Transcripts

MacBreak Weekly 397 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It is time for MacBreak Weekly. I am here with Andy Ihnatko, Rene Ritchie we will talk about the upcoming World Wide Developers Conference and what we know about IOS 8 OS 10 and OS 10/10 coming out at the WWDC, and also to talk about the new iPhone designs, surprising memos coming out of the Apple/Samsung trials and a long awaited iPad app is finally released and no it is not MicroSoft Office. It is all coming out next in MacBreak Weekly.

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Leo: MacBreak Weekly Episode 397 Recorded April 8th  2014

Rejecting Photos In Bed

MacBreak Weekly is brought to you by Audible.com. To download a free audio book of your choice go to audible.com/macbreak, and by Square Space 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 ten percent off, go to SquareSpace.com and use the offer code MacBreak, and by 99 Designs-the world’s largest graphic design market place. 99 designs connects businesses seeking quality affordable with a community of more than 280,000 graphic designers. Visit 99Designs.com/mbw to receive a free power-pack upgrade value at 99 bucks. It is time for MacBreak Weekly the show that covers your Apple news, everything going on in Cupertino with two of the best experts on the subject with Rene Ritche from imore.com in his secret lair in beautiful Quebec.

Rene Ritchie: I was at the airport this morning in my Nexus interview and they took four shots of my retina and I hoping that they just recorded the pictures and just inject stuff.

Leo: Nexus we should explain is Canada’s name not for a phone but for the ability to quickly come and go across the border.

Rene: It is harmonized with Global Entries

Leo: Global Entries, yes that is what we call it here. Do you then get to avoid things like taking off your shoes in the security line?

Rene: I think so, they were very careful as most people misunderstand what Nexus is. We have to explain to you that you cannot bring friends, you cannot bring fruit and if you update anything you have to tell us or we will lock you away in a little room.

Leo: You cannot bring fruit!

Rene: There is a long list of things that you cannot do or you lose it forever.

Leo: But I am so glad to hear that you are considered by the Canadian government to be non-hostile.

Rene: Nexus worthy.

Leo: Andy Ihnatko is also here as well and he is Nexus worthy as well from the Chicago Sun Times, hey are you guys coming out for WWDC?

Andy: I do not know yet, it depends on what they are doing for the Keynote, it certainly depends on whether I did not even bother entering the lottery this year. As I have said before there is not much point to me being there because I cannot talk about things that I may learn from elsewhere after that. I have kind of dropped that even as an option a few years ago because now every single slot at WWDC is taken up somebody who does not have a plan to write an Apple based product. I personally feel guilty about that, it is perfectly okay for somebody to do that. I will be going there just to have the environment, I would not be losing any money if I do go.

Leo: WWDC kicks of June 2nd, there will be the usual Keynote at Moscone West in San Francisco.

Andy: Everything happens at Moscone West in San Francisco it is almost if I go to Keynote there it is almost as if I want to hide a go bag and suspend it from the ceiling above the bathroom. That way I will just fly to San Francisco with no baggage and go to which ever Keynote with Google or Microsoft and just grab this bag that has my laptop, iPad a tie and jacket  and a change of shoes and I am done.

Leo: I am here I am back, they have got to put a plaque up there. Just think what was announced there.

Rene: We had GEDC one week and then MacWorld the next week and although that ended up being in the north and not the west and Bill the next and we could have just walked back for the next few weeks.

Leo: Google’s announcements are there, Apple is going back and in many of Steve Jobs Keynotes were in Moscone West. I think the 2007 iPhone announcement was from there. It is a big hall, anyway Apple set up a lottery as you mentioned and this is what everybody is doing as you mentioned Google did the same thing for years both of them said yes we sold it out in two minutes. We sold it out in a minute and a half, we sold it out in 30 secs, we sold it out in one second. So finally we all took a call can we end this now let us just have a lottery, okay because who needs the bragging rights. And then Monday they sent out invitations to randomly selected developers and so if you won the lottery you will have received an email but you have till April 14th to execute and then your ticket goes to the next person in line.

Rene: I know of a lot of people on their team enter, they want as many possibilities as possible and they got two or three and they are going to release one or two of them back to the pool because they really need to get one or people in there.

Leo: Yes do us a favor send one person.

Rene: Like Andy says it was even better this year because they announced in the press release that they are going to be streaming the state of the union and the Apple designer awards live and they are also getting almost every session up on the same day so unless you need the labs. You can go there and talk to somebody about a frame - work or get a design review almost everybody can be well served without a ticket this year which is fantastic.

Leo: And because it is live streaming and we will be covering it. Well even if it were not we would still be covering it.

Andy: It is becoming a little bit light headed now where there are people spend a lot of money and trouble to go there but the purpose of the show is not to serve the people at that show but is to create the library of content that many more people are going to be able to take advantage of that when the show is over.

Leo: It is exciting and I look forward to it. There are of course are usually and there have been in the past September and October product announcements but this is the one scheduled one ahead of time, they are talking to developers, it seems to me that this is a fairly important one, the first one of this year what, will there be announcements, will there be product announcements?

Rene: Two years ago we got the first retina Mac Book Pro 15 inch as WWDC, last year we got the new Haswell Mac Book Airs and we got a preview of the new Mac Pro, so this year if there is a retina Mac Book Airs or just new Mac Book Airs or 4Ks displays to go with that as long as there is fairly new products and evolutionary new products I think there is a good chance that we will see them.

Leo: I wonder though remember, I know that we just got IOS 7 but IOS 8 is presumably in development, we have seen a leaked health book which will presumably go with wareables that Apple may be coming with sometime this year or next and would this not be the WWDC where you go to the developers, or maybe you do it private and say develop for this?

Andy: Yes you can do that without necessarily saying here is how to support the new health band that we are going to be shipping in September. You can do that by simply saying that we have created a new set of APIs for real world integration solution and so if you want to monitor a certain field of real world input here is how you open that channel in order to communicate with that device and here is how that data will be delivered to you and I am sure that as soon as people start leaking about….there is always the schedule of events that is posted and a lot of those boxes are left blank saying we are not going to give you the name of this until we actually start this thing up. And that is usually when you start to decode the fortune cookie about they are  really doing a sensor sweep the only thing they could be possibly doing that for if they are going to be doing a fitness band or something like that. And I am sure that they will be explicitly showing their cards and so much of their showing the technology is going to power whatever it is they are doing.

Leo: Read between the lines. I do not think that is smart.

Rene: I do not think that they need developers specifically for an iWatch or an iBand because the way the Health Book is set up you will probably have a health kit underneath which will tie into a ton of different peripherals Apple is not going to be able to do everything especially not in the first generation. So they can announce the Health Book. We will almost certainly get IOS 8 OS 10.10 at least the Betas at WWDC and that will probably have all the stuff to integrate into a wide range of health stuff. First generation products won’t do everything they will need to have the Nike fuel band or the blood pressure reader or the sleep monitor or whatever else they want to be able to house in that system I will work with it so they could announce the API and everything without ever mentioning the watch or the band unless they are actually ready to sell it and it is usually at that point that they will announce it.

Leo: The reason why I am asking all this is because I am wondering if we are going to get any tea leaves to read on June 2nd?

Andy: Oh! Absolutely. I realize that there are tea leaves at the bottom of every cup of tea and you are welcome to see whatever you want to see into them. So yes we look forward to that.

Rene: As we said earlier Apple does really go to the developers behind the scenes and say we are working on this and sign all the NDAs or we are going to come to your house.

Leo: Yes but they are not going to wait for those people.

Rene: They have done for both products that they have announcement for example the iPad and the SDKs, but what they haven’t yet announced, also no indication of whether it is or how soon it will come. But if there are back deals, having everyone at the Moscone center is a great time to talk about it.

Andy: But remember that they are really, really good at getting people to maintain a secret and all those product launches oddly enough someone seems to have launched this product two weeks ago and had enough time to put together a really good game demo. So if they want to have some cool stuff then third party launch those people are going to be getting a lot of hand holding, that overture might start for the first time that they actually get to look at thing in a case of two feet thick loose site and with all kinds of random patterns printed on it so that one picture can be traced back to that one meeting,  at that one suite and that is what is going to happen.

Leo: Listen Mike Elgin….. I want I want a story I think that all of these big companies certainly Apple and Google have security, big time. We know that Apple’s security can be like scary because of the Gizmodo iPhone incident, and we know Google and I just kind of got an insight into that because we talked to Kevin Rose on Sunday about people protesting outside saying he is a parasite and all that and he said no Google security is on it, and I said well what did you do did you call the cops and he said no we got Google security and I am thinking….that kind of chills me a little bit.

Rene: Robo cop.

Leo: Between Google and Apple I would love to see a story behind the scenes revealing the secrets,… they must have their own police departments in effect right? Like heavy -duty stuff, you do not want to run afoul of Apple security.

Rene: I would like to make a Veronica Mars reference here but I stopped myself.

Andy: I want to go in the night and say that I am your worst nightmare I am nerd with a badge.

Leo: A nerd with a badge.

Rene: If they are working on a new Apple TV hard-ware and if that Apple TV hard-ware happens to have a games store or an app store then WWDC would also be an interesting place to start talking to developers about developing for the ten foot interface  on the big screen.

Leo: Mark Gurman did a nice round of everything we know about IOS 10 and 10/10, oh I like that 10,10, 10, 10. The code name for IOS 8 is Okomo or is it Okaymo or Okimo?

Rene: It is like Okomo, Okimo is a song.

Leo: It is a song?

Rene: Apple likes ski resorts for all of their IOS betas who are always named after ski resorts so Isochi was 7.1 and so…….

Leo: So that is to give the developers the illusions that they are actually able to get away, isn’t that fun?

Rene: This way they can certainly talk about it in internal emails as to how they name different products.

Leo: So I guess that the only thing we have is that image or those images from Health Book and we have seen a lot of that and we have talked about that before the activity monitor before the emergency card and so forth. We have heard that there will be updates in Maps, Mark say Samuia as IOS 7 but better data clarity and new features because Apple has been on an acquisition spree buying not one but they bought two commute databases right? Was one of them HAPATAPA?

Rene: So they also just hired the guy from Amazon, very recently.

