ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I have too many freaking t-shirts.

00:00:01 ◼   ► I made the mistake of using my,

00:00:04 ◼   ► the system I have for storing t-shirts

00:00:05 ◼   ► is like my nerd t-shirts go on hangers

00:00:08 ◼   ► instead of being folded up.

00:00:09 ◼   ► And I figured that's fine when I have two nerd t-shirts

00:00:12 ◼   ► and I have a thousand nerd t-shirts

00:00:14 ◼   ► and half my closet is nerd t-shirts and hangers.

00:00:17 ◼   ► I just really need more closet space.

00:00:19 ◼   ► That's the main problem.

00:00:20 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:00:22 ◼   ► - We should probably actually start the show.

00:00:23 ◼   ► So we have some follow-up from all the way

00:00:26 ◼   ► across the planet in Australia.

00:00:28 ◼   ► John, would you like to tell us about what Wade from Australia said?

00:00:31 ◼   ► This is the best theory I've heard so far, although it's still kind of vague and shaky

00:00:36 ◼   ► because based on fake products and rumors of why a 12-inch MacBook Air might only have

00:00:43 ◼   ► one USB port on it instead of two.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Oh, geez.

00:00:47 ◼   ► I cannot wait for this thing to come out so we can stop talking about it.

00:00:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:50 ◼   ► No, but that's the worst part of the rumor.

00:00:51 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, we're retinas green, really thin, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:00:54 ◼   ► And like the one they throw is like, one port?

00:00:56 ◼   ► Why would you do that on purpose?

00:00:57 ◼   ► And then you're like, I just, I need to have a reason

00:01:00 ◼   ► because it just doesn't make any sense otherwise.

00:01:04 ◼   ► So this is about the PCI express lanes.

00:01:06 ◼   ► How many PCI express lanes are supported

00:01:09 ◼   ► by the core M chip set that we assume

00:01:11 ◼   ► this fake product will use.

00:01:12 ◼   ► And according to Wade from Australia,

00:01:16 ◼   ► it supports 12 lanes of PCI express, four gigabits per lane.

00:01:20 ◼   ► So it means you need more than two lanes per USB 3.1 port

00:01:24 ◼   ► if you want the full speed, which I would assume they do.

00:01:27 ◼   ► So if you start adding up the ports,

00:01:29 ◼   ► you end up with one lane for the PCI Express SSD

00:01:32 ◼   ► and one for like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and stuff like that.

00:01:35 ◼   ► And you can get the chip set

00:01:37 ◼   ► with different combinations of lanes.

00:01:38 ◼   ► And Wade's speculation is that

00:01:41 ◼   ► if you can fit everything in four lanes,

00:01:45 ◼   ► then you don't have to,

00:01:46 ◼   ► you can get a chip set that just has those four lanes

00:01:48 ◼   ► you don't need to spend power

00:01:50 ◼   ► like pulling the other lanes for devices.

00:01:51 ◼   ► Like in other words, you could shut down some of the lanes.

00:01:55 ◼   ► You're going to need more than four single lanes just for USB 3.1

00:02:00 ◼   ► So you need three lanes for that and two more for other radios in the SSD

00:02:03 ◼   ► So you're already at five if you want to add another port you have to bump it up at least from five to eight

00:02:09 ◼   ► And I guess all this depends on do you really get a big power savings from keeping it at or under four at or under?

00:02:15 ◼   ► Five like is there a point at which?

00:02:17 ◼   ► You have to spend like the power budget takes a leap is just you know does it not scale linearly so

00:02:24 ◼   ► PCI Express lanes are a sort of the

00:02:26 ◼   ► the

00:02:28 ◼   ► currency of the internals of

00:02:30 ◼   ► modern Macs in terms of how many do you have and then what can you spend them on and stuff like that because you know

00:02:34 ◼   ► Once you're out of them, you're out of them. And all the other thing is that USB

00:02:38 ◼   ► 3.1 is not built into the chipsets. That's why you need to use PCI Express lanes

00:02:42 ◼   ► not like it's not it's not integrated into the chipsets, so

00:02:45 ◼   ► I

00:02:48 ◼   ► Buy more of these theories because it plays into

00:02:51 ◼   ► hardware constraints that Apple doesn't have control over and also power saving but you know

00:02:56 ◼   ► It's a speculated machine from a mock-up and we don't know exactly what kind of trash they have and you never know

00:03:02 ◼   ► What kind of crazy stuff that Apple has inside their laptops again with the history of the repackaged chip in the original MacBook Air

00:03:09 ◼   ► Who's to say the things that are offered by Intel right now are the things that constrain Apple specifically?

00:03:15 ◼   ► So we'll wait and see I don't I don't think we've ever actually seen correct me if I'm wrong

00:03:19 ◼   ► but just off the top of my head here,

00:03:21 ◼   ► I don't think we've ever actually seen Intel

00:03:24 ◼   ► give Apple access to a chipset, or even a chip itself,

00:03:29 ◼   ► that wasn't available on the market,

00:03:31 ◼   ► with the one exception of the original MacBook Air,

00:03:33 ◼   ► but that was only a, that was like a physical repackaging,

00:03:36 ◼   ► like to make the pins smaller, but like the chip,

00:03:38 ◼   ► the die was still the same

00:03:39 ◼   ► as what everyone else was getting.

00:03:40 ◼   ► - Well, I assume Apple would be willing

00:03:42 ◼   ► to put another chip on the board

00:03:44 ◼   ► that's not part of Intel's chipset,

00:03:45 ◼   ► like, well, the chipset has this,

00:03:46 ◼   ► and then we buy from whatever other weird manufacturer

00:03:49 ◼   ► that we have some relationship with for iOS hardware or something.

00:03:51 ◼   ► This other chip that gives I mean, they have to add a chip anyway

00:03:55 ◼   ► for the USB three controller.

00:03:56 ◼   ► And so who is making that controller chip for them?

00:03:59 ◼   ► They could probably get that company to make a special chip just for them.

00:04:03 ◼   ► And I don't know, like I'm not willing to rule out almost anything

00:04:07 ◼   ► because Apple has such incredible volumes and such leverage with with chip makers

00:04:12 ◼   ► that, yeah, they more or less can't make Intel do special things for them.

00:04:15 ◼   ► But at this point, like if you look at the Iris Pro graphics and everything,

00:04:18 ◼   ► who has been leaning on Intel so hard for the many, many years to improve their GPUs?

00:04:24 ◼   ► I would attribute a lot of Intel's recent GPU focus on the things that Apple said that

00:04:29 ◼   ► it needs from them and has influenced their multi-year roadmap.

00:04:32 ◼   ► They don't get it exclusively, everybody gets it, but that kind of focus and the fact that

00:04:38 ◼   ► these chips show up in Apple's machines, I would assume there's a lot of influence there

00:04:42 ◼   ► in terms of what Intel decides to make.

00:04:46 ◼   ► So we also had some feedback from Tom Holliday.

00:04:51 ◼   ► He had said that the rumored 12-inch lack of Thunderbolt sorrows me.

00:04:55 ◼   ► The MacBook Air plus 27-inch Thunderbolt display configuration allows "sesile components"

00:05:00 ◼   ► – I've never heard that word before.

00:05:02 ◼   ► Look it up!

00:05:03 ◼   ► I thought it was like a typo for several.

00:05:06 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Nope, it's not.

00:05:08 ◼   ► It's a word.

00:05:09 ◼   ► "Sesile."

00:05:10 ◼   ► SAT word.

00:05:11 ◼   ► Of an organism, for example, a barnacle fixed in one place or immobile.

00:05:15 ◼   ► Ah, gotcha.

00:05:16 ◼   ► - There's a word, I learned that word as a description

00:05:18 ◼   ► of my friend's cat when I was in high school.

00:05:21 ◼   ► That was the SAT word association.

00:05:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:24 ◼   ► Dan's cat is sessile and it's true.

00:05:27 ◼   ► - Okay, so the Thunderbolt,

00:05:28 ◼   ► the MacBook Air plus 27 inch Thunderbolt display

00:05:30 ◼   ► configuration allows sessile components

00:05:32 ◼   ► like external hard drives, scanners, and printers,

00:05:34 ◼   ► and a 27 inch display to be set up for the desktop

00:05:37 ◼   ► while the MacBook retains portability.

00:05:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I put this in the notes because

00:05:42 ◼   ► we talked about this in the past shows,

00:05:45 ◼   ► But all these things that you get out of Thunderbolt,

00:05:48 ◼   ► in terms of having multiple devices going through one

00:05:51 ◼   ► particular chain, you could approximate them.

00:05:55 ◼   ► You get the display.

00:05:56 ◼   ► You get the USB.

00:05:58 ◼   ► You could have a USB type hub thing.

00:05:59 ◼   ► You could connect hard drives through USB.

00:06:03 ◼   ► And it wouldn't be maybe as nice or as fancy as Thunderbolt is.

00:06:07 ◼   ► But the question that I had that this brought to mind

00:06:09 ◼   ► is, does this mean-- if Apple comes out with this thing,

00:06:13 ◼   ► You know thunderbolts is off most of those machines and everything is USB 3

00:06:16 ◼   ► Assuming they ever revise their stupid monitors does the next equivalent of the Thunderbolt display?

00:06:22 ◼   ► Try to replace the Thunderbolt display with one that connects just through USB

00:06:28 ◼   ► Or is that not something they're interested in anymore because I use the same arrangement like you have a portable machine you plug one cable

00:06:35 ◼   ► Into it and then you have all the other ports that don't fit on the laptop and it's a really nice arrangement

00:06:40 ◼   ► That will go away with this unless Apple comes out with a new display

00:06:44 ◼   ► That's like their USB hub display where you know the the external monitor

00:06:48 ◼   ► It's one cable you plug it in and you get a USB hub where you can hook up all your hard drives and everything and you

00:06:53 ◼   ► Also get the display all through a single cable

00:06:55 ◼   ► And I would certainly hope that they would because I have lusted after the Thunderbolt display since it was a thing

00:07:01 ◼   ► It's been like two or three years now, right?

00:07:04 ◼   ► But anyway, I've wanted one so badly

00:07:07 ◼   ► but I'm way too cheap to buy one and I would hope that they would still do this kind of a setup, but I

00:07:12 ◼   ► am extremely skeptical that they would do this kind of a setup because

00:07:16 ◼   ► Apple just I mean when is Apple ever really believed in in a docking station there was that one where like the the whole entire

00:07:22 ◼   ► Folded up laptop slid into it Stephen Hackett is furious right now. I don't remember the name of it duo doc

00:07:28 ◼   ► Thank you

00:07:29 ◼   ► But I mean other than that like docking station is not really a thing which is

00:07:32 ◼   ► Actually kind of frustrating to me because I work in an office full of Dells where they all have these docking stations

00:07:37 ◼   ► Which are aesthetically hideous, but functionally awesome, and I kind of wish that my Mac would do something similar

00:07:44 ◼   ► But yeah, I I don't know. I don't see them really putting too much effort into that

00:07:49 ◼   ► Well, I mean the answer to that is those like Belkin and Thunderbolt dock things, but nobody really buys those as far as I can tell

00:07:55 ◼   ► Well, they're so expensive. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean now I think they're like 200 bucks down from 300

00:08:00 ◼   ► but still it's still a lot but still like

00:08:02 ◼   ► I don't see I think if this is the direction Apple is going with all of their laptops

00:08:07 ◼   ► They might be concerned with things like this, but for this one model

00:08:11 ◼   ► I don't think we need to read too much into again and again this is assuming it's all correct with these rumors

00:08:16 ◼   ► but I don't think I have to read too much into it because

00:08:19 ◼   ► You guys are all talking about from the perspective of people who use laptops

00:08:23 ◼   ► much of the time or most of the time as desktops with a bunch of stuff plugged into them and have these these heavy external needs I

00:08:31 ◼   ► I think it's a good idea for most of Apple's laptops to cater to that because that is probably how most laptops that are sold are actually used.

00:08:38 ◼   ► Especially with power users where you're plugging a bunch of stuff in and might have an external monitor and stuff.

00:08:43 ◼   ► But I think there is nothing wrong with Apple having a model in the lineup that does not cater to being plugged into stuff all the time.

00:08:51 ◼   ► That won't be good at that. I mean the original MacBook Air was awful about that.

00:08:56 ◼   ► The newer ones only got better because of Thunderbolt.

00:08:59 ◼   ► I think there is nothing saying that Apple needs

00:09:04 ◼   ► to solve the problem of lots of good external bandwidth

00:09:08 ◼   ► or external ports or anything like that

00:09:10 ◼   ► with this model of MacBook.

00:09:12 ◼   ► I think they could be just fine with this one,

00:09:14 ◼   ► mostly made to be portable, to not be used

00:09:18 ◼   ► while plugged into a bunch of stuff most of the time.

00:09:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, I think you might be onto something there

00:09:23 ◼   ► because now that I'm thinking about my own example

00:09:25 ◼   ► of work in docking stations, I think a lot of the reason

00:09:28 ◼   ► we have the docking stations everywhere and dual monitors everywhere is just because it's nice to

00:09:33 ◼   ► have it. But for non-developers, you know, my company that I work for is probably half business

00:09:40 ◼   ► consultants and half technical consultants like myself. For the business folks, I think they like

00:09:46 ◼   ► having a second monitor, but I would guess that most of them would tell you, "Well, you know,

00:09:51 ◼   ► if it went away, whatever." And so if I think about it, typically they're not plugging in an

00:09:57 ◼   ► external hard drive. Typically they're not plugging in Ethernet. Typically they're not

00:10:01 ◼   ► plugging in an external monitor unless it just happens to be sitting there. So generally

00:10:05 ◼   ► speaking a lot of these folks all they plug in is power to your point Marco and that's

00:10:09 ◼   ► it. And so would it really matter if this hyper portable computer only can take power

00:10:14 ◼   ► in one other thing? Maybe not. You know the this Macbook Air two things about it like

00:10:21 ◼   ► potentially like can't they just have one model on the line. One I think the rumor maybe

00:10:25 ◼   ► Maybe not this specific when we were talking about the 9-5 Mac one, but for the past few

00:10:28 ◼   ► years it was like, "Oh, the 11 and the 13 are going away and it will just be replaced

00:10:31 ◼   ► by a single 12."

00:10:33 ◼   ► If that ends up being the case, it's fine for them to have one model that would be like

00:10:37 ◼   ► this, but if you're replacing two models with it, it seems weird that, you know, for the

00:10:42 ◼   ► people who wanted something ultra-portable and you don't care about the ports, the 11

00:10:45 ◼   ► inch makes sense, and for the people who want a bigger, sort of more full-sized laptop than

00:10:48 ◼   ► the 13 inch, but if you replace them both with the 12, it's kind of weird for it to

00:10:53 ◼   ► say that oh you know you can't use this one like use other ones like to revert to the original

00:10:57 ◼   ► macbook air but there is an advantage to not using thunderbolt and it mostly has to do with the

00:11:02 ◼   ► annoying nature of thunderbolt so as we have a thunderbolt display here and a macbook air

00:11:07 ◼   ► and it's got the little little squid type cable coming out the end of it where it's got the mag

00:11:14 ◼   ► safe power thing to power your laptop from the monitor and then it also has the thunderbolt cable

00:11:20 ◼   ► And part of it is that they made the little squid tentacles too short,

00:11:24 ◼   ► so that because they're on opposite sides of the MacBook Air,

00:11:26 ◼   ► you have to put the Thunderbolt on the left side facing you and the power on

00:11:30 ◼   ► the or whatever is the opposite, the power on the left side of the Thunderbolt

00:11:33 ◼   ► on the right. And the Thunderbolt connector,

00:11:36 ◼   ► because it has a chip in the connector itself,

00:11:38 ◼   ► it sticks out like an inch from the computer with this big, you know, inflexible,

00:11:43 ◼   ► you know, the hard plastic part of the connector.

