The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► How are you, Jason?

00:00:01 ◼   ► I'm doing good. I'm doing good. It's been a busy fall.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Apple did a lot of stuff this fall, kept, I think, all of us really busy,

00:00:08 ◼   ► so it's kind of nice to almost relax a little bit at the end of the year.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm almost at that point.

00:00:14 ◼   ► But I still have, like, a bunch of really good articles,

00:00:17 ◼   ► or at least I think good articles, that I've been meaning to write,

00:00:19 ◼   ► and I really cannot believe that I may not get to them all by the end of the year.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Like, I thought, "This'll be great. I've got—I want to write about this marzipan stuff."

00:00:27 ◼   ► I have a couple of them, but, and they're all still in gestational form. But it's not for lack

00:00:36 ◼   ► of work, and it's not for lack of other things that I have written about, etc. It's just a lot

00:00:41 ◼   ► going on. Well, Apple this year, and a little bit last year, they staggered all their releases,

00:00:46 ◼   ► right? So you got one set of phones, and then the next phone, and then the iPads and the Macs,

00:00:51 ◼   ► and it just was a very stretched out period. So there was like, there's always something else

00:00:56 ◼   ► else happening right around the corner that required sometimes travel, sometimes spending

00:01:03 ◼   ► a lot of time focusing on a particular product and right and then so you know this that you

00:01:07 ◼   ► end up with this just six weeks, eight weeks where you your time kind of isn't your own

00:01:13 ◼   ► because there's always another thing that's popping up.

00:01:16 ◼   ► Yeah, totally. Let's lead with the news, the hot news, which may or may not be. It'll either

00:01:25 ◼   ► be a totally different story by the time this podcast airs. We're recording on Friday, December

00:01:28 ◼   ► 21st. I don't expect the show to air till Monday. So who knows what will happen over the weekend.

00:01:35 ◼   ► But there's things I want to say about it that should hold up no matter what happens. But it's

00:01:40 ◼   ► the new Ben Gate with iPad Pros. Oh, yeah. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. So it started, I think, two days ago

00:01:49 ◼   ► with a report at the verge by Chris Welch. And the headline of the piece was,

00:01:57 ◼   ► Apple confirms some iPad pros ship slightly bent, comma, but says it's normal.

00:02:06 ◼   ► And, you know, and he describes reports from people online,

00:02:12 ◼   ► Mac rumors, forums, etc. People with some photographs of iPads that show a slight bend.

00:02:19 ◼   ► And then he claims is the most intriguing part to me is he claims that he purchased a brand new one.

00:02:25 ◼   ► And in retail, and out of the box, it was slightly bent, which, you know, and not to denigrate people

00:02:32 ◼   ► who contribute to the fine forms at Mac rumors and other sites, but it's, you know, it's a lot

00:02:36 ◼   ► more credible than when a byline staff writer at the verge says he's seen it. The headline certainly

00:02:43 ◼   ► certainly didn't help. And he did talk to Apple, but he did not have a quote from Apple.

00:02:52 ◼   ► You know, it's and you and I, again, this is inside baseball, but I think it explains

00:02:56 ◼   ► a lot is, you know, I speak to representatives at Apple PR frequently I have spoken to them

00:03:02 ◼   ► about this particular issue because I had some questions. And for the most part, when

00:03:06 ◼   ► you speak to Apple PR, it is off the record. When you do get something from Apple on the

00:03:12 ◼   ► record. It is, in my experience, always in the form of a very carefully written statement

00:03:19 ◼   ► that they will email to you and tell you, you know, you can attribute this to an Apple

00:03:23 ◼   ► spokesperson and basically they are extremely careful with their words and they want to

00:03:31 ◼   ► get it in writing. And you know, just extemporaneous conversations over the telephone or, or whatever

00:03:39 ◼   ► they know people don't speak as carefully as they do when writing.

00:03:43 ◼   ► I mean, this very podcast is evidence of the same phenomenon.

00:03:47 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:03:48 ◼   ► And so The Verge reached out. They obviously spoke to Apple. Apple said something that

00:03:55 ◼   ► The Verge paraphrased as, you know, that this is, that there's slight bends are normal.

00:04:01 ◼   ► I have a feeling, and I'm not trying to hold this against Chris Welch or The Verge or anybody.

00:04:08 ◼   ► I have a feeling that they didn't use the word normal.

00:04:11 ◼   ► None of the words were in quotes.

00:04:13 ◼   ► I don't have any doubt that it's not an unreasonable

00:04:17 ◼   ► paraphrasing of their summary, but I really, really doubt.

00:04:21 ◼   ► The paraphrasing that The Verge went with

00:04:23 ◼   ► made Apple seem very flippant about the issue.

00:04:25 ◼   ► And I don't, I think people who read that were rightfully,

00:04:29 ◼   ► whether they have a bent iPad Pro or not,

00:04:32 ◼   ► and we should get into,

00:04:35 ◼   ► is this actually a major problem or not?

00:04:37 ◼   ► But even if you don't have a bent one,

00:04:39 ◼   ► it certainly seems like an alarming attitude.

00:04:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's the, it reminds me of back

00:04:47 ◼   ► when Apple made its own displays

00:04:49 ◼   ► and there was a certain number of dead pixels

00:04:52 ◼   ► that were allowable.

00:04:55 ◼   ► And it was like, literally,

00:04:56 ◼   ► you'd get a brand new display from Apple,

00:04:58 ◼   ► you take it home and there'd be dead pixels.

00:05:02 ◼   ► And I forget exactly what the policy was.

00:05:03 ◼   ► It was a certain number or in a certain place

00:05:05 ◼   ► within a certain distance from one another. There was a whole thing. But in the end, what

00:05:11 ◼   ► that policy said was, if we have dead pixels in a monitor you bought, it's fine. Even if

00:05:19 ◼   ► you don't think it's fine, trust us, it's fine. And we don't consider that a defect.

00:05:25 ◼   ► Or it's like a discoloration or other some sort of like visible flaw that the and a company

00:05:33 ◼   ► says, "We don't consider that a replaceable issue. It's just, yeah, sure, some of them

00:05:38 ◼   ► have weird flaws and you just have to deal with it." For a premium product, you would

00:05:44 ◼   ► think that the company's attitude should probably be, "If this makes you uncomfortable, bring

00:05:50 ◼   ► it back and we'll give you another one." If they're not saying that, part of me thinks

00:05:54 ◼   ► that they have too many of these that are like this. It's weird because nobody's really

00:06:00 ◼   ► saying that it gets worse, right? It's part of the production process. So the question

00:06:04 ◼   ► is, is this something that they saw in the production process and we're like, Meh, it's

00:06:08 ◼   ► fine. Nobody will notice because I can't believe anybody at Apple would ever say nobody will

00:06:13 ◼   ► notice about anything ever because everything will be noticed. Yeah. And my conversation

00:06:19 ◼   ► with some people at Apple PR yesterday was along those lines of that. They, they don't

00:06:24 ◼   ► think this is, they definitely do not think this is a major issue. They, I think it's

00:06:28 ◼   ► it's probably going to blow over. So I think this conversation is, at this point, I think

00:06:33 ◼   ► it was worth having on the show to talk to you more about how Apple works and how these

00:06:38 ◼   ► things work than this particular issue. We shall see.

00:06:40 ◼   ► - Kind of a time capsule. I also would not be surprised if the end result of this is

00:06:44 ◼   ► Apple releases a statement saying, "If anybody gets something like this and they don't like

00:06:49 ◼   ► it, we will replace it."

00:06:50 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:06:51 ◼   ► - And just, that's it.

00:06:52 ◼   ► - That would be the next level. So there is actually the closest thing to a statement

00:06:56 ◼   ► I think so far. Somebody emailed Dan Riccio and got an email back. And MacRumors verified

00:07:04 ◼   ► that it looks like it actually came from Dan Riccio. And here's what Dan Riccio said, "Relative

00:07:09 ◼   ► to the issue you referenced regarding the new iPad Pro, its unibody design meets or

00:07:14 ◼   ► exceeds all of Apple's high-quality standards of design and precision manufacturing. We've

00:07:19 ◼   ► carefully engineered it and every part of the manufacturing process is precisely measured

00:07:24 ◼   ► and controlled. Our current specification for iPad Pro flatness is up to 400 microns,

00:07:31 ◼   ► which is even tighter than previous generations. I think that phrase is interesting. This 400

00:07:37 ◼   ► micron variance is less than half a millimeter, or the width of fewer than four sheets of

00:07:42 ◼   ► paper at most. And this level of flatness won't change during normal use over the lifetime

00:07:47 ◼   ► of the product. Note, these slight variations do not affect the function of the device in

00:07:54 ◼   ► anyway. Now I actually have a statement from Apple PR that I haven't published at Daring

00:08:02 ◼   ► Fireball, but it is Dan Riccio obviously is aware of their official statement because

00:08:08 ◼   ► it is extremely close. But anyway, so the thing that Riccio is saying is that their

00:08:17 ◼   ► tolerance for flatness on this iPad is better, higher, tighter, whatever you want to say,

00:08:22 ◼   ► better than previous generations. So however big a variance 400 microns is and it the to

00:08:30 ◼   ► normal scale, I looked it up 400 microns is point four 0.4 millimeters. So is that a lot?

00:08:36 ◼   ► I said this is the thing I don't know. I don't know. Is that a lot? Like if you gave handed

00:08:40 ◼   ► me a brand new iPad that had 400 microns of non flatness, would I be able to would I pick

00:08:47 ◼   ► it up and say, Hey, this iPad is bent? Or is that the sort of thing that like maybe

00:08:51 ◼   ► my iPad is bent a few hundred microns and I don't notice it. I don't know.

00:08:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I have been sitting here, so I have an 11 and a 12.9 iPad Pro sitting in front of me right

00:09:02 ◼   ► now and I've been looking at them and honestly after a while I can't tell like the optical

00:09:08 ◼   ► illusion. I start to see bends that I think aren't there and this has to do with your focal length,

00:09:13 ◼   ► you know, the focus of your eyes and where the stripes are on them, like the cellular antennas,

00:09:19 ◼   ► all of these things kind of feed in and then you kind of lose track. Although our friend,

00:09:25 ◼   ► Dr. Drang, who is an engineer and gets this stuff at a kind of a structural level, did

00:09:32 ◼   ► say to you today, "As devices get thinner, every out of straightness becomes more noticeable."

00:09:37 ◼   ► And I think there's some interesting truth in that, the idea that the thickness of the

00:09:42 ◼   ► device is so much less now that any deviation out of true is more is potentially more noticeable.

00:09:50 ◼   ► I don't know. I mean you put these down. That's the thing about that some of these visible

00:09:54 ◼   ► bends that are in some of these photos on the internet is I look at that and I think

00:09:58 ◼   ► that can't be that can't be four tenths of a millimeter right bend. That's got to be

00:10:02 ◼   ► more than that. That's got to be the kind of thing where Apple should be like yeah where

00:10:07 ◼   ► that's that's not acceptable. It shouldn't have gotten out of our factory and we'll replace

00:10:11 ◼   ► it for you. Yeah, that's what I think with some of the photos. But again, I don't know,

00:10:16 ◼   ► you know, certainly seems like it but it is true that this is the thinnest iPad ever made.

00:10:21 ◼   ► It's only five point so you know, for scale 5.9 millimeters thick overall. The camera

00:10:27 ◼   ► bump is by my measurements with a handy dandy little digital caliber I bought this year,

00:10:33 ◼   ► which is like seriously can't believe I didn't buy one before because it was only like 20

00:10:38 ◼   ► It's a little over two millimeters.

00:10:41 ◼   ► I have it at like 2.1 millimeters,

00:10:43 ◼   ► but you know, one 10th of a millimeters, you know,

00:10:46 ◼   ► who knows?

00:10:48 ◼   ► So we could even call it two millimeters.

00:10:50 ◼   ► But what they're saying is an out of variance

00:10:52 ◼   ► or within acceptable variance and flatness

00:10:55 ◼   ► is like one fifth of the camera bump.

00:10:58 ◼   ► I don't know, that sounds like it could be noticeable.

00:11:01 ◼   ► - I don't know, on a thin product that's very long,

00:11:05 ◼   ► like the long side of the 12.9 model, maybe.

00:11:08 ◼   ► But it is, yeah, this is weird.

00:11:11 ◼   ► One of the things, I mean,

00:11:12 ◼   ► talk about taking it up to like how Apple does things

00:11:15 ◼   ► and looking at it at that level.

00:11:18 ◼   ► This reminds me of some other stuff

00:11:19 ◼   ► where there's an initial reaction

00:11:21 ◼   ► and then there's some investigation

00:11:22 ◼   ► and then there's obviously a policy conversation

00:11:26 ◼   ► that happens inside of Apple

00:11:27 ◼   ► and then a PR conversation that happens inside of Apple.

00:11:31 ◼   ► And sometimes when Apple doesn't have a response,

00:11:33 ◼   ► it's because they are formulating a response, right?

00:11:37 ◼   ► They're figuring it out and they don't want,

00:11:38 ◼   ► I remember with a couple of controversies

00:11:40 ◼   ► in the past few years,

00:11:41 ◼   ► I had those ongoing conversations with Apple

00:11:43 ◼   ► where they're like, I don't have a statement for you yet.

00:11:46 ◼   ► Or I've got this statement, but it's kind of wishy-washy

00:11:48 ◼   ► and we'll work on the next one.

00:11:51 ◼   ► Because yeah, it may be that they don't,

00:11:53 ◼   ► they haven't seen as many of these.

00:11:55 ◼   ► They don't know that they know

00:11:56 ◼   ► what their allowed variance is,

00:11:58 ◼   ► but maybe there's someplace where things

00:11:59 ◼   ► that are more bendy are getting out.

00:12:02 ◼   ► I think what's most interesting to me is the fact that their attitude is that this is just

00:12:06 ◼   ► a cosmetic defect and that it's not going to get worse. It's not that big a deal. That's

00:12:13 ◼   ► good, right? Because I think it's a much bigger story if these things are bending in actual

00:12:18 ◼   ► use and are going to break because then it's a major problem for everybody who bought one.

00:12:24 ◼   ► But if it's just that some of them have a cosmetic defect, probably the right thing

00:12:29 ◼   ► to do though if your Apple is to say yes if you get one bring it back and we'll get you

00:12:34 ◼   ► a one that isn't because that you know if you can notice four tenths of a millimeter

00:12:39 ◼   ► of a variance or beyond then you shouldn't you know we shouldn't make you look at that

00:12:45 ◼   ► on your seven eight nine ten you know thousand dollar product right like it's just just we'll

00:12:50 ◼   ► take it back we want you to be happy yeah and one of the things that ties into this

00:12:54 ◼   ► story is and there's certainly a recurring theme of the last quarter of

00:12:59 ◼   ► Apple products is the prices that they charge and that you have to pay I mean

00:13:04 ◼   ► the iPad Pro is a premium tablet I mean there's no question about it and so that

00:13:09 ◼   ► you know the the a side of the argument is you know just about whether the

00:13:15 ◼   ► prices are too high or are they pricing themselves you know pricing loyal

00:13:18 ◼   ► customers out of their best products etc etc the B side though is that somebody

00:13:23 ◼   ► happily pays the price or even unhappily but pays it certainly has a reasonable expectation

00:13:30 ◼   ► for the cost of an iPad Pro that they're going to be extremely pleased with the way that it looks as

00:13:36 ◼   ► they take it out of the box. Absolutely 100 percent right it's a that comes back to it's a premium

00:13:41 ◼   ► product. Apple is playing in the premium product game here and if you it would be the same as if

00:13:47 ◼   ► people discovered that sometimes the aluminum backs had weird blob colors on them of the

00:13:53 ◼   ► wrong, like the space gray got lighter or darker in patches and it was all patchy. And

00:14:01 ◼   ► Apple would be like, "Nah, it's fine." Like, "No, it's not fine. I paid $1,000 for this

00:14:05 ◼   ► thing and you got blobs on the back and I don't care that it's part of your production

00:14:09 ◼   ► process and that you've determined that this many shades of gray off of space gray is allowable

00:14:15 ◼   ► and that it's not gonna get any worse.

00:14:17 ◼   ► - Right.

00:14:18 ◼   ► - I paid $1,000 for a product that has ugly blobs

00:14:22 ◼   ► on the back and that's not acceptable to me.

00:14:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like when you buy a car, you buy a new car

00:14:28 ◼   ► and you pick out the car and then they wait and it comes

00:14:32 ◼   ► and then the guy says, "Your car's here,"

00:14:33 ◼   ► and then you go, you pick it up.

00:14:35 ◼   ► And then it's like you walk around the car

00:14:39 ◼   ► and you double check that, I'd say it's a brand new car.

00:14:42 ◼   ► You walk around the car and you make sure

00:14:45 ◼   ► everything is just right.

00:14:47 ◼   ► And then you sign off that everything's just right,

00:14:50 ◼   ► they sign off that everything's just right,

00:14:52 ◼   ► and you drive off the lot.

00:14:53 ◼   ► And then Stone hits your windshield or something like that,

00:14:56 ◼   ► and you get a mark, or you're in a parking lot,

00:15:00 ◼   ► somebody dings your door, that's life with a new car.

00:15:04 ◼   ► But you know you didn't get it like that, right?

00:15:08 ◼   ► - Right.

00:15:09 ◼   ► - There wasn't a bend in the door.

00:15:11 ◼   ► Apple can't afford, like a thousand dollar iPad

00:15:13 ◼   ► isn't enough to justify that you get a, let's verify that it's mint one on one with an Apple

00:15:20 ◼   ► specialist as you buy it. And a lot of us prefer to buy mail order rather than, you

00:15:27 ◼   ► know, you know, it's a lot easier just to listen for the doorbell than to go to the

00:15:30 ◼   ► Apple store. So it doesn't quite scale to that sort of thing. And the prices aren't

00:15:34 ◼   ► quite commensurate. You know, a thousand dollar iPad is a lot for a tablet, but it's not a

00:15:38 ◼   ► a $40,000 car. But it's on that spectrum. Like if your $129 Chromebook has a one-millimeter

00:15:47 ◼   ► bend, it's like, well, that's life with a $100 plastic Chromebook.

00:15:51 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, yeah, exactly right. Yeah. I'm going to scream bloody murder a

00:15:55 ◼   ► lot less if I'm buying a $300 product than a $1,000 product.

