The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► I don't remember if I was barefoot last year.

00:00:02 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure if this is not the first podcast I've recorded barefoot, this is the second.

00:00:09 ◼   ► I feel like at the beach you kind of have to be. Like,

00:00:12 ◼   ► because, you know, everything at the beach you're constantly going in and out between like sandy and wet and dry and it's hot.

00:00:18 ◼   ► So your only choices are barefoot or full shoes, I think. Like, everything in between is not as good.

00:00:25 ◼   ► You a flip-flop man?

00:00:26 ◼   ► Not really I they don't stay on like I'm a big about like walking like I take long dog walks

00:00:31 ◼   ► I take bike rides and they just don't stay on

00:00:34 ◼   ► Enough for that like unless you get the kind that are basically sandals if they have a little backstrap

00:00:38 ◼   ► But that's at that point. That's a sandal. I like a flip-flop. I do feel though that

00:00:42 ◼   ► It's tiring. He's got it. You got to do a little curl with your toes. Yeah, like kind of all the time and you

00:00:50 ◼   ► You know, this is a bicycle town

00:00:54 ◼   ► I terrified of riding a bicycle with flip-flops because I feel like I'm on the verge of scraping my toes up

00:01:00 ◼   ► Yeah, it's I mean like it's not quite as bad as like riding a motorcycle flip-flops would be but it's not that much better

00:01:05 ◼   ► My show has been very erratically

00:01:10 ◼   ► More erratic than usual publishing wise I just posted 258 yesterday

00:01:15 ◼   ► But I need another July episode and I like to do these shows here in person. So here we are recording again

00:01:22 ◼   ► in the middle of the season when there's not much news.

00:01:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, we say that.

00:01:27 ◼   ► Every summer we say, oh, there's not much news

00:01:30 ◼   ► in July and August, so we better stretch it out

00:01:32 ◼   ► and do Q&A episodes, as you did and stuff like that.

00:01:35 ◼   ► But it's like, actually, a lot of stuff

00:01:37 ◼   ► seems to be happening every summer.

00:01:38 ◼   ► - One of the things I definitely wanted to talk about

00:01:42 ◼   ► before we get into rambling territory

00:01:44 ◼   ► is I wanted to talk about the purported 16-inch MacBook Pro

00:01:50 ◼   ► because there was a, I'm sure you saw it,

00:01:53 ◼   ► but there was a report out of the supply chain that,

00:01:57 ◼   ► I think it still suggested that it was coming in October,

00:02:00 ◼   ► which is a little weird,

00:02:01 ◼   ► but that it was gonna start at $3,000,

00:02:06 ◼   ► which would be really weird,

00:02:08 ◼   ► because right now the 15-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,400.

00:02:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I don't know how much we can trust rumors

00:02:17 ◼   ► from supply chain sources about pricing.

00:02:19 ◼   ► - I had two thoughts on that.

00:02:21 ◼   ► One, why trust the supply chain on that?

00:02:24 ◼   ► They don't know names either.

00:02:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, like pricing and naming,

00:02:27 ◼   ► it's so well guarded the vast majority of the time.

00:02:31 ◼   ► Like, there's almost always pricing guesses about,

00:02:34 ◼   ► or alleged pricing leaks or rumors

00:02:37 ◼   ► before new products are announced,

00:02:39 ◼   ► and they're usually wrong.

00:02:40 ◼   ► If you look at the track record of Apple rumors,

00:02:42 ◼   ► I feel like pricing is one of those areas

00:02:44 ◼   ► where we take a lot of guesses about pricing

00:02:46 ◼   ► and we're wrong a lot.

00:02:48 ◼   ► The other way they could do it though,

00:02:49 ◼   ► is it could be $3,000 and they could just

00:02:51 ◼   ► Tim Cook it by keeping the $2,400 one around.

00:02:56 ◼   ► - And so there'd still be a $2,400 15 inch MacBook Pro,

00:03:01 ◼   ► but it would be like a year old model.

00:03:03 ◼   ► But that seems like a weird way to go with the MacBook Pro.

00:03:07 ◼   ► It's, you know, that's like a MacBook Air move.

00:03:09 ◼   ► - Well also, if we look at the rumors holistically,

00:03:12 ◼   ► we look at like, you know, all the rumors

00:03:13 ◼   ► that are going around about this, you know,

00:03:15 ◼   ► upcoming alleged generation of laptops.

00:03:18 ◼   ► I think they all seem to agree on one big thing,

00:03:21 ◼   ► that the butterfly keyboard is not long for this world.

00:03:23 ◼   ► Which I am like dancing on its grave already,

00:03:26 ◼   ► even though it's not dead yet.

00:03:27 ◼   ► As you know, I couldn't possibly be more happy

00:03:30 ◼   ► that the butterfly keyboard appears by all accounts

00:03:33 ◼   ► to be going away pretty soon.

00:03:35 ◼   ► So if you think about like,

00:03:36 ◼   ► if they did keep around the old 15 inch,

00:03:39 ◼   ► what are they gonna do?

00:03:40 ◼   ► Have that be like the only butterfly keyboard

00:03:41 ◼   ► in the lineup for a while?

00:03:42 ◼   ► Or like, if they hit the current air,

00:03:45 ◼   ► and maybe keep it around at a cheaper price point next year.

00:03:49 ◼   ► Like when the alleged new scissor switch Air comes out,

00:03:52 ◼   ► depending on who you believe, either in September,

00:03:54 ◼   ► October, or 2020, depending on all the different rumors,

00:03:57 ◼   ► allegedly there's gonna be a new MacBook Air,

00:03:59 ◼   ► and new 13 inch, and new 16 inch.

00:04:02 ◼   ► Then if that's actually true, sometime in the next year,

00:04:06 ◼   ► then there will be no new models with butterfly keyboards,

00:04:09 ◼   ► unless they keep around some of the current ones

00:04:11 ◼   ► at lower prices.

00:04:12 ◼   ► And it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense

00:04:14 ◼   ► they would do that only for the 15 inch

00:04:16 ◼   ► and not for anything else like the Air.

00:04:19 ◼   ► And it seems especially problematic that the 15 inch

00:04:21 ◼   ► which is a high end computer that's bought

00:04:24 ◼   ► in large quantities by businesses

00:04:26 ◼   ► and by a lot of their pro market.

00:04:28 ◼   ► It would be weird to have,

00:04:29 ◼   ► if they're gonna go through all this hassle

00:04:31 ◼   ► to get rid of the butterfly keyboard

00:04:32 ◼   ► because of its problems, why would they keep it

00:04:34 ◼   ► on such an important widely used model?

00:04:37 ◼   ► It doesn't seem, that doesn't make sense.

00:04:38 ◼   ► So I think the 16 inch is it and the pricing rumors,

00:04:43 ◼   ► I don't give a lot of credibility to.

00:04:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so. - That being said,

00:04:47 ◼   ► it wouldn't be totally out of the ordinary

00:04:51 ◼   ► for Apple to release a new generation

00:04:53 ◼   ► of an important product that costs significantly

00:04:54 ◼   ► more than its predecessor.

00:04:56 ◼   ► It would be not well-received,

00:04:58 ◼   ► but that doesn't mean they won't do it,

00:05:00 ◼   ► and that they do it all the time.

00:05:01 ◼   ► So I think while I don't believe pricing rumors usually,

00:05:06 ◼   ► I also wouldn't rule out the possibility

00:05:08 ◼   ► that this new laptop might be $3,000,

00:05:11 ◼   ► and that might just be the new starting price

00:05:13 ◼   ► of the 15 inch class laptop, which is now 16 inches,

00:05:18 ◼   ► that's totally plausible.

00:05:19 ◼   ► Apple does that kind of stuff all the time.

00:05:21 ◼   ► And another angle I was thinking about was

00:05:24 ◼   ► Apple does, I mean maybe this doesn't matter

00:05:27 ◼   ► 'cause I think they sell a absolute ton

00:05:29 ◼   ► of the base model configurations

00:05:31 ◼   ► relative to any customized configs.

00:05:32 ◼   ► But with the drop in flash storage pricing

00:05:35 ◼   ► that's going on across the industry

00:05:37 ◼   ► and they just drop their prices,

00:05:38 ◼   ► Apple might just be forced by market pressure

00:05:41 ◼   ► make less on their upgrade components as they used to.

00:05:46 ◼   ► And so maybe they are gonna make up for that lost margin

00:05:49 ◼   ► by just raising the base price on all the models.

00:05:52 ◼   ► - I guess, I can't really think of anything

00:05:54 ◼   ► that would make the price jump up that much.

00:05:55 ◼   ► I mean, presumably-- - Apple.

00:05:57 ◼   ► - Well, right.

00:05:58 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:59 ◼   ► But I can't-- - They don't need a reason.

00:05:59 ◼   ► - Right, I think it's a marketing decision,

00:06:01 ◼   ► not in a cost of goods decision.

00:06:04 ◼   ► I mean, presumably the display is going to be

00:06:07 ◼   ► at least slightly more expensive

00:06:09 ◼   ► because they're calling it a 16-inch display.

00:06:11 ◼   ► so it's gonna be bigger than the 15.6 inch display.

00:06:15 ◼   ► - 15.4, I think we're at. - 15.4.

00:06:17 ◼   ► Maybe, I don't even know.

00:06:22 ◼   ► I don't know how many of the details of the screen came out,

00:06:24 ◼   ► but the other thing that would be nice

00:06:26 ◼   ► and would justify to some degree a price increase

00:06:30 ◼   ► would be if it goes to truly native retina resolution.

00:06:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, actual 2x of what the default setting is,

00:06:38 ◼   ► which it has never,

00:06:39 ◼   ► which it has had when the default setting was lower

00:06:42 ◼   ► up until 2016.

00:06:43 ◼   ► But yeah, 'cause right now, they ship it by default

00:06:47 ◼   ► in the scaling mode.

00:06:48 ◼   ► - Right.

00:06:49 ◼   ► - And I mean--

00:06:51 ◼   ► - It just feels off for the highest end laptop

00:06:53 ◼   ► in the lineup to be scaled.

00:06:54 ◼   ► - Like the 15 inch non-retina, going up until 2012,

00:06:59 ◼   ► the non-retina 15 inch, the last couple of years of it,

00:07:03 ◼   ► they offered this high res option, and a matte option,

00:07:06 ◼   ► by the way, for like $200 extra.

00:07:08 ◼   ► it was a small price increase, and it was,

00:07:10 ◼   ► instead of being 1440 across, it was 1680 across.

00:07:14 ◼   ► And when the 2012 Retina version came out,

00:07:18 ◼   ► it was only the 1440 natively,

00:07:20 ◼   ► but you could use these software scaling modes

00:07:22 ◼   ► to simulate higher resolutions.

00:07:24 ◼   ► So it was like, okay, that's nice, good job,

00:07:27 ◼   ► you can get higher resolutions,

00:07:28 ◼   ► but if you were accustomed to the 1680 point size,

00:07:32 ◼   ► you were actually getting worse visual quality,

00:07:34 ◼   ► 'cause it was rendering it into an off-screen buffer

00:07:36 ◼   ► like shrinking it down to fit the actual pixels

00:07:38 ◼   ► of the screen, so everything was like a little bit blurrier.

00:07:41 ◼   ► And it's not a massive difference, but you can tell

00:07:45 ◼   ► it does look a little bit worse.

00:07:47 ◼   ► And then what made it, I think, almost misleading

00:07:52 ◼   ► and I wouldn't say criminal, but certainly offensive

00:07:55 ◼   ► to a nerd like us who cares about image quality,

00:07:57 ◼   ► is that starting from the 2015 MacBook

00:08:00 ◼   ► and then the 2016 USB-C generation of laptops,

00:08:03 ◼   ► they increased the default resolution

00:08:06 ◼   ► from what the panels actually were to one step above.

00:08:10 ◼   ► So they increased the apparent screen real estate

00:08:14 ◼   ► to 1680 at 2x now on the 15,

00:08:17 ◼   ► but they didn't actually increase the number of pixels.

00:08:19 ◼   ► So I almost feel like they kinda cheated.

00:08:21 ◼   ► Like they tried to make it look like

00:08:22 ◼   ► the screens got better and they didn't.

00:08:24 ◼   ► And what's disappointing is that so far

00:08:27 ◼   ► the Ming-Chi Kuo rumor about the 16 inch

00:08:30 ◼   ► has its pixel size pinned at something

00:08:33 ◼   ► that would suggest that they haven't actually

00:08:35 ◼   ► increased that again.

00:08:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I couldn't remember if that was part of the rumor.

00:08:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was like, the current one is like 2880,

00:08:39 ◼   ► and the new one I think is 3072, something like that.

00:08:42 ◼   ► So it's like, it's not enough proportionally,

00:08:45 ◼   ► I don't think, to make it seem like they're actually doing

00:08:47 ◼   ► like a true 2X of what the default setting is.

00:08:51 ◼   ► So if that rumor is true, then it sounds like

00:08:53 ◼   ► they haven't actually fixed this problem.

00:08:54 ◼   ► But this is actually one thing.

00:08:56 ◼   ► When I had a briefing with some Apple people last year,

00:09:02 ◼   ► I actually brought this up specifically as an issue.

00:09:04 ◼   ► I'm like, you gotta fix this for the next generation.

00:09:06 ◼   ► 'Cause like this, to me, I understand making

00:09:09 ◼   ► that kind of compromise on something like a MacBook Air,

00:09:12 ◼   ► where it's a lower end product,

00:09:13 ◼   ► you're doing it to hit a price point,

00:09:15 ◼   ► the buyers might not care as much if the screen

00:09:17 ◼   ► is a little bit blurrier than it could be

00:09:18 ◼   ► at its default setting, fine, that makes sense.

00:09:20 ◼   ► But on the MacBook Pro, where you care so much

00:09:23 ◼   ► about this amazing screen, and they talk,

00:09:24 ◼   ► and they put so much work into the amazing screen,

00:09:26 ◼   ► they have this amazing color and contrast and detail

00:09:31 ◼   ► and the finishing and everything,

00:09:33 ◼   ► possibly higher refresh rates coming down the road.

00:09:35 ◼   ► They put so much effort into the display,

00:09:38 ◼   ► and on their highest end laptop,

00:09:40 ◼   ► they can't make it actual true 2x pixels.

00:09:43 ◼   ► Any argument they have for that,

00:09:45 ◼   ► I don't think is a good argument.

00:09:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think so either.

00:09:47 ◼   ► - Especially because they do it right on the desktops.

00:09:49 ◼   ► - Right.

00:09:50 ◼   ► - And they have since 2014, when the Retina iMac came out.

00:09:52 ◼   ► - Right.

00:09:53 ◼   ► Well, and it's even in the name, they even call it 5K,

00:09:55 ◼   ► I mean, they couldn't call it the Retina 5K iMac

00:09:58 ◼   ► if it didn't really have 5K pixels.

00:10:01 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:10:02 ◼   ► So we know they can do it, and so I wish they would.

00:10:06 ◼   ► - What else is it we have news-wise?

00:10:07 ◼   ► How about these, how you doing with the betas this summer?

00:10:11 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:10:11 ◼   ► - I listened to the ATP, I don't know if it was last week

00:10:17 ◼   ► or the week before, but you said more or less

00:10:19 ◼   ► you're giving up on getting anything

00:10:24 ◼   ► other than the iPhone update to overcast out by day one.

00:10:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I'm actually, I'm doing things,

00:10:33 ◼   ► like I spent the summer, instead of doing like all iOS 13

00:10:37 ◼   ► and Catalyst and independent watchOS stuff,

00:10:41 ◼   ► instead of rewriting all my stuff in Swift UI

00:10:43 ◼   ► and everything, which is like kind of what I thought

00:10:44 ◼   ► I would be doing like the first day of WVDC

00:10:46 ◼   ► when we heard all this stuff, I'm like great,

00:10:47 ◼   ► this is gonna be a packed summer,

00:10:49 ◼   ► I'm gonna be doing all this stuff, all the new betas.

