ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► he's a nice guy

00:00:01 ◼   ► like just he has a d*** voice. Well that's how me and you sound to other people

00:00:05 ◼   ► Marco. This gives you a glimpse of what it must look like for the people who hate

00:00:08 ◼   ► I was thinking it but I didn't say it. For the people who hate us this is exactly

00:00:12 ◼   ► how we sound to them. Well hold on.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Nobody hates you John. That is so not true. Look at my email there.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Believe me.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Well okay there's a difference between hates you and corrects you. You do realize that

00:00:22 ◼   ► right? No well.

00:00:25 ◼   ► So how's your review going John?

00:00:26 ◼   ► Well with the uncertainty about the release date, and you know, like it could be any day

00:00:33 ◼   ► now or whatever, I thought it was a, well, I brought it up to the R's guys and they agreed

00:00:37 ◼   ► that we should just start editing and copy editing this, even though it's not done done,

00:00:42 ◼   ► like we're still doing battery tests and getting results and still waiting for dictation to

00:00:48 ◼   ► work and still waiting for pricing information, but like what's there, we better start going

00:00:53 ◼   ► through it now. So it's uploaded and it's in the process of being edited and copy-edited

00:00:59 ◼   ► what there is of it, and we just gotta wait. I mean, you hope they're gonna give you a

00:01:04 ◼   ► nice long notice about when it's gonna be released, but they could just say, "And here

00:01:08 ◼   ► it is, and it's shipping now!" or, "God knows what they'll do with it." Obviously, their

00:01:14 ◼   ► plans don't factor in the quality of life of people writing reviews, because that's

00:01:19 ◼   ► really low on their list.

00:01:22 ◼   ► You can't make a call to one of your like birdies or something?

00:01:26 ◼   ► How many birdies? How many birdies?

00:01:28 ◼   ► Aww.

00:01:30 ◼   ► And besides, like, nobody knows this anyway.

00:01:32 ◼   ► Like, is it the type of thing that, like, the price and ship date are the type of things that you can change right up to the last minute?

00:01:38 ◼   ► Like, you don't need a big advance notice for any of these things. They can hold it, they can keep it, you know what I mean?

00:01:42 ◼   ► It's not... both of those things are known to such a small group of people.

00:01:46 ◼   ► It's not like even the name of the product, which has to be in marketing materials and everything like that.

00:01:50 ◼   ► I guess pricing isn't my in marketing tears a little bit, but there hardly are any marketing materials

00:01:54 ◼   ► It's gonna be on you know the App Store. So

00:01:56 ◼   ► Just waiting

00:01:59 ◼   ► Fun you don't you sound beaten but or not beaten. I should say you sound battered but not beaten

00:02:05 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not it's not this is a not a fun part like, you know rerunning tests going through screenshots to make sure things haven't changed

00:02:13 ◼   ► Retesting things. It's just it's no fun

00:02:18 ◼   ► You sound like a man who's on the edge of stopping

00:02:21 ◼   ► But I feel like every year you get to this point and then it ships and then you're fine. Well, I

00:02:26 ◼   ► Every year has something that's annoying about it and this year. I think the

00:02:30 ◼   ► The not knowing the ship date or the price and stuff like that

00:02:35 ◼   ► I don't have such terrible memory things these things so I can't tell you but it seems like and

00:02:40 ◼   ► Every other year previously we knew the ship date or the price

00:02:44 ◼   ► Well in advance of it happening and who knows maybe we will this year as well, but the fact that we don't by now is

00:02:50 ◼   ► Annoying me uncertainty is bad

00:02:53 ◼   ► Fair enough we have a lot to get through anything else on the review

00:02:58 ◼   ► Yeah, this is gonna be a tough show

00:03:00 ◼   ► I think because next week we're doing the show right after the iPhone of early the day after the iPhone event and

00:03:06 ◼   ► So I would imagine that next week. We're gonna have a pretty packed show full of iPhone stuff although

00:03:13 ◼   ► I don't know. Does it look that interesting? I think based on what we've seen so far,

00:03:19 ◼   ► I don't think there's going to be—if it's just the iPhone and not also iPad/Apple TV/anything

00:03:25 ◼   ► else—if it's just the iPhone, which I would probably say there's like a 50/50 chance

00:03:30 ◼   ► of, then I actually don't know if there's going to be any surprises.

00:03:34 ◼   ► Oh, we'll talk about the fingerprint scanner for half the show.

00:03:39 ◼   ► No, let's not talk about the fingerprint scanner for half the show.

00:03:43 ◼   ► Only because we don't have the time for it.

00:03:44 ◼   ► But I do think, to your point, that if there's anything interesting, I suspect that it will

00:03:48 ◼   ► be something like the fingerprint scanner.

00:03:50 ◼   ► It seems like there's a lot of smoke about the iPhone 5 Color, as I'm calling it, the

00:03:54 ◼   ► iPhone 5 Champagne.

00:03:56 ◼   ► And I think that those seem to be pretty much a lock.

00:04:00 ◼   ► I had thought earlier today on Twitter whether the Champagne iPhone would be just a China

00:04:06 ◼   ► thing or an Asia thing I should say or if it would go everywhere. At the time I

00:04:10 ◼   ► thought it would be just them now I'm thinking it would probably be everywhere

00:04:14 ◼   ► but that all seems to be pretty much a lock as far as far as I'm concerned. So

00:04:17 ◼   ► the only big surprise in my mind would be, well maybe not surprise but slightly

00:04:21 ◼   ► surprising thing would be a fingerprint scanner and there's some amount of smoke

00:04:25 ◼   ► there but not a lot. I don't know what do you guys think? Well I don't know I'm

00:04:28 ◼   ► thinking we're probably I mean the fingerprint scanner there was something

00:04:32 ◼   ► in the software, I believe, that tipped that off. There was some kind of reference to it

00:04:37 ◼   ► in the hardware stuff somewhere in iOS 7, beta something, I think.

00:04:41 ◼   ► But we've seen that before, haven't we? I can't cite an example, but I could swear

00:04:44 ◼   ► that we've seen stuff like that before.

00:04:46 ◼   ► But I think it kind of makes sense as something more interesting than a passcode lock and

00:04:53 ◼   ► faster. Whether it's more secure depends on a lot of things and is highly arguable,

00:04:59 ◼   ► but it's at least more convenient.

00:05:01 ◼   ► I don't use a passcode lock on my phone.

00:05:04 ◼   ► - I only do if I'm traveling and I feel susceptible

00:05:07 ◼   ► to my iPhone being lost.

00:05:10 ◼   ► Like at WWDC, I typically do,

00:05:11 ◼   ► not because I don't trust fellow conference goers,

00:05:14 ◼   ► but because there's a gazillion iPhones in a square mile

00:05:17 ◼   ► and it wouldn't surprise me

00:05:18 ◼   ► if somebody accidentally grabbed the wrong one.

00:05:19 ◼   ► - Right.

00:05:20 ◼   ► - But generally speaking,

00:05:21 ◼   ► I do not have a lock on mine either.

00:05:24 ◼   ► - I figure for security though,

00:05:25 ◼   ► this is always the argument with security.

00:05:29 ◼   ► Like if you're just gonna put your password

00:05:31 ◼   ► on a Post-it note and stick it to your monitor,

00:05:34 ◼   ► you're better off having lower password requirements

00:05:37 ◼   ► and just being able to remember it.

00:05:39 ◼   ► This is the kind of thing like,

00:05:40 ◼   ► I don't use a passcode lock because it would slow me down

00:05:43 ◼   ► too much when I have to unlock the phone.

00:05:45 ◼   ► If they do something with a fingerprint scanner

00:05:47 ◼   ► where it's really fast to unlock based on the fingerprint

00:05:50 ◼   ► on the home button, I might do that.

00:05:53 ◼   ► - Well, they could go one or two ways

00:05:54 ◼   ► on the fingerprint scanner.

00:05:56 ◼   ► They could do the, you guys don't remember this,

00:05:58 ◼   ► the Mac OS 9 had a voice password thing for its fake user accounts where you

00:06:05 ◼   ► would say something and then instead of typing your password you would say the

00:06:08 ◼   ► same thing and it would let you in and that one's the policy of that system

00:06:13 ◼   ► which was so impressive when you first used it you realize that it errors on

00:06:17 ◼   ► the side of letting you in so if anyone says anything remotely similar to what

00:06:21 ◼   ► you said in a similar voice they get let in so it's very comfortable and easy for

00:06:27 ◼   ► you to use, but the security is perhaps slightly better than nothing, but not much, right?

00:06:33 ◼   ► And the other way to go with it is to err on the side of not letting people in.

00:06:39 ◼   ► So the fingerprint scanner works like 50% or 40% of the time, but it never lets someone

00:06:44 ◼   ► else in except for your finger.

00:06:46 ◼   ► And based on the fingerprint technology thing, I don't think it can be all that reliable.

00:06:52 ◼   ► So they have to make one of those choices.

00:06:53 ◼   ► It's not going to work, I don't think, even 90% of the time.

00:06:56 ◼   ► So they have to decide, are we just going to say, OK, well,

00:06:59 ◼   ► 90% of the time this gets you in without entering your passcode,

00:07:02 ◼   ► but 10% of the time you get to enter your passcode anyway.

00:07:04 ◼   ► And there's a little frustration factor.

00:07:05 ◼   ► They're like, why did I bother putting my finger on there?

00:07:07 ◼   ► Because this time it didn't work.

00:07:08 ◼   ► Let me just enter the passcode.

00:07:09 ◼   ► And then maybe people-- it doesn't take much for people

00:07:11 ◼   ► to say, if it doesn't work almost 100% of the time,

00:07:13 ◼   ► I'm just going to enter my passcode every single time

00:07:16 ◼   ► and not bother with a fingerprint thing.

00:07:18 ◼   ► And the other way to do it is for people

00:07:19 ◼   ► like Marco, who don't use a passcode, and just say,

00:07:23 ◼   ► well, if your finger's close and it looks kind of close,

00:07:25 ◼   ► it'll let you in. Maybe it will let someone else in sometimes, but you know, it's better

00:07:29 ◼   ► than nothing. So that's what I'm going to watch for if this thing has a fingerprint

00:07:32 ◼   ► scanner is which one of those two policies do they come in. I guess I, the third possibility

00:07:36 ◼   ► is that it's magic and it works 100% of the time and Apple doesn't have to make that choice

00:07:41 ◼   ► or close to 100% of the time. But for some reason I find that unlikely.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Well on top of that, if you think about it, my thumb, I have an average sized hand and

00:07:49 ◼   ► my thumb is considerably bigger than the home button. So what happens if I use like the

00:07:54 ◼   ► tip of my thumb in one moment to unlock the phone but then I use kind of the the

00:07:59 ◼   ► heel of my thumb the next time is there some sort of scanner that I have to like

00:08:03 ◼   ► some training process I have to go through in order to scan my entire thumb

00:08:08 ◼   ► print that just seems so not Apple like at all here's my thought process on the

00:08:12 ◼   ► on the fingerprint scanner Apple has yet to produce an iOS device with a home

00:08:17 ◼   ► button where the home button doesn't fail some percentage of the time that's

00:08:21 ◼   ► large enough for us to all have heard of or experienced a failed home button.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Wait, I don't think that's true. Have you never heard of or experienced a failed home button?

00:08:30 ◼   ► No, I have on previous models, but I think the 4 was really bad for that. But I think the 4S

00:08:38 ◼   ► might have improved it. Certainly the 5, I believe the 5 made it metal-backed.

00:08:42 ◼   ► They keep making it better. They're improving it. But I have heard of people with 5s with

00:08:46 ◼   ► failed home buttons. And not that I'm saying it's their fault and it's shoddy workmanship,

00:08:50 ◼   ► It's just that it's a button that you press all the time.

00:08:53 ◼   ► So it's good.

00:08:54 ◼   ► I don't know what the percentage is.

00:08:57 ◼   ► Maybe 99.5% of the home buttons are fine after the first year and 0.5% fail.

00:09:03 ◼   ► But that's a button that does nothing except be a button.

00:09:06 ◼   ► So to expect an equal or higher percentage out of a button that is a button and, by the

00:09:11 ◼   ► way, also some kind of fingerprint scanner, that's why I'm explaining why I'm ruling

00:09:15 ◼   ► out the idea that it will work reliably enough that Apple won't have to make those choices

00:09:19 ◼   ► of which way to go with it.

00:09:22 ◼   ► I tend to agree.

00:09:23 ◼   ► I mean, I think it's an interesting premise.

00:09:25 ◼   ► But like you, I'm very dubious as to how

00:09:28 ◼   ► they can execute well on it.

00:09:30 ◼   ► But just like Marco was saying earlier,

00:09:31 ◼   ► I don't use a passcode lock on my phone.

00:09:34 ◼   ► I find it to be annoying when I do use it at conferences

00:09:37 ◼   ► or whatever the case may be.

00:09:39 ◼   ► And the thought of a perfect thumbprint scanner

00:09:42 ◼   ► really does sound excellent to me.

00:09:45 ◼   ► But it also has some other weird annoyances that come with it.

00:09:47 ◼   ► Like for example, what if Erin's phone is in the kitchen, all the iPads and whatnots

00:09:53 ◼   ► are upstairs, we're sitting on the couch and she wants to look up something real quick.

00:09:58 ◼   ► If I hand her my phone, what does she do?

00:10:01 ◼   ► I mean, logically I would assume she would have to enter my passcode, which of course

00:10:04 ◼   ► I would have already shared with her, but like how does that work?

00:10:07 ◼   ► And that gets to be a little dicey.

00:10:09 ◼   ► And what is the fallback like you were saying earlier?

00:10:11 ◼   ► If my thumb doesn't unlock it, is it the passcode?

00:10:13 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:10:14 ◼   ► It just seems-

00:10:15 ◼   ► Well, the passcode will always work.

00:10:16 ◼   ► I'm assuming it will always be an option and will always work.

00:10:19 ◼   ► Well, right, I'm saying, like, would that be your fallback if you can't scan your thumb?

00:10:23 ◼   ► And it stands to reason it would be, but, I don't know, it just seems,

00:10:26 ◼   ► like you were saying before, it just seems like it would be annoying

00:10:29 ◼   ► if it doesn't work darn near all the time.

00:10:31 ◼   ► Yeah, that's, you know, it wouldn't surprise me if, you know, John,

00:10:37 ◼   ► you're exactly right, that it would just be, like, a quick shortcut to get out of the passcode entry screen.

00:10:43 ◼   ► It's like a quick alternative to entering the passcode, but it might even still show

00:10:48 ◼   ► the passcode screen.

00:10:49 ◼   ► Well, it has another important effect similar to Siri in that it's a gee whiz kind of

00:10:56 ◼   ► feature.

00:10:57 ◼   ► So even if someone bought an iPhone 4S or whatever when Siri came out and only used

00:11:02 ◼   ► Siri for the first two or three days to show people and play with, a lot of those people

00:11:07 ◼   ► I think got their value out of Siri.

00:11:10 ◼   ► They got a cool new phone that you could talk to, and they played with it and were entertained

00:11:14 ◼   ► by it, and eventually became bored of it because it doesn't work reliably enough and it doesn't

00:11:18 ◼   ► fit into their workflow.

00:11:19 ◼   ► But I think a lot of them are not bitter about that.

00:11:22 ◼   ► They still were left with a really nice phone, and they got that extra bit of enjoyment out

00:11:26 ◼   ► of it, and it was exciting and interesting and new.

00:11:29 ◼   ► The fingerprint scanner could fulfill that role for the iPhone 5S or whatever they end

00:11:34 ◼   ► up calling it.

00:11:35 ◼   ► Man, Siri's a mess.

00:11:37 ◼   ► every time, seriously, it's been out now for what, two full years?

00:11:42 ◼   ► It's just a beta, Marco. Come on.

00:11:47 ◼   ► Is it still?

00:11:49 ◼   ► I don't even know. I can't keep track.

00:11:50 ◼   ► Every time I try to use Siri, which isn't that often.

00:11:52 ◼   ► I used to use it a lot, but it just kept failing so often back when it first came out.

00:11:56 ◼   ► And not even just doing the wrong thing, but failing to be recognized and timing out and having server issues.

00:12:01 ◼   ► it was failing so often that I just slowly slowed down my use of it and then eventually stopped for a while.

00:12:06 ◼   ► And I've been trying it over the last couple of months, just maybe once a week, I'll try something.

00:12:12 ◼   ► And it fails about half the time.

00:12:14 ◼   ► And so I'm just like, it's so discouraging, but I can't believe after all this time it still has this problem.

00:12:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I use it sporadically. I think I would lump myself in that category of,

00:12:26 ◼   ► "Ooh, this is shiny and fancy when I first got my 4S."

00:12:29 ◼   ► And I used it more, but not a lot.

00:12:31 ◼   ► Now I find myself only using Siri to set timers,

00:12:35 ◼   ► so for like cooking or something like that.