Leo: Isn’t that very interesting the guy who did A9 in Amazon. Which was Amazon’s attempt to create a web search engine sitting on top of Amazon. It is very interesting. His name is Benoit Benoit Dupin or something like that. And so they are clearly gearing up for this. They have bought two transit specialists they will add that. Apparently, iTunes radio will be broken out this needs to be happen. We have never mentioned it before it is really good. I was shocked to see it because I never launched the iTunes app on my iPad and iTunes radio is great. I think it is great and it does not get the attraction it deserves as they did with Podcasts they are going to separate that out on a stand-alone application. It is their version of Pandora or whatever. Another significant addition according 9 to 5 Mac is being considered for IOS 8 is voice over LTE, now this is obviously carrier specific. All the carriers are moving away from CDMA GSM to LTE but not just for data the plan eventually for all traffic to go over LTE voice and data. VOLTE will be transmitted over the same kind of network that DLT data is transmitted I presume that it is kind of like VOIP right?

Rene: It is exactly like VOIP it goes over IP packets and it opens up all of that bandwidth that is currently being consumed by VOICE which is pure data.

Leo: So T-Mobile supports Volt or I guess that is what we call it.

Rene: Volti.

Leo: Volti

Rene: Yes, Volti.

Leo: I like Volt, I like Volti Volti sounds like an evil villain.

Rene: It might well be that.

Leo: Verizon and AT&T are testing it out later this year, interestingly enough that is when the iPhone 6 will come out. Is IOS 8 going to wait until iPhone 6?

Andy: Yes.

Leo: Okay, so it is for iPhone 6.

Rene: Yes I mean it will be backwards compatible probably down with the iPhone 5 if not the 4s, almost always it comes out a couple of days before the new phone launches.

Leo: You only get this in the Apple world. Here is a bullet Apple is said to be considering adding the ability for messages threads in IOS 8 to automatically be deleted.

Rene: It is funny there is this huge problem that people will buy a 16 gigabyte or a 32 gigabyte iPhone, and they will do a ton of picture and video messaging and because there is no easy way to delete those they just accumulate inside the messages app and because the messages app is backed up to the iCloud, and they accumulate in the iCloud and you save a copy in the camera roll as well as a copy in the iCloud it just eats away tons of storage. We have people who have 3 gigs of stuff in iMessage.

Leo: All you have to do is look at your usage in your IOS and other is that to cast messages amongst other things, yes that is the biggest culprit for a ballooning other.

Andy: Also it is always a good idea to make that as an explosive part of the user device given the personal nature of these messages that is a really good user forward feature.

Leo: The only reason why I say it is kind of difficult is that this is built into every other phone system that I have ever used and after six months, or three months it deletes them. The auto-deletion is optional so you do not have to worry about disappearing threads.

Andy: It does underscore that Apple is really like one development team without the ability to focus on everything at once, they can only put the spotlight on one thing and so there are a lot of these little features that just keep getting postponed and postponed and postponed, and not because they do not think that it is important or they do not care but because their focus is now getting 7.0 out of the door no 7.1 out of the door now it is making sure that iCloud works with iWorks and that really distracts them from these little fine point features that a lot of believe have wanted for years.

Leo: According to Mark again, a notification center may be simplified again. Apparently his sources say that Apple is considering reducing the notification panel to include today notifications and no more missed notifications or no more all notifications just today notifications. The new would combine all notifications with missed notifications.

Rene: It is simpler unless redundant, because the current notifications is a little bit complex and also redundant.

Leo: And he says because they acquired Q the app Q last year he thinks that it will take some of those features from Q….. what is Q in a notification, center I cannot remember Q.

Rene: I do no remember Q, I looked at it when it happened but I do not recall.

Leo: Apple is developing versions of preview and text edit, everybody with a Mackintosh is familiar with those and optimize for the iPhone and the iPad and touch.

Rene: This is really where I get really frustrated, so that the problem they have right now is that the iCloud is in app jail so if you make a document in preview or make a document in text edit, you cannot edit them in IOS because there is no equivalent and it seems what they are going to do is put those apps there so you can open something in preview that you have saved on the Mac but then to edit it you will have to go to iBooks,  to textedit you have to go to Pages. It reminds me of things where you do not want to have a settings screen and you end up making it more complicated just to avoid having a settings screen, because in an ideal for me we would files drawn out like we have photos drawn out and a documents picker the way we have an image picker, and that in any app they can open a text-file you could just open that picker and we could choose a text-file from any app. Right now if I write something in AR Writer and then I find out that some other text editor is better and then delete it I will never get those files back. I would have to go and remember what app I wrote them and then download it again, copy and paste them laboriously over to the new app and it is just not tenable.

Andy: Yes I agree completely. The IOS continues to bump its head on the file inoperability where it is fine so long as people continue to use iPads and iPhones within the limitations of for the lack of a better word big phone type apps. But as they keep making better and better iPads and developers making stronger and stronger apps for them, people are really going to be using them in a Notebook sense deciding whether to buy a 500 dollar tablet plus a thousand dollar notebook when this tablet is so much and it does everything do on a device or a file system. So this is where you find limitations with things that are so easy to do on a device that has an open file system, or at least a more liberal idea of what to do with the data the user data on the device. It is I think that this is sort of a storm cloud that is forming that is going to require a more aggressive solution than just saying that we will take the two cheapest, most free and least useful image editor and text editor that we have ever produced for any computer ever and make a version of it that does not make much sense for a phone but which we have now boxed ourselves in a corner where we have to make them.

Leo: Right Elliot from the chat room says that we need a Finder for the iPhone, but I could not disagree more, because I do not think that I would turn the app the iPad or the phone into a desk-top computer. This is why it is challenged because app inoperability we have to do it without suddenly giving the user any access to the file system, so you do not want to kind of do it universally, you do not want to have documents on the desk-top you got to do it judiciously.

Rene: That is why I mentioned the image picker because they had solved this problem already and they restricted this to media files and  if they let you put the txt files and tsb. files whatever and then they will know what the app can read. The app can declare what kind of files it works with and then that picker service can provide those files and that way you will maintain security and you can maintain the sandbox but your files can move around as they will in the system and I think that you do not have the file system but you still have the elegance.

Andy: Also Apple has done a pretty good job of making a very simple and elegant system of simply sharing a file out when it has been exposed by an app that rationally has a reason to be able to deal with files like mail attachments like documents inside of a documents store for a word processor app. The ability to simply say take this file and do something useful with that is of a useful stricture. I do not think it would be a big step backward if Apple did something similar to the Finder. However, if they were to create something like a system level file picker that might solve a lot of problems meaning we have something that has the authority that only an app created by Apple would have to simply look into the stores of every single app that is in there giving you an overview of all the data that you have on a discrete file by file level and then the ability to simply select and do something useful with it even if it was something as useful as I am going to drag, I am going to drag this word processing file out of the word folder, excuse me out of word space and drag it into Pages space and then trust these two files into, trust these two apps and show how to negotiate and how to do that securely and successfully. We get some of that now like with third party files management apps we can just put all the things into their management files, the file stores of this app specifically and Apple will then do the rerouting for you. But this is again is a problem that is going to be have to solved and something like a file manager might actually do a good job of doing that.

Leo: This is somewhat interesting because in some ways this going with the game center are rumors and there are conflicting rumors recently according to screen shoots according to Gurman showed the game center icon, but there have been rumors up to know so now the game center is going to go away and that the functionality would be inside the game. This is kind of like the same thing, you know how to talk to the game center we don’t need a separate stand-alone game center apps. Now it is not the same idea, we don’t a text editor app just anything that can edit text should be able to see iCloud and see the text files. (Presenters talking over each other)

Andy: One of the things that I consistently love about Apple’s thinking is that the obvious thing is to have a file manager app that handles it and the most sophisticated thing to do is to figure to out what are the users missing, what are they asking for. They are not asking for an app they are asking us to solve a problem for them and can we solve that problem  in a way that they haven’t thought of then it will be a lot simpler and correct.

Leo: Let us see what else, now voice memos, do people use voice memos?

Rene: You got a bad UI, and must fix it/

Leo: We have a bad UI and we are going to fix it. Performance now we are now seeing how more and more powerful that A7 chip is in all the new mobile devices from Apple. It would be really nice to take advantage of all of that apps don’t and Apple certainly should. Improvements in car play, I presume that at this rate you will have cars that do it.

Rene: Well the thing is that car play is an extension of air play but right now it is bound to the lighting adaptor for a variety of reasons and the next generation one could go back to being wi-fi capable, as long as cars are getting wi-fi hotspots in them more frequently.

Leo: Yes my car has a wi-fi hot spot. A lot of Fords do. Inter app communications (Pointing to Andy) this is what we were talking about. Apple is said to be working on testing the functionality that will allow apps from the app store that will allow apps to communicate better. Okay, this is known as an XPC Service and they are developing an API for apps to share data. A future photo-sharing app might have the ability to push the content via the Instagram app. Right now you can kind of do it in a backwards way, you can share it out to in Instagram and Instagram opens but then Instagram has access to the photo right.

Rene: Yes they have a couple of URL schemes and X-Call Back. Apple actually imported the XPC over from the Mac to IOS I think an IOS 5 or IOS 6 and they broke Spring board and Spring board backwards which would enable it to do headless things like that but they never pushed it out to developers. And IOS 7 it was hinted that it would be their basis of some of their earlier betas but they did not ship it either but it looks like they spent something like a couple of years working on. IOS 7 did give us inter-app audio and you can push audio between different  apps but nothing beyond that so hopefully this would be an extension where almost any kind of format could do so many more things to tense on Android or contracts on Windows Phone.

Leo: A couple of people in the chat-room have been saying that what Apple has done with audio they have done right and they could extent that. That is the right way to do it.

Rene; Right. And about time.

Leo: It is really interesting how Apple completely owns the audio segment. It is one area where Android has nothing as good in terms of synthesizers, in terms of all the music making stuff that is on iPad. For musicians it is just a natural and I just do not see that anywhere.

Rene: There are two things. One is self-selecting with a lot of artist and with Apple to begin with so they want to make the tools that will want to use. But also one of the biggest strengths of IOS and we see it over and over again is the frame-works that Apple provides is simple. Not simple but it saves you a ton of work in cardio, core animation, core graphics and people can make these apps faster and better than they can on a lot of the other platforms.

Leo: Right. Let us take a break and when we come back let us talk about what we think we know about OS10 and 10.10

Rene: Syrah!

Leo: Syrah that is a wine and not a beach. Would that not be the public or not?

Rene: What happened was that they originally had the big cat names and then Apple marketing started using those and the development team said we like you are using our code names and we will come with new secret code names and they switched to wines.

Leo: Alright. So they have been wines for a while, what was Mavericks?

Rene: I forget one was Chablis and one was Chardonnay, I will pull then up.

Andy: Think for yourself like which would you rather do make all your cats tax deductible or your wines?

Leo: I would have try wines because I am looking for code names and my wine seller is a resource for code names.

