The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► You had a good piece on the iPad mini. I thought that you ordered one, it showed up,

00:00:07 ◼   ► you used it for a couple days, you wrote about it. What was the headline?

00:00:11 ◼   ► Something like, "This is the real iPad," basically.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Yeah. And I thought that really was like a bull's-eye. And don't you think that the

00:00:19 ◼   ► consensus on that has been remarkably strong? Almost everyone who's responded has been like,

00:00:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, totally, I agree.

00:00:27 ◼   ► A few people think the bigger one is still the best one,

00:00:31 ◼   ► but most people, I think, it's one of those things where,

00:00:38 ◼   ► I don't know if you wrote it or someone,

00:00:39 ◼   ► but once you feel it, you know.

00:00:42 ◼   ► You use it for a few days and you're like,

00:00:44 ◼   ► "Oh, my arm's not tired after holding this for five hours,"

00:00:48 ◼   ► you know, something like that.

00:00:50 ◼   ► I was just using it today out and about,

00:00:52 ◼   ► And it's easy to tuck into a jacket pocket if I need to,

00:00:56 ◼   ► or just in my backpack, you don't even know it's there.

00:01:00 ◼   ► And it's great.

00:01:01 ◼   ► - I think that what it will resurface though,

00:01:06 ◼   ► I think as this idea that maybe this mini-size iPad

00:01:10 ◼   ► is the one that's best for most people,

00:01:13 ◼   ► as it starts to sink in, as more and more people

00:01:15 ◼   ► get their hands on them and this idea resonates,

00:01:18 ◼   ► it's going to resurface the argument

00:01:19 ◼   ► about whether iPads are for creation or consumption or only consumption.

00:01:27 ◼   ► I think the reason that for me it's a better form factor is that I personally do – and

00:01:33 ◼   ► people want to call me a hypocrite for this, but I personally have always used the iPad

00:01:37 ◼   ► mostly for consumption. Lots and lots of reading and occasionally video. Like baseball season,

00:01:44 ◼   ► I watch a lot of video on the iPad. I think this is a great form factor for consumption.

00:01:49 ◼   ► But I'm also a very strong proponent of the fact that there are a lot of people who are

00:01:53 ◼   ► using their iPads as their computer to create stuff, to do work.

00:01:58 ◼   ► And I think for them, that's the people who are still going to want the big iPads.

00:02:02 ◼   ► Dave Asprey And I think that's absolutely true, and

00:02:05 ◼   ► that's why they should continue to have multiple sizes of iPad.

00:02:09 ◼   ► That makes sense.

00:02:10 ◼   ► And I think it's a situation where, you know, when they released it two and a half years

00:02:14 ◼   ► ago, they had no idea how many people would use it and what they would use it for.

00:02:18 ◼   ► And it turns out that 100 million people have wanted to use it, and they use it for all

00:02:22 ◼   ► kinds of different stuff.

00:02:24 ◼   ► I assume your workflow is a lot like mine, where we really get the benefit from having

00:02:30 ◼   ► a physical keyboard and multiple browser tabs open.

00:02:34 ◼   ► But if someone is doing a lot of email and that's about it for work, the big iPad is

00:02:40 ◼   ► a great laptop replacement.

00:02:42 ◼   ► I tried to do my job on an iPad, it just wasn't cutting it.

00:02:46 ◼   ► of the things that I do love using the iPad for reading in

00:02:49 ◼   ► bed reading books, you know, I put on the machine when I'm at

00:02:52 ◼   ► the gym, and I either watch video or I read or something

00:02:55 ◼   ► like that. This new size is really perfect for that.

00:02:58 ◼   ► Just walking around the house like I, you know, there's two

00:03:02 ◼   ► spots where I do or you know, where I'm when I'm in my house,

00:03:05 ◼   ► I'm either at my desk in my office chair, with my big boy

00:03:09 ◼   ► keyboard and a Mac and my big display and I'm working. Or for

00:03:15 ◼   ► For me, effectively, I'm anywhere else in the house.

00:03:17 ◼   ► And it doesn't matter whether it's bed

00:03:19 ◼   ► or whether it's the couch or whether I'm in the kitchen

00:03:21 ◼   ► making coffee waiting for the water to boil

00:03:24 ◼   ► and I'm just standing there.

00:03:26 ◼   ► Any of those other spots, other than sitting

00:03:28 ◼   ► in this office chair at my desk,

00:03:30 ◼   ► the iPad Mini is a better form factor.

00:03:33 ◼   ► I find when I'm standing up,

00:03:34 ◼   ► it's really when it's just fantastic,

00:03:37 ◼   ► just to have it in one hand.

00:03:39 ◼   ► - And I'm standing right now, and I'm waving it around.

00:03:42 ◼   ► Hopefully I won't hit something with it.

00:03:44 ◼   ► - Oh, I completely agree.

00:03:45 ◼   ► There's some little things though

00:03:46 ◼   ► that I wanted to ask you about.

00:03:48 ◼   ► So for example, stereo sound,

00:03:51 ◼   ► which people made probably a little bigger deal

00:03:54 ◼   ► out of it than they should have.

00:03:55 ◼   ► It's not that big of a deal.

00:03:56 ◼   ► But it's set up for portrait.

00:03:59 ◼   ► But when I want stereo sound,

00:04:02 ◼   ► I'm usually in landscape watching a video.

00:04:04 ◼   ► Do you think that's intentional?

00:04:06 ◼   ► Do you think there'll ever be a left and right sound

00:04:08 ◼   ► for video, or is that just kind of stereo

00:04:11 ◼   ► almost there by accident?

00:04:13 ◼   ► that's actually curious and I actually didn't even know that I don't remember

00:04:18 ◼   ► if they mentioned it on on in the event or what but I'm so used to our iOS

00:04:23 ◼   ► devices being mono even though they all look like they've even I think all the

00:04:28 ◼   ► way back to the original iPhone they all look like they have two speakers at the

00:04:31 ◼   ► bottom but don't you can like on all the iPhones you can just cover up the one

00:04:35 ◼   ► side I think it's usually the left side and then all the sound stops coming out

00:04:38 ◼   ► the right side is like a microphone or something like that they just for

00:04:42 ◼   ► aesthetic purposes make the two sides look the same. Well, it

00:04:44 ◼   ► ends up with the iPad mini, they are both speakers. And I didn't

00:04:47 ◼   ► know that until after my review came out.

00:04:49 ◼   ► I don't think they mentioned it at all until it was in some

00:04:53 ◼   ► articles told to some of the reviewers or I think Josh

00:04:56 ◼   ► Topolsky at the verge was the one who called it out in his

00:04:59 ◼   ► review. And it was funny. One of the funny parts about that is

00:05:02 ◼   ► that Amazon has this is sort of infamous checklist up on their

00:05:05 ◼   ► homepage, trying to favorably compare the Kindle Fire HD seven

00:05:11 ◼   ► to the iPad mini and one of the things that they had up was stereo speakers and you know

00:05:16 ◼   ► they had that as a check for them and an X for the iPad and iPad mini ends up it does

00:05:21 ◼   ► have stereo speakers.

00:05:22 ◼   ► I'm with you though that it doesn't really make much of a difference though.

00:05:28 ◼   ► One of the reasons you know that stereo never really mattered on these devices is what's

00:05:31 ◼   ► the difference if you have stereo sound if the speakers are only three quarters of an

00:05:35 ◼   ► inch apart, right?

00:05:36 ◼   ► If it's not actually wider apart than your head, you're not going to get a stereo effect.

00:05:41 ◼   ► I mean, it's like people don't even seem to realize how stereo sound works.

00:05:46 ◼   ► The thing for me has always been, as I'm watching video, which is probably, I would guess, at

00:05:51 ◼   ► least a quarter of the time I spend with an iPad, I'm probably watching video or maybe

00:05:56 ◼   ► somewhere in that range.

00:05:58 ◼   ► I'm holding it in landscape mode and the sound is very clearly off to one side.

00:06:05 ◼   ► It's not kind of pushing toward both ears.

00:06:08 ◼   ► and I've kind of cup your hand to push it backwards almost

00:06:12 ◼   ► so it becomes more neutral, but it's not at all.

00:06:15 ◼   ► So that's where having one of those little speakers

00:06:19 ◼   ► at what's effectively the top and the bottom of the device

00:06:22 ◼   ► might be more useful, but I don't know,

00:06:25 ◼   ► maybe that's weird.

00:06:26 ◼   ► Then you got, how many speakers do you need,

00:06:28 ◼   ► three or four or something like that?

00:06:30 ◼   ► Then you're getting into Motorola territory.

00:06:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess, and I forget,

00:06:37 ◼   ► certainly not the first person to speculate along these lines but as

00:06:40 ◼   ► people realize that the mini does have stereo speakers I guess that it's to get

00:06:46 ◼   ► them to increase the volume of sound I don't mean loudness I mean know that

00:06:52 ◼   ► that with such a small device to get enough sound out of it it needs two

00:06:56 ◼   ► speakers and if you're gonna have two speakers why not make them stereo sure

00:07:00 ◼   ► Yeah, that makes sense. But I do kind of agree. And in fact, I'll just say this, as I say

00:07:08 ◼   ► this, I've actually not even verified that it is stereo and it's not two speakers playing

00:07:13 ◼   ► mono audio. I honestly don't even know. And like you said, most of the time when I'm listening

00:07:19 ◼   ► to the speakers, it's because it's playing video. And if it's playing video, I'm holding

00:07:23 ◼   ► it horizontally, in which case both speakers are on the same side, typically the right

00:07:29 ◼   ► side because that's the side that that's where the speakers will go if you fold up the smart cover.

00:07:34 ◼   ► And again, what's the point of having left and right stereo if both speakers are on the right

00:07:40 ◼   ► side? Other than to increase the amount of actual sound coming out of this tiny little device?

00:07:47 ◼   ► Yep. And then and then little weird question number two I had was so this this is using the

00:07:54 ◼   ► effectively the same display panel as the iPhone 3GS,

00:07:59 ◼   ► that pixels per inch level.

00:08:03 ◼   ► So when they do assume they eventually have a Retina Mini,

00:08:07 ◼   ► do they use the pixels per inch of the iPhone,

00:08:11 ◼   ► which is higher than the iPad with Retina,

00:08:13 ◼   ► or do they go to the iPad?

00:08:16 ◼   ► Does the Mini all of a sudden have the best screen ever,

00:08:18 ◼   ► and the iPad, the full-size iPad with Retina

00:08:21 ◼   ► looks bad next to it?

00:08:22 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:08:23 ◼   ► - I don't think it will, though,

00:08:24 ◼   ► that there's this sort of argument that once you're in that range, sure, you're going to

00:08:28 ◼   ► look and you probably hold the bigger device a little further away from your face. But

00:08:33 ◼   ► I don't think they would hesitate. No, the way that they will go retina is exactly the

00:08:36 ◼   ► way they've done right now with all other devices, which is the physical size stays

00:08:40 ◼   ► the same. And the pixels per inch doubles, which means that they'll switch to the exact

00:08:44 ◼   ► same pixels per inch of as the iPhone and iPod touch.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Makes sense. There's, you know, switching to the DPI of the big iPad makes no sense,

00:08:53 ◼   ► then you'd have a different pixel count.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Developers would have to actually resize,

00:09:01 ◼   ► you know, do work on the app.

00:09:03 ◼   ► Right.

00:09:04 ◼   ► Well, that's going to be amazing, then.

00:09:05 ◼   ► That's going to be killer.

00:09:06 ◼   ► Yeah, and then I also kind of wondered,

00:09:10 ◼   ► obviously there's some leap in technology

00:09:13 ◼   ► that let them make it so thin and light.

