MacBreak Weekly 415 (Transcript)
Leo Laporte: It’s time for MacBreak Weekly, we’re getting closer and, closer to the iPhone launch, we’ll talk about the latest rumor round up, whether there is or not due an iWatch in September. What about that five and a half-inch phone, also news about Macs and, more it’s all coming up, next on MacBreak Weekly.
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This is MacBreak Weekly, Episode Four Hundred Fifteen, recorded Aug 12th 2014
You’re Rolling It Wrong
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It’s time for MacBreak Weekly the show that covers all your Mac subjects there. Your, Macintosh, your iPhone, your iPad, your iPod, anything with an Apple logo made in California, designed in China, or vice versa.
Rene Ritchie’s here from the fabulous imore(dot)com, great to see you Rene welcome.(iMore(dot)com-@reneritchie)
Rene Ritchie: Good morning, Leo, it’s great to be here…..
Leo: Alex Lindsay is on the way, he’ll join us in a moment, on……on….. the road from the airport. Andy Ihnatko is also here, good to see you.
Andy Ihnatko: Always good to see you Leo (cwob.com-@ihnatko), it’s good to see you Rene and it’ always good to see an empty chair that’ll soon be filled by Alex.
Leo: By Alex……or Elijah, we don’t know yet. (Andy laughing) some say sad to say it won’t be filled by Robin Williams, terrible……..terrible…….. news yesterday and, I think we’re all still reeling. You know Robin was a geek, I remember seeing him several times at Mac World Expo. Problem is that he couldn’t go to MacWorld Expos and, enjoy because he’d hounded all through the hall. But, it’s such a terrible loss when I think we feel a little,…..even more keenly here in the Bay, because he was somebody who always everywhere in the Bay area and lived very happily.
Andy: Also, that he comes from an era, remember back in the 90s when …….and the…..late 80s when Apple fans felt deceived that Apple’s not going to be around three, four or five years. You find out someone you really like, whose really, really cool is also one of those rare who uses a Mac……like oh he’s one of us. I….could…..he could stay in my guest room because I feel as if we’re already friends and , we know each other very, very well.
Leo: And, of course his very last professional work was doing an ad for the iPad Air. (Leo shows ad) Excerpt from the ad: don’t read and, write poetry because it’s cute, we read and write poetry because we’re members of the human race and, the human race is filled with passion, medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits, necessary to sustain life, the poetry, beauty, romance, love this is what we stay alive for……….(music)…….,to cope with life and me, questions of these recurring of the endless trains and the faithless of cities filled with the foolish, what good these make….oh me….oh life….the answer you are here………life exists in entity and, the powerful play goes on and, you contribute to the universe, with the powerful play goes on and, you may contribute a verse, what would your verse be?
Leo: You know it’s…… we kind of made fun of that ad well because, frankly so intellectual and,…..so heavy…..
Andy:…..so heavy……
Leo:…..and much the more heavy now. You listen to those words and, him saying those and, wow…..
Andy: Yes…..,it’s interesting that the bench and, his character and, Matt Damon’s character sat on at the public garden …..during Goodwill hunting, has been known as the Goodwill Hunting Bench, sort of unofficially there’s not plaque on it but now it’s turned into a sort of makeshift shrine here. (Leo agrees) It’s not just because of stuff like that and some of the lofty work that he did, that made a lot of people connect to him in that way.
Leo: You know of course the monologue is from the Goodwill society…….. sorry……the Poets Society, beautiful monologue and, reading some of the coverage, I got the impression that it was re-recorded. Did anybody sit down and, compare it to the actual monologue in the movie? Because I think he re-recorded that recently?
Rene: Don’t remember that?
Andy: The audio seems a little 1990s…..
Leo: Yes….. that’s why I assumed that they just lifted it from the movie. But, but then I am reading the coverage that he recorded it, then I’m not sure.
Andy: Don’t…..don’t believe what people like to push out. I really feel…..I won’t say contempt actually I feel more sympathy for people who are working for certain sites where they themselves are sad when their favorite entertainers. But, now that they know that, okay, it’s not my responsibility here at one am to come up with things to post online on the site tomorrow that’ll get clicks for all the people who are going to start searching for stuff about Robin Williams.
Leo: Yes, it’s kind of croaky…..isn’t it? So sad……
Andy: Well, it’s their job and, I don’t like to judge because I’m, sure that when they signed up they didn’t say at some point that…… I’m going to whip up mail storm of about….sad feelings of things that we can then turn into things of ad clicks. (Leo Agrees)But it’s…… oh well……
Leo: It’s hard to do anything but, just sigh (Andy agrees). A tragic, tragic end to one of the greatest…….so lots of news about Mac. One, of the things that kind of intrigued me and, might start of as a little something, a little bit more speculative. You, actually Rene Ritchie talked about it on iMore(dot)com, regarding ARM based Macs.
Rene: Yes.
Leo: One of the things that happened, generally we can say on Monday he wrote a piece where he’s actually quoting, mostly quoting somebody else, a young guy when he wrote the original piece in 2011 three years ago he was 16 at Richmond in his blog sitting in a tree, ‘Apple and ARM sitting in a tree’. So, this was three years, but now with the release of the new K1 chip from Nvidia, you know Integra K1, 64 bit that is faster than many desk top processors, it makes me wonder if there isn’t something to this. What do you think of all of this, I mean it’s pure speculation as you point out?
Rene: It’s……so Apple is not a dumb company and, if there’s anything that any of us could think that Apple might be interested in by chance, this is that they have pro-typed it this is that they have in testing, they have in development, we know that they Mark Cloud the Intel based Mac running for a long time before they switched to Intel running in the labs, we know that Apple has had interns supporting things that OS 10….OS 10 kernel to ARM. The rumor has it they have ARM based Macs, some running on iOS, some running on touch screens all of that in the lab, but that’s a far cry from a shipping product.
The switch to Intel happened because they could get better power efficiency because of the whole bunch of advantages that came shipping into Intel including PC compatibility. They could run boot camp, they could run emulators, switching to ARM could make a lot of people……a lot of lay observers are excited about it because of the idea of Apple owning the whole stack where they see the 7 shipment, and how powerful it is and, they start to dream of ARM based Macs, but, for Apple to do this they would have to have as compelling a reason, would have to be as beneficial to undergo the pain of the transfer to figure out are they going to run iOS, will they beget an OS10 onto an ARMchair, get every-one who makes OS 10 apps get them to support them in an ARMchair. Would they emulate existing 86 apps, how would they handle windows, people still just need windows in enterprise……it could be a boot camp. There’s so many questions and, so much pain involved that I think this stuff is absolutely in the realm of speculation, actually it may be a little bit of fan fiction at the moment.
Leo: Yes….on the…..you seem some benefits, you’re right to underscore the trials that would go along. Apple did it so well with Intel, that maybe people forget that….the Rosetta Carbon were done so beautifully, that I think a lot of people didn’t feel much pain when making the transition, the developers……
Rene: Maybe…..maybe they have those things, it’s just those becoming shipping products,
Leo: Yes….
Rene:…..and the decision to make those shipping products. Apple, when Apple says things like people don’t like……..,touch screen Macs are a good idea because they’re ergonomic, it’s not because they’re pulling this out of their hats, it’s because they’ve made touch screen Macs and, they’ve tested them significantly in that way in that determination in a positive way. I know the ARM Macs, they dangle those over Intel and, how late is Broadwell going to be again. And, it’s really effective for that and it’s not quite effective for store shelves yet.
Andy: And as Rene says I mean when they did the transition to Intel, you forget the power PC was not dead, but, oh boy the trajectory of that CPU was going way, way down and, Apple was really……as I recall very, Apple was the only main client for that CPU, that wasn’t like the embedded system, like controller systems.
Whereas they switched to Intel, so long as Microsoft Windows continues to run Intel machines, Intel’s going to continue to make hot, hot processors next generation, next generation after that, generation after that, so there was nothing but upside to switch to Intel. Given, given that the hassles to developers, Apple’s not going to care about 90……back then.
So, if they were to switch to ARM, there would have to be something so compelling, such as their ability to really tailor make a CPU to a specific model.
Leo: Which, they could do it.
Andy: Which, they could do if they…….one thing would be possible if they were to adopt this as and simply say that from now on the CPU…..the official CPU for Mac Book Air is going to be the ARM, the official CPU of the Mac Book Pro and, the desktop line is going to be Intel. Because, people do want that higher performance, people do want compatibility with Windows, it’s there. But, for the purposes of producing a thousand dollar, and now a nine hundred dollar and, then in the future eight hundred dollar, ultra-light notebook that can get not just ten hours, not just twelve hours but now seventeen hours or eighteen hours of battery life and, it can do all kinds of extra tricks that they even haven’t thought of yet, because they can simply design an ARM chip to do exactly what they needed to do for this product, that would be an upside. But, it’s not as simple as simply putting a new sticker on a different box.
Leo: People might forget that it was Apple that’s founded ARM back in 1990?
ARM, originally stood for ACORN RISC MACHINE, Acorn computers, which is a popular computer in the UK. It was a risk processor, which stands for reduced instruction protection set. Intel processors and, all the main processors, including the power PC, although less of the power PC…….I guess power PC might have been Cisk power processor …..yes
Rene:…… Risc…..power processor……
Leo: Whereas Risc instruction says, where the basic instructions said, where the basic instructions said where the fundamental capabilities of the processor on the Intel chips are many more base instructions……instructions is much larger than on ARM, it’s a reduced instructions set…….the idea being that you can reduce complexity and, the chip…..that’s one of the reasons the chip is lower power, it’s a……Xcity
Rene: I’d say that the X 86 is a mess.
Leo: Yes, because X 86 because, it needs to support legacy, in fact even Intel wanted to get away for X 86,…..attempted to and was pushed back because they needed to support Legacy hard-ware.
Rene: John Cusack had a really good analysis of this and, one of the things that he brought into……he reminded all of us that your ARM is going up in performance, but Intel’s going down in power, Haswell’s very good, Broadwell’s been very good, but also Apple can design any chip they want, but who’s going to fab it. Right now Intel’s the only one who could fab 14 anemeire. It might be hard for Apple to say, you’ve got to fab our A 8,9 A 10 whatever chip, before you do Broadwell, before you use Broadwell, before you use Sky Light, before you do whatever is next from that, so designing the chip is only one part of it, getting it fabbed is the second part.
Leo: Right.
Rene: Depends and, currently that’s mostly in Intel game.
Leo: ARM is what they call a fabulous company, they don’t make chips, they design chips and, license them to other people, and, including Samsung, who makes the chips, currently makes the chips for the iPad and, the iPhone……QUALCOMM which makes very powerful ARM chips, Nvidia……(interrupted by Andy)
Andy: It’s kind of an interesting question…….., interesting question though, because keep in mind that there are already prefabbing ARM chips by tens of millions to put into iOS devices.
Leo: Right……
Andy: So, there’s certainly capacity there, but once again it’s not something that they would do just to say that they would do it. It’s also if you……if you’re harping on certain negative, popular aspects of Apple they will ………, it’s not something that they would just simply say, ‘we don’t want to be beholden to Intel, anymore.’ They’re perfectly fine with me to be beholden to Intel, so long as it is for helping them to make the devices they want to make. So, when it turns out when they can no longer make the devices that they want to make and, elimination is Intel, that’s when you’re going to start a lot of serious, serious velocity on these rumors. (Leo agrees)
Leo: You do see a performance also, although I have to say this UK 1 is better than Celeron, I mean, it’s nice….it’s not up to i3 or the i5 by 7 but there…..their coming on with powers…..…both companies are moving in each other’s directions. Intel, very much wants to be where ARM is and, ARM is…….I don’t know if ARM wants to be where Intel is, but ARM certainly wants to be more powerful. Apple, originally founded ARM in and, supported ARM for the Newton it was in the Newton. They’d invested their ownership in ARM, quite a while ago.
