The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► [DRUM ROLL]

00:00:03 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:00:06 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, I love it.

00:00:07 ◼   ► I love that beat.

00:00:08 ◼   ► Good.

00:00:11 ◼   ► God, this is going to be a nightmare to edit.

00:00:13 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:00:16 ◼   ► Sorry, Caleb.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Good thing neither of us are editing the show.

00:00:20 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:00:22 ◼   ► Paul Kefasis is back on the show,

00:00:24 ◼   ► co-founder of Rokomiba Software.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Paul, you've been on the show many times.

00:00:28 ◼   ► I don't think you've been on in quite some time.

00:00:31 ◼   ► - I think I was on some kind of a list.

00:00:33 ◼   ► I'm not sure what I did.

00:00:35 ◼   ► I didn't rip up a picture of the Pope or anything,

00:00:37 ◼   ► but I don't know what I did, but I'm back.

00:00:40 ◼   ► - All right, let me see here.

00:00:40 ◼   ► I've got a list of former guests.

00:00:44 ◼   ► This is episode 214.

00:00:46 ◼   ► You were just on, you were on episode 112.

00:00:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:50 ◼   ► - Well, we should have waited 10 more episodes.

00:00:52 ◼   ► We could have doubled the number.

00:00:54 ◼   ► - Or we should have done it two episodes ago

00:00:55 ◼   ► and made it a centennial.

00:00:57 ◼   ► Oh, there you go.

00:00:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

00:01:00 ◼   ► Well, I don't know what took so long.

00:01:01 ◼   ► I will have to speak to the scheduler,

00:01:03 ◼   ► but it is good to have you back.

00:01:05 ◼   ► And it's not a complete coincidence.

00:01:07 ◼   ► We're celebrating the release of a new rogue Amoeba app,

00:01:10 ◼   ► Farago, am I pronouncing that correctly?

00:01:12 ◼   ► - You are.

00:01:14 ◼   ► - F-A-R-R-A-G-O.

00:01:17 ◼   ► - That's right.

00:01:19 ◼   ► - And where does the name come from?

00:01:20 ◼   ► - Well, it's actually a word that means,

00:01:23 ◼   ► it's a word that nobody knows.

00:01:24 ◼   ► It's an English word that means basically

00:01:26 ◼   ► sort of a melange or a jumble or, you know, just an assortment of things.

00:01:31 ◼   ► We were, you know, toying around with a whole bunch of different names as I'm

00:01:36 ◼   ► sure anyone who's named anything has experience with you, you try everything.

00:01:39 ◼   ► The Mac OS X dictionary says it's a confused mixture.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Yeah, it's got slightly negative connotations, so it's not quite like, you

00:01:49 ◼   ► know, a medley, but most people don't know the word, so we're hoping to get away with it.

00:01:54 ◼   ► All right.

00:01:54 ◼   ► any app, it's a Mac app that is a soundboard app.

00:01:58 ◼   ► And if you don't know what a soundboard app is,

00:02:00 ◼   ► a soundboard app is, that's my handing it off to you.

00:02:03 ◼   ► - Oh, I mean, it's the perfect thing for, you know, just,

00:02:07 ◼   ► (dramatic music)

00:02:09 ◼   ► basically if you want any sort of audio effects

00:02:12 ◼   ► in your audio, you're recording a podcast

00:02:15 ◼   ► and you just wanna have some great sound effects like,

00:02:17 ◼   ► (imitates sound effects)

00:02:19 ◼   ► (burps)

00:02:20 ◼   ► - I really think this is just what my show needs, I do.

00:02:23 ◼   ► I think you need to get 10 times as many sound effects as you have now,

00:02:28 ◼   ► and that's really going to draw the listeners in.

00:02:31 ◼   ► >> I think it'll greatly reduce the complaints about the speed at which I speak and the number

00:02:38 ◼   ► of times I pause before speaking. Marco --

00:02:42 ◼   ► >> If you can just toss in sound effects any time you need a break, yeah.

00:02:45 ◼   ► >> I've long suspected that Marco added that smart speed thing just for my show.

00:02:49 ◼   ► >> For you? Solely for you.

00:02:51 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:02:52 ◼   ► Right.

00:02:53 ◼   ► It should be like the talk show, the Gruber filter.

00:02:55 ◼   ► Just take out the long pauses.

00:02:58 ◼   ► And now we can fill them with farts.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:03:00 ◼   ► Well, so we were talking about this before the show, and I pulled up, you know, half

00:03:06 ◼   ► a dozen, couple dozen different audio effects to fiddle around with.

00:03:10 ◼   ► So I got to figure out how to sprinkle them in lightly.

00:03:13 ◼   ► I don't want to go too nuts with it.

00:03:14 ◼   ► Right.

00:03:15 ◼   ► But the idea here is not just that you can play sounds at any point, but you've obviously,

00:03:21 ◼   ► everybody listening can hear. You've piped it into the audio pipeline that you're recording.

00:03:26 ◼   ► You know, it's, you know, and that's, we could talk about it, just for people who aren't familiar,

00:03:33 ◼   ► some of the other apps, or what Amoeba has, that's right up your alley. But then, you know,

00:03:38 ◼   ► so at a technical level, you got to understand the way sound works on a Mac. But I think more

00:03:44 ◼   ► importantly is that it has gorgeous user interface. Effectively, I you know, correct me if you

00:03:51 ◼   ► if you think, you know, you've obviously put tons of thought in this and I've put about

00:03:54 ◼   ► five minutes into like looking at it and saying cool. But in effect, it is sort of like a

00:04:02 ◼   ► user interface design app for people who need to play sounds at a moment's notice. So you

00:04:08 ◼   ► You can arrange, pick the sounds you need,

00:04:11 ◼   ► arrange them in the way you want them to be

00:04:14 ◼   ► or that makes logical sense to you,

00:04:17 ◼   ► maybe not to anybody else,

00:04:18 ◼   ► but you can pick this logical order

00:04:19 ◼   ► and you have a big visual interface

00:04:21 ◼   ► and you can color code the sounds by category or whatever

00:04:25 ◼   ► and you've got these big click targets.

00:04:28 ◼   ► So it's not like a little tiny thing you have to do.

00:04:30 ◼   ► So if you really wanna play a sound right away,

00:04:32 ◼   ► it's got a big Fitz's Law target as they would say.

00:04:37 ◼   ► Yeah, and also the way we sort of anticipate people to be using it is via the keyboard.

00:04:42 ◼   ► So everything's mapped right to your keyboard. So it sort of turns your keyboard into basically

00:04:47 ◼   ► like a sample machine.

00:04:48 ◼   ► Right.

00:04:49 ◼   ► So if you're looking at the visual on screen and you say, "Okay, I know what I need,"

00:04:53 ◼   ► and you can see what key you need to hit right away. So that's, it's certainly playable

00:04:57 ◼   ► via the mouse, but the keyboard is really the sort of the primary way to use it, I think.

00:05:01 ◼   ► And by default, like when you first run the app, does F map to FART?

00:05:05 ◼   ► >> Our sample set actually does not have a fart sound in it. I had to download that separately.

00:05:12 ◼   ► You know, we've got the -- you know, we've got all sorts of -- we came up with -- I'm trying to

00:05:22 ◼   ► look at our sample set. I think it's 25 sounds. And we were scouring the internet to find good

00:05:28 ◼   ► sounds and to find things that we wanted. And some of the feedback I got after the app was

00:05:32 ◼   ► was released, probably about a dozen different people said, "Oh, this is great. It just needs

00:05:37 ◼   ► X sound, and it's like fart noise it needs. It needs a toilet flush." So really, we need

00:05:42 ◼   ► another sample pack of the really goofy or juvenile noises that we did not include in

00:05:47 ◼   ► the first go-round.

00:05:48 ◼   ► I had a brainstorm, and as usual, it came way too late. We started recording roughly

00:05:56 ◼   ► an hour and 20 minutes after I told you we would be starting to record. I had an eye

00:06:02 ◼   ► doctor appointment that ran late, and various other shenanigans going on here in the city

00:06:07 ◼   ► of Philadelphia, which we will get to in a bit.

00:06:10 ◼   ► And of course, so an hour and 20 minutes after we were set to record as I come down to the

00:06:14 ◼   ► podcast cave, shuffling my various beverages and trying not to trip and fall, I suddenly

00:06:21 ◼   ► realized what we should have loaded the soundboard up with.

00:06:23 ◼   ► And it's clips of my wife laughing on just the tip.

00:06:28 ◼   ► and we could make it sound as though she was here with us and just loving what we're saying.

00:06:38 ◼   ► Just dying of laughter every step of the way.

00:06:40 ◼   ► Which probably would have driven her nuts.

00:06:46 ◼   ► Because I mean, when she listens to the show, all she hears is [sad trombone sound]

00:06:51 ◼   ► Yeah, pretty much.

00:06:54 ◼   ► If you could make her look a fool, that'd be pretty good.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Yeah, that would have been pretty good. Anyway, as usual, a dollar a day late and a dollar short.

00:07:02 ◼   ► Forago, Forago? Forago? Forago came out two weeks ago, right?

00:07:09 ◼   ► John "Slick" Baum: Two weeks ago today, actually.

00:07:11 ◼   ► Pete: How's it doing?

00:07:12 ◼   ► John "Slick" Baum I haven't bought a boat yet. So,

00:07:16 ◼   ► if the listeners are intrigued, get your 1000 copies and then I can each and then I can get my

00:07:24 ◼   ► boat. Pete I know the answer to this question, but I'm going to ask it as

00:07:27 ◼   ► though I don't. Direct download, direct purchase, Mac App Store, or both?

00:07:33 ◼   ► >> Direct download for free trial, as with all of our software. Direct purchase from our store.

00:07:40 ◼   ► And this app actually could potentially be in the Mac App Store, but it is not in the Mac App Store.

00:07:44 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know how deep you want to get into this, but we've had two applications in the Mac

00:07:49 ◼   ► App Store, and we pulled one of them out because the changes that they made in terms of the rules

00:07:55 ◼   ► in the Mac App Store made it not viable to stay there.

00:07:58 ◼   ► And so we have one remaining app.

00:08:00 ◼   ► - That app was Piezo, right?

00:08:02 ◼   ► - Yep, so that's our simple audio recorder,

00:08:04 ◼   ► which is actually the recorder that I'm using right now,

00:08:06 ◼   ► because my version of Audio Hijack was all,

00:08:09 ◼   ► eh, let's just call it messed up.

00:08:11 ◼   ► So that was in the Mac App Store,

00:08:14 ◼   ► specifically to make it possible to have a recorder

00:08:17 ◼   ► that was, that skirted the, sorry,

00:08:20 ◼   ► that followed the rules of the Mac App Store.

00:08:23 ◼   ► And then those rules changed,

00:08:25 ◼   ► and so we eventually had to pull it out because the app was not able to be updated. So we said,

00:08:31 ◼   ► all right, we'd rather have a functioning app, a properly functioning app that is available directly

00:08:37 ◼   ► than a crippled app that is also in the Mac App Store.

00:08:39 ◼   ► Ted

00:08:51 ◼   ► connection, file serving connection stuff, effectively had to be pulled at one point

00:08:57 ◼   ► from Mac App Store, even though it's an acclaimed app.

00:09:01 ◼   ► It's an FTP and a web editor. I mean, like, you wouldn't think this sort of thing would

00:09:05 ◼   ► run afoul of App Store rules, but here we are.

00:09:09 ◼   ► But you've written publicly, I believe, about Piezo's success after being just going direct

00:09:15 ◼   ► download, direct sale only, right?

00:09:17 ◼   ► >> Yeah, absolutely. So, I actually just this afternoon, we posted a review of last year, 2017,

00:09:23 ◼   ► and I was rereading the post that you're referring to. It was a post from February of last year, just

00:09:27 ◼   ► about a year ago. And two years ago is when we pulled Piazzo out of the Mac App Store. And so,

00:09:32 ◼   ► after a year, I compared our revenue from the year, the last year when it was in the Mac App

00:09:38 ◼   ► Store and the first year when it was no longer in the Mac App Store. And the result was that we

00:09:42 ◼   ► actually earned more revenue because our sales were -- our raw unit sales were slightly down,

00:09:49 ◼   ► but the difference was not so great that we didn't earn more revenue because Apple takes 30 percent

00:09:54 ◼   ► of every sale that you get in the Mac App Store. And when we sell it directly, we're getting

00:10:00 ◼   ► somewhere around 95 percent of the revenue. So, it's not terribly difficult to make more money,

00:10:06 ◼   ► even if you have slightly lower sales. You're probably going to earn more money on those sales.

00:10:11 ◼   ► So and as you're where we are, as usual, many caveats apply that the rules for games might

00:10:19 ◼   ► be entirely different than for utilities like piezo.

00:10:26 ◼   ► But the bottom line is that the Mac App Store, wherever it is on the scale of zero to 100

00:10:33 ◼   ► as a success for the Mac development community, it is absolute I think I can't I think it's

00:10:40 ◼   ► undeniably not at the point where it is eating the non Mac App Store market. If anything,

00:10:49 ◼   ► the non Mac App Store market is as strong as ever. Like, well, and I think has has started to eat

00:10:57 ◼   ► some of the App Store. Because you mentioned you mentioned panic and we pulled an app out and you

00:11:02 ◼   ► know, I'd have to look back but there's you can probably find a good dozen fairly major apps.

00:11:06 ◼   ► the app store that then left, exactly, just like that.

00:11:11 ◼   ► - Right, right.

00:11:12 ◼   ► I should try to find it.

00:11:15 ◼   ► Rich Segal, founder of BB, co-founder of BB Edit,

00:11:19 ◼   ► Bearbound Software, had a great talk at Singleton,

00:11:22 ◼   ► but got-- - At Singleton,

00:11:23 ◼   ► his Max Q talk, yeah.

00:11:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, but Singleton, how many years ago was that?

00:11:26 ◼   ► Jeez.

00:11:27 ◼   ► - I think it's probably about three or four.

00:11:30 ◼   ► - At least, so it's not even that recent.

00:11:32 ◼   ► And it was a great talk because effectively,

00:11:35 ◼   ► It was like a half hour talk about why he took BB Edit out of the Mac App Store and

00:11:40 ◼   ► went back to Direct Downloads.

00:11:42 ◼   ► And I don't even want to try to summarize it because what made it such a great talk

00:11:46 ◼   ► was it really did take half an hour for him to make his point.

00:11:50 ◼   ► And, you know, and that's there.

00:11:52 ◼   ► I won't summarize it either, but it's right.

00:11:54 ◼   ► I'm sure you can find a link and it's definitely worth a watch if you're at all interested

00:11:57 ◼   ► in the Mac App Store or leaving the Mac App Store.

00:12:00 ◼   ► Right.

00:12:01 ◼   ► peak Mac App Store was early on in the days of App Store.

00:12:05 ◼   ► And one of the fears a lot of us had was that,

00:12:08 ◼   ► man, if the Mac App Store really takes off,

00:12:11 ◼   ► and Mac users just abandon direct downloads

00:12:14 ◼   ► and outside the Mac App Store payments

00:12:18 ◼   ► and only buy stuff from the App Store,

00:12:21 ◼   ► it really, it's not about the 30%,

00:12:24 ◼   ► or certainly not only about the 30%,

00:12:27 ◼   ► but it's just about, boy, would that make people

00:12:30 ◼   ► whose livelihood depends on selling independent Mac App Store

00:12:32 ◼   ► feel uncomfortable about having their entire livelihood

00:12:37 ◼   ► in a store that is clearly never going to be better

00:12:41 ◼   ► than the second favorite at Apple.

00:12:43 ◼   ► - Right, absolutely.

00:12:45 ◼   ► Yeah, the iOS App Store is clearly what they're focused on

00:12:48 ◼   ► and the Mac App Store sort of seemed like,

00:12:50 ◼   ► hey, we did this on the phone,

00:12:52 ◼   ► so we might as well try it on the Mac.

00:12:54 ◼   ► And I think you made a great point that, let's see,

00:12:57 ◼   ► I think it's been, was it 2010 or 2011

00:12:59 ◼   ► that the Mac App Store came out.

00:13:01 ◼   ► I don't want to screw it up.

00:13:03 ◼   ► It was one of those two, I'm fairly certain.

00:13:06 ◼   ► But it was quite a while ago at this point.

00:13:07 ◼   ► And when it came out, everyone said,

00:13:09 ◼   ► "Okay, let's get in there."

00:13:10 ◼   ► The iOS App Store has been such a success.