00:10:51 ◼   ► Yeah, then I got the betas and it turns out

00:10:53 ◼   ► they're really still pretty rough, still pretty early.

00:10:56 ◼   ► I don't even want to touch Catalist or Catalina anymore.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Like I did the first two betas of that,

00:11:01 ◼   ► and I'm like, all right, nope,

00:11:02 ◼   ► I'm done with that for a little while.

00:11:04 ◼   ► And even the API stuff, iOS 13 is still super rough.

00:11:09 ◼   ► It's hard to tell, like when I make something

00:11:11 ◼   ► with the UI of it, it's hard to tell

00:11:13 ◼   ► whether any bugs are my fault or the OS's fault.

00:11:16 ◼   ► And so I've just decided, you know what,

00:11:17 ◼   ► I'm just gonna focus on underlying,

00:11:20 ◼   ► like under the hood changes this summer

00:11:22 ◼   ► that are preparing the way for me to do more of that stuff

00:11:24 ◼   ► in like a month or two.

00:11:26 ◼   ► And so like, for instance, like last week,

00:11:27 ◼   ► I spent most of the past week

00:11:29 ◼   ► writing the sync engine differently.

00:11:32 ◼   ► Because the sync engine, the way it's been doing it

00:11:35 ◼   ► from like 1.0 until now, has some limitations

00:11:38 ◼   ► and more importantly, it has some really

00:11:40 ◼   ► incredibly intense memory usage

00:11:43 ◼   ► when you're doing a full re-sync to the servers

00:11:46 ◼   ► when you have a lot of podcasts.

00:11:48 ◼   ► And at first, I thought, well, who's gonna have

00:11:50 ◼   ► more than like 20, 30 podcasts subscribed.

00:11:53 ◼   ► And I looked at my own account, and I have 90,

00:11:56 ◼   ► and I'm like, all right, maybe this is more common

00:11:58 ◼   ► than I think, and I look, a lot of users have like 200,

00:12:02 ◼   ► 300, I think the peak is something like 600 to 1,000.

00:12:05 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:12:06 ◼   ► - And it isn't like one person, it's like multiple,

00:12:09 ◼   ► it's not that uncommon to have a couple hundred

00:12:12 ◼   ► podcast subscriptions in Overcast,

00:12:13 ◼   ► especially after you've been using it for like five years.

00:12:15 ◼   ► So the problem is that kind of sync engine

00:12:19 ◼   ► fit in the Apple Watch's constraints.

00:12:22 ◼   ► So when I want to make an independent watch app,

00:12:23 ◼   ► which I do want to do, I can't bring the sync engine

00:12:26 ◼   ► over until I change it.

00:12:27 ◼   ► So now I've spent the last week doing sync

00:12:30 ◼   ► in a pretty different way that should be much better,

00:12:33 ◼   ► and changing the server to support it and everything else.

00:12:36 ◼   ► So that's the kind of work I'm doing now,

00:12:37 ◼   ► because I don't need to be using the beta SDK

00:12:39 ◼   ► to do pretty much any of that.

00:12:41 ◼   ► And once this fall comes around,

00:12:43 ◼   ► I can actually install the GM versions of these tools,

00:12:48 ◼   ► and hope they're at all ready to go

00:12:50 ◼   ► and hope for the love of God, whoever's writing the iOS mail

00:12:53 ◼   ► app has gotten their act together.

00:12:54 ◼   ► Oh God, mail's so bad.

00:12:56 ◼   ► Are you mailing betas?

00:12:57 ◼   ► - I have it on my old iPhone 10

00:13:01 ◼   ► and I have it on an iPad mini.

00:13:05 ◼   ► I got so freaked that, 'cause I saw stories from people

00:13:11 ◼   ► who were saying that I wasn't even running it

00:13:13 ◼   ► on my main device, but it's screwed up my iCloud

00:13:17 ◼   ► or my notes or something.

00:13:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the scariest.

00:13:20 ◼   ► - And so I, and I just don't feel,

00:13:21 ◼   ► it's not useful for me to try it

00:13:23 ◼   ► with a throwaway iCloud account.

00:13:25 ◼   ► Like if I'm not actually using my actual data,

00:13:28 ◼   ► what's the point?

00:13:29 ◼   ► So I'm not really doing it.

00:13:31 ◼   ► What's wrong with mail on iOS?

00:13:32 ◼   ► - My understanding is that they rewrote,

00:13:35 ◼   ► so iOS 13 brought a lot of new changes

00:13:39 ◼   ► to some of the basic UI components

00:13:41 ◼   ► that a lot of the iOS apps use,

00:13:42 ◼   ► namely table views and collection views,

00:13:45 ◼   ► and how they manage their data, how when a new item comes in,

00:13:49 ◼   ► you can animate it in instead of just refreshing the whole table

00:13:52 ◼   ► as a single frame.

00:13:54 ◼   ► And they made that easier, and they changed the APIs

00:13:56 ◼   ► around that, and they introduced a bunch of new stuff

00:13:58 ◼   ► to just make all that stuff better and easier to use.

00:14:01 ◼   ► And so my understanding is they rewrote Mail entirely

00:14:04 ◼   ► using Collection View and using some of these new data source

00:14:09 ◼   ► methods.

00:14:10 ◼   ► And it's really early, I would say,

00:14:13 ◼   ► to try to be kind to people writing it.

00:14:15 ◼   ► If you use the mail app on the phone,

00:14:18 ◼   ► I would not recommend installing the iOS 13 betas

00:14:21 ◼   ► because there's just all sorts of bugs that you might have

00:14:25 ◼   ► if it was your very first,

00:14:27 ◼   ► it's not like the kind of rewrote a lot of that UI

00:14:29 ◼   ► from scratch, and it shows,

00:14:31 ◼   ► 'cause you'll have bugs like in table views,

00:14:34 ◼   ► you'll have cell reuse bugs where as you're scrolling,

00:14:38 ◼   ► the title of one message will be repeated

00:14:40 ◼   ► on all the cells in the screen,

00:14:41 ◼   ► or they'll all say no sender instead of the actual sender

00:14:45 ◼   ► the mail or you'll have rows that are inserted

00:14:48 ◼   ► that are empty, problems like that.

00:14:51 ◼   ► So it's, yeah, if you use iOS mail,

00:14:53 ◼   ► don't install the betas yet.

00:14:54 ◼   ► - I think it's gonna be interesting because

00:14:56 ◼   ► it sounds to me like

00:14:59 ◼   ► Apple's behind for where they really should be

00:15:06 ◼   ► to ship the iPhone, a new iPhone in early September.

00:15:10 ◼   ► I mean, we're like five weeks out.

00:15:14 ◼   ► But I don't know that they would hold the iPhone hardware

00:15:19 ◼   ► up for an extra two or three weeks of bug polish

00:15:23 ◼   ► and finish just to do it.

00:15:25 ◼   ► Like I wouldn't be surprised if they announced the phone

00:15:28 ◼   ► on schedule but maybe it doesn't ship

00:15:30 ◼   ► until the end of September.

00:15:32 ◼   ► They still have the early September event.

00:15:34 ◼   ► But if it's buggy, if iOS is buggy,

00:15:37 ◼   ► that is when reviewers get the phones, right?

00:15:39 ◼   ► We get them right after the event.

00:15:42 ◼   ► It just seems like it is, you know,

00:15:45 ◼   ► they're playing with fire this year.

00:15:49 ◼   ► 'Cause that hardware date is sort of set in stone.

00:15:52 ◼   ► - And I don't think they would even delay

00:15:54 ◼   ► the shipping of the phones for software,

00:15:56 ◼   ► because a lot of their products,

00:15:57 ◼   ► the volumes that they might sell

00:15:59 ◼   ► in additional two weeks and a quarter

00:16:01 ◼   ► might not matter so much to their financials,

00:16:03 ◼   ► but the phone matters a lot.

00:16:04 ◼   ► Like if they miss two weeks of sales

00:16:06 ◼   ► because the software's a little bit rough,

00:16:08 ◼   ► that's gonna hurt them in the financials

00:16:09 ◼   ► in ways that are probably not worth it.

00:16:11 ◼   ► I'm guessing they ship the phone on the same day

00:16:13 ◼   ► they were planning to no matter what.

00:16:15 ◼   ► And they just make the software as good as they can make it

00:16:18 ◼   ► by that day and just hope for the best.

00:16:21 ◼   ► Maybe they're gonna delay the Mac OS and watch OS,

00:16:25 ◼   ► or tvOS and whatever the heck the HomePod OS is called.

00:16:29 ◼   ► Maybe they delay those things a little bit

00:16:31 ◼   ► in order to prioritize iOS getting out the door

00:16:34 ◼   ► on that hardware ship date.

00:16:35 ◼   ► - Well, but they've been doing the new watch hardware

00:16:38 ◼   ► at the iPhone event.

00:16:39 ◼   ► - That's true.

00:16:41 ◼   ► - And I presume, you know,

00:16:43 ◼   ► I mean, there's so many, always so many fewer

00:16:47 ◼   ► watch rumors than iPhone rumors,

00:16:49 ◼   ► but I presume we'll see Series 5 watches this fall.

00:16:54 ◼   ► - I mean, maybe.

00:16:55 ◼   ► The watch hasn't been an exactly annual cycle, though.

00:16:58 ◼   ► Like, there's been a couple little 18-month spans

00:17:00 ◼   ► here and there, and between a couple of generations,

00:17:02 ◼   ► so I think it's most likely we'll see a Series 5,

00:17:05 ◼   ► but I wouldn't say it's, it isn't as sure of a thing

00:17:08 ◼   ► as iPhones every September.

00:17:11 ◼   ► But I do think it's most likely,

00:17:12 ◼   ► and I think again they're basically gonna like

00:17:14 ◼   ► take the prey approach to software quality

00:17:18 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:17:19 ◼   ► and just like try to make the deadline as hard as you can

00:17:22 ◼   ► because it's going to come regardless

00:17:24 ◼   ► because it's too important.

00:17:25 ◼   ► With the phone, I think they literally

00:17:27 ◼   ► would not even sell the phone.

00:17:28 ◼   ► Or they wouldn't delay selling the phone for hardware.

00:17:31 ◼   ► I think with the watch, they might.

00:17:33 ◼   ► Like they might announce it that same day,

00:17:35 ◼   ► and oh, it just doesn't ship for three weeks.

00:17:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, or shipping in October or something.

00:17:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

00:17:40 ◼   ► - All right, let me take a break.

00:17:43 ◼   ► Thank our first sponsor.

00:17:44 ◼   ► You like this, that you're having me do the sponsor reads?

00:17:47 ◼   ► - Oh my god, it's luxurious.

00:17:48 ◼   ► - You don't do them live on the show, though.

00:17:49 ◼   ► You edit those things in.

00:17:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I record the sponsor reads right before the show,

00:17:54 ◼   ► like a half hour before.

00:17:55 ◼   ► Basically, whenever the livestream starts on ATP,

00:17:58 ◼   ► I just finish doing the sponsor reads, basically.

00:18:00 ◼   ► 'Cause I do it all in a row, do the sponsor reads,

00:18:02 ◼   ► do the livestream, and then I start the livestream

00:18:05 ◼   ► I go refill my water cup and make sure I put my kid to bed

00:18:09 ◼   ► and whatever else I might have to do in the meantime.

00:18:11 ◼   ► But it's usually about a half hour before.

00:18:12 ◼   ► - All right, well let me tell you about Fracture.

00:18:15 ◼   ► Fracture is the company.

00:18:16 ◼   ► Takes your photos, prints them directly on glass.

00:18:19 ◼   ► - In vivid color.

00:18:20 ◼   ► - In vivid color.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Look, my message for Fracture is always the same.

00:18:24 ◼   ► Your phone is probably full of thousands

00:18:27 ◼   ► and thousands of photos.

00:18:28 ◼   ► I think I've got like 28,000 photos in my iCloud library.

00:18:31 ◼   ► You've got thousands of photos.

00:18:33 ◼   ► You've got family members, friends, vacations.

00:18:35 ◼   ► You're probably on big, you know,

00:18:37 ◼   ► a lot of people who don't work at Apple

00:18:39 ◼   ► are probably taking vacations in August.

00:18:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, Apple people, we're sorry.

00:18:44 ◼   ► - Pick some of your favorite photos.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Get 'em printed by the folks at Fracture.

00:18:49 ◼   ► Hang 'em up around your house.

00:18:50 ◼   ► It is, it makes your house look better.

00:18:52 ◼   ► It'll make you happier.

00:18:54 ◼   ► And file it away.

00:18:55 ◼   ► It's not really gift-giving season yet,

00:18:57 ◼   ► but it's always, always one of the greatest gifts

00:19:00 ◼   ► you can give to family members.

00:19:01 ◼   ► Nobody ever complains, no grandparent has ever complained

00:19:04 ◼   ► about getting too many photos of their grandchildren

00:19:07 ◼   ► or of dogs and cats and whoever else is in your family.

00:19:10 ◼   ► They make 'em right down in Gainesville, Florida

00:19:13 ◼   ► from U.S. sourced materials.

00:19:15 ◼   ► It's a green company, carbon neutral factory.

00:19:19 ◼   ► You can go to fracture.me for a special discount

00:19:24 ◼   ► on your first fracture order.

00:19:27 ◼   ► Don't forget, at the end of your order,

00:19:29 ◼   ► they could give you a one question survey.

00:19:32 ◼   ► Where did you hear about Fracture?

00:19:34 ◼   ► Just remember to tell them it was the talk show.

00:19:35 ◼   ► Or if you prefer, ATP.

00:19:38 ◼   ► - Thank you very much.

00:19:40 ◼   ► - So my thanks to Fracture, go check them out at fracture.me.

00:19:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, they're pretty great, house is full of them.

00:19:44 ◼   ► They're fantastic. - It is, yeah,

00:19:45 ◼   ► I can verify that.

00:19:46 ◼   ► Got a lot of cereal downstairs.

00:19:50 ◼   ► I opened my big mouth.

00:19:51 ◼   ► Talking about ATP, but you guys were talking

00:19:54 ◼   ► about Grape Nuts, of course John Sirquiza loves Grape Nuts.

00:19:57 ◼   ► - So do I, they're good.

00:19:59 ◼   ► It's crunchy bread gravel.

00:20:01 ◼   ► - I think Grape Nuts look like they're delicious.

00:20:04 ◼   ► I kinda like a cinnamony sort of crunchy cereal.

00:20:08 ◼   ► They look very different.

00:20:10 ◼   ► First time I ever tried Grape Nuts,

00:20:11 ◼   ► it was the most surprising taste.

00:20:14 ◼   ► I just did not expect it.

00:20:16 ◼   ► They really just taste like you're eating sand

00:20:19 ◼   ► or kitty litter or something.

00:20:20 ◼   ► - I feel like in the area of not that sugary cereals,

00:20:25 ◼   ► 'cause all breakfast cereal like that,

00:20:27 ◼   ► it has a good degree of sugar and carbs and everything.

00:20:29 ◼   ► it's really not the greatest thing you could be eating,

00:20:30 ◼   ► but in the area of cereals, there's like the sugary ones,

00:20:34 ◼   ► like the super sugary ones, like your Frosted Flakes,

00:20:37 ◼   ► your Captain Crocs, that kind of stuff,

00:20:40 ◼   ► and then there's the ones that have less sugar,

00:20:43 ◼   ► like Cheerios and Grape Nuts,

00:20:46 ◼   ► and I think in the less sugar category,

00:20:49 ◼   ► Grape Nuts are, they do surprisingly well,

00:20:51 ◼   ► 'cause usually in that category,

00:20:53 ◼   ► you just have some kind of weird wheat brand thing,

00:20:58 ◼   ► compressed into some kind of flake or blob or shape

00:21:02 ◼   ► or something and it's just really boring usually.

