ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► As we've already discussed, I have my paneled setup of Windows and the one...

00:00:05 ◼   ► Where does that accent come from? It's not a Connecticut thing.

00:00:08 ◼   ► I wasn't aware I had one.

00:00:09 ◼   ► The word for the thing that you cook in and the first syllable for your arrangement of Windows.

00:00:14 ◼   ► P-A-N-E-L versus P-A-N.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Panel?

00:00:17 ◼   ► Right.

00:00:18 ◼   ► How do you pronounce it?

00:00:20 ◼   ► Not the same way as the thing that you cook in.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Well, he says "pan-el."

00:00:24 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Wait, what do you cook in?

00:00:26 ◼   ► A pan.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Oh.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Not a pan.

00:00:30 ◼   ► So, wait, so I'm…

00:00:31 ◼   ► You say them both the same. You say, "I cook in a pan, and I have a bunch of panels."

00:00:36 ◼   ► Yeah. So how would you say it?

00:00:37 ◼   ► "I cook in a pan, I have a bunch of panels."

00:00:40 ◼   ► That sounded the exact… Are you trolling me right now? That sounded exactly the same.

00:00:44 ◼   ► "Panelize the waveforms."

00:00:45 ◼   ► No, I don't.

00:00:46 ◼   ► "Pan panels, pan panels." Marco, you said it. What do you have going on over there?

00:00:54 ◼   ► I cook in a pan.

00:00:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:56 ◼   ► And I have panels.

00:00:57 ◼   ► Hmm, interesting middle ground. They're slightly different from each other.

00:01:01 ◼   ► I don't understand what's—am I hammered? What is happening? I can't hear the difference.

00:01:05 ◼   ► What is going on right now? Is this what being colorblind feels like? What the hell is happening?

00:01:12 ◼   ► All right, so we talked a lot last week about onboarding screens and why they're there,

00:01:19 ◼   ► what is their purpose, whether they're good, whether they're bad, etc. And I was informed

00:01:23 ◼   ► that the reason that these screens are happening is because of GDPR, which I know almost nothing

00:01:32 ◼   ► about, and I've been a little busy, and so I'm a poor chief summarizer-in-chief, but

00:01:36 ◼   ► nevertheless, GDPR is a General Data Protection Regulation, which is something that the EU

00:01:43 ◼   ► passed recently and has come into effect, or is coming into effect very, very, very

00:01:47 ◼   ► soon.

00:01:48 ◼   ► Oh, it becomes enforceable from the 25th of May, 2018, so we are coming up on it now.

00:01:53 ◼   ► I guess this doesn't apply to Britain too soon.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Anyway, the point is, the point is, sorry everybody, the point is, apparently it talks

00:02:02 ◼   ► about how companies store your data and tries to give you more control of your data, and

00:02:08 ◼   ► I've been told that that is the genesis of all of these onboarding screens.

00:02:12 ◼   ► I'm not sure if I buy that because I bet that screen is going to be everywhere, not

00:02:16 ◼   ► just in Europe, and it's not like Apple is above doing region-specific UIs.

00:02:20 ◼   ► I do a bunch of stuff that I think is only visible in China, for instance.

00:02:24 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:02:25 ◼   ► Maybe, yeah.

00:02:26 ◼   ► On the other hand, I feel like this GDPR thing, which I'm basically just learning about

00:02:30 ◼   ► now, because I didn't actually follow your link in the show notes, reminds me of the

00:02:33 ◼   ► European cookie regulation stuff.

00:02:35 ◼   ► Do you remember that?

00:02:36 ◼   ► Oh, yes.

00:02:37 ◼   ► I think you have to remember, I think it's still in effect.

00:02:38 ◼   ► Like if you go to—they got to throw up a pop-up that says, "Just so you know, this

00:02:42 ◼   ► website is going to use cookies to keep track of you.

00:02:44 ◼   ► Agree or disagree," right?

00:02:45 ◼   ► It's another example of properly motivated but ill-conceived legislation where the motivation

00:02:53 ◼   ► is pure, like there's these computers and they potentially could be storing us, personal

00:02:58 ◼   ► information and tracking us, which by the way they totally do.

00:03:01 ◼   ► Let's do something with the law to deal with that.

00:03:04 ◼   ► But this, you know, the impulse to do this comes really early on in the history of the

00:03:10 ◼   ► web, when the scariest thing out there is a cookie, right?

00:03:14 ◼   ► And the legislation is, I know, let's make every website in the world annoying forever.

00:03:19 ◼   ► And let's never do anything else related to other kinds of tracking that'll be much, much

00:03:22 ◼   ► worse than cookies.

00:03:24 ◼   ► And like so many other laws, it just sits there until someone who's going to have the

00:03:28 ◼   ► motivation say, "You know, we should stop doing that because it's dumb."

00:03:32 ◼   ► Or we should realize the folly of this particular technique of trying to get people to grapple

00:03:38 ◼   ► with privacy.

00:03:41 ◼   ► Because if you say this is the way we should deal with everything, then you've got to have

00:03:44 ◼   ► stuff like that for all forms of JavaScript, every kind of local storage, all the Flash-based

00:03:49 ◼   ► super cookie, whatever thing.

00:03:51 ◼   ► It never ends and you'd have to plow through 50 layers of click wrap, as they call it,

00:03:57 ◼   ► to get to the website that you want.

00:04:00 ◼   ► So if there's some new kind of legislation that says, by the way, every time you launch

00:04:04 ◼   ► an application you've got to throw a thing in someone's face, which I don't think that's

00:04:06 ◼   ► what this GDPR thing says.

00:04:08 ◼   ► But if there were such a thing, I think that would be sort of the modern equivalent of

00:04:12 ◼   ► the cookie legislation, perhaps motivated by a noble intent, but ill-conceived, badly

00:04:21 ◼   ► implemented, and sure to age badly.

00:04:24 ◼   ► So we'll see.

00:04:25 ◼   ► Maybe when these things roll out and Apple talks about them on stage, maybe they will

00:04:30 ◼   ► make a pitch in that direction.

00:04:32 ◼   ► But as far as I can tell, it looks a lot more like what we talked about last show, a way

00:04:36 ◼   ► for Apple to advertise one of its competitive advantages and to provide some reassurance

00:04:40 ◼   ► and to explain what the applications do in a more clear way than just showing an empty

00:04:45 ◼   ► list view.

00:04:46 ◼   ► Yeah, we'll see.

00:04:47 ◼   ► But supposedly that is kind of the genesis for this.

00:04:51 ◼   ► There's also going to be a link in the show notes.

00:04:53 ◼   ► Smashing Magazine has "How GDPR will change the way you develop," which talks about

00:04:59 ◼   ► kind of how all this will affect developers.

00:05:03 ◼   ► And the rumblings I've heard through various sources is that this is a bigger deal than

00:05:07 ◼   ► any of us Americans are realizing because it doesn't seem to apply to us, but it applies

00:05:13 ◼   ► to any of us that have, you know, code that reaches more than one country, more than just

00:05:17 ◼   ► America.

00:05:18 ◼   ► So.

00:05:19 ◼   ► And by the way, I think it is possible to make good legislation to protect consumers'

00:05:22 ◼   ► privacy.

00:05:23 ◼   ► It's just really hard to do when it comes to tech because, you know, the tendency is

00:05:27 ◼   ► to pick whatever the specifics of the technology are at the moment and attack them and demonize

00:05:31 ◼   ► them when really it's a much more general concern. And historically speaking, legislative bodies have

00:05:36 ◼   ► not had a good track record with legislating technology, essentially. Like, understanding

00:05:42 ◼   ► what the underlying issue is rather than attacking a specific technology as the one and only

00:05:47 ◼   ► vehicle through which this issue will manifest. And that's never true. Like,

00:05:51 ◼   ► maybe that, you know, cookies were how privacy manifested a long, long time ago. Privacy issues

00:05:57 ◼   ► Choose manifest in the following decades in so many more important ways than cookies,

00:06:02 ◼   ► and yet the legislation just sits there staring at cookies, which is why you can't really

00:06:06 ◼   ► legislate to technical details.

00:06:09 ◼   ► You have to figure out what it is that we're really concerned about and make a law such

00:06:13 ◼   ► that it applies in a useful way to any future technology, but also at the same time doesn't

00:06:19 ◼   ► preclude future technologies that may run afoul of the letter of law if not the spirit.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Making laws is hard.

00:06:25 ◼   ► Making laws about technology is doubly hard.

00:06:27 ◼   ► One way to help with this, by the way, I'm saying this mostly from a US perspective,

00:06:30 ◼   ► I have no idea what's done in Europe, is perhaps take the advice and consultation of people

00:06:35 ◼   ► who know things about technology, who don't have a vested interest in one way or the other.

00:06:39 ◼   ► Kind of like talking to mathematicians and cryptographic experts when you make any laws

00:06:44 ◼   ► related to cryptography, which the US seems completely incapable of doing, or they talk

00:06:48 ◼   ► to them and ignore what they say, and say, "I think I'll listen to industry lobbying

00:06:52 ◼   ► groups instead."

00:06:53 ◼   ► They have all the money, so they must know what they're talking about.

00:06:55 ◼   ► I mean, to be fair, like, we can't even agree that facts are facts.

00:06:59 ◼   ► I know, I know. I'm thinking back to a, you know, a more naive time when we could simply

00:07:07 ◼   ► just complain about how technologically illiterate our legislative bodies are, and now we have

00:07:11 ◼   ► much more pressing concerns.

00:07:13 ◼   ► And now I'm sad. Thanks for that, Jon. All right, last week we talked about how if you

00:07:19 ◼   ► are a member of one or 30 Slack teams, you can actually, a little known fact, you can

00:07:25 ◼   ► access Slack via IRC. I don't know when this announcement actually happened, but as it

00:07:30 ◼   ► turns out, we got word within moments of releasing the episode that that's going away now. So

00:07:38 ◼   ► it has been disabled for Slack teams that haven't enabled it, and I think it will be

00:07:41 ◼   ► the, it will be phased out in the next some duration of time. So, whoops.

00:07:47 ◼   ► I'm not surprised by this because it totally seems like a thing that Slack might do early

00:07:54 ◼   ► on as part of it.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Let's make sure you have no excuse not to use Slack, right?

00:07:59 ◼   ► And then as Slack becomes more successful and as they can compare the statistics of

00:08:03 ◼   ► how many people use our IRC gateway versus how much does it take to maintain it versus

00:08:07 ◼   ► how much does it help our strategic intent of the company, it's probably used by a

00:08:12 ◼   ► vanishingly small percentage of Slack's customers.

00:08:15 ◼   ► They no longer are in that mode where they need to convince people to use Slack because

00:08:18 ◼   ► the ball started rolling and it probably does take some amount to maintain and it's just

00:08:22 ◼   ► a distraction so it kind of makes sense that it goes away.

00:08:25 ◼   ► But I bet if you use it, you're probably pretty annoyed by that.

00:08:27 ◼   ► JONATHAN: Indeed.

00:08:28 ◼   ► So that happened coincidentally right around the time we were bringing up on the show that,

00:08:32 ◼   ► hey, you can do this too.

00:08:34 ◼   ► Moving on.

00:08:35 ◼   ► Amazon's Alexa is gaining a new follow-up mode, which no longer requires a trigger word

00:08:39 ◼   ► after every request.

00:08:41 ◼   ► So what will happen is Alexa will listen for five seconds after your previous request to

00:08:44 ◼   ► to see if you're wanting to ask another question.

00:08:46 ◼   ► The blue ring on your echo will remain lit

00:08:48 ◼   ► and it will indicate that she is still listening.

00:08:51 ◼   ► In this time period, you can ask her another question,

00:08:53 ◼   ► otherwise she'll go back to sleep mode.

00:08:56 ◼   ► That's cool.

00:08:56 ◼   ► - See, this to me, this is, it sounds cool

00:09:01 ◼   ► until you actually think about how that works in practice,

00:09:03 ◼   ► and I think you can actually enable it now,

00:09:05 ◼   ► but the problem with that is,

00:09:08 ◼   ► it's not addressing what you actually want,

00:09:10 ◼   ► which is what you actually want is to say,

00:09:12 ◼   ► cylinder, play El Scorcho by Weezer,

00:09:15 ◼   ► and turn the volume to five.

00:09:17 ◼   ► You know, like you want to be able to do multiple commands

00:09:19 ◼   ► in one sentence, or in one command,

00:09:22 ◼   ► and they can't do that right now.

00:09:24 ◼   ► None of them can, as far as I know.

00:09:26 ◼   ► And that's what you actually want.

00:09:27 ◼   ► What this feature does is,

00:09:29 ◼   ► hey cylinder, play El Scorcho by Weezer,

00:09:31 ◼   ► and then it says okay,

00:09:33 ◼   ► and then it starts playing.

00:09:37 ◼   ► Like you don't want that, like that is not what you--

00:09:41 ◼   ► - I don't think it's stopping on the command.

00:09:43 ◼   ► I think all it's doing is, I mean,

00:09:44 ◼   ► my reading of this article is all it's doing is

00:09:47 ◼   ► it will immediately start playing the song that you asked for

00:09:49 ◼   ► but for the next five seconds,

00:09:51 ◼   ► anything else you say will try to interpret as a command

00:09:54 ◼   ► as if you had prefixed it with "Hey, cylinder."

00:09:55 ◼   ► - Right, but then like, I'm pretty sure

00:09:57 ◼   ► then the volume still stays ducked and it's just like,

00:10:00 ◼   ► I feel like the percentage of the time

00:10:03 ◼   ► that's going to actually do what you want

00:10:06 ◼   ► versus the percentage of the time that it's going to either

00:10:08 ◼   ► keep listening to something you say afterwards

00:10:10 ◼   ► you did intend for it to be a command,

00:10:12 ◼   ► or just delay what you were trying to do,

00:10:14 ◼   ► or do something, or you thought it was still listening,

00:10:17 ◼   ► gave it another command, but the five seconds had just ended.

00:10:21 ◼   ► I feel like the failure rate of that,

00:10:23 ◼   ► to do what people actually want,

00:10:25 ◼   ► is going to be way, way too high to be acceptable.

00:10:30 ◼   ► It's not gonna be good enough of the time.

00:10:33 ◼   ► Whereas, and it's also, to me, that's not smart.

00:10:36 ◼   ► That's just a very small implementation detail.

00:10:40 ◼   ► That's not actually making the service smarter.

00:10:42 ◼   ► What we actually need is for all these voice assistants

00:10:44 ◼   ► to become smarter and to recognize compound commands.

00:10:48 ◼   ► That's what people actually want.

00:10:51 ◼   ► Play El Scorcho by Weezer and turn the volume to five.

00:10:53 ◼   ► Set a rice timer for 10 minutes

00:10:55 ◼   ► and a pasta timer for seven minutes.

00:10:57 ◼   ► This is what people actually want to do.

00:10:59 ◼   ► And so, you know, little tricks like this,

00:11:01 ◼   ► like, that's a dumb hack.

00:11:04 ◼   ► Really what we need is for the voice assistant to get better

00:11:07 ◼   ► to actually recognize multiple commands

00:11:09 ◼   ► the way humans will actually give them.

00:11:11 ◼   ► So this is also not what I was asking for last week.

00:11:13 ◼   ► I think that's why it was sent to us as follow-up.

00:11:15 ◼   ► What I was asking for was context awareness such that follow-up commands could be aware

00:11:19 ◼   ► of what you asked for previously and interpret your subsequent commands in light of what

00:11:24 ◼   ► you had just asked it based on, like the way a person would.

00:11:27 ◼   ► If you say something to a person and then an hour later you say something else, there's

00:11:30 ◼   ► no way they're going to connect that to the context of the last thing you said to

00:11:32 ◼   ► them.

00:11:33 ◼   ► But if you say something to them and then add an addendum two seconds later, they have

00:11:36 ◼   ► the context of the first command, you know, to understand what you mean. And the key part

00:11:41 ◼   ► of that is that the second thing that you say is not itself a complete command. It relies

00:11:46 ◼   ► on the knowledge of the context. That's why I said last week that it probably requires

00:11:50 ◼   ► some more local hardware, because you would want, at least for privacy reasons or whatever,

00:11:54 ◼   ► you'd want some of that local context awareness to happen, you know, locally. You don't need

00:11:59 ◼   ► the server to keep track of like your session or whatever, so it can understand that. I

00:12:03 ◼   ► I think we can keep some of that locally.

00:12:06 ◼   ► Compound commands would also be good and actually seem much easier to me than what I'm asking

00:12:09 ◼   ► for because it's two commands and there's a joiner and you can figure it out and break

00:12:14 ◼   ► it up into pieces.

