Speculative Abandonware
Marco:
So how's it going so far?
Casey:
Going well.
Casey:
The prediction that you two had for night one at home, would you like to guess if it went as you expected or not at all as you expected?
John:
I already heard an analog, right?
John:
You already told the world.
John:
Did I already tell the world?
Casey:
That didn't come out yet, did it?
John:
That's out?
Casey:
No.
John:
I listened live.
John:
Oh, okay.
Marco:
Oh, that doesn't count.
Marco:
You're cheating.
Casey:
Yeah, you absolutely cheated.
Casey:
Okay, so Marco, did it go as you expected, which is to say it went not swimmingly, or did Declan surprise everyone and it went pretty much flawlessly?
Marco:
first night home from the hospital i'm saying it did not go flawlessly oh it was a disaster yeah that's it was a disaster it's simply unrealistic to expect otherwise i mean it's not really his fault it's you know zero year olds are pretty rough if it goes perfectly you'd be worried that there's something wrong with the baby and be bringing him back to that's true get him inspected because he'd be like this not failing to thrive is just too sleepy all the time yeah
Casey:
No, it's actually funny you say that because we did mention the pediatrician Monday that he was really sleepy and, you know, we were letting him go something like four-ish hours overnight because he really didn't wake up to feed.
Casey:
And the pediatrician was like, uh-uh, no, not yet.
Casey:
That ain't your thing yet.
Casey:
You got to wake that baby up.
Casey:
And so that's what we've been doing.
Casey:
And, um, it's been, I mean, all in all, it's actually, he's been really good.
Casey:
The first night was a disaster because we hadn't yet come to the conclusion that divide and conquer is the answer.
Casey:
And so, you know, here it is.
Casey:
I'm trying to be supportive of Aaron, who is, who is the only one who can actually feed Declan.
Casey:
And I'm waking up and just kind of staring at her while she's feeding him.
Casey:
Not, and there's no point in me being up, but I'd want to be supportive and,
Casey:
And it took us until basically the end of that night where I think I said to her, listen, he's pissed off.
Casey:
You haven't slept in forever.
Casey:
You're the one who actually needs sleep right now.
Casey:
You go to bed.
Casey:
I'll just entertain him for a couple hours.
Casey:
And that's when kind of we had the epiphany that divide and conquer is really the way to do it.
John:
There is a purpose to you staying up at the same time, and that's like to offer moral support if your wife is the type of person who would resent you if you were sleeping peacefully in the other room while she's asleep.
John:
But eventually, yes, you will both get over that because you will realize if either one of us ever wants to sleep, we have to get over the notion that all suffering must be shared.
Okay.
Casey:
Which one of us said Adam Sandberg?
Casey:
Was that me or John?
John:
I did.
John:
And then you confirmed it.
John:
We were trying to remember the name of some movie.
John:
I'm like, oh, that's the thing with Adam Sandberg.
John:
And you said, yep.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
Yeah, I don't know why I let that slide because I knew it was Andy Sandberg.
John:
But I knew it was Andy Sandberg, too.
John:
It just, you know, came out wrong anyway, in case you were wondering.
John:
the man's name is andy sandberg so everybody was wrong except me you didn't say anything right it didn't make you right but you were you are correct in saying you are not wrong you should have uh you should have corrected me in real time so we wouldn't have had this follow-up you could have done real-time follow-up you assume i know who that is or what you were talking about you know who andy sandberg is come on you overestimate me if you saw him you'd be like oh yeah it's that guy maybe you don't know the name yeah that's maybe also unlikely
Casey:
I think you would.
Casey:
I mean, if you've ever seen a recent Saturday Night Live, not now recent, but within the last 5-10 years recent, if you've seen Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and he's been in a bunch of movies too, although they're escaping me off the top of my head.
Marco:
So far, I'm at zero for two.
John:
How about Lazy Sunday, which was a... Never heard of it.
John:
The original reference that you made was on a boat.
John:
He's seen the on a boat thing.
John:
I'm on a boat.
Marco:
The first time I saw that was when I recorded it to insert into the show last week.
Marco:
Wow.
Marco:
I heard about it, so I knew roughly what you were talking about, but I didn't know anything else about it.
Marco:
I had never heard the whole thing.
Marco:
Same thing with Dick in a Box, when that came out.
Marco:
Same people, right?
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Marco:
Two weeks earlier or something.
Marco:
The entire world was obsessed with that, and I didn't hear it for six months.
Casey:
It was really funny.
Casey:
So Adam, God, I did it again.
Casey:
Andy Samberg is part of a trio called Lonely Island.
Casey:
They're the ones who did the I'm on a boat song.
Casey:
And they came out with an album, I don't know, two, three months ago, maybe a little more than that.
Casey:
And I read a review of it, which is weird because I never read album reviews, but I read a review of it on like Rolling Stone or Pitchfork or something hipster.
Casey:
And the point that they made about the album was, you know, it's supposed to be satirical rap.
Casey:
And so it's sort of kind of Weird Al-ish, although Weird Al is deliberately goofy, whereas they're more satirical in my personal estimation.
Casey:
Well, anyway, they said that the problem with the Lonely Island album is that the music is good enough and the writing is good enough that it's not really that satirical after all.
Casey:
And so they totally kind of
Marco:
escape or missed the point of the entire album which was to be satirical and silly so that they accidentally made an album that was just good enough to not be taken as a joke which was their intention exactly right i don't know it's weird should i be a little bit embarrassed that first of all i'd never heard t-pain before but while watching the on the boat video i was like the only music i was actually enjoying was when t-pain was singing because it was actually singing and not just yelling yeah
Marco:
I'm so not a rap guy, clearly.
Casey:
Well, the comedy behind that, though, is that he was auto-tuned to death.
Casey:
That was T-Pain's thing, or at least as far as I knew.
Casey:
He was the first person to really embrace auto-tune.
Casey:
Well, that's not fair.
Casey:
The first person that everyone realized really embraced auto-tune.
Casey:
I think you could argue that many artists, such as maybe Britney Spears, had embraced auto-tune a long time before him, but...
Casey:
But yeah, that's kind of his shtick.
Casey:
And yeah.
Marco:
Either way, he was definitely the most musical part of that, which I was trying to get some kind of musical enjoyment out of it because I'm like, well, if I'm going to listen to something called music, I might as well attempt to extract some enjoyment out of it.
Marco:
And that was the only source of any promise in that whole thing.
Marco:
You didn't like the lyrics at all?
Marco:
I think one verse was kind of funny, maybe.
Marco:
But I was sitting there like, this is still going?
Marco:
I couldn't believe how long.
Marco:
I figured that it was like a 45-second SNL skit.
Marco:
Not that they had made an entire three or four-minute or whatever song out of it.
Marco:
No, it's the real deal.
Marco:
I think it should have stayed as a 30-second skit.
Casey:
There's a couple of other videos that they've done that are pretty good.
Casey:
Their semicolon video I thought was pretty awesome, and it's all about using semicolons properly, which I thought was enjoyable.
John:
Sounds incredible.
John:
You've seen that one, right, Marco?
Marco:
No.
John:
That's a good one.
Marco:
Put it in the show notes, force marker to watch it.
Marco:
I have seen nothing.
Marco:
You have to understand any question that begins with, surely you've seen blank.
Marco:
No.
John:
What do you do all day?
John:
I start sending you more links.
John:
Seriously.
John:
You assume I'm going to actually watch them.
John:
Make Tiff press your little hand on the mouse button and click on it.
Casey:
yeah but then i'll have to like manually switch into chrome to make flash work to play it yeah not worth it well pause my music open my chrome ghetto it's just not worth it well what do you mean pause your music you're listening to fish that's not music pause your noise open your open your flash ghetto etc anyway uh all right what else is going on what is what did walrus cp tell us john
John:
That's Colin Peckrun tweeted to say that the last show I was talking about they were using bundles for upgrades, a concept we discussed long ago.
John:
And last week's show we posted, I hope the link is in the show, it's of a screenshot of this actually happening in the store.
John:
And I mentioned the scenario where it could actually be more expensive to get a second app as part of an upgrade bundle than it would be if you just bought the second app on its own.
John:
And Colin wrote in to say that apparently the store now forbids you from purchasing a bundle if it would be cheaper for you to buy the other apps individually.
John:
So I guess that's one workaround to this problem with bundle pricing, but it still seems pretty weird to me.
John:
And complicated.
John:
I don't know what the message looks like because I didn't test it.
John:
I didn't have a scenario where I owned half of a bundle and I could try it out.
John:
But what does it say to you to let you understand why you can't buy this bundle and what you should do instead?
John:
I don't know.
John:
It's very confusing.
Casey:
Yeah, it's very weird.
Casey:
Additionally, somebody had asked us for you to explain how you're handling trim support with your newfound baby SSD.
Casey:
Can you recap what trim is and then talk about what you're doing about it?
John:
Yeah, this is a common question when I mentioned that I've got an SSD because people who have – and it's a third-party SSD and I'm sticking it into a Mac that never had – didn't ship with an SSD –
John:
uh and everyone wants to know about trim support what am i doing with trim support and there's a bunch of wrinkles uh related to yosemite so trim i don't even know what it stands for but uh trim is a command that gets sent to an ssd that tells it that a bunch of blocks of data on it are no longer being used so the ssd is free to sort of reclaim them for future use and this sounds weird because like why would you need this on an ssd why don't you need this on a disk
John:
and it has to do with the way disks are addressed by computers we're going to use the unix parlance it's like a block addressable device where it's just it's this device hanging out there and you and you instead of addressing it in bytes you can address it in blocks like you know whatever 4k or whatever actually that's i don't want to get into blocks forget forget about the block thing just kidding just concentrate yeah concentrate on that as a well i you know because there's file system blocks and then there's the block address anyway yeah
John:
Yeah, no, we're going to get into file system.
John:
So when you're addressing a disk, you have to write a file system to it.
John:
And the file system is the structures that you put on it to keep track of where everything is.
John:
So you have a little index over here on the disk.
John:
I'm going to write like a little tree or something.
John:
And this is where I'm going to look up where the files are.
John:
And then there's a whole bunch of different techniques depending on the file system to find where are the pieces of this file?
John:
Are they big, long, continuous string?
John:
Probably not.
John:
Probably there's a bunch of pieces and then a pointer to another bunch of pieces and a pointer to another bunch of pieces.
John:
And you've got
John:
blocks that direct you to other blocks, and you've got doubly indirect blocks and triply indirect blocks.
John:
I mean, this is all the realm of file systems.
John:
The file system's job is to put a bunch of things on disks that are structured so we can find the data.
John:
And when you delete a file on most file systems, all you do is go to the little place where you would look up where all the stuff for the file is, and you just erase that entry.
John:
It's like erasing an entry in the index of a book, right?
John:
it doesn't touch the actual data that belonged to the file the data that belonged to the file is still sitting there all you did was erase like the bookkeeping information that the structures in the file system that would tell you where to find that stuff uh and that's why you can undelete files if people remember undelete utilities back from the dos days and everything like that um
John:
Because when you delete something, it doesn't take as long as writing.
John:
You don't overwrite all the disks unless you do some kind of secure delete.
John:
That's fine for spinning disks.
John:
But for SSDs, SSDs are a little bit weird.
John:
Everything about memory chips is weird.
John:
And I don't know if this is true of all SSDs, which is a point we'll get to in a little bit.
John:
But in the early days of SSDs, and probably still is the case for most of them, the way the memory is addressed in the little chips that make up the SSDs,
John:
You can't just grab one little sort of block-sized piece and read and write it.
John:
When you want to write something, you have to write it in a large chunk, even if you're just interested in one little piece of it.
John:
And furthermore, you can't write to a bunch of memory that already has stuff in it.