00:21:04 ◼   ► Grape nuts have a really fun texture.

00:21:07 ◼   ► Like you really gotta work hard.

00:21:08 ◼   ► You really feel like I'm gonna,

00:21:10 ◼   ► I'm earning these calories that I'm eating here

00:21:12 ◼   ► by chomping on this gravel in my mouth

00:21:15 ◼   ► that's taking forever to chew

00:21:16 ◼   ► and it provides a lot more texture

00:21:19 ◼   ► and I think more flavor than the other

00:21:22 ◼   ► not that sugary cereals.

00:21:23 ◼   ► Like Cheerios basically tastes like nothing.

00:21:25 ◼   ► - Yeah. - You know,

00:21:26 ◼   ► Cheerios are baby food basically.

00:21:27 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:21:28 ◼   ► And they're quite commonly used for that purpose.

00:21:30 ◼   ► - That's exactly, I still associate it, my son's 15 now,

00:21:33 ◼   ► but I still associate Cheerios very strongly

00:21:36 ◼   ► with when he was learning to eat solid food.

00:21:39 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:21:40 ◼   ► - And it occupies the perfect kid food

00:21:42 ◼   ► 'cause it's not messy, I mean there's powder.

00:21:45 ◼   ► - It does change the smell of a car forever.

00:21:48 ◼   ► If you let your kids eat Cheerios in the car.

00:21:51 ◼   ► The smell, you know how when you walk into somebody's house

00:21:55 ◼   ► and they have a cat, you can always smell,

00:21:57 ◼   ► that there's a cat lives here.

00:21:58 ◼   ► Even if they're pretty clean people,

00:21:59 ◼   ► you can always kind of tell,

00:22:00 ◼   ► oh, you smell a little bit cat lives here, right?

00:22:02 ◼   ► You can always tell if people have kids

00:22:03 ◼   ► when you get into their car,

00:22:05 ◼   ► 'cause it'll smell a little bit like Cheerios.

00:22:07 ◼   ► - 'Cause it's like sand at the beach,

00:22:09 ◼   ► you can't really get all the Cheerios

00:22:11 ◼   ► out of the backseat of the car.

00:22:12 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

00:22:13 ◼   ► It'll always smell a little bit like that.

00:22:14 ◼   ► - And it's, you know, with the kids too,

00:22:15 ◼   ► it's always, when they're at that Cheerios age,

00:22:18 ◼   ► they're also car seat age,

00:22:20 ◼   ► and that just makes way more crevices

00:22:24 ◼   ► where a straight Cheerio can get,

00:22:27 ◼   ► and you wouldn't even notice.

00:22:28 ◼   ► You get the kid out of the car,

00:22:30 ◼   ► give an eyeball to the backseat

00:22:32 ◼   ► and kinda clean up anything you need to clean up.

00:22:34 ◼   ► But those Cheerios, they'll get into every crack in the car.

00:22:36 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, meanwhile, then the car's being baked in the sun

00:22:38 ◼   ► for the next three years, and those Cheerios

00:22:40 ◼   ► are just roasting in that car seat crevice

00:22:41 ◼   ► that you can't reach.

00:22:43 ◼   ► That smell does not go away.

00:22:44 ◼   ► - I'm always interested, 'cause we're of similar age.

00:22:49 ◼   ► John Siracusa and I are very close in age,

00:22:51 ◼   ► very similar backgrounds.

00:22:52 ◼   ► We even share a first name.

00:22:53 ◼   ► And it always is fascinating to me where,

00:22:58 ◼   ► how much aligned our interests are, our perspectives,

00:23:02 ◼   ► but then there's other areas where we are totally different.

00:23:06 ◼   ► And so I thought it was interesting,

00:23:07 ◼   ► like he was saying that when he grew up,

00:23:11 ◼   ► he wasn't allowed to have sugar cereal, as we called it.

00:23:13 ◼   ► In my house, I was telling you this last night,

00:23:18 ◼   ► we weren't big junk food people,

00:23:22 ◼   ► but my family really bought in completely

00:23:26 ◼   ► to the mid-century, post-World War II Kellogg's

00:23:31 ◼   ► start your day with a bowl of breakfast.

00:23:35 ◼   ► So we had like a veritable selection of cereals.

00:23:40 ◼   ► We always had Cheerios, my dad was a big Cheerios guy.

00:23:42 ◼   ► So we'd have some Cheerios,

00:23:43 ◼   ► we'd have the Corn Flakes was a big one,

00:23:46 ◼   ► and then my sister and I could pick out

00:23:49 ◼   ► two or three sugar cereals at a time

00:23:51 ◼   ► and we'd have them open so I could have Fruit Loops one day,

00:23:54 ◼   ► I could have Frosted Flakes another day,

00:23:56 ◼   ► but every single day of the week

00:23:59 ◼   ► was a sugar cereal day for us.

00:24:01 ◼   ► - That's interesting, yeah, see,

00:24:02 ◼   ► we were restricted to only weekends.

00:24:04 ◼   ► We'd have like crackling oat bran on the weekdays,

00:24:07 ◼   ► and then the weekends, that was the splurge,

00:24:10 ◼   ► then that's when we could have such crazy innovations

00:24:13 ◼   ► as like when I was a kid,

00:24:15 ◼   ► that's when the Rice Krispies Treats cereal debuted.

00:24:18 ◼   ► - Which did not need to exist.

00:24:20 ◼   ► - No, and I remember when we got it, thinking like,

00:24:22 ◼   ► this is gonna be illegal in like a year.

00:24:24 ◼   ► Like, this should be illegal already.

00:24:26 ◼   ► There's no way this is gonna keep being on the market.

00:24:28 ◼   ► And here we are, still.

00:24:29 ◼   ► - I used to, it would be something I would look forward to.

00:24:33 ◼   ► I can't say I went to the grocery store

00:24:35 ◼   ► all the time with my mom,

00:24:35 ◼   ► but maybe like eight, nine, 10, you know,

00:24:38 ◼   ► I might have been, I forget when I was allowed

00:24:41 ◼   ► to stay home by myself if my mom went to the grocery store.

00:24:44 ◼   ► But one of the things I liked to do at the grocery store

00:24:46 ◼   ► would be to pick cereal.

00:24:48 ◼   ► And in hindsight, it's kind of crazy

00:24:50 ◼   ► that there's an entire aisle in a giant supermarket

00:24:52 ◼   ► filled with nothing but junk food.

00:24:55 ◼   ► - That's no accident.

00:24:56 ◼   ► - That's passed off as a meal.

00:24:58 ◼   ► - And there's so much about that too.

00:24:59 ◼   ► Like the shape of the boxes

00:25:02 ◼   ► is actually a huge waste of cardboard.

00:25:03 ◼   ► - Oh, right, right.

00:25:04 ◼   ► - It's like the most effective way to pack

00:25:07 ◼   ► that kind of cereal would be in a much more

00:25:09 ◼   ► like short squat box, almost like the shape

00:25:11 ◼   ► of like a Pop-Tarts box, like a shorter squatter box

00:25:13 ◼   ► that's deeper, but they make them

00:25:15 ◼   ► these giant skinny flat rectangles

00:25:17 ◼   ► so that they appear large on the shelf.

00:25:20 ◼   ► They're like billboards for kids.

00:25:21 ◼   ► And of course, all the sugariest ones are at kid height

00:25:25 ◼   ► so that kids can see it and beg their parents to buy it.

00:25:27 ◼   ► - Well, like at Whole Foods, they'll sell cereal

00:25:29 ◼   ► that comes in a bag.

00:25:30 ◼   ► They do have box cereal too,

00:25:32 ◼   ► but they'll sell the cereal in a bag.

00:25:34 ◼   ► And then I think they even label it on the bag,

00:25:36 ◼   ► like this is space efficient.

00:25:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

00:25:38 ◼   ► They're trying to tell you,

00:25:40 ◼   ► 'cause when we were growing up,

00:25:41 ◼   ► there were bagged cereals at the very bottom

00:25:43 ◼   ► and they were like the cheapo ones.

00:25:45 ◼   ► So they're trying to probably get rid of that image

00:25:47 ◼   ► of like, no, trust me, bagged cereal is good.

00:25:49 ◼   ► I don't say I think it's a losing battle.

00:25:51 ◼   ► I think that ship has sailed

00:25:52 ◼   ► and no one's ever gonna think that, but they can try.

00:25:55 ◼   ► One thing too, I realize like when I was a kid,

00:25:59 ◼   ► just like how incredibly effective TV commercials

00:26:03 ◼   ► during kids shows were at getting kids

00:26:06 ◼   ► to make their parents buy them certain things.

00:26:08 ◼   ► 'Cause like now, like my kid now,

00:26:10 ◼   ► I've been a cord cutter since before it was called that

00:26:13 ◼   ► and my kid now has almost never seen TV commercials.

00:26:17 ◼   ► Like, if we're like in a hotel room,

00:26:18 ◼   ► we'll turn the TV on, and he'll be like,

00:26:21 ◼   ► why does the show keep stopping, and what is this?

00:26:23 ◼   ► Like, but, so for the most part, he doesn't see commercials.

00:26:26 ◼   ► So it's interesting that he almost never

00:26:29 ◼   ► requests certain exact things, like buy certain brands

00:26:33 ◼   ► or certain toys, the way we would.

00:26:35 ◼   ► And I just remember thinking, like, you know,

00:26:36 ◼   ► the reason I knew about Rice Krispie Treat cereal

00:26:38 ◼   ► when I was a kid was that I watched Saturday morning

00:26:40 ◼   ► cartoons and probably TV throughout the week

00:26:43 ◼   ► at different times as well.

00:26:44 ◼   ► And so I always, I saw all the commercials,

00:26:46 ◼   ► and I would beg for the things in them

00:26:48 ◼   ► that were usually not as good as I thought they would be,

00:26:50 ◼   ► like the Typhoon, hovercraft, piece of crap.

00:26:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:26:54 ◼   ► And like, you know, but now, so,

00:26:58 ◼   ► I wouldn't say like so few kids watch commercials,

00:27:00 ◼   ► but certainly a lot fewer now watch commercials

00:27:03 ◼   ► than did like in the '80s and '90s.

00:27:06 ◼   ► I wonder, like, how does that change,

00:27:08 ◼   ► like, how do our kids even know like what to ask for?

00:27:12 ◼   ► I mean, YouTube, I guess?

00:27:15 ◼   ► In hindsight, I can definitely agree

00:27:17 ◼   ► that I was more influenced by kid show commercials

00:27:21 ◼   ► than I would have as a smart alecky kid

00:27:26 ◼   ► who was fairly cynical from a young age.

00:27:31 ◼   ► I would have sworn up and down that,

00:27:33 ◼   ► that's for dummies who get brainwashed by commercials.

00:27:37 ◼   ► I'm smart.

00:27:38 ◼   ► And meanwhile, I'm asking my mom for Mr. T cereal.

00:27:41 ◼   ► - Right. (laughing)

00:27:42 ◼   ► And we don't even go,

00:27:44 ◼   ► There were the two avenues of marketing that hit us hard.

00:27:47 ◼   ► There's the commercials were the big one,

00:27:49 ◼   ► and then also we would be going to a lot more retail stores.

00:27:53 ◼   ► We would go to a toy store to buy certain toys.

00:27:56 ◼   ► Now we just get 'em on Amazon.

00:27:57 ◼   ► And so we don't, my kid is hardly ever in a toy store.

00:28:01 ◼   ► I don't even know if any toy stores are still in business.

00:28:03 ◼   ► - Right, everything just comes in a brown Amazon box.

00:28:06 ◼   ► - Right, so the only method of marketing

00:28:08 ◼   ► that seems to work on him is when his friends at school

00:28:11 ◼   ► have something, then he'll often ask for one like that.

00:28:14 ◼   ► - But that's about it.

00:28:15 ◼   ► And a lot of his friends at school have similar parents

00:28:18 ◼   ► who were like, you know, also are pretty much cord cutters

00:28:20 ◼   ► and Amazon shoppers.

00:28:21 ◼   ► So like, the amount of like things that he asks for,

00:28:25 ◼   ► specifically, you know, certain brand names

00:28:27 ◼   ► or certain types of food, are very, very low

00:28:29 ◼   ► compared to what we did when we were kids.

00:28:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, definitely.

00:28:32 ◼   ► I think it's also the cereal racket,

00:28:37 ◼   ► before we move on to other topics, the cereal racket--

00:28:39 ◼   ► - This is better than tech news, I mean.

00:28:40 ◼   ► - The cereal racket was always interesting to me

00:28:43 ◼   ► because it was a very vibrant,

00:28:46 ◼   ► it probably still is, I'm guessing,

00:28:48 ◼   ► it's a very vibrant distinctive mix

00:28:50 ◼   ► between all-time classics that haven't changed ever,

00:28:55 ◼   ► Cheerios, Corn Flakes.

00:28:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, and Grape Nuts are-- - I think Grape Nuts

00:28:59 ◼   ► are in that. - Yeah, like there was

00:29:00 ◼   ► the article I mentioned on ATP,

00:29:02 ◼   ► the No Grapes, No Nuts, No Market Chair,

00:29:03 ◼   ► I think it was called, like it said how they changed,

00:29:06 ◼   ► they had to change the recipe twice, like once to add,

00:29:09 ◼   ► they added back a little bit of the wheat hulls,

00:29:12 ◼   ► they could call it whole grain.

00:29:13 ◼   ► And at one time they fortified it with vitamins

00:29:16 ◼   ► to make it comply with something.

00:29:18 ◼   ► That's it.

00:29:19 ◼   ► So yeah, most of these things like corn flakes,

00:29:22 ◼   ► I think they have similar things,

00:29:23 ◼   ► but they've modified very slightly over time,

00:29:25 ◼   ► but they're basically the same thing.

00:29:26 ◼   ► - But you've got these staples, you've got these classics.

00:29:29 ◼   ► And then there's the, like I said, Mr. T cereal.

00:29:33 ◼   ► I mean, I'm dating myself here,

00:29:34 ◼   ► but I remember Pac-Man cereal was a big deal

00:29:37 ◼   ► in the early '80s.

00:29:38 ◼   ► - So they would just take whatever the fad of 1982,

00:29:42 ◼   ► and then they would make a breakfast cereal out of it.

00:29:44 ◼   ► - Of course, why wouldn't you?

00:29:45 ◼   ► - I seem to recall, I think Nintendo had a cereal

00:29:47 ◼   ► at one point.

00:29:48 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, every big, yeah, I'm sure there were

00:29:50 ◼   ► like Mario cereals and stuff.

00:29:52 ◼   ► I'm sure there was probably a Sonic cereal

00:29:53 ◼   ► when I was going through that time.

00:29:56 ◼   ► 'Cause they were always, cereal companies are shameless

00:29:59 ◼   ► with licensing and everything.

00:30:00 ◼   ► You can get pretty much anything.

00:30:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, they should do like an iPhone cereal.

00:30:03 ◼   ► Just you're eating like little tiny iPhones.

00:30:05 ◼   ► - I wonder, could they get the super ellipse shape

00:30:08 ◼   ► - The icons, can they get that right?

00:30:10 ◼   ► - No.

00:30:11 ◼   ► They couldn't even make Pac-Man right,

00:30:12 ◼   ► but Pac-Man did not look like Pac-Man.

00:30:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, it seems like the breakfast cereal factory tooling

00:30:17 ◼   ► is not incredibly precise.

00:30:19 ◼   ► - I always enjoyed too the small print on the cereal boxes.

00:30:24 ◼   ► Would people sue?

