47: Extreme Minimal Guns
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Krista Murgen you wrote an article you had an article on Macworld this week is why I invited you to be on the show why?
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Ios7 design is bold but flawed
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A lot of attention for this article. I think I was really surprised by that that was it was really
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Flattering it's very nice. I
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Think that there's more that you could say about it though in my opinion sure
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You describe it. I don't want to put words in your mouth
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mouth, but you describe the move, you know, and it is kind of hard to describe just what
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exactly they've done. It's very clear from the moment they first showed that video on
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stage that they did something very drastic.
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But once you start to want to articulate it, it's kind of hard.
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It's not flat. It's not in depth. So you call it faux 3D to real 2.5D.
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Right, yeah. And that comes from just what I used to do in After Effects. So I read Matt
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and Reece's article about multi-plane technology. I was like, "Yes, exactly. That's exactly
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it." And so I was really excited by this, actually, just in terms of I really want to
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design for it because it sort of combines my past animation experience with user interface
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design and I just think it's super cool. But yeah, so they've stripped away the sort of,
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they were going for 3D but it was flat two dimensional elements and they were sort of
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static on the screen and so they had to rely on these really bubbly icons with a lot of
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gloss and really deep shadows and stuff. And now that they can have sort of two and a half
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D where yes, it's flat planes but when you tilt the phone you can sort of see how things
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moving relationship to each other. So now that they have that, they can strip away all
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the unnecessary fake 3D stuff, which I think is really cool. Because the fake 3D stuff,
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it really wouldn't work with this, because as soon as you would tilt the phone, the shadows
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and the gloss wouldn't move with it. So the illusion would be totally broken that way.
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So it really, this sort of flat, two and a half D sort of thing really works best with
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flat planes.
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Dave Asprey And I think that the fact that you have an
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animation background and I think that it's not a coincidence that you articulated this
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change very well.
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And I think part of that is the fact that part of the design team at Apple behind this
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have come from not from a traditional user interface background but from a motion graphics
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And I don't think it's a coincidence at all that like the movie they used to open WWDC
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which had nothing to do with iOS 7, but it was chock full of really interesting motion
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Oh, beautiful. Yeah, it was gorgeous. Yeah, I loved it. I was really excited just to see
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that and thought it was great that they opened with that.
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In some sense, I'd like to see some of that come to iOS 7.
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Oh, yeah, definitely. That'd be great.
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There's like a fluidity to those videos that I think would fit right in with iOS 7 but
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isn't quite there yet. I think it might just be a factor of time.
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Right. I don't know really much about the technical aspect. I don't know if it's
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a matter of just there being limited ability to actually do such fluid animations and do
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it in real time on the phone, or if it's a matter of they just haven't perfected
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it and honed it that much yet. But I definitely think it's going in that direction. It'll
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become more and more fluid that way. Hopefully, I think it would graduate possibly to a more
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3D interface where you're moving through folders and groups of apps basically on a
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Z-axis through the phone. I think that would be neat. I could see it happening. It's
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just sort of an interim step.
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Dave: My favorite new thing I think in all of iOS 7 is to go from home screen to a folder
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to an app that's in the folder and then go back out.
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Yeah, I love it. Yeah, it totally reminds me of the Powers of Ten movie.
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Yeah. That's what you said in the article, and I agree with that. You're zooming in
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in a certain way, and it feels fun. It makes me want to put more apps in folders.
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Yeah, totally. Yeah, it feels like you really are moving that way, whereas before, things
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would just sort of move up and down. Yes, you were sort of getting the idea of going
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going into something, but not completely. You know what I mean? It's better at writing
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than talking.
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No, that's okay. But I think that sometimes you can make the logical argument for it in
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writing better, but I feel like when talking about things, you can make the feel argument
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for things better. That's why I do a podcast. I don't know if it's true or not. But I do
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I do think too, I think that the fact that there's people with a serious professional
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motion graphics background behind this is what adds the rigor to the rules about the
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planes in iOS 7.
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I mean, yeah, in iOS 7.
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Because I've seen people say that, "No, there's no difference with iOS 6 in that regard.
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It's really just stylistic chrome because things slid under nav bars before."
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But in the old days, designers used to cheat.
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My favorite example of that is the linen because sometimes linen was over like in Notification
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You'd pull it down and linen is over.
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But then you'd open a folder and linen was under.
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So where is the linen?
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Where is the linen?
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Right, exactly.
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Yeah, that's a really good point.
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And you can cheat because you can make software do anything.
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You can have it be over and under.
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It's almost like a brainteaser or like an Escher puzzle.
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But it takes away from the satisfaction.
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It doesn't make it feel like you're using a system.
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It makes it feel like it's all a little arbitrary.
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And I feel like Apple has really specifically addressed that problem.
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Regardless of whether you prefer brushed glass as the sort of look and feel of the layer
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or you like the fake linen texture of the layer, at the very least, I don't see how
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anybody could argue that having a more logical set of rules as to what goes on what layer
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is not a win for the system.
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No, yeah, I think that's a really good point.
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And I think actually the blurred sort of frosted glass thing makes a lot of sense because you
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could have sort of infinite layers because it's always whatever is underneath of it,
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you know, is underneath of it.
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So that sort of, like it always makes sense, whereas linen, it sort of, it felt like it
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should be under and so then when it was over it was confusing.
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I don't know.
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Evan has a lot of problems with just the rampant sort of tons of use of blur sort of everywhere
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throughout the system, but I don't mind it so much yet. We'll see how I feel about
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it in another couple of months.
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Well, I think that gets to Craig Hockenberry's point, which I keep making every week on the
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show, but that it goes to the 3D effects in the original version of Aqua. Once you add
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I think probably the right way to go is to go a little overboard and then dial it back
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a year from now in iOS 8.
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But I think Nevin's probably right that it's overboard right now.
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But I think it might be the right way to go in the first version that goes this route.
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I have a very specific question for you, and I've been thinking about this.
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And I don't think I've looked in what Apple has written so far for the human interface
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And they don't really have like an iOS 7 human interface guide yet.
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They have sort of a transition guide.
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But there's nowhere near as much documentation as I had sort of assumed there was when I
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first logged into the ADC account at WWDC.
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And it seemed like there was a lot there.
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And I was like, "Okay.
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When I get home from WWDC, I got to read all this."
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And then I read it all.
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like, "Wait, that was only like 20 pages." Here's a specific question. In all of Apple's
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apps in iOS 7, the ones that have all been updated for this new look, they use a white,
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mostly solid, semi-translucent nav bar. They pick different—they can forget what they
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call them—tint colors, something like that.
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Nicole: Tint colors, yeah. UI tint.
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So mail, the button to go back to your inbox is blue and calendar, it's red and notes,
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it's yellow.
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Do you think that white nav bar is Apple's intent for that all iOS 7 apps to use that
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and only pick a color for text or do you think colored nav bars are still going to be a thing?
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They'll just be flat, semi-translucent.
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Just be clear?
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they'll still be colored nav bars and that they'll just use the blur. I can't remember
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what presentation video it was, and I watched a few of the WWDC presentation videos, and
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they gave specific instructions for how to color the nav bar and keep the translucency
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and blur happenings and still control the tint color as well. I think that they're
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not totally opposed to that. I don't think that they're wanting everyone to use the
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white. I think all of Apple's stuff will probably, for the most part, stick with white until
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– I don't know, until they decide to break out into something different. Maybe not this
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time, but in the future, another big update. But yeah, I think other people and third-party
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apps will definitely use colored NavVirus still, but just using the translucency and
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blur still will be – that will be the thing.
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and removing exaggerated 3D edges underneath the scrolling content beneath it, just having
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it sit there right on top.
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Yeah, I think so.
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Like Nike will still use a vibrant red and Yelp will use red and who else has a distinctive
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color like that? Lots of apps have distinctive colors like that.
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Sure, a lot of them do. I think that's a big part of knowing where you are as far as being
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in a third-party app. It's just a big part of the color screen tells you what the app's
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identity is, sort of, so I can just, at a glance, when I pick my iPhone back up, be
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like, "Oh, yeah, I'm in Mint," or whatever. I think that'll—and stripping away all
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of this other stuff, I think, yeah, we're going to rely a lot more on color. I think
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having colored nav bars will be a big thing.
