The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► It's getting time. It's getting close. Can you feel it's getting time to put the Yankee logo

00:00:04 ◼   ► up on Daring Fireball? Oh, was there baseball on last night? There was a little baseball on last

00:00:09 ◼   ► night. Oh, oh, okay. Huh. How'd that go? It was the most exciting game I've ever seen.

00:00:16 ◼   ► I was watching it. You say that every year. You know what, though? That really was. I mean,

00:00:24 ◼   ► and everybody's just going to already just stop listening to the show.

00:00:30 ◼   ► We're going to have to cut this out. I don't know. But what happened is that Alex

00:00:35 ◼   ► Rodriguez, the Yankee everybody loves to hate, even Yankee fans, all often, who has

00:00:40 ◼   ► been having a horrendous slump in the postseason, was due up with his team down.

00:00:47 ◼   ► The Yankees down by one run with one out in the ninth inning. When

00:00:53 ◼   ► When Rodriguez was due up and he didn't come out of the dugout and I saw somebody

00:00:59 ◼   ► else, I really had this moment where I thought, "Am I having a stroke?"

00:01:02 ◼   ► Because it didn't make any sense.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Like, I was all ready to be sick watching Alex Rodriguez, who's been striking out

00:01:07 ◼   ► like – he's been striking out like Bugs Bunny like two times per at-bat.

00:01:11 ◼   ► Like, he'll get six strikes and then all of a sudden two outs and one at-bat because

00:01:15 ◼   ► he struck out twice.

00:01:16 ◼   ► I'm sick about it because here he is up with one out and he's been striking out

00:01:21 ◼   ► every time he's up.

00:01:22 ◼   ► And he doesn't come out of the dugout.

00:01:24 ◼   ► I really thought maybe I was having a stroke or something, or maybe the game at the bar,

00:01:29 ◼   ► maybe they had it on a TiVo or something and somebody back there had rewounded or something.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Couldn't believe it.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Didn't understand it.

00:01:37 ◼   ► You know, my theory, people will often ask about you, is how you could be a fan of the

00:01:45 ◼   ► Yankees and the Cowboys and also be a fan who are, you know, perennial winners and also

00:01:52 ◼   ► be a fan of Apple for years when Apple was down in the dumps.

00:01:57 ◼   ► And I figured this out years ago is that the reason that you're fans of all these organizations

00:02:04 ◼   ► is not because they're winners or losers.

00:02:07 ◼   ► It's because that you get into more arguments by being fans of those organizations.

00:02:12 ◼   ► Yeah, how does my wife put it? My wife puts it that I'm drawn to the teams that...

00:02:19 ◼   ► They're lightning rods.

00:02:20 ◼   ► I guess. Something like that. She has a good way of putting it, though. Some kind of curse

00:02:24 ◼   ► word.

00:02:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I was going to say. There must be a... I bet there's an F bomb in there.

00:02:30 ◼   ► Right. No, I've told this story before, I believe on the show, but it was probably a

00:02:35 ◼   ► long time ago, so you can always repeat it. That it used to be, in the early years, and

00:02:40 ◼   ► And I've always done this is a daring fireball when the Yankees get into the – by the time

00:02:46 ◼   ► they get to the second round of the postseason, the league championship series, if they're

00:02:48 ◼   ► still in it, then I change the logo on daring fireball to the Yankees logo.

00:02:54 ◼   ► And in the first half of the decade of writing daring fireball, the emails I used to get

00:03:00 ◼   ► were I can't believe you're a Yankees fan.

00:03:06 ◼   ► And like Apple, you should – why don't you like Microsoft, right?

00:03:09 ◼   ► The Yankees equal Microsoft.

00:03:10 ◼   ► I can't believe it.

00:03:11 ◼   ► So it did not compute.

00:03:14 ◼   ► Now though, the last couple of years when I put it up, the emails I get are, "Of course

00:03:19 ◼   ► you're a Yankees fan.

00:03:20 ◼   ► You love Apple, you asshole."

00:03:22 ◼   ► Right?

00:03:25 ◼   ► And to me, see, and I see it like you do.

00:03:28 ◼   ► It's not necessarily about the winning.

00:03:31 ◼   ► It's about the...

00:03:34 ◼   ► I was a Yankees fan all through the '80s when the Yankees were...

00:03:37 ◼   ► I was like what the '90s were to Apple.

00:03:41 ◼   ► It was a dry period.

00:03:43 ◼   ► Famously, the great Don Mattingly, fantastic ball player of my childhood for the Yankees,

00:03:49 ◼   ► never won a postseason game.

00:03:50 ◼   ► It was a long, dry stretch for the Yankees, but I still like them.

00:03:56 ◼   ► The appeal was still there.

00:03:58 ◼   ► So, you feel you have suffered?

00:04:01 ◼   ► Oh, definitely.

00:04:03 ◼   ► I suffer.

00:04:04 ◼   ► I would say the two years we've gone since the last World Series have been terrible.

00:04:12 ◼   ► That's your suffering?

00:04:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:14 ◼   ► We didn't win the World Series.

00:04:15 ◼   ► We didn't get out of the first round.

00:04:17 ◼   ► Or did we go to the league championship series in 2010?

00:04:20 ◼   ► We might have.

00:04:21 ◼   ► I know Texas beat us in 2010 and then Detroit beat us last year.

00:04:25 ◼   ► Try being a Mariners fan.

00:04:28 ◼   ► I do.

00:04:29 ◼   ► I feel bad for you guys.

00:04:30 ◼   ► But you've got Ichiro.

00:04:31 ◼   ► You've got to be rooting for the Yankees.

00:04:33 ◼   ► No.

00:04:34 ◼   ► No, I'm not rooting for the Yankees, but I do root for Ichiro.

00:04:37 ◼   ► So you want the Yankees to lose, but Ichiro to go like 4 for 4.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:04:41 ◼   ► Did you see the play he made the other day where he danced?

00:04:44 ◼   ► They called it like the Matrix.

00:04:47 ◼   ► He got thrown out at home.

00:04:48 ◼   ► What is the baseline rule there, though?

00:04:51 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:04:53 ◼   ► It seems like he didn't go ridiculously far out of the baseline, but he sure went out

00:04:58 ◼   ► of the baseline.

00:04:59 ◼   ► Yeah, but I don't know.

00:05:01 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure how that works with the running out of the baseline.

00:05:03 ◼   ► It was pretty amazing piece of acrobatics though.

00:05:08 ◼   ► It also reminds you of how baseball is fundamentally almost like – the basics of it are like

00:05:13 ◼   ► a children's game, like tag.

00:05:15 ◼   ► I mean literally, you're safe if you're touching this thing, but if you're not touching

00:05:20 ◼   ► it and you're tagged by the ball, you're out.

00:05:22 ◼   ► It's like a children's game in some ways.

00:05:24 ◼   ► That play at home plate was exactly like a playground play.

00:05:28 ◼   ► He's like dancing around on a plate, jumping around.

00:05:31 ◼   ► You may not have seen some of the highlights.

00:05:35 ◼   ► When he started here, they showed a lot of highlights of stuff that he did in Japan.

00:05:40 ◼   ► There was one pitch that literally hit the dirt in front of the mound and bounced up.

00:05:47 ◼   ► It was clearly a ball.

00:05:49 ◼   ► It was ridiculous because it hit the ground before it hit the ground in front of the home

00:05:54 ◼   ► plate, bounced up, and he hit it for a hit.

00:05:57 ◼   ► He does.

00:05:59 ◼   ► He's like a trick shot artist.

00:06:01 ◼   ► They were saying on the, was it the TV or radio, but anyway, one of the Yankee broadcasts,

00:06:06 ◼   ► they were saying that the other day that the most entertaining thing to do before the game

00:06:11 ◼   ► is to watch Ichiro do batting practice.

00:06:14 ◼   ► And that Jeter often just sits there and right before each pitch, like a fraction of a second

00:06:20 ◼   ► before the guy throwing batting practice throws the pitch, Jeter will say, "Short right,"

00:06:25 ◼   ► and he'll hit it to where Jeter says.

00:06:27 ◼   ► go deep left and he'll pull it or push it to deep left up the middle and he hits one

00:06:33 ◼   ► up that he just is he's like a trick shot artist.

00:06:38 ◼   ► You see the article I linked to about the way he takes care of his bats?

00:06:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I had seen that.

00:06:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:43 ◼   ► I mean, I've seen that before.

00:06:44 ◼   ► It reminds me the thing that came to mind is to me like cinematically is that he seems

00:06:51 ◼   ► like Quentin Tarantino's envisioning of a baseball player.

00:06:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Right?

00:06:58 ◼   ► Like the way Tarantino knows how to properly fetishize a samurai sword.

00:07:04 ◼   ► Like, that's the way Ichiro takes care of his bats.

00:07:08 ◼   ► Except, I guess, in the Tarantino version, then there'd be a barefoot woman running

00:07:13 ◼   ► her feet on the bat.

00:07:14 ◼   ► It's too bad he's a little bit—he's a little reclusive.

00:07:18 ◼   ► Ichiro?

00:07:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:21 ◼   ► I'd like to know more about his day-to-day life.

00:07:26 ◼   ► One last thing on the baseball.

00:07:27 ◼   ► Here's the thing.

00:07:28 ◼   ► You're a good, true American Yankee hater.

00:07:32 ◼   ► You've got to be an A-Rod hater.

00:07:39 ◼   ► How do you feel about last night's game?

00:07:44 ◼   ► That's pretty good.

00:07:45 ◼   ► It's conflicting.

00:07:47 ◼   ► And the other thing is Ibanez was also a Mariner and a beloved Mariner for years.

00:07:53 ◼   ► So from that regard, that was nice.

00:08:01 ◼   ► It does my heart good to see A-Rod go down in flames.

00:08:05 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:08:06 ◼   ► But not Ibanez and Etiro.

00:08:09 ◼   ► No, I said, yeah, right.

00:08:11 ◼   ► Well those guys left on much different terms.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Everybody has suffered with enough sports talk.

00:08:17 ◼   ► Let's get the real show started.

00:08:18 ◼   ► Let's talk about our kids now.

00:08:25 ◼   ► So Windows 8 is imminent, right?

00:08:31 ◼   ► It's coming this month.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Yep.

00:08:34 ◼   ► Two weeks.

00:08:36 ◼   ► And we still…

00:08:38 ◼   ► No pricing on the surface.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Which is supposed to come, I believe, on midnight on the 29th, if I'm not mistaken.

00:08:48 ◼   ► I believe that is correct.

00:08:50 ◼   ► Which is 18 days from today.

00:08:55 ◼   ► Do you think they're taking a chance with the midnight thing?

00:08:58 ◼   ► Because the midnight thing, it only works if you're going to have lines.

00:09:05 ◼   ► Apple's never done it.

00:09:06 ◼   ► They've never done the midnight thing.

00:09:10 ◼   ► But if they did, you know people would be lined up.

00:09:13 ◼   ► They get people lined up at midnight even when it's not coming out until 9 in the

00:09:16 ◼   ► morning.

00:09:18 ◼   ► But if you have a midnight opening and there's just one comic book guy there…

00:09:23 ◼   ► Well, I was thinking of going up to Seattle to the local Microsoft store to see what was

00:09:33 ◼   ► going on.

00:09:34 ◼   ► So, maybe it'll all be curious onlookers.

00:09:39 ◼   ► I think that the pressure that they're under is astounding.

