch the App Store, and it's like, hey, did you know Mavericks is out?
John:
Press this button.
John:
Get it now.
John:
And that's the whole point.
John:
It's free, no purchase, just it's going to be shoved in your face the same way iOS 7 was on iOS devices, and that's all part of the plan.
Yeah.
Casey:
Well, to go back just very briefly about features, one of the things that I've been kind of dreading about Mavericks since I was sitting in the WWDC keynote is that on my work computer particularly, I like to have three different spaces.
Casey:
And one of them is like personal email and web browsing.
Casey:
The middle one is work email and IM and things of that nature.
Casey:
And the third one is whatever the actual work I'm doing is.
Casey:
And I treat each of these three spaces differently.
Casey:
That as one contiguous unit across two monitors.
Casey:
So maybe I'll have work email on the onboard LCD and I'll have work.
Casey:
I am on a external LCD, but that space, space number two, I treat as one contiguous unit.
Casey:
just spanning two monitors.
Casey:
And I know that the way that Mavericks treats the spaces and mission control and all that is that they are now two independent monitors with two independent situations going on.
Casey:
And I've been dreading that, although if I recall correctly, you said in the review, there is a way by which you can turn that off if I really get desperate.
Casey:
But that's a great example of something where I already know that this might not be something I like, but I theoretically have a backup plan just in case.
John:
And the point is, what are you going to do?
John:
You're not going to stay, especially if you're going to end up upgrading eventually, or you're going to get a new Mac with this.
John:
You might as well just get used to it sooner rather than later.
John:
absolutely like get started on figuring out what you need to do to tweak this particular version to your liking you know right instead of just saying well i'm gonna hold the same reason all these people are on snow leopard still that they mentioned in the keynote and that i also mentioned in my review like people love snow leopard because it's the last good version right because that's just the one they love and uh you just you have to move on eventually
Casey:
Yeah, and that's why I figured I'll install over the weekend.
Casey:
But it's nice, A, knowing what I'm probably not going to like about it, but it's also nice knowing after having read your review that there's a backup plan available.
Casey:
Also, I'm very surprised that I have the self-control not to update immediately, if for no other reason than for the
Casey:
easy access to emoji with whatever keystroke it is, which Stephen Hackett also gently pointed out in his Mavericks review.
Marco:
You don't need easier access to emoji.
Casey:
What are you trying to say, Marco?
John:
I think you have a problem.
John:
I put that in my review too, Casey.
Casey:
I thought you read it.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I saw it in your review as well, but I got a snarky call out in Hackett's review.
John:
Oh, I know.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So, I mean, we're late in the show for me to be going through my review point by point, and we can do more of that next show.
John:
But, like, to sum up the...
John:
I didn't want to go too meta on this, but I'll go a little bit meta, and then we'll get into more details on future shows.
John:
But when I'm writing these things, I'm always looking for some kind of message or theme for the OS.
John:
And Apple provides some of that with whatever they decide to be pushing, and however they try to wrap up in a bow the features that happen to make it into this release.
John:
And this one, obviously, energy saving is a big thing.
John:
But what I'm more looking for is...
John:
historically speaking, what kind of release is this?
John:
And I would say it's a weird one.
John:
That's the theme of this review that goes throughout the thing.
John:
There's weird stuff in this.
John:
It's odd.
John:
You would call it a transitional because there have been transitional releases, but it's a transition between what and what.
John:
A transition between...
John:
the weird lion mountain lion forestall ios jealousy you know no clear vision world and then like not on your way to an ios 7 thing because it doesn't seem like it is i mean maybe that's out there in the future but it's not clear but it's like okay away from where we were but not towards anywhere in particular and
John:
It's weird.
John:
Aesthetically and spiritually, if you want to think of it that way, it's a little bit lost and confused.
John:
It's not to say that there's so many parts of it that are just better.
John:
The tech part just gets better.
John:
It gets more efficient.
John:
Things use less memory.
John:
Things get faster.
John:
Bugs are removed and subsystems improve.
John:
you know, everything that you expect to be better, but that it's not setting off in some bold new direction.
John:
It's kind of like, I don't know.
John:
It's, it's an odd bird.
John:
And it's kind of like the beginning of something new, but it doesn't know what that is because we stopped the cats.
John:
We start with the place names.
John:
And it's, you know, it's like kind of like, uh, uh, what is it?
John:
The, you know, the baby cows or baby, baby, uh,
John:
deer or whatever and they get up and stand up for the first time on their big long legs and they're kind of tottering that's that's kind of like what Mavericks is but at the same time it has that vibe of like well there's that and there's also like well they didn't go try to like rip the entire house down and do something new like they did at iOS 7 so there is a comfort of familiarity there so uh the
John:
that theme, I hope people who read the review, like it's hard because like at a certain point I'm, I'm pasting hex dumps of like, you know, X adder output into the thing.