Rene: And, it’s also……., also……. good to point out that ARM has two ways to do business with them. One is to take their reference designs like their Cortex A-9 or A-15 in just use those chips, those Apple has the master license for the ARM instruction set so they can…..so they can the A-7 chip is based on the arm reference architecture for ARM 64. Apple basically made their own chip they just didn’t use one of the reference designs…..
Leo: Right…..
Rene:…..and, I think that’s the part that got people so excited about the idea of Apple making desk-top chips.
Leo: Apple, has a lot of …….I believe thousands of chip designers and, people responsible for chip design in-house. They bought…..didn’t they buy PA Risk, the HP…..
Rene: They bought the PA SEMI……
Leo:…..yes the PA SEMI…….(Leo nodding yes)
Rene:…….and Intra City…….. They bought several…….it’s not easy to find good chip designers. Finding engineers is hard, finding good chip designers is really hard, and when a lot of them left their previous companies, Apple was one of the companies that hired them.
And, I think that’s why…….I think it’s weird to say, ‘oh Samsung makes the chips,’ why isn’t Samsung much further ahead than Apple, why didn’t Samsung go to the 64 bit earlier their…….. they’re the ones making the chips, but Apple hired the brains that were designing them those chips that’s what let them get so far ahead in mobile. (both Andy&Leo agree)
Andy: Another thing to keep in mind is that ARM is such a popular platform because the entire fundamental nature of computing has changed in the past ten years. Whereas it is the CP that is really optimized to be a great mobile processor chip or to speak a little more broadly it’s a great chip to put into a computer that is okay to have to ……have to impose sacrifices on the user. So, if you’re putting it into a tablet, great, putting it into a phone great, if you’re putting it into even into a Chrome Book, something where all it has to do is run a limited operating system and, a web browser, all so great. But when you really try to run massively multi-threaded apps, lot of things that have to happen, absolutely synchronize, absolutely synchronize perfectly to……..to…. streaming HD and, video and, there’s no excuse for dropping frame rates and, things like that. That’s when you release what a bad, bad bag of hurt putting a mobile processor into it, putting into anything with a desk top tower platform……. the form factor is going to be.
Leo: I wonder though if there’s some sort of hybrid that might not happen, either Rene, iPad Pro that is you know verging on Mac Book Air territory, or and, we talked about this on Sunday, Rob Reid suggested what if Apple, put ARM only in the Mac Book Air, made a very low power, I mean the Mac Book Air could have 20 hours of battery life with an ARM chip in it. It would admittedly not be as high power as the Mac Book Pro but that’s the distinction, light……(Andy interrupts)
Andy: I mean…..
Leo:……it’s mobile……
Andy:……it’s an interesting idea but, I keep coming to my idea that Apple already has an inexpensive low powered very long battery life computer and, called the iPad, and anyone at any time says that we could produce a much longer battery life, much less powerful, but, also much less expensive Mac Book with a changed CPU, Apple’s answer would be well here’s the iPad Air for you and, the other problem that I have for that is if you’re putting, if you’re trying to run the same soft-ware on two different families of CPU, there’s going to be so many……it seems like there’s going to be so many things, that the ARM processor will not be able to do and, will require an Intel and, as soon as Apple has to put a sticker metaphorically on every page inside the app store, saying that this is not going to work on the Mac Book Air, it’s only going to work on this thing, and it’s because of this one API, that this one developer that wanted to use that is not necessarily important to use this manager but he wanted to use it, or she wanted to use it and, that’s why I’m going to tell you that no, you can’t run this on your 790 dollars, ARM powered Mac Book Air.
Leo: We make a big deal about all the hires that Apple has done towards some sort of watchie kind of thing. I mean if they…….for years they have been hiring chip designers and, doesn’t kind of making you inclined to think that they want to do more with designing their chips.
Andy: Well, that’s exactly the case (cross talk)….
Leo:…..,to support the the iPad and Mac…..
Andy: Well, if you want to build an iPad, you really have to have a chip that is designed right for that iPad, if want it to have a wrist top machine you have to have something that’s designed for that, you need the profile and, the power, power consumption and, power projected to the user.
So, you really want to have people on board who cannot just simply take something off the shelf but simply say here is what we want the watch to do, please design a CPU that can do that and, a watch that’s somewhat less than this can of seltzer. That’s not a good solution no matter how good the spring at the top is.
Leo: That looks like the Moto 360 it looks exactly the same shape. Hey, one thing we should point out, with regard to all this, and, I forgot what it was, I’ve had a thought of what it was, we’re talking about……look whose here….now I know why I’m distracted Mr. Alex Lindsay’s has just joined us…..(Andy…..heyyyy)
Alex Lindsay: Sorry for being late.
Leo: Not at all…..where was it delayed…….
Alex: My plane was delayed in Vancouver……
Rene: It’s all Canada’s fault…….
Leo:…..yes blame Canada…. Intel ARM we’re talking about.
Alex: Yes…..
Leo:…..and whether there might be…….oh I know what I wanted to point out, there is one arch company that is dealing with this kind of conundrum of making some Intel devices some ARM devices both intended to be kind of computers and, that’s Microsoft. In fact they’ve kind of stopped pushing their ARM based RT which was the in-between product although they did solve the problem of having a store that can sell to both to full Windows and Windows RT….The Metro store, most of the apps in there like the…..(interrupted by Rene, and cross talk) Well that’s the question,
Rene: was not as successful……not that I want to take anything away from him. I like his writing Apple should do something that’s easy. What Apple does with their prototypes is that they ask the repercussions………., the hard questions.
Leo: Right…..
Rene:……we put ARM on a Mac Book Air, does it run OS 10 or does it run iOS. If it runs iOS these are the problems, if it runs OS 10 these are the problems. Are, any of these that we get any better by going with Broadwell for the next Mac Book Air because, that’s going to be hugely power efficient , make a lot of battery life, really powerful and, the answer is that it gives us significant advantage then it just stays in the lab bidding it’s time and, minding its own business until it’s…..
Leo: Absolutely……would you all be shocked……shocked if Apple made this announcement in the next year that they are at least going to start making some computers with ARMS?
Andy: I don’t know about shock, I really think that the only smart reaction to possible Apple products is be ready for anything, because (Leo Agrees) they will leap, will leap out of the bushes with a knife in their teeth…..
Leo: …..and then God knows……
Andy:…..and then wrestle to in the worst way to the ground and, then pummel you with a new idea until you promise to buy it. (Leo Laughing) So, nothing is ridiculous, only because…… so anybody out side of Apple doesn’t have the ability to see the entire picture. And, why doesn’t Apple branded TV makes absolutely no sense to me well because, I don’t work inside of Apple, I don’t know what their planning for 2015 or 2016. I don’t know what they think that they can do now that Apple TV can’t. So, that’s why I’m in this sort of a position…….that’s…..that’s why I only do not predict stuff like that, but also when I’m confronted with a rumor like that I have to make sure that I use that weasel language saying that I don’t understand how that would work, instead of saying, ‘oh that’s a stupid idea and, of course Apple would never do it.’ (Leo Laughing his head off)
Leo: That’s what I would say and have been bit many times. (Andy laughing) I said, Apple…..oh they’ll never go in Intel, they’ll never buy pizza and I could go on and on. You’re right be smart don’t predict because Apple is unpredictable, if nothing else we’ve learnt that.
You know what this is National Make A Will Month, when Alex gets ill, we’ll take a break and, talk about LegalZoom(dot)com.
Legal Zoom’s not a law firm they provide self-help services and, your specific direction, they were developed……it was developed by some of the best legal minds in the country, in fact they’ve been doing this…..it’s been their passion for thirteen years and, it started you I think…….we talk a lot about the business value of Legal Zoom, starting your own business, incorporating, LLC, Trade-Mark, that kind of thing, but it started I think helping people make their wills. And, it is such an important thing, this is National Make A Will Month, so Legal Zoom’s offering special pricing on wills and, living trusts, you know you’ve got to protect your family, if you don’t want the courts deciding what happens to your property or your kids…..you better say what you want and, it’s not hard you don’t have to go to lawyers and, spend a lot of time and money in a law office and, saying this is what I want and I’m not going back and forth. A few simple steps at legalzoom(dot)com, it’ll take you less than 15 minutes and, cost you a surprisingly low amount of money. So, there is really no reason not to do it. No time. As little as where’s the will…..show me the will costs….69 bucks well we can take a little bit off that. If you go to legalzoom(dot)com, right now and use the offer code MBW, you’ll save on your last will or your living trust which is also…..I have to set one of those up….also a very good thing to do. Enter the offer code MBW at checkout, legalzoom(dot)com, Legal Zoom is developed by top attorneys to provide self-help services at your specific directions, that’s why I like it. They are not a law firm, Legal Zoom is furnished through independent attorneys. So, if you have a question you can go to the Legal Zoom plan attorneys, but it’s not offer, it’s actually something much better. We thank legalzoom for their support of MacBreak Weekly. I was playing chess with some-body from Zimbabwe, the other day. (to Alex)
Alex: Really,
Leo: Yes, I was trying to remember all those Zimbabwean words……
Alex: (Speaking a few Zimbabwean words)…….
Leo: You know it’s weird……… you know I played chess on line and, a Russian, a Spaniard and, a Zimbabwean……
Alex: Wow…..
Leo: And, I couldn’t talk to any one of them.
Rene: Like the Highlander of Chess.
Leo: It was good…..it was fun (Alex laughing)…….I’d rather not say anything.
Rene: …….and be the only one.
Leo: I am the only one.
Andy: The phrase horsey guy is international. (cross talk)
Leo: I started playing chess when I was a teenager in school and, it is one of the great things about chess……there’s no language involved, you see you play people all over the world, you may not be able to speak a word, you may speak…..
Alex: Were you playing real time, or were you playing like…..
Leo: We were playing postal chats, I think you have 48 hours to make a move. Chess(dot)com I highly recommend it.
Rene: It’s the international language of chess.
Leo: And, you never know and, because Chess(dot)com is on the Internet you rarely….……it’s funny I rarely get people from America……I get people from all over the world.
Alex: Right…..
Leo: It’s fun….let’s see…..Daring Fireball…..John Gruber…..mixing it up…..is he getting more snarky or is he always been this snarky.
Rene: That was such a bad press cycle…….
Leo: Yes, but you know you can’t say John’s not culpable here. He responds to the Verges article about the Moto 360 there’s the smart watch which will have charging…… that’ll have these words…..this is what it looked like on Friday……it looks like Motorola’s designers tried to draw as much attention as they could to the 360 stupid flat-tire display shape. The only that this could beget funnier is if they doesn’t even ship till after Apple announces their wrist wearable thing next month. Period….full stop. He drove a lot of traffic. Then, he tweets Oh I was just kidding……I don’t know…….
Rene: I can’t believe people linked to that though, I mean…..
Leo: What do you mean, it’s John Gruber, it rumor…..I mean this guy has had very credible inns at Apple for a long time.
Rene: He’s usually a little wordy, or does something to draw attention to him…..not actually joking or not making a meek statement.
Leo: Come….on he said next month, you think that was an accident.
