Entering the iTouch Phase of My Life
Marco:
We apparently just missed an Amazon announcement.
Marco:
Let's see.
Marco:
What?
Marco:
Amazon just released another tablet.
Marco:
I thought it was another Kindle.
John:
No, I've got to look it up.
Marco:
Yeah, whatever.
Marco:
Do we actually give it... No, it doesn't.
Marco:
I mean, how... You know, if you look at the impact that the Kindle Fire in general, the tablet line, I mean, not the stupid phone, if you look at the impact that the Kindle Fire tablets have had on the tablet market as a whole,
Marco:
i think almost everybody would be able to look at it and say that's not nearly as big of a deal as we thought it was when it was released i think we all said uh you know oh this is gonna you know this this tab was so cheap it's they're gonna get a huge market share it's gonna be a big deal and you know i from what we can tell it seems like it sells okay uh but it's not really setting the world on fire or anything like
Marco:
it isn't the only cheap android tablet anymore and it was never the best cheap android tablets and so it was you know it ended up not really mattering that much like there's tons of cheap android tablets out there many of them cheaper than this amazon software has always been mediocre at best so yeah it just it just never seems to matter as much as we think it will
Casey:
You know, this these devices must be awesome because the sub headline or whatever you call this is inexpensive may not have to be garbage, could be garbage, but may not like that's not.
Casey:
Well, these are the best Amazon Kindle Fire tablets ever.
Casey:
It's inexpensive, may not have to be garbage.
Casey:
So let's start with talking about quad 27-inch retina displays.
John:
Again?
John:
This is awesome.
John:
I love this.
John:
I'm so excited.
John:
There should be a link there, I guess, back to the same thing.
John:
But no, it's because last week, when Marco talked about it, he mentioned that...
John:
The only Mac that's for sale that this could conceivably work with is the Mac Pro because it's the only one with two Thunderbolt buses.
John:
And everybody heard two Thunderbolt buses as two Thunderbolt ports.
John:
And then we got all the email from everyone telling us all the other Macs that have two Thunderbolt ports on them.
John:
Ports are not the same thing as buses.
John:
There's a limited amount of bandwidth per bus.
John:
And even though you may have two ports, if they all lead to the same bus, it's not like you get twice the bandwidth.
John:
uh two buses like the mac pro has it's only two is it three maybe it's three it has three yeah anyway uh the mac pro has a whole bunch of thunderbolt buses and there's a diagram showing you all there's like six ports on the back or something uh yeah and then and it also connects the htmi port and and it's
Marco:
The reason why it can have three is not because like they spent an extra 30 bucks on the ports on the motherboard.
Marco:
It's because Thunderbolt basically connects directly to the CPU.
Marco:
And so the CPU has to support this and it has to have a certain number of PCI Express lanes running to it.
Marco:
All these like these bandwidth limited things that run to the CPUs.
Marco:
And the reason why the Mac Pro uses Xeon CPUs, well, one of the many reasons it uses Xeons, is because the Xeon E5 series, which it uses, has tons more PCI Express lanes that run directly to the CPU.
Marco:
And so they can do things like...
Marco:
have two GPUs that can talk to each other at extremely high bandwidth and also have enough PCI Express lanes so that they can run three individual Thunderbolt buses for the most part purely to the CPU.
Marco:
There's a little bit of a trick there with the switch, but yeah, look at it in a text review.
Marco:
Anyway, Intel's consumer CPU line, which is what every other Mac uses...
Marco:
never has enough ports for this i mean maybe in the future they might add this but it's very unlikely not ports buses buses right right so it so the like it isn't it isn't only that that the mac pro is the only one that can do this but that like it's not like next year there's going to be a macbook pro that can do this like it's it's probably going to be not until thunderbolt 3 and thunderbolt 3 is arriving with the uh sky lake something lake sky lake
Marco:
Yeah, the codename after whatever comes after broadband, I believe it's called Skylake or it's something like when that arrives, then you'll then the consumer CPUs will be able to have enough bandwidth to run these kind of displays over one cable into one bus.
Marco:
But that is still probably at least a year and a half off where that can even start to become a thing.
John:
So like I was saying, we should put in the show notes the diagram on the back of a Mac Pro, which tells you which of those six ports is connected to bus number one, which is connected to bus number two.
John:
And so it's not as straightforward as like the ones on the left or on one bus and the one on the right or another.
John:
It's this weird pattern.
John:
But anyway, that's that's why the Mac Pro would be the only option for this.
John:
Now, DisplayPort 1.3 was announced, and I think you posted about that as well, Marco.
John:
How does that factor into this?
Marco:
Thunderbolt 3 has enough bandwidth to run one of these.
Marco:
So Thunderbolt 2, basically what you need is, depending on whether you can trick it into running at 24 bit or whether you keep sending 32 bit like most display interfaces do because it's easier, you need either 21 gigabits per second or 28 gigabits per second.
Marco:
the current thunderbolt 2 limit is 20 so neither of those will fit no matter how you do it as long as it's 60 hertz you still can't do it and anything lower than 60 hertz sucks so that's no good thunderbolt 3 i think raises it up to 30 or something it raises it high enough it raises it higher than the than the 28 so it can it can then handle this
Marco:
What I expect to happen here, I expect that we have a very good chance of seeing a Retina iMac this year.
Marco:
Because an iMac, you know, when you have a built-in display, whether it's a laptop or an iMac-style computer, those displays don't connect over internal Thunderbolt cables.
Marco:
They connect over a different bus.
Marco:
I know it used to be like the LVDS thing.
Marco:
Do you know, John, is that kind of stuff still used?
John:
I have no idea how the display in an iMac is connected, but...
John:
Other than the fact that it's not a Thunderbolt cable that's connecting it from one place to another.
Marco:
So in a laptop or in an iMac, you can avoid these issues with the way their displays are interfaced to their video cards.
Marco:
It's more of like a direct connection.
Marco:
And I guess, Casey, you don't know either.
Marco:
Do you?
Casey:
No, not off the top of my head.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
So none of us know exactly how this works, but I know that it's roughly that these things use their own kind of like internal signaling mechanisms that don't have the same limitations as these external cable standards.
Marco:
So I think because like, so if Apple released this, you know, they're calling it 5k or Dell's calling it this.
Marco:
If Apple released a 5k resolution or quad 27 or quad right now, whatever you're calling it.
Marco:
If Apple releases one of these monitors,
Marco:
Only the Mac Pro could run it.
Marco:
And that's not a particularly graceful product launch.
Marco:
I don't think they would do that.
Marco:
I think they would probably wait until every new Mac could do it.
Marco:
And that's probably going to be two more years.
Marco:
But the Retina iMac could happen this year, theoretically, or late this year or early next year.
Marco:
I don't know if it will, but it could.
Marco:
And so I suspect we're going to see...
Casey:
retina 5k panels in imax before we're going to see them from apple as external monitors i mean i think that sounds fair all right moving on for more follow-up optical image stabilization tell me about how you were wrong marco
Marco:
Yeah, sure.
Marco:
So I was under the impression from forever ago, I don't know where I read this, that the way optical limbic stabilized SLR lenses worked was that there was actually a spinning glass element in them and that it spun quickly enough that it would have its own kind of gyroscopic stabilization so that when you move the lens, the spinning element would shift to kind of undo that.
Yeah.
Marco:
Turns out that's completely wrong, and the way SLR image stabilization works is very similar or identical to the way that it works in the new iPhone 6, or the 6 Plus, which is that an accelerometer detects motion, and then using electromagnets, shifts around the...
Marco:
electrically shifts around the lens x times per second to compensate for it.
Marco:
There is a floating element in that it's not tied down, but it does not spin.
Marco:
So yeah, I was totally wrong about that.
Casey:
So if you'll allow me to piggyback on that briefly, today was the day, or last night, whenever, recently was the time that
Casey:
the 6 and 6 Plus reviews all came out.
Casey:
So the embargo was lifted.
Casey:
And one thing that I saw fairly consistently between all the 6 and 6 Plus reviews was people saying that the 6 Plus battery life really is demonstrably better and longer than previous phones and even the 6 itself.
Casey:
And I don't know about you guys, but when they flashed the chart on the screen of, you know, standby time is a little bit longer and this and that is a little bit longer, none of that looked that dramatic to me except like playing music.
Casey:
But nevertheless, a lot of people are saying, and Matt Panzarino at TechCrunch is a great example of this, are saying that the 6 Plus actually has somewhat considerably better battery life.
Casey:
And that actually surprised me quite a bit.
John:
I think it's just perception versus seeing numbers on a table.
John:
You're doing the math in your head.
John:
You're subtracting 14, 11.
John:
That's a difference of three.
John:
That's three hours.
John:
And the experience of three extra hours of time is much greater than you seeing those two numbers up on the screen.
John:
so i think apple's numbers are probably in the ballpark all this stuff is fuzzy anyway i just i just think the any difference in battery life gets magnified when you're when you know the plus is just consistently still alive while the iphone 6 is dead and if it's still alive for like one hour two hours like that feels like forever it feels like oh wow this iphone 6 plus is amazing when it's just i think probably a reasonable reflection of the numbers apple put up
Marco:
I mean, from like a raw capacity perspective, I believe the parts leaks indicated that the 6 Plus's battery was something like 50% larger than the 6's battery.
Marco:
So there is a lot more capacity there.
Marco:
Of course, the question is, you know, how much more does it use for that big screen and everything and the display scaler?
John:
And the upclock CPU, too.
Marco:
Yeah, I posted a link earlier on Twitter to a Barefeet's benchmark.
Marco:
Has anyone else confirmed this yet?
Marco:
It sure looks like from this Barefeet's benchmark that the 6 Plus does have a slightly higher clock speed, probably on the range of 5-10% on its CPU.
Marco:
So it does have 5-10% better CPU performance than the 6, which is similar to the Retina iPad Mini and the iPad Air.
Marco:
both have uh the a7 cpu and it's both and they're both you know technically identical in most ways except that on the ipad air it is clocked slightly higher so you know similar like five percent or ten percent higher uh so the ipad air is slightly faster than the retina mini with the quote same cpu so it looks like we have basically that exact same difference between the six and the six plus six plus is slightly faster uh in reality you know the six plus has all these like
Marco:
fairly minor improvements over the six beyond the screen so it has more battery life you know maybe maybe in practice maybe it's 20 20 25 percent more you know like once you account for the screen and everything um it has a higher dpi screen you know so it's it's a sharper screen even like according to john gruber even even with the uh with the scaling it's doing it still ends up being sharper looking uh than the other screens
Marco:
uh it has a now we know it has a slightly faster cpu and then it has the optical image stabilization uh which people are saying does make a small difference but it is a difference and it is better
Casey:
Yeah, speaking of, I don't have it handy, so I'm going to butcher the description.
Casey:
But in Panzerino's review, he was saying, I think, that you get a couple of f-stops more with the optical image stabilization.
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
I don't know anything about photography.
Marco:
Yeah, the way this works, and this is what actually impressed me way more.
Marco:
So Panzerino, and I saw this mostly in the ones he was tweeting last night, when he was tweeting the stats and everything, and tweeting what the ISO was, what the shutter speed was for these shots.
Marco:
What's interesting is so, you know, image stabilization, keep in mind that it cannot stabilize your subject.
Marco:
So if you are like moving, if you're in a moving vehicle or if you're otherwise moving like substantially or your subject is moving, if it's a person, for instance, or a pet, you know, image stabilization does not help you there at all.
Marco:
You still need to fast shutter speed to freeze the motion.
Marco:
Where image stabilization does help quite a lot is if you're taking a picture at night of a building or something or a landscape, it helps tremendously there.
Marco:
And so what it allows you to do, basically, is compensate for the very small hand movement.
Marco:
So if you try to take a long exposure shot...
Marco:
without a tripod, just handheld.
Marco:
It's pretty hard to get that to be remotely sharp just because of tiny movements you make without even realizing it with your hands and your body while you're holding the shutter down.
Marco:
Image stabilization lets you generally, like on an SLR, a good stabilizer...
Marco:
I've been able to handhold a shot up to roughly a second exposure, which is very, very long for a camera to have a one second exposure.
Marco:
I can handhold that with a good stabilizer and the picture turns out sharp.
Marco:
It's going to be a little bit different with one that's this small for various reasons.
Marco:
But the result is that the shutter can stay open longer and it can still be sharp compared to an unstabilized image.
Marco:
What this means is that the phone is able to drop the sensitivity down.