00:12:37 ◼   ► Or if I'm trying to send a text message while driving,

00:12:40 ◼   ► I'll dictate it to Siri and hope that what I send,

00:12:45 ◼   ► Aaron or whomever, is remotely similar to the words

00:12:49 ◼   ► that came out of my mouth.

00:12:50 ◼   ► And I would agree that Siri, not only is it bad,

00:12:52 ◼   ► but I would say it's gotten worse lately,

00:12:54 ◼   ► 'cause I actually had pretty good luck with Siri

00:12:56 ◼   ► up until the last month or two.

00:12:58 ◼   ► and I feel like it's a total crapshoot now.

00:13:02 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:13:02 ◼   ► - That's right, all right, so what else will be new?

00:13:05 ◼   ► So are we saying yes to Champagne iPhone?

00:13:07 ◼   ► - Oh, I mean, I think, and by the way, not only Champagne,

00:13:10 ◼   ► there's also that new kind of lighter gray color

00:13:13 ◼   ► with the black glass.

00:13:15 ◼   ► You see that also?

00:13:16 ◼   ► - I did not, actually.

00:13:17 ◼   ► - There's four proposed colors,

00:13:19 ◼   ► and somebody had a video of all four of them lined up,

00:13:21 ◼   ► like all four of the shells lined up.

00:13:23 ◼   ► So it's the dark black and the white and silver

00:13:27 ◼   ► that we have now.

00:13:28 ◼   ► And then there is the champagne one,

00:13:30 ◼   ► which I'm sure everyone's probably seen

00:13:32 ◼   ► on Rumour Sites by now.

00:13:33 ◼   ► And then there's also like a lighter,

00:13:36 ◼   ► like a light black, if that makes sense.

00:13:39 ◼   ► - Interesting.

00:13:40 ◼   ► - And it's closer to raw aluminum color,

00:13:44 ◼   ► but it still has the black accents,

00:13:45 ◼   ► which could be nice, 'cause honestly,

00:13:47 ◼   ► the black one, I even said this last year

00:13:49 ◼   ► when the five was new,

00:13:51 ◼   ► the black I think is too dark.

00:13:53 ◼   ► You don't really get a lot of that

00:13:54 ◼   ► like nice metal quality from it,

00:13:57 ◼   ► it just looks like just one big black slab. It doesn't, like, the difference between the

00:14:01 ◼   ► black glass and the metal backing is not a big enough color difference. There's like

00:14:06 ◼   ► no contrast there. So I don't actually think the black looks like that. It also does not

00:14:09 ◼   ► age well because, especially along the chamfered edges, the black anodized coating flakes off

00:14:17 ◼   ► on those corners, on those edges, and so you see a lot of the underlying metal. So I think

00:14:22 ◼   ► for the next one I was even thinking about getting white, although my wife has prohibited

00:14:26 ◼   ► that in advance, but... She's right. Well, because she wants it, and she doesn't want

00:14:30 ◼   ► us to both be the same. But I'm thinking about that medium gray color is looking

00:14:36 ◼   ► pretty good, honestly, because I think it'll age better, and I think it'll

00:14:39 ◼   ► just look cooler. I think the black, the detail of the black just gets lost

00:14:44 ◼   ► because it's too dark. I wonder if people are going to have iPhone 5C

00:14:49 ◼   ► Envy, not just because of the colors, but maybe I'm the only one like

00:14:53 ◼   ► but you've all seen my iPod Touch and I've got that, what is it called, kind of plastic TPA, is it called?

00:15:00 ◼   ► TPU? TPU, I think. It's a kind of plastic that's like not squishy like rubber, but also not hard like regular plastic.

00:15:08 ◼   ► It's a little bit grippy, and that's what I like on my cases.

00:15:12 ◼   ► I want it to be like curved and comfortable, but a little bit grippy.

00:15:15 ◼   ► And I can't tell what the back of the 5C is made out of, like some kind of plastic.

00:15:19 ◼   ► But if it's made of TPU or something similar, I mean, I'm guessing it's not.

00:15:23 ◼   ► But like it looks more comfortable in my hand that I'm wondering if you're okay. I got the much faster

00:15:28 ◼   ► Fancier more expensive looking 5s or whatever

00:15:32 ◼   ► but holding a

00:15:34 ◼   ► 5c is more comfortable. It feels more secure in my hand it feel it doesn't have sharp edges

00:15:39 ◼   ► It's more durable and resilient to nicks and scratches and stuff like that

00:15:43 ◼   ► But of course to be slower and you know, it'd be not as good a phone

00:15:49 ◼   ► And I wonder about that. I wonder if like anybody out there will come home with their 5s and feel a little twinge of

00:15:57 ◼   ► like

00:15:58 ◼   ► Disappointment that they didn't get to bring home the green curved comfortable one that they liked

00:16:03 ◼   ► Well the people in the know are all pretty much saying for certain that the 5c is literally just an iPhone 5s internals

00:16:11 ◼   ► Probably even the same camera if I had to guess

00:16:14 ◼   ► That's kind of their style when they they're gonna do something like this

00:16:17 ◼   ► So it's basically an iPhone 5, but rather than just pushing the iPhone 5 down, they're

00:16:24 ◼   ► supposedly getting rid of it and replacing the "old model" this year with this new addition

00:16:30 ◼   ► of the old internals, with this new casing around it.

00:16:34 ◼   ► So if that's the case, it's going to be a pretty good phone.

00:16:36 ◼   ► The iPhone 5 is still really good, even with iOS 7 stuff, it's still a very, very good

00:16:41 ◼   ► phone.

00:16:44 ◼   ► think about what they're actually selling, as far as I know, nobody's been able to break

00:16:48 ◼   ► it down. Maybe Horace Didiou found a way to figure out with margins and stuff, but what

00:16:53 ◼   ► the breakdown is between the different iPhone models that are sold at a time, like how many

00:16:58 ◼   ► sell relative to each other. From just looking at the public and what people buy, just anecdotally,

00:17:06 ◼   ► it's always seemed like the cheaper, like last year's or two years ago models of iPhones

00:17:11 ◼   ► have sold extremely well.

00:17:13 ◼   ► So what if the iPhone 5C-- since the iPhone 5 is still so good,

00:17:18 ◼   ► by most standards of phones today-- what if the 5C kind of

00:17:24 ◼   ► makes it official that the lower end model/last year's model is

00:17:30 ◼   ► like the default model?

00:17:32 ◼   ► Similar to what the iPad Mini did to the iPad,

00:17:35 ◼   ► what the iPod Mini and iPod Nano did to the iPod,

00:17:38 ◼   ► you know, you have the high-end super premium model, that's going to be the 5S this year.

00:17:43 ◼   ► And then, you know, then you have the one that most people buy. And previously, that was last

00:17:49 ◼   ► year's model. This time, maybe that's going to be the 5C. Yeah, that would be a change in iPhone

00:17:54 ◼   ► buying because up until this point, what Apple has told us is that the most popular model is always,

00:17:59 ◼   ► like, whatever the fanciest one is. Like, they won't give you breakdowns, but most of the time,

00:18:04 ◼   ► they will confirm that most people are buying iPhone 5s or something to that effect because

00:18:09 ◼   ► it's the best and they're still kind of selling a high-end thing.

00:18:12 ◼   ► And I would not be surprised at all if come some earnings call when someone tries to get

00:18:16 ◼   ► this information out of them, they say that most people are buying 5Cs or they sold more

00:18:20 ◼   ► 5Cs than 5Ss.

00:18:22 ◼   ► But I think the 5C might be a better conceived physical product because they've gone through

00:18:29 ◼   ► all these iterations of the glass back and the external antenna and the 3G with the big

00:18:36 ◼   ► bubble plastic back and the original one with the plastic bottom.

00:18:39 ◼   ► They've gone around and around trying to find something that's a nice balance, something

00:18:42 ◼   ► that's a beautiful object, and I think the 4/4S form factor is the most attractive as

00:18:48 ◼   ► like a piece of sculpture.

00:18:50 ◼   ► And also one that's the most utilitarian and fun and comfortable to use to recognize

00:18:56 ◼   ► that most of the time you're holding this thing in your hands and chucking it into your purse or your pocket or whatever,

00:19:00 ◼   ► which one strikes the right balance? And maybe that's going to end up being the 5C.

00:19:03 ◼   ► I think it depends heavily on what kind of plastic that is and stuff.

00:19:06 ◼   ► But I don't think the 5 is nailed the sweet spot yet either, so

00:19:10 ◼   ► maybe you're right. Maybe the, you know, the 5 becomes the the iPad 4 of the phone line,

00:19:17 ◼   ► and this thing becomes the mini, and then it becomes the biggest sign.

00:19:21 ◼   ► I'm sure Apple would be perfectly happy with that because,

00:19:23 ◼   ► as far as they're concerned, they're selling you a cheaper version of last year's phone

00:19:29 ◼   ► and selling a ton of them.

00:19:30 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:19:31 ◼   ► I mean, and I agree with you, by the way.

00:19:33 ◼   ► I think that the best feeling iPhone in my hand was the 3G/3GS because it had that nice

00:19:40 ◼   ► curve and it was plastic, so it felt very secure in the hand.

00:19:43 ◼   ► That was too big.

00:19:45 ◼   ► Well, you're an iPod Touch person.

00:19:47 ◼   ► Every iPhone is too big for you.

00:19:48 ◼   ► Well, I'm just saying, like, you know, that, like, you're trying to look for what is the

00:19:51 ◼   ► sweet spot between making something too thin and too… and like the 3G had, you know,

00:19:55 ◼   ► was very large and maybe like a little bit over large. And yeah, it felt comfortable,

00:19:58 ◼   ► but it didn't feel comfortable in the other aspects of using it. Like when you shove it

00:20:01 ◼   ► into your pocket, now it's like, "Hmm, maybe thinner would be better," you know?

00:20:06 ◼   ► Yeah. So really quickly, just to put the rumor mill to bed, if there is a 5C and let's

00:20:13 ◼   ► say that it's very, very cheap on contract, John Saracusa, will you finally get an iPhone?

00:20:19 ◼   ► No, because it won't be very cheap on contract.

00:20:22 ◼   ► Apple is not adding – Apple is not responsible for the price of an iPhone.

00:20:26 ◼   ► You know, the carriers are.

00:20:27 ◼   ► The price of the phone is so small compared to the cost of paying for a Verizon calling

00:20:32 ◼   ► and data plan for two years of life that the phone price – like Apple has so little control

00:20:37 ◼   ► over whether I buy an iPhone.

00:20:39 ◼   ► It's all up to the carriers.

00:20:40 ◼   ► Right, because you're the only person in the world who buys a phone in a subsidized

00:20:45 ◼   ► environment and actually does that computation.

00:20:47 ◼   ► I think some people do it too.

00:20:49 ◼   ► Maybe they just do it for their kids because their kids, you know, like some teenager wants

00:20:52 ◼   ► an iPhone.

00:20:53 ◼   ► They're like, "Do you know how much that costs?

00:20:54 ◼   ► Go get a job delivering pizzas and then you can pay for the data plan.

00:20:59 ◼   ► You can play."

00:21:00 ◼   ► So we'll see.

00:21:02 ◼   ► We'll eventually reach that point.

00:21:03 ◼   ► I'm waiting them out.

00:21:05 ◼   ► They're lowering their prices and my wife's got one so I get like the family plan price

00:21:09 ◼   ► now so if they suddenly lower the family plan price, I just re-upped my – re-upped whatever

00:21:14 ◼   ► marketing campaign made that term come into existence.

00:21:16 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:21:17 ◼   ► But apparently it has penetrated my consciousness.

00:21:19 ◼   ► Anyway, I just paid again for my stupid phone plan and I bought two years worth because

00:21:25 ◼   ► it was $150 for two years worth of service to this phone.

00:21:29 ◼   ► So think about it next time you get your $70 Verizon bill.

00:21:34 ◼   ► Now what if you could find a decent prepay data plan that supports the iPhone?

00:21:40 ◼   ► And to be honest, that may exist already and I have no idea, but would you do a prepay?

00:21:43 ◼   ► I don't think it does in the US.

00:21:45 ◼   ► Although our previous sponsor, Ting, they seem to imply, or maybe even state directly

00:21:51 ◼   ► on their website, that they expect to get the iPhone pretty soon.

00:21:54 ◼   ► Well, you know, people think I'm cheapskate and don't care about nice things by not having

00:21:59 ◼   ► an iPhone, but the fact is that I'm a prima donna and demand the very best things, and

00:22:04 ◼   ► if I can't have them, I just forego it entirely.

00:22:05 ◼   ► I don't want an iPhone unless I can get it on Verizon, partially because I live kind

00:22:09 ◼   ► of in a cell phone dead area.

00:22:12 ◼   ► And Verizon has the best coverage around where I am, and it also has the best coverage at

00:22:17 ◼   ► my house and also at my work.

00:22:19 ◼   ► So I'm not going until I can get the Verizon network.

00:22:23 ◼   ► That's the reason they get to charge so much money, because they know, "Look, we have

00:22:26 ◼   ► cell towers all over the place, and you don't."

00:22:29 ◼   ► So I'm basically a slave to Verizon because of the physical realities of where the cell

00:22:33 ◼   ► towers are where I live.

00:22:35 ◼   ► Is that really still true?

00:22:37 ◼   ► I'm the opposite with AT&T.

00:22:39 ◼   ► AT&T covers everywhere fairly mediocrely, if that's a word.

00:22:45 ◼   ► But Verizon covers everywhere okay, except my house, where there's no coverage.

00:22:51 ◼   ► So I still can't use Verizon.

00:22:52 ◼   ► I really haven't had bad experience with AT&T in the last year or two.

00:22:55 ◼   ► When I got the 3GS, which I got when it was brand new, that was pretty ugly.

00:23:00 ◼   ► As soon as you got off the beaten path, you were screwed.

00:23:03 ◼   ► And I got that on AT&T.

00:23:05 ◼   ► By the time I got the 4s things were pretty good for the most part now

00:23:10 ◼   ► It's very rare that I have a situation that I don't have pretty good if not excellent coverage now to be fair

00:23:16 ◼   ► I'm not often off what I would call the beaten path

00:23:19 ◼   ► But I mean I've traveled quite a bit over the last couple years

00:23:22 ◼   ► And I've never been in a situation that I can recall that

00:23:24 ◼   ► Somebody was standing near me with a ryzen phone without an issue and I had my AT&T phone

00:23:29 ◼   ► And it was a piece of crap and Marco has the same problem that I do you live too close to rich people

00:23:34 ◼   ► In Marco's case, I'm very close.

00:23:37 ◼   ► The problem near me is that Chestnut Hill…

00:23:38 ◼   ► Excuse me, I passed an M5 like a block from your house.

00:23:42 ◼   ► I know.

00:23:43 ◼   ► I live two near Richmond.

00:23:44 ◼   ► Chestnut Hill is the problem.

00:23:45 ◼   ► There's an area near us called Chestnut Hill that, so local tales go, has a lower

00:23:50 ◼   ► density of cell towers than elsewhere because no one wants a cell tower in their backyard

00:23:54 ◼   ► and they're all rich people.

00:23:55 ◼   ► And what it produces is like, you can see it when you go on the B line on the T, you

00:23:59 ◼   ► go past Chestnut Hill and there is no signal.

00:24:01 ◼   ► like, you know, for a brief period, but zero signal. And so that's bad. And I'm assuming

00:24:06 ◼   ► you have the same problem as if you get up into Batman, Bruce Wayne Manor territory.

00:24:10 ◼   ► Suddenly no one wants a cell tower near their house, and so the servers get spotty.

00:24:15 ◼   ► I actually don't have that problem. And in fact, our town hall has cell towers right

00:24:18 ◼   ► on it, and we can almost see it directly from our house. I just don't think there's a

00:24:21 ◼   ► Verizon tower there. But the problem we have is that the area around here is very hilly.

00:24:26 ◼   ► And as anybody who lives near hills or mountains can tell you, they are pretty much radio waves

00:24:31 ◼   ► worst enemies. So it's just very, very spotty coverage up here for most radio things. AT&T

00:24:40 ◼   ► happens to cover it well, possibly because there's antenna on top of our town hall.

00:24:43 ◼   ► Well, plus the—I can't think of the word I'm looking for—but the way in which GSM

00:24:50 ◼   ► and CDMA signals work is a little—isn't it a little better for landscapes on GSM,

00:24:57 ◼   ► but a little crummier for buildings or something like that? I'm reaching back to things I've

00:25:01 ◼   ► forgotten years ago. I think that's now obsolete. Well with LTE that doesn't matter as much

00:25:05 ◼   ► does it? Because it matters mostly the frequencies I believe. Anyway we really shouldn't be talking

00:25:10 ◼   ► about it. Seriously? We're going to get so much email because we don't know what we're

00:25:12 ◼   ► talking about. Nope. Unless John, unless you do. Because you actually not talk unless you

00:25:15 ◼   ► do. That's why I'm not talking. Alright, let's wrap up the iPhone topics because we're going

00:25:23 ◼   ► to be talking about this all next week. Is there anything else? I mean I don't have anything

00:25:27 ◼   ► else I just want to make sure you and John both had a chance before we talk about something

00:25:30 ◼   ► Unless you actually think there's gonna be something non-iPhone released.

