ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I also like the idea of titles that make people not want to listen.

00:00:03 ◼   ► You know what?

00:00:04 ◼   ► You don't want to listen?

00:00:05 ◼   ► Fine!

00:00:06 ◼   ► Capital F, capital C, that's what you get.

00:00:07 ◼   ► It's obscure.

00:00:08 ◼   ► It's for the connoisseur, man.

00:00:10 ◼   ► Alright, anyway, first item of follow-up, the most followed-up item last week was both

00:00:18 ◼   ► Marco's description and my reinforcement of the idea that if you lose the tiny little

00:00:23 ◼   ► Apple remote in your couch cushions or it's just dark and it's somewhere on your couch

00:00:26 ◼   ► on the arm of your couch or on a coffee table and you go reaching for it and you feel around

00:00:31 ◼   ► to try to find it and you accidentally swipe your fingers across touchpad while you're

00:00:35 ◼   ► watching video that will move the playhead on the video.

00:00:38 ◼   ► And many many people were going to tell us that if you hit the menu button it would just

00:00:42 ◼   ► go back to where it was.

00:00:44 ◼   ► When you move the playhead it doesn't actually start playing again until you tell it to play

00:00:48 ◼   ► but then you're still kind of faced with the situation of "oh well how do I get the playhead

00:00:51 ◼   ► back to where I want to put it?"

00:00:52 ◼   ► I don't think you even have to put it back first of all but second of all if you accidentally

00:00:56 ◼   ► do that if you're reaching to the remote and you swipe your hands across touchpad and it

00:01:00 ◼   ► moves the playhead somewhere just hit the menu button and it will go back to where it

00:01:03 ◼   ► was.

00:01:04 ◼   ► I think you can probably also just hit, well maybe you can't hit play.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Anyway, menu button, the largest followed up item.

00:01:09 ◼   ► I didn't know that in my one hour of using it but since then I have used it and it works.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Have you used Plex yet?

00:01:16 ◼   ► I haven't, I keep meaning to install that.

00:01:18 ◼   ► I haven't installed it.

00:01:19 ◼   ► And the thing that keeps me away from Plex, I went through this big long painful experience

00:01:22 ◼   ► to install it on my PS4 and then was disappointed in the client.

00:01:26 ◼   ► The main thing that keeps me from installing it is my Plex server would be my Synology,

00:01:30 ◼   ► but I use the DS video server instead, and the kids use the DS video server.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Like you can play video from it from my television from ten different places.

00:01:39 ◼   ► And I think, I don't like to mess with that setup, because I think by enabling Plex there's

00:01:44 ◼   ► a potential that I could screw up my existing video thing, or maybe it'll show up as two

00:01:47 ◼   ► DLNA servers.

00:01:48 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:01:49 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:01:50 ◼   ► two DLNA servers because my dad uses DLNA and he has Plex running, I believe hosted

00:01:56 ◼   ► on the Synology of Memory Serves, and there are two separate DLNA servers for sure.

00:02:01 ◼   ► Yeah, so I'm always just afraid to touch what works, especially if it involves things

00:02:05 ◼   ► that my kids are using, but I will eventually try.

00:02:07 ◼   ► Really you should get yours first and try it and tell me about it.

00:02:11 ◼   ► Right.

00:02:12 ◼   ► Let's, we'll figure that out.

00:02:14 ◼   ► At some point maybe, I'm sure I'm going to get one.

00:02:16 ◼   ► It's just, haven't done it yet, trying to hold out, trying to wait for the holidays,

00:02:20 ◼   ► probably won't work, we'll see.

00:02:22 ◼   ► What did your kids say about the remote?

00:02:25 ◼   ► - This I thought was interesting

00:02:26 ◼   ► because I've seen a lot of things about the Apple TV

00:02:30 ◼   ► or about just technology in general

00:02:32 ◼   ► where it's like we old people don't understand it

00:02:35 ◼   ► and only the kids truly understand it.

00:02:38 ◼   ► And I thought one of my kids' reaction

00:02:40 ◼   ► to the new remote was interesting.

00:02:43 ◼   ► They're used to having lots of different remotes

00:02:47 ◼   ► 'cause I don't have a universal remote,

00:02:49 ◼   ► I have a bunch of different remotes.

00:02:50 ◼   ► They have learned more or less to navigate my crazy television setup to get what they

00:02:54 ◼   ► want on the television.

00:02:55 ◼   ► They're not really that into it.

00:02:57 ◼   ► They don't want to know how it works.

00:02:58 ◼   ► They just want to know the minimum possible to get it to work.

00:03:01 ◼   ► Anyway, I said, "Here, here's the new Apple TV."

00:03:03 ◼   ► And I showed it to them and we were watching some video and at some point they wanted to

00:03:06 ◼   ► watch a video by themselves.

00:03:08 ◼   ► And I said, "Oh, just use the new Apple TV."

00:03:09 ◼   ► And they didn't know what the remote looked like because they're used to the TiVo remote.

00:03:12 ◼   ► Anyway, I gave them the remote and showed it to them.

00:03:15 ◼   ► And immediately, this is my daughter.

00:03:18 ◼   ► She was super angry that this remote did not work like the other one.

00:03:21 ◼   ► She was just trying to navigate the grid of items to, you know, go up and to the left.

00:03:25 ◼   ► And I was like, all right, go over to Netflix.

00:03:27 ◼   ► Why she was watching Netflix, now everyone knows she knows how to do it from the T-02.

00:03:30 ◼   ► But anyway, just moving the sort of selection to the Netflix icon on the main screen using

00:03:36 ◼   ► the touch pad did not, was not immediately apparent how that worked, even though I kept

00:03:40 ◼   ► showing her swipe your thumb left or right or tap or whatever.

00:03:43 ◼   ► And she got so angry, she was like, why can't it just be buttons?

00:03:45 ◼   ► I just want to go up and left.

00:03:47 ◼   ► She was just so angry that it didn't work the way the other one did because she was competent with the other one

00:03:51 ◼   ► She knows how to go again. It was a TiVo remote not the little Apple thing

00:03:54 ◼   ► She knows how to go up up left left and then hit the button in the middle to select and this tiny little remote

00:03:59 ◼   ► Was thwarting or it had taken away her skill and made her back into a novice and that is a phenomenon that we're all very

00:04:06 ◼   ► familiar with in the adult world or the world of people who aren't in elementary school anyway

00:04:11 ◼   ► where they have a set of computer skills that have been built up over many years and

00:04:16 ◼   ► The the introduction of anything new even if the new thing is better is seen as a threat or as a bad thing

00:04:22 ◼   ► Because it puts them back into the role of novice. They know how to use the old system

00:04:27 ◼   ► They know how to use

00:04:28 ◼   ► You know a particular interface or a piece of hardware or a piece of software or whatever and that expert they start that expertise starts

00:04:34 ◼   ► To feel like they start to internalize that as like I am a competent person. I know how to do this job

00:04:39 ◼   ► I can't whatever whatever task I need to accomplish I can accomplish it and I use it and any tool you give them even if

00:04:44 ◼   ► the tool is actually better once you learn it, because it makes them feel like they can

00:04:47 ◼   ► no longer do the task they could previously do, that tool is bad. And it was amazing to

00:04:51 ◼   ► me to see that happen in an eight-year-old. You know, it's not—we're not that different,

00:04:57 ◼   ► you and I, the old people and the young people. Even an eight-year-old can be super angry

00:05:01 ◼   ► that her hard-earned skills of using the directional pad and the select button on a T-bar remote

00:05:07 ◼   ► can be erased in a moment by new technology. Anyway, she's used to it now. It's fine.

00:05:11 ◼   ► Just like that.

00:05:12 ◼   ► All is right in the world.

00:05:13 ◼   ► Well, yeah, I mean, you know, she's eight.

00:05:14 ◼   ► It takes three seconds.

00:05:15 ◼   ► You learn how to do it.

00:05:16 ◼   ► It's like she was still angry about it for that day, but now she's over it.

00:05:19 ◼   ► Oh, goodness gracious.

00:05:21 ◼   ► All right, any other follow-up, or are we already done?

00:05:23 ◼   ► If we are done, that is world record follow-up.

00:05:26 ◼   ► I'm very proud of us.

00:05:27 ◼   ► I think Marco's been doing more Apple TV gaming.

00:05:30 ◼   ► Do you have anything more to add on it?

00:05:32 ◼   ► Yeah, so basically what happened between last show and this show is that my family discovered

00:05:38 ◼   ► that the Apple TV can in fact be a good gaming system because we discovered the game that

00:05:42 ◼   ► everybody else discovered two years ago, Badland. This was especially good because none of us

00:05:47 ◼   ► had actually played it on iOS, so it was all new to us. Badland is a fantastic game for

00:05:52 ◼   ► the Apple TV.

00:05:53 ◼   ► I don't think I've ever even heard of this.

00:05:55 ◼   ► So it's kind of like the art style, almost of limbo but with color, and it's this kind

00:06:02 ◼   ► of intricate, really fancied up version of the basic gameplay mechanic of Flappy Bird.

00:06:09 ◼   ► And this is really minimizing its goodness, but it's like, so you know, you are this bird

00:06:13 ◼   ► and you like, you push the button to go up and you let go of the button to fall and you

00:06:18 ◼   ► know, just like this kind of inertia based flying game. And you just fly through these

00:06:21 ◼   ► side scrolling levels and there's all sorts of different obstacles and things that you,

00:06:26 ◼   ► you know, things you pick up to change, the behavior of things and you multiply and divide,

00:06:31 ◼   ► It's crazy.

00:06:33 ◼   ► It's just a really, really good game and it is incredibly good even on the Siri remote.

00:06:39 ◼   ► We've actually tried it with the gamepad and with the Siri remote and we actually find

00:06:42 ◼   ► it's better with the Siri remote and I can't explain why.

00:06:45 ◼   ► I don't know why.

00:06:46 ◼   ► Is it tap to click or is it click to click?

00:06:48 ◼   ► You have to actually click the button and it doesn't just tap.

00:06:51 ◼   ► But again, it doesn't make sense.

00:06:52 ◼   ► I don't know why it's better but for some reason it just feels better.

00:06:55 ◼   ► It feels right on the Siri remote.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Well, doesn't it feel weird to hold a traditional console style controller in two hands and

00:07:02 ◼   ► the only thing you're doing with it is pressing one button with one thumb?

00:07:05 ◼   ► Maybe. That might be it. So anyway, it really is a fantastic game. I highly recommend it

00:07:11 ◼   ► for any Apple TV owner. It's accessible, like, you know, kids can play it, adults can

00:07:16 ◼   ► play it, non-gamers can play it. It is really a very nice, well-done game. I think it's

00:07:21 ◼   ► like five bucks. Who cares? Just get it. Like, it's really good. By far, the best Apple

00:07:27 ◼   ► TV gaming experience that we've had so far.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Interesting. This looks aesthetically, just reading the, um, or excuse me, not reading,

00:07:35 ◼   ► but watching the little video on their website, this looks aesthetically a lot like World

00:07:39 ◼   ► of Goo to me. Did either of you play that?

00:07:41 ◼   ► Yeah, it's, yeah, and I, honestly, I wouldn't expect World of Goo to work because of the

00:07:45 ◼   ► lack of a pointer, but it is kind of in that, in a similar art style, or maybe that was

00:07:51 ◼   ► one of the influences on it. Certainly, it's just a, it's a gorgeous, you know, artistic

00:07:56 ◼   ► design game. It's really, really -- and it's kind of funny, it's kind of sick, like, it's

00:08:01 ◼   ► really good. Just get Badland. There aren't that many things you can do in the Apple TV

00:08:05 ◼   ► that are really excellent right now, because we're just waiting on a lot of software to

00:08:09 ◼   ► get ported or written for it. This is one of those things. This highly recommended Badland.

00:08:14 ◼   ► >> There's another one of those one-button-press games.

00:08:17 ◼   ► >> Yes.

00:08:18 ◼   ► >> Because, you know, and designed for -- I'm assuming this was designed for touch originally,

00:08:21 ◼   ► but it lends itself well, because you are forced to go forward. Like, there is no move

00:08:26 ◼   ► forward thing, like isn't going forward, isn't that like part of the the gameplay itself, and that

00:08:30 ◼   ► the screen moves on whether you're ready or not, so if you have to backtrack or something to get

00:08:34 ◼   ► around an obstacle and the screen is moving on, tough luck, right? Yeah, exactly. And so this is

00:08:40 ◼   ► a type of game that I think traditional gamers who are used to having more control over their

00:08:45 ◼   ► environment might find off-putting, but is ideal for the phone where you don't want to make someone

00:08:50 ◼   ► try to use a virtual d-pad, and now on the Apple TV where we actually have a real d-ish pad or

00:08:55 ◼   ► or whatever. If you just want to use the remote, hey, we already have a game already tuned

00:08:59 ◼   ► for single button press and now that button doesn't even block any of the screen. So,

00:09:03 ◼   ► an ideal Apple TV port.

00:09:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's, you know, it's watchable by people, like it's fun to watch someone

00:09:08 ◼   ► playing it. Nothing about it needs to be on a personal device that's only in your hands.

00:09:16 ◼   ► You know, it really is very much like a TV friendly, family friendly, general audience

00:09:22 ◼   ► kind of game. It's just really good. Highly recommended. I also tried Provenance more

00:09:27 ◼   ► this week. So the provenance is that emulator, so you can't actually get it on the app store.

00:09:31 ◼   ► It's one of those, it's one of the relatively few apps I think that is published with the

00:09:36 ◼   ► intention of everybody, it's open source and to install it you have to download the source

00:09:42 ◼   ► code, register for an Apple developer account, have Xcode build the game and connect your

00:09:49 ◼   ► TV via USB to your computer and have Xcode install the game onto your Apple TV with provisioning

00:09:55 ◼   ► profiles generated from your developer account.

00:09:57 ◼   ► My goodness.

00:09:58 ◼   ► It is definitely not something that you can just like tell a non-developer to just go

00:10:04 ◼   ► do this and expect them to figure it out. They might, but the chances are not great.

00:10:10 ◼   ► So it is very much a cumbersome process. I know Flux, the F.lux, that I believe just

00:10:17 ◼   ► came out with something similar for iPhones and iPads

00:10:20 ◼   ► where they had this open source version

00:10:23 ◼   ► that they just say here you can side load this

00:10:26 ◼   ► with Xcode and a developer account

00:10:28 ◼   ► if you want this on your device without jailbreak

00:10:30 ◼   ► and something like that.

00:10:31 ◼   ► So it's a pretty cumbersome process

00:10:35 ◼   ► and then it's nerdy, then you have to like

00:10:37 ◼   ► tell it to import your ROMs

00:10:39 ◼   ► that you wanna play in the emulator

00:10:40 ◼   ► and then it like creates a web interface

00:10:43 ◼   ► and you have to like go from your Mac and upload them

00:10:46 ◼   ► So it's definitely a little bit cumbersome to get set up.

00:10:49 ◼   ► But when it is set up, you have an emulator on your Apple TV.

00:10:52 ◼   ► And it covers all the popular 8 and 16-bit systems.

00:10:55 ◼   ► It doesn't go into-- like, it doesn't have N64 or anything

00:10:59 ◼   ► more advanced.

00:11:00 ◼   ► I think it stops at, like, Super Nintendo and Genesis level.

00:11:03 ◼   ► But it is really quite good.

00:11:06 ◼   ► I've played better emulators.

00:11:08 ◼   ► If you have a computer with a game pad on your computer,

00:11:11 ◼   ► you can do a lot better.

00:11:12 ◼   ► Because like, Providence, it lacks

00:11:14 ◼   ► a lot of customizable control that a lot of emulators have. You can't, for example, customize

00:11:19 ◼   ► the controls. So if you don't like how they map the buttons onto the gamepad, tough luck.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Oh, I guess you have the source code. I guess you could change it. But I am a developer

00:11:30 ◼   ► and I wouldn't bother doing that. They also don't appear to have any of the really nice

00:11:35 ◼   ► scaling modes. So like, you know, all these old games, they were made for much lower resolution

00:11:39 ◼   ► screens and if you run them on a modern emulator, you get all these like fancy, like the 2x

00:11:44 ◼   ► AI and Super Eagle, like all these fancy scaling up modes to make the graphics look better

00:11:49 ◼   ► on higher resolution larger screens that we have these days. And so that is not present

00:11:55 ◼   ► on this. So you're just looking at like a pixel quadrupled version of the game or whatever,

00:12:00 ◼   ► you know, just scale it up like in the dumbest way possible, scale it up to the big screen.

