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39: iOS 7 Deforestation

 

00:00:00   this week's episode of the talk show is brought to you by back blaze online

00:00:05   backup five dollars a month unlimited unthrottled uncomplicated go to back

00:00:11   blaze comm slash daring fireball for more information I saw you I saw you're

00:00:19   getting you're digging in deep on the PHP stuff again I am yeah and now you're

00:00:26   going to switch to NGINX? Are you thinking of mine?

00:00:29   It's Enginex.

00:00:30   Enginex. I don't know how to pronounce it.

00:00:32   Yeah.

00:00:33   Why don't give -- nobody name your software something where it's ambiguous how you're

00:00:35   supposed to pronounce it.

00:00:37   [laughter]

00:00:38   Enginex. Jesus Christ. What a stupid way to spell that.

00:00:43   I'm still like -- I'm one of those people where even if the project owner or the project

00:00:48   maintainer insists that the correct pronunciation is a certain way, if I think that pronunciation

00:00:53   is stupid, I won't use it. So like, like, SQLite is one of those things where I think

00:00:59   the, the, the actual official pronunciation I believe is, is SQLite or something or it's

00:01:07   something weird that, that I thought was dumb so I don't use it. Same thing with like GIF

00:01:12   versus GIF. I say GIF and I don't really care what the correct pronunciation is. It's GIF.

00:01:16   You know?

00:01:17   I was about to ask you how you pronounce GIF. I pronounce it GIF as well and, and it's,

00:01:23   I know that it stands for graphics interchange format, so I feel like there's a reason to

00:01:28   stand on that.

00:01:29   And it ends up, it ends up though that the guy who invented it pronounces it JIF.

00:01:33   And all the JIF people say, well, if he invented it and he calls it JIF, it must be JIF.

00:01:39   And I say, no, it's GIF.

00:01:40   I don't care what the hell.

00:01:41   See, I feel like this is like a George Lucas scenario.

00:01:43   Like at some point, you got to override the creator.

00:01:46   Right.

00:01:48   We're not changing the format.

00:01:49   No.

00:01:50   Right?

00:01:51   redefined what the GIF interchange, you know, graphics format is. I haven't rendered it

00:01:57   technically, you know, and it's some kind of incompatibility. I'm just telling you it

00:02:01   should be pronounced GIF.

00:02:02   Exactly. And at some point, you just have to say, you know what? I respect you for creating

00:02:07   this thing or working at the company that created this thing, but you're just wrong

00:02:12   on this.

00:02:13   Also, GIF already is a thing. It's peanut butter. It's kind of a crappy mass-produced

00:02:17   peanut butter but it is a very popular peanut butter whereas GIF is out there

00:02:22   for the taking there is no GIF right it's unambiguous if you say that this

00:02:26   image format is going to be pronounced GIF then anytime you hear GIF you know

00:02:31   that they're talking about peanut butter and not an image format I'll go even

00:02:35   further and say hey look we've got a whole bunch of words in the English

00:02:38   language that have a G and it's sometimes hard G sometimes a soft G but

00:02:43   if you're gonna make up a new word with a G why not go the unambiguous route and

00:02:47   and use the G in the hard G format,

00:02:50   where there is no other letter that makes that sound.

00:02:53   And if you want the soft G sound, use a J.

00:02:58   - Right, and 'cause then also when you hear GIF,

00:03:00   there's no ambiguity on how it's spelled.

00:03:03   - Exactly, exactly, exactly.

00:03:06   I tell you to get a GIF file,

00:03:07   and you don't even know what it is.

00:03:08   Well, how are you gonna write that down?

00:03:10   Maybe you'll add an extra F, I don't know,

00:03:12   but at least you'll be in the ballpark.

00:03:14   - Or at the worst, you add an extra F.

00:03:16   You read it.

00:03:17   See, and I'm one of those guys who, like, I know people say "ping" for the PNG format,

00:03:23   but I stuck with PNG for a long time. I think I might even still say it. I don't get a chance

00:03:28   to say it very often, so I'm not positive on that, but I still say "png" for the ambiguity

00:03:32   reason.

00:03:33   Hmm. I think I'm not quite sure. Hmm. I think ping evolved so late in the game relative

00:03:43   that I was already sort of working by myself most of the time by the time PNG became widely

00:03:48   used. Whereas GIF and GIF, that was when I was collaborating and working with people.

00:03:57   So I had to say it a lot. I don't remember saying PNG a lot.

00:04:00   Tim Cynova Yeah, now that you work in a hole alone, you

00:04:05   can avoid saying everything out loud except when you podcast or speak somewhere.

00:04:08   In my head though I think of it as a PNG.

00:04:11   Yeah. It just seems right. Ping already means something in computers.

00:04:16   And business people stole it to mean something even worse.

00:04:20   What's that? Oh, you're like, "Hey, I'll

00:04:24   ping you later and we can talk about our action items."

00:04:27   They stole download, they stole so many things.

00:04:31   Terrible. Speaking of business people,

00:04:34   you hear Windows Live,

00:04:37   they're like phasing out that brand and they're totally getting rid of the Hotmail brand.

00:04:42   I saw something on Twitter last night before I went to bed about that.

00:04:47   Aren't there like, there's like a billion people on Hotmail?

00:04:50   Yeah, I'll have to double check. I believe, I know it was the largest webmail service for quite a long time,

00:04:56   even long after Gmail was released. I believe it might still be the largest.

00:05:01   Oh, I thought Yahoo was the biggest.

00:05:03   Gmail's always been third place there,

00:05:05   but especially like worldwide,

00:05:08   if you go past just the US,

00:05:09   I think Gmail's more popular in the US,

00:05:10   and then worldwide it gets worse for Gmail.

00:05:14   But it's crazy, like Hotmail was the first

00:05:18   mass scale webmail, and that name is now

00:05:21   gonna be totally gone.

00:05:23   But Microsoft changes the name of their online

00:05:25   consumer service stuff like every five years.

00:05:28   When did Windows Live start?

00:05:30   Like with Xbox Live after that,

00:05:32   You know who knows what was that seven or eight years ago? They started that that's all gonna be gone

00:05:38   And now they're going to outlook calm and who knows what else?

00:05:40   That's not very interesting they don't think Microsoft often doesn't have their shit together in terms of

00:05:49   Getting acquisitions on brand

00:05:54   Like I you know like the hotmail thing if they were gonna do that why not do it years ago. Why wait ten years?

00:06:00   Well, I'm not really sure Microsoft knows what their branding is, you know

00:06:04   they I think one of the problems is they keep changing their own minds about it and

00:06:07   Like over like about five years ago. They started really maybe even more than that

00:06:12   They started really shoving windows in your face more like they started adding the word windows

00:06:17   To the names of all the programs that they made that ran on Windows

00:06:20   it was like, you know Windows Explorer Windows Internet Explorer and

00:06:24   Windows every and like things that the end and they starting the same thing with office

00:06:29   So now it's like Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, which is just kind of clumsy.

00:06:34   And I don't really know what the goal there was, except like to beat people over the head

00:06:39   with the fact that it's Windows that you're using and Office that this is a part of. But

00:06:42   I think there's better ways to do that, and I think people don't really care. It just

00:06:46   made everything more clumsy.

00:06:47   Yeah, I've always interpreted that from the outside as being Balmer. That Balmer thinks

00:06:51   that Windows is a winner, because Windows makes a lot of money, and Windows is a clear

00:06:57   market winner. And so it just, it's like him insisting that everything is Windows. Whereas

00:07:03   it doesn't even make any sense, you know, like, and I've said this before, like when

00:07:07   with this whole thing where they couldn't figure out what to call Metro after they lost

00:07:10   the name Metro and they still call it, you know, Windows. But it doesn't even, the whole

00:07:14   thing with the new UI is that it doesn't even involve Windows. I mean, literal Windows,

00:07:20   lowercase W Windows. I mean, it was at least, the name Windows at least applied to the software

00:07:27   originally. It was, "Hey, here's the thing you put on your computer and everything runs

00:07:30   in a rectangle that's called a window and you can have lots of them." And everything's

00:07:36   in these overlapping rectangles called windows.

00:07:39   Yeah, but they lost that long ago. I mean, even back with Windows CE and what then became

00:07:46   Pocket PC and then Windows Mobile 2003, they kept changing the name of that too. But even

00:07:53   like it looked like Windows but I think everything was full screen wasn't it?

00:07:57   Yeah I think so I think it was sort of like Windows it looked like the Windows

00:08:02   Chrome but you couldn't couldn't make the Windows over right and they crammed

00:08:05   it that was another example of them overusing the Windows brand and the

00:08:09   Windows theme of Windows everywhere like they they crammed in the start menu and

00:08:13   they crammed in like the little minimize and close buttons and the title bars and

00:08:17   so yeah you're right like it looked like Windows but it didn't really work that

00:08:21   way and it didn't work very well on devices of that size.

00:08:23   Right. And to me it makes even less sense for the online stuff.

00:08:27   Yeah, because what is, I mean, well, I mean, but obviously, you know, they're not thinking

00:08:31   of the word Windows in the lowercase w way anymore.

00:08:34   Right.

00:08:35   And they haven't thought about it that way for a very long time. You know, they own that

00:08:39   word now.

00:08:40   It's like a weird extra superfluous level of hierarchy though, branding-wise, where

00:08:45   why not just emphasize Microsoft, right? There's the thing that you can get that everybody's

00:08:50   he's heard of and it's already familiar and it, you know, it, you know, it's a well-known

00:08:58   popular brand. I mean, I know for years and years, you know, Microsoft was, you know,

00:09:03   in the worldwide brand survey was like top three, I think. Like a head of Apple, a head

00:09:07   of Google, like up there with like Coke and something else.

00:09:10   Yeah, I never understood why they didn't emphasize that more because you're right that, you know,

00:09:16   been driving home the Windows brand for years so hard, but I don't think it really sticks

00:09:21   with people. If you ask people, "Do you have a Windows computer?" I bet more people would

00:09:27   not really know what to say to that than if you asked them if they had a Microsoft computer.

00:09:33   I feel like people don't really care about the Windows brand.

00:09:37   If you want something to parlay your new product, your new initiative, "Here's a new thing we're

00:09:42   doing, we're doing online services, why not just stick with the company instead of, you

00:09:48   know, going two levels deep and having Microsoft Windows live. Now you've got these two levels

00:09:53   of branding hierarchy. Everything's under Windows.

00:09:55   Right. Or Office.

00:09:56   Right. It'd be like if you took your hard drive and put everything in one folder at

00:10:02   the root level.

00:10:03   Called hard drive.

00:10:04   Right. Called hard drive. Or called folders.

00:10:08   Yeah.

00:10:09   Right.

00:10:10   Files.

00:10:11   Why have that one extra level of hierarchy at the top?

00:10:17   It doesn't make any sense.

00:10:19   I don't know.

00:10:21   They always have this kind of like, you kind of think something's maybe in the water

00:10:25   up there.

00:10:27   It just seems like Microsoft lives in a slightly different reality than the rest of us when

00:10:32   it comes to things like branding and marketing of their stuff.

00:10:36   just seems like you can tell that they, like in their world of Redmond and their various

00:10:43   office campuses and everything, like in their world where all those people live and hang

00:10:47   out and talk to each other, this all makes perfect sense. And then when you get like

00:10:52   some kind of weird new commercial out of there or some kind of weird new product name they

00:10:57   come up with, the rest of the world, you're just kind of like, "Eh." It's a little

00:11:02   bit off. You know, it's like if you ever spend any time in Western Pennsylvania, especially

00:11:08   Northwestern Pennsylvania in the Erie region, almost everything there is just a little bit

00:11:13   off.

00:11:14   Yeah, I've never been up there. Been to Pittsburgh many times.

00:11:18   Pittsburgh is a pretty nice place. Western Pennsylvania, like Northwestern Pennsylvania,

00:11:21   I went to college there and spent quite a lot of time there. And it's, you know, Microsoft

00:11:26   could be headquartered there. It's very much like the same kind of, just a little bit off.

00:11:31   Pittsburgh's a little off too though. I always joked with Amy that Pittsburgh is a little

00:11:38   bit like the Simpsons Springfield where it's sort of sequestered like half part of-- well,

00:11:47   mostly part of modern North American pop culture but it has its own stuff. And the best example

00:11:53   is the way that Springfield has Duff Beer. They've got the Iron City Beer in Pittsburgh

00:11:59   which you can buy nowhere else. No one else carries Iron City beer. And in Pittsburgh,

00:12:05   it's everywhere. It's like Budweiser and Miller and Coors all rolled into one.

00:12:11   Yeah, Pittsburgh is is I live there for a couple years. I like Pittsburgh a lot. It's

00:12:17   it's a really nice city in a lot of ways. But yeah, there are some things about that

00:12:21   are like that are just kind of bizarre. And but no one there thinks it's bizarre to them.

00:12:26   you know, it's just that's how things are. And I guess it's true of most places, but

00:12:31   I feel like Pittsburgh has more of a quirky personality than most cities do. But that's

00:12:38   true of a lot of things in Pennsylvania in general. I mean, Pennsylvania is just kind

00:12:41   of quirky.

00:12:42   Totally. So tell me something weird about the Erie people or what's going on up there.

00:12:50   Well first of all, I think the whole place is made of cigarettes.

00:12:52   What?

00:12:53   What?

00:12:54   It's just like you can just – if you're driving anywhere within 20 miles of Erie,

00:13:00   you'll smell cigarette smoke the entire – I mean I don't know what – like everyone

00:13:03   there smokes.

00:13:05   And I mean it's kind of a depressing place.

00:13:08   It's – the economy of Erie has been pretty terrible for a pretty long time.