Andy: That’s not how…..I……I….I…….shouldn’t say that I don’t read his blog only because for me he’s….he’s….on the list of other commentators where…..if I read something that’s was once posted on iMore and, it mirrors what I’m editing right now in front of me, I would say okay…..I can’t publish this because really some-one said that today and, then it’ll look like I’m copying.
But I did read that……..,and it read as I don’t know just as bar chit chat…..I don’t know……I didn’t believe that it meant anything. Also, in the past he’s not……,he telegraphs things……that he’s more content to simply link to somebody else who has said, like the great bearded one, when the great bearded says, ‘yup’ to something…..Gruber’ll link to it. And, that is his way of saying I think that this is correct, whether I know for a fact or not I have great stock in what this thing is saying. Historically, he’s just never blabbed about, ‘hey I have specific information about what Apple’s plans for September,’ because that’s the easiest way to make sure that whoever is told you that is not going to tell you anything ever again.
Alex: He might not be there anymore.
Andy: He might not be there anymore (cross talk and much laughing)
Rene:…..and mission accomplished.
Andy: I….I…..have my Gruber car……’yes’, you order white pedal van with no markings and, mud on plates. No I said, ‘it’s a black……get into the van now.’ (Panelists laughing) you get in or we give you the infinite loop…….(Andy speaking in German accent)
Leo: All right. This horrified you, the new single horrified you, Rene because people took it too seriously.
Rene: Let me think…… I mean they blogged…….and I have seen in previous years they would blog things that he said in his podcast and you know I’m sure that it happens to other people too and John Gruber’s an absolutely attention magnet and, is free of correctly predicting certain things that Apple would do, but this was just wacky and, some of the news outlets will not link to room to news items that are news items……that says we believe Apple’s going to do this. They go….no…..no….no ………,that’s a little bit sketchy for us……we’re not going to link to that. But,…..oho…..Gruber has an aside and a joke and, when speaks he’s probably going to be mean to Motorola, let’s put that on the front page….let’s go….go…go….
Leo: Okay, (cross talk)
Rene: Is he consistent.
Alex: Do we think anything is going to happen this fall?
Rene: I think we have to see in September, right?
Alex: Well, not this September, but I think this, Fall.
Leo: Why would they take the spotlight away from an,….iPhone…..
Alex: ……. they wouldn’t?
Rene: All signs point to October.
Leo: And, that would normally be the iPad announcement and, there’s not much to say about the new iPad. (cross talk)
Rene:….. the iPad is a lot about touch ID.
Leo: Touch ID, right.
Rene:….it could be the headline.
Andy: I just think that there’s that consistent messaging of brand new product categories in 2014. And, that’s the only reason why I’m sure that we’ll see something like that by the end of the year.
Leo: I’m just going to be contrary and, say I don’t think we’re going to see an iWatch this year.
Alex: …..Contrary….
Rene: Well you see,……make sure that we do, Leo?
Alex: Exactly…..neither one of us guarantee it to say it will never happen. (cross talk)
Rene:….or maybe if he were to buy a Mac Mini we’d all be happy.
Leo: I don’t feel it…..I really don’t feel it.
Andy: I don’t know how to say it……how many watches does Leo have to buy to ensure that Apple will definitely come out with……
Leo: Buy’em all man! I can’t wait till the Moto 360 comes out. I’m very excited about that.
Rene: The Moto 320.
Andy: I’m not addressing this exactly……I’m not really….. addressing directly at that post but, it was a fun read about this….he makes his feelings about Motorola very, very plain. But, sometimes some of us really don’t look good for ourselves…. When there’s…….who is who had that piece about how I’ve got this explosive expose where Motorola says that they have a round display technology but there’s actually, there’s a little part of it at the very, very bottom that has the display chip, that’s not our outlet…..it’s not wrong……whatever…..press….
Rene: It’s got a button……..(noisy cross-talk)…..it’s like a splinter in my mind.
Andy: It’s like look at the fact that maybe it’s round, except for one tiny sliver, maybe ignore the fact that there is a logo on the front of this phone and, maybe actually charge it up and, look at it before you decide it’s a piece of crap, because it has a logo on the front of it.
Rene: This then will be confirmed, that’s the confirmation post sometimes.
Andy: Sometimes we’re not very charming as a species……. We Apple fans.
Rene: We’re factious species……
Andy: I wonder why we don’t get invited to the cool graduation party? We have to Gallup bowling and go eating, el burrito with our three friends, everyone else is sick of hearing us.
Leo: Well, I have to point out that Apple has yet made another fashion forward hire Yves St Laurent European Retail Head Catherine Monier, has left YSL started at Apple in the last couple of weeks, this according to Mark Gurman 9 to5 Mac. She was brought in by former YSL CEO Paul Denevue who joined Apple last year to work on quote, ’special projects,’ now her expertise is textiles, so that’s interesting.
Rene: I think retail too, she’s also head of their retail too……
Leo: Yes, it said retail but if you look at her like her LinkedIn……
Alex: Part of me wonders me a lot of time when most of them have gone to Apple’s HQ, you know one of the things that you kind of like to feel you need to do……. is go into the Apple store there (Leo Agrees) just next to the entrance and buy up Apple stuff and, sometimes you wonder if they’re going to expand all these purchases, just all these hires you wonder whether they’re going to expand making those some of that clothing line more widely available.
Leo: What if they put sensors in clothing, instead of…..maybe there’s a little misdirection here, maybe we’ve all been thinking watch? Maybe it’s really the iShirt?
Rene: Cumberbun (Leo laughing)
Leo: Cumberbundt?
Andy: I wear a Bluetooth fez now, Bluetooth fez’s are cool. Well, cool…..
Leo: Well, as in Jason Snell’s been saying in the iHat for a long time and, maybe he’s right.
Rene: Jason knows fez’s are cool.
Leo: Fez’s are cool. How about head bands, are they back?
Rene: I still think that Apple should buy Blue Bottle in every flag-ship store.
Leo:ummmm….Blue Bottle coffee?
Rene: Yeah….
Leo: Do they have Blue Bottle coffee in Montreal?
Rene: No. (some crosstalk)
Leo: You have better coffee I’m sure don’t you?
Rene: No.
Leo: (Exclaims) No.
Rene: No, not in Montreal.
Leo: In, the land of smoked meat?
Rene: Yeah, we have good smoked meat and Putin but no good coffee.
Leo: That’s sad.
Rene: We have cafeterias but that’s downtown.
Leo: How could you not have good coffee?
Rene: Not, in my area.
Leo: Oh!
Andy: I think in Canada coffee is merely regarded as a heat delivery system. The flavor’s just incidental. (Panelists laughing)
Leo: You’re right, we have our priorities. Did you read the New York Times article, I thought this was great about Apple’s University, which we’ve kind of known about. This is not really new but, I think very intriguing this idea of trying to preserve the DNA of Steve Jobs and, Apple’s design focus by having a university in which employees can sign up for. In fact new employees are strongly encourages to sign up for. They have classes for instance for CEOs from start-ups that Apple’s purchased on how to incorporate into the Apple culture. Apparently, it’s very secretive, it was mentioned in the Job’s biography by Walters…..Isaacson, Job’s biography. The Times says that employees are discouraged from talking about the company in general and, classes are no exception, but they were able to get three people who knew about it to talk, off the record….well not off the record, but at least anonymously.
They’ve mentioned one course in which they use Picasso’s famous bull lithographs to demonstrate how you can take a complex thing and, make it simple. Picasso starts with the sketch of a bull and, gets it down to just a line. It’s clearly still a bull and, then they compare it to the mouse…..which…(Computer mouse)
Andy: Is that a great example……..because the mouse is on the left and, the left two are really great and, easy to use (Leo Laughing) and the mice on the right are so minimal……
Rene:…..they’re horrible…….
Alex:……more minimalistic and, less useful.
Leo:……one of the employees says the even the toilet paper in the bathroom is free……and Apple university is really nice.
Alex: What…..what they really need, what most of us have done is with the mice is you start on the left and, you slowly go to the right and, the fifth one, which is the Logitech one.
Leo: Yeah…….the Microsoft one…..
Alex: The Microsoft one……(Panelists laughing)
Andy: Apple actually does have the perfect mouse it’s actually depicted there on the extreme right. That’s where the customer just gives them 75 dollars and, Apple says you don’t need a mouse you’re going to get a track pad. Thank-you, for that.
Leo:…..and goodbye. Goodbye……..it’s a better mouse. The, program was started in 2008, by Joe Pudulni who’s the, time dean of the School Of Time Management. They have professors from all over……some of the best universities in America…..Yale, Harvard, UC, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, some of them continue to work at the universities while teaching for Apple. Others have moved like Pudulni to Apple…. full time. The company The Times speculates may even offer courses specific for Beats employees. Dr…..I can see Dr. Dre and, Jimi Iovine in the front row taking notes.
Andy: No, the back row…..
Leo: Oh, the back row
Andy: (In a German accent)……..,the war is over. You may take out the rest of the technology competition…….,so do no try to escape…..we will all have……
Leo: That would be funny……..
Rene: It’s an interesting problem they have to solve, because you know Apple takes it culture very seriously and, Apple’s a Steve Jobs product, like the iPad or the iPhone and, when you have a group of people and, one or two new people join us it’s very easy to pass on that culture, but when you start ramping up and they start scaling up the way Apple is suddenly you have 20 new people joining, that same sort of internship process just doesn’t work anymore you have to figure out a way of passing on those case studies, those core values in a much larger way and, that tends to turn into more of a lecture sort of university sort of environment.
Leo: It does sound in a way like though, cult induction. In one of the courses what makes Apple (comma) Apple, the professor shows a slide of the remote control for Google TV, which has 78 buttons and, then shows the Apple TV remote which has 3. (all four talking in unison)
Alex: What I use with my Apple TV is my iPhone.
Leo: There you go…..wow….. that’s fast.
Alex: There you go.
Leo: Did you do that Chad?
Chad: Yeah, thanks for the creative cloud subscription because that’s…..
Leo: Now I know……,it’s all worth it …….it’s all worth it Chad. Chad has to have Photoshop. It’s awesome…..,
Rene: We also have a corporate culture, different people working in different directions that feudal and, that hasn’t worked well you know in some companies.
Leo: No, we’ve seen other companies, although I would guess any major corporation has something like this? Kind of indoctrinate…..
Alex: Well, I think that a lot of corporations think about that when they think about mergers.
Leo: Well, that’s how you do it.
Alex: I think one of the things that with the Time Warner and, AOL problem was a lot of it was a huge culture clash.
Leo: That’s right.
Alex: I mean there were a lot of problems with that merger but….there…..that was specific one.
Leo: There was another course called the best things which takes it’s name from quote that Steve, quote’ the purpose, according to the Times is to remind employees to surround themselves with the best things, talented peers, high quality material so they can do their best work…..’
Andy: By the Briars ice cream…..don’t go for the store…..
Leo: That’s right……no more of this seal test.
Rene: Actually, I heard that Briars has gone down hill…….Hagaan Das,…..there you go.
Leo: In the biography Isaacson talks about Steve Jobs literally agonizing for weeks over what washing machine to buy and, having family meetings and, trying to decide……(Alex laughing loudly)
Rene: …..having empty rooms rather than filling them with furniture that wasn’t perfect. (Leo agree)
Andy: So how would you prep your kids would have to do….okay I got ten minutes with Steve about the washing machine on Tuesday……..