Marco:
So the sensitivity also, it's called ISO in the XF data.
Marco:
You know, so the numbers are like 400, 800, 1600.
Marco:
So the higher sensitivity generally, and I'm sorry for anybody who knows this already, the higher sensitivity, you're basically amplifying the signal.
Marco:
And so you get, you don't need as much light to be captured, but you're also amplifying the noise that's present at like the baseline.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
That's what makes pictures grainy and noisy, especially if you ever see, like, the color grain.
Marco:
That's called chroma noise.
Marco:
It's one of the more obvious ones.
Marco:
And post-processing can attempt to remove some of this, and oftentimes it does, but then it looks kind of muddy or low contrast or like a watercolor painting.
Marco:
Anyway, image stabilization lets the camera capture more light before your hand motion matters if the subject is being still.
Marco:
And therefore, it can drop the sensitivity down so that way you get less noise, better colors, better contrast.
Marco:
Where that helps is in nighttime shots.
Marco:
So Panzerina was pushing these shots and like the one on the iPhone 6 of this dark building at night, the one on the iPhone 6 without stabilization was like, you know, ISO 1200 or something like that.
Marco:
And then the one on the iPad 6 Plus with stabilization was at ISO 400.
Marco:
way lower sensitivity, massive difference in noise, basically.
Marco:
And so that's where stabilization is going to seemingly help a lot in the iPhone.
Marco:
And generally, it picks the ISO for you, but it looks like it's making intelligent decisions on what's the minimum sensitivity we can use here to capture the image given the scene.
Marco:
And so the image stabilizer gives you a lot more headroom with avoiding noise in darkness.
Casey:
So the f-stop is telling me how long the shutter remained open, is that correct?
Marco:
In this context, basically, yes.
Marco:
It's not a complete definition, but yeah.
Marco:
That's basically saying, in this context, you can get a lot more light in, and therefore the sensitivity can be lower.
Casey:
Cool.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
I was just curious because like I said, I know almost nothing about photography.
Casey:
So I recognize those terms as photography related, but I wasn't sure what specifically that was leading on to.
Casey:
Since we've opened this Pandora's box, anything else about the hardware?
Casey:
None of us have any of the hardware yet, but anything else from the reviews or anything?
John:
Well, the chat room says that Jason Snell confirmed that the 6 Plus is at 1.4 GHz versus 1.2 for the 6.
John:
So there's some exact numbers on the CPU speed.
John:
And by the way, Gruber mentioned that the 6 Plus, it's kind of an iPad 3 situation where the 6 Plus may be clocked higher, but it may actually need to be clocked higher.
John:
Not so much the CPU, but the GPU, because he was saying that he saw a couple of stutters on the 6 Plus just because it's slinging so many pixels around, like a 3x image on this giant screen.
John:
That maybe having a little bit extra clock speed, assuming assuming this clock speed applies to the GPU as well, that, you know, if it's higher in the six plus that maybe it needs it.
John:
And maybe, you know, it's not it's maybe a little bit overdrawn on its CPU and GPU power bank account.
John:
This first generation, big giant screen iPod again, like like the first retina iPad was a little bit, you know, a little bit too much.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So speaking of people that were wrong, although I'm sure, John, you're about to tell me that I'm wrong and saying you're wrong.
Casey:
Let's talk about Google Wallet.
Marco:
Right from the start.
Marco:
You can drag and drop your content around.
Marco:
You can drag and drop your themes, your styles.
Marco:
You can edit everything in a graphical way.
Marco:
It's nice and easy.
Marco:
You can change fonts, colors, layouts, widths, everything, all within the nice easy editors.
Marco:
If you want to go deeper than that, you can also inject your own HTML, CSS, or JavaScript code directly into the page if you're a geek like us.
Marco:
But you don't have to.
Marco:
Of course, everything is nice and easy.
Marco:
If you mess anything up or if you need some help or if you just have a question or you just want to talk to somebody, they have 24-7 support through live chat and email located in New York City and Dublin.
Marco:
Although you don't have to actually be there.
Marco:
You can be anywhere.
Marco:
Just their support people happen to be in those places.
Marco:
Squarespace plans start at just $8 a month.
Marco:
If you sign up for a whole year up front, that includes a free domain name.
Marco:
uh they also have commerce this is a great feature they added a probably about six months ago or a year ago now it's been there for a while now uh squarespace commerce you can make your own online store and you can sell digital goods or physical goods or both and they take care of tons of the annoying stuff like
Marco:
All the credit card processing, some of the inventory management, shipping management stuff, they have all that stuff built in.
Marco:
It's fantastic.
Marco:
And all this is available at no additional charge.
Marco:
So if you have any Squarespace plan, if you have any Squarespace site, you can add a store to it at no additional charge.
Marco:
You can start a free trial today with no credit card required.
Marco:
That's a fantastic free trial.
Marco:
I've done this myself a number of times for a number of sites.
Marco:
It's fantastic.
Marco:
Start building your website today.
Marco:
When you do decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure to use the offer code ATP to get 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for our show.
Marco:
Once again, go to squarespace.com, use offer code ATP.
Marco:
Thank you very much to Squarespace for supporting our show.
Marco:
A better web starts with your website.
Casey:
Okay, John, so tell us about Google Wallet.
John:
That's not the first Android thing that I got wrong.
John:
The first one was when we were discussing smartwatches and I was talking about the idea of taking a phone and shrinking it down and having like a little phone on your wrist.
John:
I used the wrong brand name for the Android wearables.
John:
It's been so many of them that multiple names are floating around in my mind.
John:
I kept saying Android Wear.
John:
That's not what I was thinking of.
John:
It's actually Galaxy Gear, which was the one that predates Android Wear.
John:
Android Wear is actually much more like Apple's interface.
John:
Maybe a little bit more limited because we don't really know what kind of stuff can actually run on the watch.
John:
But the interfaces don't look like you're not you're not like flicking through the equivalent of table views and looking for stuff like you were on the Galaxy Gear.
John:
So I was thinking of Galaxy Gear, not Android, where my apologies for the mistake.
Casey:
OK.
Casey:
Now, Google Wallet.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
So last week we talked about the NFC thing with Apple Pay.
John:
And I noted that Apple gets the card present rate, even though a card is not actually present.
John:
They get the card present rate because of the inherent security in their NFC thing.
John:
And I thought the Touch ID might have been part of that.
John:
But Dion Garrett sent me a link to a Quora article explaining that Google Wallet also gets the card present rate.
John:
And of course, that's not reliant on Touch ID.
John:
So apparently NFC alone is secure enough that people can get these deals online.
John:
uh where you get the card present rate uh it's not it doesn't have anything to do with touch id
John:
Although there was one more article that unfortunately I didn't get a chance to read.
John:
Maybe we'll throw it in the show notes so people can read as well.
John:
But Tim Bradshaw pointed out that a link to an article in the Financial Times trying to explain how much money Apple is getting from each transaction and who is giving them that money.
John:
And he made it seem like that Apple is actually skimming more off of each transaction than previous people who attempted to insert themselves into the...
John:
into the payment chain, and that I assume most of this payment is coming from the credit card companies and the banks and not the consumers.
John:
But again, I haven't read that article, but we'll put it in the show notes.
John:
And by the way, Tim Bradshaw got Tim on Twitter, at Tim, which he must have been pretty early, huh?
Casey:
I should note with regard to Apple Pay that I got an email from Bank of America today saying, oh, we're going to support Apple Pay.
Casey:
Don't worry.
Casey:
It's coming.
Casey:
It's coming.
Casey:
It's coming.
Casey:
Which I can't remember Bank of America being that forward thinking about just about anything.
Casey:
Now, I'm one of the like six humans that doesn't think Bank of America is pure, unadulterated evil.
Casey:
I've always had OK luck with them, but I'm very surprised that they're
Casey:
trying to be on the ball with this Apple Pay thing.
Casey:
And I know that it was mentioned that they were one of the partners during the keynote, but actually receiving an unsolicited communication from them saying, Apple Pay's coming, Apple Pay's coming, that kind of took me aback.
Casey:
Not a bad thing, just surprised.
Casey:
So let's talk about some feedback from Pomo.
Marco:
I'll see if I can summarize this.
Marco:
He basically says, I know you're not into Android, but it always hurts to hear things like, how will the market react now that there is feature X for a feature that has existed before in the concept of NFC payments?
Marco:
Obviously, Apple will fare better at NFC payments than Google.
Marco:
Companies seem protective when Google tries to enter market.
Marco:
Anyway, let me skip it forward a little bit.
Marco:
As for how large iPhones will fare, you don't have to guess these things.
Marco:
Large high-end phones have been around for a while.
Marco:
There should be no shame in checking how they fare in the Android world.
Marco:
It's fine that you're not into Android, but it's sad and in such topics occasionally nerve-wracking, semicolon, two parentheses, when you don't seem to know about what's happening outside of the Apple bubble.
Marco:
So basically, you know, Pomo's complaint is it's annoying when we talk about things Apple does as if they're the first things of those type to exist and that we don't even look at the Android world to see like, hey, you know, this not only is this not the first, but we can already see in the Android world how these things do in reality.
Marco:
So my response to him or her, is it?
Marco:
I don't think we know.
Marco:
I don't know off the top of my head.
Marco:
Anyway, my response to him or her, our pronouns are terrible in this language, is basically, you know, there's two things.
Marco:
Number one, yeah, of course we don't pay attention as much to Android as we do with iOS because we don't use Android.
Marco:
You know, none of us really use it on a regular basis.
Marco:
So there's a little bit of that.
Marco:
But mainly, you know, his examples of like, you know, trying to predict how NFC will do, trying to predict how large screen phones will sell,
Marco:
yeah android has those things already but the fact is it's different when apple does things like that it doesn't like the market does not work the same way when apple does something as an android something because there there's so many other factors at play so like you know the the payment stuff the nfc payment stuff
Marco:
Yeah, Android phones have had that for a while, and no one in the U.S.
Marco:
even knows about it.
Marco:
And granted, the rest of the world, NFC payments are bigger in general, and non-dumb old credit card payments are bigger in general, with the chip and pin stuff and everything that came before that.
Marco:
But in the U.S.,
Marco:
which is admittedly not the whole world, but it's also a pretty big market and pretty important to Apple and us.
Marco:
Apple has a lot of clout.
Marco:
When Apple announces something like this, people pay attention, people hear it, and Apple is offering basically an integrated solution to people top to bottom.
Marco:
It's branded.
Marco:
It will be used.
Marco:
It's going to be in people's faces.
Marco:
It's going to have all this press and marketing behind it.
Marco:
It's going to have all these deals made with the retailers.
Marco:
No Google device manufacturer or Google itself could have that kind of integration power.
Marco:
So when Apple is going to attempt NFC, it's way more likely to succeed, I think, than any of Google's efforts.
Marco:
And not necessarily to the exclusion of Google's efforts.
Marco:
Google's efforts might also end up succeeding.
Marco:
But I think Apple's effort will... It'll be exactly what Android fans hate the most.
Marco:
It will succeed as if it was the first one there.
Marco:
And I'm sorry, but that's just very likely to happen.
Marco:
And it's not because no one gives Google credit, I guess.
Marco:
It's because no one even knew about the Android ones in the U.S.
Marco:
for the most part.
Marco:
And it's just different.
John:
We don't know if it will succeed or not.
John:
But the sections that I quoted from email says, you know...
John:
Hurst to hear how the market will react for a feature as if it hasn't existed before.
John:
And then, like, the very next sentence is, obviously, Apple will fare better.
John:
So, I mean, obviously, this person... Well, if you think it's going to fare better, then why?
John:
You're just saying it's the same.
John:
The second part that you read is even more on the nose.
John:
As for how large iPhones will fare, you don't have to guess these things.
John:
Now, first of all, I don't think we were guessing, all right?
John:
We've been discussing the...
John:
the market's appetite for large phones since episode one, literally, of this podcast, right?
John:
And so we're not guessing how large iPhones will fare.
John:
You know, large phones have been around for a while.
John:
It's right there in the sentence.
John:
Large iPhones.
John:
We know how large Android phones sell, roughly.
John:
We don't know how large iPhones will sell.
John:
There's just so many.
John:
And that's what we're talking about.
John:
We're not pretending, oh, who will buy these things?
John:
Because it's different.
John:
It's a large iPhone.
John:
It's not a large Android phone.
John:
It's a very different product selling into a very different market.
