MacBreak Weekly 392 (Transcript)

Show Tease: It’s time for MacBreak Weekly. Andy, Alex, and Rene are all here! We’re going to talk about the latest Apple news, what happened to my MacPro, the secret behind the Apple store, and some inside gossip about Tim Cook. It’s all coming up next on MacBreak Weekly. Netcasts you love, from people you trust. This is TWiT. Bandwidth for MacBreak Weekly is provided by CacheFly, at Cachefly.com.

Leo Laporte: This is MacBreak Weekly. Episode 392. Recorded March 4, 2014

Mountain Dew and Protein Bars

MacBreak Weekly is brought to you by Squarespace. The all in one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website, or online portfolio. For a free two week trial and 10% off. Visit Squarespace.com, use the offer code: Macbreak. And by Freshbooks. The simple online accounting solution, built for small business owners just like you, who want to skip the headache of tax time. For a limited time, try Freshbooks free for 60 days. To get started visit getfreshbooks.com now, and enter MacBreak Weekly in the ‘how did you hear about us’ section. And by 99 designs. The world’s largest graphic designs market place. 99 designs connects businesses seeking quality, affordable designs, with a community of more than 270 thousand graphic designers. Visit 99designs.com/mbw to receive a free power pack upgrade valued at 99 bucks. It’s time for MacBreak Weekly, the show that covers Apple, all your Apple stories in one concise, or somewhat less concise bundle. Joining us in the studio once again, Alex Lindsey, making it a trifecta of Lindsay goodness.

Alex Lindsay: Trifecta. (Laughs)

Leo: Welcome back.

Alex: it’s good to be here.

Leo: Nice to have you. You really, you said you weren’t going to travel as much, but I didn’t believe you.

Alex: You didn’t believe it. Well I might be traveling soon again, for a little bit. But, yeah, I’ve been settling in a little bit.

Leo: Nice to have somebody sitting next to me. Of course, Andy Ihnatko is no slouch either. His monitor is sitting next to me at that’s good. From the Chicago Sun Times, welcome Andy.

Andy Ihnatko: Thank you Leo, and Alex. Our hearts have been broken so many times, we didn’t dare to believe that you’d be here week, after week, after week.

Alex: And soon it’ll be like, “When will he ever leave?”

Leo: Yeah. Alex don’t you have a road trip you need to get to?

Alex: Don’t you have to go somewhere where you don’t have a connection.

Leo: I want to thank Alex because you saved the day on Sunday….

Alex: Oh it was great.

Leo: …As Terry Kay was pointing out, we had trouble, Skype trouble with Film girl. I think Christina Warren really wanted to go watch the Oscars, because she tweeted quite a bit from the Oscars.

Alex: There you go.

Leo: But somehow Skype got… No! Christina wanted to be here but thank you for filling in.

Alex: I had a great time.

Leo: And we got you out in time to watch the Oscars.

Alex: I had a great time.

Leo: And finally, Mr. Rene Ritchie from Imore.com and mobile nations. Good to see you Rene.

Rene Ritchie: Thank you, Leo. It’s good to see you too.

Alex: Rene, you look better every week.

Rene: Oh thank you.

Alex: The system keeps on refining.

Leo: Is it spring yet in Montreal?

Rene: No, it’s spring break, which means we’re all down by the frozen river in our thermal Speedos, trying to enjoy ourselves.

(Laughs)

Andy: Only three layers.

Leo: I love it. What was it, Jimmy Fallen… Where did he do the polar bear dip?

Andy: Chicago.

Leo: Chicago, yeah.

Andy: It was actually the first spontaneous expression he’s had on television since he took over the…(inaudible)

Leo: Well he did wear a suit, which was a little odd. I don’t think that’s going to keep you warm in icy water.

Andy: Well, see it’s a punk move because you might be wearing like a wet suit underneath it.

Leo: Ahhh!

Andy: You’ve got to go shirtless like that guy to the left of him. That guy is the pro.

Leo: Yeah. And Roma Manuel is somewhere in there. The Mayor of Chicago.

Andy: See he was wearing shorts. Shorts and a t-shirt I believe.

Leo: Uh huh, I see. Suit, you’re right. I bet he has a wet suit underneath of there.

Andy: He has nothing to hide for a politician, nothing to hide! Jimmy Fallen, he’s got that sort of, you know, I don’t know, sort of squirrely look about him that says,” I bet that I’m wearing a polar suit underneath this.”

Leo: I don’t know! It looks like there could be shrinkage going on. That’s pretty… he looks pretty chilled.

Andy: You’re right, because he’s not that good of an actor either. I saw Taxi.

Leo: He was in Taxi?

Andy: Oh yeah! He was Taxi!

Leo: Jimmy Fallen?

Andy: Okay, I appreciate that with Queen LaTifa who could be watching anybody else, but…

Leo: What Taxi are you talking about?

Alex: I don’t think he’s talking about the show.

Leo: Oh okay.

Alex: He’s talking about the Movie, right?

Andy: Oh no, the movie. I’m sorry, the movie.

Leo: Not Taxi. I’m thinking Robert Dienero in Taxi Driver. You’re not talking about that one.

Alex: I wasn’t even thinking about that! I was thinking…

Leo: Jody Foster.

Alex: I was thinking, do, do, do.

Leo: Taxi, the movie.

Andy: It’s basically part of the half-way house process, when you stop being a carnet live male cast member, you have to do one movie in which you play, sort of an immature cop. This was his transitional, to sort of mainstream him back in the society, where people are going to be judging him more on his merits as opposing to be sort of, mildly amusing for two minutes. One week at a time, 20 weeks out of the year. It’s less startling, its less frightening for them, and you know, if we can get more of these former Estenal cast members out there, they might actually reproduce and not require such warehousing on network television. That’s really the goal. It’s nice that we’re allowing these cast members to survive, but we haven’t done our job as caretakers for planet Earth, until we’ve allowed the native population of somewhat funny sketch comedians to reestablish their populations.

Leo: There you go. Officer Washburn is having a bad day.

Leo: Oh, that’s always funny when the airbag goes off later.

Andy: It’s hard to recognize him, because he’s not giggling and looking into the camera inappropriately.

Leo: You don’t like Jimmy Fallen, do you?

Andy: Well I’m not overly impressed by him. But again I respect him, and I respect people who are pleased by him. I’ve sampled the new Tonight show. It’s not a product that I can use in my profession, or personal life.

Leo: I like him! He’s very likable.

Andy: He’s likable as hell, but do you want someone who is likeable, or do you want somebody who is funny?

Leo: Okay, there you go.

Andy: I just don’t get it, that’s all. 

Leo: When do we cover the Mac news on this show? Is that soon? Is that coming up?

Andy: He does have a Mac on his desktop.

Leo: Okay! There you go.

Andy: Let’s have Josh on the show… Well I haven’t watched in a while. But he use to have Josh on the show a lot.

Leo: I’m sure that he will get Joshua on.

Andy: Two points very much in his favor. Again, I’m merely saying as a consumer of late night product, he does not create a product that I have use for.

Leo: When does Robert Dienero and Jody Foster show up in this? Is that later? You talking to me? You talking to me?

Andy: He’s playing with the Peter Boyle role, we’ve got to get someone else as Travis Beckle. As opposed to the other guy who hangs out at the taxi stand.

Leo: Well we cut just at the right time, by the way, on that trail there. Wow! There was some brief sensuality. I just wanted to tell you. Alright, let me give you a couple updates. First of all. Ellen uses an IPhone. Okay, that’s very important, you should all understand this.

Rene: The bestselling IPhone App.

Leo: Or it’s possible that Ellen’s people use an IPhone.

Rene: No I think its Ellen.

Alex: Ellen uses an IPhone.

Leo: You know, maybe it’s just a side effect of the business we’re in, but whenever I see product placement it’s like, Boing! Like Roger Rabbit, I see it immediately.

Alex: Now what they claim, is that it was not part of the product placement. It wasn’t part of Samsung’s deal, to get them to use it in the show. The producers thought it would be fun to use in the show and they used Samsung, obviously, because they were already a sponsor. According to the producers of the s how they were like Samsung didn’t know…

Leo: Well, according… Okay, let me tell you what the Wall Street Journal says. According to the Wall Street Journal, first, of all Samsung bought 5 minutes of ad time on the Oscar ceremony.

Alex: Which is why they used it.

Leo: Estimated 1.8 million dollars every 30 seconds. We’re talking about 20 million bucks.

Alex: Which is chunk change compared to what they got out of this

Leo: According to the Wall Street Journal, Ellen decided she wanted to do selfies during the show. ABC said, you might want to use a Samsung galaxy note 3, since they just spend 20 million dollars for 5 minutes of ad time. And it was probably more, I would guess more, as many experts said, was more impactful than the commercials themselves.

Alex: Absolutely.

Leo: That you can’t miss that big white leather.

Andy: The big Samsung logo. It’s part of the corporate branding, only one company will make a phone that’s that tacky. That’s good identification.

Leo: Yeah! I mean, had it been almost any other phone, you wouldn’t know it was a Galaxy Note, but that phone!

Andy: Only one phone maker saw the mac 0S 1.7… saw the redesign of the Mycal or the calendar applications and said, “You know what? We do like the fake stitching’s. As a matter of fact, we’d like to put that on our real product.”

Leo: Yeah.

Rene: Fake leather is under-utilized in our market.

Leo: Well and also the size is kind of a giveaway there. That thing is a monster. So the first selfie she took was all blurry and icky. She goes like this.

Alex: Thank goodness Brad LaCooper took over, is all I can say.

Leo: Yeah, Bradly did excellent.

Alex: She was wanting somebody else to do it and Bradley, “Let me just have that!” And we will now turn it too landscape.

Leo: Do you think that any of them…

Andy: Don’t you love Bradly Cooper? He’s living the fantasy that all of us have had when we’re in a public place and we see somebody using a phone camera wrong, and we’re like “Give me that!” But it was like this…

Alex: It was fun to watch him though. You seem him like slowly just go, “Give it to me, give it to me, give it to me.”

Leo: And immediately go to Landscape, showing some good taste.

Alex: He could immediately tell, this is going to be crappy if I don’t get ahold of this thing.

Leo: Journal says that Ellen did receive training in the Galaxy note three.

Andy: Not much, obviously.

Leo: In rehearsal. Yeah, well she’s an IPhone user. So you know, she immediately went back stage, took back the iPhone, and tweeted out that she’d met that other hunky guy. You know the one I’m talking about. I think it’s a good picture. Now here’s the question. You see Kevin Spacey in the back, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, with his mouth wide open. I love Jerod Letto, he’s kind of photo bombing it. Of course, Ellen’s sitting in Marl Streep’s lap, so is Jenifer Lawrence. Do you think those celebrities got paid for that? That’s a heck of a selfie!

Andy: What I wonder is, do any of those people have promotional contracts with other makers?

Leo: Right!

Andy: And were there people like fielding phone numbers, saying yeah, you know what? Mitsubishi just paid you half a million dollars in Singapore to never be shot by any other selfie camera. Ever.

Rene: That’s why Jonny Jr. wasn’t in there.

Leo: By the way, here is the Photoshop. Of course immediately editors go crazy and…

Andy: That’s really all you need, once you’ve got Kevin Spacy.

Alex: All spacy, all the time.

Andy: Once you’ve got Kevin Spacy in there. I really think that IOS 8 should have that as a standard camera enhancement. The Kevin Spacy eyes button.

Leo: I’m amazed Galaxy doesn’t have it, after all.

Alex: You know, that would actually be a great hang out thing. You know, they have the little glasses, they should just have a Kevin Spacy face that everyone can wear.

Leo: Apparently she gave everyone in her audience… Does that mean at the Ellen show? She gave them all a Galaxy note 3.