00:09:15 ◼   ► It's not just that it's smaller,

00:09:17 ◼   ► although that plays a role.

00:09:18 ◼   ► But it's interesting to me,

00:09:19 ◼   ► they did not take that step and make the bigger one

00:09:20 ◼   ► the same kind of whatever that is at the same time, but I guess you know, alternate these

00:09:25 ◼   ► things one year to the next. And yeah, I think that that is a good point. You have a great

00:09:31 ◼   ► list of questions here, Dan, I've thought about a lot of this stuff. I think the explanation

00:09:36 ◼   ► there is the ecosystem surrounding peripherals, which is okay, so a lot of people who've already

00:09:45 ◼   ► bought the iPad three in the seven months where it was available or kind of butthurt

00:09:50 ◼   ► about the fact that, hey, seven months later, or if you bought it, let's say you only

00:09:54 ◼   ► bought it the damn thing in August or something like that, two months later, it's already

00:09:59 ◼   ► been replaced by something twice as fast.

00:10:03 ◼   ► And why would Apple do that, blah, blah, blah.

00:10:06 ◼   ► But the one thing that they haven't done is disrupt any of the people making cases

00:10:11 ◼   ► or covers or anything that is based on the physical dimensions of the device.

00:10:17 ◼   ► Um, true, which there's a lot and that's, you know, Christmas is coming up. And that's

00:10:23 ◼   ► going to be a big time for those things. Right. So I think and I think you'll be able to compare

00:10:29 ◼   ► as we head towards the holidays here and Thanksgiving is ramping up as to which device

00:10:33 ◼   ► has the most peripherals available for it, the full size iPad, or the iPad mini. And I think it's

00:10:39 ◼   ► pretty clear it's going to be the full size iPad. Whereas if the iPad four was thinner, in addition

00:10:44 ◼   ► to just being faster than the iPad 3, it would be stuck in the same boat as the iPad mini,

00:10:49 ◼   ► and there'd be this dearth of peripherals available for it.

00:10:53 ◼   ► That makes total sense. Are you using the smart cover with yours?

00:10:57 ◼   ► I am.

00:10:58 ◼   ► Was it you who said you're just going to toss around in a bag, no cover?

00:11:03 ◼   ► Well, I did write that. It's a little scary, right, the idea that this big screen… When

00:11:09 ◼   ► I put it in my bag, I think I'll keep using the case, but like I had it in my pocket yesterday,

00:11:13 ◼   ► I went to pick up dinner and I just went caseless.

00:11:16 ◼   ► Like it was totally fine.

00:11:17 ◼   ► It almost feels like this cover is almost unnecessary.

00:11:20 ◼   ► It's so, it's not even that heavy or that bulky.

00:11:24 ◼   ► It's just, I don't know.

00:11:27 ◼   ► - I've been using it with the cover and I don't know,

00:11:30 ◼   ► I don't know why.

00:11:31 ◼   ► I'll tell you what, one reason why is that I do tend to,

00:11:35 ◼   ► I tend to treat the loaner units from Apple

00:11:38 ◼   ► even more carefully than I treat the ones

00:11:40 ◼   ► that I've bought with my own money.

00:11:41 ◼   ► because I don't know, it's like the Catholic guilt in me

00:11:46 ◼   ► that I would feel absolutely horrible

00:11:48 ◼   ► if I send this thing back to them in a week or two

00:11:51 ◼   ► and it had like scratches on the glass.

00:11:53 ◼   ► And you know what I mean?

00:11:53 ◼   ► And I don't even know why that is because I know,

00:11:55 ◼   ► it's not like I think that when you send these review units

00:11:57 ◼   ► back to Apple that poor little Apple needs to,

00:12:00 ◼   ► they really need every single one of these minis.

00:12:03 ◼   ► - It goes right to the Apple store,

00:12:05 ◼   ► right under the sales shelf.

00:12:07 ◼   ► - But I don't know, it's just the way I am is if I've got,

00:12:11 ◼   ► I always treat somebody else's thing in my possession better than I would even treat

00:12:15 ◼   ► my own. That's just how I was brought up. If you've borrowed something from somebody,

00:12:19 ◼   ► you'd really need to give it back to them in the exact condition that they gave it to

00:12:22 ◼   ► you, whether it's your pal Dan who gave it to you or whether it's Apple, the $400 gazillion

00:12:28 ◼   ► corporation. You treat other people's stuff with respect. So I keep the cover on it.

00:12:33 ◼   ► But I do have to admit, though, that putting the cover on it does make me feel, though,

00:12:36 ◼   ► that I'm missing out on the thinness, right, this remarkable thinness of it.

00:12:39 ◼   ► - And it's not as dramatic as the first iPad

00:12:42 ◼   ► with that huge neoprene wetsuit, but it's still.

00:12:46 ◼   ► - And it's the same reason that I have never

00:12:49 ◼   ► put my iPhones in a case, because I feel like--

00:12:51 ◼   ► - Same here, yeah.

00:12:52 ◼   ► And I almost think of this thing as more of like

00:12:54 ◼   ► a big iPhone than a laptop or something like that.

00:12:58 ◼   ► But we'll see, we'll see how it plays out.

00:13:01 ◼   ► I obviously don't want the screen to scratch,

00:13:03 ◼   ► that would be, or at least too much.

00:13:06 ◼   ► The back is already a little scratched, but that's okay.

00:13:09 ◼   ► I do think that the cover on this new smart cover folds over a little better than the

00:13:14 ◼   ► original one does.

00:13:15 ◼   ► But it's still…

00:13:16 ◼   ► Especially on the new iPad 3/4, like that thing, mine falls off constant.

00:13:23 ◼   ► I still feel though that when you have it folded over, that last panel, it's a little

00:13:28 ◼   ► flippy-floppy.

00:13:29 ◼   ► And when you're just sitting there reading something long for a long stretch holding

00:13:34 ◼   ► the thing in your hand, it's better without a cover on.

00:13:37 ◼   ► Definitely.

00:13:39 ◼   ► I did figure it out. This took me forever. I don't know why. It's one of those things

00:13:43 ◼   ► that once you think about it, it seems very obvious. But it took me forever to figure

00:13:47 ◼   ► this out was when the iPad first came out, I was very confused why they put the volume

00:13:53 ◼   ► and mute toggle on the other side as opposed to making it like a big iPhone and putting

00:13:59 ◼   ► them on the left. Of course, it's because when you put a cover on this thing, the spine

00:14:03 ◼   ► is on the left and the buttons would be covered up.

00:14:06 ◼   ► Yeah, you want it almost has those book style covers which I I think they make for the phone

00:14:12 ◼   ► But I wouldn't but then that makes me wonder why they didn't why they didn't put those buttons on the right side of the iPhone

00:14:18 ◼   ► to start hmm, I

00:14:20 ◼   ► Don't know, you know what I bet there's an answer to that question though. I'm I'll bet there is too. I don't know

00:14:26 ◼   ► But how do you think iOS shot, you know, does it come through on this thing it some of the like the home screen icons

00:14:35 ◼   ► they feel like they could be a little bigger. But it seems like they've tried not to disturb

00:14:40 ◼   ► the iPad flavor of iOS at all. It is pixel for pixel exactly the same. Like I don't think I

00:14:48 ◼   ► honestly I haven't double checked with any of my developer friends. I don't even know if there is

00:14:53 ◼   ► any supported way for an app to figure out that it's running on an iPad mini. You know that all

00:15:00 ◼   ► All the app knows is that the screen is 1024 by 768.

00:15:04 ◼   ► And the guidelines from Apple about laying stuff out

00:15:07 ◼   ► is all about these points and that it's all the same.

00:15:10 ◼   ► I really don't think Apple wants anybody

00:15:12 ◼   ► to do anything different for the Mini

00:15:15 ◼   ► than for the full-size iPad.

00:15:17 ◼   ► - I think early on, I think you're right,

00:15:19 ◼   ► I think Marco Arment was tweeting

00:15:21 ◼   ► about trying to reverse engineer how to make that work.

00:15:25 ◼   ► It's something like, does not have retina,

00:15:28 ◼   ► something about the resolution and there was some other feature that yeah and

00:15:33 ◼   ► maybe like something about the CPU performance or something I don't know

00:15:37 ◼   ► there must be some there's probably some way that you can figure it out just by

00:15:40 ◼   ► like deduction that if this and this and this then it has to be a mini it's not

00:15:44 ◼   ► the iPad 2 and I could see you know an insta paper is a perfect app example

00:15:50 ◼   ► where maybe the default font size should be a little bigger in terms of actual

00:15:57 ◼   ► points on the mini than on the full-size iPad for a couple of reasons.

00:16:02 ◼   ► A, the actual physical size of the screen, and then B, the fact that it's not retina

00:16:07 ◼   ► means that you kind of want fonts to be a little bigger.

00:16:10 ◼   ► So I could see that, but it seems like Apple doesn't want you to do that, and they haven't

00:16:14 ◼   ► done anything like that.

00:16:16 ◼   ► The home screen, I think, is exactly the same.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Yep.

00:16:19 ◼   ► Yeah, it works, though.

00:16:24 ◼   ► Another thing I want to ask you about, if you don't mind, is some of the changes that

00:16:31 ◼   ► you might anticipate that the new crew at Apple might put into iOS. One of the things

00:16:39 ◼   ► I was thinking, is there any low-hanging fruit in terms of either where the iOS, where the

00:16:46 ◼   ► OS itself goes, or not so much the whole, "Oh, are they going to de-skew a morph the

00:16:53 ◼   ► de-skew-omorph the apps or anything like that, but would you expect that the experience itself

00:16:59 ◼   ► is going to change dramatically in the next few years, or is it going to stay largely the same?

00:17:04 ◼   ► Dave: I really don't know. I can see it both ways. My first instinct is to say I don't think it's

00:17:10 ◼   ► going to change at all. I think that they've defined what this is. People are very comfortable

00:17:14 ◼   ► with it. I think the reason that people are so happy switching to it in droves, and clearly,

00:17:20 ◼   ► if you just look at the raw numbers, they're getting people who weren't previously Apple

00:17:26 ◼   ► computer customers. They're getting people who are using Windows. I think it's this simplicity

00:17:34 ◼   ► of experience that there just doesn't seem to be much that's hidden from you. I don't

00:17:40 ◼   ► know how that could change very much. It just doesn't seem like there is much to change.

00:17:46 ◼   ► - It seems like people have seen how radically Android

00:17:50 ◼   ► has had to change itself just to make itself

00:17:52 ◼   ► more useful and less horrible.

00:17:55 ◼   ► But it seems like they want to force that notion

00:18:00 ◼   ► of radical change onto Apple and iOS,

00:18:03 ◼   ► which if you've been using a Mac for the last 20 years,

00:18:07 ◼   ► there really isn't that much too different.

00:18:10 ◼   ► There's the menu at the top, there's folders,

00:18:14 ◼   ► there's Windows and that kind of stuff.

00:18:17 ◼   ► It just seems like expecting that sort of radical change

00:18:19 ◼   ► in the general area of the operating system

00:18:23 ◼   ► doesn't make sense.

00:18:24 ◼   ► - No, I don't think so either.

00:18:25 ◼   ► And I also think that it really does matter

00:18:28 ◼   ► what you start with conceptually as you evolve,

00:18:31 ◼   ► because it's really hard to add things later on.

00:18:35 ◼   ► And my favorite example of this,

00:18:36 ◼   ► and I've talked about this, I don't know how long ago,

00:18:39 ◼   ► but I know it was on the talk show.

00:18:43 ◼   ► But my favorite example of that is the stuff that they introduced in Lion.