00:30:28 ◼   ► I don't know, but it's like they'd show you

00:30:30 ◼   ► having your bowl of Cheerios

00:30:32 ◼   ► and then there's a bunch of cut-up strawberries in it

00:30:34 ◼   ► and then they have to tell you

00:30:36 ◼   ► that the strawberries are not included

00:30:37 ◼   ► And it's like, pretty sure fresh strawberries

00:30:39 ◼   ► are not gonna do well in this box, but.

00:30:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, strawberries shown for scale.

00:30:43 ◼   ► Yeah, or like the part of this complete breakfast nonsense.

00:30:46 ◼   ► - Oh, right, right. - That's always fun.

00:30:47 ◼   ► I forget the story, there was some story behind that

00:30:49 ◼   ► of basically, there was some reason why the cereal companies

00:30:53 ◼   ► would advertise as part of this complete breakfast,

00:30:55 ◼   ► and it was, again, as with many food claims,

00:30:58 ◼   ► it's total BS, and it's like, the better breakfast

00:31:00 ◼   ► would be that exact same thing minus the cereal.

00:31:03 ◼   ► Like that would actually be a better breakfast

00:31:05 ◼   ► than whatever you're adding the cereal to.

00:31:06 ◼   ► - Right, yeah. (laughs)

00:31:09 ◼   ► I also think, I think it's complete nonsense,

00:31:12 ◼   ► I know that people debate about this,

00:31:14 ◼   ► and I think different, this is,

00:31:15 ◼   ► it's very personal, in my opinion,

00:31:17 ◼   ► the way your body metabolizes,

00:31:19 ◼   ► whether you're a morning person or a late-night person.

00:31:22 ◼   ► But they really successfully sold all of North America

00:31:26 ◼   ► on the idea that breakfast is the quote,

00:31:28 ◼   ► "most important meal of the day."

00:31:30 ◼   ► Like if-- (laughs)

00:31:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, I feel like whatever meal your food goes in

00:31:35 ◼   ► that you sell, you wanna make that claim.

00:31:36 ◼   ► - Right.

00:31:37 ◼   ► Well, I just think, you know, but that's a bold claim

00:31:42 ◼   ► and they had like nothing to back it up.

00:31:43 ◼   ► They were just like, well, we'll just tell people that.

00:31:45 ◼   ► Yeah, and it makes--

00:31:45 ◼   ► - I think what we've found is like,

00:31:46 ◼   ► because now we have a variety of,

00:31:49 ◼   ► like, you know, I know people who eat all sorts of breakfast

00:31:52 ◼   ► from like large breakfasts to, you know,

00:31:54 ◼   ► super unhealthy to super unhealthy to no breakfast

00:31:57 ◼   ► and they all seem fine.

00:31:58 ◼   ► It seems like it might be the least important meal

00:32:00 ◼   ► of the day, actually.

00:32:01 ◼   ► Like, it seems like you can do pretty much

00:32:02 ◼   ► whatever you want for breakfast

00:32:03 ◼   ► and it's not gonna have a massive effect on you.

00:32:06 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:32:09 ◼   ► - What else do we have?

00:32:12 ◼   ► What's on your mind?

00:32:14 ◼   ► - I don't know, I mean there's a bit of minor stuff.

00:32:16 ◼   ► Like there was the whole listening to Siri requests thing.

00:32:20 ◼   ► I don't know how much there is there.

00:32:21 ◼   ► I don't really care that strongly about that honestly.

00:32:23 ◼   ► - So that broke right before Molten and I recorded

00:32:28 ◼   ► over the weekend.

00:32:30 ◼   ► looked into it, The Guardian is usually pretty good, but I don't get this. Like, you definitely—I knew,

00:32:38 ◼   ► we've always had to agree to some kind of terms with Siri that would acknowledge that they're

00:32:43 ◼   ► letting you, like for quality control purposes, listening, but that they're doing it in a

00:32:51 ◼   ► completely anonymized fashion. Like, it just did not seem like new news to me.

00:32:56 ◼   ► - I think the difference is, and they talked about this

00:33:00 ◼   ► this week on upgrade, the difference is that

00:33:03 ◼   ► when you agree that like, oh, when you push the Siri

00:33:07 ◼   ► button on your phone and you ask it to do something,

00:33:09 ◼   ► it is going to servers.

00:33:10 ◼   ► And those servers are also gonna have things like

00:33:12 ◼   ► your contact information so it can know, like if you say,

00:33:15 ◼   ► you know, call TIFF, it's gonna look at my contact

00:33:16 ◼   ► to see who TIFF is.

00:33:18 ◼   ► And it does all that logic server side,

00:33:19 ◼   ► so the servers need your contact, stuff like that.

00:33:21 ◼   ► So we, I think we who were in the know, we knew that,

00:33:24 ◼   ► and we knew that was doing that.

00:33:26 ◼   ► The main trick, this is what upgrade brought up,

00:33:28 ◼   ► I think the main difference is that there's a lot of

00:33:30 ◼   ► accidental invocations ever since the

00:33:33 ◼   ► hey dingus support came out.

00:33:35 ◼   ► Like we have a HomePod in our kitchen,

00:33:37 ◼   ► and all the time we'll be having a conversation

00:33:40 ◼   ► that does not include those two words at all,

00:33:43 ◼   ► and HomePod will pipe up in the corner,

00:33:46 ◼   ► "Hmm, sorry, what was that?"

00:33:48 ◼   ► Or something like that, it'll make some noise

00:33:49 ◼   ► that indicates that it was listening for a few seconds

00:33:51 ◼   ► and thought we were trying to tell it something

00:33:52 ◼   ► and then it failed for whatever reason.

00:33:54 ◼   ► And that happens a lot.

00:33:56 ◼   ► And the HomePod is the only device

00:33:58 ◼   ► that I have Hade Ninga enabled for.

00:33:59 ◼   ► I don't even use it on the other devices

00:34:01 ◼   ► because honestly it's a lot easier

00:34:02 ◼   ► to have a HomePod in your house

00:34:04 ◼   ► if that's the only device you have respond to that command.

00:34:07 ◼   ► It solves a number of problems.

00:34:09 ◼   ► But anyway, by default that feature's on

00:34:11 ◼   ► on most Apple devices these days.

00:34:14 ◼   ► It'll tell you during the setup wizard

00:34:15 ◼   ► and it'll give you a chance to turn it off.

00:34:17 ◼   ► But kind of like the default run-through process,

00:34:20 ◼   ► the encouraged flow is to turn it on.

00:34:22 ◼   ► So a lot of people have the hey-ding-a support turned on.

00:34:25 ◼   ► And so that, because it is both trying to be automatic

00:34:29 ◼   ► with its invocation, and because it is honestly

00:34:32 ◼   ► not as good as something like an Amazon Echo

00:34:35 ◼   ► at knowing when you're calling it and when you're not,

00:34:38 ◼   ► I think that's giving a lot of accidental input into Siri.

00:34:42 ◼   ► And so the controversial part of these recordings is like,

00:34:45 ◼   ► you didn't even realize it was recording.

00:34:47 ◼   ► - And so who knows what you were talking about.

00:34:48 ◼   ► - Right, and so you could have been doing something

00:34:50 ◼   ► embarrassing or nefarious or private,

00:34:53 ◼   ► and now somebody at some contractor in Silicon Valley,

00:34:58 ◼   ► not even an Apple employee, but some contractor

00:35:00 ◼   ► is reviewing your sex tape or drug deal or whatever.

00:35:04 ◼   ► That goes against what people expect to be the case.

00:35:09 ◼   ► Even though we know academically,

00:35:10 ◼   ► oh yeah, recordings go to the server,

00:35:12 ◼   ► you think of it, when you think of these things,

00:35:14 ◼   ► you think of the typical or ideal case.

00:35:16 ◼   ► You think, oh, when I push the button

00:35:18 ◼   ► and tell it and ask it a question,

00:35:19 ◼   ► it's gonna send what I said to a server, okay, no problem.

00:35:22 ◼   ► You don't think about all this accidental invocations

00:35:24 ◼   ► where it's recording just a random snippet of audio

00:35:26 ◼   ► from your world and then some weirdos listening to it.

00:35:30 ◼   ► - And I would guess that accidental invocations

00:35:34 ◼   ► might be more likely to be reviewed because Siri,

00:35:38 ◼   ► you know, like, usually she'll go, hmm,

00:35:39 ◼   ► I didn't catch that or. - Right, yeah.

00:35:41 ◼   ► - And that maybe those get flagged as, hey,

00:35:44 ◼   ► the last 15 seconds of interaction here

00:35:47 ◼   ► weren't completed successfully

00:35:49 ◼   ► and maybe that sets a flag that makes it more likely

00:35:51 ◼   ► to be reviewed.

00:35:52 ◼   ► And I did see that, that was in the Guardian story

00:35:54 ◼   ► where the anonymous contractor who was their source

00:35:57 ◼   ► said that they heard drug deals and all sorts of--

00:36:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:36:02 ◼   ► And I'm sure that isn't the common case.

00:36:04 ◼   ► I'm sure most of what they hear is boring or nothing

00:36:06 ◼   ► or just some random chatter, but yeah.

00:36:09 ◼   ► Like the fact is that can happen

00:36:11 ◼   ► and it does occasionally at least happen.

00:36:12 ◼   ► And I think the main issue here is that

00:36:17 ◼   ► people don't really know that that's happening.

00:36:20 ◼   ► Like, you can tell them in some small print somewhere,

00:36:24 ◼   ► but they don't really know.

00:36:26 ◼   ► You're not really going to communicate well to people

00:36:29 ◼   ► that your recordings of random audio snippets

00:36:32 ◼   ► will be reviewed by humans sometimes.

00:36:35 ◼   ► Like, there should be an explicit opt-out

00:36:38 ◼   ► that says basically, like,

00:36:39 ◼   ► "Can Apple review your recordings periodically

00:36:43 ◼   ► "to improve quality," or whatever.

00:36:45 ◼   ► I don't know where they word it,

00:36:46 ◼   ► but that should be an explicit opt-out,

00:36:48 ◼   ► and right now, there is no separate setting for that.

00:36:51 ◼   ► If you don't want Apple to review your recordings

00:36:52 ◼   ► periodically, you can't use Siri.

00:36:55 ◼   ► And you can't both advance the position

00:36:59 ◼   ► that Siri is the future and super important

00:37:01 ◼   ► and we're tying so much functionality to Siri,

00:37:03 ◼   ► and also say, well, if you don't like this detail of it,

00:37:07 ◼   ► just don't use any of it.

00:37:08 ◼   ► Like, that's not a valid argument, I think, at this point.

00:37:12 ◼   ► - I do think Siri is getting better.

00:37:15 ◼   ► I think it is, you know, I've always been a little more--

00:37:18 ◼   ► - Like desktop Linux.

00:37:19 ◼   ► - I remain optimistic about Siri's future.

00:37:24 ◼   ► But I still think that we are in such ridiculous

00:37:28 ◼   ► early days of this.

00:37:30 ◼   ► And in some ways that frustrates me because it was like,

00:37:35 ◼   ► we went, when I was a kid, we went from like Steve,

00:37:39 ◼   ► the two Steves making the Apple One in a garage

00:37:44 ◼   ► to having the Macintosh seven years later.

00:37:48 ◼   ► Like, it was really, really rapid,

00:37:52 ◼   ► and all of a sudden, by 1984, we had these computers

00:37:55 ◼   ► that had this really polished interface

00:37:58 ◼   ► that was, you know, like regular people could use it

00:38:01 ◼   ► and understand it.

00:38:02 ◼   ► Whereas Siri's been around since 2011?

00:38:07 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:38:09 ◼   ► - And it's not progressing as fast.

00:38:12 ◼   ► And none of them are that good.

00:38:13 ◼   ► But one of the little things I noticed,

00:38:15 ◼   ► and it's so hard, it's so much harder to evaluate

00:38:18 ◼   ► than software on your phone or on your Mac

00:38:22 ◼   ► where you see everything and you see all the details

00:38:24 ◼   ► and you can say, oh, they changed the size of these buttons

00:38:27 ◼   ► or they changed the color.

00:38:28 ◼   ► Oh, they redid the disk utility window, right?

00:38:33 ◼   ► It wasn't like when they redid disk utility a few years ago,

00:38:37 ◼   ► it wasn't like there was any question in your mind,

00:38:40 ◼   ► did they change disk utility?

00:38:41 ◼   ► You could see it.

00:38:42 ◼   ► With the voice assistant, you can never quite be sure,

00:38:46 ◼   ► but I have noticed this summer,

00:38:48 ◼   ► it has been very, very hot in Philadelphia.

00:38:50 ◼   ► And one of the things I do most frequently with Siri

00:38:55 ◼   ► is ask for the weather,

00:38:57 ◼   ► 'cause I might be getting dressed in the morning

00:38:59 ◼   ► or something, I don't have my watch on yet,

00:39:01 ◼   ► or I don't have my phone in my hand.

00:39:03 ◼   ► And I have noticed that she hasn't once this summer

00:39:06 ◼   ► given me any kind of smart alecky,

00:39:10 ◼   ► Hot you know because it's 101 degrees you could like turn that down a little bit all that annoying well

00:39:15 ◼   ► I'm a personality. I think they have but maybe I'm getting a bad sample size. You know like I can't prove it

00:39:23 ◼   ► but I'm

00:39:25 ◼   ► Specifically thinking about the hot temperatures. What was and in the winter she does burr or cold

00:39:30 ◼   ► Yeah

00:39:31 ◼   ► It's always it's always like about

00:39:33 ◼   ► 40% more words than you wanted her to give you in response to anything and it's oftentimes like a

00:39:39 ◼   ► a lot more personality than is warranted

00:39:43 ◼   ► by the accuracy and helpfulness of the assistant.

00:39:45 ◼   ► It's like, I feel like if the assistant's gonna be

00:39:50 ◼   ► fairly primitive in grand terms,

00:39:52 ◼   ► and is gonna keep making mistakes a lot,

00:39:56 ◼   ► the way many of these assistants do,

00:39:58 ◼   ► and especially Siri, I feel like it shouldn't exhibit

00:40:01 ◼   ► a lot of personality, because if it's doing something wrong

00:40:05 ◼   ► and then it says, "Brr, you're just annoyed.

00:40:07 ◼   ► "You wanna throw it out the window at that point."

00:40:09 ◼   ► give a little personality, as little personality as possible

00:40:12 ◼   ► until it's actually earned.

00:40:14 ◼   ► And I feel like none of these assistants are good enough

00:40:16 ◼   ► that they've earned the ability

00:40:17 ◼   ► to start making smart ass comments back at you.

00:40:19 ◼   ► - Right, and I feel like one of the ones for me

00:40:22 ◼   ► is I have two contacts in my contacts database

00:40:26 ◼   ► for women whose first name is Amy.

00:40:31 ◼   ► One of them I send text messages to all the time

00:40:36 ◼   ► and the other is somebody

00:40:37 ◼   ► I have a professional relationship with

00:40:39 ◼   ► and I don't believe I've spoken to her since like 2015.

00:40:42 ◼   ► But I don't wanna delete the contact.

00:40:44 ◼   ► - I feel like maybe you have to rename her.

00:40:46 ◼   ► - Maybe, but then I feel like I'll forget

00:40:48 ◼   ► what I renamed her.

00:40:49 ◼   ► I guess I know her last name, I can just do that.

00:40:51 ◼   ► But it's a little interaction that bothers me

00:40:56 ◼   ► every single time when I'll say, text Amy something something

00:41:01 ◼   ► and they'll say, "Which Amy?"

00:41:02 ◼   ► And then I have to pick.

00:41:03 ◼   ► - And it never learns.

00:41:04 ◼   ► - And it never learns.

00:41:05 ◼   ► And it just feels like the,

00:41:08 ◼   ► like I could hire the worst personal assistant in the world.

00:41:14 ◼   ► I could go to a local college and say,

00:41:17 ◼   ► "Give me somebody who's on drugs and is flunking out,"

00:41:20 ◼   ► and I'll hire that person as my personal assistant.