00:15:59 ◼   ► All right. Here is Apple's official statement, which is very similar to what I read from

00:16:04 ◼   ► Dan Riccio is the new iPad Pro with its gorgeous unibody design meets or exceeds all of Apple's

00:16:10 ◼   ► high quality standards of design and precision manufacturing. We've carefully engineered

00:16:14 ◼   ► it and every part of the manufacturing process is precisely measured and controlled. Our

00:16:20 ◼   ► current specification for iPad Pro flatness is up to 400 microns, which is even tighter

00:16:25 ◼   ► than previous generations. These slight variations do not affect the function of the device in

00:16:29 ◼   ► anyway. So you could see Dan Riccio was involved, was familiar with the preparation of the official

00:16:37 ◼   ► comment. I found it funny that he didn't include the opening line of the new iPad Pro with its

00:16:42 ◼   ► gorgeous unibody design because... Little salesmanship there. Yeah, it's like,

00:16:48 ◼   ► screw that, I'm not selling this thing, but I'm gonna, you know, talk about the precision.

00:16:52 ◼   ► So it does, you know, who knows that? And again, to me, the most interesting part of that is that

00:16:58 ◼   ► it's a tighter tolerance than previous generations. And so who knows, maybe there've been whatever

00:17:03 ◼   ► is going on out there in the field with these things. Maybe it's been going on with iPads

00:17:07 ◼   ► for 10 years and nobody really noticed because until it got this thin with these exact flat

00:17:16 ◼   ► sides, it wasn't noticeable. You know, maybe that, that, that really interesting trick

00:17:22 ◼   ► that they've been using for years to curve the aluminum on the back disguised a significant

00:17:29 ◼   ► amount of non-flatness. And nobody noticed.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Right. And you throw in the existence of a camera bump, and then it's easy to wave things

00:17:38 ◼   ► away as saying, "Well, who can tell because there's this part that sticks out?" So I can't

00:17:43 ◼   ► even tell. Yeah. I mean, the idea that it's down from their previous standard is fascinating,

00:17:49 ◼   ► fascinating, right? So it's like it used to be more than maybe more than half a millimeter

00:17:52 ◼   ► of bend in a run of aluminum. They'd be like, yeah, it's fine. And maybe nobody noticed

00:17:57 ◼   ► and there's just something about this model. I'm still not entirely convinced that these

00:18:02 ◼   ► photos that we're seeing are not items that are beyond Apple standard that somehow got

00:18:07 ◼   ► out there. And that Apple's going to say, yeah, those shouldn't be out there. And if

00:18:13 ◼   ► you can see it and it's that big, then you should get that replaced. That's our failing

00:18:17 ◼   ► on letting that out. Yeah, like maybe I don't know, maybe you would think that if it bent

00:18:22 ◼   ► in transit, you would notice a damaged box. But like I presume that that with a lot of

00:18:29 ◼   ► this stuff and I know with certain components they certainly do. You know, when they check

00:18:33 ◼   ► the they've they've even bragged about it in their product marketing videos about the

00:18:39 ◼   ► the way that they automate, you know, the precision of verifying that the S this component

00:18:43 ◼   ► meets our specs with fancy sensors and stuff like that. I would just presume that the unibody

00:18:49 ◼   ► aluminum is measured for preciseness through a systematic way, let's say.

00:18:57 ◼   ► Right, right. There's actually a test it has to pass and presumably they're testing all

00:19:02 ◼   ► of them or at least, or maybe not, maybe they're testing samples and some can get through or

00:19:09 ◼   ► it wasn't calibrated right because these are very fine measurements that are happening

00:19:13 ◼   ► and some overly bent ones got through. I don't know.

00:19:15 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Right. It's possibly because she's on my

00:19:17 ◼   ► mind because she just passed away, Penny Marshall. But I think of the opening credits of Laverne

00:19:22 ◼   ► and Shirley where they were inspecting bottles of just a linch of beer.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Jeff

00:19:26 ◼   ► And she sticks a glove on the beat and it goes through the whole assembly line with

00:19:31 ◼   ► her rubber glove on it.

00:19:32 ◼   ► Yeah, and there's just hundreds of iPads flying past two people who aren't really

00:19:36 ◼   ► paying attention.

00:19:38 ◼   ► Or it's that I Love Lucy sketch, right, where they're trying to take the candy and

00:19:42 ◼   ► all that and it's just out of hand. And yeah, that's it. The people with the calipers

00:19:46 ◼   ► are on the assembly line trying to measure the iPads. It's like, "Oh, there's too

00:19:49 ◼   ► many iPads."

00:19:50 ◼   ► Right. It takes like two minutes to measure it correctly. And yet they're coming by

00:19:55 ◼   ► at like four per minute. Just like, Oh, God, I'm gonna get fired. They're good. Good. It

00:20:01 ◼   ► looks fine. That one didn't bend. It's fine. I don't know. One thing, too. The other thing

00:20:05 ◼   ► that's interesting when you know Apple, the people at Apple PR, and I think it I think

00:20:12 ◼   ► it's a tremendous advantage that they have being a completely in house team, you know,

00:20:16 ◼   ► and I think one thing other people don't. I think that the industry has sort of moved

00:20:20 ◼   ► moved in Apple's way. But Apple was unique in that way for a long time where most tech

00:20:23 ◼   ► companies used outside PR firms. Oh, yeah. I mean, like we worked with what was a wagon

00:20:30 ◼   ► or Edstrom was Microsoft's PR. Yeah. Or Edelman. Well, well, yeah. So Wag Ed was the PR firm

00:20:37 ◼   ► for Microsoft forever for a long time. And then Edelman, they hired eventually to do

00:20:40 ◼   ► the Mac PR, right? But it was like outside PR, right? Like they would be and you'd have

00:20:46 ◼   ► these back when I was a macro like you'd have these three way email exchanges where it was

00:20:54 ◼   ► like a weird negotiation between you and the company and the PR person which is like yeah

00:21:02 ◼   ► right whereas with Apple it was always my entire time dealing with Apple there was always

00:21:06 ◼   ► inside PR at Apple like that was that was who you dealt with you didn't deal with outside

00:21:10 ◼   ► PR.

00:21:11 ◼   ► Well, one of the reasons that it's an advantage for them is just clarity of communication.

00:21:19 ◼   ► But the other thing is that—and this has happened before, like, you know, these little

00:21:22 ◼   ► mini—I don't even want to call them scandals—kerfuffles, you know, it's certainly not a scandal yet,

00:21:28 ◼   ► but hubbub, whatever you want to call them.

00:21:31 ◼   ► They, you know, part of the reason that they're like, "We're on it, we're looking into it,"

00:21:36 ◼   ► But they do things and they can do things like check with retail and say is this you know

00:21:44 ◼   ► are you guys seeing a an

00:21:47 ◼   ► Unusual number of complaints of customers with new iPad pros with a bend, you know, what's going on? Like they

00:21:54 ◼   ► They're not just guessing, you know

00:21:57 ◼   ► They actually go and double check is is there like an issue that should have raised a red flag that we haven't noticed in the data

00:22:04 ◼   ► of

00:22:06 ◼   ► You know the aggregate issues coming into the Genius Bar and I was told no there is at you know

00:22:11 ◼   ► There's absolutely nothing unusual in their support increase regarding

00:22:15 ◼   ► recent purchasers of iPad pros

00:22:18 ◼   ► So, I don't know what's going on well the problem I say this every time there's a gate right the problem is that

00:22:26 ◼   ► anecdotal

00:22:28 ◼   ► Anecdotes and it's not even anecdotal evidence anecdotes posted on the internet are

00:22:34 ◼   ► very hard to gauge whether it's 0.001%, 0.1%, 1% or 10% of products that are experiencing

00:22:45 ◼   ► any given failure. And Apple ships so many, especially of iPhones, which is when the gates

00:22:51 ◼   ► usually happen, right? The gates open when an iPhone is released. There's so many iPhones

00:22:55 ◼   ► that are sold that even if it's 0.001%, there could be thousands of lemons that Apple has

00:23:04 ◼   ► produced so that it can be it's a tough game like if you produce even a tiny number of

00:23:08 ◼   ► lemons percentage wise and it's a huge product you you know there are bad phones that are

00:23:13 ◼   ► getting out there so for the iPad this is one of those examples where it's like are

00:23:18 ◼   ► there 10 weird bendy iPads out there and one of them happened to go to a Mac rumors reader

00:23:25 ◼   ► are there a thousand but only five people have noticed are there 10,000 like that I

00:23:31 ◼   ► don't know. Like there's no real way to know and you can react and poo-poo it and say,

00:23:36 ◼   ► "But it's probably not a problem." Or you can freak out and say, "Oh my god, all the

00:23:39 ◼   ► iPads are bent." But the truth is somewhere in this range that is an uncomfortably wide

00:23:44 ◼   ► range of it being incredibly minor and the end of the world. And it's hard to tell because

00:23:52 ◼   ► the internet magnifies. If somebody finds something wrong with an Apple product in terms

00:23:56 ◼   ► of its manufacturer and posts it on the internet, it will get amplified, right? It will become

00:24:00 ◼   ► the next potential scandal?

00:24:03 ◼   ► You know what it is? The internet makes something possible that would have been impossible when

00:24:09 ◼   ► you and I were kids. It allows these people to find each other. If there are 50 people

00:24:18 ◼   ► who've received truly defective bent iPad Pros and they're upset about it and they start

00:24:25 ◼   ► Googling 2018 iPad Pro shipped bent. They are going to find each other. Like a query,

00:24:32 ◼   ► you know, like you don't have to be, you know, everybody's kind of gotten good at Googling,

00:24:37 ◼   ► right? You know, right. And also, then you places, you know, you can go like that. People

00:24:42 ◼   ► go to MacRumors or people go to the Apple discussion forums. Like there are certain

00:24:45 ◼   ► places that people are you go. There's a lot of these things, not necessarily for Apple,

00:24:50 ◼   ► but in general, come out of Reddit, right? Because somebody just posts in an interest

00:24:53 ◼   ► group in Reddit about the product that they have a problem with and it kind of goes viral,

00:24:59 ◼   ► which is the that's the trick, right? It's like if it's the right person with the bad

00:25:03 ◼   ► product and there's literally only one, it still can get magnified. Or if there are literally

00:25:09 ◼   ► only five, but there could be 10,000 like you just can't tell.

00:25:13 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break and thank our first sponsor. It's Linode. Now I've been

00:25:19 ◼   ► pronouncing it line node and I know it's a running gag on this show that I pronounce

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00:25:29 ◼   ► informed by several people out there in the show that I should be pronouncing it Linode

00:25:32 ◼   ► in the same way that Linux is not Linux.

00:25:36 ◼   ► I'm with you. I had a Linode server for like 10 years and then I got the ad copy and I

00:25:42 ◼   ► discovered that somebody said it's pronounced like Linux. It was actually in my ad copy

00:25:47 ◼   ► for whoever was like Lex Friedman or somebody put it in there and I was like, oh, like I

00:25:52 ◼   ► no idea. You know what, I'm gonna make that a new year's resolution for 2019. Then I'm

00:25:57 ◼   ► gonna need I need all of my ad reads spelled out phonetically phonetically just assume

00:26:01 ◼   ► on your hands everything wrong. It certainly looks like line node. It certainly makes sense

00:26:07 ◼   ► because of the Linux thing that it would be pronounced Linode instead. Either way, it

00:26:11 ◼   ► is a tremendous hosting service. So you can pronounce it however you want. It's l i n

00:26:16 ◼   ► ODE and they allow you to deploy and manage an SSD server in their Linode

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00:26:59 ◼   ► That's just tremendous. And they've got a special deal for talk show listeners.

00:27:04 ◼   ► You get $20 credit with code. I'll tell you at the end.

00:27:07 ◼   ► So that means you could get a server for four months with the code. It's crazy.

00:27:12 ◼   ► four months of like a top tier world class SSD server.

00:27:18 ◼   ► You can configure your memory as much as you want.

00:27:20 ◼   ► They've got high memory plans that start at 16 gigabytes.

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00:27:30 ◼   ► Something about it makes you unhappy.

00:27:32 ◼   ► You have seven days to get all of your money back.

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00:27:36 ◼   ► And they really do allow you to get a new server instance up

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00:27:43 ◼   ► They have a great, great interface

00:27:46 ◼   ► for managing all of this stuff.

00:27:50 ◼   ► Just a great dashboard interface.

00:27:53 ◼   ► Hourly billing with a monthly cap on all plans

00:27:55 ◼   ► so you won't get surprised if something happens

00:27:57 ◼   ► and you're not gonna unexpectedly get a huge bill.

00:27:59 ◼   ► Native SSD search, that's really important.

00:28:02 ◼   ► I know that's the way the whole world's going,

00:28:05 ◼   ► but you don't wanna have an important server

00:28:06 ◼   ► running with a spinning hard drive.

00:28:07 ◼   ► That's irresponsible.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Go SSD all the way.

00:28:10 ◼   ► Anyway, it's just a great service.

00:28:15 ◼   ► I paid for it.

00:28:16 ◼   ► It is actually what I use.

00:28:18 ◼   ► I would endorse them

00:28:19 ◼   ► even if they weren't sponsoring the show.

00:28:21 ◼   ► That's, they're a great company

00:28:22 ◼   ► with a tremendous reputation and a great support team.

00:28:26 ◼   ► And they're hiring.

00:28:28 ◼   ► So you can go to linode.com/careers

00:28:31 ◼   ► if you are the sort of person who works in a field

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00:28:37 ◼   ► programming, network administration, that sort of thing.

00:28:41 ◼   ► They're doing so well, they're hiring.

00:28:42 ◼   ► So go check out linode.com/careers

00:28:45 ◼   ► if you're looking for work.

00:28:46 ◼   ► And anyway, here's the deal.

00:28:48 ◼   ► 20 buck credit for everybody who listens to the show

00:28:51 ◼   ► by going to linode.com/thetalkshow.

00:28:56 ◼   ► And then the promo code, that's not quite enough.

00:28:59 ◼   ► The promo code you gotta remember is talkshow2018.

00:29:02 ◼   ► T-A-L-K-S-H-O-W 2018.

00:29:06 ◼   ► My thanks to Linode, great sponsor, great company. I sold t-shirts last week.

00:29:15 ◼   ► I saw that.

00:29:16 ◼   ► Hoodies too. Everybody's getting them. It's always exciting to me. The part where you're

00:29:21 ◼   ► selling them is more, I mean, it's nice and, you know, like I have my little email set

00:29:27 ◼   ► up to, like it's a trick I learned from Jim Kudol. I don't know if they still do it because

00:29:32 ◼   ► Field Notes has gotten so big, but Kudol had a thing set up at Field Notes so that when

00:29:36 ◼   ► everybody, whenever somebody bought field notes, it played its specific sound. I think

00:29:41 ◼   ► it was just a simple mail filter, but it's like that sound was one thing and one thing

00:29:45 ◼   ► only, which was a sale of field notes. And so I have that set up for the t-shirts and

00:29:51 ◼   ► it's nice. You hear it. Oh, dang, dang. At least people are buying them, you know, but

00:29:54 ◼   ► to me the fun part is when people start getting them on Twitter and they start posting pictures

00:29:58 ◼   ► of, of wearing them or doing them. I did stickers this time for the first time. I don't know.

00:30:05 ◼   ► I need to start moving faster, Jason. I feel like 2018 is way too long.

00:30:10 ◼   ► People love stickers. They love them. People like pins too, apparently, but I've never done the

00:30:16 ◼   ► pins. I never got pins, but I started doing pins last year and people love pins too. So it's one

00:30:21 ◼   ► of those things where you got to get outside yourself and say, "I don't particularly do a lot

00:30:24 ◼   ► of stickers or pins, but people love them and that's fine." And the t-shirts. Yeah, we just did

00:30:29 ◼   ► a bunch of stuff for comparable and relay and all that. Everybody's doing the merch because it's the

00:30:34 ◼   ► the holidays and all of that. It is fun to see those pictures come in on Twitter. And

00:30:38 ◼   ► I'm jealous because I haven't gotten mine yet, so I'm seeing other people with them

00:30:41 ◼   ► before I get my, you know, my incomparable pin or my—Mike and I did a "Dongletown"

00:30:47 ◼   ► t-shirt this year, which is in the style of like the Hollister, California, you know,

00:30:53 ◼   ► those kind of t-shirts. But it's for "Dongletown." It's got a little USB-C port and it says

00:30:59 ◼   ► Port Authority on it.

00:31:00 ◼   ► Yeah, that's good. That's very funny.

00:31:02 ◼   ► So I'm looking forward to getting my dongle town shirt and mystify everybody in,

00:31:06 ◼   ► in my town who doesn't understand computers.

00:31:09 ◼   ► Donkle town port authority would be a,

00:31:11 ◼   ► a not bad name for like the store at the airport where you buy,

00:31:16 ◼   ► you know, you know that store at the Cupertino airport,

00:31:20 ◼   ► there's a dongle town port authority, right? You know, the store for, you know,

00:31:23 ◼   ► you forgot your USB charger. Actually. Oh man, we should get,

00:31:27 ◼   ► get on trademarking that. I know. That'll be the place you go for all your adapters.

00:31:30 ◼   ► Or maybe it's just like a little vending machine or something for all your adapters. I realized

00:31:34 ◼   ► switching to the iPad Pro, I now have, I already was embarrassed because I have a pair of wired

00:31:39 ◼   ► headphones that I love that I have a carry around in a little carrying case. And I always

00:31:46 ◼   ► felt bad because I had the little white lightning to headphone jack adapter in there. And now

00:31:53 ◼   ► I also have the little light lightning USB-C adapter. So I have to choose and the other

00:32:00 ◼   ► day I was working and I was listening to something on my iPhone and then I realized I needed

00:32:03 ◼   ► to hear something on my iPad instead and I had to do like a switch on the little white

00:32:07 ◼   ► dongles. And I thought, boy, it's come to this, but I don't want to give up the wired

00:32:13 ◼   ► headphones just yet. So I use AirPods a lot, but for some stuff, especially if I'm in a

00:32:18 ◼   ► noisy environment and I want to block other people out, there's a lady at my Starbucks

00:32:23 ◼   ► that I go to who who's there all day and is lonely and will talk to you and I have to

00:32:28 ◼   ► block her out because otherwise she'll talk to me. So this is my sad story. But anyway,

00:32:33 ◼   ► I've got two dongles now in my little carrying case. It's great. Yeah, you know what? That's

00:32:37 ◼   ► the main reason that I did the stickers. Well, a I've been thinking about it for years, but

00:32:41 ◼   ► I actually want one now myself. I made I made three inch stickers, which seemed like a standard

00:32:46 ◼   ► size for circular stickers, but I also made one inch ones and I want the one inch one

00:32:50 ◼   ► to put on my AirPods case,

00:32:51 ◼   ► 'cause now we're up to three AirPod users in the household.

