#36: Headline News
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Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective, the podcast discussing news of note in iOS,
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Apple, and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm an independent iOS developer based
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just outside of Washington, DC. Today is Wednesday, March 7th, 2012, and this is episode number
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36. So obviously the big news today is the Apple keynote. I'm recording this before it
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happened. I'll probably do something after the show as well, but I wanted to capture
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feelings, thoughts, things going on before it's actually announced, and then it's kind
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of interesting to, on the flip side, to actually go back and see how that goes.
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But basically, you know, so I have to ask, today Apple, at about 1pm, which is in a couple
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of hours from now when I'm recording, they'll be announcing something new.
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Why are they expected to be an iPad?
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Probably whatever the successor to the iPad 2 is, whether it's the iPad 3, the iPad HD,
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the iPad Super Plus, amazing.
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The name itself I don't actually find particularly interesting.
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It's something to think about because whatever it is, it's going to be successful.
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And I mean, no one liked the name iPad when it first came out.
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I mean, I remember the trending topic right after the iPad was iPad,
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and then it was like iTampon and all kinds of weird things going on about it.
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I mean, the name I don't think really matters.
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I mean, Apple could call it almost anything, and it would be successful.
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So the name I don't really care about.
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But I was just kind of struck by this morning
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So I was driving into work and I was listening to NPR.
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And so on headline news, the things that--
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if you're not familiar with NPR, National Public Radio
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in the United States, basically at the top of every hour,
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they have about a five minute news bulletin.
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That's kind of like, these are the headlines, the things you really need to know.
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And today was four or five things.
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First was the ongoing conflict in Syria.
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two was Super Tuesday or the primary election results from yesterday in the US presidential
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election campaign. There was an attack in Afghanistan that killed a handful of British
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soldiers. There was a survey about teachers being unhappy in the current economic crisis.
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And then the fifth thing, which kind of blew me away, was that they were talking about
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Apple probably announcing something like an iPad this afternoon. So if you think about
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that in context. So this is one of the most respected news sources in the United States,
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you know, National Public Radio, who is, as one of their five items in the headline news,
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is talking about the iPad event, something that we know very little about, that there's
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tons of speculation and people talking about and this, that and the other, but, you know,
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it's just speculation at this point. And that makes the headlines saying that, you know,
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they're going to announce something.
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Apple's already won. They could just...
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Phil Schiller could just show up on stage and be like, "Hey, here it is. It's better."
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Throw it on the table,
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it goes on sale in two weeks, and walk out.
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It would probably sell just as well. It would probably even make more news if they did that.
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I mean, it's just sort of...
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The iOS platform generally, but the iPad specifically, has this air of inevitability
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around it now.
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And I don't think anything
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short of an external major event, we'll be able to sort of slow it down.
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I mean, you talk about it. There's another anecdote that struck me was talking to...
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someone was talking to his hairdresser and he was wearing an Apple shirt.
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He's a developer and he was talking to his hairdresser and getting his hair cut
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and she saw that he had an Apple shirt and was like, "Oh, do you know when the new iPad's gonna come out?"
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I mean, it's like totally sort of normal people in the sense of, you know, not people
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like me or like probably many of the people who listen to a podcast like this,
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who, you know, they live and breathe this, we focus on it, we follow it.
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people who are Mac rumors, or on Apple inside, or Daring Fireball, you know, all these kind
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You know, we live this, but the same kind of thing happened, I remember, with the iPad
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2 launch, where I knew dozens of people who were asking and talking about, like, "Oh,
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you know, you need to get an iPad for Christmas."
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And they're like, "Oh, I really want to wait for the iPad 2.
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I hear it's going to come out in a couple months."
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It's like, that sort of level of awareness by the general population, I think, makes
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-- I mean, as a developer, it's insane to think of all these people who can't wait to
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get their hands on a device that I can make an app for, right?
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There's thousands and thousands of people who are excited and will be lining up to get
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And I feel like that's very different than the feeling I get from the iPhone.
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And maybe it's just we're in a different phase now with the iPhone.
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People still line up, it's kind of a big deal. But it's almost...
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The iPhone doesn't feel as special in a way now, where people
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are kind of used to it. It's very similar than it has been.
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And also I think part of it is the iPhone now is much...
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It seems like Apple introduces new technology and new things in the iPad
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and then brings them into the iPhone later. So the iPhone announcements are
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less impressive I think than they would have been if the iPad
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didn't exist. Things like when they went to their own A4 chip
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I guess with the iPad 1, well everyone knows, well the iPhone 4 is
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gonna have an A4 chip. They came out with the A5 chip and the iPad 2, oh it's
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probably gonna come to the iPhone. There's a sort of
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progression there that I think reduces some of the excitement about it.
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I mean, it's still great, I'll get whatever the new iPhone is, I'm sure when it comes out,
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but there's that level of mainstreamness to the iPad now that is just kind of striking.