00:18:49 ◼   ► I think it was Lion when they introduced Launchpad and Mission Control in Mac OS X.

00:18:55 ◼   ► Do you use any of that stuff?

00:18:58 ◼   ► No, not really.

00:18:59 ◼   ► Yeah, me neither.

00:19:00 ◼   ► And I think a big part of it is that they weren't there from the beginning and they're

00:19:07 ◼   ► tacked on.

00:19:08 ◼   ► so they're sort of outside the original concept of what you're going to have and they just

00:19:13 ◼   ► don't fit. And I'll go back further to spaces and I think now they don't really talk about

00:19:18 ◼   ► spaces that much. They kind of consider that part of mission control. But spaces in Mac OS

00:19:25 ◼   ► 10 just have never worked as well as I think they do on other GUI systems that are designed

00:19:33 ◼   ► from the get go to have multiple desktops. It just is never seems right to me what you

00:19:38 ◼   ► know, is it the whole app is in this thing? Is it just the window? Just all seems kind

00:19:42 ◼   ► of tacked on. And I'm not saying that it was a mistake to add it, but I'm saying it just

00:19:46 ◼   ► shows how difficult it is to add conceptual level additions and changes to something once

00:19:51 ◼   ► it's been set. And I feel like iOS is even simpler than the original Mac. It's just this

00:19:56 ◼   ► basic idea of, you know, two, there's really just two levels.

00:20:02 ◼   ► There's the home screen, which is a list of apps, and then you're in an app and the app

00:20:06 ◼   ► gets the whole screen.

00:20:07 ◼   ► And if you want to go back, you hit this big button at the bottom, and that's it.

00:20:11 ◼   ► And there's a few exceptions to that.

00:20:12 ◼   ► You know, there's the, when you're on the home, you go to the left of the first home

00:20:17 ◼   ► screen and there's that spotlight search, which doesn't really, it's sort of outside

00:20:21 ◼   ► those simple, simple rules of engagement.

00:20:24 ◼   ► Where are you when you're doing that?

00:20:26 ◼   ► But it doesn't seem to be confusing.

00:20:31 ◼   ► It's worth stretching the rules of the thing.

00:20:33 ◼   ► Siri is outside this simple rule that you're either at the home screen or in an app.

00:20:41 ◼   ► But it's almost like an entirely separate mode to using your phone.

00:20:46 ◼   ► I just don't see them changing that very much.

00:20:49 ◼   ► And eventually it will get old.

00:20:50 ◼   ► I don't know how long, though.

00:20:51 ◼   ► I think it's got a lot of legs in front of it.

00:20:54 ◼   ► I think that's right.

00:20:57 ◼   ► One thing that I think about because it's kind of a personal problem in my house is

00:21:02 ◼   ► sharing these things.

00:21:05 ◼   ► Whether that's sharing an iPad that's kind of been retired and is now like the house

00:21:10 ◼   ► iPad, and my wife and I have different email accounts and different accounts for other

00:21:18 ◼   ► and then even just syncing multiple iPhones

00:21:23 ◼   ► and iPads to the same Mac, which I guess iCloud kind of,

00:21:30 ◼   ► I think this iPad is the first thing that I'm just

00:21:33 ◼   ► never gonna sync to my Mac.

00:21:35 ◼   ► I set it up completely from scratch on iCloud

00:21:38 ◼   ► and it's never been plugged into a Mac

00:21:40 ◼   ► and I think I never will plug it into a Mac.

00:21:42 ◼   ► But even like we got iPhone 5s, I don't know,

00:21:46 ◼   ► a month ago or so, and just trying to restore from backup

00:21:51 ◼   ► off of the iTunes app on the Mac.

00:21:55 ◼   ► Like, half of my apps on my phone were somehow

00:21:59 ◼   ► registered to my wife's iTunes account, and vice versa.

00:22:03 ◼   ► So every time we try to upgrade apps,

00:22:06 ◼   ► we have to delete half of them and reinstall them

00:22:09 ◼   ► from scratch with the right iTunes account.

00:22:11 ◼   ► And this is just like, I don't think I did anything wrong.

00:22:15 ◼   ► I'm kind of a nerd setting these things up,

00:22:17 ◼   ► but there doesn't seem to have been much thought

00:22:21 ◼   ► put into the idea of sharing these things

00:22:24 ◼   ► and just this whole idea of an iTunes household.

00:22:27 ◼   ► Like, my iTunes match account is sitting on my iMac

00:22:31 ◼   ► with the whole family's music hooked up to it,

00:22:34 ◼   ► yet I don't even know if I can have someone else's iPad

00:22:38 ◼   ► or iPhone sync to that.

00:22:40 ◼   ► And it's not like they're doing this,

00:22:43 ◼   ► It's not like they're just not thinking about it at all, but I think that as more families

00:22:48 ◼   ► have multiple iOS devices and maybe fewer Macs going forward, I think more thought could

00:22:54 ◼   ► be put into this and hopefully –

00:22:56 ◼   ► I think it's a bunch of –

00:22:58 ◼   ► – do that.

00:22:59 ◼   ► I think it's a very hard problem to solve, but I do – I agree though that you're

00:23:02 ◼   ► onto something there.

00:23:03 ◼   ► That to me – and that would be the biggest change, and it's not the sort of thing that

00:23:07 ◼   ► like people who are looking for, "Wow, as soon as I booted up this new iPhone from 2013,

00:23:13 ◼   ► it looks totally different."

00:23:15 ◼   ► You're not going to get that.

00:23:16 ◼   ► But I feel like a major thing that they could work on is, "Look, here's a brand new iPhone.

00:23:23 ◼   ► Here's my iTunes email address.

00:23:26 ◼   ► Here's my password.

00:23:27 ◼   ► Now make it exactly like my old one was and do it fast."

00:23:32 ◼   ► I feel like it's gotten better and better, especially with iCloud, but it is nowhere

00:23:37 ◼   ► near good enough, in my opinion.

00:23:41 ◼   ► I think it should be like when I back up my Mac with SuperDuper, the backup drive is just

00:23:46 ◼   ► a clone of my startup drive.

00:23:49 ◼   ► If I unmount my actual startup drive and instead mount from my SuperDuper clone, my Mac looks

00:23:57 ◼   ► exactly like it was when I backed it up.

00:24:00 ◼   ► I think they don't have that yet with iOS.

00:24:07 ◼   ► I don't see what the argument is why they shouldn't.

00:24:11 ◼   ► Like you said, sometimes you restore from backup and it's like half your apps are there

00:24:15 ◼   ► and half aren't.

00:24:16 ◼   ► And…

00:24:17 ◼   ► Yeah, some weird ones would show up where they'd just be not registered to the right

00:24:22 ◼   ► iTunes account.

00:24:25 ◼   ► The saying with Apple was always, "It just works."

00:24:29 ◼   ► And that's still true for the most part, but sometimes it doesn't work at all and it's

00:24:33 ◼   ► infuriating.

00:24:34 ◼   ► But…

00:24:35 ◼   ► It just isn't that easy to get back to where you were.

00:24:37 ◼   ► It's good that you have these iCloud backups, but it just doesn't seem…

00:24:40 ◼   ► Right.

00:24:41 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:24:42 ◼   ► And it doesn't have all your passwords.

00:24:44 ◼   ► It's weird.

00:24:45 ◼   ► Some of the passwords are there and some aren't.

00:24:48 ◼   ► And I don't quite get it.

00:24:49 ◼   ► There's not quite a logic or a rhyme and reason to it.

00:24:52 ◼   ► And I guess I run into this more often than most people because I get these review units

00:24:57 ◼   ► or I buy one of everything.

00:24:59 ◼   ► And so it feels like every couple of months, I'm setting up a new iPad, and I want all

00:25:03 ◼   ► my stuff over, and it just always seems like it takes longer and more steps than it should.

00:25:11 ◼   ► That's actually an opportunity for Microsoft in this space, as they're trying to gain traction

00:25:18 ◼   ► both in the phone and tablet market at the same time, is that as they're pushing Windows

00:25:24 ◼   ► phone eight and Windows eight for for touch devices. They're,

00:25:31 ◼   ► they're launching now in this era of where everybody sort of

00:25:35 ◼   ► expects everything to back up and restore to the cloud. And

00:25:39 ◼   ► and they've got their, you know, whatever they call Windows Live

00:25:42 ◼   ► API's, whatever they call it, but they have these API's that

00:25:45 ◼   ► app developers for Windows Phone and Windows can just assume are

00:25:49 ◼   ► there and assume are going to work for storing data and progress and stuff like that. And

00:25:59 ◼   ► there's a very, you know, and we'll see how it works as these devices roll out and people

00:26:03 ◼   ► use them. But as the way I understand it, it should be a lot more seamless on Windows.

00:26:08 ◼   ► Like if you start playing a game on a Windows phone, and you get a new phone, and you log

00:26:16 ◼   ► in with your Windows ID, and you launch that game, it, it almost certainly should have

00:26:23 ◼   ► everything you've done in all of your saved levels, everything you've done, the app doesn't

00:26:27 ◼   ► have to do anything special to do that. It's like if it's just storing the data the way

00:26:31 ◼   ► it's supposed to be storing the data, it's going into your Windows Live account. And

00:26:34 ◼   ► I feel like iOS is behind in that regard. And I feel like part of it is that it launched

00:26:39 ◼   ► in this, you know, in 2007, with the original iPhone, in this era that was still like the

00:26:43 ◼   ► the tail end of the syncing devices to your Mac or PC era, as opposed to assuming that

00:26:51 ◼   ► the cloud is there.

00:26:56 ◼   ► It's funny how Microsoft has long had this advantage of such a huge footprint with Windows.

00:27:04 ◼   ► And I always thought that this would be just a huge advantage, especially over Apple and

00:27:11 ◼   ► mobile because they already have all your stuff.

00:27:15 ◼   ► And they often have your email with Hotmail.

00:27:17 ◼   ► And increasingly they have your recreation with the Xbox.

00:27:21 ◼   ► And they just never really took advantage of that.

00:27:25 ◼   ► You know, part of it was always that the Windows mobile

00:27:27 ◼   ► software was just five years behind everyone else's.

00:27:31 ◼   ► But, and now this is a real opportunity for them

00:27:34 ◼   ► to kind of reset that.

00:27:36 ◼   ► I just don't know if they will once again.

00:27:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

00:27:40 ◼   ► There's definitely an opportunity for them though.

00:27:42 ◼   ► And I feel like it's a much better and deeper.

00:27:45 ◼   ► I'm not saying that it doesn't resonate instantly.

00:27:49 ◼   ► It seems to me like they're trying to sell Surface as, "Look, this thing has a keyboard

00:27:52 ◼   ► that it's meant to work with.

00:27:54 ◼   ► If you wish your iPad had a keyboard, you should get this."

00:27:56 ◼   ► And I can see how that resonates.

00:27:58 ◼   ► And I see people in airports with their iPads cherry-rigged with these crazy iPad keyboard

00:28:07 ◼   ► hardware stuff.

00:28:08 ◼   ► have you bought a surface? No, I did not buy one. I don't think I'm going to I think I've

00:28:14 ◼   ► seen enough to sort of judge it. And, and I like I if I bought it, I think I don't think

00:28:20 ◼   ► I'd ever really use it. I'm definitely curious. And you know, but I think an hour playing

00:28:24 ◼   ► with it was enough for me. But I do. I just feel like conceptually, they've got something

00:28:30 ◼   ► where the whole thing is cloud based, that they've got this sort of they've got a middle

00:28:35 ◼   ► ground between Apple and Google, where Google, everything's cloud-based, but primarily through

00:28:39 ◼   ► the web, you know, that people use in Gmail through a web browser. And Apple has the apps,

00:28:45 ◼   ► the local apps, you know, and all the advantages of native apps, but they don't really have

00:28:50 ◼   ► the cloud thing. I feel like there's a middle ground there for Windows, where you get native

00:28:55 ◼   ► apps with ubiquitous cloud storage.

