The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Marco specifically wrote like a pretty just called it off

00:00:03 ◼   ► Yeah off which so I didn't get that impression

00:00:06 ◼   ► But when I when I read his article about it and think about it and I wonder and then I think back to Mg

00:00:13 ◼   ► Siegler's kind of post walking back his

00:00:16 ◼   ► Tweet about the Apple TV stuff. I wonder if we saw apples kind of plan B this week

00:00:22 ◼   ► That's an interesting theory. I hadn't thought about that

00:00:25 ◼   ► Marcos called off

00:00:28 ◼   ► And he just says

00:00:30 ◼   ► Something felt a bit off about this week's Apple event part of it was the lack of surprises

00:00:34 ◼   ► Which isn't Apple's fault all of the product updates which while nice

00:00:38 ◼   ► Were incremental and predictable none of the pricing was a surprise in fact the only unexpected

00:00:44 ◼   ► Product announcement is the zombie iPad 2 sticking around for another year

00:00:48 ◼   ► Shamelessly at the same price as last year, and it goes on for there, and it's a good piece. I think it's fair

00:00:52 ◼   ► I don't think it's

00:00:54 ◼   ► reactionary Nick Bilton had a piece on the bits blog for the New York Times that I think was a little bit more harsh and

00:01:01 ◼   ► I did link to that one

00:01:03 ◼   ► That see my

00:01:07 ◼   ► my whole thing about that is that those people weren't around in like

00:01:10 ◼   ► 2000 when the big news was that the the g4 tower went dual processor, you know, it was like oh crazy

00:01:17 ◼   ► I got to get that thing. So

00:01:20 ◼   ► There is kind of a faction that expects and you know Steve spoiled us like something crazy to happen every year

00:01:27 ◼   ► And I remember, you know six years ago when I was at Forbes we would have to write the story

00:01:32 ◼   ► Two or three times a year Apple let us down

00:01:34 ◼   ► They didn't they didn't change the world today or something like that

00:01:38 ◼   ► so I will say go go back and read the old press release archives from

00:01:43 ◼   ► 2000 and in 2001 and 2002 or was like, yep new

00:01:49 ◼   ► new mouse design or something. No, that actually would be more interesting.

00:01:54 ◼   ► Do you ever notice, I'm sure you have, in fact we maybe even talked about it before, but every once in a while,

00:01:59 ◼   ► because of the vagaries of different CMSs, but that most modern blogs and CMSs have a, the URL slug for an article

00:02:10 ◼   ► is based on the title or the headline, whatever you want to call it. And then sometimes after publishing,

00:02:16 ◼   ► people change the headline but the URL stays the same because it was whatever

00:02:22 ◼   ► when it first went in. I know Bloomberg often gets caught by this or Business

00:02:26 ◼   ► Week and they sometimes have, you know, like the URL sometimes gives away

00:02:31 ◼   ► something that's no longer in the article. And I thought with Biltons it's

00:02:35 ◼   ► kind of interesting. His headline, the one that stayed, is "Longing for the Wow at

00:02:39 ◼   ► Apple's Product Showcases." But the URL slug says, and I think it's a little bit

00:02:45 ◼   ► more apt, the repetition of Apple Keynote presentations feels boring.

00:02:52 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:02:53 ◼   ► So first of all, I do notice that I, as a writer, love and hate that feature, and every

00:03:01 ◼   ► CMS I design is going to have the ability to change that slug without ruining the…

00:03:07 ◼   ► Right.

00:03:08 ◼   ► …without sending a 404.

00:03:10 ◼   ► But I would also say that especially at some place like The Times, I don't know how much

00:03:16 ◼   ► control Nick has over his headlines.

00:03:18 ◼   ► I'm guessing that he writes the first one perhaps, but I know for a fact actually at

00:03:24 ◼   ► The Times that the copy desk has a role in headlines and maybe even final say.

00:03:29 ◼   ► So I wouldn't say that that's Nick's headline, but I do find it interesting as

00:03:35 ◼   ► you say.

00:03:36 ◼   ► It's a different point though, right?

00:03:37 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

00:03:38 ◼   ► And then it even gets to it at the bottom of his piece and it and it says, you know, it's just built in writing

00:03:44 ◼   ► Showmanship aside some saw Tuesday's announcement as another example of a company that is forgetting how to innovate Apple has

00:03:53 ◼   ► quote

00:03:56 ◼   ► gone from building things consumers never ever dreamed they would need

00:04:01 ◼   ► To falling short at giving them what they want said Moshe

00:04:05 ◼   ► Cohen an assistant professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School the problem

00:04:10 ◼   ► He said is Apple needs more visionaries now to me. That's a big pile of horseshit

00:04:15 ◼   ► that lat that paragraph right there and that is one sense of you know,

00:04:20 ◼   ► The like you said like for years perennially going back all the way to you know, 1999-2000

00:04:27 ◼   ► That Apple keynotes have often

00:04:30 ◼   ► quote disappointed people is this you know the lack of any kind of amazing new game-changing the world will never be the same hardware

00:04:37 ◼   ► Event after event after event whereas the other point to me is more subtle the idea that the repetition of these

00:04:45 ◼   ► presentations the way that there's a formula and a pacing and regardless of

00:04:50 ◼   ► What's being announced or how it's being announced that it's you know it is for lack of a better word formulaic

00:04:57 ◼   ► And if you just put the content aside,

00:05:02 ◼   ► what it, you know, and we can get to that later,

00:05:04 ◼   ► but just that there's, you know,

00:05:06 ◼   ► a sameness to Apple's product introductions.

00:05:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's really interesting,

00:05:11 ◼   ► to the point where there's, you know,

00:05:12 ◼   ► there's fan fiction, right?

00:05:14 ◼   ► Like there's every time people write on their blogs

00:05:18 ◼   ► or wherever in the Verge forums,

00:05:21 ◼   ► like almost a script that they expect Tim Cook

00:05:24 ◼   ► to read off of.

00:05:26 ◼   ► So yeah, that's interesting.

00:05:27 ◼   ► I wonder if they'll switch that up.

00:05:30 ◼   ► You know, you see they've added some parts of it

00:05:33 ◼   ► like that opening video that they've now shown

00:05:37 ◼   ► probably hopefully for the last time.

00:05:39 ◼   ► It was a good video, but--

00:05:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think you can, I think twice

00:05:41 ◼   ► is stretching it.

00:05:42 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, and different audiences,

00:05:44 ◼   ► and maybe some people were at this week's thing

00:05:47 ◼   ► and not at WWDC or whatever, but it is true

00:05:51 ◼   ► that the formula has not changed.

00:05:55 ◼   ► in stark contrast to every other tech company,

00:05:58 ◼   ► which probably actually to Apple's credit,

00:06:02 ◼   ► puts on just the most ridiculous, insane product launches.

00:06:07 ◼   ► Like, I don't know if you've been to a Samsung one, but.

00:06:10 ◼   ► - I've never been to one, but I mean, the one last year,

00:06:12 ◼   ► the Galaxy S4 one, I watched online, live.

00:06:15 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:06:15 ◼   ► - I talked about it, I mean, I forget it was on the show,

00:06:17 ◼   ► but it was preposterous.

00:06:19 ◼   ► - Oh, I've been to one, I went to one in Barcelona

00:06:21 ◼   ► for Mobile World Congress a couple years ago,

00:06:24 ◼   ► And I was just so confused.

00:06:27 ◼   ► It was just very, very strange event.

00:06:29 ◼   ► So maybe to Apple's credit, don't break what's,

00:06:34 ◼   ► don't fix what's not broken or whatever that cliche is.

00:06:37 ◼   ► - Well, and maybe another factor too is that

00:06:41 ◼   ► for as much as, in the last 12 months

00:06:46 ◼   ► that Apple came under some criticism/skepticism,

00:06:52 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure what the right word is, about the long stretch between last year's

00:06:58 ◼   ► iPad introduction, which was exactly 52 weeks ago, and the fact that they didn't introduce

00:07:07 ◼   ► anything last winter or spring, and then WWDC really only – I mean, it was a major introduction,

00:07:14 ◼   ► iOS 7, but it was software only, and it was coming later in the year, that they really

00:07:19 ◼   ► went 11 months without a major new product.

00:07:24 ◼   ► It's a hardware product.

00:07:28 ◼   ► Which is so annoying because the software, A, matters more really for your day-to-day

00:07:33 ◼   ► usage, and B, it's probably, in terms of man hours, more of a challenge to make.

00:07:38 ◼   ► I don't know, I just made that up.

00:07:41 ◼   ► I bet the software takes more effort than the hardware.

00:07:46 ◼   ► But it's credit is the hardware for some reason.

00:07:49 ◼   ► - And you could even argue though that because

00:07:50 ◼   ► it didn't ship to consumers until September,

00:07:53 ◼   ► that even the software, even iOS 7 doesn't count

00:07:56 ◼   ► as being released until September,

00:07:58 ◼   ► even though it was shown in June.

00:08:00 ◼   ► - And iOS 6 was released in September last year.

00:08:03 ◼   ► - But even given that search, my point is,

00:08:05 ◼   ► even given that long stretch, which I don't think

00:08:08 ◼   ► was any kind of sign of weakness,

00:08:09 ◼   ► I think it was just the way things worked out

00:08:12 ◼   ► with the product roadmaps across the board,

00:08:16 ◼   ► that there just happened to be a stretch where there wasn't anything new.

00:08:20 ◼   ► And obviously if they were concerned about that stretch, what they could have done easily

00:08:24 ◼   ► was keep the iPad 4 until September or February or whatever and have a rather disappointing

00:08:38 ◼   ► introduction of that rather than release it just six months after the iPad 3.

00:08:43 ◼   ► I think their thought is we're gonna move as fast as we can.

00:08:47 ◼   ► And if that means that moving as fast as we can,

00:08:50 ◼   ► we end up with gaps in our product introduction schedule

00:08:54 ◼   ► because we've introduced everything

00:08:55 ◼   ► as soon as we feel like we really can,

00:08:57 ◼   ► so be it better than holding stuff back

00:09:00 ◼   ► just to fill out a regular schedule.

00:09:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think there's trade-offs either way,

00:09:07 ◼   ► but I think I would not disagree.

00:09:09 ◼   ► And again, what we don't know is what they had in mind

00:09:13 ◼   ► to perhaps announce earlier this year or even right now,

00:09:18 ◼   ► but didn't, and that could be any range of things

00:09:21 ◼   ► from this TV that people have been expecting

00:09:24 ◼   ► for a long time and now seems to either just not exist

00:09:27 ◼   ► or be very far in the future, to the wearable stuff.

00:09:31 ◼   ► Maybe they were working on it and said,

00:09:33 ◼   ► "No, this is not ready.

00:09:35 ◼   ► "We need more people, we need more ideas here.

00:09:38 ◼   ► "Maybe there's something on the component side

00:09:40 ◼   ► that they need better or more of or something like that.

00:09:44 ◼   ► So what we don't know is the unknown unknowns, I guess.

00:09:49 ◼   ► But I just find it hard, and we'll see.

00:09:54 ◼   ► Like if it's two years from now and we're doing this again

00:09:57 ◼   ► and they're still just showing off kind of minor upgrades

00:10:00 ◼   ► to existing product lines,

00:10:03 ◼   ► then maybe there is something to question.

00:10:05 ◼   ► But for now, I would say that it's still

00:10:07 ◼   ► a little early on that.

00:10:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree with that.

00:10:09 ◼   ► And as for the repetition, I keep trying to make it and it's hard for me to articulate.

00:10:16 ◼   ► But even given that year-long gap in events, if you look in the broader sense, longer term,

00:10:21 ◼   ► you know, just 10 years, or even just, you know, 3 years and kind of go for the post-Steve

00:10:27 ◼   ► Jobs era, although I think that the events, you know, there's a continuity from when Steve

00:10:33 ◼   ► Jobs was ring leading these events.

00:10:37 ◼   ► They don't feel altogether different.

00:10:38 ◼   ► I mean, his presence is obviously missed.

00:10:41 ◼   ► Maybe, you know, I mean, he was clearly the best presenter that they have.

00:10:45 ◼   ► He has a magnetism, an onstage magnetism that, you know, it's once in a lifetime occurrence.

00:10:53 ◼   ► But it's still, they still feel like the same events.

00:10:56 ◼   ► And the thing that Apple has that none of its competitors do is in the long term, they

00:11:01 ◼   ► have these events with a regularity

00:11:05 ◼   ► that allows them to be repetitious.

00:11:07 ◼   ► Did I just make up a word, is repetitious a word?

00:11:11 ◼   ► - I think it is, it's a great word.

00:11:13 ◼   ► - It should be a word.

00:11:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I agree, and you could go both ways with it.

00:11:19 ◼   ► You could mock it for being the same thing over and over,

00:11:21 ◼   ► or you could applaud it for actually having substance

00:11:25 ◼   ► that they can fill into those blanks

00:11:27 ◼   ► and not have to worry about brainstorming

00:11:31 ◼   ► some crazy new format just for the sake of doing it.

00:11:35 ◼   ► And some things have changed.

00:11:37 ◼   ► They seem to have pulled back on the,

00:11:40 ◼   ► we brought a bunch of developers to Apple HQ for two weeks

00:11:44 ◼   ► and let them loose on the new SDK.

00:11:46 ◼   ► Here's a bunch of apps that they made.

00:11:48 ◼   ► We haven't seen that in a while.

00:11:50 ◼   ► - The events are a lot like their products.

00:11:53 ◼   ► They evolve slowly.

00:11:55 ◼   ► - Right, and part of that I think is

00:11:57 ◼   ► because probably they haven't had any crazy new features

00:12:01 ◼   ► that they would wanna show off with six different apps

00:12:05 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:12:05 ◼   ► Whereas in the past they did

00:12:07 ◼   ► because everything was so new.

00:12:09 ◼   ► Maybe we'll see with this wearable thing,

00:12:12 ◼   ► if it happens next year,

00:12:13 ◼   ► that they did have another bootcamp

00:12:15 ◼   ► where they had 20 developers spend a month

00:12:18 ◼   ► in living in tents in Cupertino

00:12:20 ◼   ► and here's what they came up with.