00:41:25 ◼   ► They could be a really bad personal assistant.

00:41:27 ◼   ► I could be fretting.

00:41:28 ◼   ► I could say, "Oh, I think I gotta fire this person.

00:41:30 ◼   ► "It's not working out."

00:41:31 ◼   ► But if I told my assistant, text my wife,

00:41:34 ◼   ► that I'm gonna be late, or text Amy that I'm gonna be late,

00:41:39 ◼   ► they would know to text my wife.

00:41:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, even the worst assistant, a human,

00:41:42 ◼   ► would always have the judgment to know that context.

00:41:45 ◼   ► I mean, right now, we have kind of a dual system family.

00:41:49 ◼   ► Like, we had the Amazon Echo before we had the HomePod,

00:41:52 ◼   ► and we still have both, and--

00:41:54 ◼   ► - So do we. - Yeah.

00:41:55 ◼   ► - It is so bad.

00:41:56 ◼   ► - And we recently, like, Tiff took over the Echo as hers.

00:42:00 ◼   ► We reassigned it to entirely hers,

00:42:02 ◼   ► So it's all her accounts registered to her and everything.

00:42:06 ◼   ► And the HomePod stays with me.

00:42:07 ◼   ► And so we always joke that now we have two DIMM assistants

00:42:11 ◼   ► that are just kind of DIMM in different ways.

00:42:14 ◼   ► And you ask one of them to do something

00:42:16 ◼   ► and it totally bombs out.

00:42:17 ◼   ► You ask the other one, it'll usually get it right.

00:42:19 ◼   ► But it's not like one of them is never,

00:42:22 ◼   ► there isn't just one that's so good

00:42:24 ◼   ► that we can keep just that one.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Ultimately, what I hope is happening here,

00:42:28 ◼   ► and maybe this is a bad example

00:42:29 ◼   ► 'cause we haven't seen the result

00:42:30 ◼   ► of the big Maps rewrite yet.

00:42:33 ◼   ► I know there was some concern that it might actually

00:42:35 ◼   ► not be as good as we were hoping.

00:42:37 ◼   ► But assuming that it does get good,

00:42:40 ◼   ► I hope there is something like the great Maps rewrite

00:42:42 ◼   ► going on for Siri.

00:42:43 ◼   ► They hired John Gendrea, what about two years ago now,

00:42:47 ◼   ► a year ago, something like that?

00:42:48 ◼   ► - I think it was two years ago.

00:42:49 ◼   ► - Something like that, yeah.

00:42:50 ◼   ► - Maybe it was just last year.

00:42:52 ◼   ► - I don't know, regardless.

00:42:53 ◼   ► They hired him fairly recently,

00:42:55 ◼   ► and he got promoted to SVP.

00:42:58 ◼   ► And so clearly there was a major shift of Siri leadership

00:43:02 ◼   ► with somebody who was very qualified

00:43:04 ◼   ► to do this kind of thing in a way that I think

00:43:07 ◼   ► was probably way better than the way Apple

00:43:08 ◼   ► was doing it before.

00:43:09 ◼   ► So hopefully there is some kind of great effort going on

00:43:13 ◼   ► to really transform Siri and really bring it

00:43:16 ◼   ► at least up to the level of the Amazon Echo

00:43:19 ◼   ► and the Google whatever.

00:43:21 ◼   ► Hopefully it gets past that level.

00:43:23 ◼   ► But just to at least meet it in some of the basics.

00:43:26 ◼   ► Like Siri, yes, Siri's ahead in some areas,

00:43:28 ◼   ► but it still falls behind in some of the basics

00:43:31 ◼   ► of like reliability, performance,

00:43:33 ◼   ► some basic logic, basic learning.

00:43:36 ◼   ► It's still way behind even where the Amazon Echo was

00:43:39 ◼   ► like three years ago in a lot of those areas.

00:43:41 ◼   ► So I hope they're, I hope and I assume

00:43:46 ◼   ► that they actually are doing some kind of great Siri reset

00:43:48 ◼   ► behind the scenes, although honestly I've heard nothing

00:43:50 ◼   ► to that effect.

00:43:51 ◼   ► - And it's, you know, it's so hard,

00:43:53 ◼   ► It's obviously a very hard problem domain.

00:43:56 ◼   ► But if I only understood my wife

00:44:01 ◼   ► as often as Siri understands my wife,

00:44:03 ◼   ► she would be concerned and tell me

00:44:06 ◼   ► I need to go get my hearing checked at the doctor

00:44:08 ◼   ► because this isn't working out.

00:44:11 ◼   ► - And the problems go beyond hearing.

00:44:13 ◼   ► - Right. - Siri hears me great.

00:44:14 ◼   ► - Oh, see, she hears something,

00:44:17 ◼   ► but it's like Amy, for whatever reason,

00:44:21 ◼   ► Amy, you know, a fine podcaster in her own right,

00:44:25 ◼   ► speaks very clearly.

00:44:26 ◼   ► But it's shocking to me how often, like,

00:44:31 ◼   ► when, like, her miss rate on, like,

00:44:35 ◼   ► doing some of our home kit stuff,

00:44:36 ◼   ► like with the lights or the shades or something like that,

00:44:38 ◼   ► is really low.

00:44:40 ◼   ► Or, and she'll say stuff like,

00:44:41 ◼   ► open the kitchen shades.

00:44:46 ◼   ► And one of the things that's great about Siri

00:44:48 ◼   ► is that Siri doesn't make you do like a command line.

00:44:52 ◼   ► You have to use the words the same way.

00:44:54 ◼   ► You can say open the shades in the kitchen,

00:44:57 ◼   ► open the kitchen shades.

00:44:59 ◼   ► You don't have to program a scene with those specific names.

00:45:02 ◼   ► You should generally just figure it out.

00:45:04 ◼   ► But it's just, we have one where the main floor

00:45:09 ◼   ► of our house is a couple of different rooms.

00:45:12 ◼   ► So I do have a scene called open main floor shades,

00:45:18 ◼   ► and that just opens all of them.

00:45:19 ◼   ► And Amy will say open main floor shades, exactly,

00:45:22 ◼   ► and Siri will say, I'm sorry,

00:45:25 ◼   ► I don't have anything by that name.

00:45:27 ◼   ► - So the one common issue I have with Siri is

00:45:30 ◼   ► if you're saying something that is close to a common word,

00:45:34 ◼   ► it's almost like my snap to grid thing,

00:45:36 ◼   ► like if you're saying something

00:45:38 ◼   ► that's close to a common word,

00:45:40 ◼   ► but it's like a different word,

00:45:42 ◼   ► sometimes Siri will hear it as that common word

00:45:44 ◼   ► every single time no matter how you say it.

00:45:46 ◼   ► So one example of this is, like when Siri first came out,

00:45:49 ◼   ► you could say, you could tell your phone,

00:45:51 ◼   ► like if your name, like in my office case,

00:45:53 ◼   ► if your name was Tiffany, you could say, call me Tiff.

00:45:56 ◼   ► And it would say, okay, from now on,

00:45:57 ◼   ► I will call you, whatever you said.

00:45:58 ◼   ► But in this case, she could not get Siri to say that.

00:46:02 ◼   ► It would just say, no matter how she or I pronounced it,

00:46:05 ◼   ► every single time it would say, okay, I will call you Test.

00:46:09 ◼   ► Every single time.

00:46:09 ◼   ► And even, and that was years ago now,

00:46:12 ◼   ► but even now with the HomePod,

00:46:14 ◼   ► They added the name timer support finally, thank God.

00:46:16 ◼   ► It's great.

00:46:17 ◼   ► I wish it would come to iOS, but cool.

00:46:19 ◼   ► Start with the HomePod at least, that's good.

00:46:21 ◼   ► And some mornings I'll make some bacon and eggs,

00:46:25 ◼   ► and I will say, start a bacon timer for 12 minutes

00:46:27 ◼   ► with the bacon in the oven.

00:46:29 ◼   ► Every single time.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Okay, I've started a baking timer.

00:46:32 ◼   ► Every time.

00:46:33 ◼   ► No matter how I say bacon,

00:46:36 ◼   ► I cannot get it to not say back to me, bacon.

00:46:38 ◼   ► - Right, and you would think,

00:46:40 ◼   ► like if you were talking to a person,

00:46:43 ◼   ► you could say start a bacon timer, B-A-C-O-N.

00:46:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, right, yeah, you can clarify.

00:46:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, and there's no way to clarify like that,

00:46:50 ◼   ► and it's just like the,

00:46:51 ◼   ► you just sort of start to break down, you know, I don't know.

00:46:57 ◼   ► - Maybe I think I'm saying it like with an apostrophe

00:46:59 ◼   ► instead of the G at the end. - Yeah, bacon.

00:47:01 ◼   ► - I'm just bacon out here.

00:47:01 ◼   ► - You're just dropping your Gs.

00:47:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, right, yeah, start a bacon timer, bacon.

00:47:06 ◼   ► - I also think that the name timer thing was interesting

00:47:11 ◼   ► that the HomePod, well, and HomePod was single timer only.

00:47:15 ◼   ► You couldn't name 'em, and it was single timer.

00:47:17 ◼   ► - Yes, okay.

00:47:18 ◼   ► - And the reaction from some people at Apple PR was,

00:47:24 ◼   ► okay, it's a good feature, but is this really that big a deal

00:47:28 ◼   ► and I-- - Yes, it is.

00:47:30 ◼   ► - Well, and the thing is, is I think it was an instance

00:47:34 ◼   ► where the cultural insularity of Apple,

00:47:38 ◼   ► where a lot of Apple employees really only use Apple stuff.

00:47:42 ◼   ► So if they weren't used to having an Echo,

00:47:49 ◼   ► where you can do that and do it in the kitchen,

00:47:51 ◼   ► it's like you're totally missing the point.

00:47:53 ◼   ► It's like the main reason to buy an Echo, really,

00:47:56 ◼   ► and put it in your kitchen,

00:47:57 ◼   ► is to have these name timers that you don't have to touch

00:47:59 ◼   ► and that you can query how much time is left on the pizza

00:48:04 ◼   ► and get a very accurate answer.

00:48:06 ◼   ► - And I think, too, I mean, this was a larger problem

00:48:08 ◼   ► with the HomePod in general.

00:48:09 ◼   ► The HomePod was such a poor market fit

00:48:14 ◼   ► because maybe the way Apple saw it

00:48:16 ◼   ► was the way they priced it and the way they marketed it,

00:48:18 ◼   ► which is this is something you put in a living room.

00:48:20 ◼   ► And in that kind of context,

00:48:22 ◼   ► maybe you don't need multiple name timers very often,

00:48:24 ◼   ► but the market has a very different opinion.

00:48:26 ◼   ► The market says one of the best places

00:48:28 ◼   ► for a voice cylinder is in the kitchen.

00:48:31 ◼   ► And whether or not Apple want to position theirs as such,

00:48:34 ◼   ► and that's part of the reason

00:48:35 ◼   ► why everyone says it's too expensive,

00:48:37 ◼   ► I was like, yeah, it's a pretty good $300 speaker,

00:48:39 ◼   ► but it's not competitive in the market of voice cylinders,

00:48:44 ◼   ► because voice cylinders cost 100 bucks.

00:48:47 ◼   ► - And most people naturally don't wanna spend

00:48:49 ◼   ► home entertainment system dollars

00:48:50 ◼   ► for something that's just a gadget in the kitchen.

00:48:53 ◼   ► - Right, and especially that integrates so poorly

00:48:55 ◼   ► into any other type of a home theater system.

00:48:58 ◼   ► You really kinda can't use a HomePod easily

00:49:01 ◼   ► with pretty much anything else,

00:49:02 ◼   ► so it is like a standalone thing.

00:49:04 ◼   ► It actually is a really good kitchen speaker.

00:49:07 ◼   ► It's very expensive for that purpose,

00:49:09 ◼   ► but if you can swing it, it's a pretty good one.

00:49:12 ◼   ► But I gotta say, the Echo's still better

00:49:14 ◼   ► because the Echo is more reliable.

00:49:17 ◼   ► Its name timer support is better

00:49:18 ◼   ► and more reliable and faster.

00:49:21 ◼   ► And they have the various models that have the screens,

00:49:23 ◼   ► which honestly, I tried the very first Echo Show

00:49:25 ◼   ► with the screen. - Yeah, I remember you saying--

00:49:26 ◼   ► - I returned it within like a day.

00:49:28 ◼   ► I'm like, nope, it was terrible.

00:49:29 ◼   ► But I hear the new ones are better.

00:49:31 ◼   ► But whether or not Apple wants the market to believe

00:49:35 ◼   ► where it wants to position its products,

00:49:38 ◼   ► it doesn't really matter what Apple

00:49:40 ◼   ► wants the market to believe.

00:49:41 ◼   ► The market's gonna believe what it's gonna believe.

00:49:42 ◼   ► And so if the market says a voice assistant cylinder

00:49:45 ◼   ► speaker thing should be about 100 bucks

00:49:48 ◼   ► and should have multiple name timers

00:49:49 ◼   ► 'cause we're gonna put it in our kitchens,

00:49:51 ◼   ► Apple can only do so much to change that perception

00:49:54 ◼   ► because they wanna make something more expensive

00:49:55 ◼   ► that's more home theater focused.

00:49:56 ◼   ► Like the reality is that's what the market wants

00:49:58 ◼   ► and so far that has proven to be

00:50:00 ◼   ► what people still want the HomePod to be.

00:50:03 ◼   ► Apple hasn't moved the market towards them.

00:50:05 ◼   ► The market just kind of left them behind.

00:50:07 ◼   ► - It makes me wonder what they're working on,

00:50:08 ◼   ► what their plans are for HomePod.

00:50:10 ◼   ► I could see them going in either direction.

00:50:13 ◼   ► I could see them expanding it to be,

00:50:16 ◼   ► which is what they did with the iPod back in the day,

00:50:18 ◼   ► where they'd have multiple iPods of different sizes

00:50:21 ◼   ► and hitting lower price points.

00:50:24 ◼   ► I could see them making a smaller one that is less expensive

00:50:29 ◼   ► and maybe still sounds really good for its size,

00:50:31 ◼   ► or I could see them completely dropping it

00:50:33 ◼   ► and getting out of the business of making it.

00:50:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, 'cause to some degree,

00:50:37 ◼   ► I think they might argue that the kitchen home pod

00:50:41 ◼   ► is called the iPad.

00:50:42 ◼   ► - Right.

00:50:43 ◼   ► - And I don't think that's necessarily a good replacement,

00:50:46 ◼   ► but that is, I think, what a lot of their marketing

00:50:49 ◼   ► would try to have you believe.

00:50:51 ◼   ► And for some people, it is a good replacement.

00:50:53 ◼   ► If you want a device that responds to voice commands

00:50:56 ◼   ► and can play music and stuff

00:50:57 ◼   ► and has a screen to show you stuff,

00:50:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, actually, an iPod's pretty good for that.

00:51:00 ◼   ► And I do use my iPad in the kitchen very frequently.

00:51:02 ◼   ► It's a great kitchen device.

00:51:04 ◼   ► But I think what's most likely to happen with the HomePod

00:51:08 ◼   ► is I think they're just gonna kinda slowly peter out

00:51:12 ◼   ► and eventually bow out of the market,

00:51:13 ◼   ► similar to how they did with Wi-Fi routers.

00:51:15 ◼   ► For similar reasons.

00:51:16 ◼   ► - That's exactly, I was trying to think about

00:51:17 ◼   ► what I was thinking of, and I was thinking about

00:51:19 ◼   ► the way that they got out of the Wi-Fi routers.

00:51:21 ◼   ► Even though they, in some ways, I think,

00:51:26 ◼   ► deserve credit for starting it.

00:51:28 ◼   ► that Airport was one of the first

00:51:30 ◼   ► highly publicized Wi-Fi systems.

