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The Talk Show

4: A Decent Thing That Someone Would Like, with MG Siegler

 

00:00:00   [music]

00:00:23   I'm going to wish you a happy Android first day.

00:00:26   Yes, very happy Android first day. I'm glad the timing of this episode surrounded that almost perfectly.

00:00:36   It was six months ago, Eric Schmidt. Very smartly.

00:00:42   Made a couple of predictions.

00:00:44   Yeah. I think there were three, right? He obviously made the one saying that by this date,

00:00:52   he thought that developers in general would be focusing on Android first instead of iOS.

00:01:04   He made the prediction that Google Television, or there would be the vast majority of TVs on the market,

00:01:12   would be running some form of Google TV.

00:01:15   And what was the third thing? Oh, there would be some sort of killer tablet.

00:01:21   sort of a weird one because I think it was translated from some foreign press thing.

00:01:28   Something about a killer tablet coming out around this time. That might be the one that

00:01:31   he's only somewhat off on. I think they will have something along those lines at their

00:01:37   upcoming I/O conference. But still, not quite six months. A little bit more than six months.

00:01:43   I think that the TV one in particular was that, not that half the TVs in use would have

00:01:50   Google TV, but half the TVs in stores in the US would have someone with Google TV. I haven't

00:01:57   been to Best Buy this week. I have not been to Best Buy, but I'm guessing if I did and

00:02:02   I kept a tally, I'm guessing it's a little under 50%.

00:02:05   Yeah, they may have gotten a big shipment in yesterday. I was there about two weeks

00:02:10   ago. I don't recall seeing any, but I'm sure he had some reason to suggest that this was

00:02:20   actually going to happen and i'm sure we'll hear more about it at google i_o_

00:02:22   again

00:02:23   the kid the big complain about this show the talk show is usually that it is

00:02:27   rambling

00:02:28   and unfocused those are the adjectives that come up a lot from people who don't

00:02:31   seem to like it i have a private bad feeling that this particular episode

00:02:35   maybe the word smug

00:02:36   is going to come

00:02:39   that's uh...

00:02:40   attempts to come up sometimes and my special guest this week i'm speaking to

00:02:43   m_g_ siegler

00:02:45   uh... of paris lemon fame

00:02:48   and TechCrunch and various other endeavors.

00:02:53   And I think you and I have a sort of shared reputation for,

00:02:58   I'm not sure how to describe it, being poor sports.

00:03:03   - Right, being, you know, not acknowledging

00:03:07   Android's winning ways in any capacity, I guess.

00:03:12   - Right.

00:03:13   - All right.

00:03:14   And I think that you and I, again, this is, so far, this run of the talk show, it's a

00:03:20   lot of people who I'm on the same page with, but I think you approach this the same way

00:03:24   I do.

00:03:27   And you've done a lot of work with Mike Arrington, who I have a funny relationship with, but

00:03:31   I do think, though, that one thing that the three of us agree on, me, you, Mike Arrington,

00:03:37   is that if you're writing about this stuff, just call it spade a spade.

00:03:43   Right?

00:03:44   Just lay it out there.

00:03:46   And I'm not going to--I say to people, I'm not going to sit here and bend over backwards

00:03:50   to make somebody who's in second place seem like they're closer to first place than they

00:03:55   really are just because somebody thinks that's the way it should be.

00:03:59   Yeah, totally.

00:04:01   Yeah, I totally agree with that, obviously.

00:04:05   And I think, you know, when we do get lumped into this group that some people feel is being

00:04:11   unfair to, I guess, the Android camp. It's, you know, it is just because that's the way

00:04:16   we see it, and I think for good reason, and I think, you know, over time a lot of people

00:04:20   have come over to this site as well, but it's just got to be very frustrating for those

00:04:27   who see it a different way, I guess. And, yeah, I mean, along those lines, I remember,

00:04:32   what was the thing a few, I guess it was a couple weeks ago, where I think it was David

00:04:37   Pogue wrote some kind of review about some gadget. I forget what it was. It might have

00:04:42   been an Android gadget, it may have been a Windows phone thing, I don't really remember

00:04:45   what it was. But someone, I think it was Buzzfeed, I think it was Matt Buchanan or someone just

00:04:49   ripped him apart for kind of going out of his way to make it sound like this is a decent

00:04:55   thing that someone would like. It's not clear who that someone was or if that someone even

00:04:59   exists in the real world, but those things are always pretty funny to me.

00:05:04   Right, as I call it, grading on a curve.

00:05:06   Yeah, right.

00:05:07   It's this bending over backwards to make it seem as though it's more competitive than

00:05:12   it really is.

00:05:13   Because the bottom line was, it was the Samsung Galaxy Player 4.2, I think.

00:05:21   Right, that's right.

00:05:23   It was the iPod Touch competitor.

00:05:25   Right, from Samsung.

00:05:27   And it does seem like finally, five years later, they've got a pretty good version of

00:05:32   iPod touch, meaning like a high-end Android phone without the phone.

00:05:38   But it was really, really funny to read Pogue's take on, "Well, why would you buy this instead

00:05:43   of the iPod touch?"

00:05:45   And it's really, really hard.

00:05:47   You know, that's a hard thing to come up with.

00:05:50   And I totally acknowledge that if you work at Samsung or HTC or any of these companies,

00:05:55   you're in the hole on this.

00:05:57   But it's like anything, where if you're behind, it's not enough to catch up to who's in the

00:06:03   lead.

00:06:04   You've got to put something out there that's in some ways ten times better.

00:06:07   Mad Fientist Yep, totally agree.

00:06:10   That's Windows Phone right now in a nutshell, too.

00:06:13   It's great.

00:06:14   It's a good product, but is it ten times better than the iPhone?

00:06:19   Certainly not with apps.

00:06:23   I think they-- did they hit 100,000 apps or something the other day?

00:06:25   But it's like, you know, that metric doesn't really matter that much anymore, and I don't

00:06:31   even know if they have a good percentage of the top apps on there.

00:06:36   It's just, you know, who knows what those 100,000 apps are and if they matter to anyone.

00:06:42   But, you know, we'll see what all this Windows 8 stuff-- if that changes things at all from

00:06:49   an app developer's perspective.

00:06:52   I'm pretty bearish right now on Windows 8 in general.

00:06:55   I don't know how much you've talked about it.

00:06:57   I know you've said some things here and there.

00:07:00   I think you and I are on the same page where I just don't

00:07:03   understand--

00:07:04   I like the Metro stuff, and I kind of just wish they were

00:07:07   doing that.

00:07:07   I know why they're not.

00:07:08   I mean, they have the legacy, and they have all those users

00:07:11   that they can't just abandon straight up.

00:07:13   But I think it's going to kind of be a nightmare.

00:07:16   I've only used prototype stuff, but I think it's going

00:07:18   to be a nightmare trying to reconcile those two

00:07:21   completely different things into some kind of seamless operating system. Yeah, I

00:07:25   think the bottom line, and I'm fascinated to see how it turns out, and if anybody

00:07:29   can make it work, it is Microsoft, because there's one of their things that they've

00:07:33   done right institutionally for 30 years, is they've done a great job at moving

00:07:39   legacy platforms forward and moving people with them. So like their

00:07:46   transition from the command line DOS PC era to the graphical computing era was

00:07:54   it was ugly and it right involved a bunch of lurches but they did move the

00:08:00   existing market leading DOS user base to Windows yep slowly but surely over a

00:08:07   couple of releases yep but I think in it doesn't matter big or small big meaning

00:08:13   like Microsoft Windows, you know, the biggest platform in the history of computing, or small,

00:08:19   something like, well, I've been thinking about this a lot, is with Panik's new version of

00:08:25   Coda for the Mac, is that where you start with something in a design forever affects

00:08:34   it going forward. And what I mean by that with Coda is Coda is designed, it's for anybody

00:08:39   know it's like a one window web development app you can edit HTML you

00:08:45   can edit PHP and other scripting languages it has a whole bunch of stuff

00:08:50   to make CSS editing easier it has documentation for all sorts of web

00:08:56   development technologies like HTML CSS preview windows and remote connection

00:09:03   stuff which panic specializes in because they make transmit this great FTP SFTP

00:09:09   file transfer thing for the Mac. But the main thing is that it's the main conceit

00:09:14   of Coda ever since it came out five years ago is that it's all in one window

00:09:19   versus more traditional apps like say BB Edit or even TextMate where it's sort of

00:09:27   each text file is in a window. And even in TextMate where it's more a little bit

00:09:33   more tab oriented than BB Edit it still is a different paradigm. And I think it's

00:09:38   harder for an app like BB Edit to move towards something like a one window development. And

00:09:44   it would be hard for Panic to take Coda and say, "Well, hey, some people want stuff in

00:09:50   a whole bunch of windows. How can we make an update to Coda where you can have everything

00:09:56   in a different window?" Like, you start with this design and you're kind of stuck with

00:09:59   it.

00:10:00   And what Apple has done, and I think to me it just clicks and it makes sense, is that

00:10:06   They said, "Look, there's a new way to do all this stuff, so we're going to start with

00:10:10   a new platform, and we're going to sell this thing, this iPad, that is like a computer.

00:10:14   It's like a laptop, more or less, but we're not going to run Mac OS X on it at all.

00:10:20   We're not going to use the name.

00:10:21   It's not going to look like it.

00:10:22   It's going to be all started over from scratch, and it's going to have all these restrictions

00:10:27   and all these limitations that you're not used to, but because we're starting over,

00:10:32   it doesn't feel like we're breaking anything.

00:10:34   It's all new ground."

00:10:35   Yeah.

00:10:36   Whereas with Windows 8, I really feel like as they get closer and closer, people are

00:10:40   really running into this, "But wait a minute.

00:10:43   You're going to break all of this stuff that I'm used to."

00:10:45   Yeah, and the most funny thing about that is the way that they set it up.

00:10:51   What's this?

00:10:52   Steven Sinofsky, the guy who's in charge of Windows, he keeps writing these epically long

00:10:56   posts on the Windows blogs, but he set up, whenever it was, several months ago now that

00:11:02   Windows 8 is all about no compromises.

00:11:05   But you can view it both ways.

00:11:08   Either they're not compromising in that they're including everything that everyone could ever

00:11:13   want, and is that in and of itself a compromise, because they're not actually giving the best

00:11:18   user experience.

00:11:19   They're just throwing everything in there and hoping it all works together.

00:11:24   So far, the early reviews of the release candidate that just came out have been, they say good

00:11:32   things in general, but the switching between those two different interfaces is very jarring

00:11:38   and it's going to confuse the hell out of people.

00:11:40   Right, and the out that I see is with WinRT, which is the goofily named...

00:11:46   Right, the ARM version.

00:11:47   Which isn't going to have all the...

00:11:49   Do we know what RT stands for? Is it Real Time? Run Time? What is it? Do we know?

00:11:55   You know, I don't know.

00:11:57   I think it might be Run Time, but it's an awful name, of course.

00:12:00   Yeah, it really is. But that's the one where they're not going to have the legacy support.

00:12:05   They've got some apps in there, like the built-in Office apps, which don't really look like

00:12:09   Metro. They look a little bit more like traditional Windows, but they really are supposedly touch-oriented.

00:12:16   And you can't install traditional Windows-looking apps on the thing. So there won't be all this

00:12:22   weird context switching.

00:12:25   Yeah, and that's great, and again, I know why they couldn't do that overall, just the

00:12:33   sheer numbers that they'd be leaving behind and risk alienating completely, but maybe

00:12:39   that version does better because it's kind of fresh and from the ground up.

00:12:44   But I don't know, but then it's like when you go to a store and you want to buy some

00:12:49   kind of Windows machine, do you buy the Windows RT one with the ARM chip?

00:12:53   you buy a similar looking tablet device but has an Intel chip and so it runs, you know,

00:12:59   whatever the other flavor of Windows 8 is that's called that runs on the old architecture.

00:13:04   It's like, I don't know, that seems like just a branding nightmare and a consumer nightmare

00:13:10   waiting to happen.

