The Flash Storage Is Adequate
All right, stop downloading stuff during the podcast.
You're going to mess up your band.
Not only am I downloading Songs of Innocence, but I'm also downloading the 1080 keynote as well.
Maybe don't do that.
Like 6.8 gigs.
I already hear your MacBook Pro fan.
Do you not hear that?
I can hear it.
Mine was downloading at 5 megs a second, but my MacBook Pro didn't get any louder.
Oh, kiss my butt.
This is going to be a really depressing episode because not only do we have to talk about some of the news from today, but we have to talk about a silly monitor.
Is it silly?
It's silly.
That's silly.
It is that monitor long promised.
This is so so every time we've talked about desktop retina and every time I've written about desktop retina on my site, the topic always comes up of sometime in the distant future.
What we actually want is two times the current 27 inch resolution, which would be 5120 by 2880.
Do you remember what I called it?
I don't like the two times thing.
Well, it's technically four times, but... Yes, it's the quad 27-inch.
That's back when we were talking about when are we going to get a MagTro, are we going to get it?
I said, I really want to wait for the quad 27-inch monitor.
I'm still waiting because this is from Dell.
Well, yeah, so anyway, so we were saying that this... Like, I was under the assumption because there are multiple problems with this.
Number one is that's just so many pixels at such a density that, like...
Dell was just able to ship 4K ones at a reasonable price at 24 inches, which is roughly the same density at 24 inches.
They were just able to ship those like last year or the beginning of this year.
So that was very, very new.
And that's 4K resolution.
Now this is like, I think it's like 70% more pixels.
It's a massive jump.
It's the same, exactly the same for the same reason, the same type of jump as it was to go from 24 inch monitors to 30 inch monitors.
It's like, it's a big, big jump in just number of pixels.
The second problem is that pushing that many pixels uses more bandwidth at 60 hertz than Thunderbolt 2 can supply.
And so the only way to do it is to split it using MST, which is its own kind of mess of half support and bugginess.
um to split it between two different thunderbolt buses and monopolize most of the bandwidth of both of them because you need you need 28 um gigabits i think because yeah the max is 20 right so you need 28 so you like basically split it into two halves left half right half make the computer make the video card think it's two monitors and then in the os fix it to see it as one monitor basically that's the gist
Anyway, so you need a heck of a lot of bandwidth to do this and special hardware support, special software support.
So we were all assuming this would not come out for a very long time.
My estimate was two to three more years.
Turns out Dell has announced they're shipping one this winter, possibly December-ish, and it's only, quote, only $2,500.
And actually for what that is and for the jump that represents, that I believe is a fair price.
There are some caveats to this.
One of the biggest is we don't know yet whether it runs at 60 hertz.
uh that's that's a problem like some there have been some 4k monitors that will run at 30 hertz um and it's bad it's like people who use it say it's it's really rough like you do notice the difference it doesn't look right it doesn't feel right you know causes eye strain sometimes or whatever not good so you really need to be 60 hertz um anyway so we don't know that and we don't know like currently for for mac people
Nothing in the entire Mac lineup has two Thunderbolt buses except the new Mac Pro.
So even if this comes out, assuming it uses two different cables to plug into two different Thunderbolt buses to achieve that high bandwidth, the only computer that it even might be compatible with is the current Mac Pro.
And we don't even know if the Mac Pro will have the hardware and software tweaks needed to treat it right.
So there's a huge list of ifs here.
And then on top of all of that,
We don't know if this monitor is going to suck.
We don't like it could as John, you know, it could be like Dell's monitors have spotty quality.
Some of them are good.
Some of them are crappy.
The previous ones that used MST, the 24 inch one, the 24 inch 4K one, there were some bugs with the MST implementation.
Supposedly they've been fixed, but there were some pretty big bugs when it launched.
So it's kind of iffy as to whether this is going to work.
To me, what I think gives me promise here is
is that if dell can ship one of these this winter for 2500 bucks that means apple could too if they wanted to maybe not for that price maybe they'd put it in an imac first i think they probably would honestly you know i i think i think what we're very likely to see this fall is a retina imac with this resolution that is positioned above the current generation of imacs like uh so it wouldn't replace them it would be a new higher end model because it would have to be much more expensive possibly starting at 3000 uh would be my guess and
So maybe we'll see that.
Maybe they'll just do 4K and do scaling the way they've been doing on the other devices.
I don't know.
But this would be amazing.
If Apple released this or if Dell's is actually really good in a way that works on any other Mac or any Mac, this would be truly amazing.
And this is the true desktop retina big monitor.
I think the only other...
true retina monitor out there right now is the dell 24 inch 4k because that's the one that gives you like it gives you exact 2x resolution of a standard size at a standard density like all the other 4k monitors the 4k like 4k resolution is twice 1080p and so a monitor that is roughly 1080p uh which 24 inch monitor classes usually are um 24 inch monitor like old old 24 inch lcds um
that is like the right size for 4k to be retina anything bigger than that and either everything on the screen is too large or you you know you have to like not render it exactly at 2x this monitor or any monitor with identical specs as this monitor is the only way to get true retina at 27 inches or 30 inches so that's why this is a big deal and we weren't expecting this for quite some time
I don't think they're going to put anything like this in an iMac this year because I think it's still too far.
Like, I don't think they want that.
I don't think it makes sense for the iMac to stretch that far upmarket.
Eventually, sure, you know, when it becomes cheaper.
But, I mean, I think when they do retina on the iMac, it will not be at this resolution.
It will be something smaller because it just doesn't make sense to me with the way Apple's been treating the iMac line lately.
Do you think, Marco, if there is this hypothetical iMac that has this hypothetical retina display, would you give up your beloved trash can for this?
I would give it a couple of months to see if they released a standalone Thunderbolt display version of it.
Or, you know, a year or two years or however long it takes.
What was the gap between the 27 inch?
Maybe it wasn't that long, but I think it was about a year.
And various times in the past, it has seemed like an awful long time between the release of an Apple device with the display and the standalone display.
And we're always like, it's like the iPod Classic that we'll talk about.
Do they care about individual displays anymore?
Are they going to do that?
I mean, they released the new Mac Pro and they really didn't care about monitors like here.
Buy this thing from Sharp.
Yeah, exactly.
And maybe the reason why is because their monitor wasn't ready yet.
Maybe they are planning a big update to the Thunderbolt displays, but it just wasn't ready yet, and it wouldn't be ready for six months.
They're like, all right, well, here, take this.
So I think this fall, obviously they're busy with things that we'll get to, but I think...
The Mac lineup has not seen a lot of updates because everyone's waiting on Broadwell.
I think it would be nice to do something like this.
Not to say that's a reason they would do it, but I don't know.
I think this fall is going to be awfully quiet for the Mac lineup unless they do something like...
4k imacs which they would call retina but yeah well it'll be nice if they if they actually update the mac pros with the new cpus right so that'll that'll kind of be like for us to test how much do they really care about the macro because there's no reason they have to upgrade with the new cpus when they're available but they could uh so this will be a good way to gauge their interest in this product line like do they bother opening updating them they just say you know what we're going to skip this the current mac pros are fine people are buying them away till next year
Do you want to talk about a funny tweet that you saw, John?
I did, yeah.
We talked a lot about sexism and the games industry and stuff in the after show last show, and I saw a couple of interesting things go by in the week since.
This one was a tweet that struck me as funny.
It is from someone whose name I'm not going to attempt to pronounce, but his Twitter handle is Y-E-Z-Z-E-R.
Yezer, I guess?
And he has tweeted a picture.
People love to do this.
They take a screenshot and tweet a picture, which doesn't really make that much sense to me because as if a screenshot is proof of anything.
And I'm always amazed that people who look at screenshots like they'll ask for screenshots as proof.
You would think like kids today would be savvy and know that screenshots prove nothing.
Like you're just like you can can right click on any web page and make any screenshot you want kids.
Anyway, that's not the point.
This is not a proof thing.
He tweeted a picture of someone's tweet who has an egg icon and blacked out the identifying information because he's not trying to like make fun of this person or get this person harassed or whatever.
And the text of this tweet says.
My biggest problem with Anita, meaning Anita Sarkeesian of the feminist frequency videos, is that if I used her logic, I could see sexism everywhere.
And the commentary added by this Twitter is teetering on the brink of an epiphany.
This was funny because it's getting back to like seeing the Matrix type thing.
Uh, that, that reaction is natural for a lot of people being exposed to this stuff.
And they're like, geez, it's just like, they, it's like, I see this stuff everywhere.
Like, you know, like a conspiracy theorist, like sees, you know, the, the government is trying to hunt them down everywhere or whatever.
And so this person is, you know, offering that up as a saying, a kind of absurd notion of stuff.
If I saw things the way this person did, I would see sexism everywhere, and obviously that would be crazy.
They're not quite there yet.
Anyway, I thought it was funny.
And the other thing related to this topic is a couple people suggested the Twitter account Everyday Sexism to follow if you just sort of want ambient exposure to this viewpoint without feeling like you have to engage, without feeling like you're being yelled at or whatever.
I don't follow the account, so I don't know what tone it's like.
I just looked at some of the tweets.
It's like aggregating people, things that happen to people during the day or things they think are sexist.
They will, you know, funnel into this account and you can just add it to your Twitter stream and and just let it go by.
Don't feel like you have to argue with it.
Don't feel like you have to agree with all of it.
Just that's another way to sort of expose yourself.
I don't know.
I don't follow the account, so I can't vouch for it, but other people do and they find it's helpful.
So I thought I'd throw that out there.
And can I just kind of jump on the feedback regarding the last episode just to thank pretty much all of our listeners, all the feedback that I've heard almost exclusively.
There's, of course, a couple of bad apples here and there, but almost exclusively, all the feedback has been really positive.
And I've seen a lot of people talking about following the hosts of Isometric Show and starting to listen to Isometric.
And the
Given the subject matter, that could have taken a turn for the worst in terms of listener response, and I am extremely glad and proud that so many people seemed pleased with how it was handled and also seemed to be – enlightened seems a bit dramatic, but I can't think of a better word, so enlightened by the conversation.
And so many thanks to all our listeners for sticking that one out.
It was much, much less noisy and contentious follow feedback than when we discussed like Android phones.
If you want to take sort of take the temperature of our audience topics that we can discuss without without much angry email, sexism topics that we can't discuss without a lot of angry email Android.
So there you go.
I'm not saying that's good or bad.
That's just that's the audience we have.
And, you know, I was pleasantly surprised as well.
I thought, you know, our listeners, you never know when you touch on topical, even though it technically is tech related and it's all part of this community or whatever.
You never know if you're just going to suddenly draw a gigantic red line down the middle of your audience and half of them are going to send you angry emails.
That did not happen.
It could just be because they don't care.
Like, don't you know, it doesn't mean everyone agrees with us.
Just be like, yeah, whatever.
We're waiting for you to talk about tech stuff.
All right.
How about the Megativo?
That looks like a Synology, but isn't.
everybody was sending this like oh look this up tivo finally made a thing for john it's a giant and i i think the people who said that don't understand my tivo needs or have not captured the nuances of it so this is a product called the tivo mega and it's a rack mount what does it look like marco for it for you i think i think it's a minimum right so if you put three and a half inch drive in their side i think the smallest you can make it is for you right yeah
And it's around $5,000.
TiVo hasn't priced it.
It's got 24 terabytes of storage.
And like we said, it's rack mount.
So obviously this is not something that you stick under your TV.
And hey, look, it's got all the storage.
Isn't that great?
It's like you always say you buy the most expensive TiVo.
The problem with this device, not that I would ever entertain buying it, but the reason it doesn't fulfill any sort of even like silly fantasy of a TiVo that I might have is that the part, the sort of working part of this, not the storage.
The storage is obviously all these hard drives and there's a lot of them, right?
But the working part of it is exactly the same as the TiVo I have now.
It doesn't have more tuners.
I assume the interface is just as slow or fast.
depending on how you want to get it.
Like it doesn't have any better features than the TiVo.
All it has is like my TiVo with tons more storage and, you know, cooling and everything and power supply to power that storage and so on and so forth.
I'm not running out of room on my TiVo.
My problem is not storage.
I always want it to be like have an all HD interface, be faster, be more responsive, you know, have the built-in apps be nicer.
That's what I want.
And this doesn't fulfill any of those things.
So it's not really my fantasy TiVo.
As for who this TiVo is for, initially when I saw the announcement, I'm like, oh, they're going after...
You know, shows like The Daily Show who like record tons of channels of television that have people reviewing them.
So that's where they can, you know, get all that footage from and play it back sort of institutional DVRing.
It's not for an individual, but it's for like a company to try to capture all these channels and have a bunch of employees reviewing them or whatever.
But that's not what this is for.
There's another company that does that, by the way.
What's their name?
Yeah.
I had a link to this.
Snapstream.
Snapstream makes giant rack-mount DVR-type things for just that purpose.
This TiVo is apparently for rich people.
So it's not for institutions to use, because apparently it doesn't have, according to this Ars Technica article we'll put in the show notes,
It doesn't have like the the exporting facilities that the professional devices use to sort of get into the video workflow of broadcast television or whatever.
It's more like if you are very wealthy and have a crazy entertainment center and have like a separate room or closet where all your television stuff is, this is where you would put that rack.
right so and and you just want to record everything and it only has six tuners there's not so much you can record maybe you just want to record it and hoard it i don't know i really don't think this is going to be a big winner product for them because it's not sort of something they're going to sell television studios and and television shows
And I'm not sure how many rich people really want to have a giant Rackmount TiVo.
But there you go.
Rackmount TiVo.
I disagree.
I think your stereotypical rich person just wants the best darn TiVo that money can buy.
And when you say, well, you could record three years of television.
i want that but you can't think of the numbers they give that's sd who records sd that's they always they always inflate the number this is also like you know somebody in the chat said this is like for the custom installation market this is when this is for people who have so much money and are building such an expensive home theater setup that they're paying somebody else to design the whole thing for them and install it in their home and build the little server rack closet and everything like
Yeah, oh yeah, these people aren't installing it themselves.
But even for that, like, it's not, even those people, they say, these are the features that I want, right?
I want this, that, and the other thing.
And I don't know if, I don't even know if TiVo fits on a list.
Like, what are those names of those crazy things that rip, they rip Blu-ray?
I know what you're talking about.
I forget what.
I don't think it's legal.
No, it is.
You have to keep the discs in the device.
So they have giant jukeboxes in the discs.
So they rip all your Blu-rays.
But since it's illegal to play them back without the Blu-ray in the drive, there's a giant jukebox type thing that says, well, now it's legal because all the things are in the drive.
i forget what it is but anyway that is like i think it's called kaleidoscope because the chat room is attempting to spell kaleidoscope and spelling it in a bunch of different ways yeah kaleidoscape uh so those type of things you sell that as if you're an installer if you're a media center installer you say hey uh blu-ray is the best quality movies you can get now for you know you can buy for yourself which is true unless i guess you're buying your own like uh film prints or 70 millimeter film prints or something anyway blu-ray is the best digital copy you can get uh
You'd like to be able to have access to a giant collection of Blu-rays on demand whenever you want.
This device gives you that.
This TiVo thing, it's like, well, you could get just the plain, you know, the regular person TiVo that I have now, but you'll run out of room if you don't watch anything that you record for like three weeks and you record tons of stuff.
So really, you should get this $5,000 thing that won't run out of room that will last like...
I mean, if you record this much stuff and never watch it, like you're never going to catch up.
It's not it's too much storage.
Like, you know, you don't have you only have six tuners.
You can't you can't say like my old dream was record every single channel on television, you know, for a week.
And that way, whenever I want to watch something, I don't have to choose what to record.
You recorded everything.
All I have to choose is what I want to watch based on a moving week window or two week window or whatever.
But this can't do that because it's only got six tuners.
So I don't understand this product.
This is such a supercharging a horse problem.
This is ridiculous.
Anyway, which do you think will sell more, this or the Amazon Fire Phone?
If you're a rich person and you say, I want a DVR...
and money is no object, and now I'm an installer, and I think, well, money's no object.
I better give them the best darn DVR that I can buy.
They're going to get this ridiculous TiVo that really, to your point, serves no particular purpose other than to make rich people feel like they have the best TiVo in the world.
right and this you know like like the kind of installation we're talking about that that has you know a custom home theater stuff and stuff like this going into it that might be like a 75 grand installation so like you know the five thousand dollars for one component is not that outrageous oh no it's five thousand dollars for an htmi switch and those things right i'm not saying i'm not saying the price is the limiting factor i'm just thinking like feature wise i don't know if this is bringing anything to the table that a regular tivo uh
wouldn't and the installer can can charge five thousand dollars for a regular tivo like the price of the thing has no bearing on what the person gets charged for the installation our first sponsor this week is our friends at hover now uh last time i mentioned that a lot of people kept writing and telling me i was pronouncing the name wrong
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Well, you have a whole podcast about that.
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If we got through that ad read and you're still wondering if you're American and you're still wondering what the heck people were talking about with the alternate pronunciation, the best word I can think of that's a sound-alike that I think most Americans will pronounce in the sound-alike way is a small crappy house, a hovel.