Rene: They got to lug them home with them.

Leo: For you, and for you, and for you. And it’s just, when we, it’s so annoying now, when I run these YouTube clips, which are basically ads for Samsung products, I’ve got to see a Yogurt ad in front of it.

Alex: Here’s a really great thought. It’s someone at Samsung not thinking this all the way out. If you have a segment that you want people to actually watch, the key is to not monetize it.

Leo: What?

Alex: So, it’s because whoever uploaded this thing, turned monetization on.

Leo: Oh, on the YouTube. I see what you’re saying.

Alex: I mean, you know…

Leo: By the way, nice plug first. I guess Samsung bought some time on Ellen as well.

Andy: So they donated a dollar every time someone retweeted the photo, and the photo got retweeted 2 million times so far!

Leo: 2 Million times so far!

Alex:  2.8, I think.

Leo: Yeah, it’s going up all the time I think! 3 Million dollars she said!

Alex: I think they said it was being tweeted 250,000 times a minute for the first little bit.

Leo: I almost retweeted it and then I was like, “Stop!”

Alex: Well what’s funny is I was going to retweet it, I thought “Oh this is a good idea.” And as soon as I went there, it was dead. Twitter went offline.

Leo: She declares triumphantly, we killed twitter! As if twitter isn’t killed frequently anyway.

Alex: It wasn’t as historical as, I think, she thought it was. But it hadn’t happened for a long time, I was like wow this is.

Leo: It was the first fill will in a couple of months probably.

Rene: You’ll have to run fill will in the closet to get it back up probably.

Leo: Hey! Anybody got the Fill will slide, quick! So they’re all getting, apparently they’re all getting Samsung galaxy note 3s. Look at that!

Andy: The problem with television, you have the academy awards. You have some of the coolest actors ever in one room, and still, the hostess saying “Hey everybody turn off the TV! Go to twitter where the cool picture is going to be!”

Leo: Isn’t that interesting.

Alex: But I think that it also… One of the things I think is really interesting though, is that a lot of people are going to take that as a lesson about how to take a… if you’re doing a life event, whether its online or whether it’s on TV, finding some way to connect with that audience and have them actually do something is very powerful.

Leo: Much better.

Alex: I think we’re going to see a lot more of that.

Leo: And unskipple. Of course a lot of people watch the academy awards live. You can expect that kind of program and that makes it hard to skip, although I did what most people do. I started the recording, and a half an hour later watched it.

Alex: Well I think that the thing is, is that this is so valuable to be doing stuff that’s interaction with the audience because now it’s a must have. It’s crossing across a couple of the social networks.

Leo: Thanks to the Globe in mail, who points out that in fact, the copy write for the photo belongs to Bradley Cooper because he takes the photo, he owns the photo.

Rene: There’s paper record for a reason, you know.

Leo: They also port out that Liza Menaly desperately tried to get in the shot, but could not! She was way up in the back, she must have run down. Liza was way in the back.

Alex: No, Liza was one or two behind Julia Roberts I think.

Leo: Oh she was right there? Oh okay.

Andy: She was part of the Wizard of Oz tribute. They cut to a spot of the three surviving children of… so…

Leo: Right. Ellen made a joke about her too saying, “Nice costume sir.” I thought that was a little unkind.

Alex: Ellen can get away with that.

Andy: I thought that they were going to get back on for some reason because she’s not… there was a, only the 12^th time in human history, a human being has one the Egot because one of the composers of the Frozen song also has one the tony award, an Emmy and a Grammy.

Leo: The youngest egot yet, 31 years old.

Andy: Right, and Liza is one of the only people, living people who have actually won this thing. So you think there would have been hustler back stage for a photo op. I’m sure you could have twisted her arm to get a picture taken during the Oscars.

Leo: Globe and Mail points out that if Ellen wishes to use that image in any other promotional material, she must get Bradley Coopers help and approval.

Andy: Standard wavier and approval.

Leo: He wants photo credit.

Alex: Yeah, exactly.

Leo: Really there is Mac news. I’m going to, one more thing and we’re going to take a break and then we’ll actually come back with some actual content. Although I’m enjoying this.

Alex: I know, I am too.

Leo: Thank you for solving my problem.

Alex: What did I solve? Oh Yeah, yeah!

Leo: So the MacPro. Just an update on the MacPro, which is flaky and weird. And I thought it was just being me! Even I blame myself, “Oh I must be doing something wrong and that’s why it rebooted 3 times in 3 minutes.” So I’m unplugging stuff, maybe I have a bad drive, maybe something is going on. Fortunately Alex wanted to benchmark, this is the new MacPro, the late 2013 mac pro even though no one saw one until 2014. The late 2013 MacPro is late. So Alex wanted to bench mark it. Last week, you gave it to Keith.

Alex: So I handed it off to somebody else. Of course I say on the show, I’m going to bench mark it, and then I hand it off to Keith.

Leo: That’s fine! You have people to do that. So…

Alex: And then I said, but check the USB, do some big read writes and stuff like that. Keith was very thorough.

Leo: He wasn’t able to do anything, right?

Alex: Well he just said… no he gave me… he sent me this is long thing. Like this is what I did, this copied the first time, doesn’t copy the second time. This will install, this won’t install.

Leo: Kind of up and down.

Alex: He said this thing is a big mess!

Leo: You said it was haunted.

Alex: Haunted. Yeah.

Leo: Then he tried to run diagnostics, couldn’t.

Alex: Right.

Leo: And he had the good sense to pull out the one of the RAM modules.

Alex: He’s widely that way.

Leo: Did he get any indicator that there was problems with that RAM?

Alex: Well Keith knows a lot about these things.

Leo: He just thought about it and said, well maybe, this is like bad RAM. It is by the way, that is kind of typical of bad RAM is weird intermitted stuff.

Alex: Yeah, because it’s accessing that memory and not getting out.

Leo: So I don’t know if this physical damage on this RAM is dremain or not, but there was a visible scuff mark and actually this is the RAM module. This is an Apple Module. It was a BTO, so it came with 3 sticks, 12 gigs and then as ordered they but a 3^rd. Thanks to Ed Egbert they put a 4^th one in.

Alex: But whoever stuck the forth one in…

Leo: This is… Can you see that scuff, that little scuff there? And first of all, that shouldn’t be there unless… It’s like somebody stepped on it at the factory. And then Bergs thinks that there’s damage to a couple of these tracers right here, and maybe up here too. You see they got smashed. That clearly got smashed. So I already called Apple care, and they did a lot of diagnostics. And they said, “Well just let us know what else…” try this try that. So I emailed them that, and he called me… Cody called me, he was up in Sacramento and he said send me pictures. That’s why there’s pictures for this. So he said yeah, there’s replacement, let me call around and see if I can get a replacement stick of ram for you. He called me back and said none of the Apple stores anywhere in the country have anything like that. But here’s what we want you to do. But the stick back in, bring the whole thing to the Apple store, let them test it, if they agree there is something wrong with it, they will then give you the Mback, take it back home and in a month or two when they get new ram, we’ll come back up and install it for you at no charge. And I said, yeah. No! Takes too long, I’m not going to make two or three trips up there etc. etc. for the RAM. So I checked MAC, Other World Computing has it! Do you think, Rene, or anybody that it’s the same? They say it’s compatible.

Rene: Compatible, I don’t know if it’s identical. But it’s…

Leo: I’m sure it’s not identical.

Rene: Maybe discovered another one of the supply constraints, Leo.

Leo: Yeah. Well in fact, I then got a call from Austin. Where they’re making these things. And from a very nice lady, Christina, who said, well we’re calling all the people who have problems with their MacPro to see what’s going on. So I filled her in on this problem and she said, “Well let me get back to you.” I still haven’t heard back from them. But meanwhile, for $74, I ordered another 4 gig. Module, it should come today. Yeah, it’s not. They say it has all of the things that Apple does. You know. Apple specify thermal sensor for instance, but I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s the wrong thing or not.

Rene: I’ve used them for years, they’ve always been good.

Leo: Other world Computing is great. It’s for us unconcerned.

Alex: I’m going to show my age. Every time I see prices for RAM, I always think of the early days when I .

Leo: 4 gigs. 75 bucks!

Rene: They cost as much as a new car!

Alex: I remember, I bought a 64, I think it was a 64 gig. Or 64 Meg. For 900 dollars.

Leo: It’s DER 3 its ECC, although it’s interesting. If the modules are bigger than I think 8 gigs. Than it gets a different kind of ECC, anyway it’s very complicated. So my first question was, and I think we already figured this out, it used to be you had to add ram in pairs, so it had to be balanced.

Alex: You haven’t had to do that for a while.

Leo: Yeah, you haven’t had to do that for a while but I wasn’t sure, it comes with 3 anyway. It comes with 12 gigs and an empty slot, right?

Rene: Yeah, but its three channel ram I think, on all the Mac Pros.

Leo: Oh ok.

Rene: On all recent new machines. I don’t know how the 2s match up to the 3s anymore.

Leo: Does it even matter?

Rene: Maybe you need six now at this multiple.

Alex: The only thing that we tend to be, what we tend to be superstitious about is that we tend to make sure that all the RAM is made by the same manufacturer.

Leo: This won’t be.

Alex: We’ll see how that goes.

Leo: I don’t really need it, because for me. 12 gigs is plenty.

Alex: Right.

Leo: But for you, you said you want more memory to really do those bench marks. You need more memory.

Alex: Yeah.

Leo: I’ll give this to you after I get the new RAM in it.

Alex: You can give the ram to us and we’ll put it in.

Leo: What Apple says is not unreasonable, but it would have been nice if they would have said, oh good, we’ll send you a new module, send us the old one back. It’s clearly scuffed. I don’t…

Alex: They’ve never done that.

Leo: They don’t do that?

Alex: No, ever.

Leo: Ever?

Alex: No because then it’s a warranty issue. They just asked the user to do something, to consider something they should do.

Leo: Although it is user upgradable part.

Alex: It is, but they don’t want to send you something new and then you send it back and say, “Hey it didn’t work.” Because you didn’t get it all the way in.

Leo: For all they know, I scuffed it. When we pulled it out, I stepped on it, right? They don’t know what happened.

Andy: Leo Laporte.

Leo: And you can clearly see me with my thumb on the Gold contacts, so obviously I ruined that RAM anyway.

Alex: There was no static wristband.

Leo: I was about to say… Apple busted! I’m busted!

Alex: I kind of miss the static wrist bands.

Leo: But I think that does mean that maybe that’s one supply constraint. They don’t have separate memory. They said it would be able at roughly the same time the next generation of MacpPros shipment is available.

Alex: Maybe that’s the reason that they’re waiting.

Leo: Maybe it is grand…

Alex: Maybe you should call crucial. Because I mean, they should call…

Leo: Mack world, Mack sales, Other World computing.

Alex: Other World Computing and say, “Hey we could use some RAM.”

Leo: Then, of course, on Google plus everybody weighs in. I see no evidence that this is the cause of the issue. The protective covering looks fine. Okay, whatever.

Alex: Obvious Photoshop.

Rene: With a degree in biology.

Leo: I mean, whether the scuff did anything or not, it’s clearly scuffed, that doesn’t seem right.

Alex: And we know we took it out and everything worked fine. It’s not that we took it out, saw it was scuffed, and decided it was broken. All the tests were failing, then we took that out, and all the tests were working.

Leo: And that doesn’t look good!

Rene: That should not be scuffed. I wouldn’t trust it if it were scuffed.

Leo: Whether that’s a problem or not, it’s not right! And it did squish this trace, this trace is definitely squished.

Andy: Also if you unpack it and it looks like it was licked at the factory. I would not sign for the package.

Leo: Somebody spit in my MacPro. Is this for Leo? Oh that guy!

Andy: I couldn’t resist! It’s such a sexy design!