00:32:55 ◼   ► And that was the breaking point

00:32:57 ◼   ► of who the hell's AirPods are to these.

00:32:58 ◼   ► And so I'm actually, this would be like the first

00:33:00 ◼   ► Apple product I can recall

00:33:02 ◼   ► that I actually want to put a sticker on.

00:33:04 ◼   ► - You know the one that I,

00:33:05 ◼   ► 'cause I am not a big sticker person.

00:33:07 ◼   ► I have, at some point I decided I was gonna,

00:33:09 ◼   ► for my personal, kind of because of sixcolors.com,

00:33:12 ◼   ► I got rainbow Apple logos in the exact size

00:33:16 ◼   ► of the Apple logos on like my laptop

00:33:18 ◼   ► and my iPad and my iMac.

00:33:19 ◼   ► and I got those and put them on.

00:33:21 ◼   ► And I thought like that's fitting,

00:33:22 ◼   ► but it's literally in the space

00:33:24 ◼   ► where the Apple logo already was.

00:33:26 ◼   ► I'm just sort of colorizing it.

00:33:27 ◼   ► I've never been a, you know, slather stickers

00:33:31 ◼   ► all over my Apple products kind of thing.

00:33:33 ◼   ► But this folio case for the iPad Pro

00:33:38 ◼   ► with that giant gray completely blank expanse,

00:33:44 ◼   ► I actually have started putting stickers on it

00:33:46 ◼   ► 'cause I just can't take it.

00:33:47 ◼   ► it's the most boring accessory Apple has ever made,

00:33:51 ◼   ► and I've just decided that I need to also to help orient.

00:33:54 ◼   ► Like I know which side is which

00:33:55 ◼   ► because of the stickers and stuff.

00:33:56 ◼   ► And it's just, so that's the first one for me.

00:33:59 ◼   ► I do have a sticker on my AirPods case

00:34:01 ◼   ► because we have two sets in the house

00:34:03 ◼   ► and you can tell them apart.

00:34:04 ◼   ► - It's essential.

00:34:06 ◼   ► And, but that's just what I thought is I thought,

00:34:07 ◼   ► well, what then I started thinking, well, what sticker?

00:34:09 ◼   ► And A, because I'm not a sticker person,

00:34:11 ◼   ► I didn't have any stickers laying around.

00:34:14 ◼   ► B, most stickers are a little too big, you know,

00:34:17 ◼   ► the AirPods case is tiny.

00:34:18 ◼   ► And then I thought, well, wait a minute.

00:34:19 ◼   ► I could put my own sticker on there.

00:34:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, little, I assume it's just the

00:34:24 ◼   ► during "Fireball Star."

00:34:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's just a circle that is hopefully very close

00:34:30 ◼   ► to the correct shade of gray with a white star in the middle.

00:34:33 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:34:34 ◼   ► - I haven't seen him in person yet.

00:34:34 ◼   ► That's one of the weird things,

00:34:35 ◼   ► 'cause the shirts ship from my longtime partner in crime

00:34:40 ◼   ► in the T-shirt racket, Brian Jeremiah,

00:34:43 ◼   ► out in Southern California.

00:34:44 ◼   ► So I had the stickers sent to him too,

00:34:46 ◼   ► which kind of hurt because I wanted to see them. Yeah. I just did that cause all of our

00:34:50 ◼   ► stickers went through cotton bureau in Pittsburgh. And so I just had the, I had all of the stickers

00:34:54 ◼   ► shipped to Pittsburgh. So I don't know what they were like. The good thing is I trust

00:34:58 ◼   ► Brian's eye. Like Brian knows during fireball brand and he's very, very accurate judge of

00:35:04 ◼   ► color and you know, and, and things like, you know, are they cut right and stuff? I

00:35:09 ◼   ► mean company, I got him from a place called sticker mule. I don't know. I've used them.

00:35:13 ◼   ► - I've used them, absolutely.

00:35:15 ◼   ► - But they seemed to have a very good reputation

00:35:17 ◼   ► and was a very nice process actually setting it up.

00:35:22 ◼   ► - Those places are really designed at this point

00:35:25 ◼   ► to mitigate against having you demand your money back.

00:35:28 ◼   ► So they like go through like a proof process

00:35:30 ◼   ► and they send you the proof.

00:35:31 ◼   ► And I've actually been really happy with that

00:35:32 ◼   ► 'cause sometimes I'll oftentimes like three out of four

00:35:35 ◼   ► will be fine and then there'll be one out of four

00:35:38 ◼   ► that I'll give them a little feedback and say,

00:35:40 ◼   ► that's not what I was thinking.

00:35:41 ◼   ► often, you know, 24 hours, sometimes it's like five hours.

00:35:44 ◼   ► They send back a second proof.

00:35:46 ◼   ► I'm like, that's exactly it.

00:35:47 ◼   ► And so they're pretty good.

00:35:48 ◼   ► I've been pretty impressed.

00:35:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, I forget what my issue was.

00:35:51 ◼   ► I had a very small issue.

00:35:53 ◼   ► You know what it was?

00:35:54 ◼   ► It wasn't even that their proof,

00:35:55 ◼   ► it wasn't that the proof they showed me

00:35:57 ◼   ► showed any signs of defect.

00:35:58 ◼   ► It was, I used to be so involved in the print world

00:36:02 ◼   ► 'cause I used to do print design and I knew, you know,

00:36:05 ◼   ► what do we used to call it?

00:36:06 ◼   ► Pre-flight, remember you'd pre-flight your Quark Express file

00:36:10 ◼   ► And there was, what was the, there was a great app.

00:36:12 ◼   ► - Oh man.

00:36:15 ◼   ► - Pre-flight, was it named pre-flight?

00:36:17 ◼   ► And what you could do is just,

00:36:19 ◼   ► you get your QuarkXPress document, if you had images,

00:36:23 ◼   ► those images were external files somewhere else,

00:36:26 ◼   ► and they were referenced within the document.

00:36:29 ◼   ► You know, it's not at all dissimilar

00:36:31 ◼   ► to the concept of an HTML file,

00:36:33 ◼   ► where the image isn't actually in the HTML file,

00:36:35 ◼   ► the image, you know,

00:36:36 ◼   ► the document contains a reference to it.

00:36:39 ◼   ► And what you could do with preflight is when you were done,

00:36:42 ◼   ► you just drag your Quark file onto this app

00:36:44 ◼   ► and it would grab everything, make a copy of it

00:36:47 ◼   ► and like put it in a, I was gonna say zip archive,

00:36:50 ◼   ► but it was probably like a sit file, right?

00:36:53 ◼   ► Like a stuff it archive.

00:36:54 ◼   ► And then you'd have just one stuff it archive

00:36:57 ◼   ► that you could give to the print shop

00:36:59 ◼   ► and then they could stuff it and everything would be there.

00:37:02 ◼   ► And including like the fonts, you'd have everything you need.

00:37:05 ◼   ► You'd have the fonts, you'd have the images.

00:37:08 ◼   ► I'm so out of the game that I don't know

00:37:09 ◼   ► you ship stuff anymore. I don't know what is EPS what you want. And Sticker Mule took

00:37:13 ◼   ► all sorts of, you know, any file you can imagine. You could send them a PDF, you could send

00:37:17 ◼   ► them an EPS, you could send them raster files, which I know is just not the best way to do

00:37:24 ◼   ► it. But I send SVG, because I think that's the most modern way to do it, and I think

00:37:31 ◼   ► it's the most precise way to specify a color. But I could be wrong. Maybe I'll be inundated

00:37:35 ◼   ► with feedback this week that I was an idiot, that SVG is terrible. But what I did is I

00:37:41 ◼   ► sent them, and of course I had put this off until close to the last minute, but I think

00:37:46 ◼   ► I sent them a PDF at first, and then they showed me the proof, and I didn't really like

00:37:50 ◼   ► the color. I don't think they did anything wrong. I just wasn't sure. And I know from

00:37:56 ◼   ► past experience, sometimes PDF doesn't round trip that well with color. So anyway, I switched

00:38:02 ◼   ► to SVG and they seemingly came out perfect. Enjoying any any beverages as we record?

00:38:09 ◼   ► I ran out of beverages. I have a like the teapot but the teapot was drained so I'm tea

00:38:16 ◼   ► less now but you know I may go get something during an ad break it's possible.

00:38:21 ◼   ► I have some coffee and of course some homemade fizzy water.

00:38:25 ◼   ► The problem with the tea in my house now is that my daughter has become a tea drinker

00:38:30 ◼   ► And so that teapot gets empty at unexpected times.

00:38:34 ◼   ► And then I'm like, and then it's too late.

00:38:37 ◼   ► Like it's like, I'm not going to make another pot of tea.

00:38:39 ◼   ► It's just, it's over for, for then sometimes I'll go back and make another

00:38:42 ◼   ► pot, but sometimes not.

00:38:43 ◼   ► All right.

00:38:45 ◼   ► Here's, here's the, one of the main things and it's one of my recurring themes.

00:38:48 ◼   ► I can't stop thinking about it is this whole notion.

00:38:52 ◼   ► Speaking of iPad pros of using an iPad pro for quote unquote work.

00:38:59 ◼   ► And you fascinate me of all the other all the people know all the people in this racket,

00:39:05 ◼   ► all of our friends, colleagues, everybody, or you know, even people we don't like, but

00:39:11 ◼   ► who were right about this stuff. And I have various positions all over the map on where

00:39:16 ◼   ► the iPad and the iPad Pro probably in particular stand visit, you know, compared to the Mac

00:39:22 ◼   ► as a machine for work. And you fascinated me because you and I are like minded of similar

00:39:29 ◼   ► age. And you know, we do kind of the same thing, mostly writing and reading and linking

00:39:36 ◼   ► to things. We are both longtime fans of some of the same apps, like I'll just say in particular,

00:39:43 ◼   ► BB Edit. Sure. Which just amazingly celebrated its 25th anniversary. Yeah. Crazy. Well, it's

00:39:52 ◼   ► both crazy because that sounds like a long time for an app. Like who thinks of apps being

00:39:55 ◼   ► around for 25 years. And then on the other hand, I can't remember. Well, I do remember

00:39:59 ◼   ► before BB Edit, but it was, you know, I was like a sophomore in college when I first started

00:40:05 ◼   ► using BB Edit. And that feels like, yeah, that's a long time ago.

00:40:09 ◼   ► Yeah, totally. And for me, it was a, it was my first job that the, the, there was a guy

00:40:14 ◼   ► there who was like, you should use BB Edit. I was like, okay. And that was it. I could

00:40:19 ◼   ► be off by a year. I'm 99% sure though it was 1992. And I remember where I was, I was

00:40:25 ◼   ► in the Tower Dormitory, the new tower.

00:40:29 ◼   ► That's how creatively Drexel University named its dormitory.

00:40:33 ◼   ► They've gotten a lot better at that in recent years.

00:40:35 ◼   ► Because the way the game really works is you

00:40:38 ◼   ► find some deep-pocketed alumni who wants a name on a building.

00:40:45 ◼   ► In the '80s, Drexel was-- it wasn't on top of that game.

00:40:49 ◼   ► And there was a dormitory called the New Tower.

00:40:53 ◼   ► Which I wonder, I actually have no idea.

00:40:55 ◼   ► I should look it up, but I wonder if they still call it that

00:40:57 ◼   ► 'cause it certainly isn't new anymore.

00:40:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, they might've sold the naming rights for that too.

00:41:01 ◼   ► That happened when they built the new Warriors Arena

00:41:04 ◼   ► in Oakland that they're now gonna leave.

00:41:05 ◼   ► It was the new arena for a long time

00:41:08 ◼   ► before Oracle paid up to get the name.

00:41:10 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:41:11 ◼   ► I was in my friend, Dave, his name was Super Dave.

00:41:15 ◼   ► We had big Dave and Super Dave, Super Dave's dorm room.

00:41:18 ◼   ► Super Dave ran an excellent bulletin board.

00:41:21 ◼   ► That was that was before you know that was how we communicated with each other. I feel

00:41:26 ◼   ► like we're getting older by the minute as you tell the story. I even remember what model

00:41:30 ◼   ► computer he had a Mac. He had an excellent he had a Mac to CI which is we go down memory

00:41:36 ◼   ► lane is in my opinion one of the greatest Macintosh has ever made totally as far outside

00:41:40 ◼   ► my family's budget. But it started life when it was new as like one of the very very top

00:41:46 ◼   ► and Mac twos and it remained in Apple's lineup for years to come as it sort of it was actually

00:41:52 ◼   ► Apple didn't do this at the time it was sort of what Apple does now is allow a formerly

00:41:57 ◼   ► top line product to work its way down the lineup you know the way that you can still

00:42:02 ◼   ► go into an Apple store and buy like an iPhone success you know the two ci had that sort

00:42:07 ◼   ► of life anyway Dave was on his Mac to ci and I wasn't even wanting to pay it wasn't like

00:42:14 ◼   ► here, come here and look at this." I was like, "Oh my God, what's that? What is that?" And he was like,

00:42:19 ◼   ► "Oh, it's some new text editor called BB Edit." And I was like, "All right, I need that."

00:42:22 ◼   ► Because I had been—there were no good text editors for the Mac, and I was a computer science major. I

00:42:29 ◼   ► needed a text editor. I was, you know, stumbling around with—I forget what I was using. I mean,

00:42:36 ◼   ► you could use teach text at the time for text files. There were other third-party programming

00:42:43 ◼   ► text editors and the think packages you know like think Pascal had well actually think Pascal had a

00:42:50 ◼   ► weird thing where it wasn't really a plain text editor it was like before you know was before

00:42:55 ◼   ► source code coloring but they did like sort of like what AppleScript does where they would as

00:42:59 ◼   ► you wrote the lines of code and think Pascal it would like bold the keywords and stuff like that

00:43:04 ◼   ► isn't that why bb edit exists it wasn't because rich seagull used did think Pascal and he wanted

00:43:10 ◼   ► to write a text editor for it, a decent text editor for it?

00:43:14 ◼   ► - What I need to do, what I really need to do

00:43:16 ◼   ► is get rich on the show is what I should do

00:43:17 ◼   ► and let him tell the story.

00:43:18 ◼   ► But the basic story was it started life

00:43:22 ◼   ► as proof of concept that a well-constructed,

00:43:27 ◼   ► well-behaved, useful Mac text editor could be written

00:43:32 ◼   ► in one source code file of think of Pascal.

00:43:36 ◼   ► You know, that there'd just be like,

00:43:38 ◼   ► I don't know what he named it.

00:43:39 ◼   ► if it was like bbedit. I don't know, jeez, what's the, I don't even remember the file

00:43:43 ◼   ► extension for Pascal anymore. Was it dot P? I have no idea. You know, but that one bbedit.p

00:43:50 ◼   ► file with, you know, well structured, wouldn't be like a bunch of spaghetti code. You could

00:43:54 ◼   ► have one file and hit compile and out would come a useful text editor, hence bare bones,

00:44:02 ◼   ► bare bones text editor. So it was a bar bet basically. Yeah, I think so. I think effectively

00:44:07 ◼   ► it was a bar bet that he could write it in one file.

00:44:10 ◼   ► It has since grown to more than one file.

00:44:13 ◼   ► And as long as Outlive, think Pascal to be sure.

00:44:18 ◼   ► But not just as BB Edit isn't just going strong.

00:44:20 ◼   ► BB Edit is just came out with like a what?

00:44:24 ◼   ► 12.5 is the new version with some terrific new features.

00:44:28 ◼   ► Like it's not just around,

00:44:30 ◼   ► it is still super actively developed.

00:44:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's funny.

00:44:34 ◼   ► The ones, and that's no coincidence,

00:44:36 ◼   ► ones that are still around are the ones that are actively developed. As we record this,

00:44:40 ◼   ► just yesterday Federico Vittucci put out his favorite iOS apps of the year on Mac stories,

00:44:44 ◼   ► and one of them is Peacalc, which is also 25 years old, I believe. And it's the same story,

00:44:51 ◼   ► which is, and Federico said it in his write-up, which is, this is an ancient code base that was

00:44:56 ◼   ► originally a college project for James Thompson. But the reason it's still around is because he

00:45:01 ◼   ► aggressively embraces new Apple technology and figures out ways to get it into his product.

00:45:07 ◼   ► And like, he's not just sitting there hoping people keep using his old product. And the

00:45:11 ◼   ► same is true of BB Edit, right? Like they keep evolving it over the years. And if you're

00:45:17 ◼   ► on the beta list, which I am and you are, it's like, they're always pushing the boundaries

00:45:22 ◼   ► with that app.

00:45:23 ◼   ► - 12.5 has a feature that was based on a request from me. And I swear it was maybe like five

00:45:30 ◼   ► years ago. Like, you know how you in the Mac OS X, when you go to the help menu, you can

00:45:37 ◼   ► start typing a menu command. And if there's a menu command, it'll kind of highlight and

00:45:42 ◼   ► tell you where it is. Yeah, I love that feature. I tell that I tell people about that because

00:45:45 ◼   ► it's not a widely known feature. And it's like the best way to figure out if an app

00:45:49 ◼   ► does something. It's just literally search the menus for it. And as a power user, you

00:45:54 ◼   ► can kind of use it to give keyboard shortcuts to commands that you either don't know the

00:45:58 ◼   ► shortcut to—you know, just by, I think, what is it, shift command? Yeah, it's like,

00:46:04 ◼   ► I don't know the shortcut. It's just hardwired. So, shift command slash opens the help menu,

00:46:10 ◼   ► and you can just start typing. So, my suggestion was that BBEdit should do its own version

00:46:14 ◼   ► of that and do it better because it knows about its things. And so, there's now a—I

00:46:20 ◼   ► think it's in the go menu, go command, shift command U. And BBEdit has its own built-in.