00:13:12   It really does to me because it really doesn't seem confusing to me if a typical person,

00:13:17   just regular non-nerd, walks into an Apple store that the difference between a Mac and

00:13:21   the iPad is very, very different.

00:13:24   Different names, different interface, it's all touch, it's just a piece of glass, this

00:13:30   is super simple, this is the thing I've heard about, and here's the Mac which is, oh, I

00:13:36   understand, even if you've never used a Mac, surely you've used Windows, this is Apple's

00:13:40   thing that's like a regular PC with the keyboard and the Windows and the mouse that you drag

00:13:45   around.

00:13:46   There's no confusion.

00:13:47   Nobody's walking out with the wrong thing.

00:13:50   Whereas I really, really don't understand, and exactly what you said is, if you go into

00:13:55   a store and they have Intel-based Windows 8 tablets running the full version of Windows

00:14:01   8 and ARM tablets that are running WinRT, I really, really don't understand how anybody

00:14:07   except true nerds is going to understand what the heck the difference is and which one you

00:14:12   might want to buy.

00:14:13   Right.

00:14:14   Microsoft has to hope that they can open about 10,000 more Windows stores and they can have

00:14:21   their own people explaining this. Or the reality of the situation is that everyone's going

00:14:25   to walk into Best Buy or go on Amazon. Best Buy will be people who have, the employees

00:14:32   we're going to commission who have absolutely no idea what the difference will be and they

00:14:37   just try and sell the most expensive one. And then Amazon, you're left to fend for yourself.

00:14:43   And I'm sure they're going to have the typical Microsoft charts to show you which version

00:14:52   doesn't have this feature and which one doesn't have this feature.

00:14:55   And it's just going to be such a nightmare.

00:14:58   I do, it's just like, God, they should have just done Windows RT, the awful name and everything,

00:15:04   and just done the tablets that way and then had a more traditional version of Windows

00:15:09   and just kept it going and hope and see what happens that if people move more in the tablet

00:15:15   space, which is what of course is happening with Apple, where they can have the two separate

00:15:19   tracks and by natural selection, people are choosing to go with the iPad more than they

00:15:25   have with the Mac, and so they're just letting it play out in a natural way rather than trying

00:15:30   to cram things together.

00:15:31   Right.

00:15:32   So Apple calls it back to the Mac, where they take these iOS ideas and put them on the Mac.

00:15:39   You know, and another example of what I said before about how where you start really affects

00:15:44   what you can do in the future going forward.

00:15:46   I still think that full screen mode on Mac OS X is weird.

00:15:51   And I use it sometimes, but I don't use it nearly as much as I thought I would when they

00:15:55   announced it.

00:15:56   And it's because to me, the whole system is designed on this idea that you're using these

00:16:03   windows on one screen, not full screen apps.

00:16:06   Yeah, I totally agree.

00:16:09   No way to square that circle smoothly.

00:16:12   I think it's, you know, I use it, it seems to be good for certain things where you need

00:16:16   a lot of screen real estate, like iPhoto is a good example of something that I like to

00:16:20   use it for.

00:16:22   And they do some interesting things that they don't play up enough because the dual monitor

00:16:26   situation isn't really, I guess, probably even a mainstream thing.

00:16:30   But they actually do it smartly where you can do other things, even though it's a grayed-out

00:16:34   area or whatever.

00:16:35   they don't even make it obvious that you can do it, but you can kind of drag things over there and work in that space as well when you have things full screen.

00:16:43   But other apps don't do that at all, and so it's just kind of like a wasted space on a dual monitor thing.

00:16:47   I think on the bigger monitor in general, like the full screen apps, is often just overkill.

00:16:53   On an 11 inch MacBook Air, it could be nice just because that screen is so small.

00:16:59   small, but yeah, in general. But it's a really hard design problem, as opposed to the iPad,

00:17:06   where it just feels utterly natural. It feels like it's just right that everything is full

00:17:09   screen. And I think, you know, on the other hand, it would be really hard to add multi-application

00:17:15   windows to the iPad, because it just doesn't, the whole thing, it just wouldn't, it would

00:17:19   feel weird. And that's sort of interesting, because it's actually, I don't know if you've

00:17:24   had a chance to play at all, I assume not, because they just started coming out with

00:17:28   but the new version of Chrome OS. So they sent me one of the new Chromebooks to try

00:17:33   out. And the new version of Chrome OS is pretty different from the previous iterations of

00:17:39   it. I assume you've played with some iteration way back.

00:17:41   Yeah, I've seen an old version.

00:17:43   And so the new version is much more Windows-oriented. The old version was basically just pretty

00:17:49   much a full-screen browser at all times. And you could switch between Windows, but it would

00:17:55   almost be like now on OS X where you switch when you're doing full screen apps. And it

00:18:01   was kind of weird and now they're moving back to the window idea. You can have different,

00:18:06   there's still browser windows, but you can have different sizes open at the same time

00:18:10   and kind of switch between them. And it's fascinating that they are moving back to that

00:18:15   thing. And I know why they're doing it because they're trying to go after the Windows market

00:18:20   itself and no one had any idea how to do this. But I don't know if that will end up working

00:18:24   for them or not. I think it's a good idea to try it because no one was buying Chrome

00:18:27   OS as it stood. So maybe this is a good idea for them to do it, but they're going in the

00:18:32   opposite way.

00:18:33   Right. You know, and the bottom line for the Mac users, I think, with this back to the

00:18:38   Mac thing, is that none of it's really broken their old habits. Whereas Windows 8 really

00:18:45   seems like it's going to break some habits. So one just notable example, big, big glaring

00:18:49   fundamental difference between the Mac and iOS is you've just turned your machine on,

00:18:55   you've got nothing open, you haven't used any apps. What do you see? On the Mac, you

00:19:00   see a desktop where you can save files and put folders and just put stuff there. And

00:19:05   that's what Mac users famously have messy desktops full of files and folders and shortcuts

00:19:11   and whatever they're working on at the moment. And on iOS, it's this home screen. You still

00:19:16   have a background, you have a desktop picture, but that's where your apps are.

00:19:21   And Apple added this back to the Mac thing called Launchpad in 10.7, which is sort of

00:19:26   like the iOS launch screen for the Mac.

00:19:30   All you see are apps.

00:19:34   That should be, in theory, if they started over from scratch with the Mac today, that

00:19:39   would be your desktop.

00:19:40   Launchpad would be your desktop.

00:19:41   It wouldn't be an app that you launch or a mode you jump to.

00:19:44   It would just be, that would be your desktop.

00:19:48   And I think it would be a lot easier for most users, especially people just coming to the

00:19:52   Mac for the first time.

00:19:53   But I don't think they can do it because too many people save files to the desktop, and

00:19:57   if they couldn't save files to the desktop, they would go insane.

00:19:59   Yeah, I totally agree.

00:20:02   Do you end up using Launchpad a lot?

00:20:04   I found at first that I didn't use it, and now I just use it because that's the way that

00:20:07   Mac App Store apps, the easiest way to find them.

00:20:12   the latest app is the one that's right there in that view. Do you use it?

00:20:16   I use it a little bit on my Air, which is my secondary machine, and I don't have all

00:20:22   the apps that I have installed. And so it's a lot cleaner. I only have like two screens

00:20:26   of apps on the Air.

00:20:29   On my main desktop Mac, no, because it's like I've got like 40 pages of apps and there's

00:20:35   no way to find anything. And I use Launch Bar, and by the time I even think about opening

00:20:41   launchpad. I've already done the command space and typed a few characters of the

00:20:45   name of the app and launched it. Yep. It's interesting too that Chrome OS, you know

00:20:50   going back to that for a second, they also copied that as well. They have

00:20:54   like a launchpad-like functionality now that's kind of one of the main features

00:20:58   to launch their web apps instead of, you know, native apps. But it's something they

00:21:04   copied a little bit from Windows and copied a little bit from OS X, so it's

00:21:08   It's sort of amusing.

00:21:12   And the other thing, I'm sort of jumping around topics here, but I want to go back to this

00:21:20   six-month prediction about app development on Android and Eric Schmidt's prediction,

00:21:26   which I think he meant.

00:21:27   That's the thing is that I think he believed it.

00:21:30   Yeah, totally.

00:21:31   And your piece on TechCrunch today celebrating Android First Day, the six-month anniversary,

00:21:37   specifically mentioned his that the explanation for why he thought things

00:21:43   were going to change in the next six months was ice cream sandwich right

00:21:47   which I completely agree is by far in a way the best version of Android ever

00:21:51   it's it's a huge difference and I've said this before but it to me it's proof

00:21:55   that Matthias Duarte I think I'm saying his name right right is very talented I

00:22:03   I think that's the one where his design sense has sort of been imposed on Android as a whole.

00:22:08   And if you use a Nexus phone, it's coherent system-wide.

00:22:12   It's very nice.

00:22:13   You had a good review of the new Nexus that runs it.

00:22:17   And I think it's a better system for developers.

00:22:20   They've gotten rid of these soft buttons if you get a new phone so that you can have the

00:22:24   whole screen.

00:22:27   And so his argument was, look, ice cream sandwich is great.

00:22:31   That's really what's going to drive people to write for Android first.

00:22:37   Here's the thing.

00:22:38   It's seven months after Ice Cream Sandwich came out, and what's the percentage of Android

00:22:41   phones that are running Ice Cream Sandwich?

00:22:44   7.1 percent, according to Google themselves.

00:22:47   They publish those numbers.

00:22:49   It's hilarious.

00:22:50   It's just pathetic.

00:22:52   There's no other way to say it.

00:22:54   It's so ridiculous.

00:22:56   7.1% of Android users are using what everyone from Eric Schmidt on down considers to be

00:23:04   the best version of Android, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

00:23:08   Right.

00:23:09   And he said specifically at this event where he made this prediction we're making fun of,

00:23:13   his quote was, "With the Ice Cream Sandwich release, our core objective as a company is

00:23:18   to get all of the hardware vendors onto that platform."

00:23:22   And honestly, and I don't mean this, I really don't mean it to be making fun of them, I

00:23:29   think it just shows how Android as a whole has sort of spun out of their control.

00:23:34   Yes.

00:23:35   As a concept.

00:23:36   It's become something that is, obviously they're still driving the development of the new releases,

00:23:42   but how it's actually being used in the real world has completely, they've lost control

00:23:48   of it.

00:23:49   Right, and you talk to people at Google, I've had this discussion so many times over the

00:23:54   past two to three years now where it's like they always, and they seem to legitimately

00:24:01   believe that that's about to change. And I don't know why they think that. I mean that

00:24:05   was part of the reason why before the post, making fun of the six month claim, I wrote

00:24:12   post six months ago, pointing out June 6 as the day, and

00:24:17   just saying, we'll revisit it at that time.

00:24:20   And I just flat out said, there's no way

00:24:22   this is going to happen.

00:24:23   And I laid out, I think, five or six reasons why there was

00:24:26   no way that Android development would actually

00:24:29   surpass iOS development.

00:24:31   And one of the reasons, of course, and the thing that

00:24:34   we're talking about right now, is that Google cannot get the

00:24:38   OEMs and/or carriers to actually get in line with doing these updates the way that Apple

00:24:46   can with their partners.

00:24:50   And I think that it's like an institutional confidence. And maybe it serves them well

00:24:56   overall, but that there's a sense of, "We're Google. We're doing cool stuff. And so, of

00:25:02   course, people are going to get on board with what we want them to get on board with because

00:25:06   we're Google."