John:
So what you have to do is read that entire gigantic chunk into some other memory temporarily, erase that entire gigantic chunk,
John:
modify the little chunk you wanted to change in the in the copy that you made in memory before you erased it and then write the whole thing back which seems incredibly inefficient but that's the way ssds work for a variety of reasons um and that means that even if the space isn't used like even if you erase the little entry and said oh that file's gone i deleted it i deleted that five gig movie
John:
and just erases the little tiny lookup table of where those five gigs were, that five gigs of data is still in the chip.
John:
So the next time you want to write something, if it lands in one of those places where that five gig file was, it can't just go, oh, I'm going to write that data there.
John:
It has to erase it first.
John:
You can't, unlike a spinning disk where you can just write over any spot, like writing is just an operation where you say, I don't care where I'm writing, just start writing because it just flips the little magnetic poles in the disk and you're all set.
John:
You don't have to erase it before you write.
John:
But on an SSD, not only do you have to erase it before you write, but you have to erase this big gigantic block
John:
uh modify the little bit in the copy that you got and then put the copy back on so the trim command is an optimization the operating system when it deletes a little file it says okay i'm going to delete this little entry from the file system but also i'm going to send this command to to the disk that says by the way i deleted the entry for this for this file in the file system so you should go and find all the blocks that belong to that thing or it'll tell you where those blocks are and say the mark these as being freed so it gives the ssd a chance
John:
to erase those blocks so that when something needs to be written later, it doesn't find itself stumbling onto where, you know, because here's the thing about the SSD.
John:
SSD has no idea about the file system.
John:
It is just a big addressable chunk of storage.
John:
The file system is all something that happens in the realm of the operating system.
John:
So the SSD has no idea what's a file, what's not a deleted file.
John:
It just obeys commands.
John:
It's just a stupid, you know, box for the most part.
John:
Um, so that's why trim is useful because it lets the operating system tell the SSD, uh, I deleted a file.
John:
So all the blocks that belong to that file that were here, here, here, and here, they're not used anymore.
John:
So when you get a chance, maybe in some idle time, erase those because later when you need to write something, you're going to have some freshly erased spots.
John:
And this is, by the way, one of the reasons that SSD is especially the early ones.
John:
would slow down when they got full because that would mean that the number of places that you can write like the places that are erased in an erase state would go down because you know the ssd is almost full so anytime i needed to write anything i would have to read the entire chunk back erase the entire thing modify a little bit write it back there wasn't any fresh sort of green field to put stuff in
John:
Um, so here's the, here's the thing with trim Apple, I believe supports trim on most of its SSDs that it builds in most all, I don't know where the situation is now.
John:
I think maybe all of them.
John:
Um, but it doesn't support trim for third party SSDs in general.
Um,
John:
um so i bought a third-party ssd if you go to the system information application in yosemite you can you know select your little ata bus or sata bus or whatever your thing is on and it'll say trim support yes or no and mine says no so people were asking hey did you use this thing called trim enablers a whole bunch of little system extension type things that will force the operating system to enable the trim command even if your ssd is not once applied by apple
John:
And that's what people have been doing in past versions of the US.
John:
But Yosemite will not load a kernel extension that has not been signed.
John:
And to sign a kernel extension, you basically need to build it yourself.
John:
You need to sort of have the source code or something and compile it.
John:
But Apple does not release the source code to its, what is it called?
John:
AHCI, Advanced Host Something Interface.
John:
We should get that.
John:
Where is that?
John:
Advanced Host Controller Interface.
John:
Apple doesn't release the source code to that driver for OS X. So third parties can't make their own drivers and sign them and load them.
John:
All they can do is these hacks they were doing before, but Yosemite will basically refuse to load a kernel extension that isn't signed.
John:
So the only way to get Trim Enabler to work in Yosemite is to turn off the thing that says, I will only load signed kernel extensions, which is not a great thing to do because it is a good security feature in that
John:
like a virus or malware, can't throw a kernel extension into your system.
John:
Even if it gets temporary root access because it tricks you into entering your local password and it writes a kernel extension somewhere and you root it or whatever, the system will not load a kernel extension that isn't signed.
John:
And if they signed it, presumably it's signed with an Apple developer ID, Apple has some contact information, they could find the responsible parties.
John:
If someone goes through the effort to
John:
make malware with a signed kernel extension at least apple would have some recourse to find out who these people are because presumably that whatever their authentication method is determining if you're a real person and giving you a developed ride date and they can also revoke your certificate and validate that and do all sorts of other things having to do with it so this is a very long-winded and possibly technically slightly technically inaccurate way of getting to the question which was
John:
Am I doing this thing?
John:
Am I using trim enabler?
John:
And am I disabling kernel extension signing in Yosemite or checking for kernel extension signatures in Yosemite?
John:
And the answer is no.
John:
And the reason I'm not doing it, one, is that I don't really like the idea of bypassing the security feature in Yosemite, even though it wasn't there in previous ones.
John:
It just, like...
John:
Why would I do that unless I have a reason and that leads to the second reason which is until and unless I see performance problems with my SSD and Those performance problems are solved by enabling trim.
John:
I'm not going to even consider doing this like in other words, I'm gonna wait until There's a problem and if suddenly I feel like oh this SSD used to be really fast, but now it's getting slow and that that leads to the final nuance in that SSDs
John:
have on them like basically a little computer that manages the storage it manages like the right leveling and all sorts of other things because you can only read and write flash a certain number of times where it wears out and uh ssds are over provisioned depending on if they're like an enterprise ssd or a consumer ssd they give you more storage than you think you have because where leveling will use up sections and anyway
John:
There's a complicated little computer in there managing the chips and the complexity of what's going on inside an SSD is increasingly divorced from the view of that SSD from the operating system as just a simple box of bits that you can address.
John:
And so the assumptions about trim that you have to tell the thing to trim because otherwise it's going to be inefficient or whatever.
John:
Uh, it's not that the SSD knows where the deleted files are, but it's more like what's going on inside that SSD.
John:
Uh, it's like the operating system can't know better than the SSD when and how it needs to, uh, to do its work because in the grand scheme of things, you're going to have to erase that, that the blocks that belong to that five gigabyte file before you write to them anyway.
John:
and maybe it's better to do it soon rather than later like send a trim command uh and tell the ssd to get rid of it during like an idle period or whatever but the operating system can just send that as a suggestion as for all for all it knows the ssd reads the trim command and files it away in a queue somewhere and doesn't do it for a long time or maybe it doesn't do it ever because actually it turns out there was another io operation that addressed the same thing and invalidates the trim and whatever so
John:
I don't know the intricate details that are what's going on inside SSDs these days, but I do know that the storage management in SSDs has been changing a lot, so I'm not entirely sure whether trim is as necessary as it used to be.
John:
I think it probably still is useful, and most benchmarks bear out that if you don't enable trim, you have serious problems, especially when storage gets tight, but...
John:
Anyway, what I'm doing is leaving Yosemite's kernel extension signature checking the way it is, and if I find that my SSD is getting slow, I will follow the instructions, which we will put in the show notes, the very scary process of disabling kernel extension signature checking and using Trim Enabler.
Casey:
So I've had on my work MacBook Pro, I've had a third-party SSD since I received the machine in June of 2012.
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
Yes, June of 2012.
Casey:
I did not knowingly do anything to enable or disable trim support, and the thing still screams.
John:
Yeah, it's way faster than a spinning disk, right?
John:
Marco, have you ever enabled trim on any of your various third-party SSDs?
Marco:
No, I always have just forgotten to do that.
Marco:
I mean, one thing I always... I mean, this is now almost ancient history, but when SSDs were first getting to consumer stuff and they were getting popular, the Sandforce controllers came out and became a big splash because...
Marco:
before this was actually i think before trim existed as a command that you could send um basically you know certain ssds would do things kind of the dumb way and and would have to you know would you know they would fill up and then they would have that have whatever it's called like the right slowdown whatever whatever that's right degradation i think it's called right amplification where we all you you just wanted to write one little thing but it turns out what you have to do is erase a huge swath read a huge swath modify and then write a huge swath
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So it's like after the SSD was filled up once, as you described earlier, like after it was ever filled up, then all writes over time would then be slower than that initial batch.
Marco:
Anyway, so Sandforce was a controller company.
Marco:
They made those little computers on the SSDs to figure out where to put things and how to write things.
Marco:
And they figured out various techniques and optimizations to basically avoid that problem and minimize that problem without trim support.
Marco:
Just by how they would spread the writes around and how they would buffer them and things like that.
Marco:
Various tricks.
Marco:
I don't know all the details.
Marco:
So I would always just buy Sandforce controller SSDs.
Marco:
Because I knew first trim didn't even exist.
Marco:
And then when it was added, Macs didn't support it at all first.
Marco:
And then when Apple did finally add support for it in the OS, it would only work on these whitelisted disks, which I didn't have any of them.
Marco:
So for all of my third-party SSDs, I bought SSDs that didn't really need trim support and just never bothered trying to hack my way into enabling it.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
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Thank you very much to Squarespace.
Marco:
A better web starts with your website.
Casey:
Mr. Syracuse, could you tell us about the source list and opacity in Yosemite, please?
John:
This is old feedback from when we were complaining about Yosemite's transparency stuff in the sidebars and all that.
John:
This is from Robert Cooper, and he was sending a note, maybe we even talked about this before, I don't know, that you can choose for the source lists to be opaque, you know, programmatically if you're writing an application.
John:
Did we talk about this already?
John:
sounds familiar i don't think we did anyway we're talking about it again uh he i think he's a developer for skype because he says in one of his tweets we've chosen to do that in skype 7 i haven't upgraded skype 7 so i haven't seen it yet but uh what i think they're saying is that they chose to make the sidebar opaque in skype 7
John:
uh this i mean that you can programmatically do it yeah of course i mean you can programmatically do anything right here you know you don't even have to use apple sourceless you could fake it if you wanted to uh but it's nice to see an easy option but the important thing about the transparency in yosemite is what the defaults are for applications that were compiled and built before yosemite even shipped they can end up with like you know like outlook uh 2011 they can ship with uh the
John:
They'll have translucent sidebars.
John:
They had no idea they were ever going to have a translucent sidebar and that here they are running on Yosemite with a translucent sidebar that they never planned on having.
John:
And those defaults show how dedicated Apple is.
John:
It's not like, hey, we're going to have this new feature.
John:
And if you want to use it, just, you know, flip this little bit in this API when you make this call and you'll get a translucent sidebar.
John:
No, they opted everybody into it.
John:
which is a bold move.
John:
And, you know, I don't particularly like it because I think the apps that never meant to have transparency in the sidebars will look all weird.
John:
And even the ones that want to have it sometimes don't look great.
John:
But we've talked about that before.
John:
I've talked about it at length on this podcast and the talk show.
John:
So reference those episodes.
John:
You want to hear more whining about transparency in Yosemite.
Casey:
Excellent.
Casey:
Do we want to finally clear out this GameCube controller follow-up that's been in our show notes for an eternity?
John:
Sure.
John:
This is from someone named Rich.
John:
Long ago, I was discussing the GameCube controller and the adapter that lets you use a GameCube controller with a Wii U. The adapter is so you can play Smash Brothers, and I was excited that the adapter would also let you play any other game that used the Pro Controller for the Wii U, but that was not the case, and I was sad about it.
John:
And I was mentioning this because I thought it was pretty damning evidence against the pro controller.
John:
The Wii U pro controller is the traditional looking controller with two analog sticks and buttons and triggers, you know, the typical looking controller that Nintendo made for the Wii U specifically.