00:25:34 ◼   ► I do not.

00:25:35 ◼   ► Well, here, I'll throw this out there. This is like,

00:25:38 ◼   ► fourth-hand from some random person that has no provenance anywhere, but someone mentioned

00:25:43 ◼   ► today, and I just remembered it, it was so out of the blue, "applications for Apple TV."

00:25:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I saw, there was, somebody mentioned, I don't know whether it was like, you know,

00:25:52 ◼   ► one of our blogger people that we're friends with, or MacRumors or something, somebody mentioned that

00:25:57 ◼   ► like the Apple TV SDK was apparently like almost done for everybody to see that they

00:26:03 ◼   ► heard and then they just got pushed or canceled or whatever. I don't know.

00:26:09 ◼   ► My thoughts on that was like, you know in the recent months there have been a whole

00:26:12 ◼   ► bunch of new icons that have appeared on your Apple TV?

00:26:15 ◼   ► Right, yeah, all the different channel partnerships.

00:26:17 ◼   ► Right, and so like when I look at those I'm like, okay, well is Apple writing all those

00:26:20 ◼   ► apps or is there some sort of proto SDK that Apple is shipping off to its various partners

00:26:24 ◼   ► like Disney and ESPN and stuff, and they're writing those apps.

00:26:28 ◼   ► And then maybe it's not too much of a stretch to say, "Look, instead of all these icons

00:26:31 ◼   ► just appearing on your Apple TV every time you do a software update, how about we make

00:26:35 ◼   ► some kind of crappy Apple TV store where you can choose which icons you want and then maybe

00:26:40 ◼   ► we'll hook them up to some kind of payment subscription thing and let people subscribe

00:26:44 ◼   ► to Netflix through the Apple TV and subscribe to Hulu and that type of thing, where it's

00:26:48 ◼   ► not quite the app store we're all thinking of, like, "Oh, now there's going to be angry

00:26:53 ◼   ► birds and stuff."

00:26:54 ◼   ► to control it with a little five-way controller and that stupid remote.

00:26:57 ◼   ► And it's not the new amazing Apple TV that we're all thinking of.

00:26:59 ◼   ► It's just kind of like regularizing the current ongoing system of adding icons to our home

00:27:05 ◼   ► screens and making us turn them off with parental controls because we can't control them any

00:27:09 ◼   ► other way.

00:27:10 ◼   ► So there's a couple thoughts there.

00:27:11 ◼   ► Firstly, earlier today, and I don't remember where I saw it, there was a report that somebody

00:27:15 ◼   ► had snooped delivery information or something.

00:27:18 ◼   ► I forget where exactly I saw this nor what specifically it said.

00:27:22 ◼   ► But they said something along the lines of Apple's been receiving shipments that were

00:27:25 ◼   ► labeled for the purposes of customs set top boxes.

00:27:28 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I saw that too.

00:27:30 ◼   ► And so they were starting, they were trying to extrapolate that, oh, maybe these were

00:27:33 ◼   ► like demo units or first run units from China where they're being built.

00:27:38 ◼   ► The other thing I should point out is my understanding of Apple TV apps as they are today is that

00:27:42 ◼   ► they're all quasi web-based.

00:27:45 ◼   ► So for example, the Plex app, which masqueraded as the trailers app, um, it was like this

00:27:53 ◼   ► weird hack where you set your computer to be a proxy.

00:27:56 ◼   ► And then when you go into the trailers app on the Apple TV, it would intercept that and

00:28:01 ◼   ► it would show you information from Plex, which is a media manager.

00:28:03 ◼   ► It's a fork of XBMC.

00:28:05 ◼   ► Well, anyways, that was all like a XML and HTML and CSS and so on and so forth from what

00:28:10 ◼   ► I'm told.

00:28:11 ◼   ► I don't think that even if there is an SDK,

00:28:14 ◼   ► I think it's more a la the initial iPhone,

00:28:18 ◼   ► which was not native, it was just,

00:28:21 ◼   ► make a web app and be thankful

00:28:23 ◼   ► we're letting you do that much.

00:28:25 ◼   ► - I don't see this happening yet.

00:28:28 ◼   ► I don't know, I mean, Tim Cook hinted early this year,

00:28:32 ◼   ► I think it was maybe at the All Things D conference

00:28:34 ◼   ► or on various earnings calls or whatever else.

00:28:37 ◼   ► Tim Cook hinted on a number of occasions,

00:28:39 ◼   ► pretty strong hints that we would see something that's basically a new category of thing from

00:28:45 ◼   ► Apple this fall.

00:28:47 ◼   ► Is that not the 5C, though?

00:28:49 ◼   ► I don't think the 5C matters that much. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, for the

00:28:53 ◼   ► iPhone, yeah, the 5C is going to be profitable for Apple. They're going to make a killing

00:28:57 ◼   ► on it because the iPhone is their most popular product and they're going to sell a buttload

00:28:59 ◼   ► of 5Cs. But the implication that he gave in these statements was – oh, here, Sam the

00:29:06 ◼   ► geek in the chatroom and says it was a direct quote, "new product categories."

00:29:11 ◼   ► And so I don't, you know, that to me, you know, the implication there is we're talking

00:29:16 ◼   ► about the kind of thing like, you know, like the watch or the TV or one of these new things

00:29:21 ◼   ► people are talking about. That was the implication. Now, you know, maybe he had a loose definition

00:29:26 ◼   ► of that. Maybe the Mac Pro that they announced in June after he said this, maybe the Mac

00:29:31 ◼   ► maybe the Mac Pro is considered a new product category because it's a new type of desktop.

00:29:34 ◼   ► It's not.

00:29:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't consider it one, but maybe he does.

00:29:39 ◼   ► It could have been just that, but I'm betting not.

00:29:41 ◼   ► I'm betting there's something else.

00:29:42 ◼   ► No, I think it's the watch thing.

00:29:46 ◼   ► We're talking about one event on September 10th.

00:29:47 ◼   ► There's still time for an October event for them to announce the "How about the Mac Pro?"

00:29:51 ◼   ► which we know they're going to announce.

00:29:54 ◼   ► There's time to produce an iWatch thing.

00:29:58 ◼   ► There are possibilities out there.

00:29:59 ◼   ► It's just that we're questioning, okay, well, what's going to be on September 10th?

00:30:03 ◼   ► And that seems like it's just going to be a phone event.

00:30:06 ◼   ► I like the suggestion from Njerk in the chat room that the new category is a new AA battery

00:30:12 ◼   ► charger.

00:30:13 ◼   ► No, I mean, I don't know what they're going to do with events this fall.

00:30:18 ◼   ► I mean, obviously, they're not going to cram everything into September 10th event.

00:30:22 ◼   ► That's very likely to just be iPhones.

00:30:25 ◼   ► It's very unlikely to contain anything else at all.

00:30:27 ◼   ► It's going to be probably iOS 7, the official announcement here it's done and it comes out

00:30:33 ◼   ► in today/a week, whatever the case may be.

00:30:40 ◼   ► And they're not going to have events for every release.

00:30:43 ◼   ► If the new MacBook Pros come out and they happen to just be a Haswell update, maybe

00:30:49 ◼   ► Thunderbolt 2, if it's just that and it's not also like Retina display desktops with

00:30:56 ◼   ► with the Mac Pro altogether in one big event,

00:30:58 ◼   ► they wouldn't do an event for just like a CPU update

00:31:01 ◼   ► to a laptop, you know, so we can,

00:31:04 ◼   ► but they still have iPads, they still have the Mac Pro,

00:31:08 ◼   ► they still have potentially a new category,

00:31:11 ◼   ► whatever that means, so I don't know,

00:31:14 ◼   ► this is really, I think we're in for more than we expect.

00:31:19 ◼   ► - You know, I was just thinking that,

00:31:21 ◼   ► and I was thinking, you know, they were,

00:31:23 ◼   ► a lot of the chatter before WWDC

00:31:24 ◼   ► was how quiet Apple had been.

00:31:27 ◼   ► And if you think about it, there hasn't really been much.

00:31:30 ◼   ► Now, yes, iOS 7 was a radical visual departure

00:31:33 ◼   ► from what we've seen in the past.

00:31:35 ◼   ► But by and large, there were some very cool new APIs,

00:31:39 ◼   ► but nothing earth-shattering.

00:31:41 ◼   ► There was no, say, Siri API, for example.

00:31:43 ◼   ► So there's still not been a lot of activity for a year.

00:31:47 ◼   ► I mean, on the one hand, you could say there's been a lot.

00:31:49 ◼   ► But to me, there's not been a lot.

00:31:51 ◼   ► And so I wonder if they're just going to cram everything

00:31:54 ◼   ► into fall. Like everything is coming. Maybe a watch, maybe a new Apple TV, maybe something

00:31:58 ◼   ► else we're not even dreaming of. What if they're so smug and just sitting so quietly

00:32:03 ◼   ► on their laurels waiting for the next three months or so in the beginning of 2014 to just

00:32:08 ◼   ► knock all of our socks off? Because that strikes me as an Apple thing to do.

00:32:12 ◼   ► I don't think there's good. The two things we're talking about for new categories are

00:32:15 ◼   ► television thing and thing you wear. And I can't imagine both of those things being

00:32:19 ◼   ► ready for the holiday season. Even one of them being ready for the holiday season is

00:32:23 ◼   ► still questionable, but it seems like not an Apple thing to do, just to do both amazing

00:32:29 ◼   ► new television product and amazing new thing that you wear probably on your wrist before

00:32:33 ◼   ► the holidays.

00:32:35 ◼   ► Not just because they might not both be ready, but it would distract from one of them.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Like you'd want one of them to be the big push.

00:32:41 ◼   ► You wouldn't want to dilute the message of either one of those things, assuming they're

00:32:45 ◼   ► both as impressive as we all imagine, by having them out at the same time.

00:32:49 ◼   ► One thing that also tipped me off that the timing of this is a little weird is Chris

00:32:54 ◼   ► Parker's departure from UIKit.

00:32:57 ◼   ► So I'm sure you saw that Chris Parker is this really nice guy who works at Apple.

00:33:02 ◼   ► If you've ever gone to WWDC, you've almost definitely seen him give the "What's New in

00:33:06 ◼   ► UIKit" talk.

00:33:07 ◼   ► He's a guy with long, straight, blonde hair, and he's very energetic and gives awesome

00:33:10 ◼   ► talks.

00:33:12 ◼   ► So I follow him on Twitter, nicest guy in the world, and his dog is adorable.

00:33:16 ◼   ► And he and his dog are adorable together.

00:33:18 ◼   ► He was something important-- I don't really know exactly what--

00:33:23 ◼   ► on the UI Kit team for the last four or five years,

00:33:26 ◼   ► some very long time, pretty much since UI Kit

00:33:28 ◼   ► has been a public thing.

00:33:30 ◼   ► And he announced about a month ago or a few weeks ago,

00:33:35 ◼   ► he announced that he was leaving the UI Kit team to go work

00:33:40 ◼   ► on something else within Apple that he couldn't talk about,

00:33:43 ◼   ► that the implication was that it was new and exciting.

00:33:47 ◼   ► So given his experience on the UIKit team,

00:33:51 ◼   ► I assume that this means going to work on something else

00:33:55 ◼   ► that's maybe in the same vein or the same kind of thing,

00:33:59 ◼   ► like a UI-level framework slash API slash developer tool.

00:34:04 ◼   ► And so that would correspond pretty nicely

00:34:06 ◼   ► to if there is a watch or a TV SDK,

00:34:12 ◼   ► then that would make sense.

00:34:15 ◼   ► However, not if they're releasing it this fall.

00:34:17 ◼   ► That would be way too soon.

00:34:18 ◼   ► - So 2014, and I think it was Art Jonesy in the chat

00:34:23 ◼   ► said earlier that Tim Cook had said there would be

00:34:26 ◼   ► new stuff in the fall and in 2014.

00:34:29 ◼   ► So everything you're saying corroborates or fits with that.

00:34:33 ◼   ► That makes sense.

00:34:33 ◼   ► - The question is what's in the fall?

00:34:35 ◼   ► That would be considered possibly a new category.

00:34:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know, I mean--

00:34:40 ◼   ► - Like maybe the first generation of the quote "watch"

00:34:43 ◼   ► is basically an iPod Nano that can show notifications from your phone on it.

00:34:47 ◼   ► >> We're losing sight of what's important here, guys.

00:34:50 ◼   ► Maverick ship date.

00:34:51 ◼   ► It's concentrated.

00:34:52 ◼   ► >> Who cares, except you.

00:34:54 ◼   ► >> You can throw me a bone, you know.

00:34:57 ◼   ► We have all -- our event today is going to be all about phones and the 5S and the 5C

00:35:01 ◼   ► and colors and then let the end just go on.

00:35:03 ◼   ► By the way, Maverick's going to ship on such and such date.

00:35:06 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:35:07 ◼   ► Good night.

00:35:08 ◼   ► >> You're welcome, John Sirkisa.

00:35:09 ◼   ► >> That's right.

00:35:10 ◼   ► >> They're just going to release it one day.

00:35:11 ◼   ► They're not even going to tell you.

00:35:12 ◼   ► that you're just gonna wake up one morning and it will be on the App Store.

00:35:14 ◼   ► It'll be a Friday night.

00:35:15 ◼   ► Right, and it'll be on the App Store, immediately available for sale, for a price.

00:35:20 ◼   ► Developers will never have received a GM, you know?

00:35:23 ◼   ► Or like, same thing, developers get a GM, but still no date and price.

00:35:27 ◼   ► And then it just, you know, we have the GM for three weeks, and then it arrives in the

00:35:30 ◼   ► store one morning with a price.

00:35:33 ◼   ► You know, how can I get a book into the, any of the e-bookstores if I don't know the price

00:35:38 ◼   ► until it arrives?

00:35:40 ◼   ► Ow, Apple, I ask you.

00:35:42 ◼   ► Well, I mean, you could argue, do you really need to know the price for the content of

00:35:46 ◼   ► your review?

00:35:47 ◼   ► I've already wrote about it with my best guess in the price.

00:35:50 ◼   ► I can delete that whole section.

00:35:51 ◼   ► Can you put in like a variable that you can assign later?

00:35:54 ◼   ► Yeah, right, I'll have it be a web service call.

00:35:58 ◼   ► It'll pull different paragraphs of text.

00:35:59 ◼   ► If it's free, pull this paragraph.

00:36:01 ◼   ► If it costs 99 cents, pull this paragraph.

00:36:05 ◼   ► It'll be an app purchase.

00:36:06 ◼   ► There you go.

00:36:08 ◼   ► Uh, Marco, which reminds me, we should take a note to you and I discuss the

00:36:12 ◼   ► Syracuse rescue plan if this happens and how I'm getting to you and we're getting

00:36:16 ◼   ► to him in time to stop him from doing something stupid.

00:36:18 ◼   ► Well, I can get us to him quickly at least.

00:36:20 ◼   ► And with butt massaging.

00:36:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:24 ◼   ► And with, we should talk about something awesome.

00:36:26 ◼   ► Speaking of which, uh, our first sponsor this week is a repeat sponsor.

00:36:32 ◼   ► In fact, both of our sponsors this week are repeat sponsors, but I will save the

00:36:35 ◼   ► surprise until later, uh, of the second one.

00:36:38 ◼   ► Our first one, it's gonna be a huge surprise,

00:36:40 ◼   ► our first one is Hover.

00:36:42 ◼   ► Hover is high quality, no hassle domain registration.

00:36:46 ◼   ► And we have a promo code as usual,

00:36:47 ◼   ► you can use promo code ATP for 10% off any registration

00:36:51 ◼   ► or add on you buy at Hover, it's pretty great.

00:36:53 ◼   ► So Hover offers .net, .co, .com, TV,

00:36:58 ◼   ► tons of country code TLDs,

00:36:59 ◼   ► and they've been adding a bunch of new TLDs recently.

00:37:02 ◼   ► They just got .io pretty recently,

00:37:05 ◼   ► and they're constantly adding more.

00:37:07 ◼   ► You can get .com, .net, IO, just about .anything else.

00:37:10 ◼   ► They actually said .anything else.

00:37:12 ◼   ► That's pretty cool.

00:37:13 ◼   ► So, Hover takes all the hassle and friction

00:37:17 ◼   ► out of owning and managing domain names.

00:37:18 ◼   ► Now, everyone here, everybody listening to this show,

00:37:20 ◼   ► especially, 'cause you're all nerds like us,

00:37:23 ◼   ► or geeks, whatever the term is, sorry.

00:37:25 ◼   ► John.

00:37:26 ◼   ► Domain registration is usually

00:37:29 ◼   ► a pretty terrible experience.

00:37:32 ◼   ► Usually, the way it works with other registrars

00:37:34 ◼   ► is you go through their terrible shopping cart

00:37:37 ◼   ► after you search for names in their terrible search interface

00:37:39 ◼   ► and they try to upsell you like crazy

00:37:41 ◼   ► on every stupid little service.