00:25:07   Yeah, and it's I actually I think I wrote a post about that a year ago or something that kind of like they were living

00:25:13   In a dream world and of course that that put everyone on Google side of things in a tizzy because you know pointing out

00:25:18   Not only that Android

00:25:20   With the carrier and OEM relationships isn't going as as swimmingly as they had hoped but also the Google TV thing

00:25:27   It's like they really thought that they were going to revolutionize the TV experience and they had you know

00:25:31   They had all the executives that they needed to have I think it was was it lat two years ago at Google

00:25:36   I think they had like Howard Stringer up there and they had everyone and it was and it was you know

00:25:41   Sounding like it was going to be great and then everything just fell apart within like two months of that happening

00:25:46   And it was the same exact thing with with Google Music, which is probably the best

00:25:51   Well, I would say Google Wallet might be the the biggest chaos situation that they've ever had

00:25:56   But Google Music is certainly one of them because it was two years ago almost exactly at IO that they first announced

00:26:02   you know, what would look to be a full-on iTunes competitor. Of course they pre-announced it and no one knew for sure when it was

00:26:08   going to come out and then

00:26:10   it took them several months of negotiating

00:26:12   and it didn't actually launch until just about a year later and even today two years after they announced it

00:26:19   they still don't have Warner Brothers on board.

00:26:21   I mean they still do not have one of the major labels on their big music service that was going to revolutionize, you know,

00:26:29   Music purchasing and how on earth do they not have at least 25% if not more?

00:26:35   Warners, you know arguably the most important one to have on board

00:26:38   They don't have them on board and they just you know, they just thought that they could get it

00:26:42   You know, it'd be super easy and two years later nothing and it's not gonna happen. All right

00:26:46   I think that they've at some steps when it comes to dealing with the rest of the industry that they

00:26:51   Instead of thinking like a chess player and having this look if we do this then this then this this is where we'll be

00:26:58   be, you know, and have this strategy that with no gaps from here to there, they have

00:27:04   this sort of that famous South Park analogy where there's this step two dot dot dot.

00:27:10   Three success.

00:27:14   Let me hit the money button here and do the first sponsor.

00:27:17   I want to thank a brand new company.

00:27:21   It's a new app from a new company.

00:27:23   is Nice Mohawk and they have a brand new app called IDA, I-T-A. Think of it like it. I

00:27:30   think it's a Latin plural for items. It's a brand new list making app for the iPhone

00:27:38   and iPad and it's designed to make it fast and simple to collect and organize information.

00:27:43   I love the look of this app. This app, think of it as sort of almost like a field notes

00:27:47   aesthetic like a brown paper with one of my favorite fonts Futura all over the place sort

00:27:54   of a classic timeless 50s 60s look typographically looks like stationary. It's a beautiful app

00:28:04   and you just make lists. It's not like a to do system. It's just lists. You make lists,

00:28:11   you cross items off, couldn't be simpler and it syncs across iCloud so you can use it on

00:28:17   more than one device and seamless syncing through iCloud. Universal app, one app for

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00:28:31   99 cents through June 15th. One buck for the first list app that's actually better than

00:28:38   a piece of paper. IDA, I-T-A, from Nice Mohawk. Great app. Do you do what I do when you find

00:28:47   out that there's a cool app for 99 cents? I just buy it.

00:28:50   Yeah. There's no question. I mean, who cares? 99 cents.

00:28:54   We're years into this whole app store thing where there's this whole discussion where

00:28:58   indie developers had gone from selling, at least on the Mac, it was very standard, just

00:29:03   indie developers. The low end was always around 15 bucks. I mean, it seemed like nobody could

00:29:08   could really make a living selling software for less than 15. And most apps were usually

00:29:12   started at like 20 bucks, you know, $19.99. And the whole $0.99 thing really had people

00:29:17   thinking, "Is anybody going to be able to make a living selling these apps?" And it

00:29:22   seems like definitely some are. I mean, whether $0.99 is the right price or $1.99 or $2.99.

00:29:27   But I'll tell you what, for $0.99, I just do it. I just buy it.

00:29:30   Yeah. I mean, it's a no-brainer. The only thing I actually think about now is that,

00:29:35   "God, I have so many apps, and is this just going to get lost in the shuffle?"

00:29:39   "Will I buy it one night and then forget about it the next day?"

00:29:43   That's the only thing I think about. It's not the price thing. It's almost just

00:29:47   a non-equation, because it is so cheap and so easy

00:29:51   to download now. I'm kind of interested to see how...

00:29:55   Mountain Lion, presumably, I guess that they'll have

00:29:59   the Golden Master version at WWDC next week.

00:30:03   You know we've both been trying it out for a bit the developer previews of and it seems pretty solid to me

00:30:07   I don't know if you've had any problems with it. I

00:30:10   The only thing I really noticed that kind of annoys me is the slow

00:30:13   shutdown speed and that's like I don't really know what that's about I don't know if you've noticed that at all but uh

00:30:19   Shut down, okay, so I you know I try and shut down

00:30:23   I don't know why but I shut down about once a night pretty much and then started new in the in the morning

00:30:29   But that's the only thing I've noticed about it

00:30:31   It seems arc solid, but I'm sort of interested to see how the Mac App Store plays along with

00:30:38   Mountain Lion now, given the stuff that they're doing with, what's it called, the vault thing.

00:30:45   FileVault.

00:30:46   FileVault.

00:30:47   And, or sorry, Gatekeeper.

00:30:49   That's what I mean.

00:30:50   Oh, Gatekeeper.

00:30:51   I know what you mean.

00:30:52   Yeah.

00:30:53   Yeah, yeah.

00:30:54   You know, how is that?

00:30:55   Are people actually going to do, the default setting for it, right, is going to be that

00:30:59   people have to be certified by this app certification thing?

00:31:04   And are people actually going to get around to doing that?

00:31:07   Are developers going to do that?

00:31:08   And if they do do that, is there more incentive now to

00:31:11   sell their stuff as a registered developer over the

00:31:15   web versus the Mac App Store?

00:31:17   I don't know if it's Apple playing against itself, trying

00:31:21   to push the Mac App Store a little bit less and making it

00:31:23   easier for people to do the web, or if it's kind of

00:31:26   first and it'll just explode interest in Mac apps in general.

00:31:32   I wonder, I do think, and I believe this, and you know this could be one of those things

00:31:37   where I'm two or three years from now I'm shown to be wrong, but I do believe that Apple

00:31:42   sees that as long as there's a Mac that you'll be able to install software from anywhere.

00:31:47   It will not be App Store only.

00:31:50   Yeah.

00:31:51   Right, which is a big fear for a lot of Mac users is that there's going to, you know,

00:31:53   Obviously it's not going to be 10.8, but maybe 10.9 or whatever.

00:31:57   Sometime a year from now, two years from now, they're going to say, "Hey, here's a great

00:32:00   new feature for security.

00:32:02   You can only install software from the Mac App Store."

00:32:06   I don't think they're going to do that.

00:32:07   I really don't.

00:32:08   And I really think that Gatekeeper is not a step towards that.

00:32:11   I think Gatekeeper is a way of bringing some of the peace of mind of the App Store to downloaded

00:32:22   from anywhere apps. Right. Here's my question. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Well, how how restrictive

00:32:30   are they going to be? Are they really only going to because the thing is, is that you

00:32:33   get this developer certificate that signs your apps and Apple can revoke it. So if you've

00:32:41   used it for something that's deemed to be malware, people have got it, Apple can revoke

00:32:45   that certificate remotely and then yep that all those apps just stop working

00:32:51   are they only gonna what are they gonna use that for are they really only gonna use it for things

00:32:57   that everybody agrees are malware or like what about like the situation with the rogue amoeba

00:33:02   airfoil touch yeah that's interesting right right so let me see if i can summarize this quickly but

00:33:09   But Rogue Amoeba has this app for the iPhone called Airfoil Speakers Touch.

00:33:16   And you can use it to-- it's like an AirPlay remote player.

00:33:23   Right, AirPlay without AirPlay.

00:33:25   And they added a new feature as like a-- so you can play music from Airfoil on your Mac

00:33:30   or PC to your iOS devices.

00:33:33   And it's great.

00:33:34   It works amazingly well.

00:33:35   They added a new feature in the latest version like six weeks ago that lets you set your

00:33:41   iOS device as a destination for AirPlay from iTunes.

00:33:46   So you can play music from iTunes and have it sent there.

00:33:48   It just looks just like when your Apple TV shows up as an AirPlay destination.

00:33:53   And the way that – there is no supported way to do that.

00:33:56   The way they did that is with this technique where the – I think – I don't even know

00:34:00   how it works.

00:34:01   But there is no supported way to do it.

00:34:02   I think they have like a key that came out of an airport express or something like that,

00:34:11   the public key or something like that.

00:34:13   But it's not supported.

00:34:15   And once Apple figured out that the app got into the App Store, but then because it's

00:34:19   the sort of obscure edge case that the reviewers aren't going to catch, and they're not violating

00:34:24   any of the actual rules of the App Store in terms of private API, all they're doing is

00:34:29   is using a non-public decryption key

00:34:33   to be an AirPlay receiver.

00:34:36   And so Apple took it out of the store

00:34:38   until they took that feature out of the app

00:34:40   and resubmitted it to the store.

00:34:42   So would they, so here's where I'm going with that.

00:34:45   What about if Rogue Amoeba ships a Mac version

00:34:49   that has the same feature

00:34:51   and they sign it-- - Right, and it's not sold

00:34:52   through the store, it's just sold through the web though.

00:34:56   - Right, sold directly, not through the Mac App Store,

00:34:59   right from the Rogamiba website, if it's signed by Gatekeeper, is that okay?

00:35:03   Because it's not malware, it's doing exactly what it was built to do, but Apple

00:35:07   may not be happy. I would hope that what they would do in that situation

00:35:11   is just reach out to the developer and try and talk to them back channel

00:35:15   because it seems like it's a bit of a

00:35:19   it's going to be an edge case type situation where they can probably handle that

00:35:23   they have the manpower to be able to handle that rather than just kill the app because

00:35:27   That will cause an absolute shitstorm if they do that.

00:35:29   You know, if they remotely kill an app that was downloaded from the web.

00:35:34   That's kind of a barrier I don't think they want to cross.

00:35:37   Right.

00:35:38   I would think that they don't want to cross that because I really do think they want developers

00:35:41   to get on board with this.

00:35:42   They want all the major Mac developers, you know, if you're going to keep selling stuff

00:35:47   that's not App Store only, at least do this.

00:35:52   And I think that anything that they could do that would make developers wary of doing

00:35:56   it, I think they'll shy away from. Yeah, yeah. I think that they'll only use it for malware stuff,

00:36:03   and it's really genius because it kind of cuts malware problems off right at the root of it,

00:36:11   rather than having to worry about it after the fact, and so it's smart in that way. I still

00:36:15   wonder, and I think this is going to play out pretty interestingly in Mountain Lion itself,

00:36:21   because they'll have, for the first time, all--

00:36:24   there will be Mac apps that can play nicely with iOS apps.

00:36:28   So they'll have a lot of games that will be coming out

00:36:31   that will be able to do that.

00:36:32   But my thought is-- and I'm pretty sure this is true,

00:36:35   maybe you know the answer for sure--

00:36:37   that they have to be sold through the Mac App Store

00:36:39   to be able to do that, to be able to interplay with iOS

00:36:44   apps.

00:36:45   Do you know if that's actually the case?

00:36:47   Run the question by me again.

00:36:50   I'm not quite sure. So they'll have, you know, like a game for example. They have, you know,

00:36:55   some sort of game that will, right now of course you can play across iOS devices.

00:36:59   You can play with an iPhone versus an iPad in some racing game, say, and you know,

00:37:03   yeah, and so they'll have it now where you can do it

00:37:07   via the Mac too. You can play a game that sinks across the entire ecosystem.

00:37:12   But I think

00:37:14   that those are only going to work if it's sold through the Mac App Store. I think there's

00:37:18   things like Game Center

00:37:19   that they're going to require you to use the Mac App Store for.

00:37:23   Yeah.

00:37:23   And there's nothing that would keep a developer from implementing

00:37:27   their own peer-to-peer over the Wi-Fi thing that would let an iPad

00:37:31   app communicate with a Mac app.

00:37:33   You could do that today.

00:37:34   I think, though, that if you want to do it through Apple's system--

00:37:37   Through Apple's back end.

00:37:37   --you've got to go through the--

00:37:39   I mean, it's the same thing with iCloud for storage.