00:09:43 ◼   ► I'm really kind of in awe.

00:09:48 ◼   ► I'm a little detached from it, right?

00:09:49 ◼   ► Because it's like we're not invested in Microsoft and Windows.

00:09:56 ◼   ► I mean, I haven't used a Windows machine even just

00:09:58 ◼   ► to check my email or something in I don't know how long.

00:10:03 ◼   ► But I'm definitely intrigued by Windows 8.

00:10:05 ◼   ► We've both written a lot about it this year.

00:10:07 ◼   ► But the thing I find more interesting is like the story for the company and just how important

00:10:15 ◼   ► this is for them.

00:10:18 ◼   ► And how close to the wire they seem to be playing it.

00:10:21 ◼   ► It seems very weird to me that there's no pricing yet.

00:10:25 ◼   ► No pricing on the surface.

00:10:26 ◼   ► I guess there is pricing for Windows 8 itself.

00:10:30 ◼   ► There is pricing for Windows 8.

00:10:31 ◼   ► I forget what it is.

00:10:33 ◼   ► And it is also, it also seems to me to still be up in the air just exactly what the relationship

00:10:38 ◼   ► is between Surface tablets and the third party tablets that are going to be running the,

00:10:44 ◼   ► I guess exact same OS. And the one thing I noticed this week is they popped up all over

00:10:51 ◼   ► Philadelphia just sometime within the last, sometime within this week is on all the bus

00:10:58 ◼   ► Well, almost all the bus stops I've seen.

00:11:01 ◼   ► Both sides is Surface ads and they're really nice.

00:11:05 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yeah.

00:11:06 ◼   ► And the TV spot that they had was pretty good too.

00:11:09 ◼   ► Dave

00:11:25 ◼   ► No, they what the hell's he doing right now? So the loop has I think I think I can't now

00:11:33 ◼   ► I can't remember but and they're either good ads there but they definitely it definitely

00:11:40 ◼   ► seems to me though that Microsoft is not soft pedaling on the competition with their OEM

00:11:48 ◼   ► providers. You know what I mean? Like they're not like the surface is not just a gimmicky

00:11:53 ◼   ► look we're just going to set the bar here and I guess what I should say it's not their

00:11:58 ◼   ► nexus right like the nexus phones at least where the nexus phones are these reference

00:12:04 ◼   ► phones put out by Google and nobody really buys them they're not big selling devices

00:12:11 ◼   ► they're just sort of like here's a reference device for the new version of Android now

00:12:14 ◼   ► you go make the ones that are going to sell in big numbers it's not like that like this

00:12:18 ◼   ► This is something that Microsoft really intends to really sell.

00:12:23 ◼   ► I think Microsoft has already done more advertising for the surface than Google has done for Nexus.

00:12:28 ◼   ► Tim Cynova And I think there was an interview with Ballmer

00:12:31 ◼   ► with maybe some investors yesterday that came out and he was talking about how this is really

00:12:37 ◼   ► a fundamental change in how they do business.

00:12:39 ◼   ► So it was pretty open about it.

00:12:40 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yeah.

00:12:41 ◼   ► And his letter to the shareholders this year sort of didn't even really hint at it but

00:12:46 ◼   ► strongly suggested that they're going to take more of a

00:12:50 ◼   ► more of this approach as time goes on

00:12:54 ◼   ► which i think it is really interesting

00:12:57 ◼   ► it is interesting it's hard to see how that works out any better than

00:13:01 ◼   ► when apple was licensing the mac OS

00:13:04 ◼   ► right because i kind of think that you've got you can't have your cake and

00:13:08 ◼   ► eat it too

00:13:09 ◼   ► yeah i mean you know maybe the the the amount of evidence over the last you

00:13:13 ◼   ► know, the two decades of the industry is too little. And it's, it's not, it's not wise

00:13:19 ◼   ► to draw conclusions from a small sampling size of companies that have attempted this.

00:13:25 ◼   ► But it seems to me, though, that the evidence suggests that you should make a choice, you're

00:13:29 ◼   ► either going to do it the Apple way, and do your own OS that you use on your own devices

00:13:36 ◼   ► and do everything yourself, or do it the old Microsoft way where you're just licensed this

00:13:40 ◼   ► OS or you know like Android. And you can debate the fact that Google doesn't seem to have

00:13:45 ◼   ► made any money on Android yet but it has certainly been successful in terms of getting people

00:13:50 ◼   ► to use it by licensing it. Although I guess that with the Nexus they're sort of toeing

00:13:57 ◼   ► the other line. But they don't make any money on that, right? Whereas Microsoft is seemingly

00:14:01 ◼   ► the whole point of Surface is that they want to get, they want money. They want to make,

00:14:06 ◼   ► They see how much money Apple is taking from PC sales with the iPad and they want in on

00:14:12 ◼   ► that.

00:14:13 ◼   ► Yeah, they seem to be very open about saying we're going to be doing business more like

00:14:17 ◼   ► Apple does business in the future.

00:14:19 ◼   ► Right.

00:14:20 ◼   ► Without mentioning Apple, that seemed to have been what Balmer said in the letter to the

00:14:25 ◼   ► shareholders.

00:14:28 ◼   ► It was the Verge that had the link to the Windows 8 ad.

00:14:32 ◼   ► I was thinking the Loop had the link to Apple's iPod.

00:14:35 ◼   ► Ah, gotcha.

00:14:36 ◼   ► Gotcha. We should talk about that too. I saw that ad at the Apple event. You know what

00:14:44 ◼   ► it reminded me of? It reminded me in a good way of the classic, one of my all-time favorite

00:14:50 ◼   ► Apple ads. It's a classic from like '99 or so. It was when they had the colored IMAX,

00:14:57 ◼   ► the big CRT ones. And it was the Rolling Stones, "She Comes in Colors." Remember that ad?

00:15:04 ◼   ► Yeah, oh yeah, vividly.

00:15:07 ◼   ► Good song, and the animation was just hypnotic,

00:15:11 ◼   ► because it was that infinite white background of whatever

00:15:17 ◼   ► that universe is where Volkswagens and Apple computers

00:15:20 ◼   ► live, and just this endless stream of IMAX shooting

00:15:27 ◼   ► on top of each other, right?

00:15:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:30 ◼   ► I always thought you could do an alternate version.

00:15:32 ◼   ► I always thought it'd be funny to do a parody where

00:15:34 ◼   ► did that and watch them smash on the ground.

00:15:37 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:15:38 ◼   ► >> I guess it's not really a throwback because the iPod ads have sort of consistently been

00:15:44 ◼   ► like that.

00:15:45 ◼   ► >> Yeah, I think so.

00:15:46 ◼   ► >> For a while.

00:15:47 ◼   ► >> Every time that they have a generation of them that's about like a five different

00:15:51 ◼   ► colors to choose from.

00:15:53 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:15:54 ◼   ► They don't really do a lot of iPod advertising anymore.

00:15:56 ◼   ► They used to do a lot more.

00:15:57 ◼   ► Obviously, it was a much bigger deal.

00:15:59 ◼   ► And it seems like this is enough of a change to the lineup that they feel like, "Okay,

00:16:05 ◼   ► we should do.

00:16:07 ◼   ► We should promote this."

00:16:08 ◼   ► Because people should know that they might want to think about going out and updating

00:16:13 ◼   ► their iPods now.

00:16:15 ◼   ► Right.

00:16:17 ◼   ► So you said that I will have that in the show notes or at least I will endeavor to have

00:16:21 ◼   ► all these ads in the show notes.

00:16:23 ◼   ► So The Verge had the Surface TV ad.

00:16:27 ◼   ► But no pricing.

00:16:28 ◼   ► No pricing. 18 days.

00:16:32 ◼   ► I would love to know what the thinking is on that. Is the thinking that they really

00:16:36 ◼   ► don't know yet, is the thinking that if they don't know or they can't say or they're still

00:16:44 ◼   ► under pressure like that there's that they have this like let's say really let's say

00:16:48 ◼   ► $3.99 in mind and they're hearing from these OEMs that are just screaming at them that

00:16:53 ◼   ► we do not you can't sell this thing for $3.99 because we're selling this thing for our thing

00:16:57 ◼   ► for $4.99 or $5.99. You can't do this to us. So there's internal pressure that there's

00:17:05 ◼   ► people at Microsoft saying, "Look, we've got to raise the price on this to make it

00:17:08 ◼   ► more – put it more in line than that."

00:17:11 ◼   ► Or is it that – I could see it that way. The other way I could see it is that they

00:17:16 ◼   ► have a low price in mind or not like radically low, not like crazy low, I don't think.

00:17:21 ◼   ► But they have a low price in mind and they want to save it for the last minute as a big

00:17:26 ◼   ► surprise because they, I think that they know.

00:17:29 ◼   ► Well that's the thing.

00:17:31 ◼   ► They better have a relatively low price because at this point if they come out with something

00:17:36 ◼   ► that's not, it's gonna be, it's not gonna be good.

00:17:40 ◼   ► It's the needle on the record coming off.

00:17:46 ◼   ► It's fascinating to me and it's, to me, it used to.

00:17:51 ◼   ► It's fascinating, partially just because it's so not.

00:17:54 ◼   ► No. And it's also unpredictable. And Apple product announcements or releases have become

00:18:02 ◼   ► very predictable. And maybe in a way that makes them less exciting to talk about. But

00:18:07 ◼   ► like the way that the – everything about the way that the iPhone 5 came out was exactly

00:18:12 ◼   ► what everybody thought. That there was a big line of dirty hippies outside the New York

00:18:18 ◼   ► 5th Avenue Apple Store and they sold a million or two more than last year's and by Monday

00:18:29 ◼   ► you had to wait to get one because they were a little bit constrained and by Tuesday everybody

00:18:35 ◼   ► had found one nitpicky thing to complain about and you know.

00:18:40 ◼   ► And by Thursday, it was a, you know, a jig.

00:18:45 ◼   ► Right, consumer reports wrote something really stupid about it.

00:18:49 ◼   ► Everything was, you know, right, you could have written it all, we could have written

00:18:52 ◼   ► this all in advance and just taken the week off, really.

00:18:55 ◼   ► We would have been like, "Hey, we got it all right."

00:18:59 ◼   ► Whereas, and Windows releases, I think, used to be pretty predictable.

00:19:05 ◼   ► You know, the new one comes out, sales of PCs jump in that quarter.

00:19:10 ◼   ► Lots of people buy it and upgrade their PCs.

00:19:12 ◼   ► People complain about which PCs don't qualify or whatever like that.

00:19:17 ◼   ► And they sell 160 million copies in a year.

00:19:22 ◼   ► I don't know how this one's going to work out.

00:19:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I know it is.

00:19:30 ◼   ► Not even them.

00:19:31 ◼   ► While we're on it--

00:19:32 ◼   ► and this is sort of a side topic--

00:19:34 ◼   ► But I forgot to ask about this at the event last month with iTunes 11, which I still think

00:19:48 ◼   ► one of the weirder things about that event was that they previewed iTunes 11, even though

00:19:52 ◼   ► it's not coming out until I think they said November.

00:19:57 ◼   ► I thought I saw this morning the end of October.

00:20:00 ◼   ► I thought they had said October.

00:20:01 ◼   ► Well, there's still no developer beta.