00:28:59 ◼   ► And then everything syncs together.

00:29:04 ◼   ► In theory.

00:29:05 ◼   ► In theory.

00:29:06 ◼   ► It's one of those things where if they had all of this four years ago, for example, I

00:29:12 ◼   ► think a lot of people would be really, really impressed with it.

00:29:16 ◼   ► And I would totally have bought a Surface four or five years ago, but every time it

00:29:22 ◼   ► seems like they're playing catch up here, like when they did the Zune, it was not a

00:29:27 ◼   ► bad idea but they copied the wrong iPod you know they did by the time the zoom

00:29:32 ◼   ► came out everyone was onto the mini and the nano and they had copied the you

00:29:37 ◼   ► know basically last year's iPod and and this seems like the surface is is almost

00:29:42 ◼   ► like last year's iPad and that they're not really ahead of the game I the first

00:29:47 ◼   ► kind of PDA I bought was was the palm 5 but then not not too long after that I

00:29:56 ◼   ► I bought one of those Windows CE Dell Axims.

00:30:00 ◼   ► - I remember that.

00:30:02 ◼   ► - And it was a really, really, really impressive

00:30:06 ◼   ► tiny little piece of hardware.

00:30:07 ◼   ► And I was all Mac at that point.

00:30:11 ◼   ► I had never owned a Windows computer,

00:30:13 ◼   ► but I was like, "Wow, this is really cool.

00:30:15 ◼   ► "Microsoft has something here that's really promising."

00:30:18 ◼   ► And since then, until now, this is the first time

00:30:22 ◼   ► with Surface that I've even thought for a second

00:30:27 ◼   ► about buying some sort of Windows-related portable thing.

00:30:31 ◼   ► But I tried it out too.

00:30:34 ◼   ► They have these pop-up stores everywhere,

00:30:35 ◼   ► and I went to one in Manhattan,

00:30:37 ◼   ► and played with it for a few minutes,

00:30:39 ◼   ► and right away I was like, "Oh, okay."

00:30:42 ◼   ► It's not 10 times better than the iPad or whatever,

00:30:45 ◼   ► so it's going to be hard to get people

00:30:49 ◼   ► who have at least experienced iOS to jump on that one.

00:30:53 ◼   ► - All right, let's pick this up

00:30:54 ◼   ► on the flip side of the sponsor, Reed.

00:30:56 ◼   ► But let me tell you about our first sponsor.

00:30:58 ◼   ► Our first sponsor is Boss Jock Studio, B-O-S-S-J-O-C-K.

00:31:03 ◼   ► It's a podcasting app for iOS,

00:31:08 ◼   ► and it's kind of blew me away watching the movies.

00:31:11 ◼   ► It's an app for making your own podcast

00:31:16 ◼   ► right from your iPhone, no PC needed,

00:31:19 ◼   ► uh...

00:31:20 ◼   ► and it's kind of amazing

00:31:21 ◼   ► uh... they've got these demo videos you gotta seem to believe in c_l_ how cool

00:31:25 ◼   ► this is

00:31:27 ◼   ► they're sponsoring a right now because this is the month now these are these

00:31:29 ◼   ► these are hashtags that i'm uh... you know i'm not really a big hashtag user

00:31:33 ◼   ► but it's uh...

00:31:34 ◼   ► pat pound sign audio mo

00:31:37 ◼   ► pound sign nap pod

00:31:39 ◼   ► pomo

00:31:40 ◼   ► and that's like uh... national podcast uh... month

00:31:45 ◼   ► and what it means that audio producers across the world are publishing every

00:31:48 ◼   ► day this month and then they're tweeting their podcasts with these tags. You can do it all

00:31:53 ◼   ► right from your iPhone. No post-production necessary. They've got dynamics processing,

00:32:01 ◼   ► compression and limiting. It's applied to the mic and the mix right as you do it for

00:32:06 ◼   ► loud level audio. Anybody who's done podcasting knows that getting levels right on the audio

00:32:11 ◼   ► is really half the game. And they've got buttons for all this stuff that you can set up in

00:32:17 ◼   ► advance with intro and outro bumpers background music on the fly so you just

00:32:23 ◼   ► you can load music from your music library you can hook it up with your

00:32:27 ◼   ► Dropbox account and load music from your Dropbox account you can even paste music

00:32:31 ◼   ► from other music apps if you copy and then switch over to boss jock studio you

00:32:36 ◼   ► can paste it in so you have these buttons loaded up with with audio that

00:32:40 ◼   ► you can as you're doing the show if you've got intro and outro music or

00:32:46 ◼   ► bumpers or stuff like that you just do it all on the fly right from the phone

00:32:49 ◼   ► it's kind of amazing it exports anywhere you'd want to go it exports via FTP it

00:32:56 ◼   ► exports to Dropbox it exports to SoundCloud iTunes you can send it over

00:33:02 ◼   ► Wi-Fi you can do iTunes sharing you can email any of this standard sharing stuff

00:33:07 ◼   ► from iOS format you can encode to just about any format you'd want to mp3 m4a

00:33:13 ◼   ► A, WAV files, AIFF files. It works with external mics. Did you know this? I didn't even know

00:33:20 ◼   ► that there were extra, you know, like professional quality external mics for iOS, but there are

00:33:24 ◼   ► there's the Apogee mic, the IK multimedia, iRig mic cast, and that Blue Miki. All of

00:33:32 ◼   ► them work just great with this. It's got full, this is fantastic, full voiceover compatibility

00:33:38 ◼   ► for visually impaired producers. And I can totally see and this gets right back to that

00:33:43 ◼   ► whole argument about creation versus consumption on iOS devices, how an iOS device would be

00:33:49 ◼   ► a vastly superior computer to produce a podcast for if you were visually impaired than a Mac,

00:33:55 ◼   ► you know, with voiceover compatibility like Boss Jock has.

00:34:00 ◼   ► So right now, in the App Store, you can go, you can buy it. It's the iPhone iPod Touch

00:34:05 ◼   ► version. It's out right now. Now, they're working on an update. It's going to be free.

00:34:08 ◼   ► It's gonna be a free update with universal iPad and iPhone 5 update. It's coming very very soon

00:34:14 ◼   ► It's gonna be great on the iPad mini

00:34:16 ◼   ► So check it out now in action you can go to boss jock studio dot-com

00:34:22 ◼   ► They've got great videos that show you how it works. You're gonna be blown away

00:34:26 ◼   ► Check them out boss jock studio

00:34:29 ◼   ► This is one of those things where?

00:34:32 ◼   ► The kids these days are so lucky man. Like when I was in whatever middle school or high school or something

00:34:39 ◼   ► I had a folder full of WAV files and I was trying to do like a pod like like a radio show in the basement

00:34:45 ◼   ► You know and what I guess would now be a podcast and I had none of this stuff, right?

00:34:50 ◼   ► You know, this is just so cool

00:34:52 ◼   ► I had the exact same thought where if you want to make a podcast and have music come in and out and it's like now

00:34:56 ◼   ► You just load it. It's so stupid easy with this app. It's ridiculous

00:35:00 ◼   ► And I don't even know, again, when I was a teenager, I don't even know where I would

00:35:05 ◼   ► have even gotten started trying to fade out music and have my voice come up over it.

00:35:10 ◼   ► It would have been ridiculous.

00:35:12 ◼   ► I probably would have just had two tape decks playing side by side and recording onto a

00:35:16 ◼   ► third.

00:35:17 ◼   ► I used to do some real nerd stuff like doing play-by-play for a baseball game with a microphone

00:35:27 ◼   ► and headphones on.

00:35:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:29 ◼   ► But it's amazing. I'm just and you know, it really is it's they it's turnkey publishing

00:35:34 ◼   ► I mean, I don't want to you know sponsor is over but it really is that you do the whole thing right from your iPhone

00:35:38 ◼   ► Just that there's no post-processing necessary. You do the whole thing. Everything's leveled. Everything's blended together

00:35:43 ◼   ► Just spits it right out into your Dropbox and you're done. It's crazy

00:35:47 ◼   ► Absolutely crazy, so we're talking about the surface

00:35:52 ◼   ► and you know as it ties and relates, I mean, it's just no way not to compare it to

00:35:59 ◼   ► to iOS and to to the iPad and I agree I've seen a couple people this week as

00:36:04 ◼   ► You know people start getting their minis who've said the same thing. You just said which is that

00:36:09 ◼   ► boy, it really feels like

00:36:11 ◼   ► Apple just yinged and Microsoft finally yanked, you know that they've you know, they've shipped like a

00:36:18 ◼   ► 2011 iPad competitor

00:36:20 ◼   ► Which is the same problem palm had or HP or whatever it was

00:36:27 ◼   ► You know, they're there the what's the skating toward where the puck used to be right kind of situation but

00:36:33 ◼   ► Maybe that's okay. I mean there's still this concept of

00:36:38 ◼   ► Using office on this thing that I just I don't get it at all. Like, you know

00:36:44 ◼   ► maybe

00:36:46 ◼   ► Maybe I've been publishing on the web too long and I haven't used a word doc in a long time

00:36:50 ◼   ► But it's just the idea that these thin tablets which are you know?

00:36:56 ◼   ► kind of almost like a recreation device to a lot of people.

00:36:59 ◼   ► They're like, "Oh, this is fun.

00:37:00 ◼   ► "I don't have to use this thing for work."

00:37:03 ◼   ► The idea that all of a sudden you're gonna wanna go

00:37:05 ◼   ► and do an Excel model on this,

00:37:09 ◼   ► to me that just doesn't make any sense.

00:37:11 ◼   ► And I've tried.

00:37:12 ◼   ► I've downloaded pages and numbers and Keynote,

00:37:16 ◼   ► and I use them all on, I don't use pages.

00:37:18 ◼   ► I use numbers all the time and Keynote all the time

00:37:22 ◼   ► on my Mac, and it's great.

00:37:25 ◼   ► but I just, I've never thought to spend any time with them

00:37:30 ◼   ► on an iPad, it just doesn't make any sense to me.

00:37:32 ◼   ► So, I don't know, I think if anything,

00:37:35 ◼   ► some of the entertainment stuff that Microsoft has

00:37:39 ◼   ► is more attractive than the Office stuff.

00:37:42 ◼   ► Like if you could tell anyone with an Xbox

00:37:44 ◼   ► that they could play either part of their game

00:37:47 ◼   ► or even the full version of the game,

00:37:51 ◼   ► you know, I don't know how to do the controller,

00:37:53 ◼   ► but if you could do something on a surface,

00:37:57 ◼   ► to me that's a lot more interesting than,

00:38:00 ◼   ► hey, this thing runs Office.

00:38:02 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:38:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think it's telling that

00:38:05 ◼   ► there's always been the,

00:38:08 ◼   ► well, what are you gonna do on it?

00:38:10 ◼   ► Question about the iPad, right?