Leo: Oh no! Stop it!

Andy: Oh my gosh! There’s a hippy chest here inside there man too! Ahh!

Leo: Alright. Anyway, that’s the update on the MacPro. Its working just fine now with 12 gigs. The way God intended it. And I’ll put the Other World in. But I don’t really need it, it’s for your benefit. Because 12 gigs, basically I could be using a Chromebook for what I do with that thing.

Alex: Don’t say that in public.

Andy: Just to honk off a lot of people, you should attach to a VGA monitor. Like an old one.

Alex: I’ve got an old Sun monitor around here somewhere.

Andy: Go to the recycling Depot. And every time you see the big pile of monitors, just grab one. Even a view sonic.

Leo: (Laughs) And Keith did all the updates.

Rene: Packard Bell VGA screen.

Leo: I really think that Apple is doing its best. I really do. I’m not upset, I’m really not. And it works fine. It looks good with a VGA monitor. I shouldn’t have. Apple has no idea who I am, through all of this. Cody says, “You sound like you know what you’re talking about.” I don’t, Keith does. Ladies and Gentlemen we’re going to take a break, come back we’ll talk about the iTunes festival and knolling.

Alex: It’s all about the Knolling.

Leo: It’s all about the Knolling. I didn’t know this.

Alex: You didn’t knoll that.

Leo: Is it named after Thomas Knoll, the creator of Photoshop? It’s another Knoll. Our show today, brought to you by something that is actually quite Knolly. Squarespace. They’re making the web beautiful one site at a time. It could be your site. Squarespace is the all in one platform, hosting software, beautiful templates, a logo creator tool, IOS Apps. Everything for one low price. And they are constantly improving the platform because they host the software and do the hosting, the improvements happen automatically. You don’t have to do upgrade security fixes. Visit Squarespace.com, press the get started button, you can try it free for two weeks. NO credit card needed or anything. Just pick from one of their beautiful 25 templates. You can use the logo creator tool to create your own logo. Squarespace, it’s easy to use, I don’t think you’ll need help using it, but if you want help, 24/7 live chat and email support, right there from New York City. Plus, t they’ve got a beautiful new customer help site, with self-help articles, video workshops. They’ve really done a nice job of making it easy. But you know, you don’t have to be a coder to do this. You can, they have a developer platform that’s even more incredible. But really anybody can make a unique, beautiful site with Squarespace. All the sites, all the templates now have ecommerce. Which is great for… they can accept donations. It’s great for a nonprofit, or cash ,wedding registry, or school fund drive. It starts as little as $8 a month. That includes a free domain name. All the annual plans do. If you want commerce, yes, you can sell one product for 8 dollars, but up to 20 products for 16 dollars and unlimited products, digital services, for $24. And they include real time carrier shipping, label printing by a ship station, integrated accounting from Zero. It’s amazing what you get for a very affordable price. And Squarespace sites never go down. Elegant, clean, beautiful. I want you to start your two week free trial right now. No credit card needed. Your website. When you decide to sign up for Squarespace, all we ask is that you use our offer code, Macbreak. By the way, we’ve simplified the offer code. It’s just Macbreak. No number, no month or anything. Just Macbreak, and you’ll get 10% off. Squarespace.com the offer code is MACBREAK. Please use it so they know that’s where you heard it. We thank them so much for your support. We’re rooting for you Squarespace. We love them! Knolling, this is an article from the Australian newspaper. News.com.au. And very interesting article, that submits that perhaps the secret to Apples retail success is Knolling. The term was corned by a janitor. Andrew Chromolo who worked in Frank Geary’s furniture fabrication shop. Geary is one of the world’s most famous architect in many ways.  Most beautiful designs. You see beautiful swoopy dopy Geary buildings all over.

Alex: And great furniture evidently.

Leo: Mickey Mouse Disney center in Los Angeles. Whatever it’s called, the Disney. Is Geary and so is Experienced Music project, I think. He was designing chairs, a lot of architects do this. Denise Vanderogue did it. Goudy did it.

Alex: And they look very much like his buildings.

Leo: Yeah. Swoopy dopy. Oh beautiful! Yeah, they do. They look like his buildings! Anyway he was deigning chairs for a company called Knoll, a design firm, known for its angular furniture. The janitor noted as he was tidying up, that Geary’s tools were all arranged at right angles. On the surfaces. He’s one of those guys.

Alex: I’m in to right angles.

Leo: And he called the style of organization Knolling, because they were designing chairs for Knoll. Kind of interesting. A contemporary artist, Tom Sacks, who also worked at Geary’s shop, made it into his personal mantra, always be knolling.

Andy: And knolling his half the battle.

Alex: You’re waiting for someone to say, “Is this all organized correctly?’ And you can say, I don’t knoll!

Leo: Here’s the rules for always be knolling. This is from 10 bullets, his 2009 studio manual. Is this, did you do a search for knoll?

Rene: Yeah, this is the idea, is that you take similar items and you put them next to each other.

Leo: Well let me give you the rules.

Rene: Yeah, go ahead.

Leo: Scan your environment for materials, tools, books, music, etc. which are not in use and put them away. If you’re not sure leave it out. Group all like objects, group all like objects and then. Andy is laughing and I’m laughing because I think our houses don’t look like this.

Andy: Exactly. This is where refuges for rolling in knolling camps come from for gratis and some safety.

Leo: Never be knolling is Andy’s motto.

Andy:… My laptop I sent back two years ago!

Leo:  Be free!

Andy: Work shoes that I got from my dad’s garage, when we closed up the house and haven’t touched it since!

Leo: Excuse me, but when you see somebody who is doing this, you think they are mentally ill. You don’t assume this…

Alex: When, I look at this, I go through states of knolling.

Leo: Well I try. Briefly.

Alex: No, no my house will be like a mess, but if I have enough conference calls, my house will become very clean. And as soon as it becomes clean, I do exactly what it says here. I didn’t know what it was called something.

Leo: Align, or square all objects to either the surface they rest on, or the studio themselves. So everything is at right angles. And apparently Steve Jobs knew this, or somebody did. Because if you look at an Apple store, it’s all knolled. It’s perfect. No wires visible, frankly very few curves visible. It’s all squared off, right angles.

Andy: See I don’t know, it’s just that in high school in the 80s I worked in the computer department in the office equipment department in a big department store and apparently we were into, we got memos about knolling as well, only we called it get that crap off the shelves. Make sure everything is lined up perfectly. That was like the last thing we had to do after we sent the customers home, before we could go get our coats and go home, was to make sure all the laptops were square, make sure everything’s been put back away. It’s, I enjoy those knolling pictures because I just enjoy… there is something about my personality that says that I love seeing 400 different types of phones in one gallery all lined up nicely. I’m not sure if I would take all 400 phones that are in my hardware library and line them up that way, but it’s nice. It’s knolling, is self-soothing behavior for a certain type of personality.

Leo: It is, for some people it just has to be that way.

Andy: And there is nothing negative about it, but for some people you get a certain amount of pleasure for some meditative act. Just like raking those parallel lines in the sand bed. Instead, I’m going to take everything out of my pocket, I’m going to take all the cards out of my pocket, I’m going to line them up very nicely. I’m going to observe my collection of objects, I’m going to delete everything that looks superfluous, and them I’m going to put it right back.

Leo: I should give full credit to Emma Overton who wrote the original article for the Australian site askmen.com ‘Became a Better Man.’ Become a better man by knolling. I didn’t know, this but apparently Brian has a term for it, stacking blocking.

Brian: Here’s a German game show channel. That’s right, a German game show channel.

Leo: It’s a very old clip.

Brian: This is weird, this is very strange. It says right now they’re in the middle of a show called stacking blocking. Where contestants have to arrange items on a dresser at right angles. That passes for fun in Germany.

(laughs)

Leo: Oh no! He’s measuring it with a T-square. Wow! Oh my! You really must stacking blocking correctly. It’s a little OCD.

Andy: I don’t think that’s really a show.

Rene: Still not as bad as some of the Japanese game shows.

Alex: Now if you were really into this would, people just call you Anal?

Leo: Yeah! It’s OCD I think, really. But there is something to be said for…

Andy: If you’re lining it up its Knolling, if you then have to touch the tip of the screw driver 9 times and then the tape measure 4 times its something that perhaps you should seek a medical…

Leo: Right. That is OCD. But there is something to be said for having a tidy work space, where everything is put away where it should be. Your mind then doesn’t have to spend any energy on the workspace. It spends energy on the work.

Rene: But there are a lot of well-organized empty stores too. It’s certainly not the secret to Apple success.

Leo: I’ve got to say the people ruin it. It’s stacking blocking when the store opens, but then I’ve never seen an Apple store that’s not overflowing with round people. Screwing it all up! So I think if really Apple…

Andy: Like those children with their chubby, chubby cheeks.

Leo: I hate that.

Andy: They should be aesthetic. They should be linear.

Leo: Yes.

Rene: In series, it’s necessary but not sufficient to Apple success.

Leo: Yeah. Did you all read the expert from the new book about Apple and Tim Cook, in the Wall Street Journal? Should I summarize it a little bit? This is going to be a book, let me see if I can get the name of it.

Rene: The Revelation, Leo.

Leo: It actually explains quite a bit.

Andy: It was such a good piece I actually preordered the book.

Leo: Yeah, I can’t wait to read it. Although some people think it’s kind of a hit piece on Cook.

Rene: I’m not looking forward to the book. I’m going to read it, but I’m not looking forward to it.

Leo: Haunted Empire, It’s called. Apple after Steve jobs. It’s written by Former Wall Street Journal reporter Ukari Cane. And you know, the hit on it, and I think this came from Jim Dowlrimple was that a lot of this is second hand. Right, but she wasn’t there. But of course not, that’s how reporting is. Shortly after Tim Cook, seceded his job of CEO of Apple, she says he told the confidante he got up every morning reminding himself, just do the right thing. Don’t worry about what Steve would do. Right on. We’ve talked a little bit about that. That can haunt you. That hurt Ford for a long time, for instance. You know, Henry Ford looking over your shoulder.

Rene: Cook has mentioned that several times.

Leo: Yeah. Apparently he’s also fairly demanding. We know him as the supply guy. But in meetings apparently he could be fairly demanding. Although I don’t know a tech CEO, when you finally here these stories, like Bill Gates.

Alex: Oh but not demanding, what is wrong with them? I mean that’s there…

Leo: That’s their job.

Rene: There was that story years ago about a problem in China, and he turned to the guy and goes, “Why are you still here?” And that was still when he was CEO..

Leo: Right on.

Andy: And then the guy left the table, did not go home to pack, he went right to the airport and went right to China.

Leo: Right. One planner recalls Cook saying, “Your numbers make me want to jump out that window over there.” But didn’t Steve Jobs say, “You’re ruining my company?”

Alex: He said a lot of things!

Leo: Jeff Bezos said exactly that. This is what a good CEO maybe has to do.

Andy: The impression that I get from… I don’t know as many people who worked with Tim as I did with people who worked with Steve Jobs. But the impression I get was that I get from this conversations is that if Tim Cook says something like that is you know that it’s a rational response to actual data, and if you present him with the exact same situation a week later, he’ll have the exact same type of response. And what’s the improvement that a lot of people are siting is that we feel the people is that the CEO is on even more predictable and even keel.

Leo: Yeah, if it’s related to something!

Andy: I don’t think I would survive long with a boss that is quite that demanding. But it well within the bandwidth when you have a job that reports directly to the CEO. Well damn it, you really do have to have the spreadsheet with the right numbers, and if there’s any fudge in that number you better make sure you get that out before you go into the conference room. And that’s not irrational.