00:12:22 ◼   ► - Think about a product, I always think of the,

00:12:26 ◼   ► a pro MacBook. And let's, I'm talking long term, so let's even consider the PowerBook.

00:12:33 ◼   ► I'm not going to say it's unchanged, but there is a very clear lineage right from today's

00:12:41 ◼   ► brand new 13 and 15 inch MacBook Pros, the ones that were just announced, you know, four

00:12:48 ◼   ► days ago as we record all the way back to the original titanium PowerBook G4

00:12:55 ◼   ► which I forget what year it came out but I'm thinking I think it was like 2001 or

00:13:00 ◼   ► so right that it was titanium not aluminum but it was colored the same and

00:13:07 ◼   ► you know there were some problems with using titanium and they didn't take too

00:13:11 ◼   ► many years before they switch to aluminum and really ever since then I

00:13:15 ◼   ► I mean, again, there's huge differences in performance and thickness and weight and stuff

00:13:19 ◼   ► like that.

00:13:20 ◼   ► But at each single step of the way, the pro Power Books, Mac Books have really kind of

00:13:26 ◼   ► evolved very slowly.

00:13:28 ◼   ► And there's never really been a radical – and who knows, maybe some year, one of these years,

00:13:32 ◼   ► they're going to unveil a pro Mac Book that's as much of a change as the brand new Mac Pro

00:13:39 ◼   ► is, right?

00:13:41 ◼   ► But they haven't done that yet.

00:13:42 ◼   ► And I think mainly because they haven't seen the need.

00:13:45 ◼   ► You know, and you don't really see people

00:13:47 ◼   ► complaining about that.

00:13:48 ◼   ► And I think the events are sort of the same way.

00:13:51 ◼   ► - I agree, and it was 2001, you were right.

00:13:53 ◼   ► I think a lot of that is, and if you see it,

00:13:57 ◼   ► it's that everyone is copying that look too,

00:13:59 ◼   ► and for all of the products.

00:14:01 ◼   ► So, you know, and I expect that to be the case

00:14:06 ◼   ► for the iPhone and iPad too.

00:14:10 ◼   ► I don't expect in even maybe in 10 years that the iPhone looks drastically different than

00:14:17 ◼   ► it does today or the iPad.

00:14:18 ◼   ► I'm sure they'll be thinner and I'll be – I don't know.

00:14:21 ◼   ► What do you think of these curved phones?

00:14:24 ◼   ► I've never used one but it doesn't seem like that's a direction to pursue but I

00:14:28 ◼   ► don't know.

00:14:29 ◼   ► No.

00:14:30 ◼   ► Samsung which came out with one even then said that it was experimental and they're

00:14:36 ◼   ► only releasing it in one market.

00:14:37 ◼   ► I don't know if it was like South Korea or something, but that it was some kind of experiment.

00:14:42 ◼   ► I mean, it was—I don't have the link handy, but it was like a statement to the verge or

00:14:47 ◼   ► something where they really just wanted to put it in the consumer hands and see if these

00:14:50 ◼   ► curved screens hold up in real world use, which seems like a very strange thing to admit.

00:14:56 ◼   ► I guess they're trying to say, "Are they going to crack when you put them in your pocket?"

00:14:59 ◼   ► or something like that because they're curved.

00:15:01 ◼   ► It just seems like that—that seems like a question you should have answered before

00:15:04 ◼   ► it came to market.

00:15:06 ◼   ► I think it kind of speaks to Samsung's development process.

00:15:10 ◼   ► - Wasn't one of the Google Nexus phones curved though,

00:15:13 ◼   ► as well?

00:15:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, I thought so too.

00:15:15 ◼   ► I wasn't sure why everybody was making a big deal

00:15:16 ◼   ► out of that, although maybe it was curved the other way,

00:15:19 ◼   ► instead of side to side, it was curved the other way,

00:15:23 ◼   ► but either way, I never really saw the point of it.

00:15:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:15:27 ◼   ► I do like your analogy, so talk about the different iPad

00:15:32 ◼   ► models that we have available to us.

00:15:35 ◼   ► Now I do like your analogy to whether you're carrying it

00:15:40 ◼   ► with a MacBook or just using it as your main computer.

00:15:45 ◼   ► - Or at least main portable computer.

00:15:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:15:49 ◼   ► I think it's interesting now that they do have

00:15:52 ◼   ► kind of chip parity and power parity

00:15:55 ◼   ► that we will start to see which size people gravitate toward

00:16:00 ◼   ► whether it is the smaller one or the bigger one.

00:16:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so too.

00:16:05 ◼   ► And I think, and it's one of those things where Apple is,

00:16:08 ◼   ► I'd be surprised if they did,

00:16:10 ◼   ► but I don't think they're ever gonna break down publicly

00:16:14 ◼   ► how those sales are falling.

00:16:16 ◼   ► They'll say, as they have, how many iPads total

00:16:20 ◼   ► they've sold in a quarter.

00:16:22 ◼   ► And they'll give you, I guess they give us still

00:16:25 ◼   ► average selling price, or that there's a way

00:16:26 ◼   ► to work backwards to it, and then you can kind of make

00:16:30 ◼   ► guesses from there, but it's a lot of guessing

00:16:34 ◼   ► from the outside as to who's buying what.

00:16:35 ◼   ► You kind of just have to eyeball it, I think,

00:16:37 ◼   ► when you're out in public and see what,

00:16:39 ◼   ► which iPads you see people using.

00:16:42 ◼   ► - I wonder if there's a way for one of those

00:16:45 ◼   ► app SDK analytics packages like Flurry

00:16:49 ◼   ► to tell the screen size.

00:16:51 ◼   ► - I think that there is.

00:16:52 ◼   ► I'm almost certain that there is,

00:16:55 ◼   ► that there's like an API that you can tell

00:16:58 ◼   ► what the physical size of a screen is.

00:17:00 ◼   ► - You wouldn't be able to use resolution by itself.

00:17:03 ◼   ► And you'd know, I don't think, I mean, again, we haven't done a, nobody's done a teardown

00:17:07 ◼   ► on these or run, you know, one of those system utilities that reports the exact CPU speed,

00:17:14 ◼   ► etc.

00:17:15 ◼   ► I mean, who knows, once some, you know, these things come out in public, and people can

00:17:19 ◼   ► run those things, who knows, maybe the iPad Air is slightly faster than the iPad Mini.

00:17:24 ◼   ► But it seems like since they're saying a seven, I think it I think it's the same a seven in

00:17:30 ◼   ► both devices.

00:17:31 ◼   ► So yeah, you wouldn't be able to use that either.

00:17:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, I did a little math and I found that the density

00:17:37 ◼   ► of the iPad Air is less than the iPad Mini,

00:17:41 ◼   ► which makes sense because they're fitting a,

00:17:45 ◼   ► the main difference seems to be just the size of the screen.

00:17:48 ◼   ► So there's probably gonna be a little more empty air

00:17:50 ◼   ► in the air.

00:17:51 ◼   ► I'm gonna stick Mini, I think,

00:17:55 ◼   ► I wanna go to an Apple store and try them both.

00:17:58 ◼   ► But for me, the Mini, for where I use it,

00:18:02 ◼   ► makes the most sense still, which is mostly around,

00:18:05 ◼   ► I read in bed with it, I read, I travel,

00:18:09 ◼   ► and I do carry a 13-inch MacBook Air with me,

00:18:11 ◼   ► and I don't plan to stop doing that anytime soon.

00:18:14 ◼   ► So having the Mini, I think, still makes the most sense,

00:18:18 ◼   ► but I do wanna try the Air out and just see just how.

00:18:22 ◼   ► But one thing that I don't think

00:18:24 ◼   ► I've seen a lot of people talking about

00:18:26 ◼   ► that still attracts me to the Mini the most

00:18:29 ◼   ► is the pixel density.

00:18:31 ◼   ► Because they both have the same resolution,

00:18:35 ◼   ► we still have the effectively iPhone pixel density

00:18:40 ◼   ► on the iPad Mini, which to close up,

00:18:43 ◼   ► and I do use it close up,

00:18:45 ◼   ► will look better than the iPad pixel density.

00:18:49 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Let's pick that up there.

00:18:51 ◼   ► I'm gonna hold off on that,

00:18:52 ◼   ► 'cause I could go forever.

00:18:53 ◼   ► But let's do the sponsor break,

00:18:54 ◼   ► and then we'll come back and I'll sort of say

00:18:58 ◼   ► what I'm thinking about which one I wanna buy.

00:19:00 ◼   ► 'Cause I'm only gonna buy one for myself.

00:19:02 ◼   ► - Me too.

00:19:04 ◼   ► - I'll just say this up front,

00:19:06 ◼   ► it's way harder this year than last year, the decision.

00:19:09 ◼   ► - That's a good cliffhanger.

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00:20:14 ◼   ► They don't host your email.

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00:22:22 ◼   ► They have a JSON API for developers, admin/developers

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00:23:11 ◼   ► And if you use the promo code TTS or spell it out

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00:23:35 ◼   ► Go check them out, and my thanks to Melra.

00:23:38 ◼   ► All right, which iPad am I going to buy?

00:23:40 ◼   ► Now I wanna know which promo code people type in more.

00:23:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, that'd be a good question.

00:23:44 ◼   ► I'd go TTS.

00:23:45 ◼   ► - Think so too.

00:23:46 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:23:47 ◼   ► Boy, I gotta tell you, it's a really tough decision.

00:23:51 ◼   ► As I wrote about in my thing, I mean, this is really,

00:23:53 ◼   ► I mean, it's almost the hardest thing

00:23:54 ◼   ► or biggest section of my write-up of the event is,

00:23:58 ◼   ► and I don't think it's to the detriment of either product,

00:24:03 ◼   ► but I think that last year when the iPad Mini came out,

00:24:07 ◼   ► was a maybe not easy to choose between them but obvious how to choose between

00:24:13 ◼   ► them because they both had major trade-offs the iPad 4 or if you just

00:24:19 ◼   ► bought it six months before and didn't want to upgrade or whatever the iPad 3

00:24:22 ◼   ► which more or less the same device you know lightning adapter and slightly

00:24:28 ◼   ► better performance but let's say the iPad 3 & 4 was same device versus the

00:24:33 ◼   ► original iPad mini the the big iPad had obviously had a retina screen it was

00:24:41 ◼   ► way heavier 1.4 pounds it was thicker than the iPad to let alone the iPad mini

00:24:47 ◼   ► bigger heavier thicker had the a6 processor the a6x I guess but you know

00:24:53 ◼   ► cutting-edge iOS performance and you know more expensive and I'm guessing

00:25:01 ◼   ► more RAM, which is--

00:25:02 ◼   ► - I think it did, yeah.

00:25:03 ◼   ► It's all, anything performance related.

00:25:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I think anything performance related.

00:25:07 ◼   ► And RAM is obviously, it's more than just a convenience,

00:25:09 ◼   ► it's performance.

00:25:12 ◼   ► The iPad Mini, obviously, it's mini.

00:25:14 ◼   ► It was way smaller, way lighter,

00:25:17 ◼   ► and it was less expensive, but it had serious trade-offs.

00:25:21 ◼   ► It did not have a retina screen,

00:25:22 ◼   ► and once you go retina,

00:25:23 ◼   ► it was really kind of rough to go back,

00:25:25 ◼   ► especially given that the whole point of using an iPad

00:25:30 ◼   ► when you already own an iPhone is mainly because it's better to read on a bigger display, right?

00:25:35 ◼   ► I mean, you're with me. I mean, I mostly use my iPad for reading. And reading, I think,

00:25:40 ◼   ► is the one place where the retina screen makes the biggest difference, way bigger than games,

00:25:46 ◼   ► bigger even than video, because anything where it's moving, you don't see the details as

00:25:50 ◼   ► much as when it's static text and you just get that crisp resolution. So you give up

00:25:55 ◼   ► retina.

00:25:56 ◼   ► - Especially on something so small

00:25:58 ◼   ► that you're gonna hold closer to your face.

00:26:00 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:26:02 ◼   ► I mean everybody had the same reaction

00:26:06 ◼   ► when they saw the original Mini last year.

00:26:08 ◼   ► This is a great device.

00:26:09 ◼   ► I love the way it feels.

00:26:10 ◼   ► I wish it had a retina display.

00:26:12 ◼   ► And performance was behind too.

00:26:14 ◼   ► It was an A5, so it was the year before's system on a chip.

00:26:18 ◼   ► It had less RAM.

00:26:20 ◼   ► And less RAM manifests itself in numerous ways.

00:26:23 ◼   ► But if you're someone like me,

00:26:24 ◼   ► I mean, I do a lot of email, a lot of Twitter, a lot of Safari,

00:26:28 ◼   ► and other reading apps, but largely bouncing

00:26:33 ◼   ► between Safari and Tweetbot and Mail on the iPad.

00:26:38 ◼   ► And when you're switching apps and you

00:26:40 ◼   ► have a lot of tabs open in Safari,

00:26:41 ◼   ► you run into that thing where the memory gets purged.

00:26:44 ◼   ► And when you switch back to Safari,

00:26:45 ◼   ► the tabs have to reload.

00:26:48 ◼   ► And that's something that gets alleviated as you add more RAM.

00:26:51 ◼   ► And I hit that on the iPad Mini more

00:26:53 ◼   ► than I hit when I had an iPad 3.

00:26:55 ◼   ► - And I would say a year later,

00:26:57 ◼   ► that's what I noticed the most of anything.

00:26:59 ◼   ► Yeah, it definitely feels slow,

00:27:01 ◼   ► especially relative to my iPhone 5,

00:27:04 ◼   ► but the RAM, I see it,

00:27:06 ◼   ► especially with more complicated apps these days.

00:27:09 ◼   ► I see apps starting from a fresh state

00:27:11 ◼   ► almost every time I launch them.

00:27:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, yep, me too.

00:27:15 ◼   ► So, you know, a lot of trade-offs

00:27:18 ◼   ► that made it kind of obvious, like what do you value?

00:27:22 ◼   ► And for me, even with those trade-offs, the Mini was the obvious choice because I carry,

00:27:28 ◼   ► when I travel, I carry a MacBook Air.

