Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:10 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade brought to you this week by FreshBooks, Encapsula, and AppOptics.

00:00:16 ◼   ► I am one of your hosts for Upgrade, Jason Snell.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Myke Hurley, obviously not here because he usually does the intro, but he's not here.

00:00:25 ◼   ► He is on assignment.

00:00:26 ◼   ► And so instead I had to get a replacement for Myke, and I'm happy to say joining me

00:00:31 ◼   ► to talk about things on Upgrade This Week is John Syracuse. Welcome back. Hello.

00:00:37 ◼   ► This feels weird, podcasting in the middle of the day. What's going on?

00:00:39 ◼   ► I know. You have a strict only podcasting after dark rule that you're breaking. Well,

00:00:44 ◼   ► it's Thanksgiving week. Everything is topsy-turvy.

00:00:45 ◼   ► That's right. Well, I'm like a Mogwai. No feeding after midnight, no water, no podcasting

00:00:50 ◼   ► in the day. Bad things happen.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Oh, well, get ready, everybody, because bad things are going to happen now, I guess. I

00:00:55 ◼   ► I don't know what those things are, but nobody cares about that, Jon, because it's time for

00:00:59 ◼   ► #SNELtalk this week.

00:01:01 ◼   ► A very special question for you from me, which is from listener Mark, who wrote in to say,

00:01:07 ◼   ► "Jon, what is your favorite fictional car?"

00:01:11 ◼   ► Seems like a softball, but it's not.

00:01:12 ◼   ► I thought about it for a long time, and it should be easy for me to come up with favorites

00:01:17 ◼   ► for almost anything.

00:01:19 ◼   ► And I like cars, so surely I have a favorite fictional car, but I really, really don't.

00:01:23 ◼   ► So I had to try to come up with one, try to think, all right,

00:01:27 ◼   ► well, now think of one now.

00:01:28 ◼   ► And I don't know why I went to movies.

00:01:31 ◼   ► I have to tell you, the first thing

00:01:33 ◼   ► that came to mind when just considering what favorite cars

00:01:36 ◼   ► might be was Kit from Knight Rider.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Oh.

00:01:39 ◼   ► I think Kit from Knight Rider looms largest

00:01:41 ◼   ► as the fictional car that was in my life

00:01:44 ◼   ► the most because I watched Knight Rider when I was a kid.

00:01:46 ◼   ► It's not my favorite car, though.

00:01:47 ◼   ► I never was going to pick it, but when I just said,

00:01:49 ◼   ► let's think of fictional cars.

00:01:50 ◼   ► That's what came up.

00:01:51 ◼   ► That and Herbie the Love Bug, of all things, right?

00:01:53 ◼   ► Also not my favorite fictional car, but this came to mind.

00:01:57 ◼   ► So I had to dig deep.

00:01:59 ◼   ► I have an answer that is not particularly satisfactory.

00:02:02 ◼   ► It's not a terrible answer, but it's what I'm coming up with,

00:02:06 ◼   ► if pressed.

00:02:07 ◼   ► I'm sure there's a better answer.

00:02:08 ◼   ► I know that it's just not occurring to me.

00:02:10 ◼   ► But what I've got right now is the Spinner from Blade Runner.

00:02:14 ◼   ► Do you know what I'm talking about?

00:02:15 ◼   ► Flying car.

00:02:16 ◼   ► Yeah, that's right.

00:02:18 ◼   ► It is at various times a model and a full-size thing

00:02:22 ◼   ► on a crane that is concealed with smoke.

00:02:25 ◼   ► At no point is it CG, because they didn't have CG back then.

00:02:28 ◼   ► But it is very cool looking.

00:02:30 ◼   ► And the car leaving and arriving and shots from outside

00:02:37 ◼   ► into the car through rain-spattered windshields

00:02:39 ◼   ► and such make up a lot of the atmosphere of Blade Runner.

00:02:45 ◼   ► And Blade Runner is one of my favorite movies.

00:02:47 ◼   ► And not to spoil too much, but there are also flying cars

00:02:51 ◼   ► in the new Blade Runner movie.

00:02:52 ◼   ► But anyway, I'm picking the original Blade Runner, which I think is an iconic sci-fi

00:02:56 ◼   ► car.

00:02:57 ◼   ► And even though we don't see it do much car-ing kind of stuff, other than flying up and down,

00:03:03 ◼   ► that's what I've got.

00:03:04 ◼   ► All right.

00:03:05 ◼   ► The two that came to mind for me were the DeLorean from Back to the Future.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I wouldn't pick that.

00:03:10 ◼   ► Now, would you not pick it because the DeLorean as a car—I tried to explain this when we

00:03:14 ◼   ► were doing our Back to the Future commentary track for the Incomparable members, that I

00:03:20 ◼   ► I feel like I have to explain to younger audiences

00:03:22 ◼   ► that The DeLorean in Back to the Future is not cool.

00:03:25 ◼   ► It is a joke.

00:03:26 ◼   ► It is a joke that they're using a DeLorean.

00:03:29 ◼   ► And now it's like, oh, man, that cool time machine car.

00:03:31 ◼   ► It's like, no, no, no.

00:03:32 ◼   ► It's a punch line because nobody wanted a DeLorean.

00:03:36 ◼   ► That's not why.

00:03:37 ◼   ► And I take slight exception to that.

00:03:41 ◼   ► DeLorean was rare and exotic.

00:03:42 ◼   ► If you're a car person, you knew it was not a good car.

00:03:44 ◼   ► But if you were not a car person,

00:03:46 ◼   ► which I think what they were going for in the Back

00:03:49 ◼   ► the future movie was that both people are not car people, have no idea what a DeLorean

00:03:53 ◼   ► is other than that it is a rare car that they've never seen and that it has weird doors and

00:03:57 ◼   ► it's basically exotic. Well, I don't know because it was also John DeLorean, they went

00:04:02 ◼   ► bankrupt and he went to jail. Yeah, but nobody knows that but car people. Oh no, no, that's

00:04:07 ◼   ► not true because I'm not a car person and I was just a kid in 1985 and I totally knew

00:04:10 ◼   ► that and that was that moment where he says "a DeLorean?" where it's like "oh, it's a

00:04:14 ◼   ► joke, point and laugh at the silly car." Well, I think we now need the oral history of Back

00:04:18 ◼   ► of the Future and talk to you. Who wrote it? Would Zemeckis write it? Who wrote Back to

00:04:23 ◼   ► the Future? He prob... Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis both, maybe? Anyway, we'll have to see what they

00:04:29 ◼   ► intended with that joke. But no, that's not why I didn't pick it. Well, partly because I am a car

00:04:33 ◼   ► guy and it's not a good car, but it's different than picking, okay, not the DeLorean, but the

00:04:37 ◼   ► DeLorean from Back to the Future. I think it's fine, but it never seemed like a cool car to me.

00:04:47 ◼   ► It seemed like a cool prop in a movie that did stuff, but I never said, man, it would be great if I had a DeLorean with Mr. Fusion on the back.

00:04:53 ◼   ► I never, I never, it was never an object of like, uh, you know, I never, never fantasized about how cool it would be to drive that, which is different than, than the people.

00:05:01 ◼   ► A lot of people now would say, uh, in the world of the movie, I wouldn't want that car, but outside the world of the movie as an artifact from Back to the Future, which is a movie that I love, I would love to have one of those cars.

00:05:11 ◼   ► I also don't fall into that category, but I can understand that more.

00:05:13 ◼   ► It's interesting how you define favorite. This is how we do robot or not. It's all how

00:05:18 ◼   ► you define it. So I will say the other one that I thought of, I didn't make a pick because

00:05:22 ◼   ► the question wasn't for me. The other one I thought of was the Batmobile.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Yeah, no.

00:05:25 ◼   ► And I was actually thinking of kind of like the Adam West Batmobile, but also other Batmobiles.

00:05:29 ◼   ► Those are fun fictional cars. But I think the flying car from Blade Runner is a good

00:05:34 ◼   ► one. That's a good one.

00:05:35 ◼   ► And the only other one that came to mind, I hope I'm getting this right. There was a

00:05:40 ◼   ► There's a movie—I've got to look it up on IMDb—called The Wraith, I believe, that

00:05:44 ◼   ► would show on crappy television late at night.

00:05:49 ◼   ► From 1986.

00:05:50 ◼   ► I think that's what it's called.

00:05:52 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:05:53 ◼   ► There's a movie with a name very similar to that that I may or may not be able to remember

00:05:56 ◼   ► at this point, and it had a car in it that would appear at various times and speed by,

00:06:03 ◼   ► and it was like a regular car that they just put a bunch of body cladding on to make it

00:06:07 ◼   ► look cool.

00:06:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I see it.

00:06:09 ◼   ► and it definitely seemed cool in the movie because the whole deal was that this thing

00:06:14 ◼   ► would just show up and speed by and its windows were all blacked out and it was mysterious

00:06:17 ◼   ► and futury and stuff like that. But I also wouldn't pick that. The spinner is my pick

00:06:21 ◼   ► of the ones that I could think of. I continue to believe that there is a car that I would

00:06:25 ◼   ► pick over that that I just am not able to think of.

00:06:27 ◼   ► Well, it has been an epic Snell Talk, so thank you to Mark for your question. We have some

00:06:32 ◼   ► follow-up. I want to mention this is where we sell products, so sorry about that. But

00:06:39 ◼   ► The people have asked for the Upgrade t-shirt and the Upgrade hoodie.

00:06:45 ◼   ► It's a limited run, we do it for a few weeks and then it goes away again for a while.

00:06:48 ◼   ► I just wanted to mention, the links will be in the show notes, the Upgrade hoodie is available

00:06:53 ◼   ► now from Cotton Bureau and the Upgrade t-shirt is available now from Cotton Bureau and from

00:06:57 ◼   ► Teespring.

00:06:59 ◼   ► You can check if you're in Europe, the shipping may be cheaper from Teespring.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Cotton Bureau will have the fancy black-on-black version as well as there's a grey version

00:07:08 ◼   ► and I think a red version. And there's a six-color shirt available too, so we'll put links to

00:07:12 ◼   ► all of that in the show notes. But if you would like to buy a t-shirt or one of our

00:07:15 ◼   ► fabulous upgrade your wardrobe hoodies with the secret message on the inside, you can

00:07:23 ◼   ► do that now through early December. I think it's December 3rd is the deadline for most

00:07:27 ◼   ► of it. So check that out if you are needing a podcast t-shirt. Also, I wanted to mention

00:07:33 ◼   ► Another thing that's ending shortly, which is the AppCamp for Girls Indiegogo campaign,

00:07:39 ◼   ► is ending in a couple of days. They're trying to expand to three more cities by 2020.

00:07:45 ◼   ► They have raised more than $50,000, which is awesome. They were hoping to raise $75,000.

00:07:51 ◼   ► So I think this is a great campaign for a great cause. I know, John, you guys have supported on

00:07:59 ◼   ► ATP as well, and they've got a couple more days if people haven't supported them to give

00:08:03 ◼   ► them a shot in the arm.

00:08:04 ◼   ► Yeah, you should read their blog, too. They have a blog, and I think it's each day they're

00:08:08 ◼   ► having an interview with someone who supports AppCamp, asking them why they support it.

00:08:12 ◼   ► So if you're wondering why you might want to give money to these people, read the blog

00:08:17 ◼   ► for a little bit. Read the various testimonials of the people who support the cause.

00:08:20 ◼   ► Yeah, it's pretty awesome. So definitely check it out, but we will put a link in the show

00:08:24 ◼   ► notes to the AppCamp 2020 Indiegogo campaign.

00:08:27 ◼   ► I had a couple quick follow-up items about things that Myke and I have talked about a

00:08:32 ◼   ► while that I just wanted to throw in here. One is about the iPad Pro, because Myke and

00:08:37 ◼   ► I talk about that a lot. And there was a story this week where Satya Nadella was in India,

00:08:42 ◼   ► I believe, and at one point he just walked past some journalists who were using iPads

00:08:46 ◼   ► and said, "Get a real computer." I mean, I guess he's joking, but it's also kind of like

00:08:51 ◼   ► a bully move or something. I don't know. And that prompted me. That actually happened the

00:08:57 ◼   ► same day that Apple released this YouTube, this commercial on YouTube. It's not a YouTube

00:09:03 ◼   ► commercial. It's like an actual television commercial, but I see it on YouTube, called

00:09:07 ◼   ► What's a Computer, which shows a girl using her iPad for all these things. And at the

00:09:11 ◼   ► end she's asked, "What kind of computer is that?" And she says, "What's a computer?"

00:09:14 ◼   ► Because it's not a computer, it's an iPad. And that prompted me to write a post where

00:09:18 ◼   ► I was basically like mad at Satya Nadella a little bit because, you know, it's all in

00:09:22 ◼   ► how you use these things.

00:09:27 ◼   ► My iPad Pro is a real computer that gives me some amazing flexibility in terms of using

00:09:32 ◼   ► it like a laptop or putting it in a stand and using it kind of like an iMac or using

00:09:37 ◼   ► a flip out keyboard in the case of the smart keyboard or just having it with no keyboard

00:09:42 ◼   ► at all and it's a pure tablet.

00:09:44 ◼   ► And I wrote a little post about it.