00:51:32 ◼   ► I mean, it was, they did the hula hoop.

00:51:34 ◼   ► It was all radical.

00:51:37 ◼   ► They had Phil Schiller jumping off a 20-foot platform

00:51:40 ◼   ► to show that the accelerometer worked on the thing,

00:51:46 ◼   ► and it was still broadcasting Wi-Fi.

00:51:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, but ultimately, I don't think,

00:51:53 ◼   ► they're never gonna compete well against Amazon,

00:51:55 ◼   ► because Amazon is so good at making really cheap hardware

00:51:58 ◼   ► that if you don't care so much about the materials quality

00:52:02 ◼   ► and design and UI quality, I mean Amazon's UIs are atrocious

00:52:06 ◼   ► for their products that do have screens, they're horrendous.

00:52:09 ◼   ► But if you don't care about all that stuff

00:52:10 ◼   ► and you just want a voice assistant cylinder

00:52:12 ◼   ► that can play music and have multiple timers

00:52:14 ◼   ► in your kitchen, Amazon is gonna kill them

00:52:16 ◼   ► over and over and over again at that.

00:52:17 ◼   ► Apple is just not good at making cheap, frequently updated

00:52:22 ◼   ► like commodity hardware that interacts

00:52:24 ◼   ► that they frequently updated web service

00:52:26 ◼   ► that integrates with a bunch of third party things.

00:52:28 ◼   ► None of that's in Apple's DNA.

00:52:29 ◼   ► And so I think the HomePod is,

00:52:33 ◼   ► rather than become competitive by having a wider range

00:52:36 ◼   ► that spans multiple price points

00:52:37 ◼   ► and making Siri really good on it,

00:52:38 ◼   ► I think the more likely outcome

00:52:40 ◼   ► is they just slowly bow out.

00:52:42 ◼   ► They're already doing a whole lot of AirPlay 2 hardware

00:52:44 ◼   ► with other hardware partners.

00:52:45 ◼   ► I think that's the first step

00:52:47 ◼   ► in getting themselves out of this business.

00:52:48 ◼   ► And then give it a couple more years

00:52:51 ◼   ► where AirPlay 2 is in more products

00:52:52 ◼   ► that themselves have voice assistants built in.

00:52:55 ◼   ► Like Sonos has a couple.

00:52:56 ◼   ► I think Apple's out of this business in a couple years.

00:53:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, and something like Sonos is, you know,

00:53:03 ◼   ► it's so much more flexible because they've got

00:53:06 ◼   ► like a whole range of products, you know.

00:53:09 ◼   ► It's, I like HomePod as a product a lot, but it is not,

00:53:14 ◼   ► like I wouldn't want it to be my TV sound system.

00:53:19 ◼   ► - Well, and honestly, they sound great.

00:53:20 ◼   ► Like if you get a stereo pair of them,

00:53:22 ◼   ► They sound awesome, but they have no inputs.

00:53:24 ◼   ► And you can make them work with an Apple TV,

00:53:28 ◼   ► but it's a little clumsy to do that,

00:53:31 ◼   ► and it's nearly impossible to make them work well

00:53:33 ◼   ► with anything else.

00:53:34 ◼   ► And so it's just not,

00:53:36 ◼   ► Apple did a really good job engineering the microphones,

00:53:39 ◼   ► they did a really good job engineering the sound,

00:53:41 ◼   ► it looks kinda cool, it's a good size.

00:53:44 ◼   ► It is a really nice product for a narrow set of use cases.

00:53:49 ◼   ► But unfortunately that set of use cases

00:53:51 ◼   ► is too narrow for the market.

00:53:53 ◼   ► And it's the kind of thing that I would love

00:53:55 ◼   ► for Apple to keep going on that and make it better.

00:53:59 ◼   ► Make Siri support behind it better,

00:54:01 ◼   ► make the software better, make the hardware,

00:54:03 ◼   ► you know, move it forward, make a bigger range,

00:54:04 ◼   ► make smaller ones, make bigger ones.

00:54:06 ◼   ► I would love that, I just don't think they're gonna do it.

00:54:08 ◼   ► If they did it, I think they could be better than everyone.

00:54:11 ◼   ► If they really put their heart behind it,

00:54:13 ◼   ► and if they really, you know, make Siri really good

00:54:16 ◼   ► as the general, you know, initiative

00:54:17 ◼   ► that I hope is happening there,

00:54:19 ◼   ► and really put their back into HomePod.

00:54:20 ◼   ► I think they could really make it amazing.

00:54:22 ◼   ► And I would love that because I would like that way better

00:54:24 ◼   ► than all the other alternatives that are kind of creepy

00:54:26 ◼   ► and made with crappy hardware.

00:54:27 ◼   ► But I just don't see it happening, unfortunately.

00:54:30 ◼   ► - It's also a little frustrating knowing that it comes

00:54:32 ◼   ► from the same company that made AirPods,

00:54:34 ◼   ► which are amazing and in a lot of ways are sibling product.

00:54:39 ◼   ► They're wireless, you talk to Siri,

00:54:43 ◼   ► you're listening to music.

00:54:47 ◼   ► Everybody I know, I know you have issues

00:54:49 ◼   ► with the fitting in your ears,

00:54:51 ◼   ► but other than like, if you think that they're comfortable,

00:54:54 ◼   ► most people absolutely love AirPods.

00:54:56 ◼   ► It would be interesting to see,

00:54:58 ◼   ► somehow rub some of that AirPod magic on HomePod.

00:55:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I mean, I think ultimately,

00:55:07 ◼   ► it just again comes down to like,

00:55:09 ◼   ► how much are they willing to play

00:55:11 ◼   ► in that commodity hardware business?

00:55:13 ◼   ► Like, how cheap are they willing to make this thing?

00:55:14 ◼   ► How well are they able to compete

00:55:17 ◼   ► to get, I'm not saying they have to beat or match

00:55:19 ◼   ► the Echo's price, but they have to get closer to it.

00:55:22 ◼   ► Like, it has to cost like 30 or 50% more,

00:55:26 ◼   ► not like 300% more, whatever it is.

00:55:28 ◼   ► - Well, and sort of in a way that AirPods are,

00:55:30 ◼   ► they're expensive for EarPods.

00:55:32 ◼   ► You know, are they still 160 bucks, 159?

00:55:34 ◼   ► - I think the base is 170 now or something,

00:55:36 ◼   ► and the wireless charging is 200.

00:55:38 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:55:39 ◼   ► But when you compare them to the highest rated

00:55:43 ◼   ► wireless buds from other companies,

00:55:46 ◼   ► Like I just read a review last week of somebody

00:55:49 ◼   ► who's reviewing the new Sony ones,

00:55:51 ◼   ► which seem like a really good product,

00:55:53 ◼   ► but they're more expensive.

00:55:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, the AirPods are actually pretty price competitive

00:55:57 ◼   ► for what they are, for the other competitive,

00:56:00 ◼   ► both small wireless buds and just like the market

00:56:03 ◼   ► of generally like decent Bluetooth,

00:56:06 ◼   ► decent portable Bluetooth headphones.

00:56:08 ◼   ► They're all around 200 bucks at least.

00:56:10 ◼   ► So it's actually, those are actually pretty well priced

00:56:13 ◼   ► for what they are.

00:56:14 ◼   ► So we know Apple can do it, but the HomePod,

00:56:17 ◼   ► I think they wanted to kill Sonos with it.

00:56:22 ◼   ► Unfortunately, they didn't.

00:56:23 ◼   ► And they didn't come anywhere near

00:56:25 ◼   ► competing with the Echo family.

00:56:28 ◼   ► - All right, let's take a break, thank our next sponsor.

00:56:31 ◼   ► It's another company, Marco,

00:56:33 ◼   ► is very familiar with Linode.

00:56:34 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:56:35 ◼   ► - Linode is proud to announce their newest data center

00:56:38 ◼   ► in Toronto, Canada, built using their most up-to-date

00:56:40 ◼   ► hardware and their next generation network backbone.

00:56:44 ◼   ► Linode Toronto allows users to comply

00:56:46 ◼   ► with in-country data protection requirements

00:56:49 ◼   ► while taking advantage of all Linode's technology and tools.

00:56:53 ◼   ► So if you are in Canada

00:56:55 ◼   ► and you have some kind of legal compliance,

00:56:57 ◼   ► you need a Canadian data server, data center,

00:57:00 ◼   ► Linode has you covered now.

00:57:02 ◼   ► - I think India too, the Mumbai one I think just opened.

00:57:05 ◼   ► - I don't know, my talking points

00:57:06 ◼   ► might be out of date on that, but that's another,

00:57:08 ◼   ► I know that was the other one that was on the agenda.

00:57:11 ◼   ► Here's what they get, you get a $20 credit

00:57:13 ◼   ► for all new customers, and they have a $5 a month plan,

00:57:16 ◼   ► which is actually pretty good.

00:57:18 ◼   ► It's a pretty good plan that a lot of people

00:57:19 ◼   ► could get by with.

00:57:20 ◼   ► You get, that's effectively four months of free service.

00:57:23 ◼   ► And they've got everything you could possibly need.

00:57:26 ◼   ► I don't even know what some of this stuff is,

00:57:28 ◼   ► but you can get a dedicated CPU, CI/CD environments,

00:57:33 ◼   ► I don't even know what that is.

00:57:35 ◼   ► - Casey knows what that is.

00:57:36 ◼   ► It's some kind of like testing thing.

00:57:38 ◼   ► - Everything features native SSD storage.

00:57:41 ◼   ► Of course, it's all a 40-egrobit network,

00:57:43 ◼   ► industry-leading processors.

00:57:45 ◼   ► And again, they have 10 worldwide data centers.

00:57:47 ◼   ► Might be 11.

00:57:48 ◼   ► Says here, additional data center opening in Mumbai, India

00:57:51 ◼   ► by the end of 2019.

00:57:53 ◼   ► Maybe they're already there. - Yeah, I think it either

00:57:54 ◼   ► is about to open or it just did open.

00:57:56 ◼   ► - You pay for what you use with hourly billing

00:57:59 ◼   ► across all plans and add-on services.

00:58:01 ◼   ► So if suddenly you got a big deal, big announcement,

00:58:04 ◼   ► you need to increase your bandwidth, get more RAM.

00:58:08 ◼   ► You can do that on the fly, dial it back down.

00:58:10 ◼   ► when the traffic is over.

00:58:12 ◼   ► And they have a brand new cloud manager

00:58:14 ◼   ► featuring an improved user interface

00:58:16 ◼   ► at cloud.lenode.com, you can check it out.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Anyway, great company.

00:58:22 ◼   ► I'm a customer, everything I do is gonna be hosted there

00:58:26 ◼   ► pretty soon, not quite there yet,

00:58:29 ◼   ► but I know Marco hosts--

00:58:32 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, Overcast and marco.org and the ATP livestream,

00:58:35 ◼   ► and it's all at Lenode, I absolutely love it, it's the best.

00:58:38 ◼   ► - Well, here's the promo code you need.

00:58:40 ◼   ► talk show 2019 know the just talk show 2019 and that's what gets you the $20 credit but the URL is

00:58:48 ◼   ► linode.com slash the talk show my thanks to Linode

00:58:53 ◼   ► Go check them out if you need a web server

00:58:56 ◼   ► Did you see the essay? I just linked to it the other day

00:58:58 ◼   ► Craig mod. Yeah, but performance the fast software fast offers great software. Yeah. Yeah, and it's really good. He said he's a great writer

00:59:06 ◼   ► I've known Craig for years

00:59:08 ◼   ► very very thoughtful guy

00:59:10 ◼   ► And it's funny 'cause he's writing about fast software,

00:59:14 ◼   ► but it struck a chord with me

00:59:16 ◼   ► because it's something I've thought about.

00:59:17 ◼   ► I mean, I've spent hundreds of hours here on the show

00:59:19 ◼   ► talking about software quality.

00:59:21 ◼   ► But the very specific nature of software

00:59:26 ◼   ► that feels fast and responsive

00:59:29 ◼   ► and that the way that that makes him feel

00:59:31 ◼   ► that that software is well built,

00:59:33 ◼   ► and when you're using an app,

00:59:36 ◼   ► Like one of his examples was the web export dialogue

00:59:41 ◼   ► in Photoshop.

00:59:42 ◼   ► And you know, it's a dialogue box a lot of people

00:59:46 ◼   ► have to use a lot of time.

00:59:47 ◼   ► And it's, I literally think that it's like a dialogue box

00:59:52 ◼   ► that was written using Chromium or something like that.

00:59:55 ◼   ► Like they're actually firing up like a web browser

00:59:57 ◼   ► inside the window.

00:59:58 ◼   ► It takes, you hit the command, it takes a couple seconds

01:00:01 ◼   ► before the dialogue even appears.

01:00:03 ◼   ► Makes you feel, it makes you not trust the software.

01:00:05 ◼   ► - And it makes it feel just crappy.

01:00:09 ◼   ► It feels almost uncared for.

01:00:11 ◼   ► 'Cause a lot of times, those of us who are lucky enough

01:00:16 ◼   ► to be on fast hardware, if you buy a nice Mac,

01:00:20 ◼   ► a nice MacBook Pro or iMac or iMac Pro,

01:00:23 ◼   ► you got a lot of performance under that hood.

01:00:25 ◼   ► And if then some software that you run

01:00:27 ◼   ► performs horribly doing some common task

01:00:29 ◼   ► like showing its new file dialogue,

01:00:31 ◼   ► you kinda know this is not a hardware problem,

01:00:35 ◼   ► which makes it even more frustrating.

01:00:36 ◼   ► I have all these cores, I have all this memory,

01:00:39 ◼   ► I have this fast SSD, all at your disposal software.

01:00:43 ◼   ► What are you wasting it on?

01:00:44 ◼   ► Like, what are you doing?

01:00:46 ◼   ► - Well, and Photoshop is an interesting example

01:00:48 ◼   ► because Photoshop used to be amazingly fast.

01:00:52 ◼   ► And this was, we were talking like the early years,

01:00:55 ◼   ► like early to mid-90s.

01:01:00 ◼   ► And the hardware at the time,

01:01:03 ◼   ► - Well, literally, I don't think it's an exaggeration

01:01:05 ◼   ► to say that it was hundreds of times slower

01:01:07 ◼   ► than a modern high-end desktop.

01:01:10 ◼   ► - And in certain ways, even, like in things like I/O,

01:01:13 ◼   ► even more, like, you know, 'cause first we got cheap RAM,

01:01:17 ◼   ► then we got SSDs. - Right.

01:01:18 ◼   ► - And like, 'cause you know, in the '90s,

01:01:20 ◼   ► like I've said before, like the sound of computing

01:01:23 ◼   ► in the '90s was the sound of your hard drive grinding.

01:01:25 ◼   ► - Right. (laughs)

01:01:26 ◼   ► - Because, you know, 'cause hard drives were slow

01:01:28 ◼   ► to begin with, and also RAM was incredibly expensive

01:01:31 ◼   ► in the 90s, and so it was, you know,

01:01:33 ◼   ► nobody had enough RAM to do what the operating systems

01:01:35 ◼   ► and everything wanted to do, so just constant swapping,

01:01:37 ◼   ► just constant hard drive grinding.

01:01:39 ◼   ► - I forget the exact details of it,

01:01:40 ◼   ► but I remember in those early years,

01:01:42 ◼   ► when everything was so limited,

01:01:44 ◼   ► Photoshop even had its own custom swap disk code for--

01:01:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it had to.

01:01:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause they couldn't trust,

01:01:51 ◼   ► A, I think they wanted to write their own code

01:01:53 ◼   ► 'cause it was so mission critical,

01:01:54 ◼   ► but it just wasn't something that the OS

01:01:58 ◼   ► really provided at the time.

01:01:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, or at least not all the OSs that ran on

01:02:01 ◼   ► would have provided it.