00:11:46 ◼   ► And it's just not it's not great.

00:11:48 ◼   ► Like the cables have are sharp angles and it makes the thing wider and it's not nice-looking

00:11:54 ◼   ► With the USB thing, even though it can't do all the things that Thunderbolt can do

00:11:59 ◼   ► One the cable won't have a giant inch long hard plastic connector sticking out of it

00:12:04 ◼   ► It can be a much, you know smaller more flexible thing and two if they combine the power with it

00:12:09 ◼   ► You also won't need to have the split squid thing where you have the mag save on one side and you know

00:12:14 ◼   ► You will literally be able to plug in just one cable instead of right now

00:12:17 ◼   ► "Oh, it's one cable, but it splits in two at the end."

00:12:20 ◼   ► And that splitting is kind of annoying.

00:12:21 ◼   ► Every time you take it apart, you gotta take it,

00:12:23 ◼   ► you know, pull the things out from each other

00:12:26 ◼   ► and then it slides behind the thing.

00:12:27 ◼   ► If you just have one little cable that was a USB cable,

00:12:29 ◼   ► I would, it would be easier to sort of plug and unplug.

00:12:32 ◼   ► And I'm generally anti-dock

00:12:33 ◼   ► because of the whole docking procedure being awkward.

00:12:36 ◼   ► I'd much rather just put it down on the desk

00:12:38 ◼   ► and plug in one small cable.

00:12:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree with you.

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00:13:40 ◼   ► Now Casey, you're a consultant.

00:13:42 ◼   ► - Indeed.

00:13:44 ◼   ► How is the world of time tracking out there?

00:13:46 ◼   ► I've only been a consultant briefly,

00:13:48 ◼   ► so I don't really know much about it.

00:13:50 ◼   ► Is this a problem?

00:13:51 ◼   ► Is this a challenge?

00:13:53 ◼   ► - It's a challenge if you're doing more

00:13:56 ◼   ► than one thing at once.

00:13:57 ◼   ► I'm lucky enough that generally speaking,

00:13:59 ◼   ► I only have one client.

00:14:01 ◼   ► I come in, I work all day on that one client's one thing,

00:14:03 ◼   ► and then I go home.

00:14:04 ◼   ► But that wasn't always the case for me.

00:14:06 ◼   ► And actually, and this is a true story,

00:14:09 ◼   ► I taught myself C# by writing a time tracking app

00:14:12 ◼   ► for myself, so I was just--

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00:14:16 ◼   ► I taught myself C#.

00:14:17 ◼   ► We're going to get so much hate mail.

00:14:19 ◼   ► I taught myself C#.

00:14:24 ◼   ► I did that by writing a really, really crappy time tracking app, and this is so much better

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00:15:28 ◼   ► Once again, I'm letting Casey track his hours

00:15:30 ◼   ► with C hashtag perfectly fine.

00:15:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:15:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, one more thing I'll add to the stall

00:15:36 ◼   ► bottom of the power.

00:15:37 ◼   ► We briefly mentioned it before,

00:15:39 ◼   ► but it's worth mentioning again.

00:15:42 ◼   ► The idea-- we talked about, oh, get rid of MagSafe.

00:15:44 ◼   ► Can you power it through USB?

00:15:46 ◼   ► Yes, you can.

00:15:47 ◼   ► Despite that, that you could either use MagSafe or USB,

00:15:51 ◼   ► people also are interested in the idea of powering it

00:15:53 ◼   ► the way the watch is powered, with a thing that

00:15:56 ◼   ► doesn't plug into it, but a thing that sort of attaches

00:15:58 ◼   ► to the outside.

00:15:59 ◼   ► Please don't.

00:16:00 ◼   ► Please.

00:16:00 ◼   ► It's such a bad idea.

00:16:02 ◼   ► And I don't think that makes any sense, because USB will work.

00:16:06 ◼   ► We know that.

00:16:07 ◼   ► It'll be fine.

00:16:09 ◼   ► I'm not sure what the advantage would be to having a big, warty sort of metal thing that

00:16:16 ◼   ► you place on top of it.

00:16:19 ◼   ► Space is already at a premium and I'm not sure where you would put that.

00:16:23 ◼   ► And then who wants to have a bunch of connectors with a big circle metal thing?

00:16:27 ◼   ► I'm not even sure how that will work with the watch.

00:16:29 ◼   ► Another thing is having some kind of pad or something to use inductive charging where

00:16:34 ◼   ► you put it on the pad and it charges.

00:16:36 ◼   ► That is a little bit better appeal because then you're not plugging stuff in, you're

00:16:38 ◼   ► just chucking it down and you put stuff on the pad.

00:16:40 ◼   ► I'm not sure how fast those chargers are, but it could be done.

00:16:44 ◼   ► The problem pads have is, I think you still need something that you plug in, because yeah,

00:16:49 ◼   ► you've got a pad in the place where you put it in your home, but when you travel, do you

00:16:52 ◼   ► want to travel with a big pad or a little adapter?

00:16:55 ◼   ► Having something to plug, the smallest possible thing that you can plug in, would be nice.

00:17:00 ◼   ► Someone in the chat room asked, "Why would the pad have to be big?"

00:17:02 ◼   ► Well, if it's small, then again, you're worrying about alignment issues or something.

00:17:06 ◼   ► The whole idea is you just want to put the thing down somewhere and not align it and

00:17:09 ◼   ► not stick a little warty thing on it.

00:17:12 ◼   ► Plugging a little tiny thing into a little tiny port is actually very straightforward

00:17:15 ◼   ► and fast compared to, at least in the past, the type of things that they've had where

00:17:19 ◼   ► you put your phone down on a certain pad or whatever.

00:17:21 ◼   ► That's why you want it to be kind of like a big thing where it doesn't matter where

00:17:23 ◼   ► you put it, just put it anywhere, it'll charge, it'll be fine.

00:17:26 ◼   ► So that's possible, but Apple really hasn't gone there and I think it mostly has to do

00:17:30 ◼   ► with just the space that type of solution would take up and the fact that plugging in

00:17:34 ◼   ► seems to work.

00:17:35 ◼   ► The final one, which I think is the most fun one, it was brought to my attention by someone

00:17:39 ◼   ► whose name is now lost to the midst of time.

00:17:42 ◼   ► Someone sent me a link to a YouTube video called "Wytricity for wirelessly sending power."

00:17:46 ◼   ► We'll put links to it in the show notes.

00:17:49 ◼   ► The website is wytricity.com.

00:17:50 ◼   ► You can take a look at it.

00:17:52 ◼   ► And it made me recall our past conversations about the Artemis PSEL stuff for sort of doing

00:17:59 ◼   ► targeted wireless to avoid interference and everything where you pre-calculate the sort

00:18:04 ◼   ► of interference map of all the different sources of wireless and you focus the signal destined

00:18:10 ◼   ► for your laptop right on your laptop.

00:18:12 ◼   ► And one of the vague, rumor-y kind of hinty things was like, "Oh, we might be able to

00:18:16 ◼   ► use this for something more than just sending data."

00:18:18 ◼   ► And I think that was a hint at like, we could do wireless power because once we have the

00:18:23 ◼   ► ability to focus a particular signal on a particular location, we can power things that

00:18:28 ◼   ► way as well.

00:18:31 ◼   ► Both of those seem crazy to me, but crazy in a fun way.

00:18:34 ◼   ► I guess you could like, you know, accidentally slowly bake the inside of your hand if it's

00:18:39 ◼   ► aiming the wireless power at the wrong spot and it's sort of microwaving your hand, that

00:18:42 ◼   ► would be bad.

00:18:45 ◼   ► But I don't know, like all of these, all these things that are possible, you know, because

00:18:50 ◼   ► every time powering stuff comes up, people are like, this is not new technology, inductive

00:18:53 ◼   ► stuff is not new, wireless power is not new, this is the things that work, you know, someone

00:18:57 ◼   ► will bring out Nikola Tesla and say that we had this hundreds of years ago and just, you

00:19:01 ◼   ► know, whatever.

00:19:03 ◼   ► The physics and the technology behind it all seems to be there, but the products, like

00:19:07 ◼   ► the products that people... it hasn't caught on to the degree that other technology has.

00:19:12 ◼   ► Where, usually, you know, when... if something is going to gain traction, like really high

00:19:16 ◼   ► res screens, like, well, do people really want that?

00:19:18 ◼   ► Yeah, they more or less do.

00:19:20 ◼   ► Even though they can't really tell, it just catches on, it goes through everything, and

00:19:22 ◼   ► pretty soon the giant chunky pixels will be gone from a handheld device.

00:19:25 ◼   ► It's just because it's better, it's unequivocally better, everybody likes it better, you can

00:19:29 ◼   ► do more things with it, it looks sharper, even if most people can't tell, it's good.

00:19:32 ◼   ► inductive charging, wireless power, all those things have not made that

00:19:38 ◼   ► breakthrough. Is it because they just haven't been done right or is it because

00:19:42 ◼   ► the thing they're trying to replace is not as annoying as people think it is

00:19:47 ◼   ► and people don't mind just plugging something in and it's more

00:19:50 ◼   ► straightforward or I don't know. But I would love to see one of these things

00:19:56 ◼   ► I've never used any of these for any appreciable period of time but I'd love to

00:19:59 ◼   ► to see one of them actually end up being like the new thing because all of them have that

00:20:03 ◼   ► sci-fi kind of feel where it's like plugging things in it's like you know Back to the Future

00:20:08 ◼   ► which we should celebrate Back to the Future Part 2 which is celebrated because we are

00:20:10 ◼   ► now in the year of Back to the Future Part 2 where he sees the what was it the name of

00:20:15 ◼   ► the video game in the future.

00:20:18 ◼   ► Diana what the hell was that?

00:20:20 ◼   ► I haven't seen Back to the Future 2 in years.

00:20:24 ◼   ► Anyway Marty McFly goes over to it and he picks up the little plastic like gun thing

00:20:29 ◼   ► at the screen like use your hands it's like a baby's toy well you plug it in

00:20:34 ◼   ► how barbaric we're not there yet but it would be cool John I love that Marco and

00:20:39 ◼   ► I have beaten you down to the point that you have to go on a preamble to make

00:20:43 ◼   ► your pop culture reference make sense I just couldn't remember the name of the

00:20:47 ◼   ► thing was I don't know one in the chat room has it yet

00:20:49 ◼   ► face was here she would know it's it's a like a Western and shoot-em-up game wild

00:20:53 ◼   ► - I'm old.

00:20:54 ◼   ► - I'm old.

00:20:55 ◼   ► - Someone in the chat room thinks I can't tell if that's.

00:20:57 ◼   ► - Right.

00:20:58 ◼   ► - Anyway.

00:20:59 ◼   ► I'm old.

00:21:01 ◼   ► - Oh goodness.

00:21:02 ◼   ► - Now I think everyone who's searching for

00:21:06 ◼   ► all these crazy complex systems of charging this

00:21:09 ◼   ► theoretical rumored laptop,

00:21:10 ◼   ► I think you know, John, what you said a minute ago,

00:21:12 ◼   ► like almost all of these, even if they worked,

00:21:15 ◼   ► would probably be more annoying

00:21:16 ◼   ► or have other big downsides in practice.

00:21:19 ◼   ► The fact is, if it still has any ports at all,

00:21:23 ◼   ► then it's worth just charging it with a cable

00:21:25 ◼   ► because that's going to be better.

00:21:27 ◼   ► No matter what kind of cable that is,

00:21:28 ◼   ► that's going to be better

00:21:29 ◼   ► than any other kind of weird induction or wireless

00:21:32 ◼   ► or matte induction or clip-on induction kind of schemes.

00:21:35 ◼   ► Like it's just none of those things,

00:21:38 ◼   ► if you actually think about what it would be like

00:21:39 ◼   ► to use them in practice, in real life,

00:21:42 ◼   ► I just don't think any of those things

00:21:44 ◼   ► would be overall less annoying and better

00:21:46 ◼   ► than just a decent cable.

00:21:48 ◼   ► And they already have decent cables.

00:21:49 ◼   ► MagSafe is pretty good.

00:21:50 ◼   ► Like there's nothing wrong with MagSafe.

00:21:54 ◼   ► And if they end up using the USB power thing to do that,

00:21:57 ◼   ► that's probably gonna be perfectly fine too.

00:22:00 ◼   ► It's probably not a big deal.

00:22:01 ◼   ► The only reason the watch has to do it really is

00:22:04 ◼   ► because the watch is water sealed.

00:22:06 ◼   ► So the watch has no openings.

00:22:08 ◼   ► So they had to do some kind of other system

00:22:11 ◼   ► besides a cable that just plugs in.

00:22:13 ◼   ► And it clips onto this giant,

00:22:15 ◼   ► is the back plate sapphire or is it ceramic or something?

00:22:19 ◼   ► It's something that's not metal because if you would clip

00:22:22 ◼   ► with MagSafe, this giant metal disk onto a metal laptop,

00:22:26 ◼   ► it would scratch the hell out of it.

00:22:28 ◼   ► Just like the iPad 3 smart cover,

00:22:30 ◼   ► or the iPad 2 smart cover, the metal one.

00:22:33 ◼   ► So all these things are like,

00:22:35 ◼   ► they're searching for solutions to what really isn't

00:22:38 ◼   ► that big of a problem, which is a laptop that has any ports

00:22:40 ◼   ► at all can still have a power plug and that'll be fine.

00:22:43 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:22:45 ◼   ► You don't, wait, you don't think there's anything wrong

00:22:48 ◼   ► with MagSafe?

00:22:49 ◼   ► I will admit I liked MagSafe 1 better than MagSafe 2.

00:22:52 ◼   ► MagSafe 2 comes out accidentally more easily in the vertical direction when pressed.

00:22:59 ◼   ► But it's not that bad.

00:23:00 ◼   ► Like other than that, that's my only problem with it.

00:23:03 ◼   ► I'm a little bit...

00:23:05 ◼   ► I think the weakness of MagSafe, both versions, is the tiny little contacts.

00:23:11 ◼   ► I've seen a lot of pictures of and stories about MagSafe things that somehow either got

00:23:18 ◼   ► misaligned or something wedged in there or something caused a short inside that little tiny area because it is everything is so fine and like

00:23:24 ◼   ► You just need one little iron filing from a silly kids toy to float in over there

00:23:28 ◼   ► And you plug it in and it fries the thing and it would be nice if it wasn't that if it was more resistant to

00:23:35 ◼   ► Stuff I'm not sure what you would replace it with though because I think the tiny USB connectors probably had the same problem maybe

00:23:40 ◼   ► But yeah, I agree that mag safe 2 is worse than 1

00:23:45 ◼   ► But I'm not sure with the with the shrinking sizes. I'm not sure how

00:23:49 ◼   ► What you can do to mag safe to make it better while also making it smaller whereas something that plugs in

00:23:56 ◼   ► You know

00:23:58 ◼   ► Again, it comes out of the question. We talked about before does if the USB

00:24:02 ◼   ► 3 connector the tiny little one

00:24:04 ◼   ► Does that come out just as easily as mag safe when you trip over the cable or does it not like what size does it?

