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00:00:00   So, I should start the show by pointing out that it is 14 degrees outside here in the

00:00:06   place that does not have winter.

00:00:07   Are you still stuck on this, Casey?

00:00:11   Right here, my thermometer is reading 13.8, so we are clearly colder than you.

00:00:16   We have winter, you don't.

00:00:17   I'm 12 here.

00:00:18   Yeah, those two cents, those 2.2 degrees, man, they're killer.

00:00:23   All right, now that I got that out of the way, do you want to do some follow-up?

00:00:28   That's what we do.

00:00:29   Let's talk about SSL.

00:00:32   So we have a couple of more pieces of interesting news/feedback with regard to whether or not

00:00:38   you really need SSL for just plain old websites that don't really do anything interactive.

00:00:45   David Walken wrote in and said, "Regarding SSL Everywhere, mostly just in FYI, I'm the

00:00:48   sysadmin for a decently sized charter school in California, and I can tell you from experience

00:00:53   that HTTPS wreaks havoc with the content filters that we are required to have in place.

00:00:58   I love the idea of cheaper free SSL certs and more security in general, but it's also

00:01:03   going to make my life miserable trying to keep students from viewing content that they

00:01:07   shouldn't.

00:01:08   And that's kind of unfortunate that schools have to filter everything, but I totally understand

00:01:14   it, and that's actually an interesting point that I hadn't considered before.

00:01:17   Now, they're just going to do the same thing that we discussed last week, force everyone

00:01:21   to have a certificate, do a man-in-the-middle attack on everybody on the school's internet,

00:01:25   You know that happens in corporate settings it happens in schools all the time and as we learned from many other people who sent

00:01:30   This feedback and didn't attach a name to it in the notes because so many people sent it

00:01:33   They were showing examples of go-go's in-flight internet

00:01:36   Issuing its own certificates so that it can man in the middle you because once your browser touches trust its certificate it acts as an

00:01:43   SSL proxy de grips everything sees every all the traffic that goes through and who knows what else it does

00:01:47   So this is definitely a thing it happens in all sorts of

00:01:52   Places it happens on plain Wi-Fi happens in academic settings. It happens in corporate settings

00:01:57   Yeah, so the wonders of SSL. It's not it's not the fault of SSL, but it's like

00:02:03   People want to see your data

00:02:05   And if you try to use SSL to stop them from seeing your data if you wander into an environment where they say no

00:02:10   Really? We need to see your data. They'll see your data. Yep

00:02:13   Well, and I think this is one of those cases where like, you know

00:02:16   You can't have it both ways if you want to have

00:02:19   complete control over what gets viewed over your network and you want to spy on people or filter it,

00:02:23   you need control over those devices so that you can do things like install your own certificates,

00:02:28   you know, via IT policy and, you know, group installation methods and stuff like that, where, you know, you can't have a coffee shop and

00:02:36   be, and say, "All right, you can take your laptop in here, whatever you want, browse on it, whatever you want,"

00:02:40   and then be spying on that without their knowledge, you know, that's, that's no good. So I think this is actually a perfectly fine balance.

00:02:45   I don't think we're gonna like cause trouble for schools everywhere to a degree that it's worth not doing it

00:02:50   Yeah

00:02:51   I mean and like the go-go thing is doing schools could do something similar as you

00:02:54   Basically you try to foist the certificate on the people who are on your network and say look if you want to be on

00:03:00   Our network the price is you have to use a certificate and trust it so we can see all your content

00:03:04   I'm not quite sure what the state of filtering in an academic setting is these days

00:03:08   I understand why it would be a thing that people want to do but it just seems to me that it's

00:03:14   basically impossible to stop.

00:03:17   What they're trying to stop is students

00:03:19   from seeing things inappropriate,

00:03:20   and what students are trying to do

00:03:21   is see inappropriate things.

00:03:22   And the students are 100% going to win.

00:03:26   - Yep.

00:03:26   - Like, you cannot stop them, right?

00:03:27   But I understand that it's like,

00:03:29   well, just because we can't stop them

00:03:30   doesn't mean we shouldn't try,

00:03:32   because not trying, I don't know.

00:03:33   I don't know what the correct solution there is,

00:03:35   but technically speaking, it's one of those situations

00:03:37   where you're not gonna win.

00:03:40   - Well, plus, I mean, not to get too creepy about it,

00:03:42   But I think by the time a lot of kids are old enough

00:03:45   to start seeking out bad things on the internet,

00:03:48   there's a pretty good chance these days

00:03:50   they probably have their own smartphone with a data plan.

00:03:53   - Yep, and Verizon, all it's doing is tracking,

00:03:55   putting an ad tracker on all their HTTP requests, right?

00:03:58   (laughing)

00:03:59   - It's funny you guys bring up schools again,

00:04:01   because when Erin first started teaching,

00:04:05   she wanted to be able to do something simple,

00:04:07   like look at Gmail when she was at work.

00:04:09   And at the time, it was filtered.

00:04:11   And I think when she had left at the end of this past school year,

00:04:15   teachers were afforded more privileges than the students were.

00:04:20   But when she first started, that wasn't the case.

00:04:22   And so I vividly remember getting into a, like, several month-long game of chicken

00:04:28   where I set up, I think it was like a SOX proxy on a little Linux server I had at the house.

00:04:33   And she was using that for a while, and then that got blocked.

00:04:36   And so then I moved the SOX proxy, or whatever it was, that doesn't really matter,

00:04:39   I moved the proxy onto like a standard port number, like 25 or something like that.

00:04:45   It might've been the exchange port number, whatever that was.

00:04:47   But then that eventually got blocked.

00:04:49   And that was around the time that they started giving the teachers more privileges.

00:04:53   But there were a few other steps that I don't remember in this process, but we were definitely

00:04:57   playing this like cat and mouse game, me and well, maybe it wasn't just me because I think

00:05:00   her students were doing it too, to John's point.

00:05:03   But we were playing this cat and mouse game for several months trying to get Aaron access

00:05:07   and not just regular things like Gmail,

00:05:10   these weren't nefarious things,

00:05:12   but eventually it ended up that the IT overlords won

00:05:16   and they just allowed the teachers

00:05:18   to have a little bit more access.

00:05:20   - Yeah, I mean, anyone who's ever worked

00:05:22   with one of these content filters

00:05:24   and tried to get any work done

00:05:27   has usually run into problems like this,

00:05:28   where like, ostensibly it's a good idea

00:05:31   to help keep you working and keep you on track

00:05:33   and there are situations where that works

00:05:35   and where that has been successful,

00:05:36   but there's also a lot of situations where

00:05:39   the filter is actually keeping people from

00:05:42   not only doing harmless things,

00:05:43   like checking their Gmail every once in a while at work,

00:05:46   but also actually keeping them

00:05:47   from doing their jobs properly.

00:05:48   Like if you have to be researching things on the internet

00:05:50   as part of your job,

00:05:51   or you're looking up something for a paper,

00:05:53   and so many sites are blocked.

00:05:55   There's so many situations where these content filters

00:05:59   are actively harmful to what's trying to get done

00:06:01   in the office that they're trying to protect.

00:06:04   - Yeah, it's absolutely true.

00:06:05   But in Erin's case, there were a lot of YouTube videos that she would use during classes about

00:06:12   all sorts of various and different things.

00:06:13   Erin was a high school biology teacher, and she couldn't even do that for the longest

00:06:18   time because YouTube was carte blanche filtered entirely.

00:06:22   And again, over time, the teachers got more access and then she could do this again.

00:06:26   But your point is absolutely right, Marco, that it's not always about nefarious things.

00:06:31   It's not always about slacking off.

00:06:33   Sometimes it's really justifiable use.

00:06:35   But when the thing that's preventing you access is completely algorithmic and not like curated

00:06:41   or whatever, that's what's going to happen.

00:06:43   Yeah, I mean, YouTube is a massive resource for teachers.

00:06:47   That cannot be overstated.

00:06:49   YouTube is an incredible resource for teachers.

00:06:51   And moving on to other follow up, I should sort of kind of apologize to you, Marco, in

00:06:59   that I led you astray last episode with regard to your question about, well, could I just

00:07:04   do my feed polar, which we'll hopefully talk about a little bit later.

00:07:08   Uh, could I just do that and C sharp?

00:07:09   And I said, well, you're going to have to run all of IAS and all of

00:07:12   ASP.net and blah, blah, blah.

00:07:13   And it's really not worth it.

00:07:14   And, uh, Frank Krueger pointed out to me that I think it's called

00:07:17   ASP.net V next or something like that.

00:07:21   That's probably wrong too.

00:07:22   Don't email me, but anyway, the upcoming or currently out, I guess,

00:07:25   version of ASP.net, they actually have, I guess it's binaries for

00:07:30   all sorts of different platforms.

00:07:31   And so you wouldn't necessarily need to run the full stack on, you know, some VPS somewhere.

00:07:38   And the other thing I didn't consider is you probably wouldn't need IIS anyway.

00:07:41   You could just write a console app that in turn reaches out to the internet.

00:07:45   But if you're calling it locally or, you know, via some, some endpoint locally, you may not even need IIS at all.

00:07:54   And I know this is kind of irrelevant, but for the three ASP.NET developers that are listening, my apologies to you for leading Marco

00:08:01   and Marco, should you ever decide to give up on your beloved Go feed crawler,

00:08:07   sinker, whatever guy, let me know and I'll set you up with some C# stuff.

00:08:11   No, see now you missed your chance. This was your one window for this decade.

00:08:14   I know. That was it.

00:08:15   For me to learn a new language once a decade and this is your one window that you could have gotten

00:08:19   me to try a Microsoft language on. Nope, not gonna do it.

00:08:22   I know. It's all over. I quit.

00:08:24   It's all your fault.

00:08:24   I don't think that it was the right answer for you for this particular problem, but I stand by

00:08:30   that if you ever for whatever reason had a chance to really learn C#, I really do

00:08:36   think you'd like it a lot, but at this point I honestly don't know why you

00:08:39   would try it. Like leave aside my own allegiances, I don't think it makes sense

00:08:43   for you at all. But anyway, you could have if I hadn't failed you miserably. And

00:08:48   that kind of segues into why don't you tell us a quick update on your feed

00:08:53   poller. You had tweeted a day or two ago now that you deployed the GoFeed poller

00:08:58   this morning, whatever that day was.

00:09:00   A few hours later, I was able to confidently reduce

00:09:02   the number of overcast VPSs from 13 to five.

00:09:07   That's incredible.

00:09:08   - Yep, that's right.

00:09:09   And I think I can even get it down to four,

00:09:10   but it'd be cutting it a little bit close,

00:09:12   so I'm probably not gonna do it.

00:09:14   But yeah, so last week, I believe my status last week

00:09:18   was I had written like 10 lines of Go code,

00:09:20   so I really didn't have anything going, right?

00:09:22   Is that true?

00:09:22   - That's about right, if my memory's correct.

00:09:25   - So I've been trying it for about a week,

00:09:28   and I really like it.

00:09:28   There's not much more to say.

00:09:30   I'm using it right now.

00:09:31   It is currently running on Overcast.

00:09:33   It has replaced the PHP feed crawler.

00:09:36   So it hasn't replaced all the PHP feed processing.

00:09:39   It has only done like the front end stuff

00:09:42   of now PHP is no longer making network requests.

00:09:46   So it's no longer waiting around for network requests

00:09:49   with all these processes, nothing to do,

00:09:51   waiting around for curl.

00:09:52   So that is all now on Go.

00:09:55   Go is now fetching the pages every X seconds or whatever,

00:09:59   and depending on certain conditions,

00:10:01   depends on subscriber count, latest error,

00:10:03   or everything, anyway, fetches all the feeds,

00:10:06   and then when it finds a changed feed,

00:10:09   it stuffs that feed into Redis,

00:10:10   and a bunch of PHP worker processes crawl that.

00:10:14   So before I said it was 240 PHP processes

00:10:19   that were doing all the crawling,

00:10:20   Now it is one Go process and eight PHP processes.

00:10:25   And I probably don't even need those eight,

00:10:26   but we'll see what happens there.

00:10:28   I bet I can get away with four,

00:10:29   but I'd probably just leave it at eight

00:10:31   just to have some headroom if there's a burst of updates.

00:10:34   And that's roughly it.

00:10:35   So far, I like the language a lot.

00:10:38   Now, neither of you two have done anything with it, right?

00:10:41   - I have not, nope.

00:10:42   - So it does, I mean, obviously,

00:10:46   I am not one to learn new languages frequently.

00:10:50   Looking at the landscape today, the reason I chose Go

00:10:53   after kind of running from Node, and by the way,

00:10:56   we heard from a lot of people about Node,

00:10:58   trying to fix my memory leak.

00:11:00   And there's a bunch of nuance to how you call setTimeout

00:11:05   and what variables are in scope and whether you use

00:11:08   a closure around it or a named function or what,

00:11:10   you know, whether you were trying to do a variable,

00:11:12   there's all these little nuances.

00:11:14   I have no doubt that the right person could look

00:11:18   this code and fix it for me, but as I said last week, you know, Node is, it just doesn't

00:11:24   fit me as well as something I really want to invest a lot of time into. It is not a

00:11:30   good enough fit for me in other ways besides this way, so I lost interest in trying to

00:11:35   fix this problem. Thank you, Node people. I appreciate the week of your support, but

00:11:40   please stop emailing me corrections about it because I've already stopped using the

00:11:45   I'm sure it's fine for you or Merlin, but that's it.

00:11:49   Looking at everything else that's available,

00:11:51   I consider other things like, you know, Java, Python.

00:11:54   I was going to do ASP.NET until Casey talked me out

00:11:57   of it last week.

00:11:58   - Is that really true?

00:11:59   - No. (laughs)

00:12:00   No, it was never under consideration.

00:12:02   It might become in the future, you know, Microsoft,

00:12:05   they're clearly investing very heavily in dev tools

00:12:08   and trying to reach out to developers

00:12:10   who are not right now on Microsoft platforms.

00:12:12   and I'm curious to see what they do in those areas.

00:12:15   Because one thing that almost all of these languages lack

00:12:18   is a really nice IDE for Mac, or for anything really.

00:12:23   I'm not entirely sure Eclipse qualifies for that statement.

00:12:27   - No. - I've never used it,

00:12:29   but from what I've seen of other people using it,

00:12:30   it has never appeared as though I want to use it.

00:12:34   (laughs)

00:12:35   You said no, Casey, is that roughly accurate?

00:12:37   - I haven't used it in years,

00:12:38   so I'm admittedly talking a little bit out of turn,

00:12:42   but any exposure I've had to it,

00:12:44   and any exposure I've had to it

00:12:45   by way of other people talking about it,

00:12:48   I cannot remember a time anyone said

00:12:49   anything positive about Eclipse.

00:12:51   (laughs)

00:12:52   - Right.

00:12:53   So anyway, I would like to have a nice IDE.

00:12:56   I have one for Xcode for my native applications.

00:13:00   I've never had one for web apps.

00:13:02   Every web app I've ever written

00:13:03   has been written in a text editor,

00:13:04   either VI at first or TextMate later.

00:13:07   So I've never had a nice IDE with code completion

00:13:10   and inline error descriptions and everything.

00:13:13   Never had that.

00:13:14   I would love that, never had that.

00:13:15   I never had the luxury of a real debugger

00:13:18   while writing web apps.

00:13:19   That would also be nice, never had it.

00:13:21   And with all these new languages

00:13:23   that I've been playing with or that I've been investigating,

00:13:25   almost none of them offer that in a reasonable way.

00:13:28   So all that being said,

00:13:30   I might consider Microsoft stuff in the future

00:13:33   depending on the direction they go with their tools.

00:13:36   But right now it is not under consideration.

00:13:39   I looked at Rust and I looked at Go and I read up,

00:13:42   I didn't actually try writing any code in Rust,

00:13:44   so that's a giant disclaimer at the beginning.

00:13:48   I looked at both of those,

00:13:49   those seem like the two that everyone said

00:13:51   or with the third option of Python,

00:13:53   where everyone says either do this in Python

00:13:55   'cause it's good at this or do it in Rust or Go.

00:13:57   There's a lot of debate between Rust people and Go people

00:14:01   about which one is better

00:14:02   and a few people have tried both

00:14:05   and have given more useful opinions.

00:14:07   Not a lot have written about it,

00:14:08   I haven't found a whole lot of posts about this.

00:14:11   I think Rust in the long term will probably be more common.

00:14:16   It certainly, it has a long way to go.

00:14:18   It's still very much a beta and it shows

00:14:20   in a lot of the documentation and the tools and everything.

00:14:22   It's not, it will clearly be a lot better in the future.

00:14:27   But Rust also seems very much, very close to Swift

00:14:31   and C++ style of language preferences,

00:14:35   which really is not my style.

00:14:37   It might become my style later on,

00:14:38   but it currently isn't.

00:14:40   Just the whole, like Rust, it just seemed like it added

00:14:43   quite a lot of complexity that I,

00:14:45   that conflicted with what I actually wanted.