00:37:42 ◼   ► And there's always confusing check boxes like,

00:37:45 ◼   ► don't not prevent the newsletter from getting to me.

00:37:48 ◼   ► Well, what?

00:37:49 ◼   ► And then there's like, OK, so do you

00:37:51 ◼   ► want to pay an extra $10 a month for us

00:37:53 ◼   ► to not sell your information to spammers?

00:37:55 ◼   ► And they're like, well, wait a minute.

00:37:57 ◼   ► So there's all this crazy stuff that other registrars do

00:38:00 ◼   ► that just makes it pretty unpleasant.

00:38:01 ◼   ► Then once you finally get their name registered,

00:38:03 ◼   ► their interfaces for managing them are terrible.

00:38:05 ◼   ► And a lot of times you've got to pay extra for very basic things

00:38:09 ◼   ► like DNS that a lot of registrars offer for free.

00:38:13 ◼   ► Hover is just good.

00:38:15 ◼   ► And I say this as a hover customer.

00:38:17 ◼   ► I was a customer before they were a sponsor of the show.

00:38:20 ◼   ► I'm happy that they are a sponsor of the show

00:38:22 ◼   ► because I can actually honestly tell you, hover is great.

00:38:25 ◼   ► They don't believe in heavy-handed upselling

00:38:27 ◼   ► or aggressive cross-selling.

00:38:29 ◼   ► They don't hide functionality that really should be there.

00:38:33 ◼   ► They have email services, and they even

00:38:35 ◼   ► have Google Apps for your domain, all sorts of cool stuff.

00:38:38 ◼   ► And one of the best things about Hover-- well,

00:38:41 ◼   ► they have my two favorite features about Hover.

00:38:43 ◼   ► One, they have this awesome valet transfer service,

00:38:46 ◼   ► or transfer valet-- I forget what they call it exactly,

00:38:48 ◼   ► because it isn't in my script here.

00:38:50 ◼   ► But if you want-- when you're moving to Hover,

00:38:52 ◼   ► you can just give them the login for your existing registrar.

00:38:57 ◼   ► They will log in and move everything over

00:38:59 ◼   ► to Hover for you.

00:39:00 ◼   ► You don't even have to mess with it yourself.

00:39:02 ◼   ► And of course, if you don't want to give them the credentials,

00:39:04 ◼   ► you can still do it yourself.

00:39:05 ◼   ► It's very, very easy.

00:39:06 ◼   ► I moved a few myself, and it was very good.

00:39:08 ◼   ► My second favorite feature of Hover is their phone support.

00:39:12 ◼   ► So they have a no hold, no wait, and no transfer phone policy.

00:39:16 ◼   ► You call this number, the toll-free number

00:39:18 ◼   ► that's on their site, Monday through Friday, 8 AM to 8 PM,

00:39:21 ◼   ► and Eastern, and you will speak to a live person.

00:39:24 ◼   ► They will pick up the phone.

00:39:26 ◼   ► A live person will pick up the phone and say, hi, this is Hover.

00:39:29 ◼   ► How can I help you?

00:39:30 ◼   ► And they will actually be able to help you.

00:39:32 ◼   ► I've used it a couple times.

00:39:33 ◼   ► It actually does work.

00:39:35 ◼   ► It's really great.

00:39:36 ◼   ► So go to hover.com/ATP and use promo code ATP for 10% off

00:39:41 ◼   ► any domain you register there or anything else.

00:39:44 ◼   ► Really great service.

00:39:45 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Hover for sponsoring our show.

00:39:48 ◼   ► I didn't realize there was no transfer as well.

00:39:50 ◼   ► That's pretty cool.

00:39:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I've only called twice, but both times the person

00:39:55 ◼   ► who picked up the phone immediately upon ringing,

00:39:57 ◼   ► they helped me through the whole thing.

00:39:59 ◼   ► I didn't have to get bounced to different departments

00:40:01 ◼   ► or anything.

00:40:01 ◼   ► I don't think it's that big of a company.

00:40:03 ◼   ► You know, I think you're talking to a handful of people

00:40:06 ◼   ► who all know their stuff,

00:40:08 ◼   ► and they have the power to do things for you.

00:40:10 ◼   ► They don't have to bounce you into 17 different departments.

00:40:13 ◼   ► - Now that is really awesome.

00:40:14 ◼   ► And as I've said in the past, but I'll repeat,

00:40:16 ◼   ► 'cause I haven't said it in a while,

00:40:18 ◼   ► my father was registering domain.

00:40:19 ◼   ► My dad is savvy, but not a geek in the traditional sense.

00:40:23 ◼   ► And I told him, "Just go to Hover and just figure it out."

00:40:27 ◼   ► And sure enough, he went to Hover,

00:40:29 ◼   ► he figured it out and it worked out great.

00:40:30 ◼   ► So truly, whether you're a geek or not, it's a great option.

00:40:34 ◼   ► I definitely recommend them.

00:40:35 ◼   ► Anyway, what else do we want to talk about?

00:40:38 ◼   ► We have a laundry list of things.

00:40:41 ◼   ► Do we want to talk about confections?

00:40:44 ◼   ► Do we want to talk about how the App Store sucks?

00:40:47 ◼   ► Or do we want to talk about Nokia?

00:40:49 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:40:49 ◼   ► I feel like a lot of these topics

00:40:51 ◼   ► are going to be pretty boring.

00:40:52 ◼   ► I mean, the Kit Kat thing, like, OK, who cares?

00:40:57 ◼   ► Like, who cares which mountain or ski lodge--

00:41:00 ◼   ► Intel uses for the next chip code name like it doesn't really matter

00:41:03 ◼   ► Or what portion of California Apple is using for their next not sea line, right? Yeah, exactly

00:41:09 ◼   ► I mean what yeah

00:41:10 ◼   ► What other portion of California that has an awkward pluralization in the name that nobody who's not in California has ever heard of?

00:41:15 ◼   ► So terrible what could possibly go wrong?

00:41:17 ◼   ► Sorry Californians

00:41:20 ◼   ► All right. So enough of that

00:41:21 ◼   ► Do you want to audible to something totally different a little birdie told me we maybe should talk about Synology's

00:41:26 ◼   ► or Synology

00:41:29 ◼   ► Is that how it's yeah, it's cuz pronounced like synergy but with ology at the end

00:41:33 ◼   ► Synergy ology. Yeah

00:41:36 ◼   ► You want to talk about that we can if you want

00:41:38 ◼   ► I mean I in totally audible away from the thing that probably things that everyone else wants to talk about and talk about we want

00:41:43 ◼   ► To talk about is that a football term? Yes, or an auto or an audiobooks related. It's a football term

00:41:49 ◼   ► Okay, I forgot my audience my apologies

00:41:51 ◼   ► Anyway, so we should back up and explain what we're talking about

00:41:55 ◼   ► So a while ago Marco and you can feel free to interrupt me when you're ready Marco had tweeted about hey

00:42:01 ◼   ► I want to get a new network attached storage

00:42:02 ◼   ► What should I get should I get a drobo should I get this should I get that blah blah blah?

00:42:05 ◼   ► And I remember this was going on right around WWDC

00:42:08 ◼   ► because I remember talking about it in line with you for one of the

00:42:12 ◼   ► presentations in Presidio so anyway so come to find out that somebody from Synology

00:42:18 ◼   ► caught wind of this and offered to send Marco a

00:42:22 ◼   ► Synology network attached storage box

00:42:25 ◼   ► and that was extremely kind of them and then decided you know what we don't want

00:42:30 ◼   ► to just be that awesome let's be even more awesome or yes that's a word and

00:42:34 ◼   ► let's send a box to John and Casey as well and so all three of us have all

00:42:39 ◼   ► gotten the same Synology box they were even they even doubled down on awesome

00:42:43 ◼   ► and filled John's and mine with hard drives I don't know if that can be said

00:42:48 ◼   ► for you as well Marco so they gave us these unbelievably awesome and not cheap

00:42:52 ◼   ► network attached storage boxes, no strings attached whatsoever, and we're talking about

00:42:56 ◼   ► them because we want to, not because they told us we have to. But with that said, they

00:43:01 ◼   ► were comped. So Marco or John, what would you guys like to say about this?

00:43:06 ◼   ► Well, you've already heard me talk a lot about mine back when I got it, so John, why

00:43:10 ◼   ► don't you go ahead?

00:43:11 ◼   ► I'll preface it by saying that I haven't had a network attached storage box before,

00:43:15 ◼   ► except for the transporter, which the transporter guys sent us, and they have sponsored the

00:43:19 ◼   ► show, and we've talked about those before.

00:43:21 ◼   ► See, this is why you should start a podcast, everybody.

00:43:23 ◼   ► If you want network-attached storage, yeah.

00:43:27 ◼   ► We can't really get a whole lot else, but if you want network-attached storage, we have

00:43:30 ◼   ► tons of that.

00:43:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:32 ◼   ► So, the transporters, you've all seen them.

00:43:34 ◼   ► They're very small.

00:43:35 ◼   ► They're also much cheaper than something like a Synology.

00:43:37 ◼   ► But that was the first network-attached storage thing I had, and I use it, as I described,

00:43:41 ◼   ► in a past transporter spot, kind of like a little magical thing that just contains my

00:43:46 ◼   ► data.

00:43:47 ◼   ► And I've been using the transporter a lot.

00:43:48 ◼   ► I know this is gonna talk about Synology, but briefly in the transporter thing, like,

00:43:53 ◼   ► now that I know other people also in the podcasting space who have transporters, when I want to

00:43:58 ◼   ► send a large file to somebody and I know they have a transporter, it's such a relief because

00:44:03 ◼   ► they don't have to do one of those like, "Oh, can I put it in my Dropbox and give them a

00:44:06 ◼   ► public URL?

00:44:07 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe not."

00:44:08 ◼   ► Or one of those file send it services or it's too big to send over email or I have to host

00:44:13 ◼   ► it on a web server and keep my computer running for them.

00:44:15 ◼   ► It's so much easier if I can just jam it into the transporter and send them a little share

00:44:18 ◼   ► request and then put my computer to sleep and not think about it.

00:44:21 ◼   ► So anyway, that was my first experience with network-attached storage, and that's already

00:44:24 ◼   ► changed my life to a similar degree that Dropbox did, where now you have this new third place

00:44:31 ◼   ► where you can put things and stage things that's not one of your computers that doesn't

00:44:35 ◼   ► require you to keep your computers on or connected or whatever.

00:44:39 ◼   ► So that was kind of a relief.

00:44:40 ◼   ► But what I was always looking for in my life for network-attached storage is the same type

00:44:45 ◼   ► of thing.

00:44:46 ◼   ► The third place, the other place that isn't on any of my one computers, but that is gigantic.

00:44:51 ◼   ► Like that can fit all my crap on it, plus all backups.

00:44:54 ◼   ► It can't just be one little hard drive or two little hard drives.

00:44:57 ◼   ► It has to just be massive.

00:44:59 ◼   ► And I never could bring myself to buy one of those things because I had no experience

00:45:03 ◼   ► in the field and I was afraid I would get the wrong thing.

00:45:07 ◼   ► You know, I look at all these sort of do-it-yourself projects, and you know, I'm such a big fan of ZFS,

00:45:10 ◼   ► so I could try to build one of those with Open Solaris and ZFS, or this FreeBSD ZFS boxes,

00:45:15 ◼   ► or these build-your-own-NAS things, or maybe I should just get a little PC and stuff it full of disks and put it in the basement.

00:45:20 ◼   ► I never knew what to do, so Synology solved the problem for me by sending me this box,

00:45:24 ◼   ► and my expectations were actually pretty low, because like the transporter I expected to work like an appliance,

00:45:29 ◼   ► because it looks like an appliance, looks like a little tiny... it's not even as big as a potted plant,

00:45:32 ◼   ► but it's a cute little vertical thing, looks like a little computerized garden gnome,

00:45:36 ◼   ► And it's like, oh, it's adorable, and it's great.

00:45:39 ◼   ► It's one 2.5-inch drive in there,

00:45:42 ◼   ► so I'm not expecting, again, terabytes of storage.

00:45:44 ◼   ► But everything else looks like some big, ugly PC thing.

00:45:47 ◼   ► I remember when Marco got his, I was asking him,

00:45:49 ◼   ► like, does that have fans?

00:45:51 ◼   ► How loud are the fans?

00:45:52 ◼   ► How can you have this thing in the same room?

00:45:53 ◼   ► You put it in a closet.

00:45:54 ◼   ► Isn't it overheating the closet?

00:45:56 ◼   ► I didn't have high expectations for this thing.

00:45:58 ◼   ► I figured it would be a big, ugly, noisy PC with disks

00:46:01 ◼   ► in it.

00:46:03 ◼   ► And I got the box, and it's big, and it's heavy,

00:46:06 ◼   ► It feels like it costs as much money as it does because it's made of metal. It's very solid

00:46:11 ◼   ► It was stuffed with hard drives. I got like the 8 drive model. So it's stuffed with eight hard drives

00:46:15 ◼   ► Took it out of the box and like the instructions that come with it are like two sentences long

00:46:20 ◼   ► It's like plug into power plug into Ethernet go to your computer and type

00:46:25 ◼   ► Find that Synology comm or whatever into your web browser

00:46:28 ◼   ► Like it was just a host name that you type into your web browser and then that somehow

00:46:32 ◼   ► finds your

00:46:34 ◼   ► network attached storage to your network and

00:46:36 ◼   ► And there it is and like alright well

00:46:38 ◼   ► It just mounted is like a single volume a single massive volume, which is like oh, that's great and everything

00:46:43 ◼   ► That's not what I wanted to do. I'm like oh no. What am I gonna do with this thing like having you know?

00:46:47 ◼   ► 24 terabyte of storage just sitting there on my desktop with network attached isn't very useful to me, so I I

00:46:54 ◼   ► you know fired up the

00:46:57 ◼   ► software interface of this thing which I expected to look like I

00:47:00 ◼   ► I don't know if you ever had a non-apple router and it's like that web page you go to and a little

00:47:04 ◼   ► Locally hosted a web server and it looks like some disgusting thing or whatever, but I didn't care

00:47:08 ◼   ► I'm like fine that if it looks gross like that. That's fine

00:47:10 ◼   ► I just want to be able to like at first I was like oh my god

00:47:12 ◼   ► Maybe I didn't understand what this thing is

00:47:14 ◼   ► Maybe it just gives you like

00:47:15 ◼   ► You know it puts all the discs together in some kind of rate arrangement or something and you can choose which rate arrangement

00:47:20 ◼   ► Maybe just shows up as one volume, but like I don't want to use it like that

00:47:22 ◼   ► I want to divvy it up into different pieces and slices and I

00:47:26 ◼   ► I shouldn't have worried because the interface they have, it's a web interface, but and it doesn't look like an Apple web interface

00:47:32 ◼   ► It looks kind of like a Linux on the desktop kind of interface influenced by the original Apple aqua stuff

00:47:38 ◼   ► But it is perfectly serviceable

00:47:41 ◼   ► It works the way you expect, even the little windows you can drag around and stuff

00:47:44 ◼   ► And you can do anything with this thing like just by clicking around you can divvy this thing up into

00:47:49 ◼   ► Any possible arrangement of every any different raid strategy carve up volumes into different pieces

00:47:55 ◼   ► Make it appear has different volumes the mounting computer apply it create user accounts apply quotas

00:47:59 ◼   ► and maybe this is all old hat for people who know NAS stuffs, but I was impressed by the

00:48:02 ◼   ► Flexibility of this thing and my main problem now is it's too many possibilities. I don't

00:48:08 ◼   ► I don't know how I'm gonna divvy this thing is it's so much space and I have I have so many schemes and like that

00:48:14 ◼   ► I want to do to it

00:48:14 ◼   ► So I spent like the first week just slicing these discs up into different pieces and then reformatting them all and slice it reslice

00:48:20 ◼   ► And then trying this out and installing applications doing all this stuff

00:48:23 ◼   ► And the whole time, by the way, this thing is in my basement, and it has two gigantic fans in the back of it

00:48:30 ◼   ► that are amazingly quiet. Not quiet enough that I would ever want it in the room with me,

00:48:34 ◼   ► but still pretty darn amazingly quiet.

00:48:35 ◼   ► And in fact, when it comes out of the box, one of the umpteen settings that's in the web interface is...

00:48:40 ◼   ► I thought you were gonna find this.

00:48:42 ◼   ► I found every option on this thing. It's quiet mode and cool mode. And it comes shipped in quiet mode.

00:48:47 ◼   ► And it's like, well, the whole reason I put it in my basement is so I don't have to deal with it.