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Dave: Yeah. I've come around on that. I left WWDC thinking, "My God, everything's
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got to go white because that's what's going to fit in." Then as the weeks have
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settled in and I've used the beta more and more, I start to see that the white isn't
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really, I don't think, supposed to be system-wide. It's more like the blue-gray gradient.
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Yeah, it's like the defaulty Chrome.
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Like the Chrome that Safari and the settings app and mail used on the old iOS.
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Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
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That's what the white is.
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And Apple's just using the default Chrome because that's what the system should do.
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One of the other things that's annoyed me over the years is the way that when the iPad
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came out, they made certain changes there, yet didn't, never until iOS 7, never unified
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it between the iPhone and iPad.
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So for example, the one that's always bugged me is that on the iPad, Safari is gray, whereas
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on the iPhone, it's that blue-gray.
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The blue-gray, yeah.
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And I always thought that the gray-gray was better for Safari, that Safari was an app
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that really should be color neutral.
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Yeah, that's a good point.
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Always bugged me.
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Yeah, I wonder, and I actually haven't looked at Beta 2 on an iPad yet.
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Evan said he looked at it on iPad Mini and it didn't look great because of the text rendering
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and the non-retina screen, but that's all I've heard on that and I actually haven't
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seen Beta 2 on iPad.
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Yeah, it's sort of NDA territory, but I don't know. It just seems like they have a long
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I don't know what they're going to do. I talked about this a little bit last week, but I wonder
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what you think too is in past years they've always shipped new iPhone and iPad hardware
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with a new version of the OS. Although sometimes iPads would come out with like the original
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iPad came out with like iOS 3.2 or something like that.
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It had a weird number.
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Sort of a cycle, yeah.
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But the iPhone has always coincided. New iPhone hardware has always coincided with a new .0
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of iOS and the new phone has never been able to be like back like if you bought
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it if you buy a new iPhone 5 today you can't put iOS 5 on it it was made to
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only run iOS 6 so presumably the new I've any new iPhone or iPad that comes
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out this year would only run iOS 7 right but I can't help but wonder if they have
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a backup plan that just in case iOS 7 isn't ready to ship in October.
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That's a good thought. Yeah.
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Maybe they would ship the new phone with iOS 6 and say, "Look, iOS 7 is close and it'll
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be a free update for everybody," which would kind of be embarrassing for Apple.
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Yeah. I couldn't see. Honestly, seriously, I couldn't see them doing that. Actually,
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I would see them delaying the release of the iPhone until iOS 7 was really ready instead
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of releasing it with iOS 6 just because they trotted out iOS 7 early.
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I don't know.
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I don't really know how they make decisions at Apple, but I couldn't really see them doing
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They trotted out iOS 7 here and made a big deal about it.
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It's even made its way into the mainstream media about what a big change it is.
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My mom was reading about it.
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If my mom is reading about it, then it's a bigger deal.
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Well, and it's literally the front page of Apple.com has been for the whole month since
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Right, exactly.
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I can't really see them releasing a new phone without iOS 7 being ready to go that day.
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But I also can't see them missing the holiday quarter with a new iPhone.
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Yeah, good point.
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I feel like that's the bit, you know, it's like this is one of those irresistible forces
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meets an immovable object type thing.
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And I feel like in this case, the immovable object of, you know, iOS 7 needing to be on
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the new iPhone loses to the irresistible force of they absolutely need a new phone for the
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quarter and probably new iPads too for the holiday quarter. Ultimately, obviously, what
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they would want is to ship the new hardware and have iOS 7 be ready.
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Well, sure. Yeah.
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I just feel like this is the one year where if the OS is not going to be ready in time,
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this is the year because the change is so truly dramatic.
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Yeah, it is. It's so huge. It's so different. I'm really impressed that they have done such
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a monumental overhaul in such a short amount of time.
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It's incredible. When you work on individual products, like single app, and you know how
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long it takes, you just think you kind of get a sense of how much work it would be to
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change every single pixel in the OS.
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Yeah, and not just the pixels, but the fundamental, just like the physics and all the animation
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and everything. That's so much bigger. I mean, it's crazy. I can't imagine how much work
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went into that.
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Dave: The other night, I was watching TV and got bored. I went through my testing phone
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that's running iOS 7 and tried to find anything in the system that hadn't changed, just the
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appearance of. The only thing I could come up with is the text completions. If you misspell
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a word and it lets you cancel. There's like that little white half capsule with a little
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I don't think that changed. Although maybe it did. If it did, it only changed suddenly.
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Okay. I've actually got two things here. I'm going to check them out. Hang on one second.
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I'm running iOS 7 on my phone because Olive's iPod Touch couldn't be updated to iOS 7.
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So, you're using it on your daily phone?
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I am, yeah, which is I almost never do that actually.
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I always let Nevin do that and then I just sort of look at what he's doing.
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I'm just like, "You're an idiot."
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But I couldn't.
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Yeah, I had to do it this time just because it's such a huge change.
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That's one of the ways that I know that I'm getting over.
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And it's funny too because you get older and you should be less scared of such things because
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you have more to lose when you're young.
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But now, I don't know, somehow getting older makes me way more cautious.
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I remember two years ago at WWDC and it was Monday and it was like 5 o'clock and a bunch
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of us met at the W for cocktails and Marco Arment came in and we were all talking about
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I guess it was iOS 5 at the time and everybody was wondering about something.
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Marco was like, "Here I have it.
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I've already installed it."
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We were all like, "Whoa, you're nuts on your regular phone?"
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He was like, "Sure, why not?"
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He took it out and he showed us a thing.
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It was like, we were all like, "Wow, that's cool.
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Glad we have someone to play with it."
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Then somebody else did something else and all of a sudden his phone went to the Apple
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logo and restarted.
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Marco was like, "Oh, this might be a problem."
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So it has changed a tiny, tiny bit. I can send you a screenshot. So it's the same shape,
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but in iOS 7, there is not the big shadow around it, of course, and it no longer – it
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had a blue stroke and – is that a little bit of a glow? No. Okay. It's like a one-pixel
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blue stroke in iOS 6 and a big drop shadow and a smaller X, actually. So the X is slightly
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larger and a lighter gray, and that's about it.
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So then everything has changed.
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So if anybody else out there, anybody listening, I would be interested.
00:18:50
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Hit me on Twitter and if you can find any aspect of iOS 7 that has not changed the appearance.
00:18:58
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I don't think there's anything.
00:19:00
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I think every single pixel.
00:19:01
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I think maybe…
00:19:04
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I'm looking at photo stream shared from someone else and the little like button looks
00:19:12
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like it's the same. The little smiley face. No, it's different. No, never mind. I lied.
00:19:19
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It's flattened. The old one is slightly, has a little gloss on it and it's shinier.
00:19:25
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Dave: One of my favorite changes and it's one that I've thought ever since the first
00:19:29
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iPhone in 2007, I always thought was too much in bad taste is that I made that joke about
00:19:35
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Marco and you get that Apple logo when the phone restarts. The old Apple logo in iOS
00:19:40
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like the most overbearing…
00:19:42
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Oh God, that chrome on the Apple logo and it's gone and it's so much better.
00:19:47
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It was like three light sources.
00:19:49
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Yeah, and like a huge…
00:19:53
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I never liked that.
00:19:54
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Even from day one when everything was like bubbly and shiny and stuff, I looked at that
00:19:59
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and it was just like…
00:20:00
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The Apple logo in particular, it was so blingy because it wasn't just a gloss.
00:20:04
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It was like six times a gloss, you know, with…
00:20:08
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It was two shadows and all this stuff.
00:20:10
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And now, it's just a flat white Apple logo, which is to me what it always should have
00:20:16
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Yeah, it's great now.
00:20:19
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I miss the battery illustration.
00:20:22
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It used to be so pretty.
00:20:27
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And the new one, yeah, the new one does feel a little, I don't know, it just doesn't…
00:20:31
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Like the plugged-in charging screen?
00:20:33
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Yeah, it's, I don't know.