00:24:10 ◼   ► Start becoming like this is just as good as mag safe in terms of trip resistance

00:24:14 ◼   ► and I don't know until someone buys one of these things

00:24:17 ◼   ► or buy some other USB three device

00:24:18 ◼   ► and start stripping over it.

00:24:20 ◼   ► - All right, can we move on to any other topic?

00:24:24 ◼   ► - Yes, we have corrections for you and Jon

00:24:27 ◼   ► with regard to reliability probability.

00:24:30 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:24:31 ◼   ► - I don't think they're really corrections

00:24:32 ◼   ► because both of us tried so hard

00:24:36 ◼   ► to stay away from the math part.

00:24:37 ◼   ► Like we didn't wanna talk about the math,

00:24:39 ◼   ► we just hand-waved it.

00:24:40 ◼   ► And yet the hand-waving,

00:24:41 ◼   ► because we use mathematical words

00:24:42 ◼   ► about like addition, additive, and multiplicative,

00:24:45 ◼   ► you know, then that was enough to trigger

00:24:47 ◼   ► the math people to come tell us how wrong we were.

00:24:49 ◼   ► Like, I think we all knew we were gonna be wrong.

00:24:51 ◼   ► We didn't know the math, but there's two posts about this.

00:24:55 ◼   ► Actually, there was a good email about it too,

00:24:56 ◼   ► which unfortunately we can't link the email,

00:24:58 ◼   ► but it was too long and complicated to explain.

00:25:00 ◼   ► But Dr. Durang has one explaining

00:25:02 ◼   ► the actual math of the probability stuff.

00:25:05 ◼   ► Kieran Haley has one explaining

00:25:06 ◼   ► what he thinks we probably meant,

00:25:07 ◼   ► and I think he's closer.

00:25:09 ◼   ► If I had to re-summarize this discussion,

00:25:11 ◼   ► I would say there were two points.

00:25:12 ◼   ► both not involving math. One is the idea that if you have something with a

00:25:21 ◼   ► certain reliability and you add a second thing, even if the reliability is just as

00:25:25 ◼   ► good as the first thing, if for your entire system to be successful they both

00:25:29 ◼   ► have to work, you've decreased the reliability of your system even though

00:25:32 ◼   ► the thing you added is just as reliable as the other thing. So that was one

00:25:36 ◼   ► counterintuitive thing that people might not think of. It's like, "Oh well if I add

00:25:39 ◼   ► the second thing and it's just as reliable as the first thing, the total

00:25:41 ◼   ► reliability is the same. No, it's worse. So that's one. And the second thing is, the sort

00:25:46 ◼   ► of -- I don't want to use this phrase because it's probably wrong, but I'll say it anyway

00:25:49 ◼   ► -- network effect of when you add more and more devices, you have three devices and when

00:25:54 ◼   ► you had one before, you don't get three times the number of things you can do because if

00:25:58 ◼   ► they all interact with each other, the number of possible connections and interactions between

00:26:01 ◼   ► them goes up much faster than linearly. And that's the sort of multiplicative effect that

00:26:06 ◼   ► I think Marco was the first one to mention.

00:26:07 ◼   ► >> Yeah, the handshake problem, right?

00:26:09 ◼   ► Yeah, that by adding you may add one device than another one and you don't just get three times

00:26:14 ◼   ► the number of things that you can do you get much much more than that if they all

00:26:17 ◼   ► Interact with each other and so the first point combined with the second means that the sort of intuitive

00:26:23 ◼   ► Sense that when I have a computer there's one thing and I have a computer and a phone

00:26:28 ◼   ► That's two things and it should be roughly like, you know

00:26:31 ◼   ► It should

00:26:33 ◼   ► First people would think if the phone is just as reliable as the computer my total system

00:26:38 ◼   ► Reliability has not gone down, but it totally has because if they both don't for features that cross between them or for syncing issues or whatever

00:26:44 ◼   ► It's much worse than just having a phone or just having a computer and the second thing is as you get even more devices

00:26:50 ◼   ► The number of connections between them possible interaction it goes way up. It goes up faster than linearly

00:26:55 ◼   ► Especially if they all interact with each other

00:26:57 ◼   ► Especially if some features on one aren't even unlocked until you get the second one like continuity is not even in your world unless you

00:27:03 ◼   ► Have two devices

00:27:03 ◼   ► So there's a whole new feature set that wasn't even there before that blooms on both of them

00:27:07 ◼   ► and then you have the interaction between them and then three of them and in the cloud and everything like that

00:27:10 ◼   ► That's more or less what we were getting at if you want to get into the nitty-gritty details of the math

00:27:14 ◼   ► Dr. Drang has a good coverage there and the person who sent us an email

00:27:17 ◼   ► said that even though things do get worse when you add something to a system if

00:27:21 ◼   ► Most if most things are generally reliable like if the reliability is you know, 99% or whatever

00:27:27 ◼   ► It doesn't get that bad the effect is maybe we're exaggerating the effect because it's not like we use an example like 50% reliability

00:27:34 ◼   ► Yes, that would that you'd really feel it most things are very very reliable

00:27:37 ◼   ► Adding another one to the system of the same reliability is not gonna pull down your overall reliability that much

00:27:42 ◼   ► so that's why I think Kieran's post about the

00:27:45 ◼   ► Number of possible interactions between the different devices going up is the real thrust of what we were getting at

00:27:51 ◼   ► You with a smart girl and we still don't we still don't know the math

00:27:55 ◼   ► We stubbornly refuse to address or learn any of the math. This will not be on the test people believe John

00:28:02 ◼   ► Yeah, no, but that's what I wasn't strongly advocating for any specific thing. I was we were both saying stay away from the math

00:28:09 ◼   ► We both don't know it look it up if you care

00:28:11 ◼   ► Look it up if you care should be the motto of our feedback

00:28:15 ◼   ► No, it's like, you know, we're neither one of us off the top of her head was going to say this is definitively

00:28:22 ◼   ► How you calculate this or whatever? We both just hand waved it and ran away from it and we still got yelled at

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00:30:45 ◼   ► There's been a rumor that the iPad Pro

00:30:51 ◼   ► Might which we don't even know exists might come with a stylus which is something different. So what are we gonna do?

00:30:58 ◼   ► Oh a stylus, right? We're gonna use a stylus

00:31:02 ◼   ► No

00:31:04 ◼   ► Who wants a stylus

00:31:07 ◼   ► You have to get them and put them away and you lose them. Yeah

00:31:10 ◼   ► Nobody wants a stylus. So let's not use a stylus

00:31:14 ◼   ► Yeah, if you see a stylus then what is it? They've already failed if you need a stylus, you've already failed the point is

00:31:21 ◼   ► One of the more reliable supply chain,

00:31:26 ◼   ► I guess analysts I say,

00:31:29 ◼   ► because I don't know, I hate that term,

00:31:31 ◼   ► but anyway, has said that the next iPad,

00:31:35 ◼   ► or the 13-inch iPad will have an optional stylus.

00:31:38 ◼   ► And I don't think that most of us

00:31:41 ◼   ► would have paid too much attention to this,

00:31:43 ◼   ► or certainly I wouldn't have,

00:31:44 ◼   ► except that this particular individual

00:31:46 ◼   ► has an unbelievably good track record,

00:31:48 ◼   ► which makes me think, okay, maybe this is real.

00:31:51 ◼   ► So I can't, I don't own any styli, styluses for my iPad.

00:31:56 ◼   ► I've never gotten any.

00:31:58 ◼   ► I've never really had a particular need for them.

00:32:00 ◼   ► I've tried the, what is it, the paper pencil?

00:32:03 ◼   ► - Yep, I got one of those too.

00:32:05 ◼   ► It sits in a drawer.

00:32:06 ◼   ► - It seemed cool, I guess,

00:32:07 ◼   ► but I'm just not one that needs a stylus.

00:32:11 ◼   ► So I don't think I can really comment intelligently on this.

00:32:15 ◼   ► It sounds like Marco, you have a bunch,

00:32:17 ◼   ► 'cause you've spoken fondly of the cosmonaut

00:32:19 ◼   ► in the past, right?

00:32:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, and of all the ones I have,

00:32:21 ◼   ► that's my favorite one for general usage.

00:32:23 ◼   ► The, if you use paper a lot, like the app Paper by 53,

00:32:28 ◼   ► if you use that app a lot for artistic purposes

00:32:31 ◼   ► and sketching purposes, their stylus offers some features

00:32:34 ◼   ► in that app that other ones won't have, the paper pencil.

00:32:39 ◼   ► For general use around the rest of the iPad,

00:32:40 ◼   ► I don't think the pencil is better than the Cosmo,

00:32:42 ◼   ► I think it's about the same, if not a little bit worse,

00:32:44 ◼   ► 'cause it has a little bit of a weird shape.

00:32:47 ◼   ► The thing is, the reason why it's a big deal

00:32:50 ◼   ► if Apple makes one of these

00:32:51 ◼   ► is because if Apple makes a stylus,

00:32:53 ◼   ► it's not going to be a $25 capacitive foam tip stick

00:32:58 ◼   ► the way all the other ones are.

00:33:01 ◼   ► It's going to be integrated with the OS

00:33:03 ◼   ► and with the hardware.

00:33:05 ◼   ► So right now, the reason why the styli on the market

00:33:09 ◼   ► generally all suck or that they've basically hit a wall

00:33:13 ◼   ► that they can't get any better than this

00:33:15 ◼   ► is because to get better than that,

00:33:17 ◼   ► you need system-wide recognition of Bluetooth

00:33:22 ◼   ► and more precision on the tip.

00:33:25 ◼   ► And so certainly, like the Paper by 53 stylus,

00:33:28 ◼   ► I think that is, I'm pretty sure it is Bluetooth,

00:33:30 ◼   ► it's some kind of, yeah, it must be.

00:33:31 ◼   ► So that is Bluetooth, but it only works in their app.

00:33:35 ◼   ► And it's still not as good as it can be

00:33:37 ◼   ► because you need, 'cause like,

00:33:39 ◼   ► the app has to try to do things like reject

00:33:42 ◼   ► palm, the side of your palm touching the screen

00:33:44 ◼   ► and not count that as a touch and things like that.

00:33:46 ◼   ► And the low level OS frameworks for touch recognition

00:33:51 ◼   ► have way more recognition and way more data to work with

00:33:55 ◼   ► than what's exposed to apps in the public APIs.

00:33:58 ◼   ► And so if Apple did this at the system level,

00:34:00 ◼   ► they can not only use Bluetooth

00:34:02 ◼   ► or some other kind of short range RF thing,

00:34:04 ◼   ► probably be Bluetooth, but they can not only use Bluetooth,

00:34:07 ◼   ► but they could do it system-wide

00:34:09 ◼   ► so it would work in every app

00:34:11 ◼   ► with all the sensitivity and precision

00:34:14 ◼   ► and it would be able to tie in with the touch recognition

00:34:17 ◼   ► and do like, you know, better touch rejection

00:34:20 ◼   ► and things like that.

00:34:21 ◼   ► None of which third party styluses can do really very well

00:34:24 ◼   ► or everywhere right now.

00:34:26 ◼   ► So that's why it's a big deal if Apple makes one.

00:34:29 ◼   ► They might even, if this is gonna be a big deal,

00:34:32 ◼   ► they might even switch to the different kind of touch screen

00:34:36 ◼   ► and I believe it's a resistive touch screen

00:34:38 ◼   ► or at least be able to put in a layer like that,

00:34:40 ◼   ► like what the Wacom Cintiqs use.

00:34:43 ◼   ► which is what the Microsoft Surface Pro,

00:34:46 ◼   ► at least the two and the three,

00:34:47 ◼   ► I don't know if the original one did, I think it did,

00:34:49 ◼   ► but the Surface Pro uses this too,

00:34:50 ◼   ► where it's basically, it's like a pen tablet

00:34:53 ◼   ► integrated into the screen.

00:34:55 ◼   ► And artists love these things.

00:34:57 ◼   ► They are, you know, if you're a sketch artist

00:35:02 ◼   ► or an illustration artist that would use a pen

00:35:04 ◼   ► for your art form, these things are very,

00:35:07 ◼   ► very widely recognized, very, very widely appreciated.

00:35:10 ◼   ► And the iPad really doesn't do a very good job at that

00:35:13 ◼   ► because of the imprecisions and limitations

00:35:15 ◼   ► of the styluses that are available now.

00:35:17 ◼   ► So I think if they did this,

00:35:20 ◼   ► and I think they probably should do this,

00:35:22 ◼   ► I think there's a market for it.

00:35:25 ◼   ► It would make sense to limit it to only one model

00:35:27 ◼   ► and to make it like a high-end thing,

00:35:29 ◼   ► that would make sense.

00:35:30 ◼   ► Just like Microsoft has done, really.

00:35:32 ◼   ► And just like Wacom has done.

00:35:34 ◼   ► I don't know, by the way, I know I'm pronouncing that wrong.

00:35:37 ◼   ► I don't know what the,

00:35:38 ◼   ► I usually even say whack 'em because it's more fun to me,

00:35:41 ◼   ► just like the F'n key.

00:35:42 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:35:43 ◼   ► So anyway, I think it's a very good idea.

00:35:45 ◼   ► Well, I don't know if they'll actually do it,

00:35:47 ◼   ► but I think it's a very good idea.

00:35:49 ◼   ► - I think it's inevitable because, I mean,

00:35:50 ◼   ► for the same reason I think the bigger iPad is inevitable

00:35:53 ◼   ► and multitasking and multi-windowing on the iPad

00:35:55 ◼   ► is inevitable, like, that this platform has to expand

00:35:58 ◼   ► to do more things because it's,

00:36:00 ◼   ► because people like it better than the old platform.

00:36:02 ◼   ► And you have to make it expand slowly

00:36:05 ◼   ► and make it not lose as much of the advantages

00:36:07 ◼   ► diversify the line so a particular product does it and but like it has to happen because I mean the

00:36:12 ◼   ► amazing number of

00:36:14 ◼   ► Artificial fingers for sale for iOS devices just goes to show that there is a market demand for this in the same way that people

00:36:20 ◼   ► Wanted bigger phones, right? And that's why you know, you said like but that's that's why although they the

00:36:25 ◼   ► existing ones stink because all they are is artificial fingers like all you are is simulating a finger and the OS is made for fingers and

00:36:34 ◼   ► simulated fingers or real fingers or whatever. It's just a bunch of fingers and they're big squishy things. They're imprecise or whatever

00:36:38 ◼   ► If Apple comes out with a stylus, not only does it have to deal with Bluetooth, but I think they have to do

00:36:43 ◼   ► something different with the screen like you said and if you look at

00:36:46 ◼   ► the you know huge number of patents that come out of Apple. Apple patents million things doesn't mean they're gonna make anything but I

00:36:52 ◼   ► think in the case of the stylus even if we didn't see any patents

00:36:55 ◼   ► I would think that a stylus is going to eventually come when we get to that point and

00:36:58 ◼   ► Apple has tons of patents related to styluses or styli or whatever

00:37:02 ◼   ► I wish we knew what the plural of that was

00:37:03 ◼   ► 'cause this is gonna be awkward

00:37:04 ◼   ► for the whole time we talk about this.

00:37:06 ◼   ► We should put that in a follow-up for next week.

00:37:08 ◼   ► - Please, if you took Latin in high school, don't write in.

00:37:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't- - We don't care.

00:37:12 ◼   ► - Mouses, mice, anyway.

00:37:14 ◼   ► - I also took Latin in high school.