00:20:04 ◼   ► new versions of iTunes, there's a beta available to registered, I guess even iOS developers

00:20:11 ◼   ► too, because of the you know, the way that you do stuff, you know, with iOS devices through

00:20:15 ◼   ► iTunes, still no beta. But the thing that went unsaid was, what does it mean for Windows?

00:20:23 ◼   ► Like I presume that there's going to be a Windows 11, I mean, a Windows version of iTunes

00:20:26 ◼   ► 11 that they're not dropping that and you need it. I mean, like, because they're still

00:20:30 ◼   ► selling all these new iPods and iPods don't have Wi-Fi. There's no iCloud. You can't do iTunes

00:20:36 ◼   ► match with an iPod Nano or a Mini. So you still need iTunes. So I presume that they're getting

00:20:44 ◼   ► iTunes 11. And it's a totally new interface. It really is. I mean, it really is the famed,

00:20:54 ◼   ► long-awaited, total rewrite of iTunes. I mean, whether it's rewritten under the hood or not,

00:20:58 ◼   ► who knows, but the interface certainly is.

00:21:00 ◼   ► How much more work was that for them to do that for Windows?

00:21:06 ◼   ► And everybody's always, you know, Apple's Windows software has never made people happy.

00:21:11 ◼   ► I mean, I've never heard anybody who uses Windows say, "You know what I love? I love iTunes."

00:21:16 ◼   ► Right?

00:21:18 ◼   ► And it seems like they've stopped developing.

00:21:20 ◼   ► You're right. They've just silently forgotten that.

00:21:23 ◼   ► Chrome has taken… Chrome has done everything that Safari for Windows was ever imagined

00:21:30 ◼   ► to do, just to be a fast, modern, WebKit Windows browser. I think Safari for Windows was really

00:21:42 ◼   ► another crickets chirping type thing. So I'm really curious about the Windows version of

00:21:50 ◼   ► iTunes 11. And the other thing too is I presume, but nobody's said anything when we're in or

00:21:55 ◼   ► that they're just going to ignore the whole Metro thing, that it's going to be a desktop

00:22:02 ◼   ► app, and it will only run on the Intel version of Windows 8. And any of these, you know,

00:22:10 ◼   ► something like the Surface, the first Surface, the one that's running on ARM and uses the

00:22:14 ◼   ► Windows RT, there will be no iTunes for that. Because I guess, you know, and I guess the

00:22:19 ◼   ► the logic behind that is that like a Windows, like something like the ARM version of Surface

00:22:25 ◼   ► is like another rival post PC device, not a PC. That it's not something that you're

00:22:34 ◼   ► going to sync your iPod to. That the assumption is going to be that everybody buys an iPod

00:22:39 ◼   ► will still have a real PC. But it's, you know, nobody, I haven't seen anybody answer

00:22:45 ◼   ► that.

00:22:46 ◼   ► weird, that's a whole weird area because Microsoft, of course, is shipping full versions of Office

00:22:51 ◼   ► for that.

00:22:52 ◼   ► Right, and Microsoft really...

00:22:53 ◼   ► So, to a certain degree, it still is a desktop.

00:22:57 ◼   ► However it's going to really play out in reality with real people, Microsoft's intention clearly

00:23:02 ◼   ► is that no matter what type of Windows 8 machine you're running, Intel or ARM, whichever version,

00:23:08 ◼   ► they want you using and they think that you're going to like using Metro and that the desktop

00:23:13 ◼   ► is sort of like their version of Classic.

00:23:15 ◼   ► It's a thing you're going to go to for compatibility with old software.

00:23:20 ◼   ► Is that what… are you sure about that?

00:23:23 ◼   ► That that's what they intend?

00:23:25 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:23:27 ◼   ► Because I don't know that I've seen that really expressly said because there's still…

00:23:35 ◼   ► when they make the version of Office is really more of a desktop application.

00:23:40 ◼   ► I guess so.

00:23:41 ◼   ► And I don't know.

00:23:42 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe I'll…

00:23:43 ◼   ► It's not really Metro.

00:23:45 ◼   ► It's not really Metro.

00:23:46 ◼   ► Maybe I'm exaggerating.

00:23:47 ◼   ► Maybe I'm wrong about that.

00:23:48 ◼   ► It seems, yeah, because I think it seems like, I mean, their whole thing is that, no, it

00:23:51 ◼   ► does everything.

00:23:53 ◼   ► And you know, we're not in a post-PC world because you have your PC with you.

00:23:59 ◼   ► Like something, so like maybe something like, let's say, AutoCAD.

00:24:03 ◼   ► They're not pitching AutoCAD on rewriting for Metro.

00:24:07 ◼   ► They're saying, you know, that's a true desktop app and now you, you know.

00:24:11 ◼   ► Right.

00:24:12 ◼   ► Well, maybe. I don't know. But is it going to seem weird, though, if like for consumers,

00:24:17 ◼   ► that the consumers are – if they're expected to stay in Metro most of the time, that iTunes

00:24:21 ◼   ► 11 will only run in the desktop mode?

00:24:26 ◼   ► I think the whole thing is weird, personally. I mean, I just don't get it. I don't get

00:24:31 ◼   ► – it doesn't seem like – if you could set the whole thing up so that it very – somehow

00:24:38 ◼   ► switches modes so that you had Metro on your tablet and then when you used it as a desktop

00:24:44 ◼   ► it went back to the desktop and everything ran that way. It would make more sense to

00:24:51 ◼   ► me, but the fact that you, I mean you saw that video from The Verge of me trying to

00:24:56 ◼   ► use, trying to set the screen resolution, right? Or trying to switch orientation, something

00:25:01 ◼   ► like that. It was just a nightmare. Because he had to go on a tablet into the desktop

00:25:08 ◼   ► to change the screen resolution and it was ridiculous.

00:25:11 ◼   ► Didn't he have to do it to change the rotation too or something?

00:25:17 ◼   ► I think maybe it was the orientation.

00:25:19 ◼   ► I guess with Metro it will rotate as you rotate the device but the desktop won't. I don't

00:25:26 ◼   ► know.

00:25:27 ◼   ► Something like that.

00:25:28 ◼   ► - Well, Jesse Siegler, frequent talk show guest

00:25:32 ◼   ► and friend of the show,

00:25:34 ◼   ► do you see what he tweeted the other day?

00:25:40 ◼   ► He's just gone on a record and said he predicts

00:25:42 ◼   ► this whole Windows 8 thing is gonna be a shit show.

00:25:46 ◼   ► I think he said shit show.

00:25:47 ◼   ► - Yep, I think that's exactly what he said.

00:25:51 ◼   ► - I don't know though, I don't know.

00:25:53 ◼   ► I can see it that way, but it's,

00:25:56 ◼   ► It's like I almost refuse to believe that it could be as confusing and convoluted as

00:26:04 ◼   ► it seems to my eyes that it's going to be.

00:26:09 ◼   ► The other thing that it seems clear as we get closer to their release and as I watch

00:26:13 ◼   ► sites like The Verge and Engadget, which get all these things, and I saw one of them, I

00:26:18 ◼   ► forget again, I think it was The Verge, had a little preview review of a Windows 8 tablet.

00:26:25 ◼   ► And it seems like they're all, all of them, it seems, are going with this.

00:26:31 ◼   ► It's a tablet, it's a netbook, it's both.

00:26:34 ◼   ► You know, that it ships with a keyboard and some kind of docking mechanism.

00:26:40 ◼   ► And you undock to use it as a tablet and dock it, and then it's a netbook.

00:26:49 ◼   ► It's a little notebook with a keyboard.

00:26:52 ◼   ► That they're all going in that direction.

00:26:54 ◼   ► Nobody's really going like, I don't think so far.

00:26:58 ◼   ► It is just a tablet.

00:27:03 ◼   ► And there's a lot of them really seem, it seems like all the reviews are talking, you

00:27:07 ◼   ► know, that they say that this is convenient, but it seems like they're really kind of,

00:27:11 ◼   ► like as I call it, grading it on a curve.

00:27:13 ◼   ► And then they all say like in the next sentence that it's like really hard to get it in and

00:27:16 ◼   ► out or one of them, I swear, one of the reviews said it feels like you're going to break it

00:27:21 ◼   ► when you have to take it apart, when you pull it apart.

00:27:25 ◼   ► But just give it a little bit of force and it doesn't actually break.

00:27:29 ◼   ► That's not good.

00:27:30 ◼   ► When they write that it feels like you're breaking it, it really seems like a problem.

00:27:35 ◼   ► Tim Cynova And the pricing is not spectacular.

00:27:38 ◼   ► It was spectacular.

00:27:39 ◼   ► I mean, it's considering – yeah, it was yesterday.

00:27:40 ◼   ► I mean, it was yesterday.

00:27:41 ◼   ► And it's just – I don't know.

00:27:42 ◼   ► I mean, it's – what was it?

00:27:43 ◼   ► It's 700 –

00:27:44 ◼   ► Yeah, it was yesterday and it's just, I don't know, I mean it's, what was it?

00:27:49 ◼   ► Yeah, and you said competitive with what?

00:27:52 ◼   ► And they always say that, and I noticed that, I don't think you quite mentioned that, but

00:27:55 ◼   ► it seems like everybody entering with these touchscreen things, they always say their

00:28:00 ◼   ► prices are going to be competitive.

00:28:03 ◼   ► Well they don't want to see it competing with it.

00:28:05 ◼   ► Right.

00:28:06 ◼   ► They don't want to mention the iPad.

00:28:08 ◼   ► But like you said, what was it?

00:28:10 ◼   ► So it was like $7.99 or something like that?

00:28:12 ◼   ► Okay, so the tablet starts at $600 and with the keyboard it's $750.

00:28:19 ◼   ► Right, and that's not competitive with the iPad because the iPad starts at…

00:28:24 ◼   ► Well, it's a 32 gig so it is… right, it's technically the same price as the iPad but

00:28:33 ◼   ► when you read about it, it's all plastic and this is one of the things where it sounds

00:28:40 ◼   ► like it's going to break when you try and get it in and out of the…

00:28:43 ◼   ► Well, and the other thing too that a lot of them seem to be doing is starting at 32 gigs

00:28:50 ◼   ► and maybe being priced comparable with the 32 gigabyte iPad.

00:28:55 ◼   ► But I don't know that that's quite competitive if you don't have something at the $399

00:29:00 ◼   ► price level as the iPad 2 that's only, I know, only 16 gigabytes.

00:29:05 ◼   ► It's not quite fair, but it is true though that Apple can say you can come in and get

00:29:09 ◼   ► one for $3.99. And I do think I you know, I, I think that's a

00:29:15 ◼   ► huge, I think that's been a huge part of Apple's pricing strategy.

00:29:19 ◼   ► Ever since the iPods went to multiple storage capacities, is

00:29:25 ◼   ► that they price one with too little storage at an at at some

00:29:30 ◼   ► sort of price level that breaks a psychological barrier like

00:29:33 ◼   ► 199. So it's under 200 bucks. And then people come in the

00:29:37 ◼   ► store and they're like well hell if I'm gonna spend $1.99 I might as well get the

00:29:41 ◼   ► one with 32 gigs because it's gonna you know I can fit all my music on it like I

00:29:45 ◼   ► really do think that they say Apple sells more 32 gigabyte iPads because of

00:29:53 ◼   ► the 16 gigabyte ones at lower price points then they would if those 16

00:29:58 ◼   ► gigabyte ones weren't even in the store I really do think that that's it's a

00:30:03 ◼   ► a significant boost to iPad sales.