00:27:35 ◼   ► So I've already got like a 2.5-pound device in the bag.

00:27:40 ◼   ► And so carrying the 0.68-pound Mini as my secondary thing in the bag as opposed to the

00:27:48 ◼   ► 1.4 pound iPad 4 was a big difference.

00:27:52 ◼   ► And at home, not just when I'm traveling,

00:27:56 ◼   ► but at home when I'm using my iPad,

00:27:58 ◼   ► it's usually at the end of the day

00:28:00 ◼   ► and I'm on the couch and I'm reading.

00:28:02 ◼   ► And it was, even with the non-retina screen,

00:28:06 ◼   ► just more comfortable to sit there

00:28:07 ◼   ► and hold it in my hand being lightweight

00:28:10 ◼   ► and easily held in one hand.

00:28:11 ◼   ► - For me, the test is if it falls on my face

00:28:16 ◼   ► because I've fallen asleep, how much will it hurt my nose?

00:28:21 ◼   ► And the retina, when I got that first retina iPad 3,

00:28:25 ◼   ► that thing, I was scared, I thought I was,

00:28:27 ◼   ► I literally thought I broke my nose once.

00:28:29 ◼   ► And the Mini, on the other hand, is, you know,

00:28:32 ◼   ► just, it'll bounce off and fall on the floor

00:28:34 ◼   ► and then it doesn't matter, but.

00:28:36 ◼   ► - You know, I think-- - It's a big test for me.

00:28:38 ◼   ► - I think that the big iPad 3, 4,

00:28:41 ◼   ► I think it got .2 pounds heavier than the iPad 2.

00:28:45 ◼   ► I could be wrong, but I think I'm close.

00:28:48 ◼   ► Which doesn't sound like a lot, but felt like a lot somehow.

00:28:52 ◼   ► Somehow felt like it crossed the threshold,

00:28:55 ◼   ► and I can see exactly what you mean,

00:28:56 ◼   ► where it somehow crossed the fall on your face,

00:28:59 ◼   ► and is it gonna hurt threshold?

00:29:01 ◼   ► - I never had the two.

00:29:02 ◼   ► I had the one, and we still have it,

00:29:04 ◼   ► but we have it in a holder, and it's kind of on a swing arm,

00:29:08 ◼   ► so it's mounted, and it's never able to be a face crusher.

00:29:13 ◼   ► But that retina one, that thing is dense

00:29:16 ◼   ► and it had that sharp edge, couldn't deal with that.

00:29:19 ◼   ► - So the way that both of those iPads

00:29:21 ◼   ► evolved year over year, took them both in the direction

00:29:26 ◼   ► that addressed each of their trade-offs.

00:29:29 ◼   ► This is what makes the decision so much more complicated.

00:29:34 ◼   ► So the big trade-off with the full-size iPad

00:29:37 ◼   ► was heaviness and thickness.

00:29:41 ◼   ► And it's radically thinner and smaller.

00:29:44 ◼   ► I mean, the width decrease of decreasing the bevel,

00:29:48 ◼   ► I don't know how big a deal that is.

00:29:50 ◼   ► It seems nice, at least in the hands-on area

00:29:52 ◼   ► last week at Apple.

00:29:53 ◼   ► It did seem nice, seem nicer.

00:29:56 ◼   ► But the weight difference is just dramatic.

00:29:58 ◼   ► It is just amazing.

00:30:00 ◼   ► I was there in the hands-on room with MG Siegler.

00:30:04 ◼   ► And he had his iPad 4 with him and took it out of his bag.

00:30:08 ◼   ► And we could just do a side-by-side.

00:30:10 ◼   ► and it really just felt, it didn't feel like .4 pounds,

00:30:14 ◼   ► it felt like half, it felt like it was half the weight,

00:30:16 ◼   ► felt like we could put two of those new iPads together

00:30:19 ◼   ► and be the same weight as last year's.

00:30:21 ◼   ► It's a huge difference, way more comfortable

00:30:24 ◼   ► to hold in your hands.

00:30:25 ◼   ► And therefore, a lot of the reason that,

00:30:30 ◼   ► that's a lot of the reason I preferred the Mini.

00:30:32 ◼   ► The Mini addresses all of the weaknesses it had

00:30:37 ◼   ► that doesn't have, it has a retina display now, I should say,

00:30:40 ◼   ► and it has the same performance.

00:30:42 ◼   ► It's just as fast, it seems to have as much RAM,

00:30:46 ◼   ► but it's a little bit more expensive

00:30:48 ◼   ► at the same storage point.

00:30:51 ◼   ► So you lose some of that price advantage

00:30:54 ◼   ► of choosing a Mini over an iPad.

00:30:56 ◼   ► So it's a lot tougher.

00:30:59 ◼   ► - It's no longer kind of, oh, I lost it.

00:31:02 ◼   ► Oh, well, cheap, you know?

00:31:04 ◼   ► And I priced out the one I wanted,

00:31:06 ◼   ► it was like, oh, 630 bucks or whatever.

00:31:10 ◼   ► It even got a little heavier.

00:31:13 ◼   ► Nowhere near, nowhere near the difference that when the iPad 2 went to the 3 and they

00:31:18 ◼   ► had to make it a lot heavier to power the retina screen.

00:31:22 ◼   ► It's negligibly heavier.

00:31:24 ◼   ► I think in grams it went from a little like 308 to 331.

00:31:29 ◼   ► So I don't know, it's like 7 or 8% heavier.

00:31:33 ◼   ► And you know, a lot of people ask me, I asked on Twitter when I was there that day, you

00:31:36 ◼   ► you know, what questions you have.

00:31:38 ◼   ► A lot of people said, "Hey, does this small weight increase

00:31:41 ◼   ► "in the Mini feel, make it feel different?"

00:31:43 ◼   ► I didn't have one to do side by side with the old one,

00:31:46 ◼   ► but it's just from my recollection as a daily iPad Mini user

00:31:51 ◼   ► it felt the same, more or less.

00:31:53 ◼   ► I don't think that that--

00:31:55 ◼   ► - I think it's like less than 10% difference.

00:31:57 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:31:59 ◼   ► But, bottom line, for someone like me who,

00:32:02 ◼   ► when they travel, is already gonna take up,

00:32:05 ◼   ► still gonna take a MacBook and so you've already got like a two to three pound

00:32:10 ◼   ► device in the bag and you're just hey I just don't you know I don't want to weigh

00:32:14 ◼   ► it down with something bigger well now you're still talking about a point seven

00:32:18 ◼   ► pound mini or a 1.0 pound iPad air you're really only talking about three

00:32:27 ◼   ► tenths of a pound extra so it's not you know somebody who decides to carry their

00:32:33 ◼   ► where air in addition to a MacBook isn't really taking on that much more weight as opposed

00:32:41 ◼   ► to last year where the Mini was more than half the weight or less than half the weight

00:32:48 ◼   ► of the full-size iPad. It's a big difference and I really do think it complicates it. I

00:32:55 ◼   ► think I'm still going to choose the Mini though.

00:32:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, .3 pounds is 1/10 of the weight

00:33:02 ◼   ► of a MacBook Air 13 inch.

00:33:06 ◼   ► So, see, but the fact that it's that little,

00:33:10 ◼   ► we're getting in the weeds.

00:33:11 ◼   ► It really is becoming harder to kind of just

00:33:15 ◼   ► make this decision based on,

00:33:17 ◼   ► they've become so close together,

00:33:22 ◼   ► which kind of leads you to wonder

00:33:26 ◼   ► where's the high end of that size gonna be

00:33:30 ◼   ► in a year or two?

00:33:31 ◼   ► Do they go bigger with that?

00:33:32 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:33:33 ◼   ► - I guess, and I wrote about this in my piece this week,

00:33:37 ◼   ► but I think the best way to think about it

00:33:38 ◼   ► is that last year, choosing between the iPad mini

00:33:42 ◼   ► and the iPad Air was sort of like choosing

00:33:44 ◼   ► between a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro,

00:33:47 ◼   ► where there was a lot of trade-offs,

00:33:48 ◼   ► performance trade-offs, screen resolution trade-offs,

00:33:51 ◼   ► bigger price differential.

00:33:53 ◼   ► And this year, to me, it's more like choosing

00:33:55 ◼   ► between the 11-inch Air and the 13-inch Air,

00:33:57 ◼   ► where it's more or less the same

00:33:59 ◼   ► and you just kinda have to choose

00:34:00 ◼   ► between which size you like better.

00:34:03 ◼   ► And it's a lot more subtle of a difference to make.

00:34:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I wonder if you're mostly reading

00:34:15 ◼   ► the minis better if you do any sort of creative stuff

00:34:20 ◼   ► that the bigger one--

00:34:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think people who type on their iPad,

00:34:25 ◼   ► And I know there's a lot of people who do.

00:34:28 ◼   ► It's gotta be better on the big one.

00:34:30 ◼   ► Although I just saw a friend on Twitter said,

00:34:32 ◼   ► you know, I type better on the Mini.

00:34:33 ◼   ► And I think it's because he's a thumb typer

00:34:36 ◼   ► rather than a touch typer.

00:34:38 ◼   ► Or maybe he has very tiny hands, I don't know.

00:34:39 ◼   ► But if you're putting your iPad out in landscape

00:34:44 ◼   ► and doing typing on the on-screen keyboard,

00:34:48 ◼   ► the big one is effectively a full-size keyboard

00:34:50 ◼   ► and the Mini is not.

00:34:53 ◼   ► I can't touch type on it.

00:34:54 ◼   ► I can only thumb type on it.

00:34:55 ◼   ► But I don't do much right.

00:34:56 ◼   ► That's why I carry a MacBook Air when I travel around,

00:35:00 ◼   ► you know, when I'm out of the house and I travel somewhere.

00:35:03 ◼   ► That's why I take a MacBook Air with me.

00:35:05 ◼   ► - Same here, and beyond the fact that I do a lot of,

00:35:10 ◼   ► not just typing, but design work

00:35:12 ◼   ► that you just can't do on an iPad yet.

00:35:14 ◼   ► - Right.

00:35:15 ◼   ► - Were you surprised at all that they didn't,

00:35:18 ◼   ► you know, and I made some stupid joke about this on Twitter

00:35:20 ◼   ► before the event, but were you surprised

00:35:23 ◼   ► they didn't do some sort of keyboard cover now that they're so gung-ho about

00:35:28 ◼   ► accessories and increasing margins that way? No, I guess I'm not surprised.

00:35:34 ◼   ► Although I thought, and I'm not one, I've often said repeatedly on this show that

00:35:39 ◼   ► I don't really read much into the design or slogan of the event invitations,

00:35:44 ◼   ► but the fact that this one said we have a lot to, we still have a lot to cover

00:35:49 ◼   ► made me think, oh, maybe they've got something

00:35:52 ◼   ► specifically cover related to talk about.

00:35:55 ◼   ► But the covers are, you know, there's really--

00:35:58 ◼   ► - And you see The Verge like went back

00:35:59 ◼   ► through all the old invites and kind of said,

00:36:03 ◼   ► okay, these ones kind of have subtle hints

00:36:05 ◼   ► at the stuff and these ones don't.

00:36:08 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:36:09 ◼   ► - No, I didn't see that.

00:36:10 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, it was pretty good.

00:36:11 ◼   ► They had a bunch of them, so.

00:36:13 ◼   ► - This one clearly had nothing to do with the no hint.

00:36:17 ◼   ► It really just meant we have a lot of little things to cover.

00:36:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, basically.

00:36:22 ◼   ► I would be, I would probably buy,

00:36:26 ◼   ► I haven't actually tried that Surface keyboard cover,

00:36:30 ◼   ► but I also don't think that really says much

00:36:32 ◼   ► about what Apple could do if they put their mind to it, so.

00:36:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

00:36:38 ◼   ► I do think it's intriguing.

00:36:41 ◼   ► I also think, though, and I know for me personally,

00:36:45 ◼   ► And this just is largely about the places where I use my MacBook Air while I'm traveling.

00:36:53 ◼   ► Yeah, sometimes I am at a hotel desk and a tablet on a hardware keyboard cover would

00:37:01 ◼   ► do just as well.

00:37:02 ◼   ► But when I'm on an airplane, I don't put my air on the tray usually.

00:37:08 ◼   ► I usually literally use it as a laptop.

00:37:10 ◼   ► I have it on my lap.

00:37:11 ◼   ► And that's, you know, everybody always says even with the Surface, you can't really type

00:37:15 ◼   ► on your lap.

00:37:18 ◼   ► And I use it to take notes at conferences sometimes, you know, like at WWDC or something

00:37:21 ◼   ► like that.

00:37:22 ◼   ► And again, there, you have no tray.

00:37:24 ◼   ► You have to use it on your lap.

00:37:25 ◼   ► And so, you know, a tablet hooked up to a keyboard wouldn't work for me.

00:37:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:30 ◼   ► What I kind of want, and maybe with the low-power Bluetooth, this will become more possible,

00:37:37 ◼   ► would be to use the iPhone as the iPad keyboard.

00:37:41 ◼   ► I'm actually still better at typing, although I've gotten worse at typing on my iPhone.

00:37:46 ◼   ► But autocorrect seems to have gotten worse too, but I don't know about that.

00:37:51 ◼   ► But it seems to be going further back in your typing and changing things to be wrong words.

00:37:57 ◼   ► But –

00:37:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I've seen that too.

00:37:59 ◼   ► Just the other day, I was posting from the airplane and I was using my iPad and I wrote

00:38:08 ◼   ► I wanted to say it's just icing on the cake.

00:38:11 ◼   ► And it changed it to justifying the cake.

00:38:16 ◼   ► But it only made the change after I must have typed icing.

00:38:22 ◼   ► And I know there was a space in there.

00:38:23 ◼   ► And I just, I obviously didn't notice the change happened.

00:38:27 ◼   ► But it's like I wasn't even thinking about it

00:38:29 ◼   ► because it was, you know, like two words later.

00:38:33 ◼   ► It was annoying.

00:38:36 ◼   ► 'Cause it was also one of those things

00:38:37 ◼   ► because I was on the plane,

00:38:39 ◼   ► I didn't catch it for a couple minutes.