Rene: So the IOS Mavericks was……so here they are and 10.10 was Syrah, Mavericks was Cabornet, Mountain Lion was Zinfandel Lion was Barlow Snow Leopard was Snow Leopard they did not have time to make up a new code. Leopard was Chablis and Tiger Intel was Chardonnay Tiger PC was Merlot and Panther was the first one was Pinot.

Leo: Wow! It goes way back. So Syrah and 10/10 we do not know what the official name will be? We will talk about some of the features that you might expect in a little bit. Are we going to see a Mac Mini soon?

Rene: I hope so at WWDC.

Leo: Somebody called at the radio show this weekend and said I really want to get a Mac Mini, I have an old Mac and I have the modern Messiah keyboard why should get anything but a Mac Mini?

Andy: I am also curious to see if the Mac Pro styling translates downwards to other desk tops?

Leo: Right.

Andy: And I want to see a nice not necessarily a flat disc as the Mac Mini but at least some of the same materials and the same color and some of the same size.

Rene: And a donut.

Leo: I would like a donut computer.

Andy: A computer and a batting ring.

Leo: A batting range?

Andy: A batting ring you know you drop it on the ring, it is for warm ups.

Leo: Oh yes it is for warm ups, yes. That’s where you go when you hear the word donuts? You are a baseball fan.

Andy: There you go it is Fenway America World Series 3 Red Champion Red Soxs. We are still a good team at least for the next week……….

Leo: You see Red Poppy selfie?

Rene: Yes.

Leo: With the President. Why were the Red Sox at the White House? Because they won the World Series. And so they are at the White House and they are giving the president his own Red Sox Jersey which looked big enough right size for Big Poppy…..

Rene: I think that you could fit that around the entire Obama family.

Leo: I mean you get the whole kids and everything in there and then Big Poppy says, hey let us take a picture Pres, and they go like this and it is a Samsung Galaxy Note Three. So the White House says that we do not want Samsung to use that picture in their promotional material, it is not okay. The picture that got distributed was not the picture of the selfie that had just been taken just as it had been taken as it was.

Rene: Samsung has the advertising budget but the White House has the first strike capability I am sure they will work it out.

Leo: Do not forget who carries the football.

Andy: Don’t you love that Romulan scale thinking people realize that people are now taking selfies, now people are famous and people will have their pictures taken as selfies and let us put as many free phones into as many famous peoples selfies as possible. Well done!

Leo: Now apparently according to the New York Post which is not exactly a journal of record the president is considering banning all selfies at the White House.

Andy: The secretary had a statement yesterday last night and doing a stand up and saying yesss. Also there is the problem of they do not want to simply encourage people  to put their arm around the president……anybody on that stage has probably been vetted by probably something that makes people nervous.

Leo: I think you know that Brad looked pretty happy there posing with Hortise he did not seem like he was unhappy.

Andy: I wouldn’t want a picture taken with me and I would not be very happy too.

Rene: This would have never have happened if CJ Craig had still been in office.

Leo: Talking about the West Wing now that was a restring reference.

Rene: They did not have selfies back then.

Leo: They did not have selfies back then or camera phones.

Rene: They did not have the Internet back then either.

Leo: Did not President Obama do selfie with the fairly lovely Prime Minister of Denmark and Tony Blair of England who is less than lovely.

Rene: Call it a Presie.

Leo: It is a Presie. Immediately after Hortise took the picture some-one later believed to be Hortise yelled Cha Ching. Okay that is going a little too far. (Presenter talking over each other) Cha Ching really, really really Big Poppy.

Rene: Can you make the Cha Ching hand movement too because…..

Leo: I am calling Samsung, that’s got to be worth something!

Andy: That is fine too as I saw in The Herald the other day about how not his bigger yacht but his smaller yacht  the helicopter on that yacht needs to be refurbished. So he is kind of hurting for money you got to do what you have got to.

Leo: That makes perfect sense to me. Our show today brought to you by Audible.com and we love Audible and we are big audible fans here every time that we get together. We talk about what are you listening to right now what is your book and I was mentioning right before the show I am listening to Dog Fight. Fred Vogelstein’s amazing story of Apple and Google and the creation of the iPhone and you probably saw the excerpt in the magazine of the iPhone demo from the point of view of the radio engineer and the guy who did the radios in it. Oh! My Gosh it is such a good book. There is so many great books whether it is fiction or nonfiction, classics, scary books, funny books Phillip K Dick books. It is all at Audible.com. Actually Science Fiction at Audible is incredible that they are producing themselves with their Audible frontiers program. I just down loaded Flash Boys the new Michael Lewis book. I want to tell you how you can get a free book but before I do why don’t we ask Mr Andy Ihnatko what his current choice is.

Andy: I have two recommendations this week both in honor of Lederman announcing his retirement last week. I admit that I have no knowledge of how TV works I have no understanding of it but boy is it interesting to read a well written book about how a big decision like replacing Leno with Conan Brian works. And also how the ripple effects go and how dealing with an under-performing tonite show and swapping Leno back in its place and how that works. Bill Carter wrote a great book called The War Of The Late Nights on audible and man he talks to everybody who works in Late Night, really how did that happen? Why was NBC so sure that they needed to get rid of Leno when he was at the top of his game and replace him with Conan? How did Conan O’Brian’s people somehow manage to create a contract that said that you are not guaranteed an 11.30 start time. We just have to call the show The Tonite Show? He is talking to Seinfeld he is talking to Lederman’s people, it is such a complete picture of how one interesting industry works and the people who at the end  despite they are gambling with  hundreds of millions of dollars just have to make the best decision that they know how to do and trust that everything will work out okay. So it is just a really wonderful drama and it just teaches you little bit about how different industry works. The other one is called I Am Dying Here heart-break and hard time in stand up comedies golden era. This is a book written by a standup comic who is very active in the Comedy Store in LA during the seventies. He writes this memoir as to what this Comedy Store was like during the seventies when Lederman was the daily fixture, Leno was a regular fixture. All these huge brand name people were going out to LA to try and figure the next step of their comedy careers which was ofcourse probably wind up going through the guest chair of the Tonite’s choice at some point. It is less about the business and more about the personality and the drives of certain people. It is also really, really interesting to see the Lederman personality and the Leno personality where they were in the mid to late seventies, they fought with each other and their kind of work styles and approaches were like.

Leo: Look at Leno’s hair. Wow there is Andy Kaufmann. I cannot wait to read gosh darn you Andy Ihnatko. Every time you come on this show I use up a credit. Now I am done no credits. Fortunately those listening can get this book for free right now. I am going to give you a credit. All you got to do is go to audible.com/macbreak and you will be signing up for the Gold Account that is the Book of the Month account and this is the most affordable way to get audible books is to get a subscription. You get the book or a credit to the book every month. By the way there are two credits a month 99 and half percent of all the books and there are 150,000 books on credit. But I want to warn you that if you want go there for instance to read The Game of Thrones which you should be doing many of them are worth two credits. Many of the books are too long and this one is not and you can get it for free. Subscribe and you do not pay anything for the first 30 days and you can cancel in that time and pay nothing and keep the book and you also get the Daily Digest of the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal is part of your subscription another good reason to subscribe. I am big fan and he is big fan and Paul Thurrott Chad and we were talking about it the other day audible.com/macbreak. It does not look like they have the Night Shift was that not the book about the Leno/Lederman…..

Andy: No I actually think it was the Late Shift.

Leo: Maybe they have that. If you search by the wrong name, the Late Shift. It is the previous one and the Lederman was involved, and yes they have it, no no yes they do have it. Is this it? No. That is not it. I think that they do not have it. They have the Nudist on the Late Shift that is Bob Brunson’s very funny book about Silicone Valley which I had not thought about in years. Wow. So anyway audible.com/macbreak. The Late Shift I read that in paper years ago, what a story and I loved it. It was so sad about Leiderman, did you see Keith Obermann’s beautiful tribute today on Lederman?

Andy: Yes and it is not often that someone gets to like to hear their own eulogy and boy on Thursday and Friday everybody was like there were tributes to Lederman and their legacies, their history and their personal connection to them. Oh God when I first saw this topic I thought oh God what has happened here.

Leo: Yes, jut retiring. I cannot imagine what Lederman will do without that pulpit.

Andy: I am like Carson, he has wife he has a kid, he has hobbies that connect him to  other people and plus he has half a billion dollars so…..

Leo: So if you want to do podcasting I cannot guarantee you money but I can guarantee you happiness.

Rene: Or just follow the grand prix circuit and just fly city to city.

Leo: That is where I learned from Oberman’s stories that he is a big F1 fan. I did not know that.

Andy: He is the owner of the Lederman Racing Game. He won the Minneapolis like 6,7,8 years ago. And if you ever have this idea that Dave has become this grumpy old man then get a video of him after his racing team has won the Indianapolis 500 and that will like the top of his head was almost about to come off with smiles meeting at the back.

Leo: But he did grow up in Indianapolis I guess it is not unusual that you will get a little passion for motorsports in that city. Moving onto Syrah OS 10/10/10, they should release it on October 10th.

Rene: Double ten date I want to be thrilled.

Leo: It will be the success of the Mavericks obviously. I have lost track of the tick-tock cycle, Mavericks is a big release right? So do we expect a smaller release on this one?

Rene: I do not think that it works that way anymore just because the year by year schedule is brutal and also when you add IOS 7 to the mix  it took so many resources away from them that I think they will focus on whatever features they want to deliver on now and they will be roughly similar.

Leo: If you think that IOS 7 was controversial Syrah Joni Ive has been leading a significant design overhaul for OS 10, and the new design will be the operating system’s corner stone new feature. We do not know what it is going to look like but Joni has got his hand…….

Andy: That word worries me a little bit, because look at how Microsoft does not like Apple but look at how much failure they have had to get people to accept Windows 8 at last week at Bills most of the announcements were about Windows 8. Okay we are rolling back but a third of the things that we told you were the signature features of Windows 8. Windows users are a lot more intractable than Mac users. Mac users are open to change but nonetheless…. If you look at remember how badly a lot of people reacted to IOS 7 and they really did not have choice but to upgrade and a lot of people are still not very happy with it. So if you take the operating system that people know and love and rely on and if you make changes that are not immediately tactile as an improvement as to what went on before you are going have a lot of people who might be looking at Windows 8 now, and saying that look if I am going to have to switch to something I do not really like and that I am not familiar with I may as well go for something that I don’t really like but I am not familiar with and costs 500 dollars less in a laptop form. I am not predicting doing that I am just saying that it is an interestingly gutsy thing for me to do to really severely monkey with a Mac operating system if that is what they are doing.