John:
And yet when Smash Brothers came out,
John:
they offered this adapter for the gamecube controller and i'm saying like if they if if the wii u pro controller was really any good nintendo would not have felt the need to make an adapter and rich was writing in to uh clarify uh or to clarify that the gamecube controller was there just because smash brothers players are addicted to it and because it's wired instead of wireless if you're not using the wavebird
John:
uh and i know this but it's worth it's worth pointing out why i still think it it's evidence that the wii u pro controller has not is not fulfilling its job like if nintendo is going to make a new traditional looking controller they should make something that is satisfactory to all but the hardest of hardcore smash brother players and this you know apple is not going to make an adapter and
John:
just for people who compete in Smash Brothers tournaments.
John:
There's just not enough of those people in the entire world.
John:
This adapter is for the wide range of people who play Smash Brothers.
John:
And it's basically Nintendo admitting that even if you're not a professional Smash Brothers player, we understand that the Wii U Pro Controller
John:
is not better than the GameCube controller.
John:
So here you go.
John:
We're actually going to make a peripheral and advertise it and sell it to regular people and reissue the GameCube controller with the Smash Bros.
John:
logo on it.
John:
Again, this is not a product that is only for competitive Smash Bros.
John:
players.
John:
They're going to sell way more of them than just the people who compete in tournaments.
John:
Obviously, for the people who compete in tournaments...
John:
Yes, this product is for them, they want it wired, they need reaction times, they want to use the controller they've used for a long time, so on and so forth.
John:
But I still feel like if Nintendo had made the Wii U Pro Controller so that it was unequivocally, unassailably better than the GameCube controller and was perceived as such by customers, it would not have felt the need to make a mass-market product like this so that you can use your GameCube controller with Smash Bros.
John:
again.
John:
And, uh, I agree with them and I agree with popular opinion that the pro controller is very well made.
John:
Uh, but I think the layout and the shape are not as good as the, the GameCube controller, except of course the D pad, which is X grovel and everybody hates, but that's why the GameCube controller is not perfect.
John:
Is that the only reason?
John:
uh like that's what you have your hand on your left thumb is on the thumbstick your right thumb is hitting a bunch of buttons uh the gamecube controller is the current peak of controller design from nintendo as traditional controller design as far as i'm concerned
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Marco:
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Casey:
apparently there's a month of movember yes so i did it the last couple of years and i don't know if i'm gonna be able to do it this year because my life is so out of control at the moment but all you have to do is not shave well yeah uh so anyway the idea is you shave everything except your mustache for the entire month of of november and
Casey:
It's supposed to raise awareness and hopefully money for men's health issues, just anything men's health related.
Casey:
And if you're going to trim everything but your stash, I would do it with a Harry's razor.
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Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So we're actually into main topics only 30, 35 minutes into the show.
Casey:
This might be a record for us for the last couple months.
Casey:
I'm very proud of us.
Casey:
Well, let's talk about this Microsoft band of which I have not had time to read anything about outside of listening to underscore David Smith's podcast about it or a podcast episode about it, which we will put in the show notes.
Casey:
So why don't you guys tell me what this is about?
Casey:
Not everyone at once.
John:
You haven't seen it, Marco?
Marco:
No, I haven't, actually.
Marco:
I only saw people talking about it, but I don't know anything about it except that it looks like what appears to be a pretty decent wearable for an ecosystem that nobody's going to use.
John:
I've seen it and played with it for a couple minutes, and so I can't really talk about the usage of it, although Underscore had a good post about his usage of it, like why he bought one and what he thinks of it, and we'll link that up in the show notes if you want to get sort of a hands-on experience of using it.
John:
I've just sort of played with it, and I was looking at it from a hardware perspective, and
John:
And there's this great sort of exploded view diagram at Microsoft.com slash Microsoft-band.
John:
If you scroll to the very bottom of the page, it's a little animation that shows how it's constructed.
John:
And it's an interesting take on how to get all the hardware they want into a band-type shape.
John:
So this thing...
John:
is aiming for it's kind of weird like it's not going to be like a full full-fledged little computer on your wrist to the same degree as an apple watch is and that they don't expect you to do much uh on the screen much interacting in 2d like the screen is very long and thin so it's kind of a one-dimensional device where you're swiping white right and left but there's not a lot of up and down there's not even a lot of like
John:
hitting the top button or the bottom button there's a lot of like little sidebars and swiping to the sides and showing a little half of half of a little letter poking off the other side of the screen so you know there's more over there so you know which direction you know typical windows phone style metro ui type thing um so in that respect it's not like the apple watch where you've got this 2d thing and you could have different sets of buttons and a dial and all these other things like that
John:
But unlike the Apple Watch, for example, this does have a GPS built in so you can go for a jog with it without having your phone with you to do the GPS part of like tracking where your route was and everything.
Casey:
That is so smart.
John:
Yeah, especially since like, you know, who's going to have a Windows phone to join it up with.
John:
Uh, it does have all the sensors or a lot of the same sensors as the band, but it does an interesting thing where instead of the sensors for like your pulse and everything like that being underneath the sort of chunky top part of the watch, they've split that stuff up stuff up.
John:
So the sensors are sort of like inside your wrist, like where you'd take your pulse and the screen is on the outside of your wrist where you look at your watch.
John:
Um,
John:
which is an interesting way to keep it thin on top because they don't have to have the sensors there, but that means that the bottom of the watch, sort of the part where it clasps together, has a lump.
John:
There's a lump at the bottom of the strap, basically, and that's where the sensors are.
John:
And then to find a place to smuggle, I think, I can't tell from the exploded diagram, but I assume...
John:
this is where they're smuggling the batteries.
John:
They put the batteries in the sides of the band.
John:
They have little stiff regions on the sides of the band, left and right side of the band, that are curved plastic that doesn't bend.
John:
And inside there, I'm assuming, are little battery packs or something, because otherwise I don't know where they'd be putting the battery.
John:
What that means is the shape of this watch, the shape of this band, is kind of like a square.
John:
There's a stiff, rigid screen on the top.
John:
There's a stiff, rigid sensor bundle on the bottom.
John:
And on the left and right side, there's these sort of curved but still rigid regions.
John:
And in between that, there's a little bit of flexing.
John:
And the clasp that adjusts has like a little...
John:
groove about an inch long groove that you can sort of slide it along in the groove and whatever point in the groove you want it to you just release the thing and these two little claws grab underneath the groove so there is some size adjustability and i think they offer the actual band in three sizes because this is not like the apple watch where it's like a little computer
John:
and then a flexible band that you can adjust the length of right this computer is essentially all around your wrist this is a very much more like what i was thinking although not quite as elegant but what i was thinking of in terms of you could take advantage of the band to let you have more room to put hardware
John:
But Apple has made a very different choice here.
John:
And I think the biggest dividing line between these products is not like, oh, Microsoft Band has GPS or the Microsoft Band has to work with all sorts of other phones because it can't just work with Windows Phone because that's, like Marco said, an ecosystem that no one is into.
John:
I think the big difference is that Microsoft Band is so clearly not going for anything having to do with fashion.
John:
an apple watch is so clearly focused on fashion at least half of its you know the effort of that product is of course we're not going to make it like all one color and computer looking and have lumps we're going to make something that looks like jewelry and we're not going to put anything in the band because that's supposed to be decorative in fact the device should be decorative the band should be directive the entire thing has to be decorative because it's a fashion accessory
John:
microsoft band is absolutely not a fashion accessory in any way uh and in that way maybe perhaps it plays more to microsoft's strengths because they've never been known to be a particularly fashionable brand but uh anyway i think it's a really interesting uh design and a really interesting choice for microsoft and i'm excited by the fact that this wasn't like a demo it like
John:
you know, CES or something that never actually ships or doesn't ship for a year.
John:
It's a product that no one knew about that they announced and said, here it is, you can go buy it.
John:
So I give this this product and the effort from Microsoft a big thumbs up in the same way that I kind of did for like the whole Windows Metro thing and stuff where they kind of they're doing their own thing.
John:
They're not trying to copy Apple.
John:
They're not being Samsung.
John:
And their own thing is actually pretty cool.
John:
And I hope this has more success in the market, let's say, than the various devices like Windows Phone and the OS with the Metro interface.
Marco:
If I was into fitness, which is pretty far from the truth, then I would buy this, I think, no question.
Marco:
Because I'm not into fitness, I don't have much of a use for it.
Marco:
But I kind of like some of the trade-offs they've made.
Marco:
Right.
John:
why do you say just because you're not into fitness that this seems useless to you well i'm not going to use windows phone i mean it does it does have integration with ios i was saying it doesn't like read read underscores thing about it like it's it's kind of a pre i'm assuming he's not using with a windows phone but he's saying like he it's it's like a one-way communication it's not two-way because it's not completely platform integrated but he's he's getting the experience of being able to be notified on his wrist oh it'll show blue notifications yeah
John:
what he compared it to he divided the fitness bands let me just summarize this post here it's probably longer than just reading it out loud on the air uh but he was divided them into like the ones that are just always with you and track information like the fitbits and those necessarily you know they focus on just long battery life it's just a sensor attached to you but there's not much interaction with it right you're not flaking around a screen and then there are the ones that have screens but those have been like i have to be sleepy all the time i can't really do anything like the pebble where it's like wake me up when you want to use me
John:
And use me through some limited interface because I take a lot of energy to do all this stuff.
John:
And then I'll go back to sleep.
John:
So they have an e-ink screen or a very limited screen or they're not awake a lot of time.
John:
And this is in kind of the same category as like a combination of the two.
John:
All the fitness centers are there.
John:
I don't know what the battery life on this thing is, by the way.
John:
all the fitness sensors are there and it can do the persistence fitness things but it's also like those other devices where you can use it as a little computer and i think it does communicate with your ios device at least at one direction to show you notifications and stuff and what underscore said is basically this convinced him that he will really like the apple watch because the apple watch will be two-way communication and i guess he won't care that the apple watch doesn't have gps because that's not again if it's not into a fitness type thing
John:
The Apple Watch will count your steps if that's all you care about.
John:
If you want to map your route, then you'd have to run with your iPhone.
John:
But I totally think the lack of GPS in the Apple Watch is like three generations away from being a moot point because they'll add it in as soon as they can afford to do it with battery power.
John:
I think that's optimistic.
Casey:
The reason I'm picking on you, Marco, is because I think this is basically a pebble, but better done and with a GPS.
Casey:
And I don't view it, building on what Underscore and John were just saying, I don't view it as just a Fitbit with a GPS.
Casey:
I view it more as a pebble with a GPS.
Casey:
And my understanding of what I heard on developing perspective was it uses the same sort of APIs that, for example, that iDrive uses in your car that
Casey:
So that you can read your text messages on the iDrive screen if you set it up appropriately.
Casey:
So just like John was saying, it's all one way.
Casey:
All it's doing is saying, hey, you just got a text message and here's the text message and there's not much you can do to respond to it on the band.
Casey:
I almost called it a watch.
Casey:
But nevertheless, at least you can see something there.
Marco:
Yeah, maybe I'll give it a try.
Marco:
Because I am also curious just to see what is the actual real-life utility of such a device.
Marco:
But that being said, we're going to be getting WatchKit this month, supposedly.
Marco:
So I think this might just be, for iOS developers and iOS fans, this might just be a temporary distraction for the next five months until we have a watch.
John:
well underscore being his typical super industrious self is like he's got to get this so he knows what the utility is so he can create his fleet of of watch out understand how this man possibly like there may be more than one of them have you guys checked to see if like i don't know how he does as much as he does is he always the same guy when you because he could be like one of seven uh identical anyway uh he could be a clone that's what i'm saying
John:
Um, but this gives him a chance to see what kind of applications would be good on this device.