John:
and i don't think we we were ignorant at all that larger phones existed or whatever is you know you can't you can't just extrapolate from past events and say well uh these things have always been popular therefore we know apple i mean like what what is what is it that we should have done that we weren't doing acknowledge the existence of android phones check incorporating the the appetite for large phones in general into the possibility of a large apple phone existing and how it's going to do check like i feel like we
John:
We checked off all the checkboxes on this.
John:
We were totally incorporating all the information at hand.
John:
But we then have to say, how is Apple different?
John:
And as this person's feedback says, even he thinks, I think it's he, that Apple will fare better.
John:
Why will they fare better?
John:
Well, it's a different product with a different feature set and different deals behind it.
John:
And that's what we discussed.
John:
So.
John:
I know that's probably too long.
John:
But anyway, this this feedback, I understand the frustration from hearing a podcast from people whose usage and knowledge centers on a different platform than you.
John:
But I do think we incorporated as much information about the precursors to these products as was relevant to predicting how we think they might do.
Casey:
On a somewhat related note, I think it was after the last episode that I saw a bunch of Europeans tweet at any one of us saying, wait, you guys don't have chip and pin?
Casey:
What?
John:
Yeah, they don't know how bad it is over here.
Casey:
Yeah, it was hysterical.
John:
Tell them about the cable companies.
Casey:
Oh, it's atrocious.
Casey:
But to extremely quickly give you an idea of how bad it is here in America, we don't have chip and pin, although now that everyone is getting all of our credit card numbers, that's supposedly coming.
Casey:
And the other thing that Europeans could not understand is if you're at a restaurant, the general way things work is you ask for a check, they bring you the check, you give the server your credit card, they run away to some terminal that could be in the back of the restaurant, well out of your line of sight.
Casey:
swipe your card, hopefully not skim your card, bring it back, and then you are to add the tip that you want to add, sign the paper, and leave it.
Casey:
And just hope that A, they didn't skim your card, and B, they actually put the amount you want them to put into the point-of-sale system in order to charge you.
Casey:
It is completely backwards here, and that's one of the reasons why I think Apple Pay or any other equivalent app
Casey:
credit card less or well you know any sort of nfc based payment system might actually work because we are so backwards anything will be an improvement the only thing and i think i might have asked wondered this in either this show or the other one um i wonder if it's going to be socially awkward at the beginning to be like do you have apple pay can i do this thing with my phone i've never really tried it but i kind of want to try it is that okay do you mind
Casey:
Like that's going to be, I think, kind of socially weird.
Casey:
But I hope that we all get over that very quickly because we are so behind Europe when it comes to this credit card business.
Casey:
It's just beyond description.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
No, I was thinking like, you know, the restaurant thing is probably the biggest example.
Marco:
But there's all sorts of things in the U.S.
Marco:
where like you have to give your credit card to somebody, they swipe it and they bring it back to you.
Marco:
Oftentimes like far away.
Marco:
Like in New Jersey, it's all full service gas stations.
Marco:
And so, like, you, as the person, you have to stay in your car, and you sit there while somebody else pumps your gas for you and puts your credit card into the pump for you.
Marco:
And, like, there's all sorts of things like that in America, with restaurants being the biggest, where they're going to have to, like, completely revamp the way they charge people, like, the physical process, how they charge people.
Marco:
And whether that's going to be little wireless terminals or what, I don't know, that they bring to you, or I don't know.
Marco:
Like, there's all sorts of options, but...
Marco:
Uh, there's going to be a lot of like major, um, major disruption of minor things in the U S to, uh, to make this happen.
John:
We got feedback about that as well, which I think directly, uh, echoing something that Marco said in the last show, then the idea is that, you know, so chip and pin is coming to our country.
John:
because the fraud rates have ticked up a little bit and now it is economically feasible for them to do that.
John:
And so there'll be new point of sale hardware.
John:
And as Marco said in the last show, new point of sale hardware is an opportunity to also have NFC in that new point of sale hardware.
John:
Like Apple is coming in at more or less just the right time when there's going to be a lot of turnover and point of sale hardware in retail anyway.
John:
And adding NFC to the mix is, you know, a good thing to do is retail stores are going to want to buy whatever the most forward looking point of sale hardware is so they don't have to replace it.
John:
again you know and soon uh so we expect the the state of the art in payment processing in the u.s to slowly lurch forward towards the future will it be apple pay everywhere will it just be chip and pin everywhere will be some mix uh anything's got to be better than where we are today so i look forward to that over the next few years although knowing how slowly these things go it could be many years so we'll see
Casey:
Do you guys like full-service gas stations?
John:
No, nobody likes full-service.
John:
I do.
John:
Nobody likes New Jersey, and nobody likes full-service gas.
John:
I do.
Marco:
I do.
Marco:
There's someone here who does.
Casey:
Why do you like full-service gas?
Casey:
That just seems so weird.
Casey:
Like, whenever I go, say, to your house, like, say I did, what was it, last week and the weekend before...
Casey:
We always go up the Jersey Turnpike and go to the Token Sunocos, and we get our full-service gas.
Casey:
And it's always so awkward to me.
Casey:
And then they do your windshield, which is really nice.
Casey:
And then there's that ambiguous moment where you're like, should I tip this person?
Casey:
Do I need to tip this person?
John:
They do your windshield?
John:
Both of you.
John:
I can't believe both of you.
John:
First of all, what they're doing your windshield with is this bucket full of disgusting dirty water filled with sand that's going to scratch your windshield.
John:
windshield and then both of you do you want someone else messing with your gas cap and just shoving the thing in there and do it like it's it's terrible why would you let someone touch your beautiful precious super expensive car like they don't care about any of that stuff there they're just oh no not good well i don't mind them doing the windshield but i don't like the idea of full service gas to begin with i do like that jersey gas is considerably cheaper than any other of the surrounding states but i
Casey:
I do not like full-service gas, and I would even rather get out of my car in the winter when it's freaking freezing and handle my own gas business than have someone come to me and ask, what do you want?
Casey:
And then you've got to tell them, oh, well, I want premium.
Casey:
And then you have to give them the eagle eye, side eye, making sure they actually put in premium.
Casey:
I hate full-service gas.
John:
Well, the gas is cheaper in New Jersey because it just condenses out of the air over newer.
John:
Just put it right in.
Casey:
Oh, you're going to get so much email.
Casey:
Oh, that's fantastic.
Casey:
Oh, that's good times.
Casey:
Anyway, all right, let's talk about something awesome.
Marco:
Can I tell you why I like full surface?
Casey:
Oh, if you want to try to defend that ridiculous opinion, feel free.
John:
I'm going to go with he's really lazy.
John:
What's your guess?
John:
He's too spoiled.
Casey:
The same thing, kind of.
Marco:
All right, go ahead.
Marco:
I like full service.
Marco:
First of all, there's two gas stations in my town.
Marco:
They're both full service.
Marco:
They're both like little independently owned things.
Marco:
And the reason I like it so much is because I don't have to get out of my car and get my hands covered in that gas hand smell.
Casey:
Why don't you just put, like, hand sanitizer in your cars?
Marco:
I have.
Marco:
I have, like, a little... It's the only time I use hand sanitizer ever is I have this little thing in my car.
John:
Hand sanitizer spells worse than gas hands.
John:
Both of them are very volatile.
John:
They'll evaporate quickly, and you don't have to worry about it.
John:
It's not like a lingering smell, like, you're not going to be able to get off.
John:
It will evaporate.
John:
It'll be fine.
John:
Trust me.
Casey:
I actually think I would agree that gas hands smell better than antiseptic hands, but...
Casey:
Whatever.
Casey:
It does not surprise me, Marco, that you do not want to get out of your M5 in order to pump your own fuel.
John:
But you should not want those people touching your car at all.
John:
And Casey, you should not want whatever water they're washing your windshield with.
John:
Just go look.
John:
Get out of your car and look where they're dipping and rubbing on you.
John:
They're making it dirtier.
John:
They're not cleaning your windshields.
Casey:
You say that, but especially in the summertime and especially late in the evening, my windshield is often so disgusting from bugs that it's actually almost to the point of being a safety hazard.
Casey:
And so I appreciate the fact that I can now see something, even if it's a little cloudier, perhaps than it once was.
Casey:
At least it's not completely opaque because of bugs.
Yeah.
Casey:
Wow.
Marco:
Anyway, Igloo is an intranet you'll actually like.
Marco:
Igloo is built with easy-to-use apps like shared calendars, Twitter-like microblogs, file sharing, task management, and more.
Marco:
You can have all of this in your intranet for your company.
Marco:
And most intranets are terrible, as almost anybody who's ever used one can attest.
Marco:
Igloo is so good.
Marco:
It is everything you need to work better together in a very configurable cloud platform.
Marco:
You can learn more at igloosoftware.com slash ATP.
Marco:
With Igloo's responsive design, your intranet already works like a champ on virtually any device, iOS, Android, even BlackBerry.
Marco:
If you actually, I guess in the corporate world, it's probably important to have BlackBerry support.
Marco:
But even there, I mean, do people still use BlackBerrys?
Marco:
No.
John:
John, do you see any Blackberries at your job?
John:
I have.
John:
I still do see them.
John:
They still do exist.
Marco:
You probably are like the most normal job.
Marco:
You're probably exposed to the most normal people in your job of the three of us.
Marco:
Would you say that?
Marco:
Or Casey, do you think you are with clients and stuff?
Casey:
Yeah, see, it's a tough call.
Casey:
My actual employer is relatively progressive and small, but a lot of the companies we work with are huge financial services companies.
Casey:
And they're, let's just go with different.
Yeah.
Marco:
Nice.
Marco:
Anyway, if your company still is unfortunate enough to have BlackBerry users, Igloo will even work on those.
Marco:
They are that good.
Marco:
It also even works on your new iPhone 6 Plus right from the very start.
Marco:
They've already tested it and it works.
Marco:
So you can review a document, you can post a project update, you can change your administrative settings or talk about how that U2 album snuck onto your iTunes library all from your phone, no matter who makes your phone or what size it is.
Marco:
Plus, when you design your Igloo intranet, any change you make to the look and feel carries across all of these devices.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
That sounds awesome.
Marco:
Igloo appears in this magic quadrant report for the sixth consecutive year alongside tech giants like Microsoft, IBM, Google, VMware, Salesforce.com, and SAP.
Marco:
Is it SAP or SAP?
Marco:
SAP.
Marco:
I'm going to go with SAP.
Marco:
In a report that values the size of the vendor, in Gartner terms, that means viability, Igloo is praised for their responsiveness and customer experience.
Marco:
This quadrant thing.
Marco:
Oh, man.
Marco:
I saw this once at a company.
Marco:
It was...
Marco:
Oh, there are so many.
Marco:
It's all full of business terms.
Marco:
To me, it might as well be written in a different language.
Marco:
Business people understand it.
Marco:
I don't.
Marco:
But anyway, if you understand it, Igloo ranks very well in it.
Marco:
Here's an excerpt from Gartner's profile of Igloo.
Marco:
Feedback from Igloo's reference customers was consistently positive.
Marco:
They praised the product's quick deployment, configuration, and customization flexibility with self-service options for non-technical users control over branding and information organization and ease of use.
Marco:
They also praised the responsiveness of Igloo as an organization.
Marco:
So if you understood that and your company has a legacy intranet built on SharePoint or old portal technology, you should definitely give Igloo a try.
Marco:
They're way better than that.
Marco:
They're cool people.
Marco:
They're big fans of our work and all of our friends' work.
Marco:
They've supported us for years.
Marco:
And I can't say enough.
Marco:
If you need an intranet, start with them.
Marco:
And one of the cool things is you can get up to 10 people on Igloo for free.
Marco:
They have this free tier, zero to 10 people.
Marco:
I guess zero isn't really a usage, but one to 10 people on an Igloo, it's free.
Marco:
And after that, it's very reasonably priced.
Marco:
So check it out.
Marco:
Go to igloosoftware.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Once again, igloosoftware.com slash ATP.
Marco:
for an internet you will actually like.
Casey:
You know, just to build on that, I am not a fan of the Gartner analyses, but I am a fan of Igloo.
Casey:
The quadrant report.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Oh, it's so bad.
Casey:
It's so businessy.
Casey:
I need a shower.
Marco:
They're magic quadrants.
Marco:
Regular quadrants are boring and unmagical.
Marco:
Magic quadrants can revolutionize your industry with reference customer relationships.
Casey:
Oh, it's so bad.
Casey:
But Igloo is very good.
Casey:
So if you're turned off by hearing the word Gartner, don't be turned off about Igloo because they're awesome.
