ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Alright, so a lot of OS updates these days.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Yeah, like all of them.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Yeah, like everything.

00:00:07 ◼   ► I definitely sat down at 7.15 to upgrade my work Mac, which is the one I'm recording

00:00:13 ◼   ► on, to El Capitan.

00:00:15 ◼   ► I still hate that name.

00:00:17 ◼   ► You upgraded to a .0 release on your podcasting machine a few hours before you had to podcast

00:00:24 ◼   ► from it?

00:00:25 ◼   ► Less than three.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Oh my god.

00:00:27 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:28 ◼   ► I knew not to say anything to you guys,

00:00:31 ◼   ► nor the internet, until I had at least gotten on the call

00:00:34 ◼   ► and that much had worked.

00:00:36 ◼   ► We'll see if I have actually recorded anything

00:00:38 ◼   ► by the time this is all over, but yes,

00:00:41 ◼   ► in theory everything's going well.

00:00:43 ◼   ► - So typically the rule of audio setups,

00:00:47 ◼   ► and this applies to a lot of things,

00:00:48 ◼   ► but especially in audio setups, the rule is

00:00:51 ◼   ► once you have something that works,

00:00:53 ◼   ► don't touch anything ever, just leave it there.

00:00:56 ◼   ► Don't touch it.

00:00:58 ◼   ► And of course, in practice, this is harder to do.

00:01:00 ◼   ► If you had to like, oh, one time had to do something

00:01:04 ◼   ► different, then you gotta change the snob,

00:01:06 ◼   ► change the setting, maybe change the wiring around

00:01:09 ◼   ► for something, then you gotta change it back

00:01:11 ◼   ► and it's a pain.

00:01:12 ◼   ► And then of course in the age of computers and software,

00:01:16 ◼   ► it's even worse and it's like, well,

00:01:19 ◼   ► some people have to try to keep around an old machine

00:01:21 ◼   ► running an old version of the OS 'cause the software

00:01:23 ◼   ► doesn't work on anything newer or they just don't wanna

00:01:25 ◼   ► risk it breaking.

00:01:26 ◼   ► So there's a balance to be struck here,

00:01:30 ◼   ► because obviously it's very hard to hold on

00:01:32 ◼   ► to old versions of OS and old versions of software forever,

00:01:35 ◼   ► and as time goes on, I think it's getting harder

00:01:37 ◼   ► to hold on to old versions of things,

00:01:39 ◼   ► but at the same time, it worked and you touched it.

00:01:42 ◼   ► So I think there's a balance to be struck here,

00:01:45 ◼   ► and you did not strike it.

00:01:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:48 ◼   ► - It probably is okay for me to upgrade

00:01:50 ◼   ► as long as I don't have any drinks near the machine.

00:01:53 ◼   ► I think that's a fair compromise.

00:01:54 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:55 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:01:57 ◼   ► All right, you wanna do some follow-up?

00:01:58 ◼   ► - Talk about why people are upset about Marco pulling piece

00:02:03 ◼   ► and one of the things that I think Marco brought up

00:02:05 ◼   ► and we were trying to Google for the name of it

00:02:07 ◼   ► was loss aversion.

00:02:08 ◼   ► Joshua Pollock points out that another term

00:02:10 ◼   ► that might fit is endowment effect.

00:02:12 ◼   ► The hypothesis that people ascribe more value to things

00:02:15 ◼   ► merely because they own them.

00:02:17 ◼   ► So once you've got peace,

00:02:18 ◼   ► it's super important that you have peace.

00:02:20 ◼   ► Before you had peace,

00:02:21 ◼   ► it wasn't super important that you get it.

00:02:23 ◼   ► So once they've got the $3 application and you pull it,

00:02:26 ◼   ► it's much worse than him never having launched it,

00:02:29 ◼   ► even though the effect is the same.

00:02:31 ◼   ► Anyway, people are weird.

00:02:33 ◼   ► Thanks Joshua for the followup.

00:02:35 ◼   ► - In summary, people are weird.

00:02:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:38 ◼   ► Good times.

00:02:39 ◼   ► - And we can summarize much of our followup that way.

00:02:41 ◼   ► - All right, what else do we have here?

00:02:44 ◼   ► Daniel Melitz has a short anecdote about visual effects,

00:02:49 ◼   ► which I think has been in the followup

00:02:50 ◼   ► for about 12 years now.

00:02:52 ◼   ► But would you like to tell us about that, Jon?

00:02:54 ◼   ► - It's actually related to the iPad Pro and Pen stuff.

00:02:58 ◼   ► He says he works in VFX, which is visual effects,

00:03:01 ◼   ► and he says, "By my rough estimate,

00:03:03 ◼   ► "somewhere around 50% of compositors use a Wacom

00:03:07 ◼   ► "or Wacom tablet instead of a mouse for RSI reasons."

00:03:10 ◼   ► And I see that a lot too, people using a tablet,

00:03:13 ◼   ► not just to do drawing stuff,

00:03:16 ◼   ► but to do everything in the computer.

00:03:18 ◼   ► Like they're using their tablet basically as a mouse

00:03:21 ◼   ► to select menus, to select tools from palettes,

00:03:23 ◼   ► to move icons around on their desktop,

00:03:25 ◼   ► in the finder, whatever it is they're doing.

00:03:27 ◼   ► And that's relevant to the iPad Pro

00:03:29 ◼   ► because recently Michael Johnson, Dr. Wave on Twitter,

00:03:34 ◼   ► I think it was him, tweeted a picture

00:03:36 ◼   ► of a bunch of people at Pixar trying out the iPad Pro.

00:03:39 ◼   ► Apparently Apple visited Pixar

00:03:41 ◼   ► and deposited some iPad Pro hardware

00:03:44 ◼   ► in front of the Pixar artists

00:03:46 ◼   ► and they all got a chance to try it out

00:03:48 ◼   ► and the reviews were pretty good.

00:03:51 ◼   ► I mean it's just tweets so it's not like some big article that you can read about the trial

00:03:57 ◼   ► run of these things but the one thing I remember is they said that the palm rejection was really

00:04:00 ◼   ► good which means like when you rest your hand on the surface of the tablet and then try

00:04:04 ◼   ► to draw with the pen because you want to sort of steady the pen it doesn't think that your

00:04:07 ◼   ► hand is a touch and suddenly draw things underneath where your hand is or move stuff around or

00:04:12 ◼   ► whatever it just knows to take a look at the pen so anyway I am still looking forward to

00:04:17 ◼   ► trying out this pen even though I don't really do any kind of illustration just because it

00:04:21 ◼   ► looks neat. And who knows, maybe I'll get one someday.

00:04:26 ◼   ► All right. Let's see. So Monty Good also wrote in, he said, "Conventional wisdom seems to

00:04:36 ◼   ► be that the only people currently using ad blockers are nerds, which is to say a subset

00:04:40 ◼   ► of Internet users. So I'm not understanding why the doomsayers think that an upcoming

00:04:44 ◼   ► tweak to iOS, which is now here, is going to cause legions of people to do something

00:04:49 ◼   ► that they are already not doing.

00:04:51 ◼   ► This is something I wanted to talk about, but then Margo had to go and "calls all the

00:04:55 ◼   ► drums," as they say.

00:04:56 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:04:57 ◼   ► So we had to have a whole show about that.

00:04:59 ◼   ► But yeah, more broadly on the topic of ad blocking, I put this in here way before iOS

00:05:03 ◼   ► 9 even came out, just because all of the discussion about ad blocking and the ethics of ad blocking

00:05:11 ◼   ► and the possible effects on the publishing industry or whatever, I hadn't seen anyone

00:05:14 ◼   ► really nail down what they expected to happen in terms of the number of people who run ad

00:05:20 ◼   ► blockers.

00:05:21 ◼   ► Obviously, introducing this feature to iOS is really important because iOS is a big platform.

00:05:26 ◼   ► A lot of people use iOS, especially a lot of people who buy things use iOS.

00:05:31 ◼   ► And adding the ability to have blockers where once there was no ability to have them, at

00:05:34 ◼   ► least with the built-in browser, is significant.

00:05:37 ◼   ► But you're still left with the question, how many people do we think are going to install

00:05:42 ◼   ► an ad blocker?

00:05:43 ◼   ► It's way easier to install one now.

00:05:45 ◼   ► You can install it by tapping a couple of buttons on your iPhone, but iPhone users are

00:05:49 ◼   ► only what, 20% of the smartphone market or 30% less than that of the overall phone market.

00:05:57 ◼   ► And so even if you say 100% of iOS users are going to install an ad blocker the day iOS

00:06:01 ◼   ► 9 comes out, which is totally not true, I'm going to say it's under 100%, but even if

00:06:04 ◼   ► 100% did, does that destroy publishing?

00:06:08 ◼   ► 100% of desktop users can install an ad blocker right now.

00:06:12 ◼   ► percentage of desktop web browsing people actually do install an ad blocker.

00:06:17 ◼   ► I don't have much experience with this except for reading things on the web and even I think

00:06:21 ◼   ► like the nerdiest sites are only around like they're still under 50% ad blockers for like

00:06:26 ◼   ► the very nerdiest most paranoid most privacy concerned readers.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Even those sites seem to only get around you know 50% or less of people installing ad blockers.

00:06:39 ◼   ► I would say for the general web on the desktop,

00:06:41 ◼   ► it's well under 20% of people install ad blockers,

00:06:45 ◼   ► but I don't know, I'm just pulling numbers out of my butt.

00:06:47 ◼   ► Anyway, in the spirit of pulling numbers out of our butt,

00:06:50 ◼   ► what do we think is going to happen with iOS?

00:06:54 ◼   ► What percentage of iOS users are going to install

00:06:56 ◼   ► some kind of ad blocker?

00:06:58 ◼   ► - I would guess 10 to 20%, closer to 10.

00:07:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, that sounds, I mean, that sounds high.

00:07:04 ◼   ► If you say what percentage of iOS users

00:07:07 ◼   ► will install anything.

00:07:08 ◼   ► Like, it's such a broad base of people that it's, you know,

00:07:12 ◼   ► I would say 10% would be a pretty good conservative,

00:07:17 ◼   ► or a pretty good optimistic high estimate.

00:07:20 ◼   ► I mean, think about like, the most popular app on the phone

00:07:23 ◼   ► is probably the Facebook app,

00:07:24 ◼   ► the most popular third party app.

00:07:26 ◼   ► Most likely Facebook, right?

00:07:27 ◼   ► If not YouTube, but probably Facebook.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Then like, you know, how many people have that installed

00:07:33 ◼   ► on iOS, what percentage of iOS users have that installed?

00:07:36 ◼   ► maybe half, I don't know, maybe more, I don't know.

00:07:39 ◼   ► I have no idea what to expect there,

00:07:40 ◼   ► but that's a massive app right there.

00:07:43 ◼   ► To reach half of iOS people, that's huge.

00:07:46 ◼   ► So yeah, I would guess on the order of 10%

00:07:49 ◼   ► is reasonable to be an optimistic goal.

00:07:53 ◼   ► - I think it'll be a little bit higher than that eventually,

00:07:56 ◼   ► mostly because it's not one app like Facebook or YouTube,

00:08:00 ◼   ► it's basically a category.

00:08:02 ◼   ► Do you have any kind of blocker installed?

00:08:04 ◼   ► And I think word will spread among the people

00:08:07 ◼   ► who care about this stuff at all,

00:08:09 ◼   ► that like get a blocker, whatever,

00:08:12 ◼   ► like pick a brand name, whatever brand name

00:08:14 ◼   ► people is traveling around in people's social circles,

00:08:17 ◼   ► it's gonna be like, you need to install X

00:08:19 ◼   ► because it makes stuff faster on your phone.

00:08:22 ◼   ► I bet people are gonna be saying,

00:08:23 ◼   ► you need to install X because it makes Facebook faster,

00:08:26 ◼   ► like the Facebook app, which is probably not true.

00:08:28 ◼   ► I don't think Facebook actually uses any web views

00:08:31 ◼   ► that would honor the content blocker, but either way.

00:08:32 ◼   ► - Right, that's a big problem though.

00:08:34 ◼   ► That's a big problem in regular people's expectations

00:08:37 ◼   ► of what this will do and won't do.

00:08:38 ◼   ► So keep in mind, content blockers can't block anything

00:08:42 ◼   ► that is not displayed in a Safari view controller,

00:08:44 ◼   ► which people like Twitter and Facebook and everything

00:08:47 ◼   ► are unlikely to use at least anytime soon if ever,

00:08:50 ◼   ► especially as Facebook is pushing more towards

00:08:52 ◼   ► their own news format that it shows in a custom way

00:08:55 ◼   ► and they're an app that isn't even a web browser.

00:08:56 ◼   ► So that's problem number one.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Problem number two is you sell somebody an app

00:09:01 ◼   ► that says this will block ads on your iPhone,

00:09:03 ◼   ► but it doesn't block in-app ads,

00:09:06 ◼   ► like ads that are not in a web view in an app.

00:09:08 ◼   ► It only blocks ads in Safari and Safari View Controller.

00:09:12 ◼   ► And as more and more browsing is happening

00:09:14 ◼   ► in apps that aren't Safari,

00:09:16 ◼   ► and in some of these apps that have their own custom stuff

00:09:19 ◼   ► that aren't just launching Safari View Controller,

00:09:21 ◼   ► the percentage of ads that people on mobile see

00:09:25 ◼   ► that can be blocked by this

00:09:27 ◼   ► is probably going down over time, not up.

00:09:30 ◼   ► sure they're gonna work around it but I don't think it matters whether it

00:09:32 ◼   ► actually blocks it it only matters that this this sort of it's kind of like

00:09:36 ◼   ► quitting all your apps this sort of information slash mince of

00:09:39 ◼   ► misinformation starts traveling think of the force quitting all your apps which

00:09:44 ◼   ► we've talked about many times before that travel has traveled pretty well

00:09:48 ◼   ► doesn't matter what effect it does or doesn't have all that matters is that

00:09:52 ◼   ► people think it does something so I I'm going to guess that the idea that you

00:09:56 ◼   ► should install a whatever on your iPhone because it will make whatever better. That idea has

00:10:02 ◼   ► legs and that idea will get around and I think people will install a blocker and won't be

00:10:07 ◼   ► able to tell whether it does anything and won't ever bother to uninstall it. So I'm

00:10:10 ◼   ► going to say that the percentage might be as high as like 20%. Like I'm willing to go

00:10:15 ◼   ► up around that range.

00:10:17 ◼   ► Keep in mind also before I move on from this point though, keep in mind also the process

00:10:22 ◼   ► of enabling a content blocker after you've installed it is so buried and complicated

00:10:28 ◼   ► that it wouldn't surprise me at all if a lot of those people you just mentioned install

00:10:32 ◼   ► it and never actually turn it on.

00:10:34 ◼   ► That's a good point. I had forgotten about that part of the process. All right. So I

00:10:37 ◼   ► guess we have to modify it too and not how many people will install one, but how many

00:10:40 ◼   ► people will install it and also turn it on. All right. Now I dropped my estimate down

00:10:44 ◼   ► again.

00:10:45 ◼   ► Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Like I think 10% is optimistic.

00:10:47 ◼   ► All right. Anyway, but all of our numbers that we're throwing out there are well below

00:10:52 ◼   ► 50% and this is what I'm getting at and all the discussion and hemming and hauling about content blockers and all the New York Times

00:10:56 ◼   ► Articles or whatever no one seemed to say oh and by the way all this thing they were kicking up a fuss about

00:11:02 ◼   ► 90% of the people aren't going to install in any way and so that I think is the one of the most important underlying

00:11:08 ◼   ► Premises of any argument about what ad blockers are aren't going to do to the economics of the web or whatever and understand sites like

00:11:17 ◼   ► Don't want to have 10 or 20 percent of their people not seeing their ads and that this is a problem or whatever

00:11:21 ◼   ► but it's not the sort of Armageddon doomsaying

00:11:23 ◼   ► about ad blocking.

00:11:25 ◼   ► It's a little bit overblown unless the same people

00:11:28 ◼   ► who are speaking doom and gloom are also going

00:11:32 ◼   ► to boldly assert that doom and gloom is coming

00:11:35 ◼   ► because X percentage of people are gonna install it

00:11:38 ◼   ► and because that percentage is, you know,

00:11:40 ◼   ► equals doom and gloom, right?