John:
And he's sort of using it so that when the Apple watch comes along, he will know he will have a top 10 list of the applications he's going to make while Casey still thinks about up getting his, uh, fast X for iOS up.
Casey:
Why are you so mean?
John:
If you're going to be, if you're going to feel shame about not updating fast X, don't feel shame that overcast beat you out.
John:
Feel shame that during the time overcast was being developed, underscore probably made seven apps.
John:
Yeah.
John:
He makes everyone else look bad.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Oh, man.
Casey:
That's really funny.
Casey:
And you're right.
Casey:
I mean, if I had just a pool of money just sitting there for me to waste away on silly devices, I would absolutely buy one of these just to try it out.
Casey:
And it definitely looks – well, I shouldn't say looks cool.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Its feature set seems very neat to me.
Casey:
Like you were saying, John, it's not aesthetically the most pleasing thing in the world, but it certainly doesn't look bad either.
Casey:
And I'm curious to see what comes of it, but only time will tell.
Casey:
You know, it's too bad that...
Casey:
Because it's Microsoft, everyone just kind of fluffs it off immediately.
Casey:
Because as a friend of the show, Ben Thompson, was saying in the chat a minute ago, you know, this ain't the old Microsoft.
Casey:
This is kind of a new Microsoft that's really trying.
Casey:
And John, you were talking about this earlier, really trying to do something different and unique.
Casey:
And a lot of times I think they hit the nail really closer to the head than anyone gives them credit for.
Casey:
And so it's kind of a bummer to me that nobody's really given them any credit from what I can tell.
Marco:
Well, that's not really the problem.
Marco:
The problem isn't credit.
Marco:
The problem is action.
Marco:
So it's the same thing that happened with WebOS.
Marco:
Same thing happened with Windows Phone.
Marco:
Well, WebOS ran out of money.
Marco:
That's not Microsoft's problem.
Marco:
Well, well, but the reason why... So the same thing happened where the geeks like us and maybe the tech press, you know, these things come out.
Marco:
And everyone's like, oh, you know what?
Marco:
This is really interesting.
Marco:
Everyone says, oh, it's interesting.
Marco:
This is really progressive.
Marco:
Or, you know, some word that means, like, this is cool...
Marco:
But then the conclusion is, but I don't want it.
Marco:
Or, this is great, I love this, but I'm not going to buy this instead of an iPhone.
Marco:
And so I think this is going to have the same kind of problem, which is... So you have this device from Microsoft right before this probably big hit device from Apple.
Marco:
So you have this device from Microsoft that we're all looking at now and saying...
Marco:
this is really interesting.
Marco:
This might be really interesting.
Marco:
They're doing a good job.
Marco:
But how many people who say this are going to be using one of these in a year instead of an Apple Watch?
John:
Well, they have the same problem as Apple of old did, where at a certain point it becomes like, no matter what Apple did, it was always like,
John:
Yeah, but that's just Apple.
John:
So, like, who cares?
John:
Like, it's exactly the same thing.
John:
Like, it's interesting or whatever, but, you know, come on.
John:
Real computers use Windows.
John:
Like, it's a sideshow.
John:
You're not interested.
John:
And once you kind of get out of that position, once people start thinking of you as not part of the mainstream, not part of, like, the real thing, then it's really difficult to ever...
John:
to ever jump back up into the previous position where together get people to like say i'm actually going to buy that because it starts to feel like i'm not going to buy a mac i'm a pc guy max don't run the programs that i want i'm not familiar with how they work it's just everything builds on top of everything and it becomes insurmountable and the only way apple could dig itself out of it was with these spectacular flashy products initially flashy in ways that really weren't that you know substantial like you know using fashion again why why do people care about the iMac it was just a computer like it was an okay computer it wasn't a bad computer but
John:
the guts of the iMac were not all that impressive uh it was because it was teal and translucent and cool looking like that's why the iMac made it and the iPod was then making a product that had already existed but doing it so much better than the other ones like and so is this so much better than the Apple Watch no it's not so it's not going to do that for them but
John:
they must feel like microsoft must feel like apple did where it's like we're making good stuff like it's not bad it's good arguably sometimes it's the best or it's it's close and yet why is our reward not proportional to the quality of the product we're making if we're making something that's like 80 as good as something like and we get no market shared it just it just seems like it's not fair
John:
Um, and so I feel for them, but you know, on the other hand, I, you know, a little bit of a glee about the fact that they're in the position that Apple, I don't, I don't, I'm trying not to hold a grudge.
John:
Like in some respects I'm rooting for them.
John:
But then when I think about rooting for them, I'm like, you know what, if they, if they got control, they would just start making products I don't like again.
John:
It would make me sad.
Marco:
You know, you said like, oh, if we make a product that 80% is good, then it's just a market share.
Marco:
And the problem is like something like this.
Marco:
I think most people are going to have one wrist wearable at most.
Marco:
Most people are going to have zero.
Marco:
But but, you know, I think that the most somebody will have is likely to be one.
Marco:
And so the question is, like, not only is this good enough to buy.
Marco:
But is this good enough to buy instead of the Apple Watch?
Marco:
And that's the problem.
Marco:
Most people don't carry two cell phones.
Marco:
Most people carry one, at least that they buy themselves.
Marco:
Most people carry one cell phone.
John:
Most of them come in than a PC, because a PC was like a $2,000 investment.
John:
You didn't replace it every two years.
John:
These type of devices are small enough, and there's enough advancement in the field.
John:
They'd be like...
John:
A lot of people would try the iPhone or try Android because you're like, well, my two year contract stuff like this isn't subsidized or anything, but it just feels like it's it's not as big of a commitment.
John:
But it does get back to what you said earlier about the ecosystem where you might feel like, what am I what am I buying into here?
John:
Do I have faith that this is going to be a supported product line for the future?
John:
Or is this going to be like a one off or, you know, what was that courier project that they had?
John:
with like remember that it was like a tablet that opened up like a book and they canned that before it even got out the door so it seems like microsoft may not maybe kind of a hostile environment to innovation at this point or the kin what was that other one they made the uh yeah like the social smartphone platform that they made like two of and it was from the sidekick guys and they released that and then canned it like microsoft needs to work on their not so much execution because a lot of times the products are like have something to recommend them but just like
John:
the decision about when to release it when to announce it and whether this is going to be a thing you follow through with and if it's not going to be a thing you follow through with like don't don't release the kin line on the hopes like hey who knows maybe this will take off but we probably don't think it will because it's actually kind of a crappy product and we really did a kind of a half-ass launch and then when it doesn't catch on you're like you know what a week later let's just cam the whole thing or a courier which you show to people people get excited about and then just say
John:
well you know what let's just get rid of that you know like i know a couple people were excited but we didn't really like it and don't show it like all the things that apple tries out internally and gets rid of we never hear about those that's why you have to do it uh you really they really have to pick what they're going to do
John:
do it really well put the company behind it and not do these things that either look technically interesting and you're sad that they go away or kind of tumble out the door half-heartedly and then are canceled like when was the king canceled like i think it was like two months yeah it was very soon
John:
uh mtw chat room says they didn't show courier that it just leaked oh that's also i mean it's part of the same problem whether you show it or whether it leaks like we if we need to not know about it we need to not have pictures of it we need to not you know for all of the various like tv products and tablet products and all the watch prototypes that apple made like we got the first thing we got to see out of apple that was like a watch type thing was the watch that they said they were going to make we didn't and we haven't seen all whatever crazy tv stuff that they've tried and not released that we just assume is going on in there
John:
Apple is much better about deciding which products are good enough to go out the door.
John:
And once a product does go out the door, giving it a fair shot and putting the full weight of the company behind it.
John:
And so we'll see if Band gets that from Microsoft.
Casey:
Really quick aside, I don't know if either of you guys have seen much of this, but watching the NFL these days is just...
Casey:
A series of facepalms.
Casey:
Because everywhere you see these bright blue Microsoft Surface tablet-y things.
Casey:
And it's so obvious that it's... Product placement is one thing.
Casey:
And I know it's a thing.
Casey:
It happens everywhere.
Casey:
Hell, Apple does it constantly.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
But I don't know, maybe I am biased, but it just seems to me that it's done in a much more subtle way.
Casey:
Like I'm thinking of house, for example, you would see max all over the place, but it was subtle.
Casey:
Whereas with the NFL, it's like, here's the bright blue surface.
Casey:
And there's a row of bright blue surfaces on the commentators desks.
Casey:
And here it is on the sidelines and on the Microsoft surface, they're reviewing the play right now.
Casey:
And it's just, oh, it's so tacky to me.
Marco:
Yeah, similar problem in the most recent season on Netflix of Parks and Recreation, which is not a very good season, actually.
Marco:
But anyway, they got some kind of big Microsoft sponsorship.
Marco:
And so in previous seasons, everybody had iPhones and stuff.
Marco:
This season...
Marco:
Every computing device you see is a Microsoft device.
Marco:
So every character is carrying a Windows phone and using it proudly, like holding it up constantly.
Marco:
And every computer that you see on the desk is a Surface or at least running Windows 8.
Marco:
And it's always like showing the Windows 8 home screen prominently.
Marco:
And like, you know, it's so that you have all these like screens and, you know, Microsoft in your face.
Marco:
And it's like good product placement should be both unnoticeable and plausible.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Marco:
And what you're saying with the NFL, it violates both these things.
Marco:
You shouldn't notice that they're beating you over the head with this one particular type of product.
Marco:
It should just seem like, oh, I just kind of see people subconsciously, and it seems like everyone's using Apple products or Microsoft products, and the cool people are or something.
Marco:
That's what it's supposed to do.
Marco:
And you're not supposed to notice, A, wow, they're really beating me over the head with this one kind of product, and B...
Marco:
This is so unrealistic because in reality, I know for a fact that these things are not good enough or popular enough that all these people would naturally have them.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
And the chat room is going berserk and we would be... Yeah, I was trying to... I want to take credit for this.
John:
I didn't... For once, I didn't get something from the chat room.
John:
I saw the story earlier today and it was hilarious.
John:
This is on CNN and the same type deal.
John:
They have some kind of product placement deal with Microsoft services.
John:
And you can tell it's a surface from the back because it sort of has that, you know, iconic kickstand that they have, you know, at the back of the surface looks like where a little thing folds out.
John:
So it looks like a little easel.
John:
Right.
John:
And so what you see is a series of easels sitting in front of all the different commentators.
John:
But when they have camera shots from the side, what you can see is a lot of the commentators have an iPad that they're sort of using behind the surface as like a shield, you know, so you can't see that they're using the iPad.
John:
Either the iPad is resting against the surface, like it actually literally is an easel, or they just have an iPad in their hands.
John:
And that's not good for Microsoft.
John:
It's not good at all.
John:
It's so bad.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
It's just...
Casey:
Yeah, granted, I make my living off of Microsoft technologies.
Casey:
And so there's always going to be a special soft spot in my heart for Microsoft.
Casey:
But so much of what Microsoft does is so cheesy and silly.
Casey:
And this is some of it.
Casey:
And it makes me sad.
John:
Fashion is not their strong suit.
John:
As Steve Jobs said, taste is not their strong suit.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thanks a lot to Lynda.com for sponsoring once again.
Casey:
So let's talk about iWork 2013.
Casey:
Wait, what?
Casey:
We're talking about this?
Casey:
Yeah, well, okay, what else are we talking about?
John:
Did news happen?
John:
No, I think this is a topic, I mean, it's not news news, but it's one of those things that people complain about, and I keep seeing it, and the complaints don't go away, and the more I think about it, the more it reveals to me something that Apple, like...
John:
Something that Apple's doing that just doesn't make sense.
John:
And coincidentally, for the people who are upset about us bashing Microsoft, it's something that Microsoft does much better than Apple.