Casey:
Anyway, we can talk about the Apple Watch.
John:
Yes, that was right after we finished the last show where we were talking about, you know, the Apple Watch starts at 349.
John:
Where does it end?
John:
And we were all given our different numbers and stuff, right?
John:
Oh, we were way off.
John:
Right after it was over, I saw a tweet that said, did you know the Apple Watch is solid gold?
John:
And no, I did not know.
John:
I mean, I think we even said gold plated on the show.
John:
Apparently, the gold watch is not some other metal with gold plating on it, but is, in fact, solid gold alloy, some metal that is a very high proportion of gold.
John:
And so that takes all of our estimates and just based on the raw materials alone, just shoves them up thousands of dollars.
John:
So forget about what we said in the last show.
John:
Solid gold totally changes the equation.
John:
Now, there's still the question of, all right, so it's solid gold.
John:
All of our estimates go up by a few thousand bucks, whatever.
John:
The remaining question is what we were getting at last show.
John:
Will Apple be willing to charge a price for its product that is just massively out of whack with the cost of materials and labor and so on and so forth?
John:
So, for example, if they could get a, you know, 50 percent product margin selling their high end watch for eight thousand dollars.
John:
would they say, well, that's a 50% margin.
John:
Why don't we sell it for $16,000?
John:
No additional cost of materials.
John:
But I was saying, but you know what?
John:
At this price range, what the hell?
John:
Who cares?
John:
Just crank that number up.
Casey:
I think so.
John:
And that's the question.
John:
Like, when you get to, like, do you crash, there's a name for this.
Marco:
Veblen Goods?
John:
Yeah, it's like when, instead of the, when the demand, uh,
John:
Oh, I'm going to get this wrong.
John:
Someone Google it so I don't have to try to say this off the top of my head.
John:
But anyway, once you reach the very high end, the rules of supply and demand go all wacky.
John:
And suddenly the price starts going up and up and up as the number of people who can afford it goes down.
John:
And it just becomes like a status symbol or something that you want to buy because of its rarity.
John:
Kind of like, you know...
John:
there's not going to be many people with this watch or whatever anyway we don't know what apple's going to do in that area which is why i still think it's really interesting to see what the price is going to be but i think we already know just based on the fact that it's solid gold that the price of this thing is going to be huge so high that it'll eliminate almost everybody from even looking at that watch except for the very wealthy um and gruber had his watch review up and he talked about this as well and we didn't really talk about too much now that we know that these things are going to be
John:
comfortably into the super expensive jewelry category at the high end.
John:
So many more questions open up.
John:
One of the ones that has been discussed is who's going to buy something that expensive when it has built an obsolescence in a way that like a Rolex does not.
Marco:
Yeah, that's a big one.
Marco:
You know, like there's... I wonder, first of all, I definitely recommend anybody interested in the watch and its pricing and the watch market read Gruber's article about this.
Marco:
We'll link to it in the show notes.
Marco:
It's very, very good and very relevant to this because he knows, clearly he knows more about the watch market than we do.
Marco:
And so I think...
Marco:
You know, it's looking very, very likely based on how much watches that are just made from these metals usually sell for.
Marco:
Yeah, I think it's safe to say the gold one is probably going to be at least $5,000, probably at least $10,000 just because of just the amount of gold in it.
Marco:
I mean, gold is very, very expensive and it's solid gold.
Marco:
It's just a lot of metal, as we said.
Marco:
So the question I think is...
Marco:
You can look at this and you can say, all right, well, Apple might be in this for just wanting the kind of margins that these kind of high fashion things command, especially something like this.
Marco:
It's priced as some multiple of a precious metals value.
Marco:
So it's a decent multiple of an already expensive source material.
Marco:
So you can look at it and say maybe Apple wants just the margins.
Marco:
Maybe Apple wants that kind of product in their line to be fancy and profitable.
Marco:
The other possibility that I thought of is maybe Apple's goal here is not necessarily to make a ton of money on watches.
Marco:
but to sell a lot of watches.
Marco:
And that many people, because a watch is something you wear, it's an accessory, it's a fashion item, they kept saying personal, intimate, all this stuff, but it really is, it's a fashion item.
Marco:
Maybe they realize that there's a whole lot of people who...
Marco:
Any smartwatch out there today, like all the Google Wear ones and the other ones, they're so ugly and they're so cheap relative to these fancy watches.
Marco:
Maybe Apple has to offer watches in these high-end metals that are at these high-end prices just to get a certain group of people to even consider wearing and buying them.
Marco:
So maybe their goal is, we want these people to be wearing an Apple Watch, using it with their Apple phone, and maybe the only way to get them to wear a watch is to offer a stainless steel one and to offer a gold one.
Marco:
And so there's going to be certain people for whom that is the case, where they won't consider a cheap plastic and aluminum electronic watch.
Marco:
That'll be too geeky for them, but if you make it out of this high-end stuff...
Marco:
then you can reach a certain number of customers who otherwise would never consider wearing a computer watch on their wrist.
John:
I don't know if it's about reaching that audience.
John:
I understand wearing something is very, very different than just holding it.
John:
But I don't think...
John:
that it looks less geeky enough, but like when you dress it up, when you dial it up and make the fancy wristbands and all that other stuff, which by the way, those wrist things are probably going to cost a bazillion dollars too.
John:
Uh, but if you dress it all up, it's still a watch.
John:
That's basically a screen.
John:
It's still a little computer on your wrist.
John:
Um,
John:
So I don't know how much geekiness you are removing by like, you know, if there's some audience out there that says, well, I don't want to wear anything.
John:
I don't want to wear something that looks like I'm wearing a computer on my wrist.
John:
It's still going to look like you're wearing a computer on your wrist, no matter how nice the band is, no matter what precious metals is made of.
John:
And by the way, I looked up on the Wikipedia page.
John:
Veblen good is a good whose demand is proportional to its price so it's like as we raise the price suddenly the demand goes up because I'm not interested in an $8,000 watch because who cares but make that same watch $30,000 and suddenly I'm interested because I have a $30,000 Apple watch
John:
So anyway, I don't know if Apple is going to be entering that realm.
John:
And the obsolescence issue is definitely there.
John:
The angle that I've seen thrown around about that is like, well, that's even more of a status symbol.
John:
It's like, I bought this $30,000 watch and it's going to be a paperweight in two years because the new one's going to be out.
John:
Look how rich I am.
John:
It's like the I am rich application, but...
Marco:
And I think the obsolescence thing is going to prove to be a really big deal and a really big problem for Apple trying to sell these premium price watches because even if you're some really super rich guy in a place that really values showing your wealth like that, of which there are many places, although I'm pretty sure that the tech geek world in California is pretty much the opposite of that, which is interesting and worth talking about on its own.
Marco:
But even if you're in a place like that,
Marco:
If you have a $30,000 watch, that's a really cool thing.
Marco:
That's like, wow, that's a nice watch.
Marco:
That's going to be a family heirloom.
Marco:
If you have a $10,000 gold iWatch that's three years ago's model, that's like carrying around an iPad 1.
John:
i mean it's not even gonna work anymore when once the battery is dead uh you'll have to replace the battery and i don't know how long they're gonna you know how long you're gonna be able to find the the exact correct weird little battery that fits inside there because it's gonna you know it's not gonna be easily replaceable you're gonna have to take the whole thing apart and find the weird bat like it's it's just not gonna have longevity of the devices which which may be fine like i talked about the mac 2 fx last time i think i tried to guess what the price is and someone uh
John:
either emailed or tweeted today that actually I was low in my price.
John:
Like, how much was the Mac 2 FX in today's dollars?
John:
And some were written to say that it was like $22,000, not like $16,000, right?
John:
And so that's the other thing where it's like, well, Apple's going to sell a watch for $10,000.
John:
That's outrageous.
John:
Like, you can spec a $10,000 Mac Pro right now.
John:
It's all about...
John:
What do you think is worth $10,000?
John:
Is the utility provided by the Mac Pro worth $10,000?
John:
Maybe if you're working, if you work at Pixar, right, and that's a tool that you need to make your movie that's going to make hundreds of millions of dollars, you can justify buying a $10,000 computer.
John:
Is $10,000 close to the price of goods in the Mac Pro?
John:
I think the margins are probably pretty good on that.
John:
But, you know, Apple has to buy the GPUs from AMD and it's got to buy the CPUs from Intel and it's manufactured nicely and it has to buy the RAM from somebody.
John:
Like, it's in the ballpark.
John:
Maybe, you know,
John:
100 margins or something it's not it's not like you know well the mac pro goes three thousand dollars five thousand dollars and then goes fifty thousand dollars like there's no fifty or hundred thousand dollar mac pro except for that like there was a million dollars weird red one that that marco tried to bid on but thanks to collectors i don't remember so i got dramatically up it
John:
So I still think we have to watch to see what the top end price is going to be.
John:
And this is one of those cases where I actually will be looking at sort of the eye supply type of breakdown, not so much from eye supply, but from people who know things about jewelry and stuff to say what it's difficult because, again, as Gruber put in his article, he was comparing it against Rolexes and stuff, but those aren't priced based on the goods and labor plus a percentage either.
John:
They're priced based on how much they think the market will bear, which has almost no connection to
John:
they you know anything else in them it's just like the scale goes crazy where you just it's the same exact watch with the same movement you do it in gold if you just take that other watch and its movement and then add in the price of the weight of the gold plus a little bit extra for like shaping it into that shape and then like triple it and that's the price of the gold one for no reason just because well you know just because uh so
John:
I think this is mostly academic because as soon as you start entering into the realm of whether it's multi-thousand-dollar computers like the Mac Pro or multi-thousand-dollar watches like the top-end iWatches, so few people buy those.
John:
That's not how Apple's going to make its money.
John:
It's not like, oh, Apple's getting greedy.
John:
They are not making their money by selling $10,000 Mac Pros.
John:
They're not going to make their money by selling $10,000 iWatches.
John:
God damn it.
John:
Maybe this is it.
John:
Maybe I'm entering the iTouch phase of my life.
John:
Anyway.
John:
uh they're they're not going to make their money that way when you see the big financials they have to sell tons and tons of the the cheaper ones but if apple really wants to move into the the realm of fashion uh which i think is probably a good move at this point as technology shrinks and as as the price of compute drops to zero uh that's a better market to be in than trying to sell technology uh
John:
It's a typical Apple move to say, well, we should get the high end.
John:
Like we want all the best customers in the market.
John:
And that includes the people who buy $10,000 Mac Pros.
John:
Like we want some of that market.
John:
We're not just going to say, oh, well, they'll just have to buy a different computer.
John:
But, you know, it's like the PC.
John:
Do we want the people who buy $300 PCs?
John:
No, we want the whole top end of the market from like $900 up to $10,000.
John:
We want that whole market.
John:
And we know we're not going to sell a lot of $10,000 Macs, but we're going to offer one.
John:
And...
John:
I think they know they're not going to sell a lot of $10,000 watches, but they're going to offer one.
John:
And I think that leads to the next question about these watches, these gold watches and the bands and everything like that.
John:
How the hell do you buy one?
John:
We talked about this a little bit in the last show, but Scott McDulty had a good tweet today.
John:
He said, if I'm buying a $20,000 watch, I don't want to raise my hand so some teenager with an iPad can check me out.
John:
He's referring to the experience of going to an Apple store and trying to, I wonder if you do self-checkout with $20,000 gold.
John:
Can I just scan this, take a picture with my phone?
John:
I'm just walking out.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
how how are they going to sell this yeah well and a couple other people pointed out like are they even going to stock this in the store yeah like is it behind is it behind a big case with a key no i don't think so like is it under a jewelry counter are there separate section of the store where there's like a jeweler and a velvet like the just the logistics of how do you let someone see this this watch with this band with this x is it all going to be through third party sellers like i don't understand how they're going to sell this in the apple store
Marco:
i mean i'm guessing first of all i bet it's i bet it's going to be very rare to actually find one of these in stock in an apple store um second of all i i would i would go also gruber said this uh i i would say that there there has to be some kind of store redesign on the horizon i'm guessing one of the reasons why apple has hired um people like angela erentz however you say her name i'm sorry um
Marco:
One of the reasons why Apple has hired people who are from luxury retail brands and luxury retail experience and fashion retail experience is because they're most likely working on a major redesign to their stores to integrate things like... To integrate the watch first and then potentially future fashionable items or even just a redesign in general.
Marco:
I think their stores are...