Leo: There was a big hoo ha ha over IOS 7.

Rene: My understanding is that this was always in the cards and just again they had so much to do with IOS 7 and could not do it at the same time. Otherwise we would have seen them the redesigns happen simultaneously. But there are a couple of things to remember one is there is big halo of products and people go from 1OS to OS 10 and Apple spent a lot of years trying to make it identical but at least familiar to people who make that switch. They are maybe going to want to keep a little bit of that familiarity. I think that we can all take solace that Apple really understands that OS 10 and IOS are separate things with separate requirements. But people see large principles like the deference, the clarity and the depth sort of played through. A friend of mine Dave Whiskers did an article for MacWorld saying iCloud.com could be a hint as to where they go. But I think that what we really see is a version not of IOS 7 but of that same vision applied to the realities of the Mac.

Leo: Am I correct that 10.10 is binary for 10? I think it is.

Andy: I will say that if they release 10.10 on 10/10 then 10 10 10 10 would be forty-two.

Leo: 1,0 and 1,0 is ten and is binary am I wrong? No I am wrong.

Andy: I do agree with what Rene is saying about the general attitude towards stream lining and fixing Mac OS10. The nature of my concern is that my personal preference is that I kind of think Sistine Chapel IOS without OS7 they did a little bit too much scrubbing and little bit too much cleaning and they left something that really is not as clear as what they took away. So if they were to take a device that I use with a really big screen thirteen inches minimum you know twenty-five inches or twenty four inches sometimes they are going to be simply removing what they see as a superfluous interface and flaws and as a result they make it harder for me to set the way I like it and to navigate my way around it…I am sorry just visually anchor myself with here is the task I am doing and here are things that are not so important but still in my frame of perception that could be a problem. It would be a much longer adaptation process for IOS 7.

Rene: But there is still that felt there Andy. They have to get rid of that felt.

Leo: No more felt no more stitching.

Andy: Damn it that is my desk jotter Jodie put it back. If it is on the computer you can mess with it but if is on my house then leave it alone.

Rene: They did not have much time for Game Center last year much to many peoples chagrin. It is still there

Andy: Right it is past a couple of days of the expiration date, right you can put that away but give me my desk blotter.

Leo: Apparently they have been testing features like Siri on the desk-top. That is good, compatibility between the Air Drop on the desk top and the Air Drop on the IOS. It seems like that should have been there but no…

Rene: The thing with Air Drop and it is an interesting story that they did it and Steve Jobs said it is too complicated we are not going to ship this. They did it again and Scott Forstall said it was too complicated not going to ship this. So they went back and made an entirely new version of Air Drop to satisfy the simplicity requirements but it was no longer compatible with the Mac version. The theory being that they now have to go back and rejigger them for compatibility. But they gave them the same name but the in the future it is compatible but it is confusing in the present.

Andy: Hey the Bluetooth file transfer still works.

Leo: Does it really. You have got to wonder if people were bit by that. I knew this because I think that you told me this Rene some time ago but how many people have tried to share through an iPhone using an Air Drop from a desk top? It is just not going to work I just do not understand it. (Presenters talking over each other) Think of how much wasted time there is.

Andy: This is the most frustrating kind of feature because this is what I was going through just last week when I was using Fire TV. I was like let us try streaming music from my Amazon Library I do not see an app for it. It must be in the app store, because it is such an obvious feature. You will not believe that this feature does not exist, you just assume that I must be an idiot I cannot find it. Then you find out no it is not possible to use this banner feature that would be so useful between those two devices but no it is not ready yet.

Leo: Well this is worse because Steve said let us make it simpler it is too complicated, but what could be more complicated than having two incompatible features with the exactly the same name?

Rene: And the debate was that if they change the name later it is confusing but these will be people in the present that will be not confused.

Leo: And I would bet that has killed Air Drop. A lot of people tried and it did not work and a lot of people said Air Drop does not work. And that is it.

Rene: Also there is an amount of IOS devices versus Mac devices means that there is smaller sub set of users that you get that is the problem.

Leo: Okay so hardware, Apple seems to be readying according to some rumors a twelve inch Mac Book Air last week thinner and lighter. As you mentioned Rene Apple has unveiled laptops at WWDC so perhaps we will see something there mate we might see a mini…a donut.

Rene: It is about time Haswell is there they have enough chips and they had to redesign it because it was based on the previous generation Mac Book and not the current generation Mac Book but I would love to see that. I would love to see the same kind of PCI based memory and storage that the new Mac Book and the new Mac Book Pros have. That could be an amazing little machine that if they would just modernize it.

Andy: Does anybody want to take any bets that it will not be available with spinning hard-drives yet? They are going to make something more like an Apple TV in profile and in an unassuming presentation?

Rene: Or a fusion drive that maybe?

Andy: I do not know. They are….sometimes you just worry about…. You think about how much of Apple’s game plan is that this is a feature we want and people need and we have to make this price point because the Mac Mini is the most affordable way to get into the Mac Eco system. On the other hand they really are very driven by their own philosophy which is not arrogant it is simply have you believe that this is simply the way that you have to make computers and sort of shuck off a certain percentage of users I think. If it means that they are going to be making a better stronger product that makes more sense for them. And then if they could make a Mac Mini that does not seem like the boring 500/600/700 dollar headless Mac and looks like the super sexy hot plate of creativity and to get that sort of low profile means that we are going to make it just thick enough to accept an ethernet adaptor but not much more thick than that. Then I believe that the argument of strictly sticking to a solid state storage would win the day.

Leo: I want to do…I mentioned this before that if they come out with a new Mac Mini we are going to do a blindfold comparison between the Mac Pro and the Mac Mini. And if I cannot tell the difference then one of our editors gets the Mac Pro and I sit there with a Mac Mini. But do you know how I will know the difference because the Mac Mini does not reboot spontaneously every few hours.

Rene: You do not know that yet Leo.

Leo: Yes maybe. It is a feature.

Andy: So that is a new feature and it is a new design.

Leo: I have got to call Apple.

Andy: They do not want you to get the same problems that you get by sitting in an airline seat for three or four hours by forcing this machine to reboot, forces you to get up and walk around.

Leo: That is exactly what I do. Pound my desk and things like that. (Presenters talking over each other)

Leo: I have got to call Apple. It is one of those things that you kind of keep hoping oh it is…..remember when I said last week of it is just the relay switch…..maybe I keep thinking no it is intermittent and I am going to take it in to their store and they are going to say that it works fine for me. And I am going to take it home and it is going to do it again. Like yesterday I am doing stuff just normal stuff, not heavy duty stuff and the thing goes (frrrpppppp ppping). And it shuts down bomb boots and I replaced the ram remember we thought it was the ram stick, I do not know what is it is now.

Rene: I think that it is Apple’s turn.

Leo: I am going to go there and then they are not going to have it happen to them They are going to blame me. (Presenters talking over each other)

Andy: You just wish that there was something like the flight recorder on these things. I am just talking about not about the Console Laws I am talking about separate  things a separate CPU that simply records the string of curses, noises and smells that……

Leo: I do send everytime it crashes would you like me to report it and then I type in the comments (dddddddddd) like that but I do not know if anybody reads them.

Andy: They use that for just the internal fixture problems, it is not for, it would be great if there was some way that as soon as the crash reports reach a certain threshold you get a sort of Samaritan phone call from your local store, “Hi it turns out looks like that we have been getting 90 crash reports a day for the past four do you want to come in, and we will give you a cup of coffee and then we will take a look to see what is going on. And we promise that if it does not happen while it is in the store we will believe you by the veins that are still pulsating out of your forehead I am sure.

Leo: I do not know I know that it is just me and they may say well may be your power is not clean. We want to test that.

Leo: The last time I called they said,’’Are you using a power cup?” “Yes.” ‘’Well you had better disconnect that.” So I did and it still happens. So here it is from Cult of Mac in Polish a suggestion of the new Mac Mini. Make it look like an Apple TV just thicker, thickerer.

Rene: There is a tiny donut lock up somewhere too.

Leo: So there is a donut you were not making that up?

Rene: If someone locked down a Mac Pro and you could cut it down to Mac Mini size so that it looks like a white donut. Dark Vader’s beret.

Andy: The difficulty is that you cannot stick people on connectors. So one of the nice things about the Mac Mini is that you do not necessarily have to buy a hub because it has some many USB ports. It has the full sized Ethernet you do not have to buy a dongle for it. I think that if they decided to get that aggressive about it they can say:

”Oh well we have given you the two lightning connectors and you do not really need any other ports. You simply buy a dongle for whatever you need. I am sure that they could make that point and would want to make that fly, because again of you walk into the Apple Store with 700 dollars to spend on a Mac Mini you do not want to have to come back with another 2 or 300 dollars tomorrow if you are looking for something like a conventional desk top computer that looks like an Apple product.

Rene: It has got HDMI which a lot of people love too.

Leo: Apple’s future senior Vice President in charge of retail sales is now a Dame. That is not a sexist comment, friends, Angela Ahrendts has become a Dame of the British Empire today for her work at Burberry she revitalized that classic British Brand. Can you show this?(Points to a picture on the screen)

Rene: Ahrendts.

Leo: She made tartan cool again. Unfortunately the Queen will not be in attendance or was not in attendance at that event which was yesterday. Instead the government business secretary Vince Cable…..(laughing) this is the worst.

Rene: You cannot even get the Royal Family (Presenters talking over each other)

Leo: Mom I have got good news I am a Dame of the British Empire. Here is the bad news they are not going to put a sword on my shoulder and give me a crown the Queen is not going to kiss me and put a thing around my neck. Vince Cable is going to shake my hand he is the government’s business secretary.

Andy: Vince Cable the pre-owned Honda, right of the one twenty one just look for the guy with a snake on his face. Open till eight on Thursdays.

Rene: If you are going to be a Dame then a Yes Minister is going to give it to you.

Leo: And that is another thing that if you become an OBE as a man you get to be a Sir and then they call you Sir John Connery, Sir Joni Ive. She has to be Dame Angela Ahrendts that does not sound good. I am a Dame! They need to come up with a better name.

Leo: We do not know when Ahrendts will leave Burberrys to take over the helm at retail sales at Apple. They said the Spring The Daily Mail says this month but we do not know.

Rene: Apple has to ship something in the Spring.

Leo: Yes.

Andy: In their first big meeting in which Joni Ive just had to sit there icy as he sits from across the table from some of his great lads.

Leo: oh My God that is a good point.

Rene: They all sit at the Knights table at Apple and they will not sit with the commentators.

Leo: And we knights sit over here.