00:30:06 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:30:09 ◼   ► - And I think everything works like that.

00:30:10 ◼   ► I think cars work like that,

00:30:11 ◼   ► that there's always something,

00:30:13 ◼   ► I'm sure there's a marketing name for it,

00:30:15 ◼   ► but there's something to that.

00:30:18 ◼   ► And I feel like the PC guys who are all starting at 32

00:30:22 ◼   ► and these 599 prices, that that's a real problem.

00:30:26 ◼   ► And it makes them look bad.

00:30:27 ◼   ► - And I don't think that they're gonna have,

00:30:31 ◼   ► on day one, most of the apps that they'll have on day one are going to be desktop apps.

00:30:36 ◼   ► They're not going to be metro apps. So you really aren't going to have the host of applications

00:30:45 ◼   ► that you can get on an iPad on a metro, yeah, I mean on a metro device when it ships. And

00:30:54 ◼   ► Apple didn't have a lot when the iPad shipped. They were able to do, you know, the scaling

00:30:59 ◼   ► from iPhone apps, but that was then. That was two and a half years ago, and it's a different

00:31:06 ◼   ► world now. So, you're basically saying if you really want to run this thing and have

00:31:11 ◼   ► a bunch of apps, you can buy the keyboard. So, it actually is a $750 plastic device,

00:31:20 ◼   ► in which case that's not competing with an iPad, that's competing with a netbook.

00:31:24 ◼   ► Remember netbooks?

00:31:26 ◼   ► That's like a word that is just not.

00:31:30 ◼   ► We had a guy come out to fix our microwave and he had a netbook.

00:31:37 ◼   ► It just looked… because he had to use it to look up PDFs of the repair and the specifications

00:31:48 ◼   ► that came from the microwave vendors.

00:31:50 ◼   ► And it just looked horrible.

00:31:53 ◼   ► horrible. It's running XP. You know what, though? XP. Man, oh man, is that a hit. I

00:32:00 ◼   ► think they got so much mileage out of that. I really do. It's looking back, I mean, that

00:32:05 ◼   ► was absolutely peak Microsoft. That's really where the wheels came off.

00:32:12 ◼   ► But that really hurt in the way, yeah, right. I mean, the fact that it was such a hit and

00:32:16 ◼   ► that they wrote it for so long hurt them.

00:32:17 ◼   ► Right. And I think that the initial netbook, and the initial netbook way when everybody

00:32:22 ◼   ► was netbook, netbook, netbook, and people used to ask Apple, you know, don't you realize

00:32:26 ◼   ► you're doomed without a netbook? Which was not that big a hit, but it was enough of a

00:32:32 ◼   ► hit that it became like, at least in the tech world, a category, right? It's so telling

00:32:40 ◼   ► that what drove those netbooks, the ones that actually did sell was XP, which was like seven

00:32:49 ◼   ► years old at that point and was not designed with those machines when it was created like

00:32:55 ◼   ► XP shipped in like 2001 I think right around there and in 2001 like the smallest PC notebook was you

00:33:02 ◼   ► know by today's standards a brick or at least by quote unquote netbook standards like a real thick

00:33:08 ◼   ► heavy brick again it's kind of telling that like Microsoft's only real foray into super lightweight

00:33:16 ◼   ► stuff that nobody else was doing at the time was an OS that wasn't even designed for it.

00:33:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:24 ◼   ► I had somewhere else I wanted to go with that, but maybe I should just take a sponsor break.

00:33:30 ◼   ► Oh, you know what I want to talk to after the sponsor break? I'll tell you. I want to talk about

00:33:34 ◼   ► the new iPod Touch. But first, I want to tell you about our first sponsor. It's EchoGraph.

00:33:44 ◼   ► EchoGraph is a universal app for the iPhone and the iPad.

00:33:49 ◼   ► And what you do with it is you make infinitely looping

00:33:53 ◼   ► animated photographs.

00:33:57 ◼   ► It's like adding-- they say it's like adding splashes of video

00:34:00 ◼   ► into photographs.

00:34:01 ◼   ► And so what you get is a photo that looks like it's moving.

00:34:06 ◼   ► And it's almost like a little mini video editing

00:34:09 ◼   ► app like a like a super simple iOS version of something like I don't know

00:34:15 ◼   ► like Final Cut or iMovie and it has you know cool filters and stuff that were

00:34:21 ◼   ► more like a simple consumer version of I don't know After Effects or something

00:34:25 ◼   ► like that or Photoshop it was originally released only for the iPad in June a lot

00:34:33 ◼   ► of their users have asked for an iPhone version and it is just out it is now out

00:34:38 ◼   ► in the iOS, in the iTunes App Store. And it is even already enhanced for the iPhone 5.

00:34:47 ◼   ► So it's perfect. You can shoot 16 to 9 photographs. Fits the screen perfectly. Looks like a video.

00:34:54 ◼   ► And I can vouch for it. It's very, very fun to play with. Very cool sound effects too.

00:34:58 ◼   ► Here, let me fire it up and see if I can. It sounds like the type of sound effects we'd

00:35:04 ◼   ► have in the 80s when you move around the user interface.

00:35:09 ◼   ► Did you play with this app?

00:35:10 ◼   ► I told you they were sponsoring.

00:35:13 ◼   ► >> I didn't get a chance to download it yet because you told me five minutes before the

00:35:17 ◼   ► show.

00:35:20 ◼   ► But I did look at the video and it looks pretty cool because, I mean, it's obvious.

00:35:24 ◼   ► >> Listen to that.

00:35:25 ◼   ► You hear that?

00:35:26 ◼   ► >> It's on iOS.

00:35:27 ◼   ► >> This is like you tap around the user interface.

00:35:28 ◼   ► Listen to this.

00:35:29 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:35:30 ◼   ► That's what I was going to say.

00:35:31 ◼   ► You edit with your finger.

00:35:32 ◼   ► I love it. Really, really cool user interface. Very, very cool results. Very, very – it's

00:35:40 ◼   ► just a fun, fun app to play with.

00:35:42 ◼   ► Tim Cynova And you just sort of – you just sort of

00:35:44 ◼   ► rub the area that you want to keep moving.

00:35:46 ◼   ► Steven

00:35:46 ◼   ► And everything else stays static.

00:35:48 ◼   ► And it's just a really nice, attractive user interface.

00:35:51 ◼   ► Very well done.

00:35:51 ◼   ► So check it out.

00:35:52 ◼   ► You can go to echographapp.com.

00:35:58 ◼   ► That's echographapp.com.

00:36:01 ◼   ► Or of course, you can just go to the App Store

00:36:04 ◼   ► and search for Echo Graph.

00:36:06 ◼   ► It's a great app.

00:36:09 ◼   ► Go buy the app and help support the show.

00:36:11 ◼   ► It's really fun.

00:36:12 ◼   ► I vouch for it.

00:36:15 ◼   ► I'm sure it's also a lot of fun on the new iPod touch, which also has a 16.9 display.

00:36:22 ◼   ► Have you seen one yet?

00:36:23 ◼   ► They're now in the stores.

00:36:24 ◼   ► They just started shipping this week, I believe, right?

00:36:27 ◼   ► No, I did not because I'm not that stupid as to buy both an iPhone and an iPod touch.

00:36:34 ◼   ► But I got to play with it at the event last month.

00:36:38 ◼   ► And the thing that I knew, and I knew that everybody would say it when it came out because

00:36:42 ◼   ► everybody at the event was flabbergasted by it is how unbelievably thin and lightweight

00:36:48 ◼   ► the thing is. It is, you know, because everybody who's upgrading their iPhones is like, "Wow,

00:36:54 ◼   ► the new iPhone isn't, I can't believe how light it is compared to my old iPhone. I can't

00:36:57 ◼   ► believe how thin it is." I'm telling you, once you see the iPod Touch, it's like, "Oh,

00:37:01 ◼   ► my iPhone 5 is not that thin and lightweight." You remember before the new stuff with the

00:37:07 ◼   ► previous, you know, one generation ago, the iPhone, the iPhone 4S was the leading iPhone

00:37:14 ◼   ► in the compare it to the older iPod touches. And it always seemed like the iPod touch was

00:37:20 ◼   ► so thin and lightweight. Right? The new iPhone five is it's not quite as thin as those iPod

00:37:27 ◼   ► touch. I think it's like two tenths of a millimeter thicker. And it's a little bit heavier. But

00:37:32 ◼   ► It is roughly though the thickness and weight of the old iPod touches.

00:37:38 ◼   ► Like the iPhone has now gotten to the thinness and weight of the old iPod touches.

00:37:42 ◼   ► The new iPod touch is that much thinner and lighter again.

00:37:49 ◼   ► Like the numbers don't do it justice.

00:37:51 ◼   ► When you just look at the tech spec sheet and it says that the iPhone is 7.2 millimeters

00:37:57 ◼   ► thick and the iPod is whatever.

00:38:01 ◼   ► like as thin as a sheet of paper or something like that. Doesn't – yeah, it just – you

00:38:04 ◼   ► hold it though and you're like, "Ah, this is unbelievable." And it does –

00:38:08 ◼   ► Tim Cynova – Eventually, they'll get so thin that you turn it to the side, it'll

00:38:11 ◼   ► just be a one-pixel line.

00:38:13 ◼   ► Steven

00:38:13 ◼   ► Well, the thing that occurs to me…

00:38:15 ◼   ► You won't be able to see it unless you look at it…

00:38:16 ◼   ► It occurs to me looking at the Verge's review of it, when they took a shot of it from the

00:38:20 ◼   ► side and you see the bottom, is that in the way that Apple was pitching the Lightning

00:38:26 ◼   ► connector as, "Look, one of the reasons we had to get rid of the 30-pin dock connector

00:38:29 ◼   ► is it was limiting how thin the devices could be.

00:38:32 ◼   ► We couldn't make these devices as thin as they are now this year if we were still using

00:38:37 ◼   ► that adapter."

00:38:38 ◼   ► And it occurred to me that, look at the picture from the Verge had of it, that the new limiting

00:38:42 ◼   ► factor is the headphone jack. Like if you look like if you think the iPhone 5 makes

00:38:47 ◼   ► the headphone jack come close to the edges, the new iPod touch, it's ridiculous. And

00:38:54 ◼   ► that makes me wonder if like I really does seem like it's like it's like it's like

00:38:59 ◼   ► the VGA. Exactly. There is the only way they can make it thinner would be make it like

00:39:03 ◼   ► a bulge for the headphone port.

00:39:05 ◼   ► Can you imagine if Apple went with a proprietary…

00:39:09 ◼   ► That's exactly where I was going.

00:39:12 ◼   ► If you think people went ape shit when they got rid of the 30-pin thing, you go one proprietary

00:39:18 ◼   ► thing to another, imagine what would happen if they went with a proprietary headphone

00:39:25 ◼   ► jack.

00:39:27 ◼   ► Or maybe they're just going to do away with the headphone jack.

00:39:30 ◼   ► I guess they could.

00:39:31 ◼   ► How could they do that?

00:39:32 ◼   ► Bluetooth only?

00:39:33 ◼   ► Was that, am I making this up, were they, was there a patent thing recently about a

00:39:40 ◼   ► wireless headset?

00:39:41 ◼   ► Or wireless headphones?

00:39:42 ◼   ► Well, you can do Bluetooth.

00:39:43 ◼   ► I don't know if there's something else you could do.