Leo: I have a key note presentation……
Andy: Well Steve I don’t think I’m full of crap….here…..this graph of agitation sequence…….
Rene: They actually chose….
Alex: What did they choose?
Leo: They chose a brand and,……… they chose the one that takes a very, very long time to wash the clothes. They come out cleaner and, softer……
Rene: Time is not of importance……
Alex: I wonder if…….,if…….., Steve Jobs calls a company and, says I am thinking about getting a new washer dryer can you send one over for me to test. I bet you there are like a long line of them…….,like 8 of them in some room over there……, and some guy with little glasses, ‘we’ve looked at these and,
Leo:…..actually somebody’s put a link in the chat-room to ahhh…..to ahhhh to quote ……actually this is from a wired piece in 1996, he told Gary Isaac Woolf of Wire Week, ‘we didn’t have a very good washer so spent a long time…..actually he says a little time looking at them, it turns out the Americans make washers and, dryers all wrong, the Europeans make the …….I bet he bought a Miele, but they twice as long to wash to do the clothes. It turns out that they wash them with a quarter as much water and, your clothes end up with a lot less detergent on them, mostly they don’t trash your clothes they use them with a lot less water but they are a lot cleaner and, they last longer. We, spent some time in our family talking about what’s the trade off, we want to make. We ended up (Leo Laughing) this’s Jobs we ended a lot about talking about design but, also about the values of our family, did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour or just an hour and, a half or did we care most about our clothes feeling really soft and, lasting longer. Did we care about using a quarter of the water, we spent about two weeks talking about this every night at the dinner table.’
Rene: That’s how you hear about product needs about Apple-life and, people we’re terrified of going in there and…..
Leo: Wow………he did get a Miele…….he got a Miele……according to Wire.
Andy: It is a peek into family dynamics here, where, if you….you….you…..you’re allowed to borrow the family, you put a dent in the right panel, you know okay I have to tell Dad…..’dad I was using the knob on my washing machine and, the label is a little bit confusing, can you explain it to me.’ He gets diverted for two weeks, and for two weeks I’m trying to figure out the best washing machine, that’s enough time when you can get the car fixed.
Leo: By, the way that Miele washer two thousand dollars.
Rene: But softer and, cleaner Leo what price……
Leo: And, there’s only five left in stock so you had better hurry right now.
Rene: Not right now.
Alex: I’ve been looking at washers and, dryers because my parents they don’t listen to the show and, so I can talk about it. I’m getting them a washer and, dryer……
Leo: Look at how terrible the reviews are 8 five stars 14 one star. I paid big bucks for a piece of junk said one reviewer. (Leo scrolling down Amazon’s site) Obviously Steve did not read the Amazon reviews……..
Chad: I’m not sure if this is the exact brand or model that he bought but…..
Alex: It was the brand……
Chad: It was the first result……….when I searched the search engine.
Alex: Don’t they have a showroom on……,Boulevard down south?
Leo: Yes, they have a Miele store in town.
Alex: Never actually gone in.
Andy: I bet that machine does a great job on blue jeans and, black turtle necks (more cross talk)…….
Alex:……washes all of the turtle necks…..let’s see……what happens if we do 30 washes with a black turtle neck will it pay, that’s really the important thing. (Leo on Wikipedia looking on Miele site) I don’t know about you guys…..is it true the story about the turtle necks. Have you heard about the stories about the turtle necks.
Rene: The Japanese buyer…….
Alex: That he found the perfect turtle neck that he wanted, and that he really wanted to have this specific turtle-neck and, they had stopped making it. And, he asked them how many would it take for them to make more. And, they said you would have to do a run of ten thousand, he said okay. (Panelists laughing), or something like that.
Andy: My favorite story about Charles Schultz, where they found that he had that one steel pen nib that he absolutely loves and, they stopped making them for fear that he would run he simply said, ‘I don’t care how many you still have in the ware-house, I want to buy all of them and, so he wound up with millions and, millions of nibs and, every time he got a new editor he would break this new editor by saying …….by inviting him over to the studio and, saying…..yah well I don’t know….I’ve been doing this now for 28 years, 30 years and, I think that might be when I run out of nibs, I’ll just retire and then he takes them to the garage and shows them cartons and, cartons and, cartons. If you have the one thing you love that’s perfect and, you have the ability to simply realize that I’ll never have to shop for this item ever again. I have shoes that are like that, I have a jacket that are like that…….
Leo: Yeah…..
Andy:….are that and, if I could buy nine of these jackets so that I’ll never ever have to solve that problem…..of where do I find an nice blazer that I like. And, if I had that money…….I would spend…..I would buy ten thousand of these and, then you know and good will would have that every person who’s out of luck in a job interview would be in the same black blazer, which looks like a cult which might actually be the….the ….the ultimate goal.
Leo: Apparently the St Croix mock turtle neck in black is 175 bucks. So, if you ordered ten thousand of them…….
Alex: I bet you……I bet you…..it…..
Leo: You would get a break.
Rene: You would get volume discount.
Alex: I bet it’s got a really high thread count.
Rene:…..after volume.
Leo: The story always was that even the t-shirts in the Apple Stores were chosen personally by Steve.
Alex: Well, you know a lot of the time……for a long time we bought all of our…..like when we had to fix our logos on it, we would just go into the Apple stores and buy a bunch of their shirts and, then we would look at the label and, then we would buy that. (Cross talk) I’m not going to bother doing my research Apple can do that for me, exactly.
Leo: This is the cotton and micro-fiber classic long-sleeved mock turtle neck in black, that Steve wore, and apparently sales went through the roof when Steve passed away. It became very, very popular.
Rene: You can really go dressed in public, you would get called on it.
Leo: Yeah……, and Levis 501 stone washed denim jeans, right?
Alex: I think it was……
Leo: You know what I’m going to buy a bunch of ‘em, I’m tired of this button down look line.
Andy: I did buy his…..I had a pair of Paris sneakers, I did buy his new balance 920 shoes and, alright…..
Leo: Yeah………
Andy: They’re great, they are great, really they’re not terribly expensive, they’re comfortable, they look okay.
Leo: These are 200 dollars now these t-shirts and turtle-necks have gone up. They’re about 200 bucks,
Alex: I want a mock turtle-neck I would love one, do they make ones that are just regular turtle necks?
Leo: Yes……don’t want a regular turtle necks.
Alex: Do you know who used to make great turtle necks…….
Leo: You don’t want a regular …….., I used to wear turtle necks, the roll over ones….(Leo pretending to choke) they choke you.
Alex: You’re not rolling right…..
Rene: You’re rolling around (panelists laughing)
Leo: I think Steve wore mocks because he didn’t want to deal with that.
Alex: Yeah and he liked the structure.
Rene: He painted the back of the collar.
Leo: Start rolling it right……Holy Cow!
Alex: Got to do it double fold……..
Andy: That’s the first time it’s been said inside the Bay area.
Alex: Yes, exactly…..(Panelists laughing) I was waiting for that I threw a soft ball……no-one swung……I was like…..it wasn’t going past 60 miles an hour, it went right over the middle of the road.
Andy: It’s like the home-run Derby the all-star game.
Rene: Like playing key ball though.
Leo: Out of the park. Apple suppliers apparently…….I don’t I am talking Rene and, Andy and Alex here I don’t want to say anything, according to some Bloomberg says Apple suppliers have started making new iPads.
Rene: Better hurry up if they’re going to have enough for October.
Leo: Yes….if they’re going to announce them for October, you’d bet you’d start now right……two months. (Leo Reading) Mass production of a full sized iPad with a 9.7 inch screen is already under ways says Bloomberg with an unveiling projected at the end of this quarter early next said two of the people who asked not to be identified because of the details aren’t public. A new version of…….
Rene: It was Twit right now, it used to be iPhone 6 next Leo and, iPhone 7 after that.
Leo: Wow……
Rene:…….they’re actively making these devices, they’re not switching or going out of business…….
Leo: Hey will they do…… so September 9th we talked about it last week you concurred you predicted this in the spring……ummmm we think ten days later, a week from the following Friday they’ll have it. Will they have two phones…..a 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch, do you think,…….
Rene: I mean, I have heard they’re working on them but…..you……..we haven’t seen the same leaks and the same parts and, everything else so we…….I don’t know if it’s going to follow later, if they’re going to announce it and release it later, if they’re going to announce it next year. That’s the advantage of Apple not pre-announcing anything…..they’re not beholden to nobody…..they’re……if a product is ready…….we saw how hard it was last year to get the iPad mini to market by Christmas, they had to do that strange release in the middle of the night that no-body knew about and, I think that they’re going to try and, avoid that if they can.
Leo: Yeah…..
Rene:……in the future, so people are expecting an iPhone, whatever they have ready they’ll announce there and if something is not ready it is easy for them to either show it off like the Mac Pro at WWDC, or even wait and, hold it until it is ready.
Andy: I kind of put a……..this is around the time where I think if they’re going to have a much larger screen iPhone in October or November, this is around the time when you really be expect to see some sort of parts show up. Or, some sort of substantive rumor that you can certainly dismiss or choose not to believe but which has a little bit of protein in it there…..and,
Leo:…..we’ve seen tons of them for the 4/7 but none for the 5/5…..
Andy: Either the thing is that it is one of the tightest, tightest, tightest products they’ve ever developed, or maybe it’s not being fast-tracked for certain dates.
Rene: It’s Andy’s point….when Apple has updates of products we see leaks all the time. When they have new products like the original iPhone didn’t leak, the original iPad didn’t leak……
Leo:…..all right……
Rene:……so maybe the night before, if this is something different, if this’s not just an iPhone, if this is an iFabler, or whatever it is they call it…….., and had a different resolutions and requires something different from developers, it could be shown but isn’t released till later. You know the original Apple television was shown off in the Fall and then announced again and, at Mac World three months later and set a precedent for that.
Leo: Yeah……
Rene: If it was something really different we could hear about it.
Andy: For various reasons there is a time development cycle where there is no way that they can keep a lid on it, so they want to control that first release.
Leo: So, it’s conceivable that they have a five and, half? And, they’ve really kept a lid on it, whereas the 4/7 they didn’t.
Rene: Well, 4/7 was shipping ten days later.
Leo: Right.
Rene: And, that may not be the case right now. (Cross talk)
Leo:……I’d like the five and half inches, if the bezels aren’t too big, it’s not a huge phone……..
Rene: The 15/20 is that six……
Leo: That’s six…….
Rene: That’s huge……
Leo: That actually is huge…..
Rene:……as big as my head…..
Leo:……there you go……..
Andy: This is the 15/20……versus the original iPad. (Leo agrees)…..sorry the iPhone, yeah…..
Leo: It feels pretty big…..I do like the 15/20……I love it…..
Andy: Due to my durable testing it’s exactly 1(point)5 in size.
Leo: Five, five though, but this is five, five…..it’s not……when I compare this…..I have the 15/20 in the other room, I mean I like this size……it’s not a bad size…..I would really be…..
Alex: I’m still torn…..you know I have the larger…….you know I have the HTC and the MA.
Leo: That’s five even right?
Alex: I think it’s five even…..(cross talk)
Leo: Five, even yeah?
Alex: I’m still torn with whether I like……feel like it’s too big huh? (Leo said in unison) I feel like……I don’t know…….I think I might get the larger one to try it, but, I find myself thinking that I only like the HTC, it isn’t too big for me.