00:12:15 ◼   ► But I think it's more natural to have a conversation to hone in on what you want because that's

00:12:20 ◼   ► what you do with other people than to formulate even a single command, let alone a compound

00:12:27 ◼   ► command as if, as I said a couple weeks ago, you're playing a verbal text adventure where

00:12:32 ◼   ► maybe you don't have to get the syntax just right,

00:12:34 ◼   ► but you understand that you're issuing a command

00:12:36 ◼   ► and now maybe you can issue compound commands,

00:12:38 ◼   ► but it's not the way you would yell into other room

00:12:41 ◼   ► for Marco to add something to your shopping list.

00:12:43 ◼   ► You don't have to formulate a command for Marco.

00:12:45 ◼   ► You can basically say it in any way that you want,

00:12:47 ◼   ► including addendums and revisions and you know what,

00:12:52 ◼   ► nevermind about that, just get the other thing.

00:12:54 ◼   ► You can say stuff like that

00:12:55 ◼   ► and it knows what the heck you're talking about.

00:12:57 ◼   ► And the cylinder does not.

00:12:58 ◼   ► And that is a really tall order.

00:13:02 ◼   ► delay mode or follow-up mode or whatever is not close to that, but it at least shows that

00:13:10 ◼   ► they understand that the current mode of wake word or wake phrase followed by single command

00:13:17 ◼   ► followed by I forget you exist is pretty primitive.

00:13:22 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:13:23 ◼   ► - Also, I feel like this has a Simon Says problem, where if you get accustomed to not

00:13:31 ◼   ► not saying the wake word before every command you give,

00:13:35 ◼   ► that doesn't work all the time.

00:13:37 ◼   ► Like, you can't say, "Cylinder, play a scorcher by Weezer,"

00:13:40 ◼   ► and then 10 seconds later say, "Volume five,"

00:13:44 ◼   ► 'cause it won't recognize it.

00:13:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, you have to say, "Simon says volume five."

00:13:46 ◼   ► - You gotta say, "Cylinder volume five," right.

00:13:49 ◼   ► But sometimes you don't have to say that.

00:13:51 ◼   ► If you say it within five seconds

00:13:53 ◼   ► of the previous command being completed,

00:13:55 ◼   ► then you can omit the word cylinder.

00:13:57 ◼   ► And it's like, well, that's gonna be confusing.

00:14:00 ◼   ► it's gonna trip you up when,

00:14:02 ◼   ► like it's gonna increase your error rate.

00:14:03 ◼   ► Like this is, again, this is just one of the reasons

00:14:05 ◼   ► why this isn't a solution.

00:14:06 ◼   ► I feel like, at a high level,

00:14:09 ◼   ► I think what kind of makes me sad

00:14:11 ◼   ► about the voice assistant market

00:14:13 ◼   ► is that all of us, like Apple fans,

00:14:16 ◼   ► are accustomed to somebody being,

00:14:18 ◼   ► you know, historically Apple,

00:14:20 ◼   ► being really good at designing really smart software

00:14:24 ◼   ► and really good software experiences.

00:14:27 ◼   ► And the rest of the industry

00:14:28 ◼   ► has always been pretty crappy overall.

00:14:30 ◼   ► there's been a couple of bright spots here or there,

00:14:32 ◼   ► but not many.

00:14:34 ◼   ► And I feel like we're all having to use

00:14:37 ◼   ► Amazon and Google stuff,

00:14:39 ◼   ► and Amazon and Google have always been pretty rough,

00:14:42 ◼   ► especially Amazon, pretty rough at user interaction design

00:14:46 ◼   ► and software usability design.

00:14:49 ◼   ► And what we're seeing here is just like,

00:14:52 ◼   ► you know, tech companies making stuff that's mediocre,

00:14:55 ◼   ► which is what we've always seen,

00:14:56 ◼   ► and Apple is always the one who could save us from that,

00:14:58 ◼   ► but unfortunately in this particular market,

00:15:01 ◼   ► they just seem not capable of that for whatever reason.

00:15:05 ◼   ► And that just makes me sad, 'cause it's like

00:15:06 ◼   ► usually Apple will be the ones to save us

00:15:08 ◼   ► and to make the really good thing for people like us

00:15:12 ◼   ► who cared about good experiences

00:15:14 ◼   ► and all the details and everything.

00:15:15 ◼   ► And in voice assistants, they just aren't capable

00:15:17 ◼   ► of doing that for whatever reason, and it's kinda sad.

00:15:20 ◼   ► - I continue to think that this is much more

00:15:21 ◼   ► in Google's wheelhouse than Apple's,

00:15:23 ◼   ► because yes, it's a part of user interface design,

00:15:25 ◼   ► specifically this realm of translating words that a human comes up with into an intent

00:15:34 ◼   ► is what the Google search box is all about. It frustrates some of us because it no longer

00:15:38 ◼   ► works like AltaVista where you can formulate like a Boolean query with exact substring

00:15:41 ◼   ► matching and get predictable results. But that Google search box is all about saying

00:15:46 ◼   ► people just type lots of stuff there and you can type things there and I'm still amazed

00:15:52 ◼   ► at the Google search box. I type things there and it finds what I meant for it to find,

00:15:57 ◼   ► and I don't even know how it's doing it. Like, I didn't—it's not—you know,

00:16:01 ◼   ► how did you get what I was trying—you know, you go to the page or whatever and like none

00:16:05 ◼   ► of those words are on this page. Like, you somehow figured out what I meant. And granted,

00:16:10 ◼   ► it's still a single command and response and it's not a conversation, but Google

00:16:14 ◼   ► was founded on that strength of going beyond the sort of simple direct computer search

00:16:20 ◼   ► to intelligent interpretation of human-generated words and translating that to an intent and

00:16:26 ◼   ► satisfying the request, despite spelling errors, weird phrasing, you know, the foibles of humans,

00:16:34 ◼   ► right? And the verbal one of that, now that speech-to-text is as good as it is, it maps

00:16:40 ◼   ► very well onto the search problem in that you have to figure out intent, and you can

00:16:46 ◼   ► get the words from it pretty well, and then you have to figure out intent, and same thing

00:16:48 ◼   ► with spelling errors, same thing with homonyms or whatever, that Google's good at figuring

00:16:52 ◼   ► that out.

00:16:53 ◼   ► That's always been Google's strength, so I totally look to them to be the ones to figure

00:16:57 ◼   ► out this aspect of user interface before Apple, and I think they are doing it better than

00:17:02 ◼   ► Apple.

00:17:03 ◼   ► But I agree that all of them are not as good as I could hope.

00:17:08 ◼   ► Apple is way behind, and Amazon and Google have been ahead, but I'm waiting for them

00:17:13 ◼   ► both to take the next small step.

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00:19:41 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:19:44 ◼   ► - Well, did you guys see there was some sort of like drama

00:19:47 ◼   ► about Siri that happened today?

00:19:49 ◼   ► I did not get a chance to look up what happened,

00:19:51 ◼   ► but apparently someone was like,

00:19:53 ◼   ► "Oh, Siri's garbage and it's not my fault."

00:19:56 ◼   ► Did you know what I'm talking about?

00:19:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know it's a story on the information,

00:20:00 ◼   ► which when I see that website, I always think of Marco

00:20:02 ◼   ► and I'm like, there's someone.

00:20:04 ◼   ► - The website?

00:20:06 ◼   ► - It's much worse.

00:20:06 ◼   ► It's much worse than the magazine ever was

00:20:08 ◼   ► because the information is like, anyway.

00:20:10 ◼   ► - You know, the information is really spammy.

00:20:12 ◼   ► I really don't like, like, they signed me up

00:20:14 ◼   ► to their mailing list when they launched

00:20:16 ◼   ► as if I had signed up saying I was interested.

00:20:18 ◼   ► And as a result, even though I have never responded

00:20:20 ◼   ► to anything, never signed up for anything,

00:20:22 ◼   ► they still incessantly spam me.

00:20:25 ◼   ► And I really, like, you know, I know it's kind of low

00:20:29 ◼   ► to call them out publicly for this,

00:20:30 ◼   ► but that is not okay for anybody to do.

00:20:33 ◼   ► It just drives me nuts.

00:20:35 ◼   ► - You can unsubscribe.

00:20:36 ◼   ► I just unsubscribed today speaking of them.

00:20:37 ◼   ► - I did, because it finally drove me that nuts.

00:20:40 ◼   ► but I'm just like, I never signed up for this,

00:20:42 ◼   ► and all you're doing is promoting articles

00:20:45 ◼   ► that I can't see because I'm not gonna pay

00:20:47 ◼   ► 40 bucks a month to a spammer.

00:20:50 ◼   ► And so, it drives me nuts.

00:20:52 ◼   ► People play fast and loose with mailing lists all the time,

00:20:55 ◼   ► and the mailing list companies,

00:20:57 ◼   ► like MailChimp and everything,

00:20:58 ◼   ► they're all complicit in this

00:20:59 ◼   ► because they don't require double opt-in

00:21:00 ◼   ► when you import a mailing list

00:21:01 ◼   ► from another service, allegedly.

00:21:03 ◼   ► And so, they're all complicit

00:21:04 ◼   ► because they all make spamming people en masse really easy,

00:21:08 ◼   ► And as a result, I get on all sorts of spam lists

00:21:10 ◼   ► that appear like I signed up for them.

00:21:13 ◼   ► And it's a dirty, scammy trick when you're launching

00:21:17 ◼   ► something like this to use a PR list you find somewhere

00:21:20 ◼   ► or you buy somewhere.

00:21:22 ◼   ► And the information was one of the companies that does this,

00:21:24 ◼   ► one of the many companies that does this.

00:21:25 ◼   ► And so I just have zero respect for them, zero.

00:21:28 ◼   ► And I know it's a dumb reason,

00:21:30 ◼   ► but that's how nuts this drives me.

00:21:33 ◼   ► - Well anyway, this explains why none of us

00:21:34 ◼   ► actually read the article, because none of us have paid

00:21:36 ◼   ► the information, but we know about it because they're good at spamming people and letting

00:21:41 ◼   ► them know this already exists. It was, I think, summarized on 9to5Mac, which is also kind

00:21:45 ◼   ► of a scummy practice of like taking a paywall article and then basically rewriting it worse

00:21:51 ◼   ► on your site so that people read your site instead of the paywall thing.

00:21:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I love this business. It's such a great business. I should really go back to publishing

00:21:59 ◼   ► web content. That sounds like a lot of fun. I mean, I can understand like a paragraph

00:22:03 ◼   ► and a link seems reasonable, but once you've gone on for a page and a half, laboriously summarizing

00:22:08 ◼   ► an article that you didn't write, anyway. The story as far as I could tell was a bunch of reports

00:22:14 ◼   ► from people inside Apple or ex-Apple people who know about the internal workings of Siri over the

00:22:19 ◼   ► years saying how and where things went wrong with specific quotes from specific people assigning

00:22:24 ◼   ► blame to other people, not to themselves, explaining the situation. It's just the typical,

00:22:29 ◼   ► you know, things aren't going great inside a big company, you know, product launches and it's not

00:22:34 ◼   ► scalable and it's band-aided and everyone points fingers about who set the priorities or what they

00:22:39 ◼   ► should be doing and how often it should be updated. I mean, it's mostly details that may be, like,

00:22:44 ◼   ► interesting, you know, or like from a business case perspective if you're learning about how

00:22:51 ◼   ► businesses run, interesting, but like practically speaking, I care less and less about the internal

00:22:58 ◼   ► political goings-on in Apple and mostly just say, "That's Apple's job to figure out. I'm not

00:23:04 ◼   ► running Apple. I'm not an executive there. I'm not a high-level manager." That's their job as

00:23:09 ◼   ► a company, to figure out how to corral the people to produce results. And if it doesn't go well,

00:23:16 ◼   ► I'm not that interested in why it didn't go well, who was to blame, which person was more difficult,

00:23:20 ◼   ► which person made the big wrong strategic decision at what point. They just need to figure that out.

00:23:25 ◼   ► But on the outside, they say, "Look, how's the product doing?"

00:23:27 ◼   ► And the product, as we've discussed in the past, not doing that great.

00:23:30 ◼   ► And they've had a long time, so I hope they get it sorted out.

00:23:32 ◼   ► I don't even want to get angry about Siri again.

00:23:35 ◼   ► So let's just move on.

00:23:37 ◼   ► And instead, let's get angry about keyboards.

00:23:38 ◼   ► Marco, this is your cue.

00:23:41 ◼   ► Apple apparently has patented a keyboard that cannot be defeated by crumbs.

00:23:46 ◼   ► Marco, I know you have been celebrating.

00:23:49 ◼   ► You are swinging from the rafters.

00:23:51 ◼   ► You are so excited.

00:23:52 ◼   ► So I don't know when we're gonna expect to see this,

00:23:55 ◼   ► but hopefully it will mean that I don't need

00:23:58 ◼   ► to invest in compressed air anymore.

00:24:00 ◼   ► - I mean, this is a problem I don't have

00:24:01 ◼   ► because I have a laptop that has a functioning keyboard.

00:24:03 ◼   ► - That's true, I walked right into that one.

00:24:06 ◼   ► - But why do you think Marco would be excited by this?

00:24:08 ◼   ► This seems like Marco's nightmare to me

00:24:10 ◼   ► because Marco loves the fact that the keyboard he hates

00:24:12 ◼   ► also has a terrible reliability problem

00:24:14 ◼   ► that allows him to righteously rail against it.

00:24:16 ◼   ► Imagine if they made that keyboard 100% reliable.

00:24:18 ◼   ► Then all he's got is,

00:24:20 ◼   ► this keyboard works all the time, but I hate it.

00:24:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:24:23 ◼   ► I mean, to be fair, when it first came out,

00:24:24 ◼   ► before where you knew how badly it would break all the time,

00:24:26 ◼   ► that is what I did.

00:24:27 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:24:28 ◼   ► And also, the arrow key placement is still horrendous.

00:24:31 ◼   ► Not having the gap above the arrows,

00:24:34 ◼   ► above the left and right, is unforgivable.

00:24:36 ◼   ► But anyway, look,

00:24:37 ◼   ► I'm of two minds of this.

00:24:41 ◼   ► You know, number one, John's right.

00:24:44 ◼   ► In a way, I don't want to see this keyboard succeed

00:24:47 ◼   ► and be fixed.

00:24:48 ◼   ► I'm not gonna lie, that is part of my motivation,

00:24:50 ◼   ► because I don't like it so much.

00:24:52 ◼   ► But also, keep in mind I had those keyboards for,

00:24:55 ◼   ► what, about a year before I finally gave up?

00:24:57 ◼   ► - Across 13 different laptops.

00:24:59 ◼   ► - Three, and so I had the keyboard,

00:25:02 ◼   ► and I got used to it enough.

00:25:05 ◼   ► I never liked it, but I was able to function with it

00:25:09 ◼   ► until it stopped working reliably.

00:25:11 ◼   ► And so the reality is I know,

00:25:15 ◼   ► I gotta choose my battles here.

00:25:17 ◼   ► I know that a lot of people out there don't care

00:25:19 ◼   ► or even like this keyboard.

00:25:21 ◼   ► I know that Apple is always going to press

00:25:25 ◼   ► to make these things thinner,

00:25:26 ◼   ► and I think Apple has shown across multiple years

00:25:30 ◼   ► and multiple products that they only care

00:25:34 ◼   ► about making the keyboard thinner,

00:25:36 ◼   ► and they will make some efforts

00:25:38 ◼   ► to make the thin keyboard tolerable,

00:25:41 ◼   ► but that they are no longer interested

00:25:43 ◼   ► in keeping it a good keyboard

00:25:45 ◼   ► if that means they can't make it thinner.

00:25:48 ◼   ► And so I just have to kind of resign myself to accept that.

00:25:51 ◼   ► I'm not gonna rail on this for a half hour

00:25:53 ◼   ► like I usually do because I fought this battle,

00:25:57 ◼   ► I lost this battle, and I'm going to continue

00:25:59 ◼   ► to lose this battle into the future.

00:26:01 ◼   ► The last thing I think Apple's gonna do

00:26:03 ◼   ► in the next MacBook revision

00:26:05 ◼   ► is to make the keyboard thicker.

00:26:07 ◼   ► It's just not gonna happen.

00:26:09 ◼   ► And I fundamentally don't believe

00:26:11 ◼   ► that they can make a keyboard with this little travel good.

00:26:17 ◼   ► you just don't think they can do it.