Leo: Yeah. Here’s the paragraph I think, that to me was the most interesting. “Meetings with Cook could be terrifying.” She writes. “He exuded a Zen like calm and didn’t waste words. ‘Talk about your numbers, put your spread sheet up.’ He’d say as he nursed a mountain dew. Some staffers wondered why he wasn’t bouncing off the walls from the caffeine.” But remember Steve Jobs very famously said, “Enough small talk.”

Alex: The story was I guess someone, it was like a Monday and someone came in. They were starting a meeting with Steve Jobs and they asked him how his weekend was. And I think the quote was let’s bring the intelligence of the conversation up shall we?”

Leo: Yeah, enough small talk. We’ve got a job to do.

Alex: Andy can probably test to this, and Rene, if you’re at Apple, if you’re ever at Apple meetings they’re notoriously short on small talk, you walk into a conference room and the only thing they’re going to talk about is what you’re there to talk about. Now if you go to lunch…

Leo: Right! That’s different.

Alex: Then you can talk about whatever you want to talk about. But if you’re in that conference you only talk about what you’re there to talk about.

Leo: That’s a good corporate company, if you ask me.

Alex: It is across the board, every Apple, you know, place I’ve ever been to have meetings for whatever reason. We use to do a lot of software development as a third party developer. And we’d show them what we were working on. And there was just zero small talk.

Leo: I don’t have too much of a problem with that. “When Cook turned the spotlight on someone,” she goes on to write, “He hammered them with questions until he was satisfied. Why is that, what do you mean, I don’t understand, why are you not making it clear?” He may not have said it like that, he may have said it nicely. Why is that? What do you mean? I don’t understand.

Rene: Bill Gates had a reputation of doing the same thing.

Leo: Jeff Bezos. The meetings at Amazon are silent for the first 15 minutes. Because if you’re presenting in a meeting you’re allowed to write a 6 page press release for what this feature will do. The press release is the press release that will go out to the public. It’s focused on how it will make the public’s life better, Right?

Alex: Right.

Leo: And you give it to all the executives in the room. They read it for 15 minutes and then you begin. I think this is a very smart thing in a corporate culture to have a culture of we don’t have time to waste, let’s get to work.

Rene: Especially at that size. That’s in a massive scale.

Leo: “Cook also knew the power of silence. He could do more with the pause, than Jobs ever could do with a eupeptic. When someone was unable to answer a question, Cook would sit without a word while people stared at the table and shifted in their seats. The silence would be so intense and uncomfortable that everyone in the room wanted to back away. Unperturbed, Cook didn’t move a finger as he focused his eyes on the squirming subject. Sometimes he’d take an energy bar from his pocket while he wanted for an answer and the hush would only be ruined by the crackling of his wrapper.” That’s spooky.

Rene: That only happened once, that guy is in trouble.

Leo: That’s doctor no stuff.

Andy: You imagine someone leaving Apple, and like 5 years later every time one of their kids opens up a wrapper or something it’s like eeekk! All of your snacks come in plastic baggies nothing that crinkles.

Leo: “He gets up at 4:30 or 5 AM, hits the Gym. Eats protein bars throughout the day, simple meals like chicken and rice for lunch. Inhumane stamina, he could fly to Asia spend three days there, fly back and be in the office by 8:30 interrogating somebody about the numbers. Relentlessly frugal. For many years, Tim Cook lived in a rental unit in a dingy ranch style building with no air-conditioning. He said it reminded him of his humble roots. When he finally purchased a house it was a modest 2400 square foot home, built on a half lot with a single parking spot. His first,” this is a good measure, in Silicon Valley. “His first sports car was a use Porsche Ouster.” Eww!

Andy: Who would buy a used car?

Rene: It probably wasn’t even allowed in the Apple parking lot.

Leo: The poor man’s Porsha. Even his hobbies were hard core, cycling and rock climbing. I don’t know, he sounds like a good guy actually.

Rene: The kind of guy who gets to be CEO of Apple.

Leo: Yeah. Gave away the frequent flier miles he racked up as Christmas gifts. He volunteered in a soup kitchen during thanksgiving. He raised money for multiple sclerosis with a 2 day cycling event across Georgia. I have to respect him, we all heard the story of the shareholder meeting last week.

Alex: I loved that story. I don’t think we talked about that.

Leo: NO it happened after the show. So there was a conservative group in there. A conservative think take in the shareholders meeting. And they raised the question with Tim Cook. All of this environmental stuff you do, hits the bottom line, hits your return on investment. You really ought to be paying attention to this, you know, the cost of this. They were pushing a shareholder proposal that would have required Apple to disclose the cost of its sustainability programs, and to be more transparent about its participation in trade associations, in business organizations promoting environmental sustainability. Shareholders rejected the proposal less than 3% of the vote. But during the Q and A session the representative of NCPPR asked Mr. Cook two questions. First, he challenged, for Mr. Cook that Apples sustainability programs and goals, for instance 100% of its powers coming from green sources of the bottom line. He said, “Isn’t that just because government subsidies on green energy?” And then he said, he asked him to commit, then and there, to only doing things that were profitable. This is Brian Chaffin writing in the MAC observer, “What ensued was the only time I can recall seeing Tim Cook angry. And he categorically rejected the world view behind the NCPPR question, he said “There are many things Apple does because they are right and just. A return on investment is not the primary consideration on such issues. He said I don’t consider the bloody ROI when we work on making devices assessable by the blind.”

Alex: What I love is the next one where he says…

Leo: If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.

Alex: And he’s not saying he never pays attention to ROI but he’s definitely not saying he’s only going to pay attention to ROI.

Leo: Get out of my stock.

Andy: It was a really impeding question.

Leo: Yeah.

Andy: If it were a legitimate shareholder raising a question saying I don’t particularly care about your corporate imperatives, I invest in your company because I think that I’ll yield better returns for my clients and retirement portfolios. That’s kind of okay, and maybe they would have phrased it differently but this was a guy from a think tank group that just wanted to get a sound bite they could put on a post card.

Alex: He did.

Leo: He got the sound bite. So Ukari Canes book about Tim Cook is coming out just a few days from now. March 18^th. Haunted Empire, Apple after Steve Jobs.

Andy: That has to be one of many downsides of being CEO of Apple. Almost every other executive at every other company is allowed to simply head up a company with lots of responsibilities, lots of opportunities, and lots of challenges. Tim Cook now has to be a celebrity, where people have to start hammering at his personal life, and the fact that he doesn’t wear his personal life in the form of press release so it’s a mysterious thing that people now have to investigate. And I imagine that just a weekly bummer for him to have to deal with that kind of stuff.

Leo: Gill Amelia said that when he was briefly and notoriously Apples CEO. He said I thought I was here to run a company. That’s like running a religion. It’s a very different Job. Anyway I think on balance Tim Cook comes out pretty good. There’s still a question, as there always will be about Tim Cook is he’s clearly not Steve Jobs. Does somebody in Apple that will have the vision that Steve Jobs did.

Alex: I don’t think we’re going to know for 3 to 5 years. I think to really understand how culturally what it’s done.

Leo: Yeah.

Rene: Which is why the Haunted Empire book is probably premature. But again, I’ll wait until I read it.

Andy: It’s a title that is meant to get headlines, and to sell a book. But just like when Leander wrote the first real book on Johnny Ive, the fact that this is a new book that it covers a subject that hasn’t really been covered in such depth. Will have to get our hands on it and see if that jives with reality, but the fact that this book is out makes it an interesting book for anybody.

Rene: I look forward to it, but my hopes were dashed a lot when I read the New Yorker articles.

Leo: The New Yorker articles? Was there an article….

Rene: She wrote an article she wrote in the New Yorker that was not put in the magazine, but was put online, and it read like one of those analysts who spent years covering Apple but never understood them. It was a typical Apple hasn’t put out any great products. Apple is doomed without Steve Jobs. And really, if I hadn’t seen her name on it I would have thought it was another one of those wacky analysts, and not thought about it for two seconds. So I hope the book is a lot deeper than that article was.

Leo: We’re going to take break. Come back with Snow Leopard and the end of the line for this four year old operating system. The Apple TV rumors, true? Nope. Nope. And a lot more.

Andy: Should you have like a clip on beard standing by.

Alex: I can’t even imagine him saying it.

Leo: He’s so brilliant. I’ve got to get Jim on the show at some point. We’ll talk about that all in just a second. Out show today brought to you by Freshbooks. A simple online accounting solution built for small business owners like me, like you. It’s tax time. Ugg! Don’t we dread April 15? It’s just a nightmare, because now you’re in that, probably very likely in that position where you’ve got all the 1099s, and now you’re looking through the receipts, digging through invoices, going through all the books. If you had only been using Freshbooks this year the simple cloud accounting solution that makes tax time a breeze. Well it starts with invoices, you create beautiful professional looking invoices. That’s really what I use them for. I started using Freshbooks 10 years ago. I just was a lifesaver for me. But you can also capture, and track expenses now. You can get real time business reports for just a couple of clicks. They’ve got mobile apps which make it easy to use Freshbooks on your phone or tablet. It makes it easier to keep track of time and hours, and expenses. Just the fact that it made it easier for my clients to pay was such a relief. I actually got paid faster because I started using Freshbooks. Used them for years until I finally had to, it took four or 5 people to replace freshbooks in the accounting department. The sooner you start using Freshbooks… the sooner you can start focusing on doing what you love. Focusing on the work not the paperwork. They’ve got a great deal right now. Getfreshbooks.com they’ve extended the free offer to 2 months. 60 days. So visit getfreshbooks.com sign up, you’ll be join the 5 million users who really believe, and know that Freshbooks is changing their life. I don’t think that’s overstating it, it certainly did mine. Make sure you put Macbreak weekly, if you do get Freshbooks, in the how you heard about us cetion. 60 day free trial, tax time will be a breeze. Getfreshbooks.com. I thank them so much for their support of Macbreak weekly. Make sure you tell them that’s where you heard it. Have we knolled our desks here? Wait a minute, I’m sorry.

Alex: it’s hard because its’ round.

Leo: There. The handle’s got to be right. There. We mentioned last week the ITunes festival at south pie. That’s exciting.

Alex: It’s going to be big. They’ve added more people since we’ve last talked about it. They’ve got Sound Garden Playing.

Leo: Well and Gruger thinks that this is going to be the release of 7.1 too.

Rene: Which would be interesting because it would be the first time they released an 0S, well an s.1 without a gold master seed.

Leo: They haven’t done the Gold master yet?

Rene: Nope.

Leo: They’ve done how many? 8 Betas?

Rene: 7

Leo: 7?

Rene: 7 I think.

Leo: So according to Gruber, Apple is going to stream the performances at South Pie, they’ve always done it on iTunes, you watch live it’s fun. But they’re also going to do it on IOS. He says I’ve heard from a little birdie, a little birdie the App requires a 7.1

Alex: Well they’re going to have to hurry up. That’s all I’ve got to say, they better hurry up.

Leo: its next week. Well when is music, is it? It’s soon right?

Alex: I think its next week.

Leo: Cold Play, Keith Urban, he’s so great on American Idol. No I’m just kidding. Kendrick Lamar, Pitbull, Soundgarden, Imagine Dragons. 5 knights starts March 11.

Andy: Soon.

Alex: Next week.

Leo: That’s cold play. So do you think, is that Credible? Johns pretty connected.

Rene: He’s got good sources.

Alex: That’d be a good way to get a lot of people upgrading.

Leo: Yeah, You know what? That’s good timing right? You can’t use the app unless you run 7.1, and you have one day to install it.

Rene: Their adoption rates are so high anyway.

Leo: Exactly, they don’t need to do anything.

Andy: And also we forget that the iPhone is such a main stream device that what percentage of people worldwide who have iPhone even care about southwest music?

Leo: I care. Saturday March 15^th, Keith Urban, Willie Nelson and… I want that show!