00:13:13 ◼   ► Let's get in there and this will get our app

00:13:15 ◼   ► in front of everyone.

00:13:16 ◼   ► And I think a lot of apps did get in there

00:13:19 ◼   ► and then over time realized, you know what?

00:13:21 ◼   ► This isn't doing a whole lot for us

00:13:23 ◼   ► and it's taking a decent chunk of both our money

00:13:26 ◼   ► and our energy.

00:13:27 ◼   ► And that's when you've seen apps sort of peel back.

00:13:30 ◼   ► And like you said, the peak was early on.

00:13:33 ◼   ► And I think since then it's been fairly slow.

00:13:37 ◼   ► And there certainly hasn't been any major app that I've seen

00:13:40 ◼   ► that has only been in the Mac App Store.

00:13:42 ◼   ► - Is Pixelmator Mac App Store only?

00:13:47 ◼   ► - Ooh, that's a good question.

00:13:49 ◼   ► It's certainly possible,

00:13:50 ◼   ► but I would bet that they focus on the Mac App Store,

00:13:54 ◼   ► but still have a direct download.

00:13:55 ◼   ► - Anyway, your memory is excellent.

00:13:57 ◼   ► the Mac App Store was announced at Apple's

00:13:59 ◼   ► Back to the Mac event October 2010.

00:14:03 ◼   ► That was the episode, that was the event

00:14:06 ◼   ► where I believe Craig Federighi first appeared on stage

00:14:09 ◼   ► and he had a sort of a shaky demo.

00:14:14 ◼   ► - He's gotten much better at the on-stage performances.

00:14:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, the backstory behind that wasn't really so much

00:14:24 ◼   ► that he was nervous, but that there was like a last minute

00:14:28 ◼   ► software change and he realized that it didn't work

00:14:31 ◼   ► the way they thought it would.

00:14:32 ◼   ► It was sort of like, you know, like the rule,

00:14:33 ◼   ► like don't change anything in between rehearsals and demo.

00:14:37 ◼   ► And it was like, they thought, well, we can change that.

00:14:39 ◼   ► And then he realized on stage that

00:14:41 ◼   ► we shouldn't have changed that.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Anyway, he has gotten a little,

00:14:45 ◼   ► he went from being like, wow,

00:14:46 ◼   ► why did they put him on stage to,

00:14:48 ◼   ► wow, he should be on TV, right?

00:14:50 ◼   ► Anyway, October 20th, 2010 was when it was announced,

00:14:54 ◼   ► They began taking submissions in November 2010,

00:14:57 ◼   ► and then it launched in January 2011.

00:15:01 ◼   ► So your 2010, 2011 confusion was actually more accurate

00:15:04 ◼   ► than picking one or the other.

00:15:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you're right.

00:15:07 ◼   ► I was just looking at Pixelmator Pro is,

00:15:10 ◼   ► it looks like only in the Mac App Store.

00:15:11 ◼   ► So that is certainly one that is sort of,

00:15:15 ◼   ► the exception that proves the rule maybe.

00:15:17 ◼   ► - Well, it's a complicated story.

00:15:20 ◼   ► I think Sketch is in there.

00:15:21 ◼   ► I don't think Sketch is only Mac App Store,

00:15:23 ◼   ► but it is-- - No, it's definitely not.

00:15:25 ◼   ► Sketch definitely isn't.

00:15:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, it's worked out in a weird way.

00:15:30 ◼   ► I don't wanna spend too much time on the Mac App Store here,

00:15:32 ◼   ► but it just seems like, gosh, now we're seven years in,

00:15:37 ◼   ► and seven years in, it's sort of like a nowhere.

00:15:42 ◼   ► You know, like it's not a failure,

00:15:45 ◼   ► but it is absolutely not put a dent

00:15:47 ◼   ► in the independent marketplace. - Not a success,

00:15:48 ◼   ► or not a big success.

00:15:50 ◼   ► - Right, it's just sort of weird.

00:15:52 ◼   ► I don't think that was expected.

00:15:54 ◼   ► - I don't wanna, you know, I'm not,

00:15:57 ◼   ► I just looked at that one too.

00:15:58 ◼   ► Sketch actually is one of the ones that left the store.

00:16:00 ◼   ► - Oh, that's right, that's right.

00:16:01 ◼   ► - That's what I remember.

00:16:02 ◼   ► They're one of the fairly large ones that left.

00:16:04 ◼   ► - That's right, because they wanted to switch

00:16:06 ◼   ► to a subscription model that the app store

00:16:09 ◼   ► doesn't really support or something like that.

00:16:11 ◼   ► - Exactly. - Right.

00:16:13 ◼   ► Yeah, that's right, that's right.

00:16:14 ◼   ► That's why I knew that Sketch was on the--

00:16:17 ◼   ► - There was something about it, exactly.

00:16:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, something about it.

00:16:19 ◼   ► - Well, so all of this is sort of tangential

00:16:23 ◼   ► to what you originally asked.

00:16:25 ◼   ► And, you know, Forago is something that fits

00:16:28 ◼   ► within the confines of the App Store, at least currently.

00:16:30 ◼   ► But for us as a developer, as developers,

00:16:34 ◼   ► it has not been a priority to get it there.

00:16:37 ◼   ► And I was looking back at a post from several years ago

00:16:41 ◼   ► and somebody was saying, oh, you know,

00:16:42 ◼   ► this isn't in the Mac App Store.

00:16:43 ◼   ► You know, no one's gonna buy it, or I'm not gonna buy it.

00:16:45 ◼   ► And you're crazy.

00:16:46 ◼   ► This is where the puck is going, et cetera.

00:16:49 ◼   ► and it was pretty amusing to read

00:16:51 ◼   ► because that's not the way that it's worked out.

00:16:54 ◼   ► And fortunately for us, we've been able to continue

00:16:56 ◼   ► selling this stuff directly.

00:16:58 ◼   ► - I mean, there's a part of it.

00:17:00 ◼   ► I've been in the racket, as they say,

00:17:02 ◼   ► and I understand the...

00:17:04 ◼   ► When you're on the side where Apple's taking 30%

00:17:10 ◼   ► from the price you set for the app you made,

00:17:12 ◼   ► it feels a little high.

00:17:17 ◼   ► But I totally understand from the user's point of view,

00:17:20 ◼   ► 'cause I personally still enjoy buying apps

00:17:22 ◼   ► from the Mac App Store,

00:17:23 ◼   ► because I love the simplicity of knowing,

00:17:26 ◼   ► if I bought it from the Mac App Store,

00:17:27 ◼   ► there's one place to go to redownload it

00:17:29 ◼   ► on a different machine, or, you know what I mean?

00:17:33 ◼   ► There's just one central place to check for that.

00:17:36 ◼   ► And that is very convenient, and I do trust it,

00:17:39 ◼   ► and I know I'm not gonna get spam

00:17:40 ◼   ► from the developer afterwards.

00:17:43 ◼   ► Not that I buy a lot of apps that I suspect

00:17:44 ◼   ► I'm gonna get spam from the developer for,

00:17:46 ◼   ► but I understand the convenience of it, but.

00:17:49 ◼   ► - No, absolutely.

00:17:50 ◼   ► And it's certainly something where,

00:17:52 ◼   ► it's not something we shied away from.

00:17:54 ◼   ► And we've mentioned that 30% a bunch.

00:17:56 ◼   ► That was never a sole reason to avoid it

00:17:59 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:17:59 ◼   ► It's a high number, but it's not so high that you'd say,

00:18:02 ◼   ► well, the heck with that.

00:18:03 ◼   ► But that coupled with a half dozen other issues

00:18:07 ◼   ► that you face as a developer

00:18:08 ◼   ► makes it a whole lot less appealing right now.

00:18:10 ◼   ► And it's not something where like iOS,

00:18:12 ◼   ► you have to be there to get to users.

00:18:14 ◼   ► So, fortunately we can avoid it.

00:18:17 ◼   ► - All right, let me take a break here

00:18:18 ◼   ► and thank our first sponsor.

00:18:19 ◼   ► You are never gonna believe who it is,

00:18:21 ◼   ► it is our good friend.

00:18:22 ◼   ► - It's the Mac App Store.

00:18:23 ◼   ► - It's the Mac App Store.

00:18:25 ◼   ► Squarespace.

00:18:26 ◼   ► Look, it's the new year.

00:18:28 ◼   ► It still counts as new year in early February.

00:18:31 ◼   ► And if you, people, you know, I think it's cliche

00:18:33 ◼   ► that people make resolutions

00:18:35 ◼   ► and they're setting out to do new things.

00:18:37 ◼   ► But I think it's true.

00:18:38 ◼   ► I think it's absolutely true that it's, you know,

00:18:40 ◼   ► the winter time is the time you reflect.

00:18:42 ◼   ► You think, hey, I wanna set out,

00:18:43 ◼   ► I've got this project I've always been wanting to make.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Something like that.

00:18:47 ◼   ► Or you wanna redo like a website you already have.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Squarespace is a fantastic platform to go try it out on.

00:18:57 ◼   ► First, it's terrific.

00:18:58 ◼   ► Second, it has unbelievable design features.

00:19:03 ◼   ► And third, they do it all.

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00:19:08 ◼   ► They do the,

00:19:12 ◼   ► You could do domain registration there.

00:19:15 ◼   ► They have their own stats and analytics package.

00:19:20 ◼   ► And I've seen it.

00:19:22 ◼   ► And the presentation is so good.

00:19:23 ◼   ► Because it's not just about-- like with analytics,

00:19:27 ◼   ► it's not just like, do you have all this XYZ information?

00:19:30 ◼   ► It's how is it presented to you?

00:19:32 ◼   ► Does it make any sense?

00:19:33 ◼   ► I'll tell you the truth.

00:19:34 ◼   ► I still use Google Analytics during Fireball.

00:19:37 ◼   ► I honestly don't understand how to use it.

00:19:39 ◼   ► I've been using it for like seven years.

00:19:41 ◼   ► And I go in there.

00:19:42 ◼   ► and I honest to God feel like I'm reading Greek

00:19:44 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:19:45 ◼   ► It's terrible.

00:19:46 ◼   ► Everything at Squarespace is so easy.

00:19:48 ◼   ► It is so clearly made from a company

00:19:52 ◼   ► that values good design every step of the way.

00:19:55 ◼   ► Not just in terms of you having a good website

00:19:58 ◼   ► that looks well designed,

00:19:59 ◼   ► but that everything,

00:20:01 ◼   ► when your billing interface is well designed,

00:20:03 ◼   ► your backend stats interface is well designed.

00:20:07 ◼   ► It's just so clear sometimes

00:20:10 ◼   ► when a company only values design

00:20:12 ◼   ► at the very, very front end,

00:20:15 ◼   ► customer facing part of their business,

00:20:17 ◼   ► and they don't care about it

00:20:19 ◼   ► at the rest of the way down the line.

00:20:20 ◼   ► Squarespace is a company that is all about design,

00:20:24 ◼   ► really is.

00:20:25 ◼   ► When you get started at Squarespace,

00:20:28 ◼   ► you can start with a free trial,

00:20:29 ◼   ► and you can build the site,

00:20:31 ◼   ► there's no limits to it,

00:20:32 ◼   ► you can build everything.

00:20:33 ◼   ► There's no catch on the free trial

00:20:37 ◼   ► other than that it eventually ends.

00:20:39 ◼   ► And you can just go to squarespace.com to get started.

00:20:43 ◼   ► And when you do sign up to pay,

00:20:45 ◼   ► that's the point when you wanna remember this code,

00:20:47 ◼   ► talk show at checkout, and you can get 10% off.

00:20:52 ◼   ► Start your free trial today at squarespace.com

00:20:55 ◼   ► and when you decide to sign up,

00:20:56 ◼   ► just remember that code, talk show,

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00:21:07 ◼   ► So my thanks to Squarespace.

00:21:08 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:21:11 ◼   ► I've got some follow up.

00:21:15 ◼   ► I've got some important follow up from last week's episode,

00:21:18 ◼   ► episode 213 with John Moltz,

00:21:21 ◼   ► who hadn't been on for a long time either.

00:21:23 ◼   ► I mentioned, there was a podcast a few years back.

00:21:29 ◼   ► Do you remember the show, Paul,

00:21:30 ◼   ► it was called You Look Nice Today?

00:21:32 ◼   ► - I am familiar.

00:21:33 ◼   ► - It's a show, I figured you would be.

00:21:35 ◼   ► It's a show that was the,

00:21:37 ◼   ► was actually, this is actually, people don't know this, it was actually the first podcast.

00:21:43 ◼   ► These three lads invented podcasting a little over 10 years ago, featuring Scott Simpson,

00:21:53 ◼   ► Merlin Mann and Adam "Lonely Sandwich" Lisagor, all three of whom have been on this

00:21:58 ◼   ► show I think a few times, including Scott, who happens to have been on a very special

00:22:05 ◼   ► episode of this show that was recorded with you. It was me, you, and Scott Simpson.

00:22:12 ◼   ► That's right. The Velocity Hotels episode.

00:22:15 ◼   ► That was the Velocity Hotels episode. We came up with the idea. It was a fantastic idea that

00:22:19 ◼   ► we never really followed up on. But we were going to—

00:22:21 ◼   ► Well, now has been stolen.

00:22:23 ◼   ► Now it's been stolen.

00:22:24 ◼   ► I have lawyers working on this, but I don't know if we're going to see any money out of it.

00:22:29 ◼   ► The idea, if you don't remember this in the Velocity Hotels episode,

00:22:34 ◼   ► that we came up with the idea that, you know, why are hotels only fixed in fixed locations?

00:22:40 ◼   ► And what if, you know, you're on a trip and you need to get from point A to point B,

00:22:44 ◼   ► we stay in a hotel at point A, you get into good night's sleep, you wake up, and then you've still

00:22:50 ◼   ► got to get to point B. Well, what if your hotel could be a bus, a large motorcoach, perhaps,

00:22:56 ◼   ► but not like you're sleeping on like a Greyhound and just reclining in a chair, you'd get a nice

00:23:02 ◼   ► little luxury seats sort of like those first class cabins on Emirates.

00:23:06 ◼   ► Oh yeah, like a light flat bed.

00:23:07 ◼   ► Yeah, and maybe there's a lobby bar in the back of the bus so before you tuck in you could have

00:23:13 ◼   ► a nightcap. It was a fantastic idea. And the truth is, as you've pointed out, that there's

00:23:21 ◼   ► some competitors. While we've been sitting on the idea, some competitors have come out.

00:23:24 ◼   ► Do we have lawyers on this?

00:23:29 ◼   ► I do. They I don't know exactly what they're doing.

00:23:33 ◼   ► I got laughed at kind of a lot.

00:23:35 ◼   ► So I'm not it's not clear if that was laughter as you know, they're going to take these people to the cleaners or I hope that's what it was.

00:23:43 ◼   ► Well, anyway, while John Moltz was telling a story on the show last week about how he does not enjoy cherries,

00:23:50 ◼   ► but he does enjoy cherries when they are soaked in bourbon and put into a cocktail, which does sound good.

00:23:57 ◼   ► And I asked him, just for specificity, even though I knew, I kind of knew the answer.

00:24:02 ◼   ► I suspected that he was talking about regular cherries.

00:24:04 ◼   ► I wanted to make sure he didn't mean maraschino cherries, which are often used as a garnish

00:24:08 ◼   ► in cocktails.

00:24:09 ◼   ► And he said, "No, regular."

00:24:10 ◼   ► And that reminded me of an episode of You Look Nice Today, and I brought it up, where

00:24:16 ◼   ► the lads on You Look Nice Today were talking about a cocktail they invented just for the

00:24:21 ◼   ► listeners of the show.

00:24:23 ◼   ► And I conflated two cocktails, unfortunately, and that's what I need to follow up.

00:24:27 ◼   ► I said it was called the Aunt Nancy,

00:24:29 ◼   ► like your dad's sister Nancy, the Aunt Nancy,

00:24:33 ◼   ► and that involved a fistful of maraschino cherries,

00:24:38 ◼   ► ice, and top it off with Maker's Mark.

00:24:42 ◼   ► Turns out that's not the Aunt Nancy.

00:24:46 ◼   ► That was from a later episode of You Look Nice Today.

00:24:49 ◼   ► That drink was called,

00:24:50 ◼   ► they called the Shirley Temple of Doom.

00:24:53 ◼   ► - I think there's some ginger ale in that, is there not?

00:24:55 ◼   ► - Nope, that's the Aunt Nancy.

00:24:56 ◼   ► The Aunt Nancy.