00:26:18 ◼   ► - Good as far as you're concerned though,

00:26:19 ◼   ► because lots of people do really like the keyboard.

00:26:21 ◼   ► I mean, Casey and I included have basically been converted

00:26:23 ◼   ► to this new keyboard.

00:26:25 ◼   ► It's just the reliability issues

00:26:26 ◼   ► and as you said, the key layout.

00:26:28 ◼   ► - Right, and so basically,

00:26:30 ◼   ► if they can fix the reliability problems,

00:26:33 ◼   ► yeah, I would love if they made the keyboard

00:26:35 ◼   ► a different style,

00:26:36 ◼   ► but if they can fix the reliability problems,

00:26:40 ◼   ► that's the best I can hope for.

00:26:42 ◼   ► - The key layout is just sitting right there too,

00:26:44 ◼   ► because there can be divisive opinions about

00:26:46 ◼   ► like how this keyboard feels or not. Like some people like it, some people don't, fine.

00:26:49 ◼   ► But I feel like key layout changes, there are certain key layout changes that would

00:26:54 ◼   ► be universally praised from the perspective of using the keyboard, and the only naysayers

00:26:59 ◼   ► would be aesthetic. For example, inverted T, full size, breaking the rectangle of the

00:27:03 ◼   ► keyboard. Aesthetically, people would hate that. It would be like the notch on the keyboard.

00:27:07 ◼   ► It would be like an asymmetrical notch on the bottom of your keyboard, and those people

00:27:10 ◼   ► would yell about it. But from the perspective of people who type, how does it feel to type

00:27:15 ◼   ► I don't see anybody saying please bring back the half size arrow keys with or without the gaps above them

00:27:20 ◼   ► I mean are there fans out there who would say please bring them back again?

00:27:23 ◼   ► I guess yes that here active I can imagine it but not from a functional perspective

00:27:27 ◼   ► Did you just say that you would bring asked to bring back the half hour keys?

00:27:31 ◼   ► Though what you mean the way I have them on my 2015 where the left and right are half height

00:27:35 ◼   ► No

00:27:36 ◼   ► I mean make a full height and have that have the rectangular shape that the

00:27:40 ◼   ► - These were defined to be broken.

00:27:42 ◼   ► - So basically have the up key in line

00:27:44 ◼   ► with the other ones now,

00:27:45 ◼   ► but have the down, left, and right

00:27:46 ◼   ► like in their own row below it?

00:27:48 ◼   ► - Yes, exactly, and have all of them be full-sized

00:27:50 ◼   ► and have gaps above them.

00:27:51 ◼   ► - I mean, that would be cool,

00:27:52 ◼   ► but they're never gonna do that, so yeah.

00:27:54 ◼   ► - I know, I'm just saying,

00:27:55 ◼   ► like there are key layout changes

00:27:57 ◼   ► that I think would be universally praised

00:27:59 ◼   ► from a functional perspective,

00:28:00 ◼   ► but derided only from an aesthetic perspective.

00:28:02 ◼   ► And I'm not even saying they're wrong,

00:28:03 ◼   ► 'cause I understand thinking that's ugly,

00:28:05 ◼   ► but boy, would that be nicer for people who use arrow keys.

00:28:09 ◼   ► which is, I think, everybody.

00:28:11 ◼   ► Like, who doesn't use the arrow keys a lot?

00:28:13 ◼   ► My son, oh god, when he's taking those online--

00:28:15 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:28:16 ◼   ► --those online coding courses.

00:28:18 ◼   ► These days.

00:28:18 ◼   ► He's using the mouse to move his insertion point in one space.

00:28:21 ◼   ► I'm just like, use the arrow keys.

00:28:23 ◼   ► Use them.

00:28:25 ◼   ► Like, stop.

00:28:25 ◼   ► He goes from the keyboard to the mouse to the keyboard

00:28:27 ◼   ► to the mouse.

00:28:27 ◼   ► Well, he can't reach them.

00:28:28 ◼   ► He can't figure out where they are,

00:28:29 ◼   ► because they're all the same height as everything else.

00:28:31 ◼   ► Oh, no, he's using a full-size Apple extended keyboard

00:28:33 ◼   ► with full-size arrow.

00:28:34 ◼   ► Are you kidding?

00:28:35 ◼   ► We're not using--

00:28:36 ◼   ► Not in my house.

00:28:37 ◼   ► Yeah, he's using real keyboards here.

00:28:40 ◼   ► And I even showed him the modifier

00:28:42 ◼   ► for moving a word at a time and beginning of end of line,

00:28:44 ◼   ► but just for single characters, seeing him take the mouse

00:28:47 ◼   ► and steer it to go to the left of the place

00:28:51 ◼   ► where he needs to insert a quotation mark

00:28:52 ◼   ► to match the other one.

00:28:53 ◼   ► It's like, just hit the left arrow once.

00:28:55 ◼   ► I swear to you, it will work.

00:28:57 ◼   ► And he's just not on that page.

00:28:58 ◼   ► This is what happens from not using computers

00:29:00 ◼   ► and only using iPads and iPhones your whole formative years.

00:29:03 ◼   ► You have no idea about moving the cursor with arrow keys.

00:29:07 ◼   ► - Oh, anyway, yeah, I wouldn't expect Apple

00:29:10 ◼   ► to do anything that's gonna make the keyboard

00:29:13 ◼   ► less attractive to the current Apple design team's aesthetic.

00:29:18 ◼   ► - I agree, unfortunately.

00:29:19 ◼   ► - They're just not gonna do it.

00:29:22 ◼   ► This is not a rare thing with Apple these days.

00:29:24 ◼   ► Look at the Apple TV remote, look at,

00:29:26 ◼   ► I mean, even look, there are regular keyboards

00:29:28 ◼   ► and mice and everything.

00:29:30 ◼   ► If they were willing to make it a little bit ugly,

00:29:31 ◼   ► they could make it better economically or feel better

00:29:33 ◼   ► or work better or whatever else, but they're not.

00:29:35 ◼   ► And it's easy to see both sides of this argument.

00:29:37 ◼   ► Like, we all argue like these things should work better,

00:29:40 ◼   ► design is how it works.

00:29:41 ◼   ► They argue we are printing money,

00:29:43 ◼   ► and this is how we like to design things,

00:29:44 ◼   ► and this is what looks good.

00:29:45 ◼   ► And people buy our stuff in part because it looks good.

00:29:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it is aesthetically better.

00:29:49 ◼   ► I think we would all agree it does look better

00:29:51 ◼   ► when the keyboard is just a rectangle.

00:29:52 ◼   ► Like it just does, like as a piece of art, as a, you know.

00:29:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, and look, Apple these days is really good

00:29:58 ◼   ► at designing beautiful things that kind of suck to use.

00:30:00 ◼   ► Like that's kind of what they're best at, right?

00:30:03 ◼   ► - It could even be argued that the uniformity

00:30:05 ◼   ► is the reason the right and left arrow keys

00:30:07 ◼   ► became full height, because those little gaps

00:30:09 ◼   ► were in asymmetry.

00:30:10 ◼   ► - I guarantee you that's the reason.

00:30:12 ◼   ► Because there's no other reason to do it,

00:30:14 ◼   ► it doesn't make them easier to use.

00:30:16 ◼   ► - The same reason that the bottom row of keys

00:30:17 ◼   ► is now the same height as all the other rows,

00:30:18 ◼   ► again, uniformity.

00:30:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh totally, yeah.

00:30:21 ◼   ► It's, you know, 'cause it's designed purely to aesthetics,

00:30:25 ◼   ► it's egotistical design.

00:30:26 ◼   ► It is indulgent design for the designers

00:30:29 ◼   ► to indulge themselves in what they think looks the best,

00:30:32 ◼   ► without regard to how things work.

00:30:35 ◼   ► Someone I think also pointed out that even on the external keyboards for desktop computers,

00:30:41 ◼   ► the bottom row of keys is now the same height as all the other ones.

00:30:44 ◼   ► I didn't actually check this because I don't have one of those new keyboards to compare

00:30:48 ◼   ► with, but I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case, if only for part-sharing reasons,

00:30:51 ◼   ► because you all know Apple likes to use the same keyboard across all of its laptops from

00:30:57 ◼   ► 12 inches to 17, which I will, you know, forever remember as a ridiculous thing. And now it

00:31:02 ◼   ► is only slightly less ridiculous. It's shared between the 15 and the 13 and the 12, I guess.

00:31:08 ◼   ► Oh, so on this, before we leave this, this bit of follow-up error on this, this patent,

00:31:13 ◼   ► the date of this patent is 2016, which makes me think like just as the original MacBooks

00:31:19 ◼   ► were coming out, was that 2016 or was that later?

00:31:22 ◼   ► They came out in early 2015, a year before, a year and a half before they brought this

00:31:26 ◼   ► keyboard to all of their laptops, during which it was very clear, during that year and a

00:31:30 ◼   ► half, that it failed a lot.

00:31:32 ◼   ► Yeah, so, but in 2016, they introduced the MacBook Pros with the same keyboard at the

00:31:37 ◼   ► same time they filed this patent. So it shows that they had been thinking about, at some

00:31:41 ◼   ► point, you know, before 2016, they had been investigating these different ways to seal

00:31:47 ◼   ► up the bottom of that thing. Now, I think I brought this up when we talked about the

00:31:51 ◼   ► original slimline keyboard, or maybe it was when we talked about the Touch Bar, but I

00:31:55 ◼   ► I think this is, I'll use this opportunity to once again promote the idea that I think

00:32:00 ◼   ► Apple would benefit from on all of its laptops.

00:32:02 ◼   ► This idea of sealing up the key caps with little membranes so that stuff can't get in

00:32:06 ◼   ► there, just take it to the next level and make these damn things waterproof.

00:32:09 ◼   ► If you can waterproof a phone, if you made a waterproof keyboard, which would also obviously

00:32:13 ◼   ► include as a side effect the inability to get crap underneath the keys, I would imagine,

00:32:17 ◼   ► I mean it doesn't have to necessarily, but I would imagine that could be part of it,

00:32:21 ◼   ► people will love you for it.

00:32:23 ◼   ► How many people, Casey, spill things on their laptops?

00:32:27 ◼   ► Is it beyond us, technologically speaking, to make a sort of sealed keyboard that feels

00:32:32 ◼   ► good?

00:32:33 ◼   ► I mean, maybe these patents are just patents because Apple figured out if you do this,

00:32:35 ◼   ► it makes the keyboard feel even worse.

00:32:36 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:32:37 ◼   ► We'll see if they ever produce something like this.

00:32:39 ◼   ► But –

00:32:40 ◼   ► Well, no, I mean, we kind of know that from the smart keyboard.

00:32:43 ◼   ► The iPad Pro smart keyboard has, I think, but the same butterfly switches, or at least

00:32:48 ◼   ► similar feeling switches, but it has like a membrane across the whole thing.

00:32:52 ◼   ► And so it is, I think, roughly water resistant at least.

00:32:57 ◼   ► But it doesn't get stuff under the keys.

00:32:59 ◼   ► It at least doesn't do that.

00:33:00 ◼   ► So we kind of know this is possible to do

00:33:03 ◼   ► with just a membrane.

00:33:04 ◼   ► I know that one of the Microsoft Surface notebook lines

00:33:07 ◼   ► does it too, and they have issues with it getting dirty

00:33:10 ◼   ► and looking really grimy and gross really fast,

00:33:12 ◼   ► but that's not to say that it has to go that way.

00:33:15 ◼   ► Maybe different materials choices

00:33:16 ◼   ► could have different results there.

00:33:18 ◼   ► Like, that's not actually that bad of a thing to try.

00:33:22 ◼   ► I don't know if it would feel better or worse

00:33:24 ◼   ► than what we have now, but like, the smart keyboard,

00:33:26 ◼   ► like I use the smart keyboard all the time on the iPad,

00:33:29 ◼   ► I wouldn't call it great, but it's tolerable,

00:33:32 ◼   ► and that's about what I can say for the notebook one as well

00:33:35 ◼   ► so it's just tolerable in slightly different ways,

00:33:37 ◼   ► but you know what, the smart keyboard keys

00:33:39 ◼   ► have never failed on me, not once,

00:33:40 ◼   ► because stuff can't get in there.

00:33:42 ◼   ► So it's not a ridiculous idea.

00:33:44 ◼   ► - Do you have the problems with the smart keyboard

00:33:46 ◼   ► with like, I think it was iOS 11 or something,

00:33:47 ◼   ► People are complaining the smart keyboard

00:33:48 ◼   ► doesn't work reliable anymore due to some change

00:33:50 ◼   ► in the debouncing firmware or some crap.

00:33:53 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, no, I mean, it's not, I haven't had,

00:33:55 ◼   ► I don't know if it's related to debouncing or not.

00:33:57 ◼   ► No, it definitely is less reliable.

00:33:59 ◼   ► That seems like an iOS software thing,

00:34:02 ◼   ► just like the way the apps behave

00:34:04 ◼   ► with the keyboard attached or detached.

00:34:05 ◼   ► It has been more buggy, rotation's been more buggy.

00:34:08 ◼   ► Yeah, it's been kind of a mess,

00:34:10 ◼   ► but I attribute that to iOS 11, but I don't know.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Anyway, I think one challenge you might have

00:34:15 ◼   ► with the idea of waterproofing a laptop

00:34:17 ◼   ► ventilation and cooling. Yeah, no, I mean, obviously the MacBook is your easiest one,

00:34:22 ◼   ► right? Because the reason I bring up this whole idea of waterproofing now is that Apple

00:34:27 ◼   ► has slowly been sealing up its laptops, not for the purpose of waterproofing, but just

00:34:31 ◼   ► for the purpose of Apple being Apple, like getting rid of moving parts and seams and

00:34:34 ◼   ► making them unibody and then the battery's not removable and then... I think another

00:34:37 ◼   ► way to look at this is decontenting? Eh, no, I mean, it's a simplification. It's moving

00:34:42 ◼   ► towards this platonic ideal of like this is a featureless, you know, smooth. They are

00:34:47 ◼   ► certainly featureless, right? And so the MacBook, no vents, right? You still have to deal with

00:34:52 ◼   ► the ports, which I think might be challenging because Apple doesn't get to define all those

00:34:56 ◼   ► ports. You have to come up with the sealed, but still repairable, internal or replaceable

00:35:00 ◼   ► USB-C port or whatever. But there's not a lot of holes in a 12-inch MacBook, right?

00:35:05 ◼   ► So I feel like that is a good candidate. If you can seal an iPad or an iPhone, you know,

00:35:10 ◼   ► It has a similar number of holes to a MacBook Adorable, the 12-inch Apple laptop.

00:35:17 ◼   ► For the ones with vents and fans, granted it's a lot harder, but even on those if you

00:35:21 ◼   ► say, "Look, it's not waterproof," but the top surface, the keyboard surface, if you

00:35:27 ◼   ► do a spill on it, you'll be okay.

00:35:30 ◼   ► The water will shed away and not be sucked into the vents and the top is sealed so that

00:35:36 ◼   ► it's waterproof so it can take a spill.

00:35:38 ◼   ► You can't dunk the thing in water, but it's better than it was before, where if you spell

00:35:42 ◼   ► on the keyboard, you're doomed and Apple will never repair your thing again.

00:35:45 ◼   ► And if this membrane keyboard, like if they do this for crumb reasons, I say while you're

00:35:50 ◼   ► in there, see what you can do about water, let's call it water resistance or something,

00:35:54 ◼   ► you know.

00:35:56 ◼   ► I just think it's kind of silly as time goes on that our phones can be dropped into a glass

00:36:03 ◼   ► of water and come back out okay, but our much more expensive laptops, like a pin drop of

00:36:11 ◼   ► water falls on the keyboard and filters down into the inside and starts corroding things

00:36:15 ◼   ► and it's all over.

00:36:16 ◼   ► One spec of dust, $700.

00:36:19 ◼   ► One spec of wet dust, $1,200.

00:36:21 ◼   ► Yeah, no, more than that.

00:36:22 ◼   ► It's like total replacement.

00:36:23 ◼   ► It's like, sorry, it's like probably like the phones.

00:36:25 ◼   ► Water got in this and we don't cover water damage.

00:36:29 ◼   ► I don't know if that's true of laptops, but I know the phones have those little water

00:36:31 ◼   ► damage sensor thingies on them that they yell at you about if it turns out your thing has

00:36:35 ◼   ► water damage.

00:36:36 ◼   ► No, it is also true of laptops.

00:36:38 ◼   ► Right.

00:36:39 ◼   ► Use desktop kids, they don't get wet.