00:20:36
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I mean, I have lots of little grapes, so going back to talking about white overlays and stuff
00:20:42
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like that. With photos, I really don't like it. And again, with photo streams, when you're
00:20:46
◼
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looking at the activity on a photo stream, there's a white overlay and it fades out on
00:20:51
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your photos. And it used to do that, but in black. And it just, wow, white over a photo
00:20:57
◼
►
just doesn't work for me at all fading out. Like black fading out of a photo is like,
00:21:02
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►
Okay, fine. But anyway, I don't know. There's a lot of little things that I'm just like,
00:21:07
◼
►
"Yeah, I think that makes sense though." It's the same reason why I think like in
00:21:10
◼
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iPhoto, it defaults to a dark background in between you, like when you're at thumbnail
00:21:16
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►
view. The reason why photo apps like Aperture and Lightroom tend to use dark backgrounds,
00:21:25
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►
it somehow is more neutral to have a black or dark—if there is any kind of chrome or
00:21:33
◼
►
border or something like that, it's more neutral, whereas anything white seems like
00:21:38
◼
►
you're drawing attention away from the photo.
00:21:42
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►
Lauren: Yeah. It just doesn't work with a lot of photos. I don't know. I think black
00:21:49
◼
►
is definitely nicer. But again, maybe I'll change my mind eventually. It is more—I
00:21:55
◼
►
It's more museum or gallery-like to have.
00:21:59
◼
►
Like if you're looking in your photos app and you're looking at collections or whatever,
00:22:02
◼
►
it's more slightly, I guess, more gallery-esque.
00:22:06
◼
►
But yeah, it's not as nice, I think.
00:22:10
◼
►
I do like the new photos app a lot though.
00:22:13
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►
And I do think that there's a case where regardless of what you think of the aesthetic changes
00:22:18
◼
►
in 7, here's a case where they've obviously put a lot of time and thought into just what
00:22:22
◼
►
it means to be a photo app on an iPhone in 2013, which is that, look, let's face it,
00:22:29
◼
►
you're going to take like 1500 pictures this year and they're all going to be on your phone.
00:22:35
◼
►
How can we deal with that in a better way?
00:22:37
◼
►
Cheryl Kane-Piasecki Yeah, the collections are great. Years to collections
00:22:41
◼
►
to moments, I think it's super cool.
00:22:43
◼
►
Dave Asprey And it's surprising how useful those tiny,
00:22:46
◼
►
tiny thumbnails in year can be because you can pick out some spots, some shots. I mean,
00:22:52
◼
►
you're not going to be able to. If you shoot something in a dark room, it's just going
00:22:55
◼
►
to be black. But there are some like if you shoot like 10 shots on a certain like a sunny
00:23:00
◼
►
day or something like that, they stick out and you're like, "That's what I'm looking
00:23:04
◼
►
Mm-hmm. Definitely. Yeah. It works well. It's kind of surprising how much detail your eye
00:23:13
◼
►
can see at such a small size.
00:23:16
◼
►
Dave Asprey Yeah, totally. I think it plays into the retina
00:23:19
◼
►
screen. I don't know if it's actually pixel for pixel the same, but it's like maybe the
00:23:25
◼
►
same number of pixels in what used to be a full-size thumbnail. And even at a tiny size,
00:23:31
◼
►
you can kind of pick it out. I want to get back to your suggestions for where you think
00:23:39
◼
►
IOS 7 is flawed. But first, first I'm going to take a take a break here. Thank our first
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sponsor for sponsor this week is an event apart. This pond this podcast was sponsored
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by an event apart and they are the design conference for people who make websites with
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Great conference I said before, I've been to an event apart several times one of the
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best run conferences I've ever I've ever been to.
00:25:02
◼
►
thanks to them. So we've gotten to the bold part of iOS 7. Explain to me your case for
00:25:12
◼
►
what's flawed about what Apple has shown us so far about iOS 7.
00:25:16
◼
►
Oh, so I mean, and it's a lot of little things, but just the big ones where the type, which
00:25:22
◼
►
actually I've gotten used to, so I'm using just the default settings for typography now,
00:25:29
◼
►
And there's a setting for higher contrast backgrounds, which I had turned on originally.
00:25:35
◼
►
So I've turned that off because it's sort of just like, well, I should use it the way
00:25:37
◼
►
that people are going to see it.
00:25:40
◼
►
And it's not bothering me as much as it was originally, but it's still, especially
00:25:45
◼
►
in the places where they use ultralight, which isn't, you know, they don't use it a ton,
00:25:49
◼
►
it's usually like they use light a lot more than they use ultralight.
00:25:52
◼
►
But where they do, it's sort of like, wow, that's really light.
00:25:56
◼
►
And then even just like reading mail, and it's just really light and kind of hard
00:26:03
◼
►
And I feel like, well, legibility is so hugely important.
00:26:06
◼
►
And I know on a retina screen, you see a lot more and things that wouldn't work on other
00:26:11
◼
►
screens can work here.
00:26:13
◼
►
But yeah, I feel like Helvetica Light wasn't a great choice.
00:26:18
◼
►
I made the case a couple months ago that, maybe back towards the winter, that the future
00:26:25
◼
►
of UI design, to see the future of UI design, look at print design.
00:26:33
◼
►
And things that, you know, like, because I remember when we first got like high DPI laser
00:26:36
◼
►
printers back in the 90s, and you could print these grayscale gradients that looked good
00:26:42
◼
►
because the dots were finally fine enough.
00:26:43
◼
►
Well, then we all used them in everything we designed.
00:26:47
◼
►
Everything had a gradient-colored background.
00:26:50
◼
►
And then within a year or two, we all realized, my God, we're way overusing these gradients
00:26:55
◼
►
in our things.
00:26:58
◼
►
And I feel like that's where UI design got to from the iPhone through now is sort of,
00:27:06
◼
►
you know, we can do these incredibly cool effects, but then we overuse them too much
00:27:12
◼
►
and then dial it back.
00:27:14
◼
►
But I think that if you follow that, and I still think that's right, I think you can
00:27:18
◼
►
say, "Well, how many people in print design use Helvetica Light as the body font?"
00:27:23
◼
►
Cheryl Kane-Piasecki Right.
00:27:24
◼
►
No, that's not really done there.
00:27:27
◼
►
Dave Asprey No.
00:27:28
◼
►
I'd say try to think of a magazine that you read that uses a font as fine as Helvetica
00:27:34
◼
►
Light, and I can't think of any.
00:27:36
◼
►
I mean, maybe some advertising, you know, like, you know, it does have a sort of luxury
00:27:42
◼
►
brand feel, Helvetica Light.
00:27:43
◼
►
Yeah, and it's beautiful. But yeah, it's just like the reading rhythm isn't great.
00:27:51
◼
►
Your eye doesn't pick out letters, I think, as distinctly as it could with another font.
00:27:57
◼
►
No, I've always thought of it as a display font, and by which display font means something
00:28:04
◼
►
that you'd use for headlines or subheads or big, like for signage or titling, not for
00:28:13
◼
►
body copy. Because when you pick a font for body copy and let's face it, reading your
00:28:18
◼
►
email is a good use for a font that is supposed to be readable. That's where good typographers
00:28:28
◼
►
or font designers, they make choices that maybe aren't as aesthetically pleasing but
00:28:34
◼
►
are more about the, you know, like being a workhorse and doing the right thing for the
00:28:42
◼
►
user to make it legible as opposed to making it beautiful.
00:28:46
◼
►
You know, it's a trade-off.
00:28:47
◼
►
I mean, you want—obviously, you want it to be both, but—
00:28:50
◼
►
Yeah, of course.
00:28:52
◼
►
But legibility has to come first if you're talking about a body, you know, body font.
00:28:59
◼
►
And so I do think, you know, I don't mind the light as much as some people I know.
00:29:04
◼
►
you linked to and quoted Eric Spiekerman, who is very much opposed to it. I think he's
00:29:11
◼
►
a little biased though because he's actually—I think he's great. I mean, he's obviously
00:29:14
◼
►
a great designer and a great type designer. Overall, I've never met him, but I'm a
00:29:20
◼
►
big fan of his work. But famously, he's sort of maybe not against Helvetica, but he sort
00:29:26
◼
►
of has an antipathy for Helvetica.
00:29:28
◼
►
Definitely, yeah. He does. He articulates the case against Helvetica as well as anybody in the movie Helvetica. Gary Hustwitz, amazing and fantastic documentary.