00:38:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know what's up with that.

00:38:44 ◼   ► Hopefully they'll fix that.

00:38:45 ◼   ► But anyway, I would love to use my iPhone

00:38:47 ◼   ► as an iPad keyboard.

00:38:50 ◼   ► I don't know what, maybe I should just,

00:38:52 ◼   ► and I do, like I find myself wanting to respond

00:38:55 ◼   ► to an email on my iPad and then go,

00:38:57 ◼   ► oh, I'll just do this on my phone

00:38:59 ◼   ► because it's easier to type there.

00:39:01 ◼   ► - I do think there's something to the fact,

00:39:04 ◼   ► I mean, it's pretty clear.

00:39:05 ◼   ► I mean, at Apple is, they don't sell a slew of first party peripherals or add-ons to their

00:39:15 ◼   ► devices, but they're obviously keenly interested in them.

00:39:19 ◼   ► I mean, they first made a foray into these cases with the bumpers for the iPhone 4, which

00:39:26 ◼   ► didn't seem to take off.

00:39:29 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like the Apple branded bumpers

00:39:32 ◼   ► were particularly popular with the iPhone 4 and 4S.

00:39:36 ◼   ► I never saw that many of them in the wild.

00:39:39 ◼   ► And I think--

00:39:40 ◼   ► - Well, they also gave away a bunch of free ones.

00:39:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, and even giving away the free ones,

00:39:44 ◼   ► I didn't see that many.

00:39:45 ◼   ► - No, I got one and put it on and then said,

00:39:47 ◼   ► "Eh, nevermind."

00:39:48 ◼   ► - My thought with that, and it's not even,

00:39:51 ◼   ► I don't even think it's particularly insightful

00:39:53 ◼   ► because I think that they,

00:39:55 ◼   ► I think they spelled it out when they introduced them

00:39:57 ◼   ► event which was, "Okay, we've noticed that a lot of you are using cases with your iPhone,

00:40:02 ◼   ► but we've designed the whole iPhone including the back to be beautiful."

00:40:07 ◼   ► So here, all right, you want something that protects the thing a little bit and raises

00:40:12 ◼   ► over the glass so you can set it down and not put the glass on a surface. Use this instead

00:40:18 ◼   ► and at least you can still – most of the iPhone is still exposed. I think people's

00:40:23 ◼   ► reaction to that was no no no I want to cover up everything you know I you know

00:40:28 ◼   ► and so the new cases this year's cases for the for the 5s and the 5c you know

00:40:38 ◼   ► are more like the cases that everybody's been selling for for years and years

00:40:42 ◼   ► where it wraps the whole device and they did that for the iPad as well where they

00:40:47 ◼   ► have well I guess if you look at the iPhone and iPad they both were launched

00:40:52 ◼   ► with more types of accessories than they have today. Like the iPhone, remember the Bluetooth

00:41:00 ◼   ► earpiece that Apple made? And then with the iPad, they had that weird keyboard type thing.

00:41:07 ◼   ► And I think through usage, they said, "Eh, these things aren't really worth pursuing.

00:41:11 ◼   ► But oh, there is this market for specific cases that we didn't have at launch. Let's

00:41:17 ◼   ► do those."

00:41:18 ◼   ► You know what's funny is that weird keyboard dock that launched with the original 2010

00:41:26 ◼   ► iPad, which I guess in hindsight was sort of a sign of their not quite knowing what

00:41:30 ◼   ► everybody was going to want to do with iPads yet.

00:41:36 ◼   ► It was almost explicit in the presentation.

00:41:38 ◼   ► Look, we know this is great for some things.

00:41:41 ◼   ► We don't know what everything's going to be.

00:41:43 ◼   ► But that still made me think going into this week with that we have lots to cover that

00:41:48 ◼   ► that maybe they would do a keyboard cover.

00:41:50 ◼   ► 'Cause they've had, it wouldn't be out of the blue,

00:41:51 ◼   ► it wouldn't be unprecedented that they would do

00:41:53 ◼   ► an iPad-specific keyboard.

00:41:56 ◼   ► - And Logitech seems to be kinda capturing

00:42:00 ◼   ► a nice chunk of some market.

00:42:02 ◼   ► I don't know how big it is, I don't know how many people

00:42:04 ◼   ► are actually buying those things.

00:42:06 ◼   ► And Amazon even has a knockoff of them,

00:42:08 ◼   ► which you kinda wanna buy just to see how junky it is.

00:42:12 ◼   ► - Well, I'll tell you where I do see,

00:42:17 ◼   ► I fly enough that I, you know, I see,

00:42:22 ◼   ► I'm in an airport, it just feels like I'm in airports

00:42:23 ◼   ► a lot nowadays, and I do see an awful lot of people

00:42:27 ◼   ► typing, you know, with some kind of hardware keyboard

00:42:32 ◼   ► on their iPads, a lot.

00:42:33 ◼   ► - Some of them are hilarious.

00:42:35 ◼   ► They have like eight different, they have to fold them out

00:42:38 ◼   ► like six different ways.

00:42:39 ◼   ► It's like, why don't you just get one of those

00:42:43 ◼   ► big ass Dell Inspirons and do that, you know?

00:42:46 ◼   ► I don't know, it's almost negates the fact

00:42:49 ◼   ► that the iPad is so small and portable.

00:42:51 ◼   ► - But yeah, a little bit.

00:42:53 ◼   ► But on the other hand, I still do see,

00:42:56 ◼   ► and we were talking about this at the event,

00:42:58 ◼   ► the Hands-On event, and I tried to write about it

00:43:01 ◼   ► this week too, but that if you wanna be somebody

00:43:04 ◼   ► who only travels with one device, when you're traveling,

00:43:07 ◼   ► just one computer in your bag,

00:43:12 ◼   ► new iPad Air plus a third-party keyboard is still gonna be like half the weight

00:43:19 ◼   ► of even an 11-inch MacBook Air because an 11-inch MacBook Air is like 2.4

00:43:25 ◼   ► pounds so with a one pound iPad I mean how much those keyboards weigh they

00:43:32 ◼   ► can't weigh more than you know three four five I mean at most half a pound

00:43:36 ◼   ► right so you're still coming in at like half the weight of an 11-inch Air which

00:43:41 ◼   ► It's a lot, you know, which is, you know,

00:43:42 ◼   ► one of the smallest laptops out there.

00:43:44 ◼   ► - I'm looking it up.

00:43:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree, and almost kind of makes you wonder

00:43:51 ◼   ► why they haven't used some of this technology

00:43:55 ◼   ► to make the MacBook Air thinner if,

00:43:58 ◼   ► it could just be battery, I don't know.

00:44:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

00:44:02 ◼   ► Well, I think then you get into the whole realm of,

00:44:05 ◼   ► you know, the desktop class nature of the A7,

00:44:09 ◼   ► you know does this presage a future MacBook Air that's running on a you know

00:44:15 ◼   ► A8 or A9 and you know announce it you know might be the sort of thing that

00:44:21 ◼   ► they'd have like like the Intel switch that they would have to announce two or

00:44:27 ◼   ► three months ahead of time at WWDC to get developers to re- Mac developers to

00:44:31 ◼   ► recompile apps as fat binaries with ARM and Intel versions of the Mac and then

00:44:39 ◼   ► and start selling the thing in September

00:44:41 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:44:42 ◼   ► But I don't know, I don't think that's likely,

00:44:44 ◼   ► but I think it is definitely possible in terms,

00:44:47 ◼   ► why would they do that, I think, to get an air

00:44:51 ◼   ► that weighs more like one point something pounds

00:44:54 ◼   ► than two point something pounds.

00:44:56 ◼   ► - Totally, and that'd be crazy.

00:44:59 ◼   ► All right, so I'm looking at the ultra-thin keyboard cover

00:45:01 ◼   ► for iPad, which seems to be the thin one, the light one,

00:45:05 ◼   ► and that's still--

00:45:06 ◼   ► - Is that the Logitech, and that's Logitech?

00:45:07 ◼   ► - Correct, yeah.

00:45:08 ◼   ► which is the...

00:45:09 ◼   ► It's a hundred bucks.

00:45:11 ◼   ► They have like three or four different kinds.

00:45:14 ◼   ► One of them looks just like the Apple Bluetooth keyboard.

00:45:18 ◼   ► One of them is the one that I see a lot with eight different flaps where people have to...

00:45:22 ◼   ► It's like a trapper keeper.

00:45:24 ◼   ► But this is the very simple one that's a cover, the ultra-thin keyboard cover for iPad, not

00:45:30 ◼   ► for Mini.

00:45:31 ◼   ► And it comes in four colors and weighs 0.8 pounds.

00:45:35 ◼   ► So that's more than I would have thought.

00:45:36 ◼   ► 0.78.

00:45:37 ◼   ► All right, well then you're still talking about 1.78 pounds and you're a half pound

00:45:42 ◼   ► under even the 11 inch air. It's not as much as I would have thought, but it's still lighter.

00:45:48 ◼   ► It's getting there, yeah.

00:45:50 ◼   ► Right. I mean, a half pound is a half pound.

00:45:54 ◼   ► I wonder if it's going to come down to stock levels. I wonder if people are going to see

00:45:59 ◼   ► that the mini is delayed three months, so they got to buy an air.

00:46:03 ◼   ► Yeah, it'll be interesting to see I'm interesting from an operational standpoint, and I think the fact that the

00:46:09 ◼   ► They announced they announced a ship date for the air the iPad air and it's what was it ten days after the event I think

00:46:18 ◼   ► It's next Friday's right so that's like nine or no. That's more than ten days. It's

00:46:24 ◼   ► No ten days ten days after the event the mini is

00:46:30 ◼   ► quote unquote, "later in November," which I think really shows just how tight it was

00:46:38 ◼   ► engineering and operationally to get the Mini to retina and the A7 in one year, because

00:46:47 ◼   ► that's literally the latest that they could ship and still have any hope of meeting holiday

00:46:51 ◼   ► demand.

00:46:52 ◼   ► Right?

00:46:53 ◼   ► I mean, you can't ship a holiday product in December.

00:46:57 ◼   ► Hopefully it'll be out later in November, I'm thinking, will mean it'll be at least

00:47:02 ◼   ► available for sale in some quantities by, what is it called, Black Friday, the day after

00:47:08 ◼   ► Thanksgiving.

00:47:10 ◼   ► Because if it's not, then a lot of people are just going to buy the one that is available.

00:47:14 ◼   ► You won't even have to make a decision.

00:47:17 ◼   ► So here's another interesting thing.

00:47:19 ◼   ► I don't know if this is the first time I suppose I could look, but of the iPad Air, the Wi-Fi

00:47:25 ◼   ► and cellular models will be available the same day this time.

00:47:28 ◼   ► I didn't know that was different before.

00:47:30 ◼   ► Well, I don't know about the last year's full-size iPad, but I remember the Mini, the cellular

00:47:36 ◼   ► version didn't ship for two or three weeks after the Wi-Fi version was available, which

00:47:43 ◼   ► is one of the reasons I was stuck with the Wi-Fi version, because I wanted to get it

00:47:47 ◼   ► within the first possible day.

00:47:50 ◼   ► So here's a question for you.

00:47:53 ◼   ► I'll give you the question, but I'm going to do a sponsor read,

00:47:55 ◼   ► and you can answer afterwards.

00:47:57 ◼   ► Here's the question.

00:48:00 ◼   ► Number one, do you buy a cellular iPad?

00:48:05 ◼   ► You can answer that one.

00:48:07 ◼   ► Or do you go Wi-Fi only?

00:48:09 ◼   ► I've done both.

00:48:11 ◼   ► What are you going to buy this year?

00:48:13 ◼   ► Maybe we'll do a cliffhanger.

00:48:15 ◼   ► All right, do a cliffhanger.

00:48:16 ◼   ► All right.

00:48:18 ◼   ► It's not a simple answer.

00:48:20 ◼   ► All right, well then, let's hold it.

00:48:22 ◼   ► I want to tell you about our second sponsor, and again,

00:48:25 ◼   ► longtime sponsor of the show, Good Friends at an Event Apart.

00:48:30 ◼   ► The "an" in their name is just as important

00:48:33 ◼   ► as the "the" in the talk show.

00:48:36 ◼   ► So I would never call them Event Apart.

00:48:38 ◼   ► They're an event apart.

00:48:40 ◼   ► What's an event apart?

00:48:42 ◼   ► It's the design conference for people who make websites.

00:48:46 ◼   ► It's the one web design and front end development conference

00:48:50 ◼   ► that you don't want to miss.

00:48:52 ◼   ► Because year after year, an event apart

00:48:55 ◼   ► is the place where groundbreaking ideas appear

00:48:59 ◼   ► in public first.

00:49:01 ◼   ► An event apart stage is where Ethan Marcotte introduced

00:49:05 ◼   ► responsive web design.

00:49:07 ◼   ► You can't shake a stick today and not

00:49:08 ◼   ► talk about responsive web design, right?

00:49:10 ◼   ► That's the idea that you create one design, you use CSS,

00:49:13 ◼   ► you can use JavaScript, you can use other things,

00:49:15 ◼   ► you produce one website, one set of URLs,

00:49:20 ◼   ► none of this nonsense where you redirect

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00:49:32 ◼   ► whether it's a phone, whether it's a tablet,

00:49:34 ◼   ► or whether it's a Mac Pro with a 30-inch cinema display.

00:49:39 ◼   ► That's where responsive web design became public.

00:49:43 ◼   ► where Christina Halvorson sounded the cry for content strategy, right? I mean

00:49:48 ◼   ► content strategy is like it's like its own industry now. People did years ago

00:49:52 ◼   ► before she introduced it and started singing the praises of it and preaching

00:49:58 ◼   ► it at an event apart nobody had even heard of content strategy. It's a great

00:50:03 ◼   ► conference. I've been to it several times. It's also a conference that isn't just

00:50:08 ◼   ► once a year in one location. It's sort of a traveling roadshow. So where do you

00:50:13 ◼   ► What do you want to do if you want to find out when it's coming near you? What's the schedule? What are the tickets?