Just take that first syllable and put ER at the end.
Hovel.
Sorry, I can't do it.
in uh in british english than regular like we all accept all these other words but this one was like you're not just speaking with an american accent you are saying the word wrong and you're saying it wrong in a crazy way which makes me think that british people haven't seen enough american movies that involve the word hover in the script because it's not weird at all and it was so easy to tell as soon as we said what are we saying weird everybody else and everyone who wrote it is oh by the way i'm in insert british colony here that's not america uh so
all you people need to get together and add this to your list with like lift and lorry and torch and all those other things just add the list of things and everyone will tell each other this is one more way that American and British English is different and it is not a bunch of American people mispronouncing a word we just speak differently
All right, so we have to go from this to a bunch of genuinely sad news, and I'm not trying to be funny anymore.
There was some really, really, really unfortunate news today about Macworld, and
I speak for all three of us in saying that we have a whole bunch of friends that work, or I guess worked at Macworld, and many of them got laid off today.
And that's a really awful thing.
And I've been so lucky not to have ever been through that.
Although, John, I think you had said you hadn't, so maybe you can talk about that in a second.
But these are really, really, really, really awesome people.
And a couple of them have already been moving in the direction of new things anyway.
And so I'm very thankful for that.
But it's a really, really terrible thing.
And even as someone who never really read all that much Macworld, I'm still disappointed by it because I know what it meant to the community.
And it stinks.
And I feel real bad for all of our friends.
So best wishes to all of them.
Yeah, this is more probably more significant for old people like me, because I grew up reading these paper before the Internet, these paper magazines about the Macintosh Mac user and Macworld magazine from from the beginning.
And a lot of the names and faces that are associated with Macworld either have been there for a long time or came from Mac user, which I also read Mac user was my oldest favorite back in the day, mostly because it was it was probably friendlier to, you know, 11 and 12 year old me or whatever age I was when I was reading that.
But Jason Snell came from there and then he was he was in charge of Macworld and then in charge of even more things at the parent company of Macworld.
Yeah, pretty much everybody, almost everybody that I knew and almost the entire staff of Macworld magazine got laid off, which sucks.
I have been through many jobs and many similar situations.
My usual sort of way I handle this is when I feel like the company is going down the drain and
I start looking for something else and I get out before I actually get laid off.
But that is not you would think, oh, that's a better way to do it.
It's not really like doing it.
It's exactly the same thing, because it's basically you're in a situation where you realize your job is going away.
And if you don't know when it's going to be, it could be tomorrow, could be next week, could be next year.
But you have to do that whole thing where it's like, I don't want a new job.
I enjoy my job.
I like the people I work with, but now I need to get a new job.
And it's a terrible feeling no matter how it happens.
And it's probably even worse, although this has never happened to me, to just come into work one day and say, guess what?
You don't have a job anymore.
Sorry.
And that's got to really suck for the people who are just totally blindsided.
I wish the company, the parent company that runs Macworld, could have figured out how to make a successful business from this.
It's crazy.
It's difficult to make that transition from the old world where they were a dominant paper magazine to the new world where paper magazines are not as important.
But they had all the pieces.
They had all the talent.
They had all the people.
It wasn't a bunch of old fogies there.
They had a complete age range of people who knew what they were doing, who were savvy with all the things.
It's just like the people steering the ship just couldn't figure out how to make it work.
Yeah.
Someone tweeted earlier today, layoffs are basically when someone who makes a lot more money than you is bad at their job and you suffer for it.
Because it's not these people's job to figure out how the company is going to make money big picture-wise.
They don't have control of that.
Their job is to do the best writing and reporting they can, do the best reviews they can, or whatever their individual jobs are.
They could be doing their jobs amazingly well, and I think they were.
It doesn't matter because they don't make the decisions about it.
what the company does and that in the end is what ended up costing them their jobs that's just the way of the world so i feel terrible for these people and the thing i think about when they're out there in the marketplace now if you're thinking of hiring these people
We just talked about the print magazines being sort of a thing of the past and having to make that transition.
There are some aspects of that world that are, I think, still valuable and now suddenly become unique.
So if you run a website like Ars Technica or MacRumors or iMore or anything like that, these things came up in the time where...
Part of the excitement of that is you type whatever you want, hit a button, it went out and to millions of people could read it.
And it was much less formal and much more sort of personal and exciting and raw, right?
As opposed to like a print magazine process where you write it and it goes through editing, copy editing, and it gets smoothed over and it comes out.
I'm not going to say it's like more professional because it makes it sound like the websites aren't professional.
They are.
It's just a different tone, right?
And...
the people who work or worked for macworld are the people who know how to work in that environment and like for example if if there was some writer working for macworld and wrote just something crazy and just started filling with expletives and and yelling about things and just being terrible
that wouldn't get out in Macworld.
Macworld, I'm not going to say it was like a family magazine, but that wasn't done in the print world.
You didn't just have someone just go off on a crazy unsubstantiated rant and you wouldn't publish that because paper pages were precious and you wouldn't do that type of thing.
And the New World is not like that.
And so I'm not saying one is better than the other, but suddenly the people who are used to writing in that environment...
are now different now now they are the the the oddball now they are the interesting unique thing because there are tons of websites out there with less with sort of a less formal process and more sort of raw exposed writing these people know how to write a sort of like maybe you could say they know how to write a boring sounding or whatever i just think you know i'm going to say it again it's not really what even the professional is the word that i'm thinking of but it's not it's not really the right word but like
you read it and you feel like these are adults writing for adults in a mature manner that is considered and, uh, and well-written and well-articulated.
And that's something that I think needs to be part of the current sort of stew of, uh, tech journalism.
And it is part of it.
Some, some publications skew one way or the other, like not everything is like, you know, Buzzfeed and at the other end of the spectrum, I don't know what you would put on there, but, uh,
the people coming out of Macworld
know how to do that if you want somebody who knows how to do that these are the people and i think that skill is much more rare than somebody who knows how to just bang out i tried the i watch and it was i'm calling still calling the i watch i tried the apple watch it was really cool and was shiny and and like there's a place for that i'm not saying that's bad like people like to read that it's exciting but i say i feel like we have much more of that now than we have macworld macworld sort of not entirely going away the print magazine is going away the website's going to be other but all those people who are writing all those uh words
I hope they find some place to write in, to put their skills that they've gained, those hard-earned skills they've gained to use, because I think that type of voice needs to be part of the tech journalism ecosystem.
And the other interesting thing about Macworld, to be completely selfish for a second, was that they actually published something I was a part of, which was extraordinarily exciting.
And I mean that genuinely.
I mean, I called my mom to say, hey, mom, guess what?
I'm a published magazine writer, sort of-ish, kind of.
But nevertheless, it was extremely cool.
And like I said, everyone I've met there is just so phenomenally awesome.
And I'm really bummed.
I'm bummed for all of them.
But I'm also happy because I'm sure, I'm absolutely unequivocally confident that they are all going to find some new and exciting venture.
Someone in the chat room suggested formal instead of professional.
That's a better word because I don't want to say professional because it makes it sound like the websites aren't professional and they totally are like formal, formal or family friendly.
I don't know.
Considered like, I mean, I think it's a hybrid because this, this Mac world crew, like it's a shame this came right after the Apple watch event and everything like that.
They would descend on an event and they would file tons of stories, well-written, correct, fact-checked, researched, just in amazing speed.
I was always amazed by how fast everyone can write well there.
Everyone on their staff could not only bang out story after story, they were all good stories and they were all well-written.
Someone like me who really struggles to get any words out that I find remotely acceptable, I was always amazed that they could just be like,
oh, I got to write this story now.
Half an hour later, it's done.
I'm like, I don't even understand.
There's like magic.
It's like watching magic happen.
Right, because they're professionals.
Like, you know, you are a professional writer, but you very rarely write.
Like, you write this one big thing a year.
Whereas they do this every day.
Like, this is their job.
Their job is to write in that way, to that quality, to that standard.
And they do that.
They did that full time.
And other websites, like every website, like iMore does it, Ars Technica does it, you know, Mac Rumors does it.
They all do it.
It's just that, like, it just seems so much harder to do it in the way that Macworld does it.
Or, like, again, at the very least, it is now a rarity.
What was once, like, the only way you could write about technology, you know, every magazine was like that, is now a rarity and becoming more rare.
So what I'm saying is I just hope that that stays in the mix somewhere.
You know, I want someplace where I can read stuff like that.
Like because Macworld was in my rotation of things that I would read.
I have tabs open with Macworld stories right now, like for, you know, things from my OS 10 review because they've done a whole bunch of previews and I want to make sure I don't miss anything that they covered or want to get their point of view on things like this.
Like it's just and what am I going to do when that's not there?
You know, it's going to be disappointing.
Yeah, they also, like, they're leaving behind this very much like a real-world impact in this technology world.
Like, Macworld Magazine is the only magazine I've ever written for that I didn't own.
It's the only time I've ever written something that was in print.
It's the only time anybody else has ever paid me to write something.
I wrote one thing for one issue of Macworld.
And that was a huge honor.
Yeah.
I also have in the corner of my office, a Macworld Eddie trophy for Instapaper from, let me see if I can see it.
I believe it says 2010.
Yeah.
So I have a Macworld Eddie.
It's when you get a Macworld Eddie, it's like their annual editor's choice awards.
It is, it is this tremendous heavy statue.
It is like this giant trophy.
It's actually, it's gotta, it's gotta be 15 inches tall and it can't come in this big box, weighs a ton.
It's great.
It's this nice, like physical artifact that,
this big trophy of something you did in the virtual world that you don't usually get real life impact for, you know?
And that's nice.
And like, when I was printed in the magazine, my grandparents went out and bought like 10 copies of the magazine.
My mom went out and bought copies and like showed all of her friends.
Like, yep.
It's, and like, this is like, without old publications like Macworld, you know,
it's it's hard to it's hard to impress old people yes like really old people like our parents and grandparents yes i mean it's really it's an end and error like because it used to be macworld expos where apple would announce their stuff paper magazines were the king they had huge staffs i remember talking to jason one of the first times i met him about i really love when macworld the mac user used to do those reviews of printers and they would show magnified versions of the serifs on the different letters of the output of laser printers and you'd have like
it was kind of like DP review is today for photography where you'd see like an entire page spread of like all the little serifs on a letter T with all the different printers.
So you could see which printer did the serifs better.
And they're like huge, extensive, really detailed reviews.
And he said, but we just don't have the staff for that anymore.
Like, I mean, it's the, you know, it's the same area.
It's a slow, steady decline of paper publications, whether it be newspaper, paper magazines and everything else.
It just seems like under different or better leadership, Mac world, uh,
had the staff and the skills to make the transition completely into a viable website like all the other tech websites it's just that uh just didn't didn't happen well and i think no matter how you do it it's a hard business i mean you know i i ran a magazine briefly and and even even that even running a small ipad magazine that had no full-time staff and then eventually one full-time staff
And then, you know, had no print edition, had no photographers, no, like half of an editor first, then a full editor.
Like I had, I was doing it on such a tiny scale and it was really hard to make that work.
Even with like almost no overhead with no, no history, no old obligations, like nothing like that.
And it was impossible for me to make that work myself.
Yeah.
And even just running my own website and seeing other people run their websites.
And I know the economics of this are challenging.
And it's very easy to be a hobbyist or a part-timer in this field.
It is very hard to have a big enough company that you can afford to hire other people full time and do things properly, do things well, do things with professional journalist standards.
It is extremely hard to fund that.
And I think you can look around and see how few places are that way and how well they're doing.
And you can kind of see that, you know...
I don't know the Macworld management, and I don't know how they were running things over there, but I would say that under any management, this probably would have still happened.
Yeah, it's just really crummy.
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I have some bad news for you about your perfect vision, Marco.
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Right about when your son is entering high school, you'll be able to take advantage of those prescription lenses.
Anyway, so there was an Apple event that we almost saw.
That we almost saw.
And then we saw it in multiple languages all at once.
Can we just start by saying that – I'll start by saying that I'm so disappointed that this story that someone – this post that someone wrote about what they think caused Apple streaming problems, it's just passed around everywhere.
And like every time I saw it on website, I'm like, no, not you too.
Yeah.
If you saw a story today trying to explain what Apple Streaming's woes were, chances are you saw this story.
The link I don't even have in the show notes.
I believe it's like streamingmediablog.com or something.
Streaming something blog.
Yes.
It did not appear to have any good information, and it just didn't make any sense.
And everyone who knows anything about websites or web technology all said that, and yet it still ran on every single site.
So I find that disappointing.
it was talking about like the interactive blog stuff and the json things like there were nuggets of truth in there but none like there was no inside information and the speculation didn't make any sense and yet everyone ran it like here's an explanation of why apple streaming sucked it did not explain it very well at all it did not seem to have conclusive inside information and yet it got spread over anyway let's ignore that for now i didn't think that was a good article
We don't know why they screwed up.
Apple has done streaming many times in the past and not screwed up.
This week was not one of those times they screwed up.
Although I will say, you know, since I don't trust their streams will ever be good, I had a multi-redundant solution going here with Apple TV.
Apple TV, a VPN connection, and then my actual home ISP regularly.
And among those three of those, I always had a stream that was working.
Now, granted, the stream that was working very often had Chinese over the top of it.
And then after the Chinese was gone, it had Japanese.
But eventually, when we got to the good part, everything was solid.
They had serious problems with their AV stuff, but I was happy that all those technical difficulties happened in like the first half an hour, 40 minutes or whatever.
So when they got to the big announcement, everything was nice and clear.
Anyway, let's talk about what they announced because we don't have that much time left.
Can we start at the very beginning with the intro video?
I give a thumbs down to the intro video.
So the problem I have, I sort of watched the stream when it happened, and then last night in preparation for today, I watched it again, and it actually worked this time.
A lot of what happened during the presentation made me just kind of cringe and do the ugh thing.
And like the beginning intro video, when they first did it, I don't know, like a WWDC or two ago, I was like, oh yeah, that's pretty awesome.
But I feel like doing this every time is getting a little self-indulgent.
And I feel like a lot of the things they did, if this was Samsung that did the exact same thing, the internet would have lost it.
No, you need to watch the Samsung thing to know what you're really talking about.
Watch the Samsung, what was the Galaxy S4, was it?
you don't know you i dare you to watch and you'll feel better about this but anyway i i didn't like this intro i think it's because this specific intro video the intro video with the dots that they showed seven times i thought that was fantastic it was short it was to the point yeah the first three times it was great yeah it was short it's to the point it's clever it makes its point in both words and in you know in in images
This one was overly long, was showing us a trick that we've all seen from that OK Go video, and OK Go is apparently all pissed about that.
By the way, if you haven't seen this video we're talking about, it's at the very beginning of the show.
Those things where you look at a room from a certain angle, and all the little markings on the floor and wall line up to make it look like text that's sort of floating in front of you.
It's a whole bunch of real-world physical optical illusions that they bring the camera through.
Anyway, like it just dragged on and the things it was saying in the little words were just it wasn't it wasn't as tight.
It was, you know, it just, you know, anyway, I think having intro video find, especially on an event like this, that's so important with the whole Apple Watch being introduced and all that stuff.
I think having intro video was appropriate.
This just wasn't a great one.
See, I'm with you.
Like, I think it was just boring.
Like, you know, we have to realize that what we're watching here, this is a marketing event and we're watching a two hour long commercial.
And when you have great, amazing products being announced and you have great personalities announcing them, it's easy to forget that and see it as like this great, exciting event and actually really get into it and get into like the fun and the wonder of it.
But when you get too far into like the pre-produced videos and marketing messages and everything, the illusion starts to fall apart a little bit.
And that's why like moments like that, I thought, or when they are too video heavy in general in the keynote, or when they're like, here, we're going to show you three commercials we've made.
Like...
I don't like the movie showing off the commercials in the keynote because it helps contribute to breaking that illusion and to reminding us that we're watching a two-hour long commercial rather than the way we probably like to think of it as an exciting announcement for our industry and the future of our society using these devices.
That's how...
That's how the good ones make us feel.
But whenever they go off on too much commercial video, basically, and marketing messages, I think it breaks that a little bit.
I think it really depends on the thing.
Sometimes they show us a commercial, especially when it was Steve Jobs.
Commercials are 30 seconds.
They're usually funny.
It's not a big deal.
It's over quick.
And he was always so excited to show you whatever commercial he was excited about.
The videos...
where it's some talking head on a white background telling you about what they had to do to design the whatever part of the whatever.
Those can at least sometimes be interesting and cool, and they spend a lot of time on them.
I think incorporating one into a keynote is a reasonable thing to do.
It's the sort of touchy-feely ones where it's really easy to go off the rails, and I think the touchy-feely intro was a little bit...
I don't know.
It seemed just too fuzzy and vague.
It did not seem as precise as the other little dots and lines video.
It seemed just like a bunch of weird platitudes that did not connect in a way the other video did with either things we already believe about Apple or things that we were going to believe after seeing the thing.