00:24:58 ◼   ► - Oh, is that, okay, this is why you conflated it, I see.

00:25:00 ◼   ► - Right, this is why I conflated it.

00:25:02 ◼   ► The Aunt Nancy, in fact,

00:25:04 ◼   ► and I will put this link in the show notes,

00:25:05 ◼   ► there's a gentleman who runs a You Look Nice Today index,

00:25:10 ◼   ► where he went back and re-listened to their episodes

00:25:12 ◼   ► and indexed topics.

00:25:13 ◼   ► Unfortunately, the Aunt Nancy,

00:25:16 ◼   ► I happened to re-listen to the episode

00:25:19 ◼   ► on the HomePod I've got upstairs, as a matter of fact.

00:25:22 ◼   ► It was-- - I also gave it a listen

00:25:25 ◼   ► because it was better than anything else that was going on.

00:25:28 ◼   ► - It was ambiguously defined in the episode.

00:25:31 ◼   ► But as best as anybody can determine,

00:25:35 ◼   ► the Aunt Nancy is ginger ale and maker's mark,

00:25:38 ◼   ► served with lots of cherries.

00:25:39 ◼   ► - But also.

00:25:41 ◼   ► - A plastic drink sword.

00:25:43 ◼   ► You know those little swords they use to spear a garnish?

00:25:47 ◼   ► So on one of those, you put a buffalo chicken wing,

00:25:53 ◼   ► - Predipped in ranch dressing.

00:25:55 ◼   ► And then a second sword kebab

00:25:57 ◼   ► with eight, spearing eight mentos.

00:26:02 ◼   ► And then you put that together and there you got it.

00:26:05 ◼   ► That's the best definition anybody has of an aunt Nancy.

00:26:07 ◼   ► The only required elements,

00:26:09 ◼   ► this is sort of like when you're talking about

00:26:10 ◼   ► like an old fashioned and you know,

00:26:13 ◼   ► there's bourbon or rye.

00:26:15 ◼   ► - 20 different variations on it.

00:26:16 ◼   ► - Sugar and bitters.

00:26:19 ◼   ► But then other variations on the old fashioned,

00:26:21 ◼   ► Some will include a muddled up orange or cherry

00:26:23 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:26:24 ◼   ► The required parts are not the ginger ale or the maker's mark

00:26:29 ◼   ► it's just the speared buffalo chicken wing

00:26:33 ◼   ► pre-dipped in ranch dressing

00:26:34 ◼   ► and the second sword of eight Mentos.

00:26:37 ◼   ► And you could pretty much mix that with any alcohol

00:26:39 ◼   ► that you wanted to

00:26:40 ◼   ► and I think you could still call it an Aunt Nancy.

00:26:43 ◼   ► And I also believe there's some ambiguity

00:26:46 ◼   ► about whether you can also substitute a chicken tender

00:26:50 ◼   ► Right, there was definitely a beauty about chicken finger versus chicken wing.

00:26:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:54 ◼   ► And I, while I was listening to this, I had to raise a couple objections because my parents are

00:27:00 ◼   ► from Buffalo and they would roundly chastise me for not pointing out that it's a chicken wing,

00:27:04 ◼   ► it's not a Buffalo wing. So, it's the Philly cheesesteak kind of thing. But, you know,

00:27:10 ◼   ► my mom always makes sure to point out that Buffalo's do not have wings in case anyone is

00:27:15 ◼   ► confused. And ranch dressing is all wrong. It's blue cheese or it's nothing. And then the third

00:27:23 ◼   ► issue is I don't think you can spear Mentos. Mentos have a hard shell. So, this is a 10-year-old

00:27:32 ◼   ► episode of a mildly popular podcast. But we are doing some deep cut criticism and critiquing of

00:27:41 ◼   ► of it. Staring up some significant controversy. Absolutely. But I do I do want to praise them

00:27:47 ◼   ► because in the episode, there was a reference to a domain, buttholevideo.com, which a decade

00:27:56 ◼   ► later, almost one full decade later still leads to this episode. Buttholevideo.com.

00:28:05 ◼   ► Buttholevideo.com. You know, click that and it will take you directly to this episode.

00:28:09 ◼   ► I'll bet you 10 bucks Merlin registered the domain.

00:28:12 ◼   ► Merlin is--

00:28:14 ◼   ► - He's a domain hoarder.

00:28:15 ◼   ► - And he's also very good at it.

00:28:17 ◼   ► If by good you mean actually keeps them

00:28:20 ◼   ► and keeps paying for them, perhaps--

00:28:22 ◼   ► - For forever.

00:28:24 ◼   ► - By some people's definitions,

00:28:26 ◼   ► the people who are good at domains

00:28:27 ◼   ► are the ones who forget the ones they've never used

00:28:30 ◼   ► and stop paying for them, but--

00:28:32 ◼   ► - I was gonna say I bought velocityhotels.com

00:28:35 ◼   ► for that episode that we did.

00:28:37 ◼   ► and I checked it and I have not been paying for it.

00:28:41 ◼   ► So I guess it's a question of whether or not I'm good at it,

00:28:44 ◼   ► but I have kept the 30 or $40 that I would have been paying.

00:28:49 ◼   ► So my wallet thanks me at least.

00:28:51 ◼   ► - So in the show notes for this episode,

00:28:54 ◼   ► do I just leave buttholevideo.com as an item

00:28:57 ◼   ► in the list of links without any explanation?

00:28:59 ◼   ► I think I must.

00:29:00 ◼   ► - No context, no context.

00:29:06 ◼   ► - I also, and a minor correction on the Shirley Temple

00:29:08 ◼   ► of Doom is that I believe the official definition

00:29:13 ◼   ► is not a fistful of maraschino cherries,

00:29:17 ◼   ► but instead a shitload of maraschino cherries.

00:29:20 ◼   ► It's sort of like mixing up teaspoons and tablespoons.

00:29:25 ◼   ► So you don't wanna get the wrong proportion.

00:29:26 ◼   ► You want a shitload of maraschino cherries

00:29:29 ◼   ► and Maker's Mark and I guess some ice and that's it.

00:29:32 ◼   ► And that is the drink I have in fact seen Scott Simpson

00:29:35 ◼   ► order several times.

00:29:37 ◼   ► - Oh, frequently.

00:29:39 ◼   ► But I'm looking at Merlin's picture

00:29:40 ◼   ► of a Shirley Temple of Doom and there is ginger ale.

00:29:43 ◼   ► So I think the Shirley Temple of Doom

00:29:44 ◼   ► and the Aunt Nancy are remarkably similar,

00:29:47 ◼   ► save for the speared meats and candies.

00:29:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, and then I actually was trying to Google this

00:29:53 ◼   ► and it's actually impossible to Google.

00:29:57 ◼   ► You can get to the Aunt Nancy,

00:30:00 ◼   ► even though usually most of the Google,

00:30:02 ◼   ► like Aunt Nancy recipe,

00:30:03 ◼   ► and it's seriously like somebody's Aunt Nancy's recipe

00:30:06 ◼   ► for pumpkin pie.

00:30:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:30:08 ◼   ► And there's absolutely no.

00:30:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:30:12 ◼   ► There are no Mentos involved.

00:30:14 ◼   ► Oh, and I should also mention,

00:30:16 ◼   ► for those of you who are curious

00:30:17 ◼   ► about the chicken wing garnish,

00:30:21 ◼   ► that their idea for that is not necessarily

00:30:25 ◼   ► that it's a flavor enhancer for the cocktail.

00:30:27 ◼   ► It's something that while,

00:30:29 ◼   ► like a mixed crowd of adults and children.

00:30:32 ◼   ► - Right, it's a distraction.

00:30:33 ◼   ► - Right, that you could, if mommy needs a moment,

00:30:36 ◼   ► mommy needs a drink, she can order an Aunt Nancy

00:30:39 ◼   ► and then take the chicken wing out

00:30:40 ◼   ► and hand it to little Joey and he'll have something

00:30:43 ◼   ► to keep him quiet.

00:30:44 ◼   ► Anyway, which I think is a genius idea, quite frankly.

00:30:49 ◼   ► Here's my point, if you Google Shirley Temple of Doom,

00:30:52 ◼   ► there's a ton of people who've come up with,

00:30:54 ◼   ► it's too obvious a name, the pun,

00:30:59 ◼   ► I don't know what you call that

00:31:00 ◼   ► when you connect Temple of Doom with Shirley Temple.

00:31:02 ◼   ► And you Google it and there's actually an entire slew

00:31:05 ◼   ► of people who've used this name to define a cocktail.

00:31:08 ◼   ► And the cocktail, they bear no similarity whatsoever.

00:31:10 ◼   ► They're just people who thought of the name.

00:31:13 ◼   ► Whereas the Aunt Nancy to me is a genius name

00:31:15 ◼   ► for a cocktail.

00:31:16 ◼   ► And I kind of feel like,

00:31:18 ◼   ► I kind of feel like it's up to me and you, Paul,

00:31:19 ◼   ► to sort of,

00:31:20 ◼   ► I kind of feel like this definition in the guy's index

00:31:25 ◼   ► of you look nice today ought to become

00:31:26 ◼   ► the official Aunt Nancy.

00:31:27 ◼   ► Let's combine them together.

00:31:30 ◼   ► We'll have ginger ale, Maker's Mark.

00:31:32 ◼   ► I would just go with a splash of ginger ale, frankly.

00:31:35 ◼   ► You don't wanna put a lot of ginger ale on a drink.

00:31:38 ◼   ► - Mostly Maker's Mark is what we want.

00:31:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, a splash of ginger ale, Maker's Mark,

00:31:45 ◼   ► a shitload of cherries,

00:31:47 ◼   ► a kebab with a buffalo chicken wing or small chicken finger.

00:31:52 ◼   ► Now, do you think that we should say

00:31:55 ◼   ► ranch dressing or blue cheese?

00:31:58 ◼   ► - I wanna nix the ranch.

00:31:59 ◼   ► - I say blue cheese or nothing.

00:32:01 ◼   ► - All right, blue cheese or nothing.

00:32:02 ◼   ► But remember this is for children.

00:32:04 ◼   ► And blue cheese is a pretty strong flavor for children.

00:32:10 ◼   ► - You make a good point.

00:32:12 ◼   ► - I'm gonna say that--

00:32:15 ◼   ► - Well, if we're making the cocktail for children,

00:32:17 ◼   ► we can go with ranch.

00:32:18 ◼   ► - Let's just nix the dressing.

00:32:21 ◼   ► Let's just nix it as a, you know,

00:32:23 ◼   ► and then it can be--

00:32:24 ◼   ► - As a required element.

00:32:25 ◼   ► Dressing of your choice.

00:32:26 ◼   ► - You know what I mean?

00:32:27 ◼   ► Like you can get a martini with a blue cheese stuffed olive

00:32:29 ◼   ► and that's not necessarily canonical,

00:32:30 ◼   ► but nobody would question that it's still

00:32:32 ◼   ► a legitimate martini, it's just up to the choice.

00:32:34 ◼   ► - Right, absolutely.

00:32:36 ◼   ► - And what do we do about the Mentos?

00:32:38 ◼   ► - I really don't think you can spear Mentos

00:32:41 ◼   ► with a plastic sword, and I don't wanna make that

00:32:44 ◼   ► a requirement and then suddenly no one can make this drink.

00:32:46 ◼   ► - Is there a spearable candy?

00:32:48 ◼   ► - Ooh, starbursts that have been sitting in your back pocket.

00:32:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think the bartend,

00:32:55 ◼   ► I think that's against, I think that's gonna,

00:32:58 ◼   ► I think the bar's gonna lose their A rating, Paul.

00:33:00 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:33:02 ◼   ► I think Starbursts are a legitimate,

00:33:04 ◼   ► I think Starbursts are a legitimate substitute.

00:33:08 ◼   ► I hate to speak for the You Look Nice Today boys,

00:33:10 ◼   ► because they're all good friends

00:33:11 ◼   ► and I don't wanna stomp on their intellectual property

00:33:13 ◼   ► and I know that they have very good attorneys.

00:33:16 ◼   ► But I think Starbursts, off the top of my head,

00:33:19 ◼   ► is a good idea and I'll tell you what,

00:33:20 ◼   ► it adds a little bit of chance to the drink

00:33:26 ◼   ► because you don't know what flavor

00:33:28 ◼   ► Starbursts are gonna get.

00:33:30 ◼   ► - And it's gonna help the kids even more.

00:33:33 ◼   ► They get their dinner, they get their chicken wing

00:33:36 ◼   ► or chicken tender, and then they get a little dessert.

00:33:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, and they're gonna be barking for those Starbursts,

00:33:40 ◼   ► but you gotta tell 'em, not until you eat that chicken wing.

00:33:43 ◼   ► I like it.

00:33:45 ◼   ► All right, I say we redefine this, see what the boys say,

00:33:48 ◼   ► see if we can get an official,

00:33:50 ◼   ► and then see if we can get this into some cocktail books.

00:33:53 ◼   ► - Some cocktail books, exactly.

00:33:54 ◼   ► - All right.

00:33:55 ◼   ► - All right, what else do we have to follow up?

00:33:59 ◼   ► This one's, nowhere near as fun.

00:34:01 ◼   ► - This one is so much nerdier.

00:34:02 ◼   ► - There's an app called Nuzzle that Milt and I talked about,

00:34:06 ◼   ► which is an app that it's, I really like.

00:34:09 ◼   ► It's, you let it have your Twitter credentials,

00:34:13 ◼   ► and then Nuzzle keeps track of the people you follow.

00:34:16 ◼   ► And at a threshold, you can specify if four people

00:34:20 ◼   ► that you follow in the last four hours

00:34:21 ◼   ► have posted the same link,

00:34:23 ◼   ► Nozzle will send you a notification of it.

00:34:25 ◼   ► And then when you just want to see what's up,

00:34:29 ◼   ► you can go and there's like a homepage

00:34:31 ◼   ► where maybe they haven't reached the point

00:34:34 ◼   ► where they would have sent you a notification,

00:34:36 ◼   ► but you can see a list of linked articles

00:34:39 ◼   ► in order of how many people you follow

00:34:42 ◼   ► have recently tweeted the link.

00:34:44 ◼   ► And it's truly, for me at least,

00:34:46 ◼   ► the people I follow an interesting source of information,

00:34:49 ◼   ► a way to find interesting breaking news.

00:34:51 ◼   ► I said that they don't use the WebKit browser.

00:34:54 ◼   ► Turns out they do, there's an option that you can turn on

00:35:01 ◼   ► so that it does support the new SF Safari view controller,

00:35:05 ◼   ► which is the in-app browser that looks like Safari

00:35:09 ◼   ► and supports content blockers and stuff like that.

00:35:14 ◼   ► You have to go to settings, view stories with Safari,

00:35:19 ◼   ► and in most cases they'll use Safari View Controller,

00:35:21 ◼   ► but even then they don't use it all the time

00:35:23 ◼   ► because they also have a view

00:35:25 ◼   ► that includes a little dingus at the bottom

00:35:27 ◼   ► that shows you which Twitter people you follow

00:35:31 ◼   ► are the people who linked this that you can,

00:35:34 ◼   ► so you can see who are the people who linked this

00:35:37 ◼   ► so that it's in your list,

00:35:38 ◼   ► and you can tap on them to see what their commentary was

00:35:41 ◼   ► on the link too.

00:35:42 ◼   ► And when they show that view,

00:35:43 ◼   ► they still use the old web view that's kind of janky

00:35:46 ◼   ► and shows a lot of ads.

00:35:47 ◼   ► But anyway, that's my follow-up on this.

00:35:51 ◼   ► There's a reason I don't do follow-up most weeks.

00:35:53 ◼   ► I just let the--

00:35:54 ◼   ► - And yet we've got three of them today.

00:35:56 ◼   ► - Let the errors fall.

00:35:57 ◼   ► This next one I think is gonna be very interesting to you.

00:35:59 ◼   ► This seems like something that knowing you,

00:36:00 ◼   ► you're gonna have strong opinions on.

00:36:02 ◼   ► This one I might have let fly,

00:36:03 ◼   ► except I knew that with you on the show,

00:36:05 ◼   ► we could have a good conversation about it.

00:36:06 ◼   ► And this was that Molson and I were talking about

00:36:09 ◼   ► me complaining about a trip to the bank to deposit a check.

00:36:13 ◼   ► And I knew this, I knew this,

00:36:15 ◼   ► But it kind of slipped my mind during the show

00:36:18 ◼   ► because I can't help it.