00:14:47   There are a lot of things about it that I like.

00:14:49   I like the idea of the mutability being part

00:14:51   of the language, that's a big one.

00:14:53   I really, I would love that.

00:14:55   I like some of the type tricks you can do,

00:14:58   most of them I wouldn't need.

00:15:00   Go is a lot more basic.

00:15:03   It's a lot smaller of a language.

00:15:07   And not to say it's not advanced,

00:15:09   but the things the language will do for you

00:15:12   are much more limited.

00:15:13   Most of the time I fall on the side of the way they did it,

00:15:16   which is one of the reasons I chose to move forward

00:15:18   with that language.

00:15:19   Anyway, so far it is really nice.

00:15:22   There are parts about it that are weird.

00:15:25   It is not like a clear, oh my god,

00:15:27   this is perfect forever language.

00:15:29   I can already tell I'm probably not gonna want

00:15:32   to be writing the whole web app in this.

00:15:35   If I was writing a new web app from scratch,

00:15:37   I would consider it, but it is,

00:15:40   I don't think there's any reason for me to rewrite

00:15:42   the whole Overcast web app and go, you know,

00:15:43   just, I think it's a way for me to get rid of these hotspots

00:15:47   and that's about it.

00:15:48   But there's a lot to like there.

00:15:50   I really like it, I'm glad I'm trying it,

00:15:52   and I'm gonna keep going with it where it makes sense to.

00:15:56   - So did you use Go routines and channels and everything

00:15:59   for your, what do you call it,

00:16:02   sort of event loop replacement type thing?

00:16:04   Yeah, it's entirely Go routines and channels.

00:16:06   - That's good.

00:16:07   When I was talking about what the kind of event libraries

00:16:09   were in Go, I knew they had some weird concurrency thing,

00:16:11   but I couldn't remember what it was off the top of my head.

00:16:13   But that's, I mean, for a small language,

00:16:16   it's kind of odd that, not odd, but like,

00:16:19   this expresses the philosophy of Go.

00:16:20   If the language is small, it's kind of like C done better,

00:16:23   but they determined that the concurrency stuff

00:16:26   was important enough to actually add to a language

00:16:29   that is otherwise being kept very small,

00:16:31   and that says a lot about sort of the intended use

00:16:34   of the language and why I think it's probably a good fit for Google doing server-side stuff

00:16:37   and for you doing the poll.

00:16:39   Yeah, exactly. I mean, I love the concurrency stuff. I tweeted earlier, this is genius,

00:16:44   somebody pointed out, actually a number of people pointed out on Twitter earlier that

00:16:48   this is not at all new. It's called, is it CSP? Concurrent Sequential Processes, I think?

00:16:54   Something like that. It's a concurrency model that Go uses, communicating sequential processes.

00:16:58   That's it. Thank you, Mitchi in the chat. So anyway, I like this model a lot. It is

00:17:03   not perfect. It seems more complicated up front. Once you get into it, you realize,

00:17:08   "Oh, this is actually really nice." There's a lot of concurrency baggage you usually have

00:17:13   to worry about, like locking and threading, that you just don't need to really worry about

00:17:18   if you do it the way you're supposed to do it. And it's really, it's easy to do things

00:17:22   like earlier I added, you know, I, for, ever since the very beginning, I had a limit on

00:17:29   how many crawls can be running in parallel at any one time.

00:17:33   And that's very easy to do with channels.

00:17:35   Just, you know, earlier tonight I added a second limit

00:17:38   to how many per host you can be running at once.

00:17:41   So I don't have, because earlier I crawled all the feeds

00:17:44   to a couple of big hosts and got blocked immediately

00:17:48   from having like 2,000 connections open

00:17:50   to one host at a time.

00:17:52   So that went out the window.

00:17:54   But that was really easy to add too.

00:17:57   Like just it's this quick little, you know,

00:17:59   make a channel for every host and oh,

00:18:01   here's an array of channels and when you start it,

00:18:03   push one onto it and when you end it,

00:18:05   pop one off of it and here's the buffer length

00:18:06   and that's it, like it's really,

00:18:08   for doing stuff like that,

00:18:09   this concurrency model is really nice.

00:18:12   And what I like about it is that it is very new.

00:18:16   It is unlike any concurrency models

00:18:18   I've worked with in the past.

00:18:20   And so it is intellectually stimulating,

00:18:22   it is educational and for this task, it's really good.

00:18:26   - Hmm, so you seem pleased.

00:18:28   - Overall, yeah.

00:18:29   I mean, as I said, it does have weirdnesses to it.

00:18:32   Like, there are certain things about it

00:18:34   that I'm just like, really?

00:18:35   That's what I have to do?

00:18:36   Or you don't support that?

00:18:39   But, you know, part of this is just me

00:18:41   getting the use of the language.

00:18:42   Ask me again in six months how I feel about this language.

00:18:46   - Fair enough.

00:18:47   All right, anything else on this,

00:18:48   or would you like to tell me about something cool?

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00:21:21   Thanks a lot to Casper for sponsoring our show once again.

00:21:23   - So Marco, did anything happen this week?

00:21:26   - Nope.

00:21:28   - Are we really not talking about it?

00:21:29   'Cause we don't have to.

00:21:30   - We can talk about it if you want.

00:21:31   I mean, I don't have that much more to say on it.

00:21:33   So I wrote this blog post

00:21:34   called Apple Has Lost the Functional High Ground,

00:21:39   a title I'm regretting because...

00:21:41   (laughs)

00:21:43   Of all the complaints people had about the piece,

00:21:47   I think the title was probably the least valid complaint about it, because I don't think

00:21:51   the title was that far off the truth.

00:21:53   Can you explain the title to me? Because that was the part that I was most confused about

00:21:56   in your post.

00:21:57   So the title was, you know, "Apple Has Lost the Functional High Ground." So this is a

00:22:00   play on the concept of the moral high ground. I don't have to explain that, do I?

00:22:05   No, you don't. But explain the functional high ground.

00:22:08   So Apple stuff, you know, it used to be that Apple stuff generally, by a pretty long shot,

00:22:17   worked better than PC/Android/other alternatives.

00:22:23   People threw around the phrase "it just works."

00:22:25   As I said in the article, that was never 100% true, but it was generally true.

00:22:32   It was the general advantage that Apple stuff had over their competitors is that it just

00:22:37   worked better the vast majority of the time.

00:22:39   Certain things were more reliable, simpler, more robust, etc.

00:22:45   So this gave Apple what I consider the functional high ground in the past of Apple stuff just

00:22:50   worked better.

00:22:54   And it worked so well that I think you could not necessarily hold it over PC people, but

00:22:59   you knew when you were using an Apple product like, "Yeah, I got a good one here.

00:23:03   I got the thing that works best in this industry."

00:23:06   I think their quality problems over the last few years

00:23:10   when taken together have ruined this image to a degree.

00:23:15   And so I don't necessarily mean

00:23:18   that someone else has become better.

00:23:21   And that's an argument Gruber had,

00:23:23   that's an argument a few other people have brought up.

00:23:25   I think you can lose,

00:23:27   like if you think about the moral high ground,

00:23:28   I think you can lose the moral high ground

00:23:30   even if no one else takes it from you.

00:23:33   Like losing the moral high ground is like,

00:23:35   You used to be really good morally,

00:23:38   have a really good image,

00:23:38   or have a really good reputation,

00:23:39   and you don't anymore.

00:23:41   And so when I said losing the functional high ground,

00:23:43   what I meant was in that sense of like,

00:23:46   they used to have a good reputation for this,

00:23:48   and now they don't.

00:23:50   So I think in that way,

00:23:51   I think the title was actually pretty fair.

00:23:54   What do you think?

00:23:55   - I wouldn't have used the word functional,

00:23:56   because I think that was what was throwing me.

00:23:58   Now hearing your explanation,

00:23:59   I think my conception of it kept focusing more

00:24:01   on the definition of functional.

00:24:02   Maybe I would go with like,

00:24:04   Reliability is not really what we're going for.

00:24:07   But anyway, I probably wouldn't have made

00:24:09   a high-ground analogy in title,

00:24:10   but now that you've explained that,

00:24:11   I understand what you were getting at.

00:24:12   So you can go on to the,

00:24:14   explaining the body of your thing,

00:24:16   because I cut you off with the title part.

00:24:19   - Well, but no, that was important,

00:24:20   because a lot of people argued about the title.

00:24:23   And I do think the title was not really the bad part.

00:24:28   The part that I regret was the overall,

00:24:33   maybe sensational, maybe alarmist,

00:24:35   I don't know exactly how to say it.

00:24:36   So the post was basically saying,

00:24:39   Apple stuff doesn't work very well anymore.

00:24:41   I think the problem is,

00:24:43   I said their hardware quality is fantastic recently,

00:24:46   but their software quality is really not.

00:24:49   And originally I said it's taken a nose dive.

00:24:53   That was, that's the word I regret the most,

00:24:55   because that suggests the wrong acceleration rate

00:25:00   or trajectory of the decline.

00:25:03   Like, I think Apple software is on a steady decline

00:25:08   and it's been going that way for a while.

00:25:10   A nose dive is like a sudden drop precariously,

00:25:14   or precipitously, whatever the right word is,

00:25:16   a sudden rapidly accelerating drop.

00:25:18   I don't think that is what's happening.

00:25:20   I think it's been a slow decline

00:25:22   and there's no signs of it turning around really.

00:25:25   Definitely just like a slow decline

00:25:26   of their software quality.

00:25:27   And part of it is services quality worked in with that

00:25:31   but a lot of it really is just the software itself,

00:25:34   like the local software running on the machines,

00:25:36   which is really unfortunate.

00:25:38   And so, a few of the words, like I said,

00:25:42   riddled with bugs, I don't think it's riddled with bugs,

00:25:46   it has bugs, there are certain words

00:25:48   that were more severe than they need to be.

00:25:51   But overall, I stand by the message that I was saying,

00:25:55   which is this stuff is not working as well as it used to.

00:25:59   Now we need to be very cautious when we install updates.

00:26:02   And the fact is it used to be better,

00:26:04   and that worries me.

00:26:06   My theory is that marketing priorities,

00:26:09   and again, it's important to point out

00:26:11   the fine distinction here,

00:26:13   not the marketing department, as some sites quoted it as,

00:26:16   which I never said.

00:26:18   Marketing priorities at Apple seem to be dictating

00:26:22   that the software must keep pace

00:26:25   with the annual hardware releases,

00:26:28   or that there must be an annual software release.

00:26:30   That has marketing value.

00:26:32   That helps the products with cross marketing

00:26:34   between the Macs and the iPhones and new iPhones come out.

00:26:37   There's also all these new software capabilities

00:26:40   that go along with brand new iOSX.

00:26:42   And that was X meaning like integer,

00:26:45   not mispronouncing 10 with OS10.

00:26:49   Anyway, my opinion is that Apple quality

00:26:54   has gone downhill in the last few years

00:26:57   and they shouldn't be keeping up with this

00:27:02   artificial annual release schedule for major OSes

00:27:05   because that is just not,

00:27:07   it's not producing good quality software.

00:27:09   You know, it used to be,

00:27:10   like the 10.x.0 releases,

00:27:15   all the way up to like 10.x.3 or four,

00:27:19   were sometimes unstable or at least had some bugs.

00:27:22   Usually by the time you got to like 10.x.4 or five,

00:27:25   it was pretty rock solid.

00:27:27   you could pretty much depend on it.

00:27:28   And then with some of the previous releases,

00:27:31   they would get all the way up to like 10.x.7.8 or 9

00:27:34   because they were just around for longer.

00:27:37   And so by the time,

00:27:39   so there would be a couple of months of instability

00:27:41   at the beginning of a new OS release.

00:27:42   But then a few months in, you were fine

00:27:45   and it was rock stable for the next 18 months

00:27:48   before there was really a new one.

00:27:50   And now it seems like we're always using a 1.0 or a 1.1.

00:27:57   every release that we're using from Apple

00:27:58   because the major updates are moving so quickly

00:28:01   and get so many changes in each one.

00:28:04   It's not like we're always using a beta, but it's close.

00:28:09   It's like we're always using a .0 or a .1.

00:28:12   And you feel that in a lot of ways.

00:28:15   And one of the errors I made was I didn't actually list

00:28:17   any of those ways in this post,

00:28:19   but it's almost like there's too many to list.

00:28:21   Glenn Fleischmann wrote a really good article today.

00:28:23   He actually solicited people from Twitter

00:28:25   to tell him, make me a list, tell me all the things

00:28:29   that are common problems for everybody.

00:28:31   And he posted a good thing, I'll put it in the show notes.

00:28:33   And it's hard, there isn't like one thing,

00:28:36   you know, if somebody asked me like,

00:28:38   oh, what one thing do we need to be working on,

00:28:40   or what one thing needs to be improved here,

00:28:44   there is no one thing.

00:28:45   There are a million tiny things and a few big things

00:28:49   that just don't work very well or have bugs sometimes.

00:28:53   And I don't, you can't tell, it's hard to tell

00:28:57   if Apple thinks this is a problem

00:29:00   or if they think the course they're on is okay.

00:29:04   - Well, I remember when I talked,

00:29:05   well, first of all, I'm gonna say

00:29:07   this has been an interesting demonstration

00:29:09   between podcasting and blogging

00:29:11   because we have all, the three of us,

00:29:13   talked about all these things for like,

00:29:15   what is it, over a year now.

00:29:17   Like it's, you know, it's not as if

00:29:18   this was a sudden realization that Marco woke up one day

00:29:21   and said, "My God, I mean,"

00:29:22   But when Marco says it on a podcast,

00:29:24   or we say it on a podcast, nobody hears it.

00:29:26   But when it gets written down,

00:29:27   part of it is just luck of the draw

00:29:28   of having to catch on and go viral or whatever.

00:29:31   But it is interesting to me that

00:29:33   if someone is a regular listener to the show

00:29:35   and reads that blog post, they'll be like,

00:29:37   "Yeah, I've heard Marco say that a million times."

00:29:39   And so it's not like a revelation,

00:29:41   but then suddenly, you know, anyway.

00:29:42   - That's the thing, I wasn't saying anything

00:29:44   that I thought was particularly noteworthy or original.

00:29:47   - It was almost like the kind of thing,

00:29:49   this goes two ways, both of us do this,

00:29:51   well, back when I used to blog.

00:29:52   and Casey, like two ways where sometimes

00:29:53   you'll write something up on your site

00:29:56   and then you'll talk about it on the podcast

00:29:58   and sometimes we'll talk about something on the podcast

00:30:00   and then after the podcast,

00:30:01   you'll sort of write up essentially a more coherent summary

00:30:04   of what was discussed.

00:30:05   And this definitely felt like, you know,

00:30:08   after talking about this for weeks or months or whatever,

00:30:10   you felt like it was time for a blog post about it

00:30:12   and you more or less summarized all the things

00:30:14   that you'd said on past podcasts or whatever.

00:30:16   And it just felt like that thing you do where like,

00:30:18   sometimes it comes first in the podcast,

00:30:20   some kind of first in the blog.

00:30:21   talk about the meta stuff later but I just thought that was interesting.

00:30:24   And speaking of podcasts, one of the things that a couple people who read that reminded

00:30:28   me that existed because I'm old and I forget now was Hypercritical Episode 55, Region of

00:30:33   Pain, which was back around the mountain lion, talking about a mountain lion and maybe the

00:30:37   announcement or talking about my review.

00:30:41   That title comes from the idea that Marco just articulated which is with yearly releases,

00:30:47   my worry in that show was is the OS going to have enough time to mature because the point

00:30:53   O's are always crap right and then the point one point two is like it takes a while to settle down

00:30:57   right and if you're gonna happen if they're gonna happen every year it does do yearly releases give

00:31:03   the OS enough time to settle down or are we always going to be in what i call the region of pain

00:31:08   because it's always crap when the point O comes out like no matter how long they hold it like you

00:31:11   You just you know it's and there's always some instability sometimes long sometimes short

00:31:16   That was in 2012

00:31:19   The beginning of 2012 at this point

00:31:22   I would say that we know for os 10 that the OS does get out of the region of pain because we do reach the

00:31:28   Point four or point five but what Marcos thing was talking about is all right?

00:31:34   We exit the region of pain how long do we get in the nice part before it starts over?

00:31:39   It's not like they run into each other. It's not like it's just bug ridden it because

00:31:42   Mavericks was not just like a total disaster right before Yosemite came out at least for most people

00:31:48   I mean there are exceptions people gonna write us and say no this feature X never worked on Mavericks or my GPU always kernel-packed

00:31:53   On Mavericks or whatever like that is true, and that has always happened, and that's unfortunate, but

00:31:57   For most people like Mavericks had settled down

00:32:01   But how long did you get with the settled down Mavericks was it was it the majority of the year?