It just ended up, you know.
Anyway, I don't think they'll ever show that one again.
I hope they don't, unlike the dots one, which they obviously really loved.
Yeah, and the intro video was nowhere near as bad as the infomercial that was in the center of the presentation, but we'll get to that later.
Which one?
The watch one?
Here's how you pay with a credit card, and oh my God, it's so hard.
That was actually funny, at least.
Oh, no, it was not.
I think it was unintentionally funny.
Oh, God, this is going to last so long.
All right, so let's talk about the iPhones, which was the first thing they announced.
um the iphone 6 my initial impressions 6 and 6 plus excuse me uh my initial impressions it's bigger me remind me of this when i eventually get a bigger phone and i tell you it's the best thing ever um i really am not digging the lens protruding on the back of the phone and i'm surprised that
the internet didn't lose their crap about that either.
Some people have, but take it from me as an iPod touch owner with a protruding lens for many years.
It's not as bad as you think it is.
It's fine.
You'll be okay.
Trust me.
Yeah, I think it's one of those things like, you know, I did see, I'm sorry, I forget who it was and I should credit, but I totally forgot.
But I saw there was a series of tweets by somebody that was retweeted a million times and eventually got to me where it was like, you know, the entire world is asking for better battery life
yeah that was a forgotten towel i believe everyone is asking for more battery life nobody is saying boy i really love my iphone 5 and but it's too thick everyone is saying boy i really love my iphone 5s but it has i wish the battery lasted longer but anyway i i think you know we'll see i i i don't think that the battery life for the 5s is that terrible i like the idea of things getting thinner
If you really care, get the giant phone.
The most noteworthy thing about the iPhone part is that once again, all the parts leaks were dead on.
The only thing that people didn't know were the resolutions, which Gruber had obsessed over and he got one right and one wrong.
And the whole Sapphire screen thing, the screen has some kind of coating on it.
I forget what word they're using for it.
They said like an ion deposited screen or something, right?
Yeah, it probably is the screen they were testing in all those videos.
Yep.
But it's not made of Sapphire or if there's Sapphire in it, Apple didn't mention it.
So there you go.
That was obviously not the thrust of the phones.
Otherwise, they're exactly what everybody showed in all those different parts leaks.
And they have all the things we wanted.
The A8 we didn't know much about.
We still don't know much about.
I assume the phones all have one gig or I would have heard about it by now.
Do you guys all know?
That's what I've heard.
i mean maybe i don't know i i think i feel like i would have heard about it was going to be two gig uh it looks like an a7 that's tweaked because like the speed increase was what do they say like 15 or 20 it's not like when the a7 came out today this is twice as fast as the a6 it's not like that kind of leap the gpu makes a bigger leap but it's always easier to make a bigger leap with gpu because you just add more execution units uh it's 20 nanometer which is good uh that's sort of a you know
of the same like so intel is going to 14 nanometer with broadwell if it can ever ship them uh so intel is still ahead but intel's previous process was 22 nanometers so this is kind of like it's a big leap up from 28 it's not down to 14 but it's uh you know it's significant so these look like uh good phones the camera with the extra optical stabilization and all that other stuff the protruding like i said won't be a big deal especially people who use cases the protruding will actually be
Also, the optical limit stabilization is only in the big one.
And what I thought was interesting was when they were describing the optical limit stabilization and how it worked, they said it uses the M7 and the CPU to move the lens around.
Now, I don't see I don't know how optical stabilization works in point and shoots, but I do know how it works in SLRs.
And in SLRs, optical stabilization is like the lens element itself spins.
And at least this is how Canon's works.
And so like it has its own gyroscopic effect so that the movement is instantaneous.
And so it's awesome.
I can't imagine if it's shifting the element around, like using software to sense gyroscopic input and then shift the thing around.
How is that fast enough?
Software is really fast.
Computers are really fast.
Instructions execute in nanoseconds.
And it's probably like, you know, the things that are moving it.
First of all, it's not moving it much, right?
And second, it can move those small distances very quickly.
Uh, so the thing they showed in the video is obviously crazily exaggerated.
Like I can move up and down and it, you know, it's, it's more like a barely visible vibration, I would assume.
Uh, it's obviously it's not going to, it's not going to be as good as optical image stabilization and SLR, but you know, they're doing what they can to try to make it so that if they have to leave the shutter open a little bit longer, cause it's dark.
you don't get as much blur like don't expect miracles from this it's still a camera the size of a symbol so yeah well and the other thing is so and it's in only the big one now have you guys done the uh printed out paper things of course no but i saw you did i did not i'm just gonna wait so i i printed out the paper one we'll link to it in the show notes of of you know where you can get these pdfs
I think what's interesting, so before I printed this out, I was saying, you know what, if the big one has a better camera, I'll just get the big one because having a better camera is important to me.
And if it has any other major improvements, I'll get the big one.
Then I printed this out, and then I cut them out, and then I actually tried holding the big one and the small one, and oh my god, it is so freaking big.
Like, the 5.5, the 6+, wow.
Like, it is so big that if I hold it the way I usually hold a phone, which is I hold it on my left hand, corner of the phone is resting in my palm, fingers are wrapped around the right side, thumbs on the left side...
i can't reach the home button like that's how like i can't my thumb can't reach the home button oh god that's a good point like it's crazy like so even even they're like their thing that drops the screen down to reachability that's what they're reusing that word so janky yeah even that which is yeah that's not a great salute it i mean i guess it's better than like
Putting it in a corner.
I guess it's better than shrinking the hospital corner, but maybe just barely better.
Like, it's not that much better.
But people don't use those giant phones that way.
I've seen a lot of people using a giant and they don't use them holding them the way you're holding them.
They use them either like a sidekick where you're holding it in landscape and using your thumbs to type or they use it two handed.
And sometimes they're using it like the Galaxy Note.
Sometimes they're using it two handed and with the stylus.
Now, there's no stylus for this, but you can buy aftermarket ones, in fact.
my mother has one of those and she likes using it uh it's very strange but anyway it's not they're not using it the way you're using it you're trying to use it like a traditional iphone with your one hand and it's it's totally awkward that way now the one-handed mode thing that is a very pragmatic solution it's not great but it's certainly better than nothing uh the worst thing i think it might do is encourage people to think that they can use it that way because that's not going to save you the little double tap home button would slide down that's not going to save you from like you said you can't even get to the home button if you try to hold that way it's
I feel like the people who know they want this phone already are handling giant phones like this, like or have they've had them in the past or like they're going to use them differently.
It's kind of like saying when the iPad came out, I can't even wrap my hand around this thing.
My hands are you don't hold it that way.
You don't use it that way.
It's a different form factor.
So if this was the only phone, it would be disastrous.
But it's not.
And everyone who's tried the four seven tells me.
it's reasonable i i'm reserving judgment until i can try one myself not made of paper yeah oh yeah i mean obviously this could be different once you get it in your hand but the the paper prototypes make it make it it makes it so that i am definitely going to get the 4.7 and so and let me let me tell you why also like this is why it was also easier for me to make this decision and just like if i can pre-order it which actually i can't because of stupid upgrade eligibility anyway
I'm going to get the 5.7, the 4.7.
I'm not going to try to try to get both and return one and try to get the 5.5 and, you know, try to try it first in the store because I know I won't be able to.
The reason why is twofold.
Number one, it's not like this is the only year we're going to have this size.
4.7 is already a huge upgrade.
So let me go to that first and then see if that's big enough.
And then, you know, before I start jumping over another size.
Second,
The 5.5 is so big and unwieldy and it's so poor for single-handed use, apparently, obviously I can't confirm it yet, that I feel like it will do better in a world where the watch is commonplace.
Because the watch will, in many situations in which you'd be taking out your phone and having to use it one-handed, like if you have to take out your phone while you're walking down the street, or walking the dog, something like that, that's a situation where you'd use your phone with one hand to do something quick.
the watch will presumably eliminate a lot of those needs to take the phone out of your pocket for that kind of situation and so i'm thinking the the 5.5 might make more sense to get next year because the watch isn't even going to be out supposedly until early 2015 or spring whatever word they used that probably means april you know and or maybe later if it's if and that's if it's on time it might mean june you know we don't know and then the next iphones will be out next september probably and
And so, you know, this is the kind of thing like once the watch is commonplace, I think the bigger phone will be will be more palatable to more people.
And it might be a better trade off because like I would like a better camera.
I would like better battery life.
I would like a big screen when I'm using certain things, when I'm reading certain things, when I'm browsing websites like I would like the bigger screen in some in some cases.
But because I still have to keep taking out of my pockets, do all sorts of one handed things so often, that's going to be a problem.
Whereas in the future, that might not be the case.
Which one do you think you're going to get, a 64 or 128?
That's the great thing that made this decision easy.
I've been getting 64 for the last few revisions of the device only because 32 just wasn't quite enough space sometimes.
But a 64, I've never filled up a 64 gig device reasonably.
So I'm going to keep getting 64.
Now it's just $100 cheaper.
John, I'm curious.
What do you think of the new capacities and pricing?
I didn't predict it.
It's a very clever way to succumb to the realities of reduced parts prices over the years.
Apple has been living in a fantasy world where 1632 and 64 gigs of flash of their required spec somehow has not changed in price in the...
however many years they've been running these capacities seven years or something no because they i mean they used to be anyway they have it's just been way too long and they're like all right all right here's a 128 here's 64 but the low-end model sticks at still 16 it seems punitive like i've said it's like the ram thing i think this is a a decision made by people who are worried about apple's margins uh
more than they're worried about apple's customer experience not that i'm saying you can't have a 16 or even an eight for people who want it but if you're only going to have three models to continue to sell the 16 and make it the cheapest one is going to drive a lot of people who are price sensitive into a phone that does not have enough capacity for the things they're going to do with it it's not saying that that 16 isn't and people are going to say i have a 16 i never fill it that's fine that's great it's just that because it's a low-end model people are going to say
I don't either.
They're going to say, I have no idea what a gigabyte is.
I just want the cheapest phone.
Then they don't realize that they're the type of person who take tons of video, you know, or like take a lot of pictures or want to put a lot of, you know, they don't know what their usage is.
And 16, I can tell you an even moderate usage.
If you fill it up with like videos, you take yourself and pictures and, and a couple of movies that you buy and a lot of big apps, especially games, which can be gigantic.
Yeah.
You can fill 16 really quickly.
Right.
And that's a disappointing experience.
And there's really like there's no price justification for that 16.
That 16 could have been a 32, which is twice as much.
And that's it's a big deal because that extra 16 is all storage, whereas the original 16 part of that is by the OS and all the other stuff.
So I think there's going to be an ever so slightly larger group of people who are disappointed because they're price sensitive.
They can't afford the 32 or don't want to pay it.
uh and they either don't know or have that they're going to fill a 16 or have no choice but to try to fit their stuff in a 16 and that's not a good experience because ios generally does not behave well when it's out of storage and it makes a bad experience uh and maybe the the deleting of uh you know the the uh
auto deleting of message attachments unless you say save will help a little bit in this regard for storage sizes but it's really disappointing to me especially like in the in the six like if they're going to do that on the five or something or one of the other or the 5c or whatever like you can keep that like i understand you have to have that in but for the flagship six line to go 16 uh 64 128 that 16 really sticks in my craw i do not like it
Yeah, I wonder if they would mid-cycle bump it up.
I mean, probably not.
They have done things like that in the past, but it's been a while.
But yeah, it looks like it's screwing you.
It doesn't look nice.
It looks like a cheap move.
And they're differentiating on... That's what they've chosen to differentiate on.
They don't differentiate on RAM, obviously, because they don't tell you anything about RAM.
And I think it is also disappointing they still only have one gig.
But I can...
kind of excuse the ram for power requirements you know if again we get back to the thinness thing well if you made the thing a millimeter thicker you wouldn't have to worry about that would you apple but uh you can kind of excuse that but i mean it should really have two gigs of it so it's not as important as it is in the ipad i really hope the next ipad air does have two gigs because it's just that you know the the
The assets and everything there are just so much bigger in terms of texture sizes and all this stuff.
It's not like there's a dedicated pool of VRAM hanging off the side of this thing.
The RAM situation is more dire on a thing with a giant screen, and the power constraints are much bigger on the iPhone.
I mean, how long can we keep this up?
How long do we go with with one gig?
This has got to be the last generation.
Right.
And I hope next.
I mean, they're not going to do this because it's SOC thing, but like mentioned they went to.
OK.
And, you know, the iPhone 6S or whatever the heck they're going to call it has two gigs of RAM, except for in the low end model, which has 16 gigs of flash.
And anyway, they won't do that, probably.
But.
yeah they have to pick somebody this what can you differentiate they come in colors but those those will cost the same they use the storage sizes as their tiering structure for making you pay more money and to help their margins and and now the screen sizes yeah well the screen size to the screen size i don't think they're using the screen size for tiering because the bigger screen just really does cost more like not a hundred dollars more but that's kind of like their increment you know what i mean like it's like well you know that's very good especially since like
people will pay more for a larger television like they understand you will pay more money because it's bigger and has a bigger screen that's that's that's a thing that people already accept storage sizes is kind of like the thing that they will differentiate on that people don't really understand like people don't even know the difference between ram and flash storage and they said this is what we're going to use as our dial to make you pay more money
So, John, if you were to get an iPhone, which I'm assuming that you have no interest in still, hypothetically, which model would you be getting?
I have a lot of interest if they don't ever update the iPod Touch again.
Suddenly my interest becomes very great, doesn't it?
Yeah, I would go for a 64, you know, 4.7-inch iPhone 6.
Wow.
I'm going to have to wait until they get into the store.
I'm not going to pre-order or anything like that.
I have to wait until they get into the store.
I have to try it in my hands.
You know, it's like I really do like the rounded edges because I never liked how the five design.
I like how this one looks and it's sort of it's in the black front sort of glamour shots that they make.
And I like the idea of how I think it's going to feel in my hand because of the rounded edges.
So I'm I like this design.
I like this phone.
I just don't know if it'll be too big.
And if they do rev the iPod Touch, presumably it will be big anyway.
So size may not be a factor because
you know, like I won't have a choice.
Like I can't keep using this, this old iPod touch.
The battery's getting a little wonky.
So wait, so all three of us agree that the, the phone that we choose would be a 64 gig.
Well, presumably different colors, but 64 gig, 4.7 inch iPhone six.
No, we'd all get the same color.
Black.
Oh, I thought, Marco, you had a white one.
Tiff has a white one.
I was considering white, and then I didn't get it.
And I actually, I like the new, like, because the black on the 5 was way too dark.
But in the 5S, the new space gray color, it's more like a gunmetal color.
That's very nice.
I like that a lot.
I love the space gray on my 5S.
Now, one thing I'd like to quickly talk about is, is Tiff going to upgrade and do we know what she's going to get?
Because I saw a lot of tweets fly by about her trying on the paper cutouts in different jeans and so on and so forth.
I was curious, has she concluded yet?
Yeah.
I don't think she has.
We'll have to have her on at some point.
Maybe next week she's busy right now, but maybe next week I'll have her on.
Or Tiff, if you're listening, please come in and tell us.
This is a problem that especially a lot of women are going to have.
If you've been keeping your phone in your pocket, because women's clothing usually, if it has pockets at all, which is not always a given...
If it has pockets at all, usually they're smaller.
So Tiff always keeps the pockets... Tiff always keeps her phone in her jeans.
And the front pocket is almost never big enough.
So he usually just keeps it in the back pocket.
And it's like... I'll have to have her tell you all about this.
But basically...
it really is not a good fit the 5.5 doesn't even come close to fitting and even the 4.7 no longer fits like it either it will either stick out visibly at the top uh or like it or you gotta like put it in like only one pocket in such a way that it makes a giant long rectangle you know put like long ways and it's it's weird so i i have a feeling this is going to be an issue especially for women um
I think we're going to have to see how the market shakes out.
We're going to have to see how these sell.
And Apple's going to have to see.
I'm sure they're going to be looking at their stores to see how many people who would have otherwise bought the bigger one go with the iPhone 5S instead because it's smaller.
And I hope they're watching that.
I'm sure they will.
Because I'm guessing there's going to be a lot of people who actually prefer the smaller size, especially women.
Yeah.
You mean like the small areas in the 5S size or the 4 point?
No, I think they're going to sell a ton of the 4.7 inch sixes.
That will be their best-selling model.
Kind of like last gen, the 5S was the best-selling model way over the 5C, and people seem surprised by that.
My prediction for this set of models is that the 4.7 and 6 will be the best-selling model.
Really quickly, a couple more thoughts on the iPhone Plus.
Firstly, do you remember the title of the very, very, very first episode of ATP?
Did we call it iPhone Plus?
We sure did.
Yeah, it was the iPhone math, remember?
That's right.
And what we said, there was a likely mistranslation of iPhone Plus.
Even the name leaked on this thing.
Apple can't keep secrets.
And that was like two years ago.
I am pretty proud of us for that.
This was February 7th of 2013.
But it's not the iPhone Plus, it's the iPhone 6 Plus, to be technical.