00:36:19 ◼   ► I try not to be too American-centric,

00:36:22 ◼   ► especially these days.

00:36:23 ◼   ► But I knew this and it kind of slipped my mind,

00:36:28 ◼   ► which is that, and then maybe this is news

00:36:30 ◼   ► to some of you who are Americans,

00:36:32 ◼   ► that the rest of the world,

00:36:33 ◼   ► the rest of Western civilization moved away from checks

00:36:37 ◼   ► as a means of conducting banking about 20 years ago.

00:36:43 ◼   ► And so the idea that we still conduct business by checks,

00:36:47 ◼   ► there were numerous listeners of the show

00:36:49 ◼   ► who simply expressed laughter.

00:36:53 ◼   ► It's like finding out that in America

00:36:56 ◼   ► they still don't have indoor plumbing.

00:36:58 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:37:01 ◼   ► And that literally what I want to do,

00:37:03 ◼   ► what I would like to be able to do,

00:37:05 ◼   ► is write myself a check and then take a picture of it

00:37:09 ◼   ► and submit it through an app

00:37:11 ◼   ► so I don't have to go to the bank.

00:37:12 ◼   ► effectively do it electronically, but even in that scenario, I still have to rip out a check,

00:37:19 ◼   ► a piece of paper, and write it and sign it and then authorize it on the back just to do it. So...

00:37:27 ◼   ► John "Slick" Baum: Well, that's what I was going to say is I've got -- I'd have to think about how

00:37:32 ◼   ► many checks I get in a year. It's not a lot, but I can do bill pay or, you know, an online deposit

00:37:37 ◼   ► of them by taking a picture with my phone. But the fact that I have to get this artifact in the

00:37:43 ◼   ► first place and then I digitize it with my, you know, $1,000 pocket computer, send it to the bank.

00:37:51 ◼   ► I mean, that's -- we're still dependent on this ridiculous piece of paper that has almost no

00:38:00 ◼   ► security features. So, what's the follow-up on this, though? Just, yeah, we're backwards and

00:38:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's embarrassing, it truly is.

00:38:09 ◼   ► But don't you also think, just looking back on it,

00:38:13 ◼   ► the idea of checks are absurd.

00:38:15 ◼   ► I mean, at a certain point, the concept of money,

00:38:18 ◼   ► it's like, we can--

00:38:19 ◼   ► - You don't wanna think about it too much.

00:38:20 ◼   ► - You don't wanna think about it too much.

00:38:21 ◼   ► It's a collective shared illusion.

00:38:24 ◼   ► But checks in particular just seem,

00:38:29 ◼   ► it just seems crazy that when I was a kid,

00:38:34 ◼   ► half the time I'd go to the supermarket with my mom.

00:38:38 ◼   ► You know, somebody in front of us

00:38:41 ◼   ► was paying for the groceries with a check

00:38:43 ◼   ► and it was just, they would just let the person

00:38:45 ◼   ► walk out of the store with $150 worth of groceries with,

00:38:49 ◼   ► here, I put my name on this piece of paper, I'm good.

00:38:52 ◼   ► Yep, you're good.

00:38:53 ◼   ► - But John, they usually made them write

00:38:55 ◼   ► a phone number on there too.

00:38:57 ◼   ► Not necessarily their phone number, but a phone number.

00:39:00 ◼   ► - We're gonna call this number that you wrote on here

00:39:04 ◼   ► if there's any problems with this check.

00:39:06 ◼   ► It was kind of crazy.

00:39:11 ◼   ► I mean, and it's just crazy now.

00:39:13 ◼   ► Like imagine if like one of these new payment systems

00:39:15 ◼   ► came out, like Apple Pay came out,

00:39:17 ◼   ► and Eddy Cue is up there on stage.

00:39:20 ◼   ► He's like, we've got, this is a great new system.

00:39:25 ◼   ► You just type in how much you want in your iPhone,

00:39:30 ◼   ► and then you go down to the share menu and you hit print.

00:39:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:39:35 ◼   ► Go over to your printer and now you've got

00:39:38 ◼   ► an Apple Pay certificate and you can take that to any store

00:39:42 ◼   ► and they're gonna take it and they're gonna file it away

00:39:45 ◼   ► in a register and they're gonna take it

00:39:47 ◼   ► to their nearest Apple store at their nearest convenience

00:39:50 ◼   ► and we'll turn it into cash.

00:39:51 ◼   ► The idea that there's paper involved in this

00:39:57 ◼   ► is just nonsensical, it's crazy.

00:39:59 ◼   ► So anyway, we understand--

00:40:01 ◼   ► What was the check you were depositing?

00:40:03 ◼   ► - It was just a payment, a partner payment

00:40:05 ◼   ► from my daring firewall company

00:40:07 ◼   ► to me and Amy's personal account.

00:40:11 ◼   ► - So it was even your own money.

00:40:13 ◼   ► You're transferring money between your own accounts

00:40:15 ◼   ► and you still had to do it with a check.

00:40:17 ◼   ► - Well, and bottom line of this,

00:40:18 ◼   ► and there were a couple other people who commented on this.

00:40:20 ◼   ► One of them said, and the problem,

00:40:22 ◼   ► we can't do the electronic thing

00:40:23 ◼   ► because our personal checking has like a $500 limit

00:40:26 ◼   ► on the checks that we can scan.

00:40:29 ◼   ► So like relatives--

00:40:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, you don't wanna get too much money

00:40:31 ◼   ► your own account.

00:40:32 ◼   ► That's a good...

00:40:33 ◼   ► Right.

00:40:34 ◼   ► Like a grandparent sends Jonas a check for his birthday or whatever.

00:40:38 ◼   ► We can scan that and it goes right into our account because we're not going to give the

00:40:42 ◼   ► money to him.

00:40:43 ◼   ► No, of course not.

00:40:46 ◼   ► But any kind of serious...

00:40:48 ◼   ► Anything that would count as a paycheck is over the limit.

00:40:51 ◼   ► But a couple of people have said that they had the same problem, but you just go to your

00:40:54 ◼   ► bank and say, "Hey, I want a higher limit on this," that they have a lot of discretion.

00:40:58 ◼   ► I never tried that.

00:40:59 ◼   ► It never occurs to me to try stuff like that.

00:41:01 ◼   ► Like a bank tells me, I don't know, I don't think I'm, you know me, Paul, I'm not really

00:41:05 ◼   ► like a strict toe-of-the-line rules follower, but I just assume that when—

00:41:11 ◼   ► But a bank's rule just seems like that's it, right?

00:41:14 ◼   ► That doesn't seem negotiable.

00:41:15 ◼   ► When a bank tells me you can deposit up to $500, I just think, well, that's a stupid

00:41:20 ◼   ► rule.

00:41:21 ◼   ► It doesn't even occur to me that you can't do it.

00:41:25 ◼   ► Do you think we should be trying to negotiate like better interest rates?

00:41:28 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:41:30 ◼   ► - Is that an option too?

00:41:31 ◼   ► - Hey, can I do the same thing with my mortgage?

00:41:34 ◼   ► Is that possible?

00:41:35 ◼   ► Can I just go and say--

00:41:36 ◼   ► - I'm just not gonna pay one month.

00:41:38 ◼   ► So what are you gonna do about it?

00:41:40 ◼   ► Can we make this work?

00:41:41 ◼   ► - Well, what do you say I only pay in a month

00:41:43 ◼   ► that I have 31 days?

00:41:44 ◼   ► 'Cause that seems like the full value of a month.

00:41:46 ◼   ► I'll still pay the same number.

00:41:50 ◼   ► - Now I got a task for after the show.

00:41:52 ◼   ► This is good, I'm gonna call my bank, see what happens.

00:41:54 ◼   ► - Well, that's it for follow up.

00:41:57 ◼   ► Anyway, checks are ridiculous.

00:41:58 ◼   ► We know it and we don't know what to do about it.

00:42:01 ◼   ► I'm sure Trump will get on it.

00:42:03 ◼   ► - We'll fix that right after we fix our healthcare system

00:42:05 ◼   ► and our immigration system.

00:42:07 ◼   ► - And our elections being hijacked by Russian propaganda.

00:42:11 ◼   ► - But it's fourth on the list, right after those three.

00:42:14 ◼   ► - We'll get right on the check.

00:42:16 ◼   ► Well, I don't know, why don't I,

00:42:22 ◼   ► I'll take another break here.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Seems like as good a time as ever.

00:42:27 ◼   ► I'm gonna talk to you about another sponsor of the show,

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00:44:23 ◼   ► Maybe we should get like--

00:44:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, a real lumpy mattress in the guest bed.

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00:45:24 ◼   ► All right, HomePod is coming out on Friday,

00:45:28 ◼   ► two days from now, probably a day after the show airs.

00:45:31 ◼   ► I've had one for a little over a week now,

00:45:32 ◼   ► a review unit from Apple after a trip to California

00:45:37 ◼   ► where I also got a tour of Apple's quote unquote audio lab,

00:45:42 ◼   ► which I didn't really talk about in my review too much.

00:45:43 ◼   ► A couple other people did.

00:45:44 ◼   ► I've got some links in here.

00:45:46 ◼   ► I thought Dalrymple's review had a good look at the,

00:45:51 ◼   ► good summary of the behind the scenes.

00:45:54 ◼   ► That's what I was hoping.

00:45:55 ◼   ► I was hoping that somebody else who was on this tour

00:45:57 ◼   ► would have written that aspect of it up

00:46:00 ◼   ► 'cause it was pretty interesting.

00:46:02 ◼   ► I don't know, what are you curious about?

00:46:07 ◼   ► - Wow, I think I'm most curious to see how it does.

00:46:13 ◼   ► I mean, we've seen, like you said, these reviews are out now

00:46:15 ◼   ► there's probably a good half dozen to dozen of them. And certainly none of them are glowing

00:46:22 ◼   ► reviews that say you have to get this device. And I think, you know, that's a pretty high bar,

00:46:27 ◼   ► obviously. But you know, that's something that I guess I maybe I've got rose-colored glasses on,

00:46:32 ◼   ► but like when the iPhone came out, were there, do you remember what the reviews were like for

00:46:38 ◼   ► the first iPhone? Well, they were severely limited. There were only four people who got it. It was

00:46:43 ◼   ► Pogue, Ed Begg, Mossberg, and Steven Levy,

00:46:48 ◼   ► who was at the time at Newsweek.

00:46:51 ◼   ► I don't think they quite knew what to make of it.

00:46:54 ◼   ► I do remember that the four of them got together

00:46:57 ◼   ► and on the 10th year anniversary,

00:46:59 ◼   ► and I did reread them,

00:47:00 ◼   ► and none of the reviews had any clunkers in them.

00:47:04 ◼   ► And I think Apple was wise,

00:47:08 ◼   ► and they knew they were getting four smart people

00:47:11 ◼   ► to review it.

00:47:12 ◼   ► So nobody had the knee-jerk reaction

00:47:15 ◼   ► of every other phone on the market

00:47:18 ◼   ► has a hardware green button for making calls

00:47:21 ◼   ► and a red one for hanging up and wine,

00:47:24 ◼   ► something stupid like that.

00:47:25 ◼   ► Wine World doesn't just have this.

00:47:28 ◼   ► - The classic iPod slash dot review of,

00:47:32 ◼   ► I can't even remember exactly what it was,

00:47:33 ◼   ► but like less space than a Nomad, something.

00:47:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, 300 hours.

00:47:39 ◼   ► - It was like 10 words that they all turned out to be

00:47:42 ◼   ► just foolish sounding after the fact.

00:47:44 ◼   ► - Right, and nobody wants to touch on GLAAD.

00:47:48 ◼   ► The reviews were good.

00:47:49 ◼   ► I think the reviews saw the potential.

00:47:51 ◼   ► All four of them saw the potential and were pretty good,

00:47:53 ◼   ► but none of them were like, "You should run out and buy it."

00:47:55 ◼   ► Because I feel like the $699 or $599 starting price

00:48:00 ◼   ► of the four gig model was still exceedingly high

00:48:06 ◼   ► by cell phone standards, because it wasn't on any kind

00:48:08 ◼   ► contract. And I know a lot of people today are no longer buying their phones on contract,

00:48:14 ◼   ► but that's after 11 years of weaning us towards having 500 to $1,000 cell phones. Whereas

00:48:27 ◼   ► 10 years ago, everybody was used to buying quote unquote $29 cell phones that were $29

00:48:34 ◼   ► contract from Nokia and your carrier or whoever. But everybody had this mental

00:48:40 ◼   ► model that your cell phone cost you know like $29 or maybe if you got an expensive

00:48:45 ◼   ► one like a razor or something like a few hundred dollars but the idea of a $700

00:48:51 ◼   ► cell phone was so seemed so outlandish that I think they were hesitant to tell

00:48:56 ◼   ► people you got to go out and get it just because it was too much and I think it

00:49:00 ◼   ► too hard to foresee at the time how people would see value in that in terms of it really

00:49:05 ◼   ► replacing your laptop for many purposes.

00:49:10 ◼   ► Matt

00:49:26 ◼   ► It certainly sounds like it sounds great, but in terms of just comparing to what's already on the market, it certainly isn't blowing anything away.

00:49:36 ◼   ► So, I'm curious, I've got one coming on Friday, you know, I need it for work. I don't know that I'd get it for myself.

00:49:42 ◼   ► But I'm curious how it plays out over the next, say, three to nine months, more than just any individual thing on it.

00:49:50 ◼   ► know, is there anything specific that you—I mean, you just wrote a review of it, obviously—but is

00:49:54 ◼   ► there anything specific that jumped out to you that was interesting? Or I guess one thing that

00:50:00 ◼   ► you mentioned was being able to give commands to it without sort of yelling over the music,

00:50:06 ◼   ► if you're playing music. So that's one that was interesting to me. I'm interested to experiment

00:50:10 ◼   ► with that, even if I don't know that it's something that's super useful.

00:50:12 ◼   ► Ted

00:50:12 ◼   ► Pete: It is super useful, I think, if you ever plan to play music at an even reasonably loud

00:50:18 ◼   ► volume. And it really is uncanny. I think that's the word I used in the review. It works uncannily

00:50:25 ◼   ► well because you don't expect it, I didn't expect it to be able to work better than human ears.

00:50:32 ◼   ► So, imagine if you and I are in the same room where a home pod is blaring music relatively

00:50:38 ◼   ► loudly and you're standing eight feet away from me, there's a certain volume that I'm

00:50:45 ◼   ► going to, if I want to say to you, "Hey, do you want another beverage?" I'm going

00:50:50 ◼   ► to say it at a certain volume that I think you'll probably still hear me. And I, you

00:50:56 ◼   ► know, and I think I'm, I think, you know, anybody who's lived life for a while is

00:51:00 ◼   ► pretty good at getting that volume about right, you know, where you don't sound like you're

00:51:05 ◼   ► screaming too loud, but you're speaking louder than you would without the music on.

00:51:08 ◼   ► whereas with the HomePod, you can say, "Hey, dingus," whatever, to it at a volume that

00:51:15 ◼   ► if there was another person in the room, you would never think that they would hear it.

00:51:20 ◼   ► Or they might hear that you're saying something, but they would never understand it.

00:51:24 ◼   ► Right.

00:51:25 ◼   ► So that's definitely interesting, and it sounds like, from what you said and from your experiments

00:51:29 ◼   ► with it, that it's fairly impressive, and it's not something that I saw, at least, that

00:51:34 ◼   ► Apple had touched on or that Apple had—is that something that they at least mentioned

00:51:37 ◼   ► to you or is that something that you discovered?

00:51:39 ◼   ► No, they mentioned it to us, well, to me at least, to my group, at least while we were

00:51:42 ◼   ► in California.

00:51:43 ◼   ► Okay.

00:51:44 ◼   ► Yeah, and it is at an engineering level, and I think it is inextricably tied both to the

00:51:54 ◼   ► hardware of the microphones and the software running.

00:52:00 ◼   ► It's a version of iOS.

00:52:01 ◼   ► It's like a lot of these other gadgets Apple's come out with, where it's really running a

00:52:05 ◼   ► variant of iOS.

00:52:06 ◼   ► The version number right now is even 11.2.5,

00:52:09 ◼   ► the same version number as the version on your phone.

00:52:12 ◼   ► - It's involved with that, right.

00:52:14 ◼   ► - It's a combination of the mics being really good,

00:52:18 ◼   ► the mics being oriented in a certain way,

00:52:20 ◼   ► and the mics knowing exactly how the seven tweeters

00:52:25 ◼   ► and the woofer are oriented.