00:37:15 ◼   ► - Why would they have all those patents?

00:37:16 ◼   ► Usually their patents are about like,

00:37:18 ◼   ► well, you user interface stuff.

00:37:19 ◼   ► Like maybe they tried this user interface

00:37:21 ◼   ► and it wasn't great so they didn't ship it,

00:37:22 ◼   ► but they're gonna patent everything.

00:37:23 ◼   ► You patent anything you do.

00:37:25 ◼   ► But the number of stylists related patents

00:37:28 ◼   ► that have come out of Apple over the years

00:37:29 ◼   ► shows that they've had people doing stuff

00:37:32 ◼   ► related to styluses or styli or whatever for so long

00:37:35 ◼   ► that like, why are those guys still doing that?

00:37:38 ◼   ► It's not like they just try this experiment once,

00:37:40 ◼   ► like just year after year after year,

00:37:42 ◼   ► people are in the lab with these little sticks doing stuff.

00:37:44 ◼   ► And maybe they hate all those,

00:37:46 ◼   ► maybe everything they patented

00:37:47 ◼   ► is something they're not going to make.

00:37:48 ◼   ► But someone is being employed at Apple

00:37:51 ◼   ► to do stuff that produces things that are patentable

00:37:53 ◼   ► related to drawing with a stick on a screen.

00:37:56 ◼   ► So it seems to me that that is definitely something

00:38:01 ◼   ► that they're working on, not just once, but over the years,

00:38:04 ◼   ► and they're eventually gonna get something they like,

00:38:06 ◼   ► maybe not this year, maybe not next year,

00:38:08 ◼   ► but I think it's inevitable.

00:38:10 ◼   ► And if they don't, if they don't hurry up,

00:38:12 ◼   ► like Surface getting the cache with the artists,

00:38:14 ◼   ► because finally it was a portable tablet type thing

00:38:17 ◼   ► that had the hardware support

00:38:19 ◼   ► for a decent stylus interface,

00:38:22 ◼   ► if Apple doesn't do it soon enough,

00:38:23 ◼   ► eventually it's gonna be like,

00:38:24 ◼   ► well, every artist knows that if you wanna do art

00:38:27 ◼   ► on the road, you have to get a Microsoft Surface

00:38:29 ◼   ► because you're not gonna use a big plastic finger

00:38:31 ◼   ► to scribble on an iPad, right?

00:38:34 ◼   ► So I would say now is the correct time

00:38:35 ◼   ► for them to do something.

00:38:36 ◼   ► I hope they do something that is at least as good

00:38:39 ◼   ► as what the Surface does.

00:38:40 ◼   ► And I'm really hoping that at least one or two

00:38:42 ◼   ► of those weird patents are something we haven't seen before

00:38:44 ◼   ► because patents take a long time to come out.

00:38:46 ◼   ► Something we haven't even seen that's patent pending

00:38:48 ◼   ► will provide an interface that's even better.

00:38:53 ◼   ► Now, the kind of the scary ghost floating around this

00:38:56 ◼   ► has nothing to do with drawing pretty pictures on your iPad.

00:38:59 ◼   ► and has everything to do with the other thing

00:39:01 ◼   ► that you might do with a pen or a pencil

00:39:03 ◼   ► or writing implement on a flat surface,

00:39:05 ◼   ► which is write letters.

00:39:08 ◼   ► And that's, you know, as in characters, as in AB.

00:39:10 ◼   ► And Apple has big, scary egg freckles all over this topic.

00:39:15 ◼   ► But the thing is, once you make a stylus

00:39:20 ◼   ► and you're able to, you know,

00:39:21 ◼   ► do fine art with it or whatever,

00:39:23 ◼   ► are you gonna say, no, you can't write notes

00:39:28 ◼   ► that will translate into text.

00:39:29 ◼   ► I mean, that's one way to get out of it,

00:39:30 ◼   ► just to avoid it entirely.

00:39:31 ◼   ► It's just for drawing.

00:39:32 ◼   ► No, you can write words, but it'll just stay,

00:39:35 ◼   ► like we won't translate it into text.

00:39:36 ◼   ► But boy, I think there's no way for them to avoid

00:39:40 ◼   ► having to resurrect and finally defeat

00:39:43 ◼   ► the ghosts of the Newton by doing handwriting recognition

00:39:46 ◼   ► that is not embarrassing.

00:39:47 ◼   ► And I think the technology is there to do it.

00:39:49 ◼   ► And I think they more or less have to support it system-wide

00:39:52 ◼   ► in a nice way.

00:39:53 ◼   ► And I think very few people will use it

00:39:55 ◼   ► because who likes writing with a pen and pencil?

00:39:57 ◼   ► everyone who likes writing will send us email,

00:39:59 ◼   ► which is fine, but I really feel like--

00:40:02 ◼   ► - I mean, I don't like it that much either,

00:40:03 ◼   ► but that's a pretty big group that does.

00:40:06 ◼   ► - Is that, here's the thing.

00:40:10 ◼   ► In what context are you going to use it?

00:40:13 ◼   ► I can imagine using it for things like checking things off

00:40:18 ◼   ► or scribbling a quick little note

00:40:20 ◼   ► without bringing up the keyboard to tap things out,

00:40:22 ◼   ► but I can't imagine someone using it to do text messages

00:40:26 ◼   ► or write a long email or something.

00:40:27 ◼   ► And maybe that's just me.

00:40:28 ◼   ► Maybe I just don't see that anymore.

00:40:30 ◼   ► But like, if you're gonna write along,

00:40:32 ◼   ► unless it does cursive,

00:40:34 ◼   ► because people are really fast with cursive,

00:40:35 ◼   ► 'cause those are the type of people

00:40:36 ◼   ► who like to write handwriting,

00:40:37 ◼   ► unless they tackle cursive, which I think--

00:40:39 ◼   ► - Those people are jerks.

00:40:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:40:41 ◼   ► - To just do a long handwritten letter in cursive

00:40:44 ◼   ► and have it translate that into text for you.

00:40:46 ◼   ► But having really good stylist support in this day and age,

00:40:51 ◼   ► you can let them write it in cursive

00:40:53 ◼   ► and just send it as a giant image.

00:40:55 ◼   ► Like you can do that now.

00:40:56 ◼   ► That wasn't an option before,

00:40:58 ◼   ► you had to translate it to text.

00:40:59 ◼   ► I think now this beautiful handwriting,

00:41:02 ◼   ► you know, that people have,

00:41:03 ◼   ► or, you know, they want to convey their,

00:41:05 ◼   ► that you want to see someone's handwriting,

00:41:07 ◼   ► why not just transfer it as, you know,

00:41:08 ◼   ► a vector or a bitmap or something like that?

00:41:10 ◼   ► Why do you have to turn it into text?

00:41:11 ◼   ► I guess you have to turn it into text

00:41:12 ◼   ► to make it searchable and so on and so forth.

00:41:14 ◼   ► And I don't know.

00:41:16 ◼   ► There's lots of different ways

00:41:17 ◼   ► where they can go with this,

00:41:17 ◼   ► but I think the art angle is a slam dunk.

00:41:20 ◼   ► They're gonna do it.

00:41:21 ◼   ► It's gonna be good, I hope.

00:41:22 ◼   ► If it doesn't happen this year,

00:41:24 ◼   ► they better hurry up because everyone else is doing it.

00:41:26 ◼   ► And then the handwriting thing,

00:41:28 ◼   ► I have no idea what they're gonna do

00:41:29 ◼   ► and I see all sorts of crazy pitfalls there.

00:41:31 ◼   ► - I think the opportunity is big.

00:41:34 ◼   ► I would be surprised if anybody at Apple

00:41:37 ◼   ► with the ability to make such a decision

00:41:40 ◼   ► would restrict or stay away from these areas

00:41:43 ◼   ► because of the Newton.

00:41:44 ◼   ► I think they just don't care anymore.

00:41:46 ◼   ► That was so long, that was ancient history

00:41:48 ◼   ► and most of the public doesn't even remember the Newton

00:41:51 ◼   ► and doesn't even care about it.

00:41:52 ◼   ► - Not stay away from it because of the Newton,

00:41:54 ◼   ► but because it's still a hard problem.

00:41:56 ◼   ► Like look at how, like the Surface does it now.

00:41:58 ◼   ► Microsoft does it and they do it obviously better

00:42:00 ◼   ► than the Newton, right?

00:42:01 ◼   ► You got way more computing power.

00:42:02 ◼   ► - And they've been doing it for like a decade.

00:42:04 ◼   ► Microsoft's been doing it for a long time.

00:42:06 ◼   ► And their version is pretty good.

00:42:08 ◼   ► - It's good, but it's like, here's the thing.

00:42:12 ◼   ► People don't need to remember where the Newton is.

00:42:13 ◼   ► It's just like, it's a hard enough problem.

00:42:15 ◼   ► Kind of like a lot of the stuff,

00:42:16 ◼   ► and unfortunately we're not gonna talk about this this week

00:42:18 ◼   ► 'cause I don't think you're gonna have time to watch it,

00:42:20 ◼   ► but you know, the Windows 10 announcement

00:42:21 ◼   ► and the holographic stuff, or in the past,

00:42:24 ◼   ► the Kinect or whatever, things that are--

00:42:25 ◼   ► - That was real?

00:42:27 ◼   ► - Things that are really hard problems

00:42:29 ◼   ► that make a really awesome tech demo

00:42:31 ◼   ► that make you feel like you're living in the future,

00:42:33 ◼   ► but if they don't deliver on it,

00:42:34 ◼   ► like if they don't cross the threshold,

00:42:37 ◼   ► kind of like how Siri didn't cross the threshold

00:42:39 ◼   ► in the beginning of like, well, a demo is well,

00:42:41 ◼   ► but if it doesn't quite work for you enough of the time,

00:42:43 ◼   ► you just kind of give up on it.

00:42:44 ◼   ► And that came up again because Daniel Jaka

00:42:46 ◼   ► was talking about how Siri has gotten much better,

00:42:48 ◼   ► and that went around the sort of Apple nerd sites

00:42:52 ◼   ► this past week or so.

00:42:53 ◼   ► - Oh, by the way, about that,

00:42:55 ◼   ► So I, sorry, I interrupt for a second.

00:42:58 ◼   ► So I have not used Siri in a long time

00:43:01 ◼   ► because it just never works for me.

00:43:02 ◼   ► Like the reliability was so bad for so long,

00:43:04 ◼   ► I just stopped trying.

00:43:05 ◼   ► 'Cause I would say a complete command,

00:43:07 ◼   ► it would sit there and spin for 20 seconds

00:43:09 ◼   ► and then say, "I'm sorry, I can't help you right now.

00:43:11 ◼   ► "There's been an error."

00:43:13 ◼   ► So I stopped trying.

00:43:14 ◼   ► After seeing all these things about Siri,

00:43:16 ◼   ► I'm like, "All right, maybe I'll give it another shot."

00:43:17 ◼   ► First thing I try yesterday, Siri, start the stopwatch.

00:43:22 ◼   ► Sorry, Marco, I can't help you with the stopwatch.

00:43:26 ◼   ► - It can do everything else in the clock app.

00:43:27 ◼   ► It can't start the stopwatch.

00:43:29 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:43:30 ◼   ► - Like really, come on, this is easy stuff.

00:43:32 ◼   ► Why, why?

00:43:34 ◼   ► - Oh, but at least it worked, you know,

00:43:36 ◼   ► understood what you said and gave you a reasonable answer.

00:43:39 ◼   ► But it's similar in that like Siri is kind of bad

00:43:43 ◼   ► or any kind of voice recognition thing.

00:43:44 ◼   ► You just let a kid use it and you'll see it

00:43:47 ◼   ► because like as soon as you start talking to it

00:43:49 ◼   ► and it talks back to you, people are like,

00:43:50 ◼   ► oh, well, I guess this is a complete human

00:43:52 ◼   ► and if it doesn't do exactly what I say,

00:43:53 ◼   ► I consider it stupid, right?

00:43:56 ◼   ► And handwriting recognition is similar.

00:43:58 ◼   ► As soon as it changes anything you write into text,

00:44:00 ◼   ► you're like, "Oh, it understands handwriting."

00:44:02 ◼   ► And then you write something else and it doesn't,

00:44:04 ◼   ► you're like, "This thing is stupid."

00:44:05 ◼   ► Because your only analog for something

00:44:08 ◼   ► that understands spoken text

00:44:09 ◼   ► and can read handwriting is other humans.

00:44:11 ◼   ► And it's like, "Well, if you can read this word

00:44:13 ◼   ► "on the shopping list, why couldn't you read this one?"

00:44:15 ◼   ► There's no, you know, to a human being,

00:44:18 ◼   ► if you can read one of those words, you can read both.

00:44:19 ◼   ► Like, one is not incredibly sloppier than the other.

00:44:23 ◼   ► But to a computer, which is not like a human,

00:44:24 ◼   ► and not even close, you know,

00:44:26 ◼   ► it's not even at the level of like a kindergarten student

00:44:28 ◼   ► in terms of recognizing letters,

00:44:30 ◼   ► it just has a bunch of heuristics,

00:44:31 ◼   ► as long as they get tripped up by things

00:44:32 ◼   ► that make no sense to you,

00:44:33 ◼   ► because you have no idea how it's recognizing things.

00:44:35 ◼   ► You also have no idea how your own brain

00:44:37 ◼   ► is recognizing things, but it just works in us, right?

00:44:39 ◼   ► Our brains just work.

00:44:40 ◼   ► That's the real, it just works, right?

00:44:42 ◼   ► We can't be taught to read and write.

00:44:44 ◼   ► It just works, right?

00:44:45 ◼   ► For the most part, in most people.

00:44:47 ◼   ► - I still can't read all these cursive cards

00:44:49 ◼   ► get from old people. You got dyslexia and you've got people who are out of practice

00:44:53 ◼   ► and you've got people with terrible handwriting. But handwriting recognition is a promise that

00:44:57 ◼   ► if you don't pass a certain bar, it's like... That's why I think the bitmap thing is a way

00:45:02 ◼   ► out because maybe you try to do handwriting recognition. Even if you do it better than

00:45:06 ◼   ► Microsoft, I still think that's below the minimum that will be acceptable by the general

00:45:10 ◼   ► public where people will say, "Oh, it understands your handwriting." What they'll say instead

00:45:13 ◼   ► is, "Sometimes it kind of understands your handwriting," which is not a ringing endorsement.

00:45:19 ◼   ► But if you can use it to send bitmaps of your writing, then your only problem is the person

00:45:23 ◼   ► at the other end can read your writing.

00:45:24 ◼   ► And we've all had that where a spouse writes a shopping list for you and you can't make

00:45:29 ◼   ► out whatever the last word is and you're not sure if it's like carrots or cucumbers or

00:45:33 ◼   ► something with a C and then a bunch of squiggles.

00:45:35 ◼   ► So if humans can't do it sometimes, I don't know.

00:45:40 ◼   ► I think that is a difficult thing.

00:45:43 ◼   ► And really, we're mostly talking about tablets here.

00:45:46 ◼   ► I can't imagine someone doing it on the phone, but once you have it working on the tablet,

00:45:50 ◼   ► do you put it in the 6 Plus?

00:45:52 ◼   ► So a little place to put a stylus or something?

00:45:55 ◼   ► Would you see, I mean, I know people see this now, someone with a, you know, the Galaxy

00:45:59 ◼   ► Note or whatever, holding a big giant phone and stabbing at it with a little pencil thing.