00:39:45 ◼   ► But the thing is, the difference is, the big difference is that third-party headphones

00:39:53 ◼   ► are way bigger deal than third-party dock connector stuff, I think.

00:39:58 ◼   ► I mean, anybody who's serious about audio has some kind of serious headphones, and people

00:40:03 ◼   ► have noise canceling ones for airplanes. For however many gazillion people use the white

00:40:11 ◼   ► earbuds that Apple gives you, it's unbelievable how many people use headphones. I mean, presumably...

00:40:17 ◼   ► Do you have something else? Do you have something else that you use?

00:40:21 ◼   ► I do. I have a set of Shure, S-H-U-R-E, in-ear things that I use when I'm on... I only ever

00:40:30 ◼   ► use them when I'm on an airplane because they seal against the ear and it really helps drown

00:40:34 ◼   ► out the thing. And they were, I think they cost like 300 bucks or something like that.

00:40:41 ◼   ► But I didn't pay for them. They came in the goodie bag when I was a speaker at Mac World

00:40:46 ◼   ► Expo like three years ago. It's like you don't get paid for speaking at Mac World Expo but

00:40:52 ◼   ► they give you this backpack full of stuff and there's a lot of the stuff is like really

00:40:55 ◼   ► awesome. And I'm like, it's one of those areas where I'll blow money. I blow money on a new

00:41:00 ◼   ► I have a new iPhone every year. I blow money left and right. But there's certain things

00:41:03 ◼   ► that I'm a cheapskate on, and headphones are always one of them. I don't think I've

00:41:07 ◼   ► ever spent personally more than, I don't know, $30, $40 on a pair of headphones. But

00:41:13 ◼   ► the $300 pair of Shure ones that I got as being a speaker at Macworld are—they're

00:41:18 ◼   ► delightful. And I'm like, "Oh, this is why people spend money on headphones."

00:41:22 ◼   ► I had a pair of Shure ones. They kept popping out for some reason. And then I just got the

00:41:26 ◼   ► Bose in ear ones, which are pretty good. I'm not a big audiophile, so I know people don't

00:41:33 ◼   ► really like the Bose.

00:41:34 ◼   ► You know, I take it back. A long time ago, maybe 10 years ago, I bought a pair of Bose.

00:41:38 ◼   ► They weren't the noise cancelling ones because I was too cheap. I bought a pair of Bose over

00:41:42 ◼   ► the ear things.

00:41:43 ◼   ► Yeah, mine aren't ear.

00:41:44 ◼   ► Like the headband thing cracked. And then I got mad that I spent $90 on headphones and

00:41:50 ◼   ► they broke eventually.

00:41:53 ◼   ► That's the problem with headphones. You have them out and you're using them so often.

00:41:57 ◼   ► And mowing the lawn and stuff, and I get it snagged on something. I don't want to spend

00:42:02 ◼   ► $300 on a pair of headphones.

00:42:04 ◼   ► And of course, the ones I got for free have lasted me three or four years old now and

00:42:10 ◼   ► are still brand new. I didn't know that if I paid for a pair, I'd drop them in a

00:42:15 ◼   ► drink or something.

00:42:17 ◼   ► You get such varying opinions about the new Apple headphones.

00:42:20 ◼   ► Yeah. Do you?

00:42:21 ◼   ► Yeah, it seems like some people – I mean for me, they're great.

00:42:27 ◼   ► One way of looking at it is it's a big improvement over the old ones because the old ones were

00:42:30 ◼   ► not very good.

00:42:31 ◼   ► Then the other way of looking at it is, "Oh my god, you can get so much better headphones

00:42:36 ◼   ► for less."

00:42:37 ◼   ► I don't know that you can though.

00:42:38 ◼   ► It seemed like when people said that, it's like –

00:42:39 ◼   ► Okay, they come in the box.

00:42:40 ◼   ► They don't come with – the ones that cost less don't have a microphone.

00:42:43 ◼   ► They don't have the volume and play plus pause button on the clicker.

00:42:49 ◼   ► Right.

00:42:50 ◼   ► Which apparently, I think I read this, the ones in the iPod touchbox don't either.

00:42:57 ◼   ► No, oh no wait.

00:42:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I think I read this yesterday.

00:43:01 ◼   ► But they have the new shape?

00:43:02 ◼   ► So they have the new shape, but they don't have the microphone, and I don't think they have the clicker.

00:43:08 ◼   ► Oh, that's weird.

00:43:09 ◼   ► Which is very strange. That seems to be cheap to get.

00:43:13 ◼   ► Yeah, it seems like a weird thing for them to get cheap on.

00:43:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:17 ◼   ► I'm not a zealot about, "Hey, just because Apple has a lot of money in the bank, they've

00:43:22 ◼   ► got to split, they've got to give it away or burn some of it."

00:43:26 ◼   ► But every...

00:43:27 ◼   ► No, I'm not either.

00:43:28 ◼   ► But it seems like that seems...

00:43:30 ◼   ► You could build them in such volume that it really...

00:43:32 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:33 ◼   ► The difference isn't that great.

00:43:34 ◼   ► That if you're giving them a pair of headphones anyway, just give everybody the same ones.

00:43:38 ◼   ► I mean, and everybody agrees they're not...

00:43:40 ◼   ► It's not like they're great.

00:43:41 ◼   ► It's not like they're giving you high-end studio headphones.

00:43:47 ◼   ► $300.

00:43:51 ◼   ► So that leads me, though. So you haven't seen the iPod Touch yet.

00:43:54 ◼   ► I have not.

00:43:55 ◼   ► And I'm telling you, when you do, the thing that's going to strike you is that it is radically

00:44:00 ◼   ► thinner and lighter.

00:44:03 ◼   ► And colors.

00:44:04 ◼   ► Well, and colors. But the colors thing is, I think, is secondary to the thinness and

00:44:08 ◼   ► lightness. And I think that that thinness and lightness is so high a priority at Apple

00:44:16 ◼   ► it cannot be overstated. And in hindsight, especially if you look at the last handful

00:44:24 ◼   ► of years of Apple products, that the focus on thinness and lightness, it stands out.

00:44:33 ◼   ► And what sticks out like a sore thumb is the iPad 3, which got thicker and heavier from

00:44:40 ◼   ► from the generation before it. It really sticks out in hindsight because there's like this

00:44:46 ◼   ► relentless model after model, everything gets thinner and lighter and then there's the iPad

00:44:51 ◼   ► which got thinner the first year then suddenly got a little thicker and noticeably heavier

00:44:58 ◼   ► to accommodate the big battery that powers the retina display.

00:45:01 ◼   ► And so that's why I think like the there's two questions people keep asking me about the the the rumored as I call it iPad air

00:45:13 ◼   ► and the two questions are I

00:45:17 ◼   ► Can't believe Apple would release a new device into this in late 2012

00:45:24 ◼   ► That's not retina when everything else has gone retina across the board in iOS

00:45:30 ◼   ► A) and then B) if the new iPod Touch starts at $299, how can the iPad Air cost less than

00:45:42 ◼   ► it? Those are two questions. I've gotten those two questions more, I think, than any

00:45:48 ◼   ► questions I can remember in the history of Daring Fireball. Like, they are so complete

00:45:52 ◼   ► and they're almost phrased word for word the same way from readers.

00:45:55 ◼   ► Well, the iPod Touch starts at…

00:45:59 ◼   ► Right.

00:46:00 ◼   ► Oh, the new one starts at $299.

00:46:01 ◼   ► The new one starts at $299.

00:46:02 ◼   ► The $199 iPod Touch is the year-old model.

00:46:05 ◼   ► Is the previous generation.

00:46:07 ◼   ► Oh, that's right.

00:46:09 ◼   ► So I have answers to both of those things.

00:46:12 ◼   ► So on the Retina front, okay, it's true that everything now is Retina across the board.

00:46:20 ◼   ► The iPad's Retina, the iPhone's Retina, and the iPod Touch is Retina.

00:46:27 ◼   ► But every single new form factor for an iOS device debuted non-Retina.

00:46:33 ◼   ► And so I expect that to be the same for the iPad Air.

00:46:39 ◼   ► And the second thing is I really – that's why – the reason I called it the iPad Air

00:46:44 ◼   ► isn't so much that I think that that's what they're going to call it, although

00:46:46 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised.

00:46:47 ◼   ► The only two names I expect them to either use is either call it the iPad Air or just

00:46:52 ◼   ► call it iPad.

00:46:54 ◼   ► And you just know the difference because this is the one that's cheaper and smaller and

00:46:57 ◼   ► thinner and lighter.

00:46:58 ◼   ► But I do think though that the way they're going to pitch it, the appeal of it, isn't

00:47:03 ◼   ► so much about the physical size of it that it's 7.85 inches instead of 9.7 diagonally,

00:47:08 ◼   ► but about thinness and lightness and that it's so much lighter and so much thinner

00:47:14 ◼   ► than any other tablet on the market.

00:47:17 ◼   ► And to make it thin and light, I think it has to be non-retina because it's that everything

00:47:22 ◼   ► about the heaviness and thickness of the iPad 3, given what we know from the iFixit teardowns,

00:47:29 ◼   ► it's about the big honking battery to power it all.

00:47:33 ◼   ► The battery, the larger battery is also for LTE.

00:47:38 ◼   ► Yeah, but look at the...

00:47:41 ◼   ► So my question then is do you think it would be – this is another thing that came up

00:47:47 ◼   ► because yesterday someone suggested –

00:47:50 ◼   ► Yes.

00:47:51 ◼   ► Charles Arthur at the Guardian.

00:47:52 ◼   ► Charles Arthur suggested that it would be Wi-Fi only.

00:47:54 ◼   ► I don't believe that.

00:47:55 ◼   ► I really don't.

00:47:56 ◼   ► I don't think so.

00:47:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:58 ◼   ► But it could be 3G.

00:47:59 ◼   ► I could believe that.

00:48:02 ◼   ► I do if that would help contribute to the thinness and lightness.

00:48:07 ◼   ► the the existence of the iPhone five, and its thinness and lightness and support for

00:48:14 ◼   ► LTE makes me think that the the iPad Air will have LTE to

00:48:20 ◼   ► Okay, okay.

00:48:23 ◼   ► And you know, so I just don't expect them to say much about the fact that the display

00:48:28 ◼   ► isn't retina, though, I think that there will be nice things to say about it. I think that

00:48:33 ◼   ► I would also think that in the interest of thinness and lightness, I would not be surprised

00:48:38 ◼   ► at all if they go with the new technology that started this year with the iPhone 5 where

00:48:46 ◼   ► the touch sensors are integrated in the glass with the display as opposed to being a separate

00:48:50 ◼   ► layer.

00:48:52 ◼   ► Even though there won't be the retina pixel resolution, the pixels will seem closer to

00:48:57 ◼   ► the surface, which is another big part of the appeal.

00:49:01 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if like the color quality was a lot like the IPS technology

00:49:07 ◼   ► was a lot better than say the 3GS which has that same pixel resolution that it'll be yeah

00:49:14 ◼   ► the resolution won't be great but in other ways the display will be better than previous

00:49:19 ◼   ► non retina iOS displays right it'll still be it'll be a good display just not that high

00:49:25 ◼   ► of a resolution.

00:49:27 ◼   ► I predict, though, if it's not a retina display, that that will be used as a knock against

00:49:34 ◼   ► it.