00:46:26 ◼   ► you can just start typing something and it'll,

00:46:29 ◼   ► if there's any menu that matches it, it'll be highlighted.

00:46:32 ◼   ► And you can of course arrow down and do it.

00:46:34 ◼   ► But anyway, it's just proof to me that

00:46:38 ◼   ► when you write in with a feature request

00:46:40 ◼   ► or something like that, and you get the feedback from Rich

00:46:43 ◼   ► or from Patrick or whoever there.

00:46:45 ◼   ► I should add that I worked at Barebone Software

00:46:47 ◼   ► for two years.

00:46:48 ◼   ► It seems like a worthy disclosure back in around 2000.

00:46:54 ◼   ► But when they-- they're never going to tell you.

00:46:58 ◼   ► They're very nice people.

00:46:59 ◼   ► And they treat their customers extremely well,

00:47:03 ◼   ► which is probably another reason that they've

00:47:05 ◼   ► survived for 25 years.

00:47:08 ◼   ► But if they tell you that a feature-- hmm,

00:47:09 ◼   ► that is an interesting idea.

00:47:11 ◼   ► They might ask more, like, well, how would you use it?

00:47:13 ◼   ► Why would that be better than what's already there,

00:47:16 ◼   ► so and such?

00:47:17 ◼   ► They really do systematically put it away in somewhere

00:47:21 ◼   ► where they may not implement it right away.

00:47:23 ◼   ► Like, this is serious.

00:47:24 ◼   ► I bet this was seriously like a five-year-old feature request.

00:47:26 ◼   ► But when it first showed up in the betas for the 12.5 cycle,

00:47:30 ◼   ► I was like, hey, that sounds like a great feature.

00:47:32 ◼   ► And I was like, wait, I think I asked for that.

00:47:35 ◼   ► Anyway, we have very similar taste in software, et cetera.

00:47:39 ◼   ► And I truly struggle to try to do my work only on an iPad.

00:47:45 ◼   ► And I want to, I think, but I worry deeply

00:47:49 ◼   ► that maybe it's not that I can't,

00:47:52 ◼   ► But that I'm too old, I don't know.

00:47:55 ◼   ► What frustrates me and makes me feel like I always,

00:47:58 ◼   ► I often use this analogy, I feel like I'm wearing mittens

00:48:01 ◼   ► when I'm using an iPad.

00:48:04 ◼   ► And I am really used to having fine use of all 10 fingers.

00:48:09 ◼   ► At the other hand, that's a strength in other ways

00:48:14 ◼   ► because it's the way that I can have so much going on

00:48:17 ◼   ► at the Mac at one time can be distracting,

00:48:21 ◼   ► a way that it's not on iPad and it's a little bit, I don't know, mentally quieter. I'm not

00:48:27 ◼   ► big on the whole distraction-free writing thing.

00:48:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree. I mean, that can go too far, but it is like, I'm looking at my Mac right

00:48:35 ◼   ► now and I'm talking to you, but like, I've got a Slack window, I've got an iMessage window,

00:48:41 ◼   ► I've got our shared notes document, I've got Audio Hijack. Occasionally I will get a push

00:48:48 ◼   ► I've got a dock full of items. Like, there's a lot going on here. And iOS can be distracting,

00:48:57 ◼   ► but like, even its multitasking is literally all you're seeing is two app windows. That's

00:49:02 ◼   ► all you're seeing. And when I'm not using, like, usually Safari to look things up while

00:49:07 ◼   ► I'm writing, I'm just—I actually have this wacky stand that you and I went back and forth

00:49:13 ◼   ► on on Twitter, and then I think we may have talked about the last time I was on. That—I

00:49:17 ◼   ► rotate that into horizontal or vertical. So I'll put it in vertical when I'm writing and

00:49:23 ◼   ► I just got a big stack of text and I'm not multitasking at all. And it's just a giant

00:49:28 ◼   ► screen. There's only one thing in it, which is my text editor. That's all I'm doing. And

00:49:32 ◼   ► yeah, I could see a push notification, although I set those up to not be super annoying. I

00:49:36 ◼   ► can switch to other apps if I want to take a mental break, but there is something about

00:49:40 ◼   ► it being completely locked in that way. And you know, I could use my MacBook Air in full

00:49:46 ◼   ► screen mode apps. I could do that. I just never do because it's a Mac. That's not how

00:49:51 ◼   ► I use the Mac. But it's always been how you have to use iOS. And so there's some—I know

00:49:55 ◼   ► it's kind of a trick and it's not really true, but it's just enough. It's like quitting out

00:50:01 ◼   ► of an app saying, "I'm not going to check Twitter while I'm working on this story. I'm

00:50:04 ◼   ► going to quit Twitter." You can always relaunch Twitter, but the act of quitting Twitter puts

00:50:09 ◼   ► it just further enough away that you're like, "All right, I can leave it and I'm going to

00:50:13 ◼   ► focus. And so some of that is what's going on. I wouldn't say that's the whole picture,

00:50:18 ◼   ► but I do think that that's a part of it, is that it's just a kind of a simpler place,

00:50:22 ◼   ► and it's not getting in my way, and it's more flexible. That's the thing that I also feel

00:50:27 ◼   ► about it is, like, I can pop it in that crazy bridge keyboard case and it feels like a laptop,

00:50:32 ◼   ► but I can also pull it off and use it with an external keyboard or that smart keyboard

00:50:37 ◼   ► folio or I can just leave it completely unadorned and it's just a pure tablet experience, depending

00:50:43 ◼   ► on what I want. And that's not something I can do with a MacBook Air. It's going to be

00:50:46 ◼   ► the shape it is 100% of the time.

00:50:50 ◼   ► One of the things that I find, it's an obsession of mine. I know I've mentioned it on the show.

00:50:57 ◼   ► I think I've tried to write about it, but maybe more in the early days of Daring Fireball

00:51:03 ◼   ► than recently is a platform, a software platform to me takes on a life of its own and has character

00:51:13 ◼   ► It has, there's, you become intimate with it and, you know, just like the way that anybody,

00:51:21 ◼   ► a craftsman can get really used to a particular hammer or tool, you know, or illustrators

00:51:27 ◼   ► certainly could become very attached to their pens, you know, pencils and whatever, or certain

00:51:33 ◼   ► types of paper.

00:51:34 ◼   ► Everybody, you know, and the whole system of an OS can take on a certain character.

00:51:40 ◼   ► And one of the very interesting things to me about Apple is that by the late 80s, the

00:51:50 ◼   ► Mac was Apple and Apple was the Mac, you know, that as the Apple two died off, the Apple

00:51:57 ◼   ► still had ambitions like that.

00:52:00 ◼   ► Like the Apple of old would come out with new systems all the time, you know, I mean,

00:52:04 ◼   ► And like the Apple IIGS by the end, the last Apple II certainly was a far different computer

00:52:10 ◼   ► than the original Apple II.

00:52:13 ◼   ► And they famously had the Newton Project in the Scully years, which was almost a tragedy.

00:52:22 ◼   ► And for those who weren't there and never used one, it has a bad rap as to the quality

00:52:29 ◼   ► of it.

00:52:32 ◼   ► It was interesting and good and ahead of its time.

00:52:38 ◼   ► And very much not a pocket Macintosh.

00:52:41 ◼   ► It had its own character.

00:52:43 ◼   ► It really did.

00:52:44 ◼   ► Now, there were aspects and the things that you could see that were similar, like, "Yeah,

00:52:49 ◼   ► that's kind of Appley."

00:52:53 ◼   ► There was certainly some Apple likeness to it that was different than Mac likeness.

00:53:00 ◼   ► In that Steve Jobs exile years, a comparison of the Newton to the system seven era Macintosh

00:53:09 ◼   ► would be an interesting way of discerning what Apple as a company culturally was about.

00:53:19 ◼   ► But let's face it, for the most part, I mean, certainly financially, what kept the company

00:53:22 ◼   ► alive was the Mac. And in those years, the Mac had a very strong character, I would say

00:53:27 ◼   ► it was stronger than Apple's as a whole and was embraced by third party developers and

00:53:34 ◼   ► certainly by users. And you know, at a time it was a time and Apple was weak in certain ways.

00:53:41 ◼   ► And it was a time when third party developers big ones like Adobe and Microsoft and Macromedia,

00:53:48 ◼   ► which was a separate company at the time, arguably held as much control over the platform as Apple

00:53:54 ◼   ► Apple did. I mean, and this played out in public with the switch to Mac OS 10 and the

00:53:59 ◼   ► carbon and the cocoa and stuff like that. And it's like, you know, it's easy now to

00:54:03 ◼   ► get used to Apple saying, Oh, Hey, everything's going to 64 bit. So, you know, you know, and

00:54:11 ◼   ► it's not like they, they, they announced it and like two days later, a ship of version

00:54:14 ◼   ► of Mac OS 10 would where 32 bed apps don't work. I mean, you know, they've been very

00:54:18 ◼   ► clear about this at WWDC over the years, but there was no discussion about it. It wasn't,

00:54:22 ◼   ► not like Apple held negotiations with developers and said, we're thinking about moving everything

00:54:27 ◼   ► to 64 bit. What do you guys think? And what do you guys think the timeline should be?

00:54:32 ◼   ► You know, Apple made that decision and went with it. Whereas at that time, the initial,

00:54:37 ◼   ► Hey, we're going to switch everything to cocoa was met with a, no, you're not. And they had

00:54:43 ◼   ► to go back to the drawing board. And I just recently revisited this with going back to

00:54:51 ◼   ► the story of word six, which to me is and I when I reread it and really thought about

00:54:58 ◼   ► it, I realized that I'd sort of filed this away in the wrong category in my mind over

00:55:01 ◼   ► the years. Basically, Microsoft Word was a fine and excel to were very fine Mac applications

00:55:09 ◼   ► in the 80s that were, you know, if you think about it, a platform that launched in 1984

00:55:15 ◼   ► and got to version five by the mid 90s. They were obviously major versions on a very regular

00:55:20 ◼   ► places. Very popular, lots of people used it. Word 5.1 was it 5.1a that they found out?

00:55:29 ◼   ► Jon Moffitt 5.1a was the final resting place of that app.

00:55:33 ◼   ► Dave Asprey That's like, I very specifically remember

00:55:38 ◼   ► the last good version of QuarkXPress. It was 3.32R5. I can't remember my son's friends'

00:55:47 ◼   ► games, but I can remember QuarkXPress 3.32 R5. Word 5.1a was very popular. It was good.

00:55:56 ◼   ► It looked like a Mac app. It could certainly quibble. There were certainly Microsoft isms.

00:56:03 ◼   ► It was never my choice. I never really cared for it. But I certainly had friends in college

00:56:09 ◼   ► who used it. When I'd look at it, I wouldn't think, "That's a weird-looking app," or,

00:56:12 ◼   ► know, it looked like a Mac word processor. Yeah. And word six was not to rehash the whole

00:56:19 ◼   ► argument. I'll, I'll, you know, make a note here. I'll put it in the show notes, but I

00:56:22 ◼   ► just linked to it. Rick, I forget his name from the Mac BU wrote a sort of history of

00:56:30 ◼   ► it. And basically the problem was word for windows was an entirely different code base

00:56:34 ◼   ► than word for Mac. And they, that's a huge, it was a huge problem in terms of what you

00:56:41 ◼   ► really want is document. The thing that really matters is document compatibility. And if

00:56:46 ◼   ► you couldn't just send a document from a Word for Windows user to a Word for Mac and have

00:56:51 ◼   ► it survive with everything intact, that's a problem. And their decision for the solution

00:56:55 ◼   ► was to switch to a unified code base for both apps. And basically, they switched to the

00:57:01 ◼   ► Windows code base.

00:57:02 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:57:03 ◼   ► For reasons, whatever. But what they shipped as a Mac app did not look like or act like

00:57:08 ◼   ► a Mac app in any way. It wasn't a Windows app running an emulation, but it might as

00:57:14 ◼   ► well have been. It doesn't matter. The technical reasons behind it are irrelevant. What happened

00:57:22 ◼   ► is the users rejected it. It was like, "This app is gross. This is unacceptable. We're

00:57:29 ◼   ► not going to accept this. We're going to stick with Word 5.1. Go screw yourselves."

00:57:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, now, so you've linked to that piece by Rick

00:57:38 ◼   ► from Microsoft a few times,

00:57:40 ◼   ► and I disagree with some of the things in it

00:57:42 ◼   ► because I was there too,

00:57:44 ◼   ► and writing about Apple and working at a magazine

00:57:47 ◼   ► that was all about the Mac.

00:57:49 ◼   ► And some of his characterizations are very much like,

00:57:52 ◼   ► oh, well, the users wanted to be more Mac-like,

00:57:54 ◼   ► which meant they wanted it to be like the previous version,

00:57:57 ◼   ► which is sort of implying that the users, you know,

00:58:00 ◼   ► didn't want change and their resistance to change

00:58:03 ◼   ► was the problem.

00:58:04 ◼   ► And that was so not it.

00:58:05 ◼   ► I mean, the issue really was that in the,

00:58:07 ◼   ► and you remember this from this era,

00:58:09 ◼   ► in that period in the 90s, the Mac was dying

00:58:14 ◼   ► under heavy assault from Windows.

00:58:16 ◼   ► And one of the things that you would use a Mac,

00:58:19 ◼   ► you would say is, "I want to use the Mac.

00:58:22 ◼   ► If I'm gonna choose to use the Mac,

00:58:24 ◼   ► it's because I like the Mac."

00:58:25 ◼   ► And what word six said was,

00:58:28 ◼   ► "Here, we got you Word for Windows,

00:58:30 ◼   ► and now you can use it on the Mac."

00:58:32 ◼   ► And a Mac user is like, "Well, why would I do that?

00:58:34 ◼   ► I would just use Windows if I wanted Word for Windows.

00:58:37 ◼   ► I want Word to be on the Mac."

00:58:40 ◼   ► And they just, you know, and I think the truth is,

00:58:43 ◼   ► and I heard this from people at Microsoft,

00:58:45 ◼   ► that the truth was their clients were IT departments

00:58:48 ◼   ► and the IT departments didn't like the fact

00:58:50 ◼   ► that the menu items and toolbars and everything

00:58:53 ◼   ► were completely different on the Mac than on the PC.

00:58:56 ◼   ► And so they wanted them to be the same

00:58:57 ◼   ► so that all their support documentation could be the same.

00:59:00 ◼   ► and that it gets to say,

00:59:01 ◼   ► here's how you get the company letterhead,

00:59:04 ◼   ► go to the file menu.

00:59:05 ◼   ► - In Word.

00:59:06 ◼   ► - All right.

00:59:07 ◼   ► - It doesn't matter whether it was Mac or PC.

00:59:10 ◼   ► And that was the thing that I think,

00:59:11 ◼   ► if your identity is,

00:59:13 ◼   ► it's not just your identity as a Mac user,

00:59:15 ◼   ► but it's like, I made a choice to you

00:59:16 ◼   ► to drink Coke and not Pepsi.

00:59:18 ◼   ► And then Pepsi says, good news,

00:59:22 ◼   ► Pepsi comes in a Coke can now.

00:59:23 ◼   ► It's like, no, no, I don't.

00:59:26 ◼   ► I made a choice.

00:59:27 ◼   ► And now you're saying my choice is invalid.

00:59:29 ◼   ► that was that was at the root of that plus it was slow and bloated and bad like there was there

00:59:33 ◼   ► were a lot of things wrong with it beyond the looks of it but the looks of it and the way it

00:59:37 ◼   ► behaved were enough to just turn people off of it basically you put your finger on exactly what i

00:59:43 ◼   ► don't like i mean it's that he was there and it's first person makes it worth reading but where i

00:59:48 ◼   ► disagree and exactly what you put your finger on was that uh what they said it wasn't mac like and

00:59:52 ◼   ► and what they meant by Mack like was five word 5.1.

00:59:56 ◼   ► And that's not true.

00:59:57 ◼   ► It's that it's like what you're skipping is the issue

01:00:01 ◼   ► is that being Mack like was a meaningful thing.

01:00:04 ◼   ► And it was, it is, it always has been,

01:00:06 ◼   ► it was from the beginning very difficult

01:00:09 ◼   ► to put your finger on.

01:00:10 ◼   ► Brent Simmons years ago, oh man, back in like 2002

01:00:14 ◼   ► had a wonderful piece on how, you know,

01:00:20 ◼   ► as somebody who clearly got what Mac-like software is,

01:00:24 ◼   ► how it still is often unhelpful

01:00:26 ◼   ► because your Mac-like is different than my Mac-like,

01:00:29 ◼   ► even though we're wrong,

01:00:30 ◼   ► and then there's lots of people

01:00:31 ◼   ► who just don't get it at all.

01:00:32 ◼   ► There is a thing to being Mac-like,

01:00:35 ◼   ► and there was, and it was very strong,

01:00:38 ◼   ► and it's literally what kept Apple alive,

01:00:40 ◼   ► because if Mac-likeness hadn't been an important thing,

01:00:44 ◼   ► there's no reason everybody wouldn't have switched

01:00:47 ◼   ► Windows at the time that there is more to it than, okay, you've got a rectangular window

01:00:53 ◼   ► and the windows all have close buttons and zoom buttons. And then there's a menu bar,

01:00:58 ◼   ► you know, with the sort of, you know, agreed upon set of, you know, typical things like

01:01:03 ◼   ► file edit font. And you double click on an app, you know, and there's a mouse that moves

01:01:11 ◼   ► around and you can select text and then there's a scroll bar over on the side that shows you

01:01:15 ◼   ► You could drag this up and down to scroll up and down in a document.

01:01:18 ◼   ► And there you go.

01:01:19 ◼   ► There's a GUI.

01:01:20 ◼   ► And if you can use one, you can use any one, and that's all there is to it.

01:01:25 ◼   ► It is true that that's the fundamental description of the modern graphical user interface of

01:01:30 ◼   ► a windowing system, but there's so much more to the Mac way of doing things and of

01:01:36 ◼   ► organizing things and of feeling at home.

01:01:40 ◼   ► It's such an amazing thing when you feel at home in an app you've never used before

01:01:44 ◼   ► because it's uses all these familiar conventions.

01:01:46 ◼   ► And there were those conventions went so much deeper

01:01:50 ◼   ► than just draggable windows with a close button

01:01:53 ◼   ► and a menu bar.