00:46:04 ◼   ► My own mother uses a little fake finger thing to stab at her iPod Touch.

00:46:09 ◼   ► Some people just want to poke something with a stick.

00:46:11 ◼   ► Have you seen that?

00:46:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:46:14 ◼   ► - Have you seen that?

00:46:15 ◼   ► Have you seen people using a phone with a stylus?

00:46:17 ◼   ► Obviously not an Apple phone.

00:46:18 ◼   ► - Not a phone.

00:46:19 ◼   ► I have, my father-in-law uses his iPad

00:46:21 ◼   ► very often with the Cosmonaut.

00:46:23 ◼   ► Like he just prefers to interact with it that way.

00:46:25 ◼   ► It's just tapping UI buttons and everything.

00:46:27 ◼   ► I totally get that.

00:46:29 ◼   ► I don't know, I think the era of Apple sticking with

00:46:33 ◼   ► a very small product line,

00:46:35 ◼   ► I don't think they're really holding dearly to that.

00:46:37 ◼   ► I mean, just look at the iPad lineup.

00:46:39 ◼   ► Like you mentioned earlier about the new

00:46:42 ◼   ► 12 inch MacBook Air thing,

00:46:44 ◼   ► possibly you need to replace the 11 and 13 Air.

00:46:47 ◼   ► And even that, not anytime soon, maybe not ever,

00:46:51 ◼   ► because they are fine having a bigger lineup.

00:46:54 ◼   ► I think the Tim Cook era,

00:46:57 ◼   ► and this didn't start with Tim, it started with Steve,

00:46:59 ◼   ► but certainly I think the Tim Cook era has expanded this

00:47:02 ◼   ► of Apple is fine keeping old products around

00:47:06 ◼   ► and having more versions of new products now

00:47:09 ◼   ► to address markets that they weren't serving before

00:47:11 ◼   ► that were possibly a threat to them.

00:47:13 ◼   ► - I think they're sticking to the,

00:47:15 ◼   ► we remember the old quadrant thing

00:47:17 ◼   ► with like pro consumer laptop, desktop,

00:47:18 ◼   ► that was a simpler time, right?

00:47:19 ◼   ► There was no watches, no phones, the tablets, whatever.

00:47:21 ◼   ► But within their product setup, it's not crazy.

00:47:25 ◼   ► Like they have a laptop line

00:47:27 ◼   ► that they have more or less simplified

00:47:29 ◼   ► by trying to MacBook Pro and MacBook versus the Air

00:47:33 ◼   ► and getting rid of the non-pro MacBooks

00:47:35 ◼   ► and everything or whatever.

00:47:36 ◼   ► They have tablets, they have phones,

00:47:38 ◼   ► they have laptops in a couple of varieties,

00:47:39 ◼   ► they have desktop in a couple of varieties.

00:47:41 ◼   ► What they're doing is within those sort of nameplates

00:47:44 ◼   ► and brands, diversifying like how many different iPads

00:47:47 ◼   ► are there, but the simplification thing is like,

00:47:49 ◼   ► it's just an iPad.

00:47:50 ◼   ► You don't have to know like, do I want an iPad

00:47:53 ◼   ► or another tablet product?

00:47:54 ◼   ► They're all iPads like perception wise

00:47:56 ◼   ► and all it is is just like buying different sides

00:47:58 ◼   ► of clothing or you know, whatever.

00:48:00 ◼   ► It's like, it's as if a car manufacturer had one kind

00:48:04 ◼   ► of car and you could get that car in SUV, wagon, you know,

00:48:08 ◼   ► tricycle, motorcycle, but they called it all the same,

00:48:11 ◼   ► you know, line of things, you know what I mean?

00:48:12 ◼   ► Maybe it's not quite that big, but like--

00:48:14 ◼   ► - Actually, that's not that far from what BMW actually does.

00:48:17 ◼   ► - It's true, but like, so, but in Apple's world,

00:48:20 ◼   ► the 3 and the 5 series would not be different cars, right?

00:48:23 ◼   ► And maybe you'd have like the electric one

00:48:25 ◼   ► would be a different line.

00:48:25 ◼   ► Like, I think the iPad is the best example,

00:48:27 ◼   ► 'cause these are all iPads, and it's like,

00:48:30 ◼   ► well, they're all rectangles of screen,

00:48:31 ◼   ► but like, huge diversity of different guts,

00:48:34 ◼   ► different Xs, outsides, different form factors,

00:48:36 ◼   ► and the phone has slowly been diverse.

00:48:37 ◼   ► And they're all iPhones, it's just one variety of iPhones,

00:48:40 ◼   ► there's a range there as well.

00:48:42 ◼   ► The iPod touches off in the corner, whatever.

00:48:43 ◼   ► So with the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro,

00:48:46 ◼   ► maybe there's still a little division there,

00:48:48 ◼   ► but they're kind of unified in a MacBook.

00:48:50 ◼   ► So I think Apple's appetite for taking existing product

00:48:54 ◼   ► lines and just making more varieties is demonstrated,

00:48:58 ◼   ► but their appetite for splitting, say,

00:49:03 ◼   ► the MacBook line further splitting into MacBook,

00:49:06 ◼   ► MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, MacBook, whatever,

00:49:08 ◼   ► I think they, instead they're going the other direction.

00:49:10 ◼   ► You know, making everything,

00:49:11 ◼   ► getting rid of the plastic models,

00:49:13 ◼   ► making it all aluminum,

00:49:14 ◼   ► getting rid of the non-pro MacBooks,

00:49:16 ◼   ► and you know, who knows how long the air,

00:49:18 ◼   ► if this new one is called MacBook Stealth

00:49:19 ◼   ► and the air is going away or something, I don't know.

00:49:22 ◼   ► That kind of diversification is like

00:49:24 ◼   ► having your cake and eating it too,

00:49:26 ◼   ► because you address more of the customer base

00:49:28 ◼   ► while still making it seem like

00:49:30 ◼   ► you only need to have two or three tables in an Apple store

00:49:33 ◼   ► and you can put all your products on them.

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00:52:18 ◼   ► - So CES has already ended by like a week or two,

00:52:22 ◼   ► is that right?

00:52:23 ◼   ► - It's always hard to tell with CES,

00:52:25 ◼   ► like if it's a real thing, if anything matters.

00:52:28 ◼   ► I wonder if we can just paste in the Verge's summary of CES

00:52:33 ◼   ► from last year and just paste it in this year.

00:52:36 ◼   ► Would anybody notice?

00:52:37 ◼   ► - Anyone who isn't John would have no idea

00:52:41 ◼   ► that it was the same thing regurgitated,

00:52:44 ◼   ► but John would notice and John has noticed.

00:52:46 ◼   ► - Well, the first thing I have in here related to this

00:52:48 ◼   ► is the Wirecutter did what they do,

00:52:50 ◼   ► which is like they distilled it down to the things

00:52:52 ◼   ► they thought were actually interesting

00:52:53 ◼   ► and important out of CES.

00:52:55 ◼   ► And CES, it actually is an important show

00:52:57 ◼   ► if you care about consumer electronics.

00:53:00 ◼   ► But there is so much there that it's like,

00:53:02 ◼   ► what is the important thing this year?

00:53:04 ◼   ► And so for me, I'm interested in televisions every year

00:53:07 ◼   ► at CES, it's like, what do the new crop of televisions

00:53:11 ◼   ► look like because people tend to announce

00:53:13 ◼   ► their upcoming things that are,

00:53:15 ◼   ► they have new technologies, is this the first year,

00:53:17 ◼   ► you know, the first year an LCD TV is available,

00:53:19 ◼   ► the first year an HDTV is available, you know?

00:53:21 ◼   ► And those are the exciting years

00:53:23 ◼   ► where there's some kind of technological advance.

00:53:25 ◼   ► And then there are all the in-between years

00:53:26 ◼   ► where you're like, okay, what is this current year's crop

00:53:28 ◼   ► of plasma TVs like?

00:53:30 ◼   ► Are they better than last year's problem?

00:53:31 ◼   ► You know, so on and so forth.

00:53:32 ◼   ► Those are more boring.

00:53:33 ◼   ► That's just picking televisions as one category.

00:53:34 ◼   ► But for every category, there's something like that.

00:53:36 ◼   ► And then there's just tons and tons of noise.

00:53:40 ◼   ► So the wire cutter thing gives a good summary.

00:53:42 ◼   ► Out of the wire cutter summary of interesting gadgets

00:53:45 ◼   ► and stuff from CES, I'm really, really interested

00:53:48 ◼   ► in the TV part.

00:53:49 ◼   ► So that's the only part I've highlighted here,

00:53:50 ◼   ► but we'll put the link in the show notes

00:53:51 ◼   ► and you can check it out.

00:53:52 ◼   ► Because you can't, if you try to follow like CES coverage,

00:53:54 ◼   ► you can't.

00:53:55 ◼   ► There's too much stuff and a lot of the times the things that are covered by sort of live

00:53:59 ◼   ► from CES stuff are the things that demo well, but you're never going to see them again.

00:54:03 ◼   ► It's not a real product.

00:54:04 ◼   ► It's not a real thing, but the booth and the demo is impressive and then just forget that

00:54:08 ◼   ► it exists because you'll never see anything about it again.

00:54:10 ◼   ► But the technology stuff, which is like more of the boring written stories that does not

00:54:14 ◼   ► have anything fun to look at, it's just announcements of products.

00:54:20 ◼   ► This is just, I mean we talked about it last year on the television front.

00:54:23 ◼   ► 4K television and the technologies related to that are slowly, steadily marching forward.

00:54:29 ◼   ► 4K we don't probably care too much about because of the size of the televisions we have and

00:54:33 ◼   ► the distance we sit from them.

00:54:34 ◼   ► It's probably not a factor, but as we discussed last year, 4K comes with more than just higher

00:54:39 ◼   ► resolution.

00:54:40 ◼   ► It also comes with a larger color gamut, different frame rates, and all sorts of stuff like that

00:54:44 ◼   ► that people will notice.

00:54:45 ◼   ► And then the one I was really interested in last year was this crazy "this is not really

00:54:48 ◼   ► a product tech demo" type thing from Dolby, which was like high dynamic range to be able

00:54:53 ◼   ► to have darker darks and brighter brights in your television and that is something much

00:54:58 ◼   ► more so than 4K that you would notice if you put a regular TV next to one with this high

00:55:05 ◼   ► dynamic range thing you would be able to tell the difference immediately in the same way

00:55:09 ◼   ► that most people could with high definition television versus standard depth.

00:55:14 ◼   ► And the exciting but boring announcement related to that is this UHD Alliance which is a consortium

00:55:21 ◼   ► of a bunch of people who make hardware and a bunch of people who make content to try

00:55:24 ◼   ► to get together on these standards because you don't want this to turn into a weird format

00:55:28 ◼   ► war or whatever.

00:55:29 ◼   ► If any of these things, if any of this sort of enhanced 4K with high dynamic range, if

00:55:33 ◼   ► that's ever going to become a thing, it can't be confined to one vendor, it can't be confined

00:55:37 ◼   ► to one distributor.

00:55:39 ◼   ► And I think now it's good to see that the companies at least understand this a little

00:55:42 ◼   ► bit.

00:55:43 ◼   ► Various times they've been good and bad about this, like getting together on, you know,

00:55:46 ◼   ► making a decision on Blu-ray finally after having the HD DVD thing or, you know, I think

00:55:51 ◼   ► CDs they kind of came together a little bit.

00:55:53 ◼   ► It's always an argument over who owns the patents and who's going to get the money and

00:55:55 ◼   ► all that crap.

00:55:56 ◼   ► But nobody benefits if it's like, if it's competing standards or if it's just available.

00:56:01 ◼   ► Because if Just Sony had like this High Dynamic Range thing, right?

00:56:04 ◼   ► If it was exclusively licensed through them and Just Sony movies were out like that.

00:56:08 ◼   ► Nobody cares.

00:56:09 ◼   ► Like who would ever get that TV?

00:56:10 ◼   ► You're like, well that's great but you only watch Sony movies.

00:56:12 ◼   ► No one knows what a Sony movie is.

00:56:13 ◼   ► It has to be an industry standard.

00:56:15 ◼   ► So I'm glad to see them doing this because I'm much more excited about the High Dynamic

00:56:19 ◼   ► range stuff and the color enhanced and frame rate enhancements of 4K TV than I am about

00:56:24 ◼   ► the 4K resolution itself.

00:56:27 ◼   ► So I'm hoping good things will come from the UHD alliance and it won't splinter apart into

00:56:31 ◼   ► a bunch of petty squabbling and other crap.

00:56:36 ◼   ► And then the final thing is like, speaking of things that are sort of evergreen about

00:56:39 ◼   ► CES, like you mentioned, we just reposted the Verge story.

00:56:42 ◼   ► Every time I think about actually writing something about CES, which I actually do think

00:56:45 ◼   ► about, I don't actually write anything but I think about it.

00:56:47 ◼   ► And then I think back to the post I wrote in 2013 on hypercritical.co which is "CES

00:56:54 ◼   ► colon worst products through software."

00:56:56 ◼   ► And I don't want this to be an evergreen article.

00:56:59 ◼   ► I want it to be, remember that moment in time when consumer electronics companies realized

00:57:04 ◼   ► that they needed software in their products and they were super bad at it and every time

00:57:08 ◼   ► they added software it made their products worse.

00:57:10 ◼   ► And I'm hoping this will be a time that passes.

00:57:14 ◼   ► will be a decade or something but I want this article to be out of date and look antiquated

00:57:21 ◼   ► and look old-fashioned but this year I think it still applies.

00:57:25 ◼   ► Every consumer electronics product that is not made by a company with a computing platform

00:57:31 ◼   ► - Google, Apple, Microsoft, maybe kind of even Amazon - those are pretty much the only

00:57:36 ◼   ► companies like companies that maintain, that have a software platform and that they maintain

00:57:42 ◼   ► and advance it, they're the only companies that can do software worth a damn.

00:57:48 ◼   ► Every other company that tries to add software to their product, it just makes the product

00:57:51 ◼   ► worse because the software is awful and it replaces something that wasn't quite as awful

00:57:55 ◼   ► and the new capabilities never make up for the difficulty of dealing with it.

00:57:58 ◼   ► Like if your refrigerator comes with software, it's going to be worse than your refrigerator

00:58:01 ◼   ► without software, like guaranteed because, you know, refrigerator makers have no idea

00:58:05 ◼   ► what they're doing when it comes to software.

00:58:07 ◼   ► Thus far neither do TV makers,

00:58:10 ◼   ► the terrible bug updates, the terrible bug fixes,

00:58:12 ◼   ► and the product itself, it doesn't start off very good

00:58:15 ◼   ► and doesn't get any better.

00:58:16 ◼   ► So I'm not writing anything new about that,

00:58:19 ◼   ► it's still true, I wish it wasn't.

00:58:22 ◼   ► Let's see, yes, worst products through software.

00:58:24 ◼   ► - I'm not in the TV world,

00:58:27 ◼   ► but I totally agree with that statement in other areas.

00:58:30 ◼   ► I mean, things I've gotten off of Kickstarter

00:58:32 ◼   ► that have like, oh, this is an oven thermometer

00:58:34 ◼   ► that has an app on your phone to see the results.

00:58:37 ◼   ► And it's like, ugh.

00:58:38 ◼   ► And I threw it away and bought a real oven thermometer

00:58:40 ◼   ► with an actual display and this stupid thing.