John:
And I don't really understand why Apple is doing what it's doing.
John:
So do either one of you have the new version of iWork?
John:
Yep.
John:
Yep.
John:
I don't think I have it on the Mac.
John:
I think I probably have it on iOS.
John:
Isn't it like free on iOS or it comes free with your devices or something like that?
John:
I think it's free everywhere now.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Anyway...
John:
it's not about the specific programs which have their problems right um and the file formats are weird but it's about how they're handling backward compatibility um and i grabbed this quote from an info world article i'm assuming is reasonably accurate but if it's not uh
John:
The gist of it is right, if not the details.
John:
And so the details as listed here is basically if you get the new version of iWork, you can't open files created with any version of iWork earlier than iWork 09.
John:
If you try to do that, iWork detects that you're trying to open a document from something earlier than iWork 09 and says, oh, you should find a copy of iWork 09 and open the file with that instead.
John:
And so this is sort of leaving behind your own file format from not that long ago, like less than a decade, certainly probably, you know, less than five years ago, whatever it is.
John:
Those documents can't be opened by the new version.
John:
And a lot of the time when Apple sort of races forward, leaving behind legacy things, whether it's, you know, ditching everything except for USB on the original iMac or, you know, dropping support for an API or some hardware thing or whatever, like, there's a reason, like...
John:
It helps them to make, you know, it helps them get ahead of their competition because they're not encumbered by legacy stuff.
John:
And so they can go and make the new shiny thing without worrying about dragging along this baggage of backward compatibility because the baggage just gets bigger and bigger, especially if you have a successful product in your past.
John:
Eventually, all your time is spent trying to, like, support the past instead of worrying about the future so you can never make anything great.
John:
But I don't see how that philosophy...
John:
can be or should be applied to file formats.
John:
Because it's not as if we're asking that these old file formats be supported forever in their current form.
John:
All I think most reasonable people are asking is if I create a bunch of documents with iWork over the years and I get the latest version of iWork, I just want to be able to open them.
John:
And I don't care that much that if I open them, it converts them to the new format.
John:
As long as if it does the conversion, it's not lossy.
John:
Like this looked fine in the old version of iWork, but when I converted it to the new version, all my fonts were screwed up and everything looked broken or whatever.
John:
you just, for file format compatibility, making new file formats, for example, one of the reasons that speculated they made these new file formats that are like zip archives and stuff is for better compatibility with iOS because they want it to unify the code base is fine.
John:
That's a perfectly valid reason to change your file format and to rev the program.
John:
And maybe you can argue, but if it's a good reason to dumb down the feature set to the common set of functionality that can work on it, work on iOS on the web and on the Mac.
John:
But anyway, whatever, they're going to do that.
John:
That's fine.
John:
But by not reading the old file formats, it shows a lack of respect for the work that people have done with previous versions of this program, especially since probably the pre-iWork 09 versions are going to stop working on modern Macs pretty soon, because that's the thing that Apple does, which I think that does have a reason.
John:
But you have to support the old file formats, because if you don't, what you're signaling to people, and Apple signals this to people in iWork, and also in pretty much everything it's ever done on the web, do not trust us with your data.
John:
Make a bunch of picture galleries in, like, you know, .Mac?
John:
Oh, well, those are going to be gone when we switch over to the MobileMe galleries.
John:
Make a bunch of MobileMe websites with iWeb?
John:
Oh, iWeb's not supported anymore.
John:
I hope you didn't write too much in your little blog that you made.
John:
We're converting over to this thing.
John:
And, by the way, there's no way to get that content back out.
John:
Make a bunch of documents with iWork?
John:
Well, five years are going to pass, and you can't open them up.
John:
I hope you save a version of iWorker 9, which, by the way, won't run on the computer that you buy three years from now.
Right.
John:
It's telling everybody, do not trust Apple with your data because we will abandon it.
John:
We will race ahead.
John:
We will leave behind.
John:
I feel so bad for people.
John:
We put a lot of work into iWeb websites.
John:
That tool, what it did was basically give you a native Mac application at Lake, let people who know nothing about the web make web pages, and it put them up on a little hosting that was part of your service that you bought.
John:
It was not a very good program.
John:
The results were not very nice.
John:
But the bottom line is people dragged in little pictures and typed lots of words.
John:
and made a series of posts.
John:
And Apple was just like, well, sorry, that's going away.
John:
Hope you have some way to pull that down and back it up or something.
John:
I remember that year that I was going around to people in my family and trying to find a way to like pull down the file and modify the links so they still work locally so they can just have a local copy because people invested time in that.
John:
And Apple has no respect for the time that people spent on that.
John:
And with file formats, Apple has no respect for the work that people put in making word processing documents.
John:
So the lesson they're teaching everybody is don't use our programs or our web services if you care about being able to open this thing or view this thing in five or ten years.
John:
And...
John:
I think Apple's probably, with iWork and what it's done with the web properties, probably the worst of the big companies like, you know, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, or whatever, in breaking compatibility with no way forward, with no sort of, like, import or export option or anything like that.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I'm angry about it, and I don't even use iWork.
John:
And by the way, I don't use iWork for...
John:
For this and many other reasons.
Marco:
I mean, part of the problem, you know, you're definitely right.
Marco:
I agree with everything you just said.
Marco:
Part of the problem is bigger than just, oh, this was a bad decision on iWork.
Marco:
I mean, one of the biggest parts of the problem is that iWork doesn't get a lot of attention from Apple.
Marco:
uh there's a reason like there was literally no new update from 2009 until 2013 and the 2013 versions were not written during that whole time they were written like at the last minute and rushed out the door it seems like they spent a lot of time trying to do the sync up between there's an ios version there's a web version there's the mac version and try to make them all work on the same thing and all work together
John:
Like, that seems like what they put the effort into.
John:
It's probably not, you're right, a multi-year effort like that, but who knows?
John:
I don't know what their schedules are like internally, but the result was a program that didn't satisfy people because that synchronization between all the platforms sort of dumbed down the applications to the common subset of functionality that will work across all of them, and people were angry about that, and the execution wasn't great.
John:
But...
Marco:
yeah go on i just i don't i don't think it's because they didn't put enough effort into it because it seems like they did put a lot of resources into it they just they just put them towards the wrong things i think well i mean the iWork file formats have always been kind of a disaster so like the first versions of iWork before 09 they saved everything as a uh as a mac bundle which for those of you who don't know a bundle or a package whatever it's called a package is uh just a directory with this how is it like a special flag set to make it into a package how does that work
John:
No, the finder is the thing that interprets the bundle bit of set.
John:
No, that's classic macOS.
John:
I believe it's the finder that interprets them as something other than a directory.
John:
Because if you look at them anyplace else other than the finder, it looks like exactly what it is, a directory with a bunch of files in it.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So the first versions of iWork, their file format was these fake files, which are actually directories full of other files.
Marco:
And that causes a lot of problems whenever that file has to leave the Mac.
Marco:
The biggest thing is email attachments.
Marco:
Secondarily, you also can't put them in upload forms on websites, in the file input type, because those expect single files, and these are actually directories.
Marco:
And you can imagine that was pretty annoying when you couldn't really email these things around very easily through most email servers or email programs...
Marco:
And certainly not through Windows at all.
Marco:
If it had to bounce through Windows, you couldn't email these files around from this office suite of applications.
Marco:
Like that was a pretty stupid move, really.
Marco:
And so then in the later version, I think in the 09 version, they moved to, I believe it was just like a zip file.
Marco:
It was basically like it was either an SQL file or a zip file that was just all that data shoved into this container, which is a much better way to do it.
Marco:
And then with the new versions, I think they... Didn't they move back?
Marco:
I think with the new versions, there was some kind of... We'll have to look this up and write this up and link to it.
Marco:
There was some kind of move...
Marco:
It was a move, like a step backwards because the justification was this is going to be easier to sync between iOS and iCloud documents and Mac and everything because of the structure they've picked.
Marco:
Regardless, the file formats have always kind of been a disaster.
Marco:
They've always changed dramatically and many times have had very weird decisions.
Marco:
And again, it just seems like...
Marco:
It seems like the iWork team is not getting the resources it needs or it is not a high enough priority for iWork to ever be truly great.
Marco:
And I use iWork.
Marco:
I don't use Microsoft Office because I hardly ever need Office programs.
Marco:
So it's not worth me buying Office.
Marco:
I just use iWork stuff and get away with it just fine.
Marco:
And I've used iWork as my only Office suite for, I don't know, at least six or seven years now.
Marco:
So it's...
Marco:
I use this, you know, not every day, but I use it regularly.
Marco:
And I know these programs pretty well now.
Marco:
And they're just, they're always like 75% of the way there.
Marco:
They could be so good, but it just seems like they don't get attention from Apple.
Marco:
And I think what you're saying is true.
Marco:
It's very fair what you're saying, especially about things like, you know, the MobileMe photo galleries and stuff like that, like all the photo stuff.
Marco:
That is very valid.
Marco:
I think with iWork...
Marco:
I think it's mostly just an issue of these apps getting no love from Apple and secondarily them not caring about dropping compatibility.
Marco:
But it wouldn't surprise me at all if they were going to write in support for the new apps to read the old formats and it just got cut because they didn't have enough time because they didn't give this project enough resources from the beginning.
John:
Oh, they have that thing where they put out a version that dropped a huge number of features and then kind of backfilled apologetically as time allowed.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Yeah, that's the 2013 version, which is still, I think, worse than the previous one.
John:
And I don't use a lot of these things regularly, but I follow people who do.
John:
And it's like even Keynote, which used to be like the one, the best program in that suite is like everyone loves Keynote.
John:
It's like been getting worse over time, not better.
John:
And that's something that Microsoft has always done so well.
John:
One, support backwards compatibility support for their file formats.
John:
like, forever, basically.
John:
Like, they are the masters of that, and no need to go to that extreme, but you should be good at it, at least.
John:
And it's not like Microsoft didn't change their formats.
John:
They went to, you know, a zip file full of XML stuff, and, you know, DocX and XLSX and all that stuff.
John:
Like...
John:
They advanced, but when they advanced, they tried to be compatible because that's their big selling point.
John:
If you make documents in Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office will up to them.
John:
I remember when Office 97 came out and there was a split in format between 97 and 95 and people were freaking out or whatever.
John:
I don't remember the exact details of the year, so I'm sorry if I got it wrong.
John:
that you know they conditioned their user base to accept that the format will change and feel safe that it's not like the documents are going to become unreadable and apple is doing the opposite they're conditioning all the users to fear these applications and not trust any important data to it and the other thing microsoft has done with a few bumps in the road like you know word six for the mac and all that terrible stuff uh
John:
They tend to make their programs better with time.
John:
The programs get faster.
John:
Documents open faster.
John:
They have more features.
John:
If one version of a program had really interesting typography controls, the next version of the program would not drop all those features because they're not possible on iOS or can't be done on the web or something.
John:
They would never do that.
John:
There's no major regression in functionality without some good reason.
John:
Like, oh, we're deprecating the Access database, so forget about that whole integration.
John:
But just like...
John:
Hey, this thing adds a new ability to tweak the kerning on text.
John:
And the next version says, yeah, you know all that kerning stuff?
John:
Forget it.
John:
We pulled it out.
John:
It's gone.
John:
And if you open a document that had a custom kerning, we're just going to show it a different way.
John:
Like, that's not progress.
John:
Over time, the reason we all love software is it gets better, faster, stronger.
John:
You know, it does not sort of...