00:32:06   Definitely not right was it less than half a year was it one month of the two month right and

00:32:11   That I think when I'm looking at this again

00:32:15   We've talked about all these things before the the change fatigue not just the bug fatigue the bug fatigue is one thing

00:32:20   But also the change fatigue as in even if everything works perfectly

00:32:24   I don't know if I'm ready for everything to change how it works again like not everything

00:32:28   but you know people don't want the time change like

00:32:30   the change fatigue combined with the

00:32:33   very short periods of

00:32:35   of stability and calm

00:32:37   That I think more than like the quality of the software or any kind of metric you could put on it

00:32:43   Like number of bugs in the point releases or number of bugs in the final releases or severity of bugs or anything like that

00:32:48   I think that more than anything

00:32:51   Characterizes the dissatisfaction I've heard from a lot of people about

00:32:56   Apple is that

00:32:58   Especially on the Mac. I don't want to talk about iOS separately, but the Mac is

00:33:02   different because on the Mac I think the the third thing that comes into the into this equation of

00:33:08   Change for T. Not a long time and at a period of stability also the final question is who are you chasing?

00:33:14   Who are you chasing with yearly OS 10 updates like why?

00:33:18   With iOS you feel like all right Android Samsung you got people breathing down your neck. It's an exploding market. It's super competitive

00:33:25   You got to do what you got to do and that's that's the marketing priorities that Margaret was talking about it for the Mac though

00:33:31   So it's like yearly releases, if you can pull it off, fine.

00:33:36   And I think they proved they can pull off.

00:33:37   We can make yearly releases.

00:33:38   Each ones have interesting features.

00:33:40   They eventually settled down to stability.

00:33:41   Like they can do it, but the cost is like,

00:33:45   at least half the year you're dealing with like a baby OS

00:33:49   that has a bunch of bugs.

00:33:50   Then you get a period of stability.

00:33:51   And as soon as everything's okay, here comes the new one.

00:33:53   And like, they can do it.

00:33:55   They can get them out on time.

00:33:56   They're not more or less,

00:33:57   they're not like iOS tied to hardware.

00:33:59   Like they just basically go,

00:34:00   Yosemite's not ready, we're gonna ship that later.

00:34:02   Like it's not like there's a yearly update of Macs

00:34:03   that they're trying to sync with,

00:34:05   so it's not exactly tied to that.

00:34:07   It's just that, it's almost like a corporate stunt.

00:34:11   Not like a stunt to like shut up, but like saying,

00:34:16   our organization is so well oiled,

00:34:18   we can revise and release yearly updates

00:34:20   to a massive consumer operating system.

00:34:23   Yes, you can, and you can get it done,

00:34:26   and during the course of its life,

00:34:28   it will settle down to stability.

00:34:30   but it still may be too much.

00:34:31   Like it still may be like, why,

00:34:33   why do you think we need a new one of these

00:34:34   every single year?

00:34:36   We would prefer to have an entire year of boringness

00:34:38   instead of four months of boringness.

00:34:41   - Yeah, I agree.

00:34:42   And I wrote a small kind of response post to Marco's post,

00:34:45   which is mostly irrelevant,

00:34:48   except that a few people emailed me and one of them said,

00:34:51   and I don't have the email in front of me,

00:34:52   something along the lines of,

00:34:54   well, is it really the yearly thing that's the problem?

00:34:56   Or is it that there's so much stuff in each release,

00:34:59   new stuff in each release.

00:35:00   And I think that's a fair point that you could argue

00:35:03   that you could just put less in each of these releases,

00:35:08   but potentially keep this super aggressive yearly cycle.

00:35:12   But I don't know, it just seems to me

00:35:14   that that's not really the choice that Apple would make,

00:35:18   is just have like one marquee feature

00:35:20   and then the rest of a new OS be otherwise unremarkable.

00:35:24   The other thing I'd like to point out

00:35:26   is a friend of the show, Ben Thompson, in the chat says,

00:35:29   The problem is that Apple needs to iterate faster on the cloud stuff and slower on the software,

00:35:33   but by keeping them all linked together, they're making both worse. Cloud is still too slow,

00:35:37   software is now too fast. And I think that's a really astute point that we really could use a lot

00:35:42   of help on the services side, although again, we definitely need some help on the desktop side as

00:35:47   well. And just keeping the desktop and the mobile operating systems inextricably linked like Apple

00:35:57   is it just seems it seems like it's kind of tough to keep everything moving effectively

00:36:04   that way. Now what I'd be curious to hear your guys's take on is a lot of people said well

00:36:09   yeah okay let's assume that Apple says well the hell with yearly releases what happens for things

00:36:15   like continuity that really are integrating both the desktop and and iOS wouldn't you want them

00:36:24   them to happen simultaneously?

00:36:25   Now the comedy of this question is that I believe

00:36:28   pieces of continuity did not happen simultaneously

00:36:30   and there were point releases to Yosemite to enable it,

00:36:33   but I don't like, doesn't it kinda make sense

00:36:35   to have everything packaged together

00:36:37   at the same moment in time?

00:36:39   - Well for certain things, yes.

00:36:41   But A, I don't think those things

00:36:44   should really come up every year.

00:36:46   Big things that require these massive coordination

00:36:48   between all the OSs I don't think should

00:36:51   or will come up every year.

00:36:52   And B, you have to ask at what cost.

00:36:56   So, you know, would you drive a car

00:36:59   that had really great features added to it every day

00:37:02   but would occasionally explode?

00:37:04   Like, there's certain things that just are not worth it,

00:37:07   you know, and what I think has really shaken

00:37:10   a lot of my faith in Apple's software quality recently

00:37:14   is not like, oh, this button looks weird every so often.

00:37:18   It's like basic stuff that I take for granted

00:37:22   as like this always works, doesn't work anymore,

00:37:26   or works erratically.

00:37:27   Like one of my biggest complaints with Yosemite

00:37:30   is with networking issues,

00:37:32   usually with network discovery of resources

00:37:34   or connectivity to network resources,

00:37:36   to local network resources.

00:37:38   There's something about the way they revert discovery data

00:37:40   to enable continuity/air drop, whatever it is,

00:37:45   it has made it extremely unreliable

00:37:47   for things like network shares, network printers,

00:37:49   stuff like that.

00:37:51   We would have made fun of Windows people so badly

00:37:54   if their network shares had disappeared every so often

00:37:57   or they had 16 copies of the same computer on the network.

00:38:00   And these are issues that we have on Yosemite every day

00:38:05   that are widespread issues.

00:38:06   Lots of people have these issues.

00:38:08   And it's like this is the basics.

00:38:10   The basics are messed up now.

00:38:12   The OS isn't crashing for most people.

00:38:15   We're not getting kernel panics, fortunately.

00:38:18   But we are having a lot of weird little behaviors like that,

00:38:22   that just things that seem basic,

00:38:26   similar to when iOS broke Touch ID and phone calls.

00:38:30   (laughing)

00:38:32   Seems basic, right?

00:38:33   And whatever the cause of that was,

00:38:34   whether it was a delivery issue,

00:38:36   I don't care what the cause was.

00:38:37   The fact is you can't trust the basics anymore.

00:38:41   That, I think, is scary.

00:38:44   That's what I'm talking about

00:38:47   when I'm talking about Apple losing reputation from this,

00:38:50   is like, you know, nobody cares if things, you know,

00:38:55   don't quite look right, or if some brand new feature

00:38:58   doesn't quite work immediately.

00:39:00   Like, HealthKit launched.

00:39:02   It apparently, I don't know much about it,

00:39:04   I haven't tried to use it, but apparently,

00:39:06   the condition of HealthKit at launch

00:39:08   was a complete disaster.

00:39:10   I don't know if it's fixed since then,

00:39:11   but it was like, it basically launched

00:39:13   like not working at all.

00:39:16   Yeah, didn't Apple, I remember they had to

00:39:17   reject all the apps for it and delay them anyway.

00:39:20   Big disaster with HealthKit.

00:39:22   That's less, that's embarrassing, certainly.

00:39:25   But that's less important than if you break

00:39:28   a fundamental thing.

00:39:29   It's like if a new thing you promised isn't quite here yet,

00:39:31   like the Mac Photos app isn't here yet that they promised.

00:39:36   That's not that big of a deal.

00:39:37   Like the stuff we've been using before

00:39:39   will continue to work for a while.

00:39:41   We're not losing functionality by that being late.

00:39:45   but if they shipped the photos thing and it was horrible

00:39:49   and all of a sudden, and it took over the way iCloud Drive

00:39:52   migrates all your stuff over and you can't go back,

00:39:54   and all of a sudden, every so often,

00:39:56   you just lose your random photo, like HFS Plus, ding.

00:39:59   You can't mess with the basics.

00:40:02   And the problem is that even the basics now

00:40:06   get messed with on a high enough frequency

00:40:09   from these constant, relentless, big updates

00:40:13   that the fundamentals are shaky now,

00:40:16   and that's really, that's unsettling.

00:40:18   - See, in actually assessing, I didn't talk about this

00:40:20   when I was discussing earlier, I said that a lot of people

00:40:22   feel that the quality has declined,

00:40:24   but when I take my personal assessment

00:40:26   of where the quality has declined,

00:40:27   I think it comes just from having a longer view

00:40:31   and having lived through lots of different cycles

00:40:33   and having lived through times when it was way, way worse,

00:40:36   like before OS X, which you guys might not remember.

00:40:40   I don't really think that things are worse now

00:40:44   than they have ever been,

00:40:45   or that there's actually been a decline.

00:40:46   That's not to say that I disagree

00:40:48   with the sentiment of your post,

00:40:49   because I think it is a good sentiment.

00:40:51   I endorse the sentiment except for,

00:40:54   like it doesn't hinge on this being a new low.

00:40:57   It merely hinges on the idea that you think

00:40:59   that the current situation is not acceptable,

00:41:01   which I agree with.

00:41:02   And it's not acceptable because the Apple today

00:41:04   is not the Apple that it was before.

00:41:05   The context is different.

00:41:06   They have more platforms, they have different platforms,

00:41:08   they have platforms that are more widespread.

00:41:10   we use computers more often, so on and so forth.

00:41:11   So I don't think there has been a decline in quality

00:41:16   or any of the things you said about basic features

00:41:19   not working or anything like that.

00:41:20   But I think it should change because the context

00:41:24   in which Apple is running its business

00:41:25   and deploying its products is very different today.

00:41:28   And the one place where I would say things

00:41:31   are slowly getting worse, and overall I don't think they are

00:41:34   but I think Apple's been doing better in lots of areas.

00:41:36   But the one area where they're definitely doing worse

00:41:38   is as Apple, again, this will be a repeat of anyone

00:41:41   who's listened to the show for any length of time,

00:41:42   has heard this a million times, here we go again.

00:41:44   As Apple's products integrate more and more

00:41:48   network functionality, as that becomes a larger percentage

00:41:51   of what you do with your phone, with your,

00:41:54   basically as iCloud becomes more integrated,

00:41:56   as more of network services stuff becomes part

00:42:00   of Apple's products, Apple has not been getting better

00:42:04   at that stuff fast enough, and it's becoming

00:42:05   a larger percentage of their product,

00:42:07   Therefore it's dragging down the average.

00:42:08   Because whatever product or technology you have,

00:42:11   does it involve cloud crap?

00:42:12   Oh, well now you know.

00:42:13   It's like the kid in class is bringing down the average

00:42:16   with bad test grades, right?

00:42:18   And every single one of their products

00:42:21   now has either a small cloud component

00:42:23   or a big cloud component,

00:42:24   or like if the whole friggin' thing is a cloud component.

00:42:26   So if that cloud part doesn't work,

00:42:28   it doesn't matter how good the people write the code

00:42:29   on the client side, if the server side is falling over.

00:42:32   And this is the type of thing that can get you,

00:42:34   oh my God, the basics aren't even working.

00:42:36   So for example, earlier this week,

00:42:38   my wife said my contacts aren't syncing anymore.

00:42:40   I added a contact on my new iPad Air.

00:42:42   I added it like a week ago.

00:42:43   It's still not on my Mac or on my iPhone.

00:42:45   And everything was set up correctly,

00:42:48   all in the same iCloud account, nothing has changed.

00:42:50   Everything is all synced up, everyone's all logged in.

00:42:52   There's no errors or anything.

00:42:53   And I'm sitting there looking at it.

00:42:54   Here on the iPad, changed to a street address.

00:42:57   Here it is on the iPhone and the Mac.

00:42:59   It's not changed.

00:43:00   And you just stare at it and you're like,

00:43:01   why is this a problem?

00:43:02   Is it because someone wrote buggy client software?

00:43:04   Almost certainly not, right?

00:43:07   But then you perceive this as,

00:43:09   oh my God, the basics aren't working anymore.

00:43:11   Because cloud functionality is now a basic.

00:43:13   It's something like you just expect.

00:43:15   I like my contacts are all synchronized across everything.

00:43:17   That's the bar now.

00:43:18   And Apple's really bad at that part of doing its products.

00:43:22   And it's really bad at making a situation

00:43:24   where you can debug.

00:43:25   Like what do I even do in that situation?

00:43:26   I do the little dance that everybody does.

00:43:28   You just like sign out of iCloud, turn contacts off,

00:43:31   turn contacts back on, add a new contact,

00:43:34   just to see if it's syncing, you know,

00:43:35   like delete all iCloud data from account,

00:43:38   sign completely out of iCloud

00:43:40   and it deletes a million photos

00:43:41   from my shared photo streams on my Mac.

00:43:43   Turn it back on and watch it grind for three hours,

00:43:45   loading those photos back in, you know,

00:43:47   do all this, eventually it starts syncing again.

00:43:49   Then you can, you know, like,

00:43:50   it's just this dance that you do and that infuriates people.

00:43:53   So that part of Apple's products, I think,

00:43:55   is getting better only because the percentage

00:43:58   of cloudy stuff in software has been going up

00:44:00   and Apple has, Apple's ability to do cloudy stuff well

00:44:02   has not been going up.

00:44:03   No question their services still need work.

00:44:07   They've always been mediocre at most of the service stuff

00:44:10   and they still need work,

00:44:11   but most of the problems that I'm complaining about

00:44:14   and that I've been seeing over the last couple years

00:44:16   actually aren't because of the services.

00:44:18   Even the local client-side software

00:44:21   is problematic in the last few years.

00:44:22   - But I think that's basically better than it has been

00:44:25   in recent years rather than worse.

00:44:27   So all the things you've complained about,

00:44:28   I think back to the disasters

00:44:30   that were the early versions of Tiger and Leopard

00:44:32   and I'm like, you don't know from not working networking,

00:44:34   you don't know from beach balls in the finder,

00:44:36   let me tell you, it was dire.

00:44:38   And like, and just forget about classic Mac OS,

00:44:40   like that was a total mess in the later years of its life.

00:44:43   So, and a lot of the times there,

00:44:46   if you could fault them for one of the things

00:44:47   they've done in recent releases,

00:44:49   one place I would say you could fault them for example,

00:44:51   and I just saw, I think Craig Hockenberry

00:44:52   complaining about this today is,

00:44:54   where they do a feature that seems like,

00:44:58   it's not like a marketing feature,

00:44:59   but it's a feature they can put on a box

00:45:00   that is a perfectly good feature to do,

00:45:03   but that almost nobody is willing to accept

00:45:07   the refactoring needed to implement this feature.

00:45:10   So one of the examples was like tags,

00:45:12   which I detailed in whatever, what did that come out in?

00:45:14   Like a mountain lion or something,

00:45:16   talking about the implementation of tags

00:45:17   and how is this crazy hack based on the labels thing

00:45:19   and all that stuff.

00:45:20   It's like, all right, fine.

00:45:21   If you're not gonna use tags, so what?

00:45:22   It doesn't look like it's a big deal.

00:45:23   It doesn't seem like it would impact anything.

00:45:25   It's like you're just piggybacking

00:45:27   on existing crazy HFS+ metadata

00:45:29   and there's all these weird bugs about it,

00:45:31   but if I don't use tags, it doesn't affect me, right?

00:45:33   Well, apparently there's something having to do

00:45:34   with network shares where it makes a tag query request

00:45:37   or something and if that hangs,

00:45:39   like it hangs the whole thing

00:45:40   and you get a beach ball in the finder.

00:45:41   Now all of a sudden people who don't know

00:45:43   and don't care about tags

00:45:44   are getting a worse experience in the finder

00:45:46   for a feature they didn't even care about.

00:45:49   That type of thing is like, that's an engineering thing

00:45:51   where you have to decide it's okay to have new features,

00:45:54   but we really have to balance,

00:45:57   like does this new feature require like,

00:45:59   Oh, and by the way, now just every time

00:46:00   we bring up network share, we have to do this other thing,

00:46:02   and if it blocks, like it's a problem.

00:46:04   I don't know how, that's the type of thing

00:46:09   where when you're planning the features for ONS,

00:46:11   you really have to talk about it and say,

00:46:13   this is a great feature, we've wanted this for a long time,

00:46:16   I think it'll be interesting, it's a good bullet point

00:46:19   to add to the non-existent box, we'll do slides about it

00:46:22   and have a nice demo and stuff.