00:09:46 ◼   ► I kind of feel like it's a, I was reminded of this when I saw a video of like, look at

00:09:49 ◼   ► Satya Nadella when he was a young man working at Microsoft,

00:09:52 ◼   ► that it is an old person thing to say,

00:09:56 ◼   ► like that he is still fighting the last war

00:10:00 ◼   ► or still in a Mac versus PC, Apple, Microsoft mindset that

00:10:08 ◼   ► is causing him to reflexively put down his quote unquote

00:10:12 ◼   ► "competitors" hardware, get a real computer,

00:10:14 ◼   ► you shouldn't have an iPad.

00:10:15 ◼   ► I know Apple and Microsoft are still competitive in that area,

00:10:18 ◼   ► is they both make laptops and tablet-y type things,

00:10:21 ◼   ► and in fact more competitive now than they were then,

00:10:23 ◼   ► because now they're both hardware and software, top to bottom, right?

00:10:27 ◼   ► But it still strikes me as a conflict that only old people care about,

00:10:32 ◼   ► as a comparison that most people don't care about,

00:10:36 ◼   ► especially since his Microsoft has been the Microsoft that

00:10:39 ◼   ► is expanding into being friendlier to Linux

00:10:43 ◼   ► and working on cloud computing and having their office

00:10:46 ◼   ► applications on all platforms including iOS. They may have been writing in

00:10:51 ◼   ► Microsoft Word on those iPads when he said get a real computer. Right, but he

00:10:55 ◼   ► can't he can't help it he's a he's an old man like us he remembers the old

00:10:59 ◼   ► wars and he'll never forget. Yeah just come on let him as long as they're using

00:11:03 ◼   ► Microsoft Office and and OneDrive. A tablet on every coffee table running

00:11:09 ◼   ► Microsoft software was that it? Yeah sure. I'm sure that's slightly wrong. I'm sure that's it.

00:11:13 ◼   ► Don't put it too close to the coffee though. You might spill it and ruin your technology.

00:11:19 ◼   ► I wanted to--so on ATP you've been talking about the iPhone X the last couple of weeks

00:11:25 ◼   ► and I'm assuming that almost everybody who listens knows that you're on the Accidental

00:11:30 ◼   ► Tech podcast every week with Marco Arment and Casey Liss. I was wondering if there was

00:11:36 ◼   ► more to say about this. I imagine you'll follow up. I know it's your wife's phone so that

00:11:41 ◼   ► leaves you in this interesting position where you have to sort of like get some

00:11:45 ◼   ► stolen moments with your wife's iPhone so that you can talk about it but I was

00:11:50 ◼   ► wondering if you have anything popped up in in ongoing use of that that either

00:11:55 ◼   ► you or your wife have had with a phone that is has struck you or is it just

00:12:00 ◼   ► sort of like settled in now that this is just what an iPhone X is? I still

00:12:04 ◼   ► solicit feedback from her occasionally she's such as got a few face ID failures

00:12:11 ◼   ► still.

00:12:12 ◼   ► So I think you're still adjusting

00:12:13 ◼   ► to what you have to do with yourself to make Face ID work.

00:12:19 ◼   ► And as I said on ATP, in the same way

00:12:21 ◼   ► that we all have had to adjust what we do with ourselves

00:12:24 ◼   ► to make Touch ID work, and eventually we all preemptively

00:12:28 ◼   ► recognize the scenarios where it doesn't work.

00:12:30 ◼   ► Like if we just washed our hands, just type in your code.

00:12:33 ◼   ► It's not going to go.

00:12:34 ◼   ► Although, as I've said in the past,

00:12:37 ◼   ► if you train your phone on your wet finger,

00:12:40 ◼   ► you can actually have some success with unlocking it.

00:12:42 ◼   ► Like, train it on your wet thumb as a separate finger

00:12:44 ◼   ► from your regular thumb.

00:12:47 ◼   ► You can have some success there, but most of us, I think,

00:12:49 ◼   ► either just try to dry our hands off

00:12:52 ◼   ► or just go right for a touch of the-- anyway,

00:12:53 ◼   ► Face ID has the same thing, so she continues

00:12:56 ◼   ► to make adjustments in that area.

00:12:57 ◼   ► Although, I will say, getting out of the shower

00:13:00 ◼   ► and flipping open my iPhone, I had that moment every time

00:13:03 ◼   ► where I'm like, oh my god, it just unlocked every time.

00:13:07 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a different set.

00:13:09 ◼   ► You get so used to one set of constraints that, you know, that's trading them for a

00:13:12 ◼   ► different set is, you know, it's, it's bad when it doesn't work in a scenario where it

00:13:17 ◼   ► might've worked, but the, just the opposite, like it seems amazing.

00:13:19 ◼   ► And we'll have this in modern technology.

00:13:21 ◼   ► I can get out of the shower and unlock my phone.

00:13:23 ◼   ► It's magic.

00:13:23 ◼   ► But I was walking down second street the other day in San Francisco, cause I was a

00:13:26 ◼   ► visiting little friend and, uh, and, uh, the sun was right behind me.

00:13:30 ◼   ► It was like in that perfect position where it's shining right over my head and down

00:13:33 ◼   ► onto the phone.

00:13:34 ◼   ► And I had my first failure that those people who are reviewing the, the, the

00:13:38 ◼   ► iPhone X the first week, we're reporting about, "Oh, in certain conditions in bright

00:13:42 ◼   ► sunlight it fails." I actually had my first one of those. I've been using it for weeks,

00:13:46 ◼   ► and that was the first time I'd experienced it. And I get the feeling like you've really

00:13:49 ◼   ► got to have the right conditions for it to sort of swamp the sensor where it just can't

00:13:54 ◼   ► see your face. But that was my first time.

00:13:57 ◼   ► I would like to see a—I heard a lot of different reports of that—I would like to see a scientific

00:14:00 ◼   ► test showing, like with an IR camera, like some people using camcorders or other—you

00:14:04 ◼   ► know, a good camera that is sensitive to IR to show that actually is what's the problem.

00:14:07 ◼   ► there's so much IR coming from the sun that the dots aren't visible, essentially. Or if

00:14:12 ◼   ► it just so happens that because of the position of the sun, you squint or the phone is too

00:14:19 ◼   ► close or too far or whatever, and then people are associating with the bright sunlight because

00:14:23 ◼   ► it makes sense. So the fact that it's too long to come up with, it could be just the

00:14:28 ◼   ► sun hasn't been bright enough because it's always foggy in San Francisco. I don't know.

00:14:33 ◼   ► But I'm always wary of these sort of like, you know, strange tales of Face ID working

00:14:38 ◼   ► or not working.

00:14:39 ◼   ► This is a thing we can test.

00:14:40 ◼   ► Like, you know, we can see those IR dots and we can see.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Look at this person's face.

00:14:43 ◼   ► I can't even see the dots because there's just too much IR from the sun.

00:14:46 ◼   ► Or if that can never be reproduced, then it just may be something else.

00:14:49 ◼   ► I also wanted to point people to a post that Dan Provost made just today from Studio Neat

00:14:56 ◼   ► about lens switching on the iPhone X.

00:15:00 ◼   ► turns out basically he's trying to figure out when the iPhones switch

00:15:04 ◼   ► because the iPhone 7 plus in low-light conditions will opt for a digitally

00:15:10 ◼   ► zoomed image from the 1x camera over the 2x camera not digitally zoomed in in

00:15:17 ◼   ► these low-light conditions where Apple has decided that the camera in the 1x

00:15:24 ◼   ► digitally zoomed is actually going to give you a higher quality picture than

00:15:28 ◼   ► the 2x in those very specific conditions and it will switch you over even without

00:15:32 ◼   ► you knowing and basically what he found is that the iPhone 10 is better in low

00:15:37 ◼   ► light conditions in the 2x camera and so it takes it it has to go down even

00:15:41 ◼   ► darker for it to switch over but he made a cool video where he put the two phones

00:15:47 ◼   ► in the glyph of course because studio need and I thought that was a nice

00:15:50 ◼   ► little tidbit speaking of people doing tests and actually find out what happens

00:15:54 ◼   ► I know, right? We can theorize all we want, but somebody could actually test it out and

00:15:59 ◼   ► see. If only I had infrared camera. I like how a lot of people found their old, like,

00:16:05 ◼   ► I actually do have one somewhere, their old camera that has a night mode. I actually,

00:16:10 ◼   ► I think my old Sony camera has this too, where it's, the night mode is essentially an infrared

00:16:14 ◼   ► mode. And then you could actually like tape over the infrared blaster and then go into

00:16:20 ◼   ► a dark place and actually take shots of the face ID stuff. So everybody's pulling out

00:16:27 ◼   ► their old cameras, their old digital camera. The footage looks like it's standard def instead

00:16:31 ◼   ► of high def. A better way might be to take like a modern high def home security camera,

00:16:35 ◼   ► a lot of those have night modes, and at least then you'll get an HD picture out of it. And

00:16:39 ◼   ► oh, I wanted to mention Steve Trotton-Smith, the person who likes to go through all sorts

00:16:43 ◼   ► of code dumps and other things. He's hacking through operating systems and firmware and

00:16:49 ◼   ► file formats and he had a thread on Twitter that I thought was really great

00:16:53 ◼   ► where he found that the portrait mode so in iPhone 8 and 10 8 plus and 10 if you

00:17:01 ◼   ► do portrait mode you get those portrait lighting effects and they're they're

00:17:08 ◼   ► editable you can actually edit them later you can edit them on the desktop

00:17:12 ◼   ► on photos on High Sierra because it also supports editing those those depth modes

00:17:17 ◼   ► later. And what Steve Trouton-Smith found out is that if you take those shots on

00:17:23 ◼   ► iPhone 7 Plus in iOS 11 where it's using the Heif format, the container format, to

00:17:30 ◼   ► put the metadata in there and all that, he actually was able to edit the

00:17:33 ◼   ► metadata of an image shot on the iPhone 7 Plus in iOS 11 and make it work as a

00:17:40 ◼   ► portrait mode picture. Which is interesting because it suggests that for

00:17:46 ◼   ► some reason whether it's just for marketing reasons or whether there were

00:17:49 ◼   ► there was a lack of confidence in the result could be either I don't want to

00:17:56 ◼   ► say just definitively that it's a marketing constraint but you can

00:18:01 ◼   ► actually change those picture shot on iPhone 7 plus with 11 I think they have

00:18:05 ◼   ► to be on 11 because they have to have the depth data baked into the file

00:18:08 ◼   ► format instead of just a flat file that it will work and so theoretically

00:18:15 ◼   ► somebody could write a script that takes iPhone 7 Plus, iOS 11 pictures and

00:18:21 ◼   ► modifies them so that they are they can use a depth effect after the fact which

00:18:26 ◼   ► is uh it's kind of cool and interesting I like that he did that I don't

00:18:30 ◼   ► necessarily like the idea that Apple may have hobbled that feature on the iPhone

00:18:33 ◼   ► 7 Plus so they could sell new phones if that's the case well there's a grand

00:18:37 ◼   ► tradition of you know doing that try making features exclusive to a new

00:18:41 ◼   ► product to make it more attractive.

00:18:43 ◼   ► And it's always the game of people,

00:18:47 ◼   ► depending on what your attitude is towards Apple,

00:18:49 ◼   ► that they're sneaky and are always

00:18:50 ◼   ► trying to get one over on you.

00:18:52 ◼   ► Literally everything that can only be on a new device

00:18:54 ◼   ► is because Apple is sneaky and really it

00:18:55 ◼   ► could be done on the old device.

00:18:57 ◼   ► And then the opposite of saying Apple would never do that

00:18:59 ◼   ► and the truth is somewhere in the middle,

00:19:01 ◼   ► but more towards Apple tends not to do that,

00:19:04 ◼   ► except in a few cases.

00:19:06 ◼   ► And a few cases, it's like they just

00:19:08 ◼   ► have enough to give a good value proposition to the new product.

00:19:13 ◼   ► And even when it seems clear that they are doing it just

00:19:16 ◼   ► to make the new product to differentiate

00:19:18 ◼   ► the new product from the old, there's

00:19:20 ◼   ► usually a kernel of truth to the technical explanation.

00:19:25 ◼   ► So in this case, it's like, oh, the old phones

00:19:27 ◼   ► would be too slow to capture, to show the portrait effect

00:19:30 ◼   ► in real time, rather.

00:19:31 ◼   ► You know how when you're taking the picture,

00:19:33 ◼   ► you can see the effect and see which one--

00:19:35 ◼   ► and the old phones can't do that.

00:19:37 ◼   ► They're not quite fast enough.

00:19:38 ◼   ► That could be true.

00:19:38 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:19:39 ◼   ► Someone can unlock it and try it and see what it's like.

00:19:42 ◼   ► Bottom line is, I think we all have

00:19:44 ◼   ► to accept that even if it was technically possible,

00:19:47 ◼   ► there's a cost to making it work on the older phones.

00:19:50 ◼   ► And sometimes if you're going to pick one or two features that

00:19:52 ◼   ► are used to differentiate your newer products,

00:19:55 ◼   ► make it be like animated emoji and some slightly frilly

00:19:59 ◼   ► portrait effects.

00:20:00 ◼   ► And that's fine.

00:20:01 ◼   ► That's much better than locking out

00:20:05 ◼   ► a quarter of your battery capacity in a Tesla

00:20:07 ◼   ► or something like that, right?