John:
And you're like, I've lost the plot now.
John:
I don't know what's going on with this review, but I hope that theme runs throughout the review.
John:
And I,
John:
I do try to add another layer on top of that, which is, you know, stupid, snarky comments.
John:
And yes, tons and tons of pop culture references.
John:
And I feel like if you don't understand any of the pop culture references that I put in there and no one but me like is going to get them all because they're all from my personal history.
John:
I feel like you should still get the theme that I'm driving at.
John:
You shouldn't have to have watched the same movies and TV shows and read the same books as I have to get what I'm getting at.
John:
It should be there in the text.
John:
But for everybody else, there is the subtext laid on top of it.
John:
And I hope that people who get those few little references and find the little Easter eggs or whatever, that adds something to it.
John:
But I never want that to be the only thing.
John:
And the things I'm adding to it, I hope is building on that theme.
John:
Not just like...
John:
Oh, and by the way, here's a funny thing from a TV show that's totally unrelated to the theme of this review.
John:
I've tried to make the references related to the theme of the review, including the big one pop culture theme that runs throughout the entire thing that tries to tie it in.
John:
And part of the reason I do that is because it amuses me and entertains me to write that way.
John:
But the other thing is...
John:
I don't know what I'm going to do for a review until I basically have the intro and, like, the last line or the last paragraph in my head for the review.
John:
And then it's just a matter of, okay, we'll just fill in the 20K words in the middle and you're fine.
John:
Like, that's my process.
John:
Like, I need to know what that opening is like.
John:
And the opening, the intro has taken me the longest to write out of any of these things.
John:
I think I spend more time in the intro than I do on, like...
John:
the next 50% of the review.
John:
It's the intro and then the conclusion.
John:
And in the past years, I've been doing two conclusions.
John:
One, the boring conclusion, which is the recommendation section where I try to tell you, like, should you buy it?
John:
What are the factors involved?
John:
What do I think of it?
John:
And then there's the touchy-feely conclusion, which is what I end with because that's what I think about.
John:
So if you haven't read the review or haven't finished it, which I don't blame you because it's long,
John:
or never intended to finish it, I would encourage you to give it to maybe another try with what I just said in mind.
John:
Hopefully it'll give me you some sort of guide through, through the experience.
John:
You can come out the other side.
John:
Uh, and we will talk more about the individual features of Mavericks and future shows.
John:
And I want to answer one question from the chat room because someone was asking, and many people have been asking this on Twitter.
John:
That's a whole, a whole other meta meta theme of like people asking me questions about their view and that whole feedback process, especially in the age of Twitter.
John:
Uh, why isn't the book available in the Mexican iBook store?
John:
Uh,
John:
What?
John:
Yeah.
John:
So I put it up in iBooks, and you can select what countries you want it to be available in.
John:
I selected all of the available countries, but some of them show up with a lot of red lights because it says, you do not have a contract to sell in this country.
John:
You contact blah, blah, blah, whatever.
John:
It's Condé Nast.
John:
Condé Nast is the merchant account.
John:
Condé Nast is the parent company of Ars Technica.
John:
And I don't know if it's just that particular company or whatever, but...
John:
This book is for the iBook is for sale everywhere that I was able to put it up for sale.
John:
I don't control whatever the deals are that Condé Nast has with these individual countries.
John:
So it's not in New Zealand.
John:
It's not in Mexico.
John:
It's not in all sorts of countries, but it is in 32 countries.
John:
If you can't get it through the iBook store, but you still want the iBook version, you can subscribe to ours premiere and get the exact same file.
John:
and also the Kindle version and a PDF version and a single page webpage version without ads and all this other stuff.
John:
We'll put the link of the show notes to my blog post about it, explaining all this stuff.
John:
So it's not a choice on my part.
John:
There's nothing I can do about it, but you can, there is another way to get for the exact same price, the thing that you want to get.
John:
Uh,
John:
I think that's probably it for this week, although I'm sure people wanted to hear more about Mavericks.
John:
By next week, both of you will have read it and will become prepared with questions for me about various things, because I'm not just going to go through it a section at a time and say, on this page, I talked about this.
Marco:
That's not going to... That's fine.
Marco:
Is there a format or version of the article that you recommend the most?
John:
You didn't even read my meta blog post.
Marco:
He's just totally... No, that's the after dark for the review.
Marco:
I have to save it until after I've read the review.
John:
You can read that before.
Marco:
There's no spoilers?
John:
It's the same as the one last year.
John:
I just copied and pasted the same damn blog post from last year, which I admit in the thing.
Marco:
Because my plan was to read the web version on the iPad so that I can follow all the links, just in Safari.