Leo: The HTC’s also bigger because it has on the front speaker which makes it unusually tall. (Alex agrees) would that……a five does not have to be that big. It’s bigger than ……(cross talk)
Alex: One of the geniuses of the HTC One is that they put the lens on the convex……the most convex part of the phone except for the edges, you’re guaranteed to scratch it.(Leo laughing)
Rene: So it was what they said on the index, right?
Alex: What are these guys thinking……great it’s a cool phone.
Leo: I haven’t scratched mine but I do smudge it a lot.
Alex: Yes, it’s on the…..
Leo: It’s right there…..
Alex: They’ve curved away from it……let’s put it right out on the edge.
Andy: To me there’s not that much of a size difference (comparing two phones) between these two and, that might make some-one say well why bother making anything bigger at all.
For me though it’s like if they can make it bit bigger, which means when I’m showing people pictures trying to look at movies and, stuff like that, there really is an impressive size difference when you’re looking at photos graphics and videos on this versus the smaller phone.
Leo: I assume that you’re showing a 4.7 inch compared to the iPhone……
Andy: This is the Moto X 4.7 ……..
Leo: I think that the 4.7 is the size that you could put out and no-body would go oh that’s too big.
Andy: Well, I have big manly hands, this is a comfortable size for me to swipe my entire thumb across, but if I were somewhat smaller then I would definitely see the advantage of having a narrower screen, but it’s going to be interesting to see what the entire line up looks like, if it’s a replacement or they’re simply going to say they have the narrow one for people who’re simply bit smaller but now we’re going to give you a larger size options. They’re even better now, our……our…….now we’re going to think of the iPad as a spectrum of devices and opposed to just big and, small.
Leo: Apple, of course has talked about their new health kit technology in iOS 8 and, the new health app, according to Reuters, Christina Farr writing for Reuters ‘Apple’s preparing health-kit roll out amid tangled regulatory web. They’re talking with Mount Saina, The Cleveland’s Clinic and John Hopkins Clinic with all scripts compared to electronics health provider Epic Systems.’ I don’t know why she mentions that, but the problem is and, this is why they were having talks with the FDA and Dr. Maum tells me this you have to be very careful about making health recommendations with something like this. It’s one thing to store the information on something like as long as you secure it you’re okay.
But, it seems that Apple would like to make health recommendations. The Mayo Clinic is also involved and, they’re apparently testing a service to flag patients when results from absent devices are abnormal, follow up information and, treatment recommendations. That would require FDA approval.
Alex: Right……. (long pause), but I think part of this is often times you’re trying to do something revolutionary you’re not going to do what’s easier, you’re going to do it specifically because it is hard. Apple’s one of the few companies that can expend the money and, the time and, the process and, have enough control over the system to have actually implement this effectively and, that you know I don’t it seems like that an un-climb-able cliff. So but, if they get over it effectively ….it does give them a lot of inroads.
Leo: I am glad, my health-care provider is Kaiser Permanente, which is West Coast only right? They are apparently working or Kaiser Permanente’s Bryan Gardner who leads the research and development group responsible for their mobile offerings to many physicians are thinking about leveraging patient generated from apps and, devices and, I know my doctor would love to get blood pressure readings from me everyday or you know…..
Alex: The big issue to get into that sample rate is for and, this is where also this is where this problem jumps up is do you want all that data in your medical record? You know especially as insurance companies are looking at. In some ways that is less important……
Leo: Can you control it?
Alex: Right, and some of that becomes less important under Obama care because you’re not going to be getting as many people being turned down for their health position, but, they can definitely get charged more, that’s really the challenge there so I think that’s one of the things with a lot of these is how do you protect all that data?
Leo: Apparently, there’s an optional toggle in the health kit or the health app that’ll let patients decide if they wish to share data with third party apps with Apple’s main health app. If you choose to store sensitive health data in iCloud, it is encrypted in transit and, it rests according to one Apple employee. Yeah, they need to address all of this stuff, obviously and, that’s the tangled web there’s a lot of regulations. Not to mention there are a lot of existing systems, none of which inter-operate and, there has been a mandate from the administration to move to electronic health records. You could see kind of a Utopian vision where these records are portable, you carry it on your phone, your doctor can send you stuff, you can send to the doctor, you being measured all the time.
Alex: Also, it’s your doctor, it’s your fitness consultant, it’s all of the things to have your trainer be able to have that kind of information, you know what your heart rate was and, what your blood pressure was while you were working out and, all of these things are useful too. That’s what when you go to these really high end, like athletes performance, you know where they’re really doing high-end, high-performance athletes, I mean they’re managing everything. You know that’s becoming something where you don’t need a big……you need the trainers and, the equipment that they have down there but you don’t need the……to have the person putting all that in and, that stuff pretty available.
Leo: We’re talking about Mac, Apple, iPad, iOS, Yosemite…..we’ll talk about Yosemite, more about it in Yosemite, lots more, without guests from Rene Ritchie from imore(dot)com, from the pixelcorps it’s Alex Lindsay……he’s in the studio…..yeh, his got many new stickers on his laptop as he(Alex showing laptop case)….they’re actually holding it together.
Alex: ……mine is falling apart…..this is one from the geek house where we were…….
Leo: Oh yes you went down to County Lewis launch…….
Alex: Very impressive, I have to say…….
Leo: More than this……
Alex: No, it’s different, it’s just different, it’s not the same, it’s
Leo: It’s cool……
Alex: No it’s not cool, it is a….they’ve definitely learnt a lot from this and,
Leo:……are we going to have to keep up with the Lewis’s now, we’re going to have upgrade our……..
Alex: No it’s two different worlds. I think that it’s much more post driven and less live driven and I think it was quite soft they had 30,000 dollars’ worth of speakers really quite soft.
Leo: Does Katy have speakers?
Alex: Yeah…..
Leo: They don’t get to keep those do they?
Alex: No, but they’re really nice.
Leo: Yeah……
Alex: I was like how good are 30,000 dollar speakers? It turns out……it sounds really good.
Leo: At first we thought I would have nice speakers in here, and then I realized that you really don’t want really nice speakers when are you going to listen to it except when you’re off the air.
Alex: Yeah……..so I would get one of those.
Leo: Put them in the house, not in the studio (cross talk with Alex)
Rene: It’s just limitless what an audio can do, it’s just millions of dollars….
Leo:……,our show and of course Andy Ihnatko from the Chicago Sun Times who’s here with people in fezzes showing their sartorial excellence. Who are they and why are they wearing fezzes?
Andy: They were standing outside Boston Comic Con, last weekend and I was walking past, and they were just hanging out and I was just like…..wow…..They look like a really cool band whose CD I would buy if it was a line of fezzes.
Leo: I like it, we are not men we are Doctor Who fans.
Alex: I can’t decide whether they are more disturbing or less disturbing than a girl with a gun.
Leo: Hey, what was that….also from Boston Comic Con?
Andy: That was also Boston Comic Con. It’s taken me three or four days and, I have finally……..,I’m now only six photos short of posting a 100 pictures from the con to my Twitter account. She is actually dressed as Rocket Raccoon from Guardians of the Galaxy. So she’s got the teeth, she’s got the gun and, when she turned around she was actually wearing a tail as well.
Leo: I got to show you the Groot that Patrick Delahanty, that "Dancing Groot" that he designed….…..
Rene: We are Groot, Leo.
Leo: We are all Groot. Is Patrick here today? I guess not. That would be fun to show that off……,is he hiding, the Groot’s not here. (Cross Talk) Where did you send the Groot? Groot's back home. Well tune in here today, it’s the iPad, we did a little demo on the dancing Groot on the iPad for this week. He was very cool, he took one of those dancing daises and, Svetlana’s fiancé did a Groot head and, he did a Groot body and, you plug-in, oh I don’t know the Jackson Five, I want you back and, it dances.
Alex: Awesome.
Rene: Trinity Cauldwell from MacWorld has one of those on her desk, she has been Instagraming it……so jealous.
Leo: Is it a Groot?
Rene: It’s a Groot mini things so…….. bobble headed……so cute.
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Microsoft going after Apple, you know Apple used to go after I’m a Mac, I’m a PC. Microsoft lately for its Surface Pro Three has been doing a lot of anti-Mac ads, here’s an example…….
Alex: I don’t understand why they haven’t made…..
Advert comes on…..Chad: Sorry I ‘m still playing groot, so I was trying to…..get the audio all lined up so that it would be ready.
Leo: Are you ready?
Chad: Yes…….
Advert: Do you run Adobe on Photoshop on tablet, it’s just not…..it’s not really a tablet……it’s a laptop….it’s a Surface Pro three with a touch screen, well it can’t be as fast as my mac….
Sure it can and it is but you probably can’t plug into it.
It has a USB mini display port and this is my favorite(demonstrating) so you’re saying it does more than my mac? Well, technically you said it.
Leo: I am not particularly convinced by that…..that ad.
Andy: Yeah, that was pretty weak, that wasn’t as good as the Samsung ads that usually say….there’s lots of other ads like the Nokia phone commercials with their one voice assistant and Samsung’s done ads that are really actually cut a little bit deep into the skin and, this one is,’yah I don’t need a kick-stand because I have an angel attached to a full feature keyboard.’
Leo: Yeah, like…..okay……here’s another one……see if this one is more convincing….
Advert:……see if my Surface Pro Three is a tablet and a laptop,(Other speaker)….. but it couldn’t ever power my mac and this is an Intel core i5. This does everything it runs adobe, full Photoshop and, it’s got a touch screen,……(other speaker)……mine has a touch screen to.
This is my favorite part, I can write with a pen.
Other speaker: So can I……
Wow I ‘ve got a lot of stuff to carry. (Speakers talking over each other)
Leo: So, that was a little closer to home. There is no and probably never be a mac touch screen right?
Rene: The problem with these ads is though, is that you want to have windows to want these products……(Leo agrees)
Rene:….and people who use the mac, you’re trying to convince them to give up OS 10 and I think that was a specific MacBook Air……..
Alex: The windows market is so big, I don’t……I think that you mostly have to stem the bleeding. Like a……you don’t need to persuade the Mac people to come back to you, you just keep your….keep all the people who already have windows and, just stick with windows and that’s a massive market.
Rene: That’s what I think they’re actually doing because they’re already in partnership agreements, they won’t let them go after Dell or HP or Asus or any of the other Lenovos. But by doing this commercial they could have people who are thinking about leaving PC for a Mac, or maybe people who don’t like their current PC go to Microsoft without offending anybody.
Leo: They’re…..I mean (cross talk) one person said Microsoft might be losing as much as 1.57 billion dollars on its Surface Line. I mean this is……..
Rene:…….not been successful……
Leo:……it has not been……not been successful……..
Andy: Not even close. But what I think when I see an ad like that it’s not so much that they want to take market share away from the Mac, so much as they want to identify the Surface as something that’s slick and is cool and, it’s as stylish as anything Apple comes out with. (cross talk) I don’t know if you actually use one……it’s…….I confess that it’s an instance that it’s unusual advantage of trying out something to monkey down a thousand bucks for, but once you have a full featured PC tablet that actually works rather nice, and it is really good for the things it does, you really realize there are times when I don’t want to have to sit with like my knees together and, like….tap…..tap….tap……. like this. There are time when I really do want to have like a big remote control or big media slab, or big this that or the other. I’m not sure that I would want…..that it’s such an advantage that I would want to have this instead of a laptop style device that can really earn it’s money back for me.
But, if Microsoft can start to say that Surface is a cool thing that you have heard about that maybe you want. That’s going to be the way for Microsoft to position themselves a little bit better than they are already. You know the computer you hate to use every single day that your office…….your company gives you in your cubicle, maybe you can like, ‘hey look it comes in red now,’
Leo: What should Apple…….should Apple do a OS 10 touch tablet?