00:12:06 ◼   ► So it doesn't look great, but you know, it looks no worse than the original system did.

00:12:11 ◼   ► So overall, it's fun.

00:12:12 ◼   ► It's a fun way to get a whole bunch of games on an Apple TV

00:12:15 ◼   ► if you have a game pad.

00:12:16 ◼   ► Don't even bother if you have the Siri remote.

00:12:18 ◼   ► Just don't bother.

00:12:19 ◼   ► But if you have a game pad, check out Provenance.

00:12:21 ◼   ► Oh, if you have a game pad and an Apple TV

00:12:24 ◼   ► and you're a developer and you have a USB CD, USB cable.

00:12:28 ◼   ► - And you have a bunch of backups of your old video games.

00:12:31 ◼   ► - Yes, and if you have legally obtained backups from,

00:12:35 ◼   ► I don't even know what hardware that would be

00:12:37 ◼   ► to create those, if you have all of those,

00:12:40 ◼   ► which are really small. It's funny, like, I loaded up every game I wanted from Genesis,

00:12:48 ◼   ► Super Nintendo, and NES, and even Sega Master System, and these games are like a few hundred

00:12:52 ◼   ► kilobytes each. Like, I played through Sonic 1, which by the way, Sonic 1 is a hard game.

00:13:00 ◼   ► I used to be a lot better at Sonic than I am now. Wow. When it turns out we don't play

00:13:05 ◼   ► games for like a decade, it really impacts your ability to play them. I almost got a

00:13:10 ◼   ► the game over in labyrinth zone, that's how bad it was. I died in marble hill zone, I

00:13:14 ◼   ► mean that's, this is how bad I've gotten. So I played through that and it's like you

00:13:18 ◼   ► know a few hundred kilobytes. So it's a quick, it's a great way if you are this geeky to

00:13:21 ◼   ► set this kind of thing up, it is a really cool thing to do for a little while at least.

00:13:27 ◼   ► That being said, overall I am, so now that I've had good game experiences on the Apple

00:13:33 ◼   ► TV, I am more optimistic for its future, but it's going to depend a lot on how many people

00:13:39 ◼   ► actually buy these game controllers and then how many developers can afford to make games

00:13:46 ◼   ► for it.

00:13:48 ◼   ► Certainly there's going to be games like Badland where you don't need the game controller and

00:13:51 ◼   ► that's good but it's so limited because you see if you don't have one of these yet, you

00:13:57 ◼   ► look at that remote and you might think oh games can use six buttons or whatever.

00:14:01 ◼   ► No games can use basically I think two buttons.

00:14:04 ◼   ► The D-pad simulator, or you know, they have the track pad, and the play/pause button,

00:14:09 ◼   ► and I think that's it.

00:14:10 ◼   ► I think everything else is off limits to games, because everything else has a meaning into

00:14:15 ◼   ► the system that you aren't allowed to override.

00:14:18 ◼   ► And of course there's the accelerometer stuff, so you know, you could kind of do like Wii

00:14:21 ◼   ► game kind of stuff, some of it, not even all of it, because some of it requires more buttons

00:14:25 ◼   ► and more precision and everything, but you could do some of the kind of stuff we saw

00:14:28 ◼   ► on the Wii, but it is pretty limited.

00:14:31 ◼   ► So I do hope we see more good games, I'm sure we will, and there's probably even more out

00:14:35 ◼   ► now that I haven't tried yet, but I do think it's gonna be, I do think it has the potential

00:14:41 ◼   ► to be a really fun gaming platform, and I just hope it pans out.

00:14:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I was struck again by the stories this weekend about video game sales, like, thinking

00:14:51 ◼   ► of the Apple TV and iPhone gaming and everything else as kind of like gaming for the masses,

00:14:56 ◼   ► where it's like, "Yeah, I'm not that into games, but if you have a fun game to play,

00:14:59 ◼   ► check it out, the Apple TV, you buy it for other reasons, if it plays games it's cool.

00:15:02 ◼   ► But you know, I think the general impression of the people who are not in the video game industry

00:15:10 ◼   ► is that most people play phone games. You know, you got a phone, everyone's got a smartphone,

00:15:15 ◼   ► you can play games on it. Do you know anyone who has a smartphone who hasn't had at least one game

00:15:19 ◼   ► that they've played briefly, like had a week where they were addicted to insert name of your favorite

00:15:23 ◼   ► game here, whatever that may be? Even if it's just some random Zynga thing or Flappy Bird you

00:15:28 ◼   ► you mentioned before, the idea that for the mass market,

00:15:32 ◼   ► they're what we used to call casual games,

00:15:35 ◼   ► but there's so many more of those people, right?

00:15:37 ◼   ► And then there are the hardcore people,

00:15:39 ◼   ► the weirdos who have actual game consoles

00:15:42 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:15:43 ◼   ► But when you look at it from the numbers side of it,

00:15:46 ◼   ► it is flipped around.

00:15:48 ◼   ► There was this Call of Duty, Black Ops 3 came out

00:15:52 ◼   ► and sold like $550 million in the first weekend

00:15:56 ◼   ► and it's on track to earn a billion dollars.

00:15:59 ◼   ► It's almost as if, like if you took it in the movie sense

00:16:02 ◼   ► where people said, people have the impression of,

00:16:04 ◼   ► well, most people go to see these small independent movies

00:16:09 ◼   ► 'cause they're just movie casuals

00:16:10 ◼   ► and only the real hardcore people go to see "Jurassic World."

00:16:13 ◼   ► But no, no one has that impression.

00:16:14 ◼   ► Everyone says, well, movies?

00:16:15 ◼   ► Well, "Jurassic World," that's a smash hit.

00:16:17 ◼   ► Like that's for the masses, that's for the mainstream.

00:16:20 ◼   ► Gaming is so weird in that the thing that everyone thinks

00:16:23 ◼   ► is kind of like a dying industry of these, you know,

00:16:27 ◼   ► hardcore gamers.

00:16:28 ◼   ► There's only a couple of, you know,

00:16:30 ◼   ► tens or hundreds of millions of those,

00:16:31 ◼   ► as opposed to the billion people who play cell phone games.

00:16:34 ◼   ► And yet that's where all the money is.

00:16:36 ◼   ► Though these, you know,

00:16:37 ◼   ► Call of Duty Black Ops is making more money

00:16:39 ◼   ► than probably the entire top 10 in the iOS,

00:16:44 ◼   ► you know, gaming charts.

00:16:46 ◼   ► And that's just one game on this supposed platform

00:16:49 ◼   ► that is dying PCs and consoles.

00:16:53 ◼   ► So I don't know how we're gonna square that circle.

00:16:55 ◼   ► Like, I don't think we can extrapolate and say,

00:17:00 ◼   ► well, consoles are going away and PCs are going away.

00:17:02 ◼   ► And pretty soon the mass market will take over

00:17:05 ◼   ► and everyone just plays "Badlands" on their Apple TV

00:17:08 ◼   ► and plays "Flappy Bird" and "Candy Crush".

00:17:12 ◼   ► And that is the gaming industry.

00:17:14 ◼   ► When the money people are like,

00:17:16 ◼   ► give me this year's call of duty any day,

00:17:18 ◼   ► it is a money-making machine on the scale of a blockbuster movie and as far as the money people are concerned

00:17:24 ◼   ► That's the mass market of gaming. So I don't know it's hard

00:17:28 ◼   ► It's hard for me to get a handle on this because as a gamer I do see these other sort of

00:17:33 ◼   ► not lesser games, but smaller games as

00:17:37 ◼   ► as

00:17:39 ◼   ► The the the thing that's weird and I see Call of Duty as exactly the same as Jurassic World

00:17:45 ◼   ► The only thing that doesn't fit with that is the popular notion that console games and PC games are somehow going away to be to be wiped away by

00:17:52 ◼   ► lesser devices like the

00:17:56 ◼   ► Smartphone and iPad games that kids play and Apple TV games and whatever

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00:20:27 ◼   ► - So as we record big day today,

00:20:30 ◼   ► The biggest of all though for our friend Federico Vatici,

00:20:34 ◼   ► his dreams have come true.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Today is iPad Pro Day.

00:20:39 ◼   ► I did not have the time to go and take a look at the store

00:20:43 ◼   ► to see if they had any in stock.

00:20:44 ◼   ► I did not pre-order one.

00:20:46 ◼   ► I have no experience with this whatsoever,

00:20:48 ◼   ► but one of us does.

00:20:50 ◼   ► - So I actually went, Tiff won an iPad Pro,

00:20:53 ◼   ► and so we decided, like any Apple product,

00:20:57 ◼   ► if you're going to get it at all,

00:20:59 ◼   ► Get it when it's out because the price is not gonna change

00:21:02 ◼   ► between now, well actually, nevermind.

00:21:04 ◼   ► The way Apple is these days, this'll be for sale

00:21:06 ◼   ► for the next five years.

00:21:07 ◼   ► And it will drop by 100 bucks next year.

00:21:10 ◼   ► But anyways, so we decided, Tiff was interested

00:21:15 ◼   ► in larger screen iPad, so this morning,

00:21:18 ◼   ► woke up, ordered it for in-store pickup,

00:21:20 ◼   ► 'cause I was surprised, they said it would be available

00:21:22 ◼   ► for online ordering today in stores later this week.

00:21:26 ◼   ► and they surprised everyone, including the stores,

00:21:29 ◼   ► based on the employees I talked to,

00:21:31 ◼   ► by having it available in stores today.

00:21:33 ◼   ► That was great, so I went and ordered it,

00:21:35 ◼   ► like still in bed in the morning

00:21:36 ◼   ► with the Apple Store app for the iPhone,

00:21:38 ◼   ► which was the best way to order things.

00:21:39 ◼   ► Unfortunately, the pencil was already back ordered

00:21:43 ◼   ► at eight in the morning,

00:21:44 ◼   ► already back ordered three to four weeks.

00:21:47 ◼   ► And the stores, I asked around,

00:21:49 ◼   ► and it sounds like most stores

00:21:52 ◼   ► actually got zero pencils to sell today.

00:21:55 ◼   ► it's not like they sold out, they actually just didn't get any.

00:21:58 ◼   ► So what makes you think the pencil is back ordered as opposed to nobody has been able

00:22:01 ◼   ► to order it?

00:22:02 ◼   ► The people in my store said that they think the big stores in Manhattan might have gotten

00:22:07 ◼   ► a small number. And I heard some people from maybe some stores in Europe that are really

00:22:11 ◼   ► high profile, that they got a couple. So it does seem like they are coming to some stores.

00:22:19 ◼   ► They came to some stores today and the early orders this morning had some people said they

00:22:23 ◼   ► got a one to two week delay window rather than my quoted three to four weeks. So they

00:22:28 ◼   ► are coming but I can't help but feel like Apple keeps botching the releases of these

00:22:34 ◼   ► things. You know, like in the same way that the watch launch was totally botched. I mean

00:22:40 ◼   ► the watch launch was a disaster where yeah it officially launched on this day but you

00:22:45 ◼   ► couldn't actually get one for like months and if you wanted certain ones you waited

00:22:50 ◼   ► even longer for things like the modern buckle or leather loop or the black link that were

00:22:55 ◼   ► very back order, delayed. And now, so now with the iPad Pro, it's nice that it's available

00:23:04 ◼   ► today that that was a nice surprise that we were able to pick one up today, but two of

00:23:08 ◼   ► its main selling features, the smart keyboard, is that what it's called, the smart keyboard?

00:23:12 ◼   ► I believe that's right. The keyboard from Apple and the pencil were both totally unavailable

00:23:18 ◼   ► for most people who try to buy it today.

00:23:21 ◼   ► And who knows how long it'll be.

00:23:24 ◼   ► It does kind of put a damper on it.

00:23:25 ◼   ► Like, Tiff was really excited about the Pencil,

00:23:28 ◼   ► and so was I, honestly, to try the Pencil.

00:23:31 ◼   ► And it does put a damper on it to be like,

00:23:32 ◼   ► "Okay, now we finally get this device

00:23:34 ◼   ► "that, by the way, was announced two months ago."

00:23:37 ◼   ► It's not like this was announced last week

00:23:39 ◼   ► and we've been really impatient.

00:23:40 ◼   ► This was announced two months ago,

00:23:41 ◼   ► and it just barely shipped, apparently.

00:23:44 ◼   ► And they couldn't even get the store stock

00:23:47 ◼   ► with the really critical accessories,

00:23:50 ◼   ► like that just seems like a botched launch to me.

00:23:53 ◼   ► And this, like, the operations guy is running the company.

00:23:57 ◼   ► How does, like, how does this happen?

00:23:59 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:24:00 ◼   ► I'm probably being too critical of this,

00:24:03 ◼   ► but it really does put a damper on it.

00:24:06 ◼   ► When you go to the store,

00:24:07 ◼   ► all happy to get this new device

00:24:08 ◼   ► that you could do this cool new thing with,

00:24:11 ◼   ► and then it says, oh, you can't get your pencil

00:24:12 ◼   ► for another month, you know, that's--

00:24:14 ◼   ► - That's a bummer for you,

00:24:15 ◼   ► but what does that mean in terms of things

00:24:18 ◼   ► that Apple cares about?

00:24:19 ◼   ► Does it mean fewer sales?

00:24:21 ◼   ► - I did see a number of people today,

00:24:23 ◼   ► I tweeted early in the morning like,

00:24:24 ◼   ► this kinda sucks, and I did see a number of people

00:24:28 ◼   ► responding saying that they were going to go

00:24:30 ◼   ► pick up an iPad Pro today, but since they can't

00:24:32 ◼   ► get a pencil, they're just going to wait until they can.

00:24:34 ◼   ► So they're just delaying the sales,

00:24:37 ◼   ► they're still gonna sell those probably,

00:24:38 ◼   ► but they will just be delayed.

00:24:40 ◼   ► But I have to imagine, first of all,

00:24:42 ◼   ► Apple really wants a big opening weekend.

00:24:44 ◼   ► They want to be able to brag that they sold

00:24:46 ◼   ► X million iPads in a weekend, if they do.

00:24:49 ◼   ► So it's gonna hurt them in that way,

00:24:50 ◼   ► but also there is gonna be a certain degree of,

00:24:53 ◼   ► like right now there's inertia.

00:24:55 ◼   ► It's day one and people are really excited about it

00:24:58 ◼   ► and they wanna go get it.

00:24:59 ◼   ► Maybe some people who were on the fence

00:25:01 ◼   ► about whether they wanted to get it,

00:25:02 ◼   ► maybe they now won't get it,

00:25:04 ◼   ► 'cause maybe as this inertia dies down

00:25:06 ◼   ► over the next three to four weeks

00:25:08 ◼   ► before they can get the accessories that they want,

00:25:10 ◼   ► maybe in that time they'll actually decide,

00:25:11 ◼   ► you know what, maybe I don't really need this anymore.

00:25:14 ◼   ► It's probably not going to be a massive portion of their sales,

00:25:16 ◼   ► but I do think it will hurt them in some way.

00:25:18 ◼   ► - Well, so how does that balance with the other side

00:25:20 ◼   ► of which I think happened with the watch?

00:25:22 ◼   ► There are positive aspects of things not being available.

00:25:25 ◼   ► There is the perceived scarcity that essentially,

00:25:29 ◼   ► you know, that this product is playing hard to get

00:25:31 ◼   ► and it makes you want it even more because you can't get it.

00:25:34 ◼   ► There is, for the people who weren't even

00:25:35 ◼   ► that interested in it, there is the meta story about,

00:25:40 ◼   ► I don't want to watch, but people who do want watches

00:25:43 ◼   ► are not able to find them.

00:25:44 ◼   ► It's the Cabbage Patch Doll phenomenon.

00:25:46 ◼   ► Like it becomes like a frenzy, like,

00:25:48 ◼   ► "Wow, this must be really popular

00:25:49 ◼   ► "'cause people really want it

00:25:50 ◼   ► "and it's sold out everywhere."

00:25:52 ◼   ► And that creates a positive buzz about it.

00:25:54 ◼   ► And then finally, as like, you know,

00:25:56 ◼   ► oh, someone finally got a modern buckle, right?