Leo: Right they have got a Dame and Sir. And we knights sit over here.

Andy: I understand that Joni parks his horse in the minicab spot and he does not even care.

Rene: That is not licensed.

Leo: He gets a new horse every six months. In our show today and we are going to talk about the Samsung and Apple law suit round two and there is some juicy stuff in it. But before we do let us talk a little bit about Square Space. The greatest place to start your next website. We love Square Space, we talk about it all the time. I feel very close to the guys, I have been out there many times and I just think they do have a really great product, and if you are looking for a website that is beautifully designed state of the art, it is hard to tell when you go to SquareSpace.com click the Get Started button and you will see twenty-five templates. You might say:”Is that all?

 That is just the beginning, it is merely a starting point, in fact if you select one you will see a sites that use that template. They all look different and that is the beauty of it. You do not have to be a web designer. Somebody said, “ You know I went to Square Space and they all have pictures in them. They are so visual so I do not like it.” You know what this is modern this is what people do on websites now they put pictures. It is an amazing thing, they are all mobile responsive, they look different every time I squeeze a frame the site automatically responds and when you upload it creates nice thumb nail, images for you. It is just gorgeous stuff. And by the way all of the templates are e-commerce enabled and that is nice and they are all mobile responsive so they look good in any size. There is great support you know it is very easy to use and you will not need to be a coder to use. Beautiful developer platform but if you need help you have got 24/7 help right out of their New York offices, live chat and email support, plus the newly designed site has easier access to self-help articles videos always gets better here is the logo creator tool. Just so sweet. It all starts for eight dollars a month and you also get a free domain name when you sign up for a year. Those mobile apps and metric apps for the iPhone and the iPad which allows you to check your site stats views and visitors and social media followers and the blog, yes lets you update posts and also moderate comments on the go, even change layouts within the apps. They are so good. SquareSpace.com here is what you do you go to SquareSpace.com click the Get Started button and play with it. It will import your content from your existing site, mess around with it get a sense of what it can do for you. You do not need to give them a credit card, you need to give them an email address in case you forget the password and that is about it. If you decide to buy do use our offer code macbreak and you will get ten percent off oh you heard about them on macbreak weekly, eight dollars a month that is amazing. SquareSpace a better web awaits and it starts with your site at SquareSpace.com.

We had Liz Gains on Sunday on Twit and we were talking about the new Apple/Samsung trial. The previous trial was about trade dress, hardware the new trial is about five software patents that Apple says that Samsung has violated. It is the same ones you know it is to be able to click a link in messenger or an email to dial the phone or go to a website. Think that I do not know how you could patent that well because our back system is broken swipe to unlock and things like that. So Apple is going after Samsung really by proxy and right after Android and Google. But one of the things that is fun about this is the discovery which we are in right now where both sides ask for documents. Unless the Judge seals those documents means they are public. Liz wrote an article: The six juiciest documents from this week’s Apple-Samsung trial. There’s the super bowl email. Steve Jobs laid out strategy bullet points, including a holy war with Google. The plan for the future. Phil Sheller’s email on, during the Super bowl. In which he says I watched the Samsung super bowl ad that launched today. This was from the 2013, last year’s super bowl. It’s pretty good, but I can’t help but these guys are feeling it, like an athlete that can’t miss because they’re in a zone, while we struggle with a compelling release on an iPhone. That’s sad because we have much better products.

Andy: The whole exchange is just terrifying to read, because you see gad companies response to it, and you read oh don’t say that. Oh my god, don’t say that. What does he keep saying? Oh dear. Because essentially the ad agencies response was not written carefully enough to eliminate the possibility that you could read that and they were saying, well Apple is in the same sort of hole they were in the 1997 creatively speaking, you guys need to do a better job making better products.

Leo: Oh ow!

Andy: It wasn’t that explicit, but it was a long, long bullet point about Apple. They literally compared it to Apple in 1997, and Phil just very coldly replies that the situation is, by no means different. We didn’t have a strategy, we didn’t have compelling products, and we were six months away from bankruptcy. And you could just see him writing that with one hand, while with the other hand, picking up the phone talking to other ad agencies.

Rene: It was shocking.

Leo: Steve Jobs, in an email, which says, by the way, at the top of it, “Do not forward” But Phil Sheller forwards to Michael Chow, at Apple. This is their… I guess their upcoming strategy meeting. And right there, holy war with Google. So we know Steve was pissed about Google, but I think he considered it a holy war, I think that’s interesting. It’s fun to read this stuff, and I think it’s something to keep in mind, that when you do these lawsuits there will be this discovery and some of this stuff will be dragged up.

Rene: The iPhone is probably one of the most culturally significant developments in our recent history but for these lawsuits Apple would have kept it entirely secret. We wouldn’t know how it was developed, we wouldn’t know nearly as much about it. But because of these patent lawsuits, we have all the early design documents, all these early memos, and I feel really sad that it took this lawsuit, but I’m really happy as sort of a secret history of the universe thing, that we’re finding this stuff out.

Leo: That’s true.

Andy: It’s the same reason why you hope that every single president, or every single important presidential aid, takes the time to write a memoir, or even just speak into a recorder for three months about every detail of what it was like to be there, even if it was just put in a safety box with lawyer instructions that this is not to be released until 50 years after my death. I think that Apple is a unique company that they have people who don’t do things simply because they’re chasing after market. They do things because they legitimately believe in what they’re doing, and they’re pursing a point of view that is unique to them. So that these stories are never recorded, never told, I think of the people who are in the next five, ten, fifteen, even 20 years, who are going to be in engineering schools, even design schools, who would love to see that inspirational treasure trove of what it was like to develop these things.

Leo: Yes!

Andy: And all they know is that well they decided they wanted to get into the phone market, and here is the launch video, and here is Steve Jobs keynote. Oh well.

Leo: This is from a 2013 planning offsite for the iPhone. Which was in Calistoga just up the road apiece. And apparently Apple is a little worried about growth rates are slowing. So what is going on? The strongest demand is coming from less expensive, and larger screen smartphones, than our own. Plus carriers are getting a little unhappy that the iPhone has such high market share, costs so much, it’s unfriendly. And competitors have drastically improved their hardware, and in some cases their ecosystem. Now I have to say, when you have some of these off sites planning, it’s often good to challenge people and say “hey, you know what? You may think we’re doing great, and we are, but there’s a threat, consumers want what we don’t have, which is big screened phones.” Big screen phones. So somebody at Apple is a little worried, and maybe this is the kind of stuff that will lead to a larger iPhone.

Rene: Well it’s a little subtle, and again, the analogy here is that the iPhone on AT&T there will come a point that anyone who will want one, will have it. And there will come a point where growth going on beyond that like to Verizon. So now Apple in the last year went from 65 percent to 85 percent of the premium smartphone market. And that’s pretty much anyone who wants a 4 inch smartphone, or less. And if they want to go above 85% they have to go after the people who are buying premium Android handsets, primarily for the larger screens.

Leo: There’s also Samsung documents. Samsung apparently felt their US was too robotic, wasn’t emotional enough. So they had a planning meeting in 2009 in which they went mieux. Doesn’t mieux, mean better in French?

Rene: Mieux? Better

Leo: Yeah. They say stands for a make it a more emotional user experience. Creating a more intuitive and emotional Samsung user interface. Why are Nokia and IPhone known to be easier to use than Samsung? It’s because they’re not as… Samsung’s are not as fun to use.

Rene: They just have to hire pacific helm, or somebody to do their user interface. Just throw money at one of those…

Leo: If there interface is anything related to their slides, there’s a certain lack of, these are black and white. There’s no images, very…these slides.

Andy: But you never get… This is such a…one good thing..

Leo: It’s great to see this, I agree.

Andy: You don’t hear company’s criticize themselves. Of course, it always happens, but it gives you a sense of where they think their products are. Another one of the bombshell documents, I think it was last week, the week before, might have been last week. Was Steve Jobs draft outline in one of his all hands meeting. In which there are a couple of lines Adams that are about here are areas in which Android has actually surpassed us, like notifications and interactive communications, and those things. Where again it’s nice to see that these are the problems they have on their own radio to. Because unfortunately at this kind of scale you can’t afford to have Nokia take away, saying things like here’s where Windows phones have been falling down for us, here is where we failed. Here are the things we need to fix. And also honestly here are things that other companies are doing that we wish we did as well. And you can’t get that kind of honesty at…

Leo: No they’ll never say this in public.

Andy: …. At a school bake sale, let alone a big tech company. The only way you’re going to see this sort of communication, again its inspirational as well as informative.

Leo: This slide deck is 2008 from Samsung. Samsung strengths, now this is in 2008, do not translate well to touch. They show all the Samsung phones, and then the show the beautiful iPhone icons. They say software is the new value driver. Focusing on hardware is a losing proposition. What makes the iPhone unique is software and services. Beautiful hardware is just a bonus. Now that’ sin 2008. But I think they’re not far wrong. They do compete on hardware, but in fact, Samsung software still is not as elegant as Apples.

Rene: It’s interesting too that people accuse Apple of being aloof, or oblivious to this kind of information, but it turns out they just keep it internally. They don’t talk about it but they’re well aware.

Leo: Yeah, Sure. If you’ve ever worked for a big company, things like competitive research are a very important part of what you do. Apple says, in fact you’ve said this Andy. Apple doesn’t care what the other guys are doing, of course they do! It may not be a driver, but they do pay attention.

Andy: I never said they don’t pay attention to that. I’m saying that the fact that 3 other major manufactures are coming out with a smart watch is not going to influence their decision to make a smart watch this year. It’s certainly not going to influence their design of a smart watch. The only thing that will really turn their head is if Samsung comes out with a new watch, or a new Google watch, or this new Pebble, or this spot watch, from Microsoft from 8 years ago. If it starts selling in numbers that indicates them, “oh we thought people didn’t really want this, it turns out they’re really eager for this, it is valuable to move up our time table.” That is definitely be aware of it. Realize that they are in the launch of interviews for the iPhone, they’re talking about how they were using every single smartphone out there. Taking very careful note of what worked and what didn’t.

Leo: So last year Apple won a billion dollars in their lawsuit. Now this new lawsuit they’re asking for 2 billion dollars. The five patents are addresses, dates, phone numbers, and times appearing as links in text messages. That’s very convenient so you can click on a link in a text message and it can, for instance, open a calendar entry. They have a patent called system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer and data. Back in 1999, background data syncing. Apple says we own that! Universal search, the idea that when you do a search on an IPhone you’ll get… you can narrow it down, you’ll get search web, you’ll get the app that you’re searching for, the song you’re searching for. But you can also get Wikipedia. Universal interface for the retrieval of information in a computer system, that’s their patent from 2005. And slide to unlock, they say they own that. And finally auto completion. Apple has a patent for method system and graphical user interface for providing word recommendations, or auto complete. They say they own that as well.