00:46:25   Oh, and by the way, does this potentially compromise

00:46:28   any basic functionality that everybody needs?

00:46:30   And if the answer to that is yes,

00:46:31   and really think real long and hard

00:46:33   about the trade-offs there.

00:46:35   That is the closest I think I can get to saying

00:46:38   like a sort of potentially marketing driven decision

00:46:42   that has led to sort of unacceptable instability

00:46:45   and basic functionality.

00:46:46   And a lot of the historic things have meant like

00:46:48   we want to add some minor feature,

00:46:49   but it means totally refactoring this subsystem.

00:46:52   And sometimes that's like, oh, that's bad

00:46:54   because it's gonna cause bugs.

00:46:55   But an example of the good is like,

00:46:57   I think in Yosemite they totally redid icon services,

00:47:01   and it desperately needed to be redone,

00:47:03   because for years there had been these icon services bugs

00:47:06   that caused all my icons to be pixelated,

00:47:08   and there was no way out of it,

00:47:09   and you just had to try to keep purging caches

00:47:10   and restarting, and eventually it would go away,

00:47:12   or maybe not.

00:47:13   That's the type of thing where it's like,

00:47:15   is it really important to fix that bug?

00:47:17   Eh, it's cosmetic, it's not a big deal,

00:47:18   but to fix it we had to rewrite

00:47:19   the entire icon services thing.

00:47:21   Well, eventually you gotta get around to it,

00:47:23   and I'm glad they did get around to it.

00:47:24   So I don't want them to be afraid to do that,

00:47:26   and to like treat it as like,

00:47:27   oh, we can't change anything, we can't add anything,

00:47:28   'cause that were, you know, DiscoveryD.

00:47:30   That would mean totally changing DiscoveryD

00:47:32   to do continuity.

00:47:33   I don't think that in and of itself is a bad thing,

00:47:35   but again, if that means

00:47:37   for people who don't even use continuity,

00:47:39   because DiscoveryD does these other jobs as well,

00:47:41   it could compromise them, you gotta be really careful

00:47:42   about how you make those changes.

00:47:44   - Yeah, you know, I'd like to go back a step though,

00:47:46   and you were saying, well, it was much worse early on,

00:47:49   you know, and gosh, classic macOS was ridiculous

00:47:53   with stability, but the problem I have

00:47:55   what you're saying, even though it's surely correct, is that there's so many new Mac users,

00:48:00   and I'll even count myself in that category. I mean, I came to the Mac in 2006, 2008, something

00:48:05   like that, I don't even remember. But for me, even in my short, almost infinitesimally small

00:48:12   tenure as a Mac user, as compared to you, Jon, I can tell you that just my feeling of the quality

00:48:19   of OS X releases is exactly what we're, well, really,

00:48:22   all of us are saying is that with each new release,

00:48:27   I feel like it's getting kind of, not crummier,

00:48:30   but more fragile.

00:48:32   - Don't you think you guys,

00:48:33   you two are just traveling the curve of your Apple usage?

00:48:38   - What do you mean?

00:48:39   - Like sort of like, you know, curiosity, excitement,

00:48:43   marriage, honeymoon period, and then settling,

00:48:45   you know what I mean?

00:48:46   Like that's what I was talking about a cycle,

00:48:48   But if you've been around for a long time, you've gone through that cycle like seven times already and I think collectively

00:48:53   Because like the Mac used to be like this exclusive thing that not a lot of people had and we all loved it

00:48:59   It was great

00:48:59   And then that was the honeymoon period and then things started to get a grim and then it's like well

00:49:03   Maybe system 7 brings us a new life and then Windows 95 came and it was like that was our hitting bottom

00:49:08   You know, it's like we've gone through these cycles couple times. It was small but like the huge influx of Apple customers now

00:49:13   There's a whole it's kind of like the baby boom

00:49:15   There's a whole generation of Apple users most of whom came on board either because of the iPhone or the iPod

00:49:19   Who who are getting into the Apple stuff and who have gone through their?

00:49:24   excitement and their courtship and their marriage and their honeymoon period and are now kind of settling into bickering old middle-age and

00:49:30   It's not that this is it's not that this is a cycle of Apple's products and services

00:49:36   But it's a cycle of a specific cohort of their customers because of the huge growth they've had in recent years and that cohort is

00:49:44   Coming into there, you know, I'm no longer impressed more than I'm dissatisfied like that

00:49:49   I've take everything that works

00:49:50   I've taken for granted and anytime something that you didn't work starts did work starts to not work and I'd perceive that as a decline

00:49:55   Quality and I'm angry and so again, I don't think like this perception is wrong and they should be talked out of it

00:50:00   I think in the context of this massive customer base they have now Apple has to do better

00:50:04   They absolutely have to they have to realize that these you know, you can't rely on the honeymoon period you have to actually satisfy

00:50:09   the customers that you have

00:50:11   Congratulations, you got all these customers you sold a lot of iPhones now you're selling more Macs and iPads and stuff like that

00:50:16   This is their responsibility to fix it

00:50:18   So I'm not I'm not saying this as a defense of the company and saying they need only change

00:50:22   They absolutely do need to change it. But from my view

00:50:24   You know with the long view

00:50:26   I think these the quality things go in cycles and there are aspects that need to be addressed the cloud stuff

00:50:31   thinking hard about the release cycle and stuff like that, but

00:50:34   I'm not convinced that empirically and anything that you could actually measure you could say that the quality really is worse

00:50:40   not I maybe that's just an academic point like that's why I haven't bothered

00:50:43   blogging about this but it's not like a point I want to argue because it doesn't

00:50:46   in the end it doesn't matter if it's worth all it matters is what the

00:50:49   perception is of the customers that you have now and if they're all in the

00:50:52   bickering middle-aged period you got to deal with that you got to make your

00:50:55   products better and in the end I think they should be better like why shouldn't

00:50:58   they yeah but the problem is that you're you're saying that we're all in the

00:51:01   bickering middle-aged period and maybe Marco and I are because I mean he beat

00:51:04   me to the Mac by three or four years I think but but even new customers and I

00:51:09   I can't think of a great example, but I anecdotally, I know I have friends and family members that

00:51:14   have come to the Mac much more recently than I, only in the last couple of years.

00:51:19   And there are even some that haven't gotten Macs, but we're thinking about it that are

00:51:23   all, "I don't know about this anymore because I've heard some bad things and I've heard

00:51:28   that things aren't going so well."

00:51:30   Well, but see that that's like when the baby booms, like whatever the baby booms are into

00:51:34   or want or what they feel like influences the larger society because they are the largest

00:51:37   group of people, like they influence the others. So this huge group of existing Apple customers

00:51:42   who is now becoming dissatisfied influence all the people who might be interested because

00:51:46   all they hear from all the people who they know who are in this, you know, you're likely

00:51:49   to know a baby boomer because there's a lot of them and you're likely to know one of these

00:51:52   Mac users or Apple users who's kind of on the downswing in dissatisfaction. And what

00:51:57   you're going to hear from them is like, oh, things are worse now. It's crappy. I don't

00:52:00   like it. You know what I mean? Like it's a network effect type of thing. Like I said,

00:52:04   These things go in cycles and the cycles are not completely in lockstep but it's like waves

00:52:09   of people and they influence other people in articles like this and you know the cycle

00:52:13   of the media and stuff like that.

00:52:15   Again I don't think that that particularly matters because the bottom line is they do

00:52:18   have quality problems they do need to address they do need to do better because if you have

00:52:22   this many customers you can't rely on them all to be like oh gee whiz Apple stuff is

00:52:27   so shiny and I love it so much because that is not sustainable.

00:52:30   Sustainable is you have to do the hard stuff and be reliable and be consistent and figure

00:52:34   out how to give new features without compromising stability, figure out what your release schedule

00:52:38   is and figure out how to do this cloud stuff more reliably.

00:52:42   Well so alright, first of all let me go back a minute. I've been using the Apple ecosystem,

00:52:48   starting out with Macs first and then eventually iOS things, for actually slightly longer than

00:52:54   I ever used PCs. So we're slightly past my 20 year mark of using computers and it's basically

00:53:01   literally 10 years in, I switched.

00:53:04   So I'm about six months past my 20 year mark.

00:53:07   So I've been using Windows,

00:53:09   I use Windows stuff full time for 10 years

00:53:12   and then I'm using Apple stuff full time

00:53:13   for 10 and a half years now.

00:53:15   And so I think I'm past the point where,

00:53:19   I mean, I guess I can always get older,

00:53:22   but I think I'm past the point where this could just be like

00:53:27   me having a bad memory of things.

00:53:29   I don't know.

00:53:29   But I think one of the things that exacerbates this feeling

00:53:34   of things getting worse is that there's so much more

00:53:38   that these devices do.

00:53:39   First of all, there's more devices.

00:53:40   That's a big one.

00:53:42   So let's say 99.5% of the time,

00:53:47   things work the way they should.

00:53:49   And 0.5% have some kind of bug or failure or crash

00:53:53   or something goes wrong 0.5% of the time.

00:53:57   Every device usage that you have,

00:53:59   Like every time you take your phone out of your pocket to use it, you're doing that like

00:54:01   a hundred times a day, right?

00:54:03   People measure it, it's a lot.

00:54:04   That was the point I was making about the products that Apple sells and the customers

00:54:07   that they have and the fact that we use the computers more.

00:54:10   Like it is numerically more, but like percentage-wise, like they're not producing more bugs per line

00:54:17   of code or, you know, whatever.

00:54:18   It's just that there's more code, people use it more often.

00:54:22   And I should also emphasize, I haven't seen this chat room yet, but I realize I'm thinking

00:54:25   in the back of my head.

00:54:26   almost entirely about the Mac here,

00:54:28   because we were talking about Yosemite and OS X

00:54:30   and the release schedule.

00:54:31   iOS, I will absolutely stipulate that iOS 7 and 8

00:54:34   were worse quality wise than the preceding ones, absolutely.

00:54:39   I don't think anyone's arguing that,

00:54:40   that's the reason I'm having a debate about the Mac.

00:54:42   - Yeah, and I can tell you too,

00:54:44   working with a lot of these new APIs

00:54:46   that are added in 7 and 8,

00:54:48   there's a lot of bugs that are just API bugs.

00:54:50   They're just bugs in the shipping version

00:54:53   that your app has to work around

00:54:55   in a lot of the new features that get added,

00:54:57   and a lot of the old features that get re-broken

00:54:59   after they've been fixed.

00:55:00   - And OS bugs, like how many times,

00:55:02   like it just takes out the whole OS,

00:55:04   like that was not an iOS experience in the past.

00:55:08   Now, to give iOS some credit, like the changes in 8

00:55:11   are perhaps the most significant changes to iOS

00:55:13   in a long time, but for iOS you have a much stronger

00:55:16   argument that numerically I can show you

00:55:18   that the quality of iOS 7 and 8 has been a decline.

00:55:21   And I can show you that, and I can strongly argue

00:55:25   that the absolutely lockstep hardware

00:55:28   and software release schedule of iOS

00:55:30   puts the software team in a very difficult position

00:55:34   in terms of quality.

00:55:35   If you're gonna try to do yearly releases

00:55:37   and it has to come out with the phones,

00:55:38   you know what has to come out with the phones?

00:55:39   Let me show you a pie chart of iOS device profits

00:55:43   and Apple's revenue.

00:55:44   That's the entire freaking company now.

00:55:47   The Mac gets the luxury of not being

00:55:49   quite as locked into that,

00:55:50   although iOS and the Mac are sort of moving ahead together now, but the Mac gets to be

00:55:54   like, "You go ahead iPhone 6, yeah, I'll be there in a minute."

00:55:57   Like, "No, we don't have to release, it's fine, we'll just release the Macs with the

00:56:00   old version of the OS, it boots."

00:56:02   Or, "We'll just hold the Macs back."

00:56:03   Nobody cares, man, nobody cares about the iMac.

00:56:05   It'll come out when it's ready.

00:56:07   And so that's why I'm mostly focusing on the Mac.

00:56:09   iOS I would definitely stipulate.

00:56:11   I mean, copy and paste still doesn't work for me sometimes on iOS 8.

00:56:15   And I know someone's going to tell me that doesn't work for them on Yosemite as well,

00:56:17   - There actually is a long-standing

00:56:19   pace board bug that I hit every so often

00:56:21   that's been in Mac OS X since I started using Mac OS X.

00:56:25   - So like on iOS though,

00:56:27   we've all used every version of iOS.

00:56:28   We've all been there from the beginning.

00:56:30   And we can say, you know, there were bumps in the road,

00:56:33   but 708 is a definitely downward bump.

00:56:36   And that's our recent history for the past two years.

00:56:39   - Yeah, and again, it seems like,

00:56:41   see and this is what I was saying earlier,

00:56:43   because everything is so much more complicated now

00:56:46   There's so much more of it.

00:56:49   Those little .5% of things going wrong, they don't add, they multiply.

00:56:54   The chances of you running into something going wrong any given day is multiplied by

00:57:00   all those factors.

00:57:01   Yeah, and the cloud stuff, the cloud is a multiplying factor too.

00:57:04   Yeah.

00:57:05   It's behind everything and it's between them and getting all the continuity and the

00:57:09   airdrop stuff to work.

00:57:11   Throw in a watch.

00:57:12   - Yeah, and the problem I see, like right now today,

00:57:15   I can get my work done, it's usually not a problem.

00:57:18   But the rate of failures does seem to be going up.

00:57:21   And the biggest problem I see is not, you know,

00:57:24   everybody has a bad release every so often.

00:57:25   Even big companies like Apple.

00:57:27   They're not gonna get everything perfect every time.

00:57:28   That's fine.

00:57:29   But is there a sign of things getting better?

00:57:33   And that's where I'm really scared, 'cause I don't see it.

00:57:36   - Well, it's more than that, right?

00:57:38   It's not only there's no sign of things getting better,

00:57:40   but the engineering talent is getting spread even more thin in that, in that, you know,

00:57:46   now we have a watch coming and that's a whole nother platform with a whole nother series of

00:57:50   API's that, that somebody is going to have to write. And even if it turns out that they've

00:57:57   hired a bunch of engineers, well, are they as good as the engineers that exist? Are they worse?

00:58:03   It may even be better, but they certainly won't be

00:58:06   as entrenched in the Apple way.

00:58:09   So yeah, I think you're right, Marco,

00:58:11   that we haven't seen any indication it'll get better,

00:58:13   and we have plenty of ways that it could get worse.

00:58:15   And I'd like to hear what you two have to say about that,

00:58:17   but we should really talk about something cool.

00:58:19   - Yeah, and just to close up my part of this, I think,

00:58:23   you know, I posted the follow-up post saying

00:58:25   how much I regret publishing that post.

00:58:27   I regret having published the post,

00:58:29   not because it was complaining about Apple,

00:58:32   but because I just didn't do a very good job writing it.

00:58:34   I don't regret complaining about Apple.

00:58:37   I think these complaints were valid and needed to be made,

00:58:40   and one of the reasons why the post spread

00:58:42   so incredibly quickly and far and wide

00:58:45   is because there's so much agreement out there.

00:58:47   And once it got to the major media,

00:58:50   that was all sensationalism for the most part,

00:58:52   but when it spread around the geek community first,

00:58:55   which it did first, that was because people feel this.

00:58:59   This is a thing.

00:59:00   So I only regret not having done a very good job writing it

00:59:05   and some poor word choices here and there.

00:59:08   I don't at all regret making the complaint.

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01:01:54   once again.

01:01:56   I wish something better that I wrote would have gotten that popular.

01:01:59   That's the regret, it's like something I wrote got popular that isn't very good.

01:02:03   If you want to go meta, I wish I could remember this, but this is the problem with our show

01:02:07   notes system, because I don't think Google Docs keeps history forever.

01:02:11   We delete stuff when we're done with it rather than making a new document or something like

01:02:14   that.

01:02:15   But anyway, there was an item in the show notes where you wrote a post many weeks ago,

01:02:18   and I put it into the show notes because I wanted to talk about it, and you put a note

01:02:22   by it that you said "I don't think this is interesting, I don't want to talk about it,"

01:02:24   and eventually you deleted it from the notes.

01:02:26   I don't remember what it was, but do you remember what I'm talking about, Marco?

01:02:29   That describes many things.

01:02:32   So anyway, but it was about one of it was about one of your posts on Marco.org.

01:02:35   And the reason I put it in the notes was not to talk about the content of the post,

01:02:39   but to talk about like this post is why people get angry at you, Marco,

01:02:43   because it was a great example.

01:02:45   It was a great example of you posting something that me reading it.

01:02:48   I knew exactly what you meant.

01:02:49   And it's stuff again, stuff that you would say a million times in the podcast.

01:02:52   And it's just like this is not shocking or revolutionary

01:02:55   if anybody listens to the show or knows you are both.