01:01:54 ◼   ► There was just Mac ways of doing things like-

01:01:59 ◼   ► - I have never, and this happens to this day,

01:02:01 ◼   ► I have never, I never get more irrationally angry

01:02:04 ◼   ► than when I close a window on an app and it quits.

01:02:09 ◼   ► - Yes, I know.

01:02:13 ◼   ► - And these days, you know, the Mac sometimes will do that

01:02:16 ◼   ► because it's trying to save resources.

01:02:17 ◼   ► And if you close a text edit window, it will be like,

01:02:19 ◼   ► "Oh, I'm gonna shut off text edit," which I still hate,

01:02:22 ◼   ► but I understand what's going on there.

01:02:24 ◼   ► But that was one of the defining characteristics

01:02:27 ◼   ► of Mac-like versus PC-like, right?

01:02:29 ◼   ► Is that a Mac app exists,

01:02:32 ◼   ► and then windows come and go as a part of its existence.

01:02:35 ◼   ► And a Windows app was literally a window

01:02:38 ◼   ► with things inside it.

01:02:40 ◼   ► And if you close the window, the app is the window,

01:02:43 ◼   ► so the app goes away.

01:02:44 ◼   ► And yet you'd get these ports from windows,

01:02:48 ◼   ► from people who had no idea what the Mac was like,

01:02:51 ◼   ► where you close the window

01:02:52 ◼   ► 'cause you'd wanna move on to a different project

01:02:54 ◼   ► and the app would be like, "Great, goodbye."

01:02:56 ◼   ► And this was at the time when sometimes it would take you

01:02:58 ◼   ► like 30 seconds to launch an app,

01:02:59 ◼   ► a really complicated professional app.

01:03:02 ◼   ► And you'd be like, "No, no, no, no, no."

01:03:04 ◼   ► And it just, it's like, you don't get it.

01:03:06 ◼   ► Like this was made by somebody who just doesn't get it.

01:03:09 ◼   ► And you're right, like that is,

01:03:11 ◼   ► it's not like there's a rule book or something,

01:03:13 ◼   ► but a Mac user knew that if you close that window,

01:03:15 ◼   ► the app would not bail on you and be like, goodbye.

01:03:19 ◼   ► And that was part of the Mac was,

01:03:22 ◼   ► we all know how this app is gonna behave

01:03:25 ◼   ► when I click this box.

01:03:26 ◼   ► Everybody knows the right way to do this.

01:03:29 ◼   ► And if you deviate from that,

01:03:31 ◼   ► everybody's gonna get a little bit angry at you.

01:03:34 ◼   ► - You know, it's like the way,

01:03:35 ◼   ► I'm just trying to broadly draw an analogy.

01:03:38 ◼   ► It's like, you know, an episode of the X-Files has to feel like an episode of the X-Files,

01:03:44 ◼   ► even though maybe it's one of the episodes where it's about the deep multi-season conspiracy,

01:03:51 ◼   ► or maybe it's just a one-off that's even a little goofy, but it still has to feel like an episode of

01:03:57 ◼   ► the X-Files, right? And there's something that you can't—you can write a book, you know, and there

01:04:03 ◼   ► can be a book, you know, and that would be like the HIG, you know, the human interface

01:04:08 ◼   ► guidelines and that's a reference that somebody writing software can say, Hmm, I actually

01:04:12 ◼   ► don't know how to do this. Should this be two different menu items or should be one

01:04:15 ◼   ► menu item, you know, where you can hold down a key and turn it into a different menu item.

01:04:20 ◼   ► Let me see what the HIG says, you know, and I'm sure, you know, I know two TV shows have

01:04:24 ◼   ► books like that, that the writers can, can consult with to, you know, let's get this

01:04:29 ◼   ► right, you know? Yep. But for the most part, if you don't have an intuitive sense of

01:04:33 ◼   ► the overall gist of it, you're never going to get it, right? You just, you know, it's

01:04:38 ◼   ► got to be something that mostly you feel it and you know it when you see it. And then,

01:04:42 ◼   ► you know, every once in a while with the details, you can look it up.

01:04:44 ◼   ► Yeah, it's that you get a script for that TV show from somebody on the outside and the

01:04:48 ◼   ► people who make the TV show read it and say, have you ever seen our TV show? Like, you

01:04:53 ◼   ► don't know who the characters are or how the TV show feels. And, and, and there were outlier

01:04:57 ◼   ► apps on the Mac, not as much now, but certainly back in the day where it was that same feeling.

01:05:02 ◼   ► Like I was like NetObjects Fusion, which was a web building tool that I reviewed a bunch

01:05:07 ◼   ► on an early kind of WYSIWYG website builder.

01:05:11 ◼   ► And it was a Windows port and like, you know, it uses little plus minuses instead of disclosure

01:05:16 ◼   ► triangles.

01:05:17 ◼   ► If you close the window, it quits.

01:05:20 ◼   ► All of these things.

01:05:21 ◼   ► And like Mac user knew you could pick that out immediately.

01:05:24 ◼   ► Like you are the fraud here.

01:05:27 ◼   ► You are not a real Mac app.

01:05:28 ◼   ► And that's just again.

01:05:30 ◼   ► It wasn't that it wasn't usable,

01:05:31 ◼   ► and it wasn't that my design sensibilities were offended.

01:05:34 ◼   ► It was that I had made my choice,

01:05:38 ◼   ► and one of the advantages all apps had

01:05:41 ◼   ► was this kind of common frame of reference,

01:05:43 ◼   ► and then that app did not share it,

01:05:45 ◼   ► and it was frustrating to use.

01:05:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, the plus/minus thing versus disclosure triangles

01:05:50 ◼   ► is maybe one of the great examples,

01:05:52 ◼   ► because I am and always have been 100% convinced

01:05:57 ◼   ► that the disclosure triangle visual metaphor is better.

01:06:02 ◼   ► It is both more attractive and more intuitive.

01:06:05 ◼   ► It looks closed when it's closed.

01:06:07 ◼   ► It looks open when it's open.

01:06:09 ◼   ► It goes down.

01:06:10 ◼   ► The switching from pointing to the side for closed

01:06:14 ◼   ► to pointing down to be open

01:06:17 ◼   ► creates the opportunity for an animation affordance

01:06:20 ◼   ► that makes perfect sense.

01:06:21 ◼   ► You could see the triangle flipping in a rotating thing.

01:06:24 ◼   ► And maybe in later years,

01:06:26 ◼   ► animation got more prevalent in the OS, you could see the contents of the folder or whatever

01:06:31 ◼   ► go down. The plus minus thing, plus and minus make no sense in that context to me. And they

01:06:38 ◼   ► used to draw the little dotting line. It just led to this crazy visual thing where they'd

01:06:44 ◼   ► have all these lines all over the place that weren't necessary, right? All you need are

01:06:48 ◼   ► the triangles and indentation.

01:06:50 ◼   ► And, you know, it would transfer to things like outliners, right? Like, so you'd have,

01:07:00 ◼   ► you know, like one of Dave Weiner's outliners from the early 90s or late 80s would of course

01:07:06 ◼   ► use disclosure triangles to hide and show hierarchy of the outline, which is something,

01:07:13 ◼   ► maybe it's like an essay or, or research paper you're researching and the way that you would

01:07:18 ◼   ► to close, disclose the hierarchy of that worked exactly the same as in the finder when you

01:07:23 ◼   ► were dealing with files. No. Right. I mean, I'm the outliner works like that to this day.

01:07:30 ◼   ► Right. Um, one of the words I like for it is idiomatic and idiomatic usually was referred

01:07:36 ◼   ► to like grammar, you know, and that one of the ways that you can kind of tell sometimes

01:07:41 ◼   ► when somebody speaks your native language as a second language isn't that they're wrong

01:07:47 ◼   ► per se is that they say things that nobody who's spoken natively, whatever put together,

01:07:52 ◼   ► they're unfamiliar with certain idioms. And I, I, I sometimes I wonder how, how I ever got

01:08:02 ◼   ► semi decent grades in English, going through school in the grammar classes, because I never

01:08:09 ◼   ► knew the rules. I mean, I could, you know, I could I parts of speech I could get. And then once we

01:08:14 ◼   ► got past that, it was like, forget it. I have no idea what the hell you're talking about.

01:08:18 ◼   ► I just do it by ear. I've always just written and read by ear. And, you know, making good

01:08:27 ◼   ► Mac software has always been like that. They're just idioms that you use. And when you violate

01:08:32 ◼   ► them, it just seems bizarre, right? Like spelling an OK button, OKAY. Like, it's not wrong. You

01:08:41 ◼   ► You can look in the dictionary and there are certain publications that even put in their

01:08:47 ◼   ► style guide that the word OK is spelled out OKAY. It is in the dictionary. There are publications

01:08:54 ◼   ► that prefer it.

01:08:55 ◼   ► It doesn't go in a dialogue box.

01:08:59 ◼   ► Not a Mac.

01:09:00 ◼   ► I was going to say that the elements of style or a grammar textbook, it's kind of like the

01:09:06 ◼   ► HIG for grammar. So you internalize it because you learn the language and you do it by absorbing

01:09:11 ◼   ► it and seeing that people use it this way. And then the reason the, you know, learning

01:09:15 ◼   ► the parts of speech and all that kind of exists is as the reference material. So if you don't

01:09:20 ◼   ► know what to do, you can be like, well, okay, what's the, what are the rules here? But I

01:09:24 ◼   ► think mostly it's innate, right? That you absorb it by watching it in use and then you

01:09:30 ◼   ► understand it. And for computing platforms to broaden it out, like that is how computing

01:09:35 ◼   ► platforms work is that if you're a user of a platform and you may not even know it, you

01:09:38 ◼   ► You may not think of yourself as a big computer user

01:09:42 ◼   ► or a smartphone user, but you spend time on the iPhone

01:09:45 ◼   ► or an Android phone or whatever,

01:09:46 ◼   ► you absorb sort of like what the rules are

01:09:48 ◼   ► and how things work.

01:09:49 ◼   ► And then you get frustrated if things don't work right.

01:09:53 ◼   ► And right is defined as, I mean, there's a reason

01:09:55 ◼   ► why every app doesn't have a completely different

01:09:58 ◼   ► control scheme, right?

01:09:59 ◼   ► Because if literally that's how it was

01:10:02 ◼   ► in the early days of computing,

01:10:03 ◼   ► where every single app ran differently

01:10:06 ◼   ► and you had to figure out what its commands were

01:10:09 ◼   ► because every single one was different.

01:10:11 ◼   ► It's terrible, right?

01:10:11 ◼   ► You want to have that common frame of reference.

01:10:13 ◼   ► And we all absorb that, which is why,

01:10:16 ◼   ► I mean, to this day, that was why I got,

01:10:18 ◼   ► I ended up in a very loud room at XOXO a couple of years ago

01:10:23 ◼   ► with a designer from Google who was mad at me

01:10:26 ◼   ► because I wrote a story complaining

01:10:28 ◼   ► about the Google iOS apps using the Google share icon

01:10:34 ◼   ► instead of the iOS share icon.

01:10:37 ◼   ► And you know, it's the most, like who cares?

01:10:39 ◼   ► But I didn't like it because as an iOS user,

01:10:43 ◼   ► I looked at the icon and I'd be like, what the hell is this?

01:10:46 ◼   ► I don't know what this exploding blob means.

01:10:49 ◼   ► I'm looking for a little box with an arrow coming out of it.

01:10:52 ◼   ► And you know, that was just, I didn't know that language

01:10:56 ◼   ► because it was not my language.

01:10:57 ◼   ► - I just ran into that at dinner two nights ago,

01:11:00 ◼   ► Amy and I and Jonas were out.

01:11:01 ◼   ► Amy wanted to send a link to a product to her sister in a text message. She searched

01:11:10 ◼   ► for it. It came up with an Amazon link. She clicked it because it was on her phone and

01:11:16 ◼   ► she has the Amazon app. It opened in the Amazon app, not the website. It was the right product.

01:11:26 ◼   ► there's nowhere on that page. Amazon's iOS apps are very bad, especially in this idiomatic

01:11:34 ◼   ► design language, right? They're very clearly little web things that I don't have my pixel

01:11:40 ◼   ► in front of me. I'm quite certain that if I open the Amazon app on my Pixel, it'll look

01:11:44 ◼   ► exactly the same. But there is no little box with an arrow coming out of it, like how to

01:11:50 ◼   ► copy a link. Like, here it is. Here's the Amazon app showing me the product, and all

01:11:55 ◼   ► All I want to do is I want the box with an arrow.

01:11:59 ◼   ► Who knows what's in the share sheet?

01:12:00 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:12:01 ◼   ► Maybe, hopefully, it'll be, you know,

01:12:03 ◼   ► maybe I could just go write to messages.

01:12:05 ◼   ► But, you know, at very least, there should be copy, right?

01:12:09 ◼   ► - Right.

01:12:10 ◼   ► - And literally, I couldn't figure it out.

01:12:13 ◼   ► Because it didn't stick to the idiom.

01:12:16 ◼   ► There's only one.

01:12:17 ◼   ► And there must be some way to do it, I guess.

01:12:20 ◼   ► But that's something at iOS that is so, you know,

01:12:24 ◼   ► Here's the thing, and you want to do something with it,

01:12:27 ◼   ► you look for the box with the arrow.

01:12:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:12:31 ◼   ► And we could debate whether the Google icon

01:12:34 ◼   ► is better or more understandable.

01:12:36 ◼   ► You could do user testing, that's fine.

01:12:38 ◼   ► But the point is that if you're on iOS,

01:12:41 ◼   ► there's a thing you look for.

01:12:43 ◼   ► And if you're an Android, likewise,

01:12:44 ◼   ► 'cause when I wrote this, I heard from people,

01:12:46 ◼   ► it's like, oh, well, you know,

01:12:47 ◼   ► Apple does this wrong on Apple Music for Android.

01:12:49 ◼   ► Is that any better?

01:12:51 ◼   ► And my answer is no, it's not better.

01:12:53 ◼   ► You should be a good citizen on the platform you live on.

01:12:56 ◼   ► And it's not just because I think one platform is better than the other.

01:12:59 ◼   ► It's because a platform speaks a language and people learn it whether they know they're

01:13:04 ◼   ► learning it or not.

01:13:05 ◼   ► And then you want it to be consistent.

01:13:06 ◼   ► And that's what good platform design.

01:13:08 ◼   ► I know, you know, and all the app developers who listen to this are nodding probably because

01:13:13 ◼   ► it's a thing that they have to learn too, which is even if you have a great idea for

01:13:17 ◼   ► a better way to do it, if it's completely contrary to the way everybody else does it,

01:13:21 ◼   ► it's gonna be a tough sell because nobody is going to expect this behavior, even if

01:13:27 ◼   ► it is better. Nobody expects it. So you better, it better be a lot better. And even then you're

01:13:33 ◼   ► taking a huge risk. And, you know, it's not something like "Pull to Refresh," which was

01:13:38 ◼   ► a kind of painting in an area that was previously unpainted. It's like if you're trying to go,

01:13:44 ◼   ► everybody does it this way and you're gonna do it this different way because you think

01:13:46 ◼   ► it's better. Even if it might be slightly better, it's the wrong decision because nobody

01:13:51 ◼   ► knows how to do that. Everybody knows the other way.

01:13:53 ◼   ► I'm going to file a pull to refresh away because that is a really good point. I've got about

01:14:00 ◼   ► six threads here in my head and I can't keep six threads going.

01:14:04 ◼   ► We were talking about iOS at some point.

01:14:07 ◼   ► But one thing I want to finish up before we go on is I want to finish up on my point of

01:14:11 ◼   ► why I think I've misfiled the saga of Word 6 for Mac in my head is that when it happened

01:14:17 ◼   ► at the time. Again, I wasn't a Word user personally, so it didn't, you know, there was a certain

01:14:23 ◼   ► smugness to the—

01:14:25 ◼   ► Sure.

01:14:26 ◼   ► —this isn't my problem.

01:14:27 ◼   ► These poor, poor suckers who use Microsoft Word have to deal with this.

01:14:29 ◼   ► Right.

01:14:30 ◼   ► And I was. I had to use it in my college newspaper, used it, and then my—obviously, all the manuscripts

01:14:34 ◼   ► of the magazine were written in Word.

01:14:36 ◼   ► My college newspaper was a Claris house, so we wanted everything in MacWrite format and/or

01:14:44 ◼   ► and ClarisWorks worked equally.

01:14:46 ◼   ► - Wow.

01:14:47 ◼   ► - All MacWrite and Claris.

01:14:49 ◼   ► And, you know, eventually there was one columnist

01:14:53 ◼   ► who was submitting files in bbedit, text files.

01:14:57 ◼   ► But it didn't matter because he was also doing

01:14:59 ◼   ► the layout of the newspaper.

01:15:01 ◼   ► But for years though, I filed it away as a tragedy.

01:15:06 ◼   ► This was terrible.

01:15:07 ◼   ► You know, there was an app that was a fine Mac app.

01:15:09 ◼   ► And I was already at that point, you know,

01:15:13 ◼   ► cared about good Mac apps. Right. And I thought this is a tragedy because here was a fine

01:15:18 ◼   ► Mac app from Microsoft. And now Microsoft obviously sees this, you know, you know, saw

01:15:25 ◼   ► this as fine to ship for the Mac. And mostly out of danger, you know, because at the time,

01:15:31 ◼   ► by that time, Microsoft's growing power in the industry was obvious. And it, you know,

01:15:35 ◼   ► was worrisome because man, and if this starts a trend, this is bad news, right? Like, I

01:15:40 ◼   ► don't want to see this happening to apps I do use like Photoshop, right? Like I don't

01:15:44 ◼   ► want some new version of Photoshop to come out and be the word six of photoshops. So

01:15:51 ◼   ► for decades I've had this filed under as a bad incident. Whereas what I realize now is

01:15:55 ◼   ► it was one of the finest moments in the Mac history because it didn't work and it made

01:16:00 ◼   ► the reaction was so strong from users that just and what is a more typical word. Microsoft

01:16:08 ◼   ► Word is not an esoteric app, right? It was literally one of the most popular apps on

01:16:14 ◼   ► the platform. I would guess by headcount, I mean, maybe Mac, right? Had more cause I

01:16:19 ◼   ► guess they used to ship Mac, right? For free.