Andy: Doesn’t this feel a lot like a high profile divorce case, where when this first hit the news headlines, you felt as though, you know what, that guy was cheating around and also flaunting me, and I’m glad that this marriage is ending. And after 3 or 4 years of one side doing something to the other side, and the other side responding in a way that doesn’t seem like professional response. You’ve forgotten who you’ve decided to root for, and you just want this to be over with.

Leo: Yeah.

Rene: I do.

Andy: That’s my thing on this.

Leo: Yeah, we’re the kids in this scenario. They’re fighting for custody of us, Andy.

Andy: Only they’re not buying us toys to make up for emotional abuse.

Leo: I want candy, I want candy!

Andy: Disney world with our new iPads?

Leo: Do you want to talk about security patches and bugs? Apple fixes the Safari owned vulnerability and two dozen other critical bugs.

Rene: Yay!

Leo: Yay, you know, I don’t even know if this is news anymore. This is… if you’re on version 6.1.3. Wait a minute, is this really, oh I see. Safari 6 6.1.3 and safari 7 7.0.3. How do you get that, do you just get that by an App? It’s an app update, not an auto OS update.

Rene: Yeah, you can go to Apple.com and get it to but it’s easier to get it from software update.

Leo: So just run software update if you haven’t done it. You probably want to do that. Pone to Own is that Vancouver event where hackers, all year, save their favorite hacks, because there is a huge, huge pay off if you’re the first to hack a platform. And they take all the major platforms and, in fact, a French vulnerability seller, it’s like an arms merchant. It’s not a thing you want to tell your kid, “Yeah, I sell vulnerabilities.” They sent a team to Pone to Own, and they hacked Chrome, Adobe reader, Adobe Flash, internet explorer, won 400,000 dollars! I think this is not a… I like pone to own, I like the idea, but there is so much money now, the total of prize fund of $850,000, that I think a lot of groups are looking for exploits, and then don’t reveal them so they can make money at Pone to Own.

Andy: Well as long as they’re revealing them.

Leo: But not revealing them until…

Rene: My daddy has two zero days, how many does your daddy have?

Andy: I think the people who are white hat enough, and have a purity of purpose enough to simply say that it’s enough that I’ve uncovered this, I need to get this out as soon as possible, are not going to be the sort of people who would be swayed, not going to wait for 8 months to try to win pone to own. The people who are going to be swayed to do that are going to people who have not been terribly motivated to do the right thing of looking for and documenting a bug anyway. So I don’t know, I share your concern, you would like to simply be able… you would like to live in the sort of world where everybody is saying we can make the internet an individual lap secure and more…

Leo: Yeah, and not hold on until Can sec west, so we can win 850,000 dollars!  Oh well.

Andy: What if they were to change the rules and simply say they could put something in escrow, and simply say we have basically filed a copy right claim, we’ve documented it and that gives us the ability to show it to the offended party as well.

Leo: Right, we should win. I don’t know.

Andy: The difficulty is this is like saving up all of your favorite and most gory Russian dashcam videos, so you can have one event where you can show nothing but gory videos. As opposed to simply saying that why are we saving this one event to show all the vulnerabilities all at once, that are affecting everybody in the world? Why is it not enough to say, Okay, this team won this, this time won that. And also, that would also add the incentive to say I was the first person to file a claim against this, and so I’m the first person to document this and share it publicly.

Leo: Here’s a bug, I don’t know anything about, maybe you can straighten us out here, Rene. From nine to five Mac, Mike Beasley, an IOS 7 bug that allows anyone to disable find my iPhone, and bypass activation lock, even if they don’t have a password.

Rene: yeah, it’s a bad bug, Apple has to fix it. The good news is, if you have either touch ID or a passcode on your iPhone you’re safe, because part of the bug requires you to reboot the phone, and when you reboot the phone, the passcode will come up. So they have to have physical access to your phone, they have to be able to get to the settings, they have to be able to do a couple of moves, then reboot it, and then do some more things. So as long as the reboot brings up the lock, you’re fine.

Leo: So it’s not for 5S if touch ID is turned on?

Rene: Yeah, because basically, touch ID forces the passcode, so as long as you have the passcode turned on set up, you’re fine.

Leo: In fact, the video they show is for the iPhone 4 and 4s only.

Rene: And again, if you lock those with passcode you’re also fine.

Leo: okay, so, you’re saying the four digit code enough, or does it have to be a long one?

Rene: Yeah. I mean they could brute force it if they have physical access to your phone, but it would take a while. The key thing is, that it requires a reboot to work, so if you can stop them from gaining access after the reboot, you have much less to worry about.

Leo: Ok. Yay. In other words it’s not really a serious issue.

Rene: No, it depends how high of value a target you are.

Leo: Right.

Andy: Almost every time there’s been a security exploit against an IPhone, it has always been about if I know you, and if I know your phone is very valuable, and I’m very well motivated, then yes I can distract you long enough to get my hands on it, and make life very bad for you. Most people are worried about, well I went to this website and now my girlfriend is getting junk mail from some sort of pill distributer.

Leo: Some updates this week for IWork. Which is good. This is iWork on the iPad, right?  Oh no!

Rene: For all of them. Everything.

Leo: That’s right, because they have them all synced, don’t they?

Rene: And I know Serenity Caldwell at Macworld said there’s a ton of great new stuff in pages, especially if you make eBooks. They were storing a lot of the functionality that was sacrificed when they ported the IOS engines over to Mac.

Leo: Right. Yay!

Andy: Another reminder not to freak out too much if Apple makes a big revision to something and a lot of your favorite features are gone, it’s possible they didn’t rule them out but they just didn’t get to them, and they’ll be coming back in a future update.

Leo: Yeah, but that’s very frustrating, because basically you did an “update” that downgraded.

Andy: But my worry is a lot of people who might have been extremely happy with pages, but then decided this new apple script now, I have to ban it and start learning something else new, if they were able to deal with it for a few months, you might want to set it out until the next realize to see if something is coming back.

Leo: Right. Formal Apple executive, Andy Miller, is out at Leap Motion. I have the leap motion, we played with it. I was not overwhelmed by it. It’s a great idea, and maybe in later generations it’ll be more useful. But it was that little puck you put in front of your computer and then you can wave at it, and do things. Miller was the president and chief operating officer, he no longer has a day to day roll there.

Andy: Cool demo, what does it do?

Leo: Yeah, cool demo. I don’t know what’s going on. A person familiar with leap motion, according to recode, described tension and big clashes at the company between Miller and the other cofounders. In the context of a parallel, crazy, next generation product, like Oculus rift gaining steam and eventually being bought for 2 million dollars by Facebook, while Leap motion experienced delays and less than a stellar launch. Well, he had less than a stellar product. What can I say? You know, but that’s what happens isn’t it? The dogs start fighting over the bones.

Rene: Yep.

Leo: We mentioned that Benue Dupe is a former vice president of search technology at Amazon, has moved over to Apple. What do we know about his job at Apple?

Rene: I think, nine to five mac had a piece on it early, or maybe it was Grumman’s piece that speculated he was going to be working on some of those new IOS technologies, but..

Leo: Grumman says maps.

Rene: Yeah, which is great, because the biggest problem with maps is when they swapped out the google data, and brought in the tom toms and all the other data, was they just didn’t do good data aggregation, data cleansing, and data sanity, so you had all different form formats and conflicting location. So if they get someone who is really smart about making the data really, really clean, then that instantly improves everything else.

Leo: Right. Apple has apparently done some acquisitions. They purchased Novaris, which is a speech recognition company. The team now working on Siri. That’s good.

Rene: Good news.

Leo: Nuvaris came out of dragon systems. And I think people are familiar with dragon and dragon naturally speaking. Apple has purchased them, probably an Acuahire, but who knows.

Rene: It’s a really hard think because Nuance is a really nutigious, and they own most of the intellectual property around the speech stuff. Google managed to get one of the cofounders who actually owned many of the intellectual properties…

Leo: Cohen, he’s good.

Rene: Yeah, absolutely. And so they can do almost anything they want, while Apple has to license nuance, so however much Apple can actually bring this in house, it’ll be better for us because we’ll get better performance on board, and it’ll just move the technology forward and it’ll get so much better for us.

Leo: Apple is looking to buy a Japanese chip maker. Renesas. Renes ass. I think it’s how you pronounce that.

Rene: It’s not for sale!

Leo: Renesas

Rene: You need what’s up money before you can start talking.

Leo: Apple said it’d be seeking a 55% stake, for almost half a billion dollars. 240 employees in Japan expected to stay on after the transfer, which Apple aims to complete by summer. They’re the world’s largest producer of drivers and controllers for midsize LCDs. They have about a 30% market share. These chips determine and displace quality and performance, as well as overall energy efficiency. If you look at your battery use, you can’t do it on an iPhone, but if you look on an Android, screen is everything. Screen will suck your battery dead, so this would be, I would guess an attempt to get a lower power screen on the iPhone.

Rene: They bought intricity, they own a share of power VR, and they like to have skin in the game when it comes to their chip stuff.

Leo: You betcha. I think that’s pretty much the story morning glory. Let’s take a break, when we come back, your picks of the week, Gentlemen. Our show today brought to you by 99designs.com. A great marketplace, connecting designers with businesses that are looking for quality designs. 99 designs has now 293,239 designers, waiting for you to start a contest on 99designs.com. Let them know what you’re looking for. Fill out their online design brief, tell them how much you’re willing to pay. Designers will compete to win money in what they call a design contest. They submit designs, you give them feedback together. Over seven days, you work on polishing the designs, then you pick the one you love best. The designers get the prices money, and you get a gorgeous new design. And it works! There are currently over 2000 contests at 99designs. Last month’s designers were paid out more than 2 million dollars. I want you to take a look at 99 designs, whether you’re a business looking for t-shirts, car wraps. Maybe you’re a restaurant looking for a better menu. Better Facebook landing page. Logo, with 290,000 designers at your fingertips, there is no limit to what you can get designed. We just did our great hoodies, I think that is over now. We also did a t-shirt. What we did is we did a contest for the hoodie, and we got five… we got so many good designs, we bought five of them, they start as low as 199 bucks by the way. So we bought five of them, and we’re just going to make a variety of things. So the new T-shirt is also from 99designs. And it’s great, I love it. You’ll see it starting next week, we’re going to put it, or is it this week? Maybe it’s this week we’re going to put it on sale. Prices start at 199, your happiness is always guaranteed. If you visit 99designs.com/mbw. 99designs.com/mbw, you get a 99 dollar power pack of services for free. A power pack gives you more time and attention in the market place. 99designs will bold, feature, and highlight your project so you get nearly twice as many designs. 99designs.com/mbw. We thank 99 designs for their great designs, and their supporting Macbreak Weekly. Time for our picks of the week, let’s start with Andy Ihnatko.