00:25:59 ◼   ► As these products trickle out

00:26:02 ◼   ► when they're ready to ship or whatever,

00:26:03 ◼   ► you get repeat stories.

00:26:05 ◼   ► I know we already covered the Apple Watch seven times,

00:26:07 ◼   ► but here's the first person

00:26:08 ◼   ► to have the Darth Vader link bracelet.

00:26:09 ◼   ► Here's the first person to have the modern buckle.

00:26:11 ◼   ► So on and so forth.

00:26:12 ◼   ► Not that I'm saying Apple is doing it on purpose,

00:26:14 ◼   ► like that it's artificial scarcity.

00:26:15 ◼   ► It totally seems like this is just,

00:26:17 ◼   ► as soon as they're able to manufacture them in volume,

00:26:19 ◼   ► they ship them.

00:26:20 ◼   ► But I would say against the idea

00:26:23 ◼   ► of someone being disappointed

00:26:25 ◼   ► that they can't get what they want,

00:26:26 ◼   ► and then just saying, well, nevermind, and not coming back,

00:26:29 ◼   ► balance that against the positive effects

00:26:31 ◼   ► of the perceived desirability and value,

00:26:35 ◼   ► and the repeat press on the sort of the trickle

00:26:37 ◼   ► of stuff coming out.

00:26:38 ◼   ► So I have to think,

00:26:40 ◼   ► I think it's bad for it not to launch all at once,

00:26:43 ◼   ► mostly just because it reflects poorly on the company

00:26:46 ◼   ► and might give someone a bad impression about Apple.

00:26:48 ◼   ► But I think overall,

00:26:50 ◼   ► I don't think it's actually hurting their sales

00:26:51 ◼   ► as long as, I mean, obviously,

00:26:53 ◼   ► as long as by the time the holidays come,

00:26:55 ◼   ► as long as everybody who wants to get an iPad Pro

00:26:57 ◼   ► with a pencil for the holidays can get one.

00:26:59 ◼   ► They may cut that close,

00:27:00 ◼   ► 'cause that's where you could actually get hurt in sales,

00:27:01 ◼   ► 'cause things are seasonal like that.

00:27:03 ◼   ► If they miss the holidays,

00:27:04 ◼   ► obviously they've really messed up.

00:27:05 ◼   ► But as long as they make the holidays

00:27:06 ◼   ► with a reasonable amount of time,

00:27:07 ◼   ► I think people not getting their pencils for a couple weeks

00:27:10 ◼   ► is not that big a deal.

00:27:11 ◼   ► The main thing I'm annoyed about as a lazy person

00:27:13 ◼   ► who stays at home all the time is I seem to remember

00:27:16 ◼   ► in the old days that Apple would, if not favor,

00:27:20 ◼   ► online orders, then at the very least,

00:27:23 ◼   ► sort of give them equal footing,

00:27:24 ◼   ► where now with the Apple TV, I experienced this myself,

00:27:26 ◼   ► I ordered an Apple TV and before my Apple TV arrived to me,

00:27:30 ◼   ► they were already showing up in stores.

00:27:31 ◼   ► So rather than, you know, like, and so now I bet

00:27:34 ◼   ► if you were to order a pencil now,

00:27:36 ◼   ► you would get it sometime within the delivery window,

00:27:38 ◼   ► but then this weekend, if you go into a big Apple store,

00:27:41 ◼   ► you might be able to pick one up

00:27:42 ◼   ► if you just happen to go in the morning.

00:27:43 ◼   ► And so it's, they're definitely favoring retail, it seems,

00:27:47 ◼   ► over mail order.

00:27:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's, again, like the Apple TV,

00:27:51 ◼   ► it was not a big botch, but I heard a ton of stories

00:27:54 ◼   ► like that from people who ordered online,

00:27:57 ◼   ► and then they had weird shipping issues,

00:27:59 ◼   ► they didn't ship on time, and then, yeah,

00:28:01 ◼   ► the stores got them first, like that's, it just--

00:28:03 ◼   ► - Well, that makes sense, though.

00:28:04 ◼   ► I'm like, I'm saying this is what they do,

00:28:05 ◼   ► and annoys me because I stay at home, but people who order online, who are those people?

00:28:10 ◼   ► It's better to put them in the stores because most people are just like wandering through

00:28:13 ◼   ► the mall and they see the Apple store and they wander in and they have no idea when

00:28:16 ◼   ► a product launch or anything about it.

00:28:17 ◼   ► It's only us who like order the second it's available online because we just want to,

00:28:21 ◼   ► we want to do the action that we think is going to give us the product as soon as possible

00:28:25 ◼   ► because we're tiny little children at heart, right?

00:28:27 ◼   ► And so it's like, oh, it's available for ordering to stay up at 3am and order, order, order.

00:28:30 ◼   ► No one else is like that.

00:28:31 ◼   ► No one knows when these things are.

00:28:32 ◼   ► They just like, they go into the Apple store and they say, "Whoa, there's a new iPhone.

00:28:35 ◼   ► Are the new iPhones out?

00:28:36 ◼   ► Oh, they're not out?

00:28:37 ◼   ► Okay, well, I'll check back next weekend.

00:28:38 ◼   ► Oh, they are out.

00:28:39 ◼   ► Oh, here's the new Apple TV."

00:28:40 ◼   ► They don't know or care when things launch, so it's much better to have them available

00:28:43 ◼   ► in the store for sort of, not impulse purchases, but, "Hey, let me wander into the Apple store

00:28:47 ◼   ► and see what's available," as opposed to trying to cater to people who stay up till 3 a.m.

00:28:51 ◼   ► to order a phone.

00:28:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:28:54 ◼   ► Just the whole thing, it just puts a damper on.

00:28:57 ◼   ► You know?

00:28:58 ◼   ► Like, it's not that, it doesn't ruin things.

00:28:59 ◼   ► It's not going to kill all their sales, but it just puts a damper on the enthusiasm.

00:29:04 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, this is great!"

00:29:05 ◼   ► Except, "Oh, no, bad news."

00:29:07 ◼   ► You know, it's --

00:29:08 ◼   ► It puts a damper on your enthusiasm.

00:29:09 ◼   ► The rest of the world doesn't even know the iPad Pro exists yet.

00:29:12 ◼   ► They'll know when the ads start running on TV, and when they wander -- even when the

00:29:14 ◼   ► ads run on TV.

00:29:15 ◼   ► I think people are perfectly accepting of seeing an ad on TV for a cool Apple thing,

00:29:20 ◼   ► then wandering into the Apple Store and saying, "Is that thing I saw an ad for on TV yet?"

00:29:23 ◼   ► And having the Apple Store say, "No, we don't have those yet."

00:29:25 ◼   ► And they'll be like, "Oh, all right."

00:29:26 ◼   ► And they'll come back the next weekend.

00:29:28 ◼   ► That's how I feel like the vast, vast majorities of Apple sales operate.

00:29:35 ◼   ► Tiff just wants a pen, I understand.

00:29:37 ◼   ► All that being said, I was able to try the Pencil and Smart Keyboard in the store because

00:29:43 ◼   ► they had a demo one that some of the staff were playing with out on the floor.

00:29:48 ◼   ► And so I went up and I got to play with it too.

00:29:51 ◼   ► They wouldn't sell it to me.

00:29:53 ◼   ► I offered.

00:29:54 ◼   ► But they were not allowed to sell it to me.

00:29:57 ◼   ► million dollars for one night with your iPad Pro.

00:30:00 ◼   ► - Oh my god, that's a reference.

00:30:02 ◼   ► - I know it's a reference.

00:30:03 ◼   ► - Hey, we saw a movie together, yay.

00:30:05 ◼   ► - I've actually never seen the movie,

00:30:06 ◼   ► but I know what you're referring.

00:30:08 ◼   ► - It isn't that good.

00:30:09 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:30:11 ◼   ► Please email Jon.

00:30:12 ◼   ► So I will say, having now played with the pencil

00:30:16 ◼   ► and keyboard, very briefly, I mean,

00:30:17 ◼   ► I had about five minutes with the pencil

00:30:21 ◼   ► and about two minutes with the keyboard.

00:30:23 ◼   ► I will say the keyboard is not as bad as I expected.

00:30:28 ◼   ► I expected it to be terrible

00:30:29 ◼   ► 'cause I heard it had similar key switches

00:30:31 ◼   ► to the MacBook One and possibly even worse key feel

00:30:35 ◼   ► than the MacBook One.

00:30:37 ◼   ► I think it's probably about the same,

00:30:39 ◼   ► maybe a little bit better even.

00:30:41 ◼   ► I don't know, it didn't feel as horrible to me

00:30:44 ◼   ► than the MacBook One, but it was very close.

00:30:46 ◼   ► Doesn't matter, you know, it's an iPad keyboard.

00:30:48 ◼   ► It's going to be a compromise in a lot of different ways.

00:30:50 ◼   ► So that's fine.

00:30:52 ◼   ► I know there is a Logitech one,

00:30:55 ◼   ► the Apple stores are even selling it.

00:30:56 ◼   ► Like they had that in stock.

00:30:58 ◼   ► They were out of stock of every other iPad accessory,

00:31:02 ◼   ► including the Smart Cover and the Smart Case,

00:31:04 ◼   ► which are now two separate, like,

00:31:06 ◼   ► now the Smart Case is only the back part.

00:31:10 ◼   ► - Oh, that's weird.

00:31:11 ◼   ► - And so if you want both the back and the front covered,

00:31:15 ◼   ► you have to buy both parts for a total of like $150.

00:31:19 ◼   ► - Yikes.

00:31:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, so that's annoying.

00:31:21 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:31:22 ◼   ► Like, it's almost as expensive as just buying the keyboard,

00:31:25 ◼   ► which covers both.

00:31:26 ◼   ► So you might as well just buy the keyboard at that point.

00:31:29 ◼   ► Anyway, the keyboard was very securely attached.

00:31:32 ◼   ► It only really holds the iPad in one angle though.

00:31:35 ◼   ► As far as I can tell, I wasn't sure

00:31:36 ◼   ► if you could adjust it at all.

00:31:38 ◼   ► It seemed like it was fixed to this one particular angle

00:31:41 ◼   ► that it would hold it at.

00:31:42 ◼   ► - You could shove the pencil behind it

00:31:43 ◼   ► because there's no place else to put that pencil,

00:31:45 ◼   ► so just pull the iPad forward,

00:31:48 ◼   ► put the pencil in there, push it back, it'll be fine.

00:31:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, this is gonna be the kind of product

00:31:52 ◼   ► where there's a huge opportunity here for third parties

00:31:55 ◼   ► to make way better cases and keyboards than Apple did.

00:31:58 ◼   ► Because you're gonna want a place to put the pencil

00:32:01 ◼   ► and there isn't one anywhere on the iPad,

00:32:04 ◼   ► anywhere in any of Apple's cases.

00:32:06 ◼   ► You know, it's similar to how the iPad One

00:32:10 ◼   ► just kind of, they had that terrible gray

00:32:13 ◼   ► like wraparound case and the iPad One was just clearly

00:32:16 ◼   ► not designed with a case in mind at all

00:32:18 ◼   ► and they just kind of threw one on.

00:32:19 ◼   ► That's how the pencil feels today, which is like,

00:32:21 ◼   ► here's this awesome thing that almost everyone is,

00:32:24 ◼   ► well not almost everyone, but a lot of people

00:32:25 ◼   ► are going to want for this iPad,

00:32:27 ◼   ► and the iPad was seemingly designed with no regard

00:32:31 ◼   ► to how this thing would actually be kept

00:32:33 ◼   ► on or near or in the iPad.

00:32:35 ◼   ► - As Dan Morin pointed out today, it goes behind your ear.

00:32:38 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:32:40 ◼   ► - Right, well it's too heavy for that, first of all, I think.

00:32:42 ◼   ► - Is it?

00:32:42 ◼   ► - So it is heavy.

00:32:44 ◼   ► It's not like uncomfortably heavy.

00:32:47 ◼   ► It doesn't feel like a lightweight pencil

00:32:48 ◼   ► or a plastic stylus.

00:32:50 ◼   ► It feels dense and not too heavy, but almost too heavy.

00:32:55 ◼   ► - Your ears can take it, I have faith in them.

00:32:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:32:58 ◼   ► - But it really does feel incredibly good

00:33:01 ◼   ► to use that pencil.

00:33:01 ◼   ► I would say the keyboard,

00:33:03 ◼   ► if I were really into this thing myself,

00:33:06 ◼   ► I'm probably not going to be,

00:33:07 ◼   ► but if I was really into this thing myself,

00:33:09 ◼   ► I would probably skip the keyboard,

00:33:11 ◼   ► but I would definitely get a pencil

00:33:13 ◼   ► because I'm not an artist of any kind.

00:33:16 ◼   ► I have no illustrative abilities at all.

00:33:19 ◼   ► I hardly ever hand write anything.

00:33:21 ◼   ► This made me want to hand write things

00:33:23 ◼   ► and draw diagrams and become some kind of artist

00:33:26 ◼   ► even though I probably won't ever be.

00:33:28 ◼   ► The pencil is great.

00:33:31 ◼   ► And combining it with palm rejection,

00:33:34 ◼   ► other touch input, everything,

00:33:36 ◼   ► I could not in my five minutes of using it,

00:33:38 ◼   ► I never encountered an error in thinking

00:33:42 ◼   ► that a touch was the pencil or rejecting the palm properly,

00:33:46 ◼   ► Like it was flawless.

00:33:48 ◼   ► And they were using the Adobe,

00:33:50 ◼   ► oh God, it's like an Adobe Sketch something.

00:33:52 ◼   ► - Adobe Sketch is the app, yeah.

00:33:53 ◼   ► - That, yeah, that's what we were using to draw with.

00:33:57 ◼   ► And it worked very well.

00:33:58 ◼   ► There is a little bit of lag still,

00:34:01 ◼   ► but it is the best stylus slash pen tablet thing

00:34:06 ◼   ► for a computer.

00:34:07 ◼   ► By far the best I've ever seen.

00:34:09 ◼   ► Not even close.

00:34:10 ◼   ► Way better than the Wacom tablets that I've seen.

00:34:13 ◼   ► way better than any previous iPad or iPhone stylus

00:34:16 ◼   ► that I've tried.

00:34:17 ◼   ► It just, completely different experience, far better.

00:34:22 ◼   ► I was able to rest my palm on it, flat on the table,

00:34:25 ◼   ► and just write, just hand write.

00:34:26 ◼   ► Like Gruber mentioned in his review, which is very good,

00:34:29 ◼   ► he mentioned that he tested by drawing his signature,

00:34:32 ◼   ► and that when you draw your signature on most touch devices,

00:34:35 ◼   ► or pen terminals in stores, it always looks horrible,

00:34:39 ◼   ► crazy, nothing like your real signature.

00:34:40 ◼   ► And he said on the iPad Pro,

00:34:41 ◼   ► it looked like his real handwritten signature.

00:34:44 ◼   ► In my very brief testing here,

00:34:46 ◼   ► I tried handwriting things,

00:34:48 ◼   ► like just handwriting a few sentences,

00:34:50 ◼   ► and it looked just like my handwriting on paper.

00:34:53 ◼   ► It is incredibly good.

00:34:56 ◼   ► I wish I had a reason to use it.

00:34:57 ◼   ► And right now I don't think I do.

00:35:00 ◼   ► - So it's time for you to go look at the show notes, Marco,

00:35:01 ◼   ► if you haven't already,

00:35:03 ◼   ► because there are two videos related to this topic

00:35:05 ◼   ► in the show notes.

00:35:06 ◼   ► These were from tweets.

00:35:07 ◼   ► One is from Steve Strese saying he was not impressed

00:35:10 ◼   ► with the pencil latency.

00:35:11 ◼   ► So it's, I think it's an animated GIF

00:35:13 ◼   ► because Twitter is stupid.

00:35:14 ◼   ► But anyway, take a look at that tweet

00:35:16 ◼   ► and look at his video.

00:35:17 ◼   ► I don't, I can't tell what app he's using there,

00:35:18 ◼   ► but the lag on the thing that he's doing

00:35:20 ◼   ► is just horrendous.

00:35:22 ◼   ► - That is really rough actually.

00:35:24 ◼   ► - All right, now scroll down and here's Matt Panzareno

00:35:27 ◼   ► saying really, because when I was using it, it was awesome.