00:52:29 ◼   ► And it's one of those funny things

00:52:35 ◼   ► Apple wanted to, I'm not surprised that they're not like making it a major advertising component,

00:52:43 ◼   ► but they definitely wanted us to know about it.

00:52:46 ◼   ► I definitely noticed it in the demos that Apple performed for me that they, you know,

00:52:54 ◼   ► she clearly, the woman who was doing the demos clearly wasn't speaking, I thought, loud enough,

00:52:59 ◼   ► but it was hearing her almost perfectly.

00:53:01 ◼   ► I mean, there were a whole bunch of commands and there was like one or two she had to repeat.

00:53:05 ◼   ► But it was -- and I know -- and the other thing combining that is that firsthand as a year-long

00:53:12 ◼   ► owner of an Amazon Alexa, with the Alexa, it's not that you have to scream, but you have to talk at

00:53:18 ◼   ► least as loud as you'd have to talk to a human being over the same volume of music.

00:53:22 ◼   ► Soterios Johnson So, you've got -- I think you mentioned you've got an Echo in the kitchen.

00:53:27 ◼   ► Do you have -- how many do you have throughout the house, like two or three?

00:53:29 ◼   ► Dave: Yeah, we've got one in Jonas' room and another, a dot in the living room. But

00:53:36 ◼   ► the living room and the kitchen are on the same floor, and it's maddening because I'll

00:53:40 ◼   ► be in the kitchen—the same thing happens to Amy is we'll be in the kitchen and we'll

00:53:44 ◼   ► say the Alexa name—hopefully I said that in a way that won't trigger people's things—and

00:53:53 ◼   ► and whatever, at a relatively sane volume.

00:53:57 ◼   ► And it's like, for whatever reason,

00:53:59 ◼   ► the one in the living room at the other end of the floor

00:54:04 ◼   ► kicks in.

00:54:04 ◼   ► And it's like, what?

00:54:05 ◼   ► It's like crazy.

00:54:06 ◼   ► I don't understand how that's possible.

00:54:09 ◼   ► And does the kitchen one not kick in,

00:54:11 ◼   ► or do they both kick in?

00:54:12 ◼   ► No, it's only the other one.

00:54:14 ◼   ► I don't know how that is.

00:54:15 ◼   ► It's very strange.

00:54:16 ◼   ► And it doesn't happen all the time.

00:54:17 ◼   ► It certainly doesn't happen most of the time,

00:54:18 ◼   ► or I would have thrown the things out the window.

00:54:20 ◼   ► it happens enough that it's crazy. And it's like, and one way, one way it manifests itself is,

00:54:28 ◼   ► like, Amy certainly sends the most timers, because in the kitchen, because she's, she cooks more

00:54:32 ◼   ► things that need to be timed. And I think what happens every once in a while, she'll tell it

00:54:37 ◼   ► to set a timer and thinks it didn't hear. And then she'll tell it to set the timer again, and it

00:54:44 ◼   ► hears her and it goes off. But meanwhile, the dot out in the other room, I don't know, 30,

00:54:50 ◼   ► 40 feet away heard it too, and nobody's in there. And it set a timer. And then like, you know,

00:54:56 ◼   ► 15 minutes later, the dot is making the little alarm sound. And it's like, who the hell did that?

00:55:01 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:55:03 ◼   ► >> Well, so I'm interested to hear, you know, like you said, you've had these Echo devices for

00:55:10 ◼   ► about a year and you've had, did they, they just gave you one HomePod to test with?

00:55:13 ◼   ► - That is correct because it's right now.

00:55:16 ◼   ► And the HomePod we got for testing

00:55:18 ◼   ► is running the production software

00:55:20 ◼   ► that will be on the ones that come in the mail on--

00:55:23 ◼   ► - In two days. - On two days.

00:55:25 ◼   ► Or that you can buy in a store in two days.

00:55:27 ◼   ► So because ours are running,

00:55:29 ◼   ► which is the way I would prefer it.

00:55:30 ◼   ► I would not, I would be,

00:55:33 ◼   ► I would have been very uncomfortable.

00:55:34 ◼   ► I don't know what I would have done in fact, because I--

00:55:37 ◼   ► - Right, throwing in caveats of,

00:55:38 ◼   ► you know, I'm testing something that's not yet available.

00:55:40 ◼   ► - Right, I would have, if I was running one

00:55:43 ◼   ► with a pre-release version of 11.3

00:55:47 ◼   ► with the AirPlay 2 stuff on it,

00:55:50 ◼   ► I would have mentioned it up front

00:55:52 ◼   ► and I would have had to mention it every step of the way.

00:55:54 ◼   ► I don't know, it would have made me very,

00:55:57 ◼   ► I don't know, so I'm glad.

00:55:58 ◼   ► And I think that the same reason that I'm glad

00:56:00 ◼   ► is the reason that they gave us the production firmware,

00:56:04 ◼   ► whatever you wanna call it.

00:56:06 ◼   ► So anyway, they only gave us one

00:56:07 ◼   ► because there's really no point to having two yet.

00:56:10 ◼   ► I mean, I guess you could set it up

00:56:11 ◼   ► as two independent devices,

00:56:12 ◼   ► it's not really going to help you review anything.

00:56:14 ◼   ► >> Sure. But so, in your actual use case in your house, if you've got three different Echo devices,

00:56:22 ◼   ► I guess that's sort of the question is, do you think and does Apple think that people are going

00:56:29 ◼   ► to use this in the same way that people use an Echo currently or use a Google Home currently?

00:56:34 ◼   ► >> No.

00:56:35 ◼   ► >> Or -- exactly. And because they've been so focused on the music aspect of it,

00:56:39 ◼   ► but it really seems like, you know,

00:56:40 ◼   ► maybe you only get one of these for the house

00:56:42 ◼   ► and you put it wherever you have your biggest TV

00:56:45 ◼   ► or your stereo system if you still have one of those.

00:56:47 ◼   ► And it sort of joins in that way,

00:56:50 ◼   ► as opposed to Amazon's idea that, you know,

00:56:52 ◼   ► maybe you have one of these

00:56:53 ◼   ► in every single room of the house.

00:56:54 ◼   ► - Right.

00:56:55 ◼   ► Although I think you could have them in multiple rooms.

00:56:58 ◼   ► I think it, you know,

00:57:01 ◼   ► I think it varies greatly by the layout of your home.

00:57:04 ◼   ► Like, do you have this sort of floor plan

00:57:07 ◼   ► we're putting one in the dining room and the kitchen

00:57:10 ◼   ► and having them sync together to play the same song

00:57:13 ◼   ► at the same time makes sense.

00:57:14 ◼   ► We kind of do.

00:57:19 ◼   ► That might make sense for us to have two that way

00:57:22 ◼   ► because from our dining room,

00:57:25 ◼   ► you can walk right through to the kitchen,

00:57:26 ◼   ► but if the HomePod was in the kitchen,

00:57:29 ◼   ► you wouldn't really consider it a source for music

00:57:32 ◼   ► in the dining room and vice versa.

00:57:34 ◼   ► - Outside of the kitchen, right?

00:57:35 ◼   ► - Right.

00:57:35 ◼   ► So, I think it comes down to the fact that it really is music first. It really is a thing

00:57:42 ◼   ► that's meant to be playing music. And I think the other thing I think that you mentioned

00:57:47 ◼   ► that the one place where I feel like the HomePod really doesn't fit is in the room with your

00:57:52 ◼   ► TV, or at least not unless you want to use it completely separately from your TV.

00:57:59 ◼   ► Right. Sorry, that is what I meant. Yeah. That's the same way that you might have a

00:58:04 ◼   ► stereo there that is, at least in my mom's house, she has a TV here and a stereo there,

00:58:08 ◼   ► and they're completely divorced from one another or completely unrelated to one another, but it's

00:58:12 ◼   ► where you do your listening or your viewing. But right, yeah, that was something interesting that

00:58:18 ◼   ► you wrote about was that it's not designed to hook up to your TV, and this is a super high-quality

00:58:23 ◼   ► speaker that doesn't have an input and can't really take audio from your TV short of having

00:58:28 ◼   ► your Apple TV send to it. Which is, I don't know, you had talked about not having a line input

00:58:35 ◼   ► because Apple, you know, is thinking that everything's going to be wireless. And that's,

00:58:39 ◼   ► I get that, but it's a pretty cheap part to add to this. And when everything else on this is fairly

00:58:46 ◼   ► high end and you, you know, you could say, well, I just want to be able to take my device somewhere

00:58:51 ◼   ► and plug in audio to it without having to wirelessly send to it. I don't know, that's one

00:58:57 ◼   ► that it wouldn't make me not purchase it if I were interested to purchase it, but it seems like

00:59:02 ◼   ► something that doesn't necessarily make sense to cut the same way that they made some changes on

00:59:08 ◼   ► like the phone where, you know, a headphone jack supposedly at least had something to do with

00:59:12 ◼   ► waterproofing. Obviously, you're not waterproofing the HomePod, so there's not an obvious reason to

00:59:18 ◼   ► cut this besides the idea that, no, we just want everyone to focus on wireless audio to this thing.

00:59:22 ◼   ► Well, I think there's also a simplicity angle though because if you have a line in and then you're pumping your TV to it

00:59:29 ◼   ► And you're watching a movie what happens when you say hey dingus play whatever to it

00:59:35 ◼   ► Does it start playing the music you just asked it to play or does it keep playing the TV?

00:59:40 ◼   ► Input on line in and what happens when you tap the top of it?

00:59:43 ◼   ► Which typically does play pause does it stop and how would top how would tapping the stop button on?

00:59:50 ◼   ► on a speaker getting a dumb line-in signal go back to pause the TV. It couldn't.

00:59:56 ◼   ► So…

00:59:57 ◼   ► No, that's certainly a good point. Yeah, absolutely.

01:00:00 ◼   ► You know, I mentioned it in my review. It does seem wasteful. If you want to put it in a room

01:00:04 ◼   ► where you already have a TV and some kind of speaker system, it seems wasteful to add another

01:00:09 ◼   ► wholly independent speaker system. It is…

01:00:11 ◼   ► Right.

01:00:12 ◼   ► You know, what is that word? I was going to say duplicitous, but duplicitous means

01:00:15 ◼   ► deceitful.

01:00:17 ◼   ► Oh, superfluous.

01:00:19 ◼   ► Superfluous, right. It does seem superfluous. But I get it. I think it's for a simplicity where

01:00:27 ◼   ► it's always just playing either what you tell it to or acting as an AirPlay speaker and acting as

01:00:33 ◼   ► an AirPlay speaker never. I don't know though, because you can set Apple TV to talk to it as

01:00:39 ◼   ► an AirPlay speaker. I don't know. I don't feel like I feel much stronger. I feel like getting

01:00:48 ◼   ► getting rid of the headphone jack on the phones

01:00:50 ◼   ► is the right way, I feel like it was the right decision

01:00:53 ◼   ► last year, I really do.

01:00:55 ◼   ► On the line in, I'm a little bit more ambivalent.

01:00:58 ◼   ► I'm okay with this product not having it,

01:01:01 ◼   ► but if it did have it, I wouldn't think that they were

01:01:05 ◼   ► sticking with an older technology for no good reason,

01:01:07 ◼   ► like I would've if they didn't get rid of the headphone jack

01:01:10 ◼   ► I'm more ambivalent about it.

01:01:18 ◼   ► What else about it?

01:01:19 ◼   ► I do think if there's one thing, excuse me, Paul.

01:01:23 ◼   ► There's one thing I saw in a couple of reviews,

01:01:25 ◼   ► I think Matthew Panzarino's in particular,

01:01:27 ◼   ► which was really interesting to me because he knows,

01:01:30 ◼   ► and I knew this like a career ago,

01:01:33 ◼   ► he was actually working as a salesman

01:01:35 ◼   ► in a high-end stereo shop.

01:01:38 ◼   ► So he really knows a lot more about

01:01:41 ◼   ► why one speaker sounds better than another

01:01:47 ◼   ► or where one speaker sounds better and another one doesn't

01:01:50 ◼   ► and why and stuff like that than I do.

01:01:52 ◼   ► I just kinda listen to one, listen to the other,

01:01:53 ◼   ► and then well, I can tell I like that one better.

01:01:56 ◼   ► I just, I don't know. - Right.

01:01:57 ◼   ► - But he mentioned something,

01:02:01 ◼   ► and I think it's absolutely true, is that,

01:02:04 ◼   ► and it's just the layout of our current house

01:02:07 ◼   ► just and where I could try it.

01:02:09 ◼   ► I don't really have a smaller and smaller room.

01:02:15 ◼   ► And in a small room, and I heard a couple of demos,

01:02:19 ◼   ► 'cause when Apple demoed these things for us,

01:02:22 ◼   ► it was in an actual house.

01:02:25 ◼   ► I don't know if they rented it or whatever,

01:02:27 ◼   ► but it was in a real house of real dimensions

01:02:31 ◼   ► and had real furnishings and stuff.

01:02:33 ◼   ► And I think very typical.

01:02:35 ◼   ► I don't think it was, there was nothing weird

01:02:39 ◼   ► or set up about it, including some room.

01:02:44 ◼   ► camera's on every inch of it and you're in all sorts of videos now.

01:02:47 ◼   ► But they had like a downstairs with like a very modern floor plan for a living room, living floor,

01:02:56 ◼   ► where the kitchen flows right into the living room without a wall, just with like a kitchen

01:03:02 ◼   ► island between them, which is, you know, I've been I know so many people who have a floor plan like

01:03:07 ◼   ► that, which is a bigger, bigger, much bigger space, more risk for more ways that you could

01:03:13 ◼   ► you get echoes.

01:03:14 ◼   ► And then a smaller room upstairs,

01:03:15 ◼   ► which would be just a very, very typical,

01:03:18 ◼   ► or they even had a bedroom.

01:03:19 ◼   ► There was even a very typical bedroom,

01:03:21 ◼   ► and then maybe like a very typical home office type room.

01:03:24 ◼   ► And in those smaller rooms,

01:03:27 ◼   ► it was really more startling how good it sounded.

01:03:31 ◼   ► And in my personal testing at home, it sounded good.

01:03:35 ◼   ► It sounded better than any other thing

01:03:36 ◼   ► I've tried in these rooms,

01:03:38 ◼   ► but I feel like our place is a little bit,

01:03:41 ◼   ► has more space, bigger rooms and more echoey rooms.

01:03:44 ◼   ► So that's one thing too, is there's a lot of,

01:03:49 ◼   ► the smaller your room, I think the better

01:03:51 ◼   ► this thing is gonna sound, and it really

01:03:53 ◼   ► almost sounds phenomenal, and the effect

01:03:56 ◼   ► of not quite coming from a single point

01:03:59 ◼   ► is way more pronounced in a smaller room.

01:04:02 ◼   ► That's the other thing that I remember from the demos.

01:04:05 ◼   ► And it's not like it fools you into thinking

01:04:08 ◼   ► that there's two speakers on two sides of the room.

01:04:10 ◼   ► you could close your eyes and point to where the HomePod is,

01:04:13 ◼   ► right?

01:04:14 ◼   ► Or like if you're in a small room and there's one HomePod

01:04:19 ◼   ► and somebody spins you around like pin the tail

01:04:21 ◼   ► on the donkey and they're like, where's the HomePod?

01:04:23 ◼   ► You'll get very close to it when you point it,

01:04:25 ◼   ► but it doesn't sound like it's coming

01:04:27 ◼   ► from a tiny little seven inch point.

01:04:30 ◼   ► It really does have a dimensionality, a 3D-ness to it

01:04:33 ◼   ► that seems like something, you know,

01:04:36 ◼   ► a next level up in small speaker design.

01:04:40 ◼   ► So do you think that — all these reviews have talked about, you know, this audio quality, and

01:04:45 ◼   ► Apple touted this, and it sounds like that is true, that this has phenomenal audio quality and better

01:04:51 ◼   ► than, you know, the other devices that are out there, certainly better than the cheaper devices

01:04:55 ◼   ► that are out there, and sounds like better than even the devices that are comparably priced from,

01:05:01 ◼   ► you know, the Google Home Max and Sonos. Is that enough to make this thing sell, though?