00:11:42 ◼   ► And no one seems to ever wanna nail it down.

00:11:44 ◼   ► No one's going to say,

00:11:45 ◼   ► all these bad things are gonna happen,

00:11:47 ◼   ► and by the way, I think all these things bad

00:11:49 ◼   ► are gonna happen because 5% of people

00:11:51 ◼   ► People are going to install ad blockers, and guess what?

00:11:52 ◼   ► 5% is enough to wipe out all publishing life on earth.

00:11:55 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:11:57 ◼   ► They don't, like, no one thinks it's going to be 100%,

00:11:59 ◼   ► but no, and I think it's going to be a pretty low,

00:12:01 ◼   ► and I think this is an important move,

00:12:03 ◼   ► and I think it will have effects.

00:12:04 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's not going to do anything,

00:12:06 ◼   ► but every time I think about this issue,

00:12:08 ◼   ► we're just guessing this one.

00:12:09 ◼   ► We're trying to figure out

00:12:11 ◼   ► how many people are going to do this.

00:12:13 ◼   ► And I'm thinking, meme-wise, best case scenario,

00:12:16 ◼   ► it spreads as far and wide

00:12:18 ◼   ► as the force quitting your apps thing spreads,

00:12:20 ◼   ► which is surprisingly far, but even that one,

00:12:23 ◼   ► I bet is less than 50%.

00:12:25 ◼   ► I bet if you just picked 50% random iPhone users

00:12:29 ◼   ► from the world, put them in a room and say,

00:12:30 ◼   ► do you even know, like show them force quitting apps,

00:12:33 ◼   ► you can't say words because they won't know

00:12:34 ◼   ► what force quit or whatever, you know, it's Mac lingo,

00:12:37 ◼   ► show them the thing and say, do you know what this is?

00:12:39 ◼   ► Have you ever done this?

00:12:40 ◼   ► And I bet more than half of them will be like,

00:12:42 ◼   ► I don't even know what you just did.

00:12:43 ◼   ► I don't know what that is.

00:12:44 ◼   ► I don't know why I would ever do that.

00:12:46 ◼   ► The other half would say, yeah,

00:12:47 ◼   ► you do that 'cause it saves battery.

00:12:48 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:12:50 ◼   ► I don't know, I see it a lot.

00:12:51 ◼   ► I'm not saying you're wrong about any stretch,

00:12:53 ◼   ► but I see it a lot.

00:12:55 ◼   ► And just the other day when we were at a football game,

00:12:58 ◼   ► the person in the row in front of me would open an app,

00:13:01 ◼   ► do his thing, then go to the task switcher

00:13:05 ◼   ► and force quit the app every single time.

00:13:07 ◼   ► And it was maddening because I wanted to just be like,

00:13:09 ◼   ► no, stop.

00:13:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, Apple needs to like,

00:13:12 ◼   ► I don't know what Apple can do about that.

00:13:14 ◼   ► It kind of got away from them.

00:13:16 ◼   ► Like what can they do to stop people from doing that?

00:13:19 ◼   ► I think a fun thing to do would to make the app switcher,

00:13:24 ◼   ► I don't know, like make the application disappear

00:13:29 ◼   ► when you switch away from, I don't know,

00:13:30 ◼   ► I can't figure it out.

00:13:31 ◼   ► Like once people know that it's there

00:13:32 ◼   ► and they just like doing it, it's just,

00:13:34 ◼   ► it's kind of like the same as the people

00:13:35 ◼   ► who don't put their iOS devices to sleep,

00:13:37 ◼   ► but shut them down every time they're done using them.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And then like five minutes later, they boot it up again,

00:13:41 ◼   ► then they shut them down.

00:13:42 ◼   ► - There are people like that?

00:13:44 ◼   ► - Yep, then they boot them up and they shut them down.

00:13:46 ◼   ► And they're annoyed by how long it takes.

00:13:48 ◼   ► They gotta see the Apple logo, it takes so long.

00:13:50 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:13:51 ◼   ► - Oh man.

00:13:52 ◼   ► - What do you do to stop that?

00:13:53 ◼   ► Like you can show them the other way

00:13:54 ◼   ► or you can try to convince them

00:13:55 ◼   ► and they'll just say, "I like doing it this way.

00:13:59 ◼   ► "I like it to be off.

00:14:00 ◼   ► "I like it that we can play it off.

00:14:01 ◼   ► "I don't like the idea of that it's on."

00:14:04 ◼   ► I don't know, anyway.

00:14:05 ◼   ► Yeah, so this, I have more to say on ad blockers

00:14:08 ◼   ► but I think we've talked about them enough on past shows

00:14:10 ◼   ► and we will circle back to it.

00:14:11 ◼   ► Later on when we get to, I mean,

00:14:13 ◼   ► because I think we're gonna eventually start getting numbers.

00:14:15 ◼   ► Like the second round of stories about this

00:14:17 ◼   ► to be like, "So iOS 9 has been out for six months, and here's a bunch of popular websites,

00:14:21 ◼   ► and here's what they say about iOS users using iOS 9 or percentage..."

00:14:26 ◼   ► You know, like, we'll get numbers on it, so we'll circle back then.

00:14:29 ◼   ► Well, speaking of, our friend Ben Thompson is in the chat and has said that over 50%

00:14:34 ◼   ► of Stratechery—he did embrace Stratechery, right?

00:14:37 ◼   ► It's no longer Strateecary?

00:14:38 ◼   ► Anyway, over 50% of Stratechery users have ad blockers.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Now to his own point, it's a very geeky audience,

00:14:45 ◼   ► but he got these numbers apparently

00:14:47 ◼   ► by comparing Google Analytics numbers versus server logs.

00:14:51 ◼   ► - Well, I wouldn't say that's a great comparison

00:14:54 ◼   ► 'cause of various JavaScript things

00:14:55 ◼   ► and bots and everything else, but that's maybe a ballpark.

00:14:58 ◼   ► But I think also what we're gonna see is

00:15:02 ◼   ► we're gonna see a really big spike in those percentages

00:15:06 ◼   ► if people have been tracking them temporarily

00:15:08 ◼   ► because for the last few years,

00:15:12 ◼   ► mobile traffic has been dominating so much

00:15:15 ◼   ► that it's pretty common for typical sites

00:15:19 ◼   ► to have over 50% of their traffic being mobile.

00:15:22 ◼   ► And for all these years so far,

00:15:25 ◼   ► there really haven't been mobile ad blockers

00:15:26 ◼   ► in any meaningful numbers.

00:15:28 ◼   ► So all of a sudden, like 50% of your traffic

00:15:32 ◼   ► is now able to get ad blockers where it couldn't before.

00:15:36 ◼   ► - Well it's not 50%, if it was 50% mobile,

00:15:38 ◼   ► then that was like half Android and half iOS,

00:15:40 ◼   ► depending on what kind of website you run.

00:15:42 ◼   ► And the Android people, I'm assuming,

00:15:43 ◼   ► have always been able to get ad blockers.

00:15:45 ◼   ► Is that not the case?

00:15:46 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:15:47 ◼   ► I don't think, I should have researched this.

00:15:49 ◼   ► From what I've heard, I don't think there's like

00:15:51 ◼   ► a standard reasonable system way to do it

00:15:54 ◼   ► besides like some kind of like rooted thing

00:15:56 ◼   ► that like interferes with DNS at the system level

00:15:58 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:15:59 ◼   ► But I don't think there's like a common way

00:16:01 ◼   ► that people do it.

00:16:02 ◼   ► - Well, there probably will be if there isn't already.

00:16:04 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:16:05 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think Google will necessarily be

00:16:07 ◼   ► leaving those hooks all over the place.

00:16:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, but anyone can ship anything on Android, right?

00:16:11 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:16:12 ◼   ► We should ask the people on an Android podcast to find out.

00:16:14 ◼   ► But anyway, all we're ever talking about is iOS.

00:16:17 ◼   ► And again, in the circles we travel in

00:16:19 ◼   ► and the friends we have, a lot of them run sites

00:16:21 ◼   ► where the vast, vast, vast majority of people

00:16:22 ◼   ► who are coming on mobile are coming on iOS,

00:16:24 ◼   ► and the vast majority of people who are coming on desktop

00:16:27 ◼   ► are coming on Macs, and it's a strange little world.

00:16:30 ◼   ► When I was talking about sites that I thought

00:16:32 ◼   ► barely started to push over to 3%,

00:16:33 ◼   ► I'm talking about as mass-market as you can get.

00:16:35 ◼   ► Like a, I'm not gonna say Slashdot and feel old or whatever,

00:16:38 ◼   ► but you know, Ars Technica, Slashdot.

00:16:41 ◼   ► - Slashdot was never mainstream.

00:16:43 ◼   ► - But yeah, back in the day, it was all we had.

00:16:47 ◼   ► Sites that are bigger than like an individual person's blog.

00:16:51 ◼   ► Even just like Daring Fireball would be considered

00:16:53 ◼   ► in the small camp because yeah,

00:16:54 ◼   ► it's big for a one person thing,

00:16:56 ◼   ► but it's not like an institution with lots of writers

00:17:01 ◼   ► and 15 articles a day and so on and so forth.

00:17:03 ◼   ► - All right, one last quick piece of follow up

00:17:06 ◼   ► and then let's talk about all the new things

00:17:08 ◼   ► that happened today.

00:17:09 ◼   ► Ruggedized phones.

00:17:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, this was in response to a couple shows ago

00:17:13 ◼   ► I was trying to articulate for the millionth time

00:17:16 ◼   ► this thing that I should have written down

00:17:17 ◼   ► in a blog 17 years ago.

00:17:19 ◼   ► The idea that product manufacturers

00:17:23 ◼   ► can gain fanatical loyalty by making their products excel

00:17:28 ◼   ► in a few ways and really sticking to that over the years.

00:17:32 ◼   ► And one of those ways is rugged design.

00:17:36 ◼   ► durability, doesn't have to be look fancy,

00:17:39 ◼   ► doesn't have to be the best,

00:17:39 ◼   ► doesn't have to be the cheapest,

00:17:40 ◼   ► but if you have something that is reliably rugged,

00:17:43 ◼   ► whether it's Fisher Price toys getting a reputation

00:17:46 ◼   ► for like you buy this toy

00:17:47 ◼   ► and the kid won't be able to break it,

00:17:48 ◼   ► or I use Craftsman, although people say Craftsman

00:17:50 ◼   ► has gone downhill or whatever,

00:17:52 ◼   ► over the years if you really stick to that core value,

00:17:55 ◼   ► you will get very loyal followers.

00:17:58 ◼   ► And I said it's a shame that no one's doing that for phones

00:18:02 ◼   ► because all the phones are pretty delicate and elegant

00:18:05 ◼   ► and they're going for something different,

00:18:07 ◼   ► like stylishness and chicness,

00:18:08 ◼   ► and plus they gotta make millions of these things,

00:18:10 ◼   ► so they're not gonna, you know.

00:18:11 ◼   ► So where is the narrow focus manufacturer

00:18:14 ◼   ► that's really concentrating on ruggedized phones?

00:18:16 ◼   ► It's certainly not Apple.

00:18:18 ◼   ► Well, so here's one example that someone sent in.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Sorry, I lost the name,

00:18:22 ◼   ► since this was feedback from a while ago.

00:18:24 ◼   ► This is Sonim, or Sonim,

00:18:26 ◼   ► and the example product is a Sonim XP7,

00:18:29 ◼   ► which is a phone that looks like a rugged phone.

00:18:32 ◼   ► It's just an Android phone

00:18:33 ◼   ► with like tons of crap all over it,

00:18:35 ◼   ► but it's like the things they claim

00:18:37 ◼   ► about a long battery life,

00:18:39 ◼   ► usable with gloves on, drop and impact resistance,

00:18:41 ◼   ► oil and chemical resistant, temperature resistant,

00:18:43 ◼   ► extreme pressure resistant,

00:18:45 ◼   ► protection from micro particles,

00:18:48 ◼   ► with powerful audio, waterproof, and puncture resistant.

00:18:51 ◼   ► So here is a, you know, if you're going out in the woods

00:18:54 ◼   ► and you wanna have a smartphone with you,

00:18:55 ◼   ► and you don't wanna try to get an iPhone

00:18:57 ◼   ► with like a screen protector in a case,

00:18:59 ◼   ► someone is actually making ruggedized phones.

00:19:02 ◼   ► This is a little bit more extreme.

00:19:03 ◼   ► This is a little bit like those Toughbook things

00:19:05 ◼   ► or those laptops that people would make for the military

00:19:07 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:19:08 ◼   ► I'm thinking more along the lines of like L.L. Bean

00:19:10 ◼   ► or whatever, where it's regular person clothes,

00:19:12 ◼   ► but they have a reputation for if not durability,

00:19:14 ◼   ► then at least standing behind their stuff

00:19:16 ◼   ► and it was like a zipper rips on your L.L. Bean jacket,

00:19:18 ◼   ► you can get it replaced because they basically think

00:19:20 ◼   ► that should never happen and if it does come to us

00:19:22 ◼   ► and show us and we'll give you a new jacket or whatever.

00:19:25 ◼   ► - Now we're gonna hear from those people.

00:19:27 ◼   ► - The L.L. Bean people, I don't know.

00:19:29 ◼   ► Anyway, I'm glad that, I mean,

00:19:31 ◼   ► this is another advantage of Android.

00:19:32 ◼   ► IOS is like whatever Apple decides to make.

00:19:34 ◼   ► And if Apple decides that they don't want to make

00:19:36 ◼   ► a smallish phone that's a little bit thicker

00:19:38 ◼   ► that has longer battery life, tough luck.

00:19:40 ◼   ► You can't get one with IOS like that.

00:19:41 ◼   ► But Android has room for people

00:19:44 ◼   ► to make different kinds of products.

00:19:45 ◼   ► And so here, someone decided there's a market

00:19:47 ◼   ► for ruggedized phones and they're using Android to do it.

00:19:50 ◼   ► - I think most people just use cases

00:19:52 ◼   ► to achieve these kind of goals.

00:19:53 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, look at the goals.

00:19:55 ◼   ► Like you can't achieve these kind of goals with just cases.

00:19:57 ◼   ► - You can get pretty close.

00:19:59 ◼   ► Cases can be surprisingly good.

00:20:01 ◼   ► Yeah I mean I guess you just encase the phone in a Lucide brick or something like then you're

00:20:05 ◼   ► good to go but this is trying to be integrated where it doesn't just look like a phone with

00:20:10 ◼   ► it you know I don't know how good these phones are I've never tried them or whatever but

00:20:13 ◼   ► I'm glad it's out there and it's good to see the market trying to find some way to fill

00:20:20 ◼   ► the needs that a small group of people have but I still think it would behoove all like

00:20:24 ◼   ► the major manufacturers whether it's Google or Apple or Samsung or whatever Samsung was

00:20:28 ◼   ► actually doing pretty good too, but they were one of the first ones, the big vendors, to

00:20:32 ◼   ► tout the fact that they make waterproof phones. But they didn't look waterproof, they were.

00:20:36 ◼   ► And now people are taking iPhone 6s and dunking them in water and saying, "It's kind of

00:20:41 ◼   ► waterproof-ish." Anyway, don't put your phone in water. Don't put your iPhone in water,

00:20:45 ◼   ► if you can help it.

00:20:46 ◼   ► Our first sponsor this week is Cards Against Humanity. And, as usual, Cards Against Humanity,

00:20:51 ◼   ► rather than doing an ad, Reid has asked us to have Jon review a toaster.

00:20:55 ◼   ► [Music]

00:21:06 ◼   ► Around about this time, I think I should have Jason Sneller or somebody sing "Toaster or Not" because something arrived at my house.

00:21:13 ◼   ► And it was a very large box, and on the outside of the box it said "Microwave and Convenience Oven."

00:21:21 ◼   ► Toaster or not! Toaster or not!

00:21:24 ◼   ► I gotta say that this box was not any bigger than the biggest toaster boxes I've gotten.

00:21:30 ◼   ► So it was like comparably sized to the large toasters and the picture on the outside of

00:21:34 ◼   ► it looked like, I don't know what that is.

00:21:36 ◼   ► Maybe it's like a toaster microwave combination.