00:20:09 ◼   ► Like, how would you feel if you got your new iPhone

00:20:11 ◼   ► and it had a bigger battery than you thought,

00:20:14 ◼   ► but Apple just wouldn't ever let you see the last 25%

00:20:16 ◼   ► of capacity?

00:20:17 ◼   ► Like, that would be much worse.

00:20:18 ◼   ► So I'm comfortable living with both the uncertainty

00:20:21 ◼   ► and I would also be comfortable living with Apple saying,

00:20:23 ◼   ► actually, we made those for the iPhone X

00:20:24 ◼   ► because we need to differentiate our products

00:20:27 ◼   ► and actually would have been some extra work to make them

00:20:29 ◼   ► work on the older phones.

00:20:30 ◼   ► I like the idea that somebody, some enterprising person

00:20:32 ◼   ► can come up with a script to where you take your--

00:20:35 ◼   ► You know, you make a smart album in photos with your iPhone 7 Plus shots and drag them

00:20:43 ◼   ► out and run the, you know, and have, and process them.

00:20:46 ◼   ► And now they look like their iPhone 8 Plus or 10 shots and you get those features.

00:20:52 ◼   ► That's cool.

00:20:53 ◼   ► That's fun.

00:20:54 ◼   ► That's a fun thing that you get from poking around in the metadata format.

00:20:58 ◼   ► So.

00:20:59 ◼   ► Third party opportunity, but it would change the capture experience because if you can't

00:21:01 ◼   ► see it in real time, the process would be take the picture and then go to photos and

00:21:05 ◼   ► and then bring up the little wheel and then pick the one you want and then go back to

00:21:08 ◼   ► the camera and it's obviously much nicer to do it on the 10 all at once.

00:21:11 ◼   ► Yeah, take the picture with the depth effect on and then capture that data and then modify

00:21:15 ◼   ► it and all of that. Yeah. Many more things to talk about, but let me take a break and

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00:22:36 ◼   ► "Thank you so much for paying promptly. I see that you received the email and

00:22:40 ◼   ► then just pay me." So many people don't do that, but if you're nice like me, you

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00:23:12 ◼   ► Thank you, FreshBooks, for supporting Upgrade. So there was a report over the weekend from

00:23:18 ◼   ► a bunch of different sources. Steve Trout and Smith, again, was in this. A guy named

00:23:24 ◼   ► Jonathan Levin, I saw Guillaume Rambeau was involved at some point with at least

00:23:30 ◼   ► tweeting about it. 9to5Mac wrote a story about it and then a bunch of other

00:23:33 ◼   ► people picked it up from there, which is this idea that there will be an A10

00:23:38 ◼   ► processor, so that's the processor inside the iPhone 7, that there will be an A10

00:23:45 ◼   ► processor inside the iMac Pro when it ships, maybe by the end of this year.

00:23:52 ◼   ► So full-on iPhone processor running inside a Mac and the report suggests that there's

00:23:58 ◼   ► a thing, an operating system called Bridge OS that will actually boot the computer and

00:24:03 ◼   ► then Bridge OS, which is running on the A10, hands off the EFI firmware stuff to boot on

00:24:13 ◼   ► the Intel processor.

00:24:14 ◼   ► So like the gatekeeper of this Mac is actually an iPhone processor.

00:24:20 ◼   ► What do you think about this?

00:24:21 ◼   ► Well, if you're going to put another fairly powerful CPU in a computer, it's great to

00:24:26 ◼   ► put it in one where the price starts at like five grand, isn't that what the iMac Pro starts

00:24:30 ◼   ► at?

00:24:31 ◼   ► It's very expensive, so no real concern about, "Oh, how much does it cost?"

00:24:35 ◼   ► And honestly, I'm not sure how much an A10 costs, but I doubt it's even close to what

00:24:39 ◼   ► the Intel CPU costs, just because it is, in many respects, Apple's IP, so they don't have

00:24:48 ◼   ► to pay another company for all of their IP.

00:24:49 ◼   ► They do have to pay for the ARM license.

00:24:51 ◼   ► And they've been making it for more than a year.

00:24:52 ◼   ► So presumably the cost of manufacture per unit is down.

00:24:56 ◼   ► And they can afford to do that.

00:24:57 ◼   ► And it's small.

00:24:58 ◼   ► It's just plain small.

00:24:58 ◼   ► A lot of silicon is just like, how big is the chip?

00:25:00 ◼   ► Because you only get a certain number on the wafer.

00:25:02 ◼   ► And the fabs are expensive.

00:25:03 ◼   ► And so it's small.

00:25:04 ◼   ► So it kind of makes sense.

00:25:07 ◼   ► We've already got the ARM chip in the MacBook Pros and stuff

00:25:11 ◼   ► with a touch bar that's running the touch bar screen

00:25:14 ◼   ► with the little miniature version of iOS.

00:25:17 ◼   ► It's kind of funny now.

00:25:18 ◼   ► We always say that it's like a miniature version of iOS running on these chips,

00:25:23 ◼   ► whereas back in the day we used to say the phones are running a miniature version of Mac OS X.

00:25:27 ◼   ► It's all the same thing. It's all Darwin, that kernel, and various degrees of being

00:25:31 ◼   ► stripped down. Same thing with the phone, right? Not the phone, the watch.

00:25:34 ◼   ► It may seem like Apple has a lot of operating systems, but these are all

00:25:38 ◼   ► derived from the same family tree, and they're just various specializations of it.

00:25:44 ◼   ► Anyway, as for this being in the iMac Pro, it makes some sense to me.

00:25:49 ◼   ► Like, the idea of continuing to, some people would say continuing to lock down the Mac,

00:25:53 ◼   ► and I would just say continuing to try to make the Mac more secure, make it follow in

00:25:57 ◼   ► the footsteps of iOS devices, which do much more to verify that the code they're actually

00:26:03 ◼   ► running is the code that Apple expects them to run.

00:26:06 ◼   ► That's why it gets increasingly hard to jailbreak them, and to get in, you know, that's why

00:26:09 ◼   ► it's hard for law enforcement to get into someone's phone.

00:26:16 ◼   ► It's meant to be secure.

00:26:18 ◼   ► And the best way Apple has to enable that security

00:26:21 ◼   ► is to control as much as they can from the boot process.

00:26:25 ◼   ► From this thing is completely turned off to it is now running,

00:26:29 ◼   ► they want to control aspects of that.

00:26:32 ◼   ► Why does it need to be an A10 if all it's doing

00:26:35 ◼   ► is verifying that the thing it's about to boot

00:26:38 ◼   ► is what it expects it to be, right? And just using all the expertise and technology that they've

00:26:43 ◼   ► perfected over the years for the iPhone on the Mac. A10 seems like overkill. If, on the other

00:26:50 ◼   ► hand, it is doing other important things while the computer is running, like, for example,

00:26:54 ◼   ► being there to listen for the whole telephone, which is another thing that this investigation

00:26:57 ◼   ► has essentially revealed that is definitely a thing. That makes some sense. I mean, do you

00:27:02 ◼   ► need an A10 to listen for the whole telephone? Probably not. I think they do that on the little

00:27:06 ◼   ► M7 processor and you know, they have like a little processor that just wakes up when it hears a high telephone or whatever

00:27:11 ◼   ► but the big one is face ID, which as far as everyone knows the iMac Pro does not have but

00:27:19 ◼   ► Presumably this is not the one only iMac Pro that will ever be created

00:27:23 ◼   ► and if you wanted to make another iMac Pro in

00:27:28 ◼   ► 8 to 12 months that has face ID that

00:27:31 ◼   ► 810 sitting in there

00:27:35 ◼   ► might be more help or maybe not because this is this is the thing with the a10 and

00:27:40 ◼   ► A lot of people think once you have that processor in there. It's like having an iPhone inside your Mac

00:27:45 ◼   ► It really depends on what that processor is connected to so one of the questions that I see here

00:27:53 ◼   ► And now it says what about the iOS simulator developers who write their applications on?

00:27:59 ◼   ► their Mac

00:28:00 ◼   ► to be deployed on iPhones and iPads have a simulator in the development tools that will run their application in a little virtual

00:28:06 ◼   ► iOS device on their screen

00:28:09 ◼   ► And when that happens

00:28:11 ◼   ► As you know up until today what happens is it compiles their code?

00:28:17 ◼   ► Not for an ARM processor on a phone

00:28:19 ◼   ► But it compiles it for the x86 processor on their Mac and then it runs natively in x86 on their Mac

00:28:25 ◼   ► Mac. And that used to be way faster than iOS devices, but nowadays, depending on how things

00:28:30 ◼   ► are implemented, it can actually be slower, especially if the OpenGL implementation is

00:28:33 ◼   ► not efficient. Our friend James Thompson said that the main

00:28:37 ◼   ► reason I think that his about screen that's got the car game in it, the main reason that

00:28:44 ◼   ► that is in the Mac version is because he needed to test it on the Mac version because he couldn't

00:28:49 ◼   ► like, he can't test it in the simulator in iOS because—I don't want to get it

00:28:56 ◼   ► wrong, but that was my understanding—it's like, the simulator in iOS, he can't do

00:29:01 ◼   ► it because it's too slow.

00:29:02 ◼   ► Yeah, and there were some problems with it because they need to map from the world of

00:29:06 ◼   ► Metal and OpenGL ES on the iOS devices to the world of the crappy old OpenGL implementation

00:29:11 ◼   ► on the Mac, and sometimes that mapping is not done well or is entirely disabled because

00:29:16 ◼   ► there's a bug in it, it falls back to software mode, and it just becomes unusably slow.

00:29:20 ◼   ► But anyway, all this is to say that you don't need an ARM processor to run the simulator,

00:29:24 ◼   ► but if you had one, wouldn't it be great?

00:29:25 ◼   ► We can compile our applications down to the actual native ARM code for the A10 in this

00:29:31 ◼   ► case and run it in the quote-unquote "simulator" that's not really simulating, it's just really

00:29:35 ◼   ► running it.

00:29:36 ◼   ► For that to happen, that A10 would have to be an active participant in the running of

00:29:40 ◼   ► the system.

00:29:41 ◼   ► It would have to have access to the program that's in memory and be able to influence

00:29:45 ◼   ► what is displayed on the screen, and so on and so forth.

00:29:48 ◼   ► That is mostly in conflict with its rumored role

00:29:51 ◼   ► as the security gatekeeper for the boot process,

00:29:55 ◼   ► and also envisions a much more complicated system

00:29:59 ◼   ► where two CPUs of different architectures

00:30:01 ◼   ► have equal influence over actual running applications that

00:30:03 ◼   ► display things on the screen.

00:30:05 ◼   ► So with the limited information that's been revealed so far,

00:30:08 ◼   ► it seems unlikely to me that the ATAN or whatever is inside

00:30:11 ◼   ► there will be hooked up in such a way

00:30:14 ◼   ► that it can run applications and display them on the screen.

00:30:17 ◼   ► But who knows?

00:30:18 ◼   ► Because the thing that runs the touch bar,

00:30:19 ◼   ► that little tiny ARM processor, it

00:30:21 ◼   ► has its own little screen to display things on.

00:30:24 ◼   ► Like, who knows what Apple has planned for this in there?

00:30:27 ◼   ► But if it really is an A10, I would

00:30:29 ◼   ► have to think that their plans extend farther

00:30:31 ◼   ► than verifying the security of everything

00:30:35 ◼   ► before kicking off the boot process.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Because that seems like an awful waste of computing resources.

00:30:40 ◼   ► The rest of the time, the A10 is like, ho-hum.

00:30:43 ◼   ► I did such a good job on boot. I'll just power down here and I'll just hang out.

00:30:46 ◼   ► Well, yeah, my gut feeling is that this is obviously going to do more over time. At least

00:30:52 ◼   ► that's Apple's intent. But maybe not in the iMac Pro, if that makes any sense. I think Apple says,

00:30:59 ◼   ► "Look, we have these chips that we designed. We know how great they are. It's an advantage for us.

00:31:05 ◼   ► No PC is going to have this, so we can use it to make the Mac better, too. Use our knowledge,

00:31:12 ◼   ► glean from building all of these other products to make the Mac better without

00:31:15 ◼   ► just making a Mac that runs entirely on an A10 or an A11 necessarily. But maybe

00:31:22 ◼   ► the first one is let's just have a do let's stick it in there and see what

00:31:26 ◼   ► happens. Let's try these new things. Let's try the Bridge OS. Let's do the, you know,

00:31:30 ◼   ► the Siri kickoff listening stuff that Macs currently can't do. Maybe some other

00:31:34 ◼   ► security stuff is baked in there, but it's like let's just pick a few things

00:31:38 ◼   ► things and try it out and see and maybe you know maybe that's all that will be

00:31:43 ◼   ► above the waterline for the iMac Pro but they're already you know planning a

00:31:49 ◼   ► rollout that would do more over time you know there was a Mark Gurman report back

00:31:55 ◼   ► in February I want to say where he talked about this like hybrid Mac that

00:31:59 ◼   ► sounded and he was I think it was in a laptop context but it was something that

00:32:03 ◼   ► he was reporting that suggested there was like low laptops could use it in a

00:32:07 ◼   ► low-power mode where it would like the the ARM chip would be able to like check

00:32:11 ◼   ► your email in the background and things like that which seem like you were saying

00:32:14 ◼   ► that's a lot of weird kind of handoff and integration where you've got two

00:32:18 ◼   ► processors that are that are running the same system that seems pretty bizarre

00:32:23 ◼   ► but I could imagine Apple saying what you know once we've got this thing in

00:32:27 ◼   ► there we can start to build the Mac to be an operating system that it takes

00:32:32 ◼   ► advantage of this hybrid design instead of just running on the Intel processor

00:32:36 ◼   ► but you know it's not gonna you know the Mac iMac Pro would be like a first or

00:32:42 ◼   ► arguably because of the touch bar a second iteration on probably a long path

00:32:47 ◼   ► to getting more of those features visible it's like the starting point yeah

00:32:51 ◼   ► and also I wouldn't I'm not entirely again about knowing how this is

00:32:54 ◼   ► connected like how it's connected to hardware wise in the system or what what

00:32:58 ◼   ► role does it play if you were to draw a block diagram of this entire system it's

00:33:03 ◼   ► not even clear to me that it's what's powering the whole telephone because I

00:33:06 ◼   ► feel like an iMac Pro has CPU to spare to listen for [AUDIO OUT]

00:33:11 ◼   ► Like, not a feature that you required ARM processor,

00:33:13 ◼   ► just because--

00:33:14 ◼   ► The Hoy telephone.