John:
stumble along occasionally features that you used and relied on disappear with no explanation file formats get abandoned the application changes its looks in ways that are seem like lateral moves items move around the interface for no discernible reason that is a web version you don't care about like are there any like rabid iWork fans with the possible exception of keynote which i think did have rabid fans and may still have them the rest of iWork is just like meh
Casey:
You know, what's funny is, especially listening to what Marco had said about how iWork is 80% of the way there, I feel like so many of the things you just said about iWork, you could make a reasonable substitution of, say, iCloud or any number of other Apple software products.
Casey:
Heck, even iOS 8, a lot of people.
Casey:
I mean, I think iOS 8 is fine.
John:
No, I think it's not fair for iOS 8 and iCloud.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Like iOS 8 is not worse than iOS 7.
John:
And it adds a bunch of things that you felt like you would be happy if you had them.
John:
Like iOS 7 didn't have extensions, which is a big thing.
Casey:
Sure, sure, sure.
Casey:
No, no, I'm on a different point.
Casey:
You know, my point was when Marco was saying, you know, oh, it's so close.
Casey:
But it's not quite there.
Casey:
And iCloud has gotten better, but it seems like you could say that about a lot of things.
Casey:
So a great example is in iOS 8, the ordering of the extensions and the share sheets, or I think that's what it is, wherever the 1Password icon lives.
Casey:
You could have a 1Password extension, yet when you tried to reorder what the order of those extensions were...
Casey:
the order got reset constantly.
Casey:
Now, I believe that's been fixed in the latest beta.
Casey:
But that's a great example of, oh, you were so close.
Casey:
But then there's this one really annoying thing that you didn't quite get right.
John:
I think that's much closer than iWork.
John:
And even iCloud, which has had its stumbles, on the long term, you have to say iCloud Drive versus basically everything else they've ever done with documents.
John:
iCloud Drive is better than that.
John:
CloudKit versus everything else they've done in the same realm.
John:
CloudKit is better.
John:
maybe it's not there but you just want to see forward progress when you have a long-running program like iWork or a long-running suite like iWork that is around for a long time is not updated on sort of on a regular basis such that you just often wonder like is the product dead or they're just not going to do it anymore like iLife was the same way where they were doing iLife with years in the name and then all of a sudden a year would come and go and there'd be no new iLife and you're like so is iLife still a thing and
John:
And then they release a point update to keep the old version working.
John:
I'm like, well, there's someone, it's gotta be someone over there working on it because they're doing some work to make sure it works with the new OS, like versus Microsoft office back in its heyday, especially it was like regular updates.
John:
You know, they're going to keep trying to make it better.
John:
Maybe you'll disagree with something they've done or some weird interface, or they implemented new crazy menus and in office because Microsoft was organized like a, like a crazy, uh, I don't know what the right word is.
John:
Tower of Babel.
John:
And, and, uh,
John:
One hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing.
John:
But anyway, they always look like they were developing it.
John:
And so many things with Apple are sort of like speculative abandonware, just like Marco was doing.
John:
Is anyone working on this?
John:
Probably.
John:
Like, I guess, but maybe not.
John:
I mean, the Mac Pro is speculative abandonware hardware for the longest time.
John:
But in software, this seems like a lot of that.
John:
And it has to be said at some point that, like,
John:
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Apple feels like it shouldn't or can't sell this software anymore, that everything has to be free, that even the stuff that used to be $400 has to be $79 now.
John:
If iWork could be priced at something other than, you guys were saying it's free, I haven't even looked at it, but like...
John:
priced at some at some price that is closer to sustainable maybe it wouldn't really fund all this development but just something but if they feel like they just have to give it away for free as a perk to try to make their hardware more valuable i don't see how a bunch of mediocre mediocre to crappy programs make their hardware more valuable
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like that's not, you're not adding value.
John:
No one is going, oh, and if you get an iOS, it used to be like, remember how it used to be like that with iLife?
John:
It was like, if you want to get iLife, you have to get a Mac.
John:
That was practically a system seller to use game console parlance, right?
Marco:
Oh yeah.
Marco:
People would play with GarageBand in the store and be like, oh my God, if I got a Mac, I could make music.
John:
Right.
John:
Do they have iLife for Windows?
John:
No, you have to have a Mac.
John:
Like it was a system seller.
John:
It was like all these things that, you know, I know I have a computer and people tell me I can use it to make movies, to make music, to burn CDs.
John:
But I know I personally can't use it to do those things because it's way too complicated.
John:
I wouldn't know where to begin.
John:
And iLife was like, hey, we will make you successful at doing these things that you know are possible with a computer, but you still feel are beyond your ability.
John:
And iWork is not a system seller.
John:
Nobody is buying Macs or iPads or doing anything involving Apple to say, oh, no, goody, now I get to use iWork.
John:
I can never do word processing before.
John:
It's not a system seller.
Marco:
Yeah, and I think you're right.
Marco:
I mean, I don't think it's a pricing issue at all.
Marco:
I don't think they ever sold high enough volumes of iWork to make the price of it matter much to their bottom line at all.
Marco:
But it is very important to push the usefulness of their platforms.
Marco:
And not only from an independence perspective, it's an insurance policy against Microsoft ever stopping making Office for Macs, first of all.
Marco:
And it's also to serve their iOS interest to say, look at how useful, especially the iPad, which really needs some help right now.
Marco:
Look at how useful the iPad can be for work.
Marco:
And IBM can go and sell it for them.
Marco:
They can sell and they can say, look, it runs all these Office apps.
Marco:
Because if Microsoft Office, well, for a while, Microsoft Office didn't exist on the iPad.
Marco:
Now it does.
Marco:
But who knows if it always will and how good it will always be.
Marco:
Now Apple can go around and say, look,
Marco:
you can get for this one low price of this iPad that might be three years old, A5, for this one price, you can get this iPad and all this free software on it that's awesome.
Marco:
And you should really buy this iPad because of it.
Marco:
And you'll be able to get all this work done.
Marco:
And the problem is that, you know, so that's like, again, the strategy tax, like that's, well, not really, but that's their goal is to make their hardware sell more units because that's where they make most of their money.
Marco:
But if the software is mediocre or absent, it makes it very hard to do that.
John:
Yeah, the weird thing is that with iOS 8 now, they've essentially given Microsoft all the tools needed to do the thing that previously you would say, well, only Apple would do this.
John:
Like, only Apple is going to ever bother to make an Office-type suite of programs that work on the web, on iOS, on the Mac, with the same file format, all sharing between, all synchronized.
John:
But now with the advent of iCloud Drive, Yosemite, iOS 8, extensions and stuff like Microsoft, there's no reason Microsoft can't
John:
unify its office suite across all of its platforms using OneDrive or whatever their services and having that integrated into iOS and having that available on Macs.
John:
And, you know, like not only Apple can do this now.
John:
And I wonder if Apple would be like relieved if someone else picked someone else picked up the mantle of because that's what Apple wants to sell is like,
John:
We have a way for you to do word processing, and it doesn't matter where you do it.
John:
If you do it on your Mac, if you do it on a website, if you do it on your iOS device, it's all the same documents.
John:
It's all the same program.
John:
It looks and works kind of roughly the same everywhere with a native interface in each one of those things, with a feature set that's the same across all of them, so on and so forth.
John:
That's what they're selling.
John:
If you do it with a bunch of mediocre applications, the sort of unification they're going for, like, I don't think that is as attractive if they say, oh, well, especially, you know, in an established market like Word, like, I know how to do that in Word.
John:
I know how to make pivot tables in Excel.
John:
I don't know anything about numbers.
John:
I don't know what this pages thing is.
John:
And it's weird and it's kind of buggy.
John:
And I use the old version.
John:
Now I can't open those documents anymore.
John:
And, you know, like that's why office is still popular because Microsoft for all its weirdness and all its troubles still has held to the contract of office, like as a standard, you know, that like, if you make your documents in this, you'll be able to open them.
John:
We'll do a good job with compatibility.
John:
We'll try to make them look the same.
John:
I mean, again, there's been stumbles with that, too, with, like, if you open it on the Windows version of Office, it looks different than on the Mac version.
John:
There's font differences.
John:
There's that whole thing about the Mac's epoch being, what is it, January 1904 or something like that, which is different than the Windows epoch, so all your dates and your PowerPoints would be offset, and, like, there are always problems.
John:
But...
John:
Apple is not even a contender.
John:
They're defeating themselves.
John:
Stop hitting yourself, Apple.
John:
They're punching themselves in the face with high work.
John:
They're just not a contender in this race.
Marco:
And to play devil's advocate for a second here...
Marco:
All of the characteristics that make Microsoft so good and reliable at being an office software supplier also make them very boring and unable to compete in a lot of consumer space.
Marco:
Because all those values, you need the opposite characteristics to make a lot of great products in the spaces that we care more about these days.
Marco:
But that being said, you know, a lot of Apple's problems are just botched execution or bad decisions.
Marco:
Similar, you know, the people in the chat were pointing out earlier, like you can make a lot of these same arguments about Final Cut Pro X when that came out, that like it was Apple clearly like moving the ball forward way too aggressively and cutting way too much out and starting over and angering every user of this software, basically.
John:
I think Final Cut Pro X is more defensible.
John:
Because they were moving forward.
John:
They felt like... I think they miscalculated their power, maybe.
John:
Like, they thought that they could make this great leap and that they would leave some people behind, but that this future destination is better.
John:
And that, in the end, it would work out.
John:
They could bring their market... They could bring everybody ahead with them.
John:
There would be stragglers.
John:
People would grumble about it.
John:
Kind of like OS X, where it was kind of a mess in the beginning.
John:
People grumbled, but in the end, the greatness of it compelled...
John:
everyone to move along and plus it got this other audience of people who were never interested in the Mac because hey this has Unix underneath and it has a nice GUI like that strategy worked with them for OS X they did essentially the same thing with Final Cut Pro it was also combined with like the crazy price drop thing like forget about iWork being like you know that was never sustaining itself because not enough things were sold
John:
I think the pro apps were much closer to sustaining themselves as, as, you know, marketable products in their own right.
John:
But even those got the ax and say like, no, you can't be $300 anymore.
John:
You got to be 79 bucks.
John:
I was like, that's the max will charge.
John:
And so now, you know, they're not sustainable and then they get less updates and the final cut pro 10 thing didn't work out the way they wanted it to.
John:
And it's just been a series of miscalculations.
John:
And the pro apps are not things that are trying to help them sell hardware, right?
John:
It's not that there's just too small of a market.
John:
They were for Apple was for a while in the business of selling software to pros, and they seem to have sort of
John:
In the same way they lost interest selling the XServ and XServ Raid and everything seemed to have lost interest in pro software canceling programs.
John:
They cancel Shake or something like that.
John:
And Final Cut Pro X. I still think Final Cut Pro X was a good idea.
John:
It just didn't quite work out.
John:
as well for them as OS X did.
Marco:
Well, exactly.
Marco:
This is the problem.
Marco:
The Apple hardware is firing on all cylinders.
Marco:
The hardware these days is great.
Marco:
The last few years, you can see almost every hardware product Apple has made in the last three to five years has just been awesome.
Marco:
There's been very few exceptions to that.
Marco:
And yet...
Marco:
On the software side, they're just crumbling on so many different fronts so frequently.
Marco:
I really worry about them because it used to be that they moved much more slowly and were much smaller, but they had a solid reputation of reliability and ease of use and stability.
Marco:
And all of this was... That's what carried their brand for so long.
Marco:
That's why people would buy Apple products because it would, quote, just work.
Marco:
Because they would be...
Marco:
better they would they would be more stable they would be more intuitive everything would work better than in the pc world and in the last few years this has crumbled so far that i don't necessarily think we i mean unless pcs have gotten really bad i don't know i haven't used them in a while but i i think the apple platform no longer has that that high ground uh nearly as much as it used to if if it still has it at all i mean
John:
Maybe not in the application space.