01:02:57   And yet, if I came to that post, like, you know,

01:03:01   just blank without knowing any, without having any context,

01:03:05   I would have read it and gotten angry.

01:03:06   And then it's all about just like word choice and tone

01:03:10   and stuff like that.

01:03:11   And you talked about those in your thing.

01:03:12   It's like you regret using a particular word

01:03:13   or using a particular phrase,

01:03:14   and you don't feel like you wanna write everything

01:03:16   where you're writing and you're constantly thinking

01:03:19   what people are gonna say,

01:03:20   and they're like, you're writing defensively

01:03:22   and you're second guessing yourself

01:03:23   and all that other stuff.

01:03:24   That's what I wanted to talk about back when we did that boss

01:03:26   And maybe if we did that maybe you would just ignore me to write in this post anyway

01:03:29   or maybe you would thought about it when you're writing this thing and

01:03:32   Because that's like I don't the negative part is the part

01:03:35   I think you've articulated a while and a lot of people have talked about it's like

01:03:37   You don't want that feeling where you you're either afraid to write something or when you're writing it. You're like

01:03:44   defending you're defending things like

01:03:47   You're you're defending yourself from imagined attackers as you're writing right?

01:03:52   Because that doesn't feel like good and you should be like Jimmy just say what I'm gonna say, right?

01:03:56   But I think the the flip side of that and something that you get if you if you care deeply about these things

01:04:02   What you clearly do, you know, like if you care at all about what you write and you know

01:04:07   Bettering yourself and becoming a better writer and you know that stuff is not some people don't some people just write some session

01:04:13   Sensational BS and you feel like they sleep like a baby and they don't care that they just like riled a bunch of people

01:04:18   I can tell you quite a few of them right now. You were not like that at all

01:04:21   Right and you'd learn my and so for all like for all the years writing OS tender use and everything

01:04:25   Especially in the beginning when people thought I was a lousy PC user didn't know anything about max

01:04:30   Maybe I just try to Mac once I wouldn't hate them so much

01:04:32   like

01:04:35   it trains you like the the lesser light side of that defensiveness is you get very good at

01:04:41   Reading a sentence as it exists not as you want it to be and making sure that your specific word choices are

01:04:49   that you can defend them if challenged because you picked exactly the right word for what you meant and

01:04:54   The second level that oh, can I pick a word that will help me?

01:04:57   It'll help me to not be misunderstood sometimes that's harder to do and sometimes like you know what I use the correct word if they

01:05:03   Can't figure it out

01:05:03   I'll explain it to them after this but I always like what I always wanted to do with my old OS 10 reviews and my current

01:05:09   ones for that matter is if someone hasn't complained about something and

01:05:11   I want to be able to answer them by merely copying and pasting the sentence from the thing I wrote to say

01:05:18   Read the sentence again because it contains the words in the correct order to express the answer to your question and yet you seem to

01:05:23   Have glossed over it right like where where they read what they wanted to hear and you get into trouble when you pick a word

01:05:29   That expresses your feeling at the time

01:05:31   But if you were to read the sentence you like you know what I would actually like the nose

01:05:34   I think you would choose a different word, but when you wrote it like oh, that's that's the word for how I'm feeling now

01:05:39   but if you if you take you would never take that sentence back and paste it to somebody and say

01:05:44   As a defense in fact you would look at it and say oh actually that's not there

01:05:47   It's not precisely what I meant and that sort of

01:05:49   Some people call like lawyerly like word choice or whatever like it sounds boring and it sounds crappy

01:05:54   But it's actually something I kind of savor in

01:05:56   Writing my things and that I want every sentence that I write to be at least defensible to me like I should be able to

01:06:02   Explain myself it should express whatever I think and if it doesn't express exactly what I think I

01:06:06   Should pick a word that gets close to expressing what I think and that practice some people again some people find that practice kind of

01:06:13   It's like you know what screwless people writing what I want which I think is perfectly fine

01:06:16   But for me I get all paranoid about it when I can't

01:06:18   When I when people can use my own words against me I have chosen the wrong words because they're not really like that's not what

01:06:25   I meant I never want to say oh no no that's not what I meant

01:06:27   I want to say no that's exactly what I meant and maybe I can diagram the sentence for you to explain

01:06:31   How it's exactly what I meant is not what you're saying because this you're never gonna get around that people are always gonna read what?

01:06:37   You actually wrote and say I think what you're saying here is that Apple is doomed like that

01:06:40   to write that Apple was doomed?

01:06:42   No, but it seems like you're, it seems like, really?

01:06:44   You know, like we can have that debate,

01:06:46   but I don't want people to put the word,

01:06:47   say, you're saying here that Apple's quality

01:06:49   is taking a nosedive.

01:06:50   I never said, oh, Jim, I did say nosedive.

01:06:52   That's not really what I meant, right?

01:06:54   - Right, that's the frustration.

01:06:55   That's what hurts, is that I feel embarrassed and guilty

01:06:59   that I made a bad word choice.

01:07:01   Not like, I can be angry if somebody misquotes me

01:07:04   or, you know, takes something out of context or whatever.

01:07:07   - Yeah, but there's only so much you can do about that.

01:07:08   - Right. - Like, you don't,

01:07:09   want them to be able to actually quote you in context and you feel bad about it.

01:07:13   Exactly. That's the problem is like when I know I was wrong and I did something bad or

01:07:19   stupid.

01:07:20   And then your thing gets magnified. You write a million things like everybody does, especially

01:07:23   if you are a frequent blogger, you write a million things where you don't pick the

01:07:25   precise. I had the luxury of picking the precise word over like one thing a year and just poured

01:07:29   over it like an insane person, right? But if you're blogging every day, like you, you

01:07:32   know, but and then you get caught by surprises like most of my stuff gets read by X number

01:07:36   People just got read by X times a hundred thousand and that's kind of like an unfair lens to focus on again

01:07:41   What you probably thought was like there's another one of those posts where I summarize what I've been saying in ATP for the past two

01:07:45   Months you bang it out. You're done. You go to sleep like no big deal, right?

01:07:48   And you wake up and it's like oh why why this one and not when I talked about like

01:07:53   closed headphones

01:07:56   And I think I think the answer to why this one though like people picked up on this is like it if it wasn't you

01:08:02   It would have been someone else because this has been in the air like this is this is an actual thing

01:08:06   You know you can argue about justification or whatever. I'm saying like the current crop of Apple customers are in a cycle now where

01:08:12   We are not satisfied with the quality of the products

01:08:16   We're getting and you know we expect more than we're getting our expectations may be up our usage

01:08:22   You may be up the quality may be down some combination

01:08:24   But we're not happy and so it's been bouncing around with app review

01:08:27   with software colleagues and bouncing around circles for just I think at this point for you know over a year and

01:08:33   This just happened to catch because it was the right person at the right time

01:08:36   Expressing the things that you know, he's saying what we're all thinking right and or you know, they're misquote of him is what I'm thinking

01:08:43   Well, the funny thing is I was digging through the show notes

01:08:47   Well, you guys were talking trying to find that link and I'm not sure that this is the one you were looking for John

01:08:52   But I did stumble upon the products Apple doesn't have time to improve dated December 29 2013 very last paragraph

01:09:00   this is on Marco's website. "While most of the press demands new hardware categories,

01:09:03   I'd be perfectly happy if Apple never made a TV or a watch or a unicorn and instead devoted

01:09:08   the next five years to polishing the software and services for their existing product lines.

01:09:12   December 29, 2013." Now that wasn't the one I was thinking of

01:09:16   in terms of the one I was going to complain about how Marco wrote it and not what he wrote.

01:09:20   It was like it was it was like not a I don't even know if it was tech related. It was just

01:09:25   something random.

01:09:26   - Right, my point is just that over a year ago,

01:09:30   we were all complaining about software quality.

01:09:32   - Yeah, I mean, we're always complaining.

01:09:33   I mean, that's all I do.

01:09:34   (laughing)

01:09:35   I've always complained about software quality.

01:09:36   I haven't complained about software quality since 1999.

01:09:38   We all complain.

01:09:39   It's just like, when does it reach your critical mass?

01:09:41   When does it gain traction in the larger thing?

01:09:43   When does it become,

01:09:44   and it's almost kind of sad that it becomes a story

01:09:46   because then it itself begins a cycle

01:09:49   that we know will eventually end

01:09:50   where this becomes a thing and then we talk about it

01:09:52   and then it bounces around and then we forget.

01:09:54   And it's kind of a shame that that,

01:09:56   because that's a cycle too, right?

01:09:57   The media cycle about this thing.

01:09:59   And the media cycle will terminate long before

01:10:01   there's any satisfactory resolution to the actual problem.

01:10:05   Because the media cycle has a life of its own

01:10:07   that is not concerned with the substance

01:10:09   of the thing that it's reporting on.

01:10:10   Like once the story goes away, it's like,

01:10:12   oh, I remember that story a couple years ago

01:10:15   that I bought some software,

01:10:16   but I guess that's fixed now

01:10:16   because I don't hear of it anymore.

01:10:17   No, probably not.

01:10:18   Like it's, you know, the reality continues to lurch along.

01:10:22   Right?

01:10:23   You know just like app review like app review comes and goes in cycles in between then is it solved. Nope

01:10:28   No, not at all like it and and I think that's that's the problem

01:10:32   Like that's all we talked about in the show is like systemic problems with Apple's products and how they might solve them

01:10:38   And you're the option Marco put out there like it's the fancy we have like oh just keep polishing your products for a few years

01:10:44   um

01:10:45   That is more viable on the Mac because like I said, who are they chasing at this point?

01:10:48   Like it's not an active battleground. It's more of you know borders have been drawn and

01:10:53   Os 10 is kind of gently encroaching on windows, but it's not like a burgeoning market but

01:10:58   On the phone they really do have to be racing forward

01:11:02   they also need to get their quality under control and they need to

01:11:05   Balance those two things. I think the good thing going for them is that as a lot of people said it's like

01:11:09   I think I saw someone say ios with ios a ios is basically feature complete now, right?

01:11:14   You know the you know the end of history illusion, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's all there but but in some respects

01:11:18   it's like iOS 8 brought a lot of long-standing things

01:11:22   that we wanted for a long time.

01:11:23   And you do have now a window of time

01:11:25   where you can polish those

01:11:26   because it's not like there's some major feature

01:11:29   that we're all like, oh my God,

01:11:30   iOS totally needs like background processing

01:11:33   or multitasking or better inter-app communication

01:11:36   or better way to share files.

01:11:37   Like at this point, it's basically an app store problem

01:11:39   with the whole iCloud thing.

01:11:40   Like the basics are there if only they worked now.

01:11:43   I mean, that was kind of like so many features in Leopard

01:11:46   were like all these things you add in Leopard sound great.

01:11:48   I'll be really excited when they work.

01:11:50   And then we got like two years until Snow Leopard came out

01:11:53   and it's like, oh, now all that stuff kind of works

01:11:55   and that's kind of good.

01:11:56   But yeah, nothing's ever feature complete,

01:11:58   but they do go in cycles and I'm hoping that iOS 9

01:12:02   and the OS 10 that comes out after it will be a cycle

01:12:05   where they don't feel the needs,

01:12:07   that neither OS is desperately missing some feature

01:12:10   and they can do a polishing release.

01:12:12   - I don't necessarily agree with the assumption

01:12:16   they need to be racing ahead with software and iOS.

01:12:19   Because, I mean look, they just took a big chunk

01:12:21   out of Android sales, not because iOS 8 supports extensions,

01:12:26   but because they made bigger screen phones.

01:12:28   - Well, the hardware side, they need to be

01:12:30   racing forward there too, but wouldn't you agree

01:12:31   the features they added in iOS 8,

01:12:33   many of them are sort of long overdue?

01:12:35   - I would agree that they were overdue,

01:12:37   but I don't think that is gonna give them

01:12:39   massive market share over Android.

01:12:41   Or rather, I don't think that's going to

01:12:44   cause a lot of Android people to switch.

01:12:46   Like, it'll cause some.

01:12:48   - That's where the bar is now, though.

01:12:49   Like, they were behind, and they needed to catch up, right?

01:12:52   And so, it's not like you suddenly get more users.

01:12:56   This is just the ante to get in the game.

01:12:59   And, you know, the ante keeps being raised.

01:13:01   This is terrible, I don't know anything about gambling.

01:13:02   Sorry, anyway, that analogy.

01:13:04   (laughing)

01:13:05   I like the bar better.

01:13:06   - We're so surprised.

01:13:06   - The bar is something I can, yeah.

01:13:08   The bar is being raised, and they have to keep up.

01:13:10   and Android had raised the bar in so many areas

01:13:14   that iOS was unwilling or unable to chase.

01:13:17   And there were several releases where it was essentially,

01:13:19   let's catch up to where Android already is,

01:13:22   simply because that is the standard these days.

01:13:26   And if you don't have these features,

01:13:27   people are gonna ding you for it.

01:13:28   Having them doesn't mean people switch,

01:13:30   it just means you get to be in the conversation

01:13:31   and nobody gets to throw in your face

01:13:33   no third party keyboards, right?

01:13:34   - Yeah, but in the grand scheme of things,

01:13:36   I really don't think a lot of those things

01:13:38   were mattering in the marketplace

01:13:40   as much as geeks like to think they were?

01:13:43   - No, I don't know.

01:13:43   I mean, it's difficult to say,

01:13:45   but what I was saying before is because the iOS,

01:13:48   and basically because the iPhone

01:13:49   is such a huge part of Apple's business,

01:13:51   and it's the majority of their business,

01:13:53   I think, at this point, and it's super important,

01:13:55   and it's the market that's growing the most,

01:13:57   that's the one that has the most kind of,

01:13:59   and it has an active competitor,

01:14:00   like not a sleeping one and not a fossilized one,

01:14:03   but several active competitors that are weird

01:14:06   'cause one guy's got, Google's got the OS in the platform,

01:14:08   Samsung's making the money and you don't know who's gonna come out of China with some crazy phones that are based on their own Android variant

01:14:14   like

01:14:16   it's it's kind of a

01:14:18   malevolent twisting enemy that you that you're not quite sure how to defeat and you're just trying to do like we just need to

01:14:22   Do our best and race forward as fast as we can like understand the sentiment

01:14:26   They could have they may have gone too fast in some respects

01:14:28   They may have gone too slow holding back on all the features that are in iOS 8 and then putting them all out in one

01:14:32   Big bang release right, but I understand that they felt like the you know, that the wolf was chasing them

01:14:37   this is like an analogy show.

01:14:38   (laughing)

01:14:40   Metaphor showed me, the wolf was chasing them

01:14:42   and they felt like they had to race.

01:14:43   Whereas in OS X, it's like, where you going?

01:14:46   Desktop Linux is not coming in 2015.

01:14:48   Like Windows is kind of, it's resting at the very least

01:14:53   and they already won that market and it's not growing

01:14:55   and just like slow and steady wins the race.

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01:17:58   Thanks a lot.

01:17:59   - All right.

01:18:01   Do we wanna talk about family sharing

01:18:02   or is that gonna take another two hours?

01:18:04   - No, we don't wanna talk about family sharing.

01:18:07   Our choices I think now are to talk about

01:18:09   the MacBook Air rumors or to listen to me drone on

01:18:12   more about Marco's thing 'cause I think

01:18:14   I can go on much longer about it.

01:18:15   - Let's talk about the MacBook Air rumors,

01:18:19   but I'm not saying that I don't wanna hear

01:18:20   your other thoughts on Marco's post at some point.

01:18:23   - Maybe the after show.

01:18:24   - Yeah, that's fine.

01:18:25   All right, so where did this start from?

01:18:28   9to5Mac, is that right?

01:18:30   - Yeah, Mark Gurman got, if it's true,

01:18:32   a pretty good scoop about this,

01:18:35   the alleged 12-inch Retina MacBook Air.

01:18:39   And there have been rumors about a 12-inch iPad Pro

01:18:43   and a 12-inch Retina MacBook Air,

01:18:44   and so far there were people seem to think

01:18:46   those are two separate devices.

01:18:48   - These are not two separate devices.

01:18:50   - I know, right, yeah, exactly.

01:18:51   (laughing)

01:18:52   So, you know, I guess I'll believe them for now.

01:18:56   I tweeted earlier on Twitter that I suspect

01:19:00   that there's a good chance this is actually

01:19:02   just one device that, and immediately people are saying,

01:19:06   well then it will be like the Surface, it will suck.

01:19:09   That's not what I was saying.

01:19:11   I gotta excuse my words carefully.

01:19:13   - Speaking of the Surface, my son's, I guess, school thing,

01:19:18   he did something at school where they went

01:19:20   to a Microsoft store, and I know this because he came home

01:19:22   to me and said, "Why do we have a separate iPad and a laptop? The Surface is like both

01:19:27   in one." I was like, "No, they got to you!" I listened to his argument for the Surface.

01:19:33   He's lost. Started over.