00:37:42   The only way you get right to iCloud is if you go through the App Store.

00:37:48   and I think it's all about, you know, they're never going to cede that control to start.

00:37:53   So that if anybody's writing,

00:37:55   is abusing

00:37:57   iCloud by writing way too much data, exceeding any kind of limits, or using it

00:38:01   for file sharing or something ridiculous like that,

00:38:04   Apple can just yank the plug and it's out.

00:38:08   Let me ask you this. This is something that

00:38:11   more than one developer has brought up in the past few months with me

00:38:15   when talking specifically about Gatekeeper, and I think you've said something about this before, but I'm interested in your take.

00:38:21   The idea that Gatekeeper is sort of a test to see if they can ever do non-App Store apps on iOS devices.

00:38:32   So they would do the same thing where they sign the developer, and they have no unsigned developers since they're starting from scratch, they would be with iOS,

00:38:39   but they would have a way that you could download via the web as long as they were a signed

00:38:45   developer. And you would just lose access, of course, to things like iCloud access and

00:38:50   Game Center and those type of Apple things, but you would be allowed to download from

00:38:54   the web. Do you think that's ever going to happen?

00:38:56   I don't. And in fact, John Moltz and I talked about it on last week's episode. And I think

00:39:01   it's possible. And if they were going to do it, it would definitely be through Gatekeeper.

00:39:06   I think that if they ever did it, I don't think they would ever allow true unsigned

00:39:11   side-loaded apps.

00:39:13   If they ever allowed side-loaded apps in iOS, it would be through something exactly like

00:39:17   Gatekeeper where it's signed and they could still revoke it remotely.

00:39:22   I actually have – we're sitting right here.

00:39:24   It's open in a tab.

00:39:25   I haven't linked to it yet.

00:39:26   I have a blog post from a guy named Zach Wiegand.

00:39:31   listening to the show last week, he said, let me see if I can find a good pull quote

00:39:37   here, that it's not about the money. Yes, Apple makes a little bit of money from their

00:39:41   30% cut, but they are also providing a service for that fee. They host your app. I agree

00:39:47   with that, that it's not just about the money. I think the money Apple gets from the app

00:39:50   store is nice, but it's icing on the cake. But the reason he finds it hard to believe

00:39:57   that Apple will ever open up the floodgates to third-party non-app store apps is one word,

00:40:03   Amazon. If Apple were to allow apps to be loaded from other sources, nothing would prevent

00:40:07   Amazon from creating a rival store, one that provides many of the same benefits and is

00:40:12   even more developer-friendly.

00:40:13   Yeah, that's interesting. That's really interesting, actually, because you look at the history

00:40:18   of Amazon while they are sort of trying to do this now with the Android, that's kind

00:40:25   their model in general where they just, you know, they figure out kind of the, some weak

00:40:31   point and just kind of go over the top and figure out a way to bully their way into the

00:40:35   system and kind of disrupt it from the ground up.

00:40:39   And yeah, that could potentially open some sort of box that Apple doesn't want to open

00:40:46   if they were to do that.

00:40:47   I think Amazon would have a harder time doing it from a pure quality perspective and maybe

00:40:51   and you know kind of confusion on how to install things but yeah that's pretty

00:40:56   interesting I like that idea right I so I I would think my honest feeling is that

00:41:02   they wouldn't do it unless they were forced to buy by like antitrust

00:41:06   legislation yeah or yeah however you want to put it government regulation

00:41:11   right and if they did that that's the route they would take yeah that's uh yeah

00:41:18   Interesting. I want to I want to I forgot to mention one thing

00:41:21   I wanted to give a shout out to Ida about is that with this

00:41:25   Skeuomorphic sort of paperless thing they've done something. I don't know if they had me in mind

00:41:31   I don't know but they've done something that makes me just adore the app

00:41:35   Which is that like the whole user interface like I said is in Futura, which I adore but when you enter stuff

00:41:41   It's not in marker felt or chalkboard or any of those goofy silly childish handwriting fonts

00:41:48   It's your input is Helvetica.

00:41:51   I just wanted to--

00:41:52   I can't believe I forgot to mention that during the sponsor read.

00:41:55   That it's the skeuomorphic paper type thing,

00:41:58   but without the goofy, silly handwriting font, which is--

00:42:01   Why does Apple use those anyway?

00:42:03   Everyone just makes fun of them.

00:42:05   You know, what's their thought?

00:42:07   I just remember the day I got my original iPhone in 2007.

00:42:11   I loved every single thing about it except that stupid font in the Notes app.

00:42:15   and I just couldn't stop looking at it as, uh, and I know they've switched from Markerfeld to the

00:42:21   one that has chalk in the name, and I love the name, the chalk name, and I just can't help but

00:42:24   think that it's somebody else at Apple who thinks of it like I do, like nails on a chalkboard.

00:42:28   Every time. Also, I also have a little, another piece of correction from last week I, I, I have

00:42:37   to get to is that last week's sponsor, I pronounced their name wrong. It's Pixelmator, not Pixelmator,

00:42:44   And I cursed myself for this because I called it Pixelmator for years. And then somebody somewhere

00:42:50   told me that because the guys who make the app are German, that it's not called Pixelmator,

00:42:54   it's Pixelmator. And I thought, well, you know, I want to be worldly. I'm debonair. I know how to

00:43:00   pronounce words in other languages. So, I didn't really think about it before we did the show. And

00:43:03   I did the sponsor. And then I got like 100 emails from people saying, "Holy crap, I've been saying

00:43:08   Pixelmator like Automator for years. I can't believe I'm wrong." And so, I checked with the

00:43:12   the pixelmator guys in there they said it's pixelmator like automator and I

00:43:16   and I did the wrong thing I overthought it so that that's another piece of

00:43:22   cleanup us we have winner when are you come I assume you're coming out here for

00:43:28   WW I will be there I will be there next week have you would what do you you

00:43:36   know what are your general thoughts what's coming that's what I go we can

00:43:39   spend the rest of the show on it you know what I'll take an opportunity right

00:43:41   now. I have another announcement to make. I'll just make it right now. There's going

00:43:46   to be a live episode of this show, the talk show next week broadcast from WWDC. It's going

00:43:52   to be on Tuesday at 5.30 and it's going to be free. It's about 150 tickets to give out.

00:44:01   So if you want to go, if you're going to be in San Francisco, if you're going to be at

00:44:04   WWDC, it's going to be held a few blocks away from Moscone, Tuesday afternoon. You can get

00:44:10   tickets at the talk show dot eventbrite.com. That's eventbrite is spelled B-R-I-T-E dot

00:44:21   com. So, there's about 150 tickets. I don't know how fast they're going to go. I'm not

00:44:25   going to announce it on Daring Fireball. The only way I'm going to announce it is right

00:44:28   here during this broadcast. Special guest is going to be Cable Sasser of Panic. I don't

00:44:36   know. Maybe there'll be other surprise guests. I'm not sure. Probably about an hour show.

00:44:39   So, again, thetalkshow.eventbrite.com. Hope you can make it.

00:44:45   Yeah, I'll be there on Tuesday.

00:44:49   Tuesday, 5.30. So, I figure we'll have lots of WWDC news to talk about.

00:44:53   And I'll talk panic software with cable after.

00:44:59   So, what to expect? I don't know. I guess it seems like everybody realized, it seems pretty obvious there's going to be new Mac hardware.

00:45:06   Right.

00:45:07   I'm not quite sure though how much time, you know, I like to think about where they put the emphasis in their keynotes, because they're very, very carefully thought out.

00:45:16   Yep.

00:45:17   I wonder how much time they're going to spend talking about Mac hardware, or will it just be... I could honestly see it not even really being mentioned. I don't know.

00:45:26   I guess if they go retina display, they're going to have to mention it, because that's developer news, and that's a real bragging point that they can jump on over the industry,

00:45:34   and they can say, "Look, first we brought the retina to the phone, then we brought the retina to the iPad.

00:45:39   Everybody loves it. Text is beautiful, pictures look better. Now we're bringing it to the Mac."

00:45:44   Yep. Yeah. I think, you know, obviously everyone's noticed a trend over the years

00:45:49   where, because iOS is so huge compared to Mac development, that this is the focus of WWDC now.

00:45:56   And it just so happens that the timing of all this new Mac hardware seems to be corresponding perfectly with WWDC,

00:46:03   see, so you think that they've got to say something about it

00:46:05   there.

00:46:06   And the fact that they have the new OS X presumably close to

00:46:10   being done.

00:46:11   They've always said it was going to come out this summer.

00:46:13   And they like to, of course, launch those things with some

00:46:16   new hardware.

00:46:17   So it still seems like, though, yeah, I mean, all the

00:46:20   banners you see that are up right now at Moscone are

00:46:23   pretty much app-related.

00:46:26   So it will be interesting to see how much time they devote

00:46:29   to the Mac itself.

00:46:30   but I cannot wait to see what a retina display on a MacBook,

00:46:36   and a MacBook Pro, or whatever it's going to be, looks like.

00:46:39   I can't even really think about what it would look like,

00:46:42   because you look at your screen right now.

00:46:44   I'm looking at a 27-inch iMac screen,

00:46:46   and it's a beautiful screen, and it's always

00:46:48   been a beautiful screen.

00:46:49   And it's like, how much better is it going

00:46:52   to be now with a retina display?

00:46:54   And will it be the same situation

00:46:56   that we had with the iPhone and now with the iPad,

00:46:58   where you look at one of the retina displays,

00:47:00   and then you look at the old one.

00:47:02   And while when you first look at one and look at the other,

00:47:06   I still think to the common user, they're like, oh, OK,

00:47:09   yeah, it looks nicer, but you don't really

00:47:12   get it until you look at one and then look at the other

00:47:14   right away, or try and switch back after a long time using

00:47:17   it, and it just looks awful.

00:47:18   And is that the way all Macs are going to look now?

00:47:20   Yeah.

00:47:20   I think it's the same whenever you buy a new computer

00:47:23   and it's faster than your old one.

00:47:24   You notice the speed for a couple of seconds

00:47:26   and it feels fun, and it kind of fades away.

00:47:28   And then if you go back to the old machine

00:47:30   after a couple of days, you're like,

00:47:31   I can't believe I used this.

00:47:33   And the retina displays the exact same way.

00:47:35   Where, and I remember the naysayers about the iPad

00:47:38   who were saying there's no way they're gonna,

00:47:39   they could do it with the phone

00:47:40   'cause it was only 960 by six, whatever, 640.

00:47:44   But there's no way they're gonna put a 2,048 pixel display

00:47:49   in this tiny little iPad.

00:47:52   That's insane, they're not gonna do it.

00:47:53   Nobody's gonna notice.

00:47:54   Nobody is saying-- - It'll cost too much money.

00:47:55   Right, nobody is out there, you know, the argument was nobody's out there with the first

00:47:59   iPad or the second one saying, "My god, the pixels are too noticeable on this." But the

00:48:03   truth is, once you've used the Retina Display 1, they aren't. They're off.

00:48:07   Yeah, it's pretty bad to go back and look at it now. To me, it's even worse than it

00:48:13   is on the iPhone Switch, which is still pretty bad, but just because of the bigger screen.

00:48:18   And so it'll be even a bigger screen now, presumably a 15-inch or something like that

00:48:23   the with a mac book and it's like god that's going to be really jarring to

00:48:28   uh... and i know in the mac

00:48:31   people have said to me over the years cuz i i do i i obsess over typography

00:48:35   it is absolutely one of my my great passions

00:48:39   and i've had this discussion with people about pixels is that you know that that

00:48:43   it's inevitable and and and they've say well no most people don't care about

00:48:47   this stuff like you do so why would they bother but

00:48:51   it's just the path that print took, right? Like if you look at really old books, if

00:48:55   you look at books that were printed, you know, like vintage books from about a

00:48:58   hundred years ago or so,

00:49:00   the printing quality was great. I mean, you know, typography had, you know,

00:49:04   some of the great text faces of all time were well established already a hundred

00:49:08   years ago.