00:48:50 ◼   ► So I switched to cool mode and it is not that much noisier. I can't even tell the difference

00:48:54 ◼   ► I mean it's about the same amount of noise either way

00:48:56 ◼   ► So I have this thing down in the basement about six feet off the ground on top of something

00:49:01 ◼   ► With a you know cat6 cable running to the back of it

00:49:04 ◼   ► And I put my transporter down there too, and I put a UPS down there also off the ground

00:49:08 ◼   ► So like basically if my basement floods the water has to get six feet high before it takes my network attached storage offline

00:49:13 ◼   ► Right in which case you have lots of other problems. Yeah, and we don't have flooding here anyway

00:49:16 ◼   ► So this has really changed my life like that. I have this unseen magical storage

00:49:21 ◼   ► That's always on that I can even make it accessible from the web

00:49:24 ◼   ► I've wanted because of course the box has that feature as well

00:49:26 ◼   ► So I'm mightily impressed with this and I would not hesitate to suggest

00:49:30 ◼   ► this product for anyone who wants network attached storage because and

00:49:34 ◼   ► Everything that I've asked it to do including network time machine backups from two separate Macs

00:49:38 ◼   ► That's the great thing about I figured when they did a line or mountain line let you add the second disk

00:49:42 ◼   ► to a time machine. I just said, "Why the hell not?" And I added it as the second time machine destination for all the computers in my house,

00:49:50 ◼   ► and now they back up to their local time machine disks that they always had, and they also back up to the network one.

00:49:54 ◼   ► And that was my first test of it.

00:49:56 ◼   ► Can you back up four million files off my Mac Pro to a network time machine?

00:50:00 ◼   ► The answer is yes. Now, maybe it will flip out when it runs out of space because it does that when it's not your regular disk,

00:50:05 ◼   ► and that's not really the fault of the the Synology.

00:50:08 ◼   ► But it it has done everything I've asked it to do and I'm very impressed by it. I give it two big thumbs up

00:50:14 ◼   ► I will say also before before I had the Synology last year when I was using a laptop instead of a Mac Pro full-time

00:50:21 ◼   ► I had a Mac Mini running leopard or sorry lion server and

00:50:26 ◼   ► Using network time machine that way like with a USB disk put into the Mac Mini with your time machine or through Apple server

00:50:32 ◼   ► through over the network to my laptop and

00:50:35 ◼   ► It was incredibly slow

00:50:38 ◼   ► To backup, to look things up, to restore files, it was just ungodly slow.

00:50:44 ◼   ► With the Synology, with the Mac Pro, obviously there's a lot of different factors here.

00:50:48 ◼   ► The disks aren't external to it, although you can plug in USB drives to it, but in this

00:50:52 ◼   ► case I didn't.

00:50:55 ◼   ► It's just way faster.

00:50:56 ◼   ► I would say Time Machine, both backups and restores and browsers from my Mac Pro to the

00:51:02 ◼   ► this analogy are just as fast perceptibly, to me at least, just as fast as using a local

00:51:08 ◼   ► disk.

00:51:09 ◼   ► The time machine itself is still an incredibly slow and terrible protocol.

00:51:13 ◼   ► Even just doing it to a disk inside my Mac Pro, it's slow because it's just doing

00:51:18 ◼   ► all sorts of terrible things.

00:51:19 ◼   ► So one of the things I did do with this is try to see what kind of speeds I was getting

00:51:22 ◼   ► from it.

00:51:23 ◼   ► And I enabled jumbo frames, which I hadn't done before because I had never had a reason

00:51:27 ◼   ► to, but now all of a sudden I have a reason to enable jumbo frames, and I was happy to

00:51:30 ◼   ► I learned that all of my switches in between me and the NAS support jumbo frame, so I turned

00:51:35 ◼   ► it all on.

00:51:36 ◼   ► And I was getting over 100 megabytes a second just writing big media files, which is obviously

00:51:42 ◼   ► the easiest case, to this thing.

00:51:44 ◼   ► So I'm completely satisfied with the speed.

00:51:46 ◼   ► Of course, Time Machine is still slow as balls, but it's obviously not the fault of the hardware

00:51:52 ◼   ► or anything in between.

00:51:53 ◼   ► It's entirely a software thing, which I'm willing to live with.

00:51:56 ◼   ► But it's not so slow that it seems like about the same speed as time machine to an internal

00:52:01 ◼   ► disk.

00:52:02 ◼   ► See, that's what I'm saying.

00:52:03 ◼   ► It's about the same.

00:52:04 ◼   ► For me, it wasn't even—I mean, I haven't done a massive restore yet, but I've pulled

00:52:08 ◼   ► a few files off of it here and there.

00:52:10 ◼   ► And doing that really just feels the same as it always did using an internal 3.5-inch

00:52:14 ◼   ► drive in the Mac Pro.

00:52:15 ◼   ► The one thing that I planned poorly about was when I knew the NAS was coming, I ran

00:52:19 ◼   ► another cable from my computer room through these various holes I have, fishing it through

00:52:25 ◼   ► with a hanger and everything, my own sort of, you know, I have several cables going

00:52:29 ◼   ► through these holes, but every time I do it, I never bother to like, put a lead in there

00:52:32 ◼   ► so I can pull things back and forth.

00:52:34 ◼   ► Anyway, I did a new cable and stapled it all up to the, you know, rafters and got it all

00:52:37 ◼   ► the way into the other corner of the house where the NAS stuff is.

00:52:40 ◼   ► And then when the NAS came, I put it down, then I realized this has four LAN ports in

00:52:43 ◼   ► the back of it.

00:52:44 ◼   ► I could have, I should have run three more wires was a big mistake.

00:52:49 ◼   ► And now if I run this, I could in theory run one cable to my Mac to the switches, I could

00:52:55 ◼   ► I could also run another cable directly to the back of my television if I wanted to stream,

00:52:58 ◼   ► because of course this thing is a DLNA server and it does video streaming and everything.

00:53:02 ◼   ► So it would have a gigabit to and from my Mac, but it would also have a separate gigabit interface

00:53:06 ◼   ► to and from my entertainment center if I wanted to stream movies.

00:53:10 ◼   ► And those movies wanted to transfer at 100 megabytes a second, which is kind of unreasonable.

00:53:14 ◼   ► But anyway, that has four ports in the back, so I kind of regret not running more wire,

00:53:18 ◼   ► but that's not the fault of the NAS.

00:53:19 ◼   ► And also it supports connection bonding.

00:53:22 ◼   ► So if your switch supports that, you can, I believe, bond all four of the ports together.

00:53:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I've got two ports in the back of my Mac Pro, and the new Mac Pros do as well,

00:53:30 ◼   ► so if I bonded those interfaces, can you do that in OS X? I'm assuming you can.

00:53:34 ◼   ► I don't know. I've never tried. I would hope so. I mean, on a Mac Pro, which is the only

00:53:38 ◼   ► Mac that has multiple Ethernet ports, that would make a lot of sense.

00:53:41 ◼   ► Yeah. All right, so Casey, what did you think?

00:53:44 ◼   ► So I too had never had network-attached storage before the file transporter, which clearly

00:53:49 ◼   ► serves a wildly different purpose than the Synology.

00:53:54 ◼   ► And previous to getting the Synology, I had the most ridiculous setup of half USB external

00:54:02 ◼   ► enclosures.

00:54:03 ◼   ► Well, they were all like USB external enclosures, but one or two were connected to my airport

00:54:09 ◼   ► extreme, one or two were hard-lined into one of my Macs, and so this way my two Macs could

00:54:15 ◼   ► back themselves up via time machine.

00:54:17 ◼   ► It was ridiculous.

00:54:18 ◼   ► I'm actually fairly embarrassed at how ridiculous it was. So I get this Synology and I divvied it up

00:54:24 ◼   ► So it's the particular ones we got were the 1813 pluses

00:54:28 ◼   ► Which are kind of the Big Daddy models if you will which again, thank you so much Synology for sending them

00:54:33 ◼   ► And so I took the first two physical drives. This was mostly Marco's recommendation took the first two drives made them one

00:54:40 ◼   ► single volume and that would be Time Machine backups for my two Macs and Aaron's Mac and then I took the other six and

00:54:48 ◼   ► and said do that Synology Hybrid RAID whatever magic thing

00:54:52 ◼   ► to make it one gigantic volume with one redundant drive.

00:54:56 ◼   ► - Right, and that becomes expandable.

00:54:58 ◼   ► It's very similar to how Drobos work,

00:55:00 ◼   ► where they call it the SxR for Synology Hybrid RAID,

00:55:04 ◼   ► and it's very similar to Drobos

00:55:06 ◼   ► where you can pull one drive out

00:55:07 ◼   ► and replace it with a bigger one,

00:55:09 ◼   ► and then it'll rebuild the array and expand it.

00:55:12 ◼   ► Although the reason, I should point out now,

00:55:13 ◼   ► if you don't mind, Casey,

00:55:14 ◼   ► the reason I recommended that you split it up like that

00:55:16 ◼   ► is that the hybrid RAID volumes are very big and very expandable,

00:55:22 ◼   ► but also very slow.

00:55:24 ◼   ► Because when you think about how it works,

00:55:26 ◼   ► it's similar to how RAID 5 works, where every access,

00:55:29 ◼   ► every read and write, requires all of the disks in the array

00:55:33 ◼   ► to read and write before it's done.

00:55:34 ◼   ► And so you can imagine, in reality,

00:55:37 ◼   ► that's actually slower than one disk in that kind

00:55:40 ◼   ► of performance, especially on writes.

00:55:43 ◼   ► It's especially so on writes.

00:55:44 ◼   ► And so, you know, the SHR volume for me,

00:55:49 ◼   ► like I was a little nervous to have eight discs

00:55:53 ◼   ► all reading and writing constantly

00:55:55 ◼   ► with the exact same things.

00:55:56 ◼   ► I was nervous for both the speed of that

00:55:58 ◼   ► and also the lifetime of those discs

00:55:59 ◼   ► being all read and written to like exactly the same amount

00:56:02 ◼   ► and for everything.

00:56:03 ◼   ► I figured that was pretty heavy use

00:56:05 ◼   ► and I don't want my discs to die early

00:56:07 ◼   ► 'cause none of them are like those crazy,

00:56:08 ◼   ► you know, NAS editions or RAID editions

00:56:10 ◼   ► or whatever the stupid things

00:56:12 ◼   ► that drive manufacturers do these days

00:56:13 ◼   ► to try to get more money out of us.

00:56:16 ◼   ► So that's why I recommend-- like Time Machine

00:56:18 ◼   ► is a very different access pattern than everything else.

00:56:21 ◼   ► Time Machine is very frequent.

00:56:23 ◼   ► It should be fast.

00:56:24 ◼   ► So I do two disks in RAID 0, which I know is crazy,

00:56:28 ◼   ► but it's a backup.

00:56:29 ◼   ► And it's not even my only backup.

00:56:31 ◼   ► So I figure it's OK.

00:56:33 ◼   ► Two disks in RAID 0 are Time Machine for us.

00:56:37 ◼   ► And the reason why we have to do it that way

00:56:39 ◼   ► is because I don't know whether this is a limitation of just

00:56:43 ◼   ► just the Synology Management Interface or the underlying

00:56:46 ◼   ► component they're using that's probably a BSD thing that

00:56:49 ◼   ► emulates Time Machine.

00:56:50 ◼   ► But you can only have one Time Machine

00:56:52 ◼   ► share on the Synology at once.

00:56:55 ◼   ► So if you want multiple computers to back up to one--

00:56:58 ◼   ► if you want multiple computers back up to the Synology at all,

00:57:01 ◼   ► you have to have them all go to the same share,

00:57:04 ◼   ► and then you can manage their space with user quotas.

00:57:07 ◼   ► But we will see how well that works in practice.

00:57:10 ◼   ► Anyway, so I did the two RAID zeroes for that,

00:57:12 ◼   ► And then I have four disks in SHR for my general big file

00:57:18 ◼   ► storage and media serving and stuff like that.

00:57:20 ◼   ► And then I have two bays empty for future expansion.

00:57:24 ◼   ► So yeah, Casey, sorry.

00:57:25 ◼   ► Proceed.

00:57:26 ◼   ► No, no, not at all.

00:57:27 ◼   ► So mine is fully loaded.

00:57:28 ◼   ► So I have the two, like you had said, two in RAID 0,

00:57:31 ◼   ► and then the other six is one gigantic drive.

00:57:34 ◼   ► A few things that-- and let me pick up my little clipboard

00:57:37 ◼   ► I've been taking notes on-- a few things that I wanted

00:57:40 ◼   ► to point out about the Synology.

00:57:43 ◼   ► Firstly, it has actually a suite of iOS apps you can

00:57:46 ◼   ► download.

00:57:47 ◼   ► One of them is just a general manager.

00:57:49 ◼   ► So if you expose it to the internet, which, by the way,

00:57:53 ◼   ► you can get your own SSL certificate and install it and

00:57:56 ◼   ► so on and so forth.

00:57:57 ◼   ► But anyways, if you expose it via the internet, you can

00:58:00 ◼   ► manage it remotely via the web.

00:58:02 ◼   ► You can manage it remotely via this iOS app.

00:58:04 ◼   ► Also, the Synology itself has kind of a package manager.

00:58:08 ◼   ► And so you can actually install different packages.

00:58:12 ◼   ► And one of the packages I installed was a download manager.

00:58:15 ◼   ► And so that'll let me download,

00:58:17 ◼   ► if I wanted to download a torrent

00:58:19 ◼   ► or if I have a news group account

00:58:21 ◼   ► and want to download news group things,

00:58:23 ◼   ► I can, or even just do like a W get

00:58:25 ◼   ► for all intents and purposes,

00:58:26 ◼   ► all of that can be done on the Synology

00:58:28 ◼   ► and there's a separate iOS app for that.

00:58:30 ◼   ► It has a Plex app on the Synology.

00:58:34 ◼   ► So if all of your media is on the Synology,

00:58:36 ◼   ► which all of mine is,

00:58:38 ◼   ► then it can expose that via Plex.

00:58:40 ◼   ► And I think I mentioned earlier in the show

00:58:42 ◼   ► that Plex is a really neat media manager.

00:58:45 ◼   ► Let's see what else.

00:58:47 ◼   ► There are smaller versions of the Synology.

00:58:49 ◼   ► So like I said, we were lucky enough

00:58:52 ◼   ► to get the big daddy ones,

00:58:53 ◼   ► but there are smaller ones that have fewer drives.

00:58:56 ◼   ► And I believe all of this line of Synologies

00:58:59 ◼   ► also support getting like daughter boxes

00:59:03 ◼   ► for lack of a better word.

00:59:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, like an expansion box.

00:59:05 ◼   ► - Right, and so you could load a bunch of drives in there

00:59:07 ◼   ► in the future if you decide you need to.

00:59:10 ◼   ► And this way you don't have to pay the price

00:59:12 ◼   ► for this whole big thing up front.

00:59:13 ◼   ► And you could get one of the smaller ones

00:59:15 ◼   ► and then add on if you really find you need to.

00:59:17 ◼   ► - You can also hook up USB disks.

00:59:19 ◼   ► They have USB ports in the back.

00:59:20 ◼   ► And like for example, I have a bus powered one terabyte drive

00:59:22 ◼   ► that if I wanted I could just go throw that down

00:59:24 ◼   ► in the basement and I've got an extra one terabyte

00:59:26 ◼   ► of portable storage that just, you know,

00:59:29 ◼   ► attached to the thing.

00:59:30 ◼   ► - Although you can't, as far as I can tell,

00:59:31 ◼   ► when it mounts a USB drive,

00:59:33 ◼   ► you don't have all the same options.

00:59:34 ◼   ► Like you can't make raid volumes out of them

00:59:37 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:59:38 ◼   ► It's just a basic test.

00:59:39 ◼   ► It would just be like a portable appendage.

00:59:41 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

00:59:42 ◼   ► But yeah, as far as I know, so we have the DS1813+.

00:59:49 ◼   ► All the numbers that end in threes, I think,

00:59:50 ◼   ► are the most recent revisions right now.

00:59:53 ◼   ► So the 1813, there's also the 1513, same thing,

00:59:56 ◼   ► but instead of eight bays, it has five.

00:59:58 ◼   ► But I think otherwise, it's effectively identical,

01:00:00 ◼   ► and it has all the same capabilities.

01:00:02 ◼   ► If you don't need eight bays, I would say the 1513+ is probably

01:00:05 ◼   ► the one to look at.

01:00:06 ◼   ► And there's even two Bay models, like down to the low end.

01:00:09 ◼   ► And I think they have less processing power

01:00:12 ◼   ► because they have to be so cheap.

01:00:13 ◼   ► So I'm not sure if they would be able to do

01:00:15 ◼   ► all these exact same things.

01:00:17 ◼   ► But the five Bay and eight Bay models are pretty great.

01:00:22 ◼   ► Someone in the chat room was asking

01:00:24 ◼   ► whether they thought it was worth it for the price.

01:00:26 ◼   ► And obviously it's worth it for us because we got it for free.

01:00:29 ◼   ► But the price is a question.

01:00:31 ◼   ► And maybe that was what was keeping me away

01:00:33 ◼   ► from buying one.

01:00:34 ◼   ► It's that these things are expensive.

01:00:35 ◼   ► you look at them you're like, "Well, I could just buy a PC for that price."