00:13:12   It's one of those post-industrial places that just never really recovered when everything

00:13:15   was outsourced.

00:13:18   The climate is awful.

00:13:21   gets way more snow than you would expect based on its latitude, and it's just really miserable

00:13:27   most of the time. And it's kind of out in the middle of nowhere, too. So it has everything

00:13:33   working against it. But people who live in Eerie, people who are from Eerie, and I include

00:13:40   a lot of my family in this, actually, a lot of my family is from Eerie, but people who

00:13:44   live in Erie tend to be perfectly fine with it and not recognize or not care that it's

00:13:51   such a depressing place. And a lot of them have literally never been anywhere else, like

00:13:56   never left the Erie area. And it's just fine, as long as they smoke constantly. I guess

00:14:03   that makes it okay. So, I've never been a cigarette guy, so I don't really know what

00:14:06   it does to you, but that makes it okay to live in Erie. So, hey, you know, whatever

00:14:12   it takes shirts I'm sure they're fine people oh yeah they're very nice I would

00:14:17   be interested in seeing a map that shows like areas where smoking is still

00:14:26   permitted and like restaurants Pennsylvania is the big red dot well you

00:14:33   you've heard of James Carville the form I guess he's on TV now but yeah the

00:14:39   Is that a Clinton guy?

00:14:40   Yeah, a Clinton guy.

00:14:41   But his description of Pennsylvania, I think it applies both politically and culturally.

00:14:47   But he said it's Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburgh on the other, and Alabama in the

00:14:51   middle.

00:14:52   Yeah.

00:14:53   That's pretty accurate.

00:14:57   To win the state, you've got to run that way.

00:15:01   You don't just campaign in Pennsylvania.

00:15:03   You campaign very differently on the Pittsburgh and Philly areas than you do in Harrisburg.

00:15:08   Yeah.

00:15:09   And New York is very similar too. I mean, everyone thinks of New York who's not from

00:15:12   here, who's from the other side of the country. Everyone thinks of New York as being like

00:15:16   the city. But in fact, it's this extremely diverse state and a very large state with

00:15:23   lots of different political climates, lots of different types of people, and lots of

00:15:26   different types of places. But yeah.

00:15:29   Right. Like the state legislature in New York is nothing like the city politics in New York

00:15:34   City.

00:15:35   Oh yeah, and the state can't get anything done because the state is so incredibly diverse

00:15:38   that the state legislature just can't agree on anything.

00:15:42   Yeah. I think it's a little bit. I think Pennsylvania's non-urban areas, though, have more people

00:15:49   than New York's. I could be wrong. Or if I am wrong about it being more split, like I

00:15:57   feel like New York is so big. It's clearly way bigger population-wise than Philly and

00:16:03   Pittsburgh combined. It may not even be that the non-urban areas in Pennsylvania are more

00:16:11   populous. It's just that the urban area isn't as populated enough to compensate the way

00:16:16   that New York City can in New York. But I feel like when we get a Republican governor,

00:16:23   we get much more of a regular Republican governor, just like typical Republican governors throughout

00:16:29   the country as opposed to New York where you get like a Pataki who's you know is

00:16:34   a little bit more moderate same thing with New Jersey with what's his name

00:16:40   over there big guy Christy yeah it's Christy Chris Chris Chris yeah how can

00:16:44   you forget a name like that it sounds like he's a comic book character Chris

00:16:47   Christie he signed a bill that if if you're taking drugs with your pals and

00:16:53   one of them has an overdose and you report it you can't you won't be you

00:16:58   You won't get pro- you know, you're immune from prosecution for having taken the drugs

00:17:03   yourself.

00:17:04   That seems very sensible.

00:17:05   I'm kind of surprised that wasn't already the policy.

00:17:07   Can you- I mean, that's the thing is that can you believe that the conservatives are

00:17:10   giving the guy shit for signing the bill like that?

00:17:13   Yes I can, but-

00:17:15   I love the guy.

00:17:16   His explanation on TV is like, look, I don't want anybody breaking laws.

00:17:19   I don't want anybody taking drugs, but if you think it's more important to prosecute

00:17:24   someone for taking drugs than saving somebody else's life, then, you know, we're going to

00:17:28   a disagreement. Exactly. But anyway we don't get Republicans like that in Pennsylvania.

00:17:34   Anyway enough politics. Now that we've lost all the listeners.

00:17:39   Right. Now that we've lost all the listeners let me take the first sponsor break and tell

00:17:48   you about Backblaze the online backup faults. Backup folks. Backblaze is an unlimited,

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00:18:02   Don't let your data die in a fireball. Back it up. They told me to say that. That's not

00:18:08   bad though. But it's, you know, I see it because they're back Blaze. They've got the Blaze.

00:18:12   I run a site called Daring Fireball. Anyway, the URL you want is backblaze.com/daringfireball.

00:18:18   slash daring fireball. Now that's weird too because this is the talk show not

00:18:23   daring fireball but that's the URL they want. Got to give them what they want.

00:18:26   Kind of interesting. Kind of interesting I thought that's a little nutty and then

00:18:30   I thought you know what that's really gonna stick if I were listening to the

00:18:33   show I would think that's curious. I would remember that backblaze.com/daringfireball

00:18:38   Here's the things you want to know they've got unlimited data they don't

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00:18:48   They support backing up from external drives, anything connected to your system you can

00:18:55   backup to backplace, not just your home folder or something like that.

00:18:58   They use military grade encryption on their side.

00:19:01   It's continuous backup.

00:19:02   It's not something you have to remember to invoke like, "Hey, I'm going to go do a backup."

00:19:07   It's something that once you have it configured and set up, it's continuous.

00:19:10   And that's really the only way to do backups right because if you, you know, Murphy's Law

00:19:15   says that if you're only doing backups when you invoke them the time you need

00:19:19   the backup is going to be the time that you're furthest away from the last time

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00:19:45   11 different languages. Online backup, five bucks a month, unlimited, unthrottled, uncomplicated.

00:19:52   That's a pretty good line. www.backblaze.com/daringfireball. My thanks to them.

00:20:01   A couple other things that I wanted to add to that also. So first of all, I'm a Backblaze

00:20:04   user. I've been a Backblaze user for a couple of years. I just checked. I currently have

00:20:08   1.3 terabytes from my computer backed up, and then my wife's computer, I believe, has

00:20:12   about another 1.8 terabytes.

00:20:15   So we're looking at over three terabytes of stuff

00:20:17   we've backed up to them over the last couple of years.

00:20:19   And it's pretty great, especially

00:20:21   if you have big photos and stuff like that, where

00:20:24   other options can be more expensive or unwieldy.

00:20:28   Also, one thing that's really great that I've used before

00:20:31   with their service-- so I have a desktop and a laptop.

00:20:33   And I don't use Dropbox for everything.

00:20:35   I have small documents, a handful

00:20:38   of small documents in Dropbox, but nothing really big

00:20:40   and not all of my stuff.

00:20:42   So what you can do is--

00:20:44   like I was away from home one time,

00:20:46   and I couldn't get back to my computer

00:20:48   because back to my Mac or whatever it's called this year

00:20:51   was not going through the airport extreme properly

00:20:53   or something.

00:20:53   Well, whatever reason, I couldn't access my files

00:20:56   directly.

00:20:57   And I needed a file off my desktop.

00:20:58   So I just went to Backblaze and pulled it off there

00:21:02   onto my laptop from vacation.

00:21:04   And it was fine because it's online backup.

00:21:06   It has all your files.

00:21:07   And so it's kind of like an infinitely sized dropbox

00:21:10   for you.

00:21:11   you know, you can go, if you forgot to bring a file with you on vacation, you can go fetch

00:21:15   it from your Backblaze backup.

00:21:16   >> It's amazing. I actually didn't know that you could do that.

00:21:19   >> Yeah, it's pretty cool. And that's, and I believe that's one of the headlining features

00:21:24   of the iPhone app they just released, is the ability to do that from the iPhone too, which

00:21:28   is pretty nice.

00:21:29   >> Yeah, it is pretty neat. That way you don't have to worry about syncing stuff to your

00:21:31   iPhone. You just sort of pick and choose and access.

00:21:33   >> Exactly.

00:21:34   >> And again, I make a joke about their pun about losing your stuff in a Fireball or a

00:21:40   Blaze or whatever. But the truth is if your only backups are in your house, you are at

00:21:44   risk of what if your house catches on fire? What if you get robbed? If you get robbed

00:21:48   and a burglar comes in your house, they're probably just going to grab anything that

00:21:52   looks computery, including your hard drives and stuff like that.

00:21:55   Oh, yeah. I would say if you have any kind of reasonable upstream, if you're still on

00:22:00   a 128K upstream DSL, then you've got to be careful with what you back up online. But

00:22:05   If you have anything faster than that, if you're on cable or if you're on optical like

00:22:08   Fios, you got to do this.

00:22:13   Online backup is awesome.

00:22:15   I will say that they didn't pay me or you for me to say this, but online backup is ridiculously

00:22:20   awesome and I've tried a few of the options and my favorite by far is Backblaze.

00:22:24   It's amazing.

00:22:25   I had no idea that you were a regular Backblaze user.

00:22:28   I did not invite you to be my guest this week because of that.

00:22:31   Honestly, I don't even know.

00:22:32   That would have been a pretty weak reason.

00:22:33   It would have, but it's a happy accident.

00:22:35   But smart sponsors, smart guests, and it's not entirely coincidental that they're already aware of each other.

00:22:45   It was like Molt last week with the Igloo, the internet people. It was exactly what Molt needed in his last job.

00:22:57   What else this week? The big thing I guess, well one of the big things is this all of

00:23:04   a sudden like this week there was like a spate of reports. I think Mark Gurman at 9to5Mac

00:23:14   was first and then John Pachkowski at all things D and Adam Cetoriano at Bloomberg all

00:23:23   sort of reported on iOS 7 being a little bit late behind schedule sort of under

00:23:30   the gun to get it ready to show at WWDC and have it ready to ship presumably you

00:23:37   know September October when a new iPhone and maybe iPads or something like that

00:23:42   are coming out and be that it's one of the reasons it's behind is that they're

00:23:47   they're doing like a top-to-bottom UI overhaul. I presume you've read these stories.

00:23:53   I have, yeah. And I mean, first of all, you know, what is... whenever something is reported

00:23:59   to be behind that's still, you know, six months out, you gotta wonder like what...

00:24:04   what... is it actually running behind schedule or is it just not the schedule

00:24:08   that the reporter assumed or wanted? Yeah, I... well, in this case I... I, you know, and... and all of

00:24:14   them, I think, I don't know about Germin. Germin's story at 9to5Mac was so long and

00:24:18   meandering that I did not finish it. He's a good kid and he's doing really good work,

00:24:22   but boy, that story he had was a lot of words for very little information.

00:24:27   But I will say, and I'm not the type of person who gets hung up on it, but I started rolling

00:24:34   my eyes at all of this because I put all this in a branch discussion like a month ago. They

00:24:41   gave me credit. Both Satoriano and Pachkowski graciously said that it was first reported

00:24:48   at Daring Fireball, but it was like a month ago. So I did hear that, and that was like

00:24:55   a month ago, that iOS 7 is behind not just in terms of speculation, but within Apple

00:25:03   it was behind where they wanted it to be in terms of... And I think that it actually affected

00:25:10   the WWDC announcement date in terms of they were not 100% sure that it would be ready

00:25:17   even to show at WWDC until late in April. I don't think that they really purposefully

00:25:24   like announcing WWDC only five or six weeks before the date. In years past sometimes they've

00:25:32   announced it in March and I think that if everything had gone perfectly according to

00:25:36   schedule I think that they might have announced WWDC a month earlier but that it was a, you

00:25:41   know, are we sure that we're going to have it in shape to show in June?

00:25:45   Right. And then whatever they show in June, you know, it's such a high profile event with

00:25:49   the keynote and they're expected to show iOS 7 and show details about it during the keynote

00:25:54   and then tell all the developers about it for the next few days. So, you know, it pretty

00:25:59   much has to be feature complete and ready to demo what is that six weeks from now five

00:26:06   weeks from now and it's really soon.

00:26:09   And they don't have to give a developer beta but it's it would be weird if they don't because

00:26:14   if they're gonna be telling you about these new things like things that are different

00:26:19   and things that are new and they want you to start working on them it would be I mean

00:26:25   and usually they do usually they have you know a developer beta you know that

00:26:29   you if you're you know after the keynote you can sign into ADC and then there's

00:26:34   you know iOS 7 beta 1 or something like that exactly and and also you know they

00:26:41   they have to have it ready a couple weeks ahead of the presentation so they

00:26:44   can make the presentation and make sure that's gonna be solid right and you know

00:26:47   it's the developer betas of iOS and Mac OS 10 they are betas I mean you know and

00:26:54   it's just the people who, and somebody always does it, because it's new and shiny and they

00:27:01   have to have the newest shiny thing, they go ahead and install it on their regular day-to-day

00:27:05   iPhone an hour after it's available.

00:27:07   You're never going to let me forget that.

00:27:08   You did. I don't mean to, but you're an actual developer though, and you knew what you were

00:27:13   getting into. You did that at WWDC.

00:27:16   Yeah, I did it for iOS 5. I will never do it again.

00:27:21   I actually remember where I was when I gave you shit about it. We were in the lobby at

00:27:24   at the W. No, we were in a taxi going somewhere. Oh, no. I thought it was. But wasn't it when

00:27:30   we left the W? I remember being in the... I think there were multiple shit-given occasions

00:27:34   there. Yeah, I remember being in the lobby bar at the W Hotel and you were like, "Damn,

00:27:39   this doesn't work." And I'm like, "What did you think?" But that's, you know, even given

00:27:47   the fact that bugginess is excusable and understandable and that's the whole reason that it's a beta

00:27:51   and it's not actually released, it has to be, there's a certain minimal functionality

00:27:55   that has to be there.