01:05:07 ◼   ► I don't know. I've I thought before I started my review, just knowing what I knew, you know,

01:05:12 ◼   ► what Apple had said coming up to it and up to the point where I met with their, you know, engineers

01:05:18 ◼   ► and the next day got a briefing and headed home with my review unit before it and after it, I

01:05:25 ◼   ► really I have I don't know what I would which way I would bet on how successful this product would

01:05:29 ◼   ► be. My guess is that the best case scenario is a sort of slowly building hit, sort of like Apple

01:05:39 ◼   ► Watch, you know, where, although without that initial, like, Apple Watch debuted with like a,

01:05:45 ◼   ► you could, you know, all of a sudden it was backordered six weeks. Right, everybody wanted

01:05:49 ◼   ► that up front. But then once that subsided, it was sort of like you didn't really see a lot of

01:05:54 ◼   ► of people with Apple Watch the first year, but then it seemed like through word of mouth.

01:05:59 ◼   ► It's the sort of thing that I feel like you need word of mouth for, and that people might

01:06:03 ◼   ► come to your house and if you have a HomePod, they might be really impressed by it and think,

01:06:08 ◼   ► "Wow, that really does sound good. I might get one of those." But I could see it all

01:06:14 ◼   ► the way to being the iPod 2.0, the iPod Hi-Fi 2.0, that Apple built this thing that they

01:06:23 ◼   ► seemingly spend a lot of engineering time on and seemingly are very proud of and really

01:06:27 ◼   ► think people are going to like and people just don't want to spend 300 plus dollars

01:06:33 ◼   ► on something that just plays music from Apple.

01:06:36 ◼   ► And was that I'm trying to remember was that $4.99 the iPod Hi-Fi?

01:06:39 ◼   ► I don't remember how much it was.

01:06:41 ◼   ► We could think that's I, I don't want to, we should look it up.

01:06:46 ◼   ► But it was it was definitely I think, even more expensive than this and obviously did

01:06:49 ◼   ► a lot less.

01:06:50 ◼   ► Right.

01:06:51 ◼   ► It was literally just a speaker that took audio from an iPod.

01:06:54 ◼   ► - Nope, it was three.

01:06:55 ◼   ► - It didn't take commands or anything like that.

01:06:57 ◼   ► - It was 349.

01:06:58 ◼   ► - Oh, was it exactly the same price?

01:07:00 ◼   ► I guess I feel like I remember people saying that

01:07:02 ◼   ► now that I think about it.

01:07:04 ◼   ► - That's even funnier.

01:07:06 ◼   ► My God, is it bigger.

01:07:07 ◼   ► It's ridiculous how much bigger the iPod I was.

01:07:10 ◼   ► - Oh, it was enormous, yeah.

01:07:12 ◼   ► And especially compared to the device

01:07:14 ◼   ► that you were putting on it.

01:07:16 ◼   ► - I never bought one of those.

01:07:18 ◼   ► I had no desire to buy one.

01:07:21 ◼   ► But boy, I kind of wish I had one laying around

01:07:23 ◼   ► 'cause that would be a fun side-by-side review.

01:07:25 ◼   ► - Oh, comparison test, yeah, absolutely.

01:07:28 ◼   ► - See how much better it sounds.

01:07:29 ◼   ► I thought Pansarino, I think it was Pansarino,

01:07:33 ◼   ► had another observation that I thought was spot on

01:07:35 ◼   ► where he described the iPod Hi-Fi's sound as being,

01:07:39 ◼   ► I think he said accurate.

01:07:41 ◼   ► - Wait, the iPod Hi-Fi or the HomePod?

01:07:45 ◼   ► - Not the iPod Hi-Pod. (laughs)

01:07:46 ◼   ► You've got me thrown off, the HomePod.

01:07:49 ◼   ► And everybody agreed, if you saw it,

01:07:51 ◼   ► if you read it, I'll put a link to a couple

01:07:54 ◼   ► of these reviews in there, but there was a strong consensus

01:07:56 ◼   ► among everybody that the Google Home Max,

01:07:59 ◼   ► which is their $399 dingus, which is the,

01:08:03 ◼   ► you know, $50 more than the HomePod,

01:08:06 ◼   ► so clearly, you know, fair comparison,

01:08:09 ◼   ► is way too base heavy, you know,

01:08:12 ◼   ► which some people like, but it's like one of those things

01:08:15 ◼   ► that's like the TVs in the store being oversaturated

01:08:20 ◼   ► because you're in there looking at 17 different TVs

01:08:24 ◼   ► and the ones with the saturated colors look like,

01:08:27 ◼   ► wow, that one has, that other one looks bland.

01:08:30 ◼   ► This one has pop, I want the one with pop.

01:08:32 ◼   ► But you would never, it's like inaccurate.

01:08:35 ◼   ► You'd never really wanna tune your TV that way.

01:08:37 ◼   ► It's, you know.

01:08:38 ◼   ► And I think it's also similar to the way

01:08:43 ◼   ► that Apple has calibrated its screens forever,

01:08:48 ◼   ► but especially like in the iPhone era,

01:08:51 ◼   ► where Apple, one of the reasons that they were

01:08:53 ◼   ► one of the last, if not the last major phone company

01:08:57 ◼   ► to put out a phone with an OLED display

01:09:00 ◼   ► was that in the early days of OLED,

01:09:02 ◼   ► while there are some advantages to battery life

01:09:04 ◼   ► and certainly all along batteries

01:09:06 ◼   ► or advantages to the richer blacks,

01:09:08 ◼   ► color accuracy was really, really hard

01:09:12 ◼   ► and really has only come in the last few years.

01:09:14 ◼   ► And even though once it came on other phones,

01:09:16 ◼   ► it still couldn't come in the quantities Apple needed.

01:09:19 ◼   ► Like Apple was never gonna ship an OLED phone

01:09:22 ◼   ► until they could ship it in the quantities they needed

01:09:25 ◼   ► and with the color accuracy that they wanted.

01:09:28 ◼   ► And one thing, I'm picky about color.

01:09:31 ◼   ► I really, I've always been very picky about color.

01:09:34 ◼   ► And the one thing I've noticed with the iPhone 10

01:09:36 ◼   ► now that I've had it for months,

01:09:37 ◼   ► is even when I see it side by side with anybody else

01:09:40 ◼   ► who has like an iPhone 8 or a 7 or any other recent iPhone,

01:09:43 ◼   ► is the one thing I don't notice

01:09:44 ◼   ► is I don't notice any difference in color.

01:09:46 ◼   ► I really don't.

01:09:47 ◼   ► And I feel like that is exactly what they've done with sound

01:09:51 ◼   ► on the HomePod,

01:09:52 ◼   ► where they're being very, very fair to the original.

01:09:55 ◼   ► They're not pumping up the bass.

01:09:56 ◼   ► They're not doing other,

01:09:58 ◼   ► like the audio equivalent of sugar sweetening the audio.

01:10:02 ◼   ► - Right, tweaking it to make it sound supposedly better,

01:10:05 ◼   ► but bastardizing it a little bit.

01:10:06 ◼   ► - Right.

01:10:08 ◼   ► I would say that that's very fair.

01:10:10 ◼   ► I think the other thing that I got out of this,

01:10:15 ◼   ► I feel like there's three factors in the decision

01:10:18 ◼   ► of does somebody want a HomePod.

01:10:20 ◼   ► One is do you care enough about,

01:10:22 ◼   ► do you have a place in your life where a $350 speaker

01:10:26 ◼   ► that sounds really good makes sense?

01:10:29 ◼   ► And for some people that might be nowhere.

01:10:33 ◼   ► You might not have a room in your house or an office

01:10:36 ◼   ► where you can do that.

01:10:37 ◼   ► if you work in a cubicle or something like that.

01:10:39 ◼   ► I don't think your cubicle mates are gonna appreciate it

01:10:42 ◼   ► if you set up a home pot.

01:10:44 ◼   ► - But it's gonna sound great.

01:10:47 ◼   ► - Right, and there might be people out there

01:10:49 ◼   ► who like hear the $89 Amazon Alexa play music

01:10:54 ◼   ► and say that's good enough for me.

01:10:57 ◼   ► And why in the world would I spend four times more

01:10:59 ◼   ► on this other thing?

01:11:01 ◼   ► So that's one factor.

01:11:02 ◼   ► Do you have a spot in your life

01:11:03 ◼   ► where you're willing to spend $3.50 for audio

01:11:06 ◼   ► that you would appreciate.

01:11:08 ◼   ► Two is the issue of where do you,

01:11:13 ◼   ► where does your music come from?

01:11:15 ◼   ► You know, if your music, if you're heavily into Spotify,

01:11:18 ◼   ► and Spotify keeps coming up over and over and over again

01:11:20 ◼   ► in all these reviews,

01:11:21 ◼   ► because some of these other products support Spotify

01:11:25 ◼   ► as a first class like source of talking to the device

01:11:29 ◼   ► to play music from Spotify, and HomePod doesn't.

01:11:36 ◼   ► there's no way you want HomePod, in my opinion.

01:11:38 ◼   ► If you're heavily into Spotify and you don't wanna leave,

01:11:40 ◼   ► then I really can't see why you'd want to switch to HomePod,

01:11:45 ◼   ► even if the sound is a little better.

01:11:47 ◼   ► - Right.

01:11:48 ◼   ► - And conversely, if you are on the opposite,

01:11:50 ◼   ► if you're heavily into the Apple Music ecosystem,

01:11:53 ◼   ► lowercase m, 'cause I'll include in that

01:11:57 ◼   ► the Apple Music, capital M, subscription service,

01:12:02 ◼   ► iTunes Music Store, any purchases that you've ever made,

01:12:06 ◼   ► or see any music that you own in your personal library,

01:12:11 ◼   ► if you have iTunes Match or Apple Music,

01:12:14 ◼   ► they'll sync to the cloud,

01:12:16 ◼   ► and then you can talk to your HomePod

01:12:19 ◼   ► and have it play those.

01:12:20 ◼   ► And in fact, that's most of the music testing

01:12:22 ◼   ► I did this week, 'cause I was so interested in that,

01:12:24 ◼   ► is I had it play a bunch of Rolling Stones albums I have

01:12:28 ◼   ► that are not and have never been available

01:12:30 ◼   ► from the iTunes Store.

01:12:31 ◼   ► And it worked great

01:12:33 ◼   ► So if you're into the Apple system

01:12:36 ◼   ► Yeah, and you could just say and it's funny it got smarter - I have an album

01:12:42 ◼   ► I think it's a 1973 live recording called the Brussels affair recorded in Brussels

01:12:48 ◼   ► One of my all-time favorite Rolling Stones albums and the first time I asked the home pod to play the Rolling Stones Brussels affair

01:12:56 ◼   ► I think that's what I asked for play the Rolling Stones Brussels affair

01:13:00 ◼   ► HomePod told me that it couldn't find any music

01:13:02 ◼   ► Brussels affair and I thought damn that's this sinking I thought the damn sinking feature wasn't working

01:13:10 ◼   ► So I thought about it and I looked in my library and the actual file name I have on the album is Brussels affair

01:13:18 ◼   ► parentheses

01:13:19 ◼   ► live

01:13:21 ◼   ► 1973 so I said I asked the HomePod to play Brussels play Brussels affair live

01:13:28 ◼   ► 1973 and it said okay. Here's the Rolling Stones Brussels affair live

01:13:32 ◼   ► 1973 and it just started playing

01:13:35 ◼   ► That's a little bit of a pain in ass, but that's okay. But then like the next day I said

01:13:39 ◼   ► Hey play the Brussels affair and it said okay. Here's the Rolling Stones Brussels affair and then it it worked now

01:13:47 ◼   ► I don't know if it learned I don't know if it just needed to sink

01:13:50 ◼   ► You know if I asked it the first time before it was done sinking

01:13:54 ◼   ► I don't know what happened.

01:13:55 ◼   ► You know, and that's one of the things

01:13:57 ◼   ► about these talking dinguses,

01:13:59 ◼   ► is you never know why it works one day

01:14:01 ◼   ► and doesn't work the other day.

01:14:03 ◼   ► - Well, so can I pick this bone that I have with you

01:14:08 ◼   ► about the HomePod? - Yeah, absolutely.

01:14:09 ◼   ► Well, before we do that, let's save that.

01:14:10 ◼   ► Let's save that.

01:14:11 ◼   ► And I did wanna mention,

01:14:13 ◼   ► I wanted to mention one review in particular

01:14:15 ◼   ► that I thought was kinda crappy,

01:14:16 ◼   ► was Brian Chen's review for the New York Times.

01:14:19 ◼   ► Because I feel like all the other reviews,

01:14:22 ◼   ► I largely agree, even if I didn't agree completely,

01:14:24 ◼   ► I thought they were all pretty accurate.

01:14:26 ◼   ► And I thought Chen's review for the New York Times

01:14:28 ◼   ► was way out of line because it was sort of like

01:14:31 ◼   ► it started with him talking about using it

01:14:33 ◼   ► to listen to music.

01:14:34 ◼   ► And he said, "Hey, play some music."

01:14:37 ◼   ► And it played music he didn't like,

01:14:38 ◼   ► and he tried to get it to stop.

01:14:40 ◼   ► And instead of stopping, it said it didn't recognize

01:14:43 ◼   ► whatever artist he's complaining about's album, Stop,

01:14:46 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:14:49 ◼   ► And then he kind of went right to like a 14 point comparison

01:14:53 ◼   ► of trying to get these, you know,

01:14:55 ◼   ► multiple of these devices to do assistant type things,

01:15:00 ◼   ► like create calendar events and stuff like that.

01:15:04 ◼   ► And creating calendar events

01:15:06 ◼   ► is something HomePod doesn't do.

01:15:07 ◼   ► Now, I'm not saying it's not fair to mention that,

01:15:09 ◼   ► but it's like his whole review was pretty much

01:15:12 ◼   ► comparing it.

01:15:15 ◼   ► To me, it would be the equivalent of

01:15:19 ◼   ► if he wrote a review of the new Amazon Echo

01:15:24 ◼   ► and quickly brushed over a bunch of something

01:15:28 ◼   ► that Alexa does that does particularly well,

01:15:32 ◼   ► and then just skipped right to a 14 point comparison

01:15:35 ◼   ► of how good did the speaker sound.

01:15:37 ◼   ► Right, and then that's the whole review of,

01:15:40 ◼   ► like it's totally fair to mention it,

01:15:44 ◼   ► and I think my review and various others,

01:15:48 ◼   ► I don't see how you couldn't mention that Siri does less

01:15:52 ◼   ► on HomePod than Alexa does on the Echo products

01:15:56 ◼   ► and that the Google Voice product, you know,

01:15:59 ◼   ► which I feel like needs a name.

01:16:00 ◼   ► Like, I don't know what to call it.

01:16:01 ◼   ► They call it like the device is Google Home Max,

01:16:04 ◼   ► but, and you address it as OK Google,

01:16:07 ◼   ► but it's so much--

01:16:09 ◼   ► - Right, it doesn't have a personified name behind it.

01:16:11 ◼   ► - Right, it's so much easier.

01:16:13 ◼   ► It's just a small aside from writing a long review

01:16:15 ◼   ► about this is it's so much easier

01:16:17 ◼   ► to write about the separation between HomePod and Siri

01:16:21 ◼   ► and say the Echo or the Alexa equipped Sonos One hardware

01:16:26 ◼   ► and Alexa as the abstract service.

01:16:33 ◼   ► I feel like I wish Google would fix that,

01:16:35 ◼   ► but I don't, I guess we could just call the service

01:16:39 ◼   ► okay Google, I don't know.

01:16:41 ◼   ► But anyway, that's an aside.

01:16:43 ◼   ► Anyway, I thought Chen's review was sort of

01:16:45 ◼   ► deliberately written to make it look bad.

01:16:48 ◼   ► I don't see how there was any way

01:16:50 ◼   ► that HomePod could come out of his review testing

01:16:52 ◼   ► looking good, 'cause he was trying things

01:16:54 ◼   ► that he knew in advance it couldn't do.

01:16:57 ◼   ► Like, what's the point? - Well, but I mean,

01:16:58 ◼   ► is that unfair if those are the things

01:17:01 ◼   ► that he wants it to do?

01:17:02 ◼   ► I mean, it's not like he went and said,

01:17:04 ◼   ► "This car doesn't have any storage space,

01:17:07 ◼   ► "so this is a two-seater convertible,

01:17:09 ◼   ► "so I'm gonna try and haul two tons of potting soil in it."

01:17:14 ◼   ► This is something that I think people who get a device

01:17:17 ◼   ► of this type are gonna try and do.

01:17:19 ◼   ► And this is, it's something where it certainly is lacking.

01:17:22 ◼   ► And Apple definitely wanted to frame this device

01:17:25 ◼   ► and I think successfully framed a bunch of the reviews as,

01:17:29 ◼   ► you know, there's some shortcomings

01:17:31 ◼   ► but the audio quality is great.