00:36:41 ◼   ► Well, I don't know, they don't get wet unless Casey's around.

00:36:43 ◼   ► I bet he could find some way to get water into one of them.

00:36:45 ◼   ► Challenge accepted.

00:36:47 ◼   ► I would say hold my beer, but I'm going to need it.

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00:39:02 ◼   ► What do you guys think, I know this has been very well

00:39:07 ◼   ► covered, especially on the talk show a few days ago,

00:39:09 ◼   ► but what do you guys think of the rumors of a potential

00:39:12 ◼   ► MacBook Air update?

00:39:14 ◼   ► This to me I think is potentially very interesting.

00:39:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I heard that it was the talk show with--

00:39:20 ◼   ► - With Jason. - Snell was on, yeah,

00:39:21 ◼   ► Jason Snell and John Gruber were talking about that.

00:39:24 ◼   ► I kind of agree with Jason about his consternation of this like somehow we can't kill this laptop

00:39:29 ◼   ► and I'm mostly coming at it from a sort of Apple should be embarrassed angle.

00:39:34 ◼   ► Not so much that the MacBook Air is a bad machine but there is one part of the machine

00:39:38 ◼   ► I think is inexcusable and that's the screen.

00:39:40 ◼   ► Not because it's not in retina, like they made all the points on the show, some people

00:39:43 ◼   ► don't care about retina, some people can't even see the difference, but because it has

00:39:46 ◼   ► has such incredibly bad viewing angles, brightness,

00:39:50 ◼   ► and color reproduction, right?

00:39:52 ◼   ► It's just, at this point, when it was introduced, fine.

00:39:55 ◼   ► At this point, it is just a bad screen.

00:39:57 ◼   ► It looks worse than basically any new PC laptop screen

00:40:01 ◼   ► you could buy at any price.

00:40:02 ◼   ► - Wait, hold on, honest question.

00:40:04 ◼   ► Have you seen a 12-inch MacBook screen?

00:40:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, sure.

00:40:07 ◼   ► - Because if you look at the 12-inch

00:40:09 ◼   ► compared to the other higher-end ones,

00:40:11 ◼   ► the 12-inch screen is also noticeably worse

00:40:14 ◼   ► at things like viewing angle, color, everything.

00:40:16 ◼   ► It's not a good screen.

00:40:17 ◼   ► - But it's better than the Air.

00:40:20 ◼   ► - That's true, I'll give you that.

00:40:21 ◼   ► But it's not, it's still like a crap screen.

00:40:24 ◼   ► - It is not, oh, a slow down.

00:40:26 ◼   ► It is not a crap screen.

00:40:28 ◼   ► - When you compare it to a MacBook Pro screen,

00:40:31 ◼   ► even the old ones.

00:40:32 ◼   ► - I do that every day.

00:40:34 ◼   ► I would take the MacBook Adorable One any day.

00:40:37 ◼   ► - It's retina, so it's like way better than the MacBook.

00:40:39 ◼   ► But I'm just saying for color reproduction and viewing,

00:40:41 ◼   ► a thing that Apple used to pride itself on,

00:40:43 ◼   ► that they never really had crap monitors,

00:40:44 ◼   ► they always had pretty much the best monitors,

00:40:46 ◼   ► and they wouldn't let a really old monitor

00:40:48 ◼   ► stay around for a long time, that they would refresh.

00:40:50 ◼   ► And they have been refreshing the MacBook Air,

00:40:52 ◼   ► like ripping out the, you know,

00:40:53 ◼   ► changing the internals and everything like that,

00:40:55 ◼   ► but leaving that screen, like it just boggles my mind,

00:40:59 ◼   ► 'cause I feel like at this point,

00:41:01 ◼   ► I would never wanna buy a thousand dollar laptop

00:41:04 ◼   ► with that screen on it, it seems inexcusable.

00:41:06 ◼   ► So if they had been updating the MacBook Air

00:41:09 ◼   ► to keep it limping along on life support,

00:41:10 ◼   ► and had also updated the screen,

00:41:12 ◼   ► I would be like, "Well, this is not ideal," but they found themselves in a weird place

00:41:17 ◼   ► with their product line, so let's see what they do with it.

00:41:18 ◼   ► I think Jason and Gruber had a good analysis of that.

00:41:24 ◼   ► It's conceivable they somehow found themselves in this scenario where any move to replace

00:41:30 ◼   ► it would result in reduced margins on one or both lines as the pyre shifted.

00:41:35 ◼   ► And then Tim Cook's philosophy is like, "If it ain't broke, if people are still giving

00:41:39 ◼   ► us money for it, don't fix it, which is a terrible from a coherent product line directive.

00:41:43 ◼   ► And if there is another live talk show with Apple executives on it, I really hope Jon

00:41:47 ◼   ► asks them.

00:41:48 ◼   ► I hope he doesn't ask them, because if you ask them, "It seems like your laptop line

00:41:53 ◼   ► has no coherent story," you can make a coherent story like, "Well, the error is for people

00:41:58 ◼   ► who like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

00:41:59 ◼   ► And then you have the MacBooks.

00:42:00 ◼   ► All you're doing is listing the pros and cons of your models, but there is no coherent story

00:42:05 ◼   ► to the naming, features, or pricing of the current Apple apps hotline.

00:42:08 ◼   ► It is a mess.

00:42:09 ◼   ► And so I would state that and say, you know, there's no coherent story to the naming features

00:42:14 ◼   ► or pricing of your laptop line.

00:42:16 ◼   ► Why is that?

00:42:17 ◼   ► And if they want to contest that, I would push back pretty hard to say, "Come on.

00:42:20 ◼   ► One of them's called Air, but it's not the lightest, but it's super old.

00:42:23 ◼   ► It's got MagSafe on it, but the other ones don't have MagSafe.

00:42:25 ◼   ► One of them's called MacBook Pro, but it's got the internals of the Air, and it's just

00:42:28 ◼   ► like, your brain explodes."

00:42:31 ◼   ► So I think their line is in disarray, and I think they can make -- and I think the MacBook

00:42:37 ◼   ► Air was a great model of laptop, but we have the technology now to make a line of computers

00:42:45 ◼   ► that spans the exact same price range that offers a better computer at the $1,000 price

00:42:50 ◼   ► point than they currently offer now.

00:42:52 ◼   ► And also offers a better computer at all the other ones, depending on how you want to do

00:42:55 ◼   ► it.

00:42:56 ◼   ► "Hey, put on MagSafe and USB-C and let people charge from both.

00:42:58 ◼   ► Let's see which one people like better."

00:42:59 ◼   ► Because then you get the advantages of Casey using his Switch charger and the advantage

00:43:04 ◼   ► of if you trip over my card, you won't break it.

00:43:06 ◼   ► Maybe you can choose when you order it,

00:43:07 ◼   ► whether you want the MagSafe or not,

00:43:08 ◼   ► because maybe you just want to be able

00:43:10 ◼   ► to use all your same chart anyway.

00:43:11 ◼   ► Or put an SD card slot on the side of these computers.

00:43:14 ◼   ► Or maybe have an HDMI port on one model.

00:43:16 ◼   ► Like, I don't know, I'm going a little bit crazy here.

00:43:18 ◼   ► But I long for the days when you could look at the line

00:43:22 ◼   ► of Apple laptops and say, "I see how it goes."

00:43:24 ◼   ► Big, small, low price, high price, not a lot of features,

00:43:28 ◼   ► a bunch of features, and have them all look like a family.

00:43:31 ◼   ► And that's not the case now.

00:43:34 ◼   ► Not the case at all.

00:43:35 ◼   ► So one, I think, curiosity that I had

00:43:39 ◼   ► throughout the other nice discussions over this,

00:43:41 ◼   ► and again, I think listening to the talk show this week,

00:43:42 ◼   ► it's a really good discussion about this

00:43:44 ◼   ► from a lot of different angles.

00:43:46 ◼   ► But one thought I had was like,

00:43:48 ◼   ► if they make a Retina MacBook Air,

00:43:52 ◼   ► if they literally change nothing else about it

00:43:56 ◼   ► except a Retina screen, and maybe replacing

00:44:00 ◼   ► the two Thunderbolt 2 ports, or does it have one or two?

00:44:04 ◼   ► replacing its Thunderbolt 2 ports with USB-C ports,

00:44:08 ◼   ► and then of course, a modern chipset of the same type

00:44:10 ◼   ► that's currently in the MacBook Escape.

00:44:13 ◼   ► Would anybody still buy the MacBook Escape?

00:44:16 ◼   ► - No, that's the problem we talked about.

00:44:19 ◼   ► If you improve the MacBook Air,

00:44:22 ◼   ► why would anyone buy a MacBook?

00:44:23 ◼   ► Or a MacBook, why would anyone,

00:44:25 ◼   ► no sorry, a MacBook Pro rather, not a MacBook.

00:44:27 ◼   ► - The MacBook Escape, the 13-inch MacBook without touch bar,

00:44:30 ◼   ► is by many measures a MacBook Air.

00:44:33 ◼   ► It has the MacBook Air class processors,

00:44:35 ◼   ► the MacBook Air class chipset and everything else.

00:44:38 ◼   ► It's the same approximate size and weight.

00:44:41 ◼   ► It's a little bit, it's slightly different,

00:44:43 ◼   ► but roughly the same size and weight

00:44:45 ◼   ► as the 13-inch MacBook Air.

00:44:46 ◼   ► But if you put a Retina screen

00:44:51 ◼   ► in the old, ancient MacBook Air body

00:44:53 ◼   ► that was designed in 2010, I bet it would sell better

00:44:57 ◼   ► than the 13-inch MacBook Escape.

00:44:59 ◼   ► - It would be a better laptop.

00:45:01 ◼   ► It has an SD card slot.

00:45:03 ◼   ► It has MagSafe, the option for MagSafe.

00:45:05 ◼   ► It has legacy USB ports, which Apple acknowledges is a thing that some people want, otherwise

00:45:10 ◼   ► they wouldn't have put them on the iMac Pro.

00:45:13 ◼   ► If you showed a regular person which one of these laptops do you think is better and which

00:45:16 ◼   ► one do you want and didn't tell them about the price, and they weren't sensitive to styling

00:45:19 ◼   ► cues that clearly indicate that the MacBook Air is super old, they would say, "Well, that

00:45:24 ◼   ► one's got more stuff.

00:45:25 ◼   ► It's got more features.

00:45:26 ◼   ► It's got more things, and this power cable is really smart."

00:45:30 ◼   ► Why would you ever pick the other one if we tell you, "Guess what?

00:45:32 ◼   ► one's $300 more." You'd be like, "Well, who would pay $300 more to have no ports on the side

00:45:37 ◼   ► for a computer that is basically the same size and weight?" And it perceptibly seems

00:45:41 ◼   ► thicker because it doesn't taper, right? Like the MacBook Air is thicker on one end but thinner on

00:45:46 ◼   ► the other, but it seems smaller because it gets skinny just for that perception type thing.

00:45:49 ◼   ► And it's fine if they do that. If they want to remake their line in that way, you'd have to

00:45:56 ◼   ► sort this type of thing out but instead they leave it in the current scenario where the

00:46:02 ◼   ► old one is clearly old and has serious downsides versus the regular one in terms of the terrible

00:46:07 ◼   ► screen they have on it, right?

00:46:09 ◼   ► The new one is expensive for no perceptible reason and you trade off a bunch of stuff

00:46:13 ◼   ► and then it gets even more super expensive and you still don't get your ports back and

00:46:16 ◼   ► you still have nomadic safe and the keyboard is weird and breaks all the time.

00:46:19 ◼   ► So they need to do something.

00:46:22 ◼   ► I really want them to just clean house on the laptop line and say, "All new line.

00:46:27 ◼   ► One nice family, unified in appearance features and has a coherent ramp from expensive to

00:46:32 ◼   ► inexpensive."

00:46:34 ◼   ► And by the way, at all price points and at all sizes, every one of them is better in

00:46:37 ◼   ► some way, whether it has more features or better reliability or faster or whatever.

00:46:42 ◼   ► David Schmittle Yeah, I suspect we're going to see some

00:46:46 ◼   ► kind of major movement in the laptop line this year.

00:46:50 ◼   ► I really hope we do.

00:46:52 ◼   ► The current line has so many of these weird issues,

00:46:55 ◼   ► not to mention some of the problems it has,

00:46:56 ◼   ► but just these weird things that make it

00:46:59 ◼   ► more or less compelling or seemingly weirdly priced

00:47:03 ◼   ► in certain ways or really segmented in other ways.

00:47:06 ◼   ► It needs help.

00:47:08 ◼   ► And I have a feeling Apple knew that two years ago,

00:47:11 ◼   ► like shortly after it launched,

00:47:13 ◼   ► and I have a feeling they've worked to fix it.

00:47:15 ◼   ► And so the only question is how they're fixing it.

00:47:17 ◼   ► And I don't expect this to be giving me all my hopes

00:47:20 ◼   ► and dreams or anything, but I do expect change

00:47:24 ◼   ► and hopefully improvement.

00:47:25 ◼   ► And so we'll see what that means.

00:47:27 ◼   ► - Speaking of hopes and dreams,

00:47:28 ◼   ► this is a tough question in the style of these recent ones

00:47:32 ◼   ► that the listeners have been sending us.

00:47:34 ◼   ► For the high-end laptops, which is where we're all shopping,

00:47:37 ◼   ► well, you two are shopping 'cause I don't buy laptops.

00:47:40 ◼   ► - I'm getting towards that point.

00:47:42 ◼   ► If you had to pick one port to add to the current crop of MacBook Pro parts, let's

00:47:50 ◼   ► just pick the 15-inch MacBook Pro because that is the most.

00:47:52 ◼   ► You can only pick one.

00:47:54 ◼   ► For your own personal purposes, not for like what would make a better laptop for Apple

00:47:57 ◼   ► to sell, what would you pick?

00:47:59 ◼   ► On a 15-inch, no question, an SD card reader.

00:48:03 ◼   ► Casey?

00:48:04 ◼   ► I'm torn between ancient USB and SD card reader.

00:48:08 ◼   ► I would probably, or actually HDMI would also be convenient.

00:48:11 ◼   ► - You're gonna pick one.

00:48:13 ◼   ► - I know, I'm thinking, ah.

00:48:14 ◼   ► - See, and to me, if it's less, if it's not the 15 inch,

00:48:17 ◼   ► like if you ask me what port I would add

00:48:19 ◼   ► to the MacBook Escape, it would be a third of anything,

00:48:22 ◼   ► like a third USB-C port, just one more of anything,

00:48:25 ◼   ► because that's what it most desperately needs,

00:48:26 ◼   ► like the 12 inch too, right?

00:48:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah, the same thing.

00:48:28 ◼   ► I would kill for a second USB-C port in my--

00:48:30 ◼   ► - That's why I picked the 15, just to see,

00:48:32 ◼   ► you know, you feel like there's enough USB-Cs on the 15,

00:48:36 ◼   ► but you can add one more thing, you know, what would it be?

00:48:38 ◼   ► I am very torn between SD, between old USB, and between HDMI, but I think if I had to

00:48:44 ◼   ► pick, I think I would probably—for me, I would probably come down on SD card reader

00:48:49 ◼   ► because I don't find a need for plugging in the HDMI that often, and I have a dongle

00:48:55 ◼   ► for it.

00:48:56 ◼   ► I don't have a need for plugging in legacy USB stuff that often, and I have a dongle

00:49:01 ◼   ► for it.

00:49:02 ◼   ► But I do have an SD card reader that I like quite a lot, but it would be more convenient

00:49:07 ◼   ► to just be able to slot that thing right in the computer.

00:49:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, to me, it's like, you can solve a lot,

00:49:12 ◼   ► like a lot of the annoyances of the new laptop ports

00:49:17 ◼   ► are solved by just having a lot of them,

00:49:19 ◼   ► like when you have four of them,

00:49:20 ◼   ► well, technically really you have three of them,

00:49:22 ◼   ► because one of them has a power plug in it,

00:49:25 ◼   ► but when you have three useful ones--

00:49:27 ◼   ► - Well, unless you have pass-through,

00:49:28 ◼   ► like I hear your point 100%.

00:49:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, but then you're in dongle town, like, okay--

00:49:32 ◼   ► - Well, you're gonna be in dongle town regardless.

00:49:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, that's part of the problem.

00:49:35 ◼   ► - All landowners in dongle town, my friend.

00:49:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:49:39 ◼   ► - But I feel like the other ports,

00:49:41 ◼   ► you can fix a lot of the inconvenience

00:49:44 ◼   ► of USB-C on laptops with getting new cables for old devices.