Oh, whatever.
We didn't quite get it.
Anyway.
Anyway.
Names and names.
And then what do you guys think about, and I'm going to start with Marco, when you go to landscape on the iPhone 6 Plus, you get a split view controller if the app that you're using supports that.
How does that make you feel to have an iPad that isn't an iPad?
I think it's smart.
I mean, I, you know, the iPhone, first of all, designing an app for iPhone landscape views has always been challenging, especially if you have to support text input, because the iPhone landscape view with the keyboard up, you have basically have no space.
And so, you know, it's always been it's always been tricky to design that.
The iPhone 6 Plus has so much space in both dimensions, but especially in that height dimension.
It has so much space that if you saw any other normal interface scaled to that without the split view style, it's going to look ridiculously weirdly wide and short.
And so I think what that's doing is just like...
It isn't necessarily like, oh, we're going to bring the iPad to this.
I think it's more like we have to solve this really weird interface situation here.
What tools do we have that we can do that with?
And so that's what I think they're doing there with that.
First of all, it is a differentiator.
It is a way to get people to buy the bigger one, to say, look, the apps are a little bit better in these ways.
So that helps.
But I think ultimately it's just about how do we make apps not look weird on this?
Yeah, all those APIs at WWDC talking about the adaptive sizing stream.
I mean, again, talking about Apple leaked this itself, essentially.
Like, we all knew it was coming.
They told us in a million sessions that we're going to be, you know, they had...
If you just watch this, if they're free to watch, watch those WWC sessions, it's obvious what they're talking about.
And no one was surprised that, oh, hey, look, when when you rotate a different thing, it's suddenly this panel like they told you how to do that.
And he's like, this seems strange.
When would this come in handy?
You know, it was they were in an awkward situation where they had to tell developers how to adjust their layouts for what we knew were going to be differently sized phones.
And one of the features was, you know, some elements might not even appear if the width is compact or whatever the size class thing is.
Right.
So they timing wise, it must have been weird for them to do that.
But every developer knew it was coming.
And I think users won't really like users don't care about that stuff as much as we think they do in terms of what it requires.
It was like, oh, if you get the big phone.
you get this better stuff and they don't even know if it's the same app as far as they're concerned like or they might think like casey just kind of said like oh this is an ipad no it's not an ipad app like they don't need to know anything about adaptive layouts they don't need to know anything about size classes they just know you buy this product your experience is different especially like with with the wide keyboard with the weird you know larger keys on the side for doing doodles and the larger emoji key and whatever other things they had there uh
The fact that those buttons are there is going to be a selling point.
Like, oh, well, this one has the keyboard with the little buttons.
Like, I don't know.
I feel like the people who want this big phone already know they want it.
And this is all just going to be icing for them.
And Apple is wise to continue to evolve its UI toolkit, for lack of a better word.
to handle differently sized screens they crept on it bit by bit and now they're essentially entering a world where we can make we can make flat rectangular screens with rounded corners of any size and your app should run on them and like this the only thing left is like the weird gap between ipad and iphone apps
uh and i wonder if eventually they'll get to the point because if you look at their products now if you line them up it's a series of little rectangles with screens on them that scale nicely from really small to really big it's pretty smooth stair step and yet you have to draw this red line oh well this is an ipad app and these are iphone apps and that red line will start to get thinner over the next few years because eventually it'll be like look you're just making ios apps and they adapt themselves to whatever size screen they're on and there's no artificial distinction between ipad
an iPhone app anymore.
We're not there yet, but check back in three years.
Yeah, and I think the message to WWDC couldn't have been more clear on that front, too.
It's like, you know, your apps should stop caring about whether they're running on an iPad or an iPhone.
And, you know, you should instead just, you know, read these collections of traits to know, oh, well, this is a small, horizontal, but big, vertical screen or something like that.
And to basically bring responsive design to apps.
and you know apple has been absolutely clear that is the way to go now and in the future and the implication of course is because we're going to have this big variety of hardware and we've now we've seen the beginning half of that i think we're going to continue to see that when the new ipads are announced and uh when if if that uh resizable app thing becomes a part of the ipad os uh it'll use the same kind of system and that's just as important that i mean yeah the multitasking thing where you split the screen and have one thing on one side yeah
Yeah, like if that ever ships, it's going to be an even bigger draw for this sort of thing.
And I think like, you know, for developers, the message could not be more clear.
Build universal apps and use this kind of responsive design.
They couldn't be more clear about that.
And if your business model depends on having separate iPhone and iPad apps, you should probably figure out a way around that really soon.
Yeah, even now, just the iPhone 6 Plus next to an iPad mini.
Try explaining to a regular person that, well, this is an iPad app, and it only works on this rectangle, and it won't work at all in that rectangle.
It'd be like, what?
These are practically the same thing.
It's like, oh, no, that's an iPad, and this is an iPhone.
They'd be like, because it makes phone calls?
It can't run?
I don't understand.
Yeah, that's...
you know the direction is clear that that confusion will be cleared up may be cleared up sooner than we think for all we know the new iPads come out and Apple says oh and by the way you can't ever upload an iPad only app anymore all your apps have to be that I think it's still a ways off but like Apple could do that if they were in a hurry I don't think they're in a hurry but it's at this point it's silly with that with the iPhone 6 plus and the iPad mini both in Apple's line the division between them makes no sense yeah all right let's make some money and then talk about some money yeah
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So there's a way to pay for things with your phone.
Yeah, this is going to be really interesting, I think.
So first of all, yes, we all know that NFC is not new, that Apple is not the first one to do this.
They won't be the last ones to do this.
We know Android was there first.
We know probably things were there before, Android even.
We know NFC is very popular in some parts of the world.
We know the US payment system is horrible and outdated.
And yes, we still even use checks sometimes, which is horrendous.
So all that aside, I think this is a great move.
I hope it gets a lot of adoption.
And I think if it does...
I think this might actually be more important than the watch long term for Apple.
I think they're going to end up making some money from it, no question, because they're getting a surcharge off of each transaction.
But it's not very much money based on most of the reports we've seen.
It's a very, very small surcharge.
They make it up in volume.
Or want to, anyway.
Yeah, and there will be... If this actually works, there will be a lot of volume.
Well, so that's the question.
What makes anyone think this has any more chance of working and becoming widespread than any of the past efforts, or Passbook, for that matter?
Well, I think the biggest reason... First of all, you know, Passbook was a tough sell.
Because Passbook...
didn't really offer either side massive benefits.
It's like, it wasn't that easier, that much easier.
It didn't like, it was a pain to implement, uh, slightly, you know, cause you had to do something instead of nothing.
So like you had, you had to like do special support to implement it on the service side.
Um,
And then on the usual side, there's this weird app that they go in, and you've got to find the link somewhere in your confirmation email that says download to Passbook, if they even had that, which they usually didn't.
And I feel like the benefits there were not big enough for all the work on both sides to be worth it for most people.
Whereas for this, I feel like if this actually works the way it's advertised, and granted, the video was hilarious in the doing it wrong side of the video,
So bad.
So bad.
It was comical.
No, it was not comical.
It was embarrassing how bad it was.
I like when she asked for ID and a swipe doesn't work on the first time.
Two things that almost never happened.
It was so uncomfortable.
That was an example of Apple.
What you want is Apple to be fair.
When Steve Jobs put up the picture of what phones look like with all the different keyboards, that was fair.
Those were good publicity shots of those actual popular phones.
It was not finding the ugliest phones in the world and putting them up to show how nice yours looks next to it.
It was like, these are the popular phones now, and then we're going to show you the iPhone, and it's different than them.
This was not a fair comparison.
This does not accurately represent the inconvenience of using a credit card in America.
Right.
And that's the thing, is that this is one of those parts of the keynote where I was just sitting there and I wanted to crawl into a hole because it was so ridiculous.
I was kind of embarrassed just watching it.
And I'm probably being a bit dramatic, but the thing of it is, is that Apple keynotes or events, whatever we're calling this, are usually so spot on and so good.
And this was just...
awkward i don't know most of it was great but this part was just really awkward so for the success rate of this thing over passbook i asked that mostly just to you know to to throw that out there i think this will be more successful than passbook and i think the main reason is this is all again totally u.s centric and like marco said we all know about chip cards we all know how backwards we are yes yes yes we live in america we care about our our backwardness getting fixed
Not how awesome it is in your amazing country.
Anyway, so if we don't speak your language, we'd move there if we did.
Anyway, the reason this is going to work is because of the massive concentration of power in the U.S.
payment industry to these few big banks and few big credit card companies.
most of which apple seems to have cut a deal with so right there you've got just huge it's kind of like when apple did a deal for itunes they just got like whatever is the big five record labels or whatever there were like that's all they needed to do deals with because they covered you know they covered most of the music people cared about well they're apple is doing deals with you know mastercard visa like a bank of america like they're just covering a huge portion of the entire market just by doing deals with these gigantic companies that have
what probably should be illegal levels of power and concentration of wealth.
Anyway, that makes it... On the retail side, too, there's a similar... The U.S.
is so much based on the big chain stores that all you need are a handful of the big chains to have a massive footprint of the transactions that happen in the U.S.
every day.
And then you can start getting more support from the smaller people just because, well, we have all these people using this.
You'll benefit from this, blah, blah, blah, you know?
And that's what they need to make it work is you need to like it's not the it's not the thing in the phone.
It's not the software.
It's not NFC.
What it is, is that stupid, ugly reader thing.
That is the most important part of this product as a solution for people is that stupid, ugly reader thing.
That stupid little NFC reader and the, you know, and the way it's hooked up.
And that has to be in millions and millions of places.
That is the hard part of this project.
Not the, like you said, people putting NFC in phones forever.
Like it's so easy to do all those other parts.
The hard part is to cut the deal with all the people.
So they say, use our payment thingy, accept our, you know, like payment tokens, put these things in all of your stores.
Like that is the hard part.
That's the biggest kind of like the Amazon level type of thing where they're like,
or even google like we're going to scan every book in the world we're going to make self-driving cars or whatever this is one of the first things that i've seen apple sort of dip its toe into of saying we're going to try to do this big thing uh because it doesn't work unless those little scanners are all over the place hooked up to apple service and so them cutting the deal with the big credit card companies so that you're you'll be able to make something that you can pay with and it will connect to your bank or your credit card or whatever that's one half and the other half is
getting these little scanners in a bunch of stores hooked up to those things.
And I think the amount of stuff that they've announced in this deal is probably just barely enough, maybe, maybe barely enough to get them over the hump.
Because you need some kind of critical mass if this doesn't want to become like Passbook.
Even though Passbook is, oh, didn't they get all the airlines?
People don't fly every day.
And even if they do, the airlines were kind of spotty in the beginning about whether that was there and people weren't, you know, like...
is this really you really need to get some critical mass before until this you know for this to become something that's that is more than just a curiosity that a bunch of rich people do in san francisco when they go to whole foods you know right well and the timing of this is actually amazingly good because the u.s like there's finally now a big movement to move to chip and pin ever since what i believe it started out as the target uh credit card hack thing
where like there i'm i apologize to whoever was talking about this and i overheard it on a podcast and i forgot who it was but basically like in the last couple years there have been so many massive scale credit card hacks in the u.s especially the big target one that like it's finally getting so expensive for the credit card processors to deal with all the resulting fraud and everything that they're now finally pushing the u.s to adopt chip and pin
Well, the fraud rate, like the fraud rate has been really low and it has gone up slightly with these hacks.
Like, but all it takes is for the fraud rate to go up slightly for these business credit card companies, you know, live and die based on their, you know, terrible fees that they charge you, their crazy, you know, interest rates, but also the fraud rates.
And so the fraud rate goes up 1%.
That is enough for them to say, all right, finally, we have to get rid of the stupid magnetic stripe stuff.
And like, there is a big turnover in that type of like, that's the reason they drag their feet.
Like everything we have now is fine.
Why would we invest in changing it?
All you need is the fraud rate to take up like a percent or two and suddenly it becomes economically feasible to go to something better.
And I suppose there's a competition between the little chip things they have in the rest of the civilized world and something like this NFC thing.
Exactly.
And that's why I think because this shift is finally happening in the U.S.
and because what you said earlier about the concentration of power in the U.S.
being such that the U.S.
is a fairly straightforward market to dominate if you can get a handful of people on board, that's why I think this has a very good chance of succeeding because all those credit card terminals all over the place are going to have to get upgraded in the next few years anyway.
And so they're probably going to get upgraded to something that supports NFC if NFC is widely out there, which now it will be.
So do you think it'll be socially awkward to do this, to be early on in the Apple Pay adoption?
No, I don't think so at all.
Because, I mean, think of the convenience just trumps everything.
Right.
Do you remember when the little kiosks where you have to swipe your own card first came out?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
And it was a change and everyone just got used to it.
And that was it.
Do you have one of those little dongly things that you use at the gas station so you don't have to swipe your card?
No, no.
I have one of those.
I've had one of those for, what, 10, 15 years.
They are awesome.
You get one.
You never go back to the old way.
like and this is the equivalent of that as soon as people can like rub some part of their purse or whatever up against the thing and pay for things oh my goodness yeah you're gonna rub your purse against the gas pump yeah okay you know what i mean like like the convenience of just like the like it is so much easier than the you know and and
even though the video is ridiculous like oh it's so hard to get cards out of all i just really expected eggshells to crack on top of the person's hair when she was doing that like like from the infomercials yeah spill the person onto the floor yeah just oh things are everywhere anyway as silly as that is this is kind of like the whole iWatch thing we talked about before
taking away the the need to rummage through your purse to pull out the card to hand it to the person to hand it to back they didn't show the part of signing which some places still make you do do the stupid signature on the thing that's decreased a lot lately without requiring sign but like that little dance is not that inconvenient but if you can cut most of it out
it is addicting to be able to do that it is nice why would you ever like it's like okay that wasn't a problem i had no problem doing that but this is slightly more convenient what is the reason you would ever go back to the other way and this actually has it as they pointed out many times in the keynote this has advantages over the old way and that you don't have to give your credit card number to anybody they don't have to know anything about you or your name like using the tokens is more secure reveals less information uh to apple anyway the credit card company still knows what you bought where and when but you know it's not
Apple's not helping with that.
It is a potentially more secure, which is why everybody likes it, reduce fraud and everything, service that is more convenient to you.
And it's not that it's going to be such a life-changing thing.
It's just going to be once that is an option for you, you will never go to one of the stores that has that option and say, you know what?
I want to dig my credit card out of my wallet instead.
You just won't.
What's the point?
There's no upside.
And so it will just completely switch over to doing it the more convenient way.
If they can get these things in enough places, it will hopefully not be a novelty.
uh but more like be like the defaults for the the three stores that you you know where i shop for my groceries where i go for my you know home supplies or whatever if if the three or four stores you frequent all have this it will just become the way you pay for things uh that i think it's going to be a interesting challenge for them to get in enough locations fast enough for this not to be some weird uh again a curiosity that that is only in a few places
And also, like, think about the lock-in effects they have once this is everywhere.
You know, this is not going to force everyone to buy iPhones, but it will make it harder to ever move away from an iPhone.
It's going to be like one more thing that if you have an iPhone and you're thinking about switching to some new Android hotness or whatever, you'll have to think about, oh, you know, then I won't be able to use this in the exact same way.
And even if the other thing supports NFC, it'd be like, well, it might be different.
It might not work as well, you know.
i wonder what kind of uh lock-in they're really getting because like the hardware is capable of doing anything so if android does some sort of thing and google does stuff with payment processor like there's no reason that other companies couldn't strike the same deals and presumably if the hardware is there it is a business and software decision like once the readers are everywhere i don't think apple has any particular lock-in to those readers because those readers could be repurposed to read payments from android phones just as easily so it's more of a can other companies
uh you know do the deals with uh with all of the credit card companies and banks and retailers in the same way that apple has done oh yeah i'm not saying they can't but i'm saying like you like you not you but most people as users might consider that like oh i've gotten used to waving my iphone in front of this and using touch id to do this if i move to your phone it might not work that well or it might be different or it might not work at all you know depending on the setup and everything like
even i i know of course these are standard nfc things and i know that like other things will work with it but there will be that kind of psychological lock-in effect like that's one more thing about my life that will that i will have to change if or and possibly lose if i switch and and the watch we'll get to the watch but i think the watch is exactly the same it has exactly the same effect which is like this is one more thing that's gonna that's that i'm gonna have to change if i switch away from this as someone pointed in the chat rooms uh the
The Touch ID is a factor in this because it gives Apple the rate that you get if the credit card is present at the transaction.
There's a lower surcharge than if you just are entering the number.
And these are all weird details and vestiges of the credit card processing industry.
But basically...
Apple can make better deals because it was able to convince the credit card companies that Touch ID is a sufficiently secure thing that they should get the same rate that someone gets if they physically have the card there with them.
So you won't need to have your credit card with you, but Apple will pay the smaller surcharge.
Basically, you know, Apple is doing what it does best, making deals with the big companies, making deals that are as favorable as possible to it, that also make their partners happy and using technology to do that.