00:27:58   Right. And almost all of the headlining features, whatever those are going to be, those have

00:28:05   to be at least working. They don't have to be done, but they have to be demo-able to

00:28:10   some degree. They have to be functional.

00:28:12   Right.

00:28:13   And that's going to be tough.

00:28:16   Was Siri functional last year? I think it was, right?

00:28:19   I think so.

00:28:20   Yeah.

00:28:21   Well, no, Ciri didn't come as the WVDC release. Ciri came as, I think, a 4.1 or 5.1 kind of

00:28:30   thing when the 4S actually came out.

00:28:32   Oh, that's right. That's right. That explains why. Yeah, that's right.

00:28:39   I'm looking forward to 7, though. I want to see what they do. We don't really know how

00:28:47   much is going to change since 4Stall's been out, because he hasn't been out for that

00:28:51   long. And so, you know, it's going to be hard to really look at 7 and say, "Wow, this was

00:28:56   all Johnny Ive stuff." Like, certainly, it's going to be a lot of difference, but it hasn't

00:29:02   been long enough for us to see the full effects of what that major change in design leadership

00:29:07   is going to lead to.

00:29:11   And to Patch Kowski and Satoriano's credit, especially Patch Kowski in his report, "At

00:29:15   things deep. Again, I'm not real good with show notes, but I'll put it in the show notes.

00:29:21   But anyway, a lot of this stuff I don't put in show notes because I've linked to it on

00:29:24   Daring Fireball and I just presume that everybody out there who listens to this podcast listens

00:29:29   or reads my site too. But Pat Czkowski had some quotes from sources at Apple, which was

00:29:35   new, like people who are obviously familiar with what they're doing with Iowa 7 talking.

00:29:42   There's no names, but it's still better than the rest of us have.

00:29:47   I've talked to people, but I've not talked to anybody who'll let me quote them.

00:29:51   I've not talked to anybody who's actually told me anything specific about what it actually

00:29:56   looks like.

00:29:57   What did the guy say?

00:30:00   It's a deforestallation.

00:30:01   It's impossible to pronounce a word.

00:30:05   Right.

00:30:06   It was funny.

00:30:07   Somebody on Twitter—I wish I'd favorited it or something—but somebody on Twitter

00:30:10   last night said, "What's this I hear about iOS 7? A deforestation?" Shame on Apple.

00:30:17   The Wall Street Journal front page scandal ahead tomorrow.

00:30:20   That's awesome.

00:30:21   iOS 7 is going to lead the deforestation.

00:30:24   Maybe the next New York Times Pulitzer?

00:30:26   Yeah, I don't know. It's hard. I don't know. Seriously, I'm not being coy. I have

00:30:31   not spoken to anybody who's actually seen iOS 7 and what the direction they're going

00:30:36   and is... I don't know anybody who's actually seen it. What I've heard is people who've

00:30:40   seen people who have seen it and know about those filters that they put over the phones.

00:30:46   Yeah, the security filters. So you have to be looking at it at exactly the right angle

00:30:50   to see it.

00:30:52   And I also know that this is, in fact, the first time that they've done that, like with

00:30:57   iOS 6 and 5 and 4 and 3, that the people who had the permission to carry the builds before

00:31:06   was released on their personal phones outside the campus did not have those filters.

00:31:11   Right. So obviously, that supports what we hear from everyone else, which is basically

00:31:16   that it's a big change. Six didn't look that different. Six had a minor refresh on some

00:31:22   of the gradients and some of the coloring and some of the shading, but it was a pretty

00:31:24   minor overall difference in appearance. And if you were just looking across a bar and

00:31:30   saw someone's phone on, you wouldn't really notice that that was something really different.

00:31:34   But in this case, it sounds like they are prepared for that particular outcome and want

00:31:39   to prevent that.

00:31:40   And, you know, so it's different enough that you would notice.

00:31:43   So one comment I've gotten from a couple people by email and Twitter.

00:31:49   Here's one.

00:31:50   It's a tweet that I noted from a reader named Sven Siewitz.

00:31:54   Siewitz, S-E-W-I-T-Z.

00:31:56   Sven, I hope I'm pronouncing your name right.

00:32:01   He tweeted yesterday to me, "Johnny Ivan software.

00:32:05   I fear he might take the fun out of the OS.

00:32:08   Mac software has always had elements of playfulness."

00:32:12   That's a sentiment that's perfectly expressed that a bunch of people have said, "Hey, this

00:32:18   whole flat thing."

00:32:19   I hate that term, but "This whole flat thing and the anti-skewomorphism, is this all going

00:32:26   to be like no fun?"

00:32:28   I don't think that's something anybody should be worried about.

00:32:33   I think that there's a difference between the sort of exuberance-- I don't know what

00:32:42   you want to call it-- the corniness even of Game Center.

00:32:46   Game Center is one of the ones that they mentioned specifically, that it's not going to look

00:32:49   like a craps table anymore.

00:32:51   Well, in Game Center, I mean, Game Center was always like an extreme example of just

00:32:57   something really, I mean, it was just really inexcusably bad because, you know, that was

00:33:02   back from the, from various oddly into the Steve Jobs era and it was pretty clear throughout

00:33:08   Steve's career that he did not really respect or understand the gaming market at all. And,

00:33:16   And that's like, you know, if this is what they think gaming is, like this felt card

00:33:20   table from a casino, like that's their interpretation of video games.

00:33:26   I mean, it's like, it's so different from the actual world of video games, and it's

00:33:31   so -- it betrays a deep misunderstanding or lack of respect of the gaming market.

00:33:37   Right.

00:33:38   So that's always been looked at as a very extreme example.

00:33:42   Yeah.

00:33:43   And I think that's a good way to put it.

00:33:44   And again, I don't know.

00:33:47   For all I know, it could be that the new look of iOS 7

00:33:51   is completely sterile and no fun and unemotional and robotic.

00:33:57   I don't know.

00:33:57   But I don't think so.

00:33:59   I'd be very surprised at that.

00:34:00   Because I think the key word to keep in mind is--

00:34:03   or one of them is emotion.

00:34:06   And Apple is always designed for emotion.

00:34:10   That stuff they make makes you feel a certain way.

00:34:13   And I would say look no further than their product marketing,

00:34:15   right?

00:34:16   Their commercials and stuff.

00:34:17   The latest one is the one with the iPhone camera,

00:34:19   which I think is one of the best commercials they've

00:34:22   had in a while.

00:34:24   And there's nothing silly about it,

00:34:29   like in the way that Game Center is silly,

00:34:31   or the leather in the calendar app is silly.

00:34:37   It's not silly, but it's definitely emotional.

00:34:40   And it's definitely-- there's playfulness and fun.

00:34:42   There's kids on skateboards.

00:34:44   You know, there's-- it's not dead serious either, right?

00:34:49   I feel like that's exactly what they'd probably

00:34:53   be going for in a less textured, less fake 3D depth OS

00:35:02   look and feel.

00:35:04   Yeah, and we have to consider, too,

00:35:05   what exactly their styling and where

00:35:08   the fun and playfulness and emotion should come from.

00:35:11   I mean, if they're going to give the default UI kit

00:35:15   widgets new default styles, like they kind of did with iOS 6,

00:35:19   but if they're going to do a more severe version of that,

00:35:22   then what that's going to affect are apps that

00:35:24   use the default UI kit widgets.

00:35:27   And I mean, I think I could argue,

00:35:29   and you would probably argue, that you probably

00:35:32   shouldn't be looking to the default widgets

00:35:34   to provide a whole lot of personality

00:35:35   to your application.

00:35:36   If you're going to want to add that emotion and personality,

00:35:39   Or even if you're going to want an application that everyone says, "Wow, that's a fantastically

00:35:42   designed app," these days you probably should not be using stock appearances of anything.

00:35:48   You should be custom skinning almost everything or custom designing almost everything that

00:35:52   your app uses, or at least tweaking the defaults. And if you look now, apps that use just the

00:35:57   defaults, they don't show any emotion. They don't show much playfulness. Apps that use

00:36:03   defaults today look old and terrible.

00:36:05   Yeah, and there's certain... maybe there's some playfulness to it though. Like one thing

00:36:10   is that the default look across iOS has a lot of glossiness, you know, and just starting

00:36:17   even with app icons where if you do nothing, your app automatically gets that fake U-shaped

00:36:24   gloss across the top third. And I know you can suppress that, you know, there's a way

00:36:28   that you, you know, like in your P list file, you can suppress that by specifying something.

00:36:34   But you get that by default. And most-- a lot of icons have that.

00:36:37   And all their--

00:36:38   Apple's icons have that.

00:36:39   They do eat the dog food on that.

00:36:41   If you look at--

00:36:45   I think Safari has it.

00:36:46   If not, they've-- yeah, they have it on Safari.

00:36:48   But messages and phone and stuff like that,

00:36:51   they have this glossicride that's across the top.

00:36:55   You get it in the system standard alert box,

00:36:58   that blue translucent thing that pops up

00:37:01   you need to put your Apple ID password in or when it says, "Hey, you've got airplane

00:37:08   mode on and this thing requires network access. Do you want to go to settings or cancel?"

00:37:14   Everybody has seen that dialog box 10,000 times. It has that fake glossiness to it.

00:37:19   Like that...

00:37:20   A big swoop through the middle.

00:37:21   That, I can guarantee you, that's going away. I don't know if they're going to completely

00:37:25   redesign the look of that dialog, but the glossiness is going away.

00:37:30   What I would love as a developer is for half of what I just said to be wrong.

00:37:36   What I would love would be enough of a refresh of the default components that you can start

00:37:42   using them again.

00:37:44   Right now, if you release an app that uses default components, it will look old, just

00:37:49   because the style is kind of outdated now.

00:37:51   A lot of that still looks like 2007.

00:37:56   And iOS 6 tamed some of it.

00:37:58   They changed some of the gloss to just flat gradient, stuff

00:38:00   like that.

00:38:01   But there's still quite a lot of it there.

00:38:03   And I would love, as a developer,

00:38:06   to have better defaults again, or to make it easier

00:38:10   to customize those defaults.

00:38:12   Right now, if you want to pop up an alert dialog box, like what

00:38:15   you were just talking about, with a custom look on it,

00:38:19   you have to re-implement the entire alert dialog box

00:38:22   yourself.

00:38:23   You have to re-implement all the behavior of it yourself.

00:38:26   And they've been slowly integrating more--

00:38:28   the UI appearance stuff-- slowly integrating more of that

00:38:31   into the OS since iOS 5.

00:38:32   But there's still so many things that

00:38:35   are so fixed in their default style

00:38:38   that the most you can do maybe is tint them or replace

00:38:41   the entire thing manually.

00:38:44   And if the new defaults are kind of less heavy-handed

00:38:50   with their looks, with their default looks,

00:38:53   the default styles, if they're a little bit

00:38:55   lighter and simpler, and if that's what people mean by flat,

00:38:58   you know, if they're a little bit lighter and simpler,

00:39:00   then it'll be better for everybody.

00:39:01   It'll be better for developers,

00:39:03   it'll be, you know, less old looking for users,

00:39:06   and easier for designers to work with.

00:39:10   - Yeah, and I think we've gotten some hints already

00:39:14   about the direction they're going

00:39:16   and maybe the magnitude of it.

00:39:18   So one of them is the podcast app,

00:39:20   the Apple podcast app, I think it's just called Podcasts.

00:39:24   And the new version that came out a couple weeks ago

00:39:28   is not just like a bug fix release

00:39:30   compared to the original version.

00:39:32   They famously got rid of the reel-to-reel tape recorder

00:39:36   interface, which was--

00:39:40   if that doesn't count--

00:39:41   and there's all sorts of arguments

00:39:42   about what counts as quote unquote "skeuomorphic."

00:39:44   But that's as skeuomorphic as anything can get.

00:39:48   I mean, it actually looked like a 3D reel-to-reel tape

00:39:51   recorder.

00:39:51   That's gone.

00:39:52   But there's other things in the change, just aesthetic changes in there that like the buttons

00:39:57   have become a lot less 3D. They don't look as much like physical buttons on a Braun tape

00:40:04   recorder from 1965. They're just, you know, they're just, you know, a triangle for play

00:40:10   and, you know, a thing for fast forward and stuff like that. If you look, if you Google

00:40:14   for like, you know, the changes between the podcast app, it's not radical. It's not like

00:40:19   unfamiliar. It's not like if you were already familiar with the old podcast app that now

00:40:24   you're lost in the new one. It's, you know, just taking out some of the exuberance of

00:40:30   the fake diviseness. I think it's, you know, and I'm not super down on the skeuomorphism,

00:40:39   but I do think, though, that it's taken to the level that it has been in certain of the

00:40:43   apps. It's dishonest. Yeah. And a lot of times it's unnecessarily clunky.

00:40:49   That's, I think, where it gets in the way.

00:40:53   People often cited "Find My Friends" and its crazy leather thing as being the epitome

00:40:58   of bad skeuomorphism.

00:40:59   I don't really think it was that bad.

00:41:00   It was just a skin, and it didn't really interfere with how you use the app.

00:41:04   It was just, that's just how the toolbars look.

00:41:06   But the podcast app, with that giant reel-to-reel thing, that was actually interfering.

00:41:12   It was taking up too much space.

00:41:14   Things like gestures didn't work.

00:41:15   The speed knob thing didn't work the way you'd expect it to, and it was hard to use. That's

00:41:21   when it actually is a problem, when it gets in the way.