00:49:49 ◼   ► Like you can go on Monoprice or Amazon or whatever

00:49:51 ◼   ► and get inexpensive cables that have USB-C on one end

00:49:55 ◼   ► and whatever your peripheral needs on the other end.

00:49:57 ◼   ► And you can just replace your cables

00:49:58 ◼   ► and there's some issues with hubs and multiplying those

00:50:01 ◼   ► that I've talked about before which is still annoying.

00:50:03 ◼   ► but I feel like you can reduce a lot of the annoyance

00:50:06 ◼   ► with just new cables.

00:50:07 ◼   ► But if you need SD cards as part of your workflow,

00:50:11 ◼   ► there's no way to reduce that annoyance.

00:50:12 ◼   ► You're always gonna have an SD card hanging out

00:50:14 ◼   ► of the side of it through a cable or something.

00:50:16 ◼   ► That sucks, and when it's built in, it sucks less.

00:50:19 ◼   ► So other problems can be solved with either time

00:50:22 ◼   ► or cabling choices or peripheral choices,

00:50:25 ◼   ► but not having an SD card reader,

00:50:27 ◼   ► if you use SD cards, is always a pain.

00:50:29 ◼   ► - So the reason I asked this question is because

00:50:31 ◼   ► I've been thinking about it a lot lately,

00:50:32 ◼   ► I can tell you if you surveyed all the people at my office at work, they would all say HDMI,

00:50:37 ◼   ► because every time, increasingly when we land in a conference room and someone needs to

00:50:41 ◼   ► project, never mind the fact that they should really, with the number of Macs that are in

00:50:45 ◼   ► this office, they should really have Apple TVs connected to every single thing so we

00:50:47 ◼   ► could airplay to them because it would solve this problem in a much nicer way.

00:50:50 ◼   ► Steve Jobs would approve, "You don't need an HDMI port, you just need to be able to

00:50:53 ◼   ► airplay to everything."

00:50:54 ◼   ► I agree, Steve, but you can't fight the IT department.

00:50:58 ◼   ► Anyway, they would all say HDMI, because it's so frustrating, we all sit down there and

00:51:01 ◼   ► and it's like we look around for the one person

00:51:03 ◼   ► with the 2015 laptop who can actually plug in

00:51:06 ◼   ► because everyone forgot their dongle.

00:51:07 ◼   ► Wow.

00:51:08 ◼   ► And it used to be there was just one person

00:51:10 ◼   ► with the new laptop and we would laugh at them,

00:51:12 ◼   ► and now there's like one person left with the old laptop.

00:51:14 ◼   ► And once the old laptop disappears,

00:51:15 ◼   ► there's gonna be a bunch of people sitting around

00:51:16 ◼   ► unable to project.

00:51:17 ◼   ► I don't understand why they don't put the adapters for this.

00:51:19 ◼   ► But anyway, that's what people at work would say,

00:51:21 ◼   ► but that's not what I would say

00:51:21 ◼   ► because in my regular life, if I was buying a laptop

00:51:23 ◼   ► for myself, I don't need to connect to HDMI.

00:51:25 ◼   ► So I would never pick HDMI, but work totally would.

00:51:29 ◼   ► I would have said in the past SD, right?

00:51:31 ◼   ► Because I do have cameras that have SD cards.

00:51:34 ◼   ► When I go on vacation, I like to offload pictures

00:51:36 ◼   ► from my camera to my thing without a dongle.

00:51:37 ◼   ► It's convenient, build it in, it's small, it's skinny,

00:51:40 ◼   ► it'll fit fine.

00:51:41 ◼   ► But the more I've been thinking about it,

00:51:42 ◼   ► the more I've been getting attached to the idea

00:51:45 ◼   ► of taking a 15-inch MacBook Pro and adding MagSafe

00:51:49 ◼   ► and still having the ability to charge

00:51:51 ◼   ► by any of the USB-C things, like not removing that ability,

00:51:54 ◼   ► but adding MagSafe as an addition.

00:51:56 ◼   ► Because I feel like you get the twofer.

00:51:58 ◼   ► You get MagSafe, which is better to trip over and stuff.

00:52:01 ◼   ► You get, as I think it was, was it Jason Snell?

00:52:03 ◼   ► Or maybe it was Gruber saying, you get the indicator light,

00:52:06 ◼   ► which I think is a useful feature

00:52:07 ◼   ► when you have your closed laptop and you plug it in

00:52:08 ◼   ► to make sure you see the little light

00:52:09 ◼   ► that shows amber or green,

00:52:11 ◼   ► to show whether it's fully charged or is charging, right?

00:52:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a great feature.

00:52:15 ◼   ► It's not like, and Apple had that, what, 15 years ago?

00:52:18 ◼   ► Like, it's not a new thing and laptop this size.

00:52:21 ◼   ► - Right, and you also get one of your ports back.

00:52:23 ◼   ► Now you really do have four ports instead of three.

00:52:26 ◼   ► If you want the convenience of I just have USB-C charger with me on vacation, it can

00:52:30 ◼   ► charge everything, you've got it, but also you could have the MagSafe.

00:52:34 ◼   ► And then the only question is what do you ship in the box?

00:52:35 ◼   ► Do you ship MagSafe, do you ship USB, or do you ship both, and probably Apple would make

00:52:38 ◼   ► you pick or something.

00:52:40 ◼   ► And I know it would be backsliding, and I know MagSafe had problems too, and that's

00:52:43 ◼   ► why I feel like ship them both.

00:52:46 ◼   ► Let people decide what they want to use.

00:52:48 ◼   ► Hell, Apple can collect stats about what they use and anonymously send them back with its

00:52:52 ◼   ► differential privacy for how often laptops are charging via MagSafe versus how often

00:52:56 ◼   ► and they're charging via USB-C.

00:52:58 ◼   ► I probably would get more benefit out of SD,

00:53:00 ◼   ► but I'm finding the twofer of getting a port back

00:53:05 ◼   ► and having the option of MagSafe irresistible.

00:53:08 ◼   ► So now I'm envisioning, before I was envisioning

00:53:10 ◼   ► Apple revising its laptops by adding an SD card slot,

00:53:12 ◼   ► and now I'm envisioning them adding back MagSafe,

00:53:14 ◼   ► which I think is astronomically less likely

00:53:16 ◼   ► than adding an SD card slot, because it just,

00:53:19 ◼   ► it would be like egg on face of like,

00:53:20 ◼   ► oh, remember MagSafe, we're bringing it back.

00:53:23 ◼   ► That would be a tough sell.

00:53:24 ◼   ► Whereas SD, now there's so much room alongside those,

00:53:27 ◼   ► the edges of those 15 inch laptops, right?

00:53:29 ◼   ► It's just a giant expanse with these two little tiny

00:53:32 ◼   ► USB-C holes, an SD card slot, even Johnny Ive could tolerate

00:53:36 ◼   ► the aesthetic marring of a very skinny,

00:53:38 ◼   ► discreet SD card slot in there.

00:53:40 ◼   ► How it looks fine on Marco's 2015 MacBook Pro,

00:53:43 ◼   ► I think it would be fine on a 2018 model.

00:53:46 ◼   ► - One thing also that they could do that I think,

00:53:50 ◼   ► it probably goes against their sensibilities,

00:53:53 ◼   ► but I think it probably shouldn't,

00:53:54 ◼   ► 'cause I think it's one of the biggest engineering flops

00:53:56 ◼   ► of the new lineup, is that the number of USB,

00:54:01 ◼   ► like to me, like one of the biggest problems with these,

00:54:03 ◼   ► as I've said numerous times,

00:54:05 ◼   ► is just there aren't enough ports.

00:54:07 ◼   ► Like if you're going to sell us on an all USB-C world,

00:54:11 ◼   ► okay, we can adapt to that over time

00:54:13 ◼   ► with dongles and stuff and new cables and everything.

00:54:15 ◼   ► There still aren't enough ports,

00:54:16 ◼   ► especially with one of them being lost to power.

00:54:18 ◼   ► As you said, like you basically lose one

00:54:21 ◼   ► during most practical usage for most people

00:54:23 ◼   ► most of the time.

00:54:25 ◼   ► So, you know, like the MacBook escape

00:54:27 ◼   ► basically has one port.

00:54:28 ◼   ► Casey's MacBook One has no ports.

00:54:31 ◼   ► - Pretty much.

00:54:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:33 ◼   ► - Right, and so like, and the 15 inch has three.

00:54:36 ◼   ► And if you look at, and you know, the 13 Pro also.

00:54:39 ◼   ► And if you look at like, you know,

00:54:40 ◼   ► what the previous ones had, like you could connect

00:54:43 ◼   ► more than that amount of things to them without adapters.

00:54:46 ◼   ► And I feel like one of the,

00:54:48 ◼   ► if you look at the engineering behind this,

00:54:50 ◼   ► One of the challenges, for example,

00:54:51 ◼   ► one of the reasons why the MacBook Escape

00:54:53 ◼   ► only has two ports is because of limitations

00:54:57 ◼   ► of how many Thunderbolt channels you can deliver

00:55:00 ◼   ► because Apple decided to make all of these USB-C ports

00:55:04 ◼   ► also Thunderbolt 3 ports,

00:55:06 ◼   ► except for the one in Casey's MacBook One.

00:55:09 ◼   ► And that's a choice that they made.

00:55:10 ◼   ► They didn't have to.

00:55:12 ◼   ► It is possible to have a USB-C port

00:55:14 ◼   ► that does not support Thunderbolt 3,

00:55:17 ◼   ► like the one in Casey's MacBook One.

00:55:19 ◼   ► And so Apple, no, trust me, this is in many ways

00:55:22 ◼   ► a good thing, you just need more of them.

00:55:23 ◼   ► And so I feel like one of the biggest ways

00:55:27 ◼   ► to solve the annoyance of these laptops

00:55:29 ◼   ► is to just, if you're gonna insist on USB-C,

00:55:32 ◼   ► okay, but we need more of them.

00:55:34 ◼   ► Two total, including your power hole, is not enough.

00:55:38 ◼   ► If you can't make them on certain models,

00:55:41 ◼   ► if you can't make them full-blown Thunderbolt 3 ports,

00:55:44 ◼   ► which you already can't, they're already not

00:55:46 ◼   ► Thunderbolt 3 and the MacBook One,

00:55:48 ◼   ► and the ones on the right side of the 13 inch MacBook Pro

00:55:51 ◼   ► are half bandwidth or whatever it is.

00:55:52 ◼   ► So there's already exceptions.

00:55:55 ◼   ► The cable that comes with it

00:55:57 ◼   ► that charges from the brick to the computer

00:56:00 ◼   ► is a USB-C cable that is not a Thunderbolt cable.

00:56:03 ◼   ► In fact, it's a USB 2.0 USB-C cable,

00:56:05 ◼   ► which shouldn't even exist, but they do,

00:56:08 ◼   ► and that's what it is.

00:56:10 ◼   ► You know, there's already all these exceptions

00:56:13 ◼   ► to what the ports can and can't do.

00:56:15 ◼   ► In addition, Thunderbolt usage in practice

00:56:18 ◼   ► is pretty low, and it is not the common case,

00:56:22 ◼   ► what most people are plugging into these things,

00:56:25 ◼   ► it needs either just power, or power and USB.

00:56:28 ◼   ► Most of the peripherals being plugged into these ports

00:56:32 ◼   ► do not need Thunderbolt 3.

00:56:34 ◼   ► And so by Apple taking these ports on most of these laptops

00:56:37 ◼   ► except for Casey's and saying,

00:56:39 ◼   ► "We can only have as many as the Thunderbolt controllers

00:56:41 ◼   ► "allow us to with this chipset or whatever,"

00:56:43 ◼   ► that's very limiting to the number of ports you can have.

00:56:47 ◼   ► If they had like two to four of them

00:56:51 ◼   ► that could do Thunderbolt 3,

00:56:53 ◼   ► and two more that couldn't,

00:56:56 ◼   ► maybe on the other side or whatever,

00:56:58 ◼   ► that's not ideal,

00:57:00 ◼   ► but I think that's better than not having enough ports

00:57:04 ◼   ► to do basic things that you need.

00:57:06 ◼   ► So I know it'd be more complicated.

00:57:08 ◼   ► I know they wouldn't be able to put

00:57:09 ◼   ► the little Thunderbolt lightning bolt symbol

00:57:11 ◼   ► next to all of them,

00:57:13 ◼   ► but I think that is the best compromise that we have.

00:57:16 ◼   ► we're gonna do in all USB-C world,

00:57:18 ◼   ► we need more of these ports.

00:57:20 ◼   ► And it is a waste to suggest

00:57:23 ◼   ► that they all need to have Thunderbolt 3.

00:57:24 ◼   ► I mean, look, one of them, most of the time,

00:57:27 ◼   ► is used for power and nothing else, no data at all.

00:57:31 ◼   ► You're wasting Thunderbolt 3 bandwidth on a port

00:57:34 ◼   ► that transfers nothing except power.

00:57:38 ◼   ► So obviously, there's a major engineering inefficiency

00:57:42 ◼   ► in tying Thunderbolt 3 to USB-C for all these laptops.

00:57:46 ◼   ► If you can separate them, you could give us way more ports.

00:57:49 ◼   ► Well, not way more, but you can give us two more ports

00:57:51 ◼   ► at least on most of these

00:57:52 ◼   ► without having any bandwidth challenges.

00:57:54 ◼   ► - You could give way more.

00:57:55 ◼   ► Like, they have USB inside these cases.

00:57:57 ◼   ► You could give six USB-C ports

00:57:59 ◼   ► along with four Thunderbolt ports.

00:58:01 ◼   ► I feel like they have the controller capacity

00:58:02 ◼   ► or space inside the case to put a controller

00:58:04 ◼   ► that can support that.

00:58:05 ◼   ► Like, USB connections are cheap

00:58:07 ◼   ► in the grand scheme of things.

00:58:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it becomes, I think, more complicated

00:58:11 ◼   ► with the wiring and stuff if the other ones

00:58:13 ◼   ► could also do some of the other alternate modes.

00:58:15 ◼   ► Like if they can take power input

00:58:17 ◼   ► or if they can do certain video output types.

00:58:19 ◼   ► But, 'cause I know Thunderbolt's required

00:58:21 ◼   ► for some of the alternate modes, but not all of them,

00:58:23 ◼   ► or it is one of the alternate modes,

00:58:24 ◼   ► I don't know, something like that.

00:58:25 ◼   ► But like, tying this to Thunderbolt 3

00:58:28 ◼   ► made these ports very limited in number

00:58:31 ◼   ► and probably fairly expensive to implement.

00:58:33 ◼   ► But that was an unforced error.

00:58:35 ◼   ► They didn't need to do that.

00:58:36 ◼   ► I understand why they did,

00:58:38 ◼   ► but I think that was the wrong move,

00:58:39 ◼   ► and I hope they fix it.

00:58:41 ◼   ► - Okay, a couple of things.

00:58:42 ◼   ► First of all, you just said unforced error,

00:58:44 ◼   ► and to my ears, it was the correct usage of the term,

00:58:47 ◼   ► and I'm really uncomfortable with my reality right now.

00:58:50 ◼   ► - Wait, so is that a sports term?

00:58:52 ◼   ► 'Cause I learned it from John.

00:58:53 ◼   ► - It is a sports term.

00:58:55 ◼   ► - Okay, to me it's a Syracuse term.

00:58:57 ◼   ► - Wow, well, now my reality is back to being reality,

00:59:00 ◼   ► so I appreciate that.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Let's go on a adventure together,

00:59:06 ◼   ► a little mental exercise together.

00:59:07 ◼   ► It is 2016, or whatever year it was,

00:59:10 ◼   ► that the USB-C MacBook Pros came out.

00:59:12 ◼   ► Doesn't matter when it was,

00:59:13 ◼   ► But whenever they debuted, it's that year, that moment.

00:59:17 ◼   ► And within a few weeks of each other, the new MacBook Pros come out.

00:59:21 ◼   ► Let's pick on the 15 specifically.

00:59:22 ◼   ► There's a new MacBook Pro, it's 15 inches, it has four USB-C and Thunderbolt ports.

00:59:27 ◼   ► Simultaneously, Lenovo or Dell or somebody else comes out with effectively the same thing,

00:59:33 ◼   ► as they are off to do.

00:59:35 ◼   ► And it has the same four physical USB-C ports, but only two of them are Thunderbolt.

00:59:42 ◼   ► Do you know what the three of us would be doing at that moment?

00:59:45 ◼   ► We would be saying, "Oh, haha, these idiot PC vendors.