Because Apple Pay only works from devices that have Touch ID or devices that require a device that has Touch ID like the watch.
Uh, and Android will find a much harder time doing that because even if they come out with something like touch ID, it will be forever or possibly never that it is everywhere.
And every Android device, like it's, it's so much harder to make penetration versus like this.
Apple's already got, what are the, was it 200 million?
I think, I don't know if they were talking about the fives, the stuff that worked to watch already.
Yeah, 200 million was the number of iPhone 5 and above owners.
Yeah, so the 5Ss and the 6s, very soon a huge number of iOS devices will have Touch ID.
Touch ID is a big strategic advantage to Apple when it comes to stuff like this because it is another factor in the authentication soup, and it's helping Apple make better deals, and I think it will actually help people...
feel slightly better about doing this transaction like that it's not just oh if you steal my phone you can buy things you can't unless you have their thumbprint or whatever and i just from repeatedly unlocking my wife's phone with touch id and repeatedly redoing the stupid touch id every time i put a new build of ios 8 on it which kind of annoys me
uh i'm a big fan of touch id i have great success rates i think it is we wondered when it first came out will this be good enough to be like will it be like siri where it's like well you play with it for a while but then you realize the success rate is too low for you to really trust it for anything uh touch id i feel like has totally crossed that bar i trust it for the intended purpose it works if it ever misses i try like its convenience trumps the whatever small percentage of failure rate that i get on it just don't try to use it when you come out of the shower because your skin is all floppy and it doesn't work
now before we move on uh somebody did find tiff and in fact it was drunk casey right yeah so drunk casey alerted tiff to our to our call earlier to see if she could come in and she saw it and she now is in and and uh if if we are still interested in hearing um one one woman's opinion on the iphone sizes uh you want to put her on yeah it's fine all right hey guys what's up hi
So I'd asked earlier what your conclusion was about which phone you're going to potentially get because you used trying the phone on as a convenient excuse to show the internet your butt.
And so I was curious if you reached a conclusion.
Yeah.
Well, I did enjoy showing the internet my butt.
I asked Marco if it would be okay.
And he's like, I don't own your butt.
Yeah, exactly.
I was just going to say the same thing.
You don't have to ask him permission.
It's your butt.
You do what you want with it.
I would like him to ask me permission if he wanted to show the internet his butt.
He doesn't.
You know, it's a give and take kind of thing.
But no, I think my conclusion is that I might stick with the phone I have.
because what's like like a crazy person you're gonna use the same iphone for two years i know like an animal like i don't know because it's just gonna be so big but i mean i thought that this one i was appalled by how light it felt at first you know when you got the new one the most recent new one what is this the five something what is this marco five s yeah you're probably appalled by the lightness when you got the five because that's when it got taller and it was also very light compared to the four s
Yeah.
Like anytime it changes, I'm like, this is the worst.
And then, you know, when the new iOS, yeah, I'm saying the right things, right?
Yeah.
When that came on and it all looked like all candy pop and I'm like, oh, this is terrible too.
Everything's ruined.
And so I hated everything.
And then I like, you know, had it for two weeks and then I looked at my old phone.
I'm like, this phone is so old.
Why did I ever want that old phone?
It's the worst.
Yeah.
So I have a little bit of that still in my mind that I might, you know, look at it, look back and be like, Oh, that little phone was so old.
You know, once I get the bigger one, being bigger, I mean, like the 4.7.
So the 5.5 is in a no fly zone is out of the question out of the question.
I can't, my hand, I mean, you can't like scroll all the way.
I can't even reach the other side of the phone.
I'm holding the paper right now looking at it with my little lady thumb and I'll drop it.
Marco's little man throne can't reach the home button.
Well, everything is weensy on Marco.
That's to be expected.
He's dainty.
Oh, man, I was about to ask you something that would totally derail.
Okay, so the theory is sitting here now on a Wednesday night before the pre-order, you are going to ask Marco to pre-order nothing to get you nothing.
And then if Marco ends up coming back with the 4-7, what do you think the chances are that you're going to look at it and say, holy crap, I need that?
Yeah.
probably a 70% chance that I'll say that I need that because I can't help it.
I like having the new stuff.
But I don't know.
I just like my little, I like being able to just, it's in my pocket and it's small.
And like I discussed on Twitter and showed everyone on Twitter that my pockets are small and it doesn't, I mean, my phone currently barely fits in there.
Do you really keep your iPhone in your back pocket and then sit down with it?
I really do.
And you sit down in hard chairs with the iPhone in your back pocket?
Well, it depends on the surface.
If I'm sitting down on a soft chair, it stays in.
If it's a hard chair, it comes out.
It's weird.
What?
I evaluate, you know, depending on the situation.
That sounds like way too much work.
I know.
It is.
If I'm at the park, it usually comes out and into my front pocket because I'm like up and down with the, you know, with our son.
So it's in and out.
Plus the sand, you know, usually have it out.
Fair enough.
And since you're here, and I presume you're about to be banished, immediate thoughts on whether or not you would desire an Apple Watch.
I almost did it too.
I like wearing jewelry too much to kind of mess that all up.
I think my accessories, I decide to choose what I'm wearing.
You know, that's just the type of girl that I am.
I never was a watch wear, so I don't think I would get into it.
but but see previous comments about marco getting something new and shiny yeah but i mean come on if i if i got the big phone and i can't oh he's putting it on my wrist is that the little one oh that looks kind of nice that one's too big oh that may i might be changing my mind the gold one looks nice marco we should do that one what do you think it's pretty thick yeah
I don't know.
Well, if I got the big phone, then the big phone might end up living in my purse and I could take it out when, you know, our son is sleeping and I could do Twitter on it.
But if I need notifications, it could be right on my wrist.
So that's convenient.
And you could send Marco your heartbeat.
Exactly.
And, you know, we could draw little doodles that are important.
All right.
Before I lose all capacity to be an adult.
So we're saying no fly zone for the five, five tentative.
Yes.
On the four, seven and tentative.
Yes.
On the Apple watch.
yeah yeah because if the pocket situation gets too brutal i might need to go to the watch for notifications for you know like little text message and stuff so i know when to take my phone out of the purse plus you'd buy like all the bands so you could have a choice each day oh yeah that's what i'd have to do if i were to get the watch because it needs to match but then you can only you had then i have to get two faces because one's gold and one's silver so depends i have faces that's two watches yeah feel free to get two watches some people wear both at once
Yeah, exactly.
And Marco's over there.
He's rubbing his eyes and like holding his head.
He's like, oh, God.
Why wouldn't you have a day watch and a night watch, Tiff?
I know.
I mean, come on.
All righty.
Well, thank you for the feminine influence for tonight.
Oh, you're very welcome.
Here is Dainty Marco back.
oh man i don't think we get away with calling him dainty marco hi such a good idea to have your wife on the show isn't it marco you're regretting it in the background no that was great i i can't wait to hear the your uh no i was sitting there like i i wasn't concerned about like having to buy multiple devices i was thinking like oh my god i'm gonna have to wait on like five different lines to get all the watches that we're gonna want like and all the different bands yes yeah
All right, so let's talk about some – are we done with Apple Pay?
Actually, one quick observation.
I know this doesn't relate to iCloud, but it is kind of funny to me that after all of this angst and agita about iCloud just, what, a week or two ago, now Apple's saying to the world, yes, trust us with your credit cards and trust us with all of this.
We will be okay.
Okay.
And I mean, I understand because I'm an engineer that one is not really related to the other.
But it is kind of funny to me that there wasn't even like even a snicker or a nod to the fact that there was all sorts of iCloud Agita just a week or two ago.
Well, I mean, yeah, first of all, I think the geeks, even people who are extremely critical of Apple.
know that like okay well the credit cards aren't being stored in iCloud and stuff like that like like it there's like even that like it's hard to argue you know like falsehoods about that being related or not related secondly people have a very short memory with this kind of stuff very very short
And, you know, Apple Pay isn't even out yet.
It's not going to launch for at least another, like, month and a half.
They said October.
It's right now early September.
That might be, like, Halloween when it launches.
Or it might be November.
And they're like, oh, well, you know, we started launching it in October.
Like, they're...
that that's long enough away that the celebrity nude hack thing is going to be forgotten people have already forgotten you kidding yeah it they it's a week old and they've forgotten yeah not that we're saying that they should and it's not a big deal but reality wise like that that type of news story the cycle that it the news cycle that it's in will turn over 97 times for that i think it could still be in the back of people's minds but
You know, for Apple Pay in particular, Apple has a good story to tell customers.
The story, unfortunately, involves credit card companies and banks knowing everything they currently know.
And, you know, but as you say, well, at least Apple is not adding another party that's going to know everything because Apple is not participating in that information exchange and has no no reason to.
It doesn't base its business model around having that information or controlling it or selling or anything.
It doesn't even want it.
Everybody else still has it.
People are totally OK with that now with credit cards, it seems, except for the people who only pay for everything with cash.
So I think that'll be a non-factor, at least in Apple Pay.
All right.
Do you want to whine about the iPod Touch and or iPod Classic?
Anyone?
That's the best follow up is like we were just trying to predict like one or two episodes ago, like, oh, the iPod Classic is going to be around forever.
They're never going to kill it.
And then yesterday they killed it.
Well, no, we said they could kill it at any time when we always expect them to.
And so far they haven't, you know, but there you go.
It really is remarkable that they did kill it.
Like, of all the changes they made yesterday to everything, to their site, to their store, like, how was that a high enough priority to even be removed from the site?
It's nice and symbolic if you want to go into their whole, like, oh, the revolutionary input methods to finally retire the last... Well, I guess, does the Nano have a click wheel?
They didn't retire the last one with the click wheel, I guess.
I think it's touch, but, I mean, so was the classic.
Well, you know what I mean, like the wheel.
Anyway, it's like phasing out of the original iPod form factor.
And also all that's left now is the Nano and the Shuffle and the Touch, which isn't really an iPod.
Fair enough.
All right.
So let's talk about this Apple Watch, which, by the way, don't call it an iWatch.
That's going to be difficult.
I'll slowly train myself out of it.
Why do you think we're abandoning the eye?
Maybe it's kind of dated.
It's not so much just that it's dated.
I think it may be misguided because I understand why they're doing it.
But using generics is not a great way to do it.
It's kind of the same reason that car makers all move to the BMW Mercedes naming convention.
We've talked about this back on neutral, like, you know, so a BMW has a series of numbers and letters and Mercedes has numbers and letters as well.
Audi has, you know, a and then followed by a number or whatever.
But when Acura came into the luxury car business, which is Honda's luxury brand, they had the Acura Legend and the Acura Integra.
uh and what happened is that people would refer to their legend or their integra they wouldn't say the word acura and that's bad so the theory goes for acura brand recognition so acura changed all his its cars from the legend and the integra to a series of nonsensical letters like tl and rsx and also kind of made its car scrappier too but anyway that's another story for a different podcast um
the theory being that if you give your cars names that are just a bunch of alphabet soup or numbers people will have to say the word acura more and the word acura will be in their mind more so by calling our things the apple watch and apple pay and the apple tv it makes people say apple repeatedly or associate these products more with apple whereas if you say ipod i watch
uh there's the possibility in the mind again in the mind of marketers and maybe in reality that people don't even understand who makes the ipod is that microsoft they know ipod they know iphone they might know iwatch but to the really casual person connecting that all back to apple requires a leap of brand knowledge which may or may not be as strong as apple would like it to be now apple does have a tremendously strong brand one of the strongest brands in the entire world this is probably not a problem for them but
I can see some marketer in a meeting saying, this will really help people continue to hammer the word Apple into their mind.
Oh, you want to pay with Apple Pay instead of saying I pay?
Oh, you have an Apple Watch?
Is that your Apple TV?
The reason I think it might not be a great idea is because they're using generics.
Watch, TV, pay, mail.
I hate Apple Mail.
Every time I write an OS X review, I have to write Apple Mail because I just write mail with a capital letter.
People think I misplaced a capital letter or something.
Or am I talking about mail like the Internet as a concept?
No, I'm talking about I'm never going to write mail.app because screw file name extensions.
So I always have to say Apple Mail, right?
Using a generic Apple Watch is
Like, it would be better, like, in that respect, I think iPod, iPad and iPod is not great with the A and the O or whatever, but I think iPod and iPhone are better than a generic because you can't just say watch by itself.
You have to say Apple Watch.
uh so i think i see what they're going for but to me it feels a lot like macbook where it's like i don't like it i still think macbook is dumb i still think powerbook was a better name but in that case they were getting the mac name out there it's an imac it's in macbook you know it's a mac maybe the next uh computer will be the apple mac instead of just mac because it's not enough that you know that's that's my theory behind it the apple 15 i'm not a fan
i mean a couple things like i mean first of all apple tv did this too it was like when it was in development it was called itv in fact they even called it itv they went through the similar thing where like people were first referring to it as the itv and then when it was released it was released as the apple tv and it sounded weird oh that was the b that was the bbc or that was a bbc i don't know some one of those various things uk people you need more things to correct us on there you go
whatever whatever that itv thing that you guys have it made us not be able to call it itv right but so so there was that whereas like i think it sounds weird you know yesterday and today i think like apple tv doesn't sound weird to me anymore it sounded weird the first day i think uh we'll get over it quickly
secondly i i don't think it's quite as much about trying to boost the apple brand i think that's part of it but i i think another big part of it is fashion it is high fashion and high fashion branding as a society we're okay having phones in our pockets and taking them out occasionally having computers in our bags and taking them out when we're using them when you're wearing something
All the time, like all day, every day, you're wearing something on you.
That is jewelry.
That is an accessory.
The standards are so much higher for what people are willing to wear than what they're willing to carry in their pocket.
And...
iWatch kind of sounds geeky.
Like to me, iWatch sounds nerdy.
It's, you know, camel case itself is pretty nerdy.
And it just kind of like, that sounds nerdy to me.
Whereas Apple Watch sounds like a higher class brand name.
Even though I know it's a trick in certain ways, but it just sounds like iWatch is a geek thing and Apple Watch is a fashion thing.
They really wanted to go fashion.
They should have called it watch by Apple.
That would be like the weird thing about fashion is we talked about this before.
I think like the tolerance for being a billboard is strangely high in the fashion world because then maybe I'm still getting this wrong.
I think I got it wrong.
Another show.
I'm going to re get it wrong.
People can recorrect me.
The whole idea being that you can't copyright or otherwise protect the intellectual property of a design of something like a purse or a shoe.
but you can protect your logo because that's your trademark so they put their logos all over everything right and so now logos become part of the design because you know you have a god we need tiff to come back and tell me what you know louis vuitton bag or something with little logo all over it and that becomes like a pattern and you know it becomes the logo itself becomes fashion and so it's like apple doesn't put their logos you know there's a logo on the back of the phone but not on the front and on the apple watch i don't think was there a logo anywhere on that thing
I think on the back it has the little Apple.
But Rolex has the little Rolex symbol and the word Rolex and Louis Vuitton bags and all those other things are just covered with things like that.
And Apple does not have its logo everywhere.
They say the logo is on the back engraved.
Anyway, I said watch by Apple, but that's like... It doesn't have a name like a product...
And I think maybe it could benefit from one, especially if it's going to be like a high end watch, because all these Rolex is like it's a product name for the type of watch.
I don't know enough about high end watches to know, but like you can't just say watch by itself.
You have to say Apple watch every time.
And it's a little bit of a mouthful.
Is that your watch?
Yeah, it's an Apple watch.
You're right that I watch sounds geekier, but Apple watch just seems like.
Kind of a mouthful and kind of generic and boring.
Even Swatch is better.
Is that a Swatch?
That's a brand too, but it's just a sub-brand of some Swiss company.
You know what I mean?
I don't know.
I'm not...
I really wish I almost wish it would be cold.
iPhone like has worked out really well.
Don't you think iPhone has worked out well?
Like, granted, it is more of a geek product.
But I think because this is fashion, that's maybe a reason not to make it so geeky.
But it's geeky fashion.
I mean, we'll get to this when you talk about the thing itself.
But like, there's no escaping it.
The iPhone was a geeky kind of phone.
And eventually everybody had phone.
Everyone was totally comfortable to having their iPhone.
Sure.
Well, but also, that was seven years ago.
And so not only is that name coming from a different era, but it might even be played out.
I mean, I'm not saying the eye had to go on forever.
I'm not a great fan of the eye either.
But here's what we'll find out.
If this goes all eye-touchy,
You know, the same way everyone calls the iPod Touch the iTouch because they just like, no, Apple, we do not accept your name.
It's an iTouch forever and ever.
It's so creepy.
People could choose to just call this the iWatch.
I mean, we're doing it accidentally because we've been calling it the iWatch for a long time.
We'll probably come around because we're the kind of geeks who care about what things are named.
But just let's convene back after this watch has been out for six months and see if everybody you know still calls it an iWatch.
Or if they call it because MacBook caught on.
People said MacBook, but people did not say iPod Touch.
They say iTouch, right?
So...