00:41:22   Right, and it's dishonest. Here's a perfect reason why I use the word "dishonest," because

00:41:27   if you have a real reel-to-reel tape, or any sort of tape, you have a real limiting factor

00:41:33   in terms of seeking to go ahead. If you have an hour-long podcast, and you know that the

00:41:40   part that you're interested in is 45 minutes in, and you're at the beginning, you've got

00:41:45   to wait and hopefully, you know, and fast forward can only go so fast or else it's going

00:41:50   to shred the tape.

00:41:51   Right.

00:41:52   And you've got to wait to get there.

00:41:53   Well, there isn't, you know, one of the great advantages of going digital with our video

00:41:57   and audio is we no longer have to do that.

00:42:00   Right?

00:42:01   And so using that as the metaphor, it's a false metaphor because all the limits that

00:42:05   apply to actual, to tape or to a strip of film, you know, if you wanted to do that and

00:42:12   have like, you know, carry that analogy to a video player and have a film projector.

00:42:16   None of those, it doesn't hold up.

00:42:18   Right.

00:42:19   And that's why, that's always been my complaint with calculator apps and why I always prefer

00:42:23   solver instead.

00:42:25   Because like calculator apps, they would just mimic this old type of device, you know, the

00:42:30   old calculators that would have this one line of digits and there'd be like no real backspacing

00:42:36   ability.

00:42:37   Like you can't like hit 100 plus and then go back and edit that number, you know.

00:42:40   And there's all these stupid limitations

00:42:42   of real calculators were carried on exactly directly

00:42:46   to computer calculator apps, to almost all of them.

00:42:50   There are very few that have broken that.

00:42:52   And whereas Solver is rethinking the entire way,

00:42:57   rethinking what a calculator is,

00:42:59   because now it's a computer and you don't have to do

00:43:01   all that old crap that you used to,

00:43:03   and you don't have all those old limitations

00:43:04   that you used to have.

00:43:05   And skew-a-morphism gets in the way

00:43:07   when it starts bringing in those limitations

00:43:10   unnecessarily. Yeah. No, that's a good example. Says the guy who

00:43:14   still loves p calc. But I agree with you. I do agree with you.

00:43:19   But that's for me the reason and the main reason that I agree is

00:43:24   that if I was doing something that would involve more than

00:43:26   just one, you know, a couple of digits in a multiplier or

00:43:32   something like that, I probably would use salt silver instead of

00:43:35   p calc, like for, you know, it's a neat middle ground between

00:43:40   what I might have in the old days gone to a spreadsheet for as opposed to a calculator.

00:43:44   Whereas if I just want to multiply two numbers together, PCAL still works perfectly for me.

00:43:49   There's a new version of PCALC out too.

00:43:52   Every page.

00:43:53   Great app.

00:43:54   Here's a good example too, I think, of where Apple's going and why I don't think people

00:44:00   who are worried about the fun or the playfulness being taken out of the OS, I think it's

00:44:05   needless.

00:44:06   And I think that these have been up for a couple of weeks now.

00:44:10   Obviously, anybody who's listening to this show years from now, you know, you can't do

00:44:14   it.

00:44:15   But if you go and load apple.com now in two different tabs, once to get the iPad Hero

00:44:21   layout, and once to get the iPhone Hero layout, you can see some of the apps, like third-party

00:44:29   apps that Apple is celebrating.

00:44:31   So on the iPad one, they've got two apps.

00:44:34   I'm not sure what the one on the right is.

00:44:36   some kind of photo app, but it's mainly a big photo of a little girl playing in a

00:44:42   tent or in a balloon or something like that. But it's, you know, it's there

00:44:45   because it shows the color and it's a happy kid. But if you look at the...

00:44:49   One of those elementary school gym parachutes. Yeah, something like that. But if you look at

00:44:52   the UI around it, though, there's no 3D depth to it. It looks good, but it's like

00:44:57   just a translucent overlay to put text and thumbnails. Very... It is flat, I mean,

00:45:05   but it's, you know, it's attractive.

00:45:06   And in the other app that they're showing,

00:45:07   they're showing letterpress, which, again,

00:45:11   is not really flat.

00:45:12   It actually does, and you can see it in the screenshot,

00:45:15   it does use depth.

00:45:16   It's when you play a tile, it pops off the screen

00:45:20   three-dimensionally and, you know,

00:45:22   so it's, that's why I say flat's not quite the right word.

00:45:25   But, famously, it's relatively unadorned and minimal.

00:45:29   But I think anybody who's played letterpress

00:45:32   would realize that it's a very playful and fun interface.

00:45:39   It's perfectly appropriate for a game,

00:45:43   but in a way that is not at all like Game Center visually.

00:45:50   Well, Letterpress achieves a lot of that fun and playfulness

00:45:53   with gesture response and animations.

00:45:57   And everything is very tactile.

00:45:59   And it can be tactile without looking like a textured button.

00:46:05   Certainly there are some design challenges there

00:46:08   with usability and getting people

00:46:09   to figure out what's touchable and what's draggable.

00:46:12   But I think letterpress is a great example

00:46:15   to show that it can be done in the flat aesthetic.

00:46:19   It can still be done.

00:46:20   And you don't have to make everything

00:46:23   look like a 3D textured button for people

00:46:25   to know that they can touch it.

00:46:27   And then if you look at the iPhone Hero layout, it's three apps.

00:46:31   They show one built-in photo app.

00:46:34   And again, I think that's just to put a photo up there.

00:46:37   But not a particularly skeuomorphic design.

00:46:41   Then the two third-party apps.

00:46:42   I don't know what the photo one is.

00:46:44   Do you know?

00:46:46   That is the Tumblr app.

00:46:48   Oh, is it?

00:46:49   OK.

00:46:49   Wow.

00:46:50   Yeah.

00:46:51   I didn't even know that till just now.

00:46:52   So there you go.

00:46:53   It's the Tumblr app.

00:46:54   Yeah, that's the Tumblr app.

00:46:54   See, I don't use that.

00:46:55   So I didn't know.

00:46:56   And then there's, it's a notes, note-taking app called Catch

00:47:01   that I actually just checked out last week.

00:47:03   Not entirely flat, you know, it's,

00:47:07   but it is more flat than a lot of apps, you know,

00:47:10   it's flatter.

00:47:11   Maybe that's the better way to describe,

00:47:13   like I think the trend.

00:47:14   It's not flat design.

00:47:16   It's not Windows 8 style, completely flat,

00:47:19   no textures, no gradients.

00:47:20   It's just flatter.

00:47:21   - See, and looking at this shot with,

00:47:24   It shows a full screen photo in the camera roll,

00:47:30   but with the toolbars showing.

00:47:32   And so it has these semi-transparent, kind

00:47:34   of glossy toolbars overlaying this photo.

00:47:37   And to me, that looks old.

00:47:39   Like, I think what we've seen for a while

00:47:42   is that the default UI kit styles are out of style.

00:47:47   And they've been holding on-- iOS 6 did a slight tweak,

00:47:50   but they've been holding onto them still

00:47:52   a little bit too long.

00:47:53   But even if you go back to the iPad hero layout,

00:47:57   I think one of the reasons they didn't put anything there

00:47:59   that uses default widgets is because UIKit on the iPad

00:48:02   has always looked horrible, I think.

00:48:04   I mean, it's always been, you know,

00:48:06   if you use the default UIKit navigation bars on top

00:48:10   or if you use the default alerts,

00:48:12   like it's always looked like a scaled up version

00:48:14   of the iPhone.

00:48:15   It's never really come into its own

00:48:16   if you use the built-in stuff.

00:48:18   And a lot of it just, I think, is ugly.

00:48:21   Like, one of the things I loved most with doing the magazines app was that I finally

00:48:26   could really replace the popover chrome.

00:48:30   Because the default popover chrome, which is a border of a navy blue gradient thing,

00:48:37   framing something with a deep shadow inset in the middle of it, that should always look

00:48:41   like a hack.

00:48:43   And until iOS 6, you could not fully replace it.

00:48:45   iOS 5, you could change the chrome, but you were stuck with that weird inset shadow.

00:48:49   and six, you could finally hide the shadow also.

00:48:52   And so I think the popovers are some of the best looking

00:48:58   interface I've ever done.

00:48:59   Because-- well, I'm taking credit to Louis Mantilla,

00:49:02   who actually drew it.

00:49:03   And you're talking about the ones

00:49:04   you get for the footnotes.

00:49:06   For any popover.

00:49:07   I replaced every popover in the magazines app for iPad.

00:49:10   In fact, my goal with that was to not show any default

00:49:14   Chrome ever.

00:49:15   And the only time I do show default Chrome

00:49:17   is logging into Instapaper, I have some text inputs

00:49:21   and an alert box if you do it wrong.

00:49:23   And then if you subscribe, then I have to show the systems

00:49:27   in-app purchase dialogues, which look completely out of place

00:49:30   in the rest of the app.

00:49:31   But my goal there was to make this look well-designed,

00:49:35   I'm going to have the entire app just be custom-designed.

00:49:38   And that alone looks better than if you just use,

00:49:41   like the default pop-overs I think look horrible.

00:49:43   - I think it's a great design in the abstract.

00:49:46   I love popovers as opposed to, and I think that popovers should be used a lot more in

00:49:53   iPhone apps, not just iPad apps.

00:49:56   Oh yeah, me too.

00:49:57   I wish I could.

00:49:58   There's tons of developers who have made their own popover class for iPhone because Apple's

00:50:03   popover class only works on iPad.

00:50:04   Right.

00:50:05   I think that the iPhone, maybe just because it's called "phone," I think maybe like back

00:50:13   in 2006 when they were cranking out and iterating on that initial design I think

00:50:20   they got too caught up thinking about it as a phone and in traditional phones

00:50:23   every time you got a new menu it would be a new screen and everything so many

00:50:27   things are an entire screen and you go in and do it like you know just look at

00:50:32   like when you do you when you want to toggle Bluetooth and you go to settings

00:50:37   and you hit Bluetooth and you get an entire new screen just for a checkbox to

00:50:43   toggle Bluetooth. Now, I do think it's important to have that checkbox be a nice, big, fat

00:50:49   target like big 44 pixels in every dimension so that you have a nice, big, fat, thumb-friendly

00:50:55   target. But why not just a popover that comes underneath it when you hit Bluetooth and settings

00:51:01   that would give you the checkbox?

00:51:05   I think this might change in the future as phone screens get bigger. The iPhone 5 already

00:51:11   give us tons more real estate and then we'll see, you know, my prediction is that they're

00:51:14   going to have a bigger screen iPhone fairly soon. You know, we'll see if that actually

00:51:18   happens or not. I think the hint that Cook gave on the earnings call sounds like it might

00:51:24   be happening soon. And, you know, I think as we see, I mean, one of the great values

00:51:30   of bigger screen devices, including the crazy phablets that everybody hates, except for

00:51:35   all the people who keep buying them, which is a lot of them, one of the great things

00:51:39   about them is that you can bring you have more space to bring in some of the

00:51:43   conveniences of tablets and tablet interfaces and you know you aren't

00:51:49   limited to just these very very deep navigation stacks of full-screen things

00:51:53   on a little phone screen yeah but to your point from a minute ago I do think

00:51:57   that the iPad has suffered all three years of its life from having default

00:52:02   default Chrome that really originates with the 2007 iPhone oh yeah and the

00:52:08   scale is all wrong. Like, I can't even look, the screenshots of my first version of Instapaper

00:52:14   for iPad are unbearable for me to see because it was just blowing up the iPhone interface.

00:52:21   It was everything that you would never do today if you were designing a new iPad app.

00:52:27   I did everything wrong in that first version because I didn't have an iPad yet. I designed

00:52:32   it before anyone had iPads so it would be there on day one and as soon as it was out

00:52:36   realized, "Oh man, this is... I got some work to do. This is bad."

00:52:41   I had forgotten that you're the guy who did Instapaper.

00:52:43   Yeah, it's been so long. Yeah, it's been so long. I had totally forgotten

00:52:48   about that. That the other weird thing about the evolution

00:52:54   of iOS over the years, because now, you know, it's been six years, right? This is six years

00:53:00   since we've had the original iPhone, is that if you compare it to Mac OS X, Mac OS

00:53:06   Mac OS X has undergone numerous aesthetic tweaks every, you know, two or three revisions

00:53:13   or so, you know, and it's slowly evolved what the default look and feel of the system is

00:53:19   every couple of years and has never gone this long, not six years, with so many of the elements

00:53:27   looking exactly the same.

00:53:30   But if you look at the way that, like, you know, whenever there has been a visual refresh

00:53:35   in Mac OS X, like the time that they got rid of brushed metal

00:53:39   and just replaced everything with the, you know,

00:53:42   the non-brushed metal windows, the brushed metal windows, all of them, all of a sudden

00:53:46   looked exactly the same.

00:53:49   Which is, you know, in some ways, in terms of like the textures and the actual

00:53:53   pixels you see on screen, that was a pretty major change.

00:53:57   But, nobody who was a Mac user

00:53:59   was lost or confused or,

00:54:02   "Oh my god, where is everything?

00:54:04   I don't know how to use my computer."

00:54:07   Like that's to me is what I think they're going to do

00:54:10   with iOS 7.

00:54:11   Like I don't think,

00:54:12   and that's the other concern I've seen out there,

00:54:14   that, oh my god, if my parents,

00:54:16   I just got my parents an iPhone last year,

00:54:19   and now they're going to what?

00:54:21   To get an automatic upgrade to iOS 7,

00:54:23   and then they're gonna call me

00:54:25   and they can't find anything, right?

00:54:27   I don't think it's gonna be that type of,

00:54:28   I don't think that's what they're working on at all.