00:35:29 ◼   ► And then look at his video, also of an iPad Pro,

00:35:32 ◼   ► presumably with a different app,

00:35:34 ◼   ► and look at the lag there.

00:35:35 ◼   ► - It looks like a different app.

00:35:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, it might be, although they later in the discussion,

00:35:38 ◼   ► they're like, I was using Adobe Sketch

00:35:40 ◼   ► and then Panzer says, "Oh, I was using Adobe Sketch 2.

00:35:43 ◼   ► I don't know if it's in this picture."

00:35:44 ◼   ► And anyway, I think what this shows is

00:35:49 ◼   ► that from application to application,

00:35:52 ◼   ► there can be a big difference in latency and responsiveness.

00:35:56 ◼   ► In other words, the hardware is capable,

00:35:58 ◼   ► but depending on how the application is programmed,

00:36:01 ◼   ► you could get the latency you see.

00:36:02 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't think these are broken iPads.

00:36:04 ◼   ► I think you could get the latency you see

00:36:05 ◼   ► in the first video, which is really, really bad,

00:36:07 ◼   ► or with the same exact hardware,

00:36:09 ◼   ► you can get the latency you see in the second video,

00:36:10 ◼   ► which is really, really good.

00:36:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it's gonna depend entirely on good coding.

00:36:15 ◼   ► Like, you know, at some point,

00:36:18 ◼   ► the hardware is going to be the limiting factor,

00:36:20 ◼   ► but yeah, I mean, my experience matches

00:36:22 ◼   ► Panzareno's video there of it just being,

00:36:24 ◼   ► you know, it does, you can feel that there is some latency,

00:36:28 ◼   ► but it is really small,

00:36:30 ◼   ► and it's perfectly fine for handwriting, I think.

00:36:33 ◼   ► - And when I saw the first video, I'm like,

00:36:34 ◼   ► oh, well, maybe that's slow

00:36:35 ◼   ► because it's trying to do like a brush type thing

00:36:37 ◼   ► where it's like pressure sensitive,

00:36:39 ◼   ► there's like bristles you can see it's trying to be like a brushed ink thing

00:36:41 ◼   ► where the leading edge has things but then look at the panzerinos video and

00:36:46 ◼   ► he's doing like translucent smeared ink looking like he's not just doing solid

00:36:50 ◼   ► black lines either and what in whatever application he's using it seems to be

00:36:53 ◼   ► doing even fancier effects and this is yet another opportunity to link that

00:36:58 ◼   ► Microsoft video showing the different latency things if you watch I always go

00:37:02 ◼   ► back to that Microsoft video to calibrate my eyeballs to hard numbers

00:37:05 ◼   ► because they tell you they have like the thing with adjustable latency here's one

00:37:08 ◼   ► millisecond here's 10 here's 100 mm-hmm to my eyes the good video of the iPad

00:37:13 ◼   ► Pro here is still not down to one millisecond but it's much better than a

00:37:17 ◼   ► hundred milliseconds so it's somewhere in that range and the idea that the

00:37:22 ◼   ► application can affect what the latency is like shows that this is really just

00:37:27 ◼   ► the dawning of the mass market perhaps I'm sure Apple hopes it is but perhaps

00:37:32 ◼   ► the dawning of the mass-market era of pen computing as I was able that that

00:37:37 ◼   ► started with Windows for pen or whatever or the grid pad or that started with the

00:37:40 ◼   ► surface or whatever really it remains to be seen if this will actually popularize

00:37:44 ◼   ► the pen to any significant degree but in all cases I think pen input is not yet

00:37:53 ◼   ► at the level has not crossed the threshold that the mouse did when the

00:37:56 ◼   ► Mac was introduced because there were you know mouse type input devices before

00:38:01 ◼   ► and after the Mac but one of the things that the Mac has been excellent at from

00:38:06 ◼   ► day one is when you move the mouse the cursor on the screen moves. There's no stuttering, there's no lag

00:38:12 ◼   ► It's a seemingly direct connection and that was very important at the dawning of the Mac to making a Mac feel like a Mac

00:38:18 ◼   ► It's one of the reasons that like, you know

00:38:19 ◼   ► Windows always felt weird and different until they got their cursor stuff nailed down a couple of years later and on the Mac

00:38:25 ◼   ► There was nothing you can do in a program to make that mouse cursor screw up

00:38:29 ◼   ► Like it's not like well if you program your application badly the mouse cursor won't be responsive not drawing with the mouse

00:38:36 ◼   ► Because yeah, you could screw that up because you know on the original Mac if you tried to draw with a fancy brush tool

00:38:39 ◼   ► It would be all lagging gross and everything. I'm talking about

00:38:41 ◼   ► The mouse itself like just moving the cursor around

00:38:44 ◼   ► That stayed solid like there's nothing you could do an application to screw that up

00:38:48 ◼   ► I'll short of crashing or grinding a disk or something terrible

00:38:51 ◼   ► Like I would even even that they tended to even when the disk was grinding it the mouse would still move smoothly

00:38:54 ◼   ► All of us have experienced a crash where the entire computer is frozen, but the mouse cursor still works. That's an important part of the

00:39:01 ◼   ► Sort of physical interface to computers with a mouse is the reliability of you move the mouse or you swipe on the trackpad

00:39:08 ◼   ► And the cursor was it's also by the way why it's so incredibly disconcerting

00:39:12 ◼   ► When your mouse cursor freezes we've all had it happen many times many more times in the bad old days of classic Mac OS

00:39:18 ◼   ► It almost feels like the world is broken for a second where you move your mouse and the cursor doesn't move you're like oh

00:39:23 ◼   ► No, this is not right something. It's like you've been knocked off kilter or something

00:39:28 ◼   ► It violates this constraint of the world

00:39:30 ◼   ► that you believed in when I moved the mouse

00:39:32 ◼   ► that the cursor moves.

00:39:33 ◼   ► Well, for pen computing or any kind of pen input

00:39:37 ◼   ► to really become as sort of second nature and boring

00:39:40 ◼   ► as mouse input is nowadays,

00:39:42 ◼   ► we have to eventually get past the idea

00:39:46 ◼   ► that the responsiveness will be different.

00:39:49 ◼   ► And it's different with the pen

00:39:50 ◼   ► because pen's not a pointing device.

00:39:51 ◼   ► Pen is a drawing device.

00:39:52 ◼   ► So where I was giving the mouse a pass before and say,

00:39:54 ◼   ► "Oh, well, of course, if you wiggle the mouse really fast

00:39:56 ◼   ► that's in super paint with the spray can thing,

00:39:59 ◼   ► it would be all lagging gross and that's fine.

00:40:01 ◼   ► That's because the mouse isn't primarily a drawing thing.

00:40:04 ◼   ► It's for moving things around and clicking and pointing,

00:40:06 ◼   ► but the pen, it's not a pointing device.

00:40:08 ◼   ► There is no cursor on the screen,

00:40:09 ◼   ► it's entirely about drawing.

00:40:10 ◼   ► So I want all pen input to be, you know,

00:40:14 ◼   ► like the second video or better.

00:40:16 ◼   ► And it's clear that we're not quite there yet,

00:40:19 ◼   ► which is kind of a shame, but this is early days,

00:40:21 ◼   ► at least as far as Apple's concerned with pen input.

00:40:24 ◼   ► Although the Newton sitting on my desk right now

00:40:26 ◼   ► might disagree, but that had pretty bad latency too.

00:40:31 ◼   ► - So a couple thoughts on this.

00:40:32 ◼   ► First of all, to double down on what you were saying

00:40:35 ◼   ► about the world being completely wrong

00:40:37 ◼   ► when your mouse freezes, imagine how weird it is

00:40:40 ◼   ► when not only is the mouse frozen,

00:40:41 ◼   ► but your mouse button doesn't exist anymore

00:40:44 ◼   ► because it's a software fake button.

00:40:47 ◼   ► Like that has happened to me a handful of times

00:40:48 ◼   ► on this MacBook Pro that I have for work and it is weird.

00:40:53 ◼   ► - So you just press and the little vibratey thing

00:40:55 ◼   ► doesn't vibrate underneath it?

00:40:56 ◼   ► - Correct, so it's like pushing on a plate of glass,

00:40:59 ◼   ► nothing happens.

00:41:00 ◼   ► And that's when like everything is broken.

00:41:03 ◼   ► On the plus side, you have a physical indicator

00:41:06 ◼   ► that everything's broken, but on the downside,

00:41:08 ◼   ► this thing that you forget is all software

00:41:11 ◼   ► suddenly stops working and it's very weird.

00:41:14 ◼   ► And the other thing I wanted to throw out is,

00:41:15 ◼   ► I believe it was after the iPad Pro was announced,

00:41:19 ◼   ► I'd remembered seeing something about like

00:41:20 ◼   ► advanced multi-touch or something like that.

00:41:22 ◼   ► And I went back and watched the WWDC session on it

00:41:25 ◼   ► and we'll link it in the show notes.

00:41:26 ◼   ► It's session 233, I believe.

00:41:29 ◼   ► And it was really, really interesting.

00:41:31 ◼   ► And they talked in the session,

00:41:32 ◼   ► I don't remember who gave it,

00:41:33 ◼   ► a lot about these infinitesimally small windows of time

00:41:38 ◼   ► with which you have to process touch input

00:41:40 ◼   ► and how they coalesce it

00:41:41 ◼   ► and this and that and the other thing.

00:41:42 ◼   ► And I watched it like a month or two ago,

00:41:44 ◼   ► so I'm a little fuzzy on it now,

00:41:45 ◼   ► but it was really, really interesting.

00:41:47 ◼   ► And if you have the time, it's worth watching.

00:41:49 ◼   ► And I bring this up because it very well could be,

00:41:53 ◼   ► If both these videos are using the same Adobe app

00:41:56 ◼   ► or whatever it is, if it's the same app,

00:41:58 ◼   ► then this is irrelevant.

00:41:59 ◼   ► But if it is different apps,

00:42:01 ◼   ► it would not surprise me at all

00:42:02 ◼   ► if there are very different performance characteristics

00:42:05 ◼   ► between two different apps,

00:42:07 ◼   ► because the way they handle it can change

00:42:10 ◼   ► very, very dramatically,

00:42:11 ◼   ► depending on whether or not they're good developers,

00:42:13 ◼   ► whether or not they're using new APIs, et cetera.

00:42:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, Fraser Spears says that,

00:42:17 ◼   ► just to confirm that, he's used the iPad Pro as well,

00:42:20 ◼   ► latency is very app dependent.

00:42:22 ◼   ► He says the latency is undetectable in Notes,

00:42:24 ◼   ► meaning the Apple Notes application, I assume,

00:42:26 ◼   ► but very laggy in paper by 53.

00:42:29 ◼   ► I don't know which apps are used in this video,

00:42:31 ◼   ► but I'm totally willing to believe

00:42:33 ◼   ► that it's entirely app dependent

00:42:35 ◼   ► and that what we're not seeing is like,

00:42:37 ◼   ► oh, bad or buggy hardware or something.

00:42:38 ◼   ► It's just, you know, it's just software.

00:42:40 ◼   ► Like Casey said, if you're not pulling, you know,

00:42:42 ◼   ► processing the events in a particular way

00:42:44 ◼   ► or using whatever the fast path is for doing input.

00:42:46 ◼   ► And like I said, this Panzareno video,

00:42:49 ◼   ► that's like something that looks like a magic marker

00:42:52 ◼   ► where it's like smeary and thicker towards the edges,

00:42:54 ◼   ► something that looks like grease paint,

00:42:56 ◼   ► something that looks like watercolors.

00:42:58 ◼   ► So it's not like it only works

00:42:59 ◼   ► if you're drawing a solid black line,

00:43:01 ◼   ► but if you're doing anything fancy, it's slow.

00:43:02 ◼   ► So I really have no idea why the slow one is slow

00:43:05 ◼   ► and why the fast one is fast,

00:43:06 ◼   ► other than just maybe using the wrong APIs or something.

00:43:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, anyway, regardless,

00:43:12 ◼   ► we at least know that when properly handled

00:43:16 ◼   ► by the software side, the pen, the pencil,

00:43:19 ◼   ► can be really great.

00:43:21 ◼   ► and in a few apps already, it already is.

00:43:23 ◼   ► And that, I mean really, using this blew my mind,

00:43:28 ◼   ► like how good it is.

00:43:30 ◼   ► It is, I just, again, I wish I had a reason

00:43:33 ◼   ► to hand write things.

00:43:33 ◼   ► I've never even, I've never been like a notebook

00:43:35 ◼   ► at my desk kind of person.

00:43:36 ◼   ► Like a lot of people will sketch things out

00:43:38 ◼   ► on paper notebooks.

00:43:39 ◼   ► I've never even done that.

00:43:40 ◼   ► I never took notes in school.

00:43:42 ◼   ► But man, I do wish that I had a reason to use it

00:43:46 ◼   ► 'cause it really is awesome.

00:43:47 ◼   ► - You just need to do a video Pictionary.

00:43:50 ◼   ► someone who needs to make a Pictionary application for iPad Pro people so you can do Pictionary

00:43:54 ◼   ► with people across the country.

00:43:56 ◼   ► Like draw something basically?

00:43:58 ◼   ► You didn't get to see their face, you know?

00:44:00 ◼   ► Right, right.

00:44:01 ◼   ► iPad Pro you can put up on an easel.

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00:46:10 ◼   ► So, iPad Pro software-wise.

00:46:14 ◼   ► I got TIFF's iPad Pro,

00:46:16 ◼   ► wasn't able to get anything else for it,

00:46:17 ◼   ► so we have no case, no cover, no pencil, no keyboard,

00:46:21 ◼   ► but we're probably not gonna get the keyboard anyway.

00:46:23 ◼   ► Brought it home.

00:46:24 ◼   ► So far, I would say, based on my quick experience with it,

00:46:28 ◼   ► it is really a mixed bag.

00:46:30 ◼   ► Most of the reviews seem to back up

00:46:32 ◼   ► what I've experienced so far.

00:46:34 ◼   ► First of all, it is huge.

00:46:36 ◼   ► And because it is so huge,

00:46:38 ◼   ► Certain aspects of things that you could do well

00:46:41 ◼   ► on iPads before are actually worse, in my opinion.

00:46:44 ◼   ► I think it was definitely worse for reading,

00:46:47 ◼   ► unless you're reading things like comic books or magazines

00:46:49 ◼   ► where you need as much space as possible.

00:46:51 ◼   ► But just for reading regular column articles,

00:46:54 ◼   ► or iBooks looked kind of ridiculous on it, to be honest.

00:46:58 ◼   ► Because iBooks does not seem to offer margin control, so.

00:47:01 ◼   ► - You gotta crank the font size up, though.

00:47:03 ◼   ► That's what it lets you do.

00:47:04 ◼   ► It lets you keep the same number of words per line,

00:47:08 ◼   ► but make the text way bigger so it's easier to see.

00:47:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, but then you're just holding it back further?

00:47:14 ◼   ► I mean, you know--

00:47:15 ◼   ► - No, it's for people who have,

00:47:17 ◼   ► your eyes will go eventually, young man,

00:47:19 ◼   ► and you will appreciate it much better.

00:47:21 ◼   ► - No, absolutely, I mean, you know,

00:47:22 ◼   ► if you actually need a bigger size

00:47:24 ◼   ► just to make it legible in general

00:47:26 ◼   ► for vision accessibility reasons, that's a different story.

00:47:29 ◼   ► But if you have vision within kind of the normal range

00:47:34 ◼   ► and you don't need it to be really huge,

00:47:36 ◼   ► I would say in general that the other iPads are better reading devices for that reason.

00:47:42 ◼   ► This is obviously better for video.

00:47:43 ◼   ► >> Well, for reading, though, what if you want to have Twitter along the side while

00:47:46 ◼   ► you read?

00:47:47 ◼   ► >> That's a terrible idea.

00:47:48 ◼   ► Why would you want that?

00:47:49 ◼   ► >> People do that.

00:47:50 ◼   ► I'd do it.

00:47:51 ◼   ► Or if you just want to have Twitter and Slack and the same thing split, each one gets a

00:47:55 ◼   ► reasonable-sized column.

00:47:56 ◼   ► Like you're still thinking as if the screen is one thing that the application can fill.