00:49:35 ◼   ► I think definitely.

00:49:36 ◼   ► People will compare it to the Amazon HD devices and the Kindle HD devices and say, "Apple

00:49:43 ◼   ► blew it by not shipping a retina display."

00:49:45 ◼   ► And then they all, at the same token, will not mention that the Kindle Fire comes covered

00:49:49 ◼   ► in ads.

00:49:52 ◼   ► That's my contribution to this conversation.

00:49:56 ◼   ► my cynicism about the modern state of technology punditry.

00:50:00 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Are the ants on the inside or is it like a

00:50:02 ◼   ► candy bar where they're crawling around the outside?

00:50:05 ◼   ► Tim Cynova They're all over.

00:50:09 ◼   ► Dave Asprey That was the type of science I liked to conduct

00:50:11 ◼   ► as a kid. I loved an ant-covered candy bar. Tim Cynova

00:50:17 ◼   ► Who didn't? Yeah, no, absolutely. Dave Asprey

00:50:18 ◼   ► Because it was always like a special kind of ant, like the tiny ant, not like a regular

00:50:22 ◼   ► size ant. It was like the little mic. Tim Cynova

00:50:24 ◼   ► Well, the big ones are carpenter ants.

00:50:26 ◼   ► They're like wood.

00:50:27 ◼   ► Yeah, they don't want candy.

00:50:28 ◼   ► It's a little like...

00:50:29 ◼   ► But it almost makes it seem like they're the kid ants.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Just like it's kids who eat all the candy in the human world, it's the little kid

00:50:35 ◼   ► ants who like to eat candy in the ant world.

00:50:38 ◼   ► Did you ever try and start an ant war?

00:50:40 ◼   ► No.

00:50:41 ◼   ► How would you do that?

00:50:42 ◼   ► Oh, man.

00:50:43 ◼   ► You'd find two ant hills and then you'd like try...

00:50:44 ◼   ► Lead them to each other.

00:50:45 ◼   ► Yeah, either dig a...

00:50:46 ◼   ► Yeah, basically either dig a...

00:50:49 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:50:50 ◼   ► Or like sprinkles honeybee between them or something.

00:50:54 ◼   ► to get them to find each other and start a battle.

00:50:57 ◼   ► I don't know that we ever successfully did that, but what a horrible thing to do.

00:51:01 ◼   ► But I know that we did pick up an ant from another anthill and take him over to see what

00:51:07 ◼   ► would happen.

00:51:08 ◼   ► I don't remember what the results were, though.

00:51:09 ◼   ► I bet when he was a young child, I bet Dick Cheney was very successful at that sort of

00:51:14 ◼   ► thing.

00:51:15 ◼   ► I bet he was really good at it.

00:51:19 ◼   ► Shooting frogs.

00:51:20 ◼   ► So on the pricing front, on the pricing front, what I think is don't overthink it, right?

00:51:29 ◼   ► Everybody there's this idea that everybody seems to have in their heads that if the new

00:51:32 ◼   ► iPad iPod touch is $299, then how can the iPad Air be less than that if it's bigger?

00:51:41 ◼   ► And I say don't overthink it and a don't overthink it and be smaller is cheaper, like a 13 inch

00:51:50 ◼   ► MacBook is gonna cost less than the 15 inch MacBook the 11 inch MacBook Air is

00:51:55 ◼   ► gonna cost less than the 13 inch MacBook Air smaller is cheaper but miniature is

00:52:01 ◼   ► expensive right it's not just that the iPod touch is not just smaller iPad it's

00:52:08 ◼   ► a miniature miniaturization is expensive right so if you get like a slightly

00:52:14 ◼   ► smaller camera it's maybe it's cheaper but if you get like a little like spy

00:52:19 ◼   ► camera that's more expensive. It's expensive to miniaturize things.

00:52:23 ◼   ► Also the capacity, the starting capacity of the new iPod Touch is 32 gigabytes.

00:52:30 ◼   ► That's true too.

00:52:32 ◼   ► So if it was a 16 gig tablet you'd be in less capacity.

00:52:37 ◼   ► Right, and here's the second case. So let's say that the new iPad Air starts at 249 or even, let's just for the sake of argument,

00:52:46 ◼   ► Let's say it starts all the way at $199 for a 16-gigabyte version, and so it's $100 cheaper

00:52:51 ◼   ► than the new iPod Touch.

00:52:55 ◼   ► So what's the worst-case scenario of the people who think that this is a problem, that this

00:52:59 ◼   ► bigger and therefore more appealing device is also cheaper?

00:53:05 ◼   ► If somebody comes in and was thinking, "Well, I'll buy the iPod Touch, and instead, well,

00:53:11 ◼   ► why don't I just buy this thing?

00:53:12 ◼   ► It's only $199.

00:53:13 ◼   ► I'll save money and get a bigger screen."

00:53:15 ◼   ► Well, guess what? They just walked out of the Apple store buying an iPad. Like, that's

00:53:19 ◼   ► a win. It doesn't matter which one you buy. If you go in the store and buy one of these

00:53:23 ◼   ► things and walk out, Apple counts that as a win. It doesn't matter. If the new iPad

00:53:29 ◼   ► Air completely cannibalizes sales of the iPod Touch, well, that's great because it's an

00:53:34 ◼   ► Apple product doing it. Like, I don't overthink it. As long as people are buying any of them,

00:53:42 ◼   ► It's a win for Apple.

00:53:45 ◼   ► And they're different.

00:53:46 ◼   ► I mean, they're also just different.

00:53:47 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:53:48 ◼   ► Like you cannot put – it doesn't matter how thin.

00:53:51 ◼   ► You cannot shove an iPad Air into your pocket.

00:53:55 ◼   ► I don't think you can put it on your arm when you go running.

00:53:59 ◼   ► There's not going to be an armband accessory that you can –

00:54:06 ◼   ► I hope not.

00:54:08 ◼   ► I bet somebody will do it.

00:54:09 ◼   ► You've seen those people who take movies with the iPad.

00:54:11 ◼   ► I see them every single time we have an event at school and over the summer.

00:54:19 ◼   ► We were at the pumpkin farm last weekend and there were people taking videos of the pig

00:54:25 ◼   ► races.

00:54:26 ◼   ► So that's why I'm a little hesitant to predict that there won't be any armbands.

00:54:31 ◼   ► No, I'm saying there will be.

00:54:34 ◼   ► I'm going to come out strongly in favor of there being – I mean not in favor of

00:54:38 ◼   ► them.

00:54:39 ◼   ► it be like a fanny pack oh but I guess it would be like a reverse fanny pack

00:54:45 ◼   ► though because you'd want to like look down at your belly - yeah that's the

00:54:49 ◼   ► that's the that's the tricky and you know what you would want is you would

00:54:51 ◼   ► you would or like a you would like a beer a mode you'd want to like

00:54:56 ◼   ► orientation lock it upside down so that you could look down at your belly and

00:55:03 ◼   ► it's gonna be a lot of accidents a lot of running because I do I am that's why

00:55:08 ◼   ► I'm hesitant not to predict it because before I actually saw all these people in the real

00:55:14 ◼   ► world using their iPads as cameras, including like you said, video cameras where they're

00:55:20 ◼   ► just walking around with it.

00:55:23 ◼   ► I laughed at the demands that after the original iPad that didn't have a camera, I laughed

00:55:30 ◼   ► at the demands that everybody said this thing needs a camera on the back because I thought,

00:55:34 ◼   ► when the hell is anybody ever going to use it?

00:55:38 ◼   ► I don't think I've used it.

00:55:40 ◼   ► I've used the front-facing camera for FaceTime, but I've never used it.

00:55:44 ◼   ► Right.

00:55:45 ◼   ► The front-facing camera always made total sense to me.

00:55:47 ◼   ► The demand that it have cameras on both sides, you can claim chowder me on it.

00:55:52 ◼   ► I thought it was ridiculous.

00:55:53 ◼   ► I really did.

00:55:54 ◼   ► And again, if I got an iPad that had a broken rear camera, I don't even know if I would

00:55:59 ◼   ► notice it unless I accidentally hit the camera reverse button on the phone.

00:56:07 ◼   ► And I've done that because I call my brother or something, FaceTime my brother, and then

00:56:15 ◼   ► I want to show him my kid sitting there playing.

00:56:17 ◼   ► I want to reach him.

00:56:18 ◼   ► I guess so.

00:56:19 ◼   ► But for the most part, though.

00:56:21 ◼   ► But it's not a huge, yeah.

00:56:22 ◼   ► You would just turn the phone around and use the front-facing camera.

00:56:26 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:56:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:56:28 ◼   ► Here, let me, you know what?

00:56:29 ◼   ► Let's just take the second break and do the second sponsor.

00:56:34 ◼   ► Okay.

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00:58:49 ◼   ► They do have other ones, but they wanted me.

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00:58:54 ◼   ► Oh, let me tell you this.

00:58:56 ◼   ► Can't believe it.

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00:59:01 ◼   ► They got 10% off for talk show listeners.

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00:59:07 ◼   ► You know what?

00:59:08 ◼   ► If I hadn't remembered this, we would have had to redo the whole show, John.

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00:59:33 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:59:34 ◼   ► If we had a digital recorder, it would all be fine.

00:59:37 ◼   ► There should be some way.

00:59:38 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

00:59:39 ◼   ► If we were recording it digitally, we could insert things.

00:59:41 ◼   ► Same thing.

00:59:42 ◼   ► I keep thinking about switching my...

00:59:44 ◼   ► Someday.

00:59:45 ◼   ► ...the blogging client I use from a typewriter to something like a text editor, like on a

00:59:51 ◼   ► computer or something like that, because it's getting...

00:59:53 ◼   ► You should try Blogger.

00:59:54 ◼   ► Blogger is free.

00:59:55 ◼   ► It's getting...

00:59:56 ◼   ► Did you know that?

00:59:57 ◼   ► It's getting frustrated.

00:59:58 ◼   ► to me that when I make a typo, I've got a backspace, backspace, backspace and exit out.

01:00:03 ◼   ► And…

01:00:04 ◼   ► JEFF: White… Do you have a lot of white out?

01:00:06 ◼   ► DAVE and JEFF No. I just… I just use the capital X and…

01:00:08 ◼   ► JEFF You just use X. That explains all those X's that we see on your site.

01:00:14 ◼   ► Man, if you got Hawaii, if you live in Hawaii or you have any relation to Hawaii or if you just

01:00:20 ◼   ► like Hawaii, go get this shirt right now. DAVE Why is that? Because it's awesome.

01:00:25 ◼   ► That's awesome. It's just gorgeous. Yeah, I mean it's a distinct, it's a lovely distinct.

01:00:29 ◼   ► One thing I like, and to me it's always the sign of a class act,

01:00:33 ◼   ► the type of advertiser who actually listens to the show, is that the code is not

01:00:37 ◼   ► talk show. The code is the talk show. Because they know

01:00:41 ◼   ► that I paid a lot of money for that.

01:00:45 ◼   ► So what else is going on this week?

01:00:49 ◼   ► What's your opinion on the iPad pricing?

01:00:53 ◼   ► Oh, I know what I wanted to talk to you about, but what's your opinion on the iPad pricing?

01:00:57 ◼   ► What, what, what, what I think that the Air, whatever you want to call it is going to be?

01:01:02 ◼   ► I'd say, I'm going to go with 250.

01:01:04 ◼   ► Yeah, that's my guess.