John:
In the OS space, I know a lot of people complain about Yosemite, but like I said in my review, and this is the truth, I upgrade all my machines sooner and sooner.
John:
I just upgrade everything, and it's just been remarkably problem-free.
John:
iOS 8, not so much, which is weird because that's their more important platform.
John:
iOS 8 was super buggy for me.
John:
I still occasionally can't copy a URL and paste it into another application.
John:
I have no idea why.
John:
I'm on 8.1 now.
John:
Drives me insane.
John:
And no, I don't have one password installed.
John:
And no, I don't have any custom keyboards installed.
John:
It's mysterious.
John:
But I think their OS, you know, OS 10 at least, those guys are doing a good job.
John:
I mean, you can still argue about whether they want to do yearly releases and stuff.
John:
But then if you look at their application software, that's not part of the OS.
John:
any application software that's not part of the s like i think this came up on one of our podcasts in the past it was like name an apple application that like they like would win an ada that that is it is an example an apple apple design award for people who don't know there is a shining example of what it's like to be an awesome mac application name one that's not bundled with the os and that used to be pretty easy to do like the whole highlight suite was pretty amazing it's like you know the original version of iphone that would win an ada this is an amazing application and
John:
Now, I don't think anyone would say that about iPhone.
John:
No one would say it about anything in the iWork suite.
John:
Like, I don't think Apple is leading in software by saying, if you were awesome, these are the kind of Mac apps you would make.
John:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Squarespace, Harry's, and lynda.com, and we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco 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.
Casey:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R
Casey:
Oh, you're going to snore some more now, Casey.
John:
I didn't want to put this in the controller part because I thought we spent enough time on it.
John:
But every time I talk about controller stuff, the Wii U Pro Controller, people keep coming out and saying, what's wrong with the Wii U Pro Controller?
John:
Why do you keep saying bad things about the Wii U Pro Controller?
John:
How many times have I talked about what I don't like about it?
John:
You two have heard it before, right?
Casey:
I'm sure I have, but I don't remember, which now I'm giving you the excuse to tell me more.
John:
You don't remember because I say it immediately.
John:
I put links in the chat room so people can look at them.
John:
The Wii U Pro Controller and the GameCube Controller.
John:
Like I said, the Wii U Pro Controller, if you looked at it in your hand, you're like, oh, like any Nintendo peripheral, they make solid hardware in that, like...
John:
i'm not gonna say it's indestructible but it's pretty darn tough like it feels like a solid thing you can abuse it it does not fall apart in general nintendo is really good about making solid hardware so this feels like a solid product but the problems with it are the same i mean if you listen to my hypercritical i know we talked about this i'd like we linked the hypercritical episodes a couple times two hypercritical episodes where i talked about uh video game controllers and
John:
The main problem with the Wii U Pro Controller is that the right thumbstick is the place where the button should be, sort of the primary control location.
Casey:
Oh, yes, yes.
Casey:
You have talked about this.
John:
Yeah, and so they're just in reverse.
John:
Now, if you use two stick shooters, maybe...
John:
But even then, I like the octagonal surrounds for the sticks and they have round surrounds.
John:
I don't like having uniform buttons that are all the same size laid out in a diamond pattern because not every button is equally important.
John:
And games must have a main button, a secondary button, tertiary buttons.
John:
And it doesn't feel as comfortable.
John:
So like it's in almost every way, the controller can can be inferior to the GameCube controller.
John:
It is except the D-pad, which is much better.
John:
And the triggers are probably better, too.
John:
and the build quality is maybe a little bit it looks a little bit higher end because of the glossy finish on top or whatever and of course it's wireless and usb chargeable and all that modern technology type stuff but no that's why i don't like the wii u pro controller that's why nobody likes the wii u pro controller that's right nobody in the entire universe what i'm saying is there's not a single person in the world who likes the wii u pro controller even its designer doesn't like it that's right and the mother of the designer doesn't like it email john please email john
John:
Every time I say that I don't like it, it's like, wait a second.
John:
Are you saying that nobody likes that controller?
John:
I like it.
John:
I had the pony.
John:
You know, you got that reference, Casey?
John:
No.
John:
Nope.
John:
That's okay.
John:
I got a silver GameCube controller.
John:
I forgot if I told you that.
John:
I saw that.
John:
I think you tweeted a picture of it.
John:
Mint in box.
John:
Well, it's in box anyway.
John:
The box is not mint.
John:
But anyway, point is, hasn't been opened.
Casey:
How much did that cost you?
John:
Not too much.
Casey:
$200?
Casey:
No.
John:
I would not buy $200 for it.
John:
Speaking of things that cost $200, I ordered my phone.
Casey:
What?
Casey:
Hey!
Casey:
All right!
John:
Yeah, of course, there's a weight, you know.
Casey:
What'd you get?
Casey:
What'd you get, the gold one?
John:
No.
John:
I got the phone that everyone gets.
John:
64 black?
John:
Yep.
John:
Space gray, please.
John:
Right, yeah.
John:
Are you going to do a case?
John:
The case is already here.
John:
The phone is not, but the case is here.
John:
I got the black leather case.
Casey:
You have exactly my phone then, or will have exactly my phone.
John:
And mine.
John:
I considered getting a red one, but I just, I don't know, I couldn't do it.
John:
the uh case the colored cases do not wear gracefully i i definitely love the case like i i definitely think you're making the right move getting a case and uh i question whether you're making the right move getting a six but oh well what instead of instead of a six plus instead of a five s oh no come on you think i'm gonna finally buy an iphone after like you know six years i'm gonna buy a generation old one not gonna happen i had one for a week i know what i'm getting into it's not like i'm gonna be surprised
Casey:
All right, that's fair.
Casey:
So, Marco, if you were to buy a new phone tomorrow, the 6S is out, and you can get it in 4 or 4 point whatever inches, 7?
Casey:
7, yeah.
Casey:
What are you buying?
Marco:
So, does the smaller one have the same camera as the bigger one?
Marco:
Sure.
Casey:
It's identical in every way, except that it's physically smaller.
Casey:
Battery life?
Casey:
We'll call it equivalent because the screen is so much smaller.
Casey:
I think I go smaller.
Casey:
The thing of it is that I still just drastically prefer the feel in the hand of the 5S, but golly, I am getting used to the new screen and I am liking it.
Marco:
Oh, I like it when I'm using it unless I'm using it one-handed while walking around doing something.
Marco:
And unfortunately, that's a pretty major role of a phone for most people.
Marco:
So I just really... It's like getting a 17-inch MacBook Air or MacBook Pro.
Marco:
It's like...
Marco:
It seems like a good idea if you park it at a desk most of the time and don't bring it with you most of the time.
Marco:
But if you're carrying it with you back and forth to work in a backpack every single day, you might regret that decision.
Marco:
That might not be the best choice for you.
Marco:
With a phone, it's like you have to consider how it's actually used.
Marco:
And yes, a bigger screen is nicer while it's being used.
Marco:
Two-handed, stationary, it is indeed nicer.
Marco:
But is it worth the trade-off in portability in the sense that it makes it harder to use while portable for a lot of people?
Marco:
And obviously that's an individual decision.
Marco:
For people who are going back to the 5S or who are still using the 5S and not upgrading...
Marco:
i totally get that decision i totally respect that decision and i've almost made that decision i i think i will ultimately stick with the six but i'm i've come very close to going back to the 5s because every time i pick it up i think not only does it look way better but it just feels so much better to to use and yes it does look tiny but everything i do is a million times faster my grip is more secure i can reach everything it's it's less frustrating because the fact is as i've said earlier
Marco:
iOS and iOS apps are still largely designed with the assumption that you can always reach all four corners.
Marco:
So many important buttons are up on the upper corners that are hard to reach on the 6.
Marco:
And maybe over time that changes.
Marco:
But we're not there yet, both in the OS and all the apps.
Marco:
And it's going to be a while.
Marco:
So I think in the future this might be easier to use a larger phone because the software will be more...
Marco:
finger local in a lot of ways.
Marco:
It will assume that you're only holding the bottom two-thirds of the phone.
Marco:
But until that point, and that point is not here yet, and again, when the watch comes, and when your phone is less often needing to be used one-handed,
Marco:
If you can do certain things on the watch that you'd previously take your phone out of your pocket to do while walking somewhere or while doing something, then again, that will also help.
Marco:
But we're not there yet either.
Marco:
So I think for this year, it makes sense for a lot of people who are sensitive to this to not upgrade at the 6.
Marco:
And then maybe next year, we'll see what happens.
Marco:
As the environment around it changes, as we get the watch, as we get different software considerations, we'll see what happens.
Marco:
But as of today, I think it's a tough call.
John:
Well, consider the rumored mix of 6 and 6+.
John:
I don't know if this is rumored or announced, but I've seen numbers thrown around that make the mix of 6 and 6+, look way closer to 50-50 than I ever thought it would be.
John:
Do you know any sources of authoritative numbers or have heard similar rumors?
John:
I haven't seen anybody with any credibility.
John:
Yeah, I forget where I saw it.
John:
I mean, I'm assuming I saw it from like maybe a Simcoe or maybe some related thing.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I don't know if they'll ever tell us the mix, but...
John:
yeah what i can pretty confidently say is that i think we would have heard a story if it turned out that the 5s was like selling massively you know like the people weren't getting the six that that all the hardcore people were buying five s's and it was just a crazy i mean i and the thing against the 5s now is not so much just that it's older and slower but also uh no apple pay right no nfc and so if apple does continue to make a smaller line which is still up for grabs if they do
John:
If they gave it feature parity, then it would be like the iPads were last year, just pick the size.
John:
And if you had three sizes to pick from, they would have really covered pretty much every base you can imagine.
Marco:
Well, and the Apple Pay, again, that's another thing where you have to look and say, well, it's, you know, Apple Pay just launched, it is still not supported widely yet.
Marco:
You know, in a year from now, then a lot of, like a lot of American places will have replaced their terminals with the new touchless terminals and everything, so you'll have more of that, like...
Marco:
I feel like over time, the usefulness of the larger phones will grow.
Marco:
But today, it's more of a tough call.
Marco:
That also being said, all of this is not to say they won't sell well or that they aren't selling well.
Marco:
It's just like the TV in the store bright picture problem.
Marco:
People are going to buy these things in large numbers, regardless of whether they're actually easy or better to use than the smaller ones.
John:
Don't you think this is pent up demand for people who knew they wanted a bigger phone?
John:
Oh yeah.
John:
You know, like, like they knew, like, it wasn't like they were speculating.
John:
They're like, I think I might like a bigger phone.
John:
They're like, maybe they were coming from a bigger phone and there's like, I would buy the iPhone except it's too small.
John:
Like the whole reason they needed a bigger phone.
John:
So I, you know, and the, the number that I probably read MTV in the chat room said the T-Mobile CEO said it was close to 50, 50.
John:
Obviously he can only report on his own sales, but, uh, if that's true, we could try to find a link to it.
John:
That is, that is at least one data point.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, who knows what the truth is?
Marco:
I think you're right that we'll probably never know.
Marco:
I do think it would be interesting if large apps with analytics packages, they could start tracking things.
Marco:
Or large analytics companies, they could start publishing numbers.
Marco:
What does Flurry say?
Marco:
What percentage that they're installed on is this versus this model?
Marco:
That we can definitely... We'll have that information if we don't already have it.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, again, I think they're going to do fine with this, and that's fine.
Marco:
And in the future, it might be better to use them, but that doesn't make these large phones a great solution today for a lot of priorities.
Marco:
And look, a lot of people are very happy with them.
Marco:
A lot of people love these things.
Marco:
I was even one of the people saying, I want a bigger phone.
Marco:
And I jumped to get one as soon as I could.