00:54:31   I think it's like when they change the way the windows look in Mac OS X.

00:54:34   Right.

00:54:35   Right?

00:54:36   There's still a red button up in the corner that you use to close the window.

00:54:40   You know, there's still an Apple menu up in the top left corner where you go to get to

00:54:44   system preferences and stuff like that.

00:54:46   I think too, you know, you can look at the trend that they've been doing with OS X design

00:54:51   and with Mac.

00:54:52   Oh, didn't they drop the word Mac?

00:54:54   I don't know what to call it anymore.

00:54:55   Yeah.

00:54:56   I still like calling it Mac OS X though.

00:54:58   To me, it immediately emphasizes the word Mac,

00:55:02   whereas otherwise with OS X and iOS, OS is at the middle of it,

00:55:06   and I have to think about which one is which.

00:55:10   Right.

00:55:11   Anyway, with Mac OS X, Mac in brackets there,

00:55:14   I think the trend has been very clearly towards less

00:55:19   ornamentation for the most part, and making the default Chrome

00:55:23   be less visually noisy, and making it easier

00:55:26   to ignore or forget about.

00:55:29   And iOS started out being the complete opposite of that,

00:55:33   with all this very heavy-handed visual kurama

00:55:35   as all the defaults.

00:55:36   And so, as I said earlier,

00:55:38   if they move towards a more subtle default look,

00:55:43   then people who make custom-designed apps

00:55:47   are still gonna make very high-personality designs.

00:55:50   Now, that's not gonna be a risk,

00:55:52   but it'll just make everything else a little bit less,

00:55:56   I don't know, saccharin.

00:55:57   - Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

00:56:01   So yeah, I think we're on the same page

00:56:05   in terms of the scope of the sort of redesign

00:56:07   that we're gonna see.

00:56:09   I don't typically, this is the last point I'll make on this,

00:56:12   is I don't typically do the game

00:56:14   where you read into Apple's invitations,

00:56:17   the design of the invitation,

00:56:20   and try to interpret what it means

00:56:22   about what they're going to announce.

00:56:25   But I know a lot of people have taken this whole flat UI,

00:56:27   you know, that they're going to get rid of this.

00:56:29   And then they look at the WWDC logo.

00:56:32   Yeah.

00:56:33   And they say, well, that must be the direction they're going.

00:56:36   And maybe there's something to that, you know?

00:56:39   Because the one thing I noticed with that,

00:56:41   it's like a stack of these vibrant primary color, like--

00:56:46   Gels.

00:56:47   Yeah, like app shapes, right, though?

00:56:49   It's the--

00:56:50   Yeah, it's the round rec, the icons.

00:56:51   The round square.

00:56:52   It's like if somebody cut out an icon's shape out of lighting gels and stacked them up.

00:56:57   Right. But they're not, you know, there's no gloss on them. But there is depth, right?

00:57:03   And there is translucency. So, you know, again, I think it's like a don't throw the baby out

00:57:08   with the bathwater. I don't think that, you know, I really, really would be shocked if

00:57:13   they went full on, like, Windows 8, no depth, sharp.

00:57:18   You know, I didn't notice that until now. But now that you mention it, I'm looking at

00:57:21   and on the corners, especially on the left side of the low,

00:57:23   you can see there are shadows between each layer,

00:57:26   so it does show depth,

00:57:27   that this isn't just a pile of lighting gels

00:57:30   that are just flat and have no meaningful depth.

00:57:32   This is a pile of, it's more like letterpress tiles.

00:57:34   - Right.

00:57:35   - Because it's a stack of things

00:57:36   that have some depth to them,

00:57:39   but the things themselves are flat.

00:57:41   I don't know, yeah, this could be interesting.

00:57:43   - Yeah.

00:57:43   - If this really is an indicator.

00:57:44   - I'm stealing it from our friend Brad Ellis,

00:57:48   great user interface designer now at Pacific Helm.

00:57:53   But the line I've heard from him is,

00:57:56   if you're going to have something stacked visually

00:57:59   on the z-axis in your UI, and it's going to have a shadow,

00:58:03   it doesn't have to be four inches off the surface.

00:58:06   Like, just a little, just a tiny little bit goes a long way.

00:58:11   Whereas I think that that original 2007 iOS design

00:58:15   is everything.

00:58:16   if it has a shadow, it's like four inches of shadow.

00:58:20   - Right, exactly.

00:58:22   And Six actually made that worse.

00:58:23   Six made the shadow depth bigger on some things,

00:58:25   and it even added shadows where there weren't any before,

00:58:28   like under navigation bars and above toolbars.

00:58:31   There's now, by default, there's a shadow there.

00:58:34   And before Six, that wasn't there.

00:58:36   - Let me take a break here and thank our second sponsor.

00:58:41   Our second sponsor is a very interesting company.

00:58:46   It's Transporter.

00:58:48   It's the name of the product, and the company is Connected Data.

00:58:51   And it's a team.

00:58:55   You go to their website and you can check it out.

00:58:56   They tell you this.

00:58:57   This is the team that originally made the Drobo.

00:59:00   And what they've done is the team that made the Drobo has gotten together,

00:59:04   and they've made a thing.

00:59:06   You buy it.

00:59:06   It's called the Transporter.

00:59:08   It's a physical device that you have in your hand.

00:59:12   Put a hard drive in it.

00:59:14   You connect it to the internet and you sign up with Transporter and that drive is accessible

00:59:20   anywhere.

00:59:23   They'll say this too.

00:59:24   It's not like I'm mentioning Dropbox and it's uncouth because it's sort of a competitor.

00:59:30   No, they actually – it's sort of like having your own private Dropbox.

00:59:35   They sent me one to let me try it out.

00:59:40   It works great.

00:59:41   It's very simple to set up.

00:59:43   you buy it, you just plug it in, you install the software on your computer,

00:59:46   and it's like you have your own little private Dropbox. And so instead of it's

00:59:52   cloud access being the access is everywhere and where is your stuff

00:59:57   stored is I don't know it's out there. The where is my stuff stored is right

01:00:03   here and you know where it is and so there's a privacy layer and the cloud

01:00:08   aspect that they've solved is punching a hole through your local network to the

01:00:14   internet at large so that you can access the stuff from anywhere and what you can

01:00:19   also do is if you anybody else like if you sign up for their service you don't

01:00:25   even have to buy the transporter you can just go to their website and sign up for

01:00:29   an account once you're signed up I can share stuff with you from my transporter

01:00:34   and you can access it on a folder by folder basis. So I could just say just

01:00:39   for this folder invite Marco and then you're in and you can you can use it. If

01:00:44   you have a transporter yourself then it'll also mirror it'll sync to your

01:00:52   device the shared folder so that you'll be faster for you to access when you're

01:00:56   at home because it'll be right there on your local network. If you have two of

01:01:01   you can mirror them so that you could say have one at home and one at your

01:01:07   office or one at your parents home or something like that and it'll mirror

01:01:14   both of them and it's you know effectively like backing up the data

01:01:18   that you have on one transporter it'll be exactly the same on the other one

01:01:22   really really simple the big pitch is that it's private because they don't

01:01:28   have access to any of your data. Your data is only stored on your actual transporter devices,

01:01:34   which are completely under your control. So for some people, that might just be personal privacy,

01:01:39   like stuff that you just don't want to put on Dropbox or on some kind of cloud-based service

01:01:44   because you don't trust it or, you know, for whatever reason. For a lot of people, though,

01:01:48   it's actually a legal-type issue, like if it's medical data and stuff like that and you have

01:01:53   have these laws to comply with, where you have to have physical control of where the

01:01:57   stuff is stored.

01:01:58   So you get cloud-style access from anywhere, over the web or on your Mac or Windows through

01:02:04   the transporter software, which puts a folder right in your finder so you can see it all.

01:02:13   But you get the privacy of storing your data on your own hard drive.

01:02:19   So it's really, really interesting.

01:02:22   great. They have apps for the iPad and iPhone, no surprise. You can use it. It's

01:02:30   great for stuff like storing and sharing photos, all sorts of stuff like that. And

01:02:34   you get to put your own hard drive in it so you can have as much data as you want.

01:02:38   As big a hard drive as you can put in it is as much data as as you can store.

01:02:42   That's pretty cool. It's very cool. See, what I like about this is that they

01:02:48   don't need to, like, act in denial that Dropbox exists.

01:02:52   Exactly. That's a great way to put it.

01:02:54   A lot of things are like, you know, you hear about something and you're like, "Well, why

01:02:56   don't I just use X?" You know, and, you know, because X is better or free or whatever. And

01:03:02   in this case, I think this is like, this is some really concrete advantages over Dropbox.

01:03:06   And so they don't have to, like, hope you don't hear about Dropbox.

01:03:09   Exactly. No, that's exactly why I brought it up. Let me tell you what to do to find

01:03:15   out more. Here's the URL. It's file transporter.com slash talk, file

01:03:22   transporter.com slash talk. They have an overview video. It's a good video. It's

01:03:28   very short, but it really, you know, it gives you the gist of what the heck

01:03:32   they're doing, why you would do it very, very succinctly. And they have three

01:03:36   different configs to buy. And the first is when I was sort of going on, which is

01:03:40   the 0 terabyte model you supply any 2.5 inch drive it's 199 bucks but you could

01:03:46   also if you want just save the hassle you can buy a 1 terabyte or 2 terabyte

01:03:52   version that'll just ship with the drive already in it for 299 or 399 respectively

01:04:00   and the most important thing for listeners of this show you can save 10%

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01:04:26   10%. Oh and the other thing I should definitely mention too is it's sort of

01:04:31   an Apple like model where their business model is selling you these transporters

01:04:36   right you buy it you buy the thing for 199 299 399 use the code save 10% talk

01:04:42   but there's no charge for the service you buy the thing and then it just works

01:04:47   and so if you want to share it like if you're sharing with clients or friends

01:04:50   or something like that who don't have a transporter doesn't cost them any money

01:04:53   to sign up for the service so there's no monthly fee you just buy the device and

01:04:59   then you you get to use it my thanks to transporter for sponsoring the show

01:05:04   let's see what else we got Winky you see the Winky app it is as creepy as it

01:05:12   sounds yet it isn't what it sounds like Winky is a is an app somebody's developed

01:05:17   for Google Glass that lets you take photos by winking so you don't have to

01:05:23   say okay glass take a photo you could just wink your eye and it starts snapping

01:05:27   photos?

01:05:28   You know, I think you can… I mean, I think every generation, as we get older, looks at

01:05:37   the newest technology at some point in their lives and says, "I don't understand why

01:05:42   anybody would want that. That's going to be so problematic for our culture." Whatever.

01:05:48   And maybe this is my moment to do that, but I just cannot understand Google Apps. I don't

01:05:54   and why anybody would want to wear that on their face all the time. I don't understand

01:05:59   why any right-thinking person would trust Google with all that extra data on them. And

01:06:04   I don't understand why Google thought it would be a good thing for society if everybody

01:06:08   started wearing these things. I mean, there's so many problems, including the picture-taking

01:06:13   aspect of like, you know, there's a problem enough where you kind of don't know if someone's

01:06:17   paying attention to you, even if they're looking right at you, sort of. And then there's

01:06:21   it was the secondary problem of like, now it's even easier than it was. And we've already

01:06:25   made it pretty easy as a society to take photos and videos covertly with our phones. But now

01:06:32   Google is trying to bring it even more mainstream in a way that is even easier to take photos

01:06:38   or videos of people without their knowledge. And that's, I just think that's kind of creepy

01:06:44   in so many ways. Plus, I mean, you look ridiculous with the thing on. But besides that, I think

01:06:49   it's just it's just kind of socially kind of gross yeah I want to write about

01:06:54   this I have to get it out of my system is sort of a why I'm so down on Google

01:06:59   class and I'm not against heads-up displays in general right and I'm not

01:07:07   denying that there's a bright future in them and that you know that the amazing

01:07:11   stuff is going to happen in the next decade or two along the lines of this

01:07:17   it's this particular product in the current configuration that I just think

01:07:25   is absurd right and it gets back I don't know if you listen the last week's show

01:07:28   but like moltz pointed out a thing I wrote back in 2003 about the quote-unquote

01:07:33   iPhone and that I said that you know it was like a New York Times story that's

01:07:37   that claimed in 2003 that Apple was working on a I thing that they call the

01:07:44   iPhone that ran a stripped-down version of Mac OS X and involved apps like Sherlock and

01:07:49   stuff like that.

01:07:51   And what they said was, you know, the article made it seem as though that it was something

01:07:55   that might come out like next year.

01:07:58   And it wasn't true.

01:07:59   It wasn't -- I wrote, "That's impossible.

01:08:00   There is no technology that would do it."

01:08:02   And I was right.

01:08:03   There was no --

01:08:04   HOFFMAN, Off-screen -- less space than a nomad, lame.

01:08:05   SIMON ROGERS Right.

01:08:06   But it wasn't -- I didn't say that Apple would never be able to make a device that would

01:08:10   would run a stripped-down version of OS X and, you know, like a cell phone or something

01:08:15   like that, and that would have software like that. What I was saying was impossible was

01:08:19   that in 2003, it was impossible, and that they weren't working on anything like that.

01:08:25   And in fact, they weren't, right? It was – they were working on a tablet-type thing. Like,

01:08:28   the thing that eventually became the iPhone was in some level of work, but it was more

01:08:32   like they had the idea that it was like a tablet-type thing.

01:08:35   The story that I said wasn't true in 2003 wasn't true. It does seem funny in hindsight,

01:08:39   though because that is actually what they ended up doing four years later.

01:08:42   It's the same thing with Google Glass where I'm not denying that there won't

01:08:46   be cool and maybe even possibly useful wearable headset type things eventually.