00:48:01 ◼   ► Apple hasn't done much to dissuade you from that notion, but they have at least cut the

00:48:05 ◼   ► screen in half or thirds or whatever. So I think you have to, in considering software,

00:48:10 ◼   ► which granted I'm sure you read this, has not been updated very well for the iPad Pro

00:48:14 ◼   ► and sometimes looks ridiculous, at the very least you can say, "All right, well, it may

00:48:19 ◼   ► not be a good reading experience for this thing, but that's only because I'm letting

00:48:23 ◼   ► it have the whole screen. Why don't I divide the screen up and let something else have

00:48:26 ◼   ► that thing and now I have two good reading experiences at the same time?"

00:48:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean that's that's kind of the idea but like one of the things that made

00:48:33 ◼   ► iPads and and e-readers so good for reading books compared to computers is

00:48:39 ◼   ► That you could only do that one thing on the screen

00:48:42 ◼   ► You could fill up the screen with one reading app and you like if you try nobody reads books on their computers for the most

00:48:48 ◼   ► part because

00:48:49 ◼   ► You have these giant screens that are filled all these all these little windows of all these all these distractions and it's not a very

00:48:54 ◼   ► Good reading environment for that. Do you think that's why people not read books on computers?

00:48:58 ◼   ► I think that's one of the reasons.

00:48:59 ◼   ► I think the main reason is that it's uncomfortable to sit at a desk staring at a screen that's

00:49:03 ◼   ► in front of you.

00:49:04 ◼   ► Okay.

00:49:05 ◼   ► Similarly, it's uncomfortable to hold this iPad up for a long time because it is not

00:49:12 ◼   ► light or small.

00:49:13 ◼   ► And so, you know, different reviewers have agreed and disagreed on this point that I've

00:49:17 ◼   ► seen so far.

00:49:18 ◼   ► Some of them say it's okay.

00:49:19 ◼   ► Some of them say it's heavy.

00:49:20 ◼   ► You know, Tiff's initial impression, my initial impression so far, is that it's pretty heavy

00:49:25 ◼   ► to hold up for more than a minute or two.

00:49:28 ◼   ► Like you wanna have it on some kind of propped up case

00:49:31 ◼   ► or desk or stand or something,

00:49:34 ◼   ► not just holding it up in bed for a long time

00:49:36 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:49:37 ◼   ► So for a lot of things,

00:49:40 ◼   ► if you've ever done anything on an iPad

00:49:43 ◼   ► and the smallness of the iPad screen

00:49:46 ◼   ► has been a limiting factor for you,

00:49:48 ◼   ► then this will be an improvement.

00:49:50 ◼   ► That's not true for everything.

00:49:52 ◼   ► - Andy Anako had a good picture though, speaking of that.

00:49:54 ◼   ► Recently he tweeted a picture of,

00:49:56 ◼   ► I think his tweet was the text was "living the dream" and what he had was his iPad Pro

00:50:00 ◼   ► showing a comic book and next to it a physical comic book, which you could see, you could

00:50:06 ◼   ► take that physical comic book and basically place it on the screen and it was pretty much

00:50:09 ◼   ► exactly the same size as the screen.

00:50:10 ◼   ► So if you're a comics reader and you're tired of looking at comics either shrunken or cropped,

00:50:14 ◼   ► you can't get two page side by side, but at least now you can get one full-size real-life

00:50:19 ◼   ► comic book page at a one-to-one ratio on your iPad Pro.

00:50:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, and for people who mark up PDFs,

00:50:28 ◼   ► this would be great for them, because it's like,

00:50:30 ◼   ► you want that to be kind of life-size

00:50:33 ◼   ► or close to it at least, and the 10 inch iPad was almost,

00:50:36 ◼   ► but not quite the right size to do that.

00:50:39 ◼   ► So stuff like that, there are things

00:50:42 ◼   ► that are gonna be better on this for sure,

00:50:43 ◼   ► and there's probably gonna be a lot of those things,

00:50:45 ◼   ► but what all I'm saying is that

00:50:47 ◼   ► not everything is better on it,

00:50:49 ◼   ► and it's important, if you're thinking about

00:50:51 ◼   ► one of these devices, it's important to know that going in,

00:50:53 ◼   ► just because certain things, there is such a thing

00:50:56 ◼   ► as too big of a screen for certain things.

00:50:58 ◼   ► And you might hit that.

00:51:00 ◼   ► But as you alluded to earlier, Jon,

00:51:02 ◼   ► one of the bigger challenges up front here is that iOS,

00:51:07 ◼   ► while it's nice to have things like the split view

00:51:09 ◼   ► and the slide over and everything,

00:51:11 ◼   ► these features are pretty basic so far.

00:51:15 ◼   ► They still could, especially things like the slide over,

00:51:18 ◼   ► the app launching experience there,

00:51:20 ◼   ► if you're having to scroll through this giant long list

00:51:23 ◼   ► of these apps that are capable of doing this.

00:51:26 ◼   ► Like this interface, I don't know who designed

00:51:29 ◼   ► this interface because it should have been obvious

00:51:31 ◼   ► to anybody that as soon as you have more than a handful

00:51:35 ◼   ► of apps that support this feature,

00:51:36 ◼   ► this does not work very well.

00:51:39 ◼   ► But anyway, there are affordances for the big screen

00:51:43 ◼   ► and things that take advantage of the big screen in iOS.

00:51:46 ◼   ► But the iPad has always kind of been

00:51:49 ◼   ► the second class citizen of iOS.

00:51:52 ◼   ► It has always gotten, oftentimes delayed hardware

00:51:56 ◼   ► capabilities or less good hardware in certain ways.

00:51:59 ◼   ► Like the cameras are never as good as the iPhone cameras.

00:52:02 ◼   ► It got touch ID late.

00:52:04 ◼   ► The new one, even the iPad Pro, as the reviews have noted,

00:52:07 ◼   ► doesn't have the touch ID sensor from the 6S,

00:52:10 ◼   ► the good new one.

00:52:11 ◼   ► It has the slower old one from the iPhone 5S and 6.

00:52:15 ◼   ► And that seems crazy.

00:52:16 ◼   ► This is like a new flagship iOS device

00:52:19 ◼   ► that there is a substantially better touch ID sensor

00:52:24 ◼   ► that launched two months ago,

00:52:26 ◼   ► and the iPad Pro doesn't have it.

00:52:27 ◼   ► And 3D touch, it doesn't have either.

00:52:29 ◼   ► That might be 'cause they couldn't get it

00:52:31 ◼   ► to work on the big screen.

00:52:31 ◼   ► That's a little more understandable, I think,

00:52:33 ◼   ► 'cause you can see the challenges involved there.

00:52:35 ◼   ► - I think the touch ID sensor makes sense too, though,

00:52:38 ◼   ► because-- - Why?

00:52:39 ◼   ► - Volumes, because how many,

00:52:42 ◼   ► I don't think there is an entire world

00:52:43 ◼   ► of vendors making this touch ID sensor.

00:52:46 ◼   ► I think there's a limited number of people

00:52:47 ◼   ► who even can make it.

00:52:48 ◼   ► maybe like patent encumbered or whatever,

00:52:50 ◼   ► who has the ability to manufacture, who has the expertise.

00:52:52 ◼   ► And the iPhone is just so damn high volume

00:52:55 ◼   ► that it's going to get every single one of those things

00:52:56 ◼   ► so they can manufacture for the foreseeable future.

00:52:58 ◼   ► That, I don't know if that's true,

00:53:00 ◼   ► but that is a plausible explanation as to why,

00:53:03 ◼   ► why you wouldn't, you know,

00:53:05 ◼   ► the iPhone would absorb everything because it has to,

00:53:06 ◼   ► because it is the most important product.

00:53:08 ◼   ► And if there's any part that is in limited supply,

00:53:10 ◼   ► iPhone gets it and don't even bother,

00:53:12 ◼   ► don't even worry about the iPad,

00:53:14 ◼   ► just give them the old sensor.

00:53:15 ◼   ► It doesn't even matter, the iPhone is what matters.

00:53:17 ◼   ► because if you had to think of a part on the iPhone

00:53:19 ◼   ► that is supply constrained, the touch ID sensor,

00:53:22 ◼   ► especially the brand new one,

00:53:23 ◼   ► is one of the top ones that I would pick.

00:53:26 ◼   ► - I don't know, I think it's equally likely

00:53:28 ◼   ► that this was just an area where somebody decided,

00:53:30 ◼   ► you know what, people aren't unlocking their iPad

00:53:34 ◼   ► via touch ID as often as they do it on their phone,

00:53:36 ◼   ► so it's not that important, we can save a dollar.

00:53:38 ◼   ► It feels more like that.

00:53:39 ◼   ► - Is it cheaper?

00:53:40 ◼   ► Is the new one actually more expensive, though?

00:53:43 ◼   ► It might even just be the same, I don't know.

00:53:45 ◼   ► It seems more like iPhone gets all the good stuff,

00:53:49 ◼   ► all the best stuff first.

00:53:49 ◼   ► It is the oldest favorite child.

00:53:51 ◼   ► If anything is in short supply,

00:53:53 ◼   ► iPhone gets the stuff first.

00:53:55 ◼   ► - Right, so regardless of the reason of that,

00:53:57 ◼   ► on the software side, unfortunately, that's also true.

00:54:02 ◼   ► And you see things like, even back forever ago,

00:54:06 ◼   ► when the iPad launched with 3.2, iOS 3.2,

00:54:11 ◼   ► then iOS 4 with multitasking came out for the iPhone,

00:54:14 ◼   ► And it wasn't until, what about four months later,

00:54:17 ◼   ► something like, or maybe even six months later,

00:54:19 ◼   ► in like 4.3 was when they unified it,

00:54:22 ◼   ► where they brought all those features to the iPad.

00:54:25 ◼   ► Look at when iOS 7 launched, and then in the early betas,

00:54:29 ◼   ► they wouldn't even give you the iPad beta,

00:54:30 ◼   ► 'cause it was so unfinished,

00:54:32 ◼   ► they wouldn't even give you the developer betas at first.

00:54:35 ◼   ► And then later on in the iOS 7 developer process,

00:54:37 ◼   ► they eventually released the iPad version of it.

00:54:40 ◼   ► And I would say the iPad version has always,

00:54:43 ◼   ► and still lags behind the iPhone version

00:54:47 ◼   ► ever since the iOS 7 redesign.

00:54:49 ◼   ► There are certain things about it that just seem half-assed.

00:54:53 ◼   ► Things like Control Center, things like that,

00:54:56 ◼   ► that swipe over, app picker, UI,

00:54:59 ◼   ► notifications have always been kinda weird on it.

00:55:03 ◼   ► There's still, I think as Gruber pointed out in history,

00:55:05 ◼   ► there's still no calculator or weather apps.

00:55:08 ◼   ► It just seems like in so many ways,

00:55:10 ◼   ► The iPad is trying to be this higher end device,

00:55:15 ◼   ► and in many ways it's achieving that.

00:55:17 ◼   ► But on the software side,

00:55:19 ◼   ► it's being held back by these limitations.

00:55:22 ◼   ► And they did make great strides with the split view

00:55:26 ◼   ► and with the slide over in iOS 8.

00:55:28 ◼   ► That does help a lot, but in general,

00:55:31 ◼   ► it just seems like it's not getting a lot of attention

00:55:34 ◼   ► in its software.

00:55:35 ◼   ► And you get there, here we are, flagship product.

00:55:39 ◼   ► This is obviously very important to Apple

00:55:41 ◼   ► to get the iPad sales boosted again,

00:55:44 ◼   ► get them going again, keep the iPad alive, keep it going.

00:55:48 ◼   ► So you have this flagship product.

00:55:50 ◼   ► It launches right before the holidays, peak time.

00:55:54 ◼   ► First of all, yeah, no accessories available, right?

00:55:56 ◼   ► Problem number one.

00:55:57 ◼   ► But then second of all, hardly any apps are updated for it.

00:56:00 ◼   ► So already you have this weird experience

00:56:02 ◼   ► where when you launch most iPad apps,

00:56:05 ◼   ► they come up in the blurry, blown up way

00:56:07 ◼   ► and it just looks terrible.

00:56:09 ◼   ► It looks ridiculous.

00:56:11 ◼   ► That's a problem.

00:56:12 ◼   ► And just going through Tiff's initial setup here at home,

00:56:15 ◼   ► we've seen a lot of those apps.

00:56:16 ◼   ► Almost every app she uses has not been updated.

00:56:19 ◼   ► And that includes both games and browsing apps

00:56:22 ◼   ► and magazines and shopping apps.

00:56:23 ◼   ► There's so many apps that have just not been updated.

00:56:26 ◼   ► So that's problem number one.

00:56:28 ◼   ► But even just iOS, Tiff's first impression

00:56:31 ◼   ► when she saw the springboard home screen,

00:56:34 ◼   ► she was looking at how many icons you get across the top.

00:56:37 ◼   ► And the number of app icons has stayed the same

00:56:41 ◼   ► in how many you get per row and column in Springboard

00:56:44 ◼   ► hasn't changed, even though the screen size

00:56:46 ◼   ► got almost twice as big.

00:56:47 ◼   ► So everything's just this giant,

00:56:49 ◼   ► spread out, weird arrangement.

00:56:52 ◼   ► And she immediately started looking for a setting

00:56:54 ◼   ► to change it, 'cause she assumed,

00:56:56 ◼   ► of course there has to be a setting.

00:56:58 ◼   ► Of course this would not be the only way

00:57:00 ◼   ► you would ship this thing.

00:57:01 ◼   ► Nope, there's no setting to change it.

00:57:02 ◼   ► That is the only way it's shipped.

00:57:03 ◼   ► It just seems like there is just not enough resources

00:57:08 ◼   ► at Apple being devoted to making iOS better

00:57:12 ◼   ► specifically for the iPad.

00:57:14 ◼   ► It's hard enough for developers to justify

00:57:18 ◼   ► putting a lot of work into iPad apps a lot of the times.

00:57:20 ◼   ► And that's gonna be another problem this has

00:57:22 ◼   ► because now, for the first time, I think in a while,

00:57:27 ◼   ► with Split View coming a few months ago

00:57:30 ◼   ► and now with the iPad Pro having a whole new screen size,

00:57:34 ◼   ► not to mention if you wanted to take advantage

00:57:35 ◼   ► of things like the pen and keyboard in significant ways,

00:57:38 ◼   ► app developers need to catch up.

00:57:41 ◼   ► They need to do a lot of work to get their iPad apps

00:57:44 ◼   ► to be really great now, to keep them current,

00:57:46 ◼   ► to keep them running well in the newest hardware,

00:57:48 ◼   ► to keep them taking advantage of the newest hardware.

00:57:50 ◼   ► The iPhone does this to us every year in some way,

00:57:52 ◼   ► but the iPhone has a lot more people using it,

00:57:54 ◼   ► and therefore it's a lot easier to make money on the iPhone

00:57:56 ◼   ► for a lot of kinds of apps.

00:57:57 ◼   ► But the iPad, because it's a smaller platform

00:58:00 ◼   ► by install base, it's always been a little bit harder

00:58:04 ◼   ► for a lot of people to justify doing work on it,

00:58:07 ◼   ► and doing work on iPad apps.

00:58:09 ◼   ► And the problems in Apple's software ecosystem

00:58:12 ◼   ► of app pricing, sustainability, over-competition,

00:58:16 ◼   ► everything, all of those problems are magnified

00:58:20 ◼   ► on the iPad side, because the install base isn't as big,

00:58:24 ◼   ► so you can't just make it up in volume.

00:58:26 ◼   ► It's harder to make it on the iPad side.

00:58:29 ◼   ► There's less competition, I think, which helps,

00:58:30 ◼   ► but it's just harder.

00:58:32 ◼   ► Look at how many iPad apps have just been

00:58:35 ◼   ► just totally abandoned and just are getting

00:58:38 ◼   ► no meaningful updates because their developers

00:58:40 ◼   ► just can't afford to work on them.

00:58:43 ◼   ► I think this is ultimately going to be

00:58:46 ◼   ► what decides whether the iPad Pro succeeds or fails

00:58:49 ◼   ► is will developers, including Apple with iOS,

00:58:54 ◼   ► will developers be able to justify

00:58:57 ◼   ► investing a lot of resources into making really great

00:59:00 ◼   ► software for the iPad Pro.