00:21:38 ◼   ► I've already got had a toaster oven slot toaster combination.

00:21:41 ◼   ► Maybe this is one of those things.

00:21:43 ◼   ► This is how I get the model number.

00:21:45 ◼   ► This is the the LG LCSP 1 1 1 0 s t.

00:21:51 ◼   ► I know that model.

00:21:52 ◼   ► Of course, the LCSP11110ST.

00:21:56 ◼   ► It's the best.

00:21:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I'll put the link in the show notes.

00:21:59 ◼   ► You can take a look at it.

00:22:00 ◼   ► Oh my god, it's huge.

00:22:02 ◼   ► It's really big.

00:22:03 ◼   ► I mean, I gave the inch measurements, but it is really big.

00:22:05 ◼   ► So it looks like a microwave with a cash register, cash drawer below it.

00:22:09 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:22:10 ◼   ► So it's a microwave on top, you know, a microwave door and a bunch of number pads and all that

00:22:14 ◼   ► other stuff.

00:22:15 ◼   ► And then underneath the thing is a silver sort of pull-out handle tray thing.

00:22:22 ◼   ► And before I unpacked this thing, I had one idea about what it might be, and then as I

00:22:27 ◼   ► unpacked it, I realized what it actually was.

00:22:29 ◼   ► It's literally just a plain old microwave with a little rotating dish and all the other

00:22:33 ◼   ► stuff and some really bad UI on the controls.

00:22:36 ◼   ► And then underneath it is a very, very flat sort of miniature oven that you couldn't put

00:22:43 ◼   ► anything in that's any higher.

00:22:44 ◼   ► Like the whole thing I've had about it is you can put pizza in there or chicken nuggets,

00:22:47 ◼   ► but that's about it.

00:22:49 ◼   ► You pull out the drawer and there's maybe an inch or two of clearance in there.

00:22:53 ◼   ► Put something in there and it's got like a little pan that you have to use.

00:22:56 ◼   ► I guess you could put something else that's not a pan in there.

00:22:59 ◼   ► But anyway, you can't see anything when it's inside there.

00:23:01 ◼   ► You just slide it in.

00:23:03 ◼   ► That little slot thing gets really hot really fast because it's a small area.

00:23:08 ◼   ► But this is not a toaster.

00:23:09 ◼   ► You can't really make toast in this.

00:23:12 ◼   ► It doesn't claim to be a toaster.

00:23:13 ◼   ► It's a convenience oven.

00:23:14 ◼   ► Although this convenience oven is the least convenient oven ever because the only thing

00:23:18 ◼   ► you can really cook in it is things that are very flat or frozen pizzas. And the controls

00:23:23 ◼   ► are like, the controls are inscrutable. I don't want to dwell too much in the controls

00:23:27 ◼   ► because I have one other thing I really want to yell about about this thing that is not

00:23:29 ◼   ► related to the functionality. But the controls are like, press this one button repeatedly,

00:23:35 ◼   ► and each one of these buttons corresponds to some kind of weird preset. So like, press

00:23:39 ◼   ► it once and it'll be this temperature. Press it, you know, if you press bake once, it's

00:23:43 ◼   ► 425. If you press bake twice, it's 400. If you press bake three times, it's 375. If you

00:23:47 ◼   ► bake four times it's 350. Like, A, you would never guess that and B, I mean it has the

00:23:53 ◼   ► display and it shows you but B, you've got a number pad for crying out loud. Why are

00:23:58 ◼   ► you making me hit like, it's like auto bake, auto defrost, press the pizza button.

00:24:03 ◼   ► Yeah, it has an auto pizza button.

00:24:04 ◼   ► Yeah, and you press that multiple times for different kinds of pizzas. Like seriously,

00:24:08 ◼   ► just it's all just voodoo. Like you really just want at least a microwave works normally.

00:24:12 ◼   ► The microwave you punch a bunch of numbers and it's starting and the numbers are like,

00:24:15 ◼   ► know, fill the thing with minutes and seconds and that works in a

00:24:18 ◼   ► straightforward way. So anyway, the microwave part of it is really small.

00:24:21 ◼   ► It's only about one cubic foot inside the microwave part, but the overall

00:24:26 ◼   ► device is very large. I removed my other microwave to make room for this thing

00:24:31 ◼   ► and it barely fits. It's much taller than my other microwave and about as

00:24:35 ◼   ► wide and as deep, but the inside is smaller. So it's very space-inefficient.

00:24:39 ◼   ► You really have to be getting a lot of use out of that slide-out drawer

00:24:44 ◼   ► miniature pizza oven thing to make this worth your while.

00:24:47 ◼   ► You know, I can't think of anything

00:24:51 ◼   ► that I'd ever want to use it for.

00:24:53 ◼   ► And the microwave is only, what is it, 1,100 watts,

00:24:56 ◼   ► which is pretty wimpy for a microwave.

00:24:58 ◼   ► The oven part is 1,400 watts.

00:25:00 ◼   ► I should have done this.

00:25:01 ◼   ► I didn't try running them both at once.

00:25:02 ◼   ► I probably would have blown the circuit breaker.

00:25:05 ◼   ► No, maybe not, I don't know.

00:25:06 ◼   ► Anyway, so I'm gonna declare this not a toaster.

00:25:11 ◼   ► It is not a toaster oven.

00:25:12 ◼   ► oven is not a slot toaster.

00:25:14 ◼   ► And I'm not entirely sure who this is for.

00:25:16 ◼   ► And holy cow, 200 and something dollars, $289.

00:25:21 ◼   ► That is, I mean, it's not a bad microwave.

00:25:23 ◼   ► We can use it to warm up dinner tonight.

00:25:25 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:25:26 ◼   ► Like it's small, but the microwave part of it is fine.

00:25:30 ◼   ► Like I said, the UI is not too messed up.

00:25:32 ◼   ► But the oven thing, why is that even there?

00:25:34 ◼   ► Maybe if you have frozen pizza a lot,

00:25:37 ◼   ► it could heat up faster than your big oven,

00:25:38 ◼   ► but you better hope your frozen pizza is small

00:25:40 ◼   ► if it fit in that drawer.

00:25:41 ◼   ► If it's a family size frozen pizza, it is not going to fit.

00:25:44 ◼   ► I just think this is a bad, it's not a refrigerator toaster

00:25:48 ◼   ► and it's still probably slightly more practical

00:25:50 ◼   ► than the hybrid slot toaster oven,

00:25:53 ◼   ► but this is not a toaster oven.

00:25:54 ◼   ► It doesn't really make toast.

00:25:56 ◼   ► So I give this a thumbs down.

00:25:57 ◼   ► But all of that aside is one of the things

00:26:00 ◼   ► that I think is the strangest worst thing I've ever seen

00:26:03 ◼   ► in appliance in my entire life for people like me

00:26:05 ◼   ► and perhaps for people like you.

00:26:07 ◼   ► Took this thing out of the box, right?

00:26:10 ◼   ► And if you're looking at the picture of it,

00:26:12 ◼   ► on the front of it, there's like a brushed stainless steel

00:26:15 ◼   ► part, and it had that like static cling plastic on it.

00:26:18 ◼   ► You know, they put over stuff so it doesn't get scratched up

00:26:20 ◼   ► in shipping.

00:26:21 ◼   ► And I'm peeling out the static cling plastic,

00:26:22 ◼   ► and it's a little bit difficult to peel off.

00:26:24 ◼   ► And I'm like, oh, maybe it's got stuck in the drawer.

00:26:26 ◼   ► So I pulled out the drawer, and it turns out

00:26:27 ◼   ► the static cling plastic had sort of like

00:26:29 ◼   ► been tucked under the lip.

00:26:31 ◼   ► So you had to kind of pull the drawer out and pull

00:26:33 ◼   ► the static cling plastic off of the inside

00:26:35 ◼   ► of the lip of the drawer and stuff.

00:26:37 ◼   ► And that was a little bit annoying.

00:26:39 ◼   ► And then I looked at the top of it and there was a big sticker on top.

00:26:42 ◼   ► And I'm going to say I'm a person who always wants to remove stickers from everything,

00:26:46 ◼   ► but I'm going to go so far as to say everybody should remove stickers from everything.

00:26:50 ◼   ► If you buy something from the store, like a dustpan or a broom or a vacuum cleaner or

00:26:55 ◼   ► anything, a garbage can, and it has a sticker on it, take the sticker off.

00:27:00 ◼   ► It's not there, it's not supposed to be there for the next 30 years as this garbage can

00:27:03 ◼   ► says in your house.

00:27:04 ◼   ► The sticker is just like to advertise at you in the store, it's not part of the product,

00:27:08 ◼   ► please peel it off.

00:27:10 ◼   ► Manufacturers please make that easy to do.

00:27:11 ◼   ► Anyway, there's a sticker on top

00:27:12 ◼   ► and I start peeling it off and it's difficult to peel.

00:27:14 ◼   ► And I read the sticker

00:27:15 ◼   ► and it's in like three different languages.

00:27:16 ◼   ► It says, this product is coated with a clear vinyl

00:27:20 ◼   ► for protection during shipping.

00:27:22 ◼   ► You must remove this vinyl before using the product.

00:27:25 ◼   ► Otherwise moisture will build up inside

00:27:27 ◼   ► and bad things will happen and blah, blah, blah.

00:27:29 ◼   ► Now I'm looking around on the thing.

00:27:30 ◼   ► I'm like, well, I just peeled off all the static thing stuff

00:27:32 ◼   ► from the front and that was a little annoying.

00:27:33 ◼   ► Is that what they were talking about?

00:27:34 ◼   ► But then it says, no, start peeling on back right edge.

00:27:38 ◼   ► And I looked on the side and there's vents in the side of the thing.

00:27:40 ◼   ► And the vents, like, I put, stick my fingers in them.

00:27:42 ◼   ► There's no plastic blocking the vents, so it's not as if the entire vents were blocked up.

00:27:45 ◼   ► But I was concerned because the bottom pizza part gets hot.

00:27:48 ◼   ► Like, when you use it, it heats up considerably.

00:27:51 ◼   ► So I didn't want to, like, have some plastic slowly melting to the thing, and that would be gross.

00:27:55 ◼   ► So I go to the back right bottom edge, and I find the little edge of it.

00:27:59 ◼   ► I'm like, "Oh, this entire, like, top, you know, it's all silver all around the whole thing."

00:28:04 ◼   ► The entire top and sides is coated with this peel-off clear plastic.

00:28:08 ◼   ► It's really hard to peel.

00:28:10 ◼   ► And I start getting the edge and starting to peel the thing off.

00:28:12 ◼   ► I think it's going to be like one of those big things, like a cable sasser, what does

00:28:15 ◼   ► he call it?

00:28:16 ◼   ► Competitive peeling, where he likes to peel off the big protective films in one big thing.

00:28:19 ◼   ► So anyway, I'm peeling the thing off, and then I realize what's happening here.

00:28:24 ◼   ► The top part of this oven thing, I don't know if you can see it in the pictures, this entire

00:28:29 ◼   ► sort of silver top back case had this clear vinyl stuff stuck to it before assembly like on all edges

00:28:40 ◼   ► oh no then they assemble the thing and now they want you to peel it off and as you peel

00:28:47 ◼   ► it's impossible to get off cleanly because it's tucked in like as the pieces meet together the

00:28:53 ◼   ► vinyl is tucked inside it so if you're trying to peel this thing off there is literally no and if

00:28:58 ◼   ► And if you are sort of an anal retentive or obsessive compulsive person or like a neat

00:29:02 ◼   ► – I'm using those words.

00:29:04 ◼   ► Those are not the technical correct terms.

00:29:05 ◼   ► If you are the type of person who likes things to be neat and tidy, you are either doomed

00:29:10 ◼   ► to have a thing in your house that annoys you forever or to spend 17 hours with tweezers

00:29:14 ◼   ► trying to pull this plastic crap out of the seams.

00:29:17 ◼   ► Please, appliance manufacturers, never do this.

00:29:20 ◼   ► It's cruel.

00:29:21 ◼   ► It is cruel and unusual.

00:29:22 ◼   ► Oh, my goodness.

00:29:24 ◼   ► Either people aren't going to pull the vinyl off.

00:29:27 ◼   ► They're going to ignore that sticker and it's going to be there forever.

00:29:29 ◼   ► And it's probably fine because like I said, there are holes put in the vents.

00:29:32 ◼   ► I don't see how it could have been a big deal.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Or once you start peeling it and you realize what you're in for, you're like, "Oh no."

00:29:37 ◼   ► So the thing is like this clear and it's all I can do every time I go over there is to

00:29:41 ◼   ► stop trying to pick one of those little things.

00:29:43 ◼   ► And of course, as you pick it out and it stretches and it rips, all it does is make the thing

00:29:46 ◼   ► so small that you can't grab it anymore.

00:29:48 ◼   ► Like the little toughs and, oh, the worst.

00:29:51 ◼   ► I believe this is the worst thing, the worst thing that's ever happened to me from an appliance

00:29:55 ◼   ► unpacking experience. If I had bought this I would have returned it immediately. Not

00:30:00 ◼   ► that I ever would have bought this. Anyway, LG, I don't know what you are thinking. Like,

00:30:06 ◼   ► I just, and never mind the fact that if there's any part of this that gets hot, like the parts

00:30:09 ◼   ► that are down near the bottom, it's gonna slowly melt that plastic that's caught between

00:30:12 ◼   ► the seams. Holy cow. I should take, if I had better like macro photography skills I would

00:30:17 ◼   ► take a picture of this thing. It's just, it is the worst. So anyway, not a toaster, terrible

00:30:22 ◼   ► vinyl wrapped around the whole thing, giant thumbs down.

00:30:24 ◼   ► Is it a robot?

00:30:26 ◼   ► Not.

00:30:27 ◼   ► Toaster or not.

00:30:29 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Cards Against Humanity for sponsoring our show once again.

00:30:34 ◼   ► Alright, so today was it I believe? It was today within the last day or two as we record this.

00:30:41 ◼   ► The Apple Music Free Trial ended for those of us who are day one adopters.

00:30:45 ◼   ► Did you guys renew yes or no? I did not.

00:30:49 ◼   ► - I did.

00:30:51 ◼   ► I'm still on the fence, but I still use it occasionally.

00:30:57 ◼   ► I probably don't use it 10 or $15 a month worth,

00:31:01 ◼   ► but I do use it occasionally.

00:31:03 ◼   ► - All right, what about you, Jon?

00:31:04 ◼   ► Did you even do the trial?

00:31:06 ◼   ► - I did, I did the trial, and for the most part,

00:31:09 ◼   ► I was enjoying it.

00:31:10 ◼   ► I've never used a streaming service before.

00:31:12 ◼   ► Casey, you were in the same boat, right?

00:31:13 ◼   ► I'm not gonna use Spotify, right?

00:31:15 ◼   ► - That's correct, I use Spotify.

00:31:17 ◼   ► Anyway, I'd never used a streaming service before,

00:31:20 ◼   ► and so just the novelty of like,

00:31:21 ◼   ► oh, I can go listen to any song I want whenever I want

00:31:23 ◼   ► was interesting.

00:31:25 ◼   ► And that part mostly worked,

00:31:27 ◼   ► and I did look at the recommendations

00:31:28 ◼   ► in the little for you section

00:31:30 ◼   ► and tried to do some discovery stuff there.

00:31:32 ◼   ► I kind of enjoyed wandering through their playlists

00:31:34 ◼   ► and laughing at their playlists.

00:31:36 ◼   ► I did discover Lana Del Rey,

00:31:37 ◼   ► who I had never heard of before, through these lists.

00:31:40 ◼   ► And what I did when I discovered an artist that I like

00:31:43 ◼   ► is I just bought songs because I didn't want to just say,

00:31:46 ◼   ► oh, add these in my collection,

00:31:48 ◼   ► and then have to figure out later if I didn't renew.

00:31:51 ◼   ► So anyway, I just found the songs

00:31:51 ◼   ► and I bought them the old-fashioned way,

00:31:53 ◼   ► like for $1.29 each.

00:31:54 ◼   ► And so now when I didn't renew Apple Music,

00:31:58 ◼   ► all those songs were still there.