00:38:13 ◼   ► If, you know, and it was really half,

00:38:16 ◼   ► it was really just about the whole presentation

00:38:18 ◼   ► in 2010 when Steve Jobs debuted it,

00:38:21 ◼   ► is, you know, this, you know, the slide had a, you know, there's a phone on one side,

00:38:24 ◼   ► there's a MacBook on the other, is there room in the middle for something in here? And if

00:38:29 ◼   ► so, the only reason anybody's going to buy it is if that stuff you can do here in the

00:38:33 ◼   ► middle is better than doing it anywhere else. And there, you know, and I don't think it's

00:38:40 ◼   ► a coincidence that the, you know, they launched with these iPad versions of the off, you know,

00:38:46 ◼   ► Apple's Office apps of pages, keynote and numbers and nobody,

00:38:50 ◼   ► you know, it just doesn't seem like any of those three apps. I

00:38:53 ◼   ► mean, I know they're still top sellers. But I just don't hear

00:38:57 ◼   ► people saying, Yeah, that's what I love doing on my iPad. And I

00:39:00 ◼   ► can't say that like looking over people's shoulders and airports

00:39:02 ◼   ► and coffee shops that I see people doing numbers spreadsheets

00:39:05 ◼   ► on their iPad that often. I think they were like it was sort

00:39:08 ◼   ► of a bad guess. I think it's good that those apps exist. And

00:39:12 ◼   ► I do use them especially now with iCloud where I can store

00:39:15 ◼   ► like these spreadsheets. Like I keep my sponsorship schedules in a numbers spreadsheet. And I

00:39:19 ◼   ► update it almost all the time from my Mac. But it's fantastic if somebody sends me an

00:39:25 ◼   ► email and I can check, I can just open it up on my iPhone and check and I can see it.

00:39:31 ◼   ► And if I need to make a change or something like that, I can do it. But it always feels

00:39:35 ◼   ► real finicky.

00:39:37 ◼   ► It seems like they did it as an insurance policy. It took up a good chunk of the keynote

00:39:44 ◼   ► and it was Apple's way of saying,

00:39:46 ◼   ► hey, you can feel comfortable that these apps exist.

00:39:50 ◼   ► They still sell like crazy,

00:39:51 ◼   ► like they're always near the top of the top grossing list,

00:39:54 ◼   ► so people kind of buy that to feel comfortable

00:39:56 ◼   ► that they have them.

00:39:57 ◼   ► It's sort of, I think, the same way

00:40:00 ◼   ► that they built that Texas Hold'em game

00:40:03 ◼   ► when the App Store first launched.

00:40:05 ◼   ► It was the, we don't know if anyone's gonna make

00:40:08 ◼   ► a lot of good games for these things,

00:40:09 ◼   ► so at least we got one.

00:40:12 ◼   ► And then they've seen how usage hasn't really gone that way.

00:40:17 ◼   ► I think it's telling that they haven't

00:40:19 ◼   ► really updated them at all.

00:40:22 ◼   ► Well, they haven't for the Mac either, I guess, but.

00:40:24 ◼   ► - I think that it's, I think there's still potential there,

00:40:27 ◼   ► but I do think a big part of the problem,

00:40:28 ◼   ► and numbers to me is the biggest example,

00:40:30 ◼   ► is that a spreadsheet that's optimized for the iPad,

00:40:33 ◼   ► like that it was just iPad only,

00:40:35 ◼   ► and didn't even have a Mac or Windows counterpart,

00:40:37 ◼   ► I think would be a lot different

00:40:39 ◼   ► than what we've got with numbers.

00:40:41 ◼   ► Like where numbers to me is it's all trying to maintain the fidelity of these spreadsheets

00:40:45 ◼   ► you make on your Mac where you can make the cells real small and you've got this real

00:40:49 ◼   ► precise mouse pointer and for most people a much bigger screen than 10 inches.

00:40:57 ◼   ► Whereas I feel like a really truly native iPad spreadsheet app would have much bigger

00:41:03 ◼   ► finger friendly cells and interface.

00:41:08 ◼   ► But I don't even think the whole act of spread-sheeting

00:41:10 ◼   ► really is conducive to touch.

00:41:11 ◼   ► I mean, it's a real data processing intensive thing.

00:41:15 ◼   ► - Whereas the, like, you always say,

00:41:19 ◼   ► oh, Microsoft would appeal to the enterprise,

00:41:21 ◼   ► and that was always the thing that RIM

00:41:23 ◼   ► was supposedly gonna be good at too.

00:41:25 ◼   ► But in touch, it seems like the enterprise

00:41:27 ◼   ► is not the same thing as it is in PCs.

00:41:30 ◼   ► Like, in PCs, it's this idea of a huge office

00:41:33 ◼   ► with 500 Dell towers,

00:41:38 ◼   ► stacked up in it.

00:41:39 ◼   ► In touch, it seems like the enterprise is this

00:41:41 ◼   ► tablets everywhere in places that there were

00:41:44 ◼   ► never computers before.

00:41:46 ◼   ► I just got coffee on the way home before the show,

00:41:49 ◼   ► and of course the cash register at almost all the

00:41:53 ◼   ► coffee shops that I've been to in the last few months,

00:41:55 ◼   ► they're all iPads.

00:41:57 ◼   ► And that's kind of the new enterprise.

00:41:59 ◼   ► And it doesn't seem like Microsoft,

00:42:02 ◼   ► of course I haven't done a lot of research here,

00:42:04 ◼   ► doesn't seem like they have a big plan for that.

00:42:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, I just don't, I don't know.

00:42:12 ◼   ► I feel like that they're trying to maintain

00:42:15 ◼   ► a connection with the past that they anticipate

00:42:18 ◼   ► being there forever that isn't going to be.

00:42:21 ◼   ► - By the way, that's why I think they're still

00:42:23 ◼   ► doing the iPad too, which is these, you know,

00:42:26 ◼   ► the iPad as display, as signage and/or cafe cash register.

00:42:33 ◼   ► - Right, you don't need to spend the money on retina.

00:42:35 ◼   ► - Right, who needs retina when it's some kid's

00:42:37 ◼   ► gonna spill soda on it or something.

00:42:40 ◼   ► - I mean, I don't have sales numbers.

00:42:41 ◼   ► Apple never breaks that stuff down,

00:42:43 ◼   ► and even privately, whoever the people are

00:42:45 ◼   ► who know exactly which iPads have sold,

00:42:48 ◼   ► they're not gonna tell me.

00:42:51 ◼   ► But just offhandedly and just in raw numbers, though,

00:42:56 ◼   ► I've been told that, yeah,

00:42:58 ◼   ► the iPad 2 definitely has sold well.

00:43:00 ◼   ► And Horace Dedue has figured out, I don't even, you know, the way he's, the guy's like

00:43:06 ◼   ► a wizard with numbers, but he's figured out that the average revenue per iPad has come

00:43:12 ◼   ► down pretty significantly in the last seven months.

00:43:15 ◼   ► And that the only possible explanation for that is that the $399 iPad 2 was selling very

00:43:20 ◼   ► well.

00:43:21 ◼   ► Because there's no other way that, because the prices didn't change otherwise.

00:43:25 ◼   ► the only way that the average revenue per iPad

00:43:29 ◼   ► would have come down is if that $399 iPad sold really well.

00:43:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I actually have the number somewhere.

00:43:38 ◼   ► Not in front of me, nevermind.

00:43:40 ◼   ► No, it's Mac plus iPad, so that doesn't tell us anything.

00:43:44 ◼   ► No, yeah, I agree.

00:43:46 ◼   ► And that's where I think this 330 iPad Mini,

00:43:50 ◼   ► yeah, it's not 200 bucks,

00:43:54 ◼   ► but it's also not 500 bucks.

00:43:56 ◼   ► - And it's way too easy, even for the reasonable,

00:44:02 ◼   ► the smart, handsome guys like me and you, Dan.

00:44:05 ◼   ► It's easy for us to get caught up

00:44:06 ◼   ► in what's going on right now

00:44:09 ◼   ► and consider the long term to be the end of this quarter.

00:44:12 ◼   ► Whereas if you just look just one year out

00:44:15 ◼   ► and two or three years from now,

00:44:18 ◼   ► the distance between November 2012 and November 2013

00:44:23 ◼   ► from the future, it doesn't look – it's not that big a – one year isn't that much

00:44:26 ◼   ► time.

00:44:27 ◼   ► Well, a year from now, if they have a 329 retina iPad mini and then keep the non-retina

00:44:33 ◼   ► one and use that to drop the point below 300, well, the whole thing just makes total sense

00:44:38 ◼   ► then.

00:44:39 ◼   ► The only way that doesn't work out for them and it just – I just don't see this happening

00:44:44 ◼   ► and I think they know it too is if these 200 and 250-dollar tablets from Amazon and Google

00:44:51 ◼   ► just sell in unbelievable numbers over the next, you know,

00:44:54 ◼   ► eight, nine, 10 months. And I just don't think that's gonna

00:44:57 ◼   ► happen.

00:44:57 ◼   ► I don't see it either. There's a lot of praise among the kind of

00:45:02 ◼   ► nerd set of the Nexus tablets, but I don't even know where to

00:45:08 ◼   ► buy one. Like, I wrote a post about this, I think last week or

00:45:12 ◼   ► the week before, but with an iPad, you know, it's very

00:45:16 ◼   ► obvious you go to your local Apple store or the electronics

00:45:20 ◼   ► with a smartphone you generally buy from your carrier.

00:45:25 ◼   ► But with the Kindle, yeah, you go to Amazon.com,

00:45:29 ◼   ► the world's most popular online store.

00:45:33 ◼   ► But if you want to buy a Nexus tablet,

00:45:35 ◼   ► where do you even go?

00:45:37 ◼   ► Microsoft at least has taken upon itself to set up

00:45:39 ◼   ► some stores in basically every mall, every nice mall.

00:45:44 ◼   ► Google, what are they, are they just not trying to sell that?

00:45:49 ◼   ► that many of them?

00:45:50 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:45:51 ◼   ► They do seem to have completely eschewed brick and mortar retail.

00:45:58 ◼   ► Which I think makes sense for some things like, you know, obviously phones are going

00:46:06 ◼   ► to go through carriers primarily.

00:46:08 ◼   ► So they've been able to sell an insane amount of phones without ever having to touch retail.

00:46:15 ◼   ► and even their e-commerce efforts,

00:46:17 ◼   ► they kind of scaled back at because they did so poorly.

00:46:20 ◼   ► But tablets are, I wish I knew what percent of,

00:46:24 ◼   ► Apple will tell you what percent of Macs

00:46:26 ◼   ► they sell in their Apple stores,

00:46:28 ◼   ► but they don't say for the iPad.

00:46:30 ◼   ► I wish that I knew that.

00:46:32 ◼   ► I would guess that it's pretty high.

00:46:35 ◼   ► - I would like to know too for Barnes and Noble,

00:46:37 ◼   ► and I feel like the nook is often the dark matter

00:46:40 ◼   ► in these discussions because it just seems like everybody,

00:46:43 ◼   ► And I do this too, is that when you say, "Well, what are the biggest competitors to the iPad?"

00:46:47 ◼   ► I think Surface, Nexus, Kindle.

00:46:51 ◼   ► But Nook is doing pretty good.

00:46:55 ◼   ► I mean, it's certainly, or at least it's not like a complete dud.

00:46:59 ◼   ► But I wonder how much of theirs are being sold through their brick and mortar retail

00:47:03 ◼   ► stores.

00:47:04 ◼   ► I mean, I know that when I go into the one here in Philly, the Barnes and Noble, it's

00:47:09 ◼   ► impossible to miss the Nook kiosk.

00:47:11 ◼   ► I mean, you come in the door and I would venture to say it's the best real estate in the entire

00:47:18 ◼   ► store.

00:47:19 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:47:20 ◼   ► I think it's pretty much, you know, that's what it is.

00:47:24 ◼   ► It's the fact that they have such great distribution within their own chain.

00:47:31 ◼   ► I mean, my kind of one-liner about the Nook is that the most amazing thing about it is

00:47:36 ◼   ► that it exists.