Well, we'll see how this goes.
Really, it's not up to us and it's not up to Apple's marketers whether this gets pulled off.
It's up to the world at large.
And the little thing with the Apple logo and then the word and then, you know, writing it out sometimes and then having the little logo with the thing in it.
That always struck me as weird with Apple TV.
We're all used to it.
Everyone knows how they're going to do it.
You know, the rule is you just write it out the long way if you're writing about it.
But if you want to make it as like a little logo mark or whatever the word is, you put the little Apple logo and the thing next to it and the small caps for watch.
Also not a fan of that.
Well, that's that's just stylization in the in the marketing materials.
That's not the name.
I know, but it's not the strike you is weird.
Like, I can't think of I guess.
I mean, technically, Apple did it for Apple TV, but TV is always, you know, all caps are small caps, so it doesn't look as weird there.
I wouldn't put too much thought into that.
I mean, technically 5S, the S is lowercase, but we all write it uppercase.
Yeah, yeah.
It just seems like you like the naming to be like a nice, clean win.
And lately, the naming has been weird.
Not consistent with itself, and there's always some little problem.
so do you think in the next year or two that the iphone will become the apple phone no on account of because there's just too much brand equity in iphone it's a great name yeah iphone is established when are we going to give up numbers yeah that's coming sooner than that i think that the number thing like again talk about the naming stuff like ditching it for the ipad for being the new ipad because they want to stop doing but like
The time is coming for the end of iPhone numbers.
Like, I don't think they're going to go too far into double digits with the iPhone because it will just start seeming... I don't think they'll get to double digits.
I mean, because people will just lose track.
Do you have the iPhone 13 or 9 or 10?
Like, just, like, whatever.
Yeah.
See, it wouldn't surprise me if they did make it at least to 8 or 9 because the public kind of names these for them.
Remember when I blogged briefly about when the 4S came out and everyone freaked out because it wasn't the iPhone 5?
And the response was so incredibly brutal, unnecessarily and unfairly brutal because the 4S was like, quote, not the real iPhone 5 or not an iPhone 5.
And so the next year, even though the iPhone 5 was the sixth iPhone, they called it iPhone 5 because everybody was demanding iPhone 5.
And the entire world was calling it iPhone 5 before it was even announced.
And so they just adopted that because it was probably presumed to be better for overall brand recognition and blah, blah, blah.
So, you know, this year it's the iPhone 6.
Next year, I assume they're going to do a 6S.
And after that, they're probably going to do a 7.
I think they can make it easily into 7, 8, and possibly even 9.
I just feel like once you start getting to doubles, the numbers start to blur in people's minds.
It's easier for people to remember 5, 6, 7 than for them to remember 13, 14, 15.
Right, but if we keep having these S steps, we still have, like, eight more years to go.
Yeah, they've got time.
I mean, like, ditching them on the iPad has worked out, more or less.
Like, people don't care.
You know?
iPad, iPad Air...
It is, but that also came with a massive revision.
We'll see.
What are they going to call this fall's iPad?
The latest rumor is that the Retina Mini won't even be updated and there's going to be basically an iPad Air 2.
Is that going to be the name?
Is it going to be the iPad Air in parentheses late 2014?
What's it going to be?
They haven't been renaming the Mac Pro.
It's not the Mac Pro 2, the Mac Pro 3.
It will work out.
The difference, though, with these products is that phones seem to get upgraded either annually if you're impatient and spoiled, or biannually, at least in the U.S., biannually if you're a normal person.
Does that mean every other year?
Don't go into that.
Yeah, so the point is— It means both.
I think you mean fortnightly.
Yeah.
You know what I mean, though.
Fort-annually.
The thing is that these other products, like the iPad—
Generally speaking, those aren't upgraded on an annual or every couple year basis, unlike a phone.
And so I think having the numbers on the phone makes a little more sense and it will be harder to get rid of than on an iPad, which you may only upgrade every two to three years.
Yeah, we shall see.
We went off on a long tangent.
Let's talk about the watch.
I love that we are now two hours in and we haven't talked about the watch really yet.
People are going to kill us.
So when I was watching this video, I know there's going to be I was pretty sure there's going to be a watch.
They did the one more thing, which I don't get distracted on.
I think it's fine.
You know, if you're going to hold it back for something, this is what you hold it back for.
I don't really care what Steve Jobs would have thought about them using his whole ideas.
They're supposed to do what they think is right.
They thought this was right.
I thought it was fine.
This is a significant product.
And then they showed the little intro video.
Tim Cook talked about it, and he's like, and this is so important.
It's a new product category.
He didn't say it was a watch or anything like that.
He's like, and here it is.
And you see the video, and this is going to be your first glimpse of this thing.
And they show you close-ups of parts of it.
You can't tell what's what.
So they showed the sensors in the back.
And you couldn't, like, they look crazy.
Like, what the hell is this?
Some sort of alien device.
And they show you the little crown, but you don't know it's the crown yet.
And it looks really weird.
And so watching this video, I thought the little details they're showing were really cool.
I'm like, this is something unexpected.
This does not look like any watch I've seen.
And it's kind of like one of those things at the back of the, what is it like?
Yeah.
games magazine anyway one of those kids magazines where they show you an extreme close-up of something you have to guess what it is and it's hard to tell because it's really close up that's what the beginning of this video was for and when they like in the third or fourth shot when they finally show you the watch itself and it rotates into view my first impression immediate was disappointment that it looked like a smart watch that was my immediate first impression what was your guys reaction to that
Same.
I was starting to feel more and more smug about my own theory that it wouldn't look like a pebble or anything like that.
And it would be more about sensors than anything else.
And it's sort of about sensors, but I was way off base.
And I was hoping for and expecting something that looked totally different.
And I think, and you touched on this, the digital crown is
That's sort of different in that it's using something we already know, but in a very different way.
But I was surprised to see that it didn't look that wild.
However, the bands, when they showed those, I actually got surprisingly excited about those.
I thought they all looked really cool.
And it was clever the way that they have the little slide in and out in order to change them.
So what was your first gut reaction?
It rotates into view.
You finally see what it looks like.
What do you think immediately?
Not what you think now, but what did you just feel that second?
I completely agree with Casey, basically.
When I first saw it, at first, actually a few days beforehand, a few days ago, some site leaked like some CAD drawing of what turned out to be exactly right, a CAD drawing of the watch's body.
And it was like the EVT, the engineering test
drawing of something like that.
And so, when I saw that, I was disappointed.
I was like, oh man, it's just like a lumpy rectangle.
Like, I was hoping either for a round face or for a really like minimal thin kind of design.
Like, something else that didn't look like the other smartwatches.
And I think...
All of us in the tech business... I've been drafting a blog post about this that I still have to finish.
Before the iPad came out, I made this post.
Basically, we were all calling it the tablet.
I think because Gruber started calling it the tablet.
We knew there was a tablet that was very heavily removed.
We didn't know anything about it.
This was December 2009, about a month before the iPad was actually announced.
During this time...
I made a couple of posts, and one of them I was saying, like, the big problem with tablets is input.
You know, how is Apple going to solve the input problem?
And, you know, virtual keyboards are mediocre.
Physical keyboards are clunky with a tablet.
And I went through all the different things, like what they could do.
And my conclusion was basically, like,
They're probably just going to do something I haven't thought of.
And a few other people had similar thoughts and were writing about that.
And then you actually, John, I found an article by you on ours called Antacid Tablet that I'll just paste it in the chat that I'm going to link to.
And you basically said, yeah, there's a common notion that Apple is going to have to do something crazy, but they probably won't.
And they'll probably just use existing stuff that we all know about and just do it well.
And that's what happened.
And it turned out the iPad came out and they didn't invent any crazy new input mechanism.
They just did the ones we knew about well.
And it had problems.
Like, input on the iPad is challenging.
Keyboards on the iPad are still an unsolved problem.
Like, it has these shortcomings, but Apple just kind of punted.
Like, well, we don't really know.
Like, whenever people say, oh, well, they'll have to just come up with something we can't think of.
The number of times Apple has come up with something we are not thinking of is actually pretty low.
Usually they do things that people have thought of before and they just do them better.
Apple is not made of crazy gods.
They're made of people.
Chances are, if you can't think of a practical, reasonable, doable way to solve a problem, they probably can't either.
We saw a lot of that leading up to this watch thing.
where we saw tons of people we know, and ourselves even included, just saying things like, well, you can look at smartwatches that are out there, and they have a number of problems, mainly size, battery life, and display, and interaction.
And so it's very, very challenging to...
Try to figure out how to interact with a screen this small that is going to be functionally so busy, like have so many functions on it.
You can't just cover the thing in buttons.
That's weird.
You can't do much with a touchscreen because it's so small.
And if it is an LCD screen, if it is a touchscreen, then you have battery challenges.
But you already have battery challenges to begin with, and that makes it even harder.
And so you take this thing and so we were all saying, well, they're going to do something we haven't thought of yet.
They're going to solve the battery issue or the display issue.
They're going to have a weird display that wraps around the whole thing or somebody doesn't even have a display or it's probably not going to just be a square LCD like a touchscreen like everyone else has.
Then it comes out and it is what everyone else has.
It's just done better.
And so, you know, I was disappointed to see that.
I was disappointed to see, like, well, it's, you know, I've been relatively uninterested in all these smartwatches so far.
And part of this is I don't wear a watch.
I mean, I wore a watch in middle school, but I haven't worn one since then.
So, you know, so it's a bigger jump for me to go from no watch to a watch.
But...
I was disappointed that they didn't come up with some magic, but I also, like, I can't fault them for it because, like, well, I don't know what they should have done instead of this.
I think a round one would have looked better, but otherwise, it still would have been probably large.
And, like, look, I have, I printed out paper, printed out to these two, and the small one looks better on my wrist, I think.
See, I don't know.
Fashion-wise, like, are men, like, allowed to wear the small one?
I don't even know.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking, that there'd be a lot of men who would pick the small one.
regardless the small one like looking at them now it is it does look nicer on my wrist but i'm worried that i won't be able to see anything on the screen because it is noticeably smaller like i you know so that that i think will be a problem for for anybody who picks the small one that it does fit noticeably like it is substantially smaller in person and also the biggest problem with these to me is that they're just so tall they're they're thick
And that, I think, is going to be challenging fashion-wise to get around.
Now, that being said, you know, you can go back, probably you can pick some time in history and you can say, well, seeing a big phone rectangle in your pocket is unfashionable.
And these days, it doesn't matter nearly as much because everybody's carrying around phone rectangles.
And everybody who has owned any given pair of jeans for more than about two months, you can probably see a slight wear outline in the phone rectangle pocket.
You know, you can see where they keep their phone in
Um, and that's just become acceptable because we've all decided that it's worth carrying these devices around.
So, uh, maybe like to me, the Iowa, the, sorry, to me, the Apple watch, uh, it looks big and chunky, uh, to me, but I like, we might decide as a society that's worth doing.
But for now, I, similar to Casey, I saw it and I thought, you know, that's, that's bigger than I, that's bigger, thicker and more square than I would have preferred.
So I was excited to see Tim Cook echo,
very closely on stage that what I said when we talked about the iWatch on a recent not that recent show or whatever we talked about all the other existing watches and I'm like whatever Apple does all these things that these Android devices are doing uh
You can't just take a smartphone, shrink it down, and shove it on your wrist, which is what all these Android devices were doing.
And it was just like this Android Wear or even a lot of the Motorola watch.
It was like, take our existing smartphone, OS and interface,
Squish it down.
Now you have a little tiny smartphone on your wrist.
That just does not work.
It's terrible.
Can't do it.
And Tim Cook said as much on stage.
And he was talking about it in terms of the software of like, you can't just take your iPhone and shrink it down.
He was talking entirely about, you can't just take an iPhone app.
So you can't have pinched zoom.
You can't have all the same UI.
You can't have all this stuff.
So I was like, right on Tim, we agree there.
Where we differ and it gets back to my initial gut reaction to the phone is looking like a little, you know, Airstream trailer on your wrist and a little rectangle and just the whole thing is that I thought what they would go for is something that technology doesn't exist for now, but will eventually.
And that is like we knew it was going to be big.
We knew it was going to be thicker than you would think it was.
And by the way, big, thick, chunky watches, I think, have been in fashion at various times, at least for men.
So that's not even that big of a deal.
But when you have something like that, like, OK, well, it's got to be big because reasons XYZ, the screen and battery life, big, thick battery.
You can try to minimize that by making the transition between the strap and the thing be less abrupt because a thin strap that goes into the edge of your little Airstream trailer on your wrist highlights the fact that the thing is thick and the strap is thin.
again totally expected replaceable straps totally i mean even again with getting back to the naked robotic core thing like like kind of like fitbit does if you ever fit but you know they give you this little they give you an actual little naked robotic core and it shoves into the little rubberized wrist thing i'm not that i'm saying apple is going to make a rubberized fitbit type thing but the same type of idea that
The overall shape, you'd have replaceable bands, perhaps a replaceable everything.
And the only thing, the iWatch part of it would be a literal naked robotic cord that slid into this thing.
And you try to minimize the fact that it's so darn thick by tapering it somehow.
And I'm sure they investigated this or whatever.
And probably what they came up with was, look, we know how to make rounded rectangles with screens on top really well.
let the you know the iMac let the thing be true to itself it is a little tiny rounded rectangle it has a cpu in it has a screen on top it has a battery it's a little sandwich we know we're going to make it thinner as time goes on let's just stick with this design now but it just really does look like a lunchbox on your wrist and they can make it fancy all they want and they can put a comically oversized crown on it uh as a ui thing and have it be off center with a big giant button and we you know we know this will all shrink down but uh
i i was really expecting them to to uh to try to mask the fact that it's so big and instead they've essentially and and this is you know this is a totally giant move embraced it like this is the watch this is the thing it's a it's a metal thing we can make it shiny and nice and make the details nice and we'll have these straps intersected in the middle so the thickness is kind of minified because if you had the straps in the bottom the whole airstream trailer will be poking up on your wrist that's why when people put it on they say
oh, it doesn't look that thick, it's not so bad.
It's just that they are not trying to smoothly transition from the watch, let alone the crazy mock-ups that had like, oh, the whole thing is a screen, and it'll be longer until we get that or whatever, so they can revise that when they want to.
But this design is definitely...
More jarring on a macro scale than I would have liked.
But on the micro scale, it is everything you would have expected of Apple.
The UI itself and the details of it, the way the screen works, even the transition between the screen and the case and the little gentle curve and the force push on the thing.
Every other detail of it that they've done, I'm very impressed with.
They are basically showing everybody else, this is how you do a smartwatch.
You do not shrink iPhone apps down on them.
It has to be a totally new interface.
uh it has to be a companion to the phone for now we're not going to put uh people asking why the hell doesn't have a lightning port uh that i think that's obvious you don't want any place where there are contacts that you can you know a splash of water can get up inside you don't want crap to collect and bottom line lightning part takes it takes up a huge amount of space relative to the size of that watch where something has to go in it's hollow space and you have to put you know forget a lightning port was out the inductive charging is very clever like everything else about it i'm totally on board with it's just that
It's a, it's a little, uh, uh, you know, little, little lunchbox on your wrist with a very nice strap around it.
And that is, uh, I, like, like I said, when we, but I tweeted during the presentation, I want to fast forward right now to the iPhone 4S design of this.
So however many generations that is, it is going to look a lot better, like three or four years from now.
Now, now it totally looks like, I think even the first iPhone looked better.
I mean, there's obvious similarities because they're both kind of rounded lozenge type things, but, uh,
You know, it's funny.
The thing that I keep thinking about with regard to the Apple Watch, other than I don't get why I would want this.
And as I've said numerous times in the past, anytime I say that, I end up wanting it.
But the other thing I was thinking about is it looks to me to be extremely thick.
And I don't think I'd be into that.
And so I completely agree with you, John, that
I've got to assume over the next couple of years, it'll get thinner and thinner and thinner.
And that starting to sound more appealing to me.
Well, like I said, I don't know enough about watches, but I do know that I have seen some ridiculously thick, like normal watches on people.
And I think that is a fashion thing, like the various times in history.
And we may be in one of them now that comically thick watches are,
were not embarrassing, right?
That they were, you know, that it was something you wanted to have, that it was manly, that it was exciting, that it was interesting, not only thick, but huge.
Um...
Having this come in two sizes, that was the best part of the announcement.
I'm like, oh, thank God.
Because the size of this thing, it's like people have different size wrists.
You cannot put something that big.
It's not going to look good on everybody.
Having a smaller one, hopefully the battery life is reasonable on it, shows they understand there's a limit to the size of, there's basically a limit to the size of a screen you can put on your wrist and not feel ridiculous until the screens get much thinner and much, you know, like the futuristic sort of giant holoband thing that has, you know, we're not there yet, right?
So I'm glad that they have a smaller version.
But I think the thickness, I mean, I don't know.
I'm trying to think, will this be a barrier?
Other than me just saying, like, I wish they had, like, minimized it so it didn't look so bad.
I'm wondering if thickness will bother anybody who's interested in a smartwatch.