01:17:32 ◼   ► Or the audio quality is great despite other shortcomings.

01:17:36 ◼   ► And his review was definitely,

01:17:38 ◼   ► it didn't really talk too much at all

01:17:40 ◼   ► about the audio quality said, you know,

01:17:41 ◼   ► I listened to some music that didn't work super well.

01:17:43 ◼   ► and then Siri itself worked really poorly.

01:17:46 ◼   ► Do you think that's about an accurate summary

01:17:48 ◼   ► of what he wrote?

01:17:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so.

01:17:52 ◼   ► I think that's a pretty accurate summary.

01:17:54 ◼   ► - So I don't know that,

01:17:56 ◼   ► I mean, you're absolutely right.

01:17:57 ◼   ► It was definitely one of the harshest reviews of the device,

01:18:01 ◼   ► but I don't think that he came at it in a super unfair way.

01:18:04 ◼   ► - I wouldn't say super unfair.

01:18:07 ◼   ► I would just say a,

01:18:09 ◼   ► I just don't think it was helpful.

01:18:13 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:18:14 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:18:15 ◼   ► I feel like, I almost feel like the angle he took

01:18:17 ◼   ► would be better as a follow-up

01:18:19 ◼   ► after reviewing it for what it is,

01:18:21 ◼   ► and then having a column of what type of device

01:18:24 ◼   ► do you want in your house that talks to you,

01:18:27 ◼   ► which is two different things.

01:18:28 ◼   ► - Well, I guess to me, it's a question of

01:18:32 ◼   ► how similar is this device to the Echo and the HomePod,

01:18:37 ◼   ► or sorry, and the Google Home, rather.

01:18:39 ◼   ► - Right.

01:18:40 ◼   ► - Are these really exactly the same type of device,

01:18:43 ◼   ► or are we getting down to the nitty gritty and saying,

01:18:45 ◼   ► you know what, there's actually virtual assistant devices

01:18:48 ◼   ► that happen to play music, and there's music players

01:18:51 ◼   ► that happen to have a virtual assistant,

01:18:52 ◼   ► and those are two separate things.

01:18:54 ◼   ► And I think to most, I would assume

01:18:57 ◼   ► to most potential customers, those are the same thing.

01:19:01 ◼   ► And it's just a question of which one of those

01:19:04 ◼   ► you care about a little bit more, but.

01:19:06 ◼   ► - That's a good way to put it.

01:19:07 ◼   ► I think that's exactly a good way to put it.

01:19:08 ◼   ► And that's how I tried to frame my review.

01:19:11 ◼   ► And in fact, I even caught myself at one point

01:19:13 ◼   ► where I, in my review, in an early draft of it,

01:19:16 ◼   ► I had that the HomePod and Alexa

01:19:19 ◼   ► clearly aren't even in the same category.

01:19:21 ◼   ► And I realized that the other day,

01:19:23 ◼   ► I had written that they are in the same category,

01:19:25 ◼   ► but from different perspectives.

01:19:27 ◼   ► And so I caught myself and realized,

01:19:31 ◼   ► the way I reworded it, and which I think is more accurate,

01:19:33 ◼   ► is that they're at opposite ends of the category.

01:19:36 ◼   ► Right, 'cause you really, like, right now,

01:19:38 ◼   ► we literally have the Alexa and the HomePod

01:19:41 ◼   ► in the kitchen at the same time,

01:19:43 ◼   ► both, you know, just mostly for testing reasons.

01:19:46 ◼   ► Feature wise, because Amy is actually annoyed

01:19:50 ◼   ► that the HomePod doesn't have the one thing she,

01:19:52 ◼   ► one of the things she really likes about the Echo,

01:19:54 ◼   ► which is being able to set multiple timers,

01:19:56 ◼   ► which really feels like it's something that Apple could

01:20:01 ◼   ► and should fix right away.

01:20:03 ◼   ► Like with Alexa, you can say,

01:20:06 ◼   ► set a potato timer for 20 minutes,

01:20:09 ◼   ► and then like a minute later say,

01:20:11 ◼   ► what else might you be cooking with potatoes?

01:20:16 ◼   ► - Remind me about the boiling water in 10 minutes

01:20:18 ◼   ► or whatever. - Right.

01:20:19 ◼   ► And then you can say, Alexa, how much time do I have left

01:20:23 ◼   ► on the potato timer?

01:20:24 ◼   ► And she will tell you.

01:20:27 ◼   ► And on the HomePod, if you set a timer, you can't name it,

01:20:31 ◼   ► it's only one timer.

01:20:32 ◼   ► And then if you set another timer, Siri will say,

01:20:36 ◼   ► you already have a timer with four minutes

01:20:38 ◼   ► and 33 seconds remaining, would you like to replace it?

01:20:42 ◼   ► Like that's your only option.

01:20:43 ◼   ► And that's, you know, pretty sure that iOS

01:20:46 ◼   ► is an A8 processor could handle running two timers

01:20:50 ◼   ► at the same time.

01:20:51 ◼   ► - Well, now I'm trying to think,

01:20:54 ◼   ► does the phone let you do multiple times?

01:20:55 ◼   ► - No, the phone doesn't either.

01:20:56 ◼   ► - I don't think it does, right?

01:20:58 ◼   ► - No.

01:20:59 ◼   ► So, you know, and you know, it's a feature she uses.

01:21:05 ◼   ► It's not a crazy feature.

01:21:06 ◼   ► I don't think that's esoteric.

01:21:08 ◼   ► And I feel like once you get, I hear this a lot.

01:21:11 ◼   ► It's clearly putting these things in a kitchen

01:21:13 ◼   ► is very popular and setting timers is hugely popular.

01:21:16 ◼   ► And it's just one of those tiny little,

01:21:20 ◼   ► once you get used to, just to go back to it,

01:21:25 ◼   ► once you get used to indoor plumbing,

01:21:26 ◼   ► there's no going back to outdoor plumbing.

01:21:28 ◼   ► People have been cooking for thousands of years

01:21:32 ◼   ► and they've used various ways of determining

01:21:35 ◼   ► how long to cook a thing.

01:21:36 ◼   ► But the idea of having to touch a device to set a timer

01:21:43 ◼   ► is, once you go to just doing it by voice,

01:21:46 ◼   ► it's so, it just seems barbaric.

01:21:49 ◼   ► Because a lot of times, if you're in the kitchen cooking,

01:21:52 ◼   ► your hands might be covered with stuff,

01:21:54 ◼   ► or you might not be near the device,

01:21:56 ◼   ► or various reasons.

01:21:59 ◼   ► It's just so nice, and it just, you know.

01:22:02 ◼   ► So anyway, that's something Apple's got to get on.

01:22:06 ◼   ► >> All right, now can I issue with this thing?

01:22:08 ◼   ► >> Absolutely.

01:22:10 ◼   ► I feel like this is a fantastic discussion.

01:22:12 ◼   ► >> All right, so six, no, I guess about eight months ago,

01:22:15 ◼   ► the HomePod was announced.

01:22:17 ◼   ► And you had a post that I assume you will link to about

01:22:22 ◼   ► the HomePod having a touchscreen.

01:22:24 ◼   ► And prior to the announcement, there were all the rumors floating around and

01:22:29 ◼   ► multiple rumors sites reported that it did not have a touchscreen, unlike the, what is

01:22:36 ◼   ► it, the Amazon Echo Show, I think is the one that has a screen.

01:22:39 ◼   ► Which you don't hear about much anymore, by the way.

01:22:41 ◼   ► In this whole—

01:22:42 ◼   ► Yeah, that came out, and I don't know if it's—I don't know anything about that one except that

01:22:46 ◼   ► it has a screen and I guess it exists. But so, after this was announced, you said,

01:22:53 ◼   ► "Claim Chowder, it does have a touchscreen." And you and I had a discussion about this,

01:22:58 ◼   ► and I said, "I don't think that that constitutes a touchscreen." And you stuck to your guns,

01:23:04 ◼   ► and you said, "No, you touch it, and I don't know, you can summarize your own position."

01:23:08 ◼   ► JS: Well, I don't think it was multiple rumor sites, though. I think it was a Bloomberg report

01:23:13 ◼   ► by Mark Gurman and Alex Webb for Bloomberg, and it was, I think, about a week before WWDC,

01:23:19 ◼   ► and their exact words are, "Ahead of Apple's launch, the competition has upgraded their

01:23:24 ◼   ► speakers with support for making voice calls while Amazon's gained a touch screen.

01:23:31 ◼   ► Apple's speaker won't include such a screen according to people who have seen the product.

01:23:37 ◼   ► And then Ming-Chi Kuo, two weeks before that, said, "We also believe this new product

01:23:41 ◼   ► will come with a touch panel."

01:23:43 ◼   ► Okay.

01:23:44 ◼   ► And then you wrote, "HomePod has a touch screen on top."

01:23:47 ◼   ► Right.

01:23:48 ◼   ► After seeing it at WWDC.

01:23:51 ◼   ► This was, I've posted it Tuesday, so it was like within a day of the keynote.

01:23:57 ◼   ► And I was under the impression, now this was, I forget if I'd had my hands on, I don't think

01:24:01 ◼   ► I had, I don't think they'd had the briefing yet.

01:24:04 ◼   ► Maybe I did though, maybe they did that on Monday.

01:24:06 ◼   ► I don't remember when, in addition to the one that they had out there for everybody

01:24:10 ◼   ► to walk by, but not touch, we also got invited in like little groups of four to hear it,

01:24:17 ◼   ► not touch it and we weren't allowed to speak to it or anything. But I saw the plus and

01:24:25 ◼   ► minus buttons that you could touch for volume and I saw the Siri, I'll call it a waveform,

01:24:30 ◼   ► but the primary colored circular swirly cloud animation and assumed incorrectly that that

01:24:39 ◼   ► that was some sort of, like the equivalent

01:24:44 ◼   ► of an iPhone screen showing these things.

01:24:48 ◼   ► And that it could, in theory, show other things

01:24:52 ◼   ► under other circumstances.

01:24:55 ◼   ► And I had no idea how it worked,

01:24:56 ◼   ► other than that they said you could touch it

01:24:58 ◼   ► to do the plus/minus, but they wouldn't let us touch it,

01:25:00 ◼   ► so we couldn't see how it worked.

01:25:01 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:25:04 ◼   ► So you think I was wrong?

01:25:08 ◼   ► You think I was wrong?

01:25:09 ◼   ► - I'm not saying you're wrong on this.

01:25:10 ◼   ► - It does not, I would say I am wrong.

01:25:13 ◼   ► 'Cause I would not call the thing on top of HomePod

01:25:15 ◼   ► a touchscreen.

01:25:16 ◼   ► What Ming-Chi Kuo called it a touch panel

01:25:19 ◼   ► is probably better.

01:25:20 ◼   ► It's weird what to call it because it is,

01:25:23 ◼   ► it doesn't show arbitrary pixels.

01:25:27 ◼   ► I'm kind of curious for iFixit to get,

01:25:29 ◼   ► more curious than for most products,

01:25:31 ◼   ► just to have iFixit take this apart

01:25:33 ◼   ► because I'm curious what the hell is under there

01:25:36 ◼   ► to make the waveform.

01:25:38 ◼   ► But what we've since heard from various birdies,

01:25:42 ◼   ► not me directly, I think ATP might've had a birdie

01:25:44 ◼   ► who said it, is that there's some kind of color LCDs

01:25:48 ◼   ► under there, but it's more like, I don't know,

01:25:52 ◼   ► like light bright type things, you know,

01:25:54 ◼   ► like not pixels that could display anything that,

01:25:56 ◼   ► you know, like text.

01:25:57 ◼   ► Anything arbitrary, right.

01:25:58 ◼   ► Or arbitrary information, but it's really only meant

01:26:00 ◼   ► to create that Siri multicolored animation

01:26:04 ◼   ► and then some kind of diffuser that makes it look blurry.

01:26:08 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:26:10 ◼   ► - And like the plus and minus buttons are, I believe,

01:26:13 ◼   ► just completely hard, you know,

01:26:14 ◼   ► they're just old fashioned buttons that are, you know,

01:26:18 ◼   ► there's nothing else that--

01:26:19 ◼   ► - Pressed in plastic or whatever.

01:26:20 ◼   ► - Right, they're not arbitrary pixels,

01:26:22 ◼   ► they're just, you know, plus and minus.

01:26:24 ◼   ► - So I looked this up, and Apple refers to it,

01:26:29 ◼   ► you can go to their tech specs,

01:26:30 ◼   ► and they call it the touch surface,

01:26:33 ◼   ► which I guess would apply to pretty much anything you can touch.

01:26:37 ◼   ► But it's definitely not -- they don't refer to it as a touch screen,

01:26:42 ◼   ► because like you said, I think that to me, I guess, is the definition,

01:26:45 ◼   ► is that it can't display an arbitrary image.

01:26:50 ◼   ► And that to me is what a touch screen can do.

01:26:53 ◼   ► A touch screen ATM can display whatever you put on it.

01:26:56 ◼   ► Your phone obviously can display whatever you draw to it.

01:26:59 ◼   ► >> Touch surface. I guess that's fair.

01:27:02 ◼   ► So, touch panel sounds pretty much right to me as well.

01:27:04 ◼   ► That seems like a pretty good name for it.

01:27:06 ◼   ► Touch surface just sounds sort of meaningless, but that is the term that they're using.

01:27:10 ◼   ► Right.

01:27:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I think I was wrong.

01:27:14 ◼   ► I don't think German and Webb were right, though.

01:27:16 ◼   ► I don't think saying it doesn't include such a screen is right either,

01:27:18 ◼   ► because you can't -- there is a touch thing that they didn't mention.

01:27:23 ◼   ► Well, so the only thing that -- there, I think there --

01:27:27 ◼   ► I think it was poor writing, if anything.

01:27:28 ◼   ► They're saying the Amazon device has a true screen that displays the weather and whatever,

01:27:34 ◼   ► and the HomePod obviously does not have that. And if you just showed them side by side and said,

01:27:40 ◼   ► "This one has a screen and this one doesn't," you'd say, "Yeah, that's right." But because

01:27:44 ◼   ► they're writing about things that they didn't have images of and, I think, like I said, didn't

01:27:49 ◼   ► necessarily express it properly, then yeah, I think you're right that it was not necessarily

01:27:54 ◼   ► written the way that it should have been. - Right, you read it again, and it sounds to me

01:27:57 ◼   ► like they weren't told by someone what the HomePod does present to you, a Siri waveform

01:28:04 ◼   ► and plus and minus volume buttons, but they were told that it doesn't present to you a

01:28:10 ◼   ► what the Amazon device does.

01:28:12 ◼   ► Well, I just kicked Syrian somehow. Sorry about that. Sorry, Siri. Here's a weird thing

01:28:21 ◼   ► with the HomePod that I forgot to mention in my review. Could it happen to me today?

01:28:27 ◼   ► which is really why I forgot to write.

01:28:29 ◼   ► I'd noticed it before, but if you don't touch your HomePod

01:28:32 ◼   ► or use it in like a day, like let's say,

01:28:35 ◼   ► I was using it yesterday and I went to bed

01:28:38 ◼   ► and then I woke up today and did some work

01:28:41 ◼   ► and then I went out and then I record a podcast

01:28:44 ◼   ► and it's been like 18 hours since I've used the thing

01:28:46 ◼   ► and I go in there and if I just touch the top,

01:28:49 ◼   ► it'll just start playing whatever I left off on

01:28:52 ◼   ► like a day ago.

01:28:53 ◼   ► - 18 hours later.

01:28:54 ◼   ► - Right, and it, you know, and like, I've run into it,

01:28:58 ◼   ► and I mentioned in my review that the,

01:28:59 ◼   ► at least on the Space Gray run,

01:29:01 ◼   ► the touch surface is a fingerprint magnet,

01:29:04 ◼   ► and I kind of wish it was either matte finished

01:29:06 ◼   ► or had a better oleophobic coating.

01:29:08 ◼   ► It's, I've run into it where I look at it

01:29:10 ◼   ► and it looks like smudgy, and I wanna just,

01:29:12 ◼   ► I kinda wipe it off, and I just go to wipe it off,

01:29:15 ◼   ► and it just starts playing music real loud.