01:02:02 ◼   ► - And you used to have to wait for so much stuff

01:02:05 ◼   ► in Photoshop, not because, and again, the app felt fast,

01:02:09 ◼   ► and if there was something you needed to do

01:02:10 ◼   ► in an export dialogue, and you did it all the time

01:02:13 ◼   ► because you're using Photoshop,

01:02:14 ◼   ► so you have the keyboard shortcut memorized,

01:02:17 ◼   ► you'd hit that keyboard shortcut,

01:02:18 ◼   ► and the dialogue was there instantly, no waiting.

01:02:21 ◼   ► The things you'd have to wait for

01:02:22 ◼   ► was the computationally difficult stuff,

01:02:27 ◼   ► like if you're applying a Gaussian blur

01:02:29 ◼   ► to a, at the time, what we thought of as large JPEGs.

01:02:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

01:02:34 ◼   ► 640 by 480. (laughs)

01:02:36 ◼   ► - But even that, even though you had to wait,

01:02:40 ◼   ► you might wait like 30, 40 seconds

01:02:42 ◼   ► to apply a filter to a photograph.

01:02:45 ◼   ► But everything about it was responsive.

01:02:47 ◼   ► The dialog box appeared as soon as you hit the command.

01:02:51 ◼   ► The actual filter started being applied

01:02:54 ◼   ► the second you hit the return key

01:02:56 ◼   ► or clicked the button to do it on screen,

01:03:00 ◼   ► the progress dialog would appear instantly,

01:03:04 ◼   ► would update at a regular basis,

01:03:05 ◼   ► and then as soon as it got to the end

01:03:07 ◼   ► of the progress bar to the pixel,

01:03:09 ◼   ► it would disappear and you would see your result.

01:03:12 ◼   ► Like that, it was a slow process

01:03:16 ◼   ► 'cause the computers were so slow,

01:03:18 ◼   ► but the responsiveness to your user actions was impeccable.

01:03:24 ◼   ► and it's just an interesting contrast

01:03:27 ◼   ► that we have these faster computers

01:03:28 ◼   ► and now slower interfaces.

01:03:31 ◼   ► - Well, I think you could say a lot of the same things

01:03:33 ◼   ► apply to the original iPhone.

01:03:35 ◼   ► That the original iPhone was very slow hardware, really,

01:03:38 ◼   ► like compared to anything.

01:03:41 ◼   ► But at the time, it was like, this is the best we can do,

01:03:42 ◼   ► so let's deal with it.

01:03:43 ◼   ► And so they actually really engineered the software

01:03:46 ◼   ► with tons of effort to maximize responsiveness

01:03:51 ◼   ► while they knew they'd be waiting for the hardware.

01:03:53 ◼   ► So things like the Safari drawing the little grid

01:03:56 ◼   ► before things would render and stuff like that.

01:03:58 ◼   ► - The checkerboard.

01:03:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, the checkerboard, yeah.

01:03:59 ◼   ► - Or if you scrolled too fast, you'd get ahead.

01:04:01 ◼   ► It would only, 'cause it was so RAM constrained,

01:04:03 ◼   ► they couldn't do the whole front page of the New York Times.

01:04:07 ◼   ► So they'd render the top of it, and then as you scrolled,

01:04:10 ◼   ► they would render more of it on the fly,

01:04:12 ◼   ► but if you scrolled too fast,

01:04:13 ◼   ► they would just show you that checkerboard

01:04:14 ◼   ► so that it was always responsive to your touch.

01:04:16 ◼   ► - And there's all the stuff deep in the system

01:04:18 ◼   ► about things like being responsive to touches

01:04:20 ◼   ► and scrolling being very smooth and things like that.

01:04:22 ◼   ► And they did all this because they knew

01:04:25 ◼   ► the hardware was very constrained,

01:04:27 ◼   ► so they took a lot of effort and were very conscientious

01:04:30 ◼   ► about making sure everything stayed fast

01:04:32 ◼   ► as much as possible while they knew

01:04:34 ◼   ► they'd be waiting on the hardware

01:04:35 ◼   ► to do some more complicated things.

01:04:36 ◼   ► And that's how early computers were too.

01:04:38 ◼   ► Early computers in the '90s and '80s

01:04:40 ◼   ► and even the early 2000s,

01:04:42 ◼   ► they too were very constrained by their hardware.

01:04:46 ◼   ► And so programmers at the time,

01:04:49 ◼   ► both OS and application programmers,

01:04:51 ◼   ► had to be more conscientious about what they did.

01:04:54 ◼   ► And I think what has happened in probably the last

01:04:56 ◼   ► 10 years or so is that hardware has gotten so good

01:05:01 ◼   ► and so fast and we have so much CPU power, so much RAM,

01:05:04 ◼   ► SSDs came around to eliminate a lot of IO bottlenecks,

01:05:07 ◼   ► and now programmers at almost every level

01:05:10 ◼   ► don't really have to think about performance

01:05:13 ◼   ► for most of the things they write anymore.

01:05:15 ◼   ► So even though the hardware is faster than ever,

01:05:18 ◼   ► also programmers have stopped caring about performance

01:05:21 ◼   ► unless it's really a big problem.

01:05:23 ◼   ► And as you get into things like big companies,

01:05:26 ◼   ► like Adobe, and working on big projects like Photoshop,

01:05:30 ◼   ► the argument for like, we need to make the new dialogue fast

01:05:34 ◼   ► has to go through so many people.

01:05:35 ◼   ► And they have so many conflicting priorities of things

01:05:39 ◼   ► like, well, if we write this code once

01:05:40 ◼   ► using web technologies, it can run on all of our platforms

01:05:43 ◼   ► with the same code, look the same,

01:05:44 ◼   ► fit our branding guidelines, and all this other crap.

01:05:47 ◼   ► And performance is not on top of anybody's mind anymore

01:05:51 ◼   ► because everything is so fast,

01:05:54 ◼   ► probably half the team working on stuff like that

01:05:57 ◼   ► has never had to write performance code.

01:05:59 ◼   ► - And it's sort of just sort of a loss

01:06:01 ◼   ► of the sense of craftsmanship in the work.

01:06:05 ◼   ► Another example, right up your alley

01:06:07 ◼   ► and from your personal experience is Tumblr

01:06:12 ◼   ► was always very fast.

01:06:14 ◼   ► I haven't used it in a while.

01:06:15 ◼   ► I don't know if that's actually still true.

01:06:17 ◼   ► But a lot of CMSs, you save an article

01:06:22 ◼   ► and then it sits there and spins for seconds at a time,

01:06:29 ◼   ► enough that it's like, you could see how somebody thought

01:06:34 ◼   ► this is fine, who needs to be back in control of your CMS

01:06:39 ◼   ► instantaneously upon hitting the post button.

01:06:42 ◼   ► But it's actually not true.

01:06:46 ◼   ► Like my CMS is actually a little slow in that regard

01:06:49 ◼   ► where it takes a couple seconds for when I post an article

01:06:52 ◼   ► to get back in control of everything.

01:06:56 ◼   ► And when you notice the typo and you hit Update

01:06:59 ◼   ► and you have to wait like seven seconds

01:07:01 ◼   ► before you can fix it, it's just sitting there

01:07:04 ◼   ► right in front of you but it's spinning,

01:07:06 ◼   ► it'll drive you nuts.

01:07:07 ◼   ► Whereas Tumblr was always, you hit Publish

01:07:09 ◼   ► and it was like, did something happen?

01:07:11 ◼   ► Yeah, oh yeah, it's already done.

01:07:12 ◼   ► There it is.

01:07:13 ◼   ► There's my new picture of my kid.

01:07:16 ◼   ► - Well, and part of that is, you know,

01:07:18 ◼   ► like your CMS, first of all, was made

01:07:20 ◼   ► back when RAM was expensive,

01:07:22 ◼   ► and is also, I believe, rebuilding static files

01:07:25 ◼   ► every time you publish.

01:07:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, but that shouldn't take long.

01:07:28 ◼   ► - No, it shouldn't, but you know,

01:07:29 ◼   ► if it's like rebuilding a bunch of archive pages

01:07:31 ◼   ► or something, then you might have, okay, so maybe not.

01:07:33 ◼   ► But anyway. - It's just bad software.

01:07:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, and your software doesn't have to be

01:07:37 ◼   ► that performing in that way

01:07:38 ◼   ► because it has one user at a time.

01:07:40 ◼   ► Like with Tumblr, everything had to be really fast

01:07:44 ◼   ► because if it wasn't, the servers would explode

01:07:48 ◼   ► because it had so many users and so much traffic

01:07:51 ◼   ► at any given time.

01:07:52 ◼   ► Things that we couldn't do quickly, we just couldn't do.

01:07:56 ◼   ► So everything was designed,

01:07:59 ◼   ► and to a large degree, Overcast servers,

01:08:00 ◼   ► I've made the same way because I take a lot

01:08:02 ◼   ► of the same design approaches to them,

01:08:04 ◼   ► of basically like if something's going to be

01:08:06 ◼   ► a very heavy operation that I can't do quickly,

01:08:09 ◼   ► don't do it. I thought, I know I've talked about this before, but what are podcasts for other than

01:08:17 ◼   ► retelling old stories? But I thought one of the interesting changes Apple made philosophically,

01:08:21 ◼   ► number one, I'll go even further back out. Like, I've been thinking a lot lately, as the iPhone

01:08:28 ◼   ► and iOS settle in as long standing platforms, like they're not new. I mean, you know, we had the

01:08:34 ◼   ► 10th year anniversary last year. I mean, this is a well-established software platform. But we went

01:08:40 ◼   ► from the first version of Mac OS X to the iPhone in like six years. I mean, I know that Apple spent

01:08:48 ◼   ► like five years working on Mac OS X before it actually shipped as a 10.0. But that era from

01:08:56 ◼   ► like 2001 to you know and the iPod was new to okay here's the iPhone feels like

01:09:04 ◼   ► a long stretch of time but it wasn't it was very that's actually just a handful

01:09:09 ◼   ► of years and a lot of the people were the same and I thought one of the

01:09:13 ◼   ► interesting things that Apple obviously changed its mind about between Mac OS

01:09:17 ◼   ► and the original iPhone was what to make seem impressive.

01:09:22 ◼   ► With Mac OS X, they valued rendering quality

01:09:33 ◼   ► above all else.

01:09:36 ◼   ► So like when you, and again, this seems like a goofy thing

01:09:39 ◼   ► to get excited about, but back then,

01:09:42 ◼   ► when you'd resize a window and the contents

01:09:44 ◼   ► would update live, as opposed to just drawing an outline

01:09:47 ◼   ► and then refreshing once when you let go of the window,

01:09:50 ◼   ► that seemed impressive.

01:09:52 ◼   ► And they were doing all of this fancy anti-aliasing

01:09:55 ◼   ► and all these drop shadows and they had translucency.

01:10:00 ◼   ► They just went way overboard with the quote unquote

01:10:04 ◼   ► lickability of the interface.

01:10:06 ◼   ► But it was slow.

01:10:08 ◼   ► It was slow to resize windows.

01:10:10 ◼   ► When you would drag a window around real fast,

01:10:13 ◼   ► you could see it shearing on screen.

01:10:15 ◼   ► And then six years later with the iPhone,

01:10:19 ◼   ► they went the other way.

01:10:20 ◼   ► And they were like, if we can't keep up,

01:10:22 ◼   ► we'll just draw this checkerboard

01:10:24 ◼   ► and make sure that the scrolling speed keeps up.

01:10:27 ◼   ► And I remember talking to somebody at Apple about this once.

01:10:30 ◼   ► And he told me an interesting story that

01:10:35 ◼   ► they knew that Mac OS X was slow.

01:10:39 ◼   ► They weren't fooling themselves that the,

01:10:42 ◼   ► what was the word everybody used?

01:10:43 ◼   ► the snappiness wasn't there.

01:10:46 ◼   ► And they set up a lab where they,

01:10:49 ◼   ► what was the version of Windows

01:10:51 ◼   ► that would have been current in like 2001?

01:10:54 ◼   ► - XP.

01:10:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it was XP.

01:10:56 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, it was XP.

01:10:57 ◼   ► So they had a lab and they used high-speed cameras

01:11:01 ◼   ► and timed things like you click on the file menu

01:11:06 ◼   ► and how many milliseconds does it take

01:11:08 ◼   ► for the dropdown menu to finish rendering.

01:11:12 ◼   ► and if you drag your mouse down the menu

01:11:15 ◼   ► and it starts highlighting things,

01:11:17 ◼   ► how quickly after the mouse gets there

01:11:19 ◼   ► does the highlight come?

01:11:20 ◼   ► And they tested Mac OS X, they had a whole list,

01:11:24 ◼   ► he said, of things that we timed

01:11:26 ◼   ► that were mostly just rendering things.

01:11:29 ◼   ► And their gold standard was XP.

01:11:32 ◼   ► They were like, look at how much faster all of this is.

01:11:34 ◼   ► And sure, it wasn't as fancy looking,

01:11:37 ◼   ► but they wanted, this is our goal,

01:11:39 ◼   ► to get it as fast as this.

01:11:41 ◼   ► And it was the sort of thing that they were never

01:11:44 ◼   ► gonna talk about publicly because they're not gonna admit

01:11:48 ◼   ► that their stuff was slow and Windows was fast.

01:11:52 ◼   ► But then the funny thing is when Windows 7 shipped,

01:11:55 ◼   ► they installed it and they set up another machine

01:11:57 ◼   ► and they realized everything had gotten slow.

01:11:59 ◼   ► And they didn't know what to do and he said

01:12:03 ◼   ► it was a real fight within the company

01:12:05 ◼   ► as to whether they should still be benchmarking themselves

01:12:08 ◼   ► against XP because that was the fast one

01:12:11 ◼   ► And there were others who were like,

01:12:12 ◼   ► "No, see, they're slow too, now we're fine."

01:12:14 ◼   ► This is all good. - Oh, interesting.

01:12:16 ◼   ► That's kinda sad that that was even a debate.

01:12:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, the people who wanted to keep testing on XP

01:12:21 ◼   ► won the debate.

01:12:22 ◼   ► - I hope so, yeah, 'cause it's like,

01:12:23 ◼   ► "Oh, everyone else sucks, we can suck too."

01:12:25 ◼   ► That's a terrible argument.

01:12:27 ◼   ► - Right. (laughing)

01:12:28 ◼   ► But I think that's sort of the nut.

01:12:33 ◼   ► Like, why did Craig Maud write this essay?

01:12:35 ◼   ► Because there's so many people out there doing work

01:12:38 ◼   ► who don't have that philosophy.

01:12:39 ◼   ► I'm like, ah, if it takes four seconds,

01:12:41 ◼   ► it takes four seconds.

01:12:42 ◼   ► - Well, and I feel like it's even,

01:12:44 ◼   ► we're talking about a lot of times smaller times than that.

01:12:47 ◼   ► It's like one of the tricky things

01:12:50 ◼   ► about trying to match responsiveness of old hardware

01:12:55 ◼   ► is it used to be that when you pressed a key

01:12:58 ◼   ► on your keyboard, it would generate a hardware interrupt

01:13:01 ◼   ► and it would basically appear immediately on the screen

01:13:05 ◼   ► within some tiny amount of time because of,

01:13:07 ◼   ► but that depended on how the keyboard technology worked,

01:13:10 ◼   ► how the screen technology worked,

01:13:12 ◼   ► like the cathode gun, like how all that stuff worked

01:13:15 ◼   ► to get that level of responsiveness.

01:13:16 ◼   ► Hardware today is way more complicated than that,

01:13:20 ◼   ► and there's all these different levels and layers,

01:13:21 ◼   ► and a lot of things that introduce small amounts of latency,

01:13:23 ◼   ► like having keyboards be wireless, stuff like that.