Because if you're interested at all in a smartwatch, this one's fine.
Like, it looks better than all the other smartwatches I've seen in terms of the details.
It is not any more ridiculous than the existing lunchboxes on your wrists that are out there.
uh maybe the motorola one has a little bit more panache because it's round sort of flat tirey round but i think the motorola one looks bit like looks bigger and more like i've seen women wearing the motorola what is it called 360 or something yeah that their imaginative name not as good as watch that's a name that they should come up with a name like that anyway uh that one i think it looks i mean i think they did an excellent job in their publicity shots of showing real people wearing the watch in a way that it looks normal
And I was just amazed.
I'm like, did they Photoshop that?
Is that really how the watch looks?
Because all those beautiful people wearing the watch and those shots of like, you know, joggers or the person holding a baby or say like all those people, the watches just look normal on their wrist.
And it almost made me think like that it had to be fake because they did not look like ridiculous smartwatches.
And that's what everyone says who puts it on, that they may look huge on Apple's website when it's gigantic floating Airstream trailer coming at you.
But on your wrist, it does not look as ridiculous.
I still think it looked a little ridiculous on Johnny Ive and Tim.
Like sometimes you could see the watch was so heavy that it was like rotating around their wrists, you know, from the weight of the watch was like twisting the band on their arm.
And some of the bands like that big glaring white, like the bands look really thick and chunky too.
Even, you know, I don't know.
I don't, as a fashion accessory, I think they're doing everything they can with the current technology.
Uh, but I, I was very surprised by the conventionalness of the, of the design.
Yeah, like we were all expecting something radically different from the other ones, and it really isn't that radically different from the other ones.
It's just better.
I didn't think it needed to be radically different.
I'm just like, it's a design choice.
They could make, like technology-wise, they could make the thing that I'm envisioning.
It still has replacements.
replaceable straps but like tapered so that like so they're envisioning the time when the difference between the strap and the watch will start to go away now now we know there is a huge difference between the strap and the watch and apple has chosen to embrace that difference and say we are not going to mask that difference we're not going to hide it we're going to say yes there's the strap and there's the watch and the watch is actually much thicker than the strap and there's no getting around that and we're going to own up to it and here it is as opposed to
a more tapered type solution within the same technology it's like i'm not asking for a giant curved screen that goes around the whole thing or anything crazy like that like i think you know it's just it's just the design choice and that's more of a i'm surprised by a style choice which really shouldn't have been in retrospect in terms of that's the type of style they've you know they've expressed uh
interesting before especially uh johnny i've with like the the flower imac and everything like that of letting the base be true to itself down on the ground and letting the the thing float in the air uh it's just a different direction they could have gone um and i think the rectangularness also of the screen and the like the fact that the the the crown is off center like there's a lot of there's a surprising amount of asymmetry for a johnny i've designed don't you think yeah
Yeah.
And so it's obvious to me that when you have a really big watch, that's a deliberate choice by that watch manufacturer that they want to make this large.
Because we've seen small ones and they know they exist.
Conversely, we've never seen a really tiny smartwatch or whatever we're calling these.
And the Apple Watch appears to be big because it's out of necessity.
And I think that's why it doesn't look...
innately good like a panerai or a rolex or something like that would well we've seen mock-ups of smart watches that are small like the technology doesn't exist for us to do but most of those mock-ups don't have aren't as usable as apples because the bottom line is you need some place like i've talked about it on the past shows like if you made one of those mock-ups like how the hell would you deal with the screen is it just one like
You just sweat like those ones that look like the screen curves halfway around your wrist.
How would you how would you deal with that?
Would you scroll and flick and like move like the dial as in like a physical thing that you can, you know, you know, interact with the watch and manipulate what's on the screen without covering what's on the screen in a secure way where you're not going to accidentally start rotating the watch around your wrist or anything like that.
That is an important feature like those are problems that they're solving.
not in like ways that no one could have thought of because as many people want it, like the Blackberry had the various dials and the little balls and stuff like that.
Like this is well-trod territory for small devices of how you interact with them without touching the screen.
Uh, but Apple is the, is the first one to just, I think what's on the screen is just as important.
Like,
The interface they're choosing to do there, the sort of minimal interface, it doesn't look like anything like an iPhone interface.
It's entirely new UI with entirely new controls and entirely new way of interacting with it and all that stuff.
That is where it's obvious.
That and the physical design of the little dial and everything is where Apple has spent all its time.
Because someone, ABC News reporter asked them in one of these exclusive interviews, like...
it's so hard making something when, that a lot of people are going to have to use, but people don't get to use it until you make it.
I'm like, you dummy.
Like they've been using this thing in Apple for like, God knows how many years.
That's all they do is use it.
It's just using it and use it like crazy.
They seriously, you know, how many prototypes are sitting there?
Yeah.
Like that's all they do is use them.
They they're not guessing that this dial situation is going to work out.
They've used it for like a year, two years.
God knows how long.
And they threw away all the ones that didn't work.
And this is the best one they can.
You know, so I have faith that they have made good decisions about this because it's not like they rush this out to brush this out to get into the smartphone market like some other smart watch market like some other companies.
I do have one concern about the, well, I have a number of concerns, but one of my concerns was just me personally using it.
You know, until this point, if I'm walking down the street or if I'm sitting in the subway or if I'm otherwise in public, you can't know what technology I own unless I have it out.
this is always out uh i don't know about that i think you have a we can't know what kind of technology you own black t-shirt jeans you're not as stealth as you think you are right down to the rectangle worn into your pants pockets that's true well and the bmw m5 that you just got out of
Even that, I get that in black, so it's less conspicuous.
Oh, yeah.
It's totally less conspicuous.
You're right.
It's a very inconspicuous car with its ridiculously huge wheels.
An enormous mouth.
And yeah, you're totally right, Marco.
And additionally, how often do you go walking down the street in Manhattan just whistling and looking about?
When I'm walking around my home next to Wayne Manor.
Yeah.
yeah all right well no but so so my concern my concern is partially like you know being mugged and partially being obnoxious like it will wear i mean and i'm sure in time this will probably become less of an issue just like how you know like like i remember when i when i first got um my first disc man the my first portable cd player um my mom advised me not to like show it out anytime because people would get mugged for their disc men
uh same problem with any you know every portable electronics thing that became popular and that thieves started learning was valuable um you know the new york city subway for years was advising people not to use the stock apple white earbuds because that was that was a clear signal to anyone around you that you had an expensive apple device in your pocket um and and and they were telling you like you know leave it in your pocket don't take it out
And so I think this is going to have similar issues as that, where this is going to telegraph to everybody.
Not only do I have an iPhone in my pocket, because this only works with iPhones, but this thing itself is expensive and possibly made of gold and other things.
And it's always out there.
I mean, you can wear long sleeves maybe, but otherwise, for the most part, this is always going to be there.
And so it both screams mug me, and it also screams...
i'm i'm a nerd at first and and you know maybe over time that will get less so i hope it does and i'm sure apple hopes it does it totally well remember what it was like to use a smartphone in public when when the iphone oh you have an iphone now nobody cares you have an iphone i mean except for muggers but like whatever don't
Worrying about being robbed is kind of silly because, you know, whatever.
You have nice things.
People are going to want to steal them.
Robbery rates have been going down for years.
You'll be okay.
The embarrassment just among your peers of, like, being that guy.
Like, even, like, think of the first person to use a Bluetooth, one of those, you know, Bluetooth headphone things.
Talking to the cell phone, it looks like you're talking to yourself.
People got over that, and that still amazes me.
I think people will get over the watch if they sell a lot of them.
You just got to sell a lot of them.
Now, the weird part, and I tweeted this as well during the thing of, like,
oh apple watch starts at 350 sorry 349 dollars and i said that's great that's where apple watch starts where does apple watch end that's a good question and people were people were continuing to talk as soon as i put that price up i asked that question on twitter and today people are still talking about it so what do you guys think where what is the if you bought the most expensive apple watch how much would it cost you
So we're talking about the edition edition.
Well, you assume that's going to be the most expensive.
But anyway, what's the number?
It starts at $350.
Where does it stop?
I have a hard time seeing them going above a thousand for the watch itself.
I mean, we'll see what the band, you know, some of the bands will be premium.
Some of them will be more pedestrianly priced.
I'm guessing if you get the edition edition and get like some kind of reasonable band for it, I'm guessing you're spending over a thousand, but not by a whole lot.
Oh, that's the question.
We don't even know if the band is separate.
Like when they said it starts at $349, I assume that gets you a watch and a band.
Right?
I would bet not, but we'll see.
Or maybe it gets you the really crappy nylon band or whatever, and then to get anything good, you've got to spend another $100 or whatever on the band.
Who knows?
We'll see.
It would not surprise me to see the gold ones cross $1,000, but it would surprise me to see them go very far past it.
Casey?
I think with watch and band together, you're going to look at between $1,000 and $2,000 for anything that Apple offers.
For the top end one, you mean?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, we're not talking about aftermarket.
Obviously, someone's going to buy this, put diamond diamonds all over and do silly things like that.
So on Twitter, Dr. Wave was asking if it was going to be over a thousand.
I said, got to be definitely over a thousand.
That's a gimme.
The question is how far above a thousand.
The thing I don't know about is
What kind of I don't know how much like just the cost of the gold on the gold ones is like I don't do the math to figure out like the plating and all the other stuff like just just getting down to brass tacks of like, what are the parts here?
Because once you start using precious metals, like even before you consider markup, there's some minimum amount that it's going to go.
So I really have no idea on that, but I say definitely over a thousand.
2000, I think if you bought the best watch in all the bands, you could break 2000.
But one watch in one band, I do not expect it to be over 2000.
But I fully admit that I have no idea how much jewelry costs or gold costs or anything about that.
And here's the thing.
Here's what it gets down to, though.
It's like...
Luxury items like jewelry or not just jewelry, but like, you know, fancy watches are not priced based on the materials put into them.
That's like when you pay 30 grand for a watch, there's not 30 grand worth of material or labor in that, right?
The price is wholly disconnected from the parts, the labor or any other part of it.
It is just...
It's just the price has to do with... I mean, even Ferraris have a closer connection between the parts, the labor, and the price of them because they use expensive exotic materials and a lot of labor to put them together.
There is a closer connection between that, but the watch is just totally nonsensical.
I mean, anything with fashion, like that dress does not cost, you know, $20,000.
It just doesn't, period, right?
You're paying for something else, and I do not feel like Apple...
is going to price any of its products, nor has it really ever priced any of its product that disconnected from the parts and labor that go into it.
They're going to have big margins.
Sometimes the margins are ridiculous, like they were on the 20th anniversary Mac or even the Mac 2 FX, which was like like 13 grand in today's money or something like that.
But maybe it's like, you know, what is the basically put another way?
What is the margin that Apple would feel too embarrassed to put on its product?
200% markup, 500, 1000?
I don't think they're going to go much over $2,000 if really they could sell the watch at $1,000 or $1,500 and have the best margins of any product they ever sold for sure, but not the kind of margins like on a $50,000 Rolex.
I just don't see that.
Yeah, I mean, I think the addition, like the gold, that could be crazy.
But okay, so we already know the starting point, 350.
Even if we assume that's for only the small one and with no band included, I'm guessing most people who own this thing probably aren't going over a total of 500 or 600.
I'm guessing most of the ones that actually get sold are going to be in that $500 total range of watch plus band.
Most people are probably not going to have multiple bands or multiple watches.
And this is the kind of thing I would expect that you don't replace as often as you replace a phone or even an iPad.
I think the average selling price might be similar to the phone price.
Not the phone that people pay price, but like the real price.
What is the iPhone 5S?
It's like $600, $700 to Apple when they sell one of those?
Yeah, it's $650, yeah.
Yeah.
That seems about right for which is crazy to think about.
It's like, oh, the watch is going to be cheaper.
Like, it seems like another product that revenue wise, if they sold as many of them as they sell phones, could have a similar impact because that's for the first generation, kind of like how the first iPhones had that ridiculous price and then came down or whatever.
But I think you could be right about that.
So one thing I'm curious about is, will there be different capacities?
What do you mean capacities?
Yeah, so let's talk about the software side of this, because I think that's very interesting.
Yeah, because was it Kevin Lynch who did the demo?
Did I get the name right?
Yep.
Adobe guy.
He said, what is that guy from Adobe working on?
Now you know.
He had said, and I tried to get a verbatim quote, but it may not be perfect.
The music that's stored right here on your Apple Watch...
When he was talking about playing music, which implies to me that there is some amount of traditional style, you know, flash capacity.
And then that makes me wonder, will there be like the iPhone and like the iPad, different tiers of capacities?
Yeah.
So the iPhone doesn't tell you how much RAM it's in.
The iWatch doesn't tell you how much flash.
The flash storage is adequate.
What car maker is that?
That's Rolls, isn't it?
There you go.
Even I knew that one.
Finally, a reference all three of us knew.
Everyone gets it and no one in the audience got it.
Nope, not at all.
Of course.
No, I think we're going to learn more about this over the coming months.
Presumably, they're going to launch an SDK, I would guess, probably January.
Based on what they've said, the way they describe how the software works, some of the little wording they've used here and there in the keynote that I've heard back and everything else,
I think the most likely arrangement here is that the apps mostly run on the phone and the apps that run on the watch are extensions of phone apps.
They're like the iOS 8 extensions.
Yeah, that's just a packaging detail.
Like the bottom line is you're transferring binaries to the watch by way of the phone, by way of the app store in a bundle.
They get on there.
They have to be stored somewhere.
Right.
And if you want to like add or delete apps, you probably do that from the phone.
You know, it's probably just like every other iOS 8 extension.
Quick aside, what did you think of the quote unquote springboard?
I loved it.
I thought it was great.
It seems to me to be not too easy to use insofar as all those tap targets looked really small.
Well, that's why you got the little zoomy thing.
digital crown do again i highly recommend doing the paper printout because when you see this even on the biggest even on the big screen one quote big it is such a small area i i think it's going to be challenging and i think it's the kind of thing where we're not going to know how easy or hard it is until we actually try to use one because it's going to be very hard to predict but that's why they do the magnifying effect like the whole i like first of all i just i like the aesthetic
I used to ask that as the little circles nestled into each other, but they're nestled into each other.
And the little ones that are in the outer gaps magnify when they come towards the middle.
So it's kind of like they're trying to give you big touch targets near the center of the thing.
And then you just sort of slide around until what you want to tap is near the center.
And then that is at the maximum size.
And yeah, it does look small, but you can use them in.
But like I think most that well, they're also trying to give you shortcuts to things you commonly do.
Side button gives you the people's faces replying or, you know, if something comes in a notification, you've got the dial to pick what you want to do with it.
Any sort of dialogue, if you want to call them, that is three giant buttons to take up a third of the screen each.
So I don't think people are going to spend a lot of time trying to hunt and peck little dots on that home screen.
i think obviously these are these are extensions they i'm sure they've run natively on the watch like it's probably like you know binary compiled for the watch but it's using the extension mechanism to communicate back with the phone well it's not the extension mechanism is just a matter of packaging communicating back to the phone that's the that's the question like because there's the shared data containers and everything there's there's some weirdness going on there but well they can't have a shared data container when they're running on a different device right so right so how do they communicate
All right.
So, yeah, that's the question.
I don't think you can do a handoff style open a stream between the things.
I think the phone has to be an island in the same way that the entire iPhone used to be an island where it's like you don't get to do anything in the background.
If you want to do anything with push notifications, there's one push notification service and we will dole out your things to you.
And that's not even like it.
It's going to be incredible isolation, like the number, the number of interactions with the phone, what initiates them and how long they last.
I expect to be severely constrained.
So, yeah, because battery life is going to be brutal.
So they cannot have like, oh, it's just like handoff.
You can just open up a screen and have an NS stream between these two things and just talk.
You'll destroy the watch's battery that way.
So I expect some kind of regimented, structured way that this is the straw through which you have to sip.
This is how many times you get to sip.
To communicate with the phone, and then it will gradually open up just like, you know, background tasks and everything have on the main devices.
Yeah.
Something I was wondering about as well is I could swear during the presentation there was a lot of talk of communicating via your phone's Wi-Fi, and maybe that was –
Maybe I'm misconstruing that, but I wonder if – I don't remember the term, but the thing on a Mac or on a phone where you have two simultaneous connections going, one to the quote-unquote house Wi-Fi and one for like airdrop, perhaps the watch will use that for doing a burst data transfer process.
for bigger things, like for example, if it's uploading a binary or something like that.
I mean, I would presume it uses Bluetooth low energy as much as possible, but perhaps does this like AirPlay-esque sort of dual Wi-Fi thing to transfer anything big.
Oh yeah, because I fully expect that the watch will only be communicating with your phone.
It will not be communicating with your house's Wi-Fi, even though the watch may be Wi-Fi capable in terms of like radio frequencies and stuff, that it would totally do AirDrop style ad hoc to your phone.
And only then when it needs that bandwidth and it can't get by with Bluetooth.