01:01:05 ◼   ► I would love it.

01:01:07 ◼   ► They don't have a lot of, they don't have a lot of products that are priced at a 50,

01:01:10 ◼   ► you know, priced right in the middle.

01:01:12 ◼   ► They like, they like the 99, but they have a couple.

01:01:17 ◼   ► Like the Nano starts at $149 and there's something else.

01:01:23 ◼   ► But there's a couple.

01:01:26 ◼   ► That seems to be 16GB, $250.

01:01:30 ◼   ► I think it's got to be one of three things.

01:01:32 ◼   ► Either $199, $249, or $299.

01:01:35 ◼   ► But $299 seems too high.

01:01:39 ◼   ► And I don't think that if it were, I don't think that if, let's say worst case scenario,

01:01:44 ◼   ► the starting price is $299.

01:01:46 ◼   ► I don't think that means, "Oh, this is the end of Apple as we know it because everybody's

01:01:54 ◼   ► going to buy a Kindle Fire or a Nexus 7 instead."

01:02:01 ◼   ► They'd still sell a lot of them at $299.

01:02:03 ◼   ► But I almost feel like though if they started at $299, it would have to be 32 gigs and then

01:02:09 ◼   ► why not just have one that's cheaper in 16 gigs?

01:02:12 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:02:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know either.

01:02:16 ◼   ► Here's the other thing I want to talk to you about, John. I want to talk to you about this thing, and it's like my schtick of the month is what is it about Apple that makes people lose their minds?

01:02:26 ◼   ► And this has always been the case, right? But there was a thing in Forbes this month where a guy called for Tim Cook to be fired.

01:02:39 ◼   ► Well, he did, yeah. He said, and also the way he said it was ridiculous because he said

01:02:46 ◼   ► that Steve Jobs would fire two.

01:02:51 ◼   ► For a 78% year over year increase in stock price, record breaking iPad, record breaking

01:03:01 ◼   ► iPhone and a I think very well received mountain lion update to the Mac and iOS 6 update to

01:03:13 ◼   ► all the iOS devices all in a year and the guy should be fired because there's some scratches

01:03:21 ◼   ► on some of the black iPhones and there's a lot if you shoot right into a light source

01:03:27 ◼   ► sometimes you get a purple fringe on what everybody else otherwise agrees is

01:03:31 ◼   ► the best camera ever to ship in a mobile phone. It's a fire-tune copy.

01:03:41 ◼   ► It's unbelievable. I mean, obviously we're all sick and tired of

01:03:48 ◼   ► people trying to tell us what Steve Jobs would have done. I did foresee it. I mean, I

01:03:53 ◼   ► I think everybody knew that after he died that any hiccup, any minor hiccup along the

01:03:58 ◼   ► way was going to have some people saying this wouldn't have happened if Steve Jobs were

01:04:02 ◼   ► around.

01:04:03 ◼   ► But I have to admit I'm surprised by how vociferous that sentiment is.

01:04:11 ◼   ► Every single time there's anything vaguely less than stellar, not even bad, just like,

01:04:19 ◼   ► You know, that it's all, this wouldn't have happened under Steve Jobs. It's all

01:04:25 ◼   ► over. Like I don't understand, this is the guy, Steve Jobs was the guy who made

01:04:30 ◼   ► the Dalmatian iMac. Right? The flower, what didn't it, they were at the same time,

01:04:37 ◼   ► right? One was Dalmatian spotted and one had flowers, right? Wasn't it flowers on the

01:04:42 ◼   ► other one? Yeah. I don't even, I don't remember the flowered one because when I

01:04:47 ◼   ► saw the Dalmatian one, my eyes went blind. Right? Yeah, I don't remember what the pattern

01:04:55 ◼   ► was.

01:04:56 ◼   ► Why do you think that? And do you think I'm right, though, that Apple makes people write

01:05:01 ◼   ► things that are way more stupid than any other company? Like, I don't think anybody is...

01:05:05 ◼   ► Well, it's hard to say, because we don't follow other things as closely as we follow Apple.

01:05:10 ◼   ► But yes. But I say yes, absolutely.

01:05:15 ◼   ► I don't know Microsoft a little I mean I can't say I'm super close but I follow Google pretty pretty well, too

01:05:23 ◼   ► And I you know, maybe I don't write about him so much but I read an awful lot about him and I can't think of anything

01:05:28 ◼   ► Equivalent to that. Yeah

01:05:34 ◼   ► Well again, like the Cowboys and the Yankees. It's more of a lightning run

01:05:38 ◼   ► It just seems to attract much more attention. And what was the article that that Stewart?

01:05:44 ◼   ► I don't know if it's attention Stewart wrote in the New York Times last week

01:05:47 ◼   ► and then Glenn Fleishman sort of took it apart very very politely you know and

01:05:51 ◼   ► way more politely than you and I can ever bear to do in play it's right do

01:05:57 ◼   ► you remember that article yeah I remember him writing that hold on a

01:06:06 ◼   ► second here we have a little bit of dead space but yeah talk amongst yourselves

01:06:13 ◼   ► Let's be a good time for the listeners at home to sing a little song.

01:06:19 ◼   ► Again, I ask, what is it about Apple that causes people to lose their minds?

01:06:23 ◼   ► It was James Stewart's New York Times Common Sense column titled "Apple's Maps and Jobs's

01:06:31 ◼   ► Shadow."

01:06:33 ◼   ► He even said that the Apple's Maps thing could raise antitrust concerns.

01:06:39 ◼   ► Oh, that was it.

01:06:43 ◼   ► That was it.

01:06:44 ◼   ► And he didn't seem to understand the fact that it was tied to iOS 6 and not the iPhone

01:06:50 ◼   ► 5.

01:06:51 ◼   ► And he didn't seem to understand the fact that Apple had made the original apps.

01:06:57 ◼   ► No.

01:06:58 ◼   ► App.

01:06:59 ◼   ► And that it was just changing data.

01:07:00 ◼   ► Right.

01:07:01 ◼   ► And it was changing the app too, but it was...

01:07:04 ◼   ► But the bigger problem was that it was changing data and the data wasn't quite as good as

01:07:07 ◼   ► Google's data.

01:07:08 ◼   ► Right.

01:07:09 ◼   ► You know what?

01:07:10 ◼   ► Here's the other thing too about this and I guess maps is maybe the best example because maybe I think that the people who are arguing

01:07:16 ◼   ► That blank wouldn't have happened if Steve Jobs is around that

01:07:19 ◼   ► They seem most convinced on the maps front that this maps thing would not have happened if Steve Jobs was around

01:07:26 ◼   ► And it a that's boggle it boggles my mind because don't doesn't everybody remember mobile me

01:07:36 ◼   ► Which ships under I think Steve Jobs

01:07:40 ◼   ► But the other thing that people don't seem to realize and I think it was absolutely positively part of Steve Jobs's genius

01:07:47 ◼   ► Was that yes, he absolutely was a perfectionist

01:07:50 ◼   ► He demanded perfection but the other thing was that he had a he was compelled to ship

01:07:59 ◼   ► right like the worst kind of perfectionist is the

01:08:03 ◼   ► obsessive perfectionist who goes away and works and works and works and never releases the damn thing and

01:08:10 ◼   ► Right? And just from my own list of personal obsessions, I think that kind of explains

01:08:18 ◼   ► the significant drop-off in productivity of Stanley Kubrick over the last two decades

01:08:25 ◼   ► of his career. Right? That he was fairly prolific up until The Shining in 1980 and then from

01:08:31 ◼   ► 1980 until his death in 1999, he only had two more movies. He had Full Metal Jacket

01:08:36 ◼   ► in '86 or '87 and then Eyes Wide Shut in '99. That he went to six years between movies and

01:08:44 ◼   ► twelve years between movies and that there are all these rumors about other things that

01:08:47 ◼   ► he'd been working on but that he'd kind of, I think, painted himself into this perfectionist

01:08:52 ◼   ► corner where, you know what I mean? He was no longer compelled to ship a movie that it

01:08:59 ◼   ► was more, you know, too focused on it. And Jobs never had that problem. Jobs loved to

01:09:04 ◼   ► ship things, right? It was famously with the early Apple, the early 80s, this mantra of

01:09:11 ◼   ► "real artists ship." And I think that's like the best type of perfectionist to be, that

01:09:17 ◼   ► you're demanding perfection, but you're also demanding to ship now. And so of course he

01:09:23 ◼   ► would have shipped maps. I wouldn't be surprised if he would have shipped it sooner.

01:09:28 ◼   ► Yeah. The other example is Zentanygate, which was not as big a deal as everybody made it,

01:09:36 ◼   ► but still, there was a legitimate flaw in the phone. It's just a flaw that everybody

01:09:44 ◼   ► else had at the same time.

01:09:46 ◼   ► But they did correct it quickly. You could argue that they shipped it a little bit too

01:09:49 ◼   ► soon because it really, when they fixed it, it didn't even take a full year. They fixed

01:09:54 ◼   ► it with the Verizon iPhone 4, which had the antenna that they eventually used for everybody

01:10:04 ◼   ► else in the iPhone 4S, the one with the differently positioned separators between the frame and

01:10:11 ◼   ► the antennas.

01:10:12 ◼   ► But yeah, so they knew they were onto something.

01:10:15 ◼   ► There was like 100% certainty that they were onto something really, really useful for all

01:10:21 ◼   ► of their design goals by moving the cell antennas to the frame of the device.

01:10:28 ◼   ► But it clearly wasn't perfect yet, and they shipped it.

01:10:33 ◼   ► It's an astounding sort of lack of understanding of what actually happened to the company over

01:10:41 ◼   ► the past, over Jobs' whole career, but particularly the time since he came back.

01:10:48 ◼   ► There's this mythology that everything that Apple shipped was perfect.

01:10:56 ◼   ► People like us don't even say that.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

01:10:58 ◼   ► I say the people who truly understand the company know that the secret was, and again

01:11:03 ◼   ► to bring it back to baseball, nobody gets on base every time they're up.

01:11:09 ◼   ► It's just about having a significantly higher batting average than everybody else.

01:11:16 ◼   ► were right and continue to be right way more often than when they're wrong.

01:11:21 ◼   ► Eric Michael Rhodes Better than one in twelve in the post-season.

01:11:23 ◼   ► Eric Spana Yes, definitely. And the other thing that

01:11:25 ◼   ► they've always been very good at, and to me this is more the warning sign. And to me,

01:11:31 ◼   ► for example, the open letter from Tim Cook on maps is a sign that Apple is doing very

01:11:38 ◼   ► well, is that they've always been very good at being honest with themselves about where

01:11:45 ◼   ► they've fallen short or where they were wrong and correcting it. So obvious

01:11:52 ◼   ► examples, I forget which generation it was, but remember the one hard drive

01:11:56 ◼   ► based iPod, I think it might have been the third generation one, where they

01:12:00 ◼   ► added these four touch sensitive buttons above the click wheel? Instead of...

01:12:06 ◼   ► Oh yeah, yeah I have one of those.