Marco:
They're okay, but they don't really have an upscale feel anymore.
Marco:
They did when they first launched, but now there's just too many people.
Marco:
It's kind of old.
John:
It's plenty upscale.
John:
There's just too many damn people there.
John:
They're not going to solve that problem.
John:
That's the issue.
John:
They can solve that problem by opening different kinds of stores, like boutique stores or whatever.
John:
But even within their current product line, like the Beats headphones, the iPhone 5C, and basically just like the existence of all the cases for their existing phones, there's already that problem of when you go into a store, you say...
John:
which phone do I want?
John:
You can go from table to table and see all the different colors.
John:
A lot of the time you're like, which case do I want?
John:
And the Apple store people are really good about, oh, we'll just take that case out of the box and put it on to see how you fit.
John:
But like, it's a very informal process.
John:
And once you get into, and the Beats headphones, like I know they come in all sorts of colors and everything too.
John:
It's more like picking out clothes where you have to have, or I don't know what the best equivalent is.
John:
If you can mix and match,
John:
things and you want to see which combination you like do i like the the iphone 5c in this color with this color case do i want this like if it's more than just picking from one of five different colors that are available once you get into combinations they have to come up with a way to make that an experience that people
John:
that people want that even if they don't buy it in the apple store even if they buy it online from you know the online store they want to go to the store and see what does the you know maybe they'll have like dummy watches like what does this uh this band look like with this watch and the watch itself is not gold but it's just like maybe you just do it all with the aluminum one because they're all compatible anyway or maybe they have one that's painted gold like it's a fake one i don't i don't know how they deal with that i'm not sure that the bands are gonna be sold separately do we know that
John:
They have to sell them separately because people are going to want multiple bands for the same watch.
Marco:
I'm guessing one of like the cheap one, the sport one, which is probably what they mean when they say starts at 350.
Marco:
And it basically is like, you know, it's aluminum.
Marco:
It doesn't even have sapphire.
Marco:
It's aluminum and glass.
Marco:
It's basically an iPhone construction.
Marco:
And it has these like like neon rubber bands, basically.
Marco:
I'm guessing they're going to use that as a differentiator so that if you want the nice like one of the metal or leather bands, I bet you got to buy up.
Marco:
I bet you got to get the thousand dollar stainless steel and sapphire model.
John:
But they can't do that.
John:
They have to sell them separately as long as they're physically compatible.
John:
And I think they are.
John:
they have to sell them separately because the rich people are going to want to mix and match within their own watch.
John:
Right.
John:
So you're going to, if you want, if you want the fancy, what they have to sell them like that.
John:
And, but like, but even regardless, you, there are many possible combinations of,
John:
you have to provide a store environment where people can safely and without you getting robbed all the time, try out these combinations.
John:
And that's like when someone, as Scott said, basically, you know, in a snarky way, when someone is going to drop $20,000 on a watch, they don't want to wade through a sea of people angry about their, you know, their iCloud losing all their photos of their kids or whatever is going on, you know, in an Apple store to get someone to help them to see, like, they want it to be a nice, quiet environment and they want someone to...
John:
to pay attention to them and serve their needs because they're going to drop a huge amount.
John:
I mean, that's just what they're used to.
John:
So I don't think you can sell a $20,000 watch in that kind of store, unless, especially if there are options, because there's no options.
John:
Like, they decide before they go in.
John:
They wade through the mass of humanity.
John:
They find someone to check them out.
John:
And maybe, like Casey said, maybe they don't even have them in the store.
John:
Maybe they mail them to you afterwards or whatever.
John:
That's feasible.
John:
But as soon as you have to choose and, like, try on,
John:
different sizes and see what this watch looks like with this band or whatever.
John:
Current Apple store is not equipped for that in any way.
Casey:
Well, but is that entirely true?
Casey:
I think you're mostly right.
Casey:
But what just occurred to me was the Grand Central store is suddenly looking like a much better layout than I initially thought.
Casey:
And if you haven't been to the Grand Central store, it's like several different rooms that are
Casey:
are connected, of course, but it's not like there are these big, wide hallways, if you will, between the rooms.
Casey:
One of the rooms, I think it was where the Beats were, was upstairs.
Casey:
Is that right, Marco?
Casey:
You've probably been there.
John:
You can have departments you're thinking of.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
I want to go up to the jewelry department.
John:
That works in the Grand Central store, but we know what most Apple stores look like.
John:
It's a big rectangle in a mall.
Casey:
Sure, and that's why I think you're mostly right.
Casey:
But it just occurred to me that maybe the Grand Central store
Casey:
almost becomes the flagship store rather than the Fifth Avenue one because it's got these different sections and different rooms.
Casey:
And I think one of you said something about personal shopping earlier.
Casey:
Maybe there's the velvet rope before the Apple Watch room in the Grand Central store.
Casey:
But I agree with you, John.
Casey:
I don't know what we're going to do about the regular Apple stores, which are easily as much about getting help as they are about buying a product.
John:
That was speaking of redesign Apple stores.
John:
That was one of the theories behind what's in that big giant white box other than a hands on area, which guess what?
John:
It turned out to be hands on area.
John:
Although if we take that as a preview, I don't think we can.
John:
Like it had all the watches and those little sticks like rotating.
John:
I don't think that's the store environment.
John:
It just looks like a press hands on area.
John:
But yeah, we're all expecting some kind of redesign to the Apple stores.
John:
It's due that, you know, everyone has copied their current design, which means it's time for Apple to change.
Marco:
Well, they've had this design for like 10 years at least, right?
Marco:
When did they launch their first stores?
Marco:
Like 2003, 2004, something like that?
John:
And we're talking about design.
John:
Like people might think we're thinking like, oh, are they going to do dark colored wood on the tables or a different floor?
John:
But no, we're talking about is like, you know, design is how it works.
John:
Like what where do you go in the store?
John:
to try out the iPhones.
John:
They're like, now they just have everything on tables because you can just walk up to it, try it out, get a feel for it, maybe get a little bit of help.
John:
But if it's going to be, I need to see this watch with this band with this set of Beats headphones with this or whatever, you need someone behind a counter to help you.
John:
And it's a totally different environment.
John:
I don't think you can do that freeform.
John:
I don't think you can have people sort of self...
John:
just wandering around the store entertaining themselves and then if they need help they'll come and get you or they'll ask you if you're finding everything or whatever you can't have someone rummaging through like a bin of gold apple washes right and trying the different bands and everything like I just don't know how it's going to work I think
John:
And maybe the Apple edition watches won't even be available in regular Apple stores.
John:
You have to go to the fancy Apple stores and no one will go to the fancy Apple stores instead of rich people because they'll only sell, you know, I wish this has not actually happened, but it wouldn't be great if they only sold like Mac Pros.
John:
I'm sorry, the only Mac we have here is the Mac Pro.
Marco:
I know nobody needs this and I know you wouldn't even want it, but... This is the problem I see, like with getting into a luxury store and high-end watches that cost $10,000 for a gold one, like...
John:
this isn't apple like this like this doesn't fit the culture of the company the people the stores the customers like it just doesn't fit but but it does though like it fits because like they're going after the watch market from 300 bucks and up and just like they went to the p for the pc market from you know 900 and up and it just so happens the end up in both cases ends in five figures
Marco:
What I said earlier about some people might only wear solid gold or whatever, that's one thing.
Marco:
I think that if we would have predicted how Apple would approach this, the most Apple-like way to approach this would be to make one model that was so good on its merits that people would forget about wearing solid gold watches and be willing to wear this one because it's so good, even though it's not made of solid gold.
Marco:
And that's not what Apple is doing here.
Marco:
And I think it's worth questioning why.
Marco:
And I've seen a few people that seem a little bit alarmed.
Marco:
Possibly, you know, possibly why Apple is going this way.
Marco:
And I think there is cause for concern because, you know, what I said earlier where, you know, if they think they can only get people to wear a watch if it's made of these premium materials and cost a lot of money, like certain people...
Marco:
If that's the case, okay.
Marco:
And if that's why they're doing it, that's interesting.
Marco:
But if people are doing it... If Apple's doing it because they just want to be in the business of selling $10,000 watches, that's kind of weird from Apple.
Marco:
Like, if you think about... And granted, I know the world is way bigger than us.
Marco:
I'm very much aware of this.
Marco:
And I know that we do not represent the world at large.
Marco:
But can you imagine...
Marco:
Anybody we know, let's say we go out, let's say we're at a conference or something, a geek conference, or even just at work.
Marco:
You're at work somewhere.
Marco:
You're programmers at work with other programmers and people in offices.
Marco:
Do you think when this comes out,
Marco:
Do you think if you're at a bar at WWDC and if you look around, will anybody who in the entire conference, will any attendee of that conference be wearing a gold Apple watch?
John:
Yeah, anybody who had a big exit from their startup will.
Marco:
Will they?
Marco:
I don't think so.
Marco:
I think the startup people are still wearing jeans and t-shirts.
Marco:
I don't see that happening.
Marco:
I know, but they won't have a gold one because gold is tacky, but they'll have a stainless one for sure.
Marco:
Yeah, maybe, but still... See, this is the problem.
Marco:
In this business...
Marco:
And in this culture, and in much of Apple's culture, what is in fashion and what is socially acceptable is to be relatively understated for the most part.
Marco:
And to not be, like, super ostentatious with, like, big gold jewelry and stuff.
Marco:
Like, that's not cool.
Marco:
Like, I would feel like an asshole wearing a gold Apple watch.
Marco:
Oh, you'd get over it.
Marco:
I just can't imagine anybody we know, like any of our friends, being willing to wear a gold watch, a gold Apple watch in public because you'd be surrounded by a whole bunch of people who would all recognize it and know that you paid 10 grand for that.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Well, hold, hold on.
Casey:
I could not possibly disagree more with like every freaking thing you just said.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So let's start with it would be remiss of me not to point out that you're saying a gold watch is ridiculous and silly and a waste of money.
Casey:
Yet your car was, to be frank, not cheap.
Casey:
And I would argue that if you really think about the purpose of your car, especially in America, it makes no damn sense.
Casey:
You can't go more than 70 anywhere.
Casey:
Sure, you can get to 70 very quickly, but there's no purpose in it.
Casey:
And really, as much as I love your car, it's a silly waste of money for America.
Marco:
I completely agree.
Casey:
So let's start there.
Casey:
The other thing is, I think you're taking too myopic a view of what you expect of Apple and our friends.
Casey:
Because our friends, I agree, none of us would wear solid gold watches.
Casey:
It would be silly, it would be ridiculous, and it would be very tasteless.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
You were saying earlier that you thought that maybe the bands would kind of be, you get a band with the watch and that's that, especially with the cheap one.
Casey:
And I'm looking at a picture of the Apple Watch Sport on Apple's website and it's very clear that the little disengage button, for lack of a better word, to switch out the bands is there.
Casey:
And there's this like peachy, pinky, salmon-y colored band on this particular picture and it's zoomed way into the bottom of the watch and those buttons are there so you can remove the bands.
Casey:
And all I keep thinking about is,
Casey:
So Apple seems to be going more and more towards making everything a little more personal.
Casey:
You see evidence of this in the fact that there's now not just one iPhone that is black and you will like it.
Casey:
There's not only three colors, but there's two sizes, and that's eliminating the 5S and the 5C.
Casey:
There's a commercial that came out not long ago where these beautiful Macs were tainted or enhanced, depending on how you look at it, with all of these stickers.
Casey:
And I think when it comes to the watch, they would be out of their damn minds not to offer...
Casey:
a hundred different bands because you can personalize it, make it match your outfit if you're into that, or you can make it the opposite of your outfit if you want to call attention to it in the same way that sometimes people might sport more than one case.
Casey:
I happen to use a case for my phone.
Casey:
On my 5S, I have the Apple leather case, but even I have an additional case, which is a battery case, kind of like a Mophie, but an off-brand,
Casey:
For when I'm out at like a conference or something like that.
Casey:
So I am like the least fashion conscious person in the entire world.
Casey:
And yet I have more than one case for my iPhone.
Casey:
Although I guess to be fair, it's more about utility than it is fashion.
Casey:
But I guess what I'm saying is all of our views, and I'm including myself in this, are centered around our friends would never be into a $30,000 solid gold watch.
Casey:
But celebrities could be.
Casey:
Wall Street could be.
Casey:
There's so many people that could be reached by this.
Casey:
And just because we don't think it makes sense and it doesn't really add up in our heads doesn't mean that it won't add up for anyone else in the world.