Rene: On your IPhone.

Leo: On my iPhone or iPad. Alright well from Johns lips to Tim’s ears. Oh that sounds a little dirty.

Andy: You’ve been reading my fan pick (laughs)

Rene: There’s a lot of necessary updates in that, and as soon as it comes out the better.

Leo: Yeah. Will people be a little reluctant though to jump to 7.1? after…

Rene: If they get a respring day, probably not.

Andy: This is an eagerly awaited update for a lot of people. This is not incidental.

Leo: Still your advice would be… to wait right?

Alex: Yeah, I usually upgrade some of my devices and leave some of my other ones.

Leo: Only 5 betas the chartroom reminds us. Thanks dark Macintosh.

Andy: You know it’s weird, has everybody updated all their for real day to day devices?

Leo: 706, better do that.

Andy: I mean from IOS6 to IOS7. I still have one holdout.

Alex: I had one, I had, I think, I went a week with 7 and then just upgraded everything. I was like okay, this is much better.

Rene: I have an iPod touch still on 6 just for testing. But my Macpro just went to Mavericks yesterday.

Alex: After getting use to 7 I kept on looking back at 6 I felt so ancient.

Leo: You waited to go to Mavericks until yesterday, Rene Ritchie?

Alex: I still haven’t gone to Mavericks.

Rene: I usually wait six months to a year. On whatever machine I use for podcasting just in case, because sometimes it’s weird software, like caster app.

Leo: We are so different, because I actually install the new version of the operating system during the podcast.

Rene: During the show?

Leo: Almost always during, it’s a long standing tradition on twit.

Alex: I think the only mavericks we have are the computers we’ve bought since it was released, that you know, come with mavericks, so we’ve got like three or four machines that have Mavericks on them. But outside of that we’re all sticll 1086.

Leo: I don’t have a machine that doesn’t have maverick on it.

Andy: This is not a specific vote against mavericks or IOS7, but my day to day use iPad is still running IOS6. Only because every time I think I’m going to get around to it, I don’t get around to it. I ask myself why I have to get around to it right now, put things off. IOS7 there’s a lot of things I like about it but nothing I have to do. On my 15 inch Macbook Pro, I still have it on the previous edition, again because, I have Mavericks running on two different new machines that I’ve bought since it came out, and I like it it’s just that I don’t miss anything when I switch back to this other computer that still has the other operating system on it. That’s unprecedented in my history, I feel as if I really should. Like I said, it’s not a vote against IOS7, it’s not a vote against Mavericks, it’s just that there hasn’t been that moment that said, oh here is an app I really want to use that requires it. I better update this right, right now.

Leo: Well you better update it if you’re on Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard what 4 and a half years old.

Rene: No! That articles not right. That article is horrible.

Leo: It seems older than that. Are you talking about Greg Kiser’s article in Other World?

Rene: Yeah. That’s horrible.

Leo: Okay, let’s take it out of the equation.

Rene: Peter Kohen got so angry he wrote an instant review model.

Leo: Did he?

Rene: yeah, because it’s still available for sale on Apple.com. It’s still being updated as recently.

Leo: Oh! I fell for it.

Rene: It was not susceptible to this SSL hack, therefore it did not need to be patched.

Leo: It didn’t have the gotofail problem.

Rene: Yes, correct.

Leo: So Apple hasn’t retired it for support.

Rene: No not yet.

Alex: They just didn’t need to upgrade it for that.

Leo: Well Greg Kiser, what the hell? I mean, I trust Computer world so I just went with it. So yes, I did notice you could still buy Snow Leopard. So Apple has made no announcement we’re not going to support Snow Leopard.

Alex: So really the take on this is, if you want to stay secure, keep on using Snow Leopard.

Rene: Well use something that doesn’t have this bug. One of the reason I finally updated was I had to do the SSL bug fix anyway, and I figured I might as well just get mavericks on.

Leo: The SSL bug is a Mavericks issue. It’s not snow leopard, lion, or mountain lion.

Rene: I don’t remember if it hit mountain lion or not.

Leo: Peter says neither lion nor mountain lion.

Rene: Okay.

Leo: I’m really actually relieved, because there are Macs as little as 5 years old that can’t go beyond snow leopard.

Rene: People still use it for, is it Rosetta?

Leo: it’s the last Rosetta yeah.

Alex: If you want to run Photoshop 5.

Leo: Right, if you have apps that were on power PC, you can’t go past Snow Leopard.

Andy: As we always say, it’ll continue to run all the software that it ran at the time when you decided to pass on the upgrade. You can’t complain that every piece of software and every operating system that Apple…Every piece of software ever written will always work with the machine that I had when I was in middle school.

Leo: Well I apologize. I mean I should. Thank you Peter Koehn for setting the record straight. I use to think, I no longer do, but I use to think of Computer World was a reliable source. I apologize.

Rene: That one Author has not got a good track record when it comes to Apple. I mean there is a lot of really good writers there but that one author likes to stick it to apple.

Leo: Peter said Greg Kiser has a very long history of twisting whatever he can find with an anti-apple slant. He’s an Apple troll. So computer world, maybe you want to think about…

Rene: Let him cover something else!

Leo: Move him over to the Microsoft side. Wow! I apologize folks for repeating that story. I think I talked about it on Twit on Sunday, we’ll have to fix that next week.

Rene: Well the truth will be whenever there is an update with Snow Leopard and Apple does in a timely fashion. I just think you can’t tell that based on not having to update something.

Leo: It didn’t have a problem, so we didn’t fix it! That seems reasonable.

Andy: Is that okay with you Mr. Kaiser?

Leo: Geez!

Alex: But it did lead to a good conversation about who upgrades when.

Leo: Yeah!

Rene: Well that’s the thing that security, you know that wealth in security now, Leo. Is that people report security without giving them any context, and it happens so often it ends up just scaring people.

Leo: yeah, and its hard work I’m glad we have Steve Gibson, who kind of vets this stuff. And I always try to think with a grain of salt in this. But in this one I trusted Computer World, that’s terrible! Now I’m nervous about all these other stories! Apple details touch ID in the A7 updated security document.

Rene: Which is actually terrific. That whole document is fantastic.

Leo: Secure on clave is, sounds like a place where data is stored securely. Is that correct?

Alex: That’s the theory.

Rene: Yeah, it’s a custom A7 chip, they have a secure on clave on that chip and the touch ID sensor is actually individually pared with every A7 chip, so if you swap out the sensor, if you get your hands on the phone and think you can just swap out the sensor, it won’t work. You literally have to have those two components to get it out of there. And it goes through a hardware channel, it never goes up into the higher functions of the phone, like into RAM or anything else. They put a lot of effort into making that incredibly secure.

Leo: Each secure on clave is visioned during fabrication of the chip with a unique ID. So each chip has a built in unique ID other parts of the system can’t get it, it is not known to Apple according to this document, when a device starts up and a femoral key is created, is mashed up with a U ID, probably in a hash function and that’s what used to crypt the secure on clave memory space. So that’s secure. Even Apple can’t get into that.

Alex: Well I think that also points to that Apple is not going to make this just a convenience Item. I think you go through that kind of trouble to use it for a lot of things…

Leo: I have to ask Steve about that because they’re not using hash they’re using a term I have not heard before. Tangled. They I don’t know, Steve will know if this is a standard security term. Data that is saved to the file system by the secure enclave is encrypted with a key tangled with a UID and an anti-replay counter.  Sounds good to me.  I’ll take two. 

Rene:  There are a lot of people that work really hard to make that.  some people thought it would come out last year but they really took their time and put a lot of smart stuff with it.

Leo:  Note, by the way, that despite all the flames that Apple took for it’s fingerprint reader nobody said anything about the Samsung S5 fingerprint reader.

Rene:  I saw that a lot and to be fair Apple didn’t get any heat until they actually shipped it out.  He didn’t write his letter until the 20th - that was 10 days and it hit stores,  The security people didn’t get their hands on it to test it until it shipped.  So I don’t think it is a fairness issue as someone who’s got friends who are going to buy Galaxy S5’s.  I just want to know that they are safe and secure.  And sort of how Samsung has influenced it.

Leo:  Well I’ll tell you Samsung has a template because this document is really great.  They needed to real ease something like this. 

Renee:  And my understanding is that Apple hasn’t given it to third parties yet because it uses a Yes/No token and that is what keeps it secure when it releases the information about the fingerprint.  And securing that when it goes to third party hands is probably trickier.  I’ll be interested in seeing how Samsung is doing that because they did announce a SDK.

Leo:  Apple says the A7 processor gathers the fingerprint data but can’t actually read it.  The exchange takes place between the A7 and the secure enclave, fully encrypted.  It is over a serial peripheral interface bust that is encrypted, and authenticated with a session key that is negotiated using a device shared key that is built to the touch ID sensor in the secure enclave, using AS key wrapping.  This is serious stuff.  No third parties are allowed.  There is no API’s, he said.  Touch ID authentication and the date that is associated with the enrolled fingerprints are not available to other apps or third parties.  It does hobble what it can do.  Only Apple can use it.

Rene:  For now.  I mean I think it is just a question of time.

Andy:  Because this kind of security has to be embedded inside hardware and if you screw it up you can’t just do a software patch to fix it.  It means you have to recall phones or at least decide that an entire generation of hardware is a complete write off.  That stuff’s not surprising.

Leo:  This also has information about how stuff is encrypted in iMessage. 

Rene:  That is a big open question.

Leo:  Steve Gibson has held that what Apple can do with iMessage.  For instance, when you start up a new device the iMessage is going to appear on that device is a definite indication that Apple does have access to that data  un-encrypted…

Rene:  The interesting thing is that it looks like there are two systems.  They say Apple makes a unique key for every device.  it will try for a couple of days to deliver a message to a device using a unique key for that device that message doesn’t get there.  But you do back an iMessage to iCloud so if you restore a device it restores all the messages that device has received.  As part of your normal iCloud back up.  So it looks like there are two distinct sort of ways that looks that Apple is handling iMessages. 

Leo:  Yeah, I mean I’m not enough of a security expert to vet this but kudos to Apple for publishing in IOS security published on Valentine’s Day.

Rene:  Love letters to security nerds?

Leo:  Yeah!  It does sound like it is using strong encryption.  Each key pair the private keys are saved in the devices keychain.  The public keys are sent to Apple’s directory service.  That all sounds reasonable. 

Andy:  Anybody wonder why they didn’t release this last year?

Leo:  Why did it take them this long to write it? 

Rene:  This ID stuff and iMessage stuff is…

Andy:  When they first released the iPhone 5S, I’m wondering how long the vetting process took and how many sign offs they had to get on the stock before they made it public. 

Leo:  Yeah.

Andy:  Probably like a chocolate for an energy bar on the corners of every page of that.

Leo:  They also cover Siri, they cover FaceTime.  This really is a full document on how IOS keeps your stuff safe and private.  I am sure that they released this now because of all the concern, thanks to the NSA and so forth.  And they wanted to get it right.  It probably took this long.  You know the NSA revolutions were in June, the iPhone 5S came out in the Fall.  I bet you they didn’t have this document.  It took them a few months to write it, or put it all together, and to vet it. 

Alex:  They were represent things that have been added since. 

Leo:  I wish other companies would do this.  Conclusion:  a commitment to security from hardware to encryption to device access, each component of the IOS security platform provides organizations with the resources they need to build enterprise grade security solutions.  That is an important phrase.  They really want businesses to trust them as well as individuals.

Rene:  The starting phrase is great too.  It says that IOS was built with security in mind first.  That was a priority.

Leo:  IOS that were designed for Apple were built with enhanced security in mind.  Safari offers safe browsing, EV certificates.