Rene: OS 10 is not touch optimized, it’s the same thing where Apple won’t do 15 frames per second video, they won’t do OS 10 computer unless OS 10 face is a phenomenal touch screen variant, but it is interesting that it is….that Microsoft does believe that something in between the tablet and the laptop sort of the fablet that is in between the phone and, the tablet and, the question is there something really missing there or, is that the segment of the market that they don’t need. And, I keep going back to…….Microsoft does all these product placements and, I watch Hawaii Five O and, I remember you know one week they
had iPads and, they got them out of the cars and, they just started using them and, a couple of weeks later they had the Surface and, they got out of the car the suspect is running away and, they put the keyboard down on the hood and, they clicked the thing in and they turned it on they swiped it open and he was half way down the street……and it showed how successful they…….
Leo:…….product placement……(Panelists roaring with laughter)
Rene: It showed how successful the iPad was in just inter-mediating the traditional computer overhead and, they were not wise to go against this, so maybe going against the traditional computer is a better game-plan. But, it seems like they’re applying the same sort of strategy to this and, I don’t think it’ll be any more successful.
Andy: But, it could be a very long game that they’re playing, because we’ve talked about this before on the show where we have generations of people whose first experience with a computer was not with a mouse or keyboard, it really was with a touch device. And, I’m wondering what happened when these people start making buying decisions in their late teens when they’re thinking of buying a computer for college, when they are the generation that is now putting in a request at their business, on what kind of the computer they want to be able to use.
And, the iPad is way ………the iPad plus and Mac Book I think is way better than Surface. However, you look at these two things and, I can’t help but ask myself why should have somebody have two devices this powerful and, this expensive and that’s what makes me not want to call the Surface a silly idea. Not, that any body has called that here today but that’s when I start to think I really wonder if……I think two devices is just as clumsy as Surface is in it’s current form and, I would be very surprised if five years from now some-one really hasn’t tried to solve that problem and, simply say we’re going to take one thousand dollars of you and we will give you this one thing that will be good for putting everything into how we define computing, here in the 21st century!
Rene: I think to Alex’s point earlier to the no touch screen Mac is that Apple’s got a very successful plane so please put wings on the car. And, they’re no,….no ……we’re not going to do that, meanwhile they’re working on helicopter. And, if you look five years or ten years down I don’t think that we’ll be far ahead of the devices that we have now.
And, also to Microsoft’s credit one of the reasons is that Surface doesn’t appeal, is that Windows 8 doesn’t appeal to me but maybe Windows 9 will and, then the Surface might be a more interesting device.
Alex: What I think, for me the limitation is I always……I think about this every time I travel which is often……why am I still using a laptop because today I was like in economy and, this little like the back of the plane and, I can’t open my laptop and, just like why am I doing this why am I not using the iPad. Well the first reason is that I can’t type fast enough and, I don’t like any of the keyboards that I have gotten for my iPad. And, the number two is that it is not a good mail client. You know that’s the number one problem that I have with the iPad and, if you get 400 emails a day it does not…..you can’t use it. Like it doesn’t cache enough of them, it doesn’t want to say here’s the deal…..I’ll give you ten gigs on my iPad, just don’t keep it all……download it all on the computer, just stop doing that.
It doesn’t search well……so I get disconnected……I’m trying to find my ticket for United and, now I have to try and go,……..now I don’t have any wifi…..
Rene: It’s going to copy on soon.
Alex: AT&T isn’t working. (Cross talk with Andy) if I had a good keyboard and it would just download my fricking mail all of it……
Leo: Have you tried any of the third party mail apps?
Alex: Do they download all of it?
Leo: Just download IMAP.
Alex: I don’t want IMAP I want to be on my computer so I can search it.
Leo: You can pop it. (Cross talk)
Alex: I want IMAP, but I want it……this is my computer now is IMAP it is downloaded, but it’s not POP. I want to be able to……the thing is the problem is you the search engine……you know….
Leo: You’re using Gmail right?
Alex: Yeah……
Leo: ……that’s part of the problem. That’s not really IMAP either.
Alex: But,…..here’s the deal……it works on my computer, my computer works fine I can find everything that I’m looking for…..I just cannot find it on…..ahhhh…..
Rene: You should use IMAP Alex for the email……Apple mail.
Alex: I use both…….here’s what happens……I use Apple……I don’t use mail on my iPhone or my iPad, I just tell everyone that you’ve got to text me at hangouts. You know like if you want me to look at something just text me……forget it…..if my computer’s not open you got to like text me I hate downloading emails.
Andy: I was just going to say that I think that points out that as much as I love the iPad, I still have to acknowledge that it’s very clumsy at so many different things. Like just, I was moderating a panel just on Friday and all I was having was just basically a slide deck behind me for the big screen so for a while people were calling up the panel that we could talk about with the images and, the honesty see what they were talking about and, all I had to do and this is……you’re listening to what I’m telling ………saying in an increasingly angry tones to my iPad.
All, I want to do is take eleven jpegs from here and have them on here. When they’re connected to a wire like this…..I should not have been spending more than 38 minutes trying to make that damn thing happen.
And, I’m thinking if I had an android tablet I could copy them over, if I had a Surface tablet I’d…..I could just copy it over and, it would be a real computer with a file system. So, this is the sort of thing that we’re going to be confronting as the years go by.
We love our iPads, we love notebooks and we want our notebook to be more like tablets or tablets to be more like notebooks. I do think that we’re coming to an age where it’s going to start to be silly to have…..for me to be travelling with three different multi-touch devices. I am going to expect that I’m going to have one device that works really great with everything and, it’s not because it’s a fridge toaster, it’s really because it’s the direction that computing should be headed.
Rene: Did you see the new iPad commercials, yesterday.
Leo: The new ones?
Rene: Yeah…..
Leo: We can play those.
Rene: They had a slow ride and a music one from China.
Leo: (singing)come on and take a slow ride.
Rene: It’s part of the Your Verse campaign.
Leo: Yeah…do you want the Detroit Cyclists first…..
Rene: Yeah…..the Slow Ride that was the one that was more interesting, because it was more activity, the other one was more artistry.
Advert playing and starts off with the music: Leo: Hold on we’ll start over….what are you doing are still looking for groot….
Chad: No I’m playing it over my side.
Leo: Okay, lets play one more time, you’re playing it over there. Advert playing……hey Apple mail……(music playing) Leo: If you’re watching this is something to do with Detroit and bicycles.
Rene: If you go to Apple(dot)com(slash)ipad there’s….they have an actual page set up for this, and they have all the longer video which explains what the slow ride but also how he uses his iPad, for social networking, for occasions, for sketching for planning, for weather predictions, for…….
Leo: So is this a particular person or it’s a group….slow ride group.
Rene: The person who started the group, but the interesting thing is there seems to be a disconnect when people talk about iPad and productivity. Is that some people believe that productivity is only enterprise. It’s only using a computer with Oracle or with Microsoft or with one of those sorts of systems. And other people believe that there’s a whole new generation of productivity that don’t use- might not use Office, might not use Oracle, might not use Sales Force, but they’re doing things like this where they’re running a startup out of a coffee shop. Or they’re providing-
Leo: That’s productivity, yeah.
Rene: Yeah, absolutely. And its mobile and its accessible because these- you can’t strap a beige blocks computer onto your back and run to the top of a mountain. Or go deep sea diving.
Leo: But the iPad not exactly ideal on a bicycle either.
Rene: You can put it in a backpack very easily and take it with you and have these meetings. And again, it just intermediates the whole keyboard and mouse and the computing thing. So it’s like, it’s not a hammer, it’s a screwdriver. So you don’t want to knock nails with it, but you do want to turn screws with it. And in that context, I think that’s- you know, if you try to use it for a personal computing task, it’s still not there yet. But it does things that a personal computer either can’t go to, or it makes it easily enough that people who found personal computers unapproachable can finally benefit from computing.
Leo: That is, by the way, Jason Hall. He’s the cofounder of the slow roll city bike ride in Detroit. To kind of promote the rebirth of Detroit. And this is the Apple page… I like it that they do these pages at the apple site.
Rene: They’re gorgeous.
Leo: Because it really, I mean, the ad itself is a little cryptic and quick.
Rene: If you scroll down they have layers- that image parallax, so that guy and his bike go by faster.
Leo: Oh look at that. It’s kind of weird, yeah. Wow. They call this parallax, this new style. I was asking our web designers. You know that thing where you have a big picture and then you scroll down… what’s that called? He said that’s called parallax and it’s probably because of effects like this.
Rene: The video games….. Like all the old Amegia games used that to try to do- my old Nintendo games tried to make-
Leo: What is this, a CSS thing, foreground and background? One moving slower? It’s interesting. I like it. I like it. Is it happening here too? No.
Rene: You can’t tell all the pictures.
Leo: That one’s not. So okay, so that’s one, and then here’s the one from China. This is Yaoband. A Chinese musical group I guess. Yaoband. Maybe they’re not Chinese. Oh yes they are. It shows them using a Chinese email, Chinese maps… playing Chinese pool…
Rene: International is a big part of Apple store.
Leo: Oh, he’s recording. I get it. He’s sampling… that’s cool. He’s sampling with his iPad. You probably want a real mic right?
Alex: A real mic. They make those. For PC. They don’t want to show you that that of course because it’s not Apple. That would be complicated, it wouldn’t be simple.
Leo: Right. He’s got everything he needs to record samples. And he’s got a little MPC on the iPad, that’s cool.
Alex: What I will say is that, well, and for this kind of mix you may not need it. You know. I will say that the creative apps that are being created for the iPad are stunning.
Leo: Well, especially music, I mean, wow.
Alex: The music apps are, that is an area where I don’t know if I would use my computer anymore for a lot of those things. Especially when you’re interacting with things live and you want to have it right in front of you. I think that those are great. I mean, even the Micky, the Micky has the one where it’s got that little shell that you pop the iPad into. We have one. And it’s a little simplistic.
Leo: I use the Apagy mic. Which is a digital mic you plug into the lightning port and it does a good job.
Rene: I just got the new Micky from Blue Microphone that has a lightning in for review.
Leo: That would be the ideal way to record right? Is something with digital interface capabilities.
Alex: Yeah. I mean, you really want a great pre amp. Because it doesn’t matter once its digital, but what you do need is good analogs digital convertor so you get a really good pre amp and a really good AD. And you can hook it up to an iPad and you’d get the same thing you get on your computer.
Leo: It does say that Yaoband captures audio samples with the iPad. It doesn’t say with the iPad mic though. It just didn’t …
Rene: You watch the longer video on the site, they show you actually him doing it and him doing jams later with other street musicians. Using the city sounds.
Leo: Yeah. Looks like he may also be using an iPhone in some cases too. This is cool. Creating a bike horn base line with iMachine. Turning billiards balls into beats with iMachine. iMachine is a 3rd party iPad app.
Alex: I’m sure that we all know this, but I was talking to a developer about what happens when you end up in one of these ads.
Leo: Yeah. They sell a lot of copies of these.
Alex: He said it was a quarter million dollars in a week.
Leo: Wow. Well, it’s an ad for your product.
Alex: I know. He was just like- and that was the first week. He said I went from being a struggling little- a guy who was making some money on it to not having to work anymore. I’m working on other apps now.
Leo: It’s not like you can write a letter to Apple and say “could you feature my app?”