01:00:39 ◼   ► But then the reason I wasn't buying a PC for that price was, well, you buy a PC then you

01:00:44 ◼   ► have to install an OS, probably install Linux on there and deal with volume management and

01:00:48 ◼   ► where you're going to put the drives and are they going to be all internal and how easy

01:00:51 ◼   ► is it to get them and maybe you should buy a shuttle PC where you can get them in and

01:00:54 ◼   ► out.

01:00:55 ◼   ► Eventually you end up sort of cobbling together your own NAS, like with the Do-It-Yourself

01:00:59 ◼   ► NAS kits.

01:01:00 ◼   ► You arrive back at the thing that Synology is providing for you already done.

01:01:04 ◼   ► software, hardware, everything included.

01:01:06 ◼   ► And I should have just pulled the trigger on that before,

01:01:09 ◼   ► because that to me is worth the price.

01:01:11 ◼   ► Now, the downside for me as a Unix nerd

01:01:14 ◼   ► is that don't go into this expecting

01:01:16 ◼   ► that what you're going to get is a Linux PC

01:01:19 ◼   ► with logical volume management and stuff like that.

01:01:23 ◼   ► Like, you can get a shell, you can SSH into it,

01:01:26 ◼   ► but, and you know, it's like whatever,

01:01:28 ◼   ► it's like an Atom processor or something,

01:01:29 ◼   ► but it is not a full-fledged Linux PC

01:01:32 ◼   ► that you can just expect to immediately pop right in there

01:01:34 ◼   ► It's gonna have all your Linux user land that you expected and you're gonna be able to just install your own

01:01:38 ◼   ► Stuff from RPMs and just treat it like oh, it's like I have a Linux PC

01:01:42 ◼   ► And also I have a NAS what you have is a NAS and it is totally designed from top to bottom to be network attached

01:01:47 ◼   ► storage and not designed from top to bottom for you to just

01:01:49 ◼   ► Have an interactive user shell and use it as like your little place to the ussh into and you can install us

01:01:55 ◼   ► as a you know as

01:01:56 ◼   ► They I think comes with it or maybe in the packaging manager

01:01:58 ◼   ► You can install Perl from their package or manager and stuff like you can do all that stuff

01:02:02 ◼   ► But it doesn't come out of the box for that so if you're expecting

01:02:04 ◼   ► Like a Linux home server that you're going to be using interactively from a shell

01:02:09 ◼   ► Well, I don't know how people wanted that except for me. Maybe this is not that thing

01:02:12 ◼   ► This is a NAS and although you can make it act kind of like a Linux machine

01:02:15 ◼   ► It's kind of like swinging as the tide to do that so because like I went in there for example like I'm gonna set up

01:02:20 ◼   ► Some cron jobs to do stuff instead of going through the GUI

01:02:23 ◼   ► But I don't think cron D was on there

01:02:25 ◼   ► Or maybe it was a second like it's very clear once I like the shell they give you isn't even like bash or let alone

01:02:31 ◼   ► you know, my favorite shell TZSH.

01:02:33 ◼   ► You can install ZSH, you can install Bash,

01:02:35 ◼   ► you can install all these things,

01:02:36 ◼   ► but they're not there to be in with.

01:02:37 ◼   ► That's a signal to you to not set up cron jobs,

01:02:40 ◼   ► but to use it like a NAS,

01:02:41 ◼   ► because there's a GUI interface for all this stuff.

01:02:43 ◼   ► You have some repeated job you wanna do,

01:02:45 ◼   ► you know, go nuts with it.

01:02:46 ◼   ► So that's the only caveat I would give to this,

01:02:49 ◼   ► this thing is, if you want something

01:02:51 ◼   ► that's a network attached storage appliance, buy this.

01:02:53 ◼   ► If you want a Linux home server, buy a Linux home server.

01:02:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree with that.

01:02:57 ◼   ► I mean, if you're gonna wanna like,

01:03:00 ◼   ► really hack it and if you're going to want to do things

01:03:04 ◼   ► that it can't do officially, and there's

01:03:06 ◼   ► a lot that it can do officially.

01:03:08 ◼   ► They have kind of like an app store type interface,

01:03:11 ◼   ► or like a package manager interface

01:03:13 ◼   ► that you can install a bunch of stuff from.

01:03:14 ◼   ► And you can probably browse it on their site somewhere.

01:03:17 ◼   ► But I would say, yeah, you can SSH into it.

01:03:21 ◼   ► I tried installing the crash plan client directly onto it,

01:03:25 ◼   ► so you can have it back itself up to crash plan.

01:03:28 ◼   ► And because my crash plan server here,

01:03:30 ◼   ► as we discussed previously, because my crash plan nearest

01:03:33 ◼   ► server is terrible, I ended up abandoning that.

01:03:35 ◼   ► But I did get it working.

01:03:36 ◼   ► It just was too slow to upload to matter.

01:03:38 ◼   ► But if you're going into that area of installing

01:03:44 ◼   ► your own package manager, and then installing Java,

01:03:47 ◼   ► and then installing your own stuff, at that point

01:03:49 ◼   ► you might want your own PC, a regular Linux PC that

01:03:53 ◼   ► happens to have a bunch of drives in it maybe.

01:03:56 ◼   ► But if what you're looking for is the NAS, then yeah, I agree with John that this is

01:04:00 ◼   ► pretty much the way to go.

01:04:01 ◼   ► Yeah, and I had a couple other quick thoughts, and one of them actually was about CrashPlan.

01:04:06 ◼   ► So I have two MacBook Pros, one of which is works, one of which is mine, and the one that's

01:04:12 ◼   ► mine has CrashPlan on it.

01:04:14 ◼   ► And I told my Mac, I told CrashPlan to look at the Synology and back it up, the big, you

01:04:22 ◼   ► know, what is it, 15 terabyte array or whatever it is.

01:04:25 ◼   ► it took, I don't know, three or four days or something like that because I don't have the problems you have with Crash Plan and

01:04:30 ◼   ► sure enough all of that is now in Crash Plan. I'm not paying anything extra for it.

01:04:34 ◼   ► It's all just up there waiting for me, which is really great.

01:04:37 ◼   ► And the other thing I wanted to point out was, you know, just like John said it really changed my world.

01:04:41 ◼   ► And I mean that because, say for example, I really like Top Gear.

01:04:47 ◼   ► It's my favorite TV show, the British version.

01:04:50 ◼   ► And so I have all of these episodes of Top Gear stored on

01:04:53 ◼   ► literally 15 or 20 DVDs. And as John berated me about early on in ATP's existence, that really

01:05:00 ◼   ► isn't a very good mechanism for keeping all of these files. Additionally, I had, you know,

01:05:05 ◼   ► all of our wedding pictures on a couple of DVDs. And yes, I had a couple of backups of those, but

01:05:10 ◼   ► all of these things that were just sitting on DVDs in various binders or whatever you call them,

01:05:15 ◼   ► from straight out of like '99, they're now all, they've all now been sucked into the Synology.

01:05:21 ◼   ► And now, in principle, I never have to worry about them again.

01:05:24 ◼   ► And that is really awesome.

01:05:25 ◼   ► And on top of that, if I want to watch some random episode from the fifth season or series of Top Gear,

01:05:31 ◼   ► I can do that in no time.

01:05:33 ◼   ► Whereas before, I would have to say, "Oh, God. Now I got to go up to the office, find the binder full of Top Gear DVDs,

01:05:39 ◼   ► figure out which one is the one that has the Top Gear episode I wasn't able to take in forever."

01:05:44 ◼   ► Now it's all just right there.

01:05:45 ◼   ► So in summary, it really has been awesome.

01:05:48 ◼   ► I've never I've always kind of felt like I wanted a network attached storage

01:05:52 ◼   ► But I never felt like it was something I needed and now I've been completely changed now

01:05:57 ◼   ► I must have this in my life, so I definitely recommend it even if you don't get the model

01:06:02 ◼   ► We have find a different model that fits your needs, but I definitely recommend it

01:06:06 ◼   ► I can't say thank you enough for the folks at Synology for sending all of us one that was extremely kind

01:06:11 ◼   ► Yeah

01:06:11 ◼   ► Really great of them to do that

01:06:12 ◼   ► And I'm compelled at this point to remind people because no one has said it yet in this discussion that raid is not a backup

01:06:18 ◼   ► solution. Just keep repeating that to yourself as many times as possible. Like when I was divvying up

01:06:23 ◼   ► my Synology and I still haven't come up with a final setup that I'm going to do, but mostly I

01:06:29 ◼   ► was settling on using it as not as a just a box of disks type of thing, but close to that where

01:06:36 ◼   ► I'm struggling to think of any reason why I would set up any kind of RAID situation because

01:06:42 ◼   ► none of the stuff that I'm using, like the reason you want RAID is because you don't want

01:06:47 ◼   ► downtime. But I'm not in that type of environment. I can be down for a day or two days, and it's not

01:06:52 ◼   ► a big deal as long as I don't lose data. So I don't need to like, "Oh, I've got to put that in

01:06:58 ◼   ► at least arrayed one because what if one drive fails?" All these things are, the vast majority

01:07:03 ◼   ► of it for me, are backups of things that I already have on probably two other hard drives elsewhere

01:07:09 ◼   ► in the house plus in the cloud. And for the few things that I have on there that would only be on

01:07:14 ◼   ► on the Synology, like all my media files that I'm going to,

01:07:17 ◼   ► they're all on my Mac Pro now,

01:07:18 ◼   ► so they really are backups now,

01:07:19 ◼   ► but when I get my new Mac Pro

01:07:21 ◼   ► with its dinky internal storage,

01:07:23 ◼   ► a lot of it will only be on the Synology.

01:07:25 ◼   ► And when that happens, my solution is going to be

01:07:28 ◼   ► to set up two volumes on the Synology,

01:07:31 ◼   ► one of which has all my media,

01:07:33 ◼   ► and one of which has a regularly backed up copy

01:07:35 ◼   ► of all of my media.

01:07:36 ◼   ► And why wouldn't I just do a RAID setup?

01:07:38 ◼   ► Because if something goes wrong

01:07:39 ◼   ► and I accidentally delete everything,

01:07:40 ◼   ► or it gets corrupted or something bad happens,

01:07:42 ◼   ► A backup is something that doesn't change at the same time you change the primary.

01:07:46 ◼   ► So no RAID solution, SHR, whatever, RAID 10, RAID 6, is going to save you if you accidentally delete all your files.

01:07:52 ◼   ► Because it will delete them across all of your disks.

01:07:55 ◼   ► And when you say, "Hey, I want those backs!" it'll say, "You should have had a backup."

01:07:58 ◼   ► So I'm going to end up divvying this thing up into many different slices, maybe with a few RAID 0 things in there.

01:08:03 ◼   ► But probably almost no redundancy or data protection.

01:08:06 ◼   ► All of my data protection is probably going to be by having the Synology backup to itself.

01:08:11 ◼   ► and of course to online and all the other places that I back up.

01:08:14 ◼   ► So that's actually kind of a surprise to me too, after all the stuff of thinking about different raid schemes and stuff.

01:08:19 ◼   ► I tried many of them and every time I looked at it I was like, "This is really what I want?"

01:08:24 ◼   ► And it's one of the few things that made me finally buy Carbon Copy Cloner, which I hadn't bought for years because I'd always been using Super Duper.

01:08:30 ◼   ► But Super Duper doesn't do network disks and Carbon Copy Cloner does.

01:08:33 ◼   ► So if I want to have two volumes on the NAS, I can have a job that on any of my Macs, it

01:08:39 ◼   ► will smart copy one—I'm using super-duper terminology—intelligently copy one of those

01:08:45 ◼   ► volumes onto the other to make a weekly or whatever backup of my media drive instead

01:08:50 ◼   ► of you doing a RAID 1 volume or a RAID 5 volume for my media and thinking that somehow that's

01:08:55 ◼   ► protecting it because it wouldn't be.

01:08:58 ◼   ► And despite all the times we've talked about it, none of us have tried iSCSI yet.

01:09:00 ◼   ► No, no.

01:09:01 ◼   ► No, I'm still too afraid of it. I mean, I'm assuming it would work fine, but I'm like this works so well

01:09:06 ◼   ► Why would I why like what is it that I can't do with it the way it is that I would want install kernel

01:09:11 ◼   ► Extension, you know back up with back, please. That's a big one

01:09:13 ◼   ► Well, I'm already a crash plan subscriber, right?

01:09:17 ◼   ► You know, so I'll probably just like do like a see didn't suck this all into my crash plan thing

01:09:21 ◼   ► But may still use back place for my local Mac. I don't know him decided

01:09:24 ◼   ► or I could see like, you know, if you if you wanted to use one of the Synology discs as like a

01:09:30 ◼   ► Photoshop scratch disk or something like that like some some disk role where the network protocol overhead might be

01:09:38 ◼   ► Prohibitively slow for it or weird in other ways

01:09:41 ◼   ► And you don't need to share it then that might be that might work, but who knows yeah

01:09:45 ◼   ► There's a the latest version of the Synology software

01:09:48 ◼   ► has support for SSD

01:09:50 ◼   ► Doesn't have some kind of SSD support like an SSD cache drive. Yeah, I haven't listened to it yet

01:09:55 ◼   ► Yeah, like the read caching a few other a few other NASA's do this already also

01:09:59 ◼   ► so they're not the first ones to do this.

01:10:01 ◼   ► But yeah, it works similar to how you'd expect it, basically.

01:10:05 ◼   ► Not quite like Fusion Drive,

01:10:06 ◼   ► but it basically uses an SSD of whatever size.

01:10:10 ◼   ► You stick it in there and it can use it as a read cache,

01:10:13 ◼   ► but I don't know in detail how that works.

01:10:15 ◼   ► - And I was thinking that that would be for people

01:10:17 ◼   ► who have massive aperture libraries or something,

01:10:19 ◼   ► and they use it with the iSCSI interface, right?

01:10:22 ◼   ► And so then they get a little bit extra performance

01:10:23 ◼   ► because they're really thrashing it or whatever.

01:10:26 ◼   ► - Well, the difference though is that,

01:10:27 ◼   ► it depends on how it's being used.

01:10:28 ◼   ► Like, Fusion Drive is interesting because it's not just a cache, it's actually moving

01:10:34 ◼   ► blocks around and saying, "Alright, this block that's being actively read and written to

01:10:38 ◼   ► now lives here on the SSD."

01:10:41 ◼   ► And so it can not only make reads faster, but it can make writes faster.

01:10:45 ◼   ► And if it's kind of like a simple dumb caching arrangement instead, where the data still

01:10:50 ◼   ► lives on the spinning disks and the SSD is just like a read cache for it, then that's

01:10:54 ◼   ► great for reads, but it doesn't do you any good for writes.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I still wish I could, I'm still trying to angle with this new, you know, trash can

01:11:02 ◼   ► Mac Pro, if I could somehow get a fusion-based boot drive out of that thing.

01:11:08 ◼   ► Oh yeah, good luck with that.

01:11:10 ◼   ► I mean, either that or I want like a 1.5 terabyte SSD, but I know that's not gonna happen, so

01:11:14 ◼   ► I'm thinking of something.

01:11:16 ◼   ► So my NAS is not entirely solved in my Mac Pro problem, but that's Apple's fault, not

01:11:20 ◼   ► Synology's, because they didn't put any drives in the damn thing.

01:11:24 ◼   ► Oh goodness.

01:11:25 ◼   ► Oh goodness. All right, so really quick question Marco and then please tell me about something else that's awesome.

01:11:30 ◼   ► I've been asked by some friends that actually believe in photography in a way that I don't.

01:11:35 ◼   ► If the Synology works as a like aperture or lightroom, I don't even know the terms, like library or something like that.

01:11:44 ◼   ► And I feel like I saw you answer this via Twitter or email or something like that.

01:11:47 ◼   ► But do you find for you and/or TIFF especially, like what is your workflow?

01:11:52 ◼   ► can you use this as your primary working drive?

01:11:54 ◼   ► Or how did you guys divvy that up?

01:11:57 ◼   ► - We really don't know.

01:11:58 ◼   ► I mean, neither of us are qualified to know.

01:11:59 ◼   ► Tiff's photo management is,

01:12:01 ◼   ► she uses her own file and folder structure

01:12:04 ◼   ► and uses Adobe Bridge and Photoshop.

01:12:06 ◼   ► Bridge for browsing and light editing and raw,

01:12:08 ◼   ► and Photoshop for more detailed editing.

01:12:10 ◼   ► So that's, Bridge is basically a file browser.

01:12:13 ◼   ► Like it doesn't keep much of its own library around.

01:12:16 ◼   ► It doesn't manage the files for you.

01:12:19 ◼   ► I use Lightroom, which is not actually that different from Bridge.

01:12:25 ◼   ► Lightroom is basically a nice interface with a few different,

01:12:29 ◼   ► like a few additional library management features on top of Bridge.

01:12:33 ◼   ► It has all the same editing controls, the same, you know, camera raw stuff that Adobe does.

01:12:37 ◼   ► What I like about Lightroom, actually, a little side note, what I like about Lightroom a lot,

01:12:42 ◼   ► first of all, compared to Aperture, it's way faster, way more frequently updated, and way more stable.