00:31:59 ◼   ► And I didn't renew, not because I didn't like it,

00:32:01 ◼   ► it's just because I didn't like it

00:32:03 ◼   ► whatever it is, like $15 a month worth.

00:32:05 ◼   ► It was not working out economically speaking for me,

00:32:08 ◼   ► because I do like a way to discover music,

00:32:11 ◼   ► but realistically speaking, you can discover music,

00:32:16 ◼   ► You can search for it anywhere, you can use some other streaming service, you can just

00:32:19 ◼   ► ask friends and then go illegally download a song and then buy it for when you find the

00:32:23 ◼   ► artist that you like.

00:32:24 ◼   ► There are other ways to do music discovery than Apple Music.

00:32:28 ◼   ► And Apple Music wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either.

00:32:32 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:32:33 ◼   ► I kind of like the idea that I could play whatever I wanted, it's just a little bit

00:32:38 ◼   ► too expensive for me.

00:32:40 ◼   ► The bugs that everyone complained about, I didn't get hit by any of those, but I was

00:32:43 ◼   ► wary of them always, mostly because I think my music collection doesn't suffer from the

00:32:47 ◼   ► things like, poor Jim Dow Rimp has got like 50 versions of the same song from different

00:32:51 ◼   ► albums and album music gets all confused.

00:32:54 ◼   ► I generally don't have that problem.

00:32:56 ◼   ► If I do have lots of copies of the same song, they're like from CD rips and I name them

00:33:01 ◼   ► differently, and iTunes is not confused by them because it can't make heads or tails

00:33:04 ◼   ► of them, so it's just going by my metadata, which is all distinct.

00:33:08 ◼   ► And album music really just, maybe it's because album music, like I said early on when we

00:33:12 ◼   ► talking about the service just doesn't have enough of the obscure stuff that I like.

00:33:16 ◼   ► Its selection of mashups, for example, is not great because most of those are illegal.

00:33:23 ◼   ► And its selection of video game music is not really that great.

00:33:26 ◼   ► Movie soundtracks it's a little bit better with.

00:33:28 ◼   ► But anyway, I would like to continue to do it, but I couldn't justify the cost.

00:33:34 ◼   ► I almost did it.

00:33:35 ◼   ► I almost said, "You know what?

00:33:37 ◼   ► I like it.

00:33:38 ◼   ► I do like it."

00:33:39 ◼   ► Just look at the price and I say I do not like it $15 a month birth

00:33:43 ◼   ► I just don't I like iTunes match $25 a year worth easily

00:33:46 ◼   ► So I'll just keep renewing that until they cancel the program and then I'll be sad

00:33:49 ◼   ► But no didn't renew it but through no real fault of Apple music. I tried Spotify back in the day

00:33:57 ◼   ► I'm just not

00:33:58 ◼   ► the way I listen to music just doesn't lend itself to getting a lot of value out of streaming services because I'm very particular and

00:34:03 ◼   ► I want to sort of pick the songs that I like and occasionally I want to go out into the wider world find new songs

00:34:08 ◼   ► with new artists they like and I just bring them back to my collection and I listen to

00:34:12 ◼   ► them there.

00:34:13 ◼   ► So, sorry Apple Music, but you know, and it was a little bit annoying when it was expiring

00:34:18 ◼   ► because it kind of let me still use the UI and it kept bringing up this dialogue that

00:34:21 ◼   ► says Apple Music has expired.

00:34:22 ◼   ► I'm like, well, fine, hide it from the UI for me.

00:34:24 ◼   ► Why do I have to go on iOS and say show Apple Music yes/no?

00:34:28 ◼   ► Once it's expired, stop showing it.

00:34:29 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:34:30 ◼   ► Anyway, they're just trying to get me to resubscribe, but I'm glad I had successfully done, figured

00:34:35 ◼   ► out how to stop the auto-renew because a few times I was paranoid about it. Is auto-renew

00:34:39 ◼   ► really off? Is this going to auto-renew? It didn't auto-renew. Everything was fine.

00:34:43 ◼   ► Yeah, they don't make that incredibly easy or clear, but I don't know. I think Apple

00:34:49 ◼   ► Music on the whole is, I wouldn't necessarily say it's quite this bad, but it's kind of

00:34:56 ◼   ► like Apple's Surface, where they really tried to have this no-compromises, everything all

00:35:04 ◼   ► all in one thing with iTunes and your local music

00:35:08 ◼   ► and iTunes match and Apple Music

00:35:11 ◼   ► and throw in the connect thing,

00:35:13 ◼   ► which I don't know if anybody's using that,

00:35:14 ◼   ► like all the social stuff.

00:35:15 ◼   ► So they're trying to throw all this stuff into one product

00:35:19 ◼   ► and the usability I think suffered tremendously,

00:35:23 ◼   ► first of all.

00:35:24 ◼   ► Even if everything worked properly all the time,

00:35:26 ◼   ► which it doesn't, but even if it did work properly

00:35:29 ◼   ► all the time, it is a design disaster.

00:35:32 ◼   ► It is really, really hard to use, to figure out, to know what mode you're in and where

00:35:37 ◼   ► your music is and whether you have your music or not.

00:35:39 ◼   ► It is really tough.

00:35:41 ◼   ► And it's part of that, I think it's just that it's a really big problem to be solved and

00:35:45 ◼   ► no one could have designed it well.

00:35:47 ◼   ► But they also didn't design it that well.

00:35:51 ◼   ► I think it could have been designed better, but even in the best implementation it wouldn't

00:35:55 ◼   ► have been great just because the problem is too weird and complex to cram into a good

00:35:59 ◼   ► design.

00:36:00 ◼   ► But it is very confusing.

00:36:01 ◼   ► It does have a lot of functionality,

00:36:03 ◼   ► but it's very hard to find it, and it's very unreliable.

00:36:07 ◼   ► In my experience, playing songs off of it,

00:36:11 ◼   ► like I'll play through a whole album,

00:36:13 ◼   ► and every third or fourth track will either be skipped,

00:36:17 ◼   ► or it will stop in the middle,

00:36:18 ◼   ► and then it'll advance to the next one.

00:36:20 ◼   ► Like, it's very unreliable for me.

00:36:22 ◼   ► - Is that over cellular?

00:36:23 ◼   ► - No, that's on my desktop at home.

00:36:26 ◼   ► - So I didn't have that problem.

00:36:28 ◼   ► I tried it over cellular a few times,

00:36:29 ◼   ► and I'm always in these zones where I get like one dot

00:36:32 ◼   ► on my stupid cell signal, so I blamed it on that.

00:36:34 ◼   ► But desktop, it's always more or less worked for me.

00:36:37 ◼   ► I haven't had any big delays.

00:36:38 ◼   ► The songs start playing immediately,

00:36:40 ◼   ► never skipped, never did.

00:36:41 ◼   ► Maybe I was just like, yeah, I'm obviously not a heavy user

00:36:43 ◼   ► and I have heard people reporting what you said,

00:36:45 ◼   ► but that's the thing with like things that have,

00:36:48 ◼   ► that are largely or in this case,

00:36:50 ◼   ► like primarily a server-side phenomenon,

00:36:53 ◼   ► depending on what the weather is like in iCloud, you know?

00:36:56 ◼   ► Like if it's bad weather when you're trying to do it,

00:36:58 ◼   ► piece of crap and nothing works, right? And if it's good, again, it goes back to like the bits on

00:37:02 ◼   ► your disk are the same as the bits on my disk, but depending on what the weather is like in Apple

00:37:05 ◼   ► Server Farm that day, it could just totally not work and be a piece of crap, and then when I do

00:37:09 ◼   ► it, everything could be fine because it's a different time. And it's, you know, the servers

00:37:13 ◼   ► are responding now. They're actually, you know, or maybe I'm getting different ones because it's like,

00:37:17 ◼   ► you know, it's UIP routing for a different CDN or whatever the hell it is. That's the frustrating

00:37:22 ◼   ► and inscrutable thing about cloud services. It's like, it's not just one thing that you can get

00:37:26 ◼   ► get your hands on it. It really is more like the weather.

00:37:29 ◼   ► Yeah, and unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of problem where Apple historically has

00:37:35 ◼   ► done very badly. They really aren't as good as the other tech giants at making sure that

00:37:42 ◼   ► things that are dependent on internet infrastructure and CDNs and everything being different in

00:37:47 ◼   ► different places, making sure that works well for the most number of people. Apple traditionally

00:37:52 ◼   ► is not very good at that. Netflix does it way better. Amazon and Google do it way better.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Facebook I think is their own universe over there.

00:38:00 ◼   ► They do it fine.

00:38:01 ◼   ► I mean, it just seems like this is the kind of thing

00:38:03 ◼   ► that Apple does not do very well.

00:38:05 ◼   ► And they haven't.

00:38:06 ◼   ► - It's an insidious problem because you can imagine

00:38:09 ◼   ► complaining to an Apple executive like,

00:38:11 ◼   ► hey, I tried to use your thing and it didn't work

00:38:14 ◼   ► or whatever and they could be like,

00:38:17 ◼   ► I'm totally gonna fix that for you.

00:38:18 ◼   ► That's unacceptable, I've gotta have that work.

00:38:20 ◼   ► And so maybe they'll try it themselves

00:38:22 ◼   ► and it'll probably work.

00:38:23 ◼   ► And they'll go back to the team and they'll be like,

00:38:25 ◼   ► this person said this thing happened and, you know, whatever.

00:38:28 ◼   ► And they'll be like, well, you know, what are you talking about?

00:38:30 ◼   ► Everything's fine.

00:38:31 ◼   ► Like it's always fine when you look like after the fact.

00:38:34 ◼   ► And if it was just bad weather that day, like, well, well, you know,

00:38:38 ◼   ► if you're not if you're not really obsessive about metrics and measuring

00:38:43 ◼   ► measuring the actual experience of all of your users,

00:38:46 ◼   ► it's very easy to convince yourself and others inside the company

00:38:50 ◼   ► that everything's fine because look at our uptime.

00:38:52 ◼   ► It's like this number of nines.

00:38:53 ◼   ► and we are always up and we're always responding

00:38:56 ◼   ► and our response times are good and so on and so forth.

00:38:58 ◼   ► It's like, what is the end user experience?

00:39:02 ◼   ► Maybe your servers are up

00:39:03 ◼   ► but maybe your network routing is messed up

00:39:05 ◼   ► or maybe for some point there was some corrupted CDN

00:39:07 ◼   ► that was giving bad data that was causing the thing

00:39:10 ◼   ► to repeatedly retry or whatever.

00:39:12 ◼   ► If that stuff isn't visible to you,

00:39:14 ◼   ► you can think everything is great.

00:39:15 ◼   ► You can think all the metrics,

00:39:18 ◼   ► all the things that you're measuring are great.

00:39:19 ◼   ► Every time an executive gets angry

00:39:20 ◼   ► and checks for him or herself, everything is fine.

00:39:23 ◼   ► But then when you go to the engineering team, they're like, you know, and you try to tell them what the problem is

00:39:28 ◼   ► Like well show me show me what's wrong and every time you know, every time an active executive does it it works great, right or

00:39:33 ◼   ► Maybe it doesn't work for a second, but they try it again and it works and like oh, I guess everything's fine

00:39:38 ◼   ► It's so easy to convince yourself that there's nothing that needs to be done

00:39:41 ◼   ► Because you don't have the same experience as someone else had or you have it for a second and then it gets better

00:39:46 ◼   ► It's like well, I guess this is fixed forever. I never need to look at this again

00:39:50 ◼   ► It's you know server-side stuff

00:39:52 ◼   ► You have to have a different philosophy than you do like making products is making products

00:39:56 ◼   ► You look at them how they come off the line and they measure like return rates and stuff

00:39:59 ◼   ► And I think they have a handle on how to figure out whether they're making quality products in that way

00:40:02 ◼   ► but for service I stuff I think they just don't have I

00:40:05 ◼   ► Feel like if they had the metrics

00:40:09 ◼   ► They would be improving more rapidly. Whatever metrics they have are

00:40:13 ◼   ► Convincing them that things aren't as bad as they are and maybe the only one they care about is like in the end

00:40:18 ◼   ► I don't care about this crap all I care about is customer stat right customer satisfaction

00:40:22 ◼   ► It's like in the high 90s and everything's fine

00:40:24 ◼   ► And then I just get back to success hides problems because there are lots of things that are awesome about Apple and iOS devices

00:40:29 ◼   ► And we all love them

00:40:30 ◼   ► But that can hide the fact that as Marco said and I think as we all kind of feel

00:40:34 ◼   ► They're a little bit behind everyone else in the cloud stuff in terms of reliability not a lot

00:40:40 ◼   ► It's not a piece of crap. It does it works. You know

00:40:42 ◼   ► Most of the time in fact the vast vast vast majority of the time. It's like but when it doesn't work

00:40:48 ◼   ► It is just so infuriating and you can only do that a certain number of times before people are like you know what?

00:40:54 ◼   ► I'm just gonna use Dropbox because Dropbox failed me once in the three years

00:40:59 ◼   ► I've used it and this has failed me once in the one year. I've used it therefore

00:41:02 ◼   ► You are bad like what do you mean once in the year? We have five nines. We're blah blah blah

00:41:06 ◼   ► it's like yeah, but Dropbox seems more reliable and I

00:41:10 ◼   ► Know that's that's the world of server-side. It's tough

00:41:14 ◼   ► You know, it's to come back to why why not renew Apple music for in my case anyway

00:41:20 ◼   ► I loved the Siri integration being able to say, you know

00:41:25 ◼   ► Siri play such-and-such album or play songs by such-and-such artists. That was awesome. Really really liked it

00:41:32 ◼   ► I also kind of liked being able to say, you know, I really like this album

00:41:35 ◼   ► Just treat it as though I own it and I know that's a very polarizing

00:41:39 ◼   ► Approach some people love that some people hated it. I liked it

00:41:43 ◼   ► But what I kept coming back to was I just didn't care for the way in which you

00:41:50 ◼   ► find music within iTunes, and I know it's so

00:41:54 ◼   ► It's so obvious to complain and moan about iTunes and so I'm not going to go on about it

00:42:01 ◼   ► but suffice to say I just really didn't care for the interface in iTunes and I

00:42:05 ◼   ► really like

00:42:07 ◼   ► Spotify's

00:42:08 ◼   ► UI I mean it has its own problems for sure

00:42:11 ◼   ► But if I want to find and play a piece of music in Spotify, it's very quick and very easy.

00:42:18 ◼   ► And I found an Apple Music on both the Mac and on iOS. Maybe it's just I think differently.

00:42:23 ◼   ► Maybe this is another example of Twitterific versus Tweetbot.

00:42:26 ◼   ► You know, in that sense I come down from in the Tweetbot camp. Twitterific is somewhat inscrutable to me.

00:42:32 ◼   ► And in this case, I come down in the Spotify camp. It doesn't mean that Spotify is by necessity better.

00:42:38 ◼   ► It's just it works better for my brain. And so that's why I'm not renewing. Plus,

00:42:43 ◼   ► I'm kind of the DJ for the house, so I didn't need to worry about family things.

00:42:46 ◼   ► Erin very rarely listens to music that isn't on the radio. So, and Beats 1 was not her thing.

00:42:51 ◼   ► So that's why I did it.