01:16:21 ◼   ► By the point when word five was out, I would, I would probably argue that it was the most

01:16:26 ◼   ► commonly used in a professional sense. It almost certainly was maybe in schools. Mac,

01:16:33 ◼   ► right was still more popular, but regardless, it was a mainstream app and it was rejected

01:16:38 ◼   ► and it, it, it, the rejection was so strong and the Mac was still deemed by Microsoft

01:16:44 ◼   ► to be important enough to care that Microsoft formed an entire business unit, the Mac BU,

01:16:51 ◼   ► I mean, creatively named, but they, they said, okay, we, to, to do this right, we need, you

01:17:00 ◼   ► You know, we need a real team, big team of Mac,

01:17:04 ◼   ► people who get the Mac, and let's do it right.

01:17:08 ◼   ► And then Word 98, you know, again,

01:17:12 ◼   ► was never really to my liking, but was a credible Mac app,

01:17:16 ◼   ► and Word ended up, you know, to this day is still --

01:17:19 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know. I don't know what it looks like now.

01:17:21 ◼   ► It probably looks like crap just because it's leaked over time.

01:17:27 ◼   ► - It's okay.

01:17:28 ◼   ► What I would say is ironically enough,

01:17:30 ◼   ► it looks like Word for Windows,

01:17:33 ◼   ► which looks like Word for iPad.

01:17:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:17:37 ◼   ► - Which is kind of interesting.

01:17:38 ◼   ► I like Office on iPad better than I like it

01:17:41 ◼   ► on the Mac at this point.

01:17:42 ◼   ► And I think some of that may just be

01:17:43 ◼   ► that the Mac version feels very Windows-like to me

01:17:48 ◼   ► and the iOS version feels very iOS-like to me.

01:17:51 ◼   ► But it is, I very rarely, I use Excel some.

01:17:54 ◼   ► I have an Office 365 subscription.

01:17:56 ◼   ► Word is not an app that I particularly use.

01:17:59 ◼   ► Although there are people like Dan Morin

01:18:02 ◼   ► writes his novels in Scrivener,

01:18:03 ◼   ► but the publishing industry is entirely still based on Word.

01:18:07 ◼   ► So in the last step he does is compile his book

01:18:11 ◼   ► out of Scrivener into a Word file,

01:18:12 ◼   ► and then all of his editorial revisions

01:18:15 ◼   ► and everything that happens in the publishing process,

01:18:17 ◼   ► he's got to do in Word.

01:18:19 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

01:18:19 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:18:21 ◼   ► - This is why I can't write a book.

01:18:23 ◼   ► - Yeah. (laughs)

01:18:25 ◼   ► No, but it's a but to me that that rejection of it and and that it was still

01:18:29 ◼   ► seemed so important. It's a triumph. It was a triumph of the Mac at

01:18:32 ◼   ► maybe and again, not maybe not at the peak of Apple's power, but at the

01:18:36 ◼   ► peak of the Mac's

01:18:37 ◼   ► platform Integrity and they did the right thing. I mean that that is the

01:18:42 ◼   ► the the story that doesn't get told enough about what six is that Microsoft

01:18:46 ◼   ► completely

01:18:47 ◼   ► reformed itself when it got that feedback it. There were people inside

01:18:51 ◼   ► Microsoft who obviously said look if we're going to be on the Mac, we need

01:18:55 ◼   ► to actually be on the Mac and not have this be a symptom

01:18:58 ◼   ► of us not caring about this platform.

01:19:00 ◼   ► And then, you know, that was with the, you know,

01:19:02 ◼   ► Bill Gates appears on the screen

01:19:03 ◼   ► and they're gonna do an investment

01:19:04 ◼   ► and they want Apple to continue and all of that.

01:19:06 ◼   ► That was all part of the same thing.

01:19:08 ◼   ► And they did, I mean, the Mac BU ended up being,

01:19:11 ◼   ► I don't know if it still is,

01:19:13 ◼   ► but it was for a very long time,

01:19:15 ◼   ► the largest concentration of Mac developers

01:19:19 ◼   ► outside of Apple were Microsoft.

01:19:22 ◼   ► And they were building all those products on the Mac

01:19:24 ◼   ► and they were never quite Mac-like in the same way again,

01:19:29 ◼   ► but like that first, even that first release in 98

01:19:33 ◼   ► or whenever. They were at least trying.

01:19:34 ◼   ► Yeah. Like seriously trying.

01:19:36 ◼   ► Like they got the drag and drop stuff to work right,

01:19:39 ◼   ► which seems so basic, but like they were,

01:19:41 ◼   ► they went into kind of like Olay land,

01:19:43 ◼   ► which was like drag and drop for Windows

01:19:45 ◼   ► and they had like extensions and stuff.

01:19:47 ◼   ► And they're like, they backed out of a lot of that stuff.

01:19:49 ◼   ► And then the OS X transition, they committed to it.

01:19:52 ◼   ► They were there, they did a good job.

01:19:54 ◼   ► Like they got back on the horse after word six

01:19:58 ◼   ► and it's to their credit,

01:19:59 ◼   ► but it's also because all the people

01:20:01 ◼   ► who use that product push back.

01:20:03 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:20:04 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break here

01:20:06 ◼   ► and thank our next sponsor.

01:20:08 ◼   ► Helpfully comes with a pronunciation.

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01:20:14 ◼   ► but here's one it's spelled H-U-L-L-O.

01:20:16 ◼   ► Let's just forget that they're a longtime sponsor

01:20:18 ◼   ► of the show and I'm familiar with them.

01:20:20 ◼   ► I don't know how else I would pronounce that,

01:20:21 ◼   ► But here's one which I don't know if they're worried

01:20:26 ◼   ► if people are calling them a hula or something,

01:20:28 ◼   ► but there's two L's so it's obviously hello.

01:20:31 ◼   ► But maybe my reputation precedes me

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01:20:36 ◼   ► Well anyway, have you ever tried a buckwheat pillow?

01:20:39 ◼   ► They are totally different from the fluffy, soft pillows

01:20:41 ◼   ► most of us are used to.

01:20:43 ◼   ► Not just a different feeling,

01:20:44 ◼   ► they're actually quite heavy.

01:20:45 ◼   ► Honestly, it's most similar to a bean bag.

01:20:49 ◼   ► Years ago, when I first heard about them,

01:20:51 ◼   ► sounded like a really weird idea for a pillow.

01:20:53 ◼   ► But turns out, this isn't just something they invented.

01:20:56 ◼   ► Buckwheat pillows have been used around the world,

01:20:59 ◼   ► especially in Asian countries, for hundreds of years.

01:21:03 ◼   ► This is actually a normal pillow

01:21:04 ◼   ► in a lot of parts of the world,

01:21:06 ◼   ► or a normal way to make a pillow.

01:21:09 ◼   ► Now, it supports your head and neck the way you want it to,

01:21:11 ◼   ► unlike a traditional squishy soft pillow.

01:21:13 ◼   ► They allow your neck to fall flat into a downward bend,

01:21:18 ◼   ► which can be uncomfortable.

01:21:19 ◼   ► And so hellos not just support the position you want,

01:21:23 ◼   ► they also stay cool and dry compared to pillows

01:21:26 ◼   ► filled with feathers or foam.

01:21:28 ◼   ► Most pillows absorb and retain body heat

01:21:32 ◼   ► with a buckwheat pillow, tends to breathe better,

01:21:35 ◼   ► air can get through the buckwheat husks inside.

01:21:38 ◼   ► And so you don't have to flip,

01:21:39 ◼   ► like their thing is that you don't have to flip

01:21:40 ◼   ► to the cool side of the pillow,

01:21:41 ◼   ► like in the middle of the night

01:21:42 ◼   ► where you flip your pillow around

01:21:43 ◼   ► because your pillow's too hot.

01:21:44 ◼   ► You don't have to do that with a hollow pillow.

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01:21:55 ◼   ► complain about them not having them when we travel. They are great products and I'll tell

01:22:01 ◼   ► you what, I think it's at least three years, maybe longer. It's got to be at least three

01:22:07 ◼   ► years. They last. My wife's pillow pillow, which she sleeps on every single night, it's

01:22:12 ◼   ► the original one that they sent years ago when they first sponsored the show. So they

01:22:15 ◼   ► They really do last a long time and they're easily adjustable. All you do is unzip it

01:22:22 ◼   ► and add more or take more out and that's how you adjust the thickness and it's because

01:22:29 ◼   ► you can adjust the thickness and it stays. You don't need a second pillow like one. Even

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01:22:36 ◼   ► little bit more off the bed. You don't need that with a hollow pillow. One, one hello

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01:23:55 ◼   ► example from that era that I wanted to touch on. Mac Paint was one of the original Mac

01:23:59 ◼   ► Mac apps from Apple, famously made by Bill Atkinson, who invented QuickDraw and a bunch

01:24:05 ◼   ► of—one of the great—more than just an engineer, an engineer and designer and everything

01:24:14 ◼   ► from that era. And a lot of the concepts of Mac Paint would be very familiar to people

01:24:19 ◼   ► today using apps like Acorn or Pixelmator or any of the drawing apps, you know, a palette

01:24:27 ◼   ► of tools and a pencil for drawing and an eraser and you click on it in the palette and then

01:24:32 ◼   ► you can erase and draw blah, blah, blah.

01:24:35 ◼   ► I remember when I first saw Photoshop and I don't know what version it was. It was maybe

01:24:41 ◼   ► 2.5, maybe 2.0, I don't know, somewhere in that era. And Photoshop could obviously do

01:24:47 ◼   ► a lot more than MacPaint. And there was nothing—I may not know where everything was. Maybe I

01:24:56 ◼   ► I didn't know the first time how to do Gaussian blur or something like that.

01:24:59 ◼   ► But when I wanted to do something, my first guess as to how to do it was exactly obvious

01:25:06 ◼   ► to me.

01:25:07 ◼   ► Like it's probably in this menu.

01:25:08 ◼   ► Oh yeah, there.

01:25:10 ◼   ► And it was a super powerful app.

01:25:14 ◼   ► It was amazing what this app can do.

01:25:15 ◼   ► It's amazing how big the files are that it can open.

01:25:18 ◼   ► It's amazing how stable it is.

01:25:21 ◼   ► And the interface was very different in Photoshop back then than it is now.

01:25:25 ◼   ► It certainly was a lot more dialogue based where you'd invoke a command and a modal dialogue

01:25:30 ◼   ► would come up and you would enter a lot of stuff that you would do visually today with

01:25:37 ◼   ► the mouse rubbing over a thing you would do by entering numeric values and cells and hitting

01:25:42 ◼   ► buttons in a modal dialogue box and then seeing if you like the result and then if not undoing

01:25:48 ◼   ► to try something else.

01:25:50 ◼   ► because that was it was the Nate, you know, how we got from there to here, you know, I

01:25:55 ◼   ► mean, there just wasn't the computing power to do everything live back then. Really, I

01:26:00 ◼   ► mean, that's the main thing. It's not like I think it was obvious that it would be better

01:26:03 ◼   ► to directly manipulate the images. But a lot of the stuff you would do in Photoshop, would

01:26:09 ◼   ► you hit the close, you know, the OK button to apply it or whatever the action button

01:26:13 ◼   ► name, and then you sit there and wait. You know, and it would give correctly, as it should

01:26:19 ◼   ► it would give you visual feedback, maybe a progress dialogue if it was long enough, but

01:26:25 ◼   ► whatever was needed to show you like, okay, you know, I'm working on it, it would be working

01:26:30 ◼   ► on it, and then you'd see the result. But those dialogue boxes had so much power, and

01:26:36 ◼   ► had so many great features, and they were organized in a way that felt so Mac like it,

01:26:43 ◼   ► there's no other way to describe it. It wasn't like they invented some new language for

01:26:48 ◼   ► image editors, it was like they took what a Mac-like image editor should be, a very

01:26:53 ◼   ► simple app like MacPaint, and expounded upon it.

01:26:58 ◼   ► Sure. But that was an app built by native speakers, right? They knew the Mac in and

01:27:04 ◼   ► out, the brothers did, the Knoll brothers.

01:27:06 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. John and Thomas Knoll. I can't remember. John is the one who's still at—

01:27:12 ◼   ► John's at ILM, I want to say.

01:27:15 ◼   ► Right. And I think Thomas is still at Adobe.

01:27:16 ◼   ► And Thomas is still at Adobe?

01:27:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:27:18 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah. And john even got like story credit on the Star Wars Rogue One.

01:27:25 ◼   ► Exactly. Right. How's that for a frickin life? co invented Photoshop and made a Star Wars movie?

01:27:32 ◼   ► Yeah, pretty, pretty good. Pretty good. I I was visiting ILM with our friend Todd does Eerie and

01:27:39 ◼   ► and guy walked by in the cafeteria and Todd says, Oh, hey, john. And then he turns to me,

01:27:47 ◼   ► me he says that was John Knoll and I'm like but and he said and I think Todd at the time

01:27:52 ◼   ► said you're one of the people who would care more about that he he's the guy who made Photoshop

01:27:57 ◼   ► than the guy it was like you're right accurate that is completely accurate I'm more impressed

01:28:01 ◼   ► that that's the guy who co-invented Photoshop than his incredibly impressive history working

01:28:05 ◼   ► at ILM on Star Wars movies and other sci-fi movies that are touchstones of my life because

01:28:10 ◼   ► he wrote Photoshop right like oh it's huge but they knew it the Knoll brothers knew it

01:28:15 ◼   ► that they knew the Mac well.

01:28:16 ◼   ► And so Photoshop, I had that same experience

01:28:18 ◼   ► using Photoshop on the Mac in college

01:28:20 ◼   ► that, you know, yeah, you got it.

01:28:22 ◼   ► And this is the, you know,

01:28:23 ◼   ► I feel like this is a roundabout way

01:28:25 ◼   ► of what you're getting to is this question of like,

01:28:28 ◼   ► Mac-like versus iPad-like and hanging over,

01:28:32 ◼   ► tell me how you feel about this,

01:28:33 ◼   ► 'cause we're right here at the end of 2018.

01:28:36 ◼   ► I feel like 2019 is going to be the year

01:28:39 ◼   ► with the most tumultuous change

01:28:42 ◼   ► in terms of the identity of the Mac since OS X came out.

01:28:47 ◼   ► - I don't know.

01:28:51 ◼   ► I think that's possible.

01:28:53 ◼   ► And- - Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah.

01:28:56 ◼   ► - Well, you tell me in what way?

01:28:58 ◼   ► - The Marzipan thing.

01:28:59 ◼   ► I think, 'cause you wrote about this

01:29:02 ◼   ► on "Daring Fireball" a bit about like,

01:29:04 ◼   ► what is Mac like and what is not Mac like

01:29:05 ◼   ► and how the Marzipan apps aren't Mac like.

01:29:07 ◼   ► And, you know, I reacted to those pieces

01:29:12 ◼   ► by saying to myself, I think the problem here is that

01:29:17 ◼   ► Apple is going to redefine what Mac like is

01:29:20 ◼   ► to be what sort of like app like is.

01:29:25 ◼   ► I just get this real feeling that in 2019,

01:29:29 ◼   ► what Apple is going to do is say,

01:29:31 ◼   ► we now have a unified app platform

01:29:33 ◼   ► and iOS apps can run on the Mac

01:29:36 ◼   ► and maybe they're gonna make other changes

01:29:39 ◼   ► and sort of say, this is how we want apps to behave now.

01:29:42 ◼   ► And it's gonna be something that is informed by iOS

01:29:46 ◼   ► and the behavior of iOS in a way that is going to be

01:29:50 ◼   ► more foreign to Mac users.

01:29:54 ◼   ► And especially if you're a Mac user who doesn't use iOS,

01:29:56 ◼   ► and I guess those people exist,

01:29:58 ◼   ► it will be, I think maybe especially foreign.

01:30:00 ◼   ► But the idea that Apple is going to sort of say,

01:30:02 ◼   ► this is how we want apps to behave now.

01:30:04 ◼   ► And it is a little bit like saying how an app behaves

01:30:08 ◼   ► slightly different on an iPhone than on an iPad.

01:30:10 ◼   ► There'll be sort of like on an iPhone and an iPad and a Mac.

01:30:14 ◼   ► But I just, I feel like the Marzipan thing,

01:30:17 ◼   ► you can't bring iOS apps to the Mac

01:30:21 ◼   ► and have them just be weird and different.

01:30:24 ◼   ► Like the platform has to have some sort of unification,

01:30:28 ◼   ► but I think it's most likely that what Apple's going to do

01:30:32 ◼   ► is say these Marzipan apps are part of a new way of doing it

01:30:37 ◼   ► of thinking of apps on the Mac and that they're gonna kind of redefine what Mac how Mac apps

01:30:43 ◼   ► behave as a part of this because I do think ultimately they want a single unified app

01:30:49 ◼   ► platform across all their devices. It probably gives them the ability to add touch to the

01:30:54 ◼   ► Mac for the first time because they'll be bringing touch first apps to the platform

01:30:59 ◼   ► that actually could potentially work with touch not necessarily in 2019 but eventually

01:31:04 ◼   ► I just I feel like this is their this is their ultimate solution. The marzipan stuff to what

01:31:10 ◼   ► do we do with the Mac in a world where iOS is our most important platform? And the answer

01:31:13 ◼   ► is we're not going to replace the Mac, but we might replace the Mac app platform so that

01:31:19 ◼   ► the common way we think of a Mac app is something that's built on UI kit and also runs on iOS.

01:31:25 ◼   ► I think that's possible and it's absolutely you've absolutely nailed a area of conversation

01:31:31 ◼   ► I wanted to have with you. I think that what you just said is entirely possible.

01:31:35 ◼   ► You say that with no enthusiasm.

01:31:41 ◼   ► I do have no enthusiasm. I have no enthusiasm because what we've seen so far is not good.