00:49:09   And the typography is gorgeous, but if you look at the quality of the printing,

00:49:12   it's...

00:49:13   there's a lot of, you know, the ink spread a lot.

00:49:16   And the fonts were designed to accommodate that.

00:49:20   the great text

00:49:22   faces

00:49:24   hundred years ago were designed with the idea that look it's gonna you know it's

00:49:28   not going to be super crisp it's not the letters are going to be perfect

00:49:31   you go to a bookstore now by a print book that the

00:49:35   the quality of the type in the book is

00:49:37   astounding it is like each letter is absolutely perfect like you buy it

00:49:43   newsweek or time i mean they still print newsweek right

00:49:46   i think so dan lines you know he's he's picking their somebody's

00:49:50   Yeah, somebody's paying his checks.

00:49:52   Right.

00:49:53   The print quality is astounding.

00:49:54   It is absolutely astounding.

00:49:56   And it's, you know, maybe you don't notice that the – people don't buy Newsweek and

00:50:00   think, "Oh, my God, this thing is very finely printed."

00:50:05   You may not know – you may not think it, but you notice it.

00:50:07   And that's just like the way Apple stuff is all the way, you know, where people don't

00:50:11   buy – normal people don't buy it, the iPhone, and think about how nice the seams are between

00:50:16   the steel antenna and the glass front.

00:50:21   You may not think about it, but you appreciate it.

00:50:25   Do you think that they just do kind of one

00:50:29   product at first with the Retina display in terms of the Mac?

00:50:32   You know, they do a MacBook Pro rather than the MacBook Air,

00:50:37   or do they release a Cinema Display one that can use--

00:50:40   that obviously if they've met new Mac Pros,

00:50:42   you'll need new Cinema Displays, or you can use the old ones.

00:50:45   but do they do just one retina at first?

00:50:50   I really don't know.

00:50:51   I thought originally that they would do it one just to introduce it.

00:50:55   And it seems like that's a little bit more of an appley way to do it, is iterative.

00:50:59   But it seems like there's so many spots in the Mac product matrix that are overdue for

00:51:07   an update that it just feels to me like they're going to just do the whole line at once and

00:51:13   and say that they all get retina.

00:51:15   You get a retina display, you get a retina display.

00:51:18   It's gonna be Oprah Winfrey up there getting out cars.

00:51:22   - God, do you think they'll do a 27-inch iMac

00:51:25   and like cinema display one, though?

00:51:26   That'd be pretty insane.

00:51:28   - I don't know, it seems almost impossible,

00:51:30   but that's what I thought about the phone, too,

00:51:32   when I first heard the rumors three years ago

00:51:35   that they were gonna double the pixel resolution

00:51:37   on the iPhone, it just seemed impossible.

00:51:39   - Yeah.

00:51:40   - I mean, like there's more pixels.

00:51:43   I still have a 20-inch cinema display, but even if you had the old 23-inch or whatever,

00:51:47   the iPad, today's iPad, has more pixels than those.

00:51:50   I know, that's crazy.

00:51:51   Yeah.

00:51:52   So, I don't know.

00:51:53   You know, I almost wonder, and I don't even know if it's a yield problem, but maybe at

00:51:58   this point, with the pixels that small, a couple of dead pixels you don't even notice,

00:52:02   I honestly don't know.

00:52:03   Right.

00:52:04   Sure would be awesome if they did.

00:52:06   And I wonder, obviously they'll try and do something within OS X, Mountain Lion, to make

00:52:16   older apps look fine on the new thing without being custom tailored for it, but I do sort

00:52:22   of wonder what they'll end up looking like.

00:52:25   I think it's going to be like the iPhone, where they're going to stick out.

00:52:30   The ones that haven't been updated are going to stick out.

00:52:32   because that is the weird thing. The weird thing about, and I didn't think it

00:52:36   didn't make sense to me until I saw it, but when you run non-retina apps on the

00:52:41   iPhone, they should in theory look the same as they did on an old 3GS with a

00:52:47   non-retina display. But they don't. It looks worse because the pixels, yeah

00:52:54   there's a little four pixel square where one pixel used to be, but they're so much

00:52:57   sharper that you see that whereas it was sort of fuzzy on the old non retina

00:53:03   displays there was a fuzziness that sort of glossed over the the pixelation that

00:53:09   you could notice whereas yep when you run them on the actual retina displays

00:53:13   it it turns into sharp jaggedness that's stair-step you know like you're filling

00:53:18   in graph paper right look and I you know I think that I think that's the

00:53:24   motivation. I think that's the one thing about Apple's success with this sort of

00:53:29   aesthetics are a core value that across the board it just gets developers on

00:53:35   board. Like your app looks like ass is like a kick in the pants to

00:53:39   developers to hurry up and fix it. Like no one wants to be that guy who

00:53:44   people are saying, "I love your app, but boy it looks like ass on my new MacBook

00:53:47   Air." Yeah. I wonder, you know, I think about like what are what are 1080p

00:53:53   movies gonna be like, you know, most YouTube things are 1080p now or have the option for

00:53:57   it, Vimeo videos, and then of course the iTunes content. You know, they can go so far beyond

00:54:04   that but Hollywood's obviously not ready to do that. They're filming, like, they're filming

00:54:08   the new Hobbit movie, right, with those RED cams, and that's gonna be, you know, super

00:54:12   high resolution. 4K, right? 4K. And so there, you know, there will be options to do that

00:54:16   in the future, but, you know, this is gonna be an interesting transition.

00:54:21   I think video, I think video gets by with it though because of the motion.

00:54:26   Yeah.

00:54:27   Because it's the motion.

00:54:28   It blurs.

00:54:28   It inherently blurs the stuff. Just like with, you know, when you watch an actual film projected

00:54:34   that the, you know, the frame to frame, you don't see the frames. And so I think that covers it up.

00:54:42   I think a bigger question is what photographs are going to look like.

00:54:46   Yep.

00:54:48   And you kind of see that on the iPad, I think, especially when you're on the web, because

00:54:52   most websites don't have retina photographs. They're photographs on the web, and you really,

00:54:59   I think, you can really see like JPEG compression now that you couldn't see before with the exact

00:55:03   same photograph on another, on a non-retina display. Yeah, yeah, it was, you know, I had my

00:55:11   little logo thing, of course, wasn't retina ready when it came out, and I just like would look at

00:55:16   that and cringe every single day and so now it's a matter of just uploading a

00:55:20   much larger image file but it looks finally looks fine right yeah let me um

00:55:26   let me just let me do the second sponsor and we'll run through I think for the

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00:56:46   to them and look for him at WWDC so what else

00:56:54   maps maps it seems like a done deal I mean that's the one that's that's leaked

00:56:58   everywhere what what would you make of the of the Google event yes it was now

00:57:04   yesterday that it happened.

00:57:06   Kind of funny little event that--

00:57:11   I don't know what they were really thinking, if they were

00:57:13   even trying to be smart about the way that they timed the

00:57:18   entire thing.

00:57:20   Every tweet that I saw about it, I was gearing up to just

00:57:23   sit down and watch it.

00:57:24   And then every tweet, it's like, this is ridiculous.

00:57:26   They're not announcing anything.

00:57:27   All they're saying is the history of Google Maps and

00:57:31   going into how great the product is.

00:57:33   it's very clear that they threw this conference together at the last second

00:57:36   just to preempt whatever Apple's going to announce at WWDC.

00:57:40   One of the articles I read covering it, I forget which site it was on, but the first comment was perfect.

00:57:47   It was the first comment with somebody whose comment was "Google to Apple, all caps, first."

00:57:53   [laughs]

00:57:55   You know, which is, it was so perfect because it's, you know, that's famously what try to,

00:58:00   people, jerks try to stick in is the first comment on any article.

00:58:03   It really was. And somebody else had the analogy I saw on Twitter, and I wish I'd thought of

00:58:08   it, was that it really reeked of that. It was exactly like that 2010 CES keynote from

00:58:16   Steve Ballmer, where they were talking about slates.

00:58:19   Right, right. And it's holding up that one.

00:58:21   It was six weeks before the original iPad introduction, and it was at a point where

00:58:27   there was this fever pitch of, "Hey, Apple's really doing a tablet, and it's coming soon."

00:58:32   everybody knew it, nobody knew what it was going to be, but there was this idea that

00:58:35   Apple has a tablet and it's coming soon. And Microsoft's CES keynote was about slates,

00:58:41   and they tried to get a slate word in there.

00:58:45   And Google got a chance to throw out the 3D word, even though they've had 3D elements,

00:58:51   of course, for a while, but now they have some sort of new, amazing 3D element, coming

00:58:57   soon, mind you. Nothing was actually released at this event because it wasn't ready. But

00:59:01   coming soon they will have some sort of 3D thing. I thought

00:59:05   I think it was like Quentin Hardy for, I think he wrote about it in the New York Times

00:59:09   maybe it was even like the Bits blog there or something like that, but you know, because I was of course

00:59:13   extremely skeptical and just wrote a post pretty much trashing that whole

00:59:17   conference as a giant waste of time and kind of showing

00:59:21   Google has, while they are undoubtedly the leader in

00:59:25   maps, they do have a vulnerability here that I think is going to be

00:59:29   fun sort of to watch how it plays out, but I thought

00:59:32   Quinton Hardy had an interesting other view of it which is that

00:59:36   they had to do this conference to try

00:59:40   and preempt what the rest of the press will talk about at WWDC

00:59:45   which is that wow Apple has an opportunity here to really hurt

00:59:49   Google where something that matters because

00:59:52   you know mobile's so key, maps are so key to mobile

00:59:57   and there's all this data and you know Google could lose half the market all of a sudden

01:00:01   and so Quentin Hardy's point was that

01:00:05   you know this at least puts a seed

01:00:08   in the press's mind that well you know this

01:00:11   what Apple announced you know could be disruptive certainly

01:00:14   but it's not nearly as good as what Google has done and you know they've had

01:00:17   seven years to work on this and they've been doing it all this time and they

01:00:20   have

01:00:21   all the experts in the space you know working on this problem so there's no

01:00:24   way they can actually do it

01:00:25   It was basically just to plant a seed of doubt in five days before WWDC about it.

01:00:30   I guess. I just think it makes them look defensive though.

01:00:34   Yes, right. They're fighting down rather than fighting up because they are in the position of power.

01:00:39   You know, if it were me, I would just stay silent, you know, and I might have

01:00:47   fought as hard as I could at the negotiating table to convince Apple to stick with Google Maps

01:00:52   in iOS if I really thought that was in Google's interests, but if they were clearly going

01:00:58   to go their own way and not renew the contract, then just shut down. Silence. And good luck,

01:01:05   and let's see what they do. And let them do it. Because Jay Yarrow had a piece on Business

01:01:10   Insider today, and in typical Business Insider fashion, it's sort of sensationalized, and

01:01:15   it's why Apple is taking a tremendous risk with this. But he's a good guy, Yarrow, and

01:01:21   And he has a good point.

01:01:22   The fundamental point, though, is that it is a risk, because it has to be as good as

01:01:27   Google Maps overall.

01:01:28   You know, directions have to be as good.

01:01:31   And they can't – and I'm guessing that's why it's taken them so long, that they've

01:01:36   been working on this for a while.

01:01:37   They've been making these acquisitions for years, is that there's no other way to roll

01:01:42   that out other than to do it all at once and have beautiful cartography that covers the

01:01:49   the world and accurate directions and driving and transit, public transit.

01:01:57   And I know that the Google walking directions are still beta, but they're pretty good.

01:02:03   At least in the cities I've used them in, it always works.

01:02:07   I think they're just covering their ass if you get hit by a car or something like that.

01:02:13   But it just has to be as good.

01:02:14   And it's an area where Apple is not a historical smartphone.

01:02:17   Totally unproven.

01:02:18   Yeah.

01:02:19   And it goes back to what we were talking about kind of at the beginning where if you're going

01:02:23   to come into a market that's kind of dominated by someone, you have to do something that's

01:02:27   really kind of not just as good, but 10 times better.