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And so then on the flip side of that, I was going to talk about
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sort of what that means as a developer, and as I sit down and I think about
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What this announcement could mean it's kind of kind of a crazy thing. I was talking to my wife last night about how the
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It's a strange profession to be in where tomorrow. This is just soon this last night. It's in it's like you know tomorrow at one
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the entire rest of my year professionally could be turned upside down and just
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Yeah, it's kind of crazy that there's just you know there's a couple of guys in Cupertino who can announce something
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and that'll just totally change. Right now I'm working on doing some retina work for my iPad apps and some updates and things. Who knows?
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It's like Apple could announce all kinds of things that would just turn that upside down. It could be new frameworks, new platforms.
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Say, for example, they update the Apple TV and allow apps on it. Okay, well, that's a new interesting thing that I may want to develop for.
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And I mean it's kind of just crazy when it going from a world where I used to work at a sort of you know
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It's a nine-to-five kind of employee
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You know, it was very rare that things would change in terms of you know
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What I was doing what I was gonna be working on I can probably predict six seven months out what I'm you know
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Our projects I'd be working on where they'd be doing
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And it's just kind of crazy to think that who knows. I mean, I remember when the iPad first came out
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We just dropped everything
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You know, I just just and like let you know, let let's work on as many as we can
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Let's understand this platform. I mean that was insane
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They the platform the device hadn't even shipped and we're you know all running around like if a simulator
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And that was it and we're kind of like you know printing out
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Mockups, and I think I remembering right I even found a I found one of my child children's books
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Had the same shape and weight of an iPad and so I take that and put mock-ups on it
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I mean going through all of these things because the market is just so rich
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It's not easy easy is the wrong word, but it is so possible to be successful in the iOS App Store
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And so, you know just seeing an event like this is just so sort of reinforces that at least to me to such a degree
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where I'm like
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Yeah, I mean anything and whatever Apple does it's good for me. I mean
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The only with these are a few exceptions I suppose of they closed the App Store
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They decided actually we're going to discontinue this product, you know things that are just kind of absurd
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But otherwise, it's only going to be good for me.
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And that's kind of fun.
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That's exciting.
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And that is, I think, it is really a sign of being in the right industry, I think, where
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there is so much excitement about the thing that you're working on that no one really
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-- I was just thinking, like, Windows 8 had a big announcement a couple days ago.
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And I'm sure it hit some places, but it was certainly not an NPR news bulletin.
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I don't think it made the main page of CNN.
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I mean, all these things that you just kind of see, it's like, it makes me worried a little,
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if I'm honest, that for them to travel to be so successful, that at some point, that
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seems like that's going to be sort of the pride goes before a fall.
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at some point being so successful becomes a problem, becomes something that they have
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to overcome.
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That, A, the expectations are so high.
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I mean, the whole, "Oh, I was disappointed with the 4S, it wasn't fancy and new."
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I don't know if I really buy that as an argument because it still sells well.
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And it's like taking a diamond and polishing it, it's still a diamond.
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It's not like polishing it somehow makes it better.
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It's like people would be like, "Oh, well, I want it to be better and faster and this
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Well, it's starting is such an amazing thing that just polishing it makes it better.
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But I was just kind of struck by, I just hope they can keep it up.
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I mean, at this point, it's like I'm kind of hitching my wagon onto the App Store and
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kind of focusing all my attentions onto it.
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I used to do some Android stuff.
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I really don't.
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Every now and then I get these emails like, "Oh, but your app doesn't work so well on
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this particular version of Ice Cream Sandwich.
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That's unfortunate.
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It's like this particular phone."
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And honestly, I tell these people, it's like, I'm sorry, but there's not enough time in
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the day or money in Android for me to track that down.
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Like versus, you know, spending my time working on a platform where I can put in a lot of
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effort and get a sort of a just reward for that effort.
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So anyway, that's just some thoughts today.
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I kind of wanted to say, I want to throw some things out before the announcement.
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I'll probably do something either this afternoon or tomorrow based on what they announce, so
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certainly stay tuned for that.
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But otherwise, I hope you enjoy it.
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It's, let's see, 1 p.m. Pacific, so if you're in the U.S. that, or sorry, 10 p.m. Pacific,
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which is 1 p.m. Eastern.
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I think my favorite place is to watch it, use your Macworld and Gadget, and then if
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If those two fail, then I always go to whoever stayed up for the iPhone 4S announcement.
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It was, I think, Gidget.com was the site that stayed up.
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And it's just kind of a fun thing.
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Sit down, enjoy it, and just-- I wish they streamed them still, but they don't.
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But just sit down, watch a live blog, and enjoy being able to view history being made.
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And otherwise, happy coding.
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Have a chance to stay a little bit focused this morning,
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and otherwise, I'll talk to you later.