01:12:47 ◼   ► and the processing stuff they have is really good.

01:12:52 ◼   ► It's, I would say, far ahead of Aperture at this point,

01:12:55 ◼   ► with no sign of Aperture catching up anytime soon.

01:12:57 ◼   ► Aperture always has felt like there's nobody working on it,

01:13:00 ◼   ► and I think that's actually been true for a lot of the time

01:13:02 ◼   ► that it's been around.

01:13:03 ◼   ► But anyway, so the problem is, though,

01:13:06 ◼   ► neither of us can tell you,

01:13:07 ◼   ► 'cause Tif doesn't use things where the library

01:13:10 ◼   ► would be like half there and half in her computer.

01:13:12 ◼   ► She has some old archive client work

01:13:16 ◼   ► that just the folders are on the NAS now,

01:13:18 ◼   ► but she's not like actively browsing that,

01:13:20 ◼   ► so you can't really tell.

01:13:22 ◼   ► I actually still keep my entire photo library

01:13:24 ◼   ► on my local SSD.

01:13:26 ◼   ► So the NAS for me does not take a role in this.

01:13:30 ◼   ► People keep asking me this all the time,

01:13:31 ◼   ► and I can't, I'm sorry, I can't give you the answer.

01:13:34 ◼   ► Aperture has this weird concept of like,

01:13:38 ◼   ► you can have the masters in one place,

01:13:40 ◼   ► and then you can have like the working files

01:13:41 ◼   ► or previews locally or something.

01:13:43 ◼   ► And back when I used Aperture,

01:13:45 ◼   ► I used it for a couple of years.

01:13:47 ◼   ► And I never, one of the reasons I stopped using it,

01:13:49 ◼   ► besides all the other problems I decided,

01:13:51 ◼   ► was I was never quite clear on where the files were.

01:13:55 ◼   ► And like, what I'm supposed to be managing here,

01:13:59 ◼   ► like where is this file?

01:14:00 ◼   ► Do I actually have a copy of this file?

01:14:03 ◼   ► Can I delete this version of this?

01:14:06 ◼   ► Is that gonna delete the original?

01:14:07 ◼   ► And the whole concept of vaults and reference masters

01:14:11 ◼   ► and all this crazy stuff Aputure has to manage files

01:14:14 ◼   ► and where they're located,

01:14:15 ◼   ► I could just never wrap my head around it.

01:14:17 ◼   ► So I never really used much of it.

01:14:19 ◼   ► And with Lightroom, you have a lot more control.

01:14:22 ◼   ► I think it's less, I think,

01:14:24 ◼   ► and I don't use this stuff that heavily,

01:14:26 ◼   ► so with a grain of salt,

01:14:27 ◼   ► but Lightroom seems to have less automatic management

01:14:32 ◼   ► of those files, but it gives you more control

01:14:35 ◼   ► over the file structure and where it goes.

01:14:37 ◼   ► It doesn't try to just hide it all in a bundle

01:14:38 ◼   ► like Aperture does.

01:14:39 ◼   ► It has, you just tell it what directory to import to,

01:14:43 ◼   ► and it imports to those directories.

01:14:45 ◼   ► And I like that a lot better.

01:14:47 ◼   ► But to answer your original question,

01:14:49 ◼   ► I can't actually tell you how it is using a photo library

01:14:53 ◼   ► on a NAS.

01:14:54 ◼   ► I really can't tell you.

01:14:55 ◼   ► That's one of those examples where maybe iSCSI might be

01:14:59 ◼   ► worth considering or trying.

01:15:01 ◼   ► Fair enough.

01:15:02 ◼   ► How about something awesome?

01:15:03 ◼   ► That sounds fantastic.

01:15:05 ◼   ► Our second sponsor this episode is another repeat sponsor.

01:15:07 ◼   ► It is the repeat sponsor.

01:15:09 ◼   ► It is, once again, Squarespace.

01:15:11 ◼   ► Squarespace is the all-in-one platform

01:15:12 ◼   ► that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional

01:15:14 ◼   ► website or online portfolio.

01:15:17 ◼   ► For a free trial and 10% off, wait a minute,

01:15:20 ◼   ► September is here and this is really cool.

01:15:22 ◼   ► Every other month that we've run Squarespace

01:15:25 ◼   ► and I've never heard Squarespace sponsor any other show,

01:15:27 ◼   ► every other month they have a 10% off coupon code.

01:15:30 ◼   ► This month it's even better, this month, just for September,

01:15:33 ◼   ► use coupon code ATP9, 'cause September is month number nine,

01:15:37 ◼   ► right, yeah, yeah.

01:15:40 ◼   ► Use coupon code ATP9 for 20% off.

01:15:43 ◼   ► That's a lot.

01:15:44 ◼   ► That's a big, big cut.

01:15:46 ◼   ► It's 20% actually.

01:15:47 ◼   ► So use coupon code ATP9 for 20% off.

01:15:51 ◼   ► So Squarespace is constantly improving their platform.

01:15:54 ◼   ► They have new features, new designs, better support,

01:15:57 ◼   ► and they have over 20 highly customizable templates

01:16:00 ◼   ► for you to choose from to start.

01:16:01 ◼   ► You can customize everything.

01:16:02 ◼   ► You can change the markup.

01:16:03 ◼   ► You can inject JavaScript.

01:16:05 ◼   ► You can do all sorts of cool stuff.

01:16:07 ◼   ► I've customized the layout for ATP's site.

01:16:09 ◼   ► I've used JavaScript hacks to insert download links

01:16:12 ◼   ► for the MP3s and stuff like that.

01:16:15 ◼   ► They give you all sorts of stuff to play with.

01:16:18 ◼   ► It's incredibly easy to use.

01:16:19 ◼   ► If you need any help, though, they

01:16:20 ◼   ► have an amazing support team.

01:16:21 ◼   ► They work 24/7.

01:16:24 ◼   ► And Squarespace starts at just $8 a month.

01:16:27 ◼   ► And that's before our coupon.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Starts at just $8 a month and includes a free domain name

01:16:31 ◼   ► if you sign up for a whole year at a time.

01:16:33 ◼   ► And we all know that Squarespace is beautiful on the outside.

01:16:36 ◼   ► But what's also amazing is all the code is beautiful too.

01:16:39 ◼   ► Take a look at the markup sometime.

01:16:41 ◼   ► You'll see there's a lot you can do there.

01:16:43 ◼   ► They take a lot of pride in their back end code.

01:16:45 ◼   ► So this ensures easy markup, accessibility, SEO,

01:16:50 ◼   ► all sorts of great benefits.

01:16:52 ◼   ► So they take care of the hosting so you don't have to.

01:16:56 ◼   ► We've talked before, and I'll repeat it a little bit here,

01:16:58 ◼   ► that we all know how to make websites.

01:17:00 ◼   ► We can make our own, and we can stick it on a server somewhere,

01:17:03 ◼   ► but that's a pain in the butt.

01:17:04 ◼   ► We all know it.

01:17:05 ◼   ► We've all done it.

01:17:06 ◼   ► And there's a lot of situations for which you do not want to be doing that or you shouldn't

01:17:10 ◼   ► be doing that.

01:17:11 ◼   ► And Squarespace is just fantastic to get something up there quickly and easily that is, especially

01:17:16 ◼   ► in my case, way better than anything I could make myself.

01:17:20 ◼   ► So thanks a lot to Squarespace for hosting or for sponsoring this episode of ATP.

01:17:24 ◼   ► And really, don't forget, use coupon code ATP9 for the month of 9 for 20% off just the

01:17:32 ◼   ► month of September.

01:17:33 ◼   ► Check it out.

01:17:34 ◼   ► Use that code.

01:17:35 ◼   ► You'll save a bundle.

01:17:36 ◼   ► Squarespace for sponsoring.

01:17:39 ◼   ► Thank you guys.

01:17:40 ◼   ► They've been really good to us, Squarespace, so it's very much appreciated.

01:17:44 ◼   ► So there's a couple things I think we could talk about, but we're a little short on time.

01:17:48 ◼   ► So do we have any thoughts on OmniKeyMapper, or whatever it was called?

01:17:53 ◼   ► Do you know what I'm talking about?

01:17:55 ◼   ► I do.

01:17:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Go ahead, Jon, because I don't know much about it.

01:17:58 ◼   ► I mean, I don't have any thoughts except for sadness.

01:18:01 ◼   ► Like, why can't, you know, is this the continuing tension between Apple's app

01:18:07 ◼   ► store policies and what third-party Mac software developers want or need to do to

01:18:14 ◼   ► maintain their business and is a difference of opinion about how the Mac

01:18:20 ◼   ► software business should work and third-party developers rely on upgrade

01:18:24 ◼   ► revenue and think it's a reasonable thing to do and Apple doesn't and now Apple's

01:18:28 ◼   ► trying to stop third-party developers from allowing Mac App Store customers to upgrade

01:18:34 ◼   ► to a non-Mac App Store version.

01:18:36 ◼   ► So the scheme that Omni had was like, "Hey, you bought our app on the Mac App Store.

01:18:40 ◼   ► You want the next incremental update, but you don't want to pay full price.

01:18:45 ◼   ► Just use this application that we have.

01:18:46 ◼   ► It will figure out that you purchased our previous version of our application from the

01:18:50 ◼   ► App Store and we'll give you upgrade pricing on purchasing the next version, not from the

01:18:54 ◼   ► App Store."

01:18:55 ◼   ► And Apple won't even allow that to happen.

01:18:57 ◼   ► They said, "Stop doing that."

01:18:59 ◼   ► Lots of people on Twitter were like, "Is that even legal?

01:19:01 ◼   ► Can they stop you from doing that?"

01:19:02 ◼   ► It's like proof of purchase.

01:19:03 ◼   ► Isn't there some sort of precedent case in law that you're allowed to do proof of purchase

01:19:08 ◼   ► type discounts from competitors or whatever?

01:19:10 ◼   ► Oh, this is the App Store.

01:19:11 ◼   ► There's no law.

01:19:12 ◼   ► Yeah, but the point is, who cares?

01:19:14 ◼   ► Unless you have the money to challenge Apple in court, which nobody does, basically, except

01:19:17 ◼   ► for maybe Adobe or Microsoft, neither of whom are in the Mac App Store anyway, it's a moot

01:19:23 ◼   ► point.

01:19:24 ◼   ► is being kind of jerky about it.

01:19:28 ◼   ► They're saying, "You don't like our store?

01:19:31 ◼   ► Fine.

01:19:32 ◼   ► Don't be in it.

01:19:33 ◼   ► And, by the way, don't try to do anything that involves our store like giving your customers

01:19:37 ◼   ► a discount."

01:19:38 ◼   ► And the argument—we talked about paid upgrades before—but the argument is, like some people

01:19:41 ◼   ► ask on Twitter, "Why should an upgrade be any cheaper than the original purchase?"

01:19:46 ◼   ► And as the Omni guys have explained on their site and in Twitter as well, it's like you

01:19:50 ◼   ► get more value from the first purchase of the program.

01:19:53 ◼   ► If you don't have a program and then you do, that's incredibly valuable.

01:19:57 ◼   ► And then when they upgrade the program to a fancy new version, that's an incremental

01:20:01 ◼   ► amount of value above the current one you have, but it's presumably not as big a value

01:20:05 ◼   ► as going from not having that program to have it.

01:20:07 ◼   ► So that's why upgrade prices should be cheaper than the initial purchase, because the initial

01:20:10 ◼   ► purchase has more value to you, and the upgrade has some value to you, but presumably not

01:20:16 ◼   ► as much as the entire application to begin with.

01:20:19 ◼   ► And Apple disagrees.

01:20:21 ◼   ► And so they don't have upgrade pricing in the store and this will continue to be an

01:20:26 ◼   ► annoying battle until this gets sorted out in some way.

01:20:29 ◼   ► And one way it can get sorted out is all Mac developers who have any desire to have upgrade

01:20:33 ◼   ► pricing leave the Mac App Store, but that's probably not going to happen.

01:20:38 ◼   ► Well, I just, I feel so bad for the Mac developers that I feel like they don't have a lot of

01:20:45 ◼   ► leverage unless they in mass leave the App Store, like you were saying.

01:20:50 ◼   ► So by themselves, they don't really have any leverage, and so they just have to deal with

01:20:55 ◼   ► it.

01:20:56 ◼   ► And that's really too bad.

01:20:57 ◼   ► And I wish that Apple, maybe they do care, but they give the outward appearance of not

01:21:02 ◼   ► caring about how this works for anyone but themselves.

01:21:06 ◼   ► And that's crummy.

01:21:07 ◼   ► And it's one of the ways that Apple really disappoints me.

01:21:10 ◼   ► Yeah, well, like we said the past time we discussed this, in theory they could care

01:21:15 ◼   ► about the customers because they think just a low price for everybody is better than upgrade

01:21:19 ◼   ► pricing because of lock-in and making it a more competitive market.

01:21:21 ◼   ► All those things we talked about in the past show.

01:21:27 ◼   ► The much less charitable opinion that many people expressed is, no, in reality, what

01:21:32 ◼   ► they want is for software to be free because they want there to be many attractive reasons

01:21:37 ◼   ► to buy their hardware.

01:21:39 ◼   ► They want software to be entirely commoditized and almost free and eliminate any company

01:21:43 ◼   ► that can't survive by giving away almost free software.

01:21:45 ◼   ► So if you need to charge 50 bucks to the first version and $10 upgrade pricing, you will

01:21:49 ◼   ► be eliminated by the company that can charge $15 for every single version year after year

01:21:54 ◼   ► and somehow stay in business.

01:21:56 ◼   ► That's sad.

01:21:57 ◼   ► It is sad.

01:22:00 ◼   ► Any other thoughts on that?

01:22:02 ◼   ► And then we have one more topic I want to try to squeeze in if we can.

01:22:05 ◼   ► Yeah, let's move on.

01:22:07 ◼   ► Buy Omnigraffle.

01:22:08 ◼   ► It's a good program.

01:22:09 ◼   ► They are not a sponsor of the show.

01:22:11 ◼   ► I just use it and like it.

01:22:13 ◼   ► And they deserve a break.

01:22:15 ◼   ► Alright, so how about Nokia or Nokia or whatever it's called?

01:22:18 ◼   ► I'm sure I'm sure we're pronouncing it wrong even now.

01:22:20 ◼   ► Surely we are.

01:22:21 ◼   ► Someone's gonna tell us.

01:22:22 ◼   ► Maybe it's, maybe we'll hear about it on Strateecory.

01:22:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I was really surprised to hear that was the correct pronunciation, but we're

01:22:28 ◼   ► already taking a turn for the boring.

01:22:30 ◼   ► So what do we think about this Nokia thing?

01:22:33 ◼   ► I don't see how this is really helping anyone, and it just smells of desperation to me.

01:22:38 ◼   ► Oh, it's helping somebody.

01:22:40 ◼   ► I think it's helping both of them.

01:22:43 ◼   ► Both companies.

01:22:44 ◼   ► Nokia because they get to save face kind of because they were going down down down and now it's like well

01:22:51 ◼   ► Not our problem anymore, you know

01:22:53 ◼   ► Microsoft bought it in the money. It's their fault that our phones didn't sell or whatever and Microsoft again if we get back to

01:23:00 ◼   ► discuss if they want to be a

01:23:03 ◼   ► Devices company according to like the Palmer plan before he was booted out if that's what they want to be

01:23:10 ◼   ► acquiring a hardware manufacturer is the logical next step. And the obvious one they would

01:23:16 ◼   ► acquire is the one they're already half in bed with, with their, you know, Microsoft

01:23:20 ◼   ► guy who went to be their CEO and this very intimate deal for them to make Windows phones

01:23:25 ◼   ► and widely acknowledge they should be making the best Windows phones. So yeah, that's

01:23:29 ◼   ► the one to buy. So now Microsoft has more hardware muscle to go along with its supposed

01:23:35 ◼   ► plan to become kind of like Apple and Google, Google wrapped into one.

01:23:39 ◼   ► >> Yeah, I think Ben Thompson, the author of "Shatikari," I think his theory is probably

01:23:44 ◼   ► the correct one, which is, you know, because Microsoft already had Nokia/Nakia, however

01:23:50 ◼   ► it's actually pronounced, they already had them kind of around their finger for a long

01:23:54 ◼   ► time, for the last few years, ever since ELOP was installed as CEO. And, you know, they

01:24:01 ◼   ► already had Nokia being their phone maker. They were making, was it exclusively Windows

01:24:07 ◼   ► Windows phone smartphones at this point?

01:24:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

01:24:10 ◼   ► Either way, close enough.

01:24:11 ◼   ► And they were making what most people considered very good hardware for Windows phone.

01:24:16 ◼   ► And so, you know, Microsoft was already kind of getting the milk for free there.

01:24:20 ◼   ► Well, I don't know if that's the same thing, though.

01:24:23 ◼   ► Well, it might not be.