00:33:15 ◼   ► --came on iOS devices first.

00:33:16 ◼   ► I'm sorry if I'm activating everybody's phones.

00:33:19 ◼   ► Just because they came out on phones first, like, oh,

00:33:22 ◼   ► now they're getting an A10.

00:33:23 ◼   ► Now they can do a Hoy telephone.

00:33:24 ◼   ► The iMac Pro is going to have monster processors in it.

00:33:27 ◼   ► There's no reason you need to do it--

00:33:28 ◼   ► The Hoy telephone.

00:33:29 ◼   ► --on a coprocessor.

00:33:30 ◼   ► It's just-- it'll work fine on the umpteen core Xeon that

00:33:33 ◼   ► is in there, right?

00:33:34 ◼   ► So I don't-- you know, just because someone discovered

00:33:36 ◼   ► The Hoy telephone.

00:33:37 ◼   ► —is in there.

00:33:37 ◼   ► Doesn't mean that it relies on the ATN processor.

00:33:40 ◼   ► Maybe it could.

00:33:40 ◼   ► Maybe there's some code sharing that they get away with that.

00:33:42 ◼   ► But it doesn't have to.

00:33:44 ◼   ► And so I'm left continuing to wonder what

00:33:47 ◼   ► the ATN might be used for.

00:33:50 ◼   ► And really, it really depends on how it's hooked up.

00:33:53 ◼   ► And as for the hybrid thing, I think

00:33:55 ◼   ► I mentioned this on a past ADP.

00:33:56 ◼   ► The thing that comes to my mind that actually also, I believe,

00:33:59 ◼   ► is a hybrid x86 ARM system that does other stuff with the ARM

00:34:05 ◼   ► CPU while the system is ostensibly asleep is the PlayStation 4.

00:34:10 ◼   ► And it was designed this way with the same type of arrangement.

00:34:12 ◼   ► Oh, when you're using your PlayStation 4, we're using an x86 CPU and a really big GPU,

00:34:16 ◼   ► and you're playing your games and stuff.

00:34:18 ◼   ► But when you put it into "rest mode," then we shut all that stuff down, but there's another

00:34:22 ◼   ► little processor off to the side that takes very little power, and that does stuff when

00:34:26 ◼   ► your system is basically off.

00:34:28 ◼   ► Like the fan is not running anymore, like maybe a light is pulsing on it or whatever,

00:34:32 ◼   ► but it makes no noise, and you think it's off.

00:34:33 ◼   ► This is the rest mode that the PlayStation 4 has.

00:34:36 ◼   ► But because there's another processor available, actually, we can do stuff like download our

00:34:40 ◼   ► software updates for your games, like these multi-gigabyte patches to games, so that next

00:34:44 ◼   ► morning when you go to play your game, "Oh, we've already downloaded that update for you

00:34:47 ◼   ► in your sleep."

00:34:48 ◼   ► Or maybe we updated your entire operating system and rebooted the thing for you.

00:34:51 ◼   ► I've heard at various times that this hybrid arrangement was more troublesome than they

00:34:56 ◼   ► had expected, and actually they merely run the x86 CPU in low-power mode to get the job

00:35:01 ◼   ► done, which maybe speaks to how difficult it is to have two different CPUs in two different

00:35:08 ◼   ► architectures, sharing resources, particularly the disk, but maybe also memory, and have

00:35:13 ◼   ► that work in a seamless way.

00:35:15 ◼   ► But either way, it shows that someone else had the same idea, that I have a big hot CPU,

00:35:20 ◼   ► which the iMac Pro will have, to use when you're really using it, and I have a wimpy,

00:35:24 ◼   ► cool CPU to do stuff when you're offline.

00:35:27 ◼   ► But the architecture difference really makes me wonder what's going on there.

00:35:31 ◼   ► This is also the kind of thing where Apple is probably not

00:35:33 ◼   ► going to come out and tell you, like,

00:35:35 ◼   ► there's no WWDC session on this.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Let me tell you how we implemented this hybrid CPU

00:35:40 ◼   ► arrangement.

00:35:41 ◼   ► Unless it's a developer-facing API, and maybe in that session

00:35:45 ◼   ► someone will brag about how they did it.

00:35:47 ◼   ► But otherwise, it's just going to be

00:35:48 ◼   ► people looking at how the things are connected.

00:35:50 ◼   ► And clever people like Steve Drouton-Smith and Guillermo

00:35:53 ◼   ► Rambo figuring it out for us and telling us,

00:35:56 ◼   ► how is that connected to everything else?

00:35:58 ◼   ► And how can we work together to do something cool with it?

00:36:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, instantly you start to think about things like,

00:36:06 ◼   ► oh, well, if they built a touchscreen Mac that also had--

00:36:09 ◼   ► could you also run iOS apps?

00:36:11 ◼   ► Or could you reboot into iOS or something like that?

00:36:13 ◼   ► It's like, well, maybe, but that's super weird.

00:36:16 ◼   ► That's a hell of a waste of an iMac, with no touchscreen on it, by the way.

00:36:19 ◼   ► Well, no, that's what I was thinking is, oh, man,

00:36:21 ◼   ► if the iMac Pro is a touchscreen iMac that runs iOS, too, then I'm in.

00:36:28 ◼   ► But that's not happening.

00:36:29 ◼   ► You don't want people putting their grimy fingers

00:36:32 ◼   ► on your 5K display.

00:36:33 ◼   ► Probably not.

00:36:35 ◼   ► Probably not.

00:36:35 ◼   ► Only when it's tilted beyond a certain angle.

00:36:37 ◼   ► It's a threshold of fingerprint acceptability.

00:36:40 ◼   ► Vertical, no touch.

00:36:41 ◼   ► Now it starts tilting.

00:36:42 ◼   ► It starts tilting.

00:36:43 ◼   ► You're like, at a certain point, you're like, all right,

00:36:44 ◼   ► you can touch the screen.

00:36:45 ◼   ► Now it's like the-- what is it, the Surface Studio,

00:36:47 ◼   ► the Microsoft thing?

00:36:48 ◼   ► I'm not going to let anybody touch my Mac Pro with me.

00:36:50 ◼   ► What if it was leaning really far down, like almost flat?

00:36:53 ◼   ► Yeah, sure.

00:36:54 ◼   ► No, I think I'm going to write an article at some point.

00:36:57 ◼   ► I did the math a while ago about like the various screen sizes and all of that.

00:37:01 ◼   ► And I totally would be into a Microsoft Surface Studio kind of thing running iOS.

00:37:10 ◼   ► I want Apple to do that sooner rather than later. I don't know if they will.

00:37:15 ◼   ► I think that job one is to get the iPad sales growing, which they're starting to do.

00:37:22 ◼   ► But I would be really, I'd be super intrigued by a, you know, basically like desktop-ish iOS device.

00:37:28 ◼   ► But I actually saw, was it Steven Sinofsky? I saw somebody interesting on Twitter say that, you know,

00:37:36 ◼   ► one of Apple's next steps may be not to make a weird hybrid Mac thingy that is iOS and Mac,

00:37:44 ◼   ► but to just embrace the laptop form factor and just make an iOS laptop. Like, it's not an iPad

00:37:51 ◼   ► with a case, just like, "No, this is a little laptop that runs iOS, and it looks like the

00:37:55 ◼   ► MacBook, but it's just iOS, and you can't take the keyboard off and enjoy." And just see what

00:38:03 ◼   ► would happen, because people might love that or they might hate it. I don't know.

00:38:07 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer** Yeah, no, I think that is,

00:38:08 ◼   ► based on how they've been going, that seems like a logical way station before you get to the 27-inch

00:38:15 ◼   ► iPad Pro, right? Before you get to the iPad that is plugged in all the time, essentially.

00:38:20 ◼   ► the service, because everybody's using their iPads, including you, as little crappy laptops

00:38:26 ◼   ► with a bad hinge, essentially.

00:38:27 ◼   ► Like, you have to find some way to prop up this floppy little keyboard, and, you know,

00:38:32 ◼   ► like, boy, if this was just—and you have those Logitech cases that sort of clamp onto

00:38:35 ◼   ► the bottom of your iPad and make it into a little laptop, and it's like, just Apple,

00:38:39 ◼   ► just weld the suckers together.

00:38:41 ◼   ► Give me an iPad with a keyboard attached to it.

00:38:44 ◼   ► It's a form factor.

00:38:45 ◼   ► We all know and love it.

00:38:46 ◼   ► It'll work great.

00:38:47 ◼   ► And, assuming they get their keyboard issues worked out, it should be something that they

00:38:50 ◼   ► much better than even the best Logitech little clampy thing that turns your iPad into a keyboard.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Because that's not a speculative use case. People are doing that today.

00:38:59 ◼   ► I use my iPad as a laptop all the time. I have the Brydge keyboard, which has got a

00:39:03 ◼   ► little clampy thing, and you just kind of drop it in, and it's a laptop. And then you

00:39:07 ◼   ► pull it out, and it's a tablet again. And if Apple could do that, the problem there

00:39:11 ◼   ► is that Microsoft has done that, and a bunch of other companies have done convertibles.

00:39:15 ◼   ► And there are lots of ergonomic issues with it, and I can see why Apple might not want

00:39:18 ◼   ► to do that, but that's fine. Just make it a laptop and see because an iPad in laptop

00:39:23 ◼   ► mode is pretty great and I think people would like it.

00:39:27 ◼   ► Yeah, and it can be kind of convertible. You don't have to tear the keyboard off. Like

00:39:30 ◼   ► you don't have to go the fold. Just fold it back.

00:39:32 ◼   ► Fold it back. Yeah, exactly right. Totally do that. I think that's the next thing I want

00:39:37 ◼   ► to see from iOS, honestly, is I want a weird iOS device. I want a not a spin-off watch.

00:39:44 ◼   ► The eMate running iOS.

00:39:45 ◼   ► Right? I mean, I kind of do. The eMate is actually a great analog, which is like, "Oh,

00:39:49 ◼   ► wait a second. I thought this was just these little handheld things and you made a laptop

00:39:52 ◼   ► out of it?" It's like, "Yeah, I kind of want that. I want a weird iOS device that's not

00:39:57 ◼   ► an Apple TV, not a watch, not some sort of spin-off device that runs a version of iOS."

00:40:01 ◼   ► But like, no, this is running apps. It's not an iPad. It's not an iPhone. It's this thing.

00:40:07 ◼   ► And I would love for them to do that. I think that's interesting questioning for Apple about

00:40:12 ◼   ► what do you sometimes I think Apple doesn't want to make any product unless

00:40:17 ◼   ► it's going to be a hit so they don't want to make a weird product that people

00:40:22 ◼   ► might not like like well no if everybody isn't going to love it then we want to

00:40:25 ◼   ► do it but at some point you want to have a product line right you want to have

00:40:29 ◼   ► well you can get the macbook at the 13 inch macbook pro or the 15 inch at some

00:40:33 ◼   ► point like yeah okay you get the iPad pro and the iPad you've got this thing

00:40:37 ◼   ► whatever it is you got the you know you and take your pic slide right in there I

00:40:42 ◼   ► I would love to see that.

00:40:43 ◼   ► - I know a lot of current Mac laptop users

00:40:46 ◼   ► who would love the key travel on the E-Mate.

00:40:48 ◼   ► - I wanna talk about laptop designs a little bit

00:40:51 ◼   ► in a little while, but first I wanted to mention

00:40:53 ◼   ► another thing that happened last week,

00:40:54 ◼   ► which is that the HomePod got delayed.

00:40:56 ◼   ► This is one of those, and I saw a bunch of people saying,

00:40:59 ◼   ► "Whoa, this is really surprising."

00:41:02 ◼   ► And my reaction was, "No, I feel like Apple

00:41:06 ◼   ► introduces hardware in June and says it'll ship

00:41:08 ◼   ► at the end of the year."

00:41:10 ◼   ► Did we not all, those of us who observe Apple, go, "Eh, maybe."

00:41:15 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:41:16 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:41:17 ◼   ► What they did was announce the thing that everybody else already knew.

00:41:20 ◼   ► Yeah, so when they did that, there are legitimate questions about why you announced it there,

00:41:25 ◼   ► other than the fact that the rumors were swirling.

00:41:28 ◼   ► Did they need to announce it there?