01:13:26 ◼   ► There's all these little levels of latency

01:13:29 ◼   ► that are the result of technological advancement,

01:13:31 ◼   ► like the hardware got better in certain ways,

01:13:33 ◼   ► it got more capable, more complicated,

01:13:35 ◼   ► the OSes got more advanced,

01:13:37 ◼   ► and there's different layers of everything now.

01:13:39 ◼   ► So a lot of that's just down to that,

01:13:40 ◼   ► but then I feel like the big challenge

01:13:43 ◼   ► that we have with software is not that things

01:13:46 ◼   ► take four seconds when they should take one,

01:13:49 ◼   ► but that things that should take 20 milliseconds

01:13:52 ◼   ► take 200 milliseconds.

01:13:54 ◼   ► So we're talking about much smaller time intervals here,

01:13:58 ◼   ► but that adds up, or simple things,

01:14:00 ◼   ► like how I believe you said before,

01:14:02 ◼   ► how when you invoke Spotlight with command space on a Mac,

01:14:07 ◼   ► or when you open a new window on a Mac

01:14:09 ◼   ► or do something like that,

01:14:10 ◼   ► and then you start typing the commands

01:14:12 ◼   ► of what you want to appear in a text field

01:14:14 ◼   ► or a name or something,

01:14:16 ◼   ► it'll queue up those commands

01:14:17 ◼   ► and it will put them in as soon as it can.

01:14:20 ◼   ► On iOS, if you hit Command + Space

01:14:22 ◼   ► with a keyboard on an iPad Pro,

01:14:23 ◼   ► it doesn't start accepting input

01:14:25 ◼   ► until it has finished the animation

01:14:26 ◼   ► and is showing you the text box.

01:14:28 ◼   ► And there's little things like that,

01:14:29 ◼   ► where the responsiveness-- - That has gotten fixed.

01:14:31 ◼   ► - Oh, it has, in 13?

01:14:32 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:14:33 ◼   ► Don't quote me on this,

01:14:35 ◼   ► but I actually think it is shipped

01:14:37 ◼   ► in the latest version of iOS 12.

01:14:39 ◼   ► A little birdie-- - Oh, interesting.

01:14:40 ◼   ► - A little birdie who saw my rant about that was like,

01:14:43 ◼   ► told me that this drives some of us nuts too.

01:14:47 ◼   ► We're gonna try to sneak a, don't say anything,

01:14:52 ◼   ► but don't quote me, but I think they fixed it.

01:14:55 ◼   ► And I think they're definitely supposedly fixed it

01:14:57 ◼   ► for iOS 13, but I don't understand how that ever shipped.

01:15:01 ◼   ► How does that not, 'cause you would think

01:15:03 ◼   ► if you are on the Spotlight team,

01:15:06 ◼   ► like you're one of the people who's,

01:15:08 ◼   ► one of your jobs is to program the Spotlight interface

01:15:12 ◼   ► on iOS, wouldn't you think that you're really good

01:15:16 ◼   ► at using Spotlight and that you might start--

01:15:18 ◼   ► - Well, but also, I'm sure it was probably

01:15:21 ◼   ► one of those situations where, first of all,

01:15:23 ◼   ► on iOS, keyboard support was very rudimentary

01:15:26 ◼   ► until iOS 13, like the APIs, I mean,

01:15:29 ◼   ► I'm sure they had better stuff privately,

01:15:31 ◼   ► but the public APIs for it were pretty rough,

01:15:33 ◼   ► pretty rudimentary, and so I bet the whole stack

01:15:37 ◼   ► of trying to capture the keyboard input

01:15:38 ◼   ► works totally differently on the iOS

01:15:40 ◼   ► than it does on Mac probably.

01:15:42 ◼   ► And also, that's presumably a part of Springboard,

01:15:44 ◼   ► and Springboard is famously this massively complex

01:15:47 ◼   ► code base that does all sorts of stuff,

01:15:49 ◼   ► and it's apparently been refactored a whole bunch of times

01:15:51 ◼   ► to try to deal with its complexity,

01:15:53 ◼   ► 'cause it's just so big and so complex and so important,

01:15:56 ◼   ► it's so critical to the OS, and so I can imagine

01:15:59 ◼   ► that was probably a harder job than it sounded like,

01:16:01 ◼   ► But that being said, again, it's this whole thing

01:16:04 ◼   ► about performance being important or not.

01:16:06 ◼   ► When you start talking about these differences

01:16:09 ◼   ► between a 20 millisecond activity

01:16:11 ◼   ► or a 200 millisecond activity or something like that,

01:16:14 ◼   ► it's kind of like death by a thousand cuts.

01:16:15 ◼   ► At the time, if something takes 200 milliseconds,

01:16:19 ◼   ► that's a pretty frequent interaction

01:16:21 ◼   ► that you could make faster,

01:16:22 ◼   ► but it might be a little bit inconvenient to make it faster

01:16:25 ◼   ► with the way things are built.

01:16:26 ◼   ► At the time, you might be able to ship that.

01:16:28 ◼   ► You might be able to say, you know what,

01:16:29 ◼   ► we're on a tight deadline,

01:16:30 ◼   ► "We're trying to ship this in time for the phones,"

01:16:31 ◼   ► or whatever, "We have to get it out the door,"

01:16:34 ◼   ► it just simply isn't important enough

01:16:36 ◼   ► to get that time down right now.

01:16:37 ◼   ► We'll do it later, and of course later never comes.

01:16:40 ◼   ► And when you have enough of that in an app,

01:16:42 ◼   ► or in an OS, or in a platform, it really,

01:16:46 ◼   ► and I think this is what Craig Mobb

01:16:47 ◼   ► was ultimately getting at, like,

01:16:48 ◼   ► the just overall feeling of software

01:16:51 ◼   ► that is built that way or that ends up that way

01:16:53 ◼   ► is so different, and at no time does it ever seem

01:16:56 ◼   ► like a critical problem as you're building it.

01:16:58 ◼   ► And the company responsible for it,

01:17:00 ◼   ► it might never be economically worthwhile

01:17:02 ◼   ► for them to devote the resources

01:17:05 ◼   ► to really make it incredibly faster

01:17:06 ◼   ► once it is like quote fast enough to be usable like that.

01:17:10 ◼   ► But ultimately, that really does result in

01:17:14 ◼   ► a feeling of like you're just kind of

01:17:16 ◼   ► moving through maple syrup.

01:17:18 ◼   ► And to me, the performance in a lot of ways like that

01:17:21 ◼   ► is as important as things like input reliability

01:17:24 ◼   ► because it's tied to it.

01:17:26 ◼   ► Part of the reason why I don't like certain things

01:17:29 ◼   ► because I think my keyboard and mouse and trackpad

01:17:33 ◼   ► should be 100% reliable, not 99.9% reliable,

01:17:36 ◼   ► like 100% reliable.

01:17:38 ◼   ► And if you are operating something

01:17:40 ◼   ► and if you're typing a sentence

01:17:42 ◼   ► and one out of 200 key presses doesn't register,

01:17:45 ◼   ► that's a really big problem, actually.

01:17:47 ◼   ► It seems like a small number.

01:17:48 ◼   ► - I think it could be way higher than that.

01:17:49 ◼   ► I mean, I think it could be like one in 10,000

01:17:51 ◼   ► and it would drive you nuts.

01:17:52 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:17:53 ◼   ► And so you feel like you're not in control at that point.

01:17:56 ◼   ► - If you write a thousand word article--

01:17:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess it's probably 10,000 keystrokes, right?

01:18:00 ◼   ► Yeah, so I feel like if you,

01:18:03 ◼   ► you feel like you're not in control of your computer

01:18:06 ◼   ► when it just randomly fails and things like that,

01:18:08 ◼   ► and performance can give you that impression.

01:18:10 ◼   ► Like if you are waiting for something to happen

01:18:13 ◼   ► that shouldn't be slow, that is being even a little bit slow,

01:18:16 ◼   ► it can give you that same feeling of like,

01:18:19 ◼   ► this isn't working properly,

01:18:20 ◼   ► or I'm not in full control over this.

01:18:22 ◼   ► - One of the features I use a lot,

01:18:26 ◼   ► and it annoys, I love the feature,

01:18:29 ◼   ► and I'm so glad it's there, but using it every single week,

01:18:33 ◼   ► well, I won't use it this week,

01:18:35 ◼   ► 'cause I don't need to share notes with you,

01:18:36 ◼   ► but I use Apple Notes to share

01:18:39 ◼   ► show notes with guests on the podcast

01:18:44 ◼   ► and then with Caleb who edits,

01:18:47 ◼   ► and we toss things in there like links

01:18:50 ◼   ► that I often forget to post, title ideas,

01:18:54 ◼   ► And the interface, do you use the shared notes feature

01:18:58 ◼   ► in Apple Notes?

01:18:59 ◼   ► - A little, not a lot.

01:19:00 ◼   ► - It's one of those things where I should,

01:19:03 ◼   ► it would be harder to write about it.

01:19:05 ◼   ► It's like I kind of would probably be better

01:19:07 ◼   ► as like a YouTube video.

01:19:08 ◼   ► But it commits a sort of, number one, it's just slow.

01:19:13 ◼   ► You go up to the share menu and you go to share

01:19:19 ◼   ► and then a dialogue comes up.

01:19:20 ◼   ► It takes way too long for the dialogue to come up.

01:19:22 ◼   ► And again, famously I know, as a user of software,

01:19:27 ◼   ► it is generally frowned upon to tell the developer

01:19:32 ◼   ► of any particular software that something

01:19:35 ◼   ► should be easy to add or fix.

01:19:39 ◼   ► - Right, yeah.

01:19:39 ◼   ► - Generally-- - It should take you

01:19:40 ◼   ► about a day, right?

01:19:41 ◼   ► - Explain your problem as politely as you can

01:19:44 ◼   ► and let them figure out how easy it is.

01:19:46 ◼   ► - How hard could it be?

01:19:48 ◼   ► - So I'm not trying to violate that rule,

01:19:50 ◼   ► but it doesn't seem like opening up the sharing dialog

01:19:53 ◼   ► should take a while.

01:19:55 ◼   ► It just takes, it just does not seem snappy enough.

01:19:58 ◼   ► But then the part that drives me nuts

01:19:59 ◼   ► is I always share it by iMessage,

01:20:02 ◼   ► and you hit iMessage, and then the dialog box goes away.

01:20:06 ◼   ► And then the one that lets you type the iMessage comes up.

01:20:11 ◼   ► - Oh yeah. - And in between,

01:20:14 ◼   ► there is no spinner, there's no HUD,

01:20:18 ◼   ► it just looks like it failed.

01:20:19 ◼   ► like you hit message. And a couple of weeks ago, somebody on Twitter dug up scans of the original

01:20:29 ◼   ► Apple human interface guidelines from 1985 or '84, whenever they first published Inside Mac.

01:20:34 ◼   ► And it was like the third page of the interface guidelines specifically said that if the user

01:20:41 ◼   ► has to wait for something, show as accurate a progress as you can. Ideally, show a

01:20:48 ◼   ► - Like a percentage bar kind of thing.

01:20:50 ◼   ► - A percentage bar type thing, you know, the bar.

01:20:53 ◼   ► If you can't, if it is indeterminate,

01:20:55 ◼   ► show the watch cursor, you know,

01:20:57 ◼   ► that was the old, the old wait cursor was the watch cursor.

01:21:01 ◼   ► And if you used a Mac back then,

01:21:02 ◼   ► you got used to the watch cursor.

01:21:04 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:21:04 ◼   ► - Because, you know, the computers were so slow.

01:21:06 ◼   ► But the watch cursor would appear

01:21:09 ◼   ► the second you were waiting on the computer

01:21:11 ◼   ► and it disappeared the moment it was done with whatever.

01:21:16 ◼   ► And then it was always very accurate.

01:21:18 ◼   ► Like if you got your arrow cursor back,

01:21:20 ◼   ► you knew that it was done.

01:21:21 ◼   ► You know, like talking about spinning hard disks,

01:21:26 ◼   ► like you'd hit Command + S in some apps

01:21:28 ◼   ► and you'd have to wait for the watch cursor.

01:21:29 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, well and again, it's like,

01:21:30 ◼   ► 'cause back then computers were so slow

01:21:32 ◼   ► that you had to design for waiting from the start.

01:21:36 ◼   ► Like every app, many features of every app

01:21:39 ◼   ► had to be designed right from the beginning

01:21:41 ◼   ► for like the user's gonna have to wait

01:21:43 ◼   ► for some period of time here,

01:21:44 ◼   ► let's make that obvious and clear and everything else.

01:21:46 ◼   ► And modern, like I bet whoever,

01:21:48 ◼   ► I bet whatever systems are being invoked by

01:21:50 ◼   ► the delay between that, you know,

01:21:52 ◼   ► the CloudKit share dialogue and the, you know,

01:21:54 ◼   ► message send from the share sheet,

01:21:56 ◼   ► it probably is not even built with the assumption

01:21:58 ◼   ► anybody would ever wait for it.

01:22:00 ◼   ► And so there is no affordance.

01:22:01 ◼   ► There is, we don't even have a wait cursor anymore.

01:22:04 ◼   ► Like we have the beach ball, which is not a good thing.

01:22:06 ◼   ► Like that's not something going wrong.

01:22:08 ◼   ► You know, but like Mac OS,

01:22:10 ◼   ► I don't think even has a wait cursor.

01:22:12 ◼   ► - No. - And no modern OS

01:22:13 ◼   ► as far as I know does.

01:22:14 ◼   ► I don't know if Windows still has the hourglass,

01:22:16 ◼   ► but I think we just assume the software

01:22:18 ◼   ► doesn't make you wait anymore,

01:22:19 ◼   ► or if it does, it'll show it in a nice way in its UI.

01:22:23 ◼   ► But anyway, that dialogue, I mean,

01:22:26 ◼   ► there's a lot of problems with it.

01:22:28 ◼   ► So I don't see it as often in notes.

01:22:30 ◼   ► I do see the same dialogue very frequently

01:22:32 ◼   ► in photo sharing, in the Photos app.

01:22:35 ◼   ► And it always takes me, first of all,

01:22:38 ◼   ► it always takes me at least two tries

01:22:40 ◼   ► to even bring up the dialogue,

01:22:42 ◼   ► 'cause I can't find where it,

01:22:44 ◼   ► how do I create a shared note or photo album?

01:22:47 ◼   ► And I always get it wrong the first time.

01:22:49 ◼   ► And then I eventually figure out

01:22:51 ◼   ► which button invokes the invite people thing.

01:22:53 ◼   ► And it always takes me at least two tries to invite somebody

01:22:56 ◼   ► because the link doesn't work

01:22:58 ◼   ► or the box just goes away randomly

01:22:59 ◼   ► or I thought I invited them

01:23:01 ◼   ► but I didn't actually invite them or whatever.

01:23:03 ◼   ► Like that whole system is really hard to use

01:23:06 ◼   ► and surprisingly inconsistent and surprisingly sloppy.

01:23:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's not clear.

01:23:11 ◼   ► It's one of those things that they could use

01:23:13 ◼   ► from our labels.

01:23:14 ◼   ► What is this button you keep pushing over here?

01:23:16 ◼   ► - It's a mute button.

01:23:18 ◼   ► - So as soon as you're done talking,

01:23:19 ◼   ► you just mute yourself.

01:23:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, that way I'm not breathing all over you,

01:23:22 ◼   ► and I can take a sip from my cup here

01:23:24 ◼   ► without you hearing the water sloshing around.

01:23:26 ◼   ► - I should probably get one of those.

01:23:28 ◼   ► - It's pretty great, yeah.

01:23:29 ◼   ► Or rather, so it's the Roles MS-111.

01:23:32 ◼   ► It's a totally mediocre mute switch.

01:23:35 ◼   ► It's not great, but I have yet to find anything else

01:23:38 ◼   ► that works better.