Rene: I was actually startled. A friend of mine wrote me and he said I’m in the new Apple ad. I said what are you talking about? And it turns out that- I didn’t really know about this- he had made a water PH meter. So you can measure the PH of water. And they showed it off in the last iPhone ad. And he’d made an app that went with it. I have known you for 12 years and suddenly something he had made out of his home and started building is an Apple ad.
Leo: And then on the webpage they do highlight the apps that they’re using.
Alex: They didn’t do this at first, but then it became this big deal because people- I mean, like me. I would see stuff in the ad and be like oh, I want to find that. And it was hard to find the apps. They’ve obviously made it a lot better.
Leo: It’s cool. Very neat. Apple has now- and you know when you first get an iPad and you first plug it in- they suggest “to get the most of your iPad here’s some great free apps to get you started.” And of course pages, numbers, keynote. They’ve added Beats Music. Just not free. But... can you use it for free in anyway? Or I guess, 2 weeks free. But you have to buy a subscription to use Beats Music. Right?
Alex: Is there an ad model on that as well? I don’t know.
Rene: It’s still US only, I can’t test it.
Leo: You know what, we played with it yesterday on iPad today and I actually kind of like… the idea- and Jimmy Iovine said this right when they started Beats Music, we think human curation is still the best way to figure out what you want to listen to. So they do some really interesting things. For instance your make a sentence... that will be the songs that you will get. To create your radio station. So you have words, it’s like refrigerator magnets. You can pull into a sentence. Like “I want to boogie down with my pants off on the beach late at night.” It makes that sentence- I’m not kidding you, like one of them is that. And then it makes that station for you. So that’s one way they do it. The other one is when you first sign up for Beats Music they ask you for a number of different categories that you like. So it’s very visual, it’s nicely done for the iPad and they really do focus on curation. Human curation. So I think it’s not been taking off because, frankly, they were late to the party. Everybody has got Spotify and Ardio and everything else. Pandora. But this one, you know, I was pretty impressed by it. Not enough to go out and buy it…
Alex: That’s the problem. But Apple could fix that.
Leo: They could build it into iTunes radio and solve the whole problem right there.
Rene: Everyone in America and Australia can enjoy it.
Leo: Yeah.
Andy: That’s what we’re seeing as part of the suggested apps. Part of this campaign is going to have to be to make sure that people are linking Beats with Apple in the public eye. To make them think that this is part of your Apple experience. The fact that you have this really cool Beats logo that you’ve been sticking on your skateboard for a couple of years.
Leo: Yeah, here’s the iPad interface. I’m at a party and feel like celebrating with my bff to hip-hop. And then you play the sentence and its going to be a radio station based on the sentence.
Rene: Podcast and iBooks are going to be default apps and maybe one day Beats will be a default app too.
Leo: Yeah. Well it kind of is. When you put it in that list. The big button on this says “download all.” It doesn’t say download that one, that one, and that one. It says “download all” or “not now”. So you know, most people who get a new iPhone or iPad will press the download all button and get those all. Yeah, what else are you going to do?
Andy: It’s going to be fascinating to see in a years’ time what happens to that interface too.
Leo: Yeah.
Andy: It looks great, it just doesn’t look very Apple-like. So I’m just curious if they’re going to be allowed to retain their own design aesthetic.
Rene: Especially because it’s cross platform. And it’s apparently going to stay on Android and Windows phone too. So maybe the interface can’t be too Apple.
Leo: Right. IOS drops to 67% enterprise share in the 2nd quarter according to Good Technology. This is their semiannual mobility index report. Activations by platform. Android up 32%. And Windows phone flat at 1%. Yikes.
Rene: IBM won’t fix that.
Leo: No. that’s got to gripe Microsoft. Because Microsoft actually has a pretty good story with Windows phone and the enterprise. But nobody wants a Windows phone.
Andy: And they spend so much money to get Nokia. That it’s… so you’ve got to imagine in Nokia’s defense, Windows phone is- has been not quite finished for a couple of years. And especially in 2014 we’re seeing a couple more of those puzzle pieces click into place. And by 2015 it could be definitely something that is a painless alternative to Android and iOS, but is anybody going to care at that point?
Alex: I saw the very first one. Other than in here in the TWIT brick house, I was on my first Windows phone in a while. You know, in DC. And I walked over to her, I was like “So, what do you think? What do you like about it?”
Leo: It’s noticeable isn’t it?
Alex: He was working on it, I go “what do you think?” he goes “I’m getting an iPhone this fall.” I was waiting for some guy to give me a recommendation to show me why it was so great.
Leo: Why don’t you borrow my 1520 and play with it.
Rene: Our Windows phone community, they are so engaged, they are so happy with it. For a large part they are outside the US…
Andy: Everybody I know who has a Windows phone, they don’t use it just because it was assigned to them or because oh, well I fell for the hype, it’s okay but I’m not going to buy another one. They absolutely love it. So it’s definitely finding its audience. I also should say that- third plug for Boston Comic-Con last weekend, it’s another one of those events where my eyes are really peeled for what kind of technology other people are using. Because everybody is taking pictures with their cameras. And I would almost say that the iPhone was a minority device at this function. We’re talking about thousands and thousands and thousands of people. Almost everything I saw was a Samsung phone. Or, I actually saw a great many Nokia phones out there. So we really can’t ignore the fact that there are a lot of phones out there and a lot of them are telling very compelling stories for certain types of consumers. And so that iOS 8 is going to be a big deal because it’s going to be the first time that Apple can say we didn’t just make it thinner this time. We actually made it do cool and new interesting things that you might dig.
Leo: If you worked at Apple and your name was Sam. Sam Sung. You might feel a little left out in the cold. Sam left Apple. He was an Apple specialist at the Apple store. Left Apple. Has decided to sell his last remaining business card with the name Sam Sung on it. His Apple employee ID and his T-Shirt autographed. Here’s the good news, he’s selling it for charity. Child’s Wish. Already 80,000 dollars bid for this.
Rene: Super important to say he’s selling the card and giving you the lanyard and the t-shirt for free.
Leo: Oh he can’t- oh that’s interesting. He was at the Apple store in Vancouver. Actually. The Pacific Center store. You know I think people must be doing this for charity. And by the way, sometimes you see these things- we sold stuff at the screensavers for charity. Most of the bidders weren’t real and we ended up not raising much money because they were lying. But what EBay does now is they restrict it to preapproved buyers. So the seller gets to say whether you can bid or not and you have to kind of, I presume, demonstrate that you have the ability and intention to pay. So I’m guessing that that is a real 80,000 dollars. And that’s great.
Rene: Hopefully the Samsung and Apple executives will get in on the bidding.
Leo: It would be funny wouldn’t it? It hangs in the Samsung corporate lobby.
Andy: I would love to think that at some point the lawyers came in and had a talk with a senior Apple executive and say, we have to shut this down because we can’t let this logo merchandise. And it went up, up, up, up to the top level and back down to the bottom level and said okay, we’ve decided we’re going to address this by being the top bidder on this and that’s how we’ll make sure – so we got a quarter of hits, it’s for a good charity, its good, we just got the checkbook open.
Leo: I love it.
Rene: They’re going to snipe it at the last minute.
Leo: Yeah. Boom!
Andy: And someone at Samsung had the exact same idea. And this will go for 80 million dollars.
Leo: That would be so awesome. Should I press the button now? No, wait Tim. Now? No, wait Tim. I want to press it. No, Tim. Alright. Hold, hold. Alright, now! We’re going to take a break, we’ll come back with your picks of the week. Gentlemen, get ready. But first a word from Audible. Audible.com, the 150,000 books strong. I bet it’s more than that now. I should do another count. If you do an empty search you can see how many titles they have. At audible.com. More than 150,000, that’s for sure. Great books too. All the new stuff comes out on audible.com. Everybody has realized, in fact, we were just talking yesterday, what a great interview on Triangulation with the author of The Martian. Andy Weir and I highly recommend it if you didn’t hear that. And if you haven’t read the book, you must read it. What was interesting to me is that when Andy sold the rights, he sold the audio rights first. And then sold the book rights. And I think that nowadays that’s not unusual that the audio rights are important. And that’s why Audible has everything. Including Andy Weir’s The Martian. Highly recommend it. It’s going to be a movie with Matt Damion, Ridley Scott directing next year. But you’ll see the movie in your head because when you listen to audio books, there’s no budget that could build a set as good as the set you build in your mind. It could build the whole story. I just love listening to audio books. When I drive, when I’m at the gym, when I’m cooking, cleaning, walking the dog. Audible.com. if you got to audible.com/macbreak right now you can get a free book. You’ll be signing up for the gold account. That’s a book a month plus the daily edition of the New York Times. The daily Digest and the New York Times, Wall Street Times. Your choice. And you don’t pay anything for those first 30 days. If you cancel before the next month, you pay nothing. However, your book is yours to keep forever so pick wisely grasshopper. There’s so much good stuff here. I have to remember to mention this, the Great Courses, all of them are now on Audible. For instance, wouldn’t you love Professor Neil Degrass Tyson teaching you about unsolved mysteries in the Inexplicable Universe? It could be your pick. The great courses are there as well. What do you listen to these days Andy? You always have some great recommendations.
Andy: I actually had 2 lined up because I actually listened to that exact same Triangulation podcast and so of course I bought the book.
Leo: You’re going to love it.
Andy: It sounds like it’s exactly up my alley. The next thing I have on deck after that is a book called Console Wars. It was released a little bit earlier this summer, I haven’t gotten around to…
Leo: Also a Triangulation interview.
Andy: Yep. It’s set up as the story between Stega as the lowly underdog, trying to fight Nintendo back when they were still Nintendo and not Nintendo. To actually get the console on the market. And I’ve only read reviews of it so far and talked to one person who actually recommended it to me. And it really is framed as a very nice sort of a movie-type tale of “here is the person who came in to Sega, who was the person who needed to come in to say “You want to get the king of Chicago, here’s how you get the king of Chicago”.” And basically laid out the plans, here’s what we can do that they want to, all the way up to now we’re going to have this adorable character called Sonic the Hedgehog and that’s going to make everybody want to play this game on this console….
Leo: It looks so fun.
Andy: Yeah, it looks like a great story.
Leo: It is. And actually Sonic the Hedgehog, they talk about how they got him. It was a contest. His original name, and I wish I could remember what its original name was. It was something terrible.
Andy: Yeah and apparently he was a lot meaner looking and dangerous looking and – and they said no, no, no, no, no. not only does this have to look good for kids, but also we want girls to really think this is a cute character. And let me show you about the culture that says that- everything I’ve read about this says that this is a really great novel type story. I like a lot of non-fiction, but I love nonfiction that’s written in the form of a novel where it seems like there’s a character and a building story line. And everything I’ve read about this – okay I will use one of my audible credits to pick this one up.
Leo: And watch Triangulation after you do, because it’s great. Yeah, really great stuff.
Andy: One last plug for Audible, I get more housekeeping done because I’ve got audio books. Because I remember the last time that- once a year you really do realize that you have to do like a total top to bottom baseboard to baseboard cleaning of the kitchen and I’ve been putting it off and putting it off. And that’s when I acquired Neil Gaymon’s Ocean at the End of the Lane. And so not even intending to get the whole job done in one day I started it playing, started off by like, clearing a kitchen counter and scrubbing it down. And I did not want to leave the kitchen because I wanted to get to the end of the story. And so I wound up cleaning the entire kitchen, getting all of this done in one afternoon. Only because I wanted to find out how this book ended. And ever since that, it’s like okay, here’s this awful piece of housekeeping, here’s a cleaning out of the garage I absolutely don’t want to do. Let me find a good 12 hour audio book that will make me stick to it because I just want to keep cleaning and keep finding out what happens.