01:31:46 ◼   ► I should also clarify that just, you know, people who listen to the show probably know it,

01:31:57 ◼   ► But Apple hasn't given a name to marzipan like that marzipan is something that leaked as a codename and I

01:32:04 ◼   ► Know it is used internally to refer to something. You know this this project to get these four apps

01:32:10 ◼   ► news stocks

01:32:13 ◼   ► home and voice recorder, yeah

01:32:17 ◼   ► Running on the Mac

01:32:21 ◼   ► And

01:32:23 ◼   ► For all the reasons you said and for general consensus that

01:32:28 ◼   ► That that iOS developers of which there are many more than there are Mac developers have largely

01:32:38 ◼   ► Rejected creating Mac apps because they see it as too much work and or two different

01:32:46 ◼   ► And or slightly difficult in certain ways

01:32:51 ◼   ► which we don't need to get into and neither of us are really I

01:32:54 ◼   ► Get it at the broad strokes that app kit is old and UI kit is

01:33:00 ◼   ► newer and a lot of the things in UI kit that are different than app kit are things that

01:33:05 ◼   ► They took the you know, the people who used it the most and created it

01:33:10 ◼   ► You know for stalls iOS software team that started it next could say starting in you know

01:33:16 ◼   ► 2005 or 2006, whenever they started that work

01:33:20 ◼   ► for the app framework for the iPhone, could say,

01:33:22 ◼   ► well, wait, we know AppKit intimately.

01:33:25 ◼   ► What are some of the things we hate about it

01:33:27 ◼   ► and would do differently if we could do it all over again?

01:33:29 ◼   ► 'Cause we're doing it all over again

01:33:31 ◼   ► and we can even make changes that would break app.

01:33:34 ◼   ► We can't just say these are good ideas.

01:33:36 ◼   ► We should do them in AppKit too

01:33:37 ◼   ► because AppKit has to keep being AppKit, right?

01:33:40 ◼   ► It's just one of those things.

01:33:41 ◼   ► Here's an opportunity for a clean break.

01:33:43 ◼   ► Let's do it that way.

01:33:45 ◼   ► And then Mac developers could look at UIKit and say, "Hey, that's cool. This is so much

01:33:52 ◼   ► easier in UIKit than AppKit." But now we're at the point where there's probably millions

01:33:57 ◼   ► of iOS developers who started with UIKit who look at AppKit, which has the old way, and

01:34:04 ◼   ► say, "Well, that seems like a lot of work. Why would I do that?" And who maybe don't

01:34:10 ◼   ► get it, period. They don't get the whole Mac-like thing anyway.

01:34:13 ◼   ► Right. So I get it. I get that there's a market for that. I don't know though that what we've

01:34:18 ◼   ► seen, I don't know that this project actually is that initiative. Like there may even be

01:34:27 ◼   ► an initiative along the lines of exactly what you're saying, a more unified UI kit derived

01:34:34 ◼   ► way of making apps for all platforms, including the Mac, which would be, here's our new way

01:34:39 ◼   ► of doing it. That is not the thing that was used to make these four apps. I mean, maybe

01:34:47 ◼   ► it's sort of is, and this is just one little piece of it, but that the whole picture is

01:34:51 ◼   ► so much bigger that it's not even worth thinking about, uh, or thinking about based on what

01:34:59 ◼   ► we've seen so far in these four apps in Mojave. Like I really think that it might be that

01:35:04 ◼   ► shallow an effort. I've, I can't, I agree. And it better be right. Cause these apps are

01:35:09 ◼   ► kind of crappy, but it, so I, but I think you're right. I think there's a,

01:35:13 ◼   ► Mark Gurman said something at some point about how there's more as a pan,

01:35:17 ◼   ► but there's also like a whole bunch of other, uh,

01:35:20 ◼   ► efforts that they're doing in terms of ways that developers can build UIs and

01:35:24 ◼   ► things like that.

01:35:25 ◼   ► I think maybe there is a much bigger picture that we haven't seen that is not

01:35:29 ◼   ► just, you know,

01:35:30 ◼   ► the same tools that brought you the home app will now be available to everyone.

01:35:34 ◼   ► Right. It's good. It's going to be a completely, you know,

01:35:37 ◼   ► a much bigger thing, I think, than what we've seen so far.

01:35:40 ◼   ► - The thing that bothers me about these apps

01:35:43 ◼   ► is that they saw them as being worth shipping

01:35:46 ◼   ► because it's the sort of thing that the user

01:35:49 ◼   ► shouldn't have to worry about, right?

01:35:52 ◼   ► So for example, let's just compare and contrast with,

01:35:55 ◼   ► and maybe it's a bad analogy, I don't know,

01:35:57 ◼   ► 'cause programming languages are different

01:35:58 ◼   ► than the application frameworks, but,

01:36:00 ◼   ► you know, Apple software development across all platforms

01:36:07 ◼   ► is moving from Objective-C, which has been around

01:36:12 ◼   ► since the late '80s, to a new programming language

01:36:14 ◼   ► called Swift.

01:36:15 ◼   ► And every year, more and more of the OSs

01:36:20 ◼   ► are written inside Apple and Swift than Objective-C,

01:36:24 ◼   ► and the third-party apps are,

01:36:27 ◼   ► new ones are often created entirely in Swift

01:36:29 ◼   ► from the beginning, and old ones as new features are added

01:36:32 ◼   ► are being written in Swift instead of Objective-C.

01:36:36 ◼   ► And guess what, from a user's perspective,

01:36:38 ◼   ► they could have never heard of either of those things

01:36:40 ◼   ► or have any idea what the difference

01:36:42 ◼   ► between Objective-C and Swift is,

01:36:43 ◼   ► and there's no visible sign of it whatsoever,

01:36:46 ◼   ► which is how it should be, right?

01:36:49 ◼   ► That's developer problem.

01:36:51 ◼   ► So like this,

01:36:53 ◼   ► it's totally a developer problem if it's,

01:36:59 ◼   ► it is a problem.

01:37:01 ◼   ► Is it problematic enough that Apple needs

01:37:04 ◼   ► to make a serious effort to fix it

01:37:05 ◼   ► to get iOS apps more easily ported to the Mac

01:37:09 ◼   ► or sharing more code with the Mac or make the Mac app

01:37:12 ◼   ► with the way you make a Mac app more like it.

01:37:14 ◼   ► Okay, fine.

01:37:17 ◼   ► But then whatever the result of that problem is,

01:37:19 ◼   ► it shouldn't be painfully obvious to a typical Mac user

01:37:22 ◼   ► who opens the app that this app is weird.

01:37:25 ◼   ► - Right, right.

01:37:27 ◼   ► This goes back to all our conversations

01:37:30 ◼   ► that we just had about weird Windows apps

01:37:32 ◼   ► that get ported to the Mac.

01:37:33 ◼   ► It's like if it doesn't feel right,

01:37:36 ◼   ► like what's wrong with this thing?

01:37:37 ◼   ► Why does it play or all those Java apps

01:37:39 ◼   ► that we got in the 90s and early 2000s

01:37:41 ◼   ► that were just totally not right.

01:37:44 ◼   ► Like something is really wrong here.

01:37:45 ◼   ► - You'd open them up and there would be,

01:37:48 ◼   ► they would have a Mac menu bar,

01:37:49 ◼   ► but the Mac menu bar would just be like two items.

01:37:52 ◼   ► Like one of which was to quit the app.

01:37:53 ◼   ► And then all of the other menu items

01:37:55 ◼   ► were in a window style menu bar

01:37:58 ◼   ► within the window of the app.

01:38:00 ◼   ► So not only was it wrong to have a Windows style menu bar

01:38:04 ◼   ► in the window, it also had a Mac menu bar

01:38:07 ◼   ► that didn't have the menu items.

01:38:10 ◼   ► I mean, it was terrible.

01:38:12 ◼   ► These marzipan apps are not that bad.

01:38:14 ◼   ► I'm calling them marzipan because we need a name

01:38:16 ◼   ► to talk about it.

01:38:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause Apple very aggressively did not name it

01:38:21 ◼   ► at WWDC.

01:38:22 ◼   ► It's just a new method of building apps

01:38:24 ◼   ► that is coming in 2019.

01:38:26 ◼   ► - Right.

01:38:27 ◼   ► But these apps have that,

01:38:29 ◼   ► that this doesn't belong on the platform.

01:38:31 ◼   ► This does weird things, stuff, you know,

01:38:36 ◼   ► and it's, A, this feels weird for the Mac in general,

01:38:39 ◼   ► but it feels really weird to be shipping

01:38:41 ◼   ► as part of the system from Apple.

01:38:42 ◼   ► I don't have, I'm still not running Mojave as my main OS,

01:38:47 ◼   ► so I can't look at them right here,

01:38:49 ◼   ► but I mean, just off the top of my head,

01:38:51 ◼   ► there's a lot of weird drag and drop problems in these apps,

01:38:53 ◼   ► which is the sort of thing you sometimes expect

01:38:56 ◼   ► from third party apps, but never from Apple apps.

01:38:58 ◼   ► It's like, I think it's the news app, maybe news and stocks,

01:39:05 ◼   ► because news and stocks are sort of the same app.

01:39:07 ◼   ► It's sort of like stocks is really just a way to get Apple

01:39:09 ◼   ► news about the companies that are listed in the stocks.

01:39:13 ◼   ► It's like if you make the window wide,

01:39:17 ◼   ► you can make the window as wide as you want,

01:39:19 ◼   ► but the content doesn't reflow to fit it.

01:39:22 ◼   ► Which in and of itself, it's not like you

01:39:24 ◼   ► to be a good Mac app, you would have to support

01:39:27 ◼   ► a full width of a 30 inch iMac.

01:39:30 ◼   ► But if there is a maximum width that you can flow to,

01:39:33 ◼   ► that should be the maximum width of the window.

01:39:35 ◼   ► Like, it's always been like, I'm sure you'll agree,

01:39:39 ◼   ► one of the top signs of a,

01:39:40 ◼   ► hmm, you're new to writing Mac apps, aren't you,

01:39:42 ◼   ► is if an app would let you make the window too small.

01:39:46 ◼   ► Right?

01:39:47 ◼   ► Like there's, you know, a good Mac app has always known,

01:39:50 ◼   ► all right, you can resize the window,

01:39:52 ◼   ► but here's the max that we can handle gracefully

01:39:55 ◼   ► and here's the minimum we can handle gracefully

01:39:58 ◼   ► and that's it.

01:39:58 ◼   ► And when you could get an app that would make you,

01:40:00 ◼   ► let you shrink it up as far as you want

01:40:02 ◼   ► and you'd start covering up buttons and controls and stuff.

01:40:05 ◼   ► It's like, oh my God, you could just fix this and res at it.

01:40:08 ◼   ► Marzipan apps have a lot of stuff like that.

01:40:12 ◼   ► But the way that like sidebars work,

01:40:14 ◼   ► the way that there's no contextual menu items

01:40:16 ◼   ► like standard ones that every single app has had

01:40:19 ◼   ► since Mac OS X shipped,

01:40:21 ◼   ► It's just weird.

01:40:23 ◼   ► The sharing thing is one of the ones I've written about.

01:40:26 ◼   ► And they did fix it, and I don't know if me writing about it

01:40:29 ◼   ► had any effect on that.

01:40:31 ◼   ► I don't wanna take credit for it,

01:40:34 ◼   ► but even the way they fixed it is so weird.

01:40:37 ◼   ► So one of the problems with Apple News on Mojave

01:40:40 ◼   ► is if you read, let's say there's an article

01:40:44 ◼   ► from Six Colors, and you read it in Apple News,

01:40:49 ◼   ► and you're like, this is a good story.

01:40:50 ◼   ► I would like to share this. I would like to put it in an iMessage or mail it to a friend.

01:40:57 ◼   ► On iOS, you can hit our good old friend from half an hour ago, the square box with the

01:41:03 ◼   ► arrow, and one of the options would be like message and you could send a message. And

01:41:10 ◼   ► you could copy the URL and get a real URL. Or no, I know what it is. iOS has an open

01:41:16 ◼   ► and Safari button. And so you can make the article open from Apple News in Safari and

01:41:21 ◼   ► it'll take you to the six colors.com version of the website. If you care enough that I

01:41:26 ◼   ► want to make sure I'm not sending an Apple News URL, I want to send the original URL

01:41:32 ◼   ► on the Mac version. You there was no open in Safari and there wasn't a way to copy the

01:41:39 ◼   ► link. It was like one of the first ways I figured out to get a real URL out of it was

01:41:44 ◼   ► to copy the URL, which would copy an apple.news/whatever unique identifier URL. And then instead of

01:41:53 ◼   ► using Safari, go to Chrome and paste it in there. And then it would redirect to the original

01:42:00 ◼   ► website because Chrome doesn't know the magic. Hey, if it's an Apple News URL, open it in

01:42:05 ◼   ► Apple News. But if you opened it in Safari, it would always take you to Safari. There

01:42:09 ◼   ► was other than using Chrome or some other third party software, there was no way to

01:42:13 ◼   ► to get the original URL.

01:42:15 ◼   ► Like that's crazy and very un-Mac like.

01:42:18 ◼   ► It's not just limited.

01:42:19 ◼   ► Anyway, I don't know.

01:42:22 ◼   ► I see that stuff as a,

01:42:24 ◼   ► I'm very worried about it to be honest.

01:42:27 ◼   ► That if this is actually a sign of where Apple thinks,

01:42:32 ◼   ► that these are fine examples of,

01:42:34 ◼   ► well, the other thing is that in the latest version

01:42:39 ◼   ► of Mojave, they added like a file share

01:42:42 ◼   ► or copy Safari link button or something.

01:42:44 ◼   ► I forget what they did.

01:42:45 ◼   ► I don't use Mojave on a daily basis,

01:42:46 ◼   ► so I forget what it was.

01:42:48 ◼   ► They added a menu item that does give you the original URL.

01:42:52 ◼   ► So there is that.

01:42:53 ◼   ► It might even still be in the beta version

01:42:58 ◼   ► that's not actually shipping.

01:43:00 ◼   ► So anybody out there who's looking in Mojave

01:43:02 ◼   ► and looking for it while they listen to this,

01:43:03 ◼   ► maybe it's not there yet,

01:43:04 ◼   ► but there is a solution in the beta at least.

01:43:07 ◼   ► But it's not the right solution.

01:43:10 ◼   ► It's certainly not the Mac-like one.

01:43:11 ◼   ► So I'm deeply concerned that these are,

01:43:15 ◼   ► like they're either some type of prototypes

01:43:20 ◼   ► that effectively should have been branded as public betas,

01:43:25 ◼   ► that we're shipping public betas

01:43:27 ◼   ► of these four apps in Mojave.

01:43:28 ◼   ► Mojave will be shipping as a non-beta OS in the fall,

01:43:32 ◼   ► and it will include four public betas of these apps,

01:43:36 ◼   ► which they did not say.

01:43:39 ◼   ► These apps are not branded as public betas.

01:43:41 ◼   ► They are branded as the Mac version of home

01:43:43 ◼   ► and news and whatever.

01:43:45 ◼   ► I'm deeply concerned.

01:43:49 ◼   ► If the mistake is that they should have been called

01:43:51 ◼   ► public betas and they didn't want to call them public betas,

01:43:54 ◼   ► but they've got much better ideas

01:43:56 ◼   ► for where they're going with this stuff,

01:43:58 ◼   ► well then I can't wait.

01:43:59 ◼   ► I look forward to hearing about those ideas.

01:44:02 ◼   ► If these are actually indicative

01:44:03 ◼   ► of where Apple thinks Mac apps,

01:44:05 ◼   ► like what makes a reasonable Mac app from Apple,

01:44:08 ◼   ► then I've maybe never been more concerned

01:44:11 ◼   ► about the future of the platform.

01:44:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the mystery, isn't it?

01:44:15 ◼   ► Did they think these were okay?

01:44:17 ◼   ► Or are they just trying to...

01:44:18 ◼   ► 'Cause the advantage of shipping them is,

01:44:20 ◼   ► especially for news, news is an important platform for them.

01:44:25 ◼   ► It's an important thing for them to do.

01:44:29 ◼   ► Home, right?

01:44:30 ◼   ► Having home kit support is important to have.

01:44:32 ◼   ► I get why you wanna get those in Mojave

01:44:35 ◼   ► so you can say, "Finally, the Mac can do these things."

01:44:38 ◼   ► I was complaining about no home kit support in the Mac

01:44:40 ◼   ► for the last couple of years, right?

01:44:41 ◼   ► So great.

01:44:42 ◼   ► - It was like when the Mac didn't have Siri for years.

01:44:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:44:47 ◼   ► And it's like, you know, okay, so now we can do that.

01:44:50 ◼   ► And I get it, but there is,

01:44:54 ◼   ► I do think it's an interesting question why they didn't,

01:44:56 ◼   ► given how Apple has really become much more open

01:44:59 ◼   ► to branding things as beta, shipping beta things

01:45:03 ◼   ► in their operating systems for a while now

01:45:06 ◼   ► to not have branded these as a beta or something.

01:45:11 ◼   ► 'Cause I hear, just like you do, I'm sure,

01:45:13 ◼   ► from people when you criticize these apps who say,

01:45:15 ◼   ► "But you know, it's just a, they're just trying it out.

01:45:18 ◼   ► It's just new."

01:45:19 ◼   ► And it's like, yeah, but they shipped it

01:45:20 ◼   ► in the shipping version of the software.

01:45:21 ◼   ► It's not a beta, it's the final version of these apps

01:45:24 ◼   ► that ships with the OS.

01:45:26 ◼   ► So they obviously have some degree of confidence

01:45:29 ◼   ► 'cause they didn't slap that label on it.

01:45:31 ◼   ► And that goes back to your, I think,

01:45:33 ◼   ► concern about the platform, which is,

01:45:36 ◼   ► does Apple think that the marzipan apps are are good enough? And I mean, I'm sure they

01:45:41 ◼   ► don't but the question is do they think that they're you know close or do they think that

01:45:47 ◼   ► they're a completely transitional thing that the was the only way they were going to get

01:45:51 ◼   ► in Mojave but they know that that's not the total solution that's going to come in 2019

01:45:57 ◼   ► and that's what I kind of assume but you know it is I although I remain optimistic that

01:46:04 ◼   ► Apple is going to an interesting place here that could be good for the Mac and good for

01:46:08 ◼   ► Apple's platforms overall. You know, every transition like this is fraught with peril.

01:46:16 ◼   ► And if you're a Mac user, there definitely is a scenario here where in order to get the

01:46:23 ◼   ► iOS stuff over on the Mac, the Mac kind of gets messed up. And that's definitely a possibility.

01:46:30 ◼   ► And there are probably people inside Apple whose opinion is basically, "Look, the Mac

01:46:35 ◼   ► is a legacy platform, the old apps aren't going away, but if anybody else wants to use

01:46:40 ◼   ► this thing, any computer-shaped computers from us in the future, we gotta have the App

01:46:44 ◼   ► Store apps on there.