01:29:17 ◼   ► It doesn't seem,

01:29:19 ◼   ► I don't know, it doesn't seem to me like it should,

01:29:22 ◼   ► It seems like that's, I could see where it would like wake up

01:29:25 ◼   ► and maybe, maybe, you know, Siri should say hello to you

01:29:29 ◼   ► or something, if it hasn't been playing for,

01:29:33 ◼   ► I don't know what the threshold is,

01:29:34 ◼   ► but there's some threshold in ours

01:29:36 ◼   ► where if it hasn't been playing music,

01:29:39 ◼   ► I feel like just touching it should just sort of wake it up.

01:29:42 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure what wake it up means,

01:29:44 ◼   ► but I, you know, more or less the prompt you get

01:29:47 ◼   ► when you just hold the side button on the phone.

01:29:50 ◼   ► - Right, yeah.

01:29:51 ◼   ► think it should just start playing. When it is playing, of course, tapping it to pause it is

01:29:56 ◼   ► fantastic. It makes all the sense in the world. But just randomly starting to play when you touch it

01:30:02 ◼   ► is surprising.

01:30:04 ◼   ► >> Well, I'm interested to get it. I'm interested to fiddle with it. I don't know if it's gonna be

01:30:11 ◼   ► something that I wind up using or if it's something that I test with, and then that's sort of the end

01:30:15 ◼   ► of it. But like I said, I'm definitely interested to see longer term whether this is something that

01:30:20 ◼   ► you know, do you think, how about that?

01:30:22 ◼   ► Do you think they have a HomePod 2 in development already

01:30:26 ◼   ► with, I don't even know what features we think it would have

01:30:29 ◼   ► but you know, do they, do you think they have a

01:30:31 ◼   ► chain of these or is it something like the iPod HiFi

01:30:34 ◼   ► where they made one and that was it?

01:30:36 ◼   ► - I think it's more like Apple TV.

01:30:38 ◼   ► And Apple TV had, at least in its current incarnation

01:30:43 ◼   ► since it went to like a, you know, a TV OS

01:30:45 ◼   ► with an app store, it had a very obvious

01:30:48 ◼   ► next generation model with support for 4K.

01:30:51 ◼   ► I know there are other changes too,

01:30:54 ◼   ► but just specifically going, supporting 4K

01:30:57 ◼   ► was an obvious need and there's no such thing in audio.

01:31:01 ◼   ► Right, like, so I wouldn't be,

01:31:03 ◼   ► I think this is sort of like Apple TV

01:31:06 ◼   ► without even the obvious 4K upgrade

01:31:08 ◼   ► and anything that's improved on this

01:31:11 ◼   ► is all going to come on the software side

01:31:14 ◼   ► in terms of either some kind of SDK

01:31:17 ◼   ► so that other services like Spotify can be addressed directly by talking to the device,

01:31:25 ◼   ► and so that apps, like things like podcast players, like Overcast and Castro, can be

01:31:33 ◼   ► addressed by talking to the device without having your phone nearby, you know?

01:31:39 ◼   ► Or even if it's only with your phone nearby, but some way where you can just talk to it.

01:31:44 ◼   ► >> Well, so I guess the only -- so thinking about the hardware,

01:31:47 ◼   ► the only obvious thing that you could do to change it would be what we were just talking about is

01:31:51 ◼   ► having some sort of display screen on it, which given what you said about the Echo Show not --

01:31:58 ◼   ► well, I guess we don't really know. We have no idea how well that's sold or anything,

01:32:00 ◼   ► but it certainly has not been in the forefront when you're talking about the Echo. It doesn't

01:32:05 ◼   ► necessarily seem like that would be the obvious thing to do with this. So, yeah, it definitely

01:32:09 ◼   ► does seem like software is where this will get upgraded. So, that's, yeah, I don't know.

01:32:14 ◼   ► The whole thing is interesting to me because they've been talking, they've said that they've

01:32:18 ◼   ► been working on this for half a decade. And so, it's very much not, oh, we got to play catch up

01:32:24 ◼   ► with a virtual assistant. It seems more like, oh, we have this thing and we can, you know, add a

01:32:29 ◼   ► virtual assistant to it. So, we'll do that. That makes sense. But they didn't necessarily want to

01:32:35 ◼   ► enter that virtual assistant market as much as they wanted to have a high quality speaker.

01:32:39 ◼   ► Yeah. You know, and it's, you know, a lot of people, people who are already invested in

01:32:44 ◼   ► Spotify are very, very down on the thing. And I don't blame them if you really are.

01:32:48 ◼   ► And talking to a couple of, I'm not, I have like a free Spotify account that I only use for poking

01:32:53 ◼   ► around on it. But talking to various friends over the last week or two, some of them are really into

01:32:59 ◼   ► Spotify. It sounds like Spotify has some fantastic features, some really interesting features in

01:33:05 ◼   ► terms of not telling Spotify to play, you know, having something specific to play in mind, but

01:33:11 ◼   ► being able to tell Spotify what you're in the mood for and based on your previous preferences,

01:33:17 ◼   ► it's like getting a radio station that is just perfect for you and it plays things that you-

01:33:22 ◼   ► Well, it's what Pandora, you know, claimed to do a decade ago and is still around and still trying

01:33:27 ◼   ► to do. But yeah, it seems like Spotify has gotten the intelligence of music recommendations pretty

01:33:33 ◼   ► well done at this point. Right. I guess the two main things are playing things that you do like

01:33:38 ◼   ► but weren't in your mind to ask for and like, "Oh, I love this song," and be exposing you to

01:33:44 ◼   ► new music that you might like. Whereas if you only ever ask for what you like or what you already know

01:33:51 ◼   ► that you want to listen to right now, it's very different. And I'm not saying that that's how

01:33:55 ◼   ► HomePod works, I mean, although that's how mostly how I tested it.

01:34:00 ◼   ► You know, and a big factor in that, though, is the limit the current limitation of HomePod

01:34:06 ◼   ► only being tied to one iCloud account, which, you know, I spent a fair amount of time on

01:34:10 ◼   ► my review.

01:34:11 ◼   ► And it's I understand it, especially for a 1.0.

01:34:13 ◼   ► But it's, it certainly is obvious to me that the way this product should work is that,

01:34:22 ◼   ► at least in the size of a typical household

01:34:24 ◼   ► with two, three, five people,

01:34:29 ◼   ► it should be able to have five people's iCloud music accounts

01:34:34 ◼   ► and identify them by voice.

01:34:38 ◼   ► And the competing products, and you say,

01:34:40 ◼   ► well, this isn't science fiction,

01:34:43 ◼   ► but the other products already do this.

01:34:45 ◼   ► The Google products can identify people by voice

01:34:48 ◼   ► and the Amazon, and tie them to different Google accounts.

01:34:52 ◼   ► So like with the Google products,

01:34:55 ◼   ► you can tell it to add an event to your calendar,

01:34:58 ◼   ► and it adds it to your Google calendar,

01:35:00 ◼   ► 'cause it both recognizes your voice

01:35:02 ◼   ► and knows which Google account is yours,

01:35:05 ◼   ► and then I can ask it to add event to my calendar,

01:35:07 ◼   ► and it knows my voice and can add it to my calendar.

01:35:10 ◼   ► So it's not like me saying that the HomePod should do this

01:35:15 ◼   ► is asking for something outlandish,

01:35:16 ◼   ► it's something that competing products do.

01:35:19 ◼   ► And for building up--

01:35:19 ◼   ► - Are there any Apple devices besides the Mac

01:35:23 ◼   ► that do profiles?

01:35:25 ◼   ► - No, I don't think so.

01:35:26 ◼   ► - Like your phone obviously doesn't,

01:35:28 ◼   ► your phone that makes a decent amount of sense,

01:35:30 ◼   ► that's your device,

01:35:31 ◼   ► even if you have kids or something like that.

01:35:32 ◼   ► iPads are one that people have been,

01:35:35 ◼   ► I think clamoring for for years to have profiles on.

01:35:37 ◼   ► - Right from the beginning.

01:35:38 ◼   ► I remember people saying,

01:35:39 ◼   ► this would be fantastic in school,

01:35:40 ◼   ► but why can't I have profiles?

01:35:43 ◼   ► Apple TV is one where individual apps

01:35:47 ◼   ► definitely have profiles.

01:35:48 ◼   ► You know, if you load up Netflix,

01:35:49 ◼   ► it'll ask you who's watching,

01:35:51 ◼   ► but there's not an overarching profile

01:35:54 ◼   ► where you can just say, okay, now Paul's watching,

01:35:56 ◼   ► now John's watching, and just show me my apps

01:35:58 ◼   ► or show me my recommendations or whatever.

01:36:02 ◼   ► It seems like something that they don't do currently,

01:36:05 ◼   ► besides on the Mac, obviously.

01:36:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, it seems like a blind spot for the company.

01:36:08 ◼   ► I thought about that as an angle for the review,

01:36:10 ◼   ► that they're so, you know, their roots as a quote unquote

01:36:15 ◼   ► personal computer company really still show through

01:36:20 ◼   ► to today, right?

01:36:21 ◼   ► And like with a watch, it makes all the sense in the world.

01:36:24 ◼   ► You know? - Right.

01:36:25 ◼   ► - But with the TV, it makes no sense.

01:36:28 ◼   ► And even with the way that they've changed their TV app

01:36:32 ◼   ► in the last year to make it, try to make it like your hub

01:36:35 ◼   ► for watching stuff. - Right, exactly.

01:36:37 ◼   ► - From multiple sources, like pick up on this show

01:36:40 ◼   ► you were watching on Hulu or pick up on this other show

01:36:45 ◼   ► that you're watching on Amazon Prime

01:36:47 ◼   ► or watch this new movie release from iTunes.

01:36:52 ◼   ► It's like it's based on the aggregate viewing

01:36:55 ◼   ► of everybody in your house, not on you,

01:36:57 ◼   ► which really doesn't make a lot of sense.

01:36:59 ◼   ► - Doesn't make any sense, yeah.

01:37:01 ◼   ► And now I'm trying to remember, OS 9 and earlier,

01:37:04 ◼   ► did that not have users?

01:37:06 ◼   ► - No, definitely did not.

01:37:08 ◼   ► - There might have been some kind of weird,

01:37:11 ◼   ► cheaty move towards the end that was like in a,

01:37:16 ◼   ► I wish Syracuse were here, but it was,

01:37:18 ◼   ► there might have been-- - That's what I'm trying to,

01:37:19 ◼   ► I'm trying to go back in time 20 years at this point,

01:37:22 ◼   ► but LS-10 is clearly where,

01:37:24 ◼   ► that's definitely built around individual users

01:37:27 ◼   ► and you have a home folder

01:37:28 ◼   ► and you can have 10 home folders on your computer

01:37:31 ◼   ► if you have 10 people in your house

01:37:32 ◼   ► and everybody can use the same computer.

01:37:33 ◼   ► - And everybody can be equal.

01:37:35 ◼   ► You can even make everybody an admin.

01:37:37 ◼   ► It's not-- - An admin on it, exactly.

01:37:39 ◼   ► - You can't, you're not even limited to,

01:37:41 ◼   ► well, one person can be the admin

01:37:43 ◼   ► and everybody else can be a non-admin user.

01:37:45 ◼   ► You can even grant admin privileges to everybody in the house

01:37:48 ◼   ► if you want and trust them with the computer.

01:37:50 ◼   ► And the non-admin users aren't really limited

01:37:55 ◼   ► from what they can do other than modifying

01:37:57 ◼   ► the system software and installing apps and stuff like that.

01:38:01 ◼   ► - Right, whereas the TV-- - It truly is--

01:38:02 ◼   ► - Like you said, that's the big one to me,

01:38:04 ◼   ► that the TV and the iPad,

01:38:06 ◼   ► where these sorts of things make perfect sense,

01:38:08 ◼   ► but I think you're right, it's not in their DNA

01:38:11 ◼   ► as a personal computing company,

01:38:12 ◼   ► and I think in OS X it sort of happened almost incidentally

01:38:15 ◼   ► because they built it on Unix.

01:38:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, and Netflix has a great interface for it.

01:38:20 ◼   ► Netflix, I'm not even quite sure what their algorithm is,

01:38:23 ◼   ► but their algorithm seems to be,

01:38:25 ◼   ► if you haven't fired up Netflix,

01:38:28 ◼   ► if you've, you know, we've got three family members

01:38:29 ◼   ► on one Netflix account, and you know,

01:38:32 ◼   ► you fire up the Apple TV

01:38:33 ◼   ► and you haven't watched Netflix in a while,

01:38:35 ◼   ► it'll say who's watching, and there's the three of us,

01:38:38 ◼   ► and you pick who it is, and then it shows stuff

01:38:40 ◼   ► based on what you've watched before.

01:38:42 ◼   ► And it seems like if you have watched recently,

01:38:46 ◼   ► it just assumes that you're the person

01:38:48 ◼   ► who was watching recently, but if you want to,

01:38:50 ◼   ► you can go back and manually change it to the other person.

01:38:55 ◼   ► - Right, if you dip out of it to go back to the home screen,

01:38:57 ◼   ► it doesn't immediately ask you who it is again.

01:39:00 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:39:00 ◼   ► - But after, yeah, you're right, I don't know

01:39:02 ◼   ► what the time is, because I've never thought about it,

01:39:04 ◼   ► because it's always just worked the way I expected it to.

01:39:07 ◼   ► - Oh my God, it was like a year ago,

01:39:09 ◼   ► I had to sit Jonas down and say,

01:39:11 ◼   ► you know what, don't be lazy,

01:39:13 ◼   ► you've gotta switch this goddamn thing.

01:39:14 ◼   ► 'Cause my Netflix thing is--

01:39:16 ◼   ► - Oh, you're getting the worst recommendations

01:39:17 ◼   ► in the world, right?

01:39:18 ◼   ► - It was filled up with 30 seasons of Friends.

01:39:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:39:24 ◼   ► - I think Amy told me this, like Friends got big

01:39:27 ◼   ► with the middle school crowd last year.

01:39:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, like last year--

01:39:30 ◼   ► - I don't understand.

01:39:31 ◼   ► - It was like a nationwide craze.

01:39:33 ◼   ► Jonas watched the entire series of Friends

01:39:36 ◼   ► from first episode to last twice.

01:39:38 ◼   ► But he did like the first season of it,

01:39:42 ◼   ► or first year of it, or first run through the whole thing

01:39:44 ◼   ► on my Netflix account, which I honestly have no interest

01:39:48 ◼   ► in rewatching Friends, and it really,

01:39:52 ◼   ► he watched a couple other stupid things too,

01:39:54 ◼   ► and it was all, he understood it, that's the worst part,

01:39:56 ◼   ► he totally understood it.

01:39:57 ◼   ► He just didn't feel like going back, you know, one level.

01:40:00 ◼   ► - Two clicks to get back to his profile.

01:40:02 ◼   ► - Son of a bitch.

01:40:03 ◼   ► Kids are angry.

01:40:06 ◼   ► Hey, let me take a break here

01:40:07 ◼   ► and thank our third and final sponsor of the show.

01:40:09 ◼   ► It's our good friends at Fracture.

01:40:11 ◼   ► Fracture is a company that you send them your photos,

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01:40:18 ◼   ► And they do this, each one is handmade with love and care

01:40:22 ◼   ► in Gainesville, Florida from US Source Materials.

01:40:24 ◼   ► And let me tell you something,

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01:40:27 ◼   ► said it I think in early December, but certainly November,

01:40:30 ◼   ► These things make incredibly thoughtful, unique gifts.

01:40:33 ◼   ► It's win, win, win, because you get,

01:40:37 ◼   ► you get an easy place to go to buy the gift.

01:40:44 ◼   ► The person you give it to, your friend, your family,

01:40:47 ◼   ► who you give it to, gets a very thoughtful gift

01:40:49 ◼   ► that's much more personal than anything

01:40:52 ◼   ► you could just buy out of a store,

01:40:54 ◼   ► and they'll appreciate it.

01:40:55 ◼   ► I'm telling you, people love getting these things.

01:40:57 ◼   ► And then the best part about it is,

01:41:00 ◼   ► is you can just keep going back to the well

01:41:02 ◼   ► and giving them as gifts again and again and again.

01:41:04 ◼   ► Like I've said before, the worst thing about when you,

01:41:06 ◼   ► if you're a bad gift giver like I am,

01:41:08 ◼   ► and you finally give somebody who you really care

01:41:10 ◼   ► about a gift that they're like, and that they tear up,

01:41:13 ◼   ► and they're like, this is fantastic, thank you so much.

01:41:15 ◼   ► Well, now you've gotta top it, right?

01:41:17 ◼   ► And you can't, if it's like a store bought item,