00:42:53 ◼   ► But there's certainly a lot to like with Apple Music for sure, and I don't want to lose sight of that because there's

00:42:58 ◼   ► It is pretty damn magical to say play songs by, you know, Bill Withers or something and next thing you know,

00:43:04 ◼   ► you're listening to some pretty good

00:43:06 ◼   ► Pretty good music. So there's stuff like just wasn't for me

00:43:09 ◼   ► I like the aesthetics of Apple music better than Spotify that the one time I tried Spotify

00:43:14 ◼   ► Maybe six months ago for an extended period I don't know if it was there

00:43:18 ◼   ► Their weird icon or the color the way the UI looks it just looked like it was like a weird non-native web

00:43:24 ◼   ► So I guess all the stuff in iTunes is webby stuff. Anyway, it just taste wise it seemed it

00:43:30 ◼   ► Didn't match my taste as well as the Apple music stuff does functionality wise it was fine

00:43:36 ◼   ► but it seemed a lot like I was using like, I don't know, like a weird, it was

00:43:44 ◼   ► like a GUI made with Linux or something. It didn't look right, it didn't

00:43:49 ◼   ► fit, and just it was not pleasant to look at. Apple stuff is

00:43:55 ◼   ► always pleasant to look at, but a lot of it I would struggle to find the UI or

00:43:59 ◼   ► I'd say like, "Oh, you've got a big giant play button on this recommended

00:44:02 ◼   ► playlist for me. It would be nice to have more functionality here until I click

00:44:05 ◼   ► into it or whatever, but I thought whoever did like the sort of, it's basically web design,

00:44:08 ◼   ► whoever did the web design for Apple Music did a pretty good job. They have a lot of

00:44:11 ◼   ► nice artwork and most of the things they present you have. I'm always surprised the amount

00:44:17 ◼   ► of sort of custom artwork they have available for artists and playlists and stuff. They

00:44:23 ◼   ► did a lot of work to basically add graphics for even the most obscure artists, not just

00:44:27 ◼   ► album art, but also background images, pictures of the artists and stuff like that. And color

00:44:33 ◼   ► themes and all the other stuff they do. It's actually something inside iTunes that I think

00:44:37 ◼   ► looks nice, which is a nice change.

00:44:40 ◼   ► All right. Any other thoughts, Marco? Or are you good?

00:44:42 ◼   ► Nah, I think I'm good. I mean, I'm going to keep using it because I do like—when

00:44:47 ◼   ► I want to go explore and find new artists, I do like being able to go and play their

00:44:53 ◼   ► entire album straight through, or at least most of the songs, or the first half of most

00:44:58 ◼   ► of the songs before they die and cut out. That part is very frustrating. But I do like

00:45:02 ◼   ► I like the idea of being able to play through

00:45:05 ◼   ► an entire album before I buy it.

00:45:08 ◼   ► That being said, it's just so half-assed.

00:45:11 ◼   ► Like the whole, all of Apple Music is so half-assed.

00:45:16 ◼   ► I feel like I should probably try something else instead.

00:45:19 ◼   ► Because, and ultimately, unfortunately,

00:45:22 ◼   ► Apple Music has really destroyed the iOS Music app.

00:45:27 ◼   ► It hasn't done as much damage to desktop iTunes.

00:45:30 ◼   ► up iTunes, I can still use my way and it mostly doesn't get in the way. If canceling my membership

00:45:36 ◼   ► to Apple Music would restore the iOS music app to the way it was before, I would do it

00:45:43 ◼   ► in a heartbeat. You know, it seems like Apple Music is here to stay and it's going to keep

00:45:51 ◼   ► taking prominence in Apple's stuff because it is an important business interest they

00:45:56 ◼   ► have. So the business needs of Apple Music are going to keep influencing the direction

00:46:01 ◼   ► of music and music integration on all of their platforms. And they've shown repeatedly that

00:46:06 ◼   ► they're very, very happy to destroy iTunes and iOS music app usability in the name of

00:46:14 ◼   ► promoting the new thing they're doing in music. And right now it's Apple Music and that's

00:46:19 ◼   ► probably going to be the thing for a while. I wish things were better there. I wish either

00:46:25 ◼   ► that they didn't destroy it in the name of Apple Music,

00:46:28 ◼   ► or that just Apple Music was better than it is.

00:46:30 ◼   ► And maybe over time it will get better, I hope it does.

00:46:34 ◼   ► - We're still ripe for, as we talked about

00:46:36 ◼   ► when Apple Music was announced,

00:46:37 ◼   ► we're still ripe for a photos-like simplification

00:46:40 ◼   ► and unification of music.

00:46:42 ◼   ► They're close to it now, right?

00:46:43 ◼   ► They're lurching towards it with iTunes Match

00:46:46 ◼   ► and Apple Music, and this whole, you know,

00:46:48 ◼   ► they've done a reasonable integration of like,

00:46:50 ◼   ► hey, if you sign up for Apple Music,

00:46:51 ◼   ► you have the access to all this music,

00:46:53 ◼   ► and you can say whether you like it or not,

00:46:55 ◼   ► And like Casey said, you can add it to your collection,

00:46:56 ◼   ► now it's like your music,

00:46:57 ◼   ► and you can actually also still buy it,

00:46:59 ◼   ► so that if you, like I did,

00:47:00 ◼   ► so if you unsubscribe from Apple Music,

00:47:02 ◼   ► these songs don't go away because you actually bought them,

00:47:04 ◼   ► but you discovered them through Apple Music.

00:47:06 ◼   ► They're close, it just doesn't need to be 17 different plans

00:47:09 ◼   ► all integrated with each other.

00:47:09 ◼   ► It just needs to be one unified interface

00:47:11 ◼   ► where every single song in the world

00:47:14 ◼   ► is either part of your music,

00:47:16 ◼   ► part of your music that you own,

00:47:17 ◼   ► or it'll go, I mean, it's basically conceptually

00:47:20 ◼   ► the same as what it is now.

00:47:21 ◼   ► Like, I'm just describing exactly what the situation is now,

00:47:23 ◼   ► but it's complicated now because it is,

00:47:26 ◼   ► there's iTunes with nothing,

00:47:27 ◼   ► there's iTunes match which you pay for separately,

00:47:29 ◼   ► and there's Apple Music which you pay for separately.

00:47:31 ◼   ► And there are separate tabs that you go to

00:47:33 ◼   ► that are specific to Apple Music,

00:47:35 ◼   ► then there are ones that are just your music,

00:47:36 ◼   ► then there's a hybrid.

00:47:37 ◼   ► Like, I'm not subscribed to Apple Music anymore,

00:47:39 ◼   ► but I still have the hearts next to my things,

00:47:40 ◼   ► and I can click on them and it encourages me.

00:47:42 ◼   ► It says, yeah, click on more hearts,

00:47:44 ◼   ► 'cause that will tell us what kind of songs you like.

00:47:45 ◼   ► I'm like, you're not gonna recommend anything to me anymore

00:47:48 ◼   ► because I'm unsubscribed from Apple Music,

00:47:49 ◼   ► and there's still iTunes,

00:47:50 ◼   ► oh, forgot about iTunes Genius.

00:47:51 ◼   ► There's still iTunes Genius,

00:47:52 ◼   ► or maybe is the genius using the hearts?

00:47:54 ◼   ► That's still there.

00:47:55 ◼   ► There's a lot-- I don't know.

00:47:56 ◼   ► There's a lot of crap in there.

00:47:57 ◼   ► And so I think they've got all the functionality.

00:48:00 ◼   ► It just needs to be like history eraser button, clean slate,

00:48:04 ◼   ► and say, OK, we're finally admitting that music

00:48:06 ◼   ► collections live in the cloud like photos.

00:48:09 ◼   ► We keep the canonical copies.

00:48:11 ◼   ► You can tell your Mac to download all of them.

00:48:13 ◼   ► Basically, what they did with photos

00:48:14 ◼   ► only was much, much better performance, please,

00:48:16 ◼   ► and fewer bugs.

00:48:17 ◼   ► But conceptually, they have everything that they need.

00:48:21 ◼   ► They finally agreed that the files on your disk

00:48:25 ◼   ► aren't the canonical copy that they can kind of do.

00:48:27 ◼   ► iTunes match, iTunes in the cloud matching things,

00:48:29 ◼   ► and they just need to get better about like the,

00:48:31 ◼   ► sort of keeping track of everything they did.

00:48:33 ◼   ► Hey, we found this file on your computer on this date,

00:48:36 ◼   ► and this was the file, and we're never gonna get rid of it,

00:48:38 ◼   ► we're gonna preserve it forever,

00:48:39 ◼   ► but by the way, if you would like to replace it

00:48:41 ◼   ► with this DRM-free 256 kilobit blah, blah, blah song,

00:48:45 ◼   ► you can, but if we did the wrong matching for us,

00:48:47 ◼   ► tell us and you can get your old one back.

00:48:50 ◼   ► I feel like anybody who's used any of these features

00:48:51 ◼   ► can spec out everything that they want.

00:48:53 ◼   ► And it's a massive simplification if you just say,

00:48:55 ◼   ► this is not seven programs and 15 features.

00:48:57 ◼   ► This is one thing, they should have just called it

00:48:59 ◼   ► Apple Music, just like it's called Photos or whatever.

00:49:02 ◼   ► It's one thing and there are different things

00:49:04 ◼   ► that you can pay for for different services

00:49:06 ◼   ► and it is completely unified and it's just like

00:49:08 ◼   ► a cloud-based music library with streaming features

00:49:13 ◼   ► and all that other stuff.

00:49:14 ◼   ► So I don't know if that also has to come

00:49:16 ◼   ► with an iTunes rewrite, I don't know if that has to come

00:49:17 ◼   ► with a backend rewrite as they slowly unify,

00:49:20 ◼   ► iTunes Genius, iTunes Match, and all the other stuff,

00:49:22 ◼   ► but I think we are going in the right direction.

00:49:26 ◼   ► We're just, we are in a transitional phase now.

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00:52:11 ◼   ► real-time follow-up you can get rid of what Apple calls "loves". They're not likes

00:52:16 ◼   ► because "like" is not passionate enough for a company like Apple. Apple loves music

00:52:21 ◼   ► and also probably Facebook has a trademark on "likes" or whatever. Anyway.

00:52:23 ◼   ► I think Eddie Q loves music. Yeah. So in iTunes preferences under the general

00:52:29 ◼   ► tab in preferences there's a pop-up menu for ratings you can pick stars, loves, or

00:52:33 ◼   ► stars and loves. So I guess I can go to it and change it back to stars and not see the

00:52:36 ◼   ► loves anymore but... Wait, what's the difference? Oh, the stars are the one through five, I

00:52:40 ◼   ► Yes, and the loves are the hearts, and the hearts are relevant to Apple Music.

00:52:45 ◼   ► I was doing that when I was going through their playlist and saying, "Well, I like this,

00:52:48 ◼   ► I like that," and so it can recommend songs for you and it encourages you.

00:52:52 ◼   ► It says, "Good, keep clicking those hearts because that lets us know what you like and

00:52:55 ◼   ► we can make better playlists for you."

00:52:56 ◼   ► But now that I'm not subscribed to Apple Music, it's not going to be making any more playlists

00:52:59 ◼   ► for me, unless iTunes Genius is still in there, but it probably isn't.

00:53:03 ◼   ► I always disabled iTunes Genius because it always made iTunes either crash or gobble

00:53:07 ◼   ► up memory until memory was exhausted on my machine, which was always fun.

00:53:10 ◼   ► And I'd watch it in the process thing.

00:53:13 ◼   ► It would grow by like a gigabyte a minute, right?

00:53:15 ◼   ► And that has bad effects after not too many minutes.

00:53:20 ◼   ► And the only way to get it to stop back in the day was for me to just deactivate Genius.

00:53:25 ◼   ► I've had it off everywhere.

00:53:26 ◼   ► Like every time I launched iTunes, it'd be like, "Trying to send Genius to it?"

00:53:28 ◼   ► I'm like, "No, stop.

00:53:29 ◼   ► Don't do that.

00:53:30 ◼   ► Whatever it is you're doing, you're not going to do it well.

00:53:33 ◼   ► Stop."

00:53:34 ◼   ► Anyway, iTunes is confusing.

00:53:36 ◼   ► Alright then. Do you know what? Do you want to wear the pajamas with stars or

00:53:41 ◼   ► would you prefer the pajamas with cars? Read that book all the time. What? It's a

00:53:46 ◼   ► Sandra Boynton book. It's a reference. Don't worry about it. I know, I know a lot

00:53:50 ◼   ► of her books. I don't know that one. Night-night little pookie. Anyway, moving

00:53:54 ◼   ► on. So I received an iPhone 6s and Aaron received a iPhone 6s. Marco, I presume

00:54:02 ◼   ► you and Tiff both received iPhone 6s? That's right. That makes everybody in the

00:54:06 ◼   ► world except John. That is correct. I'm gonna have one in the house eventually. My wife's

00:54:09 ◼   ► gonna get one. Just think of all the things you could be force pushing in the meantime.

00:54:13 ◼   ► I know. I got to try one at work. I was excited by it. This is the big story, I think. Now

00:54:19 ◼   ► that everyone has their successes, you guys have it, and everyone else in the world who

00:54:24 ◼   ► ordered on day one has their thing, the word on the street is that 3D touch, please don't

00:54:31 ◼   ► call it force touch anymore, is the bee's knees.

00:54:34 ◼   ► - I would agree with that.

00:54:36 ◼   ► With an asterisk, I think it's very cool.

00:54:39 ◼   ► I think it's going to be even cooler.

00:54:42 ◼   ► The problems I have with 3D touch,

00:54:44 ◼   ► the biggest one is I forget that that's a thing,

00:54:46 ◼   ► and so I don't think to try it.

00:54:48 ◼   ► And the other problem is a lot of third party apps

00:54:50 ◼   ► just haven't embraced it yet,

00:54:52 ◼   ► which I mean, it's not third party developers' faults.

00:54:55 ◼   ► They barely had any time with it so far.

00:54:57 ◼   ► But like when I discovered it in Instagram,

00:55:01 ◼   ► I just thought it was the most amazing thing ever.

00:55:03 ◼   ► And I've been 3D touching all the things,

00:55:06 ◼   ► which is kind of funny because--

00:55:07 ◼   ► Ew.

00:55:09 ◼   ► Because most of the touch targets in Instagram

00:55:12 ◼   ► that do have a 3D touch affordance

00:55:14 ◼   ► are fairly small because they're text.

00:55:17 ◼   ► I really like the 3D touch.

00:55:18 ◼   ► I think it's very, very cool.

00:55:20 ◼   ► I'm very anxious and excited to see what third party

00:55:24 ◼   ► devs do with it in the future.

00:55:26 ◼   ► And what was very interesting to me was,

00:55:29 ◼   ► somebody retweeted somebody else that I retweeted,

00:55:31 ◼   ► we'll put the link in the show notes,

00:55:33 ◼   ► apparently it's available via JavaScript as well.

00:55:35 ◼   ► So you can do this on the web as well.

00:55:38 ◼   ► I don't know if that's gonna be useful or not,

00:55:40 ◼   ► but I just think that's kinda cool that it's exposed,

00:55:42 ◼   ► whether or not anyone ever does anything neat with it.

00:55:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I have a similar problem as you

00:55:48 ◼   ► where I keep forgetting that it's a thing I can do,

00:55:50 ◼   ► but I'm sure over time that we'll all get used to it

00:55:52 ◼   ► and consider it a really cool shortcut.

00:55:54 ◼   ► There is a significant discoverability issue with it,

00:55:58 ◼   ► where there's really no way to tell

00:56:00 ◼   ► that something can be force-touched

00:56:01 ◼   ► without just pushing all over the place

00:56:03 ◼   ► and just seeing what happens.

00:56:04 ◼   ► And I kinda worry that it's gonna be a little bit

00:56:06 ◼   ► like the old days of Siri,

00:56:07 ◼   ► where we're gonna try it on a bunch of stuff,

00:56:09 ◼   ► most of it's not gonna work,

00:56:10 ◼   ► and then we're just gonna forget

00:56:11 ◼   ► to try it again for a while.

00:56:13 ◼   ► You know, that happened a lot with Siri at the beginning,

00:56:17 ◼   ► where it would fail a couple times,

00:56:18 ◼   ► and you'd be like, "Well, I guess I'm not gonna try

00:56:20 ◼   ► "that again."

00:56:20 ◼   ► - But even Siri, I think the 3D Touch

00:56:22 ◼   ► has the same effect as Siri in that people are like,

00:56:25 ◼   ► "Well, Siri's messed up and doesn't do what I want,

00:56:26 ◼   ► "but I still use it to set timers,

00:56:28 ◼   ► "but I still use it to set reminders."

00:56:30 ◼   ► Like, everyone found the one really, really easy thing

00:56:32 ◼   ► they could have Siri do,

00:56:33 ◼   ► so maybe people are gonna 3D touch everything,

00:56:36 ◼   ► not find any new places to use it,

00:56:38 ◼   ► but the two places where they do use it,

00:56:39 ◼   ► they're gonna use it there all the time.

00:56:40 ◼   ► - Siri still can't start the stopwatch.

00:56:43 ◼   ► - I know, I know.

00:56:44 ◼   ► I also can't set reminders for, what is it, 10 minutes?