00:59:02 ◼   ► 'Cause it's kind of a chicken and egg problem.

00:59:05 ◼   ► If they don't, then the iPad Pro,

00:59:08 ◼   ► it will probably not do substantially better

00:59:11 ◼   ► than the other iPads have done.

00:59:13 ◼   ► And it's not like they're bombing,

00:59:14 ◼   ► and everyone always says, "Oh, well it's a bigger business

00:59:15 ◼   ► "than McDonald's," or whatever.

00:59:16 ◼   ► You know, they're doing okay, but it seems like

00:59:18 ◼   ► the point of this product was to really juice

00:59:20 ◼   ► the iPad lineup, really give it a substantial boost.

00:59:22 ◼   ► And unless the software comes,

00:59:25 ◼   ► I don't think that's going to happen.

00:59:27 ◼   ► I also don't see what in the software ecosystem

00:59:31 ◼   ► will meaningfully change that will suddenly make this

00:59:35 ◼   ► a great platform that is worth developers,

00:59:38 ◼   ► both large and small, spending a lot of time

00:59:41 ◼   ► creating and maintaining professional quality apps

00:59:43 ◼   ► for this platform.

00:59:45 ◼   ► - Seems like Apple's been coasting on the,

00:59:47 ◼   ► not coasting, but like benefiting from the inevitability

00:59:50 ◼   ► of the iPad that they apparently feel

00:59:52 ◼   ► that I've always felt, even from like the original iPad

00:59:55 ◼   ► Remember when the iPad was coming out, it was like Apple's tablet, we didn't know what

00:59:58 ◼   ► the name of it was going to be.

00:59:59 ◼   ► One of the topics of discussion around that time, although we didn't have a lot of podcasts

01:00:02 ◼   ► talk about it on, was what is the home screen going to look like on an Apple tablet?

01:00:08 ◼   ► And the reason that was a discussion, because the second thing anyone would say in that

01:00:12 ◼   ► conversation is they can't just do what they do on the phone and have just a grid of icons

01:00:16 ◼   ► because the screen is massive.

01:00:18 ◼   ► So what are they going to do?

01:00:19 ◼   ► Like it was fun to think about what is the sort of the home experience, the root level,

01:00:26 ◼   ► the bottom level, the thing you see when you turn the thing on.

01:00:30 ◼   ► What does that look like when you have a tablet-sized device?

01:00:32 ◼   ► And Apple's answer was it looks like a phone, we spread stuff out a little bit more, right?

01:00:37 ◼   ► And as the iPod, iPad changed sizes, when it got smaller, you know, the icons were there,

01:00:42 ◼   ► now it's gotten bigger, the icons just spread out.

01:00:45 ◼   ► There's a couple aspects of that.

01:00:47 ◼   ► One is if they actually did put things in at the same density they are on a phone, that

01:00:54 ◼   ► would be an object of ridicule.

01:00:56 ◼   ► People like, "That big iPad, you can't tell where anything is because there's a million

01:00:59 ◼   ► icons on the home screen."

01:01:01 ◼   ► So they can obviously not do them.

01:01:03 ◼   ► That just goes to show that the density that works well on a tiny thing in your hand, you

01:01:06 ◼   ► can't use that same density when the thing is the size of an actual notebook piece of

01:01:10 ◼   ► paper.

01:01:11 ◼   ► But surely, looking at the iPad Pro, you could fit a few more in there, can't you?

01:01:14 ◼   ► is just huge white space between them, but it all gets back to the same root problem,

01:01:19 ◼   ► which is trying to figure out, which Apple has been trying to do and mostly failing for

01:01:24 ◼   ► many many years now, how to take this computing device that Apple and I at least think is

01:01:30 ◼   ► the future of computing, as obvious as anything else, but that it has to grow up and it has

01:01:37 ◼   ► to start taking on more of the capabilities of desktop computers and it has to do that

01:01:41 ◼   ► at the same time as it doesn't take on all of their crap.

01:01:44 ◼   ► The whole reason we see it as the future of computing

01:01:46 ◼   ► and inevitability is that there's some things

01:01:49 ◼   ► you won't be able to do on a phone,

01:01:50 ◼   ► which is, we don't have to call inevitable,

01:01:52 ◼   ► it's already here, boom, done, right?

01:01:54 ◼   ► Some things you can't do on a phone that's too darn small,

01:01:56 ◼   ► and PCs are still too hard to use, including Macs.

01:01:59 ◼   ► So here's this thing that's in between.

01:02:01 ◼   ► It takes all the good stuff from your phone

01:02:03 ◼   ► that everyone knows how to use and is comfortable with,

01:02:04 ◼   ► gets rid of all the legacy crap,

01:02:06 ◼   ► but how can you make it have more capabilities?

01:02:08 ◼   ► And designing the home screen with the iPad

01:02:10 ◼   ► was one of the first times that I've always faced with that thing.

01:02:12 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:02:13 ◼   ► All right.

01:02:13 ◼   ► What do you see when you turn on the iPad?

01:02:15 ◼   ► We have this big screen.

01:02:16 ◼   ► Can we do something different in this realm?

01:02:19 ◼   ► And that realm is like the place where people go to launch their apps

01:02:21 ◼   ► or to rearrange things or whatever.

01:02:24 ◼   ► And they punted on it.

01:02:25 ◼   ► They said, well, I don't know.

01:02:26 ◼   ► We don't really have any good ideas right now.

01:02:28 ◼   ► So let's just make a degree out of icons.

01:02:30 ◼   ► And they just continued to kick that down the road, all the while knowing

01:02:33 ◼   ► that surely there's something more they can do.

01:02:35 ◼   ► But it's like, but you don't want to make it into--

01:02:36 ◼   ► what, are you going to have a Finder on the iPad?

01:02:38 ◼   ► No, no.

01:02:38 ◼   ► We don't want that crap.

01:02:39 ◼   ► The whole reason people like the iPad is that it's simple, right?

01:02:42 ◼   ► So it has to be straightforward.

01:02:44 ◼   ► And like, all right, yeah, we're fine with that.

01:02:46 ◼   ► But now we're getting to the point in the iPad's evolution, it's like, but we have to

01:02:49 ◼   ► make it more capable.

01:02:51 ◼   ► So bigger, good, yes, thumbs up.

01:02:52 ◼   ► I've always been a big fan of the iPad Pro.

01:02:54 ◼   ► You have to make it bigger because there's more stuff you can do.

01:02:56 ◼   ► And then what can we do with that real estate?

01:02:58 ◼   ► That's a harder problem.

01:02:59 ◼   ► I've got this extra real estate.

01:03:00 ◼   ► Apple's like, "No, we could split the screen and make it like a divider that you can kind

01:03:04 ◼   ► of like..."

01:03:06 ◼   ► It's better, better than nothing, but it still shows that they haven't figured out how to

01:03:12 ◼   ► add capability without adding complexity.

01:03:14 ◼   ► The beauty of the thing we all know, the Windows pointer mouse, you know, WIMP interface pioneered

01:03:19 ◼   ► by the Mac or popularized by the Mac, is that evolved over time with a vocabulary that we're

01:03:25 ◼   ► all familiar with.

01:03:26 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's easy for us to think like, "Oh, Macs aren't that hard or PCs aren't

01:03:29 ◼   ► that hard.

01:03:30 ◼   ► Everyone knows how to use Windows and menu bars."

01:03:34 ◼   ► And like, there's a vocabulary for dealing with windows that, you know, that they have

01:03:37 ◼   ► widgets on them that you can resize them from various edges, you can move them around tabs

01:03:42 ◼   ► or another vocabulary that was added.

01:03:43 ◼   ► And we all understand how tabs work.

01:03:45 ◼   ► But that's us, everyone else.

01:03:47 ◼   ► And same thing with the file system, file system and folders and, you know, navigating

01:03:50 ◼   ► the hierarchy, a very simple, consistent vocabulary for people who are into computers.

01:03:55 ◼   ► For everyone else, it might as well be, you know, inscrutable.

01:03:58 ◼   ► And just like some people just never fully grasp it.

01:04:00 ◼   ► So that's why we know that like the smartphone and the iPad

01:04:04 ◼   ► are inevitably the future because history has shown over,

01:04:08 ◼   ► you know, decades that just people,

01:04:11 ◼   ► not enough people grok computers the way we grok them.

01:04:15 ◼   ► This interface is, you know,

01:04:17 ◼   ► it's much better than what came before.

01:04:18 ◼   ► The command line, even a small number of people grok.

01:04:21 ◼   ► The GUI with the mouses and the scroll bars,

01:04:23 ◼   ► a larger reveal grok,

01:04:24 ◼   ► but everybody gets the smartphone, right?

01:04:26 ◼   ► And, but there are those of us who use computers

01:04:29 ◼   ► to do our job, so they have to figure out a way

01:04:31 ◼   ► to make these things more capable

01:04:33 ◼   ► without making them more complicated.

01:04:34 ◼   ► And that is a really difficult job, and that's on Apple.

01:04:36 ◼   ► Like, individual developers, they can make their applications

01:04:40 ◼   ► to use the old parlance iPad Pro savvy,

01:04:43 ◼   ► and they need to all do all that stuff or whatever,

01:04:44 ◼   ► but it's kind of on Apple to show how this can really be

01:04:49 ◼   ► the future of computing, and so far,

01:04:50 ◼   ► they've been timid about it, because it's safe to say,

01:04:54 ◼   ► we'll just do what we did on the phone and bigger,

01:04:55 ◼   ► 'cause people already understand it, and it works fine,

01:04:57 ◼   ► but you're not gaining any new capabilities then,

01:04:59 ◼   ► Even though they said, "Well, when you rotate mail sideways,

01:05:00 ◼   ► "you get a new sidebar."

01:05:02 ◼   ► Or even on the 6S Plus,

01:05:04 ◼   ► they did a couple of different layouts and whatever.

01:05:07 ◼   ► This is so massively huge, you can't just say,

01:05:09 ◼   ► "All right, well now all our apps

01:05:10 ◼   ► "will have a little bit different layout."

01:05:11 ◼   ► 'Cause sometimes you don't even have anything

01:05:12 ◼   ► to go over there.

01:05:13 ◼   ► Inevitably, you have to get to some solution

01:05:14 ◼   ► that gives us what we do with Windows,

01:05:17 ◼   ► but in a simpler way.

01:05:18 ◼   ► And the splitter is their first crack at that,

01:05:19 ◼   ► and I haven't used it, so I don't know how successful it is,

01:05:22 ◼   ► but boy, I just feel like they have a long way

01:05:24 ◼   ► to go in this area.

01:05:25 ◼   ► and most of the complaints surrounding software

01:05:30 ◼   ► on the iPad Pro,

01:05:31 ◼   ► I don't think it dooms the tablet as a platform,

01:05:33 ◼   ► it just goes to show that this is a hard problem

01:05:37 ◼   ► and it's easy to take for granted

01:05:39 ◼   ► the breakthroughs and conventions that came with the Mac

01:05:41 ◼   ► and with the original GUI that had so much time to evolve.

01:05:44 ◼   ► I remember we had two arrows on both ends of the scroll bars

01:05:46 ◼   ► and we had proportional scroll thumbs

01:05:48 ◼   ► and then we got rid of the scroll bars entirely

01:05:50 ◼   ► and all that.

01:05:51 ◼   ► Even just something as simple as moving windows around

01:05:53 ◼   ► and scrolling.

01:05:54 ◼   ► There's a lot of cracks at that.

01:05:56 ◼   ► Like what we have now is not what was first there,

01:05:58 ◼   ► and we tried all sorts of different things

01:05:59 ◼   ► to try to find something that was better.

01:06:02 ◼   ► Proportional scroll thumbs were a pretty big revolution.

01:06:04 ◼   ► Apple didn't invent those obviously,

01:06:05 ◼   ► and they were really late adopting them.

01:06:08 ◼   ► But that was a significant enhancement

01:06:10 ◼   ► over the original scroll thumb,

01:06:11 ◼   ► and the original Mac scroll bars

01:06:13 ◼   ► were a significant enhancement over the weird ones

01:06:14 ◼   ► on the Xerox systems that you had to like middle click

01:06:16 ◼   ► or whatever to scroll.

01:06:17 ◼   ► So I don't expect anyone to nail this in the first try,

01:06:22 ◼   ► But the iteration time has definitely slowed down,

01:06:26 ◼   ► I think mostly because the smartphone and its interface

01:06:29 ◼   ► became so iconic that Apple's like,

01:06:32 ◼   ► "Well, worst case, it's like a phone,

01:06:34 ◼   ► "but on a bigger screen, everybody understands that

01:06:36 ◼   ► "and it'll be fine."

01:06:37 ◼   ► But we won't make significant progress

01:06:38 ◼   ► towards the future of computing, capital F, capital C,

01:06:43 ◼   ► that Tim Cook and I and several other people believe

01:06:46 ◼   ► must come someday.

01:06:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

01:06:49 ◼   ► I mean, a lot of these problems,

01:06:52 ◼   ► people assume to be problems, like my old

01:06:55 ◼   ► launch an app without a setting screen design problem,

01:06:58 ◼   ► where you assume, oh well, computers are too hard to use,

01:07:01 ◼   ► so the way to make them easier to use

01:07:03 ◼   ► is to get rid of all these files and windows and everything,

01:07:07 ◼   ► get rid of all these things people are confused about.

01:07:10 ◼   ► But if you look at it only in that way,

01:07:12 ◼   ► that's kind of a naive 22-year-old smart person

01:07:17 ◼   ► way to look at things, of like, well, this is all stupid,

01:07:19 ◼   ► we'll just get rid of it.

01:07:21 ◼   ► And then you do and you realize,

01:07:22 ◼   ► oh, now we have a lot of problems to solve.

01:07:26 ◼   ► And the solutions that you build up

01:07:28 ◼   ► end up being oftentimes more complex or worse,

01:07:32 ◼   ► or at least no better than what was already there.

01:07:35 ◼   ► Because what was already there

01:07:36 ◼   ► was actually there for good reasons.

01:07:38 ◼   ► And so a lot of these problems, I think,

01:07:40 ◼   ► have to be backtracked in some way.

01:07:42 ◼   ► For example, iCloud Drive, perfect example of this,

01:07:45 ◼   ► where you have, okay, well, there's no more files.

01:07:48 ◼   ► each app just has its own content in the app.

01:07:51 ◼   ► And then, oh, now we have a sync engine

01:07:53 ◼   ► and well, it'll just sync.

01:07:54 ◼   ► There's documents still in the app.

01:07:56 ◼   ► And then, oh, it turns out having a folder

01:07:59 ◼   ► that just syncs everywhere, like Dropbox, is really useful

01:08:02 ◼   ► and makes a lot of things way easier

01:08:05 ◼   ► than all these apps having their own little sandbox silos.

01:08:08 ◼   ► And also those little sandbox silos

01:08:10 ◼   ► bring lots of other limitations

01:08:11 ◼   ► and challenges to the platform.

01:08:13 ◼   ► And, oh, by the way, all this contributes very heavily

01:08:16 ◼   ► to why a lot of people can't get their work done on iOS.

01:08:18 ◼   ► - Don't you feel like it's tempting

01:08:20 ◼   ► to slide back to the old solutions?

01:08:21 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:08:22 ◼   ► - I think that was, you know, Sync is a great example

01:08:24 ◼   ► where it's like the new stuff is supposed to work

01:08:26 ◼   ► but doesn't and Dropbox used the old paradigm

01:08:29 ◼   ► plus reliability to say, look you guys,

01:08:32 ◼   ► you guys haven't figured it out.

01:08:34 ◼   ► I know this is an old paradigm that is confusing

01:08:35 ◼   ► but it's reliable and at least, at the very least,

01:08:38 ◼   ► the people who understand files and folders

01:08:40 ◼   ► will understand Dropbox and the other people,

01:08:41 ◼   ► they'll muddle along because we'll be reliable enough

01:08:43 ◼   ► but it's so easy to go back to that.

01:08:46 ◼   ► Apple doesn't like to do that.

01:08:47 ◼   ► That's why the iPad Pro doesn't come with a bunch of windows

01:08:50 ◼   ► with widgets that you slide around on the screen, right?

01:08:52 ◼   ► They totally could.