Casey:
And that's also a good point that we're taking a very myopic American view of this.
Casey:
And from what I've gathered from like Ben Thompson and others, that Asia takes a very different view of this.
Casey:
And a lot of Asia, or so it appears, is about expressing your wealth as extravagantly as you possibly can.
Marco:
Oh, yeah, and that's what I'm saying.
Marco:
Like, I don't mean to say that this is everybody, but that this is such a... It's such a big part of Apple culture that this seems to be working against and conflicting with.
John:
But the Apple culture previously had been based on technology.
John:
They're getting into fashion with this, and when you get into fashion, everything that comes with it is, you know, like, functionally, all the watches, like...
John:
the more expensive ones it's not like they get like more better battery life or anything like that like they're functionally the same and so in that respect everyone it's it's like the mac hey you can if you can afford the lowest price uh well now that is all the non-retina is gone anyway the lowest price retina macbook pro that is a reasonable price that that someone who has a good job could could get uh
John:
They could buy that and it works really well.
John:
And it's a very similar experience to spending 10 grand on a Mac Pro because really you're not going to use the extra power that the Mac Pro provides.
John:
So if you can afford the cheapest watch, Apple Watch, you will have the same experience as someone who bought the more expensive one.
John:
So it's not like they're saying we are no longer egalitarian.
John:
We don't believe that our technology should be accessible to everybody.
John:
It's like I said before, they want the watch market from a couple hundred bucks and up.
John:
And it just so happens the and up goes up really high.
John:
And the fashion market, the and up goes really high without an additional utility.
John:
At least in the Mac Pro, you can argue that there's some utility that you're not tapping into in the fashion market.
John:
There is no extra utility for a Gucci bag or some expensive pair of shoes like they.
John:
In fact, there's often less utility because that's the way fashion works.
John:
Right.
John:
if apple wants to be in the fashion market and i think this again i think this is a good plan because uh long term as you know as the price of compute goes down and down that's what you're selling is a fashion device uh you know you're selling yes a solution to make your life better but especially for things that you wear attached to your body the fashion market is just different and apple entering into that market it's not being on apple like if apple thinks that they want to be also be a uh you know to sell fashion items because
John:
Once Apple says we want to be in the fashion business, then them behaving as everyone else in the fashion industry does is still Apple like because Apple is entering into that market.
John:
It's like I don't I don't think it's out of character.
John:
I think it's just it would be wrong for Apple to try to sell fashion devices like they are our Macs or even iPhones.
John:
Right.
John:
Because, I mean, iPhones are kind of, you know, do you wear an iPhone?
John:
No, but you do keep it in your pocket.
John:
It's more personal than the Mac.
John:
It's like a continuum.
John:
But once you're strapping things on to you, it gets or even beats headphones once you're putting them on your head.
John:
That becomes very, very different.
John:
And so I think they have to change their strategy of how they sell into that market.
John:
And again, I don't think like we're getting all upset about the high end watches and everything.
John:
They're mostly going to sell the cheap ones.
John:
Like that's all Apple cares about for their bottom line.
John:
That's, you know, but if you're going to be in that market and not sell the high end ones.
John:
maybe it like it makes you lesser like the respected fashion brands are not always the ones that only sell super expensive stuff i bet even rolex has affordable models or reasonable models uh for watches watches are weird because the utility of them is basically zero at this point so it's entirely about you know fashion and all that other stuff except for maybe i guess like sport watches for running and being waterproof and stuff like that but apple's not in that market either
John:
I think if we see them enter another fashion category that has more of a utility value, I don't know, Apple shoes.
John:
I can't, I don't think Nike would like that very much.
John:
We'll see how they behave in that respect.
John:
I guess Beats is another thing when we'll see it.
John:
How do they deal with the Beats headphones?
John:
Because the utility is, you know, it's kind of there on those things, but, but they're, you know, they're popular because they're fashion accessories.
John:
So,
John:
um i i don't think this is uh a sign of doom and gloom in fact i think apple is out ahead of the other technology companies in realizing that long term i mean they've been ahead out for years like selling things based on the amount of ram and the cpu speed was was no good so apple stopped doing that way before everybody else and now they're they're i think ahead of the other people and saying we're going to sell goods where the technology
John:
It practically isn't even a factor in the price.
John:
The exact same CPU, the exact same screen, the exact same storage, and a price range from hundreds to tens of thousands.
John:
Other technology companies, you'd be like, what the hell is Apple doing?
John:
But other fashion companies are like, oh, we do that.
John:
We sell leather shoes from a price range from a couple hundred bucks to a thousand bucks, and it's all made of the same leather.
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Casey:
All right, so we're not quite done with the Apple Watch.
Marco:
We're never going to be done with the Apple Watch.
Casey:
No, we're not.
Marco:
I love that we're probably not even going to get to iOS 8 at all.
Casey:
No, I don't think we will, and I'm not kidding.
Marco:
This is still a follow-up, just to be clear.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
We learned a little more about the offline...
Casey:
capacity or not capacity, uh, features of the Apple watch.
Casey:
And, uh, apparently an Apple rep said, uh, that the watches offline abilities include Apple pay music via Bluetooth and via storage within the watch itself, activity tracking and some apps, which makes it more useful than I think most of us expected actually.
John:
The Apple Pay one, as I mentioned this in the last show, is mysterious because there's no Touch ID on the thing.
John:
So you're going to be able to Apple Pay with it, but Touch ID won't be involved at all, which gets back to the other point about getting the card present rate if you just use NFC.
John:
So, yeah, Touch ID not being a factor there reinforces that.
John:
Music, Bluetooth, yeah, fine.
John:
Some apps...
John:
that gets confusing to me because what wouldn't you know i guess this is what we were discussing last time like is it a bunch of binaries that you ship over to the watch that you run on the watch using the watch's cpu is it like carplay where the phone is projecting a ui into someplace else i seriously doubt that but then why would it only be some apps why couldn't you run all the apps or some applications that are going to communicate over ad hoc wi-fi to your phone
John:
I don't even know if Apple knows the answers to all these questions yet.
John:
The offline capabilities of the watch, I would imagine that anything you see people doing in an Apple ad, don't assume they always have their phone in their pocket when they do that.
John:
They're out for a run or whatever.
John:
Checking.
John:
I guess it can count your steps.
John:
It can't do GPS, but it can do something offline.
John:
I don't know.
John:
They're limited by physics here, but I think they're
John:
goal you know five ten years from now is to make the apple watch be able to do everything that an iphone can do obviously that's a long ways off but that's where they're headed the fact that it's a companion device now just always reminds me of how uh ios devices before they were ios devices were companion devices to your mac and now aren't anymore
Casey:
Real time follow up from friend of the show, Ben Thompson.
Casey:
He said if the watch loses contact with your skin, which you would know by way of the sensors on the bottom of the watch, you have to reenter the pin code.
Casey:
I'm not sure what pin code that is.
Casey:
I'm assuming there's either the shared pin code with your phone or maybe a watch specific pin code.
Casey:
But nevertheless, you have to identify yourself as yourself if it loses contact with your skin.
Marco:
See, I kind of disagree with John, your assumption that the watch will become basically the new digital hub.
John:
No, no, I'm not saying the new digital hub.
John:
I'm saying the fact that it's tethered to the iPhone now is purely a limitation of technology and that eventually, if it had the storage capacity, battery power, and everything else, if it could have its own GPS, its own Wi-Fi, its own cell radio, everything, if you could take all the technology and the iPhone and put it there, they totally would.
John:
They just can't at this point.
Marco:
i'm not you know so i'm sure this is one of your like well on an infinite time scale arguments that's not infinite but like you know you can imagine it like it's that's not outside the realm of possibility like if you look at you can do it with a big ugly watch right now right i see this i mean i i've said so many times before like it is unwise to bet against or compete with the smartphone the smartphone almost always wins and
Marco:
The smartphone is amazing and awesome and extremely powerful and disruptive to everything.
Marco:
And it is unwise to bet against the smartphone.
Marco:
The watch as a smartphone accessory makes a lot of sense as its own device or as an eventual replacement to the smartphone.
Marco:
I see that I have a hard time with that because it's not going to replace it.
John:
I'm just saying it will be independent of like you'll be able to do more.
John:
You won't need to always carry your phone around when you want to use your watch to do something the watch can do.
John:
Obviously, there's only so many things you could do on a screen the size of a postage stamp, right?
John:
The screen is not going to be the new 5.5 inch iWatch, right?
John:
It's always going to be a small little thing.
John:
But the thing is, there are things you can't do on the Apple Watch now.
John:
I think I said iWatch nine times.
John:
Sorry.
John:
There's things you can't do on the Apple Watch now that
John:
You can't do not because it would be a bad idea to do them on a watch, but simply because it needs to have the iPhone next to it for this thing.
John:
Oh, you don't have any connection to the internet, for example.
John:
Well, the iWatch doesn't have one.
John:
So if you want to do anything that has anything to do with the internet, like just receive a text message, if you're out for a run, look up at your watch, text message says, I'll try to be home in five minutes because you have to pick up the kids or whatever.
John:
You can't see that unless you also have your iPhone with you.
John:
That's a technical limitation that if Apple could get rid of right now, they would.
John:
And you're maybe, you know, five, eight years out from them being able to do that.
Marco:
Okay, yeah, I'll give you that.
Marco:
That is fair.
Marco:
And, you know, I realized, Casey, I mean, really, the Apple Watch, it seems like Fast Text is the killer app for this thing.
Marco:
I assume you're not going to wait as long as you have with your iOS 7 update to get your Apple Watch.
Marco:
See, I did it now.
John:
You finally caught me.
John:
He'll have to because that...
John:
We're assuming that's the only way you're going to be able to distribute Apple Watch apps is embedded inside.
Casey:
That's true.
John:
And iOS will have to update Fast Text merely as a Trojan horse.
John:
It's a vehicle to distribute the WatchKit stuff.
Casey:
Yes, yes, yes.
Casey:
It will happen eventually.
Casey:
Actually, I just told someone on Twitter, I don't remember who it was, that at this point, I'm thinking in my copious spare time as we're planning for a child and then we'll soon have said child, maybe I'll just write the darn thing over in Swift.
John:
And, you know, Casey, we just want you to release it.
John:
You just set it back another year.
Marco:
You need to fix one auto layout bug.
Casey:
Yeah, I know.
Casey:
Actually, there's also an animation bug, which I realized, but it's minor.
Casey:
Anyways, I will get to it one day, maybe as I'm up feeding Sprout at two in the morning and then I'm unable to go back to sleep.
John:
Yeah, you'll be totally in the mood to do iOS development at that point.
Marco:
Yeah, yeah.
Marco:
You'll have like, you know, no sleep for three days straight.
Marco:
And like, you know what?
Marco:
I think what would be a good use of my time right now is rewriting my app in a new language.
John:
Screaming babies are really conducive to that kind of concentration and flow you need to get into to do good programming.
Casey:
Well, look at it this way.
Casey:
The bar is so low that even if it's rewritten kind of in a crummy way, it won't look that different.
Casey:
Oh, well.
Casey:
So going back to the watch as I try to steer away from being embarrassed and miserable, one thing that was pointed out to us, and we have in the show notes by Matthias, but several people had said this.
Casey:
That the Apple Watch would actually be a really great way to send text messages or really picture messages in languages like Chinese, where single characters or images – forgive me, I don't know the terminology –
Casey:
can represent kind of complex thoughts and so this person said most simple messages can be transmitted in four or so characters and and you know depending on how this is all implemented that could be easier than getting a phone out unlocking it and either tapping away or doing that crazy thing that i know you can do in japanese where you like draw simplified versions of the characters and it figures out what you mean
Casey:
And that's a really clever point that I certainly didn't think about because I'm used to using a Germanic language or whatever, where we need a whole bunch of letters to make one word, let alone many words to make one thought.
John:
Yeah, one of you last week brought up the whole idea of bringing back graffiti, which is the simplified writing technique to draw regular English words.
John:
Alphabet.
Marco:
Roman.
John:
Yes, that's the one I was looking for.
John:
Without typing all the strokes.
John:
So, you know, an A is just an upside down V. You don't have to draw the cross stroke.
Marco:
Every letter is one stroke.
John:
Right.
John:
And that would obviously still be super painful for us to do.
John:
We did that already with the palm things.
John:
But with languages like Chinese that have like pictogram type characters.