00:29:41
◼
►
Yes. And that's any weight of Helvetica. And so, Spiekerman's a little bit biased in that regard, but I think with regard to the light in particular, he's pretty spot on though.
00:29:55
◼
►
What was his description?
00:30:00
◼
►
He said, he called it a smooth, unreadable carpet, you know, when you see a lot of it
00:30:06
◼
►
at once in body.
00:30:08
◼
►
He also said, "Ein a shitstorm," in the little YouTube clip that I linked to, which
00:30:12
◼
►
I actually said in the comments someone had translated what he said, but I actually just
00:30:17
◼
►
started watching it.
00:30:20
◼
►
It's kind of like having aphasia where you recognize a word every now and then, and he
00:30:24
◼
►
a lot of English words sort of intermittently. But anyway, that was fun.
00:30:31
◼
►
It is true. I think that overall it is going to be seen in hindsight as a trendy aspect
00:30:40
◼
►
of iOS 7. I think no matter what they do between now and when they ship come fall, maybe they'll
00:30:47
◼
►
dial back some of it, which would be great, I think. But I think overall though, it's
00:30:52
◼
►
It's still going to be a lot of Helvetica, Ultralight, and in displaced cases and light
00:30:58
◼
►
and in reading cases.
00:31:01
◼
►
I think in years come by, we're going to look back at iOS 7 as being way too trendy on the
00:31:06
◼
►
light font direction.
00:31:07
◼
►
Lauren Ruffin Yes.
00:31:09
◼
►
I hope that it is and that it changes in the future.
00:31:14
◼
►
You sort of figure that out.
00:31:16
◼
►
Dave Asprey I noticed Apple too in their marketing materials.
00:31:20
◼
►
Since Iowa 7 has come out, I've noticed it more and more, has been using a lot more
00:31:25
◼
►
of a very light-stroked version of Myriad for their own stuff, their own marketing materials.
00:31:34
◼
►
At first, I thought that they – I knew they started using it, I think, with like the MacBook
00:31:38
◼
►
Air or something like that, where it was meant – the actual light weight of the font was
00:31:42
◼
►
meant to convey the lightness of the actual hardware product you were buying.
00:31:47
◼
►
But it looks like they're using it everywhere and it's sort of – I almost feel like
00:31:51
◼
►
it's a fad that's infected Apple is this desire to go with these really light stroke
00:31:56
◼
►
versions of their fonts.
00:31:58
◼
►
Yeah. Oh, that may be true. But it does really mirror the hardware really well. But yeah,
00:32:06
◼
►
that's not always useful.
00:32:09
◼
►
Right. No, and I think that too because I keep as, you know, now that I have my old
00:32:15
◼
►
iPhone 4S running iOS 7 and I'm trying to use it during the day. I don't have a SIM
00:32:19
◼
►
card for it but I, you know, use it while I'm at home at Wi-Fi as much as I can to
00:32:22
◼
►
get used to it. And then I switch to my iPhone 5 and every time I pick up the 5, I'm like,
00:32:27
◼
►
"My God, it's so thin and light." It's like it's back to day one and I'm shocked
00:32:30
◼
►
at how much thinner they made it.
00:32:33
◼
►
But I kind of feel like if they went with Helvetica regular or Helvetica Noi regular,
00:32:39
◼
►
you know, whatever.
00:32:41
◼
►
I'm not going to say that I don't care about the difference, but you know what I mean.
00:32:45
◼
►
For body text, just for like the body of emails, chat messages, I don't think that it would
00:32:53
◼
►
ruin the effect.
00:32:55
◼
►
No, not at all.
00:32:57
◼
►
I think that would be really helpful.
00:32:59
◼
►
So they do use regular. Actually, so they have dynamic type. They try to, as they use
00:33:05
◼
►
it at smaller sizes, they thicken it up. But I feel like they didn't do that enough. They
00:33:11
◼
►
don't think enough at normal reading sizes, I guess. I think it's a cool thing that they
00:33:18
◼
►
do, and that they're aware of that. But I think just regular would be great for things
00:33:25
◼
►
Dave Asprey Yeah, and I've even seen people be confused
00:33:29
◼
►
about what that setting does, where I've seen a couple of people think that the dynamic
00:33:33
◼
►
type setting is about making the type thicker.
00:33:35
◼
►
Adrienne Asprey Well, as it gets smaller, it changes the
00:33:41
◼
►
Dave Asprey A little tiny bit, but I think it's only
00:33:43
◼
►
if you dial it down to the smallest size, then in some cases, it'll switch to Helvetica
00:33:48
◼
►
regular weight instead of lightweight. But for the most part, you're still getting Helvetica
00:33:52
◼
►
a light at a smaller size. Whereas, and I think what's telling about the confusion people
00:33:57
◼
►
have over that is that I think a lot of people, when they're faced with reading their mail
00:34:03
◼
►
on iOS 7, they don't think this font's too small. They think this font's too thin.
00:34:08
◼
►
Cheryl Kane-Piasecki, PhD Fin. Yeah, it's too wispy.
00:34:10
◼
►
Dave Asprey Yes, wispy.
00:34:11
◼
►
Cheryl Kane-Piasecki, PhD It just doesn't read well. And the icons, sort
00:34:14
◼
►
of like the toolbar icons, I mean, not like app icons, they really reflect that, and not
00:34:19
◼
►
in a good way either, in my opinion. Things like the share icon, oh, the bookmarks icon
00:34:24
◼
►
in Safari. So, it has like the same weight as Helvetica Lite, just looking at it, but
00:34:32
◼
►
it's also really hard to distinguish. When I first saw that bookmarks icon, I was like,
00:34:36
◼
►
"What is that? What is that supposed to be?" It didn't read as a bookmarks icon at all.
00:34:41
◼
►
It sort of took me like 10 seconds to parse it. And that's happened with a couple things.
00:34:45
◼
►
Yeah, but even just looking at the icons, like right now I'm in male, looking at the
00:34:51
◼
►
icons, and they definitely match and they look balanced with the typography there, but
00:34:57
◼
►
they're not prettier icons or nicer icons to me.
00:35:01
◼
►
Yeah, I don't like that style either.
00:35:03
◼
►
And the way I've expressed it is that to me, I think the icons should sort of have the
00:35:08
◼
►
same feel that Helvetica has.
00:35:10
◼
►
They have the same—like you said, they have the same stroke width as Helvetica Ultralight,
00:35:13
◼
►
they don't look like if Helvetica had a new Unicode glyph for iOS sharing icon. It wouldn't
00:35:22
◼
►
look like that box with the arrow.
00:35:23
◼
►
It wouldn't look like that. The box with the arrow is funky. I really liked their old share
00:35:29
◼
►
icon actually. Maybe that would be too heavy for this new overhaul of a system, but something
00:35:38
◼
►
in between. Again, it's a little too far, like you were saying.
00:35:43
◼
►
Yeah, and I think that they actually-- that's one of those things where I feel like they
00:35:47
◼
►
could redraw the icon, but they've gone too far. It is still an arrow coming out of a
00:35:52
◼
►
box, but I feel like it's so different than the old one, and it doesn't have-- it used
00:35:57
◼
►
to be a swoopy--
00:35:59
◼
►
A swoopy arrow, like, yeah, like moving to the-- yeah. So you're sending it somewhere.
00:36:04
◼
►
It sort of alludes to pushing, sending, whereas this one is just sort of going straight up,
00:36:09
◼
►
which-- I don't know.
00:36:11
◼
►
sort of developed an understanding of what that glyph meant.
00:36:14
◼
►
Yeah, it doesn't have the energy that the other one does or sort of the action.
00:36:18
◼
►
Right. I don't think that this looks like the same thing.
00:36:22
◼
►
You'd only know it because it's in the same spot in most of these apps.
00:36:26
◼
►
Yeah, exactly.
00:36:27
◼
►
Whereas on its own, I don't think people would say that's the new version of that icon.
00:36:32
◼
►
And the Bookmarks one is another example of that too.
00:36:36
◼
►
Yeah, the Bookmarks one doesn't even look like a book.
00:36:38
◼
►
No, it doesn't. It's funky.