John:
That's my personal favorite.
John:
First of all, I spent all this time in pain getting these damn retina screenshots because I don't have a retina Mac, and believe me, this is not a fun experience trying to go into high DPI mode and cram these gigantic windows onto your non-retina screen and try to arrange them so you can get everything right.
John:
and and then it's my wife's computer too she's constantly chasing me to get off of her computer because she's the only one with the 27 inch screen which can fit a reasonable size window in in high dpi mode so all those retina images if you have access to a retina device i highly recommend reading it on a retina device and i like doing long reading on my retina ipad so i think that is the best experience is
John:
So, you know, if you want to say, what is, what is the top level experience for me?
John:
It's subscribe to ours premiere, go to the article, uh, on your iPad, on your retina iPad and view it on a single page with no ads and just scroll through it and read it in one sitting.
John:
Uh, second after that, I would say is read the web version broken up into pages because then you can remember you were on page seven or something and not have to worry about like retaining your position in this giant long scrolling thing.
John:
Yeah.
John:
That was my plan.
John:
Again, do it on a retina Mac or something like that.
John:
Uh,
John:
I really think the web version is the best version.
John:
I say this every year, which doesn't make any sense because, you know, reading the web version is like the e-book versions cost money.
John:
The web version is free.
John:
The free web version is the best one, I think, as I explain at length with copy and paste the text from last year's post explaining the same thing.
John:
Maybe next year I'll be able to just link back to it and say, read what I wrote last year.
John:
That all applies this year.
Marco:
Well, the right answer is to buy the Kindle version and buy the iBooks version, but still read it on the web on an iPad.
John:
Some people do that, and I thank them for it.
John:
And some people just like to have the e-books.
John:
The e-books exist because people wanted them, not because I thought it was a great idea.
John:
I didn't think anyone.
John:
Why would anyone pay for an e-book that's something they can get for three?
John:
But people want to read the way they want to read.
John:
So you want it?
John:
We will provide it.
John:
Go nuts.
Casey:
In Marco's defense, I was going to ask you that question, even though I knew the answer, just because I felt like it might be worthwhile to have it stated on the show.
Casey:
That the canonical version is the Ars Technica web version.
Marco:
On a retina device, preferably a full-size iPad.
John:
Yeah, and that makes the text look nicer, too.
John:
I mean, you know, the only...
John:
partly objectionable experience to reading on the web is I do use a lot of links in my writing and I think that's good and I like that some people don't that's why I think you should read it in you know Safari on an iPad because you can visit the links without like leaving to another application or whatever and nicely go back and forth and retain you know state of where you were and everything but the links color the link colors are as users for both the non-visited and visited links make it so lots of links in a paragraph I'll get up a little bit like they're not subtle it's like orange and blue did you say ugh
John:
Yeah, I said, ug it up.
John:
And they do.
John:
And I don't pick the colors for the site design.
John:
And the colors are not... Most people who write for ours do not use the density of links that I do.
John:
And if you're scared by the first page where every other word looks like it's a link, they do thin out later.
John:
And my big thing with linking is...
John:
I think they're super important and I don't want anyone to read a sentence and not know what I'm talking about.
John:
Like if they read over something and like they read some word and I make some offhanded mention of core animation and they have no idea what core animation is.
John:
I don't want to just leave them there hanging and they'll think they're going to Google core animation.
John:
I want to link them back directly to the section where I describe what core animation is in detail two years ago or whatever.
John:
That's why I put the links there.
John:
You know what core animation is, and you're sick of mousing over the stupid links to see where they go or whatever, and eventually you ignore them.
John:
That's fine, but I want to bring everybody along.
John:
So you shouldn't need to follow the link to understand it.
John:
If you know what core animation is, don't follow the link that's linked to core animation, right?
John:
And some of them are snarky, and some of them is adding information in the sentence, but they should never be necessary.
John:
You should be able to remove every single link from this review, and it still makes sense if you have all the background knowledge that you need to have.
John:
But I'm not going to go into detail of explaining, you know, what...
John:
you know, what virtual memory is or something.
John:
If I talk about virtual memory, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to link it to like the Wikipedia, lots of Wikipedia pages.
John:
It's mostly like, what is this?
John:
I don't want you to stop in the middle of a sentence and say, I don't know what that noun or proper noun is, or I don't understand this concept or this three letter acronym.
John:
And I know you're not going to go Google it, but if you can just click a link and I'll take you directly to precisely the pace to explain exactly what that thing is, then you can resume reading.
Casey:
No, I agree with you.
Casey:
I like the links.
John:
So I'm saying, like, if I pick the link color for Ars Technica, I would pick a link color that blends more nicely with the writing, but I don't pick it.