01:02:31   Apple doesn't necessarily have to do that here because they have control of this platform,

01:02:36   and so people will have no choice but rather to use it.

01:02:39   And as long as it's just as good, that will be fine for people.

01:02:43   Most people won't even, most average consumers I think, they'll notice a difference obviously

01:02:48   if they look a little different, but they don't really care if it's a Google map or

01:02:51   if it's an Apple map as long as it functions just as well as it did.

01:02:55   So it doesn't have to be better here, but it has to be as good.

01:02:58   And that's asking a lot, and no one knows if Apple's going to be able to pull it off

01:03:03   or not.

01:03:04   They certainly think that they can, it seems like, but who knows?

01:03:07   My big question, and I forget if I asked this to John Moltz or Adam Lisagor on this show

01:03:14   a week or two ago, and I think it was Moltz, but we couldn't figure it out, is do you think

01:03:18   they're going to do a web version of their map?

01:03:21   I said this yesterday, too, thinking out loud about it. That's a really interesting question,

01:03:29   because on one hand it seems like if they're going to ask every developer to do this, along

01:03:36   with the standard Maps app, so in all the apps they'll have--

01:03:41   someone brought up the point that it's not like there is a

01:03:43   Google Maps SDK.

01:03:44   Part of the iOS SDK is just the--

01:03:48   they have MapKit, I think.

01:03:49   And right now that uses Google data.

01:03:51   And presumably they'll switch that out to use the Apple data.

01:03:54   So almost all developers probably will

01:03:58   fall in line with that.

01:03:59   And if they do that, then it's sort of like there's so many

01:04:03   apps that have a web component to it.

01:04:05   Are they then going to have to switch over to using Google Maps on the web because they

01:04:09   have no other choice?

01:04:11   Or does Apple offer a web version of it?

01:04:14   I would guess that Apple doesn't have a web version of it, though.

01:04:17   It doesn't seem like an Apple-like thing to do, but the other thing I was thinking about

01:04:20   is what happens when you email somebody directions from your phone?

01:04:23   Yeah.

01:04:24   Yeah.

01:04:25   Right?

01:04:26   Like, when you do it now, you can use your Google Map app on the phone and say, "Look,

01:04:28   here's where I'm coming.

01:04:29   Here's the directions."

01:04:30   And there's, like, a little action button, "Email this," and it sends them to the Google

01:04:34   website. So I guess they just hope that you're using a mobile device or an iOS

01:04:40   device and you either open it through your iPad or the iPhone or maybe they

01:04:43   have a picture or something that they include. I don't know. It's a real mystery to me. I don't

01:04:48   expect them to do a website but I wonder how you email directions to

01:04:51   somebody if they don't. It's also interesting idea as well because you

01:04:58   know on the web itself Google is also in a bit of a vulnerable position there

01:05:02   because for some reason, which most people still don't really

01:05:05   understand, Google raised their rates a few months ago for

01:05:09   using Google Maps for high level customers.

01:05:12   So for example, Foursquare switched away from using

01:05:15   Google Maps on their website.

01:05:16   They still use it in the mobile app because it's part of iOS

01:05:19   SDK, and it's free.

01:05:21   But on the web, they started jacking up their rates for big

01:05:24   customers, and so all those guys now are moving over to

01:05:27   things like OpenStreetMaps, where they can kind of

01:05:29   customize their own maps.

01:05:30   And so Google is actually vulnerable here.

01:05:33   And no one really-- again, no one understands why they jacked up those rates.

01:05:36   It's not a lot of money for Google.

01:05:38   And it just seems like a risk that they're taking for no apparent reason.

01:05:43   So if Apple were to do web maps of some sort,

01:05:47   they could get a lot of the bigger developers potentially using them.

01:05:50   Again, I don't think it's going to happen,

01:05:51   but it's something interesting to think about.

01:05:54   It's always seemed in Google's priority was collecting data.

01:05:58   Right.

01:05:59   Right.

01:05:59   And collecting money.

01:06:00   And so I don't know why they're charging...

01:06:01   Yeah.

01:06:02   Right.

01:06:03   Like, why motivate people to maybe look elsewhere?

01:06:05   And you know, Foursquare is obviously a super high-profile example.

01:06:10   Why give Foursquare any reason to change?

01:06:14   It does seem curious to me.

01:06:15   I mean, unless it's far more expensive than I think it is.

01:06:20   I mean, it's definitely expensive, but it's such...

01:06:24   You know, and the amount of money that they would make from it has got to be completely

01:06:29   negligible to Google's bottom line. And so, who cares? Just do it as a loss leader. I

01:06:34   mean, it's such a valuable service, and they're the leader in this. And they're, you know,

01:06:38   I've talked to Forescare about this. They don't really know why they decided to change

01:06:41   it and start jacking up these rates. No one really knows.

01:06:45   Yeah, and it just seems un-Google-y. It's not, you know, all the complaints that you

01:06:50   and I have about various aspects of Google, one is, one thing I can't imagine ever saying

01:06:55   before is that they seemed like they were too hungry for collecting money from people.

01:07:01   I can't think of any other example of that, where they've done something where they

01:07:06   seem to favor revenue per user over just getting as many people using their things as possible.

01:07:12   Yeah. So, I don't know. What do you think about, you know, so it sounds like we know

01:07:19   maps are coming. Seems like Facebook as well is going to be a part of this. I know you're

01:07:25   not a Facebook user at all, but this is the state of the ecosystem right now. So many

01:07:33   apps use Facebook Connect to be able to do it.

01:07:38   I think if they could get Facebook to agree to terms that Apple considers appropriate,

01:07:46   privacy-wise, that it's a done deal.

01:07:50   I think so.

01:07:51   And I think – the one thing you have to remember, too, is that Apple really operates

01:07:59   on a yearly schedule.

01:08:01   They really do things annually.

01:08:02   They don't roll out a lot of stuff other than bug fixes in between.

01:08:08   And so a year ago is when they baked in the Twitter stuff in the OS.

01:08:13   And it was sort of, you know, I think it was half because they thought Twitter was good

01:08:16   and that it would be useful for iOS.

01:08:18   And I think it was half a message to Facebook of, "Well, we'll show you."

01:08:22   You know, this is Apple saying to them, "You know, you don't want to agree to our terms.

01:08:26   Well, these guys are."

01:08:28   You know, and they're nipping at your heels.

01:08:30   So, you know, one year later, I wouldn't be surprised at all if, you know, I think as

01:08:34   a negotiating tactic, a one-year head start of built-in social integration on iOS, you

01:08:40   know, was enough to maybe get Facebook to budge on the terms that they were offering,

01:08:44   which by all accounts, and you know, I think you and I both have, you know, pretty high

01:08:48   level info on that. It was, you know, more or less came down to their Facebook's bottom

01:08:52   line on the terms they wanted from Apple was Apple would not agree to. Not about money.

01:08:57   It was about privacy and share. So, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised at all. I think that's

01:09:02   definitely going to happen. I think it sticks out more now in iOS 5 that there's one and

01:09:09   and only one third-party social integration.

01:09:12   There's almost like this section in the settings apps

01:09:15   that seems like it would naturally be suited

01:09:17   to a couple of them.

01:09:19   And it's just one, Twitter.

01:09:23   - And coincidentally tonight,

01:09:26   Facebook's having this last minute event,

01:09:28   it looks like, to launch what they're calling

01:09:30   their App Center, which is fascinating

01:09:33   because it's actually leaked out a little bit

01:09:36   and it's gone live in their Facebook app

01:09:38   on their Facebook iOS app even, where it's basically on

01:09:42   the side panel, they now have this new area that's called

01:09:45   App Center, where they basically have

01:09:47   their own app store.

01:09:48   But it's not their app store.

01:09:50   It's really pointing to mobile apps, at least on--

01:09:53   I think the idea is to be platform agnostic.

01:09:55   So if it's on Android, it points to Android apps.

01:09:57   If it's on iOS, it points to iOS apps.

01:09:59   If it's on the web, it can point to a web app.

01:10:01   But this might come into play with these negotiations as

01:10:06   because as we're seeing now, Facebook is a pretty important driver for growth for a lot of these apps.

01:10:13   We had all the video camera apps that were kind of exploding for a while, mainly because of the way that they were using Facebook's Open Graph.

01:10:20   And now, one of the big complaints that's only going to get louder is about app discovery and Applebot Chomp,

01:10:28   and they're supposedly trying to work on things with that.

01:10:30   But Facebook can do a pretty good job of it, I think, just given the social data that they

01:10:34   have about what apps your friends are using.

01:10:37   And so maybe Apple, maybe they do something a little bit more with that, too, to kind

01:10:42   of make it as a new discovery layer for apps themselves.

01:10:45   Because all it does is kick you into the app store.

01:10:47   It's just a new layer on top of it.

01:10:50   Yeah, I definitely, you know, and that hearkens all the way back to the original rumors that

01:10:55   that Ping was designed with Facebook integration in mind,

01:10:59   and that you'd get these recommendations

01:11:01   and find out new music that people you know were using

01:11:04   based on your Facebook friendships and connections.

01:11:08   - Yeah, and that may have sunk that ship

01:11:12   before it even started, along those lines.

01:11:14   - One thing I've noticed, I have noticed this recently,

01:11:18   and it's partly because, I don't know if I notice it more

01:11:21   because I don't even have a Facebook account,

01:11:23   or if it's just my branding sensitivity.

01:11:26   But I've noticed more and more as I walk around the city,

01:11:30   when I see like billboards and advertisements,

01:11:34   like on the sides of buildings or wherever you can put ads

01:11:36   like walking around, I see an awful lot of brands

01:11:40   that instead of putting their URL,

01:11:42   all they do is put Facebook. - Yeah, they've,

01:11:43   Facebook, yep.

01:11:45   - Dot slash their name. - Yep.

01:11:47   - Including one, I forget who,

01:11:49   who didn't even print Facebook.

01:11:51   just printed the "F", just that Facebook "F" slash their name. And I thought that was...

01:11:58   that blew me away. And it wasn't next to their URL. This is where to go for more information,

01:12:04   is Facebook slash brand name.

01:12:06   Yeah, I've noticed the same thing. I don't really know what that's all about, if Facebook

01:12:11   just has a killer kind of partnership team to be able to get these guys to do it, or

01:12:15   if there's some sort of data that they're seeing where it's just kind of silly now to

01:12:19   have your own website when what you really want is kind of data, social data that Facebook

01:12:25   is able to offer up and help you kind of spread the word about messages and stuff.

01:12:28   Right.

01:12:29   And that you could get them to follow you or like you and then have an ongoing relationship

01:12:34   with them rather than one time they visit your site, look at your one page, and whatever

01:12:40   they remember, they remember.

01:12:42   But I still think it's very, very powerful.

01:12:45   I think it's a powerful statement of Facebook's influence.

01:12:49   You know, while I have you here, because now you're your new gig. Your job is really working

01:12:54   as... are you an angel investor or a VC?

01:12:58   A VC.

01:12:59   You're a VC.

01:13:00   Yeah, just doing seed level investments. So smaller, kind of angel-sized investments in

01:13:05   a way, but yeah.

01:13:06   So I want you to explain to me the Facebook IPO.

01:13:09   Sure.

01:13:10   Here's what I... I don't understand why it's being called a disaster. I don't understand.

01:13:15   It seems to me like it must – it's gone down, so that's not good.

01:13:19   But it seems to me like it was mostly – at least on day one, it was priced kind of right,

01:13:24   because – now, this is my very, very layman's – this is so outside my wheelhouse that

01:13:28   maybe I'm just totally off base – is that it was like, what was it, $30, $38 or $32?

01:13:34   Whatever it was.

01:13:35   Yeah, $34 or $38, something like that.

01:13:37   But it seemed to me like if you were on the inside, you got it at – there is one of

01:13:42   the banks that was doing the IPO.

01:13:43   You got it at 38 bucks.

01:13:45   if you jumped on it right when the bell rang, if you could get your trade in, then you were

01:13:49   getting it at the same price. That seems fair to me.