00:59:47 ◼   ► Now that you have to worry about whether or not you're plugging in to the right port,

00:59:51 ◼   ► what a ridiculous mess that is."

00:59:53 ◼   ► We didn't say that on the MacBook where, as Margaret has pointed out, it's a situation

00:59:57 ◼   ► now where you have to know one side is special and the other.

00:59:59 ◼   ► That's been a thing on Apple Apples for a long time, that certain ports on one side

01:00:02 ◼   ► are better than the ports on the other side.

01:00:04 ◼   ► That's been true for many laptops in Apple's history.

01:00:05 ◼   ► And yeah, it's always kind of annoying, but we understand why it is the way it is, and

01:00:09 ◼   ► we accept it.

01:00:10 ◼   ► it's a source of ridicule.

01:00:12 ◼   ► All right.

01:00:13 ◼   ► I just feel like all I can imagine is all of us going, "Ha ha, those idiot PC people."

01:00:17 ◼   ► I mean, we have talked about that as an inherent problem with using the same connector for

01:00:21 ◼   ► all these things.

01:00:22 ◼   ► I still think that the advantages of using the same connector for all of them outweigh

01:00:24 ◼   ► the disadvantages, but as Marco just said, your laptop has a port, has a hole that's

01:00:29 ◼   ► exactly the same shape as the ones in Marco's, and yet it is not capable of the things that

01:00:33 ◼   ► Marco's old ones were capable of, right?

01:00:37 ◼   ► It's both the same cables fit into both of them, but if you plug in a thing that expects

01:00:40 ◼   ► Thunderbolt into yours, it won't work.

01:00:42 ◼   ► And there's no indication for that, physically speaking.

01:00:44 ◼   ► I don't even know if there's a little lightning bolt thingy next to them anymore.

01:00:47 ◼   ► No.

01:00:48 ◼   ► So, I mean, that's just the nature of the piece.

01:00:50 ◼   ► Well, it wouldn't be next to yours.

01:00:51 ◼   ► No, if at some point, yeah, maybe you shouldn't ask me after all.

01:00:54 ◼   ► So, you know, I think the implicit assumption, I'm also thinking of my own feelings about

01:01:00 ◼   ► underlying discussion, is that I still believe, I'm still hoping, I guess, that when Apple

01:01:06 ◼   ► does make a big revision to their laptop line, that one or more of the new laptops they introduce

01:01:13 ◼   ► will have more ports than the thing that it's replacing.

01:01:16 ◼   ► And that's why I keep getting to what do you think they'll add or whatever.

01:01:19 ◼   ► If I'm wrong about that, and if they introduce a whole new laptop line that's like the next

01:01:24 ◼   ► generation after this current crop of 2016, 2017, like they've had time to process the

01:01:29 ◼   ► feedback from the market and so on and so forth, and none of them have any more ports,

01:01:34 ◼   ► I will be extremely disappointed.

01:01:36 ◼   ► Like I realized to myself that I've just been assuming.

01:01:38 ◼   ► Basically since the Apple round table about the Mac,

01:01:41 ◼   ► when they talked about the Mac Pro,

01:01:42 ◼   ► from that point on, I read into what they said,

01:01:46 ◼   ► within my hopes and dreams of saying,

01:01:48 ◼   ► "Yeah, I know you're talking about the Mac Pro

01:01:50 ◼   ► and the iMac Pro, like I know that's what this is really

01:01:52 ◼   ► about and about a re-editation of the Mac,

01:01:54 ◼   ► but the few sentences they said about the laptops,

01:01:56 ◼   ► I latched onto really hard and said,

01:01:58 ◼   ► that means eventually, after two year cycle,

01:02:01 ◼   ► whatever, it takes a long time, like not immediately,

01:02:03 ◼   ► but eventually when they do the next big laptop revision, one or more of them will have more

01:02:08 ◼   ► ports.

01:02:09 ◼   ► And I don't know what I'm going to do if that turns out not to be the case.

01:02:13 ◼   ► My faith in — I'm already a laptop hater, I guess — but my faith in Apple's laptops

01:02:16 ◼   ► will be fundamentally shaken.

01:02:18 ◼   ► So far, it's still just like, they made a wrong turn, and things were already in the

01:02:22 ◼   ► pipeline, and they couldn't really do much about the revision for 2017.

01:02:26 ◼   ► All they did was add the rubber gaskets and stuff, and it's like, hopefully they know

01:02:29 ◼   ► what's wrong.

01:02:30 ◼   ► time they do the big revision, that'll be the time to make more different fundamental

01:02:34 ◼   ► decisions. But if the next ones come along and they're exactly the same set of just USB-C

01:02:38 ◼   ► only, MacBook One is still the MacBook One, the other ones still just have two ports and

01:02:44 ◼   ► there's no changes and no MagSafe and no SD card, no HDMI, nobody gets anything, not even

01:02:49 ◼   ► an additional USB-C port, nothing, I'm going to be super disappointed. I'll probably console

01:02:56 ◼   ► myself by hugging my new Mac Pro, but I don't know about you. Have you internalized that

01:03:05 ◼   ► as a thing you expect and so now you're set up to be disappointed by not being there?

01:03:08 ◼   ► Or are you still pessimistic and you'll be pleasantly surprised if they do anything?

01:03:12 ◼   ► I will be stunned if there's any sort of, not really mea culpa, but if they add any

01:03:19 ◼   ► sort of ports to any of these laptops, I will be flabbergasted. I'm not saying it's unreasonable

01:03:26 ◼   ► but I do think it is a, what did you say, like egg on the face sort of admission that

01:03:31 ◼   ► oh maybe we didn't get this exactly right.

01:03:32 ◼   ► Well if they add a USB-C or a Thunderbolt 3 I feel like it's not an admission of anything,

01:03:36 ◼   ► it's just they added a more port.

01:03:37 ◼   ► Even that will be something, it will say look we realize USB-C is great but when you only

01:03:41 ◼   ► get two of them, the ones taken with power, it really limits things so now you got one

01:03:44 ◼   ► more so you got three.

01:03:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, and let's be realistic here also, like if you look at the side of one

01:03:49 ◼   ► of these things and you look at like the height of ports, I think it's very unlikely that

01:03:54 ◼   ► that we will see the return of USB-A or even MagSafe,

01:03:58 ◼   ► because I don't think they fit.

01:03:59 ◼   ► I think they're too tall.

01:04:00 ◼   ► I don't think they could reasonably fit those.

01:04:02 ◼   ► - Oh, it would have to be a new MagSafe, yeah.

01:04:04 ◼   ► It would have to be MagSafe 3.

01:04:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, right, because I can't see them doing that.

01:04:09 ◼   ► And honestly, I'm totally okay with USB-C charging.

01:04:13 ◼   ► I wish the charger was nicer.

01:04:15 ◼   ► I wish it had things like the charging light

01:04:17 ◼   ► and some kind of version of MagSafe would be nice.

01:04:22 ◼   ► But other than that, I actually like USB-C charging

01:04:25 ◼   ► 'cause you can get third-party chargers

01:04:26 ◼   ► that have like the wonderful Anker one

01:04:28 ◼   ► that has the built-in USB charging also.

01:04:31 ◼   ► It makes the charging situation much more flexible

01:04:34 ◼   ► and then you can travel a little bit lighter

01:04:36 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

01:04:37 ◼   ► So I like that.

01:04:38 ◼   ► But if you look at what can actually fit

01:04:42 ◼   ► in this new super thin case design, not a lot can.

01:04:46 ◼   ► USB-C, you could fit more of them.

01:04:50 ◼   ► And maybe, you know what, Apple,

01:04:51 ◼   ► maybe you could put them a little further apart

01:04:53 ◼   ► because they're really close to each other

01:04:55 ◼   ► and it makes it a little bit annoying to use.

01:04:58 ◼   ► Also, the headphone jack should move back to the left side

01:05:00 ◼   ► where it belongs because there's a reason why headphones

01:05:05 ◼   ► were always on the left side of laptops before.

01:05:08 ◼   ► It's because when you have a headphone cable

01:05:10 ◼   ► that only has a wire on one side,

01:05:13 ◼   ► historically that has been conventionally

01:05:15 ◼   ► on the left ear cup.

01:05:16 ◼   ► So your headphone cable goes down the left ear cup,

01:05:18 ◼   ► your left arm into the left side port of the laptop.

01:05:21 ◼   ► When it's on the right side, you have to cross your

01:05:22 ◼   ► headphone cable over your laptop, which sucks.

01:05:25 ◼   ► So, that's wrong.

01:05:25 ◼   ► Anyway.

01:05:26 ◼   ► - You can wrap it around the back.

01:05:27 ◼   ► Oh, by the way, speaking of ports on different sides,

01:05:29 ◼   ► that's another thing I appreciate about USB power,

01:05:32 ◼   ► that you can connect the power to either side,

01:05:33 ◼   ► so depending on where you are on the couch or wherever,

01:05:36 ◼   ► if you're in some weird place that you can do it.

01:05:38 ◼   ► That's why I think they should always keep that,

01:05:40 ◼   ► and I really don't ever expect them to make MagSafe 3,

01:05:42 ◼   ► but I've been musing on it lately.

01:05:45 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:05:46 ◼   ► So I think if we look at like what kind of ports

01:05:49 ◼   ► we might realistically actually get,

01:05:52 ◼   ► I wouldn't expect USB-A, I wouldn't expect MagSafe.

01:05:56 ◼   ► SD cards are actually plausible.

01:05:57 ◼   ► That I think could fit.

01:05:59 ◼   ► I'm not sure if they want to,

01:06:01 ◼   ► but again I think that would go a long way

01:06:03 ◼   ► towards addressing a lot of people's complaints.

01:06:06 ◼   ► HDMI almost certainly won't fit.

01:06:08 ◼   ► They could do mini HDMI, but they won't.

01:06:10 ◼   ► They're gonna rely on Thunderbolt and USB-C for that.

01:06:14 ◼   ► But ultimately, I think the most realistic option

01:06:18 ◼   ► is to either get no port changes at all,

01:06:22 ◼   ► which, like Jon, I would be very disappointed by,

01:06:24 ◼   ► or to get more USB-C ports,

01:06:27 ◼   ► which I would be very happy with.

01:06:29 ◼   ► So we'll see.

01:06:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, more USB-C ports is the most likely.

01:06:35 ◼   ► I'm still rooting for SD, I think,

01:06:36 ◼   ► when we talked about this originally.

01:06:37 ◼   ► I said just add an SD card and it'll be fine,

01:06:39 ◼   ► but the more I think about the port being taken up by power

01:06:41 ◼   ► and experiencing myself,

01:06:42 ◼   ► the more i think more more USB-C would be a good idea and by the way for a MagSafe 3 design again

01:06:47 ◼   ► not that they're doing this but if you give up on the notion that the magnet is on the side of the

01:06:51 ◼   ► computer you can do lots of interesting things imagine if MagSafe looked like a little shovel

01:06:55 ◼   ► and and it was large surface area magnet sort of on the bottom like in an L shape like it clipped

01:07:00 ◼   ► onto the corner and tucked underneath the little curve like there are things you could do to add

01:07:04 ◼   ► much more magnet surface area while keeping it very thin like we don't have to think inside the

01:07:08 ◼   ► the box defined by MagSafe as it previously existed. Magnetically detachable charging

01:07:14 ◼   ► cables for trip-proofness is, I still think, a good idea and an idea that could manifest

01:07:20 ◼   ► in a way that will work with the thinnest possible laptops still.

01:07:23 ◼   ► So, in the chat room, Espressly asked an interesting question. They said, "Would you prefer a second

01:07:29 ◼   ► USB-C on the adorable or a headphone jack?" And I presume the genesis of this is that

01:07:35 ◼   ► On the opposite side of the laptop, on the right hand side, and Marco you're right to

01:07:38 ◼   ► say that that is bananas, but on the right hand side of the laptop of the adorable, there

01:07:42 ◼   ► is a headphone jack.

01:07:44 ◼   ► And I would absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, trade in that headphone jack for

01:07:48 ◼   ► another USB-C port without question.

01:07:50 ◼   ► Because you've got AirPods and that's fine.

01:07:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, and all sorts of other Bluetooth headphones.

01:07:56 ◼   ► And yeah, there are occasions that I have plugged in headphones to this laptop, but

01:08:01 ◼   ► they are extremely rare.

01:08:03 ◼   ► And I would get much more, maybe not daily,

01:08:06 ◼   ► but much more frequent use out of a second USB-C port

01:08:09 ◼   ► than I would the headphone jack that's there today.

01:08:12 ◼   ► - There's no reason to make that trade though.

01:08:14 ◼   ► We already did 20 shows about complaining about it.

01:08:16 ◼   ► There's no room for another USB-C port.

01:08:18 ◼   ► There is, there's room for another USB-C port

01:08:20 ◼   ► and a headphone, it will be fine.

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01:09:45 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:09:48 ◼   ► - WWDC is announced.

01:09:51 ◼   ► It is in San Jose again.

01:09:53 ◼   ► It is the fourth through the eighth of June,

01:09:56 ◼   ► is phenomenally great because that's what the three of us guessed it would be. And that's

01:10:01 ◼   ► what we booked hotel tickets for a long time ago. So that's great news. It is going to

01:10:06 ◼   ► be apparently about marzipan or whatever it's being called today if you believe what people

01:10:12 ◼   ► are looking at on the invitation, which I think is a exercise in futility, because the

01:10:17 ◼   ► invitation is anything but also of interest on that Monday, which is the fourth, all three

01:10:24 ◼   ► of your hosts will be there to do another episode in addition of ATP Live, which is

01:10:28 ◼   ► part of a, what are they calling it, like a podcast fair or something like that?

01:10:32 ◼   ► Festival. Festival, that's what I was looking for, thank

01:10:34 ◼   ► you. Which means two live podcasts at Alt-Conf.

01:10:37 ◼   ► Whee! So yeah, so we're going to be doing a kind

01:10:41 ◼   ► of a joint thing between us, Alt-Conf, like Marco said, and Relay. They're going to be

01:10:48 ◼   ► doing an episode of Connected in addition to some other things that I genuinely don't

01:10:54 ◼   ► what's happening, but I know enough to know that it's going to be an extravaganza. So,

01:10:57 ◼   ► if you are interested in coming to see ATP Live in San Jose on Monday, June 4th,

01:11:03 ◼   ► you can get tickets at AltConf's website, and we will put a link in the show notes.

01:11:09 ◼   ► They are $5 apiece if they are still available. I honestly haven't even looked. That money goes

01:11:13 ◼   ► to AltConf, which is good because AltConf is free, so we don't see any of that money,

01:11:18 ◼   ► but I don't think that's a bad thing at all. And additionally, you can get tickets to the

01:11:21 ◼   ► the relay thing as well, or to Alt-Conf. And it's worth noting that even if WWDC, if the

01:11:28 ◼   ► lottery doesn't work out well for you, in addition to Alt-Conf, there's also layers

01:11:32 ◼   ► that will be going on the same time, run by a friend of the show, Jessie Char, and a couple

01:11:37 ◼   ► of other lovely women. Actually, I think it's just Elaine and she. But anyway, they are

01:11:41 ◼   ► awesome. They are super, super awesome. And the conference is super, super awesome. And

01:11:46 ◼   ► the snacks at the conference are super, super awesome. So no matter how you slice it, layers

01:11:50 ◼   ► is great, AllConf is great, WWDC is great, plenty of options if you can find yourself

01:11:55 ◼   ► in San Jose that week. Is that it? Wow, that was fast.

01:12:00 ◼   ► You covered it pretty well. Go team!

01:12:01 ◼   ► You summarized in chief. Yeah, chief summarizer in chief. Chief actually

01:12:04 ◼   ► doing my job for once. We can talk about the WWDC graphics, which

01:12:07 ◼   ► you alluded to earlier. I think some of the commentary about this, or commentary, tweets,

01:12:13 ◼   ► whatever, about this have kind of combined two things that are not really related. One

01:12:19 ◼   ► One is the artwork Apple puts on the email invitations to select press when they are

01:12:25 ◼   ► going to have an event come hear us talk about whatever, you know, like iPhone announcement

01:12:30 ◼   ► event or, you know, Mac update, press events, right?

01:12:33 ◼   ► And traditionally they make a little graphic and usually sometimes a little phrase underneath

01:12:36 ◼   ► it, right?

01:12:38 ◼   ► And then there is what we're actually talking about here, which is every year when they

01:12:41 ◼   ► do WWDC, there's some kind of graphical motif or theme.

01:12:45 ◼   ► It's used in the banners that hang in the exhibition halls and the rooms where they

01:12:50 ◼   ► have things.