Andy:  It really does make you think that here in 2014 the features that people are most interested in a phone are the screen, the camera, the Apple iBreak and now the security too.  And now any company, even if they haven’t really been paying attention to that so far, they now have to make sure that is part of the marketing.  If it is on page 3, page 4, or page 8 it has to be there.  Here’s how we are securing your phone to make sure that it can’t be compromised by either commerce minded or government security minded individuals. 

Leo:  They define tangling down here.  I’ve never heard the term tangling but they are using a PBKDF2 and Steve’s talked about PBKDF2.

Rene:  You have to think that if you have an antennae and people are frustrated but if you start tying transactions and something goes wrong, people feel like you’ve got a hand in their wallet so you have to preemptively… especially if another manufacturer, whether it is Samsung or someone else, has a fingerprint sensor and it is not great and there is a lot of publicity around it.  People start lumping Apple into it.  They probably want to have a really good foundation for how their technology works out there ahead of time.

Leo:  We’ll get Steve to vet this document and translate it into English. 

Andy:  You know there is also a precept in encryption that says that if you want to digitally secure something you make it more secure by making your methods public because that way the entire community can hammer on it and find the faults in it before you make a commit.  Maybe this document is part of that as well so that if there is something that is going to cause a lot of people to either correctly or because they don’t know what they are doing, complain that it doesn’t have this or it doesn’t conform to this standard or there is a weakness that was published three years ago in this paper right here, it gives Apple an opportunity to head that off and say “Well no actually we’re going to add a section here that explains that is not the case or quietly say ‘Yeah, let’s fix that’ before we actually put that under product review”. 

Leo:  Also from Apple Insider Daniel Eran Dilger writing that Apple is preparing a software update unclear if it will come out with 7.1 that will fix some of the problems people have had and the enhance functionality and touch ID.  The fingerprint fade particularly.  Authentech, which is the fingerprint recognition company that Apple bought 2 years ago, the team is still there and they are working to improve the recognition software and will release an update relatively soon.  Including a solution or he believes addressing the issue of fade which is that after a while it stops recognizing your fingerprint.  Has anybody tried, because I have a 5S, and has anybody tried Steve Gibson’s technique of adding points?  Did it seem to help?

Renee:  I’m on 7 which has been rock solid for me.  I don’t know if it is that.  But in general it is working very well on this latest version. 

Leo:  We’ll understand better once 7.1 comes out.  Apple stores are discounting Apple TV’s and adding a $25 iTunes card.  That has led some to think, to assume, to predict a new Apple TV coming out this Spring.  Jim Dalrymple of The Loop says, “Nope”.  But that’s all he says, “Nope”.  That’s all he ever says, “Yep”.  “Nope”.

Renee:  A man of few words.

Leo:  He’s a reliable source, yes?  That means, not necessarily that there isn’t a new Apple TV but that there won’t be one this Spring.

Renee:  There is new software most definitely but I guess the hardware is dependent on what Apple wants to do.  I don’t think they are anywhere near going 4K yet.  If they want to do an STK that requires a lot more storage or memory or something better than half of an A5 chip set.  They’ll need new hardware.  But if that stuff is not in their immediate pipeline then the software update cannot come soon enough and they can release the hardware when they are closer.  I think everybody is right it is just a question on time scale.

Leo:  So he highlights the “could” signal on new Apple TV on its way.  And then says, “Nope”.  That implies never. It’s not on its way.

Renee:  Their prototype is 2, 3, or 4 years is out. 

Leo:  Right.  There will be new Apple TV someday.

Alex:  I think the most likely thing would be to add more features to Apple TV and if you do that you about a WWDC. 

Andy:  The evolution of the Apple TV has always been about same, very, very boring featureless rounded corner box and always about simply adding more software and adding more services to it. 

Leo:  By the way, Apple TV is more than a hobby, at least if the B word determines that.  It’s a billion dollar business baby.  Tim Cook said at the shareholders meeting.  A little more difficult to call it a hobby these days.  Ten million units, if you do the math. 

Renee:  Well the billion counted content sales.

Leo:  Oh.  So it doesn’t mean 10 million units.  Okay.

Renee:  But it is still a billion dollars - a lot of companies would love to have that.

Leo:  A billion dollars in one fiscal year, for a hobby.

Renee:  An Apple scale hobby!

Leo:  When do we think the next software update is?  Soon? 

Renee:  If there is any SDK stuff involved I think Alex is right we’ll see a WWDC but if it is strictly an interface improvement.

Leo:  They need to improve the interface.

Renee:  I still can’t search across content if I just want to find a movie and I don’t care if it is on iTunes or Netflix.

Leo:  That’s what we need!

Renee:  Yeah, Spotlight for Apple TV.

Andy:  When we see an Apple product be this static for this long without being short ordered, very few changes but still widely available, that usually means they have something really, really momentous in terms of the next update coming.  That is what I’m looking forward to with the Apple TV.  At this point they’ve fallen way behind the Roku and I think it’s because Apple has forgotten about it or doesn’t care about it.  It’s because the next change isn’t going to be incremental, it’s going to be massive.

Leo:  His lips never moved during that entire speech.  It is amazing.

Renee:  I think you ought to take up Ventriloquism.

Leo:  Did you see John Travolta?

Alex:  Oh!  That was painful.  It’s called too many martini’s before the show.

Leo:  I don’t even know who’s name he was trying to say. 

Andy:  Idina Menzel.

Leo:  He didn’t say Idina Menzel did he?

Andy:  One of my favorite bloggers said, “You know John Travolta’s job on stage - he only had to do two things.  Die his hair a natural color and say Idina Menzel” and he failed to do either of those things.

Leo:  Let me play the clip of it.  I think it is on Oscar moments. 

Alex:  The funny thing about that is that we work on a lot of live shows with celebrities and what you end up with, you saw this with Harrison Ford, if you work enough of these shows you can tell who was worried about their presentation and who didn’t care.  So like Harrison Ford obviously he did not - he didn’t make a mistake but the first time he saw whatever he was saying he was still on the air.

Leo:  It’s called cold reading versus…

Alex:  But you could tell some people thought about it, worked on it, and practiced it over and over again.  And there were some people that decided they were like “This is just something I have to do” and they just got up and did it because you know…

Leo:  So he was supposed to say.  What was the name he was supposed to say again?

Renee:  Idina Menzel.

Leo:  And he says… so now if you go to Slate there is a little Adele Dazeem name generator where you can Travolta-fy your name!  So let’s try Leo Laporte.  Luke Lopeez!

Alex:  Wait, I want to see Alex Lindsay.

Leo:  You can only do it once.  They force you to reload, so they get all the page views.  Alex Lindsay.   Let’s walk up on the stage, “The wonderfully talented Argyll Lezwis….”  

Alex:  Just call me “Argyll Lezwis”.   And that is the day that he finally believed his wife that “yeah, maybe I should get my contact lens prescription updated”.

Leo:  I am actually very sympathetic because once you’ve done that you can’t fix it.  No, they’ve moved on and…

Renee:  You’ll live in infamy forever.

Leo:  Forever infamy.  I want a video of Tim Cook just looking at him with a power bar.

Renee:  Reddick will make it happen.

Leo:  Yeah, Reddick will.  Are you worried Android is sixty two percent of the tablets market?  No another bad step.

Renee:  It’s not a bad step.  But it just shows how badly we do it reporting mobile devices and the car industry stats like this would never be considered because it is mature enough to be segmented.  My understanding is that a large number of those devices are video players in Asia that just happened to run Android as a means to playing video.

Leo:  But that is the first question you should always ask when you hear these things.  World wide  or US?  And this is world wide.

Rene:  Yep.  And $200 below.

Leo:  So world wide, at all price points, Android tablets were 62% of sales in 2013 according to the Gartner group.  This is the first year that has happened.  Apple did sell 70 million iPads in that period.

Rene:  What I think is funny is when the iPad was hugely successful Apple got lumped into media tablets and some other category that ostracized them and now the tablets are mainstreamed, everything is lumped together.  It’s another way that makes iPad look funny.

Leo:  If you look by vendor, Apple still is completely dominant.  Apple is, on this pie chart, Apple is blue, others is black.

Rene:  Others is those video players.

Leo:  Those $200 or less video players.  Samsung is light blue.

Alex:  And I still think when you look at Amazon and Samsung and possibly the Nokia/Microsoft, I think you really want to know who is selling those because I think those are destined to fork.  You know I think Amazon is basically forked it.

Renee:  I think the Chinese ones aren’t even running.  They are running an Android open source product.

Leo:  Yeah, it’s ASOP, it’s not a Google services.  Absolutely.  So Google gets no benefit from that. 

Rene:   think they get more benefit from iPad that they get from most of them.

Leo:  That’s right.  That is probably true.  .15% of mobile gamers count for 50% of all game revenue.  You know who you are, by the way.

Alex:  That would be me!

Leo:  We’re the whales!  Swerve announced the results of its first ever, it’s some sort of marketing app for mobile.  Mobile gains Modization report, “The vast majority of players never make any purchases.  Only 1.5% of players active in a month, and this is based on a survey, 1.5% actually made an in-App purchase that month.  50% of the revenue is from the top 10 players that do make purchases.  That means this 1.5% of all players.  49% of all players make 1 purchase per calendar month.  13% make 5 or more.  Then there’s me and Alex!  Most of the spend activity, a significant amount within the first 24 hours. 

Alex:  Right.  Because you are excited and if you’re trying to win and at some point you realize, “I shouldn’t be buying all this”.

Leo:  The average time to first purchase just under 24 hours and if you make a second purchase, and again that is a small number, the average time lapse before you first and second purchase is an hour and forty minutes.  Just some people have no self-control!

Rene:  Kevin Mitchell spent like $300 the first night on Candy Crush! 

Leo:  53% of players that make a purchase go on to make a repeat purchase within 14 days, 47% do not.  13.7% of new players accrue more than 4 purchases the first 14 days.  In other words, there is really a big divide between who spend and people who don’t.  And if you spend, your chances are you’re going to spend again and again and again.

Alex:  As a developer it is important to look at the last story we just talked about.  The percentages of other devices and everything else.  When you start to think about that, and I think the more the Google services, Android I think is a much more important number.  I think the Google Services, Androids and the IOS are the two places people are spending money. 

Leo:  This is probably the most important:  the average value of an in-App purchase is $5.94.  Majority are between $1 and $5 but they don’t contribute a huge percentage of the revenue.  Purchases of over $50.  Who would spend that?  Oh never mind.

Rene:  There are some people who will tell you they spend $1000 a weekend on those game.

Alex:  I know that with field runners I bought thousands of points for like $10 or $20 and I used them for like six months.

Leo:  I absolutely don’t understand it.

Alex:  You don’t understand what why you do in-App purchases?

Andy:  No, I’m saying that I understand in-App purchases.  I wish that someday I’m making so much money that I can blow a $1000 on a weekend of in app purchases on a game and not even notice it!  It’s a casino. 

Leo:  You don’t have to be making a lot of money.  Look at the people who go in a casino and drop a $1000 in a weekend and they aren’t necessarily… they are betting their rent money.

Andy:  But, I don’t know…

Leo:  You know something you do when you leave Las Vegas is to look for the people… a taxi driver told me this, who are walking to the airport with their roller bag behind them.  He said, “See those guys?  They used their cab fare.  All they have left is their plane ticket out”. 

Rene:  It is sad to be human.

Alex:  Which is funny because I go to ‘Vegas.  We used to work there a lot.  And I don’t have any temptation.  I guess I don’t have the genes..

Leo:  I never gamble.  On the other hand I spent $300 on Simpsons.  I’m an idiot. 