01:13:52   Yeah.

01:13:53   What do people want? People want it to double? That seems to me like you're saying that it's

01:13:58   cooked in favor of the banks who got it at the price before it doubled.

01:14:02   Yes, that's exactly right. I mean, my take on it is exactly pretty much what you said,

01:14:07   that this, you know, the perception of it is not the reality. The reality is that Facebook

01:14:12   made as much money as possible as they could have off of an IPO. And say they had priced

01:14:18   it at $15 or something and then it opened at $35, that would have been, wow, everyone's

01:14:25   like wow, there's so much demand for these Facebook shares or whatever. But Facebook

01:14:29   would have made actually half the money because they would have only sold half for what they

01:14:37   could have basically. And so Facebook came out very well from this and I think that they're

01:14:43   all looking at this right now and they just don't care. They had to go public, it was

01:14:47   kind of an annoying thing for them to do for a while. They kind of rallied around it at

01:14:52   the end and they did raise something like $16 billion as a result of it. But they did

01:14:57   as well as they possibly could. It's a loss really for the people who are looking to get

01:15:04   typically happens, at least with tech stocks, where there's a pop, and so people want to

01:15:09   get on it on day one, get the 20 to 50 percent whatever it's going to be pop, and then sell

01:15:15   quickly and they're pissed off because that didn't happen, and instead they ended up losing

01:15:20   money if you tried to do that. But it's a silly thing. If you're going to buy Facebook

01:15:24   stock, first of all, there's a lot of talk right now that the financials aren't strong

01:15:28   and that there was some insider knowledge about it that was only passed to certain people,

01:15:33   And you know, those things will get looked into and maybe there's something to that.

01:15:36   It sounds like nothing that actually happened was illegal, it was just kind of, that's the

01:15:40   way it works right now.

01:15:41   You know, Sir Morgan Stanley led the IPO and they let certain people know like what data

01:15:45   they had.

01:15:46   But the reality of the situation is if you were going to buy Facebook stock, you know,

01:15:50   you really should have known what you were buying to begin with.

01:15:53   It's not like any of this data is really secret or kind of hard to understand, you just need

01:15:57   to do a little bit of homework.

01:15:59   And if you're buying Facebook stock, you really should be buying it at the, you know, the

01:16:02   IPO price and thinking it's a long-term bet, not some sort of stock pop thing. We've been

01:16:08   in this mentality of these tech IPOs throughout the past however long, you know, decade now,

01:16:13   where these things initially pop and everyone is expecting it to pop, and so when it didn't

01:16:17   pop people are wondering, you know, what does that mean? Is everything crashing? Is this

01:16:23   the end of tech itself? But, you know, right now the stock I'm looking at is at $26. I

01:16:29   I would bet in a year it'll be somewhere around the IPO level, maybe above it, and that's

01:16:33   just the way it's going to be until Facebook grows into a more mature company and they

01:16:37   start producing more substantial revenues that justify the pricing of it.

01:16:45   I think people in the tech press in general, obviously they like to play up the story that

01:16:50   it was a huge failure.

01:16:51   There were certain things that NASDAQ really screwed up on, and that certainly is going

01:16:57   to play out over the next several months when more companies start to IPO? Do they go with

01:17:01   the New York Stock Exchange instead of NASDAQ?

01:17:03   It seems like that was part of the piling on, though. That's not Facebook's fault.

01:17:08   I mean, I guess you can fault them for going with NASDAQ rather than going with the New

01:17:11   York Stock Exchange. But it's sort of like a piling on, though, where I saw that there's

01:17:16   this sort of – and again, I'm not really – I don't use Facebook, but I actually

01:17:24   really am kind of fascinated by the company and I'm very interested in

01:17:27   Zuckerberg because I feel like he is one of those rare guys. He's like a Bill

01:17:32   Gates, Steve Jobs, once-in-a-lifetime sort of or once-in-a-generation unique

01:17:39   individual. And if I were, I didn't, you know, I don't have any money in Facebook

01:17:45   but if I did it wouldn't be because I like the product, it would be because I'd

01:17:48   like to place a bet on him long term. And I still think, I think that's exactly

01:17:52   why Amazon has such a high... what's the...

01:17:57   Price to earnings.

01:17:58   Yeah, price to earnings is people betting on Jeff Bezos.

01:18:03   Yes.

01:18:04   Which I think is a smart bet.

01:18:05   I would, you know, I don't have Amazon stock either, but I wouldn't mind having some Amazon...

01:18:09   I certainly would think about it, and if I did, it would be betting on Jeff Bezos, because

01:18:13   I think he's very smart.

01:18:15   He's that type of guy.

01:18:16   And that's a good way to think about it, because you look at Amazon's business and you see,

01:18:19   the profits are falling actually because of some of the hardware stuff they're kind of

01:18:24   trying to do and the margins aren't great at all, but it's a total long-term bet that

01:18:28   they'll just be able to kind of outmaneuver everyone coming their way and Facebook now

01:18:34   kind of outmaneuver in the space that they're in and that they'll kind of be like we were

01:18:38   just talking about the brands that are using it as their webpage, they're now like a part

01:18:42   of the fabric of the web that's kind of irreplaceable. And some people don't agree with that of course,

01:18:48   that would be the bet you're making. I think you kind of hit upon it too, the other kind

01:18:54   of backlash element I guess of the Facebook IPO was the fact that their price to earnings

01:18:58   ratio is insane and their market cap was going to be about 100 billion and now it's closer

01:19:03   to like 60 billion or something like that and you think about that in relation to these

01:19:07   other companies that are making, like Apple and Google, that are making way, way, way

01:19:13   more revenue and of course profit and you know Facebook's not that far away at a hundred

01:19:19   billion from Google which is what I think two hundred billion and so like how can you

01:19:25   possibly justify it and it just happens to be that you know Facebook had the biggest

01:19:28   tech IPO of all time it was there was a lot of pent up demand for it and now that people

01:19:34   you know have sensed that there's some way that they can spin this as a failure it's

01:19:39   It's kind of, you know, everyone likes to be the first to call the top of the market,

01:19:44   and now it's going down from here.

01:19:45   But it just doesn't seem like that's really…

01:19:47   But I got…

01:19:48   Yeah, and I'm glad to hear that from you, because I just had this sense that the press

01:19:51   coverage was like the knives were ready to come out, if it did anything but shoot way

01:19:55   up.

01:19:56   And then they just piled on with the fact that there were technical problems on NASDAQs

01:20:01   and that they just threw in, and it just became this very neat narrative that Facebook's

01:20:07   IPO is a disaster.

01:20:08   It was certainly not a disaster for them.

01:20:12   Right, and then anything that could possibly fit into that basic story,

01:20:16   the Facebook IPO disaster, they would just throw in there. Everything else gets

01:20:20   tossed into that pile. And I thought it was sort of a "we were just waiting to jump on you"

01:20:24   thing, much like Antennagate was for Apple.

01:20:28   We've been waiting for something like this, and now we're gonna

01:20:32   beat it until it's dead. And the unfortunate side effect of some of this is

01:20:36   is that there are companies now who are going to be a little hesitant to go public, and

01:20:41   maybe that's right, maybe they should be more hesitant to go public. You look at Groupon

01:20:48   and some of these other ones that are struggling, but they're hesitant not for maybe the right

01:20:54   reason. They're hesitant because they don't want to get the same kind of press backlash

01:20:57   that Facebook got, which is totally ridiculous, and there's not much really you can do about

01:21:04   that but it's a... Here's the other thing that I see is big picture wise at the

01:21:11   Silicon Valley poker table is you know in that whole enemy of the enemy is my

01:21:18   friend mindset is that Google is to me the new Microsoft where they're the ones

01:21:24   who are sticking their fingers in everybody else's pies and not making

01:21:30   any friends and spoiling the friends that they had, right? Because I still, it's so

01:21:37   hard to think, I mean, in terms of how far this industry can go in five years is that

01:21:41   when the iPhone was introduced, there's Eric Schmidt invited up on stage, backslapping

01:21:46   with Steve Jobs, talking about what great almost sibling companies, Google and Apple

01:21:51   are. Apple's doing their thing and we're doing our thing and it's totally separate and we

01:21:55   love each other and we're so happy to have a couple of services on the iPhone. This is

01:21:59   is going to be great. And now look where they are. The way I see it is Google has really

01:22:04   made enemies of everybody. And it just makes a lot more natural to see something like Facebook

01:22:11   integration in iOS and some significant keynote time Monday devoted to that.

01:22:18   Yeah. I do. Yeah. Along those lines, I wonder if Apple back channel was talking with Facebook

01:22:25   and making sure that they get some sort of, not exclusive partnership, but better access

01:22:32   than Facebook is willing to give to something like Android.

01:22:39   While Google and Facebook are at odds for other reasons, and social and different areas

01:22:47   right now, Facebook is really...they still have to play nice with Android because so

01:22:52   much of their business is mobile and Android is a large part of the mobile ecosystem.

01:22:57   So they have to play nice with it.

01:22:58   But I do wonder if there's some sort of behind-the-scenes thing going on with Apple and Facebook where

01:23:03   it's a little bit of an anti-Google tilt going on.

01:23:07   Right.

01:23:08   I just see it that everybody's an enemy with Google.

01:23:14   And it's one of those things like we were talking about earlier where they just don't

01:23:17   ... You talk to them and they don't have that ... They just don't seem to be aware of this,

01:23:22   though it's not like a big secret and anyone can see it, you can talk to people who basically

01:23:27   say it, everyone is sort of, if they're not Google's enemy right now, they feel like Google's

01:23:32   going to move in their space because Google just keeps doing that over and over and over

01:23:36   again now. You know, the best relationship they have, I guess, is with Samsung because

01:23:40   Samsung's the one company doing well off of Android, but, you know, we'll see what happens

01:23:46   with this Motorola stuff. You know, that could go sideways as well.

01:23:50   You know, it does seem like they're oblivious about it.

01:23:52   I really--and that's, to me, is a difference for them when Microsoft was the enemy of everybody

01:23:57   in the Valley.

01:23:58   Microsoft seemed very self-aware of their role, that they were, you know, making enemies

01:24:03   of everybody.

01:24:04   And anybody who was making a profit at Microsoft was going to try to steal that market.

01:24:09   And they seemed very aware of that.

01:24:11   Google does not.

01:24:12   Google seems to think that they're still everybody's friend, but everybody else kind of hates them.

01:24:15   Yeah.

01:24:16   very weird sense of entitlement at a company level that seems to be going on.

01:24:23   I'll just try to wrap this up. We've been going for about an hour and a half. Any other WWDC predictions?

01:24:27   What do you think about my idea of Apple TV apps? I've got nothing. I have no inside dope on that.

01:24:33   Nobody has whispered anything to me about that. The only hint I have of that, the only actual info,

01:24:39   is that I know that the new Apple TV has Bluetooth 4 hardware in there.

01:24:43   And that Apple's not using that for anything yet.

01:24:47   - Yep, that's true.

01:24:49   And the latest iPhone has it as well, right?

01:24:53   - Right.

01:24:53   - Okay, so, right.

01:24:55   I don't know, I haven't heard anything either

01:24:57   about any kind of Apple TV app stuff.

01:24:59   I mean, it's gotta happen eventually, of course.

01:25:02   And they already have some element of it.

01:25:04   They have their own apps that they've built for Netflix

01:25:07   and MLB and the different ones.

01:25:11   that would be a pretty awesome thing if they did that because

01:25:15   everyone's been waiting for it.

01:25:16   And now the timing would be kind of interesting too because

01:25:20   it's right after the CES stuff where we had the game systems

01:25:25   out there.

01:25:26   And you've got what Nintendo's doing now and Microsoft is

01:25:29   waiting till next year to do their new system.

01:25:31   Same with Sony.

01:25:32   And so there is this intro to the market right here.

01:25:36   And if Apple allows apps, then presumably a lot of those

01:25:40   be games again. That could be a fascinating way to play it. I don't know if that will

01:25:46   happen or not. But, yeah. I mean, they did just redesign the interface, right? When did

01:25:51   that come out?