01:12:08 ◼   ► It was a very confusing design and it was... it always confused me because it

01:12:14 ◼   ► somehow it I don't know like which button to push at which time seemed

01:12:19 ◼   ► confusing and everybody had a lot of problems with the fact that they were

01:12:24 ◼   ► capacitive buttons rather than buttons that clicked so that people were like

01:12:29 ◼   ► their skin would touch these buttons and bat you know the wrong thing would

01:12:32 ◼   ► happen songs would pause you'd go back in the menu and you didn't want to just

01:12:36 ◼   ► because your skin touched this button so everybody I think it agrees it was a

01:12:40 ◼   ► worse design than what they had before. And they scrapped it. They went back the next

01:12:45 ◼   ► year to the way it was before. It was like it never happened.

01:12:47 ◼   ► Tim Cynova And the tiny, the buttonless iPod, what's

01:12:52 ◼   ► that called? Shuffle.

01:12:54 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Shuffle, exactly.

01:12:55 ◼   ► Tim Cynova It was another one.

01:12:56 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Right.

01:12:57 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Similarly failed concept.

01:12:58 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Right. Instead of doubling down on it or digging

01:13:01 ◼   ► in or refusing to admit it, it was like, "Okay, that was a bad idea. Let's go back. Here's

01:13:05 ◼   ► all your buttons on your iPod Shuffle again."

01:13:08 ◼   ► I think time after time that they've had that, you know, that they've, you know, when they've made mistakes, they recognize them and move on.

01:13:17 ◼   ► Would you count last year's iPod Nano? I know a lot of people really liked that. I did not, that did not impress me particularly.

01:13:30 ◼   ► The fact that they dropped the video, I think, was really baffling to me.

01:13:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it made for... I have one and I do like it, but to me it isn't an iPod Nano.

01:13:45 ◼   ► It's an iPod shuffle with a screen.

01:13:46 ◼   ► It's a shuffle, yeah. It's an iPod shuffle with a screen.

01:13:48 ◼   ► Right. And presumably the screen is significantly, I can only assume, is significantly more expensive

01:13:54 ◼   ► component-wise than the just simple clicky buttons that are on the actual shuffle as

01:14:00 ◼   ► we know it. And the shuffle is about hitting... What does the shuffle sell for now? Like $79

01:14:06 ◼   ► bucks, 69 bucks.

01:14:07 ◼   ► Maybe less.

01:14:08 ◼   ► Right.

01:14:09 ◼   ► But that they can't – I don't think they could – I don't think that they could replace

01:14:13 ◼   ► the shuffle with last year's Nano with the little tiny stamp – posted stamp touchscreen.

01:14:19 ◼   ► Forty-nine – forty-nine dollars.

01:14:20 ◼   ► Well, how much?

01:14:21 ◼   ► Forty-nine dollars for a shuffle.

01:14:22 ◼   ► So there you go.

01:14:23 ◼   ► Yeah, they couldn't – I don't think they could sell that for $49 and make a profit.

01:14:27 ◼   ► So that's why it's not.

01:14:28 ◼   ► But I bought it treating it as a – the way that I treated my previous iPod shuffle.

01:14:33 ◼   ► It's just a shuffle with a screen which is cool because I can read

01:14:36 ◼   ► Like when I'm listening to podcasts I can I don't have to

01:14:40 ◼   ► Take a guess as to whether this is the newest episode of whatever podcast I can read it and say okay

01:14:46 ◼   ► I know that this is it

01:14:48 ◼   ► But yeah, it's another example I think of acknowledging a mistake

01:14:53 ◼   ► Because yeah

01:14:56 ◼   ► It's like it's kind of weird how they've gone back and forth over the years of whether or not the iPod nano is meant to

01:15:02 ◼   ► play video in addition to audio. It's like, "Yes, now you can do video." And then they're

01:15:06 ◼   ► like, "No, now you can't do video. It's just audio." Now they're like this year, it's like,

01:15:11 ◼   ► "Definitely, video." But I agree.

01:15:14 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer:** I mean, it's kind of neat that they have this

01:15:17 ◼   ► category that is sort of change ever changing.

01:15:18 ◼   ► **Ezra Klein:** Like I think as a basic rule of thumb for evaluating

01:15:20 ◼   ► a company, the two things you really want is you want them to be right most of the time

01:15:26 ◼   ► and you want them to be very good at correcting themselves when they're wrong the rest of

01:15:31 ◼   ► the time. Like it's not realistic to expect a company to be right all of the

01:15:35 ◼   ► time because nobody is. It's impossible. No organization or

01:15:39 ◼   ► individual in history is right all of the time. You know it's the way I think I

01:15:47 ◼   ► and you, I would also say, conduct ourselves as writers. We try to be

01:15:52 ◼   ► right most of the time but if we are wrong about something you just put it

01:15:56 ◼   ► out there make fun of yourself, you know, or apologize if it was, you know,

01:16:00 ◼   ► something that would require it. But you don't dig in.

01:16:04 ◼   ► I did that just the other day.

01:16:06 ◼   ► What was that about?

01:16:07 ◼   ► Well, when I was on that documentary, the Welcome to Macintosh documentary, they had

01:16:12 ◼   ► asked me about – this was back in 2006 when I was interviewed. It didn't come out for,

01:16:18 ◼   ► I think, another year and a half or something. And they asked me, "What would Apple be

01:16:23 ◼   ► like without Steve Jobs?" And this was back in 2006 they were asking this question. And

01:16:28 ◼   ► I said I didn't think that they'd be able to keep up the pace.

01:16:31 ◼   ► This is before the iPhone.

01:16:35 ◼   ► Back when the hits that Apple had were much fewer.

01:16:40 ◼   ► They were doing better with the Mac and they had the iPod.

01:16:44 ◼   ► Yeah, and if it was 2006, it was pre-iPhone.

01:16:47 ◼   ► Yeah, it was pre-iPhone.

01:16:50 ◼   ► So I cut myself a little slack, but still it was not the brightest thing I've ever

01:16:56 ◼   ► said.

01:16:57 ◼   ► I don't see how else to be you know so it's not worth it

01:17:00 ◼   ► Don't look for pundits who are right all of the time look for pundits who are right most of the time and who when they're?

01:17:05 ◼   ► Wrong get on top of it right and it's amazing to me that the New York Times seems to be coming out with a lot of

01:17:12 ◼   ► This stuff it does two pieces within like a couple weeks that were just real groan early really yeah

01:17:19 ◼   ► One thing I found is somebody pointed out some reader pointed out to me the James B

01:17:24 ◼   ► Stewart, the guy, the columnist who, the common sense columnist, what it is. The common sense

01:17:32 ◼   ► columnist is apparently previously written about, he's an Android guy. And I think that

01:17:40 ◼   ► that sort of gets to the heart of the what makes these people lose their minds is that

01:17:46 ◼   ► it's this irrational, anti-Apple mindset that if you're going to start with the assumption

01:17:53 ◼   ► that there's something wrong with Apple and something wrong like I've often said that there's this implicit

01:17:58 ◼   ► Insinuation that there's something wrong with people who choose Apple products and a lot of these people's explanations for

01:18:04 ◼   ► Why Apple products are so successful? Well, it all starts with the fact that their customers are

01:18:10 ◼   ► Fanatics and that's yeah

01:18:14 ◼   ► That's my favorite is that they will go on to tell you all the horrible things about the new iPhone

01:18:20 ◼   ► Right. When they come out with something new and it-

01:18:22 ◼   ► It doesn't compare to the Galaxy S3 or whatever because, you know, whatever reason. But they'll

01:18:28 ◼   ► sell a lot of them because of the fanboys.

01:18:30 ◼   ► Right. They'll sell a couple million of them to their fanatics.

01:18:34 ◼   ► Thirty-five million a quarter.

01:18:36 ◼   ► But, right, the Apple or the Apple faithful. That's what they will say.

01:18:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:42 ◼   ► Without any irony. Without any sense of irony.

01:18:43 ◼   ► No. No. It's such a-

01:18:45 ◼   ► Right?

01:18:46 ◼   ► Wow. How many people could there be who are brainwashed by Apple?

01:18:49 ◼   ► But if you start with that, if that's your starting point as one of your things that

01:18:53 ◼   ► you're going to file as a fact, that these people are like religious faithful, then all

01:19:00 ◼   ► sorts of—once you start that with a bad assumption like that, that you're unwilling

01:19:04 ◼   ► to backtrack from or examine at a distance and reconsider perhaps, then it's easy to

01:19:12 ◼   ► start down a path where you end up with "Let's shit can Tim Cook."

01:19:18 ◼   ► guy out of there before the company is totally ruined. We need to bring in somebody from

01:19:26 ◼   ► the top.

01:19:27 ◼   ► He must just laugh. He must just...

01:19:28 ◼   ► They should bring in somebody from Sony. Somebody who knows how to make gadgets.

01:19:32 ◼   ► Sony knows. Michael Dell.

01:19:34 ◼   ► Yeah, get Michael Dell in there. I have one last thing. Here's the one last thing, and

01:19:40 ◼   ► I've tweeted this. And everybody out there, if you're listening to the show, you should

01:19:43 ◼   ► follow the talk show on Twitter because that's the best way to get updates on

01:19:49 ◼   ► what's going on with the show. Like I didn't have a show last week. Maybe you

01:19:53 ◼   ► were distressed about that. Maybe you were confused. But if you follow me on

01:19:56 ◼   ► Twitter at the talk show you would have known that there wasn't gonna be a show

01:19:59 ◼   ► last week because that's where updates like that happen. And I have tweeted this

01:20:04 ◼   ► but many of you maybe don't listen to it. That everybody listens to the show. What

01:20:07 ◼   ► you should go do is book out the time, get a babysitter. You got to go see two

01:20:11 ◼   ► movies. You want to see The Master by Paul Thomas Anderson, great movie. Adam

01:20:20 ◼   ► Lisa Gore was on the show months ago when the trailer came out and we talked

01:20:23 ◼   ► about it. Well now the movie's out in the theaters, we've seen it. Adam Lisa Gore is

01:20:28 ◼   ► going to be back on the show and we are going to talk about it. But we're also

01:20:32 ◼   ► going to talk about another new movie called Looper and that's by writer

01:20:38 ◼   ► director Ryan Johnson. Ryan with an "I". And this is unbelievable, it's almost hard to

01:20:45 ◼   ► believe, but as another guest on the show with Adam is going to be writer/director of

01:20:52 ◼   ► Looper, Ryan Johnson. And so the three of us are going to talk about the master, we're

01:20:56 ◼   ► going to talk about Looper, and the whole thing is going to be very spoilerific. So

01:21:02 ◼   ► you want to see these movies before you listen to the show, and you definitely want to see

01:21:05 ◼   ► both of these movies. Now you've, have you seen Looper?

01:21:07 ◼   ► I've seen Looper. I've not seen The Master yet, but I've seen Looper. It's a good

01:21:13 ◼   ► movie, and you should go see it.

01:21:14 ◼   ► Right. Don't take my word for it. Just understand that if Bruce Willis is in the movie and it's

01:21:18 ◼   ► about time travel, you know it's going to be good. You know it's going to be good.

01:21:24 ◼   ► Bruce Willis, time travel, and can't go wrong.

01:21:29 ◼   ► You can't go wrong.

01:21:30 ◼   ► So I'm very excited about that, but I've got to get this out here. You've got to

01:21:33 ◼   ► know this if you're listening to the show. You want to see these movies before you listen

01:21:36 ◼   ► to the show.

01:21:37 ◼   ► All right.

01:21:38 ◼   ► I say we call it a show, Jon.

01:21:42 ◼   ► Good work.

01:21:43 ◼   ► All right.

01:21:44 ◼   ► Swing for the fences.

01:21:46 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]