00:50:17 ◼   ► What are the cities are coming to here's what you do you go to the website and event apart.com?

00:50:24 ◼   ► Slash talk show that way they'll know you're coming from here. You'll find out everything you need to know

00:50:30 ◼   ► Can't recommend it highly enough great great conference

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00:50:46 ◼   ► All right, cellular or Wi-Fi iPad.

00:50:51 ◼   ► I've only ever bought cellular models

00:50:55 ◼   ► 'cause I do use that a lot.

00:50:56 ◼   ► - And I've bought now twice the wrong kind

00:51:02 ◼   ► and have had to return it, or wanted to.

00:51:05 ◼   ► So the first iPad I ever bought was cellular

00:51:08 ◼   ► and that was the AT&T 3G original iPad.

00:51:12 ◼   ► And I was very excited about streaming the Cubs games

00:51:17 ◼   ► at the gym over 3G, 'cause back then you had unlimited data,

00:51:23 ◼   ► so I could pull down as many, as much as I wanted to.

00:51:28 ◼   ► I could stream video without being concerned about that.

00:51:31 ◼   ► And it didn't work because the network sucked so bad

00:51:35 ◼   ► that the video just didn't stream where I was.

00:51:38 ◼   ► So after that point, I was like, all right,

00:51:41 ◼   ► I'm not getting another 3G iPad, this is stupid.

00:51:46 ◼   ► And then iOS whatever, five or something,

00:51:50 ◼   ► turned on tethering, so even then I was even more

00:51:54 ◼   ► against the idea of having a cellular iPad.

00:51:57 ◼   ► And then I bought an iPad with Retina, iPad 3 with WiFi,

00:52:02 ◼   ► and that was the first LTE,

00:52:08 ◼   ► was that the first LTE Apple product, period?

00:52:10 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:52:11 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:52:13 ◼   ► - And I borrowed someone's LTE thing

00:52:16 ◼   ► and went, holy crap, I need this.

00:52:19 ◼   ► So I returned my iPad and got an LTE one.

00:52:22 ◼   ► And then I found that iPad to be unusably heavy

00:52:29 ◼   ► so I never used that.

00:52:31 ◼   ► So then when the Mini came out, I'm like,

00:52:32 ◼   ► all right, I'm just getting the first thing that comes out,

00:52:34 ◼   ► getting the WiFi one.

00:52:36 ◼   ► And then a month after that, I realized that I'm an idiot

00:52:39 ◼   ► and should only buy cellular from now on.

00:52:41 ◼   ► So that's the answer is that I'm getting a Verizon,

00:52:45 ◼   ► but I said, now I'm tempted this crazy guy

00:52:48 ◼   ► who's now the CEO of T-Mobile is doing things like

00:52:51 ◼   ► setting his hair on fire and giving everyone

00:52:53 ◼   ► 200 megs of free data a month.

00:52:56 ◼   ► And then I wonder, should I get a T-Mobile iPad

00:53:00 ◼   ► and have 200 megs of free data?

00:53:03 ◼   ► Probably not, I'm on the Verizon family plan.

00:53:05 ◼   ► So for 10 bucks a month, I can just tap into the pool of--

00:53:09 ◼   ► plan right right so anyway that was a unnecessarily long way of saying

00:53:13 ◼   ► Verizon 32 gigs space gray mini I bet a lot of people have gone through the

00:53:19 ◼   ► similar jumps though like that it was a good explanation I you know what here's

00:53:26 ◼   ► a big one for me is I've always bought the highest capacity one but I think I

00:53:31 ◼   ► don't think anymore because now that they've gone to 128 I don't I've never

00:53:36 ◼   ► filled the 64 so I feel like I don't need that and I feel like I should

00:53:41 ◼   ► double-check my storage on the 64 because I don't know that I really need

00:53:48 ◼   ► even 64 because one of the things I wanted 64 was to load up a bunch of

00:53:52 ◼   ► music and I feel like that's you know I feel like that's you got to get with the

00:53:58 ◼   ► times and iTunes radio is really the way to go if you want to listen to music and

00:54:02 ◼   ► I know if you're on a plane you know your iTunes radio isn't gonna work for

00:54:05 ◼   ► But I don't really listen to music if I'm gonna listen to music on my plan anyway

00:54:09 ◼   ► I want it from my phone not from the iPad right. I just want the headphones going into my pocket not to something

00:54:14 ◼   ► I'm carrying around

00:54:16 ◼   ► So exactly I don't know that I need even 64. I'm gonna double check and I don't have big games

00:54:21 ◼   ► I'm not an infinity blade player, so I don't have

00:54:24 ◼   ► Big games. I'm you know whereas I still I still buy the biggest iPhone

00:54:28 ◼   ► Storage wise that I can buy and also I mean even if just for you know photos and videos that I shoot

00:54:35 ◼   ► Also, I don't shoot photos and videos with my iPads,

00:54:38 ◼   ► so I don't need storage for that.

00:54:40 ◼   ► But I do go cellular.

00:54:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, for me that's the better use of that 100 bucks

00:54:45 ◼   ► or whatever because the way I think about it is

00:54:48 ◼   ► how much video will I reasonably watch

00:54:51 ◼   ► on this trip that I'm going on?

00:54:52 ◼   ► That's probably the most amount of storage I'd ever need.

00:54:54 ◼   ► And it turns out the 16 is too small, even at SD.

00:54:59 ◼   ► I find myself having to delete stuff and redownload it

00:55:02 ◼   ► and that's very annoying.

00:55:03 ◼   ► - I'm a little surprised, especially since I went

00:55:05 ◼   ► I'm a little surprised the 16 stayed around,

00:55:08 ◼   ► although I think it's about hitting certain price points

00:55:11 ◼   ► and stuff like that, but it's, you know.

00:55:14 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:55:16 ◼   ► - It's a vague disappointment to me

00:55:17 ◼   ► that the 399 for Mini and 499 for iPad Air isn't 32 gig.

00:55:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, you'd think that at some point

00:55:27 ◼   ► they would kind of reset the base level.

00:55:30 ◼   ► - Right, because it is stretching it.

00:55:31 ◼   ► 16-- - Which they've done

00:55:32 ◼   ► on the iPhone. - Yeah.

00:55:33 ◼   ► I mean, the first iPhone started at four gigs, right?

00:55:36 ◼   ► Or eight, I forgot, one of those two.

00:55:39 ◼   ► - I feel like it's one of those things

00:55:40 ◼   ► where I'll eat my hat if next year

00:55:42 ◼   ► 16 gigabyte iPads don't go away.

00:55:44 ◼   ► I feel like that the bar will be raised

00:55:46 ◼   ► and 32 will become a new baseline.

00:55:48 ◼   ► - What will happen first, that or the iPod Classic?

00:55:53 ◼   ► Retirement, I don't know.

00:55:55 ◼   ► I do, so a lot of people are also wondering

00:55:58 ◼   ► about the iPad 2, why it's still around

00:56:01 ◼   ► and why it's still $400 and not something like $200.

00:56:06 ◼   ► And you address it in your post very well.

00:56:10 ◼   ► And I joke that I think that they should have just called it

00:56:12 ◼   ► the iPad Square because it's still, if you are,

00:56:16 ◼   ► and I see these almost every coffee shop now,

00:56:19 ◼   ► one of those point of sale things,

00:56:21 ◼   ► and a lot of them use the old dock connector

00:56:24 ◼   ► either for power or the credit card swiper.

00:56:29 ◼   ► Square of course uses the headphone jack

00:56:32 ◼   ► for the credit card swiping thing,

00:56:34 ◼   ► but if you get the new Square register,

00:56:37 ◼   ► I believe it uses the old pin connector for everything.

00:56:42 ◼   ► And that's where you don't need retina,

00:56:46 ◼   ► you don't need performance, you just need something.

00:56:48 ◼   ► - You do want the big one though.

00:56:50 ◼   ► - You need the big one.

00:56:51 ◼   ► - Right.

00:56:52 ◼   ► - Especially if you got messy hands or something

00:56:55 ◼   ► and you just need a big touch target

00:56:57 ◼   ► for those cash register apps

00:57:00 ◼   ► and for people that sign in and all that kind of stuff.

00:57:03 ◼   ► But they don't wanna make it too cheap

00:57:05 ◼   ► because they don't want normal people buying it

00:57:07 ◼   ► instead of a good iPad, right?

00:57:10 ◼   ► - You know, that's a non-cynical way to put it.

00:57:14 ◼   ► I think even the more cynical way might have a lot of truth

00:57:17 ◼   ► where if there's so many people who are still buying it

00:57:20 ◼   ► at 3.99, three, four weeks ago before this event,

00:57:25 ◼   ► Why reduce the price if they don't seem to be under any pressure from consumers if demand isn't tapering off at $3.99

00:57:32 ◼   ► why not keep it around and

00:57:35 ◼   ► presumably, you know given that it's

00:57:37 ◼   ► It's a 20 a product that debuted in April 2011

00:57:44 ◼   ► Right. Mm-hmm, right April 2011

00:57:48 ◼   ► uh

00:57:51 ◼   ► At $4.99, and now they're still selling it for $3.99, presumably I would think that they're

00:57:56 ◼   ► making insane margins off it.

00:57:59 ◼   ► I would assume that in terms of profit margin, it's the most profitable iOS device they make.

00:58:05 ◼   ► I mean, maybe the iPhone is the most because of the subsidies.

00:58:08 ◼   ► It's probably the most profitable percentage-wise unsubsidized device that they make.

00:58:13 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Yep.

00:58:15 ◼   ► I would agree with that.

00:58:16 ◼   ► And it's also important to consider the relative cost.

00:58:20 ◼   ► I was asking someone about this a while ago and they said that the cost savings between

00:58:27 ◼   ► one of those iPad point of sales and a cash register is still hundreds or even a thousand

00:58:33 ◼   ► dollars or something like that.

00:58:35 ◼   ► We're worrying about a hundred bucks here and there, but the reality is that they're

00:58:41 ◼   ► still saving maybe a hundred percent or even more of the all-in cost.

00:58:46 ◼   ► It doesn't really matter that much.

00:58:48 ◼   ► I was talking to somebody else about Square.

00:58:51 ◼   ► And I think in particular, you know, it ties into, you know, using the iPad as the device

00:58:57 ◼   ► that drives the reader.

00:59:00 ◼   ► Square does not win.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Their rates are – their rates are competitive, but they're not the best.

00:59:13 ◼   ► Like you can save money by going with some kind of dedicated point of sale or something.

00:59:18 ◼   ► In terms of the hardware or the processing fees?

00:59:23 ◼   ► Processing fees. But squares are not bad, you know. But the main win has nothing to do with

00:59:29 ◼   ► comparing a 2.3% plus 30% 30 cents per transaction versus whatever else. It really is just about the

00:59:37 ◼   ► the fact that they take so much of the friction

00:59:39 ◼   ► out of setting it up in the first place

00:59:42 ◼   ► and keeping it running, where you just sign up

00:59:45 ◼   ► and it's like a three-step elegant sign-up process

00:59:49 ◼   ► and you put a reader in an iPad and you're off and that's it.

00:59:53 ◼   ► And for small business owners, like you said,

00:59:55 ◼   ► coffee shops and stuff like that,

00:59:57 ◼   ► their biggest concern is making the coffee

01:00:00 ◼   ► and making customers happy.

01:00:02 ◼   ► The last thing they wanna worry about is the register.

01:00:06 ◼   ► It's just about, it's just getting rid of the hassle.

01:00:10 ◼   ► It just eliminates so much hassle

01:00:12 ◼   ► from getting it up and running.

01:00:14 ◼   ► And maybe it's just one of those things

01:00:17 ◼   ► where maybe financially you'd be better off

01:00:19 ◼   ► biting the bullet and spending three days

01:00:22 ◼   ► setting up something more complicated

01:00:24 ◼   ► because you're gonna use it for the next five years.

01:00:27 ◼   ► But nobody ever wants to spend those three days doing that.

01:00:29 ◼   ► They just wanna spend an hour setting up Square

01:00:32 ◼   ► and be done with it. - Totally.

01:00:34 ◼   ► Yep.

01:00:35 ◼   ► The other group I know for a fact, because just talking to people at Apple, big, big

01:00:39 ◼   ► buyers of the iPad 2 are schools.

01:00:44 ◼   ► And I think it's, you know, meaning K-12.

01:00:46 ◼   ► Because I think once you're talking about college, you know, colleges don't buy the

01:00:50 ◼   ► iPads for students.

01:00:51 ◼   ► Students come with their own.

01:00:52 ◼   ► We're talking about K-12 schools.

01:00:55 ◼   ► And you would think, I would think that even last year's iPad mini, which was a lower price

01:01:01 ◼   ► starting point at $329 would be great especially for the elementary school kids but from what

01:01:07 ◼   ► I've been told schools want full-size iPads and they want the cheapest one they can possibly

01:01:12 ◼   ► get and so the iPad 2 I you know I've been told it still sells really really well to

01:01:20 ◼   ► k-12 and so thus it stays.

01:01:26 ◼   ► if you're buying 1,000 units,

01:01:28 ◼   ► that's 100,000 bucks you're saving.

01:01:30 ◼   ► That's not nothing.

01:01:32 ◼   ► - Right. - No.

01:01:33 ◼   ► All right, I lied.

01:01:35 ◼   ► Apparently Square Stand is available

01:01:38 ◼   ► to support the Lightning connector.

01:01:41 ◼   ► So you don't need the old--

01:01:43 ◼   ► - It wasn't a, you're not nuts though.

01:01:45 ◼   ► When it first debuted, it wasn't.

01:01:47 ◼   ► - Right, yeah.

01:01:48 ◼   ► - But you'd be not, I mean, honestly though,

01:01:50 ◼   ► I mean, you know, I'm as picky as the next guy.

01:01:52 ◼   ► But if, you know, if Dan, if you and I open a coffee shop,

01:01:56 ◼   ► I'd make sure, I'd put an iPad 2 in the register.

01:01:59 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right?

01:02:00 ◼   ► Why spend an extra 100 bucks?