00:58:43 ◼   ► You know, like the microphone interface I got for a week

00:58:46 ◼   ► and then returned 'cause it was broken anyway.

00:58:48 ◼   ► But like this thing that has this screen

00:58:50 ◼   ► with just one button on it

00:58:52 ◼   ► and everything else is controlled by software.

00:58:54 ◼   ► And then of course the software is terrible.

00:58:56 ◼   ► So I get this, I replace it with this box

00:58:58 ◼   ► that is covered in knobs and buttons and it's way better

00:59:01 ◼   ► and it will last way longer.

00:59:02 ◼   ► I mean, just, ugh.

00:59:04 ◼   ► I hate software so much and I'm a software developer

00:59:07 ◼   ► and I hate software.

00:59:08 ◼   ► I mean, it's, use software intelligently.

00:59:11 ◼   ► Use software when it really does benefit things,

00:59:14 ◼   ► but that is not everywhere,

00:59:16 ◼   ► and that is not always necessary,

00:59:18 ◼   ► and it is often better without it.

00:59:19 ◼   ► - And the worst part is like,

00:59:20 ◼   ► even in the places where you could totally see the benefit,

00:59:23 ◼   ► like, there are things that have had,

00:59:25 ◼   ► sort of, you know, visual interfaces for a long time,

00:59:28 ◼   ► like, for example, thermostats or something,

00:59:30 ◼   ► you're like, that's a perfect place for software,

00:59:31 ◼   ► because having a bunch of little buttons

00:59:34 ◼   ► under a panel that you open up,

00:59:35 ◼   ► on this little dinky screen,

00:59:36 ◼   ► you're like, boy, if I could have real software to do this,

00:59:39 ◼   ► that would be better.

00:59:40 ◼   ► And the Nest approach is kind of tied up with,

00:59:42 ◼   ► also don't make it programmable or whatever,

00:59:43 ◼   ► but so many opportunities exist for something

00:59:46 ◼   ► that where software really is appropriate,

00:59:49 ◼   ► but awful software is worse than just give me

00:59:52 ◼   ► a bunch of fricking buttons and a dial, right?

00:59:54 ◼   ► And what you were talking about,

00:59:55 ◼   ► like on the thermometer type thing is like,

00:59:57 ◼   ► this is actually not an appropriate place

00:59:58 ◼   ► for software at this point.

00:59:59 ◼   ► Just give me a mechanical device that works.

01:00:01 ◼   ► And the cars are the best example,

01:00:03 ◼   ► because like there are ample opportunities

01:00:04 ◼   ► for good software to improve the experience inside a car.

01:00:08 ◼   ► But they take the software and put it where it's not needed.

01:00:10 ◼   ► And then the software that is there

01:00:12 ◼   ► is usually pretty terrible.

01:00:13 ◼   ► And we all use cars.

01:00:15 ◼   ► And so we're all just kind of suffering

01:00:16 ◼   ► as companies that do not know how to make software,

01:00:20 ◼   ► I guess, hopefully slowly learn to make software better.

01:00:23 ◼   ► I don't know if they're even learning.

01:00:25 ◼   ► I mean, like you just talked about the BMW key fob

01:00:28 ◼   ► with a screen on it.

01:00:29 ◼   ► That is not an appropriate place for software.

01:00:32 ◼   ► Something that's in your pocket that you wanna feel

01:00:34 ◼   ► to be able to feel the buttons,

01:00:35 ◼   ► or maybe you don't wanna touch it at all.

01:00:38 ◼   ► (sighs)

01:00:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:39 ◼   ► - All right, and speaking of software,

01:00:43 ◼   ► our friends at Rogue Amoeba released something new this week.

01:00:47 ◼   ► - Audio Hijack 3.

01:00:48 ◼   ► - Indeed.

01:00:49 ◼   ► - It's not Pro though, so forget it.

01:00:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:00:53 ◼   ► - Well, that just means it doesn't have Thunderbolt ports

01:00:54 ◼   ► on it anymore.

01:00:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:00:56 ◼   ► - People don't get the joke.

01:00:57 ◼   ► It used to be called Auto Hijack Pro,

01:00:59 ◼   ► and with the version 3, they removed Pro from the name,

01:01:02 ◼   ► because it was just like, you know,

01:01:04 ◼   ► it's like Netscape Navigator gold, pro gold.

01:01:08 ◼   ► Yeah, we don't need the,

01:01:10 ◼   ► we don't need the suffixes and the modifiers.

01:01:12 ◼   ► We can just say audio hijacked and it's version three.

01:01:15 ◼   ► - Yep, and I have been fiddling with it.

01:01:18 ◼   ► I have not used it to record a podcast yet.

01:01:21 ◼   ► I didn't have enough time today to get my,

01:01:24 ◼   ► I don't know, I guess workflow almost,

01:01:27 ◼   ► a session I think is what they, the term they use.

01:01:29 ◼   ► I didn't have enough time to get my session squared away

01:01:32 ◼   ► before we recorded tonight, but I'm hoping to,

01:01:35 ◼   ► in the next week, be able to set it up so that it records

01:01:39 ◼   ► not only a copy of just my mic, but also a copy of you guys

01:01:42 ◼   ► as well.

01:01:43 ◼   ► And this will be super helpful for analog.

01:01:46 ◼   ► But it's really, really slick the way

01:01:48 ◼   ► they've done the kind of workflow-y interface

01:01:51 ◼   ► where you're dragging boxes around.

01:01:53 ◼   ► And it's, again, a very gentle way

01:01:58 ◼   ► of trying to do very powerful things,

01:02:00 ◼   ► much like the workflow app that I've talked about

01:02:02 ◼   ► quite a few times, both on my website and here on the show.

01:02:05 ◼   ► That's a very cool, very cool idea, very well done.

01:02:08 ◼   ► And the thought of writing that UI scares the crap out of me

01:02:13 ◼   ► 'cause I'm a terrible UI developer as it is.

01:02:15 ◼   ► And writing something that complex

01:02:18 ◼   ► with like that kind of a dynamic layout

01:02:20 ◼   ► just scares the bejesus out of me, but it's cool.

01:02:22 ◼   ► - I wouldn't just describe it as gentle.

01:02:24 ◼   ► And by the way, this is not a paid sponsorship.

01:02:26 ◼   ► We're saying this because we think this app is needed.

01:02:28 ◼   ► And the reason I'm excited about this app

01:02:29 ◼   ► is because it takes an idea, concepts that have been,

01:02:34 ◼   ► that have been related to audio for a long time.

01:02:37 ◼   ► And it's like these capabilities,

01:02:39 ◼   ► a lot of these capabilities more or less existed already

01:02:41 ◼   ► in the previous versions of Audio Hijack

01:02:43 ◼   ► or you could have done yourselves

01:02:44 ◼   ► with the different audio things.

01:02:46 ◼   ► The major innovation of this is kind of like,

01:02:48 ◼   ► people are familiar with Quartz Composer,

01:02:50 ◼   ► is it lets you visually design the flow of audio.

01:02:54 ◼   ► Like if you were to,

01:02:56 ◼   ► If you were to try to explain to somebody,

01:02:57 ◼   ► what I need is I need to have the audio from this source

01:02:59 ◼   ► going into over here,

01:03:00 ◼   ► and I need to record into a file over there,

01:03:02 ◼   ► but then be mixed with this one over here

01:03:03 ◼   ► and have a volume adjustment

01:03:04 ◼   ► and go through this output device,

01:03:05 ◼   ► and you would draw it in an app and you're like,

01:03:06 ◼   ► "Boy, how the hell am I gonna configure that in an app?"

01:03:09 ◼   ► You just take that diagram and you make it in this thing.

01:03:13 ◼   ► They have these little blocks that you can pull out

01:03:14 ◼   ► for sources of audio.

01:03:16 ◼   ► They have a little meter block, which I think is genius

01:03:18 ◼   ► and shows the greatness of this approach.

01:03:20 ◼   ► It's like, what does the meter block do?

01:03:21 ◼   ► Doesn't do anything.

01:03:22 ◼   ► It lets you know if you're clipping in that source, right?

01:03:25 ◼   ► and then you have adjusters for different channels and volume things and you have a

01:03:28 ◼   ► recorder where you can put the track down, you can put multiple tracks down into one

01:03:32 ◼   ► recording, split them all into separate ones.

01:03:35 ◼   ► The interface is the entire thing of this application.

01:03:37 ◼   ► The capabilities were there and you could have used it with an old version of Audio

01:03:40 ◼   ► Hijack or other applications but take a look at the screenshots of this.

01:03:43 ◼   ► If you do anything related to audio, and maybe you don't, maybe it's just a bunch of podcasters

01:03:47 ◼   ► who care about this stuff, but if you do anything related to audio or recording audio, this

01:03:51 ◼   ► This one interface, this one window,

01:03:53 ◼   ► like just drag a bunch of things

01:03:54 ◼   ► and connect them with lines,

01:03:56 ◼   ► lets anybody do things that previously

01:03:58 ◼   ► almost nobody could do,

01:03:59 ◼   ► because you'd have to understand

01:04:00 ◼   ► some crazy arcane interface

01:04:02 ◼   ► and a bunch of weird vocabulary.

01:04:04 ◼   ► It's like, this is all visual vocabulary.

01:04:06 ◼   ► Very simple, very straightforward.

01:04:07 ◼   ► I was super impressed by this.

01:04:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a very neat app,

01:04:10 ◼   ► and I'm hoping to get everything squared away

01:04:13 ◼   ► so I can use it to record this next week.

01:04:16 ◼   ► - We should have held out

01:04:17 ◼   ► because they probably would have sponsored,

01:04:18 ◼   ► and I could have done a good sponsor for them,

01:04:19 ◼   ► but too late.

01:04:20 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:04:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, and Marco, you were on the beta for this,

01:04:24 ◼   ► weren't you?

01:04:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was, yeah, I like it a lot.

01:04:27 ◼   ► What I like about it, I said it in this blog post too,

01:04:28 ◼   ► like, in audio, like dealing with audio,

01:04:31 ◼   ► and like, oh, I just need to record this

01:04:33 ◼   ► and then run it through this mixer

01:04:35 ◼   ► and combine it with this and then be able to mix this in

01:04:37 ◼   ► and record over here and split this off

01:04:39 ◼   ► and apply an EQ and a compressor over here,

01:04:42 ◼   ► like, doing stuff like that can very quickly lead you

01:04:46 ◼   ► into hardware complexity and just a hell

01:04:50 ◼   ► of wires and cheap or expensive little boxes

01:04:53 ◼   ► all over the place and lots of like just boxes

01:04:56 ◼   ► all over your desk and complexity

01:04:58 ◼   ► and not knowing where things are and costs.

01:05:02 ◼   ► And this app is able to replace so much complexity,

01:05:06 ◼   ► so much hardware, and even like if you try to do

01:05:09 ◼   ► a lot of these things in software,

01:05:11 ◼   ► there are like free open source things out there

01:05:14 ◼   ► that you can do some of these things with

01:05:17 ◼   ► or that you can combine in certain ways

01:05:20 ◼   ► to do some of these things.

01:05:20 ◼   ► And they're usually way harder to set up.

01:05:23 ◼   ► And you gotta install these three different packages

01:05:25 ◼   ► and one of them is really made for Linux

01:05:27 ◼   ► and all this stuff.

01:05:28 ◼   ► You hit all these little bottlenecks

01:05:29 ◼   ► and frustrations and limitations

01:05:32 ◼   ► and just challenges in setting it all up.

01:05:34 ◼   ► So to have it all in one app is pretty amazing.

01:05:36 ◼   ► This kinda makes me sad because

01:05:39 ◼   ► this is the kind of awesome utility

01:05:41 ◼   ► that we will never see on iOS

01:05:43 ◼   ► and that can never be in the Mac App Store.

01:05:45 ◼   ► And those things make me very sad.

01:05:47 ◼   ► - A second point I was gonna bring up is

01:05:49 ◼   ► The innovation of this app,

01:05:52 ◼   ► this is exactly like the original GUI.

01:05:53 ◼   ► It's like, previously I could not do this with a computer

01:05:56 ◼   ► because it was too complicated.

01:05:57 ◼   ► But now when you make all my files little pictures,

01:05:59 ◼   ► now I can actually arrange them.

01:06:01 ◼   ► I don't know how to type commands to move files.

01:06:03 ◼   ► I can't keep, simple things like file management.

01:06:05 ◼   ► Once you made the files little pictures

01:06:07 ◼   ► that people could drag around with a mouse,

01:06:08 ◼   ► suddenly they were able to do it.

01:06:09 ◼   ► And for professionals who are gonna have

01:06:12 ◼   ► actual audio hardware with the XLR interfaces

01:06:15 ◼   ► or all that stuff, this is not replacing

01:06:17 ◼   ► a giant recording studio for them.

01:06:18 ◼   ► But it's saying like you have a Mac that is capable of doing a lot of stuff in

01:06:22 ◼   ► Software that you can also do a better job of a more fancy job of with hardware

01:06:28 ◼   ► But maybe you don't want to buy thousands of dollars for the audio hardware and that like Marco said that is a whole other world

01:06:33 ◼   ► Of complexity what if you just want to do something like I have a Mac everything here is happening on the back

01:06:37 ◼   ► I've got a Skype call. I've got you know a Google hangout. I've got some music playing. I've got like why can't I I?

01:06:45 ◼   ► Know my Mac is capable of this it hears all the audio

01:06:47 ◼   ► I can route it in a simple way using the input and output control panels

01:06:50 ◼   ► Why can't I just do this one thing that want to do is not that much more complicated

01:06:54 ◼   ► So I would say this is like when I tweeted about us

01:06:56 ◼   ► I was like if you don't have a big budget for hardware

01:06:59 ◼   ► but you want to do something like what Marco does with like playing some music and mixing it to a live stream and stuff like

01:07:04 ◼   ► that like or you know on the incomparable where we just want to play clips from on our clip show play clips from past episodes or

01:07:11 ◼   ► drop in sound effects and like a game show type thing. You're not asking for much

01:07:14 ◼   ► It's pretty simple, but it's like oh I can add stuff in but it won't record my sound effects

01:07:19 ◼   ► You just hear them over the Skype chat or the only place I can get my sound effects is out of the completely mixed Skype

01:07:23 ◼   ► chat or I'll play this clip and the other people in the show won't hear it

01:07:26 ◼   ► but eventually it'll be in the final recording silly things like that are limitations of the simplicity of the way we can mix audio here and

01:07:32 ◼   ► Providing an application that does that it's just such an incredible shame like this is this is like the kind of

01:07:38 ◼   ► Innovative application that you would expect from a great Mac developer, right?

01:07:41 ◼   ► Can't be on the Mac App Store can't be on iOS because of the way it works because it you know

01:07:46 ◼   ► Hijacks the audio from other applications and stuff like that and I understand like it doesn't have any kernel extensions or anything

01:07:51 ◼   ► But it's using you know, it's getting into other

01:07:54 ◼   ► Processes and like, you know grabbing audio from them and I feel like it's my computer

01:07:59 ◼   ► I there should be security restrictions about that like oh, do you want to hijack audio from this application?

01:08:04 ◼   ► You know confirm that it's done have some sort of system level thing that prevents like

01:08:08 ◼   ► I feel like this application could be on the Mac App Store

01:08:12 ◼   ► if Apple cared enough about the functionality it provides

01:08:14 ◼   ► to provide sort of the gateways of like,

01:08:17 ◼   ► oh, do you wanna give this app access to contacts?

01:08:20 ◼   ► The person says yes, that app has access to contacts.