00:56:47 ◼   ► Whatever its frequency is, it drives me nuts.

00:56:49 ◼   ► "Sorry, I can't set something that frequent."

00:56:50 ◼   ► Why, why can't you do it?

00:56:52 ◼   ► Wait, what do you have to be reminded of every 10 minutes?

00:56:56 ◼   ► Stir the sauce, man.

00:56:58 ◼   ► Of course.

00:56:59 ◼   ► Remind me to stir the sauce every 10 minutes.

00:57:00 ◼   ► Siri's like, "Sorry, I can't do that."

00:57:03 ◼   ► You don't care about my sauce, Siri?

00:57:04 ◼   ► You just want it to stick?

00:57:06 ◼   ► You just want it to burn on the bottom?

00:57:08 ◼   ► I'm so glad I asked.

00:57:09 ◼   ► So seriously, that is my use case for it.

00:57:13 ◼   ► So then what I have to do is remind you to stir the sauce in 10 minutes, and then it

00:57:18 ◼   ► does, and then I've got to set another reminder for the next 10 minutes.

00:57:21 ◼   ► I don't understand how this is better

00:57:22 ◼   ► than setting it every 10 minutes.

00:57:24 ◼   ► Speaking of iOS things that are,

00:57:26 ◼   ► I guess maybe they're, the only thing I can think of

00:57:28 ◼   ► is like, it's going off all the time

00:57:32 ◼   ► and people don't know how to stop it or whatever.

00:57:34 ◼   ► That's the only logic I can think of,

00:57:36 ◼   ► or maybe they're afraid it's gonna hurt battery life.

00:57:38 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:57:38 ◼   ► Anyway, I had someone today who had a problem

00:57:41 ◼   ► with their iPhone and wanted to come over

00:57:44 ◼   ► and have me look at it and see if I could fix their iPhone.

00:57:46 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, what is this gonna be?

00:57:47 ◼   ► Maybe they got that thing wedged

00:57:49 ◼   ► they're gonna need the whole machine re-image,

00:57:51 ◼   ► or they're gonna have to do an iTunes backup locally

00:57:53 ◼   ► and then restore it from the backup

00:57:55 ◼   ► or force an application to download

00:57:57 ◼   ► or do something like that.

00:57:58 ◼   ► No, what actually happened is they had

00:58:00 ◼   ► triple tapped the home button.

00:58:02 ◼   ► And it enabled voiceover.

00:58:03 ◼   ► And they're like, it's like,

00:58:05 ◼   ► all it does is say everything that's on the screen.

00:58:08 ◼   ► It was iOS 6.

00:58:10 ◼   ► Anyway, yeah, I turned that off for them.

00:58:13 ◼   ► But yeah, I guess that's the thinking behind

00:58:16 ◼   ► the not every 10 minutes.

00:58:19 ◼   ► But anyway, circling all the way back to 3D Touch,

00:58:22 ◼   ► yeah, I think that's, as I said in the impasse shows,

00:58:25 ◼   ► the lack of discoverability is going to be a detriment,

00:58:29 ◼   ► especially in the beginning when apps haven't implemented it

00:58:32 ◼   ► so you have to experiment.

00:58:33 ◼   ► Like, boy, I wonder, you know,

00:58:35 ◼   ► the first update comes and they say

00:58:36 ◼   ► they have 3D Touch support.

00:58:37 ◼   ► I wonder what the hell they did.

00:58:39 ◼   ► Or does this app have 3D Touch support?

00:58:40 ◼   ► I'll just start shoving things.

00:58:42 ◼   ► But the benefit is that if you're not into 3D Touch,

00:58:48 ◼   ► My brief experience with the 6S's of friends that I've tried

00:58:51 ◼   ► and from talking to people is that

00:58:53 ◼   ► if you don't know 3D Touch is this, it doesn't bother you.

00:58:56 ◼   ► Like it doesn't get in your way.

00:58:58 ◼   ► It is not an essential feature that you have.

00:59:00 ◼   ► Like the lack of discoverability is a feature

00:59:02 ◼   ► and a detriment.

00:59:03 ◼   ► It's a detriment to people like us

00:59:04 ◼   ► who really wanna be like power users

00:59:05 ◼   ► and make sure we're using things in the most efficient way.

00:59:08 ◼   ► And so we're going to be shoving our fingers into the screen

00:59:10 ◼   ► to find out where we can use it.

00:59:11 ◼   ► But for everybody else, if they don't know 3D Touch exists,

00:59:14 ◼   ► it does not bother them at all.

00:59:16 ◼   ► And so it is completely invisible.

00:59:17 ◼   ► It's a feature that is a benefit if they know it's there

00:59:19 ◼   ► and it is not a detriment if they don't know it's there.

00:59:23 ◼   ► Which is the best kind of thing

00:59:24 ◼   ► because I can imagine someone will have a success

00:59:25 ◼   ► for like a year and then someone will show them

00:59:27 ◼   ► 3D touch on the camera or they'll do it accidentally once

00:59:30 ◼   ► and be like, wow, that's great.

00:59:32 ◼   ► Although the default settings,

00:59:33 ◼   ► I was surprised at how hard I had to press.

00:59:35 ◼   ► I don't know if anyone would do it accidentally.

00:59:37 ◼   ► The first time I tried to 3D touch something,

00:59:39 ◼   ► I long pressed it and all the icons started wiggling

00:59:41 ◼   ► 'cause I wasn't pressing hard enough.

00:59:42 ◼   ► That's the defaults.

00:59:43 ◼   ► I knew it was there.

00:59:44 ◼   ► So what is that, three settings,

00:59:46 ◼   ► like soft, medium, hard, or whatever.

00:59:48 ◼   ► - Also in the 6S, the Taptic Engine, really like it.

00:59:54 ◼   ► Can't really tell you why, I just like it.

00:59:56 ◼   ► I feel like it's much crisper vibration.

00:59:58 ◼   ► I found, I caught myself constantly mashing on

01:00:03 ◼   ► like the Tweetbot icon on my home screen,

01:00:05 ◼   ► just to get that doo doo doo.

01:00:06 ◼   ► I find it so entertaining, I don't know why,

01:00:08 ◼   ► it's the silliest thing in the world.

01:00:10 ◼   ► But I really enjoy the Taptic Engine.

01:00:14 ◼   ► I think it's well done.

01:00:15 ◼   ► It's worth a little bit of extra weight,

01:00:17 ◼   ► 'cause that's what everyone's been saying, right?

01:00:18 ◼   ► That that and the 3D Touch sensors

01:00:21 ◼   ► is the added weight over the 6, is that right?

01:00:23 ◼   ► - Or maybe it could also just be the shell.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Like the shell got thicker

01:00:28 ◼   ► and a little bit heavier and stuff, so.

01:00:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's only a handful of grams anyway,

01:00:31 ◼   ► so I think it's probably everything,

01:00:32 ◼   ► but I would imagine the screen is the majority of it

01:00:35 ◼   ► because the Taptic Engine is mostly air

01:00:37 ◼   ► and it's probably less dense than the battery

01:00:39 ◼   ► that it replaced.

01:00:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's probably true.

01:00:42 ◼   ► I did, when I first got the phone, I did immediately notice that it was, it felt substantially

01:00:50 ◼   ► heavier.

01:00:51 ◼   ► I think that's unfair.

01:00:52 ◼   ► I think it was just heavier enough that I noticed it versus the 6.

01:00:56 ◼   ► Now that I haven't held my 6 in several days, I don't feel like it's any different at all.

01:01:01 ◼   ► I put the 6S in the Apple leather case that the 6 was in, and that seemed to be just fine.

01:01:10 ◼   ► It seems a little tighter, but nothing egregious.

01:01:14 ◼   ► So thumbs up for 3D Touch, thumbs up for the Taptic Engine.

01:01:17 ◼   ► Live photos, two thumbs as high as I can possibly reach.

01:01:21 ◼   ► I think it's extremely cool.

01:01:23 ◼   ► And the thing about live photos that I think is going to be really cool is looking at a

01:01:27 ◼   ► live photo in a year, or in two years, or in three years.

01:01:30 ◼   ► Because I'm a very loyal user of Picture Life, and as with many of these sorts of services,

01:01:38 ◼   ► the Photos app on iOS, if you 3D touch that on the home screen, you can look at, you know,

01:01:43 ◼   ► the pictures you've taken a year ago, or two years ago, or six years ago, or ten years

01:01:46 ◼   ► ago, if your library goes back that far.

01:01:49 ◼   ► And I always love seeing those pictures.

01:01:53 ◼   ► When I wake up in the morning, that's one of the first things I do, is go to the PictureLife

01:01:55 ◼   ► app and look at those pictures, because I always get great memories from them.

01:02:00 ◼   ► But there are definitely times that I will look at these pictures and have no friggin'

01:02:06 ◼   ► idea why I took that picture or what it was off. And granted, Live Photos doesn't guarantee

01:02:11 ◼   ► that that problem will be fixed, but it certainly helps. And seeing a picture of Declan just

01:02:20 ◼   ► kind of sitting there looking adorable, but then giving it a little push and seeing the

01:02:25 ◼   ► context of that picture, it's just genuinely magical. And I love it. And the problem I

01:02:32 ◼   ► I have with live photos is that I love it so damn much that it almost makes me give

01:02:37 ◼   ► pause to picking up my beloved Olympus Micro Four Thirds camera because I don't want to

01:02:43 ◼   ► give up on that context on these pictures.

01:02:45 ◼   ► Aren't you annoyed by the low frame rate and low resolution?

01:02:48 ◼   ► Not really.

01:02:49 ◼   ► You will be in a decade.

01:02:50 ◼   ► Oh, oh, oh, absolutely I will.

01:02:52 ◼   ► But today, no.

01:02:53 ◼   ► And I think it's because I understand that we just, well, I'm assuming, I should say,

01:02:57 ◼   ► that we just don't have the grunt to be able to do all that at once.

01:03:01 ◼   ► But yes, in a decade I will be annoyed by it, but I would probably still just appreciate

01:03:06 ◼   ► having that context over having no context at all.

01:03:08 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think it's maybe the grunt, but probably even more of a factor is the size.

01:03:16 ◼   ► If they had, you know, if they cranked up the size, cranked up the frame rate, assuming

01:03:19 ◼   ► this was technically possible, cranked up the quality of the compression or whatever,

01:03:25 ◼   ► then you know, people take a lot of pictures.

01:03:26 ◼   ► If you turn all those pictures into three-second videos, that really adds up, especially on

01:03:30 ◼   ► 16 gigabyte phones, anyway.

01:03:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:03:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that has to be a factor.

01:03:35 ◼   ► I'm just thinking of like,

01:03:36 ◼   ► when my kids were born on babies and stuff,

01:03:39 ◼   ► I was recording them on mini DV tapes,

01:03:43 ◼   ► like camcorder camcorders in standard def,

01:03:46 ◼   ► and they look awful.

01:03:47 ◼   ► I mean, like that's just, you know,

01:03:49 ◼   ► my childhood pictures are like in 16 millimeter

01:03:52 ◼   ► or whatever, eight millimeter, whatever size film,

01:03:55 ◼   ► as in, you know, video film type stuff was.

01:03:58 ◼   ► So yeah, you can't help that.

01:03:59 ◼   ► That's gonna be, you know, is the way it's been.

01:04:01 ◼   ► The thing about live pictures is,

01:04:04 ◼   ► it's going to be a gorgeous 12 megapixel photo

01:04:07 ◼   ► surrounded by really low resolution,

01:04:10 ◼   ► sub 30 frame rate video.

01:04:13 ◼   ► So, yep, better than nothing and kind of neat.

01:04:16 ◼   ► But actually, Casey, I'm wondering how you decide,

01:04:19 ◼   ► is it just a toggle on/off,

01:04:22 ◼   ► like do live pictures all the time

01:04:24 ◼   ► or is it on a per shot basis?

01:04:25 ◼   ► How do you decide what to make live pictures

01:04:26 ◼   ► or do you even have that choice?

01:04:27 ◼   ► So in settings, I think there's a general,

01:04:30 ◼   ► is it even available setting if memory serves?

01:04:34 ◼   ► - Well, it's just like HDR,

01:04:35 ◼   ► where it's a thing you push during the capture screen.

01:04:38 ◼   ► And you can turn it on, you can leave it on,

01:04:40 ◼   ► or you can turn it on and off shot by shot.

01:04:42 ◼   ► But it works just like HDR does.

01:04:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's what I was driving at,

01:04:45 ◼   ► is that there's a little kind of like button

01:04:48 ◼   ► on the heads up display in the Photos app

01:04:50 ◼   ► that will let you toggle it on and off.

01:04:53 ◼   ► But I could have sworn I had seen

01:04:55 ◼   ► that there was a live Photos,

01:04:57 ◼   ► I guess I'm crazy.

01:04:58 ◼   ► I'm looking now and I don't see it anymore.

01:05:00 ◼   ► I thought that I'd seen just a general,

01:05:02 ◼   ► can you do a live photo, yes or no, in the settings app.

01:05:06 ◼   ► I think I'm wrong.

01:05:07 ◼   ► And what I was gonna say is what Marco just said,

01:05:09 ◼   ► that as you're taking a photo, as you're in the camera,

01:05:13 ◼   ► at the very top, there's what looks almost like a target.

01:05:16 ◼   ► I'm not really sure why this is the live photos icon,

01:05:19 ◼   ► but it's on the top dead center

01:05:22 ◼   ► and that turns live photos on and off.

01:05:25 ◼   ► - So what do you do?

01:05:26 ◼   ► Do you have it on all the time?

01:05:27 ◼   ► or do you use-- - Yes, no,

01:05:27 ◼   ► it's on all the time.

01:05:28 ◼   ► - I think also, by the way,

01:05:29 ◼   ► I think I saw this on the web,

01:05:30 ◼   ► I haven't tried it myself,

01:05:31 ◼   ► that even if you take everything in live photo mode,

01:05:34 ◼   ► you can selectively, is this right,

01:05:37 ◼   ► decide that after you've taken the live photo,

01:05:39 ◼   ► that you just want it to display

01:05:40 ◼   ► as a regular photo in your collection?

01:05:42 ◼   ► - I think that's right.

01:05:44 ◼   ► - Seems like it'd be a simple thing to do,

01:05:47 ◼   ► it'd basically just saying, just show the picture,

01:05:49 ◼   ► ignore the live photo-y part of it,

01:05:50 ◼   ► even if it was recorded.

01:05:52 ◼   ► I don't think it deletes the live photo-y part of it,

01:05:53 ◼   ► I think it just toggles it off.

01:05:54 ◼   ► Either way, like Auto HDR and other settings

01:05:59 ◼   ► that are up there in the weird swipey interface

01:06:02 ◼   ► in the Apple camera, I imagine people are probably

01:06:06 ◼   ► gonna either have live pictures on all the time

01:06:08 ◼   ► or turn it off, especially in the beginning.

01:06:10 ◼   ► If they turn it on all the time and they fill

01:06:11 ◼   ► their stupid 16 gigabyte phones with hundreds

01:06:14 ◼   ► of tiny videos, then maybe in their consultation

01:06:17 ◼   ► with the Apple genius and their frustration,

01:06:20 ◼   ► it'll come up and say, well, one way you can save space

01:06:22 ◼   ► is to not do all these live pictures every time.

01:06:24 ◼   ► or maybe people will find it annoying.

01:06:26 ◼   ► Because here's the other aspect of live pictures

01:06:28 ◼   ► that I'm speculating about

01:06:29 ◼   ► because I'm not using a phone that has them.

01:06:32 ◼   ► If you have it on all the time,

01:06:34 ◼   ► there is the high potential for situations

01:06:37 ◼   ► when taking photos of adults

01:06:38 ◼   ► where the before and after three seconds of video

01:06:40 ◼   ► is not flattering.

01:06:41 ◼   ► And not that you don't want it,

01:06:44 ◼   ► but I mean, some people are weird

01:06:46 ◼   ► about having the picture taken at all.

01:06:48 ◼   ► You wanna capture the incident when they're smiling,

01:06:51 ◼   ► the incident before and after

01:06:52 ◼   ► when they're making a weird face.

01:06:54 ◼   ► They're not like kids where they're cute all the time.