01:02:04 ◼   ► - Yeah. (laughs)

01:02:05 ◼   ► - It really is just a touchscreen, and like you said,

01:02:07 ◼   ► it's still cheaper than a dedicated register,

01:02:09 ◼   ► but it doesn't even make any sense.

01:02:12 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, yeah, it's interesting that Apple

01:02:15 ◼   ► has upgraded all their, the Apple Store iPad displays

01:02:19 ◼   ► to Retina, at least the ones I've seen.

01:02:22 ◼   ► But I guess they probably have a lot of

01:02:24 ◼   ► of dinged up ones that they can't sell or something like that. Or, you know, returns

01:02:29 ◼   ► or something like that. Good use of those.

01:02:33 ◼   ► Let me take this break right here and just tell you about our third sponsor. Another

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01:06:04 ◼   ► - So speaking of web design,

01:06:07 ◼   ► I'm curious what you think about Apple's new

01:06:11 ◼   ► kind of paradigm of web pages where they're doing that thing that a lot of,

01:06:15 ◼   ► well, I see a lot of startups do it too,

01:06:18 ◼   ► where you're almost flipping through a PowerPoint when you load the web page.

01:06:23 ◼   ► But you go down or no, I guess some of them will go side to side.

01:06:26 ◼   ► It's not a, yeah, you go down. It's not a smooth scroll though.

01:06:30 ◼   ► It's almost like you're flipping through slides and it's not on every page,

01:06:34 ◼   ► but on a lot of their, you like that?

01:06:38 ◼   ► I kind of don't like it. Everything looks great.

01:06:40 ◼   ► like the 5C page is very colorful, looks awesome.

01:06:45 ◼   ► I'm not crazy about the flipping through slides.

01:06:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm looking at the Air page now.

01:06:52 ◼   ► Yeah, and you kinda click a button.

01:06:54 ◼   ► Yeah, no, that's exactly what it is.

01:06:55 ◼   ► You do go down, and it is, yeah, that's a good way to put it

01:06:59 ◼   ► that it is sort of like a keynote deck,

01:07:02 ◼   ► and there's like little dots on the side

01:07:04 ◼   ► that tell you which one you're on.

01:07:08 ◼   ► I can see why they do it because it certainly makes it more skimmable, but it makes it harder

01:07:14 ◼   ► to go deep. So I don't know, I guess I'm a little non-plus, or maybe I'm misusing non-plus

01:07:20 ◼   ► there. Ambivalent.

01:07:23 ◼   ► What it does is kind of lets one piece of the story own the screen, but it doesn't...

01:07:32 ◼   ► It's not a very smooth scrolling thing.

01:07:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:37 ◼   ► I wonder how much of it is about what they're like

01:07:42 ◼   ► using it on iOS devices.

01:07:46 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, could be.

01:07:47 ◼   ► And some of these, I mean the stuff they're doing

01:07:51 ◼   ► with motion graphics and,

01:07:54 ◼   ► I always love reading the technology behind some of those

01:07:56 ◼   ► where it's like some crazy JPEG that's being

01:07:59 ◼   ► rendered in a very weird way.

01:08:02 ◼   ► They're making videos out of images and all kinds of stuff.

01:08:06 ◼   ► It's kind of cool.

01:08:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I hadn't really looked at this before.

01:08:09 ◼   ► As I sit here flipping through the iPad Air page, it is kind of neat the way that each

01:08:13 ◼   ► transition – the iPad Air itself is part of the animation and never leaves the screen.

01:08:21 ◼   ► It just keeps moving around and different stuff keeps coming by.

01:08:25 ◼   ► So it's technically impressive, but I think in terms of answering the questions that I

01:08:30 ◼   ► have as sort of an obsessive nerd when I come to the page, it's not as good.

01:08:36 ◼   ► I always just go straight to the tech spec page.

01:08:38 ◼   ► That's where the stuff I want to see is usually hiding.

01:08:43 ◼   ► They have a good page too, where it's not the same on--

01:08:49 ◼   ► I've referred to it more times this week than probably

01:08:52 ◼   ► any other page on the internet.

01:08:54 ◼   ► You just go to apple.com/ipad, and it's like the top level

01:08:58 ◼   ► all iPad page.

01:08:59 ◼   ► And you go to compare iPads, and it's

01:09:02 ◼   ► sort of like one of their tech spec pages,

01:09:04 ◼   ► but it covers all of the iPads that they're still selling.

01:09:08 ◼   ► So it compares--

01:09:09 ◼   ► - Oh, interesting.

01:09:10 ◼   ► - It compares the iPad 2, the iPad Air,

01:09:15 ◼   ► the old but still available at 299 original iPad Mini

01:09:20 ◼   ► and the new iPad Mini.

01:09:22 ◼   ► And you can see some of the weight differences

01:09:24 ◼   ► and size differences.

01:09:25 ◼   ► It's a super helpful page in terms of understanding

01:09:30 ◼   ► the differences from last year to this year.

01:09:34 ◼   ► A couple other things from this week. I guess one of the other big, well I don't know how

01:09:44 ◼   ► big it is, but there's a lot of, you know, iWork got updated this week and it's, you

01:09:49 ◼   ► know, the big news is that they've achieved parity across three platforms, Mac, iOS, and

01:09:56 ◼   ► let's call it four platforms really. Mac, iPhone, iPad, and the iCloud for the I work

01:10:04 ◼   ► for iCloud web apps and that they all use the same document format now which

01:10:11 ◼   ► all sounds pretty cool there was a pretty good demo I don't know how true

01:10:15 ◼   ► to life it is you know on stage of two people editing the same document at the

01:10:19 ◼   ► same time that that demo by the way you know that's it was kind of corny right

01:10:26 ◼   ► - Right?

01:10:27 ◼   ► - It was, that's what I was going,

01:10:29 ◼   ► I wonder if Steve would have approved this demo.

01:10:32 ◼   ► Like, Eddy Cue weird glamor photos and that kind of stuff.

01:10:36 ◼   ► - All right, I don't know though.

01:10:39 ◼   ► It's hard to say.

01:10:40 ◼   ► - Maybe, yeah, I don't know.

01:10:41 ◼   ► - 'Cause you know, Steve was obviously there

01:10:43 ◼   ► when they had approved Phil Schiller jumping off

01:10:45 ◼   ► a 10 foot ladder while holding an iBook, so.

01:10:48 ◼   ► - True.

01:10:49 ◼   ► That's true, yeah, maybe he would have loved it,

01:10:50 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:10:53 ◼   ► But the fallout of this is that the way they've achieved document and feature parity across

01:11:01 ◼   ► these platforms was not by raising the web app and iOS app document and feature abilities

01:11:10 ◼   ► to match those of the Mac, but rather by using, effectively, I think, the iOS engines of these

01:11:18 ◼   ► apps as the baseline for all of them, including the Mac, which means that on the Mac, your

01:11:24 ◼   ► users of all three apps are losing a lot of features. Whether everybody used them or not,

01:11:29 ◼   ► you know, we can argue about, but obviously some people used everything. And so pages

01:11:33 ◼   ► and numbers users, it seems like pages users in particular, are up in arms if they were,

01:11:38 ◼   ► you know, reliant on a lot of the advanced layout and typography features that used to

01:11:41 ◼   ► be available in pages.

01:11:44 ◼   ► I've never really used pages, but I use numbers every day as...

01:11:50 ◼   ► All the charts I've ever done for SplatF are in numbers.

01:11:55 ◼   ► So when I started reading tweets, people saying, "Oh my God, they butchered all these apps."

01:12:00 ◼   ► I freaked out because I'd already updated them.

01:12:03 ◼   ► And I popped open probably my most complex spreadsheet and charts thing,

01:12:09 ◼   ► and it seems like I'm going to be okay.

01:12:11 ◼   ► like some of the features I used like custom colors

01:12:16 ◼   ► and that sort of thing were hidden a little,

01:12:20 ◼   ► but it looks like everything that I used in Numbers

01:12:24 ◼   ► is still there, maybe a little harder to find.

01:12:27 ◼   ► I haven't gotten too far into the weeds yet,

01:12:29 ◼   ► but I'd love to hear what Horace has,

01:12:32 ◼   ► Horace, that you has to say,

01:12:33 ◼   ► 'cause he's also a Numbers guy,

01:12:36 ◼   ► and he does stuff that I don't even know how to do

01:12:39 ◼   ► in numbers.

01:12:40 ◼   ► So I'd love to hear how he looks at that because it really is, people, I get an email, by far

01:12:46 ◼   ► the most popular, most common email I get is, "Hey man, how do you make your charts?"

01:12:51 ◼   ► And people are maybe expecting a complicated answer and just say, "No, it's numbers.

01:12:55 ◼   ► It's shockingly powerful and very simple and it makes really good looking charts."

01:13:00 ◼   ► And it seems like the stuff that I use it for is still possible and in fact one of the

01:13:06 ◼   ► bugs that was driving me nuts has been fixed. A lot of people hate pie charts. I kind of

01:13:12 ◼   ► hate pie charts too, but they had a weird thing where you could not take out the drop

01:13:16 ◼   ► shadow in a pie chart. On text, it was permanently... You could maybe go into the... I don't even

01:13:26 ◼   ► know how you would do it, but now you can finally get rid of the drop shadow in pie

01:13:31 ◼   ► pie charts, so that makes me happy.

01:13:32 ◼   ► But I should probably just not use pie charts.

01:13:35 ◼   ► But so far, so good for numbers.

01:13:38 ◼   ► I don't know about pages.

01:13:40 ◼   ► I sympathize with the users whose pet feature--

01:13:43 ◼   ► no, I don't want to--

01:13:45 ◼   ► it seems almost like I'm minimizing it.

01:13:50 ◼   ► Features that they relied upon, if they're gone,

01:13:53 ◼   ► I sympathize.

01:13:56 ◼   ► I've been there sometimes in the past with various apps

01:13:58 ◼   ► you know, a major update, you know, takes something away or changes something that you've relied upon.

01:14:03 ◼   ► But I do wonder how many times, how many times does it have to happen where Apple has a major

01:14:11 ◼   ► update to something and takes out a lot. And, you know, before people get it in their heads that

01:14:19 ◼   ► before you ever rely on anything from Apple, assume that in the future it might get reduced

01:14:26 ◼   ► in functionality to be increased in simplicity. Right? If they did it to Final Cut Pro, which

01:14:32 ◼   ► was a true pro app, you know, let alone like they did the same thing with iMovie back in

01:14:38 ◼   ► 2008, you know, it's happened numerous times over the years. And every time people act

01:14:45 ◼   ► like it came out of the blue and then people are surprised. I mean, I can see being disappointed

01:14:51 ◼   ► and I can see, you know, filing, you know, requests with Apple. These are the features

01:14:55 ◼   ► I really hope you bring back first.

01:14:58 ◼   ► I mean, that's utterly reasonable,

01:14:59 ◼   ► but I think to be surprised by it is a little naive.

01:15:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that, although in the case of Final Cut Pro,

01:15:06 ◼   ► that was a new app, and the old app, you know,

01:15:09 ◼   ► still lives on your computer.

01:15:11 ◼   ► You would have to manually install.

01:15:12 ◼   ► - Well, don't they still have, some people,

01:15:14 ◼   ► I've been so busy working on my write-up

01:15:16 ◼   ► of this week's event that I still haven't updated my Mac

01:15:21 ◼   ► to the iWork apps, but somebody told me

01:15:23 ◼   ► that they keep the old ones around.

01:15:24 ◼   ► I mean like they're in like a folder or something. Oh cool. I didn't know I didn't know that

01:15:28 ◼   ► I mean so you know if you're listening into the show and you've been worried about upgrading

01:15:34 ◼   ► double-check before you just go and hit update and software update but

01:15:37 ◼   ► Or maybe you know make your own zip archives of the old ones just in case but I've been told that they keep them around

01:15:44 ◼   ► Okay, I still have them on my iMac so I can do that if I need to but you know, okay

01:15:49 ◼   ► That's good to know. Yeah, and I mean to answer your your broader question, I guess

01:15:54 ◼   ► it's hard to tell people don't become dependent

01:15:57 ◼   ► on Apple's productivity tools

01:16:00 ◼   ► because that's the whole point they exist, right,

01:16:02 ◼   ► is so that you would depend on them.

01:16:04 ◼   ► So I don't know, it's tricky.

01:16:08 ◼   ► - Right, and I think people who are accusing Apple

01:16:11 ◼   ► of not being aware, like AppleScript,

01:16:14 ◼   ► and there's one that I use AppleScript way more,

01:16:17 ◼   ► certainly more than 99.99% of Mac users.

01:16:20 ◼   ► I mean, so I definitely understand the pain.

01:16:22 ◼   ► I don't happen to have any scripts that drive the iWork apps,

01:16:26 ◼   ► but I could certainly imagine it.

01:16:30 ◼   ► And I sympathize with that.

01:16:31 ◼   ► But I also see exactly how that did not

01:16:33 ◼   ► rise to the level of feature that Apple

01:16:37 ◼   ► got into these initial events, initial versions of them.

01:16:41 ◼   ► And I think that the thing not to think about--

01:16:44 ◼   ► or the thing that's wrong is to think that the managers

01:16:49 ◼   ► And yet even the engineers on the iWork team are somehow like unaware that anybody was

01:16:55 ◼   ► using AppleScript or that there would be anybody who'd be disappointed by taking out.

01:16:59 ◼   ► I mean, they know it better than anybody, but you have to have priorities.

01:17:04 ◼   ► That's really what it comes down to.

01:17:06 ◼   ► And, you know, and it really matters what your highest priority, you know, your – what

01:17:10 ◼   ► the difference between your first priority and your second priority can often have dramatic

01:17:15 ◼   ► differences than if they were turned around.

01:17:17 ◼   ► And it's clear that Apple's number one priority here

01:17:20 ◼   ► was cross-platform parity for iPhone, iPad, web, and Mac.

01:17:25 ◼   ► And all the things that people are complaining about,

01:17:28 ◼   ► I think, are fallout from that number one priority.

01:17:32 ◼   ► And the thing that I also think they're not

01:17:35 ◼   ► getting enough credit for is, to my knowledge,

01:17:38 ◼   ► there's not a single other Office suite--

01:17:41 ◼   ► not Microsoft's, not Google's, certainly not OpenOffice--

01:17:46 ◼   ► that can say it's feature compatible, document compatible

01:17:51 ◼   ► on phone, tablet, web app, and desktop.