John:
they have to do that now a lot of the time because if you have like thousands and thousands of characters to choose from uh no keyboard can present them to you in a reasonable way anyways you have to go to like the root character and then it breaks up sub menus and so on and so forth and it would actually be more efficient to be able to draw little scribbles uh to do the stuff like that now i'm not sure how fun it would be to draw the scribbles with your finger on a watch size screen but uh someone will try it and if it works i'm sure it will become very popular i think
John:
Casey's fast text idea or Apple's own idea of like you receive a text message from somebody who has some sort of keyboard, whether it's an iPhone or a computer or whatever, and that the watch tries to interpret what was said to give you like three options to reply with that type of I just want to push a button to confirm or cancel or whatever, or even just recording an audio message.
John:
Almost any other option is preferable to scratching anything out on that screen in that phone because, you know, the audio ones that, you know,
John:
even even a little animated emoji or something like a yes no answer i just i would not want to draw little pictures because if you're on the go like once you start drawing little pictures you're gonna have to stop walking probably because i don't think you can draw anything sensible while you're walking or if you're if you are doing you're going to walk into a lamppost or something
John:
but while you're walking you can hold the thing up to your mouth and send a little audio thing go yeah i'll be there in a second bloop and then it goes out uh that is much more feasible so like i said last week apple demonstrated what it thought were like a whole bunch of different ways that you could communicate from this tiny little screen without having to type anything and i think they're just hoping that one or two of those stick or work out or end up not being terrible
Casey:
Yeah, I hear you.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I'm curious to see how it all works.
Casey:
And other things that people pointed out to us, and we saw this a lot, was there was no apparent battery indicator ever shown on the watch at any point that I'm aware of.
Casey:
And that could mean any number of things.
Casey:
What I wonder is...
Casey:
will it be that since the watch to some degree is largely about surfacing notifications, would it perhaps be that you would just get a notification when your battery is low, not unlike the iPhone, but perhaps a little less annoying.
Casey:
And it would just say, hey, I'm kind of running low on juice.
Casey:
You might want to plug me in soon.
Casey:
Or alternatively,
Casey:
if you have a Bluetooth headset that will report battery status over Bluetooth.
John:
Oh, no, that would be the worst.
Casey:
Well, I'm just saying that, you know, you could have the same kind of battery indicator for the Bluetooth headset on the status bar on the iPhone, but instead of being for a Bluetooth headset, of course, it's for the watch.
Marco:
Well, your watch will report to you that all five devices that are within its little Bluetooth cloud are all low on battery power.
John:
Yeah.
John:
No, it's just like Marco with not putting the indicator badges on Instapaper and stuff like that.
John:
Like, hey, did you see Vitici's review?
Marco:
Of the new Instapaper?
Marco:
Yeah, he basically mentioned that.
Marco:
That's what brought him back to Instapaper after trying other ones, was he overall liked it better.
Marco:
And one of the reasons he liked it was the lack of those badges.
John:
Yeah, that is a stress relief thing.
John:
Not having the badges, not even having the option to add them.
John:
I know a lot of people who obsessively look at the battery on their phone.
John:
And in some ways, the phone is important enough.
John:
I think you have to show the battery so people can manage it.
John:
but the watch has an ancillary device, like, what are you going to do about it?
John:
A phone, it's like, you can plug it into a charger when you're sitting at your desk or whatever.
John:
The watch, to charge it, you have to take it off.
John:
There is no, like, you have to take it off.
John:
So it's like, why bother even telling you?
John:
There's nothing you can do to manage the battery on this thing.
John:
Don't worry about it.
John:
Don't look at it.
John:
Obviously, when the battery gets low, I'm sure something will appear on the screen to say, hey, you're almost out of juice.
John:
It's not like the thing's just going to turn off one, you know, and you're going to...
John:
turn up to look at it and it'll be black and be like oh i guess i ran out of battery like there will be something towards the end but the screen is super small like there's no status bar do they have to show like what on on ios devices on the status bar we have a clock well i think the watch has that covered sort of like they're not it's not going to be a status bar on these apps showing you battery power wi-fi signal strength you know bluetooth on or off uh rotation lock on or off do not disturb on like
John:
all that information there's just not enough room in the watch to show they just want that out of your face they don't want you staring at it they don't want you obsessing over what the watch is doing in any particular moment so i think the combination of all those factors means don't expect to see a bunch of status stuff having to do with how the watch is doing because that's not that's not you know i don't think even regular traditional watches have ever had battery gated like you're not supposed to monitor your watch to see how it's doing and i i'm assuming they're thinking since it's so non-critical
Marco:
if the battery dies like well regular watches didn't need battery indicators because they lasted months or years or forever and if the battery died it would be very obvious the watch would stop moving or working well it'll be obvious on this too the screen won't turn on anymore that means that
John:
that means the battery but like i'm sure there'll be some kind of little buzz or notification or whatever thing when the battery is going down and we'll have a little warning or something but you don't need to be monitoring it all day you don't need to be looking at and going oh i'm not going to check the time that often for the next right it's like what kind of control do you even have it's not like you're choosing to i mean i guess maybe you go into and not launch apps or something but it's not like a phone where you can modify your behavior like oh i'm not going to watch that youtube video now because i'm running low on battery
Marco:
No, I'm guessing it's very simple.
Marco:
I'm guessing it doesn't even tell you anything until the battery is low, and then it tells you that.
Casey:
I think you're right.
Casey:
However, I take a little bit of issue with saying you don't need to manage the watch's status, because what if you really want to go for a run after work, but you've been using the watch a lot, and now you're nervous as to whether or not it will last the duration of your run?
Casey:
If you're like me, your runs last like 15 minutes, so it's no big deal, but...
John:
but you know what i'm driving at but what what are you like using your watch a lot i always i see the watch as something that like things will come in on the wall like you're not gonna what are you doing on the watch unless it's playing games which i don't know how that is even gonna work out like are you initiating activities from the watch that you're choosing not to initiate them from that anymore i
Casey:
Absolutely.
Casey:
There were like 60 little bubbles on the watch home screen during the demo.
Casey:
There's got to be that many bubbles for a reason.
Casey:
And also, I should point out that my mechanical traditional citizen watch actually does have a low battery indicator.
Casey:
And what it is, is because it's one of the EcoDrive watches, which I think Gruber might have mentioned in his watch review.
Casey:
If you don't get it within light over the course of like two or three months or something absurd like that, when you look at the watch, instead of ticking every single second, it'll tick in like two or three second increments.
Casey:
So it'll go from 10 seconds to 12 seconds to 14, etc.
Casey:
And that's the indicator to you that that thing's running out of juice.
Casey:
And I...
Casey:
Don't know what happens if it completely runs out of gas, so to speak.
Casey:
It may be that you have to take it in for service, or it may be as simple as you just got to put some light on it.
Casey:
But even my traditional mechanical watch actually has a battery indicator to some degree.
John:
Like, that's what we're talking about.
John:
A thing that basically says low battery.
John:
It's not like a little bar graph.
John:
Like, oh, I'm at 73%.
John:
Oh, now I'm down to 62%.
John:
Like that type of micromanagement of the battery.
John:
It's just, we all hope that will go away eventually in, you know, phones as well.
John:
But, you know, we're not holding your breath for that.
John:
Like the watch, their goal, and we'll see how well they achieve this is put it on the morning and take it off at night for a reasonable day worth of average usage.
John:
You should be fine.
John:
If they don't meet that goal, the lack of anything except for a low battery indicator, maybe you'll put a damper on things like I'm sure there'll be some screen that you can go to, as Casey pointed out, and all those little bubbles on the screen.
John:
One of them is going to be settings and it's going to tell you about your battery usage and, you know, do all the which applications are using a lot of battery and bubble.
John:
Like, I'm sure they'll bring over all that iOS 8 style stuff buried in some screen somewhere.
John:
But.
John:
i think the idea of obsessively monitoring it especially to the degree that you have an always visible user interface element like the status bar on such a tiny screen is just not going to be ported to the watch and kind of in the same way that a lot of the uh complexities and traditions of desktop computers did not make it to ios now going from ios to the watch is yet another opportunity to shed some things that you know you're always supposed to have and a battery indicator is one of those things oh
John:
you always have access to the file system.
John:
Well, on iOS, you don't.
John:
Deal with it.
John:
Oh, well, you always see a battery indicator.
John:
Well, on the watch, you don't.
John:
Deal with it.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week.
Marco:
Squarespace, Igloo, and Linza.com.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
John:
They didn't even mean to begin.
John:
Because it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Margo and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
They didn't mean to.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
John:
Of course, the other option is they just didn't have time to mock up where the battery indicator is going to go and the release version will have one up in the corner.
John:
Because as we know from yet another developer release of Yosemite, sometimes Apple's just not entirely done with the graphics for stuff and they have to change it in every freaking release.
John:
I took all my did I tell you I did I did all my screenshots I thought it was done with screenshots except for if any few little things change and then they do no build and I'm like oh it looks the same I should be fine and they start digging and it's not and ugh
John:
So how is the review?
John:
I'm starting to now read what I wrote.
John:
Oh, that's good.
John:
Yes.
John:
It doesn't mean I'm done.
John:
There are still things that I skipped over and things that I couldn't get to work and things that they changed and, you know, new builds.
John:
But I went back to the beginning and said, let me see if what I wrote and I'm going back through it now.
John:
So still have still do not have anything publishable.
John:
And there are still things that I can't get to work right.
Casey:
Something that should be pointed out is if you want to support us in ways that don't involve our sponsors, which the number one best way to support us is to try out our sponsors, to check them out and see what they have to do.
Casey:
But if you want to support us, and by us I mean John, when the review comes out, it will presumably be available as an e-book.
Casey:
Go ahead and buy that e-book.
Marco:
While you're there, buy Fast Text.
Casey:
Oh, God, don't, because I'm going to just feel even more guilty about the fact that it's not updated.
Marco:
I would love to see a Fast Text sales spike.
Marco:
Just come out of nowhere.
Marco:
That would be kind of funny, but no.
Marco:
Come on, listeners, you can do it.
John:
Everybody go out and buy Fast Text this week.
John:
We didn't even, speaking of things that might be on your iOS device that you never use and want to get rid of, we didn't even talk about the YouTube thing.
John:
Oh, thanks.
John:
Well, it's like you buy the e-book as a form of support.
John:
You don't have to ever read it.
John:
You can buy it and just delete it.
John:
Anyway, we didn't talk about the U2 thing.
John:
I know Marco did a post about that, and I just agree with everything he said, but it would have been worth talking about probably.
Casey:
Well, we just did.
Casey:
Done.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Oh, except for another one thing you didn't post about is you're supposed to do.
John:
Oh, I tried to give it a fair shot, but I stopped after the first song and a half.
John:
That's not a fair shot.
John:
You have to actually listen to the album.
John:
I listened to the rest of it before the live stream tonight.
John:
All right.
John:
Well, that's what I'm saying.
John:
Like you said, I think, did you say that you gave it a fair shot or you tried to give it a fair shot?
John:
I don't remember your actual.
Marco:
I said something like I wanted to give it a fair shot, and I stopped after one and a half songs.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
So you wanted to, but you did not.
Marco:
Well, hold on, though.
Marco:
I mean, you know, I listen to albums.
Marco:
If an album is, like, unbearably boring and doesn't grab me... Like Fish?
Marco:
After the first song and a half... So after 40 minutes of Fish?
John:
Is it really going to get better?
John:
Like...
John:
Well, like I said, your favorite song in the entire world could have been the last song on that album.
John:
You would never know if you stopped.
John:
You got to listen to it at least once.
John:
I mean, some people would say you had to listen to it more than once to give it a fair shot.
John:
But I'm just saying, like, bottom line, each song you must listen to one time to know that you hate all of them, which may be the case.
John:
Fine.
John:
But you can't say, well, I hated the first two, so I'm sure I hate the last six.
Marco:
I didn't say that.
John:
I know.
John:
But you said you wanted to give it a fair shot, but I don't think you did.
John:
I think you have to listen to it.
Marco:
And so I did before the show and the rest of the album sounds very similar to the first song and a half.
Marco:
And I still don't like it.
John:
It's usually the case, but like you just have to you have to listen to it because you never know.
John:
There are many albums that I've listened to that I dislike all the tracks except for like one or one or two.
John:
And you'll never know that if those one or two are like mixed in the middle of the thing if you stop in the beginning.
Marco:
Well, and I would say also that, you know, to me, like, again, I listen to full albums only.
Marco:
I don't listen to singles.
Marco:
I listen to full albums.
Marco:
I listen to them in order.
Marco:
And so it is important, like, the first song on an album matters.