00:47:37 ◼   ► It's this bookstore chain of all companies

00:47:40 ◼   ► has been able to make an actually okay computer.

00:47:45 ◼   ► Target hasn't been able to do that,

00:47:49 ◼   ► or PetSmart, or any other retail chain,

00:47:51 ◼   ► but all of a sudden this bookstore

00:47:53 ◼   ► has this decent tablet computer.

00:47:55 ◼   ► And Barnes and Noble, I think,

00:47:57 ◼   ► is still where a lot of people just go to hang out

00:47:59 ◼   ► when they have time to kill.

00:48:00 ◼   ► 200 bucks is not an absurd amount to spend at the bookstore.

00:48:06 ◼   ► that's like three DVDs.

00:48:08 ◼   ► So I think that's done really well for them.

00:48:10 ◼   ► And now don't forget, Microsoft now owns a chunk

00:48:13 ◼   ► of that Nook business.

00:48:14 ◼   ► And I always wonder, is that like their kind of plan B,

00:48:19 ◼   ► if things don't work out with Nokia, is it gonna be okay?

00:48:23 ◼   ► - You know what, that strikes me.

00:48:24 ◼   ► - Portable business.

00:48:25 ◼   ► - That strikes me though now that I think about it,

00:48:27 ◼   ► 'cause I mentioned, I think with MG last week,

00:48:29 ◼   ► that at the Surface event in New York,

00:48:32 ◼   ► the demo units that Microsoft had set up,

00:48:34 ◼   ► they had a bunch of third-party apps,

00:48:36 ◼   ► including Amazon Kindle, but it was weird because the Kindle apps didn't have any books

00:48:40 ◼   ► in them. You could launch the Kindle app, but they didn't preload any Kindle books in

00:48:45 ◼   ► there, which seemed like, "Well, what's the point of even putting the app on there?" Now

00:48:49 ◼   ► it makes me wonder why they—well, maybe there is no Nook app for Windows 8 yet. I

00:48:54 ◼   ► guess that's probably the answer.

00:48:55 ◼   ► Eric Michael Rhodes I think that's probably it, yeah.

00:48:57 ◼   ► Eric Michael Rhodes But it just seems like poor coordination, given

00:48:59 ◼   ► that they're allied, that they had to put a Kindle app.

00:49:03 ◼   ► I mean, as popular as the Kindle app for iOS is,

00:49:07 ◼   ► I really don't expect it ever to be set up on the demo unit instead of an Apple event.

00:49:11 ◼   ► Right. Can you imagine being the guy at Microsoft just to call the guy

00:49:15 ◼   ► at Amazon and say, "Hey, could you give us a bunch of codes

00:49:19 ◼   ► for free books for our demo units or something like that?"

00:49:23 ◼   ► What, do they just put free books on there or something?

00:49:27 ◼   ► the samples, just somehow load them up with the sample. I don't know. There's got to be

00:49:32 ◼   ► some way to do it. Just put samples on there if you want to be cheap and not buy the 990

00:49:37 ◼   ► books for the things.

00:49:38 ◼   ► Dave: That's probably something that they thought of like an hour before and they're

00:49:42 ◼   ► like, "Oh, shoot. We don't have any actual books in here." I wonder whose job it is at

00:49:47 ◼   ► Apple to pick what music goes on the iPhones and iPods in the store.

00:49:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I wonder too. I wonder if that comes from the store like is there something like from the iTunes store like does the iTunes

00:49:57 ◼   ► store get to pick like here's

00:49:59 ◼   ► You know here's them be is it is it that let's put the stuff that is most popular or put this stuff that we want

00:50:06 ◼   ► To be the most popular

00:50:08 ◼   ► It's always an interesting mix like it's always there's always like some older stuff and some newer stuff

00:50:13 ◼   ► I assume it's probably just

00:50:16 ◼   ► someone in the iTunes division

00:50:18 ◼   ► makes a playlist and

00:50:20 ◼   ► When they do the the retail build gets stuck in there

00:50:24 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's you know, it's true too that they pick which apps, you know, like games and stuff like that. I feel like there's

00:50:30 ◼   ► It's probably a pretty interesting job. Actually, there's all these little jobs at Apple that I think are really fast like the you know that or

00:50:40 ◼   ► The people who do the packaging design that's got to be

00:50:45 ◼   ► That's gotta be kind of fun. Yeah, definitely

00:50:47 ◼   ► Well, let's test out 17 different plastics for the the insert and the new case or something like that

00:50:54 ◼   ► Right or the cellophane that you wrap the device in

00:50:57 ◼   ► Right has to have the right

00:50:59 ◼   ► the right

00:51:02 ◼   ► Tearing characteristics. Yeah here. Let me take a break here and do the second sponsor

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00:54:47 ◼   ► Do you see the the live episode I did from Montreal? I did the whole thing in French. I

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00:54:58 ◼   ► Hey, how'd you get how'd you make out with sandy?

00:55:03 ◼   ► You know, I don't want to brag but we we did great. I was

00:55:09 ◼   ► We we were a couple blocks from I live in a neighborhood in Brooklyn called Dumbo or a block away from it. So

00:55:17 ◼   ► the the waterfront area got pretty wrecked and some of the restaurants that you know that we like to go to are

00:55:24 ◼   ► Not in business right now

00:55:26 ◼   ► but we got pretty lucky here the power was on the whole time and

00:55:32 ◼   ► Internet went out around midnight. So I was like, alright bedtime and woke up the next morning and it was back

00:55:39 ◼   ► So but I of course I did was

00:55:42 ◼   ► freaking out most of the time because our

00:55:44 ◼   ► windows are these sliding doors and I was paranoid that they were gonna collapse on us and then

00:55:51 ◼   ► Basically, we'd be sitting outside. So I was not relaxed at all. It was pretty terrifying

00:55:57 ◼   ► but the the windows held up and

00:56:00 ◼   ► We stayed dry. So but it's crazy like the city really got messed up

00:56:07 ◼   ► It kind of says something about our New York City's infrastructure.

00:56:16 ◼   ► At the same time, it's a little fun to go through these kind of, at least before all

00:56:24 ◼   ► the bad stuff happened, like the whole preparing for the hurricane is kind of slightly fun

00:56:30 ◼   ► experience.

00:56:31 ◼   ► But then once it happened this time, it was really bad.

00:56:36 ◼   ► It's been, I guess the most heartwarming thing

00:56:40 ◼   ► has been to see how people who fared okay

00:56:43 ◼   ► have been helping people who haven't been.

00:56:45 ◼   ► There's been a lot of effort to bring food

00:56:48 ◼   ► to some of the places that got hit very hard.

00:56:51 ◼   ► New York has, of course, this trendy food truck movement,

00:56:55 ◼   ► so a lot of the food trucks have been off serving food

00:56:58 ◼   ► to people who actually need it,

00:56:59 ◼   ► and not just people who want it, and that sort of stuff.

00:57:04 ◼   ► So it was a weird experience.

00:57:06 ◼   ► I mean, you know, it's not like I'm living in Miami

00:57:09 ◼   ► or something, a hurricane in New York City theoretically

00:57:13 ◼   ► isn't supposed to happen very often

00:57:14 ◼   ► and now we've had two in two years.

00:57:16 ◼   ► - It does, you know what, and it reminds me a little bit of,

00:57:20 ◼   ► yeah, I just don't see how you can't be,

00:57:22 ◼   ► of the aftermath of 9/11, of just the city coming together

00:57:26 ◼   ► and people, anybody who can help somebody else helping out.

00:57:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I wasn't here for that.

00:57:31 ◼   ► I was still living in Chicago, but yeah,

00:57:34 ◼   ► that's what a lot of people were saying.

00:57:36 ◼   ► It was obviously a different sort of tragedy,

00:57:40 ◼   ► and although it affected, in terms of New York City proper,

00:57:44 ◼   ► beyond Staten Island, like lower Manhattan,

00:57:46 ◼   ► which is where the World Trade Center was,

00:57:48 ◼   ► was hit, was arguably hurt the most by Citi as well.

00:57:53 ◼   ► Like a bunch of my friends who live down there

00:57:56 ◼   ► basically don't have an apartment

00:57:58 ◼   ► either for the next several weeks or even months

00:58:00 ◼   ► because the whole kind of lower tip of Manhattan

00:58:04 ◼   ► was flooded and everyone's buildings got their power

00:58:08 ◼   ► messed with, so.

00:58:09 ◼   ► - Just little things.

00:58:10 ◼   ► I remember I saw a thing at one of those slideshows

00:58:12 ◼   ► just the other day where that in the Meatpacking District,

00:58:17 ◼   ► there's a classic steakhouse, Old Homestead.

00:58:21 ◼   ► They've expanded a little.

00:58:22 ◼   ► They have a Vegas and Atlantic City branch now.

00:58:24 ◼   ► But it's been there for like 100 years, this steakhouse,

00:58:27 ◼   ► and their electricity's been out.

00:58:30 ◼   ► And so the freezers are out,

00:58:31 ◼   ► so they don't want any of the meat to go bad.

00:58:33 ◼   ► So they were just cooking up all the steaks

00:58:35 ◼   ► from their freezers and giving them to cops

00:58:37 ◼   ► as cops came by.

00:58:39 ◼   ► Any first responders who'd just come by,

00:58:41 ◼   ► you get a free steak from Old Homestead.

00:58:43 ◼   ► And they were just, some guys were just taking them out,

00:58:45 ◼   ► putting them in the cars, the squad cars as they go.

00:58:49 ◼   ► And it just, I don't know, something about that,

00:58:51 ◼   ► I thought that was just great.

00:58:52 ◼   ► - There's a lot of that.

00:58:54 ◼   ► Whenever something messed up happens here,

00:58:56 ◼   ► there's a lot of that camaraderie.

00:58:57 ◼   ► and I think crime dips a lot.

00:59:00 ◼   ► Like there were, I think, a couple days

00:59:01 ◼   ► with no murders or something like that.

00:59:03 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:59:04 ◼   ► - Although there were also supposedly people

00:59:07 ◼   ► dressed up as power company people and then robbing.

00:59:11 ◼   ► - Oh, that's the worst.

00:59:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's pretty scummy.

00:59:14 ◼   ► - Oh my God, that almost makes me wanna believe in hell,

00:59:17 ◼   ► just so that they could go there.

00:59:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it was interesting.

00:59:20 ◼   ► - That's the worst.

00:59:21 ◼   ► How do you live with yourself with that?

00:59:23 ◼   ► - That's pretty bad.

00:59:24 ◼   ► But it's interesting how the biggest,

00:59:27 ◼   ► kind of the biggest, now it's cold and it kind of sucks

00:59:31 ◼   ► to be without heat or something like that.

00:59:32 ◼   ► That week was still not so freezing.

00:59:35 ◼   ► And kind of the biggest thing was that people just wanted

00:59:37 ◼   ► to charge their phones and there were these kind of

00:59:40 ◼   ► impromptu charging stations that were set up at banks

00:59:44 ◼   ► and at restaurants and hotel lobbies and all this stuff

00:59:46 ◼   ► and it was, yeah, come inside, don't be out in the weather,

00:59:50 ◼   ► but also charge up your iPhone.

00:59:52 ◼   ► And that's something that I guess wasn't so prevalent

00:59:57 ◼   ► 10 years ago.

00:59:58 ◼   ► - No, I don't think so at all.

00:59:59 ◼   ► I do think that's a big difference.

01:00:01 ◼   ► - Or you can just, the big blackout they had in New York.