01:06:56 ◼   ► Maybe they're not happy that you have those

01:06:59 ◼   ► one and a half seconds bracketing

01:07:01 ◼   ► the reasonable picture, right?

01:07:03 ◼   ► So I wonder if that's also gonna be a social issue.

01:07:07 ◼   ► If you have live photos on all the time

01:07:09 ◼   ► or people are gonna be wary

01:07:10 ◼   ► when you're taking pictures of them,

01:07:11 ◼   ► that they don't just have to be pleasant

01:07:13 ◼   ► and smiling for an instant,

01:07:14 ◼   ► they have to make sure that they're not making

01:07:16 ◼   ► a weird face three seconds on either side.

01:07:18 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:07:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, you make a fair point,

01:07:21 ◼   ► But I think in the end of the day,

01:07:24 ◼   ► it's just going to be awesome to be able to,

01:07:26 ◼   ► as I keep coming back, to have that context

01:07:29 ◼   ► around the photo.

01:07:30 ◼   ► And even if it's somebody giggling beforehand

01:07:32 ◼   ► or making a funny face, in some ways,

01:07:34 ◼   ► that almost makes the picture better.

01:07:35 ◼   ► So you have the still life posed picture,

01:07:40 ◼   ► but the goofy face that led up to it or what have you.

01:07:43 ◼   ► I don't know, Marco, you haven't said much about it.

01:07:44 ◼   ► What do you think about all this?

01:07:46 ◼   ► - So Tiff sent me my first received live photos today.

01:07:49 ◼   ► She and Adam were, she went to pick them up from school

01:07:51 ◼   ► and they were out playing in a muddy baseball field

01:07:54 ◼   ► near our house and she sent me a live photo of Adam

01:07:57 ◼   ► like stomping on a giant mud puddle.

01:07:59 ◼   ► And it was pretty cool to watch.

01:08:01 ◼   ► I kind of got it then.

01:08:03 ◼   ► I was like, oh, this is kind of nice.

01:08:07 ◼   ► It wasn't a video, I mean it was a very, very short

01:08:09 ◼   ► video clip with a photo that previewed it basically.

01:08:12 ◼   ► So an actual video would have done a way better job

01:08:16 ◼   ► of showing the moment if it was intended to be in motion.

01:08:20 ◼   ► But it's a lot like the debate between,

01:08:25 ◼   ► like you were saying, between using the iPhone camera

01:08:28 ◼   ► versus using your fancy mirrorless.

01:08:30 ◼   ► And when you have your phone camera

01:08:34 ◼   ► versus some other type of camera,

01:08:36 ◼   ► one thing that is relevant, that is important,

01:08:38 ◼   ► is like, what are you gonna actually use?

01:08:42 ◼   ► People say the camera that you have with you

01:08:44 ◼   ► is the most important camera.

01:08:45 ◼   ► Like, what are you actually gonna use?

01:08:46 ◼   ► Like if you're actually going to take a picture

01:08:50 ◼   ► and think about it and get out your mirrorless camera,

01:08:52 ◼   ► great, it'll be way higher quality

01:08:53 ◼   ► than what you can get with your iPhone.

01:08:55 ◼   ► But if you, you know, the fact is

01:08:57 ◼   ► you're not gonna have it all the time,

01:08:58 ◼   ► and so you're better off not missing a moment

01:09:01 ◼   ► and just capturing it with something

01:09:04 ◼   ► rather than waiting until you have

01:09:06 ◼   ► the better camera out to capture it.

01:09:08 ◼   ► And so with live photos, I think it's gonna be

01:09:09 ◼   ► a similar kind of thing where it's like,

01:09:12 ◼   ► yes, you are better off switching over to video mode

01:09:15 ◼   ► and capturing a 4K video if what you want

01:09:18 ◼   ► is to capture this moment in time in a moving format.

01:09:22 ◼   ► Like video, an actual intentionally shot video

01:09:26 ◼   ► is going to be better at that for most cases.

01:09:29 ◼   ► But with live photos on, you can kind of,

01:09:33 ◼   ► you can get like half of the benefit of a video

01:09:37 ◼   ► with every picture without really having to think about it,

01:09:39 ◼   ► without having to choose that mode.

01:09:42 ◼   ► So that, I think you're gonna get a lot more,

01:09:45 ◼   ► like there are so many moments where you wanna

01:09:47 ◼   ► take a picture and then like, you know, afterwards

01:09:49 ◼   ► like, oh I wish that was, I wish I had a video of that also.

01:09:52 ◼   ► Like that happens a lot.

01:09:53 ◼   ► And so this does solve that.

01:09:55 ◼   ► And it isn't, I don't think it's the best implementation.

01:09:59 ◼   ► There's a number of implementation details

01:10:00 ◼   ► that I would nitpick about.

01:10:02 ◼   ► The quality is a big one.

01:10:05 ◼   ► The fact is it's good enough when you're looking

01:10:06 ◼   ► at it on a phone.

01:10:07 ◼   ► And that is how most people are looking at most pictures

01:10:09 ◼   ► these days, which is unfortunate because as technology

01:10:12 ◼   ► as phones get bigger, as screens get better,

01:10:15 ◼   ► these might not age very well compared to what they could be

01:10:18 ◼   ► if they were higher resolution

01:10:19 ◼   ► and especially higher frame rate would be nice.

01:10:21 ◼   ► But, you know, I assume we will solve that over time.

01:10:26 ◼   ► I really hope that the low resolution and low frame rate

01:10:31 ◼   ► were decided for technical reasons

01:10:34 ◼   ► of like this is what the sensor can do

01:10:36 ◼   ► rather than we don't wanna take up more space

01:10:38 ◼   ► in our 16 gig phones that we keep selling.

01:10:39 ◼   ► I really hope that was the reason.

01:10:41 ◼   ► So...

01:10:42 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:10:43 ◼   ► I don't feel as bothered by the low frame rate, nor the low resolution.

01:10:47 ◼   ► I agree with both of you.

01:10:49 ◼   ► In a perfect world, it would probably be better to have both.

01:10:53 ◼   ► But it just really doesn't bother me.

01:10:54 ◼   ► In fact, I would almost go so far as to say that part of the charm of it is that it's

01:10:59 ◼   ► really a picture that has a little motion around it.

01:11:02 ◼   ► And I think you hit the nail on the head, Marco, that if you're trying to catch motion,

01:11:06 ◼   ► a live photo is not the right way to do it.

01:11:08 ◼   ► A live photo, like I was saying before, is to capture a single photograph that gives

01:11:13 ◼   ► you a little bit of context around it.

01:11:15 ◼   ► And if you really want to capture video, again, I couldn't agree more that the right way

01:11:18 ◼   ► to do it is to capture video.

01:11:20 ◼   ► But I think the low frame rate, and even to a lesser degree, the low resolution is kind

01:11:26 ◼   ► of, I don't know, adorable in its own way, because it's kind of janky in a kind of

01:11:32 ◼   ► fun way.

01:11:33 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:11:34 ◼   ► That probably sounds really contradictory, but I kind of like it.

01:11:37 ◼   ► - It's like Instagram and the filters.

01:11:39 ◼   ► You want it to look like old 70s type photo.

01:11:41 ◼   ► - Right, except that you don't have the high-res original

01:11:44 ◼   ► saved to your camera roll.

01:11:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, fair point.

01:11:46 ◼   ► - Well, and also it's not harkening back to any real past

01:11:50 ◼   ► that actually existed unless you're considering like,

01:11:52 ◼   ► remember what your video looked like in 1990?

01:11:55 ◼   ► Digital video, it was low frame rate and crappy wrist.

01:11:57 ◼   ► Anyway.

01:11:58 ◼   ► - It's almost vine-like.

01:11:59 ◼   ► Like when you watch it, it's almost like a vine.

01:12:01 ◼   ► I mean, it's a lot shorter and that's noticeable,

01:12:03 ◼   ► but the benefit of it,

01:12:04 ◼   ► and you can kind of loop it a couple times,

01:12:06 ◼   ► Like it is kind of viney and I like that about it.

01:12:09 ◼   ► - Did you know, this is an OS feature,

01:12:11 ◼   ► I was messing with my thing the other day,

01:12:13 ◼   ► I think it was in Twitter maybe,

01:12:15 ◼   ► and I was swiping my finger on the screen

01:12:17 ◼   ► when an animated GIF was playing,

01:12:18 ◼   ► and you could scrub back and forth on the GIF.

01:12:20 ◼   ► Is that an OS level feature for displaying GIFs in Safari

01:12:24 ◼   ► or is that an app feature?

01:12:25 ◼   ► - I didn't think so.

01:12:27 ◼   ► - You can go, it isn't just pausing it,

01:12:29 ◼   ► you can actually go back and forth.

01:12:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I move my thumb back and forth

01:12:32 ◼   ► and it would go forward, back, forward, back, you know.

01:12:34 ◼   ► It was a neat way to do it.

01:12:35 ◼   ► Anyway, yeah, that is another, that kind of,

01:12:38 ◼   ► that's not really an aesthetic,

01:12:39 ◼   ► that's an accidental aesthetic.

01:12:41 ◼   ► GIF animations, that someone should do a PhD thesis

01:12:44 ◼   ► if they haven't already about GIF animations.

01:12:46 ◼   ► How we got to this point, because like the history of GIF,

01:12:50 ◼   ► the dawning of GIF resolutions, the dormant phase,

01:12:53 ◼   ► and then having it come roaring back

01:12:54 ◼   ► because every single freaking browser could play it.

01:12:56 ◼   ► It's like, you know what?

01:12:57 ◼   ► I'm done with dealing with embedded video or Flash.

01:12:59 ◼   ► I'm just gonna do everything as GIF.

01:13:01 ◼   ► But it's 256 college, doesn't matter.

01:13:03 ◼   ► used a different 256 every frame of animation, but they're huge, doesn't matter, they play

01:13:07 ◼   ► everywhere and that's all that matters is it plays everywhere and it's just this incredibly

01:13:13 ◼   ► backwards, stupid, archaic format that nevertheless swept across the internet like a fire in the

01:13:19 ◼   ► plains filled with dry grass and now we're kind of stuck with it.

01:13:23 ◼   ► Anyway, just think, in an alternate universe where Apple was more a jokey company, there

01:13:29 ◼   ► would be animated GIFs surrounding your 12 megapixel photo.

01:13:32 ◼   ► So thank goodness for small favors, right?

01:13:34 ◼   ► At least it's only a low frame rate H.264 video instead.

01:13:39 ◼   ► So anyway, the most important question that you guys might not know the answer to is,

01:13:42 ◼   ► what's the default?

01:13:43 ◼   ► You get an iPhone 6s out of the box, is live photos on by default or off by default?

01:13:47 ◼   ► I believe off.

01:13:48 ◼   ► That's kind of a bummer because I feel like this is, this is a, I mean I guess it's easy

01:13:52 ◼   ► to turn on, but I don't know how many people know how to use the, I think it's not particularly

01:13:57 ◼   ► the whole weird swipey interface to going from videos to photos and turning auto HDR

01:14:03 ◼   ► on and off. I've seen a lot of people be confused with that. I know how it works, I've accidentally

01:14:08 ◼   ► switched modes a few times and had to take the extra 2 seconds to switch back and I find

01:14:11 ◼   ► it frustrating. I don't really like that UI. But it's kind of a shame that I thought it

01:14:15 ◼   ► was on by default.

01:14:16 ◼   ► Right. Neither is 4K video, by the way.

01:14:19 ◼   ► That's good. That shouldn't be on by default. That's like, "Well, if you really want it,

01:14:22 ◼   ► you have it, but this is like a... they're going to have TV ads for this that I'm never

01:14:25 ◼   ► going to see. Maybe they already do have TV ads for this showing, "Hey, live photos.

01:14:29 ◼   ► This is cool." People with babies and teenagers will love this. Adults who don't want their

01:14:35 ◼   ► pictures taken might not love it so much.

01:14:37 ◼   ► And you're going to sit there with your dead photos and not enjoy all the fun.

01:14:40 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:14:41 ◼   ► You're dead. Yeah, that would have been the political way to do it. We're not going

01:14:46 ◼   ► to call ours live photos. Everything else is a dead photo. We'll call them feature

01:14:50 ◼   ► photos.

01:14:51 ◼   ► Right.

01:14:52 ◼   ► Good real-time follow-up the gif thing you were talking about as

01:14:56 ◼   ► Jelly is said in the chat and as I confirmed by using his wonderful app to gift wrapped

01:15:01 ◼   ► That is not a system thing that must have been a Twitter effect thing

01:15:05 ◼   ► moving on touch ID

01:15:08 ◼   ► Super fast in the new phones. I wouldn't go so far as to say instant

01:15:12 ◼   ► I feel like most people that I've heard talk about it have said it's just so fast

01:15:17 ◼   ► it's instant and I wouldn't say that I mean it is really really freaking fast noticeably faster faster and

01:15:25 ◼   ► So fast that I am extremely pleased by it every time I use it

01:15:30 ◼   ► But I wouldn't say instant one thing I did want to say though very quickly about that is I found an odd behavior

01:15:36 ◼   ► And I'd be curious if those who are listening have heard this as well feel free to tweet at me

01:15:42 ◼   ► Don't worry about John and Marco I

01:15:45 ◼   ► I had the, I had my iPhone plugged in, my new 6S, plugged into the wall via, I believe

01:15:51 ◼   ► it was an iPad charger and extension and then both Apple and not Apple USB to Lightning

01:15:57 ◼   ► cords.

01:15:58 ◼   ► And for whatever reason I couldn't get my Touch ID to work.

01:16:02 ◼   ► I couldn't get it to work, couldn't get it to work.

01:16:03 ◼   ► Tried re-learning several different fingers, couldn't get it to work, couldn't get it to

01:16:08 ◼   ► work.

01:16:09 ◼   ► In fact, I wouldn't even relearn the damn fingers.

01:16:11 ◼   ► I was starting to get really bummed out because I thought, "Man, I've got a lemon."

01:16:14 ◼   ► And then for whatever reason, I unplugged my phone.

01:16:18 ◼   ► I don't know what possessed me to do this.

01:16:19 ◼   ► And everything started working instantly.

01:16:22 ◼   ► I didn't think much of it because that was the only time I'd had it happen.

01:16:25 ◼   ► And then earlier tonight, Erin had the exact same problem on her phone, which is also a

01:16:32 ◼   ► success.

01:16:33 ◼   ► And I don't know if it's this particular charger.

01:16:35 ◼   ► I don't know if it's gross power coming into our house.

01:16:38 ◼   ► I wouldn't think so, but who knows?

01:16:41 ◼   ► But one way or another, this is two times now that we've had this issue where Touch

01:16:46 ◼   ► ID just would not recognize our fingers until we unplugged the phone.

01:16:51 ◼   ► So I don't know what that could be, but if you did have that experience, I'd love

01:16:55 ◼   ► to hear about it.

01:16:56 ◼   ► So tweet me @CaseyLiss.

01:16:57 ◼   ► That's Apple's new cord protection plan, subtly discouraging you animals from using

01:17:02 ◼   ► your phones while they're plugged in because this is why your cords get destroyed.

01:17:06 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

01:17:06 ◼   ► - At least that's one possible theory,

01:17:08 ◼   ► as I continue my streak of never having broken

01:17:12 ◼   ► a 30-pin or a lightning cable in any way.

01:17:16 ◼   ► - I've broken some 30-pins.

01:17:17 ◼   ► I don't know that I've broken a lightning, though.

01:17:20 ◼   ► - I'm getting worried about our couch charging cable.

01:17:22 ◼   ► It's the end is starting to bunch up,

01:17:25 ◼   ► where it meets the stress boot, it's starting to wrinkle.

01:17:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've seen a lot of pictures of that phenomenon.

01:17:30 ◼   ► Do you use it, ever use it plugged in when you're there?

01:17:34 ◼   ► I usually don't, but Tiff and more importantly,

01:17:38 ◼   ► Adam all the time do.

01:17:40 ◼   ► - Kids destroy everything.

01:17:41 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:17:42 ◼   ► - My son has bent the, like he's got an iPad 2 that he uses

01:17:46 ◼   ► and picture it this way, put the headphone

01:17:49 ◼   ► into an iPhone 2, put an Apple earbud headphone

01:17:51 ◼   ► to an iPhone 2 and then slam it on the ground,

01:17:54 ◼   ► headphone and down.