00:36:41
◼
►
So, yeah. I'm in agreement with you there that I think that the toolbar icons aren't
00:36:48
◼
►
good. Here's another one that I picked up. It was subtly bothering me about iOS 7, but
00:36:54
◼
►
when I read your article, I was like, "Yes. Yes. This is killing me," which is in alerts
00:37:02
◼
►
and dialog box type things. They use bolder text. It may not even be Helvetica Bold. I
00:37:10
◼
►
think it's just Helvetica regular, but it looks bold. Yeah, I think it's just regular.
00:37:13
◼
►
Yeah, it looks real bold comparatively, but... To connote the default button? Yeah, and that's
00:37:21
◼
►
it. And it's like you can't... I mean, before you could tell based on position, but also
00:37:28
◼
►
just based on the look of the buttons, like one stood out a lot. Like the whole button
00:37:33
◼
►
was red or black, depending on what kind of an action sheet you've got. But yeah, there's
00:37:39
◼
►
There's no way to tell what the least destructive option is.
00:37:44
◼
►
Right away you have to just look at it for a second.
00:37:47
◼
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And then things pretty much follow the same pattern.
00:37:50
◼
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They're in the same places and stuff and you interact with them in the same way.
00:37:54
◼
►
But they don't look the same.
00:37:58
◼
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There's not enough distinction there to me.
00:38:04
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►
It confused me all along and I couldn't help but wonder if in some cases it was just a
00:38:07
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►
bug because it's such an early version of the OS that they one was different weight than the other
00:38:12
◼
►
but then once you said that I kind of started seeing it yeah that's what they mean they mean
00:38:16
◼
►
go to the bold one by default and it's it in some cases it's the safe option in other cases maybe
00:38:22
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it's not the safe option but it's like the preferred option right like you know sort of
00:38:27
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what you would expect them to want to do yeah like if you already clicked a trash can icon you
00:38:31
◼
►
probably do want to delete this so we'll make delete bold and cancel will be thin.
00:38:37
◼
►
But overall the effect though is to me it's an interesting idea. I think it was worth trying,
00:38:44
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►
but I think it's a complete failure because I feel like that's the sort of thing like if you
00:38:48
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►
have two or three buttons in a dialog box you can maybe play with the color of them but you can't
00:38:55
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►
can't play with the weight. It just looks like you've made like a programming error.
00:39:01
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►
Yeah, yeah. It does look accidental.
00:39:05
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►
Like if I have three articles on my website and they're all three of the same type of
00:39:09
◼
►
articles, well, then they should all use the same font for the headline. And if one of
00:39:13
◼
►
them is using a different font for the headline, it looks like a mistake, like I set the wrong
00:39:18
◼
►
class on the element or something like that.
00:39:21
◼
►
buttons look like. And it sticks out at me. Rather than get used to it as the weeks go
00:39:27
◼
►
on, it sticks out at me more and more as time goes on. And I think, I see the logic though
00:39:33
◼
►
of why they did it that way, which is, you can kind of backwards engineer it, which is
00:39:37
◼
►
like on Mac OS X, the default button pulses. It's blue and it has like an animation to
00:39:45
◼
►
it. And then you know that if you hit the return key on your keyboard, that's the button
00:39:49
◼
►
that you'll get.
00:39:50
◼
►
Right. Sorry.
00:39:51
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That's all right. And then on iOS, they don't have a return key, so you kind of have to
00:39:57
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just tap it. So they would just make like the default one blue and the other one's
00:40:03
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Typically. Something like that. They would use the background color of the button, though.
00:40:07
◼
►
So now they've got done away with the backgrounds of buttons, and so they had nothing else to
00:40:11
◼
►
play with. And so they said, "Well, why don't we try making it bold?"
00:40:16
◼
►
That doesn't work for me.
00:40:18
◼
►
It doesn't work for me either. It's just not distinct enough and like you said, yeah, it's just slightly different enough that it looks wrong. It looks like a mistake.
00:40:27
◼
►
But it doesn't jump out at you. Like I want to be able to tell at a glance which button is "cancel".
00:40:32
◼
►
And you know, I do know that cancel is going to be the one on the bottom, usually. But yeah, I just want it to stand out more.
00:40:40
◼
►
I don't want to have to really parse these.
00:40:42
◼
►
It's sort of like you get to the point where you're not actually even reading the buttons.
00:40:47
◼
►
You just sort of know what they do and say.
00:40:51
◼
►
A lot of that is visual.
00:40:52
◼
►
So now, you're having to rely more on the text.
00:40:56
◼
►
It takes just slightly longer.
00:40:58
◼
►
I would almost prefer if they want to stick to their extreme minimal guns.
00:41:04
◼
►
I would almost prefer if they did less to differentiate them and only use, let's say,
00:41:10
◼
►
the placement of the buttons to confer which one should be the default.
00:41:15
◼
►
So if it's a stack, a vertical stack of buttons like you often get on the iPhone, top/bottom,
00:41:20
◼
►
the top one is default and the bottom one is cancel and they all have the same weight
00:41:27
◼
►
of Helvetica, whether it's regular or whether it's ultra, just make them all the same.
00:41:32
◼
►
If it's like two buttons left, right, the right one is always default and the left one
00:41:39
◼
►
is always the cancel or the equivalent.
00:41:42
◼
►
But make them the same weight and just let the consistency of their placement be the
00:41:47
◼
►
emphasis, even though there's actually less emphasis in that case.
00:41:52
◼
►
My eyes just can't get used to the different weights of two buttons that are supposed to
00:41:58
◼
►
Interesting.
00:41:59
◼
►
I'm trying to think what else.
00:42:04
◼
►
Oh, the icon grid for…this is a big question I have for you.
00:42:08
◼
►
So, this is pretty controversial.
00:42:13
◼
►
Your husband, you mentioned in the article, Neven Murgen, had a pretty good article widely
00:42:19
◼
►
read about, you know, he called this grid wrong.
00:42:21
◼
►
This is this sort of template grid that Apple has shown that they say all of their icons
00:42:28
◼
►
or iOS 7's, what was the word, confer with, comply with, that they match. And you agree
00:42:38
◼
►
with Nevin that it's not a good idea.
00:42:40
◼
►
Well, I feel like either the grid is wrong or people are using it wrong. And he mentions
00:42:47
◼
►
that too. It's sort of like, well, I'm looking at settings now. It looks like it extends
00:42:52
◼
►
way too close to the edges and maybe it'd be different if it wasn't so heavy and likewise
00:42:58
◼
►
like the circle for the App Store or the iTunes Store. Yeah, it just feels like it's too large
00:43:05
◼
►
within the square. It feels bulky and funky.
00:43:08
◼
►
I'm going to play devil's advocate here and disagree.
00:43:12
◼
►
I don't think so.
00:43:13
◼
►
You don't think it looks weird?
00:43:15
◼
►
It looks unusual. I don't think that it's inherently weird though that it extends. I
00:43:20
◼
►
agree with Nevin that it goes contrary to the sort of consensus design sense that we've
00:43:26
◼
►
arrived at with iOS icons in particular, app icons over the years. And that what Nevin
00:43:35
◼
►
I think has described as feeling right, like just the eyeball sizing is indeed, it's the,
00:43:44
◼
►
you know, it's like when you're trying to judge like if you see somebody and you know,
00:43:50
◼
►
like your friend is or spouse or somebody is buying a new dress or a suit because there's
00:43:56
◼
►
a big wedding coming up and they want to look good. And you go shopping with them and they come out.
00:44:01
◼
►
And you just sort of have an idea that, "Wow, that does look good. That looks much more stylish.
00:44:09
◼
►
That's a much nicer suit than your old one." Or the opposite, that, "No, that does not. That
00:44:15
◼
►
looks like you took that suit out of your father's closet." It's hard to articulate. There's style
00:44:22
◼
►
changes. I feel like Neven's right that that was the style, but I think it's just
00:44:27
◼
►
that though, a style.
00:44:29
◼
►
Just a style and not, yeah, like you're...
00:44:33
◼
►
They irritate my eye for some reason, but no, you could be right. It could just be that
00:44:38
◼
►
I'm accustomed to the other style and I don't like seeing the new style. Like the
00:44:43
◼
►
clock really bugs me. Although, first, I will say that the Photos app icon, I really like
00:44:47
◼
►
that icon and it doesn't bother me.