01:08:53 ◼   ► It could, you know, they could make like a touch,

01:08:55 ◼   ► an OS X designed for touch

01:08:57 ◼   ► where all the window widgets are gigantic or whatever,

01:08:59 ◼   ► but you have actual windows.

01:09:01 ◼   ► Apple doesn't wanna do that to its credit,

01:09:03 ◼   ► to its detriment or demerit

01:09:05 ◼   ► or whatever word you wanna insert there.

01:09:07 ◼   ► They don't seem to have quite an idea

01:09:10 ◼   ► what to do going forward.

01:09:12 ◼   ► and they've been really cautious about like poking their way towards the edges of like,

01:09:17 ◼   ► I mean, Microsoft has been much more daring in thinking the old paradigms are cruddy,

01:09:23 ◼   ► we want to try something new, and they went hog wild with the whole Metro stuff.

01:09:28 ◼   ► I don't think that was successful either, but they certainly, you know, came, went forward

01:09:34 ◼   ► much more boldly than Apple.

01:09:35 ◼   ► Apple's just been like, it's just, we'll just use the smartphone stuff.

01:09:38 ◼   ► Everyone likes that.

01:09:39 ◼   ► the compromises we made to a small screen, we will port to the big screen and don't

01:09:43 ◼   ► complain that it can't do anything more than a phone.

01:09:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean at this point, I would say the main thing that holds iOS back from more pro

01:09:51 ◼   ► adoption is the OS. It's not that the screens weren't big enough. Those things help. And

01:09:58 ◼   ► things like the iPad Pro and the pencil and finally a decent keyboard, those things will

01:10:06 ◼   ► all help and they will all bring in certain portions of the workforce and population that

01:10:12 ◼   ► couldn't have done it before or didn't want to do it before.

01:10:15 ◼   ► But fundamentally, the main reason why so many people say, "I can't get my work done

01:10:20 ◼   ► on an iPad," or "It would be very clunky for me to get my work done on an iPad,"

01:10:25 ◼   ► fundamentally that comes down to iOS and the structure of iOS, how things like files and

01:10:30 ◼   ► documents and sandboxing and apps, how those things are all -- and multitasking, like how

01:10:35 ◼   ► how these all work together, the things they can do,

01:10:38 ◼   ► the things they can't do, that is ultimately

01:10:40 ◼   ► what it comes down to for a lot of people.

01:10:41 ◼   ► And that is really hard to change meaningfully

01:10:45 ◼   ► without, as you said, without just basically

01:10:47 ◼   ► making it a Mac, like without redoing

01:10:49 ◼   ► all these old complexities.

01:10:51 ◼   ► Now Apple is trying to figure out

01:10:54 ◼   ► which of those old complexities were actually not necessary

01:10:57 ◼   ► and which are necessary to have a productive

01:11:01 ◼   ► kind of pro work machine.

01:11:03 ◼   ► - I don't think any of them are necessary.

01:11:04 ◼   ► The question is simply, like, because all they are is a means to an end.

01:11:07 ◼   ► The end is I need to have a way to use multiple, to do multiple things at once.

01:11:14 ◼   ► We call it multiple application, but there's no reason that paradigm you need to stick,

01:11:17 ◼   ► although Apple seems married to that.

01:11:18 ◼   ► You could have gone, Apple could have gone the OpenDoc route where everything is inverted

01:11:21 ◼   ► and the document is king and there's no real applications.

01:11:24 ◼   ► And anyway, they didn't.

01:11:25 ◼   ► The point is they have applications.

01:11:26 ◼   ► So we're faced with, basically the high level problem we're faced with is how do I do more

01:11:29 ◼   ► than one thing at one time?

01:11:31 ◼   ► before these things start sharing with each other,

01:11:32 ◼   ► just simply, how do I go to a web browser,

01:11:36 ◼   ► to my text editor, to my email, to my photo editor?

01:11:39 ◼   ► How do I do more than one?

01:11:40 ◼   ► Windows solves that problem,

01:11:41 ◼   ► not capital W, Windows for Microsoft,

01:11:43 ◼   ► but Windows is the solution that people came up with,

01:11:46 ◼   ► that there's going to be application content,

01:11:47 ◼   ► it's in these little rectangles

01:11:48 ◼   ► that we can change the size of.

01:11:50 ◼   ► When we change the size to small,

01:11:51 ◼   ► scroll bars are there to move around.

01:11:52 ◼   ► They have a thing that you can drag them on.

01:11:54 ◼   ► They have little buttons that you can close

01:11:56 ◼   ► and minimize and match.

01:11:58 ◼   ► That was the old solution to that.

01:12:00 ◼   ► Old solution, if I've seen anybody use computers,

01:12:03 ◼   ► Windows are not something that most people deal with well.

01:12:07 ◼   ► And it has simply not gotten better.

01:12:09 ◼   ► You can't blame it all,

01:12:10 ◼   ► it's because old people didn't grow up with computers.

01:12:12 ◼   ► There are many, many people who grew up with computers

01:12:14 ◼   ► who cannot manage Windows.

01:12:15 ◼   ► I, as we all know, am an expert at managing Windows.

01:12:17 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

01:12:18 ◼   ► - Because I grew up with it,

01:12:20 ◼   ► and because I have an aptitude for it.

01:12:21 ◼   ► But, and it makes me keenly aware

01:12:23 ◼   ► that pretty much everyone else I see

01:12:25 ◼   ► has no idea what to do with Windows.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Even young kids at work, like kids just out of college,

01:12:29 ◼   ► I see how they use computers

01:12:31 ◼   ► and they have these massive screens

01:12:32 ◼   ► and they have like maybe two windows on them.

01:12:34 ◼   ► That's why people love tiling window managers

01:12:36 ◼   ► and things like Windows 10

01:12:37 ◼   ► where you jam the window against the side of the screen,

01:12:39 ◼   ► it fills the half.

01:12:39 ◼   ► Managing Windows is, it is not easy to do,

01:12:44 ◼   ► to have a bunch of windows all shuffling around.

01:12:45 ◼   ► It's like having 17 papers on your desk

01:12:47 ◼   ► all overlapping with each other

01:12:48 ◼   ► and trying to manage it, right?

01:12:50 ◼   ► That is, it's not like that people

01:12:51 ◼   ► are gonna get better at that.

01:12:53 ◼   ► So I'm not saying it's a bankrupt paradigm.

01:12:54 ◼   ► It's way better than people managing

01:12:57 ◼   ► the mental state required to deal with a command line,

01:12:59 ◼   ► right, big advancement over that.

01:13:01 ◼   ► But you can't go back to it,

01:13:04 ◼   ► but we still have the root problem of,

01:13:05 ◼   ► what if I wanna do a bunch of stuff at once?

01:13:07 ◼   ► So how do you let me do a bunch of stuff at once

01:13:09 ◼   ► without asking me to manage Windows?

01:13:11 ◼   ► And so far, we don't have a good answer to that.

01:13:14 ◼   ► The iOS multitasking switcher, splitting the screen,

01:13:18 ◼   ► none of those things, like we recognize all those things

01:13:21 ◼   ► are better than nothing,

01:13:23 ◼   ► but still not as capable as Windows,

01:13:25 ◼   ► even to people who aren't good at managing windows

01:13:27 ◼   ► and don't like to have a lot of windows,

01:13:29 ◼   ► if you're at all used to windows, you're like,

01:13:31 ◼   ► I wish I could just have windows on this thing,

01:13:32 ◼   ► but then you realize it doesn't work

01:13:34 ◼   ► with the finger or whatever.

01:13:34 ◼   ► So that's just one root problem.

01:13:36 ◼   ► How do I give something that's the equivalent of windows?

01:13:40 ◼   ► Like, I don't wanna say it that way,

01:13:41 ◼   ► but how do I let people use this computing device

01:13:45 ◼   ► to do more than one thing at the same time

01:13:47 ◼   ► and move between those tasks in a nice way?

01:13:49 ◼   ► So set that aside, we don't have a good solution.

01:13:51 ◼   ► The other one you were talking about, Marco,

01:13:53 ◼   ► How do I deal with the data?

01:13:55 ◼   ► How do I take some piece of data?

01:13:57 ◼   ► How do I synthesize like pictures from here,

01:14:00 ◼   ► text from there, a link from here?

01:14:01 ◼   ► How do I move stuff between applications,

01:14:04 ◼   ► keep track of where things are, save things,

01:14:06 ◼   ► have, you know, like, and the old solution

01:14:08 ◼   ► that was files and folders in a file system.

01:14:10 ◼   ► You had images, you had text documents, you know,

01:14:12 ◼   ► and that was the old paradigm.

01:14:13 ◼   ► And as we all know, people aren't good at the old paradigm.

01:14:16 ◼   ► Files and folders, people make a big giant mess.

01:14:17 ◼   ► They can't keep track of where they are.

01:14:19 ◼   ► Lots of people can deal with it,

01:14:21 ◼   ► but lots of people just can't.

01:14:22 ◼   ► And again, we've had computers long enough not to say like,

01:14:24 ◼   ► "Oh, we just gotta wait for the old people to die.

01:14:26 ◼   ► Young people will know how to deal with files and folders."

01:14:28 ◼   ► Nope, we ran that experiment.

01:14:29 ◼   ► Human beings are not changing that fast.

01:14:31 ◼   ► Files and folders, a lot of people can use it,

01:14:33 ◼   ► but a lot of people can't.

01:14:35 ◼   ► It's much easier when there's no saving.

01:14:37 ◼   ► You open the Notes app,

01:14:38 ◼   ► you type a bunch of notes in with your thumbs on your iPhone

01:14:40 ◼   ► and you close the Notes app.

01:14:41 ◼   ► No one is begging for a save button

01:14:43 ◼   ► on the Notes application.

01:14:44 ◼   ► I've said this a million times.

01:14:46 ◼   ► And it just goes to show that like,

01:14:49 ◼   ► those are complexities that we don't need.

01:14:51 ◼   ► But when you want to do something that would traditionally be done with files and folders in a file system,

01:14:55 ◼   ► what is the solution for that?

01:14:57 ◼   ► So Apple should really probably have like teams of 50 really smart people,

01:15:02 ◼   ► multiple ones of them, working on all these problems.

01:15:04 ◼   ► Because right now they're either not solving them at all or making the most timid move in the direction of solving them.

01:15:11 ◼   ► And then just kind of being like, I don't know, like it's a little bit more complicated than the iPhone,

01:15:17 ◼   ► but it's not as good as a Mac. What do you guys think of that?

01:15:20 ◼   ► And it's just not the same as the bold vision of the Mac of saying the command line is crap forget about it what we're

01:15:24 ◼   ► Doing has nothing to do with the command line here are you know we've seen the future and just gooeys

01:15:29 ◼   ► And we're gonna this is the direction we're gonna take and it's way better than everything came before it and so far

01:15:34 ◼   ► We haven't had that moment for the post you know the post wimp world

01:15:39 ◼   ► So two questions for you John first of all on an infinite time scale would we get good at using Windows I?

01:15:47 ◼   ► Don't think so because I don't think there's any I don't think there's any evolutionary pressure

01:15:51 ◼   ► Like there's there's nothing about being good at windows that makes your genes more likely to be passed on

01:15:58 ◼   ► So in the absence of that pressure

01:16:01 ◼   ► I don't see how the genetic makeup of humans would change over any period of time to become better at managing

01:16:08 ◼   ► multiple traditional windows and the second reason of course is that

01:16:12 ◼   ► We will come up with different interfaces that are better than windows and simpler and better suited to us

01:16:17 ◼   ► So it's not you there's nothing holding windows steady of saying I demand that windows as they currently exist stay there for the next

01:16:23 ◼   ► You know three billion years to wait and see if human evolution will make us better at handling them

01:16:28 ◼   ► You took that question way too seriously, but I gave you I gave you the answer, but I appreciate it

01:16:34 ◼   ► I mean, that's nothing less. Yeah, exactly the other question I had and I am being serious now is

01:16:39 ◼   ► you seem

01:16:41 ◼   ► really disappointed with the multitasking paradigm in iOS and

01:16:45 ◼   ► You know, I have this iPad mini the first one with the retina display and it doesn't support

01:16:51 ◼   ► God, I always get the terminology wrong. So it does do slide over. It doesn't do split view

01:16:56 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure I got that right. That's right

01:16:57 ◼   ► And so I've only had limited experience with the multitasking on an iPad, but I feel like I really like it

01:17:05 ◼   ► I will say that the multitasking switcher when you're switching between apps and in the slide over or what have you is

01:17:11 ◼   ► is stupid. Like, I agree with you there. That's dumb. But the general premise behind it, I

01:17:17 ◼   ► don't think it's so bad. I'm not saying there couldn't be better, but I mean, I think it's

01:17:20 ◼   ► a pretty solid first step. Do you not think that?

01:17:23 ◼   ► I don't know. Like, it's easy to see that it's not as capable as multiple windows, right?

01:17:29 ◼   ► Sure. Because two, like, it's better than one, but not as good as three. And what if

01:17:33 ◼   ► you've got four, and so on and so forth. Sixty. Yeah. And it doesn't help you with the, it

01:17:39 ◼   ► doesn't help you yet with the, you know, sharing for one thing to the other, dragging and dropping

01:17:44 ◼   ► across that line, or somehow because things are visually next to each other, all the same

01:17:49 ◼   ► things we do in the desktop.

01:17:50 ◼   ► Like drag and drop is, again, not saying drag and drop is what they should bring over because

01:17:54 ◼   ► it's the old thing that worked, but they need something that fills the same role as drag

01:17:57 ◼   ► and drop in that like, you know, I have something over here, I'm going to drag it over there

01:18:02 ◼   ► and I'm going to chuck it into this thing and now this image I dragged out of photos

01:18:06 ◼   ► onto the desktop, I drag from the desktop into photos.

01:18:09 ◼   ► That's not a particularly efficient move,

01:18:10 ◼   ► but it's using a vocabulary that we understand to do that.

01:18:13 ◼   ► The reason I'm mostly disappointed in it as,

01:18:15 ◼   ► not disappointed, like it's better than nothing,

01:18:17 ◼   ► but it's so clearly still less capable

01:18:22 ◼   ► than a desktop computer,

01:18:25 ◼   ► but I feel like almost as hard to explain

01:18:27 ◼   ► to people who aren't familiar.

01:18:29 ◼   ► Like I just tried to show my daughter today

01:18:31 ◼   ► for whatever reason, she decided to use the laptop

01:18:36 ◼   ► to write something instead of writing it on a piece of paper.

01:18:39 ◼   ► I don't think she writes on her iPod.

01:18:41 ◼   ► But anyway, she decided to use a laptop.

01:18:43 ◼   ► And she asked me how to make the window cover the whole screen.

01:18:46 ◼   ► Because that's just a user.

01:18:47 ◼   ► She's grown up on iOS.

01:18:48 ◼   ► So I showed her the full screen thing.

01:18:49 ◼   ► She's in full screen mode.

01:18:50 ◼   ► And then she wanted to look something up in Safari.

01:18:53 ◼   ► And I wanted to show her, you can actually

01:18:54 ◼   ► see the text editor in Safari at the same time.

01:18:58 ◼   ► But then I realized, to show her that, I have to show,

01:19:00 ◼   ► all you have to do-- again, all you have to do

01:19:02 ◼   ► is arrange the windows.

01:19:05 ◼   ► Arrange the windows.

01:19:07 ◼   ► She doesn't know how windows move.

01:19:09 ◼   ► She doesn't know windows can be resized.

01:19:11 ◼   ► I resized a window and she asked me how I did it.

01:19:12 ◼   ► How did you change the size of the window?

01:19:14 ◼   ► Like it's another thing, you know, like.

01:19:17 ◼   ► So trying to show someone how to use windows,

01:19:19 ◼   ► obviously very complicated.

01:19:20 ◼   ► Trying to show her how to use split view on the iPad

01:19:23 ◼   ► would, it results in almost the same conversations.

01:19:26 ◼   ► Like it's already, already too complicated I feel like.

01:19:29 ◼   ► That people aren't gonna figure it out on their own.

01:19:32 ◼   ► And I think it suffers in comparison to windows

01:19:34 ◼   ► and that it doesn't really give you a sort of functional vocabulary that you can apply

01:19:39 ◼   ► repeatedly because once you figure out how a window works, you still may not be good

01:19:43 ◼   ► at arranging windows because just knowing how to a window works is like I know how to

01:19:47 ◼   ► form all the letters.