01:24:24 ◼   ► But regardless, Ben Thompson's theory as to why this was necessary is that, you know,

01:24:32 ◼   ► Nokia was, by most people who were smarter than us

01:24:34 ◼   ► in this area, by most people's assessment,

01:24:38 ◼   ► Nokia was in severe financial problems.

01:24:41 ◼   ► They were possibly, on the verge of going bankrupt.

01:24:43 ◼   ► And there were also some rumors that maybe they

01:24:47 ◼   ► were considering just making Android phones,

01:24:50 ◼   ► just starting to use Android, just to get more market

01:24:53 ◼   ► share and more money coming in.

01:24:55 ◼   ► So if either of those were about to happen,

01:24:57 ◼   ► if Nokia was about to either go bankrupt

01:24:59 ◼   ► or start becoming an Android manufacturer,

01:25:02 ◼   ► that would give Microsoft a pretty big reason

01:25:04 ◼   ► to help them out and step in there

01:25:06 ◼   ► and get some more influence there.

01:25:09 ◼   ► Because if Nokia stopped making Windows phones,

01:25:13 ◼   ► who the heck would?

01:25:14 ◼   ► There's a handful of other manufacturers that make them,

01:25:17 ◼   ► and they're all terrible.

01:25:18 ◼   ► Nokia makes the only good ones.

01:25:20 ◼   ► And Microsoft still is fighting hard for-- well,

01:25:25 ◼   ► they're fighting for Windows Phone to still be a thing,

01:25:29 ◼   ► And they're not just going to give in and start

01:25:31 ◼   ► making Office for Android, which has a bunch of Nintendo

01:25:33 ◼   ► parallels that we don't have time to get to today.

01:25:35 ◼   ► But they're not going to do that.

01:25:39 ◼   ► Even if they should, they're probably not going to.

01:25:41 ◼   ► So Microsoft kind of had to do this.

01:25:45 ◼   ► Theoretically, if this is true, they kind of had to do this.

01:25:48 ◼   ► And it might have played a role in why Steve Ballmer has

01:25:50 ◼   ► been suddenly kicked out.

01:25:52 ◼   ► Like maybe Nokia would only agree to it

01:25:54 ◼   ► if ELOP became the next Microsoft CEO.

01:25:57 ◼   ► or maybe Ballmer opposed the idea and the board didn't. There's all sorts of possibilities

01:26:01 ◼   ► here, but I think that given what we've heard about Nokia's financial situation, that sounds

01:26:07 ◼   ► like a really plausible explanation for all this.

01:26:10 ◼   ► And really, if they want to be a company that makes awesome hardware and software together,

01:26:15 ◼   ► there is no getting around them making their own hardware. And they've got a taste for

01:26:18 ◼   ► it with the Surface, and even with the Zune and of course with the Xbox. It's not the

01:26:23 ◼   ► same when it's another company doing it.

01:26:27 ◼   ► Because that's the reason that Apple kept making better products in them for all those

01:26:30 ◼   ► years even though they were dominating them in the market, was that it was all in-house

01:26:34 ◼   ► in Apple.

01:26:35 ◼   ► And Microsoft somehow was trying to control a horse by a pair of reins or poking something

01:26:42 ◼   ► with a stick.

01:26:43 ◼   ► They could try to influence the people who made PCs, like please don't put crapware

01:26:47 ◼   ► on or try to strong-arm them by requiring, "If you want the Windows logo for Windows

01:26:52 ◼   ► You must include X Y and Z or you better put a sound chip on your things because we're embarrassed by the PC speaker

01:26:57 ◼   ► And you know they had some influence on all the people

01:27:00 ◼   ► But it's not the same as when it's you and so they'd see Apple like oh fine sure Apple can make awesome hardware because they

01:27:05 ◼   ► Can just put whatever the hell they want in there and sure Apple doesn't have all these crazy driver and support problems because they make

01:27:09 ◼   ► Seven machines they know exactly what they need to support

01:27:12 ◼   ► I think Microsoft's sick of that like it's been it's like fighting with one arm tied behind your back and so they need

01:27:18 ◼   ► hardware expertise and

01:27:21 ◼   ► This this could have been the perfect stormer like you know like Margot was saying that

01:27:25 ◼   ► If they didn't save these people all those beautiful

01:27:28 ◼   ► You know Lumiya phones would be gone, and if you're gonna buy someone anyway to help you make phones

01:27:33 ◼   ► Why would you not buy the company?

01:27:34 ◼   ► It's making currently making the best windows phones right so it makes sense from all those different perspectives like people are down on the deal

01:27:41 ◼   ► Just because they're like is this gonna be enough to save you

01:27:43 ◼   ► This is really gonna make a difference, or is this another one of your you know stupid deals that

01:27:50 ◼   ► You had to make and that doesn't end up changing Microsoft in any way

01:27:53 ◼   ► You know it seems like what's what is now let's say you know in six months from now

01:27:59 ◼   ► Everything's all settled and they they own this this massive division from Nokia that makes all their phones

01:28:06 ◼   ► And they can finally start releasing you know the next generation of

01:28:09 ◼   ► Microsoft Lumia phones because they bought the rights to use the the trademark Lumia

01:28:14 ◼   ► But not the trademark Nokia because they didn't actually buy all of Nokia. They only bought like their phone hardware division

01:28:19 ◼   ► So, suppose six months from now this is all in place and they release Windows Phone 8.5

01:28:27 ◼   ► or 9.0 or whatever it is on the new Microsoft Lumia, whatever.

01:28:32 ◼   ► What's different then compared to today?

01:28:35 ◼   ► What does this really change?

01:28:36 ◼   ► What does this enable besides just a continuation of the status quo, which was not working well?

01:28:41 ◼   ► What does this enable?

01:28:42 ◼   ► Well, it enables them to do the things that Apple does.

01:28:46 ◼   ► like say the next version of Windows Phone,

01:28:48 ◼   ► you know, Windows Phone 8.7,

01:28:49 ◼   ► or I don't know what the hell the version they're up to,

01:28:51 ◼   ► they want to do something with it,

01:28:53 ◼   ► and they say, okay, well, this version of Windows Phone

01:28:56 ◼   ► will only run on, because Microsoft's done this like crazy,

01:28:58 ◼   ► will only run on such and such hardware,

01:29:01 ◼   ► and they could even say it will only run

01:29:02 ◼   ► on this new hardware, and in fact,

01:29:04 ◼   ► we're gonna design this new hardware,

01:29:05 ◼   ► and we're going to custom pick the GPU

01:29:07 ◼   ► and the system on a chip,

01:29:08 ◼   ► and we'll build the entire thing as a unit,

01:29:10 ◼   ► kind of like we're building an Xbox,

01:29:11 ◼   ► with the hardware and software tied together

01:29:13 ◼   ► to work in perfect synergy

01:29:14 ◼   ► give us exactly the GPU features we want, exactly the clock speed, memories, and bus

01:29:18 ◼   ► sizes that we need to implement the software stack that we plan to implement in this OS

01:29:22 ◼   ► to make a match set.

01:29:24 ◼   ► Instead of saying, "We're going to make this OS, and this is the driver interface, and

01:29:29 ◼   ► we'll try to support your things, and maybe you should pick..."

01:29:31 ◼   ► They can make an integrated package that doesn't have to be like, "We make this over here,

01:29:36 ◼   ► you make this over there, and then we have meetings to work out our interfaces," because

01:29:38 ◼   ► you never end up with an optimal situation like that.

01:29:40 ◼   ► You want something as low-cost as possible that performs as well as possible in the smallest

01:29:46 ◼   ► amount of power.

01:29:47 ◼   ► And, you know, like, you want them to be a match set, exactly the same way that Apple

01:29:52 ◼   ► does with all its phones, like crazy, and like Microsoft does with the Xbox, where they

01:29:56 ◼   ► control the entire stack.

01:29:57 ◼   ► So that, I think, is the win that they're looking for.

01:30:00 ◼   ► It doesn't mean they have the competence to pull it off, but in theory, that was not possible

01:30:04 ◼   ► before and now it definitely is possible.

01:30:06 ◼   ► It's just up to them to pull it off.

01:30:08 ◼   ► Well, sort of.

01:30:09 ◼   ► My recollection of the original Windows Phone 7 specs were that the hardware specifications

01:30:15 ◼   ► were pretty specific. To your point, they weren't as specific as "Hey guys next door,

01:30:21 ◼   ► can you build exactly this?" But they were pretty darn specific and there wasn't a lot

01:30:25 ◼   ► of wiggle room.

01:30:26 ◼   ► But you couldn't iterate on it. They produced the spec and said, "You guys should build

01:30:31 ◼   ► this," and then they go off and build the thing. And they do still have leeway to pick

01:30:34 ◼   ► their own camera or pick their battery sizes or pick the materials or pick the screen technology

01:30:38 ◼   ► and stuff like that. Like, it's, when Apple designs, it's not like one team goes off and

01:30:43 ◼   ► says "Here's iOS 7, here's where the specs have to be," and then hands off a piece of

01:30:46 ◼   ► paper to the hardware guys and they build the phone. It's totally together. It's a process

01:30:50 ◼   ► moving in lockstep, iterating over and over again, like revising, revising. Instead of

01:30:54 ◼   ► "OS manufacturer makes a new OS, provides a spec sheet that says "To run this OS you

01:30:59 ◼   ► need this hardware." Even if the spec sheet they give you has no variability, it's not

01:31:04 ◼   ► the same as it having been designed all together and going through iterations.

01:31:08 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true. I mean, we'll see what happens. I mean, only time will tell. I thought

01:31:14 ◼   ► the good pieces that I read personally were both of Ben Thompson's. We've already talked

01:31:18 ◼   ► about one, and there's another that he himself actually has linked in the chat, which has

01:31:23 ◼   ► some talk about the, what is it, value something, value act, which I guess we're theorizing

01:31:31 ◼   ► has some play in some things going on in the board behind the scenes. Also, Horace's take

01:31:37 ◼   ► on it, which had a delightfully Casey trolling title, which I got to find. I think it was

01:31:43 ◼   ► like who bought whom or who is buying whom. Reading a quick blurb from that. So in a way,

01:31:52 ◼   ► an acquisition of priorities is almost a reverse acquisition. The acquired is actually "buying"

01:31:58 ◼   ► the acquirer. The acquired company's priorities and hence processes and resources become the

01:32:02 ◼   ► guiding principles in the acquirer. It's what happened when Apple bought Next and may

01:32:06 ◼   ► have happened when Disney bought Pixar. And whether or not you buy into the theory, I

01:32:11 ◼   ► thought it was a really interesting point.

01:32:12 ◼   ► We forgot the most important point, of course, which has been made by many other people online,

01:32:17 ◼   ► is that when you are in the hardware company, you don't get a $15 license fee for your

01:32:21 ◼   ► OS when they sell the phone. You can get like 300 bucks out of the $3,000 cell phone service

01:32:26 ◼   ► contract that you got. So you make a lot more profit when you sell. I mean, that's the obvious

01:32:30 ◼   ► thing that is going unsaid here, but it's worth mentioning.

01:32:33 ◼   ► Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm sure they wouldn't have even considered this possibility if that

01:32:38 ◼   ► wasn't on the table.

01:32:40 ◼   ► I mean, that doesn't make much of a difference if no one buys them. So I still think of it

01:32:42 ◼   ► from the perspective of, finally, you have a fighting chance of doing what Apple does.

01:32:50 ◼   ► Or what Samsung does, because even though it's like, well, Samsung doesn't control

01:32:53 ◼   ► the OS. It's like, well, they don't control it, but they kinda kinda...

01:32:57 ◼   ► I always wonder how many people Samsung has working on their Android OS, because it's

01:33:02 ◼   ► open source, and they customize their OS to various degrees, so they are more masters

01:33:07 ◼   ► of their fate than Nokia was, because I imagine that...

01:33:10 ◼   ► I don't know what the deal is, it's pretty incestuous between Microsoft, but I don't

01:33:13 ◼   ► know if Nokia previously had all the source to Windows Phone 7 and 8, and were able to

01:33:19 ◼   ► sort of customize it. I mean, I'm pretty sure they weren't allowed to customize it because

01:33:23 ◼   ► they said, "We want you to have the Windows Phone experience and don't change the UI to

01:33:27 ◼   ► be like the Motorola Sense skin or all those things that people do with Android."

01:33:33 ◼   ► So is that it? I guess. I can't think of anything less interesting,

01:33:38 ◼   ► to me at least, than trying to figure out in any more detail than what we've talked

01:33:42 ◼   ► about, trying to figure out what's going on with Microsoft and its board. The whole value

01:33:47 ◼   ► Act thing, that sounds really interesting when Ben Thompson writes about it.

01:33:51 ◼   ► I would hate to be trying to do more research on it, though.

01:33:54 ◼   ► Can you imagine having to dig through board stuff?

01:33:58 ◼   ► Ugh.

01:33:59 ◼   ► That probably is actually, I think, the board intrigue part and the politics part of it,

01:34:03 ◼   ► is the most interesting part of this entire deal, but has the least or perhaps the most

01:34:09 ◼   ► negative bearing on the success of the future companies.

01:34:12 ◼   ► It's interesting from a political, personal, you wonder what happened in kind of like Game

01:34:16 ◼   ► Thrones, right? But the more interesting that gets, the more it bodes ill for the

01:34:21 ◼   ► future of these companies, because if this deal is really about like who's

01:34:25 ◼   ► going to be CEO and backstabbing in acquisitions and whose star is rising

01:34:29 ◼   ► and falling in the corporate ranks, that is totally taking your eye off the ball

01:34:32 ◼   ► and you do not want any kind of drama like that, or at the very least you want

01:34:35 ◼   ► very intense and very brief drama leaving you to a new regime that, you

01:34:40 ◼   ► know, goes along smoothly. But this just looks like a gigantic mess over there in

01:34:44 ◼   ► in the boardrooms. And I'm so glad that we aren't there sitting through it all.

01:34:49 ◼   ► I do want to end with one quick thing, a tweet from Matthew Panzorino from a few days ago,

01:34:54 ◼   ► which I think hits the nail on the head. "Reality check, though. You and I as consumers can only

01:34:58 ◼   ► win if Microsoft and Nokia succeed. Competition only burns the crucible hotter and pure."

01:35:04 ◼   ► I think that's dead on. I know we've all said that many times, but if this does work out,

01:35:09 ◼   ► it makes Apple work that much harder and Google work that much harder and Samsung work that

01:35:14 ◼   ► much harder. So I do hope it works out, but it's going to be interesting.

01:35:18 ◼   ► If not for the Metro look, who would Apple have used for inspiration for iOS 7?

01:35:24 ◼   ► Exactly. Oh, God, that's such a minefield.

01:35:29 ◼   ► And on that note, on that bombshell... All right, let's wrap it up because we're

01:35:34 ◼   ► running long here, and we've got to get our sleep before next week's iPhone episode.

01:35:38 ◼   ► So thanks a lot to our two sponsors, Hover and Squarespace, and we'll see you next week.

01:35:43 ◼   ► week.

01:35:50 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey

01:35:57 ◼   ► wouldn't let him 'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:36:07 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm And if you're into Twitter, you can follow

01:36:16 ◼   ► Follow them @CASEYLISS

01:36:21 ◼   ► So that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:36:25 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C

01:36:31 ◼   ► USA, Syracuse

01:36:33 ◼   ► It's accidental

01:36:36 ◼   ► They didn't mean to

01:36:39 ◼   ► Accidental

01:36:41 ◼   ► ♪ Check my cast so long ♪

01:36:44 ◼   ► - I'm just, I'm so excited to be playing with it every day.

01:36:49 ◼   ► Every time I see it automatically mounted on my desktop

01:36:51 ◼   ► and slowly and painfully get a time machine back up

01:36:54 ◼   ► and then go away.

01:36:54 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:36:55 ◼   ► I think, ooh, that's down there.

01:36:57 ◼   ► It's down there doing that stuff.

01:36:59 ◼   ► - It's down there doing that stuff.

01:37:01 ◼   ► Are we still talking about the Synology?

01:37:02 ◼   ► - That whole paragraph is a title.

01:37:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:37:05 ◼   ► - I'm so close to like getting a Mac Mini or something

01:37:07 ◼   ► to be a Plex thing connected to my TV.

01:37:09 ◼   ► I just need a fanless Mac Mini.

01:37:11 ◼   ► Alright, do we want to do titles real quick?

01:37:13 ◼   ► So, I like Computerized Garden Gnome.

01:37:15 ◼   ► Don't you think it's like a little garden gnome?

01:37:17 ◼   ► It's like a little statue.

01:37:19 ◼   ► I know what you're saying.

01:37:20 ◼   ► It looks like a robot. It's got a little light around it. It's cute.

01:37:22 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:37:24 ◼   ► I'm so happy that I just think of them down there.

01:37:26 ◼   ► The two of them sitting next to each other in my basement.

01:37:28 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:37:30 ◼   ► Like all in their own little UPS that's made just for them.

01:37:32 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:37:34 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:37:36 ◼   ► Which one's Bert and which one's Ernie? Ugh, goodness.