00:44:49
◼
►
That's my favorite.
00:44:50
◼
►
because it's broken up a little bit more. Like it's not just a circle that's close to the edges.
00:44:54
◼
►
It's sort of, you know, these rounded wrecks that are, you know, spun around.
00:44:58
◼
►
Well, somehow to me it's a better use of the space and a perfect and a one that I don't hate it as
00:45:04
◼
►
much as other people, but the one that it confuses me is the Safari icon. Because I don't understand
00:45:10
◼
►
why the Safari icon has a circle in the square. Right. Yeah, it could just be the needle.
00:45:18
◼
►
Right, and let it just be a blue square, or a round square, whatever you want to call
00:45:23
◼
►
that shape. But let it be sort of like the weather icon and just have a compass in it.
00:45:27
◼
►
I don't understand why it's a circle and a square.
00:45:30
◼
►
Right. Yeah, for me, what bothers me about the Safari icon most is actually the needle,
00:45:36
◼
►
how the needle is touching the circle. So like the circle being close to the edge is
00:45:41
◼
►
sort of irritating too, but actually the needle inside it is really just bothers me. I don't
00:45:47
◼
►
I don't like it.
00:45:50
◼
►
I also kind of feel like the new shape and sort of, hey, draw more close to the edge
00:45:56
◼
►
edict from Apple on these icons works better on the iPad than the old icons did.
00:46:04
◼
►
And I don't know that they're bad for the iPhone.
00:46:06
◼
►
I just think that they're different on the iPhone, but I think they work better on the
00:46:13
◼
►
But here's the big thing, and I've thought about it this week.
00:46:17
◼
►
And I haven't seen anybody talk about it.
00:46:19
◼
►
But I poked around Apple's site, and as far as I can tell, that icon grid is not anything
00:46:26
◼
►
that you can download, or at least not yet.
00:46:30
◼
►
Like I came out of WWDC thinking that this grid was going to be right there on the iOS
00:46:36
◼
►
dev center and you'd, you know, how to design icons for iOS 7 and give it to you in a PSD
00:46:42
◼
►
format or some other format, PDF or something.
00:46:45
◼
►
then you could start drawing your app icons on this grid. Well, as far as I can tell,
00:46:49
◼
►
that grid doesn't exist. The only ones I could find are ones that people out there have recreated
00:46:55
◼
►
on their own.
00:46:56
◼
►
>> Right. Yeah, I haven't found it as a thing that Apple has produced yet either. But, you
00:47:02
◼
►
know, I'm sure that they're reworking the interface guidelines and hopefully, you know,
00:47:07
◼
►
that'll be part of it.
00:47:08
◼
►
>> Oh, that's what I'm wondering, though. Is it just something we're waiting for or
00:47:13
◼
►
Or is this just an explanation of their icon system?
00:47:18
◼
►
And there's...
00:47:19
◼
►
Well, it seems like they wouldn't mention it if they...
00:47:21
◼
►
Well, you know, honestly, I don't know.
00:47:23
◼
►
I was sort of assuming that they were going to release it later, but I don't know.
00:47:28
◼
►
I could be wrong.
00:47:29
◼
►
I was too, but now I'm not sure.
00:47:31
◼
►
Yeah, I don't know.
00:47:37
◼
►
And the whole reason I went looking for it is I got it in my head that if you took it
00:47:44
◼
►
and started overlaying it on certain Apple products like base stations and like the Apple
00:47:51
◼
►
TV, that the hardware already conforms to the same grid.
00:47:55
◼
►
Nicole: Oh, interesting.
00:47:56
◼
►
Dave: But I couldn't get that far because I couldn't
00:47:58
◼
►
download the grid.
00:48:00
◼
►
So somebody smart out there, if you want to get a mention on Daring Firewall, that would
00:48:05
◼
►
would be a good project this week is find that grid and then put it on top of products
00:48:10
◼
►
like Apple TV and Base Station and all the other round square hardware products they
00:48:16
◼
►
have and see if they fit.
00:48:19
◼
►
You're a believer in grid-based design? Do you think that there's something to that?
00:48:24
◼
►
I feel like Johnny Ive is committed to it. And if my theory is right that the hardware
00:48:28
◼
►
fits to the same grid that the icons do, then I feel like I should win a prize.
00:48:34
◼
►
I think it works for a lot of things. I mean not for all things. I don't know. I definitely
00:48:41
◼
►
mostly go on eyeball, but it depends on what I'm doing. The more information and data
00:48:47
◼
►
that I want to show, the more I want to use a grid. If I'm designing a Mac app icon,
00:48:54
◼
►
then I don't use a grid at all. I just draw a nice shape that I think looks nice. But
00:48:59
◼
►
I'm sort of planning out what an app is going to look like, I'm a lot more likely
00:49:04
◼
►
to use a grid and just sort of, yeah, say how am I going to divide up this window into
00:49:09
◼
►
thirds and more than that, you know? How are things going to lay out? I think it just depends
00:49:17
◼
►
on the kind of design that you're doing, the kind of thing that you're showing.
00:49:23
◼
►
I like the idea of grids. And when I see people who are big supporters of grid based layouts,
00:49:29
◼
►
like Koi Vin, who has even as a great book on web based grid design, and I see the grids overlaid
00:49:36
◼
►
on top of the result. And I see that how there's a system at play. I think that's awesome. I love
00:49:42
◼
►
this. And I'm always so impressed. But whenever I design anything myself, I just go with what looks
00:49:47
◼
►
good. Right? Yeah. And my favorite example of that is the daring where the daring fireball logo is
00:49:53
◼
►
on the Daring Fireball website. There's no logic. It doesn't really fit with either of
00:49:58
◼
►
the two columns underneath. I just kept moving it left and right until I felt like it looked
00:50:03
◼
►
like it was balanced between the gap between the two. Then I was done. There's absolutely
00:50:09
◼
►
no way you can draw any kind of grid over that. But once I had it, I thought that's
00:50:16
◼
►
Yeah, we have this book. I can't remember who wrote it, but it's called Grid Systems,
00:50:23
◼
►
and it's pretty good. I haven't actually read the whole thing. And I'm like, "Oh,
00:50:27
◼
►
yeah, I love that. I like the concept, but it's not something I do every time, definitely,
00:50:33
◼
►
by any means."
00:50:34
◼
►
Let me take one more break here, second break, and thank our second sponsor. Our second sponsor
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And right there on their website, they have a big honking movie right there, and it shows you everything you'd want to know about it.
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I think that's one of the best ways to show off a product.
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Here, just go to this website, watch this movie, and you can instantly see what this thing is all about.
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And it's a really great looking product.
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No special code. You don't have to type slash the talk show or anything. They'll
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know you came here from there. That you came there from here, I guess I meant to say.
00:52:16
◼
►
All right, Krista, you also design Mac software. You even said one like designing Mac icons.
00:52:25
◼
►
Famous example, good example of your work would be Piezo from Rogue Amoeba. Really,
00:52:33
◼
►
It's so skeuomorphic now.
00:52:36
◼
►
So skeuomorphic.
00:52:38
◼
►
I told you when it first came out, the thing I like best about it is that Piezo, the app
00:52:44
◼
►
looks like the icon.
00:52:46
◼
►
So it's like when you launch the icon, it's like the icon, to me, it just turns into a
00:52:51
◼
►
full-size window and now you can use it and you use it and then you close it and it just
00:52:55
◼
►
shrinks back to the icon.
00:52:57
◼
►
The icon is the app itself.
00:53:00
◼
►
There's very few apps that I can think of where you could ever say that.
00:53:03
◼
►
Thanks so much.
00:53:04
◼
►
That's what I was really going for.
00:53:05
◼
►
Is that sort of design?
00:53:06
◼
►
Is it quickly turning passé though?
00:53:11
◼
►
I look at it now and I'm like, "Oh, this is way too garish."
00:53:13
◼
►
Even actually the week that it came out, I wanted to redesign it.
00:53:16
◼
►
It's too shiny and bulbous now.
00:53:19
◼
►
I definitely designed the icon to look like the app itself because that's one thing when
00:53:25
◼
►
I'm sort of shuffling through my Mac apps, I want each icon to sort of jar a memory of
00:53:35
◼
►
sort of what the app is and what it does and what it's going to do. So I wanted to just
00:53:40
◼
►
really tie them together in a good way. So yeah, that worked.