01:17:56 ◼   ► - And you probably said this before,

01:18:00 ◼   ► but this is arguably what defines Apple,

01:18:02 ◼   ► is that they're willing to make that jump.

01:18:06 ◼   ► Can you imagine Microsoft stripping out

01:18:09 ◼   ► half the features in Word

01:18:11 ◼   ► and having the stones to stick with it?

01:18:15 ◼   ► - Right, it would be impossible,

01:18:16 ◼   ► because they've spent so long.

01:18:19 ◼   ► I mean, I would venture to say the entire life of Microsoft

01:18:23 ◼   ► or certainly the entire life that almost 99.9% people

01:18:27 ◼   ► even heard of Microsoft with functionality,

01:18:31 ◼   ► features being their highest priority,

01:18:34 ◼   ► the most features, having the most features,

01:18:37 ◼   ► having the most backwards compatible features,

01:18:40 ◼   ► where each iterative version going forward

01:18:44 ◼   ► carries over all of the functionality

01:18:46 ◼   ► of the previous versions, additional complexity be damned.

01:18:50 ◼   ► I mean, that's been their priority.

01:18:53 ◼   ► And it would be almost--

01:18:54 ◼   ► - Whereas I could see Apple saying,

01:18:56 ◼   ► okay, how are the next 500 million iWork users

01:18:59 ◼   ► gonna do this?

01:19:00 ◼   ► And the answer is probably across multiple iOS devices

01:19:04 ◼   ► and maybe fewer Macs and focus on them.

01:19:09 ◼   ► And maybe you argue at some point

01:19:11 ◼   ► and maybe make a separate, a third tier between iWork

01:19:16 ◼   ► and I don't know.

01:19:19 ◼   ► Yeah, but that's even more complexity, that's dumb.

01:19:22 ◼   ► - For years, I think 2010, 2011 in particular

01:19:27 ◼   ► it seemed like was maybe peak fear

01:19:30 ◼   ► that Apple was going to abandon the Mac

01:19:33 ◼   ► or force a migration from the Mac to iOS.

01:19:36 ◼   ► And I feel like in 2012, and especially I think 2013,

01:19:41 ◼   ► Apple has really shown that it is committed to the Mac.

01:19:45 ◼   ► Just everything, hardware like the Mac Pro,

01:19:47 ◼   ► which is totally new, cutting edge,

01:19:49 ◼   ► I think they're continued industry leading MacBooks.

01:19:54 ◼   ► I've shown that on the hardware side

01:19:57 ◼   ► and with now annual revisions to Mac OS X

01:20:01 ◼   ► or I guess as it's renamed now OS X,

01:20:04 ◼   ► they're committed to it.

01:20:06 ◼   ► And I think it's alleviated those fears

01:20:08 ◼   ► that they were going to abandon the Mac

01:20:10 ◼   ► or just force everybody to use iOS.

01:20:13 ◼   ► But I do think, I mean, nobody can deny it,

01:20:15 ◼   ► that iOS trumps macOS.

01:20:20 ◼   ► I mean, and iOS devices trump Macs for Apple.

01:20:23 ◼   ► They're bigger financially and they have more users.

01:20:26 ◼   ► And so you--

01:20:27 ◼   ► - And they're growing, whereas the Mac has,

01:20:30 ◼   ► almost all likelihood, peaked forever in terms of sales.

01:20:33 ◼   ► And I wrote about this, I think, nine months ago,

01:20:36 ◼   ► and we'll see again.

01:20:36 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think we're gonna see Mac growth ever again.

01:20:40 ◼   ► But it's totally fair to be disappointed as a Mac user in the new iWork apps.

01:20:45 ◼   ► Absolutely.

01:20:46 ◼   ► But I think it's foolish to be surprised, especially since that number one priority,

01:20:53 ◼   ► achieving parity, is for the benefit of the iOS devices for the iPhone and iOS.

01:21:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:04 ◼   ► Yeah, and again, I mean, I don't know exactly what's not working for some people.

01:21:09 ◼   ► and I certainly feel for them, but so far I haven't,

01:21:13 ◼   ► in my selfish point of view, everything still works.

01:21:17 ◼   ► So all good there, we'll see.

01:21:21 ◼   ► - It works for Dan Fromer.

01:21:22 ◼   ► - Yep. (laughs)

01:21:24 ◼   ► - Good enough, ship it.

01:21:25 ◼   ► - Right.

01:21:27 ◼   ► - Well, that feels like a show.

01:21:30 ◼   ► I had a couple other things to talk about,

01:21:31 ◼   ► but I feel like, why don't we call it a wrap?

01:21:34 ◼   ► What do you think?

01:21:34 ◼   ► - Okay, yeah, it works for me.

01:21:36 ◼   ► - Can I tell you what--

01:21:37 ◼   ► - Tell me what they were, yeah.

01:21:38 ◼   ► - I'll tell you what was on the list,

01:21:39 ◼   ► and we'll see if we go into overtime.

01:21:41 ◼   ► We go into overtime maybe.

01:21:42 ◼   ► I had two other things.

01:21:43 ◼   ► I had the banner ads Google's been starting to tinker with

01:21:47 ◼   ► in search results.

01:21:48 ◼   ► And the BBM for iPhone and Android.

01:21:53 ◼   ► - I think the ads thing is interesting

01:21:57 ◼   ► because we could also mention the Instagram ads.

01:22:00 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:22:01 ◼   ► They just showed them for the first time today, right?

01:22:04 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:22:05 ◼   ► - All right, well let's talk about that a little.

01:22:07 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:22:08 ◼   ► make of the big banner ads that they're tinkering with in search results? Looks like the easiest

01:22:13 ◼   ► way to get one is to search for flights. And it's like if you search for Southwest flights,

01:22:17 ◼   ► you get a big Southwest ad. And I think Virgin America has one now too.

01:22:22 ◼   ► And we're talking about Google. Google search. Yeah. I don't hate them. Now, part of this

01:22:27 ◼   ► is, is my natural bias. I grew up in a advertising household. My dad owned a very small ad agency.

01:22:35 ◼   ► so we would actually have to watch the commercials on TV

01:22:38 ◼   ► and not leave the room or hit the mute button

01:22:42 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:22:43 ◼   ► I don't mind them.

01:22:45 ◼   ► I think that if you're Southwest Airlines

01:22:48 ◼   ► and people search Southwest Airlines,

01:22:50 ◼   ► they're looking for you, so might as well own that page.

01:22:54 ◼   ► And if it costs you a little bit

01:22:57 ◼   ► to add a photo of your plane, I'm okay with that.

01:23:01 ◼   ► Most of the time, I'm not gonna see that page anyway

01:23:04 ◼   ► because Google is gonna auto-complete

01:23:06 ◼   ► or even take you straight to the URL in Chrome.

01:23:09 ◼   ► - I think I have a reputation

01:23:12 ◼   ► as sort of being knee-jerk anti-Google.

01:23:14 ◼   ► And I'll tell you, I'm with you.

01:23:15 ◼   ► I actually don't have a problem.

01:23:18 ◼   ► I think it's curious because they sort of,

01:23:23 ◼   ► not even sort of, explicitly came out and said years ago

01:23:26 ◼   ► that they would never have banner ads and search results.

01:23:29 ◼   ► It was back in the Marissa Meyer era

01:23:32 ◼   ► when she was in charge.

01:23:34 ◼   ► - But they would also never make a phone either, right?

01:23:36 ◼   ► Things change.

01:23:37 ◼   ► In my 10 list of complaints

01:23:42 ◼   ► against internet advertising right now,

01:23:44 ◼   ► that's not even close to being on that 10 list.

01:23:46 ◼   ► If anything, what drives me crazy

01:23:48 ◼   ► are the pop-up ads I'm seeing again.

01:23:50 ◼   ► I feel like it's 1998 and there's an X10 wireless camera ad

01:23:55 ◼   ► popping in my face or something like that.

01:23:57 ◼   ► That bothers me.

01:23:58 ◼   ► Google if Google can make money from from Spirit Airlines or whatever because

01:24:03 ◼   ► they want to put their logo on the search results page for Spirit Airlines

01:24:07 ◼   ► that I never see anyway go for it have fun and isn't it to me there's almost a

01:24:12 ◼   ► sort of integrity to the fact that if something you type a search query and

01:24:18 ◼   ► hit return and results come in and if something is a sponsored result it is

01:24:25 ◼   ► almost an integrity to making it look more like an ad rather than, you know, some of

01:24:30 ◼   ► the games that they've played over the years. And they've always, again, you know, I think

01:24:34 ◼   ► coming from me, you know, saying that, you know, Google search has always been a product

01:24:39 ◼   ► that, and I know that they've played some games with favoring their own products and

01:24:43 ◼   ► services over competitors and you can get into competitive arguments about that. But

01:24:47 ◼   ► in general, it's, you know, it's one of the great triumphs of the modern world. I mean,

01:24:53 ◼   ► It's the foundation upon which the entire Google empire is based and deservedly so.

01:24:59 ◼   ► It's one of the most amazing things in the world.

01:25:01 ◼   ► And if you could take a time traveler from any period, 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 100

01:25:08 ◼   ► years ago, Google search is one of the things you would show them about the modern world.

01:25:13 ◼   ► That you do this thing and you type on this keyboard and you get, you know, you can ask

01:25:17 ◼   ► anything and get answers.

01:25:18 ◼   ► It's amazing.

01:25:21 ◼   ► I think that some of the things they've done in the past to show that indicate that a result

01:25:26 ◼   ► is sponsored have been subtle enough that you could argue that that lacks integrity,

01:25:33 ◼   ► but just putting a gentle shading, you know, a little yellow or a pink or something like

01:25:37 ◼   ► that in a small gray, light gray type that says sponsored post or sponsored result very,

01:25:45 ◼   ► very quietly, is almost worse than making a big graphical banner ad. Because there it

01:25:51 ◼   ► says, you know, those things look like ads. It's like, hey, that's an ad. And it's one

01:25:55 ◼   ► ad. And it's not gratuitous. And hopefully it is, like you said, it's what you were looking

01:26:00 ◼   ► for. So I kind of feel like it's not worth criticism. It's an interesting direction,

01:26:06 ◼   ► though.

01:26:07 ◼   ► Right. And you know, and it's easy to say, aha, you're doing the thing you said you'd

01:26:11 ◼   ► never do. But that happens all the time. Companies change. They have to. And I guess that the

01:26:18 ◼   ► thing for me that's most important is that integrity. If it's the advertiser I'm expecting,

01:26:24 ◼   ► go for it. Whatever. If it's a deep, deep discount, airsearch.net, buying up the Southwest

01:26:34 ◼   ► Airlines page and tricking me into clicking and going somewhere else, maybe that's a bigger

01:26:39 ◼   ► problem. But it seems that they're not doing that.

01:26:41 ◼   ► At least not at this stage.

01:26:42 ◼   ► It's also worth putting into context what no banner ads meant, let's say in 2005.

01:26:49 ◼   ► Because 2005, eight years ago, that's a long time, and Google was still a very young company.

01:26:56 ◼   ► I don't forget when their IPO was, but it wasn't that long before that.

01:27:02 ◼   ► And even pre-IPO, the pre-Google world was still in recent memory.

01:27:10 ◼   ► pre Google what did banner ads on search engines mean well it was like those

01:27:15 ◼   ► remember the punch the monkey oh yeah I mean it was tree loot right it was

01:27:19 ◼   ► garbage all that stuff it was real garbage and whereas you know this is not

01:27:25 ◼   ► I don't I don't feel like this is a devaluation of Google search I do think

01:27:32 ◼   ► it's an interesting angle to wonder what's driving them to do this though is

01:27:36 ◼   ► Is it just a pursuit of more profit?

01:27:39 ◼   ► Or is it the fact that desktop search is either stagnant

01:27:44 ◼   ► or in decline and they need to get more out of each search

01:27:49 ◼   ► to maintain the levels that they've had before?

01:27:53 ◼   ► That's an interesting question to me is what does this mean?

01:27:57 ◼   ► What's driving them to do this?

01:27:59 ◼   ► - Yes, and is it also the need to make more money

01:28:02 ◼   ► off of desktop users because mobile users

01:28:06 ◼   ► aren't making as much money.

01:28:07 ◼   ► - Per search.

01:28:08 ◼   ► But yet more and more searches are going mobile.

01:28:13 ◼   ► And I can't help--

01:28:13 ◼   ► - And going through tools like Siri,

01:28:16 ◼   ► which don't even kind of start from the Google homepage.

01:28:20 ◼   ► Maybe not Siri because who uses Siri?

01:28:24 ◼   ► But stuff like that where search is a feature in an app

01:28:28 ◼   ► and not a destination necessarily.

01:28:31 ◼   ► - Right.

01:28:32 ◼   ► - And I think it dovetails, interestingly,

01:28:36 ◼   ► with the new Instagram ads,

01:28:38 ◼   ► which they just showed off this week,

01:28:41 ◼   ► and I believe TechCrunch had kind of a gallery of them.

01:28:44 ◼   ► And again, I don't hate them.

01:28:47 ◼   ► I mean, I follow a bunch of companies already on Instagram.

01:28:50 ◼   ► I think they're some of the best people I follow.

01:28:53 ◼   ► To me, a nice photo of camping or something

01:28:59 ◼   ► from an outdoor gear brand is actually often nicer

01:29:02 ◼   ► to look at than someone's kid.

01:29:04 ◼   ► So I follow a bunch of brands already,

01:29:07 ◼   ► and if they, as long as the ads kind of follow

01:29:11 ◼   ► the theory of Instagram, which is that it's people

01:29:16 ◼   ► shooting pictures with their phones

01:29:17 ◼   ► and not stupid stock photos and pre-produced junkie ads,

01:29:22 ◼   ► then I think that's great.

01:29:24 ◼   ► I'm very happy for the service that I spend

01:29:28 ◼   ► a lot of time using to make money somehow.