00:41:29 ◼   ► There was no developer story.

00:41:30 ◼   ► I have a theory that they originally intended for there to be a developer story, and then

00:41:35 ◼   ► they didn't have it ready, and so they didn't have a developer story.

00:41:39 ◼   ► was I'm starting to believe that way more now because I think iOS 11.2 has

00:41:46 ◼   ► SiriKit for HomePod in it which is not something they talked about in June that

00:41:54 ◼   ► there would be any kind of tie-in between SiriKit and apps running on

00:41:57 ◼   ► iPhone and HomePod and yet it seems to be happening now so that makes me wonder

00:42:03 ◼   ► if like some of the delay here may be that the software and the end this

00:42:07 ◼   ► developer story, whether they changed course, or whether it was always just kind of lagging

00:42:11 ◼   ► and they were hoping to get it back up to speed. But I think it's arguable, like, did

00:42:17 ◼   ► they really need to introduce it because it wasn't ready. All they were doing with the

00:42:21 ◼   ► press was having them listen to the speakers. You couldn't interact with it in any way.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Anytime Apple announces hardware and says it's going to be months before it's ready,

00:42:31 ◼   ► for me, I immediately go, "Oh, well, if it's ready by then," because when it's that far

00:42:36 ◼   ► there's just so many things that could go wrong.

00:42:38 ◼   ► Well, the tradition is that if they show hardware that early,

00:42:42 ◼   ► that the thing that's going to make it not ship

00:42:44 ◼   ► is that the software is not ready.

00:42:46 ◼   ► Like, that's the traditional Apple way.

00:42:47 ◼   ► Like, oh, the hardware actually is ready,

00:42:49 ◼   ► because the hardware team has their stuff together,

00:42:51 ◼   ► and they have a more limited domain.

00:42:53 ◼   ► But the software is the more difficult thing.

00:42:55 ◼   ► And yeah, so when they only showed the HomePod with music,

00:42:58 ◼   ► it was so clear, even Apple itself,

00:43:00 ◼   ► that this is not the full story of this product.

00:43:02 ◼   ► Despite the fact that all we can show you is music,

00:43:04 ◼   ► In their brief presentation, they

00:43:06 ◼   ► alluded to non-music uses, like, will we

00:43:09 ◼   ► be able to talk to the HomePod?

00:43:10 ◼   ► Oh, yes, of course you'll be able to talk to your HomePod.

00:43:12 ◼   ► Not today, obviously.

00:43:13 ◼   ► Like, don't talk to it now.

00:43:14 ◼   ► It won't hear you.

00:43:15 ◼   ► But, you know, eventually you will.

00:43:16 ◼   ► And it's like, what will I be able to say to the HomePod?

00:43:19 ◼   ► Will it be like--

00:43:19 ◼   ► The Huawei telephone.

00:43:20 ◼   ► Sorry, I'm activating everybody's things today.

00:43:22 ◼   ► Will it be like the Google Home?

00:43:24 ◼   ► And Apple was not sharing anything about that.

00:43:26 ◼   ► And so we were left to speculate.

00:43:28 ◼   ► But it was clear that this was not iPod Hi-Fi Mark II, right?

00:43:32 ◼   ► That you were going to be able to talk to this.

00:43:34 ◼   ► cylindrical. And we all know if it's cylindrical, you can talk to it. That's the rule of the

00:43:39 ◼   ► Internet of Things as established by Amazon.

00:43:41 ◼   ► That's what I tell my fire hydrant outside my house every day.

00:43:44 ◼   ► You say, "Fire hydrant? What's the weather today?" And it just doesn't answer.

00:43:48 ◼   ► "Hail hydrant," I say. That's the activation code for it.

00:43:51 ◼   ► Wow, very controversial plot development. So yeah. And why didn't they demonstrate it?

00:43:56 ◼   ► Like, a feature that they said this thing is going to have, but they can't tell us anything

00:43:59 ◼   ► about it and they're not going to demonstrate it? Because the software's not ready. So I'm

00:44:03 ◼   ► I'm assuming that the software still isn't ready, and that's why the HomePod is being

00:44:13 ◼   ► delayed until next year.

00:44:14 ◼   ► That's fine.

00:44:15 ◼   ► I'm in no hurry.

00:44:16 ◼   ► Here's the thing.

00:44:17 ◼   ► When they say, "And it will be shipping in December," it's like, why even bother saying

00:44:21 ◼   ► that?

00:44:22 ◼   ► Even if you could hit that date, you've missed the holidays, so why even bother?

00:44:25 ◼   ► For bragging rights, for participation medal, we technically shipped on December 24th.

00:44:30 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

00:44:31 ◼   ► the holidays if you're not shipping hardware in October,

00:44:34 ◼   ► essentially.

00:44:35 ◼   ► So the iMac Pro can ship on December 28th, and it's fine.

00:44:38 ◼   ► It's not a big stocking stuffer.

00:44:39 ◼   ► It's not a stocking stuffer, exactly right.

00:44:41 ◼   ► But the HomePod, you could see that people were probably

00:44:43 ◼   ► thinking, oh, that might be a great thing

00:44:45 ◼   ► to put under the tree.

00:44:46 ◼   ► And that's not going to happen now.

00:44:48 ◼   ► I do wonder if there are HomePods built and ready to go,

00:44:53 ◼   ► and it's all a software issue, just

00:44:55 ◼   ► like how a bunch of iPhone 10s immediately

00:44:57 ◼   ► wanted to do a software update.

00:44:59 ◼   ► They got built so long ago, they need a software update now.

00:45:01 ◼   ► they were ready to go, but that the software is just not is not there. I agree with you.

00:45:06 ◼   ► I think it's more likely that it's a hard it's a software issue than a hardware issue

00:45:09 ◼   ► just because Apple tends to be really solid with the hardware. And this is a complex new

00:45:15 ◼   ► product that's got a lot of software in it. And they just made a new introduction with

00:45:19 ◼   ► the HomeKit stuff that was not there before. So that's another piece of the puzzle that

00:45:24 ◼   ► maybe I've seen a couple analysts say the state of the market has changed enough in

00:45:28 ◼   ► last six months that it's also possible that Apple decided to recalibrate the

00:45:32 ◼   ► product a little bit and change a little bit about how it works. I'm not sure if I

00:45:35 ◼   ► believe that or not. There's only so much. What can they change at this point? It's written by people who don't

00:45:39 ◼   ► understand what goes into making a product. They can change the software.

00:45:44 ◼   ► A little bit. But I think the problem is that by the time it takes to make the

00:45:48 ◼   ► change to catch up to the last six months, another six months will have passed.

00:45:53 ◼   ► And at some point you just gotta ship it. Just get it out there and

00:45:57 ◼   ► then if you can do some software updates later, do them. But there's no doubt that whatever

00:46:04 ◼   ► is going on, they would have sold as many as they could have made, I think, for the

00:46:09 ◼   ► holidays. And so this is a big thing just in terms of saying, "No, we can't do it."

00:46:14 ◼   ► Essentially, spend your stocking stuff or money, your $450 speaker money somewhere else

00:46:21 ◼   ► or don't spend it at all, but you can't spend it with us because we can't do it.

00:46:25 ◼   ► said that in September. That's the thing. When they made this announcement in September,

00:46:29 ◼   ► they were announcing, "You can't buy this for Christmas this year." Even with their

00:46:34 ◼   ► ship date, when they say shipping in December, it's staying to the entire world. So why announce

00:46:38 ◼   ► it? If it's staying to the entire world, you will not be able to get this for Christmas

00:46:41 ◼   ► for anybody unless you are incredibly lucky, but probably you won't be able to.

00:46:46 ◼   ► They pre-announced their failure to make the holiday season. But why announce it at all?

00:46:51 ◼   ► I think that announcing it was the right move, because at that point, it was an open secret

00:46:57 ◼   ► that they were doing something like this.

00:46:59 ◼   ► It was such a fervent rumor, and other competitors were making moves.

00:47:04 ◼   ► I think Apple needed to put a stake in the ground and say, "We are going to enter this

00:47:11 ◼   ► market not today, but as soon as we can."

00:47:15 ◼   ► And the end-of-the-year date is one of those kind of, "Let's be aggressive, and let's

00:47:19 ◼   ► to look better in press releases because if it was next year, it crosses some line. And

00:47:23 ◼   ► everybody says, "Apple announces a product, but it won't even ship till next year." Whereas

00:47:27 ◼   ► if you announce it as December, then you get to do this delay later. Maybe they were aiming

00:47:31 ◼   ► for December again. Shipping anything in December doesn't make any sense to me. They did the

00:47:35 ◼   ► same thing with the iMacs. Remember when they announced iMac, not the iMac Pro, but a while

00:47:39 ◼   ► ago one of the iMacs was announced to ship in December or something? And I think that

00:47:43 ◼   ► one also slipped. It's like, it's an admission of defeat that we are announcing that we have

00:47:48 ◼   ► failed to meet this holiday quarter, but it would make no sense to delay it until the

00:47:52 ◼   ► next holiday, so we're going to get it out to you as soon as possible. But with the HomePod,

00:47:55 ◼   ► they just wanted the world to know Apple is entering this market. So I think it was the

00:47:58 ◼   ► right move to announce it.

00:48:00 ◼   ► I do agree about the mental boundary of 2018, because the AirPower mat is the example, right?

00:48:08 ◼   ► They announced the AirPower mat and the new charging thing for the AirPods, and they're

00:48:12 ◼   ► like, "This will happen in 2018." And literally, I had this visceral response, which was like,

00:48:17 ◼   ► 2018, are you kidding? But if they had said, "Well, it's late 2017," I would have been

00:48:24 ◼   ► like, "Oh, okay. That's not far. This is 2017. That's this year. Great."

00:48:28 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like when you leave work for the holidays and you say, "See you next year."

00:48:32 ◼   ► It's the same people.

00:48:36 ◼   ► Would you buy one? Are you interested in this product? You've got Google Home stuff in your

00:48:40 ◼   ► house, right?

00:48:41 ◼   ► I'm kind of interested in it, especially now that some leak has revealed, apparently, that

00:48:45 ◼   ► can actually make them work as a stereo pair. Like, one can be left channel, one can be

00:48:49 ◼   ► right channel. Well, that would be... no, that's true. They told us that. That they

00:48:56 ◼   ► will... you can pair them. They told us you can have more than one of them, but it wasn't

00:48:59 ◼   ► clear to me from their announcement whether you can just have more than one of them and

00:49:02 ◼   ► they'll figure out how to fill the room with sound. That was something they knew. They

00:49:05 ◼   ► told us that at our not-a-briefing listening party in a grove somewhere that I can't admit

00:49:11 ◼   ► that it happened.

00:49:12 ◼   ► Anyway, that makes a difference to me because I'm not expecting this particular cylinder

00:49:17 ◼   ► to be as good a conversation in terms of what can I say and how much do I have to think

00:49:23 ◼   ► about saying it.

00:49:24 ◼   ► Based on my experience with Siri, Google Home is far superior.

00:49:28 ◼   ► A far superior conversationalist.

00:49:30 ◼   ► So sure, the main selling points for me, for the Apple thing, are it has ties to Apple

00:49:37 ◼   ► ecosystem and I have some things in the Apple ecosystem, so there could be some synergies

00:49:41 ◼   ► For example, my photos are an Apple's photos thing.

00:49:46 ◼   ► And what else do I have?

00:49:47 ◼   ► I don't have my calendar there, so I can't use that.

00:49:49 ◼   ► But anyway, there is some synergy there.

00:49:51 ◼   ► And the big pitch that they did make was, this sounds really good.

00:49:54 ◼   ► And Google Home does not sound good.

00:49:56 ◼   ► And I don't really have anything that I can talk to to ask it to play

00:49:59 ◼   ► music that sounds very good.

00:50:00 ◼   ► So I might be interested to try one of these as a far superior way

00:50:05 ◼   ► to fill a room with music with the ease of a voice command.

00:50:11 ◼   ► Unfortunately, I subscribe to Google Play Music,

00:50:13 ◼   ► and I don't subscribe to Apple Music.

00:50:15 ◼   ► So I'm not sure this synergy works out for me buying one.

00:50:17 ◼   ► So I haven't made a hard and fast decision yet.

00:50:19 ◼   ► Most likely, I'll read the reviews

00:50:22 ◼   ► and see what everyone thinks about it.

00:50:24 ◼   ► I will probably succumb to my curiosity and buy one,

00:50:26 ◼   ► but I will also have to try to find a literal physical place

00:50:29 ◼   ► in the house to put it.

00:50:30 ◼   ► Because I don't have that much room for cylinders,

00:50:33 ◼   ► and it's not clear to me whether this should be in the kitchen/dining room area or the

00:50:37 ◼   ► living room area or someplace else. So I guess count me as on the fence.

00:50:43 ◼   ► Yeah, so my big difference is that I am an Apple Music subscriber and I really like it.