Marco:
But maybe there's a better point between 4.0 and 4.7.
Marco:
That's a pretty big range.
Marco:
You know, like maybe a 4.3 would be great.
Marco:
You know, you get a little bit more space.
John:
I don't know.
John:
4.7 is the compromise side.
John:
Like, you know, you're just shaping inches.
John:
You're going to be like, you know, you just need bigger hands.
John:
That's what it comes down to.
Marco:
Yeah, I'll just upgrade them next year when I'm off contract with you.
John:
With my week with the six, like I said, I think what happened was that I just upgraded my hand motions.
John:
I upgraded my little hand gymnastics.
John:
And you hold the phone differently than everybody else in the world.
John:
well you know like the moves you do to to get to the parts that you have to because like you said the software just isn't updated i'm using apps that were made for at best the iphone 5 screen and at worst you know the smaller 3.5 inch and i i upgraded my my hand moves so much so that it went back to the smaller one i would find myself starting to do the hand move that i needed to do to hit the done button in twitter if i can realize oh i don't need to do that move i can go back to my other move to do you know
John:
I think that will mostly take care of itself, though.
John:
And like the reason I think I'm not bothered by it is because once I sort of upgrade all my, you know, my hands move set, then it's fine.
John:
Like the only I think the only persistent bothersome thing about the iPhone six for me was how much room it took out took in whatever pocket I had it in.
John:
Because that didn't go.
John:
Yeah.
John:
It always felt like it was bigger.
John:
It was more it was taking up more.
John:
If I put it in my front jeans pocket, it was more likely to feel it under stress.
John:
If I sat down, I'm all paranoid about bending.
John:
And if it's in my coat pocket, it pokes out a little bit farther than the other one did.
John:
But that I think I'll get over because I really do use mine more like a little mini tablet.
Casey:
So do you think there will ever come a time that.
Casey:
if you think back to the Tweety days, pull to refresh wasn't a thing.
Casey:
And then Lauren Brichter did it with Tweety and then it became a thing.
Casey:
It literally became a system level thing.
Casey:
So do you think there may come a time where iOS transitions to a
Casey:
back button at the bottom of the screen kind of layout, be it because some popular app like Tweety does it and everyone embraces it, or perhaps because the SDK changes and suddenly tab bars are at the top Android style and back buttons are at the bottom.
Casey:
Do you think that would ever happen?
John:
I think they're going for the system back gesture.
John:
That's their attempt to say, here's a new paradigm for navigation.
John:
Instead of having a toolbar that you have to reach a back button that's really hard to find, do the system swipe.
John:
But I think that swipe is, I know I almost never do it.
John:
It is not obvious.
John:
Even if you show someone to it, they don't.
Casey:
Oh, I do it all the time.
John:
Yeah, I pretty much almost never do it.
John:
uh and i don't think it's the type of thing that if you show somebody they will do all the time because it's not reliable it depends on which application you're using whether it works or not and it's just it is a fairly precise gesture it's not there's not a lot of slop on it because if you just do a swipe sideways that may do something but it's not the back one that has to involve the edge and like i think there's too much nuance to it so i think what you were saying casey is more likely that
John:
Application developers will, especially if the six plus ends up being like super popular, they'll have to redesign their applications to be inside like the thumb, you know, the thumb hot zone, like where you can reach where, you know, put everything that's important within reach.
John:
And then suddenly the phone doesn't feel as big anymore because the apps are designed not to have you do that.
John:
And whatever paradigm it is that does that, whether it's moving everything to the bottom or, you know, I don't know what the solution is.
John:
Reachability is definitely not it.
John:
That's like a hack that I'm sure a few people might use, but that's not the best solution.
John:
But, yeah, I am hoping that the UIs redesign themselves and we standardize on it.
John:
Even if it's not Apple doing it, even if it's just like, you know, the hamburger button thing, which Apple is not popularizing that.
John:
And like you said, the pull to refresh, you know, come out of the third party world and have there be some kind of consensus and have all the applications start to look the same and then have Apple roll it in.
John:
That's that's plausible.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Now, in other news, Marco, have you played with your Retina iMac at all?
Marco:
Yeah, I'm using it right now.
Marco:
Oh, and?
Marco:
Yeah, I've been using it full time for about two days.
Casey:
Oh, I didn't realize.
Casey:
And things are amazing or whatever?
Marco:
Oh, my God, it's amazing.
Marco:
Oh, good.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
It's... Yeah, it's amazing.
Marco:
There's... So there's actually a few things that I've had to change as a result of going to Retina that are very, very boring.
Marco:
So I'm going to tell you about them.
Marco:
So the first thing is...
Marco:
that's that's fair so as as john knows with yosemite stuff uh this so the this was also an upgrade to yosemite so uh at as john has pointed out yosemite takes cues from the desktop wallpaper to do most of its blurriness um so please email john with the details of how i got that wrong so the problem is before for years i've used just like a static like medium gray background and i've
Marco:
put a whole bunch of crap in my desktop and all, you know, I save everything to the desktop and everything's all, you know, it's John's disaster scenario.
Marco:
It's like everything is saved from the desktop.
Marco:
In Yosemite, if you have a solid color desktop that is some drab, dark color, many windows will, will pick that up in some little way and just look terrible.
Marco:
You know, you just have these awful, I mean, John, you saw this, right?
Marco:
And you're testing and stuff.
John:
Yeah, like my background at work, as I said, has pumpkins.
John:
Pumpkins are nice and beautiful and orange, but they make everything look terribly sick and rusty.
Marco:
But even like you can't just do a solid color, a flat color background, even that, because even the flat color backgrounds now will make many things in Yosemite look terrible.
John:
If you want to get away from this effect, use a background that has enough light colors in it.
John:
Like if it has like blue sky with fluffy white clouds, your menu bar will look sane and most of your windows and menus won't look that crazy.
John:
Maybe it'll look like the color temperature on your monitor is off because it'll be a little bit blue.
John:
Uh, because that's what, that's what I have here at home.
John:
I have a desktop background that has a white sky with fluffy cats moving up to top of it.
John:
And my menu bar looks okay.
John:
And the menus I pulled down from it look a little blue, but like there's something about anything that's like brown or green.
John:
It just, it just makes the whole interface look sick.
John:
Like it's like sick house syndrome, but for your Mac.
Marco:
Funny that you mentioned that.
Marco:
So basically, I tried a few different things, and what I've come to is I started using the wallpaper I've been using on my Retina MacBook Pro since I got it in 2012, which is a bright sky blue photo I took in New Zealand of the bright sunlit sky and a bright blue ocean.
Marco:
And so it's this nice, like, sunny, bright blue picture, and it's crisp, and it looks amazing on the retina resolution.
Marco:
It's fantastic for this purpose, because it works with everything, as you said.
Marco:
A light blue color is great for this.
Marco:
I also then had to declutter my desktop, because it looked terrible covered in files.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Good.
John:
Especially if like when they change the iTunes icon, of course, they also change the file.
John:
Like if you have an MP3, it gets the iTunes file icon.
John:
So all of a sudden, everything used to have a blue dot on it.
John:
It has this big shining red dot.
John:
It looks like a Japanese flag all over your desktop.
Marco:
Yeah, so I clean up my desktop.
Marco:
That had to change also because that was part of it.
Marco:
Also, my monospace font had to change because I was a Monaco holdout.
Marco:
All these years, I was doing Monaco non-anti-aliased on my desktop.
Marco:
Go to Inconsolata.
Marco:
I haven't tried that yet.
Marco:
So right now I'm on Menlo because I basically inherited what I've been doing on my Retina laptop since that existed.
Marco:
So I went from Monaco 10 to Menlo 11.
Marco:
I had to go up a size also.
Marco:
And part of that is because I think it just looks better on Retina.
Marco:
And part of that is because I went from a 30-inch screen to a 27.
Marco:
So I actually have a decrease in the size of elements on screen because it's the same point width.
Marco:
but three inches smaller diagonal so it actually is like everything is noticeably a little bit smaller uh but other so so i'm actually like i'm fitting less per line in xcode i have to like go change my line wrap settings and adjust my standards and everything the same point with is your 30 inch is it yeah 2560
Marco:
Really?
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
It's a little bit shorter vertically, but horizontal.
John:
That's the difference.
John:
All right.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I've been thinking about what I'm going to go to because I'm also a Bitmap Monaco holdout.
John:
I'm still on Bitmap Monaco 9, but obviously once I go Retina, that is not tenable anymore, so I'll have to pick a different font.
Marco:
you're a nine wow i was always 10 monaco yeah monaco nine has been my fun hardcore since the since the old days when lowercase l and capital i looked exactly the same hardcore monaco nine users yeah that's been the biggest difference like so like you know now i'm basically using like this this like clean wallpapered beach scene computer with all these big smooth fonts on it uh compared to my old like super geek monaco pixel font but
Marco:
I got used to it very quickly.
Marco:
So Tiff's iMac arrived today, and I've been back and forth with her computer setting it up, and going from her old computer to her new one, I keep having to briefly use her 27-inch Thunderbolt display, which of course is a non-retina display.
Marco:
Same size, very similar finish.
Marco:
The iMac, though, is less glossy, but it's still reflective, just less so.
Marco:
Same size, same pixel dimensions, and the 27-inch Thunderbolt is no slouch.
Marco:
It's a very good-looking monitor.
Marco:
My big 30-inch HP mediocre monitor always had far more drab colors and worse contrast and everything than this awesome little 27-inch that TIFF always had.
Marco:
Well, now that I was using the retina for... I was using it for one day, and I go to see TIS monitor, and it just looks like complete garbage.
Marco:
Like, you see every pixel.
Marco:
It looks like you're going back to DOS.
Marco:
Like, you can't believe how much worse it looks.
Marco:
Like, once every screen you see...
Marco:
all day is retina.
Marco:
When you see a non-retina one, it is shocking.
Marco:
Like, it's a big, big difference.
Marco:
So, yeah, that's how it's going.
Marco:
I'm loving it.
Marco:
It's great.
Marco:
There is fan noise, not in most workloads, but if you stress the CPUs for more than about a minute or so, like if you're using Handbrake to encode a video or something like that, if you max out all the CPUs for more than about a minute, you will hear the fan spin up.
Marco:
And I would say the overall noise level is similar to the Retina MacBook Pro when it's spun up.
Marco:
So it's like a nice kind of like medium.
Marco:
It sounds more like white noise than the old fans like Casey's fan.
Marco:
Oh, it sounds more like white noise.
Marco:
It has like, you know, like the essential blades, I assume to do that.
Marco:
But.
Marco:
And it is, it is not, I would not call it loud, but you do definitely hear it.
Marco:
And it is, yeah, I would say it's very similar to the 15 inch Redmi Notebook Pro under full load.
Marco:
So it's fine.
Marco:
I'll see in practice over time if that ends up being a problem.
Marco:
While recording this podcast, I've been monitoring the fan speed, and it has not gone above its idle speed during this entire time, so I'm not worried about things like this being a problem.
Marco:
We'll see what happens if I have to encode a bunch of video or something.
Marco:
The reality is, I need CPU speed, but I usually need it in short bursts, like compiling an Xcode or encoding the MP3 for the show.
Marco:
I need it in short bursts, and so I don't think the fan noise...
Marco:
is ever really going to be a huge problem for me but i'll see what happens like this this might be the one factor that in two years makes me want the new mac pro that can drive the new 5k standalone display but we'll see for now i'm very very happy with this good i'm x for everyone yeah something like that titles before i really do start snoring how are you still awake i'm dying i am absolutely dying if i'm honest
John:
It should be less of a hardship for you because day and night just cease to have all meaning.
John:
And this should be just like if we were doing it at like 11 a.m.
John:
in the morning.