01:08:54   But this one is not. This one is ridiculous. It looks stupid.

01:09:01   Yeah. Well, and yeah, it looks like a medical device.

01:09:04   Right. Doesn't it? It looks like some kind of like enhanced hearing and visual aid.

01:09:09   but not in a tech way, in a medical assistance way.

01:09:13   Right, or something that you might have to wear for certain jobs, you know?

01:09:17   Yeah, if you're like inspecting a plane in the airport, walking around the runway

01:09:23   wearing one of these things with a clipboard in your hand.

01:09:24   Right, and I could even see that there are uses, especially the camera part, that if you,

01:09:32   even if you look stupid, I could see it how it, for certain people, it might be useful to have a

01:09:39   have a stupid looking camera that you wear like this over your eyes so that you can get

01:09:44   a first person perspective while you do something where you want your hands free. Right? Like

01:09:50   so you can make, I don't know, like the one that Google even made. Like if you're going

01:09:54   to take a video while you jump out of an airplane with a parachute, well, I don't know. You

01:09:58   don't want to have a camera in your hands. That's for sure.

01:10:01   Right. I mean, and you can look at aspects of this and you can say, okay, well, the technology

01:10:06   will get better in Area X, so that's not going to be a problem for long. I think you

01:10:11   can look at especially things like size and battery life. You can say, "Okay, well,

01:10:15   those will get better over time." It will get smaller. It will look sleeker. The battery

01:10:20   life will get longer. But I think the social aspects of it are the big, long-term, what-the-fuck

01:10:30   moment.

01:10:31   And, you know, I guess, you know, and again, I'm right there with you, where maybe it's

01:10:36   just that we're too old and we're getting curmudgeonly and we just, you know, stuck

01:10:42   in the mud and we're, you know, already old-fashioned.

01:10:45   Because I could see how if, you know, you went back to the '80s and told somebody about

01:10:50   how all of us have little pocket computers with three, four-inch screens that we check

01:10:57   all the time and if we go out to dinner and you go to the bathroom, I'm going to get my

01:11:02   phone out until you come back.

01:11:05   I could see how someone would say, "Well, that sounds like hell on earth of everybody

01:11:10   always looking at these computer screens."

01:11:14   Whereas I see it as, "My God, it's a relief from boredom."

01:11:17   It's great.

01:11:18   I try never – like if I'm at dinner with people, I try never to be on my phone while

01:11:23   we're at the table together, but if I'm out with one person and that person gets up, I usually take

01:11:29   out my phone. I don't know. I do that and I can see how that's, you know, there's like a slope

01:11:38   along the lines of, well, how far away is that from having your computer always in your field

01:11:44   of visual stream in your glasses? That it's, you know, it's along the same continuum. But to me,

01:11:49   that goes over this border that to me is just ridiculous. Yeah and you know we

01:11:56   don't know how that's going to change over time with with generations and

01:12:01   social stuff. Like I think there was this great video I'm trying I think it might

01:12:05   have been by Dan Savage maybe? I'll have to find it and put it in your

01:12:14   in your non-existent show notes but there was this great video where this

01:12:17   guy was talking about, I think it was back with the governor or senator, Wiener, whatever

01:12:24   that was, when he sent his pictures of his junk to people and then they got out.

01:12:28   He was a congressional representative from New York, New York City.

01:12:33   Right. So there was a big deal about that. And he made this video about it afterwards.

01:12:39   It's on YouTube somewhere. I've got to find it. And I think it's Dan Savage, but I'm not

01:12:42   positive on that. And he basically said, "Yeah, today our politicians are so afraid of pictures

01:12:52   of their junk getting out that if it does happen, then you're like, 'Well, that's pictures

01:12:57   of someone's junk. I don't know.' You try to deny it. And then at some point, the tide

01:13:04   will change socially because everyone's having pictures of their junk all over the place,

01:13:08   especially if you're younger, and sending it all over the place." I'm so glad to acknowledge

01:13:11   like this did not exist when I was younger.

01:13:13   (laughing)

01:13:15   And then eventually, a politician can get up there

01:13:19   and say, "Yeah, that's my junk.

01:13:21   "Of course, who cares?"

01:13:23   Eventually, the times will shift in social tolerance

01:13:27   of certain things that it will just become normal.

01:13:32   And so I think with my concerns with Google Glass

01:13:36   of it kinda sucks when you can't tell

01:13:39   someone's looking at a screen overlaid over your face or looking at you, and it kind of

01:13:44   sucks if everyone can be taking pictures or video all the time and you can't even tell

01:13:48   if they're doing it or not. You know, all those things make me nervous, but having a

01:13:54   cell phone in my pocket that can take a quick picture or video makes other people nervous,

01:13:59   especially older people, in older contexts. You know, it's like everything we're doing

01:14:04   is adding more things that make people uncomfortable

01:14:07   who are older or who are more conservative.

01:14:11   And we keep pushing that boundary back

01:14:13   in all these other ways.

01:14:14   We've been pushing it back for decades.

01:14:17   So maybe this is just the next step of that.

01:14:19   But I don't know.

01:14:20   This to me seems like it crosses a line

01:14:23   that shouldn't be crossed.

01:14:26   And I think we'd actually be worse off

01:14:27   if that line was crossed.

01:14:29   But I don't know.

01:14:30   People probably say the exact same thing about camera phones.

01:14:34   Yeah, probably.

01:14:35   You know, I see my difference with that is, and what's his name?

01:14:39   I don't know how you pronounce his name.

01:14:41   He's the guy who writes the OS news site, Tom Holwerda.

01:14:44   I don't know.

01:14:46   T-H-O-M.

01:14:47   You know who I'm talking about.

01:14:50   I know the site.

01:14:51   But he, Twitter replied me yesterday after I linked to the Winky app and my only comment

01:15:01   was a fake quote from a hypothetical Glass user saying, "Okay, Glass, let's be creepy."

01:15:10   And his Twitter thing was, "Oh, come on." Because he's a huge Glass enthusiast. He's

01:15:15   super excited about Glass and thinks that I'm being some either like a Pollyanna or

01:15:25   combination of a prude and a if it isn't from Apple it's crap zealot which the

01:15:34   Pollyanna part the the prude part maybe is true that's what we're talking about

01:15:38   the Apple part man I would be so depressed if Apple came out with Google

01:15:42   Glass it's exactly like this I would think I would then then that's I in some

01:15:48   sense it would be great though and I've talked about this before because man I

01:15:51   Nothing would be better for my reputation than for me to have something to really dig

01:15:56   into and just rip Apple apart on.

01:15:58   Like, you know, I don't do it because they haven't released anything that I think is

01:16:03   terrible, you know, but it would be great.

01:16:04   Right.

01:16:05   I mean, they have, but they've been smaller things.

01:16:06   Right.

01:16:07   You know, like the iPod HiFi was a massive flop.

01:16:10   But who cares?

01:16:11   It was a speaker dock.

01:16:12   You know, no one—it wasn't like a big PR problem for them to release a speaker dock

01:16:16   that was actually a pretty decent speaker dock, just too expensive.

01:16:20   But the difference, yeah, and the difference,

01:16:24   his reply to me was, oh come on,

01:16:26   like nobody's taken a surreptitious picture before?

01:16:31   Like it's not happening all the time now?

01:16:32   And that is true, people do sneak photos, you know,

01:16:36   and you can be creepy by taking photos with your phone now.

01:16:40   But there's a physical,

01:16:42   there are physical limitations to it, right?

01:16:44   Like you have to be sly about it.

01:16:48   And so yes, somebody could take a picture of you in someplace

01:16:52   where you don't want to be photographed,

01:16:54   and you don't know it, and you may not notice them doing it.

01:16:58   Presumably, especially if the flash is off on the computer

01:17:02   or on the camera, obviously.

01:17:04   But they have to work at it.

01:17:07   It's not they're strapped to their forehead always,

01:17:11   constantly.

01:17:12   I would find it so uncomfortable if I went out to dinner

01:17:17   and somebody just had their phone up

01:17:19   and in a position that looked like it was filming

01:17:23   a video of the entire meal.

01:17:25   And I don't know if they're--

01:17:26   Exactly.

01:17:26   I don't know if they're doing it or not,

01:17:28   but they're holding it up the entire time.

01:17:29   Well, to me, that's what it would

01:17:31   be like going out to dinner with Scoble with his glasses on.

01:17:36   Glass on, I guess.

01:17:37   You have to--

01:17:38   Who knows how you--

01:17:39   --singularize it.

01:17:40   I think also it's worth considering

01:17:44   If you are a user of Google Glass,

01:17:47   do you want Google getting all that information

01:17:51   from your face all the time?

01:17:53   - Right.

01:17:53   - Do you want Google to know

01:17:55   that you just loosed up the waitress's butt?

01:17:57   And what are they gonna do with that information?

01:18:00   They're an advertising company.

01:18:02   People think Google just does some of this stuff

01:18:04   for the fun of doing it,

01:18:06   and some of their projects do seem like

01:18:07   they're just kind of engineering for fun,

01:18:09   although since Google+ has come out

01:18:11   and the company's focus has been shifted,

01:18:13   you can tell those have been lessened in the company.

01:18:15   But at the end of the day,

01:18:17   they gotta make this a business somehow.

01:18:19   They have to make it work with the rest of their businesses.

01:18:21   And the way they're going to do that, in all likelihood,

01:18:24   is by tying this in extremely deeply

01:18:28   with everything they know about you,

01:18:30   which is their business.

01:18:31   Their business is to know as much as they possibly can

01:18:33   about you so they can charge more for the ads

01:18:36   that get shown to you.

01:18:38   And so when you look at it from that perspective,

01:18:41   it just feels kind of dirty.

01:18:43   Like, wait, do I really want Google

01:18:45   to know every minute of every day of my life what I'm doing?

01:18:50   It's bad enough that I'm carrying a phone in my pocket.

01:18:53   If you have an Android phone, then you

01:18:55   can already do quite a lot of that stuff today.

01:18:58   But it's different when it's your face.

01:19:01   When your phone is this thing that you can kind of put away,

01:19:04   and technology is such that phones can't really

01:19:08   afford the battery problems of keeping GPS on all the time.

01:19:12   So they at least aren't live tracking you precisely yet.

01:19:17   But who knows in the future?

01:19:19   There was that thing this week with the Google Now app

01:19:21   burning battery time on iPhones.

01:19:23   That's exactly what I was going to say.

01:19:25   We're segueing perfectly into the next thing.

01:19:28   Well, and there's a thing--

01:19:31   I'm not even sure I completely understand the why of it

01:19:36   and the way that knowing your location helps Google serve you ads and stuff better.

01:19:43   And part of it, obviously, is not even about advertising or creepiness, and really is.

01:19:47   And this is why I think it is so insidious, because there's obviously usefulness to it,

01:19:54   where in theory, if they know where you are and you say, hey, I'm hungry,

01:20:02   I'm in the mood for pizza but I don't you know this is I'm not familiar with

01:20:06   this neighborhood it's useful if they know where you are and can say you know

01:20:11   there's a well-regarded pizza place two blocks over to the left right and you

01:20:17   know and if they know even more about you and they know and you've you have

01:20:21   you know a Google+ the pizza restaurants that you've been to in the past and

01:20:31   and said, "I like this one and I don't like that one," that they can, if they have millions

01:20:36   of users, that they can correlate all of that and say, "Given the type of pizza that you've

01:20:40   said you've liked before and the ones you've said you don't like, this is almost certainly

01:20:44   a pizza place that you're going to like." And that, if it's accurate and it works, that's

01:20:48   -- that is -- I do understand that is useful, right? That's the whole pro-Google argument.

01:20:53   Right. Well, it's useful sometimes. It's useful when you have purchasing intent. And so if

01:21:01   you think about these examples, and that makes sense. You think about these examples of,

01:21:07   where should I go eat pizza right now? You have purchasing intent. And that's what Google—Seth

01:21:11   Godin did a talk about this a while ago. There's a video of it online somewhere. But that's

01:21:16   what Google and their advertising model excels at. And that's why Facebook's advertising

01:21:20   model sucks.

01:21:21   Google's advertising model excels at that

01:21:23   because it's really easy to sell ads against purchasing intent.

01:21:27   If you're searching for something like,

01:21:28   what kind of coffee maker do I need to get from my office?

01:21:32   Then that's a great place for not only Google

01:21:35   to recommend things to you based on knowledge it has from Yelp

01:21:39   or user reviews or whatever, but they can also then integrate

01:21:42   ads really well into that in a way

01:21:43   that the ads are not trying to distract you.

01:21:46   The ads are actually possibly helpful to you.

01:21:48   And same thing with-- that's why local search matters so much

01:21:52   to them, because it's the same kind of thing, where

01:21:55   if you are looking for a pizza place around you,

01:21:58   that's a great time for Google to not only use all this data

01:22:01   they know about you to give you better recommendations,

01:22:04   but then for them to be able to go and sell that

01:22:07   to the advertisers, for them to go to local advertisers,

01:22:09   for local advertisers to be able to say,

01:22:11   I'll pay you $1.50 to put my ad on top

01:22:13   and put a yellow box around it.

01:22:15   And so in all those contexts, that's great.

01:22:19   It's great for Google, and it actually

01:22:21   is kind of helpful for the user at those times.