01:19:34   No, he doesn't know anything about computers anyway. It's fine.

01:19:40   So anyway, so yeah, my theory was that there were rumors about one device that was either

01:19:46   a MacBook or an iPad. But anyway, regardless, all the room people are insisting it's actually

01:19:52   two different devices and they know more than I do obviously.

01:19:53   I haven't heard anything except from them.

01:19:56   So anyway, supposedly it's two devices, fine.

01:20:00   And this one in particular was the 12 inch

01:20:03   retina MacBook Air and it makes a number

01:20:06   of pretty substantial, again, if this is correct,

01:20:09   which that's a big if.

01:20:10   - I don't think we need, the reason I put this in notes

01:20:12   is I don't think we need to care whether it's true or not.

01:20:15   I think we can just discuss the rumor as in like,

01:20:18   is this something that Apple would make

01:20:20   and if they did make it, would you like it, why and why not?

01:20:23   - Fair enough.

01:20:24   I might like it.

01:20:25   So my portable needs have always been best served

01:20:29   by a 15 inch.

01:20:31   However, in recent times, I have come to realize

01:20:36   that I always think I will get a lot more work done

01:20:40   when I'm traveling with my laptop than I actually do.

01:20:43   I always think, oh, I'll bring my laptop

01:20:46   and then I can finally have this feature to the app,

01:20:48   even though I'll be offline most of the time

01:20:51   or have limited connectivity or I'll be upstate

01:20:54   with a DSL connection that's like from 19 to 75.

01:20:58   So I always think I'll get a lot of work done.

01:20:59   In practice, I usually just do basic web and email stuff

01:21:03   because I am waiting to get back to my big, fast computer

01:21:07   with my big, fast internet connection at home.

01:21:09   So I might try it simply because

01:21:14   I am due for a new laptop this year.

01:21:17   And actually, and the one, so I currently have

01:21:20   a first gen retina 15, so it is almost three years,

01:21:24   like two and a half years old now,

01:21:25   so this coming summer it'll be three years old.

01:21:27   That, it's like, I have no reason really to replace it,

01:21:30   except that it does have screen image retention issues

01:21:34   pretty badly now, and my father-in-law

01:21:37   needs a new computer, and so, and because it has

01:21:40   pretty bad image retention, I don't really feel comfortable

01:21:42   selling it to somebody, so I figure I'd just give it to him.

01:21:45   He really needs a computer basically now.

01:21:47   So I figure as soon as something new with Broadwell

01:21:48   comes out that I want, I will buy it and do the swap.

01:21:52   There have been many occasions where I've been

01:21:55   in some kind of travel situation, usually flying,

01:21:58   where a 15-inch is way too big to take out and use.

01:22:01   And so I think I would use something this small.

01:22:05   People who fly a lot always talk about the 11-inch Air.

01:22:07   And I've never liked the 11-inch because the screen

01:22:11   is just so damn small on it.

01:22:14   Isn't it 1366 across, something like that?

01:22:18   - Not only is it low-res, but it's also physically small.

01:22:20   There's wasted, the borders on it seem way too wide.

01:22:24   The thing is already small, and you couldn't stretch

01:22:26   the screen to the edges, apparently not.

01:22:28   - Yeah, exactly.

01:22:29   So anyway, this rumor thing looks really nice

01:22:31   in that it appears to have a dramatically reduced

01:22:36   screen bezel width, which is nice.

01:22:38   Or as you would say, bezel.

01:22:39   I will never forget that.

01:22:41   (chimes)

01:22:42   - They have distinctive looks.

01:22:42   They have plastic bezels in the front of them.

01:22:45   (

01:22:50   that the keyboard keys are actually narrower.

01:22:54   And I'm a little worried about that,

01:22:56   because they haven't changed the size

01:22:57   of the keyboard keys in a very long time.

01:22:59   - Well, hold on, was it that the keys were narrower

01:23:01   or the borders between the keys were narrower?

01:23:04   - Well, it doesn't matter.

01:23:05   - It does though, because in the picture,

01:23:07   in the diagram again,

01:23:08   this is all could just be fantasy stuff.

01:23:09   In the diagram, the plastic key caps are the same size,

01:23:12   they're merely placed closer together.

01:23:13   And that is different from making the keys bigger

01:23:16   so the gaps between them are small,

01:23:17   but having the center points in the same place.

01:23:19   This seemed to be implying that the center points

01:23:20   were in different places,

01:23:22   so that the keys were actually closer together.

01:23:23   I imagine if the spacing is as shown,

01:23:27   if you are a crappy typist like me, you'd probably be okay.

01:23:31   But it is a compromise that it's like,

01:23:35   if you made the thing an extra centimeter wider,

01:23:37   would that have been a deal breaker

01:23:38   to have a standard keyboard?

01:23:39   Like it's an interesting design trade off if true.

01:23:42   If the product was as conceptualized,

01:23:43   then we're gonna get to more of the supposed,

01:23:45   you know, if this product was real,

01:23:47   what about this design trade off?

01:23:48   But the keyboard one, it's one of the minor ones,

01:23:50   but it's like, it's a line in the sand

01:23:53   where it's like previously it was like,

01:23:54   nope, full-size keys everywhere, spacing it.

01:23:56   For all we know, like I haven't actually measured

01:23:58   center to center, but I'm assuming that the keyboard spacing

01:24:00   has not changed in the modern era of Apple hardware.

01:24:03   And this would be a change.

01:24:05   But I don't think I would notice it.

01:24:06   And I don't know, you guys both touch typists?

01:24:09   - Yep. - Eh, mixed.

01:24:11   Like, unlike, you know, a little bit sloppy with it.

01:24:14   Oh God, don't title that.

01:24:15   (laughing)

01:24:16   If you were to use this keyboard, Casey, would you feel,

01:24:19   Would you say, oh, like, it was obviously if you use one of those Logitech keyboard

01:24:22   covers for an iPad, you're like, oh, this is like a Fisher Price keyboard.

01:24:24   It's crazy.

01:24:25   I can't type on it.

01:24:26   Right.

01:24:27   And that's an extreme.

01:24:28   With this spacing difference, do you think you would feel it?

01:24:31   I don't think so.

01:24:32   I will say that the rare occasions that I used Macs many, many years ago and the little

01:24:38   nubbins were on the D and what, which was the other key D and K keys back before they

01:24:45   moved them to the PC position of F and J, that threw me off constantly and I could barely

01:24:53   type on a Mac back then.

01:24:54   But that was a, I would argue, a much bigger difference.

01:24:57   I think if I just have to get used to the keys being slightly together, or slightly

01:25:02   close together, I don't think that would make a very big difference at all.

01:25:05   Unless you have really big sausage fingers.

01:25:07   I think, I find with laptops, it's more of a thing getting used to the keys that they

01:25:11   move, like the fact that control is not in the corner.

01:25:13   when they move escape out of the corner and that would probably screw me up and maybe

01:25:17   screw up people who are like Emacs users or people who might hit the escape key more than

01:25:20   you might expect.

01:25:22   One exciting thing about this mockup of a keyboard here is that the left and right arrow

01:25:28   keys are full size, which is like one baby step towards the sanity of full size arrow

01:25:32   keys.

01:25:33   But now I won't break the border of the keyboard yet, but this is a baby step isn't it?

01:25:37   In fact, actually this may not be a baby step, this may be regression because it might have

01:25:41   been driving him crazy to have half-height left and right keys because they broke the

01:25:43   symmetry of every key cap being the same size except for the, you know, modifier keys and

01:25:47   stuff. So I don't know, but anyway, I endorsed that rumored change as well.

01:25:53   So the big rumored change, which has all of us talking about this in particular, is allegedly

01:26:01   all of the ports are gone except a headphone jack and a USB 3 Type-C, the new reversible

01:26:08   USB connector, including the power connector.

01:26:11   So if this is true, the power and all device connections

01:26:16   except headphones will have to run through

01:26:18   a single USB type C connector.

01:26:22   - All right, so I think the first thing we can say

01:26:24   about this is, is this technically possible to do?

01:26:26   - Right, and from people who have been following

01:26:29   the spec more closely than us, apparently the answer is yes.

01:26:32   The USB type C connector has a lot of capability.

01:26:38   and I don't know the fine details of it,

01:26:40   but people are saying that it was designed

01:26:43   to carry up to 100 watts of power into the computer,

01:26:47   if necessary, as well as be able to kind of

01:26:52   multiplex other port types over that physical plug.

01:26:56   - And it can do displays as well.

01:26:58   - Yes, exactly.

01:26:59   So it does seem like it is possible.

01:27:01   - Yeah, so that I think, I don't know if it was emphasized

01:27:04   enough historically, I mean they mention it here,

01:27:06   but like the reason we can have this discussion is because

01:27:10   plus or minus, minor things about like,

01:27:13   well, it won't charge as fast

01:27:14   or will you be limited in monitors

01:27:16   or will it compromise the speed of the bus?

01:27:18   Technically from the specs, it seems like,

01:27:20   yes, this is a thing you could do.

01:27:22   You can pick a laptop with a headphone port

01:27:25   and a single USB type C port.

01:27:27   - All right, it still might be a bad idea,

01:27:29   but it does seem like it's possible technically.

01:27:31   - Now, if Apple did this and made this device,

01:27:33   regardless of whether we think they're going to or not,

01:27:35   - Would you want to buy one?

01:27:36   Would it change your opinion of like,

01:27:38   of you were saying you might want to get this

01:27:41   'cause it's nice to get a laptop replacement,

01:27:43   you like having a laptop, it'd be cool to be a small one.

01:27:44   Would this change your decision about getting one?

01:27:47   - Probably not, simply because it wouldn't affect

01:27:51   the way I use it, but I also recognize

01:27:54   like the way I use my laptop as a secondary

01:27:58   and pretty occasional computer really,

01:28:00   that's not how most people use their laptops.

01:28:03   Most people use their laptops as their only computer

01:28:05   and are using it frequently, and most of the time,

01:28:08   it's on a desk plugged in to other stuff.

01:28:11   So for that kind of use, again, we'll have to see.

01:28:13   This is all, we could be totally wrong.

01:28:16   This port could be totally awesome,

01:28:17   and we might be able to shove everything through it

01:28:20   and have a little base station or adapter or whatever.

01:28:22   - I'm not willing to say that it would be totally awesome,

01:28:25   because the big one is they're saying MagSafe is gone too.

01:28:28   And MagSafe isn't just like,

01:28:30   oh, it's just coming up with another port.

01:28:31   USB can technically carry the power, why wouldn't you do it?

01:28:34   Well, the same reason MagSafe exists in the first place,

01:28:36   'cause you don't want a plug that goes inside your computer

01:28:38   to be the power cord that people trip over.

01:28:40   That's why MagSafe was invented.

01:28:42   We did that before.

01:28:43   We had laptops where there was a connector

01:28:44   that went into there, and we all broke them off

01:28:47   at a certain point.

01:28:48   Not to say MagSafe was perfect,

01:28:50   and MagSafe 2 has been arguably a regression,

01:28:53   and maybe this thing is so thin

01:28:54   that they can't figure out how to get a MagSafe.

01:28:56   Maybe they should switch the iWatch type little

01:28:59   magnetic inductance suction cup-y looking thing over.

01:29:01   I don't know what they have to do,

01:29:03   but I don't wanna go back to a world

01:29:05   where people can't trip over the power cord to a laptop.

01:29:07   And so if this thing came out,

01:29:09   it's not just that it has one port,

01:29:10   but if it didn't even have a power port,

01:29:12   this would make me strongly consider it,

01:29:14   not only not buying it for myself,

01:29:15   'cause I don't really like laptops,

01:29:16   but not even recommending it to other people,

01:29:18   because I think MagSafe is one of the best features

01:29:20   they've ever added to their laptop line.

01:29:21   And if they take it away

01:29:22   in favor of this little USB Type-C connector,

01:29:25   I would take a wait and see approach.

01:29:26   And I would say, basically I have to see,

01:29:28   is the connector so tiny?

01:29:30   Like if it's practically the size of a lightning connector,

01:29:31   You know, is it so tiny that it basically acts like magsafe

01:29:34   and that you can trip over it a million times

01:29:36   and it won't break off and it won't yank your computer down

01:29:38   just because it's so small.

01:29:40   Like it's not like a big full-size USB connector

01:29:42   or is it really the issue that I think it's going to be

01:29:45   and that, you know, it's not as good as magsafe

01:29:49   and we're back to the old days.

01:29:50   - Well, what about the Xbox style

01:29:53   midway through the cable breakaway thing?

01:29:56   - Don't do anything Xbox style.

01:29:57   (laughing)

01:29:58   - I should have expected that.

01:30:00   - Come on.

01:30:01   That's like, you know, any big giant thing in the middle of your cable.

01:30:04   Ugh, no.

01:30:05   Well, what if it wasn't so big and giant, but it still served the same purpose?

01:30:08   Then you gotta use the special cable all the time.

01:30:10   I mean, so let's get to the other compromises of having a single port.

01:30:13   Ignore the magsafe thing entirely. Pretend that the power thing is not an issue.

01:30:16   Why would you have just one of them,

01:30:18   unless you're making some sort of philosophical statement?

01:30:20   Like, is there a technical reason why we think we'd have just one?

01:30:23   Some people have argued power because the second port would require power,

01:30:25   and I can maybe kind of buy that, but I don't know enough about the specs of the,

01:30:29   what is it, the Core M line of processors?

01:30:31   - Right, right.

01:30:32   - I don't know if there's something about adding

01:30:35   another port that is a significant power drain.

01:30:38   It seems like in this mock-up,

01:30:39   there's space on the side of it

01:30:41   where you could put another port.

01:30:42   - Well, it is teardrop-shaped still, though.

01:30:45   So it does taper into a narrower shape

01:30:49   as you go down closer to the person sitting.

01:30:51   So there might not be as much room

01:30:54   for more of them as you think.

01:30:55   - I mean, it's, again, this is,

01:30:57   I think this is all just a Photoshop job here.

01:30:59   - It is, it's a render based on rumored information

01:31:02   and things that were told by sources.

01:31:03   - I think there's technically a room,

01:31:06   but like in the aesthetic design,

01:31:07   if you don't want to sort of compromise that,

01:31:09   because there's the region that is perpendicular

01:31:12   to the surface of the table,

01:31:13   and that region is smaller than the width of the thing.

01:31:15   So width-wise, there's plenty of room,

01:31:17   but is there room in the perpendicular area?

01:31:18   I feel like there's definitely room.

01:31:20   At the very least, you could do it one on one side

01:31:23   and one on the other or something like that.

01:31:25   But two ports is so much better than one

01:31:27   because two ports gives the average person

01:31:31   the ability to do something reasonable

01:31:33   without engaging the sort of squid

01:31:36   or octopus of cables that has to snake out of it

01:31:39   because it was like, oh, I have one thing plugged in

01:31:41   and I have to do some other thing.

01:31:42   Look, I just have to put it in a little thumb drive.

01:31:43   Well, thumb drives don't even have USB type C connectors.

01:31:45   - Right, well, something really common,

01:31:47   power and an iPhone.

01:31:49   - Or like a mouse, how about a mouse and something else?

01:31:52   - Right, and a lot of people have argued,

01:31:54   yeah, there's a lot of wireless mice out there.

01:31:55   And yes, that's true.

01:31:56   - That's Bluetooth mice,

01:31:57   and some of them have the RF dongles, yeah.

01:31:59   - Yeah, exactly.

01:32:00   And, but, I mean, just the simplest thing,

01:32:02   when I'm traveling somewhere,

01:32:04   I always have devices plugged into the USB ports

01:32:07   on my laptop, and usually it's charging iOS devices.

01:32:11   - Yeah, so I mean,

01:32:14   I just don't understand,

01:32:17   I don't quite understand the philosophical statement

01:32:19   that would be made.

01:32:20   I understand the philosophical statement that would be made

01:32:22   by only having USB type C ports,

01:32:25   and by having it be fanless and having it use the Core M.

01:32:28   I understand the statement of this machine, right?

01:32:31   But only having one of them,

01:32:33   I don't understand the extra thing you would be getting

01:32:35   from, you know, this is a thin super lightweight machine,

01:32:40   it's almost as thin as an iPad, it's very simple,

01:32:42   there's no fans and it isn't that amazing.

01:32:45   Even if they went with like,

01:32:46   we're not gonna have a retina screen

01:32:47   'cause we can't because we wanted to go

01:32:49   with this low power family design.

01:32:51   I would even be okay with that

01:32:52   It's like that is totally what this machine is about.

01:32:54   But nothing about having only one USB port,

01:32:56   again, putting aside MagSafe.

01:32:58   Nothing about only have one USB port makes a statement

01:33:00   to me that I find that has any value,

01:33:02   aesthetically, practically speaking, or in any other way,

01:33:05   unless it was like we couldn't do two

01:33:07   because of power constraints.