Andy: Mine is really fun app, or really useful app for 3D development. It’s called Rhinoceros, it’s a very popular app for Windows, and they’re working on a version for Mac. And while they’re developing it for Mac, they’re basically saying the MAC version is free, while it’s under development. You can just go to the site, just go to mcneal.com/rhino. Oh I’m sorry, I think I have the wrong URL up.

Leo: rhino3d.com/mac.

Andy: Thank you, I had the wrong page up here, checking on a fax. Yeah, just download it for free, every couple weeks they’re releasing a new development build. The old one expires, the new one will replace it. And it’s a very full featured 3D online, and output program. I like it even if it weren’t a free for now app, it’s the first 3D app I’ve tried that I really seem to be able to understand. The exception maybe to Sketch up, but Sketch up for me seems to be about more architectural drawings. Things you can define as here is a plane, I’m going to make this plane thick now. Now I’m going to make another plane that joins it like this. For actually wanting to design a more complex shape than that, or even trying to visualize something in your had that you would do with clay if you wanted to deal with clay, this really has a log of that potential. I first starting playing with it because as you know I’ve been started to get into 3D printing over the past few months, and I wanted to do things that were a bit more complicated than other stuff. And it’s a bit more fun to just make models now. And I totally stink at it, which is why I don’t have anything to show you, but it feels as though there is not much of a barrier, between how I want to use this app, and this app letting me do that stuff. This app is really, for a development app, it is rock solid, I have not doing really complicated things with it, but I’ve never gotten it to crash or screw up on me once. Most of its limitations are things like extended plug in support, which are things that would be important to you if you’re a Windows user of this product. There’s no documentation obviously, so you have to sort of fumble through it on your own. But there are enough tool tips in this interface, the interface is clean enough that you can pretty much work your way through it.

Leo: They have about 7 hours of video on the site to though.

Andy: Exactly.

Leo: So you can get some help on how to use it for sure.

Andy: So whether you have a real purpose for this app, or whether you just want to start playing with designing things in 3d and then outputting them, this is a really great app to have. And it exports, and there are no limitations on what this app can do, even though it’s a developer release. You can export your 3D model in pretty much any format you want, so if you want to spit it out for a 3D printer, it will give you an STL file. If you want to export it as an object, so then you can then use it in a Photoshop project. If you need for a graphic you’re producing, if you need something in 3D that will match whatever’s in the current seen, no problem, you can output it, put it into Photoshop and work with it that way. Long, long list of which… Three quarters of the file types I don’t recognize. So that’s how I know I’m really impressed with the 3d product, if It’s mostly file formats I don’t recognize.

Leo: There’s commercial and noncommercial. Is it, what’s the…. How’s it free?

Andy: It’s just free. If you’re at rhino3d.com/mac, go to 3D, and you’ll just simply…

Leo: I guess if you want to use it for commercial purposes you have to pay for it, something like that? When I click the link that says “buy”, I see money.

Andy: Here, I see download, the most current work development project here. Click that.

Leo: Yeah. Oh okay. 90 days, after 90 days saving and plugins stop working on the Windows side anyway. I don’t know how the MAC is differen.t

Andy: Again, it expires when they have a new development version out, but that means there’s a new development version. So obviously there is going to be a point where the final development bill won’t work anymore and you’ll wish that… you’ll be happy that you have exported your files. But it’s not as though it’s going to be a shock surprise, like oh my god, my world has suddenly collapsed around me. But again, the great difficulty with 3D apps like this is they are so hard to develop, and such expensive development that you can’t really sell a 20 or 30 dollars trial version of this sort of stuff. So it’s really hard to really experiment with this stuff on a prolonged basis, so this is a really good opportunity if you’ve ever wanted to experiment with this sort of stuff. Or if you have that one job where I would love to be able to fix this one image, but all I need to do is create a green screen image with a fake background on it that I could drop somebody into. You could just create this, knock this out in Rhinoceros and have a lot of fun doing it.

Leo: Anyway, Rhinoceros code names are small towns in Wisconsin. This is code named Wanachi 5.0. So there you go. Rene Ritchie your pick of the week.

Rene: I have two because anyone listening to the beginning of the show new that we were sort of all picking the same thing. So, like Andy, I came up with a spare so, the first one is called understudy, it’s an App for the iPad, it’s made by Ken Ferry, and I’m blanking on his partners name, so I apologize, but they were both Apple engineers. Ken worked on Core OS, and then he worked on auto layout and then passbook. So he has a really good pedigree to him, and he left because he wanted to start focusing on educational apps. And what this does that’s so clever is it’s basically mentoring for your iPad. So what you do is you sign up for an account, and there’s two books available now, there might be more. One is Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and the other is the MIT Computer Sciences program, and you start reading the book and then once a week you’re matched up with someone, it’s fantastic, you’re matched up with someone who’s farther ahead in that book, you know, either an expert or just up to ⅕ of the way through the book, and they help you understand what it is that you’ve been reading. And then as you progress you’re matched up with someone who is just beginning the book and you help them. It is really nice, it’s got a whole Facetime-like video chatting service embedded in it, so you can talk with the person you’re mentoring. It’s got a shared whiteboard, so as you draw notes and things it’s in real time between the both of you, and it’s just an excellent, I saw a bunch of nerds on twitter really excited about this because they’ve been dying to learn these skills for a long time but needed the peer-pressure, the encouragement, the tutoring you know, to go along with it. And this app just provides all of that.

Leo: So just a little bit about the two books that it comes with, of course Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is widely considered “The Classic” on learning to draw. Just a must have. Both of these books have been around for many decades. And so if you’re interested in learning how to draw, what a great book. And then The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programming is a book I’ve recommended for years as the one and only best book to learn how to program. You’ll be learning in a Lisp variant called Scheme, don’t let that put you off because the point of this is to learn computer programming, not as something pre-professional, like I’ve gotta get a, learn a language that’ll help me get a job, but it’s really learning about algorithms, the expression of algorithms, the deep underlying fundamental principles of representing a problem and solving it in a syntex. And it’s just a classic, brilliant book. But, it’s long and hard and it’s difficult, it’s challenging. Having someone to sort of mentor your way through it would be great. This is a great idea and I really like the choice of books that they’ve made here.

Rene: It is a version 1.0 app, so there are just a few books when you start, also there’s, the network has to be built out. but the model is really interesting. It’s free to try and you can get up to two, I think it’s two hours of voice communications a month with it. It might be a week but I think it’s a month. If you pay just five bucks it’s unlimited. So five bucks a month gives you unlimited use of the audio and video, sort of mentoring system. As well as all the other stuff. So free to try, easy to get in to. I had the great pleasure of spending some time with Ken on it, he’s also the guest on next week’s DBUG so he’ll be explaining all about the app and how he built it for the tech nerds who are really interested in it. So for me it’s just been a really interesting app and I’ve been, I’m hoping people will teach me better math with it, basically.

Leo: Yeah, it’s a lovely idea. Both of these books you can get, you can download for free, they’re out there, you already have kind of this start, I can get a MIT level computer science education on my own, but what you’re missing is that thing you get a a college. Which is some mentorship. You know, someone to sort of talk with about it. This adds that, it’s so great, I really like this.

Rene: And it’s very sort of very Asian in a way. Like, my grandfather learned in a trade school in Germany and it was a mentor relationship, and in China the juniors and the seniors, always, everybody is a teacher, you learn from everybody and we’ve lost a lot of that in North America outside of the tutoring system, so it’s nice to see that sort of becoming digital.

Leo: Chat roulette for programmers and artists.

Rene: Sort of, yeah. You’re responsible, I drew Batman right away, that’s where my mind goes.

Leo: You both picked the other one.

Rene: Yeah, Monument Valley, which is just the most, it’s an Escher-esque universe where your wonderful little character just wanders around these dimensionally brain twisting constructs trying to find her way to the end. And you manipulate those environments to help get her there, and it’s just the best looking, most beautiful sounding iPad game I’ve played in a long time.

Leo: Yeah, Sarah made it her pick of the week on iPad Today on our last iPad Today.

Rene: Contemplative as a game.

Leo: And the music is beautiful too.

Andy:I cannot get the music to play on my iPad.

Leo: What?

Andy: Frustrated as hell, I’m getting no sound whatsoever.

Leo: That’s weird.

Rene: Stick in the earphones because it sounds so much better with the earphones than it does in the speakers.

Leo: It’s a puzzle game, a three dimensional puzzle game.

Rene: Some people think it’s really short but it’s really up front, no in app purchases, no subscription required, and it’s delightful for as long as it lasts.

Leo: It reminds me of is that amazing indie game for the Playstation 3 called Journey. Which was gorgeous, it had beautiful music, you don’t kill anybody. It’s just beautiful.

Andy: It’s like there are, that’s a really great point because there are parts of this game that involve, sort of moving walkways and revolving them, sometimes vertically. And the thing is if your character is on one of those walkways that’s rotatable, the handles that you push to make them rotate retract, as if it’s saying “no you cannot rotate this while your person is on it and make her fall and die.” There are sort of like, spy vs. spy characters that are getting in your way. You also can’t do anything to manipulate these people by manipulating the environment, It really is just a meditative sort of game, I just really really, it was responsable for me, I thought I was going to be leaving the house at 11, I downloaded this at about 10:30 and I wound up leaving the house at about noon.

Rene: I lost sleep, it cost me some sleep.