01:25:53   That was at the iPad event. So, end of February.

01:25:57   Yep. So...

01:25:59   And one thing I've noticed with that, and it's gone to a more iOS home screen type thing

01:26:03   where these little rectangles that look like apps, but instead of being squares, they're

01:26:07   little 16 to 9 rectangles. And one thing I noticed about that is just like the original

01:26:13   iPhone where it was like an uneven number of icons that there was only like one in the

01:26:19   bottom row which just begged for those other three spots to be filled in, which didn't

01:26:25   necessarily imply third party apps.

01:26:27   Right. It could be Apple or it could be third party.

01:26:30   Right. But I can't help but think that the Apple TV is the same way where it's an uneven

01:26:35   number of those rectangles where it just seems like it's almost like that blank space is

01:26:39   a dot dot dot. It's like an ellipsis that's like more to come.

01:26:44   Well, I do think like when you just look at the market itself and you see like Microsoft,

01:26:50   now there's this big, Microsoft's big push in the press has been that Xbox is winning

01:26:56   the battle for the living room, right? And so they're doing all these partnerships with

01:27:03   places like ESPN and so it seems natural that Apple would also have some sort of ESPN, you know, Watch Now

01:27:10   partnership thing with Apple TV and so maybe

01:27:13   Maybe that's something that gets announced

01:27:16   ahead of a rather than like a platform for it right now

01:27:20   But I also like the idea and I think you put this forward

01:27:25   In a subtle way at least that if they do get a platform out there now and they get developers developing for it

01:27:32   then if and when they do do you know their actual foray into the space in a

01:27:37   more meaningful way

01:27:39   they'll have apps they're ready to go and that's like you know they're seeding

01:27:42   their own victory right there

01:27:44   i can't help but think that if they do it there's gotta be some kind of new

01:27:47   hardware maybe not i i i feel like this in the new apple tv that does ten eighty

01:27:51   p

01:27:52   it's only four months old so they can't just say that one's obsolete but it's

01:27:55   got to be like a remote or something that uses bluetooth there's got to be

01:27:58   better

01:27:59   input than the IR remote.

01:28:01   Well, those SKUs that got leaked yesterday or something, I think 9.5 Mac Adam,

01:28:05   there were some interesting things in there, right? There were things that

01:28:08   weren't known

01:28:09   necessarily, like there could be some sort of hardware thing that's

01:28:12   totally off the radar that's like, you know, a cheap accessory. So yeah, maybe it

01:28:16   is something

01:28:17   like some kind of new remote control to specifically control apps in a

01:28:20   different way.

01:28:22   And then, uh...

01:28:24   Well, you go ahead. Go ahead.

01:28:26   What do you think about, you know, I think we can all assume we're not going to see new iPhone hardware,

01:28:32   because the precedent has been set now for that in the fall, but if, as all indications seem to be lining up,

01:28:40   that there is going to be this new screen size, how do you think they're going to play that with iOS 6?

01:28:46   I think you've said before that they'll do it in a way that's not obvious,

01:28:51   but that they'll have something to kind of drop a hint that something will be changing about it.

01:28:55   How do you think they do that?

01:28:57   Either not at all, and just trust that when they do the announcement in September, October,

01:29:04   whenever the new phone comes out, that they'll say, "Look, this phone is shipping next week,

01:29:10   and developers go to blah, blah, blah address and find out how to update your apps.

01:29:16   Oh, and we have these guys here with us who we've brought in a month ago, and they've

01:29:20   updated their apps."

01:29:21   Right.

01:29:22   talk about how they spent 15 minutes and got their app to do the new size. Or, you know,

01:29:27   like my conjecture was that they could do it in the context of maybe even just --

01:29:32   Adam: The notifications, right?

01:29:33   Justin: Yeah. Like being flexible about making room for that and doing it web OS style. Like

01:29:38   I know a lot of people hail the multitasking interface of web OS as like the card thing,

01:29:45   which I never really liked. I didn't like that. I thought it was confusing the way that

01:29:50   I was not a fan of that, but I thought the best idea in web OS was the way their notifications

01:29:54   didn't cover content, that they shrunk the content and stood there.

01:29:59   I thought that was their best idea, and I think it's silly having seen it the way that

01:30:03   on iOS the banners cover up content.

01:30:07   So I think if they could do it that way, they could get you to be flexible, although it

01:30:11   doesn't cover the horizontal case, where when you're holding the phone sideways, it doesn't

01:30:16   explain why you'd want to be flexible horizontally.

01:30:19   So I don't know.

01:30:20   That is a mystery to me.

01:30:21   I think bottom line is I totally believe Tim Cook's line at the D conference last week

01:30:30   that they're doubling down on secrecy.

01:30:32   I don't think anything is – I don't think things have ever been as tight out of Cupertino

01:30:36   since I've been following the company.

01:30:38   The only place that leaks is Asia.

01:30:41   It's the supply chain.

01:30:42   So all – and that's a little bit outside Apple's control, right?

01:30:46   like these faceplates and stuff like that that leak from manufacturing in China. That's

01:30:51   a little bit outside their control. The stuff that's completely in their control, the stuff

01:30:55   that is actually happening in Cupertino, California, it has never been more tight-lipped. And the

01:31:00   best example of that is Mountain Lion. I mean, Mountain Lion came out of the blue. I remember

01:31:04   talking to you on the phone.

01:31:06   Yeah, we were trying to guess what it would be.

01:31:08   Right, like a day or two before those briefings started in February, I believe it was.

01:31:14   Right.

01:31:15   February or January, whenever that was.

01:31:18   And number one, there's that game of,

01:31:21   hey, did you get the call?

01:31:23   Yeah, yeah, I did.

01:31:24   I was like, all right, shoo.

01:31:26   And then it's like, I feel like then we can,

01:31:28   we still can't talk a lot, but we can talk.

01:31:30   I was like, do you have any idea what this is about?

01:31:32   And we were both like, nope, no idea.

01:31:34   - Yeah, I think the best guess was retina max at the time.

01:31:39   - Exactly, that was definitely my best guess,

01:31:41   and I think that was your best guess, too.

01:31:43   No idea.

01:31:44   It's just a perfect—and so I'm actually happy about this, right?

01:31:47   In a way that I actually feel like I know less about what's going to be announced

01:31:52   Monday at WWDC than I have in years.

01:31:54   I couldn't be happier about it.

01:31:55   It makes me just look forward to it.

01:31:57   Yeah, it makes it really exciting.

01:32:00   You're right that, of course, Apple can't do all that much to stop the hardware stuff

01:32:06   that kind of gets out from the third-party suppliers over in Asia.

01:32:10   like iOS, I feel like I heard a little bit about Facebook,

01:32:15   heard a little bit about Maps,

01:32:17   but the Maps thing was only after someone else

01:32:20   had heard something, and so you could kinda put feelers

01:32:22   out there for what's out there.

01:32:23   But I have no idea anything else.

01:32:25   You know that there's gonna be other major changes,

01:32:27   and there's nothing really out there,

01:32:28   and no one's talking about it.

01:32:29   - And my gut feeling is that it's kinda gonna be

01:32:32   a big keynote, that they've got a lot to announce,

01:32:35   and that we just don't know what it is yet.

01:32:37   'Cause compare and contrast to last year,

01:32:39   where they actually put out a press release the week before

01:32:43   where they said what they were going to cover.

01:32:45   Yeah, that was very unusual.

01:32:47   Yeah.

01:32:48   In fact, even pretty much tipped the beans on iCloud.

01:32:52   I'm not sure they named it, but they

01:32:54   said Apple's upcoming cloud base--

01:32:56   Why did they do that?

01:32:58   Do you have any good reason for why now,

01:33:00   like looking back at it?

01:33:01   They did say that they were going to do iCloud.

01:33:04   There had been a lot of rumors that iCloud was coming,

01:33:06   But it's like, why do you--

01:33:08   Is it acceptable for me to say I was right?

01:33:12   Is that going to-- is that self-serving?

01:33:14   I think I was right when they did it last year.

01:33:16   When I linked to their PR during Fireball, my guess was--

01:33:19   and I think in hindsight it was exactly right--

01:33:21   was that it was specifically to set the stage for no hardware

01:33:26   announcements.

01:33:27   Right, OK.

01:33:28   Yeah.

01:33:29   To make it clear to everybody, we're

01:33:31   going to tell you what we're going to talk about,

01:33:33   just so that everybody will know we're not

01:33:35   going to do a new phone because they've done this new phone in the spring all the time.

01:33:38   That's a very good point. They made it pretty clear that they wanted...

01:33:44   My guess is that Jobs hated doing that PR, but I think he agreed that it had to set that

01:33:51   into submission.

01:33:52   He knew, yeah, because just imagine what the backlash should have been had it been set

01:33:56   up that, "Well, we get a new iPhone every year, and wait a minute, there's no new iPhone

01:34:01   this year, and no one had any idea, and that's the surprise, that there's nothing." And,

01:34:05   know, this is the downfall of Apple. Apple's slipping, you know, like what's

01:34:08   what's happening here? Because the one thing that I find myself losing

01:34:13   track of sometimes, and it's just a way to center myself covering the company, is

01:34:17   to keep in mind that I get excited about cool new stuff that Apple does, no matter

01:34:22   what. I think it's cool and it's new, I get excited about it, I'm

01:34:24   interested in it. But there's a big difference between some of the stuff

01:34:27   they do and some of the other stuff, which is, is it something that they're

01:34:31   selling or is it just something they're improving, right? So last year's

01:34:35   thing was mostly... that's the thing, it was nothing that they were going to sell.

01:34:40   Like iCloud is something they just gave to everybody.

01:34:44   And so financially, you know, and that's... you have to, you know, never forget that it's,

01:34:49   you know, it's all about the money. I feel like this year it's going to be about

01:34:54   stuff that they're selling, or at least a big part of it.

01:34:58   Yeah, and that's, I mean, have they ever updated every single Mac in their line at the exact

01:35:04   same time?

01:35:05   No, never.

01:35:06   And so that's, and the best part about that is that it probably still won't be the focal

01:35:12   point of the keynote, because iOS is so much bigger.

01:35:15   Right, yeah, that's what I think.

01:35:18   I think it'll probably start out with the Mac, and then, you know, and congratulations,

01:35:23   you know, whatever Mac you're using, whatever one you like, guess what, there's a new Retina

01:35:26   version of it, I think.

01:35:27   That's what I think they're gonna do and then now we'll do the overview of mountain lion again

01:35:32   You know, they like to do nice those the ten things or whatever that that are that are new and different

01:35:37   Right and then yeah and then go into iOS. Yep

01:35:40   Well, I think that's a show I want to thank our sponsors again excellent creations that's XC e ll ENT creations excellent creations

01:35:50   Com they have a special website

01:35:52   WWDC

01:35:54   2012 dot excellent creations comm check them out if you're looking for a mobile developer or looking for a new job as a mobile developer and

01:36:01   IDA

01:36:03   Great beautiful new list app for the iPhone and iPad you can find out more about that at nice mohawk

01:36:11   calm

01:36:12   Happen to know that the developer of IDA has in fact a very nice mohawk

01:36:16   It's true

01:36:20   I wonder if that's you know, I don't know if that's legal though

01:36:22   If he asked if you could require all of your employees to have a mohawk

01:36:26   That would be a good one. I do know that Ben Ben Lockman know the founder of the company does now

01:36:32   He's kind of stuck with I have to ask him about that now that he's named the company nice mohawk

01:36:35   I wonder if he's kind of stuck with the haircut, right?

01:36:37   I mean, he's 60 still have the mohawk even though he's no hair

01:36:40   He has to get a hair hair implants to keep the mohawk going

01:36:45   Right, like it would have been trouble for Apple if they were somehow named in 1978 after

01:36:50   Steve Jobs then thick luscious head full of hair.

01:36:59   I want to prove them.

01:37:01   [BLANK_AUDIO]