01:22:24   The problem is all the other times,

01:22:26   when you don't have that purchasing intent,

01:22:28   or when you're doing something that is not

01:22:30   commercial in nature or that you don't think

01:22:32   of as commercial in nature, and they kind of surprise you

01:22:36   with either an ad that you weren't expecting,

01:22:39   or they surprise you with knowledge

01:22:42   that they have that you didn't think they had about you

01:22:45   or what you did or what you intend and that's when it that's when it gets

01:22:48   creepy yeah and you know and Amy has run into this recently where she's noticed

01:22:54   and she's you know called my attention to it with her computer where like

01:23:00   she'll she'll have searched for and who knows even if it's Google I might you

01:23:05   know I don't even know it might be through some other similar to type

01:23:09   aggregate collection of stuff we're like she searched for product X like four

01:23:15   days ago. And now she's on this other website that isn't even related to that product and

01:23:21   here are ads for exactly what she was searching for four days ago.

01:23:26   Yup.

01:23:27   Right?

01:23:28   And it's not like a general audience thing like that. It was definitely not a coincidence.

01:23:30   Right. And it, the result is not, "Oh yeah, I should buy that." The result is, "I am creeped

01:23:36   out and I'm going to tell my nerd husband and, you know, this is freaking me out." Right?

01:23:44   It is creepy.

01:23:45   And that to me is where I see that Google and I really do think Google has shifted over

01:23:51   the second half of its life.

01:23:53   In the first couple of years of its life, it just seemed amazing and helpful in the

01:23:59   second half of its life.

01:24:01   And especially I think, even though I think Eric Schmidt is a pretty creepy guy, I think

01:24:06   it's really accelerated though since Larry Page took over as CEO.

01:24:09   Yeah, it's really accelerated since Facebook really. Since Facebook got so big that it

01:24:14   started becoming an obvious threat to many of their core markets.

01:24:17   Yeah, I think that really is the – I think – and again, correlation is not causation,

01:24:23   but boy, the correlation is very strong that when Facebook got big and when it became clear

01:24:29   that Facebook was not the next MySpace but was going to be a standalone thing and they're

01:24:37   to be acquired there they've reached the critical mass where they were going to IPO which was

01:24:42   far in advance of you know years in advance of when they actually did IPO like it was a long you

01:24:48   know there were a couple of years there where it was clear that Facebook was going to eventually

01:24:52   IPO and no you know Google wasn't going to have a chance to buy Facebook uh that's when it does seem

01:24:58   like that they really had like a freak out and have really gotten creepy about the personal stuff

01:25:05   And any and and so it all goes back to the location

01:25:07   I mean not all but in terms of what we're talking about here is that they really want to know where you are

01:25:14   like all day every day and

01:25:16   I find that in the context of everything else Google is doing very very disturbing and it it

01:25:23   I think it's actually the root. I think you know in terms of their desire to know where you are. I

01:25:31   I think is the entire reason that Apple Maps exists.

01:25:36   Oh, yeah, definitely.

01:25:37   You know, and I feel like everybody has this wide--

01:25:40   and it's held up as the criticism of Tim Cook as a CEO,

01:25:45   and that Apple--

01:25:46   it's all of these stories, these, hey, Apple's hit a rough patch,

01:25:51   Apple's doing poorly.

01:25:53   Inevitably, they bring up Apple Maps,

01:25:55   and that Apple Maps is a disaster and a shit show,

01:25:57   and it's terrible and inexplicable.

01:26:01   Well, it's not inexplicable.

01:26:02   I think it's that Google--

01:26:04   and some of this I actually know-- is that Google,

01:26:07   to up the offering in terms of getting the vector maps

01:26:13   instead of the bitmap map tiles and turn-by-turn direction

01:26:18   for driving, which was sorely missing from iOS,

01:26:22   that they wanted--

01:26:24   they were-- their deal was that if you want that from us,

01:26:27   you've got to let us let people sign into their Google account

01:26:31   And that would let us track their location

01:26:35   through their iPhone, through the built-in maps

01:26:37   functionality that ties to our maps.

01:26:39   And Apple was not willing to budge on it.

01:26:41   And so they were so unwilling to budge

01:26:43   on that in terms of the privacy implications

01:26:46   that they went ahead and shipped a map service that they--

01:26:51   and I know that--

01:26:52   I think it's probably a little bit worse than they expected

01:26:54   in terms of the reaction.

01:26:56   But I think that they knew that it wasn't going to be--

01:26:59   wasn't going to be as good as Google Maps. And they did it anyway for the privacy reasons.

01:27:06   Yeah, I don't... For some reason, you know, with Apple it's very, very clear to everyone

01:27:12   where they make their money. So it's... Most people don't ascribe weird motivations to

01:27:17   Apple's business decisions. Usually it's just, "Well, okay, they want to charge more for

01:27:21   that," or, "They want you to buy this thing." But yet, with Google, it seems like most people

01:27:26   just kind of give them a pass, especially nerds, because Google did have a very long

01:27:32   period where they really did things that really appealed to people like us. As you said, the

01:27:38   first half of their life, they really, really appealed to people like us because they were

01:27:42   a nerdy company doing nerdy things and with seemingly little care about making money because

01:27:47   they owned the online ad business pretty early on in their lifetime, especially the search

01:27:52   ad business at least, not display ads for a while, but they owned the search ad business

01:27:57   pretty quickly and they were making tons of money. And so I think it was easy to stay

01:28:03   in that kind of small, geeky, engineering-driven spirit and keep making things that endeared

01:28:08   them to us. But now that spirit's been gone for a couple of years at least. I think it's

01:28:16   probably longer than that. Certainly the spirit is certainly not there at the moment. And

01:28:22   I think you can look at that honestly and say, "Well, okay, they grew up. They had to

01:28:29   make a lot of these moves." But so many people in our circles or so many nerds like us still

01:28:36   kind of give them a pass on their motivations and why they are doing things and where their

01:28:40   money is going to come from. It's not that they look at what Google is doing and say,

01:28:44   I'm okay with that," it's that they don't even think about it in their mind, like,

01:28:48   "Wait, so what's their motivation for doing this? What's in it for them

01:28:51   here? How are they gonna pay for this?" etc. And so Google can be doing some

01:28:58   pretty creepy or questionable things and get relatively little skepticism or

01:29:03   relatively little scrutiny, I should say, from the geek audience. Yeah, in a way

01:29:09   that Facebook doesn't, because Facebook has somehow, like, their initial

01:29:14   first impression of them was that they were going to do these sort of things.

01:29:19   Right. And I think, to be fair, I think Facebook is pretty creepy overall as well.

01:29:24   Right.

01:29:25   And what Facebook had—one of the design challenges Facebook has always had,

01:29:30   and you can see they've failed a few times on this, is that Facebook and Google's the same way.

01:29:36   They both have enough data on you that if you knew what they knew, you'd be creeped out.

01:29:41   creeped out. And so they always have to kind of hide what they know or use restraint in

01:29:46   designing new features or designing the interfaces to things or designing how they reveal what

01:29:50   they know about you to avoid creeping you out with data they already have or inferences

01:29:56   they can already draw about you. And I heard something like Facebook can tell when you're

01:30:02   going to break up with your girlfriend before you can. There's all sorts of things like

01:30:07   like that, like there's, like Facebook knows a lot about you.

01:30:09   But in, you know, the recent history where Google

01:30:13   has been kind of pushing into social so hard,

01:30:16   I think we've seen a pretty clear pattern

01:30:18   that while they both have enough data on you

01:30:20   to appear quite creepy if they do it wrong,

01:30:23   Facebook is generally a little bit better

01:30:25   at avoiding that problem.

01:30:27   Facebook is a little bit better at designing

01:30:29   in such a way that it doesn't feel as creepy

01:30:31   as it really is.

01:30:33   And Google is not quite good at that yet.

01:30:36   Yeah, I agree.

01:30:37   Boy, they really wanna know where you are.

01:30:41   - They really, I mean that's,

01:30:42   I don't use any of the Google apps.

01:30:43   - Right, the new Google app.

01:30:44   Now, so it's not called, the feature's called Google Now,

01:30:48   but the new feature on iOS is just in the Google app.

01:30:52   It's just in the regular, which originally was just a way

01:30:54   to do Google searches.

01:30:56   But you open it up, and if you're not,

01:30:59   or even if you are signed in,

01:31:01   there's a big button at the bottom

01:31:02   that says location service is off.

01:31:05   Like, and they don't let you use, I think, some of the, a lot of the now features unless

01:31:11   you turn location on.

01:31:14   And I realize, and it seems to me, and some of them obviously require location, but I

01:31:20   think the thing that's weird though is that it, by default, if you turn location on, it's

01:31:24   not just for, and this gets back to your thing about like, what was the Seth Godin thing

01:31:30   about when you're in the mood to buy something?

01:31:32   Yeah, it's like purchasing intent or I think he calls it permission-based marketing.

01:31:36   Right.

01:31:37   It's not just when you're asking for something.

01:31:40   And if I'm asking for pizza now, well, now we need your location to see where you are

01:31:45   and we'll give you the recommendation because that's what you're looking for.

01:31:49   It's that they want to know where you are all throughout the day and where you've been.

01:31:54   And that to me is the difference.

01:31:56   That's like the line that I'm very uncomfortable with.

01:32:00   And so I don't have it, the location, turned on in my Google app.

01:32:04   You know what I mean?

01:32:05   There's a huge difference between granting them permission for your location right now

01:32:09   when I'm asking where can I get coffee versus granting them permission to track me throughout

01:32:15   the day.

01:32:16   And one thing too that, you know, iOS has always kind of felt like a safe place to experiment

01:32:22   with new apps because apps are so heavily sandboxed and restricted with what they can

01:32:26   do and, you know, when they can run even.

01:32:29   You know, iOS's lack of fully permissioned background modes for apps where you can run

01:32:36   in the background indefinitely doing anything you want.

01:32:39   iOS's lack of that and all the heavy sandboxing makes it okay as a consumer to say, "You

01:32:45   know what?

01:32:46   I can try this Google app, even though I don't really love Google that much or I don't

01:32:49   trust them to know everything about me.

01:32:51   I can launch this app, and when I'm done with it, I can shut it down and that's

01:32:54   it.

01:32:55   I'm good."

01:32:56   you aren't surprised a month later to learn that

01:33:00   it's been running in the background for a month

01:33:02   and it knows everything everywhere you've gone

01:33:03   for the last month.

01:33:04   - Right.

01:33:05   - You know, iOS by design kind of limits that,

01:33:07   but location services are an exception,

01:33:11   and the whole battery thing, do you wanna recap that?

01:33:14   - Well, you can.

01:33:16   - Okay, so basically, app comes out,

01:33:19   everyone's reporting massive drops of battery life

01:33:21   when it's on, and Google issued a statement

01:33:24   basically saying, "We don't constantly monitor

01:33:26   your location, so therefore you're all wrong and the battery's fine, we tested it. But

01:33:29   it seems pretty universal from almost everybody using it that it is indeed doing bad things

01:33:34   with the battery life. And I think it's important for me as a developer to clarify what exactly

01:33:38   they're doing, because when you…

01:33:41   Well, before you do that, I'll just reiterate that I'm always a little suspicious of when

01:33:47   software updates come out and there's vague arguments that, "Hey, the iOS 4.1 point

01:33:53   whatever is killing my battery and it wasn't before and a lot of times when

01:33:58   this happens it just seems like whenever any new software comes out somebody has

01:34:01   something wrong with their battery and they false you know they it's that

01:34:05   correlation causation thing well I just upgraded to this thing so that must be

01:34:08   the reason and it doesn't seem to be a lot of any kind of cause-and-effect

01:34:13   proof whereas with this Google now thing you it's a lot of people telling the

01:34:18   exact same story which is that I upgraded to the new Google app my

01:34:22   battery life went to complete shit. I uninstalled the Google app and my battery life went back

01:34:28   to normal.

01:34:29   Exactly.

01:34:30   And Google, and the weird part is that Google is really adamantly saying, "No, not us."

01:34:35   And I can't help but think that it's effectively a, "Please don't turn off location."

01:34:40   Right. So here's what I'm thinking here. I haven't used the app, so I can't confirm this.

01:34:46   And we don't have a chat room, so they can't confirm it either. And you don't have location

01:34:49   services, so you can't confirm it either. Probably should have done more research on

01:34:52   on this beforehand, but oh well.

01:34:54   There are three different ways you can track location on iOS

01:34:58   with very, very different battery implications.

01:35:01   One of them is full on GPS tracking,

01:35:04   where you're continuously tracking locations.

01:35:06   So you pretty much only need that

01:35:08   if you're doing a turn by turn navigation app or something

01:35:10   like that.

01:35:10   That destroys the battery, because you

01:35:13   have the GPS radio running constantly,

01:35:14   which itself is a huge battery drain.

01:35:17   Plus your app is running constantly.

01:35:19   So any processing you're doing, if the user has something else

01:35:22   in the foreground, you have two apps being fully active.

01:35:26   So that destroys battery life.

01:35:27   As anyone knows, if you've ever done turn by turn,

01:35:29   even with Apple's own stuff, constant GPS fixes

01:35:32   are very, very expensive to battery life.

01:35:35   And Google says they're not doing that.

01:35:38   Great, that's fine.

01:35:39   I believe them.

01:35:39   They don't need to be doing that.

01:35:43   And then on the other end, there's the geofence.

01:35:46   I did it with Instapaper to do the background

01:35:48   update when you cross a certain threshold.

01:35:51   News.me actually invented that.

01:35:53   It's funny, actually, the guy who invented that at News.me

01:35:55   is now working on Instapaper at BetaWorks.

01:35:59   I stole this feature from him, and then now he--

01:36:01   Now it's no longer stolen.

01:36:02   Exactly.

01:36:03   Right?

01:36:03   It's like if you steal something from somebody,

01:36:06   and you keep it, and then you get married to that person,

01:36:09   well, now it's no longer stolen.

01:36:10   Exactly.

01:36:11   It's joint property.

01:36:13   Exactly.