01:12:51 ◼   ► It's used in all the websites and the materials and the emails.

01:12:54 ◼   ► And it started off pretty generic many, many years ago, but it has evolved so that now

01:12:59 ◼   ► each WWC has kind of like a branding theme or flavor.

01:13:05 ◼   ► So for the press invitations, sometimes those have been intentionally pointing to something

01:13:12 ◼   ► they're going to say. Like the one with the little rotating apple with the like back to

01:13:17 ◼   ► the Mac thing behind it where they were going to talk more about the Mac and guess what?

01:13:20 ◼   ► They talked more about the Mac. Some of them are only explicable in hindsight where you

01:13:25 ◼   ► can tell some of the graphic treatments on the invitation were the same ones they would

01:13:28 ◼   ► use when they announced a particular product, whether it's the iPhone or whatever. But sometimes

01:13:33 ◼   ► it's just a fun graphical theme that has to do with "Hey, we have an app store and you

01:13:37 ◼   ► make apps for it and apps are these little rounded rectangle things so we use lots of

01:13:40 ◼   ► rounded rectangles in our stuff. But I would say that there is a fairly solid track record

01:13:47 ◼   ► of some of the time the press invitations do in fact intentionally indicate something

01:13:52 ◼   ► that they're going to talk about in a vague way. WWDC art on the other hand has a much

01:13:57 ◼   ► worse track record of communicating anything about what's going to be represented other

01:14:01 ◼   ► than the fact that it's a developer conference where they tell you about developing for Apple

01:14:04 ◼   ► platforms. As far as I can recall, there has never been a WWDC website that hinted strongly

01:14:11 ◼   ► at the specific nature of a specific thing they're going to announce, probably mostly because at the

01:14:16 ◼   ► time this artwork is commissioned, they're not even entirely sure what's going to be presented

01:14:19 ◼   ► at WWDC and things that are going into and out of the keynote and into and out of the sessions

01:14:24 ◼   ► for a long time. So I feel like this, trying to read the tea leaves in this artwork is probably

01:14:33 ◼   ► about as useful as trying to read the tea leaves in last year's artwork, which is all

01:14:37 ◼   ► those top views of people.

01:14:39 ◼   ► Yeah, the little people.

01:14:41 ◼   ► Which was like, it's a particular artist who does that style of stuff.

01:14:44 ◼   ► And that aesthetic theme was all over WWDC last year, but it had nothing to do with anything

01:14:49 ◼   ► that was presented.

01:14:50 ◼   ► It was just a cool, fun marketing style that talked about, you know, people, developers

01:14:55 ◼   ► are people, and they're doing developing things, and it's fun and interesting or whatever.

01:15:00 ◼   ► one looks super cool and it's got these cool 3D representations of like, you know,

01:15:04 ◼   ► UI elements from iOS and the Mac. It's because, and it's got curly braces and other weird shapes,

01:15:11 ◼   ► it communicates like, "Hey, these are things you use when you're developing for our platforms,

01:15:16 ◼   ► and this is a conference about developing for our platforms." It's really hard to read anything

01:15:20 ◼   ► into it, but people are so, they so want to see something in it, they're saying, "See how these

01:15:26 ◼   ► are all 3D, it's showing that they're moving away from flat design because nothing is flat in this.

01:15:30 ◼   ► Get it, man? They're coming, you know? And like, it's really reaching. And I have to admit, when I

01:15:37 ◼   ► saw this, my thought was nostalgia, because one of—I tweeted this—one of the elements in this

01:15:42 ◼   ► very cool-looking—like there's an animation that goes along with it—very cool-looking 3D

01:15:45 ◼   ► rendered thing showing a bunch of controls. One of the elements in the lower left corner are three

01:15:51 ◼   ► translucent spheres with symbols in them, an X, a minus,

01:15:56 ◼   ► and then two little arrow-y things,

01:15:57 ◼   ► like a box with a slash through it.

01:16:00 ◼   ► And I tweeted about it with one word tweet

01:16:04 ◼   ► that said memories, dot, dot, dot.

01:16:06 ◼   ► A lot of people didn't know, they responded

01:16:09 ◼   ► and thought I was referring to things in like iOS 10

01:16:12 ◼   ► or something, or pre-iOS 7 or whatever.

01:16:15 ◼   ► What I was actually referring to was

01:16:17 ◼   ► the window control widgets,

01:16:19 ◼   ► what we used to call the stoplight widgets, red for window close, yellow for minimizing,

01:16:23 ◼   ► green for what used to be zoom and is now full screen or whatever the hell it does now.

01:16:29 ◼   ► They used to be rendered as if they were glossy spheres, and when you brought your mouse near

01:16:35 ◼   ► them or hovered over one of them, you'd see these symbols appear in the spheres.

01:16:39 ◼   ► And they were glossy spheres just like these spheres, although this is just viewing them

01:16:42 ◼   ► from a different angle.

01:16:43 ◼   ► Later in the life of the Mac operating system, they became flatter and eventually they just

01:16:48 ◼   ► became like what they are now, which is like, you know, flat colors of red, yellow, and

01:16:52 ◼   ► green. They don't even look like they're spheres at all, right? Even though they still have

01:16:56 ◼   ► the symbols in them. But floating in this thing are not the flat window widgets of today's

01:17:00 ◼   ► High Sierra. Floating in this thing are the window widgets of, you know, Cheetah, Puma,

01:17:04 ◼   ► and Panther. Mac OS X, I forgot, I missed Jaguar, sorry. Mac OS X, .01, 2, and 3, I

01:17:13 ◼   ► think is how long these things lasted before they start getting really flat. And that,

01:17:16 ◼   ► thought was a nice nostalgic nod or an indication that the Mac is considered legacy. But it's

01:17:22 ◼   ► a nice nod towards the past because most of the other controls that you see here are clearly

01:17:28 ◼   ► elements from iOS or elements from applications that are popularized by iOS, like the little

01:17:32 ◼   ► dot dot dot when someone's typing in messages, right? I think it's the same graphic they

01:17:35 ◼   ► use in messages on the Mac, but I associate it with iOS just because that's where text

01:17:41 ◼   ► messaging first came to the Apple platform. So my take is that you should not read into

01:17:48 ◼   ► these types of graphics. I think this is an awesome graphic. I love the aesthetic theme,

01:17:51 ◼   ► and I'm just enjoying it as cool branding for WWDC.

01:17:55 ◼   ► I agree with everything you just said. So we will all be there, and I'm excited for

01:18:01 ◼   ► it. It's one of my favorite times of year, and it's really, really fun. I don't really

01:18:07 ◼   ► care at all about texture.

01:18:09 ◼   ► So I don't know which one of you added this to the show notes, but do you want to take

01:18:13 ◼   ► it away?

01:18:14 ◼   ► Apparently magazines are a really hot business right now.

01:18:16 ◼   ► It's really a growth industry Apple's getting into here.

01:18:18 ◼   ► Yeah, you really messed that one up, Marco.

01:18:20 ◼   ► We should explain what this thing is.

01:18:23 ◼   ► I hadn't heard of it before today, surprise.

01:18:27 ◼   ► Because it's really popular.

01:18:28 ◼   ► But anyway, Apple, as an Apple press release and/or PR person would say, Apple acquires

01:18:33 ◼   ► small companies all the time.

01:18:35 ◼   ► Yeah, it actually is really a high number every time they say like did you know the last year Apple acquired 35 companies or some

01:18:40 ◼   ► Some huge I'm really really they you know, it's mostly small like Apple doesn't want to buy them when they're a 10 bazillion dollar company

01:18:47 ◼   ► They want to get them before that sometimes they buy companies just for the people sometimes for the technologies or patents

01:18:52 ◼   ► Rarely do they buy them for complete working businesses, but that does happen to like beats

01:18:57 ◼   ► They bought beats and then continue to sell beats headphones as beats headphones, right?

01:19:01 ◼   ► I guess maybe the one of the most recent full-fledged businesses they purchase so texture seems like one of the small ones

01:19:06 ◼   ► It's not clear to me whether they bought it for the business or the people or the tech or anything like that

01:19:09 ◼   ► but it what it is described as is

01:19:11 ◼   ► Netflix for magazines where you play a flat fee and get access to a bunch of magazines in the same way you pay a flat fee

01:19:17 ◼   ► Every month for Netflix and you get access to a bunch of movies

01:19:19 ◼   ► Why does Apple need to buy this

01:19:22 ◼   ► I'm not sure why they might want to buy it but

01:19:27 ◼   ► Apple has in the past shown that they're interested in

01:19:31 ◼   ► Being some kind of a platform aid to periodicals. We all remember newsstand Marco. I'm sure most fondly

01:19:39 ◼   ► That was an attempt to do something like this newsstand did not work out so well newsstand is now gone

01:19:45 ◼   ► But it signals Apple's interest in this

01:19:48 ◼   ► Texture strikes me as all right the approach with newsstand of making this weird app

01:19:54 ◼   ► Slash folder where a bunch of things go and putting weird limitations on them or giving them

01:19:57 ◼   ► You know of recurring structures like the whole newsstand thing didn't work out having individual applications for individual things

01:20:03 ◼   ► But having them be newsstand savvy that that model didn't work for us

01:20:06 ◼   ► Let's try this model and this model

01:20:08 ◼   ► Seems a little bit more like Apple news or Apple itself could potentially make an application and within that application

01:20:14 ◼   ► you see a bunch of magazines just like within Apple news you see a bunch of news and

01:20:19 ◼   ► And other content providers can participate in Apple News not by launching their own application

01:20:24 ◼   ► that is Apple News-powered, but rather by getting their news into the one and only Apple

01:20:28 ◼   ► News application.

01:20:30 ◼   ► Texture is an established business that works in a certain way, so I'm not sure if Apple's

01:20:34 ◼   ► going to rebrand it or just put it out the way it is or just scrap texture entirely and

01:20:38 ◼   ► take those people and tell them to make Newsstand version two.

01:20:41 ◼   ► This time it'll be better.

01:20:44 ◼   ► But as Marco or maybe Casey pointed out, it's great that they're kind of into that, but

01:20:49 ◼   ► I'm not sure magazines on computers or otherwise are really where it's at in terms of a growth

01:20:56 ◼   ► industry.

01:20:57 ◼   ► But I would give Apple full credit for recognizing that Newsstand didn't work out.

01:21:03 ◼   ► Sunsetting in a fairly graceful way, as I think Marco said, the best time to cancel

01:21:08 ◼   ► something is when no one notices that you canceled it, and many people don't realize

01:21:11 ◼   ► Newsstand is gone now.

01:21:12 ◼   ► Because if you never really used it, you're like, "Is Newsstand gone?"

01:21:15 ◼   ► Or if you remember what Newsstand was, "Yeah, it's gone."

01:21:18 ◼   ► And no one really kicked up a fuss about it.

01:21:20 ◼   ► So that was good.

01:21:21 ◼   ► And I think it's worth taking another run at.

01:21:23 ◼   ► I know I read magazines, and I do have individual apps, you know, I have like the Edge magazine

01:21:27 ◼   ► application.

01:21:28 ◼   ► Like, I read magazines on my iPads.

01:21:31 ◼   ► I'm not totally offended by that idea.

01:21:33 ◼   ► I read ebooks on my iPad too.

01:21:35 ◼   ► And so if Apple wants to make a really nice service application thingy for reading magazines,

01:21:41 ◼   ► Sure, give it a shot. Why shouldn't they be allowed to give that a try?

01:21:44 ◼   ► Yeah, no argument here. It's just this was not on my radar before and as soon as we cease talking about it

01:21:50 ◼   ► It will not be on my radar again.

01:21:52 ◼   ► Do either one of you read magazines at all on any iOS device? No. I don't read magazines at all on anything ever.

01:21:58 ◼   ► Hmm

01:22:00 ◼   ► Yeah, no

01:22:00 ◼   ► I mean I still read Car and Driver on paper and I read Edge on paper and also in iOS because I think their iOS app

01:22:06 ◼   ► I mean, it's not great, but it's not the bad old days of like the original Zinnio for all

01:22:10 ◼   ► I know this is the new Zinnia behind these, I have no idea what technology powers it is.

01:22:13 ◼   ► But it's not just a bunch of PDFs that they throw onto your screen.

01:22:17 ◼   ► Although with today's retina they could probably do that and it would probably be okay, especially

01:22:20 ◼   ► on a 12.9 inch because it's practically magazine size and with a retina screen it would look

01:22:24 ◼   ► great.

01:22:25 ◼   ► I'm mostly doing it for Edge and Car and Driver because I like the content, but the presentation

01:22:29 ◼   ► on iOS isn't bad.

01:22:31 ◼   ► And it's nice not to have to carry around, you know, if you're going on vacation and

01:22:34 ◼   ► you want to read through your last three issues of Edge magazine, to have them all on your

01:22:38 ◼   ► iPad rather than three paper things.

01:22:40 ◼   ► It's convenient.

01:22:41 ◼   ► So I will probably download this and try it and see how good the app is and if there are

01:22:47 ◼   ► any magazines that I care about in there.

01:22:48 ◼   ► I doubt I'll subscribe to it though.

01:22:51 ◼   ► Cool.

01:22:52 ◼   ► I have nothing to say about this at all.

01:22:54 ◼   ► I know.

01:22:55 ◼   ► I just don't care.

01:22:56 ◼   ► And maybe I should care, but I just don't care.

01:22:58 ◼   ► Apple buys leading manufacturer of fax machines.

01:23:00 ◼   ► Fax machines, yeah.

01:23:02 ◼   ► I mean, here's the thing with magazines.

01:23:04 ◼   ► Like we're making fun of them because magazines is the old world or whatever, but websites,

01:23:08 ◼   ► websites are not that different from magazines and once you have a magazine that publishes

01:23:11 ◼   ► through an application it's like, is this just like a closed version of the web and

01:23:15 ◼   ► a closed version of a web browser? Maybe, but, you know, websites and magazines still

01:23:22 ◼   ► seem slightly different, like magazines have websites, but, I don't know, maybe I'm just

01:23:27 ◼   ► nostalgic for the old days of magazines and there's lots of legacy businesses that are

01:23:32 ◼   ► are tied to the magazine format that I'm glad to see allowed to live another decade or two

01:23:38 ◼   ► through an effort like this.

01:23:40 ◼   ► All right, so time for Ask ATP.

01:23:42 ◼   ► Matt Wallin writes, "My Mac Pro does not have a Wi-Fi card."

01:23:45 ◼   ► Wait, this is a Mac Pro question.

01:23:47 ◼   ► I don't care.

01:23:48 ◼   ► Bill Ballinor writes—I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding—"My Mac Pro does not have a

01:23:52 ◼   ► Wi-Fi card.

01:23:53 ◼   ► My wife and son both have accounts on the Mac Pro, and I was thinking of using Migration

01:23:55 ◼   ► Assistant to copy stuff from the old machine to the new.

01:23:58 ◼   ► Can I connect them via Ethernet for this purpose?

01:24:00 ◼   ► or will it matter that the new machine will be running on High Sierra and the old machine

01:24:03 ◼   ► is El Capitan. I've looked for specific documentation on this online and haven't found a satisfyingly

01:24:08 ◼   ► definitive answer." Now, I don't think I have ever used Migration Assistant, ever. I'm not

01:24:14 ◼   ► saying it's bad, I'm not saying that I'm doing things the right way, it's just I like to

01:24:18 ◼   ► kind of start fresh each time. I know that this is also a little bit different because

01:24:22 ◼   ► you're talking about other people and they may not want to start fresh even though you

01:24:25 ◼   ► do, but I don't really have any good answers with regard to Migration Assistant. Have you

01:24:31 ◼   ► guys used that? I thought both of you have.

01:24:33 ◼   ► I definitely have. I'm a big proponent of Migration Assistant. I think there are a couple

01:24:38 ◼   ► parts to this question. Starting at the very end, I've looked for specific documentation

01:24:42 ◼   ► and haven't found anything. I almost guarantee that there is satisfying definitive documentation

01:24:47 ◼   ► related to this on Apple's website, but yes, sometimes it can be hard to find. The beginning

01:24:50 ◼   ► of the question, going back to the beginning, I can connect via all these different things.

01:24:53 ◼   ► I don't have Wi-Fi, does it matter?

01:24:57 ◼   ► I can tell you that you do not want to use Migration Assistant over Wi-Fi if you can

01:25:03 ◼   ► at all help it.

01:25:04 ◼   ► So the fact that your Mac Pro doesn't have a Wi-Fi card, don't worry about it.