01:33:08   But I don't think that's the case

01:33:09   'cause I've seen other laptops with the, you know,

01:33:12   the same, what we think is the same chip set

01:33:14   that might be in something like this

01:33:15   and they aren't as compromised.

01:33:17   So I am baffled by the single port rumor

01:33:20   And I hope it is just a misunderstanding.

01:33:23   It's all a big misunderstanding.

01:33:24   - So I agree with you that I think throwing away MagSafe

01:33:28   is a very dubious choice.

01:33:31   But let's just assume that they make that choice.

01:33:36   And it really is what this render shows,

01:33:38   which is just one lightning-esque connector,

01:33:40   which by the way, I'm not entirely sure

01:33:42   why they wouldn't use lightning,

01:33:43   I guess because of all the power

01:33:44   and all the other things that this USB-C can do.

01:33:47   I don't know, but they need to carry display over it

01:33:50   and all that stuff.

01:33:52   - So, but regardless,

01:33:53   so we only have this one USB type C and headphone.

01:33:56   I keep trying to think about,

01:33:59   and I haven't had the time to come up with a good answer,

01:34:01   but I keep trying to think about,

01:34:04   what has Apple done lately

01:34:07   that would enable this computer to exist?

01:34:10   So for example,

01:34:12   airdrop between computers,

01:34:15   That, hypothetically, if it ever freaking worked,

01:34:18   hey Marco, have you ever talked about things not working?

01:34:20   Anyway, if it ever worked,

01:34:22   AirDrop could be the solution that makes USB keys obsolete.

01:34:27   And that's just one very silly example.

01:34:31   Let's take another, you guys mentioned Bluetooth,

01:34:34   specifically for mice.

01:34:36   I use a Bluetooth mouse,

01:34:38   and so I don't need to plug in

01:34:40   one of those little RF dongles,

01:34:41   although pretty much everyone at work

01:34:43   does exactly that, plug in an RF dongle.

01:34:46   So if you leave aside a secondary display,

01:34:51   which admittedly in a lot of contexts is very important,

01:34:54   and if you assume that we can do basic USB key style things

01:35:00   with AirDrop or equivalent,

01:35:03   what do you really need a bunch of USB ports for?

01:35:05   I mean, charging is a great example to Marco's point,

01:35:08   but that's kind of, it's really a rhetorical question.

01:35:11   What I'm driving at is, if you think of this

01:35:14   more like an iPad that happens to have a keyboard

01:35:16   and maybe even runs OS X,

01:35:18   then you do a traditional computer,

01:35:23   what do you really need those ports for?

01:35:26   - I think it's more, it's not so much like,

01:35:28   what do you need them for,

01:35:29   like that you desperately want them,

01:35:30   it's that taking it,

01:35:32   it shouldn't be taken away unless there's a reason.

01:35:34   And there's lots of reasons we've already gone through,

01:35:37   which may be true, like, you know,

01:35:39   it could be a power issue and it's like,

01:35:40   well, you know, is that the smallness, the fanlessness,

01:35:44   you know, the lightness of this machine is a reason to say,

01:35:47   we couldn't make this machine

01:35:48   the way it is without the port.

01:35:49   That would be a reason.

01:35:50   I don't think it's actually true in this case,

01:35:52   but that would be one reason.

01:35:53   And the other could be some aesthetic

01:35:55   or philosophical statement that you're making,

01:35:57   which I don't understand.

01:35:59   But in the absence of any good reason to not have it,

01:36:02   you're like, just put it on there because it's so, you know,

01:36:05   one is just, it's just too few.

01:36:07   Like why not just have none at that point, right?

01:36:10   'cause not that you need two all the time,

01:36:12   although a lot of people do need two all the time,

01:36:14   but you wanna have the one that you're using

01:36:16   and the extra one for the other thing that you wanna do.

01:36:19   Because the statement in the machine, ultra portability,

01:36:22   convenience and everything is massively compromised

01:36:25   by having to carry a satchel

01:36:26   with a rat's nest of cables in it.

01:36:29   That hurts the message of the machine, doesn't help it.

01:36:32   - But what are you plugging in?

01:36:33   That's what I don't understand.

01:36:34   - Well, we already mentioned USB key type things

01:36:37   or RF dongles.

01:36:38   Already those, if you have an RF dongle

01:36:39   on a USB key, you've got two ports filled

01:36:41   just to do your work.

01:36:42   - But you've already failed.

01:36:44   My point is if you're using an RF dongle

01:36:47   or if you're using a USB key,

01:36:49   this is already not the computer for you.

01:36:51   - But I mean, I think those things

01:36:53   that people will be doing, I have a portable mouse,

01:36:55   and it has a stupid RF dongle on it, it's not Bluetooth,

01:36:58   and I have a USB key, and I want to use my mouse

01:37:02   to do my work, and part of my work involves

01:37:03   taking this USB key from work and shoving it in

01:37:05   and pulling up files on it.

01:37:06   And if I can't do that without unplugging my mouse,

01:37:08   It's like, well, then why am I even bothering

01:37:10   to use the mouse?

01:37:10   And maybe I should get a weird dongle adapter type thing.

01:37:12   Like that is not a crazy scenario.

01:37:13   People who use mice with their laptops

01:37:17   and during, you know, because the mouse is basically like,

01:37:19   that becomes like, that port is taken all the time

01:37:21   'cause I always use the mouse.

01:37:22   Even when I'm on my little trade table,

01:37:23   I use the mouse 'cause I hate the track pad or something.

01:37:25   And by the way, I have a USB key sometimes.

01:37:27   That's already two ports.

01:37:28   And you haven't done anything exotic,

01:37:30   like plugged in a portable hard drive

01:37:32   or, you know, plugged in an optical thing or something like,

01:37:36   Like, unless you're saying that this can't be a person's primary Mac, which would definitely

01:37:40   be a first for any laptop that Apple has ever made.

01:37:42   They've always said, you know, there may be compromises for this, but this can be your

01:37:46   only Mac because you can get everything done that you want to get done.

01:37:49   And without a spaghetti's nest and a hub coming off of this thing with one port, I think that

01:37:56   hurts the intended message of the machine as a tiny convenient little thing because

01:38:00   it's not convenient anymore when it has to come along with a bunch of accessories.

01:38:03   Yeah, see, but I disagree.

01:38:04   I think what it is is that you're viewing this against a traditional computer, which

01:38:08   is the same problem I had when I first saw it.

01:38:11   But the more I think about it, the more I think this is really a, if you want the best

01:38:15   of the best mobile computing experience, when you define best as thinnest, lightest, et

01:38:20   cetera, maybe this is even ARM for all we know, who knows?

01:38:23   But one way or another, you have to buy all in on the fact that these are the compromises

01:38:28   that you're going to have to deal with.

01:38:30   You're going to have to trade in that RF mouse for USB mouse, I mean, for a Bluetooth mouse.

01:38:34   - But why do you have to deal with that?

01:38:37   Why do you have to?

01:38:38   You say you're going to have to.

01:38:39   I will accept it if I have to, but why do I have to?

01:38:42   There needs to be a reason.

01:38:43   Could it not have been this thin if it had two ports?

01:38:47   Like that's the question I want to answer.

01:38:48   It seems to me based on the smock up of this fake product

01:38:51   that may not even be real,

01:38:52   that it could be that thin with two ports.

01:38:55   And I don't think it's a power issue.

01:38:57   - And I think you're right,

01:38:58   but the only analogy I can come back to

01:39:01   is around the time that Macs started dropping optical drives.

01:39:06   I was not a Mac user when they dropped floppy drives,

01:39:09   but around the time they dropped optical drives,

01:39:11   and let me be clear, the two Macs that I own

01:39:14   both have optical drives.

01:39:16   When that happened, when they started dropping them,

01:39:18   I thought they were out of their damn minds

01:39:20   in the same way that I think a lot of people said that

01:39:22   about floppy drives.

01:39:24   But as it turns out, outside of getting

01:39:28   the crappy quality pictures of Declan when he was born from the hospital photographer,

01:39:33   I haven't really used an optical drive in ages.

01:39:36   I can't even remember the last time I've used it with that one exception.

01:39:39   So it really turns out that we don't really need optical drives anymore.

01:39:44   And I'm wondering that maybe we don't really need USB ports on a regular basis anymore.

01:39:52   And you know what, if you really want to stick with that RF mouse when you're at work, and

01:39:56   If you really want to throw USB keys into your computer at work, then you know what,

01:40:00   John, you're right.

01:40:01   You're going to have to have that ugly ass USB hub sitting there with all its little

01:40:05   things falling out of it because that that's what you're going to have to deal with.

01:40:09   I think the optical drive and the floppy drive and I would add sealed in batteries are great

01:40:13   examples to support my point because all those things had a reason.

01:40:18   Optical drive, like I was totally in support of that going away because it's like, look

01:40:21   Look what you could, maybe not necessarily for the iMac, because you could argue that

01:40:26   it could have hung out there a little bit longer, but for laptops, hell yes, because

01:40:28   you look at what you can do when you get rid of that.

01:40:30   It was this giant, it was taking up a huge percentage of the case.

01:40:34   Yes, please get that out of there.

01:40:35   Floppy drives, it's like nobody likes floppy drives, USB keys replaced them.

01:40:38   The message of the iMac was like, "Nope, it's all USB, there's no ADB stuff."

01:40:42   That was a philosophical message expressed by the paring down of the variety of ports.

01:40:47   more like printer port and serial port and all this stuff. It's like old style interfaces

01:40:52   got a new style here, but they didn't just include one of them, right? When there's a

01:40:55   reason, the incorporated batteries, again, making the unibody, not having the battery

01:41:02   door, not doing all that stuff, like you got something in exchange for your compromise.

01:41:05   And a lot of people were angry about those things. I really wasn't because I saw what

01:41:09   I was getting for it. With one port, I don't understand what I'm getting for it. And that's

01:41:13   my complaint about it.

01:41:14   And I'm not saying you're wrong.

01:41:17   Really, what I'm thinking is what if this is, as you said,

01:41:20   a philosophical statement that you shouldn't need USB anymore.

01:41:24   We're beyond that now.

01:41:26   And I know that sounds kind of insane because even I think it sounds kind of insane.

01:41:29   Well, then why not put zero?

01:41:31   Like that would be a statement.

01:41:32   Well, because you need some sort of charging.

01:41:34   iPad put zero on it and people were upset about that.

01:41:36   And that was definitely a statement.

01:41:37   This is not a device that you're going to connect peripherals to.

01:41:40   Yeah, it's a fair point.

01:41:42   I don't know, Marco, where do you come down on all this?

01:41:44   - You know, if you think about when the very first MacBook Air came out in 2008, was it?

01:41:50   I think it was around 2008. It had a lot of these limitations. Like, a lot of limitations

01:41:56   that no computer, even by Apple, had had at that point yet. And it was, I mean, I had

01:42:03   one and it was pretty clunky. It was pretty frustrating to use. It had one USB port and

01:42:11   in one display, in one headphone, in one power.

01:42:14   But, you know, display I never used, headphone.

01:42:16   So, you had one USB port.

01:42:19   And that was so annoying.

01:42:21   I hit limitations on that constantly.

01:42:24   You know, these days it's different.

01:42:26   These days, one of the biggest differences

01:42:28   is that wireless networking is a lot faster.

01:42:30   You know, that I believe came with 802.11G

01:42:33   and the port on it, like,

01:42:34   I have one of the little wired ethernet dongles for it,

01:42:36   but the port was only USB 2.

01:42:39   And the ethernet on was only 10, 100.

01:42:42   And of course the disk in it,

01:42:44   I didn't have the SSD 'cause it was way too expensive.

01:42:46   - That whole machine was a mess.

01:42:47   The CPU would throttle down and everything too,

01:42:48   'cause it got too hot.

01:42:49   - Yep, yep.

01:42:50   And the disk I had,

01:42:52   or the 1.8 inch hard drive was so incredibly slow.

01:42:56   And so like transferring files to and from it

01:42:58   was excruciating.

01:43:00   It took so long, whether it was wired or wireless,

01:43:03   it barely even mattered.

01:43:05   It just took forever.

01:43:07   and having only that one USB port,

01:43:09   even back then in 2008, even when I only had an iPhone,

01:43:11   when there were no iPads yet,

01:43:13   and I wasn't, you know, 'cause these days you can also,

01:43:15   like, if you have a camera,

01:43:17   most cameras will charge over USB now,

01:43:19   so like, there's so many devices now that charge over USB,

01:43:22   and this was before a lot of external hard drives

01:43:24   were very common, I mean, these days,

01:43:27   you know, in some ways you need fewer ports,

01:43:29   in some ways you need more ports,

01:43:30   and I just, I remember how incredibly frustrating

01:43:33   that was back then.

01:43:34   There's a reason why the next generation of MacBook Air

01:43:38   added, I believe they have two ports, right?

01:43:40   - I'm looking at one right now.

01:43:42   It has one on the left, one on the right.

01:43:44   - But most importantly, the port does not double

01:43:47   as the power connector underneath those, obviously.

01:43:49   So that's a secondary issue, which we did put aside,

01:43:52   but I would bring it back when it comes to

01:43:53   the reality of this thing.

01:43:54   It's like one port is one thing,

01:43:56   but one port that's also power,

01:43:58   I really need to be convinced that it is able

01:44:00   to fill the role that MagSafe does

01:44:01   in terms of tripping over the power cable.

01:44:04   So having owned that first Air,

01:44:06   it was extremely limiting and frustrating in a lot of ways.

01:44:11   That being said, it was amazing

01:44:14   because of how incredibly thin and light it was

01:44:16   for the time, and it was a giant leap forward for that time.

01:44:20   And eventually, once the new one came out,

01:44:23   I think in 2010 when they made the unibody, the good one,

01:44:27   well, their first one was the unibody too, anyway,

01:44:29   when they revised it and made the good one

01:44:31   that we all know now is the MacBook Air,

01:44:33   that generation, they fixed a lot of it.

01:44:35   And one of the biggest things they fixed was

01:44:37   they all had SSDs and they were really fast.

01:44:39   And so anyway, if this is a major leap forward

01:44:43   in some way or in some ways,

01:44:47   then we're gonna overlook the one port thing if that's real.

01:44:50   We're gonna overlook that, we're gonna tolerate it.

01:44:53   But the first MacBook Air, to achieve that wow factor

01:44:57   in these couple areas, that also probably

01:45:01   shouldn't have been anybody's only computer.

01:45:03   And so this isn't the first time they've done this.

01:45:06   They don't do it often,

01:45:07   but this isn't the first time they've done it.

01:45:09   - Well, they beat everybody with MacBook Air though,

01:45:12   because they had Intel make that special,

01:45:14   I think it was a die shrink or whatever it was,

01:45:16   some special chip made for them

01:45:18   that meant they were the first one in the arc.

01:45:19   - It wasn't even die shrink,

01:45:20   it was literally like a smaller package

01:45:21   or on the same chip.

01:45:22   - Oh yeah, well, whatever it was,

01:45:24   they were able to come up with a machine

01:45:26   that other people didn't have.

01:45:27   There was the first unibody,

01:45:28   which other people didn't have,

01:45:29   and it was also the first laptop

01:45:31   that you could make this ridiculously thin,

01:45:32   putting in the envelope and everything

01:45:34   because they have the special chip and all that.

01:45:35   That's not the case with this.

01:45:36   There's already PC notebooks out

01:45:39   that use these same chip sets that are available today

01:45:41   that are not as elegant and everything,

01:45:43   but they are similarly reaping the same advantages

01:45:46   that Apple is going to get here

01:45:47   because they're already on the market

01:45:48   with the same chip sets that Apple is going to use,

01:45:50   or at least being reviewed

01:45:51   'cause I've read reviews of them on site.

01:45:52   So they don't quite have the same,

01:45:55   they don't have the opportunity

01:45:56   to do what they did with the Air,

01:45:58   or even I would say with the iMac at this point,

01:46:00   because this rumored design is a simple evolution

01:46:03   of what they have.

01:46:03   It's thinner, it's lighter, it's everything,

01:46:04   so on and so forth,

01:46:05   but it's not gonna be the first to market.

01:46:07   And I don't think they have a special,

01:46:09   maybe they have a special chipset in terms of the GPU

01:46:11   if it ends up being Retina,

01:46:12   and maybe it'll be the first Retina one on the screen,

01:46:14   which is another wild card,

01:46:15   'cause this article doesn't say anything about

01:46:16   whether the rumored thing is supposed to be Retina.

01:46:18   But I understand what you're saying,

01:46:19   but I would not hold up the first MacBook Air

01:46:21   as a model to be repeated,

01:46:22   because I think in the end,

01:46:24   that machine was not really a failure,

01:46:27   but it was bad enough that it will always be remembered

01:46:30   it's one of those machines you're like,

01:46:31   oh yeah, I got one of those,

01:46:32   and it was kind of neat, but boy,

01:46:33   everyone just has their stories about,

01:46:35   the story's basically the next one,

01:46:37   that was the one that was actually good.