00:53:47
◼
►
I feel like we're going to be left with an unusual situation where come, I don't know,
00:53:55
◼
►
two, three, four months after iOS 7 ships and most actively developed apps have caught
00:54:01
◼
►
up to the iOS 7 design trends that we'll have a lot more apps left on the Mac that look
00:54:09
◼
►
like iOS as we know it and fewer on iOS.
00:54:14
◼
►
Interesting.
00:54:15
◼
►
Interesting.
00:54:16
◼
►
Because a lot of the stuff that I see like in Piezo, Piezo to me looks like an app on
00:54:21
◼
►
the Mac that has drawn a lot of inspiration from iOS.
00:54:28
◼
►
So it's like there's like a nice little glossy finish to the levels.
00:54:32
◼
►
What makes it look like there's a piece of glass over there?
00:54:35
◼
►
I can't remember seeing stuff like that on the Mac before iOS.
00:54:40
◼
►
lighting it directly came from product illustrations of iPhone and of iMacs and Macbooks and stuff,
00:54:49
◼
►
but they started doing that probably around the same time. I'm not really sure when that
00:54:53
◼
►
sort of gloss thing came out in Apple product illustrations, but it's definitely from that.
00:55:01
◼
►
I took that.
00:55:03
◼
►
Do you think that the Mac is going to keep this stuff or do you think the Mac is heading
00:55:09
◼
►
for an iOS 7 style?
00:55:12
◼
►
I think actually the Mac will just keep sort of trailing iOS in that way and so we'll start
00:55:18
◼
►
seeing more flat Mac apps.
00:55:22
◼
►
I think iOS is sort of leading the design trends and the Mac is sort of following along
00:55:28
◼
►
behind it and doing its own thing too.
00:55:30
◼
►
branching off and going in its own way sort of separately. But yeah, I definitely think
00:55:36
◼
►
you'll see less skeuomorphism, ornamentation, et cetera, in Mac apps, because that had become
00:55:42
◼
►
a big thing. But I think it'll start to trail off now, too.
00:55:48
◼
►
One thing I would love to see them do, and I tweeted this, and people panicked, and they're
00:55:53
◼
►
like, "Oh, I hope not." But I tweeted something to the effect of, "You realize that come
00:55:57
◼
►
next year, Johnny Ives, the same team that brought you iOS 7 is going to do a new version
00:56:01
◼
►
of Mac OS X. I don't know that that's true. I just wanted to make people work it up.
00:56:06
◼
►
But I wouldn't be surprised if it went one extreme or the other. The one extreme would
00:56:12
◼
►
be a radical iOS 7 style visual redesign of a Mac OS X. I would think a lot along the
00:56:21
◼
►
lines of what we see with iOS 7 just within Windows as opposed to these full screen things.
00:56:27
◼
►
Or, B, they kind of just leave it alone and say that this sort of gray platinum look that
00:56:35
◼
►
we've gotten to with OS X is sort of the end of the 10 years of development of establishing
00:56:43
◼
►
a style for it, and that's what it is.
00:56:46
◼
►
I don't know.
00:56:47
◼
►
I hope that it doesn't stay the same.
00:56:49
◼
►
I feel like that would be stagnating and it would be kind of sad for OS X.
00:56:55
◼
►
So yeah, I'm not sure if—I mean maybe it won't go as drastically in the direction
00:57:00
◼
►
of iOS 7, but I hope it doesn't stay the same.
00:57:03
◼
►
Yeah, my guess is it won't.
00:57:05
◼
►
I really—that it won't stay the same.
00:57:08
◼
►
And I do think something semi—if you want me to bet, I'd bet a little bit of money.
00:57:12
◼
►
I'd bet like five bucks that something radical would be coming for next year after the same
00:57:17
◼
►
team that brought you iOS 7 is eventually finished with iOS 7 and has time to turn their
00:57:23
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attention elsewhere. Yeah, I would not be surprised either.
00:57:28
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But it's kind of striking though to me that it's cool if you're a Mac nerd and you
00:57:32
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want the Mac. You don't want Apple to forget about the Mac. It's cool that Mavericks
00:57:36
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has a lot of new stuff. They've devoted a lot of time in the keynote to it. It's
00:57:40
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not an afterthought. But in terms of visual style, nothing has changed really.
00:57:46
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Yeah, really, no. Which is fine for now. I'm excited about new stuff in Mavericks. But
00:57:53
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yeah, I think it'll get visually updated eventually. I don't know. I can't say if it'll be as drastic
00:58:00
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as iOS 7 or maybe just sort of an in-between. But definitely hope it'll get at least a bit
00:58:07
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of a facelift.
00:58:10
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The other thing, maybe I'm off by a year.
00:58:13
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Maybe it's a two years out thing because, and I do think, I still think this is true,
00:58:19
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that it's not a coincidence that this radical redesign of iOS 7 has happened after almost
00:58:27
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all iOS 7, all iOS devices have gone to retina displays.
00:58:32
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Whereas retina displays for the Mac are still an oddity.
00:58:36
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It's really just two models, the two MacBook Pros, and those are not the most popular MacBooks
00:58:42
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that MacBook Airs are.
00:58:45
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That's a really good point.
00:58:46
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They couldn't get away with the wispiness definitely on just a standard non-retina display
00:58:54
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I don't think that would hold up well at all.
00:58:59
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But as far as the physics and the animation and stuff like that, that'd be cool.
00:59:04
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That would be totally cool.
00:59:06
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And you can't help but think that if it's the prototype of the future, the new Mac Pro,
00:59:13
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►
if it's, as John Siracusa describes it, like the race car that a company makes that shows
00:59:21
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►
off technology that's going to be in the family sedan six, seven years later.
00:59:27
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►
It's clearly in that direction because the new Mac Pro has an entire graphics card that's
00:59:32
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not even meant to power a display.
00:59:35
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It's just to have a GPU available to software to do things like animate and shade and stuff
00:59:42
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I'd love to see Mac OS X get flatter.
00:59:48
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One thing that's bothered me for 10 years about Mac OS X is how big the drop shadow
00:59:56
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is between leaders.
00:59:59
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I think that's just to make it look super deep to imply that you can have a lot of windows
01:00:03
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happening at once and stacked on top of each other? Maybe. I mean, that's always been—it's
01:00:08
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gotten—you know, things have started to get flat. I mean, if you look at the newer
01:00:11
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►
scroll bars of the last two versions, they're not those big, honking, always present aqua
01:00:21
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►
scroll bars anymore. It's like they disappear, they're really thin, and they're totally
01:00:25
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►
flat and they, yeah, they're only there when you start to move, you know, by default
01:00:33
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►
Yeah, that's a good example of where it's really gone from maybe the most gratuitously
01:00:38
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►
– it was like the last remaining vestige of the original gratuitous Mac OS 10.0 and
01:00:45
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►
then they replaced it with what's probably the flattest thing in the default system look.
01:00:49
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►
Yeah, I would say it probably is the flattest thing. Yeah, you're right.
01:00:55
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I think that the Z height, the implication of Z height distance between windows though
01:00:59
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►
has always been so preposterous on Mac OS X. They look like they're three or four
01:01:03
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►
inches away from each other.
01:01:05
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►
Yeah, totally. They really do. They're really big.
01:01:09
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►
Whereas on the classic Mac OS, I think they just drew a one-pixel gray line along the
01:01:15
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►
right side and the bottom side, and that was all you needed. It was perfect. A little bit
01:01:19
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►
more like paper, like sheets of paper that are stacked as opposed to …
01:01:24
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►
Oh yeah, that's a good analogy.
01:01:25
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►
As opposed to hovering.
01:01:26
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►
Yeah, as opposed to these floating…
01:01:30
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►
Sort of suspended big things.
01:01:31
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►
There's the implication of an awful lot of z-height distance between windows has always
01:01:36
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►
bothered me.
01:01:38
◼
►
All right, we're almost up for the hour, but there's one more thing I wanted to talk
01:01:42
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►
to you about.
01:01:43
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►
And that was…
01:01:45
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►
And I didn't even know you were involved in it until you brought it up in your MacWorld
01:01:47
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►
article, but that you were a speaker at AppCamp for Girls.