00:50:49 ◼   ► I like it. I like the playlists that they make. I'm at my desk a lot and working on

00:50:57 ◼   ► my Mac and for all the things that I can complain about about iTunes, it works pretty well at

00:51:04 ◼   ► playing my music and even integrating and letting me switch very easily between my purchased

00:51:10 ◼   ► music library and my Apple Music streaming library. And so one of my frustrations with

00:51:18 ◼   ► the Echo is that it doesn't do that. And to the point where we have the one sort of centrally

00:51:25 ◼   ► located Echo in the kitchen and I bought the one device Amazon Music Streaming

00:51:30 ◼   ► package for that which is cheap because it's only on a single device just so

00:51:35 ◼   ► that it has access to every song we can ask it to play. I would prefer to use

00:51:43 ◼   ► Apple Music. I think the challenge is that this is a starkly an

00:51:47 ◼   ► ecosystem play where Amazon wants you to pay for Amazon's music thing, but I

00:51:52 ◼   ► don't want to use Amazon's music thing on my Mac and my iPhone. I want to use

00:51:56 ◼   ► Apple Music. So the great advantage of the HomePod is that it would give us

00:52:01 ◼   ► voice control of music using Apple Music and I wouldn't have to worry about these

00:52:04 ◼   ► other services. It does seem a little bit silly to have services have hardware

00:52:10 ◼   ► based on services. It also seems a little bit silly to buy the same service

00:52:14 ◼   ► essentially multiple times because you have different boxes from different

00:52:17 ◼   ► manufacturers and the nice thing about Sonos is that it does do Apple Music.

00:52:21 ◼   ► The problem is that all their voice integration stuff that they've announced

00:52:24 ◼   ► doesn't support Apple Music. It supports Amazon's music service because Amazon

00:52:29 ◼   ► doesn't want you to play Apple Music from an Echo for logical reasons. So it's

00:52:34 ◼   ► frustrating all that you know ecosystem back and forth but it does make the home

00:52:39 ◼   ► pod more interesting to me just because I've seen how we use the Echo and if it

00:52:45 ◼   ► sounded better and had access to the entire Apple Music library and all my

00:52:49 ◼   ► playlists and all of that you know which it will it doesn't make it does make it

00:52:55 ◼   ► more interesting to me the presence of Siri does not excite me as much as it

00:52:59 ◼   ► does

00:52:59 ◼   ► Apple Music just because I am an Apple Music customer. Remember when that platform

00:53:03 ◼   ► lock-in was so much simpler where it was just the "I bought Photoshop and

00:53:06 ◼   ► Microsoft Office for the Mac and if I switch to Windows I have to rebuy that

00:53:10 ◼   ► expensive software" and that was it and now we're talking about I pay some

00:53:14 ◼   ► company far away to give me access to all the world's music that they keep on their

00:53:18 ◼   ► servers. But I can only play that music through certain pieces of hardware devices that are

00:53:23 ◼   ► either made by them or partnered with them, but other people will sell me hardware devices

00:53:27 ◼   ► that interact with other things that I pay people to store for me on their computers.

00:53:30 ◼   ► It's just like this massively distributed, huge, world-spanning virtual goods marketplace

00:53:35 ◼   ► instead of "I bought Photoshop for the Mac and it cost $600 and if I switched to Windows

00:53:40 ◼   ► I'd have to buy another cardboard box with Photoshop."

00:53:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it reminds me of the VHS and Beta days, which were a long time ago, but it's that

00:53:47 ◼   ► same thing of like, "You must choose! You must choose!"

00:53:50 ◼   ► But it's so much more complicated, as you just outlined. It's not just software and

00:53:55 ◼   ► hardware and match. There's all these middle players, and the things that we're buying

00:53:58 ◼   ► are not even things that is like access to the world's music, and access to an arrangement

00:54:03 ◼   ► of songs that either we established for you or that you've established. Like, my playlists

00:54:08 ◼   ► are in Apple Music, both the ones I manually made and the cool ones they make for me. And

00:54:11 ◼   ► And then the music itself is kind of the same for the services, but maybe one artist that

00:54:16 ◼   ► I care about is on one service more than the other, or I'm super into classical or video

00:54:19 ◼   ► game music, that's better represented on this service.

00:54:21 ◼   ► And it's just very complicated.

00:54:23 ◼   ► It's not as bad as the Internet of Things home automation, I think, but it's close.

00:54:27 ◼   ► There are fewer players, and it's more well understood what it is that you're buying,

00:54:32 ◼   ► but it's not consumer-friendly at all.

00:54:34 ◼   ► We just want access to our stuff the way that we want it, when we want it, on the things

00:54:39 ◼   ► want, but these companies have other plans for us.

00:54:42 ◼   ► Yeah, yes they do. Yes they do. As consumers, we have the power to reject them, but they

00:54:48 ◼   ► know how to get us.

00:54:51 ◼   ► You can just keep using your iPod Hi-Fi. That's the question. If you get one of these and

00:54:54 ◼   ► you listen to your music on it, have you already stopped using your iPod Hi-Fi?

00:54:57 ◼   ► No, I use it. It's plugged in via the AUX port. It's plugged into my Mac. So that's

00:55:02 ◼   ► where I listen to all of my music and audio from my Mac is the iPod Hi-Fi.

00:55:06 ◼   ► All right, but if you got the HomePod, would you disconnect that and just talk to your

00:55:10 ◼   ► new little pudgy cylinder?

00:55:12 ◼   ► No, no, because this is just all controlled by my keyboard and stuff on my Mac, and so

00:55:18 ◼   ► it's perfect.

00:55:19 ◼   ► It's basically a Mac speaker.

00:55:20 ◼   ► If I buy the HomePod, it'll be out in the living room, kitchen, dining area, somewhere

00:55:25 ◼   ► out in that.

00:55:27 ◼   ► As you know, we have one big room that is the kitchen and the living room and the dining

00:55:30 ◼   ► room.

00:55:31 ◼   ► It's all one big, long room.

00:55:32 ◼   ► and I would put it somewhere in there, like we have the Echo.

00:55:36 ◼   ► And that's what it would be for.

00:55:37 ◼   ► So would this be displacing another cylinder,

00:55:39 ◼   ► or would this be augmenting?

00:55:41 ◼   ► That's a real good question.

00:55:42 ◼   ► It might be augmenting, which is then you got them fighting it

00:55:44 ◼   ► out, which is scary.

00:55:45 ◼   ► That's right.

00:55:46 ◼   ► You got to have them talk to each other.

00:55:47 ◼   ► It'll be great.

00:55:47 ◼   ► Oh, boy.

00:55:49 ◼   ► Let's take a break.

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00:57:21 ◼   ► your support of this show and all of Relay FM. Speaking of things that I

00:57:25 ◼   ► I wrote last week, because that is sort of one of the things that happens on this show.

00:57:29 ◼   ► I wrote this thing for Macworld about people who are grumpy about Apple's laptop designs.

00:57:36 ◼   ► And it was funny because I've had that on my to-do list for a long time. And then I

00:57:41 ◼   ► pitched it to Macworld a couple weeks ago and they said, "That sounds like a good

00:57:44 ◼   ► column idea." Because one of the things I do is I have my story ideas and every now

00:57:47 ◼   ► and then I'm like, "That looks like a Macworld idea. I'll save that for the Macworld

00:57:50 ◼   ► that I write every week. And so I was like, "We'll do it next week." And the day I was

00:57:56 ◼   ► sitting down to write at Marco wrote his story on his website, noted blogger Marco Arment,

00:58:03 ◼   ► who writes a blog post every so often, about how he loves the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro

00:58:09 ◼   ► and considers it the best laptop ever made. And his point there is that Apple is—Apple's

00:58:14 ◼   ► current line of laptops are not the best laptops ever made. They are a regression. And my story

00:58:20 ◼   ► was basically saying, "I'm trying to do some analysis of why people are grumpy

00:58:25 ◼   ► about the MacBook line," especially since Apple is talking about how Macs had

00:58:29 ◼   ► record revenue and the MacBook line really drove out the average selling

00:58:32 ◼   ► price of the Mac up and all these things. And my theory is that this is at least

00:58:40 ◼   ► in part rooted in the fact that Apple is the single source for Mac hardware, and

00:58:44 ◼   ► that if Apple makes a clever opinionated product decision, as they so frequently do, and put

00:58:52 ◼   ► it across the board, and it bites you, you don't have anywhere to go. You are cornered.

00:58:58 ◼   ► You are stuck. And if you can't use that keyboard, let's say, on the MacBook Pro, Apple doesn't

00:59:05 ◼   ► make a laptop, nobody makes a laptop with a different keyboard that runs the Mac. So,

00:59:14 ◼   ► What do you think about this theory and do you think all this unrest that we hear in

00:59:20 ◼   ► our circles is maybe a little bit of selection bias where nerds are bothered by this but

00:59:28 ◼   ► the numbers show that other people aren't because they're still buying MacBook Pros?

00:59:33 ◼   ► This is always kind of an underlying fear of Apple customers and it takes various forms

00:59:39 ◼   ► But you can be afraid that

00:59:41 ◼   ► Apple is going to leave you behind

00:59:45 ◼   ► sometimes that can be

00:59:48 ◼   ► that they

00:59:49 ◼   ► they just start making products that are not suitable for your needs and they go after a larger market and

00:59:56 ◼   ► You feel left behind there

00:59:59 ◼   ► because

01:00:01 ◼   ► You always liked Apple's products, and if they stop making products for you you have to buy something else

01:00:06 ◼   ► You can't, like you said, you can't buy another person's Mac

01:00:09 ◼   ► compatible, except for that brief time

01:00:11 ◼   ► in the period of clones.

01:00:13 ◼   ► Yes.

01:00:14 ◼   ► You have to switch platforms then.

01:00:16 ◼   ► Other times, and it seems like what's happening now,

01:00:18 ◼   ► is it's not that Apple is consciously deciding

01:00:22 ◼   ► to leave you behind, but it's more

01:00:25 ◼   ► like they have traced a path to the future for users like you,

01:00:31 ◼   ► and it's uncomfortable.

01:00:33 ◼   ► And this has happened many times in the past.

01:00:36 ◼   ► And mostly Apple has been successful.

01:00:39 ◼   ► Removing lots of legacy ports is a great example,

01:00:42 ◼   ► where that annoyed a lot of people

01:00:44 ◼   ► who were using their computers with those legacy devices.

01:00:47 ◼   ► But in all those cases, after a fairly short period of time,

01:00:52 ◼   ► it was clear that they weren't actually leaving you

01:00:54 ◼   ► behind as a customer.

01:00:56 ◼   ► You just needed to sort of get with the times

01:00:58 ◼   ► and give up your ADB peripherals and give up your SCSI drives

01:01:02 ◼   ► in favor of FireWire.

01:01:04 ◼   ► And that's what people did.

01:01:05 ◼   ► And so it's different than they just decided they're not

01:01:10 ◼   ► going to be in this market anymore.

01:01:11 ◼   ► They're saying, this market is moving on,

01:01:13 ◼   ► and you need to come with it.

01:01:14 ◼   ► And customers adapt.

01:01:16 ◼   ► And they grumble, and then they adapt.

01:01:18 ◼   ► The tricky bit with the current laptop stuff

01:01:22 ◼   ► is it's not entirely clear yet which scenario are we in.

01:01:27 ◼   ► Has Apple decided that they're not

01:01:29 ◼   ► interested in these certain narrow kinds of quote,

01:01:32 ◼   ► unquote, "pro" customers?

01:01:34 ◼   ► Or have they decided that the market is moving on,

01:01:36 ◼   ► and all the pro customers need to come and adopt this?

01:01:39 ◼   ► And it's complicated by the Mac Pro stuff,

01:01:42 ◼   ► where for a long time it seemed like Apple had decided

01:01:45 ◼   ► that it doesn't want that corner of the market anymore.

01:01:48 ◼   ► The people who need a computer like the Mac Pro,

01:01:50 ◼   ► Apple doesn't want to make a computer like that anymore.

01:01:52 ◼   ► And Apple had essentially decided that.

01:01:54 ◼   ► The iMac Pro was going to be their answer.

01:01:56 ◼   ► And that is clearly very different from the customers

01:02:00 ◼   ► who use the big tower Mac, right?

01:02:03 ◼   ► And they were even going to stop making the cylinder, which

01:02:05 ◼   ► itself was different from the towers.

01:02:06 ◼   ► And they were just going to look at the iMac Pro as the future.

01:02:08 ◼   ► And if you don't like it, then you're

01:02:10 ◼   ► a market that we don't care about.

01:02:11 ◼   ► But they changed their mind.

01:02:12 ◼   ► OK, we made a miscalculation.

01:02:15 ◼   ► We do want that market, and we're

01:02:16 ◼   ► going to make a thing for you.

01:02:18 ◼   ► The laptops-- Apple, as far as I can tell,

01:02:20 ◼   ► does not think they're leaving the pro laptop market.

01:02:22 ◼   ► Every time they show the Mac Pro Pros,

01:02:24 ◼   ► they're like, look at all this stuff.

01:02:25 ◼   ► You're going to have people doing Final Cut,

01:02:26 ◼   ► and you've got two 5K displays hooked up to it,

01:02:29 ◼   ► and it's super powerful.

01:02:30 ◼   ► And Thunderbolt 3 is really fast,

01:02:32 ◼   ► and you've got this big RAID array connected to it,

01:02:34 ◼   ► and look at all-- you know, they think they are making

01:02:37 ◼   ► the product for pros, right?

01:02:39 ◼   ► So they're not leaving you behind where you feel like,

01:02:41 ◼   ► oh, Apple's not-- you know, like, the poor Aperture users.

01:02:44 ◼   ► Apple just decided they don't want

01:02:45 ◼   ► to be in this market for pro software.

01:02:47 ◼   ► It's just me and Lightroom, or that's it, or whatever.