John:
So that's the only one downside to reading it, the web version versus one of the e-books, because the e-books do use, like, depending on how your reader is configured, do use nicer link colors.
Casey:
Anything else?
Marco:
Let's wrap it up.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our two sponsors this week, Squarespace and Hover.
Marco:
And we will see you next week with tons of questions for John because I will probably have done my homework.
John:
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:
Margo and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
They did it in me.
Casey:
Will that be the first time you've ever done your homework?
John:
You can do lots of homework because I don't have to prepare and you guys do.
John:
Finally, you've been preparing for the last five months or whatever.
John:
Yeah, by next week I will have forgotten everything.
John:
So I'll have to frequently consult.
John:
It's like after you take the test when all the knowledge leaves your head.
John:
Thank God I never need all that again.
Marco:
Let's blame the listeners.
Marco:
We'll say that we're giving them time to read it and prepare their own questions into our feedback form rather than I didn't do my homework because I was out all day.
John:
Yeah, I think there's a lot of people like, oh, I don't want to read their review.
John:
It's too long and boring.
John:
I just want to hear like an audio summary of it.
John:
But that's, you know, it's better if you read it and then it's like the incomparable.
John:
It's better if you watch the movie or TV show or read the book and then listen to the incomparable talking about it.
John:
You don't want to do the reverse.
John:
So...
John:
If you're still listening, go out there and read the review.
John:
And come back next week.
John:
Plenty of time to read it.
John:
It's not that long.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, I think I did my meta review last year.
Marco:
I think it only took me like an hour and 40 minutes or something like that.
Marco:
It doesn't take like hours and hours and hours to read this thing.
Marco:
It's not that ridiculous.
John:
I mean, it does if you don't know what I'm talking about.
John:
Like if you don't know all the background, that's what all those links are in there for.
John:
If you read it and you're like... That's true.
John:
What the hell are they talking about?
John:
Forrestal, what?
John:
I don't know who these people are.
John:
Well, click the link, and you'll find the story about, you know, like, you just keep going back, and it'll be, who was Forrestal?
John:
Why did he leave?
John:
What was the hell about about them?
John:
Like, we also, everyone who's reading that kind of has a vague idea of what that's about for context, but if you don't, there's links.
John:
And if you do that, you could be there for a long time.
John:
It's like getting lost into a Wikipedia maze, where you just keep going back and back until you're on the page for philosophy, inevitably, and you're like, oh...
John:
You ever see that with the number of links it takes from any Wikipedia page to end up on the philosophy page?
John:
That's amazing.
John:
That's where they all dead end, I think.
Marco:
uh you want to do titles we have a ton of amazing ones what was the one that marco picked last week like he was totally not going to pick it on the air but then i saw the episode c-level executives yeah you could you not resist that or what it was just so your joke was so bad and and it was just like it there weren't any other that were really awesome and that one ended up being really awesome because i think you just wanted to put in my explanation in the in the after show
Marco:
Well, actually, I decided to put that in before I decided to name it that.
Marco:
But it was just – it was so funny because you thought it was so funny.
Marco:
And your enthusiasm for it made it funnier.
John:
It actually is funny.
John:
That's the secret.
John:
Here's the thing about it.
John:
The thing about it is that actual, like, the letter C-level looks awful.
John:
It's just terrible.
John:
It's one of those terrible business phrases like sunsetting or, you know, the C-level executives.
John:
It is just terrible in all the ways that made-up jargon is terrible.
John:
But when you change it to C-level, it's like, oh, yeah, now we're on to something.
John:
Who doesn't love the C?
John:
C-level executives.
John:
It sounds interesting and classy and pure, and it is not like C-level, you know.
Casey:
John, are you really trying to sell this joke still?
John:
It's not really a joke.
John:
I'm just saying it's a much nicer phrase than C-level.
John:
The joke is, if you want to find it in there, is how awful C-level is with the letter C as compared to the SEA.
John:
But anyway, Marco came around on his own.
John:
C-level executives.
John:
crickets did you hear the after show from last week i know you don't usually listen to the posted one john but i don't listen to the possible i listen to every single posted episode what are you talking about oh i thought you didn't listen to every podcast i'm on always the posted version every single oh i didn't know i did not you had been a faithful hypocritical listener you would know that but you know whatever
Casey:
No, I, oh, now you're just playing dirty.
Casey:
I was a very faithful.
John:
Yeah, you didn't, you didn't hear that one offhand comment I made in the umpteen hours of hypercritical audio over the course of two years.
Casey:
Thank you, sir.
Casey:
Apology accepted.
John:
All right.
John:
But yeah, no, I do.
John:
I always listen to it because like, you know, it's not, so you can hear where, how terrible I am and say, oh, I'll try not to do that again.
John:
And then I do it again next week.
John:
But if you repeat that over two years, you do it less.