01:00:03 ◼   ► It was like, well, all right, our apartment's dark

01:00:05 ◼   ► and the TV's off, but here it's,

01:00:07 ◼   ► we do have this connection to the world,

01:00:09 ◼   ► but it's running out of battery.

01:00:10 ◼   ► So that was interesting.

01:00:13 ◼   ► I'm kind of like the voyeur in me was kind of tempted to go

01:00:17 ◼   ► into the dark zone at nighttime and shoot some footage

01:00:20 ◼   ► and that kind of stuff, but I don't know,

01:00:23 ◼   ► it seemed a little dicey, so I wussed out on that one.

01:00:27 ◼   ► But next year I'll get a chance, maybe.

01:00:30 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:00:31 ◼   ► - Next year's hurricane.

01:00:33 ◼   ► I did see a thing, I should link it up,

01:00:34 ◼   ► I'll put it in the show notes.

01:00:35 ◼   ► I saw a device on Uncrate the other day.

01:00:40 ◼   ► It's a portable iPhone charger.

01:00:42 ◼   ► And just like a lot of these other ones,

01:00:45 ◼   ► you can plug it in a wall and it stores a charge

01:00:48 ◼   ► and then you connect a USB cable to any,

01:00:50 ◼   ► I guess it's a USB out, so you could charge anything

01:00:53 ◼   ► that can charge over USB with this thing.

01:00:55 ◼   ► But the distinction is it has a fold-out hand crank

01:00:59 ◼   ► so that in a pinch you can charge this battery

01:01:03 ◼   ► by turning the hand crank like a pencil sharpener.

01:01:06 ◼   ► And it's one of those things where like two weeks ago

01:01:10 ◼   ► I would have thought, I don't know, I don't go camping,

01:01:13 ◼   ► I'm not buying that thing.

01:01:14 ◼   ► Whereas now I'm thinking, hey, maybe I should have

01:01:16 ◼   ► one of those here.

01:01:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, is that like the new headlamp,

01:01:20 ◼   ► is like having something like that?

01:01:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I wonder how that's,

01:01:23 ◼   ► I imagine that's kind of gonna be a popular gift,

01:01:26 ◼   ► at least on the East Coast for Christmas this year,

01:01:28 ◼   ► that kind of stuff.

01:01:30 ◼   ► - And God only, I don't know.

01:01:31 ◼   ► I mean, maybe it takes 10,000 cranks

01:01:34 ◼   ► to get a little bit of a charge on it.

01:01:35 ◼   ► I don't know, but in a pinch though,

01:01:38 ◼   ► in like a city-wide blackout, I would do it.

01:01:40 ◼   ► I would absolutely do it.

01:01:41 ◼   ► I'd just sit there and turn that thing forever.

01:01:43 ◼   ► I don't know, I won't charge on my iPhone.

01:01:47 ◼   ► They should—soon there'll be an HTC phone with a built-in crank.

01:01:53 ◼   ► Someone will do that.

01:01:54 ◼   ► To an extent.

01:01:55 ◼   ► We have the hand-crancer unit.

01:01:58 ◼   ► Dave: Yeah.

01:01:59 ◼   ► And I do think that the hierarchy of need—a couple of people have posted about this—that

01:02:08 ◼   ► it's kind of changed.

01:02:10 ◼   ► Obviously you want food and shelter first.

01:02:15 ◼   ► is maybe above that, and then you want connectivity. You want internet. All these poor people in

01:02:24 ◼   ► New York couldn't play letterpress for a couple days.

01:02:26 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Honestly, I played probably about 100 games

01:02:29 ◼   ► of letterpress during the thing. It was interesting. The cell towers, of course, have battery backups,

01:02:37 ◼   ► and that's how, I guess, the Verizon LTE was on when the cable modem was off. Eventually,

01:02:44 ◼   ► gave out too. I think Verizon put them on faster though than AT&T, I want to say. I'm

01:02:51 ◼   ► not sure. Maybe that has to do with there being the local phone company here too. I'm

01:02:55 ◼   ► not sure what happened. It almost makes you wonder if those types of companies should

01:03:03 ◼   ► be even thinking harder about this sort of stuff. Or if it was just a fluke thing and

01:03:09 ◼   ► it'll never happen again. I don't know. You don't want to be too prepared for something

01:03:14 ◼   ► that's not going to happen again.

01:03:17 ◼   ► Or that next time it'll be something else.

01:03:20 ◼   ► Right.

01:03:21 ◼   ► It's not the same thing.

01:03:22 ◼   ► Same type of thing where everything's disrupted, but the source of disruption's different.

01:03:27 ◼   ► Like the underwear bomber.

01:03:28 ◼   ► Well, there's not going to be the shoe bomber.

01:03:30 ◼   ► There's not going to be another shoe bomber again, but that's all they want to think

01:03:33 ◼   ► about is shoes.

01:03:36 ◼   ► One other thing, you linked up a story that I think is interesting about Virgin America.

01:03:45 ◼   ► Maybe we should talk about that for a second.

01:03:48 ◼   ► Yeah, we could do that.

01:03:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:03:50 ◼   ► As kind of Mac Apple people, we've grown used to a world where our experience in smart design

01:03:59 ◼   ► is paramount to whatever else other features are out there.

01:04:04 ◼   ► The story was that Virgin America,

01:04:09 ◼   ► which is by many accounts the kind of smartest

01:04:14 ◼   ► and best thought out airline in the United States

01:04:17 ◼   ► is still losing money like crazy

01:04:20 ◼   ► and may not be financially viable due to a bunch of reasons.

01:04:24 ◼   ► The airline industry just sucks to begin with

01:04:26 ◼   ► and there's high costs of employment and fuel

01:04:31 ◼   ► and all that sort of stuff, but it makes you wonder,

01:04:34 ◼   ► you know, is the user experience the most important thing,

01:04:39 ◼   ► and if it's not a sustainable business,

01:04:42 ◼   ► should, you know, can it keep going?

01:04:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, it brings me back to this argument I've had

01:04:48 ◼   ► over this word, the word traction for years.

01:04:51 ◼   ► I've sort of been, you know, that it's,

01:04:53 ◼   ► there's some kind of black magic,

01:04:55 ◼   ► whether it's you're selling computers or cars or airline tickets that you know

01:05:00 ◼   ► that you somehow get to a certain point where you have traction and it's so much

01:05:04 ◼   ► easier to keep going than it ever is to get it in the first place and you know I

01:05:09 ◼   ► think Apple suffered from this for a long time and I've said this before and

01:05:13 ◼   ► I can never find the source because it's an old 90s era thing and but I'm I know

01:05:20 ◼   ► know that I'm right though. And I think Apple, I know that the basic story is right, but

01:05:27 ◼   ► that the source of it is confusing. And I've never been able to find it. If anybody out

01:05:32 ◼   ► there can find the source for this, I would thank you greatly and mention you on the show

01:05:36 ◼   ► and thank you profusely. But the gist of it is that Apple commissioned this survey in

01:05:41 ◼   ► the 90s, maybe like 96, 97 or so. And it showed that of people going out, US retail consumers

01:05:50 ◼   ► who are going out to buy a personal computer that 90% of them never even considered buying

01:05:55 ◼   ► a Mac. And that like of the percentage who did consider buying a Mac, like an unbelief,

01:06:03 ◼   ► like 40% of them wound up buying one, you know, and so like Apple's like 4% of the US

01:06:08 ◼   ► retail market in like 1997 was like 90% of people who never even gave it a second thought,

01:06:14 ◼   ► never even looked at them. And 10% of people who did and 40% of those people bought one.

01:06:20 ◼   ► And that the gist of it, you know, being that all they had to do is get more traction in

01:06:24 ◼   ► people's minds.

01:06:25 ◼   ► Just get more people to consider buying a Mac and that their sales could go way higher,

01:06:31 ◼   ► which is exactly what I believe has happened.

01:06:33 ◼   ► And I think that's that iPod halo effect that people wondered about, you know, in 2002,

01:06:39 ◼   ► 2003, is that once people started going, even just going into an Apple store to buy anything,

01:06:44 ◼   ► to buy a music player, it opened their mind to maybe buying a computer from them and,

01:06:49 ◼   ► you know, it's all come up millhouse for them ever since.

01:06:53 ◼   ► I just can't help but think that Virgin's

01:06:54 ◼   ► in that same situation where people are just buying tickets

01:06:57 ◼   ► on Delta and American Airlines and whatever else

01:06:59 ◼   ► because that's what they've always done.

01:07:02 ◼   ► I just, I don't know, to me, once the first time

01:07:04 ◼   ► I took a flight on Virgin, I instantly knew

01:07:07 ◼   ► that I would never ever again fly anything else

01:07:10 ◼   ► if there was a Virgin flight available.

01:07:12 ◼   ► I mean, I go out of my way to fly Virgin now.

01:07:15 ◼   ► Like, I'll fly to make the times,

01:07:18 ◼   ► they don't have they only have a couple of flights a day in and out of Philly so

01:07:21 ◼   ► I will fly San Francisco to LAX LAX to Philly to make it work rather than pass

01:07:28 ◼   ► up you know dozens of direct flights from SFO to Philly on other airlines

01:07:32 ◼   ► because it's that much better it's so much better that I don't even hesitate

01:07:36 ◼   ► to fly with like a layover in LAX and that's and that's interesting and I

01:07:43 ◼   ► think air you know flight is such a weird market where people are are

01:07:48 ◼   ► usually just sorting by price and that's it period or maybe they have like a very

01:07:54 ◼   ► hard time of day requirement or something like that yeah and I know a

01:07:59 ◼   ► lot of it I also know a lot of people who've gotten locked into airline X

01:08:03 ◼   ► because they've got a gazillion miles right and platinum on American so all I

01:08:08 ◼   ► fly is American when I have the opportunity and I guess that's exactly

01:08:12 ◼   ► why they instituted those mileage programs. And that I know a couple of friends who never fly,

01:08:22 ◼   ► I've spoken to them specifically about Virgin and that they say that they'd love to, but they can't

01:08:26 ◼   ► because one of them's got Delta miles and the other one's got, I forget the other one, but it

01:08:32 ◼   ► doesn't matter, one of the old traditional carriers and they're just locked into it because of that.

01:08:37 ◼   ► And I don't know for me. It's so different and it just makes because you know, I tend to fly when I do fly

01:08:42 ◼   ► It's often from coast to coast. It's from here to San Francisco

01:08:46 ◼   ► So it's you know a big huge chunk of my day and spending it somewhere in a comfortable seat in

01:08:51 ◼   ► A nicely lit cabin with really pleasant every universally every single flight. I've taken truly truly pleasant

01:09:00 ◼   ► flight attendants

01:09:02 ◼   ► better food

01:09:04 ◼   ► actually like decent food, you know, it's kind of amazing and

01:09:08 ◼   ► The other thing the other sense that really hits you is that that it smells nice in a virgin airplane

01:09:15 ◼   ► Like the other airplanes it really makes you realize just how stinky the cabins are

01:09:18 ◼   ► It's that mix of burnt coffee and jet fuel and dried bath well farts or farts and sweat or something like that

01:09:27 ◼   ► I don't know what they're doing

01:09:28 ◼   ► It's in and it reminds me of like the difference between old casinos and new casinos like going to an old casino

01:09:34 ◼   ► casino and it's just this stink of 1977 sweat and cigarette smoke. A new casino really smells

01:09:43 ◼   ► like, "Wow, this is a casino, but it smells nice in here." That's what Virgin's like.

01:09:46 ◼   ► It reminds me a little of … Oh, sorry. Well, the gist of it though is that they're

01:09:51 ◼   ► losing like $300 or $400 million a year and that people are saying that that's just

01:09:55 ◼   ► too much. They've either got to start making money or the thing's going to dry up.