Sam the Geek just said Wi-Fi is confirmed.
I'd love to... Is there... Do we have a source on that?
Oh, I guess Apple PR is saying it has Wi-Fi?
I would... I said, bringing back to the last show where we talked about the little SD card or the iFi that goes into your camera and has, you know...
It draws all its power from your SD card slot and yet it has Wi-Fi and it talks to your computer and everything like that.
I think they can get away with it, especially since I don't think... They're not going to give us a number for talk time.
Even though the watch has a microphone, they don't expect you to be going on three-hour phone calls.
Just because it's probably awkward to hold your wrist up.
They expect you to...
fire off responses to texts, send messages to people, do quick calls like that.
I don't think they expect it to be sustained streaming audio and certainly not video at this point.
There's not even a camera on the watch, although you can go in the other direction.
But all of those things are not going to be good for battery.
And so it seems like the whole idea with the watch is...
You know, sort of on the go, pick up things, looking at notifications, doing small things.
And I think that's necessary for battery life.
And I guess we'll see for convenience.
Like, does it feel weird to hold your wrist up?
Can you actually sustain a long conversation by talking into your wrist?
Or does that just never feel right?
Yeah.
Also, red time follow up.
It does indeed confirmed have Wi-Fi only BG, which is interesting, but it does have Wi-Fi according to the Apple press release.
Yeah, you wouldn't think it would need AC because it's only got the rumor for the storage is like eight gig or something.
I saw that go by in the chat room.
That's the interesting.
So that S1 thing, which is what a great, you know, we've got a bunch of stuff in here.
It's all encased in the thing for water resistance.
We're just going to call the whole thing S1.
We have no idea what's in there, but you would assume it.
First of all, we all assume it's an ARM chip, even though they didn't say.
Right.
is it like an old apple sort of like we took the cpu core from the a4 and did it at 20 nanometers and put like the thing that impressed me most about little demos is that there's obviously a powerful enough gpu in there to do those particle effects and to do them in a way that's energy efficient because like when you draw those little doodles they wipe away with the particle effect like that's all open gl stuff or not open gl is probably metal right
silly but anyway same thing like those flourishes mean they feel like that is okay to do power wise which means that it's it doesn't just have a reasonable cpu in there but it's got a gpu that meets some minimum standard granted the screen is super tiny it doesn't need to push a lot of pixels um
But that makes me really wonder what is inside that S1.
If it's like a cut down GPU for an iPhone 4 and a cut down CPU made it a smaller process.
This is an entirely new chip that has nothing to do with any Apple A whatever chip that has ever been made.
I'm really curious about the architectural details of what they could shove into a watch.
I think it's also worth thinking about like, you know, how, how does that like, you know, the, the, the flash guy mentioned, um, about, you know, you can play music directly stored on it.
How much does it work without an iPhone?
So I'm guessing one of the reasons it has wifi is because that way it can work with handoff properly within your house.
Like if it, if it only has Bluetooth, that means if your phone is more than, you know, 15, 20 feet away, um, in most places, it loses the connection.
So if your phone is like in your bag and you're up walking around your house somewhere or your office somewhere and your phone's back at your desk, you know, that's going to be a problem.
Well, but you can hand off to your Mac, I would imagine.
You come up to your Mac with the thing.
And handoff works as a combination of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
So that's why I'm guessing that's why handoff or that's why Wi-Fi is there.
So and also like, what do you think?
Like, I'm guessing that if you are totally gone from your iPhone, let's say you go out on a jog around your neighborhood, you leave your iPhone at home, you leave the watch on, right?
That's obviously a situation they're considering because they're focusing so much on fitness stuff.
And I'm sure they know that not everybody brings their iPhone on a jog.
So...
I'm guessing it can work in a limited mode, totally disconnected.
And it can probably, it probably works like an iPod, where it can probably play a limited amount of music, whatever it has stored on it.
That's why it can store music on it, is for exercise reasons.
And, you know, as you're out, you can, it basically becomes an iPod Nano with a watch.
Yeah.
And then and although there's no headphone port, so you're only doing Bluetooth headphones, which is going to kill the battery.
But that's another story.
But like that's that's what I'm guessing.
I'm guessing third party apps probably can't do anything in that mode or very little.
But they can do something.
I mean, what what can they what would they even want to do?
Because if you don't have any communications of the outside world.
Maybe you could provide visualizations of information being picked up by the image or whatever the little, you know, something like something fitness related to make a better like lap counter, like all the type of things that you might want to watch to do when you're on a run or something or walking or even just like a compass app can't do GPS because.
doesn't have i don't think you can do it doesn't do we know it has gps i assume it doesn't just for power reasons they said they said in the keynote um it said something like that it can use the gps from your iphone which i'm pretty sure is pretty clearly saying it does not have its own gps
Yeah, we're going to have to wait many more years before they can jam more crap into here.
But I assume, you know, if we go five years in the future, this thing might actually have GPS.
It might actually have a camera.
It might be thinner.
Like we just got to wait for technology to catch up for them to stick more of this stuff in there.
But for now, this is definitely.
you know, and they snuck it in early in the keynote and then emphasized it more later.
This needs to go with your iPhone, which I think is fine for this product in the beginning because who's going to buy a really expensive fancy smartwatch?
They probably already have an iPhone anyway.
Well, and that's the thing.
Like, if this does take off as a fashion item,
that's going to drive iPhone sales.
Because there's going to be some people out there who have an Android phone who see this and want this.
Yeah, until and unless there can be an Android equivalent to this.
I know there's tons of Android smartwatches or whatever, but I don't think any of them have been executed fashion-wise to the caliber that this thing appears to be.
So if someone wants it as a fashion accessory, they don't actually have a good Android-based alternative that I think lives up to the fashion standard set by this phone in terms of fit and finish.
And probably cachet because of the popularity of it and everything.
And I think also it would probably be unlikely to see something like this from the Android camp anytime soon.
Well, I'm sure we'll have some sort of awful knockoff really quickly.
Well, no, I'm saying it's unlikely that we're going to see anyone else besides Apple make one that is this desirable and cool in the fashion sense.
like most people are not going to be like oh i can't wait to get my you know to wrap one of the new motorola whatever is around my wrist well samsung will make one looks that looks exactly identical so there's that going for one thing also like we if you've if you've been reading some of the tweets from from people who know more about manufacturing than we do
some of the really basic traits of this are just really hard to manufacture.
Like Apple can do it because they are so advanced in that field.
They have such advanced manufacturing techniques and so much power and margin to use them.
Um, whereas not everybody has that.
And like,
Somebody was saying, like, even just like the design of the crown, it requires some insane lathe to make, you know, the little things and make everything right.
And even like the design of like the latches that latch onto the band and how like even those are hard to make in that specific shape and with that kind of precision and everything.
Regular people don't make those distinctions, though.
The Samsung phones are not made to the same fit and finish that Apple phones are, but most people don't notice.
That's true.
High-end watch nerds certainly will, but I really don't know how this watch will be reacted to by a high-end watch nerd.
Yes, I haven't read that article that's been going around today about the high-end watch nerd talking about the Apple Watch.
I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
We'll put it in the show notes so you guys can read it maybe before I do.
All right.
So we should probably try to wrap this sometime before Friday.
One of the things I wanted to quickly touch on is the kind of interactive – and what are they – oh, intimate was the word they used, which I don't know about that.
But the interactive bits that you can do with the watch.
So when you can like draw little doodles and you can do the heartbeat thing, which I –
I think that's more creepy than not, but I'm not really sure.
But what I just noticed, which I don't recall them saying during the keynote, is that this is a full-on Dick Tracy watch because it has a walkie-talkie on it.
And I'm reading from Apple's website.
For a fun alternative to a phone call, use the built-in speaker and microphone to trade spur-of-the-moment sound bites with friends.
I wonder if it really is a walkie-talkie, like again, getting back to Marco saying, no phone, take all the phones out, two people with iWatches, can they walkie-talkie with Apple Watches, sorry, can they walkie-talkie to each other?
I can't imagine that being the case.
Because it could do ad hoc Wi-Fi between the watches or something.
Would it work as well as AirDrop?
Yeah.
AirDrop's not that bad these days.
Anyway, that was the throwing stuff against the wall part of the keynote.
They're like, oh, and it does this and it does that.
And who knows?
Maybe these things will be useful.
We'll have to just try it to see.
Is there usefulness hampered by the fact that they have to be tied to the phone?
And if I had the phone, why would I just use it to text the person?
Because you're not doing text input on the watch and everything.
So we'll see.
Here's a really basic question.
This thing is supposedly slightly water resistant, right?
Yep.
I mean, I would assume a mass market watch has to be somewhat water resistant.
So if you're washing the dishes and it gets splashed.
It's splash resistant, but it cannot immerse it.
The charging thing on the back and the general sealed nature of this thing looks like it is
right where you would expect a fancy watch to be in that it's like, okay, it's not a waterproof watch, but we'll do our best to keep water out of the thing.
To go back to the experience, the digital crown seemed like a clever idea to solve this problem, which we talked about a little bit earlier.
What didn't
makes sense to me having never touched one was why is the home button pressing the crown it seemed to me to be much more logical that pressing the crown is like okay and pressing that big huge button below the crown is the home button this is like mutant rotation lock all over again i'm sure the apple canon will change its nine like the thing that baffles me as much about the digital crown is like that would have been the logical place to try to cram touch id but i guess it's too small like there's no touch id on this thing
Well, but it's never leaving your person ever, in theory.
I know, but, like, if you're going to pay with it, like, when you pay with the phone, you have to touch ID authenticate, but when you pay with the watch, you don't?
I don't... Yes, somebody was saying how, like, it'll use the skin sensor on the bottom to, like, see if it still attacks to you or whatever, but that sounds... That might change, we'll see.
Yeah, that could be... We don't know how that authentication works, and, yeah.
It's kind of like they could take it off your wrist if they could replace the little...
I was going to do an Indiana Jones reference, but anyway.
I've seen those movies.
You know when he replaces the idol with the sandbag?
Yes.
You've got to take the watch off the wrist, but you have to make it think it's still up against skin or whatever.
I thought it was interesting, too.
Casey, I think your point is very valid about how I think clicking the wheel should be okay.
I think they only have two buttons on this watch.
Obviously, this is at an extreme premium, similar to the iPhone.
There's only two buttons.
I think it's interesting that the second button, rather than being home, the second button is, like, bring up your list of friends.
Like, it shows you where their focus is.
Their focus is on making this a very social device, as opposed to show me more notifications or, you know, go launch threes.
Like, this is very much, like, this is meant to be a very social device.
And honestly, one part I thought was a little bit weird is, like,
I'm probably only going to have my wife on that list.
First of all, like, I don't think I want to see anyone else's heartbeat.
You leave a solitary life, but other people who are going amongst, like, I think, think of a teenager who's got all their friends are going to be on there, right?
If you have teenagers, rich teenagers, fine.
yeah right you know like their friends are going to hate them for having an eye watch and it's interesting it's interesting with the social aspects of it because i agree that's something you want to use it for but there's no text input and so that's why they have like the animated emoji and the little drawings they want you to use this thing to sort of quickly communicate with people with the tapping and all that other stuff they want you to use it for that but they know how much people love texting it's like well you can't text on this we're not going to throw up a little keyboard you can you can probably do you can do dictation you can talk to siri
but what can you do without doing any of that stuff?
Well, you can draw little pictures, which I think is clever.
You can do the little tapping.
The little animated emoji is like fun.
Like they're trying to say, we want you to communicate in ways other than typing to each other.
And thus far, the world has said we want to text each other like crazy.
So this will be an interesting challenge to see if they can convince the world to use these alternate means of communication for more than just, hey, I just got an iWatch.
Let's play with all these novelty things and then get bored of it.
You know, the first thing I thought of when I saw the, like, tap feature, so you can just, like, tap on it and, you know, you can do it many times in a row or just once, immediately I thought of Journey and, you know, inventing your own little language.
I thought you were going to say the Yo app.
I tweeted the Apple Watch with the Yo app built in because that's basically like it is.
Like, you want to...
What does tapping do?
Like, you just want to get someone's attention, like, hey, hey, and a little tap on their wrist, right?
And the journey thing is like communicating with glyphs.
A lot of people said that, but the key of the glyphs and journey is that you don't get to pick what yours is.
Whereas with the little drawing pictures and making little, you know, language within each other, as many, many people, including me, tweeted, this is an opportunity for them to let a million rudimentary drawings of penises bloom.
Because that's all people are going to draw on this thing, is send each other little tiny...
terrible phalluses that they drew with their finger on their phone naturally on their watch i wonder maybe we can bring back uh graffiti oh that's interesting yeah they didn't bring that up but it's got like i they just totally did not want you to do text input on this thing like unless you're talking to siri like that's it they do not want you to draw letters they don't want you to type letters like how would you feel about manipulating a little 3d happy face and sending that to somebody does that make you feel good
How about a hand that you can pose in different positions?
No, it won't make a middle finger.
Maybe a third-party app will do that for you.
Which, by the way, I did see somebody with a square or rectangular-shaped Android watch just a few weeks ago trying to type out a text message on it, and it looked absolutely ridiculous.
No, it's not good.
All right, anything else on the watch?
I think we should save for next week questions such as why, which is a good question, I think.
I agree.
It has been foretold.
That's why.
Yeah.
So it is written, so let it be.
I mangled that quote.
Does anyone know that quote?
You two don't know it.
Forget it.
You knew that before you even asked.
All right.
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week.
They probably didn't even listen to the whole thing.
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week.
Hover.
Warby Parker and Squarespace.
And we will see you next week.
Now the show is over.
They didn't even mean to begin.
Cause it was accidental.
Oh, it was accidental.
John didn't do any research.
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Cause it was accidental.
Oh, it was accidental.
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M-E-N-T-M
i think people who listen to this will be disappointed that you didn't try to make me feel bad about not going but i think you both correctly understood that nothing that happened during this event changes any of the things that went into me not going although i will say when when that stream kept cutting out on tv we were like we were like i bet syracuse was kicking him kicking himself now
oh we didn't have to say anything because the internet was attacking you and it was wonderful yeah i know but like but see first of all like i said i didn't i always had one stream that was working sometimes it was an sd which was kind of disappointing but it totally evened out by the time the watch got there so the streaming wasn't fine but like none of that makes up and i can tell you that what did i feel after the event was over relief that i didn't now have to fly home
You could have had the hands-on area.
You could have told us more about the watch.
I am totally not disappointed.
I'm not disappointed they didn't get to see U2.
I don't really care.
It's just everything.
I'm disappointed they didn't get to see my friends who went to the thing, but I totally do not regret my decision I made the right one.
There's pretty much almost nothing they could have done.
Here's what they could have done.
If they gave everyone in the audience a Mac Pro, I would have regretted not going on.
HFS+.
dead.
No, I would not have regretted not being there for that.
It's like, unless there's something I could have gotten by being there, whether it's an experience or an actual thing or something like that, and looking at the iWatches, I guess it's like the fifth time I've said it.
Sorry, guys.
Looking at the Apple Watches and everything, I'll see them eventually.
This is exactly what I thought the event was going to be.
New iPhones and the watch and I guess the payment stuff.
It's fine.
The best thing was when U2 comes out, because don't you like U2 a lot?
Yeah, but not like, I mean, you're going to say only their earlier stuff.
Like, yeah, I used I used to follow them a lot more than I do.
Now they're kind of an aging band.
The musical style they've been doing lately is not particularly to my tastes in their in the grand scheme of things.
I was glad I got the album for free.
I mean, I probably would have bought that album anyway.
I still buy the albums when they come out.
I think you were better off.
Anybody who likes U2, when they first started playing, I was like, oh man, Syracuse is going to hate that he missed this.
Then after they played and they were still on stage and Tim Cook comes back out and does that horribly awkward skit with them.
Oh, it was so bad.
I think anybody who likes either U2 or Tim Cook or Apple or anything good in the world is better off not having seen that.
I think Bono did pretty well considering this is not his job.
Like, he doesn't know how to come up and, like, because they have to say, we're going to do this thing.
And, like, you know, Tim Cook was more embarrassing because, like, he seemed a little silly and starstruck and red-faced and flustered.
And it's like...
Well, the finger touch was just the icing on the awkward cake.
When I rewatched the thing, I did not watch that part again because it's a little bit too painful.
And everyone who was there said U2 was way too loud.
So we actually got a better experience of that not being there either.
I didn't like that song they played, though.
Yeah, I think I'm going to treat it like most Apple events where they have a closing band where the music is the end of the event.
That's it.
Usually when the musical guest starts playing, all the live blogs stop and they say, all right, that's it.
We'll see you later.
Nothing's going to happen after this.
If you two... Well, even then, I was going to say, if you two was in the press area afterwards mingling and I could have hung out with them, but really, that's not going to happen either.
If you could... If you saw, you know, The Edge...
you said that like you said that like butthead butthead yeah what what what would you what would you ask in a setting like that like do you have like a prepared questions you can't like in a set in a setting like that you can't like people just like you know they'd have to come over for a nice dinner we would chat