01:19:48 ◼   ► It's not the same as knowing how to write, you know what I mean, or knowing how to hit

01:19:50 ◼   ► one piano key is not the same as knowing how to play a piano.

01:19:53 ◼   ► But you know that any key on the keyboard, if you hit it with your finger, will make

01:19:56 ◼   ► a noise.

01:19:57 ◼   ► You figured out the vocab, the functional vocabulary, the basic functional vocabulary

01:20:00 ◼   ► of a piano.

01:20:01 ◼   ► Once you figure out how windows work, you can drag them by the title bar, you can resize

01:20:04 ◼   ► them, you can close them, you can move them around, you learn the parameters, can I move

01:20:08 ◼   ► it all the way off the screen?

01:20:09 ◼   ► No, no, I can't.

01:20:10 ◼   ► Can I get the title bar underneath the menu bar?

01:20:12 ◼   ► Not unless there's like a bug in the OS, which happens sometimes.

01:20:17 ◼   ► Is it really that much easier?

01:20:18 ◼   ► Don't think about the split view as like, "Oh, it's pretty cool.

01:20:20 ◼   ► I kind of like it."

01:20:21 ◼   ► You know how to use desktop computers.

01:20:22 ◼   ► Think about it as if you had to show somebody who had only ever used a smartphone, how to

01:20:28 ◼   ► use split view with their eyes glazed over and they'd be like, "I don't get it."

01:20:31 ◼   ► And then secondarily, could they transfer those skills?

01:20:34 ◼   ► Like if you say you show them how to use split view

01:20:35 ◼   ► and they figure it out, could they,

01:20:37 ◼   ► are those skills useful for anything else?

01:20:38 ◼   ► So they're gonna say,

01:20:39 ◼   ► "Now I can split view any two applications,"

01:20:41 ◼   ► or would you have to show them again?

01:20:42 ◼   ► Okay, well, this is how you do a split view,

01:20:44 ◼   ► but what if you want to, like when you come back to it,

01:20:46 ◼   ► will the same two things be in the split view?

01:20:47 ◼   ► Or what if you want to put something different

01:20:48 ◼   ► in the split view?

01:20:49 ◼   ► What if you want to have multiple,

01:20:50 ◼   ► like I think it's already too complicated

01:20:53 ◼   ► and still less capable.

01:20:55 ◼   ► Now, I'm not entirely sure about that,

01:20:57 ◼   ► but that's my sense of it so far is that

01:21:01 ◼   ► It's not like it's on its way to being as good as the Mac.

01:21:03 ◼   ► I think it's not as capable as the Mac

01:21:07 ◼   ► and not really easier to explain than Windows.

01:21:10 ◼   ► So I feel like it's a bad solution at this point.

01:21:13 ◼   ► - You know, I've been talking about it before,

01:21:14 ◼   ► like there seems to be a certain baseline level

01:21:17 ◼   ► of required complexity.

01:21:19 ◼   ► And that's not to say that for things like multitasking,

01:21:22 ◼   ► that we have Windows or SlideOver

01:21:24 ◼   ► or everything's full screen.

01:21:25 ◼   ► Like that's not to say that these things

01:21:28 ◼   ► cannot be improved upon,

01:21:29 ◼   ► but I do think there is a certain ceiling

01:21:32 ◼   ► that we cannot surpass of how simple can we make this?

01:21:37 ◼   ► Because the fundamental fact is these are advanced concepts.

01:21:42 ◼   ► They're going to have some inherent level

01:21:43 ◼   ► of minimum complexity.

01:21:45 ◼   ► Oh, oh, we're gonna have multiple things that are separate,

01:21:49 ◼   ► that are running on this screen at once,

01:21:50 ◼   ► and there's going to be some way

01:21:52 ◼   ► to divide the screen space between them,

01:21:54 ◼   ► and you're gonna have to be able to pick out

01:21:57 ◼   ► which ones to open somehow,

01:21:59 ◼   ► figure out if you wanna open them one at a time

01:22:02 ◼   ► or if you want to add multiple ones to the screen

01:22:04 ◼   ► in some way, then figure out how to switch between them,

01:22:07 ◼   ► how to close certain ones or all of them.

01:22:09 ◼   ► Like there's going to be some baseline level

01:22:12 ◼   ► of complexity to this no matter how it's designed,

01:22:14 ◼   ► no matter what system it is.

01:22:16 ◼   ► There's going to therefore be some kind

01:22:18 ◼   ► of basic learning curve, no matter how easy to make it.

01:22:21 ◼   ► So again, this isn't to say that we can't improve

01:22:24 ◼   ► systems we have now, but I think people are assuming that there is some endgame here that

01:22:31 ◼   ► we should be going for where anybody can just pick it up and all of a sudden it's perfect.

01:22:36 ◼   ► And that's never, we're never going to reach that.

01:22:39 ◼   ► I think you're mistaking intuitiveness in the old parlance for just a better UI, because

01:22:44 ◼   ► you could say all the same things back before the GUI existed. Like there's some inheriting

01:22:48 ◼   ► complexity in a time-sharing system where multiple programs are running at the same

01:22:53 ◼   ► time and we're never gonna make that easier because this you know like and

01:22:56 ◼   ► then the GUI came along and it's like oh well I guess if you totally rethink

01:23:00 ◼   ► things then I guess you can make it massively easier for a huge number of

01:23:03 ◼   ► people still too complicated for all people but so much better you know like

01:23:08 ◼   ► you really there is no I don't think there's any limitation and you know the

01:23:13 ◼   ► endgame obviously would be like you know some crazy neural interface where you

01:23:16 ◼   ► just think stuff and imagine what happens or or the endgame is all the

01:23:20 ◼   ► extinction of human life and the computers take over. Anyway, there's definitely an endgame,

01:23:24 ◼   ► you may not like it. But for things like interfaces, I think they're absolutely,

01:23:30 ◼   ► I think that kind of thinking that is just like, there's a certain amount of complexity and there's

01:23:35 ◼   ► no way we're going to make it simple, is just absolutely the wrong way to look at this. Because

01:23:39 ◼   ► having lived through the GUI revolution and having seen how, that's why the original GUI

01:23:44 ◼   ► and the Mac was so brilliant, that it did find a way. Lots of people tried to find ways to do it,

01:23:49 ◼   ► And then the Mac finally did find a way

01:23:52 ◼   ► through the use of metaphor and through what

01:23:55 ◼   ► I've maintained is one of the best interfaces ever,

01:23:58 ◼   ► the spatial finder, giving people

01:24:01 ◼   ► an interface that played to the strengths of the knowledge

01:24:07 ◼   ► that they have from living in the actual world

01:24:09 ◼   ► and let them use those skills to manage

01:24:11 ◼   ► this virtual world of the computer in a way

01:24:15 ◼   ► that wasn't possible before.

01:24:17 ◼   ► And it made them much more capable.

01:24:19 ◼   ► It didn't just make the capabilities easier,

01:24:21 ◼   ► it added new capabilities.

01:24:24 ◼   ► And what we needed is the next one of those revolutions.

01:24:26 ◼   ► Arguably, the smartphone was the next one

01:24:27 ◼   ► of those revolutions.

01:24:28 ◼   ► It just happened to be in a constrained environment

01:24:31 ◼   ► where the thing has to fit in your hand

01:24:32 ◼   ► and you carry it around with you,

01:24:33 ◼   ► which let us avoid a lot of the more difficult problems.

01:24:37 ◼   ► It was a very difficult problem in itself.

01:24:38 ◼   ► Like that was the second revolution, the smartphone, right?

01:24:41 ◼   ► Making people be able to do stuff with computers,

01:24:44 ◼   ► people who couldn't even use computers,

01:24:45 ◼   ► or making you not even think of it as a computer.

01:24:47 ◼   ► But in the larger realm, we still have these other computers

01:24:50 ◼   ► that have changed into this incredibly capable

01:24:53 ◼   ► general purpose thing we have

01:24:54 ◼   ► that we still think is too complicated.

01:24:55 ◼   ► So that is the next frontier.

01:24:57 ◼   ► So I'm not as fatalistic as you are about like,

01:25:01 ◼   ► yeah, there is some inherent complexity

01:25:03 ◼   ► and people aren't going to change,

01:25:04 ◼   ► but I really truly believe there absolutely is a way

01:25:07 ◼   ► to leverage what humans are good at

01:25:10 ◼   ► to let them do all the things they do

01:25:12 ◼   ► with desktop computers in an easier way.

01:25:15 ◼   ► To go back a step, it is absolutely insane to me, John,

01:25:18 ◼   ► that you would take Windows as the introduction

01:25:23 ◼   ► to multiple things happening at the same time.

01:25:26 ◼   ► To me, the iPad multitasking interface

01:25:29 ◼   ► is so much easier to understand

01:25:31 ◼   ► and makes so much more sense.

01:25:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a little bit weirder

01:25:36 ◼   ► in that there's not a lot of visual cues as to what to do,

01:25:39 ◼   ► but in every other measurable way,

01:25:41 ◼   ► I feel like it is so much easier.

01:25:42 ◼   ► And for your daughter to be confused by Windows, that's not terribly surprising to me.

01:25:48 ◼   ► But I think if you had done the reverse and started her on the iPad, and then said to

01:25:52 ◼   ► her, "Alright, well this is kind of like the iPad, but you can have more than just two,

01:25:56 ◼   ► and you don't have to do some weird gesture to slide them around, you just have to grab

01:26:01 ◼   ► it and move it," I feel like that would have made a lot more sense to her.

01:26:04 ◼   ► To me, I think you're looking at the iPad interface as a dumbing down of windowing,

01:26:12 ◼   ► whereas I see, even though this obviously is chronologically the reverse, I feel like

01:26:17 ◼   ► windowing is an extension of the more simple iPad interface.

01:26:23 ◼   ► And it's a much easier paradigm to understand.

01:26:26 ◼   ► And yes, it's not discoverable, but once you've discovered it, it is so simple to use.

01:26:31 ◼   ► And it seems like it would be – a lot of the problems that people have with windowing

01:26:37 ◼   ► systems, I don't think they would have them with the iPad.

01:26:40 ◼   ► This is all guessing.

01:26:41 ◼   ► I have no evidence.

01:26:42 ◼   ► I've never asked my parents, "Hey, how do you have two apps open at the same time

01:26:46 ◼   ► on the iPad?"

01:26:47 ◼   ► This is all supposition.

01:26:48 ◼   ► But it just seems so much more logical to me than the far more inscrutable task of managing

01:26:54 ◼   ► windows.

01:26:55 ◼   ► I think you're getting hung up again on the learnability and intuitiveness.

01:26:57 ◼   ► It doesn't really matter how confused they are at first.

01:26:59 ◼   ► matters is after you've shown them how to do it does this translate into sort of a new paradigm

01:27:05 ◼   ► does it give them skills and vocabulary that they can then use to manage complexity in their life

01:27:09 ◼   ► like not the computer complexity but the complexity whatever whatever thing it is that

01:27:13 ◼   ► they're using the computer to do you want to you know there's always going to be some you know

01:27:19 ◼   ► again that's the the saying from the old gooey days the only thing that's actually intuitive is

01:27:23 ◼   ► the nipple everything else is learned and so intuitiveness is totally a red herring right

01:27:29 ◼   ► All you want is something that most people can learn in a reasonable amount of time,

01:27:34 ◼   ► and that after they learn it, it gives them a toolset because it defines a sort of

01:27:38 ◼   ► understandable world that lets them use those skills to solve problems.

01:27:44 ◼   ► So you can totally see how the GUI, the Mac GUI in particular, gave people that vocabulary.

01:27:49 ◼   ► All applications work the same. The menu bar is always at the top. All the windows work the same.

01:27:52 ◼   ► Scroll bars work the same. The mouse works the same. There's a simple vocabulary for same click,

01:27:56 ◼   ► double clip, and then adding that right click and everything like that. That was a tool set.

01:28:01 ◼   ► I don't think the split view thing, it's a vocabulary that works in that way because

01:28:06 ◼   ► it doesn't create, I don't think there is an easily sort of, there's no user model,

01:28:12 ◼   ► there's no mental model that people can latch onto for that. Mostly because there's kind of not

01:28:16 ◼   ► really an analog in the physical world, but because they're like, well, what? Because the

01:28:19 ◼   ► paradigm for iOS thus far has been the thing is the app, the app is the thing. And that is totally a

01:28:24 ◼   ► a thing, a paradigm that people can hang on to.

01:28:28 ◼   ► You wanna go back to the place

01:28:29 ◼   ► where all the other things are, you hit the home button,

01:28:31 ◼   ► and then when the thing goes, it is the device.

01:28:33 ◼   ► That's a simple one, but that is a very solid paradigm.

01:28:36 ◼   ► That is what is power, the smartphone revolution,

01:28:38 ◼   ► you know, this incredibly good

01:28:41 ◼   ► iPhone user interface paradigm.

01:28:42 ◼   ► Split View, I think, does not fit with the old paradigm,

01:28:46 ◼   ► and doesn't give the user a vocabulary or a mental model

01:28:49 ◼   ► that they can then parlay into,

01:28:52 ◼   ► now I can solve any problem,

01:28:54 ◼   ► because I know how split views work.

01:28:55 ◼   ► They're just more like a weird feature

01:28:57 ◼   ► that has been added on top of the old system.

01:28:59 ◼   ► Like, again, it doesn't have to do with learnability

01:29:02 ◼   ► or having to explain it.

01:29:03 ◼   ► It's just that it just seems like it is not of a piece

01:29:05 ◼   ► with the rest of the interface.

01:29:07 ◼   ► It is a tacked on kind of thing

01:29:09 ◼   ► that I don't think represents a new interface paradigm,

01:29:12 ◼   ► and therefore they haven't actually solved the problem.

01:29:14 ◼   ► - See, and I think that where we fundamentally disagree is,

01:29:17 ◼   ► to me, the only thing that you should be able to accomplish

01:29:21 ◼   ► by understanding and grokking split view on the iPad

01:29:25 ◼   ► is being able to put two arbitrary apps next to each other.

01:29:28 ◼   ► That is it.

01:29:29 ◼   ► I don't care if that lets you leap into new worlds

01:29:32 ◼   ► and go out into the great unknown and apply this knowledge.

01:29:35 ◼   ► All I care about is can your daughter have Safari

01:29:38 ◼   ► and Notes next to each other?

01:29:39 ◼   ► And then later on, can she have YouTube

01:29:41 ◼   ► and Tweetbot next to each other?

01:29:44 ◼   ► - But she has to understand why they're no longer

01:29:46 ◼   ► next to each other or why something else

01:29:47 ◼   ► is next to something else or how long they're expected

01:29:50 ◼   ► to be next to each other.

01:29:51 ◼   ► Like, you know what I mean?

01:29:51 ◼   ► There's, there's so many questions surrounding that in terms of like, what,

01:29:54 ◼   ► what is the paradigm, what is the user model?

01:29:56 ◼   ► What is the mental model?

01:29:57 ◼   ► How does this work?

01:29:58 ◼   ► Just because you can, I know how, if I'm using this application,

01:30:01 ◼   ► I can make another appear.

01:30:02 ◼   ► If there's no actual understanding or there really is no solid paradigm

01:30:06 ◼   ► underneath it, then every time you use some other application, you're faced with,

01:30:09 ◼   ► why is the thing not next to it now?

01:30:11 ◼   ► Well, I'll just go through that same motion I knew before to

01:30:13 ◼   ► put the thing next to it.

01:30:14 ◼   ► Why is this next to that now?

01:30:15 ◼   ► Well, I know how to get rid of the thing next to it and it becomes, it's

01:30:19 ◼   ► like you're fighting with the computer instead of it helping you. You're not

01:30:21 ◼   ► using it as a tool to help you solve a problem. It's just like every time you

01:30:25 ◼   ► know this is capability but when it doesn't work the way you expect it to

01:30:29 ◼   ► work because you have a different model of like the persistence or the or how

01:30:33 ◼   ► the interaction between the different applications is, when they're not that

01:30:36 ◼   ► way you can stab at the screen a few times to make it be that way but it's

01:30:40 ◼   ► not it's not as like it's not as straightforward as the the windows model

01:30:44 ◼   ► which again people aren't good at but at least is an understandable model. You

01:30:47 ◼   ► make the windows the sizes you want, you put them where you want. At face value, like that's,