01:29:31 ◼   ► And if they can get brands like there was a GE one

01:29:34 ◼   ► that had a cool picture of an airplane engine.

01:29:36 ◼   ► Like if they can get GE posting that and get paid for that,

01:29:40 ◼   ► that sounds great as long as it's not some garbage,

01:29:43 ◼   ► almost these are like better than a lot of TV ads,

01:29:49 ◼   ► which is still where all the money is.

01:29:50 ◼   ► But you watch TV ads and you're like,

01:29:53 ◼   ► these are insultingly stupid.

01:29:55 ◼   ► But if Instagram can get money for an elegant ad,

01:29:58 ◼   ► if there's a fashion show and some guy

01:30:02 ◼   ► who works for that company has their iPhone

01:30:04 ◼   ► and they're shooting photos and they want me to see it

01:30:07 ◼   ► and they wanna pay Instagram to promote that into my feed

01:30:10 ◼   ► and it looks good, yeah, that sounds okay.

01:30:13 ◼   ► - Even, it's very rare that you're watching TV

01:30:15 ◼   ► and the commercial is better than what it is,

01:30:17 ◼   ► the show that you're watching.

01:30:19 ◼   ► Sometimes you see a great commercial and it is.

01:30:21 ◼   ► It elevates, you know, the art.

01:30:23 ◼   ► It's, you know, a little 30 second dose of cinema

01:30:26 ◼   ► and it's, you actually enjoy it, but it's rare.

01:30:30 ◼   ► Whereas, you know, I feel like you said, you know,

01:30:32 ◼   ► these Instagram ads seem like they're actual instances

01:30:36 ◼   ► of what it is that Instagram is, a cool photo.

01:30:40 ◼   ► My only concern with them, my one and only concern

01:30:42 ◼   ► is that the examples I've seen so far,

01:30:44 ◼   ► it seems like they allow way too much text under the image.

01:30:49 ◼   ► I feel like you should, the rules should be tightened up

01:30:51 ◼   ► and they should really just be a very tight amount of text

01:30:55 ◼   ► and you know, some kind, give them a URL,

01:30:57 ◼   ► repeat, you can learn more.

01:30:59 ◼   ► - Which you can't do right now

01:31:01 ◼   ► and that's an interesting thing.

01:31:01 ◼   ► I wonder if they will allow advertisers

01:31:04 ◼   ► to be the first ones to put clickable URLs in their texts

01:31:07 ◼   ► 'cause right now there's no way,

01:31:09 ◼   ► like if you look at some brands

01:31:11 ◼   ► like do contests on Instagram and they're like,

01:31:13 ◼   ► go to our profile and click our profile URL to do that

01:31:16 ◼   ► and that's awkward, you know,

01:31:18 ◼   ► As a person who has a company who I would possibly

01:31:23 ◼   ► buy Instagram ads someday,

01:31:25 ◼   ► I'd much rather be able to put a URL in.

01:31:27 ◼   ► - I understand why they don't allow clickable URLs,

01:31:29 ◼   ► 'cause it would allow people to do spam,

01:31:32 ◼   ► or some, you know, and people posting.

01:31:34 ◼   ► But I could see them doing it,

01:31:37 ◼   ► it would be reasonable for me,

01:31:38 ◼   ► I would see it as reasonable if only advertisers

01:31:40 ◼   ► got to put clickable, tappable URLs, I should say,

01:31:43 ◼   ► in their thing. - Yeah.

01:31:44 ◼   ► - But then to reduce the text,

01:31:46 ◼   ► because the cool pictures fit right into your Instagram feed.

01:31:51 ◼   ► The big chunks of text don't.

01:31:54 ◼   ► It's the text that sticks out as you scroll

01:31:57 ◼   ► rather than the images.

01:31:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, NPR has been doing this thing

01:32:01 ◼   ► where they're doing some contest or something

01:32:03 ◼   ► and they have like four paragraphs of text

01:32:06 ◼   ► and I think I unfollowed them for it.

01:32:09 ◼   ► - The New Yorker has a cool Instagram feed

01:32:12 ◼   ► and they hire different photographers

01:32:15 ◼   ► take over it for like a week at a time and you know sometimes they'll go to an

01:32:18 ◼   ► event or they're you know they're working alongside a reporter doing a

01:32:22 ◼   ► story somewhere and they I don't know why but that and it just seems so

01:32:28 ◼   ► completely un-New York-ery but they often put like 20 or 30 hashtags and it

01:32:33 ◼   ► just makes it look it just looks awful but they're great photographers they are

01:32:37 ◼   ► seriously like world-class photographers and you know when they're shooting with

01:32:43 ◼   ► with the, and they're posting with pictures taken

01:32:44 ◼   ► from the iPhone, I'm like, you know,

01:32:47 ◼   ► I've really gotta up my game because I cannot blame the tool

01:32:49 ◼   ► this guy, they could do great photos,

01:32:51 ◼   ► but the big chunks of ugly hashtags really do

01:32:55 ◼   ► always make my finger hover over and unfollow.

01:32:58 ◼   ► - I've never understood that.

01:33:00 ◼   ► I think that has to come from some app

01:33:02 ◼   ► because someone really manually going in

01:33:04 ◼   ► and tapping in like InstaGood, InstaMorning,

01:33:08 ◼   ► like all these just ridiculous dumb hashtags every time.

01:33:12 ◼   ► - I don't know.

01:33:13 ◼   ► - I think it might come from some app, but I don't know.

01:33:16 ◼   ► I agree, and if you look at a lot of the ad samples,

01:33:19 ◼   ► again, in that TechCrunch article,

01:33:20 ◼   ► there are a lot of hashtags.

01:33:22 ◼   ► - I don't get it, and I never tap hashtags,

01:33:27 ◼   ► and I guess that's something, 'cause you can tap a hashtag,

01:33:30 ◼   ► and it puts something tappable in the ad,

01:33:32 ◼   ► but if there was an option in Instagram

01:33:34 ◼   ► to just strip hashtags out, I would do it,

01:33:37 ◼   ► 'cause I never tap them,

01:33:38 ◼   ► and it would only clean up my stream.

01:33:41 ◼   ► I use them kind of jokingly sometimes,

01:33:43 ◼   ► just literally spamming other people's comments.

01:33:46 ◼   ► But what kind of bums me out is that Instagram,

01:33:51 ◼   ► I respect their desire to keep the product

01:33:54 ◼   ► as simple as possible.

01:33:56 ◼   ► That's how I hope to develop my app too.

01:33:59 ◼   ► But there are some things that are missing still

01:34:03 ◼   ► that kind of bug me, like the inability to search

01:34:06 ◼   ► for pictures of a location.

01:34:10 ◼   ► Seeing the location field in someone's Instagram

01:34:14 ◼   ► and then tapping that location,

01:34:16 ◼   ► like a national park or a store or something,

01:34:18 ◼   ► there's often really, really great collections

01:34:21 ◼   ► of photos in there,

01:34:22 ◼   ► but there's no way to kind of seek those out.

01:34:25 ◼   ► You can't search. - Right, you have to find one.

01:34:27 ◼   ► - You can search for usernames, yeah.

01:34:29 ◼   ► And like, one of my friends was in Portofino, Italy,

01:34:34 ◼   ► once, and posted some picture from the beach,

01:34:37 ◼   ► and if you tap that location,

01:34:39 ◼   ► It's all like Russians on yachts in bikinis.

01:34:43 ◼   ► It's really funny.

01:34:44 ◼   ► It's like, but there's no way to go back to that.

01:34:46 ◼   ► You gotta go.

01:34:47 ◼   ► And stuff like that.

01:34:48 ◼   ► And another one is you can't log in on multiple accounts,

01:34:53 ◼   ► which for most people is not a problem.

01:34:57 ◼   ► And I totally respect the designing a product

01:34:59 ◼   ► around most of your users.

01:35:01 ◼   ► But especially as they're trying to cater to brands,

01:35:04 ◼   ► I have a friend who runs three restaurants and a magazine,

01:35:08 ◼   ► and she still has to manually log in and log out

01:35:10 ◼   ► and type in the password every time she wants to post

01:35:13 ◼   ► something from one of those different accounts.

01:35:15 ◼   ► - Sounds like somebody needs a day phone and a night phone.

01:35:19 ◼   ► - Right?

01:35:21 ◼   ► So I don't know.

01:35:23 ◼   ► But I love the simplicity of Instagram.

01:35:27 ◼   ► I maybe don't use it as much as I used to for some stuff.

01:35:31 ◼   ► It really bugs me that they don't post the pictures

01:35:35 ◼   ► to the Twitter stream anymore,

01:35:36 ◼   ► especially as Twitter starts testing things

01:35:39 ◼   ► like putting the pictures in line.

01:35:41 ◼   ► I still use the official Twitter app

01:35:45 ◼   ► and I was in a UI test group a few weeks ago

01:35:48 ◼   ► where every picture showed up in line in my stream

01:35:51 ◼   ► and I really liked it.

01:35:53 ◼   ► And I think that's kind of what they're gonna switch to

01:35:55 ◼   ► at some point.

01:35:55 ◼   ► But it does bum me out that Instagram's

01:35:58 ◼   ► not in the stream anymore.

01:36:00 ◼   ► But maybe now with ads they'll do it again, I don't know.

01:36:06 ◼   ► I think bottom line is that this concept for ads in Instagram, to me, is if not identical,

01:36:16 ◼   ► it is nearly so to what Instagram would have done eventually if they had remained wholly

01:36:23 ◼   ► independent.

01:36:24 ◼   ► You know, because if they had remained independent, eventually they had to have some kind of revenue.

01:36:29 ◼   ► I think this would have been it.

01:36:30 ◼   ► So I don't think it is, it to me allays some of the fears that I've had at least and a

01:36:39 ◼   ► lot of others from when Facebook bought them that they were going to get a lot more Facebooky

01:36:43 ◼   ► and go that route for revenue.

01:36:47 ◼   ► And to me this is, I wouldn't be surprised if this has been in the plans since before

01:36:53 ◼   ► they were acquired.

01:36:54 ◼   ► I mean it doesn't seem, it really doesn't seem, even to date it really doesn't seem

01:36:58 ◼   ► like Instagram has changed in any way, even now with this proposed advertising, in a Facebookian

01:37:06 ◼   ► fashion, to put it that way.

01:37:09 ◼   ► They almost feel more still like they belong with Twitter more than with Facebook.

01:37:14 ◼   ► But maybe that's good for Facebook.

01:37:15 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think it's exactly why they bought them.

01:37:18 ◼   ► And I think the bottom line of why did they buy Instagram was that Zuckerberg regretted

01:37:25 ◼   ► And there were those, you know, a couple of stories in the last couple of weeks, like

01:37:28 ◼   ► Nick Bilton's excerpt from his book and the great New Yorker profile of Jack Dorsey.

01:37:36 ◼   ► You know, I don't even think it was a surprise though, but more details than were known before

01:37:39 ◼   ► that, you know, that Zuckerberg did seriously consider buying Twitter years ago didn't work

01:37:45 ◼   ► out and it only got bigger.

01:37:48 ◼   ► And I feel like, you know, I feel like it made him all the more determined when he,

01:37:52 ◼   ► you know, saw that Instagram was very Twitter-like to not let that pass.

01:37:59 ◼   ► I do think so.

01:38:00 ◼   ► Absolutely think that Instagram remains a lot more like Twitter than it is like Facebook.

01:38:06 ◼   ► And, you know, I would say I'm still impressed with how many people are posting to it.

01:38:11 ◼   ► Like I don't know if the people who posted a lot in the early days that I followed are

01:38:16 ◼   ► posting as much, but every time I fire up Instagram, I don't even follow that many

01:38:21 ◼   ► people, especially on the weekends, there's new stuff to look at. And it's still mostly

01:38:25 ◼   ► pretty good.

01:38:26 ◼   ► I'm always surprised by how many people I see out in the real world Instagramming.

01:38:29 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

01:38:30 ◼   ► And like sporting events, you know, like, over the summer when I went to some baseball

01:38:34 ◼   ► games and went to Disney World and stuff like that. And I, you know, it's such a distinctive

01:38:40 ◼   ► UI, you know, and that the blue and the big camera button at the bottom or it's, you know,

01:38:45 ◼   ► you don't have to be like a eavesdropper, you can just, you know, just eyeball somebody's

01:38:49 ◼   ► screen. When you're taking a photo, you're holding it out in front. It's really easy

01:38:54 ◼   ► to see. But I could see people, I still do, I see it all the time, people taking pictures

01:38:59 ◼   ► with their phone who are clearly taking it in Instagram. It's definitely got real normal

01:39:08 ◼   ► person traction.

01:39:11 ◼   ► And has completely ruined all expectations from VCs for how an app should grow. But that's

01:39:18 ◼   ► - It's a different topic.

01:39:19 ◼   ► - That was pretty amazing.

01:39:23 ◼   ► - Cool.

01:39:25 ◼   ► - All right.

01:39:26 ◼   ► Good show.

01:39:29 ◼   ► Dan Fromer.

01:39:29 ◼   ► Give him a URL.

01:39:31 ◼   ► Should we send him to City Notes?

01:39:34 ◼   ► - Send him to our brand new, very proud Twitter account,

01:39:38 ◼   ► which is City Notes.

01:39:40 ◼   ► We finally got it.

01:39:41 ◼   ► - Oh, nice.

01:39:42 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:39:43 ◼   ► - So just go to twitter.com/citynotes.

01:39:47 ◼   ► Follow us there, we got some cool new stuff coming

01:39:50 ◼   ► later this year, which we're very excited about,

01:39:53 ◼   ► and you can kinda follow us there and get it when it's new.

01:39:57 ◼   ► - Did you hear me typing right there

01:39:59 ◼   ► on my loud clicky-clack keyboard?

01:40:00 ◼   ► That's me going there, here I am right now,

01:40:02 ◼   ► clicking, follow.

01:40:04 ◼   ► - Boom.

01:40:05 ◼   ► - Followed right now.

01:40:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a very low volume stream for now.

01:40:09 ◼   ► It's never gonna be very high volume,

01:40:11 ◼   ► but good stuff coming.

01:40:14 ◼   ► - All right, thanks, Dan.