01:08:22 ◼   ► That's the only kind of barrier I think you need.

01:08:24 ◼   ► It just, it's kind of sad that you cannot buy this

01:08:28 ◼   ► in the Mac App Store, you have to buy it direct.

01:08:30 ◼   ► - All right, I think we're good.

01:08:32 ◼   ► - Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week,

01:08:35 ◼   ► Harvest, Backblaze, and lynda.com,

01:08:38 ◼   ► and we will see you next week.

01:08:40 ◼   ► ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:08:45 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:08:48 ◼   ► ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:08:49 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:08:50 ◼   ► ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:08:52 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:08:53 ◼   ► ♪ John didn't do any research ♪

01:08:55 ◼   ► ♪ Marco and Casey wouldn't let him ♪

01:08:58 ◼   ► ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:09:00 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:09:01 ◼   ► ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:09:02 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:09:04 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm And if you're into Twitter, you can follow

01:09:11 ◼   ► them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:09:20 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Armin S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Siracusa

01:09:30 ◼   ► ♪ It's accidental, accidental ♪

01:09:33 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't mean to ♪

01:09:35 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental, accidental ♪

01:09:38 ◼   ► ♪ Tech podcast so long ♪

01:09:41 ◼   ► - You can find out how much money Marco is saving from Go.

01:09:46 ◼   ► - It isn't that impressive.

01:09:47 ◼   ► It's like a few hundred dollars a month.

01:09:48 ◼   ► I mean, it's, you know.

01:09:49 ◼   ► - That's what we wanna know.

01:09:50 ◼   ► - It's a few hundred dollars a month.

01:09:52 ◼   ► - There you go.

01:09:53 ◼   ► - It's not like, we're not talking thousands.

01:09:55 ◼   ► 'Cause hosting overcast was already inexpensive

01:09:58 ◼   ► compared to like Instapaper or Tumblr or something like that.

01:10:01 ◼   ► - You say like it's nothing.

01:10:02 ◼   ► A few hundred dollars a month is not nothing.

01:10:05 ◼   ► - I mean, that's a car payment.

01:10:06 ◼   ► - Well, but in my last business,

01:10:07 ◼   ► I was spending like five to $7,000 a month.

01:10:09 ◼   ► So like for this one, like this is a lot smaller

01:10:11 ◼   ► because it's like five to $700 a month

01:10:14 ◼   ► as opposed to a thousand.

01:10:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a pretty good bang for the buck though.

01:10:17 ◼   ► Like how long did you spend rewriting it in Go?

01:10:19 ◼   ► And then the savings will be realized going forward.

01:10:24 ◼   ► So you've got a pretty good return

01:10:27 ◼   ► on the investment and the time you spent to learn Go

01:10:30 ◼   ► and rewrite this thing.

01:10:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, and ultimately,

01:10:33 ◼   ► I'm gonna have to spend a little more time on it

01:10:34 ◼   ► because the current model I have

01:10:35 ◼   ► has a couple of little problems,

01:10:37 ◼   ► but overall it's been a huge win

01:10:40 ◼   ► and I learned a new language and that is valuable too.

01:10:42 ◼   ► And now I have a very, very good tool

01:10:47 ◼   ► for certain types of problems in my tool belt, I guess.

01:10:51 ◼   ► I learned something new,

01:10:53 ◼   ► give us something to talk about on the show here and there

01:10:55 ◼   ► and let's be seeing some money.

01:10:57 ◼   ► I mean, like John said, a few hundred dollars a month,

01:10:59 ◼   ► that's significant, that's impressive,

01:11:01 ◼   ► and that's really awesome.

01:11:02 ◼   ► And it's kinda crazy that you just choosing

01:11:06 ◼   ► to attack this problem a little bit differently

01:11:10 ◼   ► has had what I think to be a pretty big, tangible impact

01:11:15 ◼   ► on your financial situation for Overcast.

01:11:19 ◼   ► That's awesome.

01:11:20 ◼   ► And who would have thought that ditching PHP

01:11:24 ◼   ► would save you hundreds on cards,

01:11:26 ◼   ► I mean on server costs.

01:11:29 ◼   ► - And just not even ditching all of it,

01:11:30 ◼   ► just ditching it for like this one hotspot,

01:11:32 ◼   ► this one major bottleneck that was a huge resource hog.

01:11:36 ◼   ► And that's why I like that I now have this in my tool belt

01:11:40 ◼   ► because now I know problems like this,

01:11:43 ◼   ► I have another way to attack them.

01:11:45 ◼   ► I have something else that I know well enough

01:11:47 ◼   ► and that I trust enough to do this kind of thing

01:11:50 ◼   ► that's now available to me.

01:11:52 ◼   ► And that will enable certain new things.

01:11:55 ◼   ► And I didn't wanna learn certain things

01:11:57 ◼   ► like Python or Ruby that much

01:11:59 ◼   ► because they didn't seem to provide enough of an advantage

01:12:03 ◼   ► to make it worth me adding that complexity

01:12:06 ◼   ► and having that burden of having to learn that

01:12:08 ◼   ► over a few weeks and dumping all that time into it.

01:12:12 ◼   ► Go is different enough and good enough at certain things

01:12:16 ◼   ► that it was worth it to me and I'm glad I did it.

01:12:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, the bad old Marco would have spent many more months

01:12:23 ◼   ► arguing with everyone else about why you didn't need to rewrite so true like you would have just

01:12:29 ◼   ► The amount of time and energy you would have spent defending your decision not to rewrite it and go

01:12:33 ◼   ► Would dwarf very quickly dwarf the amount of time it actually took you to rewrite it and go. Oh, yeah

01:12:39 ◼   ► No, this this is what happens when there's a lot of money to be made on one side of an argument

01:12:42 ◼   ► Yeah, well, it's all speculative. You're like, oh, I don't think it'll be that much faster

01:12:46 ◼   ► Maybe I could reduce the number of machines from one to two even now you're saying it's not that much money

01:12:50 ◼   ► Although I think it totally is

01:12:51 ◼   ► And then you know the whole the arguments you just made about having us in your tool bit and so on and so forth

01:12:55 ◼   ► You know we could have made those arguments

01:12:57 ◼   ► You know you have and you know it doesn't seem like a big deal. It's not a whatever that's all

01:13:02 ◼   ► I hope you you've learned from this that like

01:13:04 ◼   ► trying new things is awesome and saves you money and

01:13:07 ◼   ► It's

01:13:10 ◼   ► Lesson I usually take from that is like I get this work all the time

01:13:13 ◼   ► I have to do the calculation of like how much energy will it be for me to argue against this for just how much energy?

01:13:18 ◼   ► will it take for me to just do it?

01:13:20 ◼   ► And a surprising amount of time, it's like,

01:13:23 ◼   ► it's more exhausting for me to think about

01:13:24 ◼   ► arguing against it than just to just do it.

01:13:27 ◼   ► Like, it's actually less work, 'cause then you're like,

01:13:30 ◼   ► whatever, it's done.

01:13:31 ◼   ► When it's done, the argument is over,

01:13:33 ◼   ► there's no argument to be had,

01:13:34 ◼   ► and it was less mentally exhausting

01:13:36 ◼   ► than having to try to argue about this.

01:13:39 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, in my case, it was really just about like,

01:13:43 ◼   ► you know, I'm not gonna take like a sideways step

01:13:46 ◼   ► and learn a language that is generally similar to PHP

01:13:49 ◼   ► and what it does well and what it doesn't do well,

01:13:51 ◼   ► because there's not a whole lot of upside for that.

01:13:55 ◼   ► - Well, we'll work on that one next.

01:13:57 ◼   ► I know that's what you think.

01:13:59 ◼   ► - But with Go, the reason I went to it

01:14:02 ◼   ► was because I had this problem that I was doing

01:14:06 ◼   ► that PHP is especially bad at.

01:14:09 ◼   ► If it was just something that PHP is kind of

01:14:11 ◼   ► inconvenient for or not that well designed for,

01:14:14 ◼   ► that's less of a gain.

01:14:15 ◼   ► That's more like, well, in an ideal world,

01:14:17 ◼   ► on an infinite time scale thing,

01:14:19 ◼   ► maybe I would do something else.

01:14:20 ◼   ► But in most cases, most of the problems

01:14:24 ◼   ► I have to solve with web apps,

01:14:26 ◼   ► the other languages don't solve it better than PHP enough

01:14:30 ◼   ► to make it worth the jump

01:14:31 ◼   ► and the hassle of having to rewrite things.

01:14:33 ◼   ► I mean, this is costing me,

01:14:34 ◼   ► this is gonna cost me probably two months

01:14:36 ◼   ► of web programming time,

01:14:37 ◼   ► because I not only had to rewrite the crawlers

01:14:40 ◼   ► and debug all the problems that came with them,

01:14:42 ◼   ► but I also had to rewrite a lot of these supporting tools.

01:14:44 ◼   ► things like the logging infrastructure

01:14:46 ◼   ► and the things that allow me to check and see

01:14:50 ◼   ► when feeds were last crawled,

01:14:52 ◼   ► how often, monitoring if there's delays,

01:14:55 ◼   ► if there's queue congestion,

01:14:56 ◼   ► being able to force one to crawl immediately.

01:14:59 ◼   ► There's all sorts of little infrastructure supporting pieces

01:15:02 ◼   ► that tie into the crawling system

01:15:04 ◼   ► that I now have to modify or rewrite

01:15:06 ◼   ► because it's a different system.

01:15:08 ◼   ► So it is a pretty expensive change up front.

01:15:12 ◼   ► It will pay off over time,

01:15:13 ◼   ► but it's certainly taking a lot of time.

01:15:15 ◼   ► And so that's why I'm not gonna rewrite

01:15:17 ◼   ► the whole rest of the app in Python or something,

01:15:18 ◼   ► because there doesn't seem to be enough benefit

01:15:22 ◼   ► to doing that for the amount of time and work it would take.

01:15:25 ◼   ► If I'm faced with a problem that PHP does really badly,

01:15:29 ◼   ► like lots of parallel network requests,

01:15:33 ◼   ► now I'm not gonna use it for that.

01:15:36 ◼   ► So that's where the benefit is.

01:15:38 ◼   ► - When you sell Overcast, your next product,

01:15:40 ◼   ► the parts that are appropriate for Go,

01:15:42 ◼   ► you won't write in PHP to begin with

01:15:44 ◼   ► and it'll be go from the beginning.

01:15:45 ◼   ► And the same thing with your queue management stuff.

01:15:47 ◼   ► Like if you ever, if we've ever crossed the next hurdle,

01:15:49 ◼   ► which is like third-party products

01:15:51 ◼   ► for dealing with queues of things and managing the queues

01:15:53 ◼   ► and dealing with failures and reporting and logging.

01:15:56 ◼   ► There are lots of infrastructure type tools

01:15:58 ◼   ► that deal with that.

01:15:59 ◼   ► I know you probably don't like anything

01:16:00 ◼   ► when you're really just write the thing,

01:16:01 ◼   ► straightforward thing yourself.

01:16:03 ◼   ► But in the similar way that if you were to try

01:16:05 ◼   ► to use one of those, you'd be like,

01:16:06 ◼   ► oh, I have this infrastructure that already works.

01:16:07 ◼   ► Now I have to do this thing.

01:16:08 ◼   ► And now I have this weird system

01:16:09 ◼   ► where some of them use this system, some of them use that.

01:16:10 ◼   ► It's like, again, the next time you do a project,

01:16:12 ◼   ► if you have that tool in your tool belt,

01:16:15 ◼   ► then you will say, okay, this part of the system

01:16:17 ◼   ► I'm gonna write in PHP, this part I'm gonna write in Go,

01:16:19 ◼   ► this thing I'm gonna use, you know,

01:16:21 ◼   ► this Q system and this whatever, like,

01:16:24 ◼   ► we'll work on the third party stuff next.

01:16:25 ◼   ► But like, I feel like having,

01:16:27 ◼   ► this is one of the things that having a crappy job

01:16:29 ◼   ► forces you to deal with,

01:16:31 ◼   ► because if you have either one crappy job

01:16:32 ◼   ► or even better, multiple crappy jobs,

01:16:35 ◼   ► crappy meaning of just like regular J-O-B jobs

01:16:37 ◼   ► where you work for somebody else,

01:16:38 ◼   ► you don't get to pick half the time

01:16:39 ◼   ► what you're working with,

01:16:41 ◼   ► what database you're working with,

01:16:42 ◼   ► what logging infrastructure you're working with,

01:16:44 ◼   ► what operating system, what any, you know,

01:16:46 ◼   ► it just, you don't get to pick, right?

01:16:48 ◼   ► And a lot of times you work with crappy things,

01:16:50 ◼   ► but eventually you work with a whole bunch

01:16:51 ◼   ► of different things so that when you come to a new situation

01:16:53 ◼   ► you're like, look, I've tried these five things

01:16:56 ◼   ► and these seven things in this realm or whatever,

01:16:58 ◼   ► and you have, you're forced to have experience

01:17:00 ◼   ► with lots of different things,

01:17:01 ◼   ► and so you have a deeper tool chest to pull from,

01:17:04 ◼   ► whereas if you're not forced by some pointy haired boss

01:17:07 ◼   ► to use a particular technology,

01:17:09 ◼   ► it's always up to you to do the cost benefit

01:17:11 ◼   ► and like, I'm the only person here,

01:17:13 ◼   ► is it really worth me learning to do this on my own,

01:17:15 ◼   ► so on and so forth.

01:17:16 ◼   ► It's much harder to,

01:17:17 ◼   ► you don't have the time to just screw around with stuff

01:17:21 ◼   ► and try everything out and survey the landscape.

01:17:23 ◼   ► You really just have to go with what you know.

01:17:26 ◼   ► And so now you overcoming that hurdle to say,

01:17:29 ◼   ► I am going to screw around for a little while

01:17:31 ◼   ► just because I think there'll be a benefit from it.

01:17:33 ◼   ► It's a sort of a slow motion version

01:17:35 ◼   ► of having a series of crappy JOB jobs

01:17:37 ◼   ► where you forced to use 50 different technologies.

01:17:40 ◼   ► - It's so true.

01:17:40 ◼   ► I also think it's kind of funny for you

01:17:42 ◼   ► to just kind of wave your hand at,

01:17:44 ◼   ► oh, it won't be any better than PHP.

01:17:46 ◼   ► - Well, that's not what I said.

01:17:48 ◼   ► I said it won't be better enough

01:17:50 ◼   ► to make it worth the transition costs.

01:17:52 ◼   ► - Okay, even then, I think that's a very bold claim

01:17:56 ◼   ► for, not for Go necessarily, because you know Go,

01:18:00 ◼   ► but to just kind of wave off, I don't know,

01:18:02 ◼   ► Python as an example,

01:18:04 ◼   ► and just assume that it's not going to be that beneficial.

01:18:08 ◼   ► I think that's pretty bold.

01:18:09 ◼   ► Now, it doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong.

01:18:12 ◼   ► It just means that's pretty bold.

01:18:13 ◼   ► And I am proud of you and remain proud of you

01:18:16 ◼   ► for having explored GO.

01:18:17 ◼   ► And I echo what Jon is saying that I think this is a baby

01:18:21 ◼   ► step in the right direction for you understanding

01:18:23 ◼   ► that you don't necessarily need to personally solve

01:18:25 ◼   ► every problem under the sun.

01:18:27 ◼   ► And there are more than one ways,

01:18:29 ◼   ► there's more than one way to skin a cat and that's okay.