01:36:13   So anyway, so it's this feature where you can--

01:36:17   And the various reminders apps have this too, including apples.

01:36:20   And almost every to-do list has this kind of thing

01:36:23   where you can say, wake up my app when you enter or leave

01:36:28   this particular set of radii and points.

01:36:32   So you can say, when I leave my house by more than 80 meters,

01:36:38   wake up my app.

01:36:39   And so it kind of works like a border crossing thing.

01:36:41   So sometimes I don't get called.

01:36:43   It's a very low power way to monitor for locations.

01:36:47   And the phone and the radios are all

01:36:49   optimized to make this very, very low power.

01:36:52   And I believe it only uses the radios

01:36:53   and does not even turn on the GPS chip at all.

01:36:56   Yeah, and it's a loose enough fence where I, for example,

01:37:00   can't use it to remind me to buy stuff at the supermarket.

01:37:05   Because the supermarket is about 2 and 1/2 blocks from our house.

01:37:08   Oh, yeah, it's too close.

01:37:09   Yeah, it goes off at home.

01:37:11   It's two and a half blocks and is way too close.

01:37:15   So I can't use it for that.

01:37:16   - And critically, if you're using the geofence API,

01:37:19   you can only monitor up to 10 locations at once.

01:37:22   So you can't just say,

01:37:23   notify, wake up my app for me to do whatever I want

01:37:27   every time you move 10 feet.

01:37:30   That's different.

01:37:31   So there is an op,

01:37:32   and geofencing doesn't have much of an effect

01:37:34   on battery life because it's not really keeping the radios on

01:37:38   more than they otherwise would be on

01:37:40   you have cell service. So it's really, it's almost free. And if you have geofencing active

01:37:44   in an app, you'll see the location services arrow just as an outline in the status bar.

01:37:49   It won't be the solid white. It'll be just the outline of white around it to indicate

01:37:53   something is using geofencing. But the battery life for that is pretty much free. Because,

01:37:58   again, like you aren't, the app isn't waking up that often, and you aren't using any, you

01:38:04   aren't using the GPS radio. Like no radios are more active than they otherwise would

01:38:06   would have been.

01:38:08   But what Google's probably doing with the Google Now app

01:38:11   is the significant location change service, which

01:38:15   I believe it uses the same radios

01:38:18   and the same method of monitoring location

01:38:21   as geofencing.

01:38:22   So it's not using the GPS chip.

01:38:23   So when they say we are not continuously

01:38:25   tracking your location, that is technically correct.

01:38:30   But if what they're doing with that information

01:38:32   is waking up the app every time you move like 100 feet.

01:38:37   If the app gets woken up on every single one

01:38:40   and they're doing some processing

01:38:41   and possibly sending your new approximate location

01:38:44   to a server, then that's keeping other parts of the phone

01:38:48   way busier than they otherwise would have been.

01:38:50   Even if it's not using the GPS chip,

01:38:52   it is at least using data radios,

01:38:55   it's transmitting things and it's using the CPU.

01:38:58   So that is probably the call.

01:38:59   If I had to guess, and having not run this app myself,

01:39:02   I would guess they're doing that service,

01:39:05   which they can say technically is not continuous tracking,

01:39:08   by Apple's definition, it's not continuous tracking,

01:39:10   it's not using the GPS chip,

01:39:11   but if they're waking up the app constantly

01:39:14   every time you go anywhere,

01:39:15   it's gonna destroy your battery life, no question.

01:39:16   - And I wonder too then, if therefore it's also true

01:39:19   that it doesn't destroy the battery for everybody,

01:39:22   which I think if that were the case,

01:39:23   there's no way they would have shipped it.

01:39:25   Maybe it's people, it's affecting people who move a bit,

01:39:30   know like you said who knows 100 feet 200 feet but like me who wakes up makes

01:39:35   a pot of coffee and sits down in a chair for eight hours maybe wouldn't trigger it

01:39:40   but somebody like a college student who's going between buildings all day or

01:39:45   somebody who works in a hospital work in a big office right big offices can be

01:39:49   hundreds of feet long you know it's it's pretty easy to trigger trigger changes

01:39:52   with just walking around your own office exactly going to meetings or going you

01:39:56   walking to the restroom and going to the wherever you go to eat lunch and etc etc.

01:40:00   Exactly. Right. You might be engaging this, you know, once an hour or something

01:40:05   like that and driving the phone nuts. And if that is what they're doing, then I

01:40:10   think it is a little bit disingenuous to say we aren't tracking a location

01:40:14   constantly. Right. Or imagine what would happen in that case on a

01:40:17   commute, right, if you have an hour drive to work. Yeah, then it's basically running

01:40:22   constantly. And if they are submitting that to a server or saving

01:40:25   information in any way every time they get woken up for a "significant location change,"

01:40:31   then I would say they are continuously tracking you, just not very precisely. But it's precise

01:40:36   enough to know what neighborhood you're in. It'll tell them that. It'll tell them what

01:40:42   restaurants and subways you're near. It's precise enough for that kind of use. It's

01:40:48   precise enough within a few hundred feet as opposed to whatever GPS is, like three feet.

01:40:53   It's very, very precise for advertising purposes.

01:40:57   And the bottom line is that as this app has evolved,

01:41:00   the Google app-- and Google now is just--

01:41:04   with the locations of it is just the latest part of it.

01:41:06   The app is-- almost all of the new stuff

01:41:10   requires you to be signed into your Google account.

01:41:12   Even if you're not-- and you can sign in and be signed in

01:41:16   and do the location preference separately.

01:41:22   Although in my opinion, they actually,

01:41:24   they kind of bury the preference for the location stuff

01:41:28   in a sort of Facebook-y sort of way

01:41:31   of making it not that obvious where you go to toggle it.

01:41:36   And the language surrounding it is slightly obtuse

01:41:39   in my opinion, which I don't think is a coincidence.

01:41:42   Like it is hard, it is really hard to just look at--

01:41:46   - Uncheck this box to disable location-based

01:41:48   privacy settings.

01:41:49   - Yes or cancel.

01:41:51   Yes or okay? I don't know. It's a little like that. But boy, the whole thing, if you're

01:41:59   not signed in, the app really doesn't do it as anywhere near as much. Whereas, you know,

01:42:03   when the app first came out, it was just like Google.com where being signed in would let

01:42:08   them remember stuff, but for the most part, you could do the whole thing without being

01:42:11   signed in. Like, they really want to know who you are.

01:42:14   Right. And this is why, like, I don't even keep a Google account logged in on my main

01:42:18   browser. Like I have, I use Safari as my main browser and then I have Chrome as like my

01:42:23   my ghetto and Chrome has Flash and a Google account signed in.

01:42:26   Right. And so anything I need that requires those

01:42:29   things I can switch over to Chrome for but most of my browsing I'm doing not there. And

01:42:33   just because you know, and I know Google knows who I am and they're tracking me anyway through

01:42:37   what it means. Exactly.

01:42:38   But you know it gives me a little bit of peace of mind because it just seems like over time

01:42:42   Google just wants more and more and more from us. And you're right that they're bringing

01:42:47   the Google account in a more heavy-handed way into more of their stuff, and they really

01:42:53   want you to be signed in so they know exactly who to attribute all this behavioral data

01:42:56   to and they don't have to just infer it with less confidence.

01:43:01   It just seems like you give them an inch and they take a foot.

01:43:04   Every time I sign in, it prompts me to add a phone number.

01:43:07   And they say that's for security.

01:43:08   That's great.

01:43:09   But I don't trust them.

01:43:10   They're an advertising company.

01:43:11   So what do they do my phone number for?

01:43:13   So I don't give it to them.

01:43:14   And I'm sure they found it through some other means.

01:43:17   I'm sure that something I've done somewhere on the internet

01:43:19   has given them my phone number in some other way.

01:43:22   But--

01:43:22   It's not the same.

01:43:23   It's not the same.

01:43:24   And so I know-- I try to keep my privacy reasonably mine,

01:43:32   reasonably mine if I can with Google.

01:43:35   And every time they add a new feature, if I want to use it,

01:43:38   usually I've got to give up a little bit more of that.

01:43:42   And you can say, oh, well, that's fine.

01:43:44   I trust them.

01:43:45   Or they're not going to do anything weird with it.

01:43:47   But you never know.

01:43:49   And people are not skeptical enough, I think,

01:43:52   of companies like this.

01:43:53   And even if you say, oh, I have nothing to hide,

01:43:55   well, that's not really the point, is it?

01:43:58   I feel like, are there any people in your life,

01:44:03   besides your wife-- and for a lot of people,

01:44:05   even that's not the case-- where you would want them to have

01:44:09   a record of everywhere you ever go?

01:44:12   Like, for them to have that location-- like,

01:44:14   Remember when the Apple location database got out

01:44:17   that they were accidentally keeping on the phone

01:44:18   and you could upload it and see a map of where you went?

01:44:21   That was creepy as hell.

01:44:23   And is there anyone in your life that you know

01:44:27   besides your spouse who you would want

01:44:29   to have that information?

01:44:31   Like if there's no people who you would trust with that,

01:44:33   people who you know who you know with their motivations,

01:44:35   you know what they're gonna do with that information,

01:44:37   if anything, you wouldn't trust people with that.

01:44:40   Why do you give it to Google?

01:44:41   - Right.

01:44:43   You know, so it just seems like people don't look at this

01:44:46   with enough skepticism, and that's why the model works.

01:44:49   But, you know, increasingly I find myself

01:44:51   more and more alienated by Google,

01:44:55   because they keep wanting more from me,

01:44:57   and I don't wanna give it to them.

01:44:58   And I wanna remain at a safe distance from them,

01:45:02   you know, information and privacy-wise.

01:45:05   And they're increasingly trying to pull that line in

01:45:07   with people and say, no, our minimum distance is now shorter.

01:45:10   - Yeah, totally.

01:45:12   I noticed one thing that I thought was a little weird just before we sign off and

01:45:18   is I do have Google Maps. I do have the app installed on my phone but I'm not

01:45:25   signed in because you know although I'm pretty happy with Apple Maps there are

01:45:30   times if it doesn't work right then it you know I want Google Maps there to do

01:45:34   it for example when I was in actually in Dublin Apple Maps did pretty good but

01:45:39   When I was in New Zealand for web stock,

01:45:42   Apple search was just not that good.

01:45:43   And Google's was great in terms of like finding--

01:45:46   everybody says they're going to such and such restaurant.

01:45:50   But in Instagram-- and I almost made my famous Instapaper

01:45:54   Instagram conflation.

01:45:55   Instagram, the other day, I clicked

01:45:57   on a map on somebody's photo.

01:45:58   I wanted to see where they were.

01:46:00   And when I tapped the map in Instagram,

01:46:04   it took me to Google Maps, not Apple Maps.

01:46:09   the app. And I'm betting that they're doing the thing that you did with, I think, the

01:46:14   magazine or was it…

01:46:15   Yeah, with Chrome, yeah, which was actually a mistake.

01:46:17   Yeah, you – which is not a bad idea, but in practice is not. It was not what people

01:46:22   wanted, where you made this decision that if Chrome was installed, assume that they

01:46:28   want to use it as their default browser. It was a way to work around the fact that Apple

01:46:32   doesn't let you specify a non-Safari default browser. But the downside of it is there's

01:46:38   lot of people who do have Chrome installed but don't want it to be their

01:46:41   default browser. Yeah. And I kind of think that that's what Instagram is doing with

01:46:46   Maps. Yeah, because I mean you would think because that's a Facebook owned

01:46:50   property now, you would think they wouldn't want to be overly friendly

01:46:53   towards Google. Right. I can't understand why, how else they would do that, but

01:46:58   anyway it was weird. Any other thing that's weird, it's a little, I don't know, I

01:47:01   guess it's not weird, but it's, it emphasizes it though, is that inside the

01:47:06   app they're using the OS mapping service which therefore looks like Apple Maps so

01:47:12   you're not looking at a bigger version of the map you saw you're looking at a

01:47:15   different map that's weird that I wonder if that's just like something some kind

01:47:20   of old part of the code that they forgot about that haven't touched and see yeah I

01:47:24   wonder if maybe you should shoot off the URL in a certain way that it does go to

01:47:28   Google Maps I don't know maybe maybe that's what it is I don't know it's a

01:47:34   weird thing. Anyway, we could probably call it a show. That's a good long show.

01:47:39   Yeah, we got a solid almost two hours. Marco, thank you very much for your time.

01:47:43   Thanks for the fun. People can find out more at Marco.org and the magazine.

01:47:49   What's the URL for the magazine? Oh, it's a terrible domain. It's the-magazine.org.

01:47:55   Yeah, well, you just go to the App Store and look at the magazine.

01:47:59   And, uh, uh, boy I had stuff I wanted to talk to you about that, but, uh, we ran out of

01:48:04   time.

01:48:05   I really liked that piece you guys had.

01:48:06   I think it's the most recent issue, the one with the doctor on, uh, vaccinations.

01:48:09   Yeah, that was my favorite piece of the issue.

01:48:11   Yeah, that was great.

01:48:12   That was really good.

01:48:13   That was the best one.

01:48:14   That was the best article I've read.

01:48:15   Not just in the magazine, but it was like one of my favorite articles of the week.

01:48:19   So anyway, everybody, if you want something good to read, go check out the magazine and

01:48:22   look up this article on, uh, these idiots who don't vaccinate their kids.

01:48:27   And my thanks to our sponsors again back blaze go to back blaze comm slash daring fireball

01:48:34   not the talk show and

01:48:37   File transporter or transporter and their URL is file transporter comm slash talk and

01:48:46   Save 10% with the discount code talk Thank You Marco. Thanks

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