01:01:52
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►
Yeah, that was so great.
01:01:53
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►
It was really fun.
01:01:54
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►
I'm going to do it again in August, so it'll be good.
01:01:57
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►
So tell me more about how that went.
01:02:01
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►
I just went in for one day.
01:02:02
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►
I think the next time the camp runs, I'll go in like a couple hours a day for all five
01:02:09
◼
►
But I just went in and I did like a 45-minute talk, just like an overview about user interface
01:02:15
◼
►
design principles and sort of what that means on iOS.
01:02:18
◼
►
and I talked about patterns and anti-patterns and had this bit about hugging the HIG and
01:02:24
◼
►
just telling them to sort of embrace expected patterns as far as for problems that have
01:02:29
◼
►
already been solved.
01:02:30
◼
►
And they were actually really into it and super attentive.
01:02:33
◼
►
I didn't expect a room full of middle schoolers to pay attention to sort of anything that
01:02:38
◼
►
an adult would be saying standing in the front of a room, but yeah, to have this group of
01:02:43
◼
►
12 middle schoolers being really interested in interface design was awesome.
01:02:47
◼
►
And then, and yeah, the biggest part of the whole thing was when I talked about iOS 7,
01:02:52
◼
►
and I didn't want to, you know, get too into iOS 7 because they were going to be working
01:02:57
◼
►
on iOS 6, so I wanted to stick to sort of how iOS 6 works and looks and just user interface
01:03:03
◼
►
patterns in general, that sort of a thing.
01:03:05
◼
►
But yeah, it was great.
01:03:07
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►
They were super into it and just had a ton of questions and comments and it was great.
01:03:12
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►
And then I worked with them sort of individually afterwards.
01:03:15
◼
►
They were broken up into teams and I talked to them one-on-one and I talked to them with
01:03:19
◼
►
the teams altogether too and that was great.
01:03:22
◼
►
Dave Asprey And it was just a – I think they were calling
01:03:25
◼
►
it a beta of the camp because I think it was only – well, a dozen girls?
01:03:30
◼
►
A dozen kids?
01:03:31
◼
►
Nicole Stelzner It was.
01:03:32
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►
Yeah, it was I think just 12, maybe 13 girls.
01:03:33
◼
►
Yeah, so it was the first time.
01:03:35
◼
►
So they had done an Alpha camp before with just three, sort of seeing like what the camp
01:03:39
◼
►
would be if they did it.
01:03:41
◼
►
And this time it was a beta, so sort of just like doing a run-through, seeing how it would
01:03:45
◼
►
really work.
01:03:46
◼
►
And yeah, and it went really well.
01:03:50
◼
►
Jean McDonald, who runs it, said it was—they had a lot of great feedback.
01:03:54
◼
►
And so now they'll be doing it, I guess, sort of for real, I guess, as a launch.
01:04:01
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►
It felt really real when I was there.
01:04:02
◼
►
It felt super organized and—
01:04:04
◼
►
And right now, it's just—while it's in beta at least, it's a Portland thing.
01:04:11
◼
►
other cities.
01:04:12
◼
►
Dave Asprey Because obviously, middle-aged kids aren't
01:04:15
◼
►
going to be able to pack up and just go to Portland.
01:04:20
◼
►
Being local is a bigger deal for a kid's thing than for an adult conference.
01:04:24
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►
Lauren Ruffin Sure.
01:04:25
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►
Yeah, definitely.
01:04:26
◼
►
For summer camp especially, I think it's harder to travel for that.
01:04:31
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►
Dave Asprey I think it's such a great, great idea.
01:04:37
◼
►
But it's not done yet.
01:04:39
◼
►
Just because this is the thing that I wanted to bring it up again is to launch it, just
01:04:44
◼
►
to get it off the ground, Jean set it up as an Indiegogo project. Indiegogo is sort of
01:04:51
◼
►
like a Kickstarter type thing, but it can be used for different types of projects that
01:04:55
◼
►
Kickstarter can't. If you think about it as a different way of doing a Kickstarter
01:04:59
◼
►
type thing, that's all you need to know.
01:05:01
◼
►
Right. Yeah. I think of it as Kickstarter for nonprofits because the things that I funded
01:05:06
◼
►
on it were all nonprofit sort of fundraiser things.
01:05:08
◼
►
Yeah, a perfect way of putting it. And it's often more for things that can't quite be
01:05:14
◼
►
described as a product. You know, like Kickstarter is like epitomized by things like the paper
01:05:20
◼
►
watch or whatever that thing is called.
01:05:22
◼
►
Where you give money and then you're going to get a thing that you can like pick up.
01:05:26
◼
►
Whereas App Camp for girls, you don't get a watch.
01:05:31
◼
►
They had a $50,000 goal and they hit it.
01:05:37
◼
►
As I speak right now, it's $73,000, which is awesome.
01:05:42
◼
►
But they really want to hit $100,000 before this is up.
01:05:46
◼
►
As we speak, 11 days left, probably by the time you hear this, about a week left.
01:05:53
◼
►
But I would encourage everybody.
01:05:54
◼
►
You could just Google AppCamp for Girls and get there.
01:05:57
◼
►
you if you go to Indiegogo.com and search for AppCamp for Girls, you'll get to the
01:06:02
◼
►
project page. If you haven't contributed, I really think everybody out there who listens
01:06:07
◼
►
to the show would be—it's such a great idea.
01:06:09
◼
►
MELISSA Yes. Do it.
01:06:11
◼
►
DAVE I'm super excited about it.
01:06:13
◼
►
MELISSA Yeah, me too. It was such a cool thing to
01:06:15
◼
►
be involved with. I'm really excited to be involved with it again going forward. I
01:06:20
◼
►
hope they reach their $100,000 goal and keep it going. It's totally the sort of thing
01:06:24
◼
►
I see my daughter doing when she's like 11 or 12, hopefully. I mean, it depends on
01:06:29
◼
►
who she turns out to be and what she's into, but I would love it to have just grown to
01:06:35
◼
►
the point that she can enroll in it 12 years from now.
01:06:38
◼
►
Dave: Yeah. I think it's great. I hope it takes off.
01:06:42
◼
►
Nicole. Yeah, me too.
01:06:43
◼
►
Dave. But I could definitely use everybody's help, so I would encourage everybody listening
01:06:48
◼
►
to check it out.
01:06:49
◼
►
Nicole. Yes.
01:06:50
◼
►
Dave. And I'm so glad to hear that the beta one went well.
01:06:52
◼
►
Nicole. Yeah.
01:06:53
◼
►
Not surprised. I feel like there's probably a huge untapped market out there.
01:06:58
◼
►
Mm-hmm. For sure.
01:07:00
◼
►
Really, really excited about that. All right, Krista Murgen, thank you so much for being on the show.
01:07:05
◼
►
Yeah, thanks for having me.
01:07:07
◼
►
Is there anything else? Any website you want me to point people to? Should I tell them your Twitter?
01:07:11
◼
►
Oh, sure. Twitter.
01:07:13
◼
►
What's your Twitter handle?
01:07:14
◼
►
Oh, it's @antichrista.
01:07:16
◼
►
Antichrista. Get it?
01:07:17
◼
►
Like Antichrist with an A on the end.
01:07:20
◼
►
That's cute.
01:07:22
◼
►
It's a great name.
01:07:25
◼
►
And Rogamiba.com, of course, as well.
01:07:28
◼
►
Rogamiba, our friends, Internet funnyman, Paul Kofosis.
01:07:32
◼
►
Is he your boss?
01:07:34
◼
►
Do you report directly to Paul Kofosis?
01:07:37
◼
►
Yeah, he's my boss/project manager.
01:07:41
◼
►
Internet funnyman.
01:07:43
◼
►
He's got a show with my wife now.
01:07:45
◼
►
Yes, and it was really funny.
01:07:46
◼
►
I loved the first episode.
01:07:48
◼
►
It was really good.
01:07:49
◼
►
Yeah, it was.
01:07:50
◼
►
Just the tip.
01:07:51
◼
►
the tip now we're all in cahoots together nice well anyway thank you very much Chris
01:07:58
◼
►
this is great yeah yeah thanks for having me