01:18:32 ◼   ► The part where Marco's right about this thing, though,

01:18:34 ◼   ► is like, it's not even Python versus PHP,

01:18:36 ◼   ► it's that he found the hotspot, right?

01:18:38 ◼   ► Like, you reduced your number of servers by like half,

01:18:40 ◼   ► didn't you?

01:18:41 ◼   ► So it doesn't matter how much better something is than PHP,

01:18:43 ◼   ► this was clearly the hotspot.

01:18:45 ◼   ► Like, he's not gonna halve it again, right?

01:18:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - You know what I mean?

01:18:48 ◼   ► So that's the, again, that's just true of anything,

01:18:51 ◼   ► not just working it yourself,

01:18:51 ◼   ► but especially when you're working it yourself,

01:18:53 ◼   ► put your effort towards the thing

01:18:54 ◼   ► that's gonna give you the biggest bang for your buck.

01:18:56 ◼   ► And so if you halve the number of servers,

01:18:58 ◼   ► it's silly to expect that the next change

01:19:01 ◼   ► will also have the number of servers,

01:19:02 ◼   ► because eventually it'll have 1/1000 of a server.

01:19:05 ◼   ► And that's not gonna happen, right?

01:19:07 ◼   ► So decide where the bottleneck is and address that.

01:19:12 ◼   ► And then if the current state of things is fine,

01:19:15 ◼   ► then your work is done, you don't need to work further.

01:19:18 ◼   ► I don't think, for example, if he decided the hotspot is PHP,

01:19:21 ◼   ► I need to replace PHP with Python,

01:19:23 ◼   ► he would not have had the number of servers.

01:19:24 ◼   ► That's the type of thing, even without using language,

01:19:26 ◼   ► you can kind of ballpark and say,

01:19:28 ◼   ► are these of the same level of abstraction?

01:19:30 ◼   ► Go is clearly lower level and it's clearly giving him

01:19:33 ◼   ► something that PHP wasn't that he knew

01:19:34 ◼   ► would be a big bang for the buck.

01:19:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, definitely.

01:19:37 ◼   ► - Even been doing watch kit a lot.

01:19:40 ◼   ► Lots of watch kit this week.

01:19:41 ◼   ► I'm liking it a lot.

01:19:43 ◼   ► - Yeah?

01:19:44 ◼   ► - 'Cause it's so limited that there's not a lot of pressure

01:19:48 ◼   ► on me to make something amazing like that's,

01:19:50 ◼   ► like there's not a lot of pressure on me

01:19:52 ◼   ► to cram the entire app into this because I just can't.

01:19:57 ◼   ► Like it is not possible to.

01:19:59 ◼   ► So the limits I have are very challenging

01:20:04 ◼   ► and in that way kind of interesting to me.

01:20:07 ◼   ► - Can you do a thing with like,

01:20:09 ◼   ► do you have accelerometer access on the watch?

01:20:12 ◼   ► Like if I shake my wrist?

01:20:13 ◼   ► - Nope, no sensors.

01:20:14 ◼   ► - No, that would be like,

01:20:16 ◼   ► a lot of the time when I'm listening

01:20:17 ◼   ► to a podcast or something,

01:20:19 ◼   ► I hate, I've talked to you about this before,

01:20:20 ◼   ► I hate the stupid little clicker,

01:20:22 ◼   ► like going forward and back

01:20:23 ◼   ► of doing two clicks and three clicks,

01:20:24 ◼   ► which when you have cold fingers

01:20:26 ◼   ► and like, I don't know if I accidentally hold too long

01:20:28 ◼   ► and ends up being the click and the hold.

01:20:29 ◼   ► I know all the patterns, but I just can't make my fingers do it with the stupid Apple

01:20:33 ◼   ► Clicker.

01:20:34 ◼   ► But you run out of gestures.

01:20:36 ◼   ► You don't have enough...

01:20:37 ◼   ► There's not enough input.

01:20:38 ◼   ► You don't have enough buttons.

01:20:39 ◼   ► So a lot of the time it's like, I just missed the last few seconds of what was said on a

01:20:44 ◼   ► podcast.

01:20:45 ◼   ► I would shake my wrist for it to go back seven seconds and just have that be the one unambiguous,

01:20:49 ◼   ► vigorous wrist shaking.

01:20:51 ◼   ► I feel like you could make it vigorous enough so you wouldn't accidentally do it or whatever.

01:20:55 ◼   ► And that is much easier than me trying to triple click the stupid headset thing to go

01:21:00 ◼   ► back and hear what somebody said.

01:21:02 ◼   ► Actually I have a prototype class that's a pocket tap recognizer that will try to recognize

01:21:08 ◼   ► if you tap the phone while it's in your pocket.

01:21:10 ◼   ► Like if you just like hit it with your finger from the outside of your jeans or whatever.

01:21:14 ◼   ► And I got that working decently but I could never get it working reliably enough to actually

01:21:21 ◼   ► ship it.

01:21:22 ◼   ► Like it's just not good enough.

01:21:23 ◼   ► there's too many false responses in either direction,

01:21:27 ◼   ► like falsely detecting if you just step really hard

01:21:29 ◼   ► as a tap and missing real taps.

01:21:32 ◼   ► I just could not get it to work properly.

01:21:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's kind of small for gestures.

01:21:36 ◼   ► That's why I was thinking the one input you have

01:21:38 ◼   ► is the shake, and the shake.ndo is silly in iOS,

01:21:42 ◼   ► but I'm pretty sure I've never accidentally done it,

01:21:46 ◼   ► and I very frequently have A, done it on purpose,

01:21:49 ◼   ► and be shaking an app in the dim hope

01:21:53 ◼   ► that this app will actually support undo through shake.

01:21:56 ◼   ► And I'm really excited when it does,

01:21:57 ◼   ► and when it doesn't, I'm just sad.

01:21:58 ◼   ► - You've never kicked that off accidentally?

01:22:01 ◼   ► - Never.

01:22:02 ◼   ► - Oh, I do it all the time,

01:22:03 ◼   ► 'cause I'll be holding my iPad,

01:22:05 ◼   ► so I'll be in bed on my back,

01:22:07 ◼   ► holding my iPad up with both hands using it.

01:22:10 ◼   ► And then I'll kind of like drop it intentionally

01:22:13 ◼   ► to let it land on my chest

01:22:14 ◼   ► so I can like type or something like that

01:22:15 ◼   ► and not support the weight of the iPad

01:22:18 ◼   ► with my hands anymore.

01:22:19 ◼   ► - I have an iPad three,

01:22:20 ◼   ► if I did it, it would break my ribs.

01:22:22 ◼   ► - That's true.

01:22:23 ◼   ► That is an excellent point, sir.

01:22:26 ◼   ► But yeah, every time I do that deliberate drop

01:22:30 ◼   ► onto my chest in order to make it

01:22:33 ◼   ► so that I don't have to support it anymore,

01:22:35 ◼   ► then it kicks the undo.

01:22:40 ◼   ► Do you wanna undo the typing you just did?

01:22:42 ◼   ► And it drives me nuts every time.

01:22:43 ◼   ► But as a developer, I know that it makes perfect sense

01:22:47 ◼   ► why that's happening.

01:22:48 ◼   ► It's not my fault, but it's kind of my fault.

01:22:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, for all I know, I am accidentally triggering it.

01:22:53 ◼   ► I'm just doing it in apps that don't support undo.

01:22:55 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:22:56 ◼   ► But I've never seen stuff go away on my screen

01:22:59 ◼   ► and realize it's because I jostled the thing too much.

01:23:01 ◼   ► And like I said, I very frequently,

01:23:03 ◼   ► after accidentally performing some action,

01:23:05 ◼   ► just futilely shake the device.

01:23:07 ◼   ► Even if it doesn't undo, it lets me get revenge, I guess,

01:23:10 ◼   ► on the device.

01:23:10 ◼   ► You stupid phone.

01:23:12 ◼   ► Didn't mean to tap that.

01:23:13 ◼   ► You know I didn't mean to tap that.

01:23:14 ◼   ► - No, so I've actually,

01:23:16 ◼   ► I've been doing a lot of WatchKit stuff.

01:23:17 ◼   ► I'm just gonna talk about it now, screw it.

01:23:19 ◼   ► So I like it a lot.

01:23:23 ◼   ► I think it's important for people's expectations

01:23:26 ◼   ► of what WatchKit apps will actually be

01:23:29 ◼   ► to actually know how it works a little bit.

01:23:31 ◼   ► So basically, when Apple Watch launches in a few months

01:23:36 ◼   ► or whenever, it doesn't matter,

01:23:38 ◼   ► developers can only,

01:23:39 ◼   ► Apple can do whatever they want with their apps,

01:23:41 ◼   ► but third-party developers can only make

01:23:42 ◼   ► Watch apps with WatchKit.

01:23:44 ◼   ► So what this is is,

01:23:47 ◼   ► WatchKit is actually an extension that runs on the phone

01:23:51 ◼   ► from the main parent app.

01:23:53 ◼   ► And it runs in the background.

01:23:55 ◼   ► Whenever you select the apps icon on the watch,

01:23:58 ◼   ► it launches the WatchKit extension on the phone

01:24:01 ◼   ► to boot up, give it data, and control it.

01:24:04 ◼   ► And then the third-party developer's code

01:24:06 ◼   ► never actually runs on the watch.

01:24:08 ◼   ► All the third-party code is running on the phone,

01:24:11 ◼   ► and it's literally just like,

01:24:12 ◼   ► it's reading data from the parent app on the phone.

01:24:14 ◼   ► If you're making network calls,

01:24:15 ◼   ► it's also happening on the phone.

01:24:17 ◼   ► and then you send commands to the watch

01:24:21 ◼   ► to just update the screen.

01:24:22 ◼   ► The watch is playing through a static storyboard

01:24:24 ◼   ► where you've defined your controllers and everything

01:24:26 ◼   ► and the elements they have.

01:24:28 ◼   ► Those are all static.

01:24:28 ◼   ► You can't generate elements dynamically at runtime.

01:24:32 ◼   ► You can hide and show them, but you can't generate new ones.

01:24:34 ◼   ► And so the phone is basically commanding the watch

01:24:38 ◼   ► over Bluetooth how to update your interface in it.

01:24:42 ◼   ► So it's sending over commands like,

01:24:45 ◼   ► set this label's text to this string.

01:24:48 ◼   ► And like all the commands, it's hilarious,

01:24:50 ◼   ► all the commands, they're write only,

01:24:52 ◼   ► you can't read from them.

01:24:53 ◼   ► So you can set the color of the text

01:24:56 ◼   ► but you can't read it back.

01:24:57 ◼   ► 'Cause it's literally just like this thin layer

01:25:00 ◼   ► on top of this command structure

01:25:01 ◼   ► that's just like telling the watch

01:25:02 ◼   ► how to update its interface.

01:25:04 ◼   ► So there's a number of challenges with this

01:25:06 ◼   ► and the biggest one is latency

01:25:07 ◼   ► 'cause Bluetooth has some latency.

01:25:10 ◼   ► In modern Bluetooth it's pretty small.

01:25:12 ◼   ► But there is some latency.

01:25:14 ◼   ► And there's also just a lot,

01:25:16 ◼   ► there's pretty limited bandwidth there.

01:25:18 ◼   ► And the watch, as far as we can tell

01:25:20 ◼   ► from hints and things here and there,

01:25:22 ◼   ► the watch is not gonna keep your app running for very long.

01:25:25 ◼   ► Like as soon as you stop looking at it,

01:25:27 ◼   ► it closes, the extension closes and everything's cut off.

01:25:30 ◼   ► So there's gonna be major challenges

01:25:33 ◼   ► in just getting these watch apps to be dynamic

01:25:38 ◼   ► and to be useful and to be rich.

01:25:39 ◼   ► Because if you're sending over images,

01:25:43 ◼   ► Even like, you know, I'm having this problem with the album art of like, how do you send

01:25:47 ◼   ► over album art in a way that is efficient?

01:25:49 ◼   ► And you can have it cache up to 20 megs of album art for you, but not a lot.

01:25:57 ◼   ► All these little limitations, little problems, but overall the biggest thing about it is

01:26:02 ◼   ► just this lack of dynamic interface and the latency involved in updating things.

01:26:08 ◼   ► And everything is based around trying to minimize it.

01:26:11 ◼   ► So if you're really chatty over that protocol,

01:26:13 ◼   ► over the Bluetooth, you're gonna keep the radios on,

01:26:15 ◼   ► and you're gonna burn a bunch of battery life

01:26:16 ◼   ► on both sides.

01:26:18 ◼   ► So there's a lot of challenges, a lot of limitations here.

01:26:22 ◼   ► I would say for the first wave of third party apps,

01:26:26 ◼   ► which I think is gonna be a year roughly,

01:26:29 ◼   ► I would say don't expect a lot of dynamic interaction.

01:26:34 ◼   ► It is like a static menu that you're dealing with,

01:26:37 ◼   ► or like static interface elements.

01:26:38 ◼   ► there's almost nothing dynamic that you can do.

01:26:40 ◼   ► I would not expect a whole lot from games.

01:26:44 ◼   ► I think some games will work on it,

01:26:46 ◼   ► things where you can have very simple controls

01:26:48 ◼   ► like which of these five actions do you wanna do next?

01:26:51 ◼   ► Touch this button, like that's it.

01:26:53 ◼   ► Like there's not a lot of interaction

01:26:54 ◼   ► that's gonna be reasonably possible with the system.

01:26:57 ◼   ► On the plus side, it's really quick to develop for

01:27:00 ◼   ► and it's really easy to get something going

01:27:02 ◼   ► and I think it's a smart move overall from Apple

01:27:07 ◼   ► and the tools are pretty good.

01:27:10 ◼   ► There's a couple of bugs here and there,

01:27:12 ◼   ► but overall for this limited set of things that it's doing,

01:27:15 ◼   ► it's pretty well suited for that.

01:27:16 ◼   ► So I'm actually really happy about it.

01:27:19 ◼   ► I'm, again, as I mentioned earlier,

01:27:20 ◼   ► I'm happy that I don't have to kind of be forced

01:27:24 ◼   ► to cram the whole app into it because I just can't.

01:27:27 ◼   ► So instead I can do this limited subset

01:27:29 ◼   ► that I can do in a month or two

01:27:30 ◼   ► and have a really great app out there and be done with it.

01:27:35 ◼   ► So overall, I like it.

01:27:37 ◼   ► Again, set expectations low if you're gonna be buying

01:27:40 ◼   ► one of these things.

01:27:41 ◼   ► Don't expect a whole lot from third party apps,

01:27:43 ◼   ► but what you have I think will be interesting

01:27:46 ◼   ► and certainly will be enough for the first year.

01:27:49 ◼   ► - That's good for Apple because what they wanna say is,

01:27:52 ◼   ► boy, the Apple Watch is out and already there are,

01:27:56 ◼   ► insert very large number of third party applications for it

01:28:00 ◼   ► because if it's really easy for you to add like,

01:28:02 ◼   ► why don't you just add trivial Apple Watch support?

01:28:04 ◼   ► Well, all Apple Watch support at this point is trivial

01:28:07 ◼   ► without native apps and stuff like that

01:28:08 ◼   ► and the incredible limitations.

01:28:09 ◼   ► So if you make it easy for people to go,

01:28:11 ◼   ► that's a nice bullet point we could add to our iPhone app.

01:28:13 ◼   ► I could say we have watch support

01:28:14 ◼   ► and then everyone is thinking of,