Marco:
And what most albums are made, not to put, like, the biggest hit first, but to put some kind of song first to, like, open it up, you know, get the rhythm going, you know, establish the tone for the rest of the album.
John:
That's old world thinking, though.
John:
Well, how old is U2?
John:
I know what you're talking about, but I think even U2 has gotten really bad at that for their last several albums of building an album the way everybody used to when they built an album.
John:
Now it's like, I don't think people care anymore.
John:
They don't care about play order.
John:
They don't care about building anything.
John:
They just want 10 tracks, and every single one of them needs to be a top 10 hit.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I don't listen to enough music to know who I think Radiohead is still building albums that way, but I don't listen to enough different bands to know if that is a thing that that some bands still do, like think of it as a whole and arrange it as a whole and compose it as a whole rather than just taking a collection of tracks and maybe like reordering them once you've got the track set together.
Marco:
I think there is still some thought put into it.
Marco:
It's questionable whether there's enough people in the world who listen the way I do that it's worth it.
Marco:
But there is definitely thought put in most of the time to that sort of thing.
John:
Even in Phish albums?
John:
I don't even know Phish.
John:
Does Phish have albums?
John:
They just start playing.
Marco:
They do, but they're pretty unimportant to actual Phish fans.
Marco:
Actual Phish fans usually just listen to the live shows.
Casey:
Did you like the U2 album, John?
Marco:
Not really.
Marco:
Yeah, you actually like U2.
John:
Yeah, I do, but the last few albums, they've gone in a musical direction that is not as interesting to me, and I've...
John:
Since I'm a big U2 fan, I'm predisposed to like a lot of what they do.
John:
I'm giving this album a longer shot than Marco to see if it grows on me or not, because it's not like outside the realm of possibility.
John:
For the past several albums, there's been at least one or two songs that have grown on me, even though for the past several albums, my initial listen to most of them has been like, meh.
John:
They did a...
John:
they kind of like a band this old has like backlash and then backlash backlash and then backlash backlash but they're like nine levels deep in backlash in terms of uh what fans think of them and what they think of their own sound and like they've circled back around so many times that they're just into this they've spiraled back into what they think of as the the u2 sound but it's not really the u2 sound anymore
John:
And it's just a little bit boring to me, musically speaking.
John:
So I'm not that into it.
John:
We agree.
John:
There are some glimmers of interest in some of the production on the album, but there's a lot of saminess.
Marco:
I completely agree on the last part of that sentence.
John:
yeah if you're not a youtube fan like maybe like it's kind of if you don't know uh if you're not hearing glimpses of the old youtube if you don't know the old youtube or didn't like the old youtube having glimpses of them show through is meaningless and so all you're left with is like what you've got there whereas uh someday apple will be in decline and we'll see some glimmer of the old apple and you'll understand what i mean but
Casey:
all right so you want to do titles i think uh john won it already entering the i touch phase of my life yeah that's that's it i mean how can we how can we not pick that i completely agree you're gonna all right let's go through the capitalization now now go through the capitalization in my defense i was the one who did who did that and as i was typing it i knew that what i typed was wrong i don't know i can't leave it the chance anymore so marco go ahead how are you going to capitalize this
Marco:
uh capital entering phase and hmm i'm stuck on the my the my gets a capital yes it does yes i think so i mean we need to just have a standard and you can use titlecase.com if you want all right so the only lowercase words are the and of in this title besides the eye touch which is camel case but you know
Marco:
See, this looks stupid.
Marco:
This is why I capitalize everything, because it's just consistent.
Marco:
It never looks this weird.
Marco:
No, it totally looks weird when you capitalize, oh, are you crazy?
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
And we didn't talk about anything that came out today.
John:
Nope.
John:
Yeah.
John:
The Tim Cook privacy thing, which everyone was posting in the chat room a million times.
Marco:
Well, that just came out like during the show.
Marco:
I haven't had time to read it yet.
John:
Slightly before.
John:
But yeah, I read it.
John:
We didn't talk about the Charlie Rose interview, which I made sure I watched all of before the show because we might talk about it.
John:
But we didn't.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
We're going to have months of stuff to talk about that happened this week.
John:
Someone put the Charlie Rose thing in the notes so we don't.
John:
So we remember it.
John:
Charlie Rose and the privacy thing.
John:
Just throw them in there for topics for next week.
Marco:
Yeah, so I guess that's it.
Marco:
I could talk about the iPad thing, but for almost two hours already, I'm exhausted.
Marco:
Let's go to bed.
John:
What iPad thing?
Marco:
I accidentally released an iPad app today.
John:
Oh, that iPad app thing, yeah.
Marco:
There's not much to say.
Marco:
I accidentally released an iPad app.
Marco:
It doesn't look that bad, but it looks pretty bad.
John:
The storyboard thing, are you essentially like wiring up a UI with constraints as a storyboard so that the interface elements in the default, like what would be equivalent of the default ping?
John:
Like, is it all basically just a fake facade, but it's a facade that's resizable?
John:
Is that how the storyboards work?
Marco:
Yeah, so I don't actually use storyboards anywhere else in the app.
Marco:
But what you can do is you can set a storyboard or a zip file instead of your launch image.
Marco:
You can set it as your launch image on iOS 8.
Marco:
And it's fairly undocumented and pretty poorly understood and pretty poorly supported.
Marco:
The simulator doesn't even support it yet.
Marco:
There's this post by, is it Ole?
Marco:
I'm sorry, I forgot exactly his name, but I'm going to do it in the show notes.
Marco:
In theory, it's great.
Marco:
In case listeners don't know, iOS apps always had these files called default.png.
Marco:
They're called the launch images.
Marco:
And when you first launch the app, if it wasn't running in the background, when you first launch the app, it shows this image first.
Marco:
Then it takes like a second or two for the app to actually load in the background.
Marco:
And then the app pops in in place of the image.
Marco:
And so the way that Apple's old apps used to do it and the way that kind of became the standard is that you would have the image basically showing an empty version of your UI.
Marco:
So like an empty table with blank toolbars or something like that.
Marco:
And so then you would show it, it would show the empty table with blind tube bars, and then as soon as your app was actually loaded, it would pop in right into those placeholders.
Marco:
So your table would pop content in, your navigation bars would pop titles in and stuff.
Marco:
The problem with this is that because it's just a static image, you had to make one for every orientation once the iPad came out and once you could launch in non-portrait orientation...
Marco:
So you had to make one for every orientation.
Marco:
You had to make one for every screen density.
Marco:
And you had to make one for every device.
Marco:
So once new screen sizes came out, you had to make a different one for that.
Marco:
You had to talk about 2X, 3X, 1X versions of all of them.
Marco:
And it just became a big pain.
Marco:
And then once the system or your app changes its style of navigation bars or whatever, you had to remake all the images to match the new style.
Marco:
So it's an interesting system to make loads look like they're faster.
Marco:
And it's important that you have a useful launch image, but the old system of making them was clunky.
Marco:
So anyway, I always say it has this thing where you can replace it with a storyboard or a zip file so that it could basically... You could replace it with a dummy UI that has no code behind it, no logic behind it, but like a dummy UI file instead of a static image.
Marco:
And so I did that.
Marco:
I...
Marco:
For Overcast 104, the iOS 8 update that was released today, I replaced it with that and I deleted all my launch images, which is great because then I don't have to worry about what size device you're running it on at all or what orientation you're launching it on.
John:
And it's just one storyboard, right?
John:
One storyboard with a bunch of auto layout constraints and a bunch of fake controls not wired to anything.
Marco:
In fact, mine is even easier.
Marco:
Mine is literally like just the navigation controller because all I'm showing is a title bar, an empty table view in the middle and a toolbar at the bottom.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
And so and it's it's like the simplest interface document ever.
Marco:
Anyway, the problem is there's a bug, and I've had a couple other people confirm it that their apps did this too.
Marco:
There's a bug that if you run this on an iPad for an app that is otherwise marked iPhone only in the info plist file, it runs it at the iPad's full size instead of running it in a little iPhone simulator on the iPad.
Marco:
So that even if your app is marked iPhone only, it basically makes you have an iPad version of your app.
Marco:
If you didn't try to just drag over the IPA file onto an iPad during development, which I didn't.
Marco:
So that happened, and it turns out I've accidentally launched an iPad version because of this bug.
Marco:
The question, of course, is what to do about it.
Marco:
So it works.
Marco:
It actually, because of auto layout, because I had adjusted some of the constraints, and I made the interface work for the iPhone 6 Plus.
Marco:
So I already made the interface big screen friendly.
Marco:
So it just doesn't look broken.
Marco:
it's not good it isn't optimized for it it's you know a lot of people said it's like the way android tablet apps were when android tablets first came out where they were just blown up phone apps it's basically just like that where it it is literally just a blown up version of the phone ui all the table views are like you know giant and cells are all wide and skinny and it looks ridiculous so the question is what to do about it and
Marco:
It's actually an interesting question.
Marco:
So I did plan to have an iPad version, but I also plan to do it right to actually like custom make an iPad interface.
Marco:
And there are people who have been using it on the iPad before who just ran it in a little windowed iPhone mode where he blows it up to the iPad screen.
Marco:
And that sucks.
Marco:
And no question, like if you're on an iPad, that sucks.
Marco:
So I think overall, having a blown-up iPhone interface actually sucks less than running it in the iPhone windowed mode.
Marco:
So I think I've made an accidental improvement with an accidental iPad app.
Marco:
But I don't intend to actually leave it that way.
Marco:
So what I think I'm going to do instead is... I'm not going to pull this version off the store or anything.
Marco:
I'm also not going to revert it back to iPhone only in the next update because that will anger anybody who got used to it now.
Marco:
So I think what I'm going to do is as soon as I reasonably can, which is probably the next update, actually try to make like a slightly better adaptation of the interface for the iPad.
Marco:
Probably a basic split view kind of layout.
Marco:
A very stock basic UI kit version of what I have now.
Marco:
But just some kind of tweaks to do that.
Marco:
So that's what I'm going to do.
Marco:
And I still need to support rotation.
Marco:
That's a big one.
Marco:
I have to support landscape orientation.
Marco:
On the iPad, that'll be easy.
Marco:
On iPhones, it won't be.
Marco:
And so I have to deal with that.
Marco:
So this is what I'm going to do, basically.
Marco:
But it's unfortunate that...
Marco:
i accidentally launched an ipad version on the other hand it actually is kind of freeing like i retweeted somebody saying this earlier it's kind of freeing because like the pressure i don't feel any pressure now to like make sure my ipad version is perfect well you should you should hurry up though because i'm going to fix that bug and then your ipad version is going to go away and people are going to complain you think there's any chance they're going to fix that bug i don't i don't think so
John:
Yeah, I mean, it is.
John:
It seems like a pretty clear bug.
John:
Like it's just it's misreading the, you know, is this is should we run this on an iPad?
John:
Well, I'll just look at the default images.
John:
Oh, it's got a scalable one.
John:
That must mean it's ready.
John:
You know, like that seems like a pretty easy bug to fix.
John:
And they'll probably get around to it in 601, I assume.
John:
And then your app will go back to being scaled.
Marco:
801 you mean but yeah sorry yeah yeah i talked it's all right uh i you're probably right so yeah i mean i intend to do this like within the next couple of weeks like that's what i'm now working on i'm not like once i finish editing editing and publishing this episode of our show i'm going to go back to working on making my my accidental ipad interface a little bit more intentional
John:
I hope we don't have to wait weeks for 801 because 8 is not getting along with my iPod Touch.
John:
Every once in a while, a Twitter effect just stops being able to launch, and then I have to restart my phone.
Casey:
Maybe you should get an iPhone.
John:
Maybe I will.
John:
Maybe I'll go to the store and check them out sometime, see what it's like.
Casey:
I will absolutely crap my pants if you suddenly say on the show one day, not only did I buy an iPhone, but I bought a 6+.
Casey:
In gold.
Casey:
I'm not going to buy a six plus.
John:
I mean, go look at the six.
John:
You know exactly which one I'm going to get if I get it.
John:
I mean, I assume I'm going to unless it's like unless seeing it in person, I'm just overwhelmed by something weird about it.
John:
But anyway, it'll happen, especially if they're not going to make new iPod Touches.
John:
So I'm probably going to wait until after whatever event in October they're going to have.
Casey:
Oh, man.
John:
Got to have all the options on the table before I choose.
John:
It's not a race.
John:
I don't want to get the first ones off the assembly line anyway.