01:17:55 ◼   ► So the headphone is bent now, like it still works,

01:17:59 ◼   ► but if you hit the headphone in it,

01:18:00 ◼   ► it is bent just at the part where, you know,

01:18:03 ◼   ► it goes into the device, not a good look.

01:18:06 ◼   ► This is the kind of, and the smart cover

01:18:08 ◼   ► is slowly delaminating too, so yeah,

01:18:10 ◼   ► kids destroy everything. - That's no good.

01:18:12 ◼   ► - All right, anything else on Touch ID?

01:18:15 ◼   ► Marco, you were pretty effusive about it,

01:18:17 ◼   ► and I mean, not that I'm not,

01:18:18 ◼   ► but would you say I am being ridiculous,

01:18:20 ◼   ► or would you say that it's damn near instant,

01:18:23 ◼   ► but not quite instant?

01:18:25 ◼   ► - I agree with you, I wouldn't say instant.

01:18:26 ◼   ► It also depends a lot on how precisely it recognized it,

01:18:31 ◼   ► precisely recognized it.

01:18:34 ◼   ► Like, it seems like if it has a really solid match,

01:18:37 ◼   ► I think it can recognize it faster

01:18:39 ◼   ► than if it kinda has to think about it for a second,

01:18:41 ◼   ► you know?

01:18:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:18:43 ◼   ► - So, I think the claim that Apple makes,

01:18:45 ◼   ► which is that it's about twice as fast,

01:18:47 ◼   ► I'd say that's accurate.

01:18:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would agree with that.

01:18:49 ◼   ► It is, again, I don't wanna sound like I'm poo-pooing it.

01:18:53 ◼   ► It is definitely way, way, way faster.

01:18:55 ◼   ► It's just, I had read or heard some of the early rumblings

01:18:59 ◼   ► about it as being like instant.

01:19:01 ◼   ► And it is instant, it is not, but gosh, it is close.

01:19:05 ◼   ► And I love it, I really do.

01:19:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, related to that is this,

01:19:08 ◼   ► these are the links I put in here

01:19:09 ◼   ► for Daniel Jalkut's thing about

01:19:10 ◼   ► how Siri is always listening.

01:19:12 ◼   ► We knew this from the keynote,

01:19:14 ◼   ► and I think people are looking at Apple text docs

01:19:16 ◼   ► or whatever, anyway.

01:19:17 ◼   ► The M9 chip is related to Siri,

01:19:19 ◼   ► and people were asking, "How does that M9 chip

01:19:21 ◼   ► "that tracks when you're stepping or whatever,

01:19:23 ◼   ► "how is that related to Siri?"

01:19:25 ◼   ► All this gets down to having features on your phone,

01:19:30 ◼   ► constantly doing something,

01:19:32 ◼   ► constantly sensing the outside world,

01:19:33 ◼   ► whether it's sensing whether you're shaking the phone

01:19:35 ◼   ► up and down or sensing whether you're saying,

01:19:37 ◼   ► hey Siri or whatever, without killing your battery.

01:19:40 ◼   ► So that means you can't have the main CPU

01:19:42 ◼   ► and the big beefy CPU, GPU, RAM, everything,

01:19:45 ◼   ► big combination running all the time

01:19:47 ◼   ► or waking up every two seconds and say,

01:19:49 ◼   ► did the user say, hey Siri?

01:19:50 ◼   ► Did the user say, hey Siri?

01:19:52 ◼   ► That kills your battery.

01:19:53 ◼   ► So this is-- - People are gonna kill us

01:19:54 ◼   ► for this.

01:19:55 ◼   ► - Maybe I'll have to bleep it.

01:19:58 ◼   ► - Seriously, people, just turn this feature off

01:19:59 ◼   ► on your phone, or give your, can you give your phone

01:20:01 ◼   ► a different name yet?

01:20:02 ◼   ► Is there another thing you can do?

01:20:03 ◼   ► - I don't, well, the 6S actually does like a voice training

01:20:06 ◼   ► thing where it, when during the intro setup,

01:20:09 ◼   ► after it, when it asks to enable Siri,

01:20:11 ◼   ► it forces you to actually train it,

01:20:13 ◼   ► and it kinda teaches you to say,

01:20:15 ◼   ► hey Siri, in your own voice, and it like forces you

01:20:17 ◼   ► through this process.

01:20:19 ◼   ► So now it seems to be matched to your voice.

01:20:22 ◼   ► In practice, I don't know how tightly

01:20:24 ◼   ► it is matched to your voice.

01:20:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, it would be nice if you could rename it.

01:20:27 ◼   ► Anyway, that problem of having a battery-powered device,

01:20:32 ◼   ► always sort of listening, always sensing,

01:20:35 ◼   ► but not killing your CPU is why the little M9

01:20:38 ◼   ► and the little step counter thing is there.

01:20:40 ◼   ► The thing that Apple does is they make dedicated hardware

01:20:42 ◼   ► with its own little dedicated local buffer.

01:20:45 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know how it works inside,

01:20:46 ◼   ► but I'm imagining this is a super lower power chip

01:20:49 ◼   ► that has this one job that just spools crap up.

01:20:52 ◼   ► And if it senses something that it thinks is significant,

01:20:57 ◼   ► it will then wake up the big CPU and say,

01:20:59 ◼   ► "Hey, by the way, the thing just said, hey Siri.

01:21:00 ◼   ► And by the way, here's the audio I recorded

01:21:02 ◼   ► starting when they said, hey Siri, you take it from here."

01:21:05 ◼   ► Like I'm just entirely speculating

01:21:07 ◼   ► about how this actually works.

01:21:08 ◼   ► But the bottom line is custom hardware

01:21:10 ◼   ► that it takes way less power than the actual CPU

01:21:13 ◼   ► to be sort of the guard, the guard post, like listening,

01:21:16 ◼   ► listening for anyone to say, hey Siri,

01:21:17 ◼   ► or counting the steps is even easier

01:21:20 ◼   ► because they can just sit there and tick up a counter

01:21:22 ◼   ► and then when the actual CPU wakes up,

01:21:23 ◼   ► it's like, by the way,

01:21:24 ◼   ► while you were just sleeping over there,

01:21:26 ◼   ► this many more steps took place

01:21:27 ◼   ► or here's the step data or whatever.

01:21:29 ◼   ► So that's smart use of hardware.

01:21:34 ◼   ► Features like that are coming all the time.

01:21:36 ◼   ► Touch ID is kind of like that.

01:21:38 ◼   ► I don't know to what extent it's already

01:21:39 ◼   ► completely independent where the Touch ID sensor

01:21:41 ◼   ► and its little secure enclave and everything

01:21:43 ◼   ► can work entirely independently of the CPU

01:21:45 ◼   ► and then just pass on the information.

01:21:47 ◼   ► That must be true to some degree

01:21:49 ◼   ► just for the security implications,

01:21:50 ◼   ► but the way you get these things to be more responsive

01:21:54 ◼   ► is not like, oh, we need the A10 CPU.

01:21:56 ◼   ► No, it's custom hardware to say,

01:21:59 ◼   ► the main part of the system

01:22:00 ◼   ► is not involved in this process at all.

01:22:02 ◼   ► This is like a sense organ

01:22:04 ◼   ► that relays and buffers this information,

01:22:06 ◼   ► and the faster you can make those little sense organs

01:22:09 ◼   ► while keeping them low power,

01:22:10 ◼   ► the better this is gonna get.

01:22:11 ◼   ► So Marco is pegging it at about twice the speed,

01:22:14 ◼   ► just like Apple said,

01:22:15 ◼   ► that they can do that twice the speed

01:22:16 ◼   ► for another two or three years.

01:22:18 ◼   ► it really will be instant pretty quickly,

01:22:20 ◼   ► 'cause I don't think there's any particular limit

01:22:23 ◼   ► on the sensing.

01:22:24 ◼   ► Once you're touching it, you're touching it.

01:22:25 ◼   ► It's not as if you need to,

01:22:27 ◼   ► it needs to do this incredibly big computation.

01:22:30 ◼   ► You could just dump the raw sensor data out

01:22:32 ◼   ► once you're touching it,

01:22:34 ◼   ► and then it's the processing and the matching or whatever.

01:22:37 ◼   ► But yeah, if they can double it in one year,

01:22:41 ◼   ► I'm optimistic that this will eventually actually be instant.

01:22:47 ◼   ► - All right, anything else on the hardware?

01:22:50 ◼   ► I have one other quick thought about the 6S,

01:22:51 ◼   ► but anything else on the hardware?

01:22:53 ◼   ► - How's the battery been for you?

01:22:54 ◼   ► For me, I'd say it's about the same.

01:22:56 ◼   ► - I'd say it's about the same, maybe marginally worse,

01:23:01 ◼   ► but I also wonder if it's all in my head

01:23:03 ◼   ► because I've been looking out for exactly that.

01:23:05 ◼   ► - Right, exactly, yeah, it's hard to know.

01:23:07 ◼   ► - Well, if it's about the same, that means it's worse

01:23:09 ◼   ► because this is a fresh battery

01:23:11 ◼   ► versus your one-year-old 6, right?

01:23:13 ◼   ► So it should be better than a one-year-old 6, so.

01:23:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it is not dramatically different, but I would definitely not say it's better,

01:23:24 ◼   ► and I'm skeptical that when I say it's worse, it really honestly is.

01:23:28 ◼   ► It may just be me thinking it is.

01:23:30 ◼   ► You're also playing with your phones more, maybe.

01:23:31 ◼   ► Like, you just got the success, you're force-touching things, the live photos and all that other

01:23:35 ◼   ► stuff, so it'll probably settle down.

01:23:36 ◼   ► But anyway, it being a wash seems reasonable.

01:23:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:23:40 ◼   ► My final thought about the success—and I tweeted about this a few days ago—it was

01:23:45 ◼   ► interesting to me that anecdotally, based on zero facts whatsoever, I saw a lot less

01:23:51 ◼   ► kvetching about, "Oh, my phone wasn't available. Oh, my phone wasn't available. I really wanted

01:23:57 ◼   ► this in such and such color and such and such capacity, and it wasn't available." And I

01:24:01 ◼   ► did see some of that for the rose gold pretty quickly. But, you know, last year, my recollection

01:24:07 ◼   ► anyway was that by 3.15 in the morning in the one true time zone, which is Eastern time,

01:24:14 ◼   ► A lot of people were already starting to say, "Oh my God, my thing is sold out. Oh my gosh."

01:24:18 ◼   ► And I didn't see much of that this year. And in fact, somebody, I can't remember who it was, said to me,

01:24:23 ◼   ► they pre-ordered like two or three days before the first, the launch day.

01:24:30 ◼   ► And they were still able to reserve one for launch day.

01:24:33 ◼   ► And I just found that surprising. And so I was theorizing, this was right before the numbers came out,

01:24:38 ◼   ► that, well, maybe they didn't sell as many, or, you know, maybe it's just that it's easier

01:24:42 ◼   ► because a lot of these components are similar.

01:24:43 ◼   ► And then I got to thinking, well,

01:24:44 ◼   ► not all that many of these components are that similar.

01:24:47 ◼   ► And as it turns out, the numbers were through the roof.

01:24:50 ◼   ► And I didn't realize at the time I had talked about this,

01:24:52 ◼   ► but apparently the S years are always better.

01:24:55 ◼   ► So I don't know what to make of this.

01:24:57 ◼   ► Maybe it's just that Tim Cook's ops

01:24:59 ◼   ► are really getting that much better

01:25:01 ◼   ► or just getting more mature, if you will.

01:25:04 ◼   ► But I was impressed by how few inventory problems

01:25:07 ◼   ► we heard about with the exception perhaps of the rose gold.

01:25:10 ◼   ► Well, one aspect of that that we have here in the show notes

01:25:12 ◼   ► is that the A9 is being made by two different manufacturers.

01:25:15 ◼   ► I'm not sure if that was the case with the A8, but--

01:25:18 ◼   ► I think this is the first time they've ever done that.

01:25:20 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's a Taiwan semiconductor,

01:25:22 ◼   ► and Samsung are both making the A9.

01:25:24 ◼   ► And the most interesting thing, I think,

01:25:26 ◼   ► is that they're both making slightly different A9s.

01:25:28 ◼   ► I guess they just have different transistor layouts.

01:25:30 ◼   ► Maybe they're actually different sizes, different feature sizes

01:25:33 ◼   ► on them.

01:25:33 ◼   ► Anyway, we'll put a link to the chip work story

01:25:35 ◼   ► that they actually opened these things up

01:25:37 ◼   ► and sliced open the chips and took

01:25:39 ◼   ► look at the actual little chip that's inside the package, and lo and behold, two different

01:25:43 ◼   ► things. So that helps with inventory. You know, we talked about like, what is the thing

01:25:46 ◼   ► that is most supply constrained on these phones? It's usually the thing that's hardest to make,

01:25:50 ◼   ► and that's usually either something having to do with the camera sensors or something

01:25:53 ◼   ► having to do with the CPU/GPU system on a chip thing. And this year it looks like they

01:25:57 ◼   ► were able to make a lot of them. Although, I told my wife this, "Hey, people aren't getting

01:26:01 ◼   ► sold out and you could have just, you didn't have to wake up at 3 a.m. and you could have

01:26:04 ◼   ► just woke up in the morning or whatever." And she's like, "Great, I'll be able to get

01:26:06 ◼   ► thing right away, and then I went to the Apple website or whatever, and it's like three to

01:26:09 ◼   ► five weeks for the model she wanted.

01:26:12 ◼   ► So maybe that was just a fluke, and by the time he does buy it, there'll be plenty of

01:26:15 ◼   ► inventory, but it seems like it's not a bottomless pit.

01:26:20 ◼   ► It seems like the demand did actually exhaust supply eventually.

01:26:25 ◼   ► I haven't looked in recent days.

01:26:26 ◼   ► I'm hoping by the time her contract is up and she goes for her other phone, we can just

01:26:30 ◼   ► walk into an Apple store and there won't be a line of people there, and we can just get

01:26:33 ◼   ► the phone that she wants.

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01:29:43 ◼   ► We started recording at 9 this evening because basically I'm an idiot, but it worked out

01:29:47 ◼   ► okay, so I'm a genius.

01:29:49 ◼   ► In any case, initial impressions, already really like the split view, whatever they're

01:29:55 ◼   ► calling it, for having to opt side by side and full screen.

01:29:59 ◼   ► I think I like San Francisco.

01:30:02 ◼   ► I feel like every platform I see San Francisco on, my first reaction is, "Eh," and then over

01:30:08 ◼   ► time I end up really liking it.

01:30:11 ◼   ► My site does indeed support pin tabs, which I'm really excited about, because I had no

01:30:17 ◼   ► I had no idea if that was working or not.

01:30:19 ◼   ► I didn't run any of the betas.

01:30:20 ◼   ► This is all brand new to me, but so far so good.

01:30:23 ◼   ► I really like it, and I did not lose my mouse yet,

01:30:27 ◼   ► but Renz in the chat asked, and the mouse jiggle

01:30:30 ◼   ► is very creepy and kind of delightful all at once.

01:30:33 ◼   ► So that's my initial impressions.

01:30:36 ◼   ► Any other initial impressions from you guys?

01:30:39 ◼   ► - Well, should we do, is there gonna be

01:30:42 ◼   ► an official John Siracusa review of El Cap on our show,

01:30:45 ◼   ► Or will you kill me for even saying that?

01:30:48 ◼   ► I haven't even installed the GM yet.

01:30:50 ◼   ► God, look at you.

01:30:51 ◼   ► You really kicked back.

01:30:52 ◼   ► I know, you've graduated and suddenly it's like, whatever man.

01:30:55 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it's like being spoiler, it's like my new change in philosophy of trying

01:30:59 ◼   ► to be relatively spoiler free for the new Star Wars movies, whereas with episode one

01:31:03 ◼   ► I wanted to know almost everything about it, and now I'm trying an opposite approach.

01:31:07 ◼   ► So for OS X, it's like, you know, I installed the betas, I filled around with it, but I

01:31:12 ◼   ► I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna do this

01:31:14 ◼   ► like a regular person.

01:31:15 ◼   ► I see the keynote, I installed the betas,