01:09:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's a different, obviously the industry's

01:10:02 ◼   ► a lot different than the financial situations are,

01:10:04 ◼   ► but it reminds me a little of the old Windows Apple problem,

01:10:08 ◼   ► which was everyone is so used to Windows,

01:10:11 ◼   ► even if it's less elegant of an experience,

01:10:13 ◼   ► they can justify it just because they're familiar with it

01:10:17 ◼   ► or because they're locked into it or something like that.

01:10:19 ◼   ► - It's just the way it used to be, yeah,

01:10:20 ◼   ► it's just the way it is.

01:10:22 ◼   ► - And I've written this about even airplanes themselves,

01:10:25 ◼   ► like the airline industry or the airplane industry,

01:10:28 ◼   ► They need their iPhone moment where everything got reset.

01:10:32 ◼   ► Right now they're kind of graduating from the Nokia

01:10:37 ◼   ► Symbian phone to the Blackberry phone,

01:10:39 ◼   ► but there's no, they kind of need that inflection point

01:10:42 ◼   ► where if you look at the airline,

01:10:44 ◼   ► and I don't want to get too geeky on airline stuff,

01:10:47 ◼   ► but you look at the new planes they're designing,

01:10:49 ◼   ► like the 787, they're like 15 to 20% more fuel efficient.

01:10:56 ◼   ► The seats are maybe a little more comfortable.

01:10:59 ◼   ► The TV is like an inch bigger,

01:11:01 ◼   ► but there isn't like that whole reset point

01:11:04 ◼   ► where the experience is just vastly different.

01:11:06 ◼   ► And someone, I think, eventually will figure that out,

01:11:09 ◼   ► but I'm not sure what it is.

01:11:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, I totally agree, though.

01:11:12 ◼   ► And I don't know.

01:11:13 ◼   ► I don't know, I still am hoping.

01:11:16 ◼   ► I just hope they have the patience to keep with it

01:11:18 ◼   ► and that people will catch on in it.

01:11:20 ◼   ► Maybe they just need a couple more routes or something.

01:11:23 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:11:24 ◼   ► but it just doesn't add up to me.

01:11:26 ◼   ► - Maybe someday you can have an airline.

01:11:31 ◼   ► - I don't know, I say it would be fun.

01:11:35 ◼   ► It's probably a terrible job.

01:11:37 ◼   ► - The Apple airline, that would be a colossal waste of money

01:11:41 ◼   ► then you know when to sell Apple stock

01:11:43 ◼   ► when they start doing that kind of stuff.

01:11:46 ◼   ► - The other thing I don't get on Virgin

01:11:52 ◼   ► is that they have first class upgrades that are really, really cheap. If there's open

01:11:58 ◼   ► seats in first class, like day of the flight, it can be just like $150 to upgrade. Yet I've

01:12:07 ◼   ► been on flights where I've done it and I've gotten the first class upgrade for like $150

01:12:11 ◼   ► and there's still open seats and the other cabin is full. I don't know. It just seems

01:12:17 ◼   ► crazy to me that more people wouldn't take advantage of that.

01:12:21 ◼   ► - I think a lot of that is so they could just,

01:12:23 ◼   ► if there are people on standby,

01:12:26 ◼   ► they can get more seats sold,

01:12:28 ◼   ► or maybe just hook you into that experience.

01:12:32 ◼   ► Like I've had a few free upgrades on American recently

01:12:36 ◼   ► because I have so many miles,

01:12:38 ◼   ► and I'm in the Platinum program,

01:12:41 ◼   ► and now I'm like crap,

01:12:42 ◼   ► I don't know if I can fly coach anymore.

01:12:44 ◼   ► Of course I have to,

01:12:45 ◼   ► 'cause real business class is way too expensive.

01:12:48 ◼   ► - Right, I wish business class was more like coach plus

01:12:52 ◼   ► rather than first class minus.

01:12:55 ◼   ► - Well, and it's funny because business class is,

01:12:57 ◼   ► and this is actually another kind of parallel

01:13:00 ◼   ► to the phone industry, business class is so much

01:13:03 ◼   ► more profitable than coach.

01:13:06 ◼   ► Maybe over half of the profits or maybe even more than that

01:13:10 ◼   ► of a flight would be from the business class people,

01:13:15 ◼   ► if not vastly more than that.

01:13:17 ◼   ► It's the same thing like when Nokia was before the iPhone or right after it, it was something

01:13:24 ◼   ► like 80% of their profits came from their smartphones, which were like 10% of their

01:13:29 ◼   ► phones sold.

01:13:30 ◼   ► All those coach seats are kind of break even and then all the profit comes from the front

01:13:35 ◼   ► of the plane.

01:13:36 ◼   ► So …

01:13:37 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Well, and then there's Southwest though,

01:13:39 ◼   ► which is all coach.

01:13:40 ◼   ► Adam Boffa And profitable.

01:13:42 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Right.

01:13:43 ◼   ► Right. And so that's in Southwest is still it's it's just their routes in and out of Philly have gotten so

01:13:49 ◼   ► inconvenient for me where all they don't they used to have a daily non-stop to SFO they used to have one to SFO and one

01:13:55 ◼   ► To Oakland and they've gotten rid of both of those

01:13:57 ◼   ► So now the only way for me to go out west on Southwest is you know stop in Chicago, which makes it a lot less

01:14:02 ◼   ► appealing Vegas, maybe I

01:14:05 ◼   ► Forget if they I think they still have non-stops to Vegas

01:14:09 ◼   ► Yeah

01:14:09 ◼   ► Yeah, and maybe I have to route through there.

01:14:11 ◼   ► That always makes me, I don't like to have a layover in Vegas though.

01:14:14 ◼   ► If I get off the plane in Vegas though, I want to stay.

01:14:17 ◼   ► That was the one time I remember last year, I did that last year.

01:14:20 ◼   ► I was flying out to San Francisco, pretty sure it was the Southwest.

01:14:24 ◼   ► And it was one of those continuations where I didn't even have to get out of the plane,

01:14:29 ◼   ► but we had enough time and I wanted to go to the restroom or get something to eat.

01:14:33 ◼   ► And I was like, "Hey, can I quick run out of the plane?"

01:14:36 ◼   ► And so I had five minutes in Vegas.

01:14:38 ◼   ► It's the worst. It's just enough to wet the whistle.

01:14:44 ◼   ► Perfect.

01:14:46 ◼   ► Yeah, Southwest though is flying in a giant bus. They have the advantage where their staff is very nice.

01:14:53 ◼   ► They have terrific service. People who work for Southwest really like it.

01:14:59 ◼   ► There's this very, very generous stock ownership thing where everybody who works on Southwest gets shares in the company

01:15:06 ◼   ► company and it really seems to invest them in it. But it's

01:15:11 ◼   ► really, you know, it's the coachee of coach and everybody,

01:15:14 ◼   ► you know, you really are just in like a flying bus for five or

01:15:17 ◼   ► six hours.

01:15:17 ◼   ► That's and that's the profits in the airline industry that and

01:15:22 ◼   ► spirit spirit air. So cool.

01:15:25 ◼   ► I agree, though, I would like to fly everywhere. Virgin. Some

01:15:30 ◼   ► days I'd like to, I would like to just be in a Virgin plane

01:15:32 ◼   ► just to work for the day. Just to go up. Hey, you could just

01:15:35 ◼   ► go up, fly me around for a couple of hours and let me get some work done and then I'll

01:15:39 ◼   ► just come right back to Philadelphia.

01:15:41 ◼   ► See, there you go. There's the business. Just sit in the air all day and then go back down.

01:15:50 ◼   ► I do. I find myself very productive on an airplane when I work during the day. I figured

01:15:54 ◼   ► out why. It's because with GoGo Internet, it works just well enough that I can use it

01:16:01 ◼   ► to research things and look things up. It's way too flaky and slow to really screw around

01:16:07 ◼   ► on the internet and waste time. It just makes me very productive. It's a very productive

01:16:11 ◼   ► environment for the type of work I do, for linking to and writing about stuff.

01:16:15 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Yeah, I've actually done some of my best posts

01:16:17 ◼   ► on GoGo, except the only issue is that if you try uploading a photo, they totally degrade

01:16:23 ◼   ► the quality of the JPEG. They have some weird filtering, and it shows up looking horrible

01:16:28 ◼   ► on your site. Not only downloads, but uploads too. They do that. Hey, man.

01:16:35 ◼   ► Right. And it is true. I bet you're the same way as me. Where complete isolation from the

01:16:40 ◼   ► internet actually does make me less productive as a writer because I've just gotten used

01:16:45 ◼   ► to, "Hey, I don't know what this, I don't know exactly what this term means. Let me

01:16:49 ◼   ► Wikipedia it and make sure I'm getting it right." And if I can't do that, it's like

01:16:52 ◼   ► I feel lost. I need a little bit of internet to write.

01:16:58 ◼   ► - Right.

01:16:59 ◼   ► - And that's kind of to come full circle,

01:17:03 ◼   ► I've set up my iPad Mini in a way that I can truly relax,

01:17:07 ◼   ► which is no email accounts on the iPad.

01:17:13 ◼   ► - Oh, that's smart.

01:17:15 ◼   ► - Which is a bummer because sometimes I want to send

01:17:17 ◼   ► an email and I don't have anything set up,

01:17:19 ◼   ► so maybe I'll just set up some AOL account

01:17:21 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:17:22 ◼   ► - Oh, I see what you mean.

01:17:23 ◼   ► - I have the iPad Mini in full Zen mode,

01:17:25 ◼   ► so I might even uninstall Twitter

01:17:27 ◼   ► because that's, although it's good for Twitter,

01:17:29 ◼   ► so I'll just have to hide it somewhere sometimes.

01:17:31 ◼   ► But without email, I can really kind of,

01:17:36 ◼   ► I read a book this week, which is something

01:17:38 ◼   ► I haven't done in a long time, and it's been really great.

01:17:41 ◼   ► - It says a lot about our generation.

01:17:47 ◼   ► - Have you found your word?

01:17:48 ◼   ► - My word?

01:17:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, the word you were looking for?

01:17:51 ◼   ► - No, I don't remember.

01:17:51 ◼   ► - All right, that's all right.

01:17:53 ◼   ► - I just think it's telling that you're really proud

01:17:54 ◼   ► of yourself for having read a book.

01:17:56 ◼   ► - Oh yeah. (laughs)

01:17:58 ◼   ► It was good, it was the Michael Lewis book

01:17:59 ◼   ► about all the messed up economies around the world.

01:18:03 ◼   ► Check it out. - Oh yeah.

01:18:04 ◼   ► That one, that's on my list somewhere.

01:18:05 ◼   ► - Now I gotta read the Nate Silver book

01:18:06 ◼   ► because hopefully it'll make me smarter.

01:18:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, did he get all 50 states this time?

01:18:12 ◼   ► I know he had 49-- - I think so.

01:18:13 ◼   ► - I think he got 50, I think he went 50 for 50.

01:18:16 ◼   ► So now he's like 99 for the last 100 states.

01:18:19 ◼   ► - He's gotta retire or he's gotta hit

01:18:22 ◼   ► like some insane goal next time.

01:18:25 ◼   ► maybe he'll even know. Well, anyway, thank you very much Dan

01:18:31 ◼   ► Fromer for joining me this week. This was a great show. I want to

01:18:34 ◼   ► thank our sponsors again, voila, voila in the Mac App Store

01:18:39 ◼   ► screen capture screen recording tool and for iOS boss jock studio

01:18:46 ◼   ► all in one podcast recording app for iOS kind of amazing.

01:18:50 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]