01:02:49 ◼   ► Apple thinks they're not leaving you behind.

01:02:51 ◼   ► What they think they're doing is getting rid of SCSI ports

01:02:53 ◼   ► and ADB ports and saying, we're still

01:02:55 ◼   ► going to serve that market, but that market

01:02:57 ◼   ► needs to follow us forward into the future

01:02:59 ◼   ► by using all these fancy peripherals and stuff like that.

01:03:01 ◼   ► And it seems like there's an argument between a small subset

01:03:05 ◼   ► of the market and Apple about whether that future--

01:03:08 ◼   ► whether they want to come along.

01:03:09 ◼   ► They're like a dog on a leash.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Apple's trying to pull you into the future.

01:03:11 ◼   ► And they're saying, no, I don't want to go to that future,

01:03:13 ◼   ► because that future is worse.

01:03:15 ◼   ► And they elucidate all the reasons

01:03:16 ◼   ► you can read Marco's post.

01:03:19 ◼   ► So yeah, being cornered, being beholden to one company that

01:03:23 ◼   ► makes a thing to your satisfaction is difficult.

01:03:26 ◼   ► And there's always the danger that they

01:03:28 ◼   ► will stop serving that market.

01:03:29 ◼   ► And there's also the danger that they will--

01:03:31 ◼   ► that that market will move on, and that you will just not

01:03:33 ◼   ► be able to move on with it.

01:03:35 ◼   ► And I think we're in the midst of that argument.

01:03:38 ◼   ► And based on Apple's turnabout on the Mac Pro,

01:03:42 ◼   ► makes me think that there is some reconsideration

01:03:45 ◼   ► of the exact shape of the future.

01:03:47 ◼   ► It seems very clear to me that Apple does not

01:03:50 ◼   ► think it's leaving behind these pro users like Marco.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Marco feels left behind, but Apple

01:03:54 ◼   ► thinks they're not leaving it behind.

01:03:55 ◼   ► So there needs to be a meeting of the minds here.

01:03:57 ◼   ► There needs to be some kind of compromise,

01:03:59 ◼   ► Mario can't buy 2015 laptops forever, and Apple can't continue to make laptops that

01:04:06 ◼   ► this section of the market doesn't want, and continue to think that it's actually serving

01:04:10 ◼   ► that section of the market.

01:04:11 ◼   ► So in the same way, even though it's a tiny majority, like they sell like zero Mac Pros

01:04:15 ◼   ► compared to like all the rest of the stuff they sell, it's a tiny portion of the market,

01:04:19 ◼   ► but it's an important part of the market.

01:04:21 ◼   ► Apple has shown it's important by saying we're going to make a new Mac Pro.

01:04:23 ◼   ► I think this tiny part of the laptop market that's annoyed with the new MacBook Pros is

01:04:28 ◼   ► is also worth addressing, I think Apple will address them,

01:04:30 ◼   ► and so I think there will be a meeting

01:04:32 ◼   ► of the minds here eventually.

01:04:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think in some ways this instance of the unrest

01:04:38 ◼   ► is driven in part by things

01:04:41 ◼   ► that are actually good about Apple.

01:04:42 ◼   ► Like, I think it's good that Apple's saying,

01:04:45 ◼   ► "We're gonna do a totally different keyboard design,

01:04:47 ◼   ► "and we're gonna come up with something that's super thin

01:04:49 ◼   ► "but still has the appearance of responsiveness."

01:04:52 ◼   ► And, you know, it doesn't travel out of travel,

01:04:54 ◼   ► but we don't think regular people will notice

01:04:57 ◼   ► they'll like it because it still feels like you're doing something when you're typing,

01:05:01 ◼   ► even if we're fooling you a little bit because the travel isn't very much. Which is why I

01:05:05 ◼   ► kind of fell into this cornering idea because I think the difficulty is when Apple does

01:05:11 ◼   ► this thing, I mean, I think what stuck with a lot of MacBook Pro users is that they put

01:05:17 ◼   ► the MacBook keyboard, which was engineered for a super thin laptop, and they put it on

01:05:23 ◼   ► these other designs when arguably they didn't need to because they didn't really need to

01:05:28 ◼   ► eke out that small amount of space saved by having a super thin thing, which they totally

01:05:34 ◼   ► did on the MacBook. And I get that. That's the challenge here is like when I said I would

01:05:43 ◼   ► love Apple to do an iOS laptop, it's a similar sort of thing of like try some different stuff,

01:05:48 ◼   ► have a varied product line. The good thing about having a varied product line is that

01:05:51 ◼   ► people can kind of pick and choose. It's like what I talk about the Mac Mini. I really believe

01:05:56 ◼   ► the greatest feature of the Mac Mini is that it lets Apple do whatever the heck they want

01:05:59 ◼   ► with the iMac and potentially the Mac Pro and say, "Look, you got a problem? Just get

01:06:05 ◼   ► a Mac Mini and do whatever." It's there to do anything. And it doesn't do any particular

01:06:11 ◼   ► thing incredibly well, but it does everything because it's just a box.

01:06:15 ◼   ► So the slim keyboard thing, though, I think that is another disconnect between us and

01:06:21 ◼   ► Because when it was introduced on the little skinny MacBook,

01:06:24 ◼   ► the MacBook One, the 12 inch, I don't

01:06:28 ◼   ► think Apple presented the idea that this keyboard is

01:06:36 ◼   ► confined to this laptop.

01:06:37 ◼   ► Because when we saw it, it came from the idea

01:06:41 ◼   ► that the keyboard was off-putting.

01:06:42 ◼   ► This is different than we're used to.

01:06:44 ◼   ► And I've tried it, and actually I don't kind of prefer it

01:06:47 ◼   ► to the other one.

01:06:50 ◼   ► so we explained it to ourselves, it's because this is a super skinny computer

01:06:53 ◼   ► and they made a super skinny keyboard, right? So that we had said,

01:06:56 ◼   ► "Oh, makes sense. Keyboard that we don't like as much, but it's for the skinny

01:06:59 ◼   ► computer." Did Apple say? I think they told that as part of their story, that

01:07:03 ◼   ► along with butterfly switches and stainless steel

01:07:05 ◼   ► whatevers, I think they said, you know, this is all to get this thing to be

01:07:10 ◼   ► thin and light. Keep in mind also that all of us were like,

01:07:13 ◼   ► well, I mean, it was unclear, right? Because we were all like, "Oh, what

01:07:16 ◼   ► does this mean?" And when they did the magic keyboard,

01:07:19 ◼   ► which was after, everybody's like, "Oh, thank goodness, they have another keyboard design that they did,

01:07:24 ◼   ► so they're not going to stick this in all the laptops."

01:07:27 ◼   ► Because we didn't know when we were trying to be reassured, and of course that was wrong,

01:07:31 ◼   ► the Magic Keyboard has not been reused anywhere else, and in fact they did use that laptop design, the MacBook design,

01:07:38 ◼   ► although they did change it when they rolled it out and said, "It's better!"

01:07:42 ◼   ► So they obviously heard some of it, but yeah.

01:07:45 ◼   ► So I think the main reason-- we were looking for that

01:07:50 ◼   ► reassurance of the Magic Keyboard

01:07:51 ◼   ► and thinking that it was reassurance where it didn't

01:07:53 ◼   ► actually exist, because who knows those teams could be

01:07:55 ◼   ► totally separate from each other.

01:07:56 ◼   ► But the disconnect is over the second scenario

01:07:59 ◼   ► where Apple sees the future and wants

01:08:00 ◼   ► to bring us all along to it.

01:08:01 ◼   ► And the disconnect was that I think

01:08:04 ◼   ► Apple thought that that keyboard, yeah, it was slim,

01:08:07 ◼   ► and yeah, it's what you need to make the skinny laptop.

01:08:09 ◼   ► But actually, it's a great keyboard.

01:08:11 ◼   ► And why wouldn't you want it everywhere?

01:08:13 ◼   ► This is the best keyboard we've ever made.

01:08:15 ◼   ► And to give an example that people usually don't think about,

01:08:17 ◼   ► but it just goes to show when it works, we're all on board,

01:08:20 ◼   ► right?

01:08:21 ◼   ► If they come out with a new thing that seems weird at first,

01:08:24 ◼   ► but we all try it and we go, oh, you know what?

01:08:26 ◼   ► Apple was right.

01:08:27 ◼   ► This is better.

01:08:28 ◼   ► There's no fuss, right?

01:08:29 ◼   ► And the example is from-- more old people examples.

01:08:32 ◼   ► This is an old people show now.

01:08:33 ◼   ► Yes, it is.

01:08:34 ◼   ► Myke's gone.

01:08:34 ◼   ► Get rid of that whippersnapper.

01:08:38 ◼   ► Mouse balls.

01:08:39 ◼   ► Apple mice used to have balls in the bottom of them.

01:08:42 ◼   ► And that's how mice worked.

01:08:43 ◼   ► And eventually-- not that Apple was the first to do this--

01:08:45 ◼   ► but eventually, Apple said, no, the new mice

01:08:49 ◼   ► that we're going to make have this optical thing

01:08:51 ◼   ► on the bottom.

01:08:51 ◼   ► No more ball.

01:08:53 ◼   ► And maybe you're an Apple user and had never

01:08:56 ◼   ► used a logic mouse, an optical mouse.

01:08:58 ◼   ► And so this is the first mouse without a ball you're using.

01:08:59 ◼   ► You'll be using a mouse with a ball that

01:09:01 ◼   ► has a certain feel to it, a certain heft.

01:09:03 ◼   ► They behave in a certain way.

01:09:04 ◼   ► You know how to clean your little mouse rollers

01:09:06 ◼   ► and everything.

01:09:06 ◼   ► You're like, a mouse without a ball?

01:09:08 ◼   ► It's going to be terrible.

01:09:09 ◼   ► But then you get it, and you use it, and you're like, oh.

01:09:11 ◼   ► "Oh, this is better." And so when mice without balls sweep through the entire Mac product

01:09:16 ◼   ► line, nobody's up in arms, because we all basically agree, "Yeah, Apple's right. This

01:09:19 ◼   ► is better." Right? Like, the industry is right, that yes, this is the way to go. And to this

01:09:24 ◼   ► day, no one is like—

01:09:25 ◼   ► Go back to the track balls on laptops when they replaced them with track pads. It was

01:09:29 ◼   ► like, "Oh, yeah, this is better."

01:09:30 ◼   ► Yeah, this is weird.

01:09:31 ◼   ► It's weird, but it's totally the right call.

01:09:32 ◼   ► Yeah, and you try it, and you try it, and then so when all the balls disappear from

01:09:36 ◼   ► all of the mice and all of the laptops, nobody is up in arms and saying, "I can't believe

01:09:39 ◼   ► that Midas trackpad that they put on that one laptop, now it's on all of them, and I

01:09:44 ◼   ► feel cornered. You don't feel cornered if everybody likes it. And so I think disconnect

01:09:48 ◼   ► is that Apple really thinks that's a great keyboard, and a small vocal minority thinks

01:09:53 ◼   ► that it is not. And this is before we even addressed the reliability issue, which is

01:09:56 ◼   ► independent of people's opinion. Like, reliability is the thing that they have to deal with.

01:10:00 ◼   ► But just, you know, and because of the timelines and the sequencing, they're putting in the

01:10:05 ◼   ► rubber gaskets to make the 2017 thing feel a little bit different makes me think that

01:10:09 ◼   ► now they recognize that their high opinion of this keyboard is not shared by some part

01:10:16 ◼   ► of the market that they care about, some small portion of the market.

01:10:18 ◼   ► But because hardware takes so long, it's not like they can scramble and put the Magic Keyboard

01:10:22 ◼   ► in their next laptops like the 2017 laptops.

01:10:25 ◼   ► The best they could do was say, "What can we do in the timeframe for the 2017 laptops?

01:10:29 ◼   ► Well, we can put some rubbery things in there and it feels different and it's less noisy."

01:10:33 ◼   ► Good.

01:10:34 ◼   ► Go with that.

01:10:35 ◼   ► And so again, I think Apple is-- there

01:10:38 ◼   ► will be a meeting of the minds, that Apple is not vehemently

01:10:41 ◼   ► arguing that this keyboard is great

01:10:43 ◼   ► and you're just going to love it.

01:10:45 ◼   ► What they're saying is, we hear you,

01:10:46 ◼   ► but you're going to have to wait for us to address your concerns.

01:10:49 ◼   ► At least that's what I hope they're saying,

01:10:51 ◼   ► because that's how I explain the 2017 change.

01:10:53 ◼   ► Like, we hear you.

01:10:54 ◼   ► We would like to address your concerns.

01:10:55 ◼   ► But hardware is hardware, and it's not

01:10:56 ◼   ► as if we can snap our fingers and give you an entirely

01:10:59 ◼   ► new keyboard for laptops.