Leo: There is a good recommendation for Audible. Your house will be cleaner.
Alex: That’s the new ad. Audible, your house, a clean house.
Leo: Audible.com/macbreak gets your first one free. I think you will enjoy it. You know we all love Audible. And if you’re not a member yet, now you know you ought to be. Let’s get our picks of the week. We’ll start with you Rene Ritchie.
Rene: I have two quick ones. I mentioned one earlier. One is the Mikey digital. It’s the new version from Blue Microphone. And it’s got the lightning adaptor on it. And with it you can record much better quality audio.
Leo: Oh, and it plugs right into it which is kind of cool.
Rene: Yeah. It is really cool. We used the previous one to record, you know, we didn’t get all Alex Lyndsay about it, but we used it to record our interviews. This is me attempting to move my pawn a couple squares down the board. But it worked really well. It was so much clearer than the built in microphone. You could change the direction. In many ways. It’s just if you are going to do interviews or recording or anything, if you’re going to sample pool tables with your iPhone or iPad this is just a much better, much more intelligent, much nicer way of doing it.
Leo: Mikey. M-I-K-E-Y Digital. How much is it? Let me press the buy now button, I’ll find out.
Rene: I think it was just under 100 dollars.
Leo: Oh, that’s not bad. Yeah, $99.99 on Amazon. Plugs right in.
Rene: Yeah. And I’ve used them all, we’re reviewing this one right now. But so far it’s been absolutely excellent.
Leo: Neat.
Rene: The other thing I wanted to mention is more self-serving, but I wanted to make sure people knew about it. Is we’re changing the way we do a lot of the podcasts that I’ve been hosting. So the ones that you know, Android Central, the iMore show, those are staying where they were. But the other ones are moving to a new home. It’s got a temporary shelter set up right now on iTunes. We’ll put the links in the show notes.
Leo: Zen and Tech.
Rene: It was the only name I had available. And I had to set up the iTunes page. But the thing is we’re not going to be posting those shows in iMore mobile nations anymore. So if you like them, you do enjoy them and you want to keep listening to them, you’ll have to go to iTunes or iSS for now. I just wanted to make sure people knew.
Leo: Oh, interesting. Do you own these, yourself personally?
Rene: Those are my shows, yeah. Well, mine and my co-host’s shows.
Leo: I see. The TV show... review Debug and Iterate.
Rene: Yeah, Debug and iterate we might keep hosting on iMore just because it’s the crossover audience, a very familiar subject matter to them. But the other ones you’ll only be able to find them there. People will email me and say why didn’t you post it, where is it, where is it gone? So I want to try and preemptively let them know that they can still find them there.
Leo: So go to iTunes, search for Zen&Tech. and you’ll be able to find the whole list of Zen&Tech podcasts.
Rene: And I’ll put the link somewhere handy. And I’ve made sections there. The nice thing about having them separate is I can make my own sections. We have one there, for example, Apple Legends. All the interviews we’ve had with people at Apple.
Leo: That’s nice.
Rene: And this week we’re recording- people have asked for this so we’re going to do it- a double header with Niten Ginatra and Don Melton. So we’ll get Apple’s iOS app guy and Apple’s Safari guy. Sort of talking about why they made the decisions that they made.
Leo: You get some good guests. That’s awesome. That’s not luck, that’s skill, I know. Alex Lyndsay, your pick.
Alex: So in a previous episode, we found our hosts looking for headphones. So we talked a little bit about the Bose, the quiet comfort acoustic noise cancelling headphones. I went ahead and ordered some.
Leo: Oh. Because you didn’t like the idea, but you wanted to be fair.
Alex: I wanted to see what it was like. So I ordered a pair. They’re not replacing my Adimonics, but I do like them for the plane. So …
Leo: So did you get the over the ear or the in the ear?
Alex: The in the ear.
Leo: Aah, these are different, okay.
Alex: Yeah. These are in ear, these are the quiet comfort 20i I guess. You know, they’re iPhone, microphone, everything else. About $300.
Leo: They sell them in the Apple store so…
Alex: They sell in the Apple store, they sell them on Amazon. I got them on Amazon. Anyway, so they’re very comfortable in the ear. I like to really get in there with the Adimodic and it’s not quite that good, but it’s pretty good. It’s a little bulky, so there’s that little amplifier at the bottom. Or that little controller, and I always forget to turn it off, so I burn its battery out. So I’m just not used to that habit. They do feel a little bit more delicate so I do keep them in the case. All the time. When I’m not using them. I don’t like it, because that little power supply is right near my iPhone, I tend not to be wanting to walk around with it. That’s what I found myself, sensitive of walking through the airport with it on. Just because it’s bouncing around a lot. So I still like the Adimodics for that. They’re a little less bulky. But I will say that it’s quite a thing to be sitting in the plane, and you hear this ssshhhh and you just turn it on and it goes sshhht. It’s just gone.
Leo: Wow. So it is active cancellation even though they are in ear monitors.
Alex: Its active cancellation and in ear. It’ll distort a little bit with really, really heavy bass. That’s one thing I noticed. Really heavy bass will cause it to distort. It doesn’t get as loud, but you don’t really need it as loud. I think it gets as loud as you can safely make it. It also is funny, if you get your head against something, like a bus is taking you to the airport or back and it does this kind of weird vibration thing that is a little odd. You know, the noise cancellation can have its own errors. But in a plane environment or in a loud environment, it’s actually a really great solution and I’m happy I have them. That said, I don’t think I’d spend as much time walking around with them as I do with the Adimodics.
Leo: You live on an airplane so I’m sure this is something…
Alex: I spend a lot of time on it, yeah, it really makes everything else go away and you really are in your own little world. Like when I’m working away and I turn those on, I really don’t hear anything about…. Which might be bad, you know… I figure I’ll feel the Gs’ if you know… but I’m not worried about that.
Leo: I noticed they have two different versions with a microphone and one with a microphone for iPhone and iPad.
Alex: I don’t think it changes the price, it might change the price a little bit. Why would you… I guess the only advantage is you would have a… it still does that, it still has the middle one. One of the differences is that it’s a T. so the one without the mic will be a TRS connector. As opposed to the one with the mic will be a TRRS connector which can be a little funky when you’re plugging it in to some things. So when you plug auto headphone receptacles you put a TRRS, its tip, ring, ring, sleeve. Instead of a tip, ring, sleeve. You have to sometimes pull it out just a little bit to get the full signal. So I think that that might be one reason that you’d want a standard one. But obviously if you’re listening to this show you probably want the TRRS.
Leo: You know what kind of sleeve you want.
Alex: Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that’s it. Oh, one last thing. My other tip. The next final cut user group is this Thursday. So this Thursday at 6 o’clock. So we’re going to try this virtual final cut user group thing again. You can go to bitly/fcpxug2. So its final cut 10, fcpx ug, for user group, 2. And that’ll take you to the ozzio account. We actually have calendar invites now, you can sign up. And so we’re bringing in some of the really, the experts of experts of final cut. We’re bringing them in from LA and all over. So you defiantly want to check that out, it’ll be 6pm live stream pacific standard time on Thursday.
Leo: I think you’re right, I’m looking at this, it does look like a tip, ring, ring, ring, ring.
Alex: For the iPhone. Trrs. Yep.
Leo: It’s the Bose quiet comfort 20i. Headphones. $300. Worth it.
Alex: Well, if you spend a lot of time in the plane, it just really depends on how much time you…
Andy: And I can back him up on this. I flew with Brian Brushwood and he had them. And it’s kind of amazing that you have them on, you have them off, and the moment you flip them on, all of the noise in the airplane just disappears.
Leo: You think better than the over the ear ones?
Andy: Yes. Well, it’s harder to sleep with the over the ear ones.
Alex: The reason I don’t like the over the ear ones is I have a very constrained supply of space in my bags. So the over the ear ones have way too much space for me. I actually own the over the ear ones as well. I just don’t use them because I don’t want to pack them.
Leo: And you have to charge them ahead of time. Or do you have a little box that charges?
Alex: Charge them ahead of time. But I always have those, I have those little powergen batteries so I’m always using those, yeah.
Andy: And its micro USB charger so…
Leo: Yeah, easy peasy. Let’s get Andy Ihnatko’s pick of the week.
Andy: I have a tip and a pick, the week before last we were talking about the inadequacies of the Apple TV remote. Someone on Twitter reminded me that there is actually a menu option inside settings. On the Apple TV, settings to general and then to remotes. You can actually teach the Apple TV whatever remote you happen to already have in your hand right now. So if your cable company gives you a remote and it has one of those options for VCR, you might not be using the VCR so you just aim this remote at the Apple TV, tell it that this is the up button, this is the down button, this is the left button, this is the right button. And now you can use this just as well as the aluminum stick of gum that Apple gives you inside the box. So totally forgot about that. So I would not have found it if he had not reminded me of it. So that’s pretty cool. The second one is a neat little sound utility for the Mac called SoundBunny. And it’s a $10 app, 30 days free trial. What it does is it gives every single app running on your Mac its own individual sound control. And this is useful for a couple of different things. For instance, let’s say that you’re in a mood this afternoon that you want to listen to music but it is really important for you to hear when Skype has a call or something like that. You can dim most of what you’re doing and make sure that Skype is always the loudest thing in there. Without having to go from app to app to app to app and use their individual settings controls. The other thing is sometimes you’ve got an app running that is making more noise than you would like and you don’t want to quit it but you do need to mute it. And this will allow you to simply mute an individual app. I found this yesterday when- there is a bug in Safari when sometimes when an app is making sound there is no indication in the menu bar or the title bar of the window that it’s making sound at all. And some dumb website was auto loading music and after about 2 minutes of being open. And because it’s the end of the workday I’ve got like 5, 8 different windows, each with 10 different tabs on them. And I didn’t want to have to quit Safari and lose my work space. So it took 20 minutes of my time to track down which one of these tabs was causing all the noise. And if I had had this app installed before, you do have to restart in order to make it work, if I had had this done before, I could go I bet it’s Safari. Yep it’s Safari, great, I’ll just keep Safari muted and just keep on going because I don’t have time to deal with this right now. So 10 bucks is not a lot of money that is this useful. And you do get a free trial that you can figure out if it’s actually going to enhance your life in a productive and positive way.
Leo: And here is a video of Patrick Delahanty’s Groot. Dancing to the music.
Leo: That’s my pick of the week. You can’t buy it in stores, you have to know somebody as cool as Patrick and Svetlana. Oh shut up Sarah. She didn’t get it. She didn’t see the movie so she didn’t understand. The magic. I am Groot. Hey thanks for joining us, we do MacBreak Weekly every Tuesday 11am pacific, 2pm eastern, 1800 utc on twit.tv. You want to join us live? We love it. But if you can’t, it’s okay. On demand audio and video always available after the fact. Twit.tv/mbw or on iTunes or stitcher or Xbox. Wherever you get your podcasts. You can also use the wonderful apps our independent developers have written for us on all the platforms including iOS, Android and even Windows phone and Roku. But whatever you do, please watch. There you go. Go to twit.tv/apps right? And then you can see all the ways, all the myriad ways you can watch the features. Patrick put that together too. I think you for being here, no back to work my friends. Because you know what? Break time is over! Thanks to Andy and Alex and Rene and to you too, have a good one.