Andy:  When I was in ‘Vegas, the thing that got me most upset on the casino floor was I already don’t have a whole lot of affection for Judge Judy because she’s, in my mind, she’s someone who makes $40 million a year shrieking at people who are at a lower income and telling them,  “I don’t have to listen to your explanation or anything because I’m smarting than you are”.  And so every time I leave my bank of elevators to go outside to get a cab or whatever, what do I pass by?  A big bank of Judge Judy slot machines.  So I guess you don’t really mind so long as it’s a revenue positive thing for you.  You don’t really care about responsible behavior.

Leo:  I would’ve liked to be in that meeting.  “Judy, Judy, I’ve got a great idea”.  How much?  Yeah, Judge Judy slot machines.  I saw them too.  They are at that Mandalay Bay and I don’t understand it. 

Alex:  I haven’t seen any Judge Judy slot machines.

Leo:  Why would you want to play a Judge Judy slot machine?  What is the point in that?

Alex:  There is a Judge there.  It can’t be cheating you.

Leo:  That’s just stupid.  They’ve got Vinny Barbarino slot machines.  I can’t believe they haven’t come to me and asked me.  “Would you like to be a slot machine”? 

Alex:  They could have Andy and Rene and you know like the three Andy’s?

Andy:  If I had a slot machine and you put money in the slot the money would return back to you as saying, “Actually have you gone to In and Out burger because they are only here on the West Coast.  You can get a double double here.  Get something better.” 

Alex:  If you get three Andy’s it gives you all the money you’ve spent up to that point back.  And then it tells you that you should leave!

Andy:  That looks like a penny bet will be the Andy mode, then there’s the Rene mode and then there is the Alex mode where you get cocktail service! 

Alex:  Exactly!

Alex:  It only takes 700 quarters but you get a lot of free drinks. 

Leo:  They do have buttons these slots depending on how much you want to spend and there should be like an Andy, a Rene and an Alex.

Rene:  Giant Alex.

Leo:  That’s it, you’ve got no more.  This by the way was based on Freemium games who examined their revenue from 2014 and the data comes from, Swarf says, tens of millions of people.  So, fairly accurate. The CEO Swarf says, “What is interesting is that while many consider the premium model to be successful there is still surprisingly little data relating exactly how consumers interact with Freemium games”.  So now we know a little bit more and I think if you’re developing a Freemium game there is probably a lot of juice in there for you.  Something you should consider.  You’ve got to get ‘em early!

Andy:  I hope this means there is light at the end of the tunnel for some developers to say, “Well maybe we don’t have to make releases as Premium.  Maybe we can actually sell this as $2.99 and you’re out game.”

Leo:  No I’ve already started seeing that.  I think it is very encouraging we talk about that on iPad once in a while.  Threes is a good example.  It’s what $3? And there’s no in-App purchases at all and it is a good game.  I think that there is going to be more of that stuff.  Because I think people are reacting badly to this Freemium thing.

Andy:  If any company would ever do something like that, I say this in all sincerity, it would be Apple.  If ever they looked at the numbers and said, “This is crazy stupid.  Here is a game being marketed at kids and we know for fact this is generating at least $280 per user, per week, it’s not coming from 8 year old kids allowances.  This is probably a bad thing.  We need to either put in new user controls or consider how we allow these games to be marketed.”  I don’t know if that would ever happen.

Rene:  In-App caps after you spend $20 it is on lock or something.

Leo:  No, we know what the future is.  Last week the Guardian looked at the apps store.  300 new games were released on Wednesday of last week.  Of them, 1/3 were clones of Flappy Bird.  Including Tappy Bieber.

Rene:  You have to dip your fingers in  penicillin after  you tap the Bieber! 

Leo:  No, I think that is good.  Tap the Bieber!  We got Tappy Bieber, Flying Ducky, Flappy Penguin, Easy Flappy Penguin, Flappy the City Flyer, Flying Rainbow Cat, Wander Ghost, Tappy Neon, Flappy Monsters, Flashy Bird, Floppy Spongy, Tappy Duck Real Bird, Flying Unicorn, and Floating Felix.  And I haven’t even gone through all of them. 

Rene:  No Floppy Twit yet?  Someone should’ve done Floppy Twit.  Splashy Girls.

Alex:  That sounds like the menu at a legalized brothel.

Leo:  My Fat Flying Dragon.  What do you think that is?  Flappy Love.  The Adventure of Duck Toy, Happy Bird Light, Birdie Flap, Flappy Troll.

Rene:  I love the smell of key words.  Something is burning. 

Andy:  Other names John Travolta has announced from the Oscars!

Leo:  And now the incredibly talented Flappy Pyro Bird!

Alex:  We are really waiting for Flappy Twit. 

Leo:  No, no.  I’m not waiting for Flappy Twit.  How about a Floppy, Floppy, Flying Disc in the Land of Ape Retro game?  That’s actually the title!  Alright, ladies and gentlemen.  We’ll take a break and come back to your picks of the week.  So fire them up!  Fire them up! 

Leo:  Our show brought to you today by 99designs.  It is the worlds largest graphic design market place.  This would be a good time to show the hoodie with our 99design on it.  So we want to do a hoodie, you know we do these - it is just a clever marketing ploy.  You can only get them for a month.  There is a limited time.  We realize if we just put this stuff on the market forever but if we say you can only buy it for a month, people buy them!

Alex:  Right.

Leo:  So we have these beautiful print hoodies and we went to 99designs.com and we said we need a design for a hoodie.  We had so many good designs we bought five of them.  That is typically what will happen.  Designers will look at your contest and say submit a design.  When we go to the front page there are 285,093 designers.  They will look at the contest and there are 2284 open patterns right now.  And they will submit design ideas; you look at them, you vet them, you work with them.  We ended up buying five out of the 40 or 50 that we got.  Pay offs last months to designers from 99designs was 1.9 million dollars. 

Rene:  How much do you pay for each one?

Leo:  It varies.  You set the price.  The designer decides whether it is worth it to go for the price.  It starts as low as $199.  How much did we pay for our designs, do you know?  $300 each.  This is the hoodie design.  Here is Glen Rubenstein, he is modeling the hoodie.  I loved that design.  So we took the five designs, we asked you to vote and we made this one out of the hoodies.  Isn’t that nice?  So those are not on sale yet.  Tomorrow.  All right.  They’ll be a tee-spring deal?  If you want to get there tomorrow when it starts go to teespring.com/twit.  But that is another story.  It is a great mix.  We have some designers in house that are very good.  But it is really a lot of fun to go to 99designs.com and set up a contest and get all these great designs that really kind of gives you new perspective on your logo.  And it could be for a lot of things.  Maybe you're a cook and you want a menu design or you want a landing page for your restaurant, car reps, app design.  You get a design you love or you get your money back.  Very flexible.  You set the price and you have many concepts.  Not just proposals but actual concepts you can choose from.  It is very affordable, it is very fast.  Here is the deal.  Go to 99designs.com/nbw and you’ll get a $99 power pack of services free.  Power pack gives you more designer time and attention.  99 designs will bold, highlight and feature your design project in their marketplace.  That way you’ll get a lot of designs, often twice as many.  99designs.com/mbw and the process doesn’t cost you anything to go there and set up a contest.  You pay once you get a design.  So you set the price.  So just do it and get some ideas.  99designs.com/mbw.  We thank 99designs for some great designs.  They just did our marketing kit.  There you go.  We use them.  We love them.  99designs.com  Our last teeshirt was one of our in house guys.  That was Anthony.  99designs.com/mbw.

Leo:  Time for our picks of the week.  Alex Lindsay you are  sitting here.  Do you have a pick?

Alex:  I do. 

Leo:  We’re going to find out what Andy’s camera of the week is.  Because he finally bought one.  What is your pick of the week Alex?

Alex:  So I’m constantly trying to figure out what font to use and exactly how to, like what is this going to look like with this font when we’re building out bits and pieces.  A lot of times you get in this situation where you select the font, you change it, you select, then you change it and then you finally give up and move on.  So this actually makes it a lot faster.  This is called Ultra Character Map.  What you can actually do, I don’t remember how much it is but Ultra Character Map basically allows you to… oh here it is.  $9.99.  Great.  All it does is that it grabs all your fonts.  Forget the 3D stuff it does because that is kind of silly.  But what it lets you do is type in custom so right there where you see that you can actually type in what you are going to type.  So you can type there, you know I can type pixel corp or something else and I can see how it looks in real time in all of the fonts.

Leo:  So this replaces Apple’s kind of built in one?

Alex:  Yeah.  It is just a lot.  It is very visual.  You can see here where I typed in pixel core and you can see…  Oh, I just spilled water off to the side there.  So basically you can see what it is going to look like.  You can preview it in all of those fonts at one time.  There are a lot of other things you can do with it.  You can look specifically at a certain font and see exactly what it is going to look like.  If you look at the grid you see all of the texts that are in that font.  So if I grab one of these it shows all of the characters and clips that exist in that font whether they are mapped or not.  So you can really see some of them are more complex than others.  You can try to figure out where to get those now that you know they are actually there. 

Leo:  Kind of like Nicky Lotto in the pit crew in the Formula One race?  You’ve got all your guys cleaning.

Alex:  For those of you that are listening to the show; we’ve got guys with paper towels, ladders. 

cleaning up behind me.  Water was so kindly brought to me and then I went and opened my laptop and pushed it all off so there are people running around.

Leo:  Go ahead and keep it open so that we can see this shot.  That is why Chad is on a ladder behind you right now.  See he is behind you setting up a camera.

Alex:  Oh okay.  So there we go.  So anyway, mass chaos.  So I think that it is a cool, a very cool app. 

Leo:  Very nice.

Rene:  $9.99?

Leo:  $10.  Ultra Character Map.  There finally, after all that now we can see all the fonts.

Alex:  The grid view.  You can see me changing fonts.  You can see me looking at how something if I do pixel core.  You see how they all look.

Leo:  Lovely.

Alex:  You can see better.  So anyway.  That is the app.  I like it a lot.  I use it every day.

Leo:  Okay Rene Ritchie.  Your pick of the week. 

Rene:  I have two picks.  One is an app called Documents 5.  It is the latest version of Five.  Documents by Readdle is a really good document.  What the’ve done that is really interesting with this version is that they’ve done sort of what Google has done with their apps and that is to get around the lack of interact communication of contracts or intents.  In IOS they’ve made all their apps work together.  So if you happen to have them all installed you can hand off a PDF to their PDF app or you can scan something and bring it from the scanner of the documents app.  So it means that you have a much more seamless, more powerful experience if you go in on their ecosystem of apps.  I like that idea very much. 

Leo:  Documents 5. 

Rene:  Very smart Ukrainian startup company that has been doing IOS apps for years.  They just keep getting better and better and they do a lot of stuff with enterprises, they’ve been working on enterprise licensing stuff.  It is a very clever work around to Apple’s lack of communications in their apps.

Leo:  Very good.

Rene:  The second one is CarPlay which is Apple…

Leo:  You know.  Let’s talk a little bit about that.  That should’ve been one of our news stories so let’s talk about that.

Rene:  This is really cool.  CarPlay was sort of a name we joked about back at WWDC because it sounded so much like bi-directional airplay technology and to sort of make Andy’s day the code name for this was Stark, which give you sort of an indication as to where their thinking about this technology.  It is really nice because it decouples IOS from device and lets it take over external displays.  In this case the display is of cars.  Now the car has to be running something first.  It has to be running something like Unix or Microsoft embedded or even embedded Android or something because there has to be an infotainment center there.  But once that is there, as long as they have their partnership with Apple and all the optimization and the controls are in place you just go in, you plug in your iPhone and apps like Phone, Maps, Messages, other audio apps like iTunes radio, iHeart radio, the podcast app will all get a unique interface projected onto the display.  And the display can send it back and forth to the car.  As is usually the case, the things outside of Apple’s control can vary. For example some of the Mercedes have very awkward displays on top of their dashboards.  The Ferrari that they were showing off today a the Swiss Auto Show, the Geneva Auto Show, had a nice resistant type screen which was probably very good for leather racing gloves but not very good for responsiveness.  but this system itself seems to be working fantastically well.  It just lets you take everything that is on your personal iPhone and get it into your dashboard with safety precautions but also with the promise of easy updates from Apple when IOS gets updated.  Which is almost certainly going to be faster than the typically glacial pace that car companies themselves update their software.