01:46:39   - No, I mean, and I think that machine was a failure.

01:46:42   I would be harder on it having owned one.

01:46:44   I think it was a failure.

01:46:45   I really, that machine,

01:46:47   we had an extremely love-hate relationship.

01:46:50   But these days, the technology is better

01:46:52   in a few really important ways.

01:46:54   Number one being SSDs are now very cheap

01:46:56   and relatively speaking.

01:46:58   Now SSDs can be in all of them, so they can be fast,

01:47:01   and wireless is faster, so that alleviates

01:47:03   a lot of the IO bottleneck in and out of that machine,

01:47:05   that bothered me so much.

01:47:07   So if this machine is real, I think this could be good.

01:47:11   One of my biggest concerns though is,

01:47:15   once again, it seems like they're prioritizing thinness

01:47:19   to an unnecessary degree

01:47:21   at the likely expense of battery life.

01:47:23   So looking at this machine,

01:47:25   If these specs are even close to true,

01:47:29   it is extremely thin,

01:47:32   and it allegedly still maintains the teardrop tapered shape,

01:47:36   which means there's gonna be very little room

01:47:38   for much battery in there.

01:47:39   And if they're going for lightweight,

01:47:41   again, not a lot of weight budget for battery either.

01:47:44   So even with a very low power chip,

01:47:47   you still have a big screen and radios.

01:47:49   - They might've got some space back,

01:47:50   because again, in this fantasy machine and this rumors,

01:47:53   they're saying that the track pad

01:47:54   is not a mechanical click down.

01:47:56   I don't understand what it is though,

01:47:57   but if it doesn't go down--

01:47:59   - Well, it's like the stupid tap to click

01:48:00   that all trackpads have that we all turn off.

01:48:02   - Is it, or is it like pressure sensitive?

01:48:03   Anyway, whatever they're saying,

01:48:04   it seems like they're saying that now there may be

01:48:06   a sliver of extra room under the trackpad

01:48:08   that wasn't there before because you don't need

01:48:09   an empty space for the trackpad to pivot down into.

01:48:12   - Were they saying that about the trackpad or the keyboard?

01:48:14   I thought they might have been saying it about the keyboard.

01:48:16   - No, it said the trackpad doesn't click down anymore,

01:48:18   like you, and presumably you just have to tap it.

01:48:21   - Yeah, I was wondering if it was pressure sensitive

01:48:22   or something, but yeah.

01:48:24   So I mean, I'm mostly on board with this machine,

01:48:27   but my two big things are mag safe or no mag safe,

01:48:30   and give me a reason why there's not more than one port

01:48:35   that's not a philosophical reason.

01:48:36   Because I mean, that's another thing I thought

01:48:38   would be the benefit of the USB Type-C connector.

01:48:41   They're smaller and now you can fit more of them.

01:48:44   Like they're not monstrous things where it's like,

01:48:46   'cause you could, on the original Air,

01:48:47   they had, it wasn't like the fold down little thing,

01:48:49   'cause they couldn't even fit one on

01:48:50   like Johnny's nice curve shape.

01:48:52   - Yeah, there's like a little like flap door

01:48:53   that would flap open, it was--

01:48:54   - And they got over that, it's like pop-up headlights.

01:48:58   - Yeah, exactly. (laughs)

01:49:00   - Like, there was a thing in the '80s,

01:49:02   people said, you know what,

01:49:03   just like once they have the technology

01:49:04   to make decent lights and not have them pop up,

01:49:06   they did it, and so like, yeah, anyway.

01:49:08   What else about the change,

01:49:10   Space Gray coming in colors or something,

01:49:11   I'm all on board with that.

01:49:13   - Yeah, I would love a Space Gray Apple laptop,

01:49:16   I think that would be awesome.

01:49:17   But yeah, overall, I think it's gonna be,

01:49:21   I think it's gonna be really interesting.

01:49:22   I think though, I am definitely concerned,

01:49:26   not about all these other factors,

01:49:27   not about the port as much,

01:49:29   I am mostly concerned about battery life,

01:49:32   that they have prioritized thinness too much

01:49:35   and that there won't be very good battery life in this.

01:49:39   'Cause you know, just the existing 11 inch MacBook Air

01:49:41   does not have very good battery life.

01:49:43   It is much better on the 13 inch

01:49:44   'cause there's more space for battery.

01:49:46   I think if you take this machine

01:49:49   and you just don't give it a teardrop shape.

01:49:53   Just make it uniform thickness

01:49:54   the way the Retina 13-15s are.

01:49:57   Even if it's thinner,

01:49:58   if it's just uniform across the whole thing,

01:50:01   that leaves a surprisingly large amount of volume

01:50:02   for batteries in there.

01:50:04   And I hope they do that, but I bet they won't.

01:50:07   - Yeah, so I have a quick thought and then a question.

01:50:11   My quick thought is,

01:50:12   what if the brick that is plugging into this one USB port

01:50:16   has USB ports on it?

01:50:17   - Doesn't help you 'cause it's under your desk.

01:50:19   - Yeah, I mean, and yes, we know about the Plug Bug.

01:50:21   Please stop emailing us.

01:50:23   Stop right there.

01:50:25   Let me stop your email right there.

01:50:26   - That's not how what people do though.

01:50:27   Like the plug is not, like when you're in a hotel,

01:50:30   who knows where the plug is.

01:50:31   When you're at your desk, the plug is not always up.

01:50:32   Like it's a different place.

01:50:34   People will end up using, you know,

01:50:36   people will be more likely to use a powered hub.

01:50:38   - I mean, it's possible.

01:50:39   Now the other question I have is,

01:50:41   could this be the first ARM Mac?

01:50:43   - So that's a good question.

01:50:44   I think if you look at the iPad Air 2 CPU, the A8X,

01:50:49   and you look at the benchmarks

01:50:51   from the new fanless Core M chips,

01:50:53   that would be presumably the chip

01:50:56   that would be using this thing,

01:50:58   they're pretty close, actually.

01:50:59   They're similar in performance.

01:51:02   I think the Intel one is faster single-threaded,

01:51:06   but not by a massive amount.

01:51:08   They're in the same ballpark.

01:51:10   The big question to me is why would they go ARM?

01:51:14   So no question they could if they wanted to.

01:51:16   They could ship an ARM Mac,

01:51:18   they could compile everything from ARM,

01:51:19   and they could require developers to cross-compile

01:51:22   for the Mac App Store and everything.

01:51:23   - Didn't Chuck point out,

01:51:24   I think it was Hockenberry today as well,

01:51:26   like if there was gonna be ARM,

01:51:29   they would have to have something like the,

01:51:32   you know, the Intel developer program

01:51:33   where they shipped out like, you know,

01:51:35   G5 Power Mac cases with Pentium 4s inside them

01:51:39   to let people, you know, like any CPU transition

01:51:42   needs developers on board.

01:51:43   So if that is the case, you would expect that transition

01:51:46   to proceed the release of the machines and the scheduling.

01:51:49   If this leak is in any way real,

01:51:53   and we expect this machine this year,

01:51:55   it's when are you gonna tell all the developers,

01:51:57   by the way, you're gonna have to cross compile

01:51:59   of our ARM and hear all the crap you have to do.

01:52:00   The timing seems wrong to me for that to be the case.

01:52:02   But anyway, go on with the feasibility.

01:52:04   - Yeah, well, I mean, but again, like, well,

01:52:06   I think it would be less work this time

01:52:08   because developers have already been dragged

01:52:10   through one transition.

01:52:11   We are not only already familiar with ARM from iOS,

01:52:14   but these days developers,

01:52:16   by going through the first transition,

01:52:17   a lot of developers move their code to more portable code.

01:52:21   And so I think it would be a much less involved transition

01:52:25   for developers.

01:52:26   And I think the days of Apple having some kind

01:52:30   of pre-release developer hardware program,

01:52:32   I think those are gone, pretty far gone.

01:52:35   And I think the way they would do this would be the same way

01:52:37   when they have new iPads,

01:52:40   and the same way they're gonna do the watch,

01:52:41   they didn't ship a watch to everyone for WatchKit.

01:52:44   That's not gonna happen.

01:52:45   They're just gonna let you submit apps

01:52:49   two weeks ahead of time before this thing goes on sale.

01:52:52   - But you have existing software, though.

01:52:55   In the case of those things,

01:52:56   you have all these existing Mac apps.

01:52:58   You have to decide if you're gonna do a fat binary thing,

01:53:00   and if you are, everyone has to recompile their things

01:53:03   as fat binaries, and you have to decide

01:53:04   whether this is gonna be a transition

01:53:06   or a constant parallel thing,

01:53:07   because as good as ARM may be for this machine,

01:53:09   ARM still can't compete with the high-end machine.

01:53:11   So at the very least,

01:53:11   you're gonna still have this giant tube Mac Pro

01:53:13   that's not gonna have an ARM processor in it.

01:53:15   And then you're just gonna have two processors forever.

01:53:17   And like, yeah, there's,

01:53:18   I think they could definitely make a machine

01:53:22   with an ARM processor that does this,

01:53:23   and it would be reasonably satisfactory,

01:53:24   but all the ancillary bookkeeping and strategic things

01:53:28   don't quite yet make sense to me.

01:53:30   I don't understand what they would come out on stage and say

01:53:33   is the reason they're doing this,

01:53:34   unless they try to say it,

01:53:35   because it can be super low power.

01:53:36   it's like it would be lower power,

01:53:40   but it wouldn't suddenly become an iPad.

01:53:42   - Right, you wouldn't suddenly get 24 hour battery life

01:53:45   where you were with the same Intel chip

01:53:47   you would have gotten five or seven.

01:53:50   It's not gonna be that big of a difference.

01:53:52   But for me the biggest thing is,

01:53:55   I have no question they could do this,

01:53:56   I have no question they could give developers

01:53:58   very little notice and we would all just jump

01:54:00   and just do it, well not we, I'm not a Mac developer,

01:54:03   but they would all jump and just do it

01:54:04   because it wouldn't be that much work for most of them.

01:54:07   My big thing is, same thing as you said with the ports, why?

01:54:13   Because there would be a substantial cost to it

01:54:16   during the transition.

01:54:17   First of all, couldn't run Bootcamp anymore,

01:54:19   and you couldn't virtualize Windows anymore.

01:54:21   That's a big problem for a lot of people.

01:54:23   Once again, I think, going back to the earlier discussion,

01:54:27   this couldn't be your only Mac

01:54:28   if you need to use Windows apps.

01:54:30   But maybe it could be your travel Mac,

01:54:31   or maybe for a lot of us, myself included,

01:54:33   who don't ever run Windows apps, they can do it.

01:54:35   But there's certainly a lot of people need Windows,

01:54:37   so it would lose the support of all of them.

01:54:40   For the transition period, however long it is,

01:54:42   before most of the apps or all the apps you use

01:54:45   are compiled for ARM, how do you run Intel apps?

01:54:49   Is there some kind of Rosetta layer?

01:54:50   'Cause the problem is, like, when you went

01:54:52   from PowerPC to Intel, there was also

01:54:54   a massive performance jump.

01:54:56   - I like that you said we've been through

01:54:57   one transition before.

01:54:58   - I know you've been through many.

01:55:00   - Yes, yeah, no, but you're right.

01:55:02   This runs to your point.

01:55:03   every time there's been a transition,

01:55:04   there's been some kind of band-aid to like,

01:55:07   A, it's a clear transition, this is old, that's new,

01:55:10   which would not be the case with ARM,

01:55:11   because you'd be like, what the hell,

01:55:12   what's your story for the Mac Pro?

01:55:13   Are you gonna come up with that crazy 12-core ARM processor?

01:55:16   Where is that?

01:55:16   Anyway, so it wouldn't even be a transition.

01:55:18   And B, every time there has been a transition,

01:55:20   there's been some way for you to keep using your crap

01:55:22   in the short term.

01:55:23   - And it was usable because the transition came

01:55:26   with a big performance boost.

01:55:27   Whereas in this case, if you're going from Intel to ARM,

01:55:30   it's actually getting a little bit slower.

01:55:32   - And possibly a little hotter,

01:55:33   'cause it's not 14 nanometer unless Intel's

01:55:34   fabbing it for you.

01:55:35   - Exactly, so you're not gonna have extremely,

01:55:39   you know, good enough,

01:55:40   you're not gonna have good enough emulation speed

01:55:43   or translation speed of an Intel binary

01:55:46   running on an ARM laptop.

01:55:47   Like that's gonna suck and be either not available at all

01:55:51   or be pretty slow and probably unusable for a lot of people.

01:55:54   So I just, I don't see why it makes sense

01:55:58   to have this be ARM as long as Intel's chips

01:56:01   can get close enough in power usage.

01:56:03   And I think with the Core M, I think we're seeing

01:56:06   they pretty much can.

01:56:08   Not that ARM is lagging hugely behind,

01:56:10   but the transition costs of switching,

01:56:13   there's no clear reason right now

01:56:16   why they need to make that transition.

01:56:17   There's no massive gain to be had on the other side

01:56:20   that we can see right now.

01:56:21   Long term, there might be, and they might choose

01:56:23   to make that transition at some other time.

01:56:25   But, and for instance, one of the biggest gains could be,

01:56:29   I bet Apple's pretty sore with Intel right now

01:56:32   because of the Broadwell delays,

01:56:34   having delayed Apple's entire product line.

01:56:35   - Yeah, it's not so much that they're sore with them,

01:56:37   they're just like the long-term strategic advantage

01:56:39   would be because Apple wants to own and control

01:56:41   all the major technologies, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

01:56:43   like that whole thing.

01:56:44   Like that's why, because--

01:56:45   - But they can make that switch anytime they want.

01:56:47   - I mean, you have to start sometime,

01:56:48   but like if they came up with an R machine,

01:56:52   I think the message would be that

01:56:54   this may be a longer transition,

01:56:56   but it will be a transition,

01:56:58   and eventually every single piece of hardware Apple sells

01:57:00   will have an ARM CPU designed by Apple

01:57:02   and fabbed by whoever Apple can get to fab it for them.

01:57:04   Like that would be the long-term vision.

01:57:06   It's like, short-term this is gonna suck for you

01:57:08   because for all the reasons Marco just said,

01:57:10   it's not gonna be able to emulate your stuff.

01:57:11   It's not gonna be huge increase in performance.

01:57:13   In fact, it might be a dip, but long-term,

01:57:15   it's important for Apple as a company to own and control

01:57:17   all the major technologies that contribute to its products

01:57:19   and blah, blah, blah.

01:57:20   And that's a crappy message, but you're like,

01:57:21   I don't care about Apple's long-term strategy.

01:57:23   I just want good products now, right?

01:57:25   And so, and it's not like Apple needs to do this

01:57:28   to save itself from destruction.

01:57:30   Like, well, I understand you gotta do

01:57:31   what you gotta do, Apple.

01:57:33   I still, I would still be like,

01:57:36   I would still be working with Intel, working on Intel,

01:57:40   maybe buy Intel if you have to,

01:57:41   like whatever, you got a lot of money.

01:57:43   Like work something out because switching to ARM

01:57:48   would be short-term as in like the next few years,

01:57:52   not so great for Apple's customers.

01:57:54   and maybe this is not the best time to be doing that.

01:57:57   All right.

01:58:00   - Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week,

01:58:02   Casper, Hover, and Automatic,

01:58:04   and we will see you next week.

01:58:06   (upbeat music)

01:58:09   ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:58:11   ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:58:13   ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:58:16   ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:58:19   ♪ John didn't do any research ♪

01:58:21   Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:58:24   'Cause it was accidental

01:58:26   (It was accidental)

01:58:27   Oh, it was accidental

01:58:28   (Accidental)

01:58:29   And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM

01:58:33   And if you're into Twitter

01:58:37   You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:58:43   So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:58:48   I need to hire an editor or something.

01:59:10   Weren't you an editor?

01:59:12   Weren't you an editor for a while?

01:59:14   Isn't that how that works?

01:59:15   You can't be your own editor.

01:59:16   I know, I'm just saying.

01:59:17   How is an editor for like five minutes?

01:59:19   You could be your own editor.

01:59:20   You can.

01:59:22   You could be your own editor.

01:59:23   Everybody can.

01:59:24   Like, that's part of the experience of being a blogger is like you don't have a staff.

01:59:28   Like you don't have people doing all this stuff for you.

01:59:30   You are, you're doing it all.

01:59:31   You're writing, you're conceptualizing the thing, you're assigning it to yourself, you're

01:59:34   writing it, you're editing it, you're copy editing it, you're putting it into the CMS,

01:59:38   you're running the website, like, you're doing the whole thing.

01:59:41   So I feel like, I mean, you can't do as good a job as if I'm going to have an entire staff,

01:59:45   But you don't want to have an entire staff, that's part of the whole blogging thing.

01:59:51   If you look at the things you have written recently and go back to things you wrote before,

01:59:54   you're already editing yourself to be different.

01:59:58   The system is working as designed.

01:59:59   [ Silence ]