01:46:45 ◼   ► So we're gonna just do this and the people who care about the Mac as it was 10 years

01:46:51 ◼   ► ago can complain, but we don't care."

01:46:54 ◼   ► I think maybe they don't have the upper hand because I think that roundtable that you went

01:47:00 ◼   ► to suggest that maybe the Mac attitude has changed at Apple

01:47:05 ◼   ► and they've kind of reinvigorated themselves

01:47:08 ◼   ► in terms of letting the Mac be the Mac.

01:47:10 ◼   ► So that's part of what makes me optimistic here

01:47:12 ◼   ► is that I think this is Apple solution

01:47:15 ◼   ► to keep the Mac relevant

01:47:17 ◼   ► instead of what they might have been planning before,

01:47:20 ◼   ► which was to just let it sort of float along on its own

01:47:23 ◼   ► until everybody who used it stopped buying computers

01:47:27 ◼   ► or died.

01:47:27 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:47:28 ◼   ► So I choose to be optimistic about this

01:47:30 ◼   ► because of the about face they've done on the Mac

01:47:32 ◼   ► in so many other areas the last year and a half.

01:47:35 ◼   ► - One of the things that Apple and Next in particular,

01:47:40 ◼   ► the next half of Apple really took a tremendous pride in

01:47:46 ◼   ► and was there really for Next their claim to fame

01:47:50 ◼   ► was the ease with which they allowed rich applications

01:47:53 ◼   ► to be created compared to what had come before,

01:47:58 ◼   ► which we now know as Coco, you know, with the project builder, which is now Xcode, you

01:48:03 ◼   ► know, and interface builder, that you could drag and drop your interface in interface

01:48:10 ◼   ► builder and set constraints with, you know, tools that were a lot like the tools in drawing

01:48:15 ◼   ► apps, you know, with, you know, here's how you set the bounds of a rectangle and you

01:48:19 ◼   ► can set the style for a label, text label and stuff. And that you've got all these

01:48:25 ◼   ► things that were built in like here's a rich text editing field. So if you want rich text

01:48:31 ◼   ► in your app, like, like,

01:48:32 ◼   ► Jared Ranere: text edits, it was teach text that it was simple text. Now it's text.

01:48:36 ◼   ► Brian Smith Right. That's text edit, jeez, I forgot text

01:48:38 ◼   ► edits name. Right. But you can get the full power of text edit in any app just by dragging

01:48:42 ◼   ► the control out, you know, and this was, it wasn't like this on the Mac or Windows. And,

01:48:47 ◼   ► you know, people could make people could write custom apps or new apps in in on the next

01:48:52 ◼   ► step system with a lot less work and a lot less time.

01:48:55 ◼   ► And it was a big part of the eventual success of Mac OS X

01:49:02 ◼   ► is that it wasn't just a good platform,

01:49:04 ◼   ► it was a great platform that really enabled

01:49:07 ◼   ► small teams of developers to build really powerful apps.

01:49:10 ◼   ► And we see that to this day, right?

01:49:12 ◼   ► Where there are apps like, you know,

01:49:16 ◼   ► Acorn is from a friend, you know, my friend Gus Mueller,

01:49:22 ◼   ► He runs the company with his wife, and Gus is the only developer, and it's a super

01:49:27 ◼   ► powerful image editor.

01:49:29 ◼   ► He's one person.

01:49:31 ◼   ► He's very good, but it would be really, really difficult to do that on another platform

01:49:38 ◼   ► because there's so much stuff built into Mac OS X that he can rely on Apple's color

01:49:44 ◼   ► management and stuff like that.

01:49:47 ◼   ► You know, it's a really big difference from the classic Mac era.

01:49:52 ◼   ► Like there was lots of stuff I still love about the classic Mac era, but there weren't

01:49:55 ◼   ► going to be a one-man alternative to Photoshop.

01:49:59 ◼   ► You know, it just wasn't possible because there wasn't enough built into the system.

01:50:04 ◼   ► So anyway, Apple's—all this is to say is Apple has prided itself not on being a good

01:50:08 ◼   ► platform for users, but that it's a great platform for developers just insofar as are

01:50:14 ◼   ► the tools good and are the frameworks good. And you know, the state of the art always

01:50:21 ◼   ► moves forward, right? So my hope would be is both for their internal use inside Apple

01:50:27 ◼   ► and for third party developers writing for their products that they are, they've got

01:50:33 ◼   ► grand plans inside for where's the next way we take this. So it's not just not even just

01:50:39 ◼   ► Here's how Mac apps can be made more easily

01:50:43 ◼   ► by iOS developers.

01:50:44 ◼   ► But how can the whole state of the art for iOS development

01:50:48 ◼   ► be taken to a new level for a new decade?

01:50:51 ◼   ► - Right.

01:50:52 ◼   ► - So my hope is that their plans are grand like that.

01:50:57 ◼   ► These four marzipan apps are not the work of that project.

01:51:00 ◼   ► They may be the work of one tiny leg

01:51:03 ◼   ► of a many legged stool of that project,

01:51:06 ◼   ► but this is not that.

01:51:07 ◼   ► There's just no sign of it.

01:51:11 ◼   ► Yeah, well these are also, I think they viewed this all as low-hanging fruit, like these

01:51:15 ◼   ► are all single window apps, right?

01:51:17 ◼   ► So there's obviously multi-window tech.

01:51:18 ◼   ► Yeah, but that's part of what sucks about them is they shouldn't be single window apps.

01:51:21 ◼   ► Why in the world should voice recorder be a single window app?

01:51:24 ◼   ► Why is Apple News a single window app on the map?

01:51:27 ◼   ► Why can't I double click an article to open it in a window?

01:51:29 ◼   ► Because I want to keep reading.

01:51:30 ◼   ► Not wrong.

01:51:31 ◼   ► You're not wrong.

01:51:32 ◼   ► I want to keep reading new articles.

01:51:35 ◼   ► answer is that they haven't either they haven't done that yet or the part that they did they

01:51:40 ◼   ► can't release yet because it's part of a bigger something. You're right. You're right. It's

01:51:44 ◼   ► insane that Apple News is a single window app. I mean, maybe home makes sense as a single

01:51:49 ◼   ► window app, but certainly not Apple News. It's ridiculous. It's really hard to believe

01:51:54 ◼   ► that I find I don't find it hard to believe that somebody made it. I don't find it hard

01:52:00 ◼   ► to believe that there's there are people at Apple whose experience is so thoroughly on

01:52:04 ◼   ► the iOS side of things and they don't maybe weren't Mac users before that they would think

01:52:11 ◼   ► you know as a proof of concept. Hey look I do have and as a proof of concept it certainly

01:52:15 ◼   ► is interesting right it's certainly worth looking if you didn't know about the project

01:52:19 ◼   ► and somebody came up to you and you're a manager at Apple and somebody said hey I got Apple

01:52:24 ◼   ► News running on the Mac and they showed you what what they have right now this this in

01:52:30 ◼   ► Mojave, you would certainly say, let's, you know, I would say, I would say, let's have

01:52:34 ◼   ► a meeting. This looks interesting, right? Let's see who, who should be in a meeting.

01:52:38 ◼   ► Let's, let's talk about this. Cause you've got something here, right? You don't have

01:52:42 ◼   ► something shippable, but you have a very interesting proof of concept. I find it crazy that that

01:52:49 ◼   ► went all the way through to, this is a major part, you know, or not major, but this is

01:52:55 ◼   ► and mentionable in the keynote part of Mojave without somebody in a position of authority

01:53:02 ◼   ► saying you can't ship this app without support for multiple windows or opening articles in

01:53:06 ◼   ► windows.

01:53:07 ◼   ► I mean, it's just crazy.

01:53:09 ◼   ► I mean, you know, maybe there's no, there's no, again, it's not a written rule.

01:53:13 ◼   ► There's no line in the Hague that says that a news app has to be able to open articles

01:53:18 ◼   ► in multiple windows.

01:53:19 ◼   ► But it's almost because you didn't have to write it.

01:53:23 ◼   ► That's the whole point of a Mac.

01:53:24 ◼   ► I think the answer is probably that somebody had to make the decision, which is worse,

01:53:29 ◼   ► another year where the Mac doesn't support Apple News and HomeKit, or it supports it

01:53:36 ◼   ► with apps that aren't quite up to our standards. And they made the decision that it was more

01:53:40 ◼   ► important. It's funny, too, because they didn't need to release these apps. And I wonder sometimes

01:53:46 ◼   ► about why they did that, because the so they're like, OK, well, we can get HomeKit on the

01:53:51 ◼   ► Mac, but what it's going to take is it's going to take us to use this translation layer to

01:53:54 ◼   ► do it. And it's not going to be a great app, but it'll work. And, but you know that the

01:53:59 ◼   ► moment we ship this, the first beta, everybody's going to take it apart and realize we have

01:54:04 ◼   ► a translation layer. And they're going to freak out. So if we do this, we're going to

01:54:08 ◼   ► have to say something because we need to, we need to set expectations. Because that's

01:54:12 ◼   ► the other thing about this is these four apps, these four apps required them to have those

01:54:17 ◼   ► slides where they talked about how this was something that they were going to do in a

01:54:20 ◼   ► year. I feel like that was the imprint of Steve Trout and Smith on the WWDC keynote.

01:54:27 ◼   ► Apple can't just ship that news app and then go nobody knows the truth, which is that it's actually

01:54:35 ◼   ► the iOS version. Because within hours, Steve Trout and Smith would pull it apart and say, "Oh,

01:54:40 ◼   ► this is a whole system. Here's how it works. Here's this." So they had to say something about it.

01:54:45 ◼   ► Or they could have not shipped the apps, foregone those features in Mojave, and just said, "Oh,

01:54:52 ◼   ► we don't know what Mark Gurman's talking about. We have no idea."

01:54:55 ◼   ► It's an interesting theory, and I don't know. Again, I really need to start using Mojave

01:54:59 ◼   ► on a daily basis more just to be able to form and conceal my opinion on this. But it's possible

01:55:08 ◼   ► from what I've seen that maybe home was the one that drove it, because home is the one

01:55:12 ◼   ► that they kind of needed. Right? You didn't have you couldn't get your Apple News on your

01:55:17 ◼   ► on your Mac, but it was easy. If you were on your iPad or phone and you got or your

01:55:22 ◼   ► watch even and you got the alert. If you wanted to read that story on your Mac, you could

01:55:26 ◼   ► get it it would just open in Safari right every as far as I know part of the rules of

01:55:31 ◼   ► Apple News is that every single article in Apple News is represented by an article on

01:55:36 ◼   ► the publisher's website. I don't think there's I don't if I'm wrong, I'd love to know but

01:55:41 ◼   ► but I don't think there is such a thing.

01:55:44 ◼   ► So you weren't missing out on the news,

01:55:48 ◼   ► whereas you are missing out

01:55:49 ◼   ► on being able to manage your HomeKit stuff.

01:55:51 ◼   ► And we probably won't have time to talk about it,

01:55:56 ◼   ► me and you on this show, or at least not in depth,

01:55:58 ◼   ► but I think one of the interesting things for 2019

01:56:00 ◼   ► is I think Apple's HomeKit stuff

01:56:02 ◼   ► is really starting to pay off.

01:56:03 ◼   ► I think they were behind Amazon

01:56:06 ◼   ► and other companies for a while,

01:56:08 ◼   ► based on their security stuff

01:56:10 ◼   ► and the way they tried to leverage their MFI influence

01:56:13 ◼   ► and had more control and therefore everything went slower

01:56:18 ◼   ► because Amazon's is sort of a Wild West of,

01:56:22 ◼   ► here's our stuff, ship whatever you want.

01:56:24 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:56:25 ◼   ► - But in my personal experience,

01:56:28 ◼   ► Apple's home stuff works better than Amazon's.

01:56:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've gone from having a whole bunch

01:56:36 ◼   ► of Wild West stuff to wanting everything

01:56:39 ◼   ► be in HomeKit and using the Home app all the time. And I now run on my Mac Mini server

01:56:45 ◼   ► that I've got, I'm running this command line utility called HomeBridge. It's basically

01:56:52 ◼   ► a software bridge for HomeKit, for non-HomeKit compatible apps. And once I set it up, which

01:56:59 ◼   ► you know, you got a bunch of config files and you got to do a bunch of stuff and import

01:57:04 ◼   ► plugins for the various devices you've got. But all of my non-HomeKit compatible devices

01:57:09 ◼   ► are now in HomeKit because of that. And so now, you know, the jig is up. Now I'm basically

01:57:17 ◼   ► only using the Home app to control my stuff and it's good.

01:57:22 ◼   ► And that's the one that was a real obvious gaping hole on the Mac. If you're going to

01:57:28 ◼   ► throw yourself into the Apple ecosystem and you're a good Apple customer and you've got

01:57:33 ◼   ► a phone and a Mac and maybe an iPad and you're buying, you know, maybe you got Apple TV and

01:57:37 ◼   ► you're buying HomeKit compatible appliances. It seems crazy that you couldn't use your

01:57:41 ◼   ► Mac to manage it. And so I wonder about that. I wonder if that's, I mean, this is absolutely

01:57:48 ◼   ► not, this is just based on your speculation, but boy, that certainly is an interesting

01:57:52 ◼   ► theory. I mean, it's just a spitball, but it certainly is interesting that they wanted

01:57:56 ◼   ► to ship home. That was the easiest way to get it. It's probably the one that it seems

01:58:01 ◼   ► the least weird. It doesn't seem particularly Mac-like. It's certainly insane to me that

01:58:06 ◼   ► the dialog boxes are iOS dialog boxes.

01:58:09 ◼   ► When you set a schedule and you have to turn the little iOS tumbler, that is the worst.

01:58:16 ◼   ► I was convinced they were going to fix that by the time Mojave left beta.

01:58:19 ◼   ► I really was. I really was too. Because it's a control that it doesn't really make it's

01:58:26 ◼   ► not on a touchscreen. It makes no sense. It makes no sense without a touchscreen. It's

01:58:31 ◼   ► is absolutely insane that to set the schedule,

01:58:34 ◼   ► you get a date picker like iOS.

01:58:36 ◼   ► It is crazy.

01:58:37 ◼   ► I mean, and in terms of if they had shipped that app,

01:58:40 ◼   ► you wouldn't have even needed Stephen Trout and Smith

01:58:41 ◼   ► or Guillermo Rambo to take it apart

01:58:44 ◼   ► before you knew that it was an iOS app running on a Mac.

01:58:47 ◼   ► - Right, if you click on the right places,

01:58:49 ◼   ► it's very, very clear from the beginning what it is.

01:58:52 ◼   ► Yeah. - Right, and it was--

01:58:54 ◼   ► - I would sit at my Mac.

01:58:54 ◼   ► I got the light next to my desk on a HomeKit switch.

01:58:58 ◼   ► And I would have those moments where I'd be like,

01:59:00 ◼   ► "Oh, I need to turn on the light, it's getting dark.

01:59:02 ◼   ► "I need to go get my iPhone.

01:59:05 ◼   ► "My Mac can't do this, I have to go get..."

01:59:07 ◼   ► And that sucked.

01:59:08 ◼   ► It's better with Mojave, there's no doubt about it,

01:59:10 ◼   ► even if the app is stupid.

01:59:11 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:59:12 ◼   ► Well, that's an interesting theory.

01:59:14 ◼   ► All right, let me thank my third sponsor,

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01:59:58 ◼   ► need a new website sometime next year. Probably a lot higher. And I think they keep sponsoring

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02:02:05 ◼   ► What else?

02:02:08 ◼   ► We got to talk about keyboards

02:02:09 ◼   ► 'cause you can't come on the show

02:02:10 ◼   ► and we don't talk about keyboards.

02:02:11 ◼   ► - I know, right?

02:02:12 ◼   ► And baseball season is over.

02:02:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, baseball season is over.

02:02:15 ◼   ► - It's keyboard season, I guess.

02:02:17 ◼   ► - You know what?

02:02:17 ◼   ► Can I tell you just tell you one thing about baseball?

02:02:19 ◼   ► - Okay, let's do it.

02:02:20 ◼   ► - I love the MLB app.

02:02:22 ◼   ► I do, I have the alerts turned on,

02:02:25 ◼   ► but I know we've talked about this before too.

02:02:27 ◼   ► I do move it off my first home screen in the off season.

02:02:31 ◼   ► - Sure. - It's over on home screen too.

02:02:32 ◼   ► But I still get the news alerts.

02:02:34 ◼   ► But in this off season,

02:02:37 ◼   ► I would say nine out of 10 of the stories

02:02:39 ◼   ► are conjecture about trades or free agent signings.

02:02:44 ◼   ► Like who might Manny Machado go to?

02:02:47 ◼   ► I don't wanna read any of those stories.

02:02:48 ◼   ► I wish, and I don't know how this could be configured

02:02:51 ◼   ► preferences. But I want to hear about every news. Anything that seems like a significant

02:02:56 ◼   ► signing from any baseball team, I would like to hear about it. I don't want to read any

02:03:00 ◼   ► of the speculation. But nine out of the ten alerts are for the speculation. And then I

02:03:04 ◼   ► ignore them. And then I find out, like, three days after it happens that the Yankees re-sign

02:03:11 ◼   ► Jay Happ. I'm like, "What do you mean they re-sign Jay Happ? I thought he was leaving."

02:03:14 ◼   ► And it's like, "Well, how did I miss that? I have the alerts." But it's because I've

02:03:18 ◼   ► trained myself to ignore them.

02:03:20 ◼   ► it should be on their list like they have very little granularity in their notification

02:03:25 ◼   ► setting I'm looking at it right now basically there's a you could do individual team and

02:03:30 ◼   ► then there's then there's news on and off for individual teams or for general MLB news

02:03:36 ◼   ► and one of the things that I feel like in this era of iOS 12 and having control over

02:03:42 ◼   ► your notifications that Apple needs to even push even more to app developers especially

02:03:48 ◼   ► like leading app developers like the MLB app. This is always one of the highlighted apps.

02:03:52 ◼   ► They have a great relationship with Apple. They need more granularity in their push notifications

02:03:57 ◼   ► for content than they have. I actually experienced this. I actually sent a bug report to the

02:04:02 ◼   ► Washington Post because I had their, this was last year, I had their news alerts turned