Alex:  I have to admit at this point as I think about getting another car at some point in time how my phone interacts with it is probably more important to me than the car performance or mileage or most of the other features in the car, other than maybe how it looks.

Leo:  Yeah, I agree. 

Andy:  I think this is also a double big deal even when this was just shown off at WWDC I thought isn’t that interesting that they’ve demonstrated the ability of IOS to project it’s interface to a dumber device and that makes me think that if Apple does do a wearable watch with an actual screen it doesn’t necessarily have to run IOS now.  All you have to do, since the host device is going to be iPhone anyway, it could simply project what it needs into a much more low power, simpler, dumber device.

Rene:  And the nice thing too is that Apple, unlike Samsung, will never manufacture their own refrigerators or their own home automation things.  Nor will they license IOS or any of their operating systems to those companies.  But if they can just say, “Your display meets these minimum requirements”, then all of a sudden IOS in the car becomes IOS everywhere or whatever the future of IOS is.  It can start taking over other screens and I think that sort of lets Apple have their cake and eat it too when it comes to the internet of things ecosystem. 

Andy:  It would be different for a device like, if they ever go to Samsung because it is one thing you always have your phone in your car anyway but if you have to go upstairs to get your phone out of the charger in order to get ice out of your refrigerator, that is a problem!

Rene:  I would love IOS on my Cannon camera for example.  Apple will never do it, but if one day there are mythical cameras that can be projected onto it, I would love that too.

Leo:  Yeah.  I’m going to save you for the best for last, Andy, if you don’t mind.  But we were talking on the radio show the other day about the sound effects of Dark Castle.  Remember that?  Well, it turns out Z Sculpt’s has been working for some time on a Dark Castle clone.   Return to Dark Castle is in the apps store for $10, so if you played this classic game, as I’m sure many of you did, in black and white on your old Mac Classic, you will recognize the sound!  But now in glorious 3D. 

Andy:  That is the sound of mine at my 8:30 AM lecture with only 2 hours of sleep! 

Alex:  You know what is funny is to really date me, was that I’ve never really actually seen Dark Castle.  But what that really reminds me of is Aztec.  Do you remember Aztec?

Leo:  No, I don’t.  Was that an Apple 2?

Rene:  Apple 2.

Leo:  I’m sure this was influenced by that. 

Rene:  Reminds me of Beer Run too. 

Leo:  Yeah.  Well, but this is Dark Castle.  $10 for Return to Dark Castle.  It has more levels, all the classic levels.  It is a lot of fun.  And my quest is ended.  Now, it is time ladies and gentleman.  We know that Andy Ihnatko was in the market for a brand new camera.  But we don’t know which camera he chose because he decided to play it coy last week, but now he is going to reveal all.  Andy, your pick of the week!

Andy:  Coy?  I wasn’t being coy!  No, it’s just that at the time I’d ordered it and it had arrived that morning and just in case, you hate to be enthusiastic about something that still smells like packaging peanuts and then next week you’re like, “I wish I hadn’t recommended this because now I realize it stinks”!  But yes, this is the Olympus OM-D EM-1 which is Olympus’s attempt to say, “Well, we’re one of the two companies that started off making Micro 4/3 format sensor cameras, now we are going to make one that is absolutely unabashedly, no questions asked, a professional style camera”.  And I absolutely love it.  It is absolutely the camera that I was hoping for.  Because buying a camera is a very idiosyncratic sort of choice.  It really has to be the camera for you in the way that you shoot and what you want.  I had a nice budget to work with and this is not a cheap camera.  The body alone is about $1400.  This lens is made to pro specifications lens and it is another $1000.  So this really is as expensive as a nice, not pro level, but a nice Nikon with a very nice lens too.  But the problem with that is that SLR’s are just so big and they are so heavy.  They take up so much space.  This is a mirror-less compact which means that it doesn’t need to have a mirror box and it doesn’t need to have a prism in it and for that reason, and because the sensor is smaller, the lenses can be smaller as well.  The reason why I started on Micro 4/3 to begin with is the number of times when I had to leave my Nikon D200 at home, even though I was going to be in Europe for 10 days but I just knew that I can’t have this big SLR around my neck everywhere I go and everything I do.  And with these compact mirror-less cameras they are great because you really can break them down and put them in your shoulder bag and it doesn’t look like you are carrying $2000 worth of camera equipment there.  The only worry that I had about it is that Micro 4/3 sensors are not as, they don’t handle high ISO’s as well as APSC cameras, which is what you get with the Sony’s, with the Fuji’s with that sort of stuff.  But this has a killer feature that sort of makes up for all that.  This has, in body, five access stabilization.  So no matter what you are doing when you’re holding this camera it can really absolutely negate that.  It works with any lens that you work it with.  And so I went out shooting twice so far with it and the first night I had it out was just after sunset like as night is falling, like in Boston.  And this is exactly the right sort of situation for that sort of thing.  I don’t know if you can zoom in but that is absolutely tack sharp and that is like a 1/3 of a second, 1/5 of a second.  Such a long exposure that there is just no way that you’ll get a sharp image on any other camera.  So yes, this doesn’t work as well at high ISO’s than a Fuji or a Sony does but this thing will give you the sharp image at ISO was 1600 or 800 as you would get from a Fuji or a Sony that is working at 3200 and if you had a Fuji or a Sony, you’d have to bump it up to 3200 to get that high shutter speed in order to freeze the frame.  Other than that though, it is weather proof.  The lens is weather proof too.  You can get it in the rain, you don’t have to really care about it.  It is really like an AK47 it is so solidly built.  And on top of everything else though,  I just love all of the thought that went into this tactile interface.  I actually thought the lens was broken because I couldn’t autofocus and then I actually, you know, read the manual and discovered that it’s normally in autofocus mode but if you want to get it manual focus you take this ring and pull it down and now you are manually focusing.  So you can do all of this with the thumb dials, this control, so you never have to take it away from your face at all.  It is all completely tactile.  Every knob, every dial, every function button can be reassigned.  On day three I realized that the rear wheel is adjusting white balance, I don’t adjust white balance that much.  It was very easy for me to reassign it to something else or turn it off entirely.  The bottom line is that whether my photography is any good or not, it is something I have a lot of fun with and I really drive myself nuts when I can’t get the shot that I really, really want.  And so that is why it is worth it to me to have a really good lens and a really good camera and this is just so much fun to shoot with.  I’m not a gun enthusiast but I understand what some people, friends of mine who shoot guns, mean when they say, “This is a fun gun to shoot with”.  This is comfortable to hold.  It feels as though everything is exactly where you want it to be.  I’m just in love with this camera. 

Leo:  Lisa and I bought twin EM-5’s for our trip to Italy.  We were so happy and of course we shared those Micro 4/3 lenses and then I reviewed this on Before You Buy and the EM-1 is a little confusing but it is better than the EM-5.  They’ve learned a lot from the EM-5 and it really is a lovely camera.

Andy:  Fuji is doing some great stuff with mirror less compacts too.  It’s not the same lens system and sensor system and there are some really great things too.  The reason why I wasn’t terribly tempted by their new SLR style camera is that this really does feel like a company that has been doing this for years now and they know exactly what they are doing.  This is the fourth generation piece of hardware that they have built, whereas Fuji is still on their first or second generation line of thought.  They haven’t really worked out all the design kinks in terms of making a really fun to shoot camera and Olympus really, really has done that.  Like I said, if you shoot the way that I shoot, you have the same relationship with cameras that I do, this is the Andy Ihnatko model camera really.  I can’t imagine designing something that is as good as that.  And finally a couple years ago I thought that I was going to be buying a new camera because I had the money set aside and it was really time for a new upgrade, since that Nikon D200 that  I had was really, really old by camera standards and it was time for an upgrade.  I just didn’t find anything that really seemed as though, “This is something that I’m really going to be able to use for the next 4 or 5 years, it doesn’t feel like a really modern camera”, so I bought a really cheap Panasonic Micro 4/3 camera and now the cool thing is that I can take the really nice lens I  bought for this will also work on that little pocket size Panasonic.  Now when I travel I can actually now have two camera bodies on me at the same time because that Panasonic is about the size of a big deck of cards.  It is absolutely no size to it whatsoever.  So that is another benefit for it.  Like I said, not a cheap item but absolutely the right choice for me.

Leo:  Micro 4/3 is the only system where the lenses are compatible across manufacturers and there is a huge range of very good ones.

Andy:  Panasonic and Olympus both decided to get on board at the same time. They are a couple of modern manufactures for doing the 4/3.

Leo:  Fuji?

Andy:  I think that the new cameras have their own proprietary lens I think.  That was part of the decision for me was that it had the larger sensor and that sort of stuff.  And the other factor is that is seems as though when a company announces they are coming out with a really, really great lens it’s Micro 4/3 first and then they drifted down to the other formats later.  Because there were a few truisms about cameras that have been around for the past forty or fifty years and one of them is that if you can spend 90% of your money on a lens and buy a cheap body you’ll get better pictures than if you spend 90% of your money on a body and buy a cheap lens.  And so I’m just convinced that if next year I want to get a different kind of a zoom that there is going to be…. Olympus has a really good plan for more pro lenses, and other manufacturers really good pro lenses.  So I feel this is going to make me happy for at least the next 5 years.

Leo:  I think you made an excellent choice.  I really love those cameras.  Thank you, Andy, our slots machine is available in better casino’s everywhere.  Don’t forget to bet one Alex if you really want to win! 

Rene:  So awesome.  I don’t know who did that, but they did it very fast.  Thank you very much.

Leo:  And we would really like to mention the big story that broke earlier today and it was rumored yesterday that Apple’s CFO Peter Oppenheimer is leaving after 18 years.  He’s the guy you’d hear on those Analyst jobs.  He’s taking a job at Goldman Sachs.  I think it is safe to say he has decided to cash in. 

Rene:  He can spend more time…

Leo:  More time with his money!

Rene:  He also wants to get his Pilot’s license and he wants to move.

Leo:  That’s got to be hard work to be Apple’s CFO.

Rene:  He’s being replaced by Lucas Maestri who is a fantastic name!

Alex:  Wow.  He oversaw it as it went from 8 billion to 171 billion.  Annual growth.

Leo:  That is pretty big growth.  

Rene:  No money left to conquer.

Leo:  And Lucas Maestri came to Apple about a year ago from Xerox and he was CFO over at Xerox so I think he will probably know how to build an 8 billion dollar company.

Rene:  He was on the last conference call too, which makes a lot of sense now.

Leo:  Was he? 

Rene:  His first appearance.

Leo:  Okay.  New CFO.  Apple’s apparently known about this for awhile and that’s why they were grooming Maestri.  Hey thank you everybody!  That is it for Mac Break Weekly for this week.  We do it every Tuesday at 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern time, 1900 UTC.  Please join us for the live broadcast at Twit.tv.  But you don’t ever have to worry, you never miss an episode because we make audio and video always available after the fact at our website twit.tv/mbw and everywhere that podcasts are aggregated.  So if you subscribe to us in iTunes you’ll get each and every episode as it comes out.  Thanks to Andy Ihnatko for being here, Chicago Sun Times as always Rene Ritchie from iMore.com and Mobile Nations, great to have you.  And Alex Lindsay from the Pixel Corps and thanks again for pitching in on the Twit.  We’ll see you next time, now get back to work because Break time is over!