Leo: So I’m very pleased, both excited and a little depressed, late last night when I saw Adobe release the press release, they have finally put out Lightroom on the iPad. And by the way, I had to fight to get this as my pick, because both Andy and Rene had wanted to pick it obviously. The reason I was a little bummed is because we just completed two iPad Todays yesterday. And didn’t mention it in either of them, even though this is a program we’ve all been waiting for for a long time. So I spent a lot of time in bed last night playing with Lightroom for the iPad, and it is great. It’s free, but you have to have a copy of Lightroom, and you need also to have a subscription to Lightroom because it uses the creative cloud to sync, so you’ll have Lightroom on your desktop and what you do is you’ll make collections. If you haven’t been using Lightroom’s collection feature, you’re going to have to learn about it. You do have to update to Lightroom 5.4. But you’ll create collections of photos, and then in the process of creating the collections, or after the fact, you can sync them. I gather, and maybe one of you guys can help me with this, it uploads a smaller version to the cloud, which you can then download to your iPad. So you’ve got the picture on your iPad. But here’s what’s interesting, there’s a lot of gestures by the way, you’ll have to learn, like the double tap and the triple tap. The double tap changes what you see in the view, and you can have a histogram of the image, you can have the exif information of the image, and you can have the image itself. And I have to say, it’s a good enough quality that on a retina iPad you don’t feel like you’re losing anything. And then, you can do things. So a swipe up flags it, makes it a pick, a swipe down rejects it, says don’t pick it, and that syncs back to your desktop. Which means then you can have them deleted from your collection if you want, deleted from your Lightroom if you want. You can also make changes, so many of the Lightroom adjustments are here, a lot of them are here. I always turn up clarity on my images a bit, so all you have to do is slide the slider here and what’ll happen is, I turn up vibrance often, give it a little more of that. You can desaturate or saturate, but you also have all the plugins, all the presets, or many of the presets, that you might have. So let’s say I want to try this in black and white, I can do that very easily. And this will be synced back to the desktop, whoops, that’s a little force crash there. So I’m not going to send the data to that right now. But see, it goes right back to where you were. I have to say, I am really excited about this. Because I think one of the chief ways people are going to use this, at least I’m going to use this, is as a way of kind of lean back looking at your photos from the day or the week or the trip, rejecting and picking the ones you want, making the kind of basic modifications you would be making anyways, maybe even something more serious. You can, ok, once you do this you can share them out. There’s the usual Apple share button. You can also, if you wish, and it’s rather large so they don’t recommend it, download full copies of these images onto your iPad. And you can do a little slideshow of your images as well. And there are slideshow options so you can set how long the slideshow lasts for, the kind of transition. So also a great way, and I think a lot of photographers would use this, to show a portfolio to a client. Or just a slideshow to family and friends, it really is, they’ve done what I think, a bang up job of this. This is Lightroom, it’s free for the iPad. Now since you both were going to pick this, I’m sure there are features you would like to highlight that I haven’t mentioned. What do you think?

I like it a lot, the thing I love the most about it is just the simple act of triage. Which for me always works better for me on and iPad than a desktop, I don’t really know why that is. But I think it’s because instinctively I’m just looking at this as a beautiful 8x10 style print, and it either hits me or it does not hit me and it’s so easy to simply swipe and say “no, no, no, no, yes, no, no”

Leo: That’s exactly what I was doing, and it’s so nice, yeah.

Andy: I’m not quite at the point yet where I make adjustments and trust that it’s going to turn out exactly the way I anticipate it’s going to turn out. But again, as simply as a way to have some of the power of Lightroom, particularly the power of having raw files available, and editable and just mess around with able.

Leo: I was even importing into iphoto jpegs just so I  could do some of this. Now you’re really working with a synched up Lightroom, it’s just phenomenal.

Andy: It does also pay off some of the faith that you had by saying “oh man, I can’t believe Adobe isn’t allowing me to own their apps anymore, now I have to subscribe to them.” Well, it’s kind of okay if the price is right and every now and then, by the way, because you’ve subscribed here’s something that’s beautiful and it’s absolutely free. Or excuse me, no extra charge.

Leo: I think they’ve really done a nice job with this. You’re right, there are things you can do in Lightroom, you can’t do. You are on a different screen. Although Apple has taken great care to make the iPad screens pretty accurate. So I think you could so some trustworthy editing on here. They do seem to sync back to the desktop quite well. Rene, what has your experience been?

Rene: I loved the interface, I got a chance, I got a walkthrough from Adobe on this and I just loved, I didn’t like the Photoshop for IOS, the Photoshop for iPad interface, I thought it was impenetrable. I thought this one, yes, the gesture are, you need to discover the gestures, but once you do, they’re fairly intuitive. They managed to, I think, very smartly picked the features they moved over to mobile, just exactly what you and Andy said. This is the thing you’re going to do the triage on, I many times had a photo that I needed to use for something, couldn’t get to my MacBook, or didn’t have it with me, and I really would have liked to been able to do it in Lightroom as opposed to, I mean, there are good photo editing programs, but if I can round trip it with Lightroom, it saves me so much work. And I’m also, I’m a big fan of Creative Cloud, I have a subscription to it, I think it’s terrific. I think they still have a $9.99 Photoshop and Lightroom subscription, which is a really great value for photographers. And I like that they’re becoming very clear, Adobe, for example, Photoshop is going to be focused on designers going forward. They’re really clear about that and a lot of photography heavy lifting is moving to Lightroom and they’re making these companion apps and they’re really trying to, not just service the agenda of Adobe Corporate, but make things that are better for photographers, designers, and other visual professionals.

Leo: This is, I mean, this is really nice. Very elegant, straightforward UI. I’m extremely happy.

Rene: And they say that the lo-res versions that go to your to the cloud and go to your iPad, the hi-res versions on your desktop will maintain every single change you’ve made. And in my experience, that’s absolutely true.

Leo: Right, so yeah, really what you’re sending is a, it’s not a bad, and these are all raw images from my lightroom DNGs, so these are raw images that, I don’t know if I’m, I’m sure I’m working on a jpeg of it.

Rene: It’s a jpeg.

Leo: Yeah, but because of the way Lightroom works, the changes you make are saved separately from the image, so they can be reapplied to the raw image on your desktop once you get it round tripped. I think this is just, I am so happy with this.

Andy: It also clears out the annoying thing, where, like Rene says, you’re at an event, you need to shoot things and host them immediately, but you also are collecting images, so okay, great, so I’ve got one copy of this on the card, I’ve got one copy of this on the iPad, I’ve synced, I’ve imported from the card, now I don’t know what copy is the truth of this image. The ability to have it all on one cloud system and just one expression of it, that’s such a life changer.

Leo: I tell ya, I’m going to get through my photos and get them processed a lot faster than I did before, It’s just really nice to have these capabilities. These are all images from last October. That I never processed. Finally having a chance to catch up so I’m just very happy. Free but you do have to be a subscriber to the Creative Cloud. Lightroom and Photoshop together, I think, what, like ten bucks a month?

Andy: Yup, unlimited, it lasts, it’s good for a year, after that the price goes back up to whatever the current going price is at the time of which your offer expires. Yeah, I signed up for it for exactly that reason. It was not for, when it was first offered it was a little too expensive for a hobbyist like me, but for ten bucks, for heaven’s sake.

Leo: And Chad has pick.

Chad: Yeah, I was actually going to jump in here.

Leo: I don’t usually mention MacHeist, but go ahead, I’m going to let you do it.

Chad: The big reason that I wanted to bring up MacHeist is there’s a few very expensive apps in here, especially in ScreenFlow is something that I kind of want, so some part of me kind of wants this to get up to. So the idea behind MacHeist is it’s really similar to Humble Bundle, you pay one price, and then you get a bundle of apps. Unlike Humble Bundle you don’t get to choose your own price, you do have to spend twenty dollars but then you get eight apps absolutely, and then there’s a ninth app that will be unlocked if enough people get the heist. It’s only twenty dollars.

Leo: It’s only twenty bucks, my experience is has been I’ve bought a couple of these, sometimes you get older versions, sometimes you don’t have the rights you would have had if you had bought the version. Buyer beware a little bit. This was controversial when it came out, I don’t know. What do you think Rene and Andy, is it alright now?

Rene: I have developer friends who absolutely love this idea, and I have developer friends who absolutely hate this idea. There is no agreement that I can find in the market for this.

Leo: Alright, MacHeist.com. It is a good deal. And the reason Chad is mentioning this, he really wants ScreenFlow, and they still need 2000 people to buy the bundle to unlock it.

Chad: Right.

Leo: That’s your real reason, isn’t it?

Chad: It’s a selfish reason, I’m not going to lie.

Leo: That’s fair. No, ScreenFlow is great, well worth it from telestream. But normally $99 so I think getting it for $20 would be a good deal. MacHeist.com. That’s it for Macbreak Weekly, I thank you all for being here. Andy Ihnatko, the Chicago Sun Times, ihnatko.com. Always a pleasure. He’s muted. Are you muted?

Andy: I just wanted to mention before we sign off, I’m going to go visit this week is the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder. It started on Monday, I had to stay in town for some family stuff, but I am boarding a plane at five am Wednesday morning so I can be at the University of Colorado at like ten or eleven am and start doing my panels. All these panels are really fun, really interesting, with some people who are way smarter and more articulate than I am and it’s all open for free to the public, so if you’re in the Boulder area, by all means, come by. Go to colorado.edu/cwa and you’ll be able to see the complete lineup of people and what we’re talking about. If you’re a comic book fan you’ll see Willow Wilson who writes that wonderful Ms. Marvel book. Is also one of the speakers, I’m doing a panel with her tomorrow late in the afternoon, I think another one on Thursday. So the range of people they get for this is just amazing.

Leo: Give my best to Henry, my son is there. And I want to go next year, tell him I want to go next year.

Andy: Your name has been more than put forward, it’s been aggressively promoted as someone who would be a valuable addition to the lineup.

Leo: Henry said “If you only spoke there I’d really be cool with my friends.” I said “Andy speaks there, tell them you know Andy.”

Andy: Well, in that case, forget it.

Leo: Rene Ritchie, IMore.com, great to see you, I’m sure you’ll be here in June, for WWDC, we’ll see you then.

Rene: I will absolutely be at WWDC, and I think most of the stuff we recorded at Macworld is finally online.

Leo: Good

Rene: So if you go to IMore.com/macworld2014, we have Don Melton and Matt Drance talking about a lot of the stuff from the early days of Apple. We have Pacific Helm, Sebastiaan de With talking about iOS 7 six months later. And a lot of their hatred has turned into love which is fantastic to see. So there’s a whole bunch of stuff up there for people to enjoy.

Leo: I love it when hatred turns to love. Thank you Rene, thank you Andy, thank you for being here. We do Macbreak weekly 11 am Tuesdays. That’s Pacific time. That would be 2pm Eastern time, 1800 UTC, on twit.tv. We’d love it if you watch live, but if you can’t, on demand audio and video always available at twit.tv/mbw or wherever you can get your favorite netcasts. We also have an open studio and we have four people here, which is nice, great to have you guys. If you want to come and watch, you can always be here for almost any of our shows, simply by emailing tickets@twit.tv. I’m Leo Laporte, we’ll see you next time, now get back to work ‘cause break time is over!

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