01:25:07 ◼   ► I would never recommend doing it.

01:25:09 ◼   ► It was worse when Wi-Fi was slower.

01:25:11 ◼   ► It's better now that Wi-Fi is faster, but I have not had good luck with using Migration

01:25:15 ◼   ► Assistant over Wi-Fi.

01:25:17 ◼   ► The good news is that most reasonably modern Macs can do Migration Assistant through almost

01:25:23 ◼   ► any of their ports. Like I don't know if they can do it over the headphone jack yet, but

01:25:26 ◼   ► who knows.

01:25:27 ◼   ► Like the old iPod shuffle sinking over the headphones jack?

01:25:31 ◼   ► Yeah. I used to do it through FireWire. You can do it through Ethernet. You can do it

01:25:36 ◼   ► through Thunderbolt. There's all sorts of ways that migration assistance will work.

01:25:41 ◼   ► The bad news is figuring out how to get it to work, especially with the more obscure

01:25:46 ◼   ► ports, can be tricky. So what I would recommend is going back to Apple's website and digging

01:25:51 ◼   ► through this stuff and finding the documentation for your specific computer, and it will usually

01:25:56 ◼   ► tell you, and by the way, from your computer, you can only migrate to this set of computers

01:26:01 ◼   ► through these interfaces.

01:26:02 ◼   ► There is sort of a matrix of what connectedness can I use and how is it known as the computer,

01:26:06 ◼   ► and you can, unfortunately, find yourself in a situation where you're trying to migrate

01:26:09 ◼   ► from a really old computer to a really new one, when there's no great way to do it, except

01:26:14 ◼   ► for maybe Ethernet, but then you need an Ethernet adapter or whatever.

01:26:17 ◼   ► But I have never, as someone who keeps computers for a long time, I've never kept on long enough

01:26:21 ◼   ► that I was unable to run Migration Assistant.

01:26:24 ◼   ► So I would suggest using the fastest connection you can.

01:26:27 ◼   ► Ethernet is probably sufficient and it's probably the baseline, so try to do that if you possibly

01:26:32 ◼   ► can.

01:26:33 ◼   ► Find the docs for it and just give it a try.

01:26:36 ◼   ► I think you will be mostly pleased with the results.

01:26:39 ◼   ► I always have been.

01:26:40 ◼   ► I find that Migration Assistant really does migrate my stuff.

01:26:44 ◼   ► And yes, it does take a long time, but the amount of time it takes when I do the math

01:26:47 ◼   ► works out to be roughly amount of data it has to transfer, you know, divided by the

01:26:53 ◼   ► transfer rate or whatever.

01:26:54 ◼   ► I have had almost similar luck as that. The only difference I would suggest are when you

01:27:01 ◼   ► connect the old Mac via target disk mode, it tends to be significantly faster. My greatest

01:27:07 ◼   ► has a pretty big problem that I think it's had basically forever in that it is terrible

01:27:13 ◼   ► at estimating how much time you have left.

01:27:16 ◼   ► And it will frequently get into a state

01:27:18 ◼   ► where it appears as though it's making no progress at all.

01:27:21 ◼   ► And it could stay there for hours or even days.

01:27:25 ◼   ► And that's very frustrating.

01:27:26 ◼   ► It's very hard to tell often what it's doing,

01:27:29 ◼   ► whether it is still going to go,

01:27:30 ◼   ► how long it's still going to go for.

01:27:32 ◼   ► - That's why I said do the math.

01:27:33 ◼   ► If you know you have a one terabyte hard drive

01:27:36 ◼   ► that's mostly full and you know your connection

01:27:38 ◼   ► is one gigabit, do the division,

01:27:40 ◼   ► figure out how long you think it's gonna take

01:27:41 ◼   ► You can use that as your outside, you know,

01:27:43 ◼   ► like to get an idea of how long you think it's gonna take.

01:27:46 ◼   ► If it takes 10 times that thing,

01:27:47 ◼   ► something's probably gone wrong.

01:27:49 ◼   ► But don't believe the progress bar,

01:27:51 ◼   ► 'cause it doesn't know.

01:27:52 ◼   ► - Well anyway, I have had significantly better luck

01:27:57 ◼   ► with doing it via target disk mode on the sending machine,

01:28:01 ◼   ► rather than having both machines

01:28:03 ◼   ► run the Mega

01:28:03 ◼   ► the Migrator Assistant app.

01:28:05 ◼   ► This would probably also, if there's any problems

01:28:07 ◼   ► with the old one being El Capitan,

01:28:11 ◼   ► target disk mode would probably avoid those problems

01:28:12 ◼   ► a little bit more likely or more easily

01:28:15 ◼   ► than running the Migrator Assistant app on both sides.

01:28:18 ◼   ► But also, yeah, I found the disk method to be way faster

01:28:23 ◼   ► and way more reliable and I have never had it reach

01:28:26 ◼   ► one of those states where it seemed like

01:28:28 ◼   ► it's gonna just take forever.

01:28:29 ◼   ► Whereas over WiFi and even Gigabit Ethernet,

01:28:32 ◼   ► I've had that happen.

01:28:34 ◼   ► So by doing target disk mode, you have most of the options

01:28:38 ◼   ► that Jon suggested on the old Mac Pro.

01:28:41 ◼   ► You probably, let's see, Mac Pros that had Wi-Fi

01:28:44 ◼   ► are optional, would be 2006 into 2008.

01:28:47 ◼   ► I believe it was standard after that, so it's pretty old.

01:28:50 ◼   ► It will definitely predate all Thunderbolt,

01:28:52 ◼   ► 'cause Thunderbolt came after the Mac Pro.

01:28:54 ◼   ► So your best port is probably FireWire 800,

01:28:58 ◼   ► assuming you have, well you definitely have that,

01:29:00 ◼   ► assuming it still works, then I would suggest,

01:29:03 ◼   ► you know, if you have any problems trying to do this

01:29:05 ◼   ► over ethernet, I would suggest,

01:29:07 ◼   ► assuming the new machine has Thunderbolt,

01:29:10 ◼   ► go to the Apple Store, get a Thunderbolt to,

01:29:14 ◼   ► well, let's see, you're gonna need two dongles.

01:29:16 ◼   ► - No, FireWire 800, that is what I've got

01:29:17 ◼   ► on the iMac right now, I was gonna suggest.

01:29:19 ◼   ► If you, like, Target is Smoking--

01:29:20 ◼   ► - But does it go FireWire 800 to USB 3 Thunderbolt,

01:29:23 ◼   ► or does it have to, you have to adapt two to three,

01:29:25 ◼   ► and then two to 800?

01:29:28 ◼   ► - I only have one adapter in the back of my 5K iMac.

01:29:31 ◼   ► It's like Firewire 800 into this adapter

01:29:35 ◼   ► and this adapter into the back of the iMac,

01:29:36 ◼   ► but I confess I do not recall what exactly

01:29:38 ◼   ► it's going into the back of the iMac.

01:29:40 ◼   ► - So assuming that you're,

01:29:42 ◼   ► he doesn't actually say what he's going to, right?

01:29:45 ◼   ► - No, I believe that's correct.

01:29:47 ◼   ► - Okay, so assuming that it's a current generation machine

01:29:51 ◼   ► that only has Thunderbolt 3 ports,

01:29:53 ◼   ► you might need two dongles to go once from 800

01:29:57 ◼   ► to Thunderbolt 2, and then once again,

01:29:59 ◼   ► from Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3.

01:30:01 ◼   ► So that might be like $80 worth of dongles,

01:30:05 ◼   ► 'cause the Thunderbolt one's like 50 bucks.

01:30:07 ◼   ► - Well, then we have to start considering ethernet,

01:30:08 ◼   ► 'cause eventually they do both have ethernet ports,

01:30:10 ◼   ► ethernet is fast.

01:30:11 ◼   ► And practically speaking,

01:30:12 ◼   ► the reason I find myself using ethernet

01:30:14 ◼   ► is because I'm doing two desktops

01:30:15 ◼   ► and they're far away from each other,

01:30:16 ◼   ► and it's kind of a pain to like disconnect the desktop

01:30:18 ◼   ► and lug it over and put it close enough

01:30:20 ◼   ► so your little firewire or Thunderbolt or USB-C cable

01:30:24 ◼   ► can connect to the right ports.

01:30:26 ◼   ► It's just, then you're like, look, Ethernet is easier.

01:30:29 ◼   ► Even if your home doesn't wire for Ethernet,

01:30:30 ◼   ► to just get 100 feet of Ethernet cable

01:30:32 ◼   ► and plug it in and snake it over

01:30:34 ◼   ► and leave it there for a day for you to do the transfers,

01:30:36 ◼   ► that'll of course encourage you to wire your house

01:30:38 ◼   ► for Ethernet like a civilized person.

01:30:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I mean, if they have a Mac Pro

01:30:43 ◼   ► that doesn't have WiFi, they probably have this covered.

01:30:46 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:30:46 ◼   ► - Anyway, so yeah, I agree.

01:30:48 ◼   ► Try Ethernet first and only go buy the $80 worth

01:30:52 ◼   ► of dongles and cables if for some reason

01:30:54 ◼   ► Ethernet always fails.

01:30:55 ◼   ► - And backup before you do anything.

01:30:58 ◼   ► Backup, make a bunch of backups, take the backups,

01:31:00 ◼   ► disconnect them from all your computers,

01:31:01 ◼   ► put it someplace else, and then have fun screwing

01:31:04 ◼   ► with your computers.

01:31:05 ◼   ► Worst case scenario, you screw everything up,

01:31:07 ◼   ► you erase everything you restore from backup,

01:31:08 ◼   ► and then you're back to your initial stage again.

01:31:10 ◼   ► - Also, wait, if you can backup to a USB 3.0 hard drive,

01:31:14 ◼   ► your old Mac Pro doesn't have USB 3.0.

01:31:17 ◼   ► - Migration.

01:31:18 ◼   ► - But yeah, you could just then plug that

01:31:19 ◼   ► into the new computer and just do it that way.

01:31:21 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:31:22 ◼   ► - Oh, my word.

01:31:24 ◼   ► All right, Bill Ballinore writes,

01:31:26 ◼   ► "Is it okay for developers to force polite interactions

01:31:29 ◼   ► "on their users such as labeling the OK button in a prompt,

01:31:32 ◼   ► "'Yes, please,' or the dismiss button

01:31:34 ◼   ► "in a confirmation dialogue, 'Thanks.'

01:31:36 ◼   ► "These things make me cranky."

01:31:38 ◼   ► You're wrong, this is absolutely acceptable and I like it.

01:31:41 ◼   ► - Oh, God, no, what's your, okay, so, okay, there's,

01:31:45 ◼   ► if done in a non-intrusive, non-suggestive,

01:31:51 ◼   ► not putting words in my mouth kind of way,

01:31:53 ◼   ► It can be fine.

01:31:56 ◼   ► Unfortunately, that's not what happens in practice.

01:31:57 ◼   ► In practice, you have things like,

01:32:00 ◼   ► "No, I don't want to subscribe to the newsletter

01:32:02 ◼   ► "and get all these special deals because I'm cheap."

01:32:04 ◼   ► Or something like that.

01:32:06 ◼   ► They make you, so often, the words they use

01:32:10 ◼   ► are passive-aggressively condemning yourself

01:32:13 ◼   ► for making a choice that does not benefit

01:32:16 ◼   ► the developer's business interests.

01:32:18 ◼   ► And it's really obnoxious.

01:32:20 ◼   ► Oftentimes, other than that,

01:32:21 ◼   ► It just, you know, it tries to sound human and hip and cool,

01:32:26 ◼   ► but it's from like a big corporation

01:32:27 ◼   ► and we know that's fake.

01:32:29 ◼   ► And it comes off as just insincere fakery

01:32:32 ◼   ► trying to appeal to be more human

01:32:34 ◼   ► from a company that is anything but.

01:32:36 ◼   ► So it's very hard and very rare

01:32:40 ◼   ► to get this kind of thing right in a way

01:32:42 ◼   ► that sounds both sincere and non-offensive.

01:32:46 ◼   ► - I think you're reading too much into this,

01:32:48 ◼   ► or maybe I'm not reading enough into it.

01:32:50 ◼   ► To me, like, having a dismiss button that says "Thanks!"

01:32:54 ◼   ► I don't have a problem with that.

01:32:55 ◼   ► Having a dismiss button that says "No, I'm too cheap," or even if it's passive-aggressively

01:33:00 ◼   ► saying "No, I'm too cheap," and not using those literal words, that, yes, I agree with

01:33:04 ◼   ► you, that's total garbage.

01:33:05 ◼   ► But something as simple as "Yes, please," or "Thanks," or "No, thank you," like, I don't

01:33:09 ◼   ► have a problem with that at all.

01:33:11 ◼   ► I think you would have a problem with the "Thanks," because "Thanks" is putting words

01:33:14 ◼   ► in your mouth.

01:33:15 ◼   ► Like, you just want the box to go away.

01:33:16 ◼   ► So there's two aspects of the problem.

01:33:17 ◼   ► One is the giving your personality and putting words into the mouth of the user, because

01:33:22 ◼   ► what if they're annoyed at your application right now and are forced to hit a button that

01:33:25 ◼   ► says "thanks" and they don't want to thank your application at all because they're frustrated

01:33:28 ◼   ► with your application?

01:33:29 ◼   ► The "thanks" button makes them hate your application even more because you're forcing them to pretend

01:33:32 ◼   ► they're saying "thanks," right?

01:33:33 ◼   ► But the second reason, independent of all this stuff, is people are accustomed to dialog

01:33:38 ◼   ► boxes alerting a certain way.

01:33:39 ◼   ► Yes, no, okay, cancel.

01:33:40 ◼   ► Like there are interface standards that they're accustomed to, and if your application deviates

01:33:44 ◼   ► from those standards in any way, there should be a reason for it.

01:33:48 ◼   ► Maybe you care at weather and you have a personality type thing and that's part of the selling

01:33:52 ◼   ► point of your application.

01:33:53 ◼   ► Fine.

01:33:54 ◼   ► But if your application is selling point, it's not like there's a cost to defying expectations.

01:33:59 ◼   ► It causes people to pause and have to look at it and think about what they hit and like

01:34:03 ◼   ► read.

01:34:04 ◼   ► It causes them to have to read, whereas no one reads yes, no, or okay, cancel.

01:34:06 ◼   ► If they see them a million times, they just, you know, it becomes like a visual macro.

01:34:10 ◼   ► You're just like, oh, I recognize that.

01:34:11 ◼   ► I don't know which thing I want to hit.

01:34:13 ◼   ► or even just a single button dismiss thing in iOS,

01:34:16 ◼   ► where the button is always labeled as okay,

01:34:18 ◼   ► and now suddenly that button has different text on it,

01:34:21 ◼   ► you're forced to read it, you find out it says thanks,

01:34:23 ◼   ► you don't feel like thanking anybody,

01:34:24 ◼   ► and now you're annoyed.

01:34:26 ◼   ► So I would, I would in general say there is no 100% safe way

01:34:31 ◼   ► to inject personality into labels like that.

01:34:34 ◼   ► There are a lot of downsides,

01:34:36 ◼   ► and the only potential upsides are

01:34:37 ◼   ► if your application's value proposition

01:34:41 ◼   ► is based on its personality and whimsy,

01:34:43 ◼   ► which can be done, but is much trickier than you think.

01:34:48 ◼   ► - It also, be very careful when you're writing dialogue text,

01:34:51 ◼   ► if you're a developer or if you're Apple,

01:34:54 ◼   ► that attributes malice or actions to the user,

01:34:57 ◼   ► or it attributes an intent or actions to the user

01:35:01 ◼   ► that may or may not be the case.

01:35:04 ◼   ► One of the most infuriating pieces of text

01:35:06 ◼   ► in all of Mac OS is the dialogue that comes up

01:35:09 ◼   ► after it has a kernel panic and shuts down and reboots

01:35:12 ◼   ► that says, "You shut down your computer

01:35:15 ◼   ► "because of a problem."

01:35:17 ◼   ► And a lot of times, no, you shut down my computer

01:35:21 ◼   ► because of your problem.

01:35:23 ◼   ► - It doesn't say that, does it?

01:35:24 ◼   ► - It totally says that.

01:35:25 ◼   ► - It says your computer shut down due to a problem.

01:35:27 ◼   ► - It says you shut down your computer.

01:35:29 ◼   ► - I gotta Google for this now.

01:35:31 ◼   ► - I agree with John, that is not how I remember this.

01:35:34 ◼   ► - Are you sure?

01:35:35 ◼   ► - I am not sure, but.