01:11:00 ◼   ► I'm not entirely convinced that Apple doesn't still

01:11:03 ◼   ► believe that it's a great keyboard. I'm not entirely convinced that people belly-aching

01:11:08 ◼   ► about it are not just written off as, you know, the nerds say that, but then we've got

01:11:12 ◼   ► our, I mentioned this in my Macworld piece, it's like, what's the customer sat? I know

01:11:17 ◼   ► the revenue figure and I know the average selling price, but what is the customer sat

01:11:20 ◼   ► and what are you seeing in your markets? And Apple does research. Apple knows what the

01:11:24 ◼   ► reception is here. And that's the question is like, are they seeing people say, I don't

01:11:28 ◼   ► really like the keyboard and they're like, oh, customer satisfaction on the keyboard

01:11:30 ◼   ► us down or what they saying is well the nerds don't like it but everybody else

01:11:35 ◼   ► likes it and then who are those nerds and are they a key part of our customer

01:11:39 ◼   ► segment that we are that we've made angry I my gut feeling is that they may

01:11:45 ◼   ► or may not feel that but the reliability issue makes me think they'll change it

01:11:51 ◼   ► because I can't conceive of people are like don't buy a Mac laptop because when

01:11:55 ◼   ► it's out of warranty it'll cost you hundreds of dollars if if a piece of

01:11:59 ◼   ► When one key goes bad, it probably will go bad.

01:12:02 ◼   ► And it probably will.

01:12:03 ◼   ► Like, that is really bad for long-term value of Apple laptops, which really hurts the sale

01:12:07 ◼   ► of Apple laptops and makes the brand perception worse.

01:12:10 ◼   ► It's bad in so many ways financially that my gut feeling is that that's going to change

01:12:15 ◼   ► the keyboard before any bellyaching by nerds about the key travel.

01:12:19 ◼   ► Well, but the reason I think the bellyaching is a factor is because even on the 12-inch,

01:12:24 ◼   ► when it first came out, one of the complaints, mostly from nerds who care about these details,

01:12:28 ◼   ► was that it was too loud.

01:12:29 ◼   ► One of the big changes to the 2017 revision was that they must have they heard that tiny but vocal

01:12:36 ◼   ► Minority of their customer is saying hey, this keyboard is kind of loud. How do they know that? Like you said they're surveying people saying

01:12:41 ◼   ► Well, how do you how are you satisfied with this new keyboard? What do you think of it?

01:12:44 ◼   ► Blah blah blah kind of loud must have come up a lot

01:12:46 ◼   ► And so the revised version is slightly less loud that is that shows that they care what the tiny

01:12:51 ◼   ► minority of people who have little picky complaints about the keyboard thinks

01:12:56 ◼   ► If that the tiny minority had said it's kind of loud and also the travel isn't deep enough there

01:13:01 ◼   ► I don't think there's anything they could do in the 2017 laptop time frame to help those people with the depth

01:13:06 ◼   ► They can put in gaskets for the sound, but there's nothing they can do to say

01:13:10 ◼   ► Well, look like the 2017 laptops hardware design was basically locked

01:13:13 ◼   ► Long ago and we can do a last-minute change to make them quieter

01:13:17 ◼   ► But we can't like we hear you we hear you that you don't like them on the pro laptops

01:13:22 ◼   ► but there's nothing we can do about it.

01:13:23 ◼   ► And so the fact that they did do something for a very picky minor complaint and only

01:13:27 ◼   ► made it slightly quieter, by the way—it's still kind of noisy, which I notice as I type

01:13:30 ◼   ► in mine in meetings, right?

01:13:31 ◼   ► It's only slightly quieter.

01:13:34 ◼   ► Makes me think that they do care about what that minority thinks, and it's just a question

01:13:38 ◼   ► of timelines, that we have to wait.

01:13:39 ◼   ► But like you said, ignoring all this, the reliability—which, again, we're just going

01:13:43 ◼   ► anecdotally—but the reliability alone means Apple has to do something about this keyboard.

01:13:48 ◼   ► the confluence of all these things, that the nerds who they appear to want to satisfy and

01:13:53 ◼   ► their complaints combined with the reliability and the cost of repair makes me think they

01:13:57 ◼   ► have to revise it. Now, we'll see, because if the next revision they come out with looks

01:14:01 ◼   ► and feels exactly the same but is like a thousand times more reliable, then we'll say, "Look,

01:14:06 ◼   ► they addressed the reliability issue, but they really didn't care about your complaints

01:14:09 ◼   ► about the keyboard depth," right? So we'll find out.

01:14:11 ◼   ► I actually think the noise was a feature, that they were like, "Oh, we just give people

01:14:17 ◼   ► more auditory feedback because as somebody who's bought some mechanical keyboards, the sound is

01:14:22 ◼   ► part of it. That's part of the keyboard experience and I think they were really planning on like,

01:14:29 ◼   ► "Well, there's no tactile response or very little tactile response in terms of movement,

01:14:34 ◼   ► but we're going to make the pop when you hit that switch and we're going to make it really,

01:14:40 ◼   ► you can feel it and we're going to make it really loud and people are going to feel like, "Yeah,

01:14:44 ◼   ► I'm typing on a keyboard and you know I think that was kind of their plan but I

01:14:50 ◼   ► don't yeah anyway I don't think whether I was another program I would say

01:14:55 ◼   ► they're gonna have pre-recorded audio clips of a buckling spring keyboard that

01:14:59 ◼   ► they will play in response to you're hitting the keys that'll be the the BMW

01:15:03 ◼   ► style fee yeah interesting idea I like that idea just you could have

01:15:06 ◼   ► customizable soundscapes so you could say what would you like your keyboard

01:15:08 ◼   ► clicky actually totally silent but all all the sound is artificial it's just

01:15:13 ◼   ► We've got some speakers underneath the keyboard that...

01:15:16 ◼   ► Yeah, they're almost there already.

01:15:18 ◼   ► And remember, this is the same company that ships their iOS devices with the key click on by default,

01:15:22 ◼   ► which, as we all know, is an abomination.

01:15:24 ◼   ► I agree.

01:15:25 ◼   ► All right, let's take one more break.

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01:16:10 ◼   ► I was listening to a several weeks old episode of Reconcilable Differences,

01:16:15 ◼   ► your podcast with Marlin Mann on this very Relay FM podcast network,

01:16:19 ◼   ► and you were talking about Twitter a lot.

01:16:21 ◼   ► And I realized I wanted to talk to you about Twitter just because

01:16:26 ◼   ► you and I were both vocal supporters of the Kickstarter for Twitterific for Mac.

01:16:33 ◼   ► And when I first got the betas, I thought, well, this is different and new, and I don't

01:16:37 ◼   ► know if I'm going to use it, and we'll see how it goes, and we'll see how it progresses.

01:16:41 ◼   ► And I realized a few weeks ago that I've completely moved house, and I am using Twitterific for

01:16:45 ◼   ► Mac, which I had switched to the official Twitter client because the old Twitterific

01:16:50 ◼   ► had been so old that I finally was like, I can't do this anymore.

01:16:54 ◼   ► But now I'm all the way back, and I wanted to check in with you about how you feel about

01:17:00 ◼   ► the new Twitterific for Mac and how you're using it.

01:17:03 ◼   ► I'm loving it because I never left it on both platforms,

01:17:06 ◼   ► but they had diverged.

01:17:08 ◼   ► Like, the connection between the old Mac Twitterific

01:17:11 ◼   ► and the iOS one, you know, it stopped being a thing.

01:17:14 ◼   ► The iOS version continued to progress

01:17:16 ◼   ► and had all these great features and everything,

01:17:17 ◼   ► and the Mac version just did not have them.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Eventually, when they came out with the URL shortening thing,

01:17:22 ◼   ► where, like, the URLs didn't count as much

01:17:24 ◼   ► towards your tweet, the old Mac version

01:17:26 ◼   ► wouldn't even show them.

01:17:26 ◼   ► It would just link you off to the website

01:17:28 ◼   ► so you could see the rest of the tweet.

01:17:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:30 ◼   ► That was it.

01:17:31 ◼   ► That was it.

01:17:32 ◼   ► That was the killer.

01:17:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I kept using it even with that.

01:17:36 ◼   ► And this factors into how I'm using Mac Twitteriffic now.

01:17:39 ◼   ► The reason I was able to keep using the old, crusty version of Twitteriffic before they updated it

01:17:45 ◼   ► was because almost all of my Twitter reading had transitioned to iOS devices, phone or iPad.

01:17:52 ◼   ► It kind of fell into the same category as me as reading a long article, which I'll tend to do on my iPad,

01:17:57 ◼   ► instead of sitting in front of my Mac, because I'm sitting in a chair in front of a computer

01:18:01 ◼   ► or standing, if I have a standing desk at work, up at standing height, all day.

01:18:07 ◼   ► And I want that Steve Jobs layback experience.

01:18:10 ◼   ► The reason I had a little couch on the stage for an injury is the iPad.

01:18:13 ◼   ► And so that's sort of my mode, my posture for reading Twitter.

01:18:18 ◼   ► And that means that I was able to read Twitter on my Mac much less.

01:18:21 ◼   ► Now that I have a modern, capable, completely in sync with my iOS version

01:18:26 ◼   ► of Twitter on the Mac, I no longer have that limitation.

01:18:29 ◼   ► I still spend most of my time reading on iOS.

01:18:32 ◼   ► But when I'm on my Mac, it's so great just

01:18:34 ◼   ► to be right where I left off, to have all the features,

01:18:36 ◼   ► to have cool features that aren't even on the iOS one,

01:18:38 ◼   ► like the detection of polls and popping up on the poll web view

01:18:43 ◼   ► so I can now participate in all these tweets.

01:18:46 ◼   ► Reading Twitter on a third-party Twitter client

01:18:49 ◼   ► is a little bit different in that it's mostly entirely

01:18:51 ◼   ► better, but occasionally you get a tweet

01:18:53 ◼   ► where you have to surmise that there is a poll that

01:18:55 ◼   ► invisibly you're not seeing.

01:18:56 ◼   ► Yeah, I've gotten really good at that.

01:18:58 ◼   ► Sometimes it's not clear.

01:19:00 ◼   ► Sometimes they say, what do you like best, colon?

01:19:03 ◼   ► Like, if they use a colon, it's a pretty good indication,

01:19:05 ◼   ► because the tweet will just end there in the third party client.

01:19:07 ◼   ► But in the first party one, you would see the poll.

01:19:09 ◼   ► But other times, they say something vaguely cryptic

01:19:12 ◼   ► and then have a period.

01:19:13 ◼   ► And you're like, is there an invisible poll

01:19:14 ◼   ► that I'm not seeing?

01:19:15 ◼   ► Well, now the Mac version of Twitter, if it tells you,

01:19:17 ◼   ► oh, by the way, there's an invisible poll you're not seeing.

01:19:19 ◼   ► And if you want to participate in it, click here,

01:19:21 ◼   ► and open a web view, and blah, blah, blah.

01:19:22 ◼   ► Why does this have to happen?

01:19:23 ◼   ► Because Twitter, in their three years ago bad decision-making

01:19:27 ◼   ► decided that third-party Twitter clients are a bad idea

01:19:30 ◼   ► and did some bad things to them.

01:19:32 ◼   ► But we hang on.

01:19:33 ◼   ► At least I still do, because I like the unified timeline.

01:19:36 ◼   ► I like the lack of the algorithmic timeline,

01:19:39 ◼   ► trying to show me what it thinks I want to see.

01:19:42 ◼   ► I like the lack of ads and all the other things.

01:19:44 ◼   ► And so I am enjoying it.

01:19:46 ◼   ► I still read mostly on iOS devices,

01:19:48 ◼   ► but I love being on my Mac and not being limited,

01:19:51 ◼   ► like a full participant in Twitter,

01:19:54 ◼   ► even when I'm on my Mac.

01:19:56 ◼   ► I'd say I'm kind of 50/50 because I am sitting at my Mac all the time and writing.

01:20:01 ◼   ► And so I have it open here.

01:20:04 ◼   ► And then when I'm in the rest of the house, I'm on iOS looking at it.

01:20:07 ◼   ► So having that sync, which yes, everybody who uses tweet bot, we know that you already had that before, but I didn't use tweet bot.

01:20:12 ◼   ► I have it.

01:20:13 ◼   ► I don't use it.

01:20:13 ◼   ► Um, it's nice to get that unified feeling again.

01:20:17 ◼   ► Um, and you know, I have hope I built, I built, did you build a custom theme?

01:20:22 ◼   ► I thought about it cause I had a custom scene on the old, right.

01:20:24 ◼   ► But I didn't want the hassle of trying

01:20:28 ◼   ► to maintain the custom theme, especially during the betas.

01:20:30 ◼   ► Like, there were new betas all the time,

01:20:31 ◼   ► and things were changing.

01:20:32 ◼   ► I'm like, I'll just wait.

01:20:34 ◼   ► And I got so used to-- it's not the default.

01:20:36 ◼   ► I have some settings changed, but I don't have--

01:20:38 ◼   ► I'm not actually customizing it where

01:20:39 ◼   ► you go where you can pick the colors and the exact font

01:20:41 ◼   ► sizes, like with the custom theme editor.

01:20:42 ◼   ► I'm not doing that.

01:20:43 ◼   ► So I'm just using the regular person preferences

01:20:46 ◼   ► to make a dark window mode and adjust the font size

01:20:49 ◼   ► and make the small thumbnails.

01:20:50 ◼   ► But I haven't gone fully into a completely custom theme.

01:20:53 ◼   ► I am using one and it's nice. I enjoy it. It's actually funny listening to people like Marco talk about the OLED display on the iPhone X and how they want, you know, a perfectly black background and all that.

01:21:06 ◼   ► It's like, I like, that's what I like. I want a black background and I want, I don't want sort of like medium gray text. I want white or almost white text.

01:21:14 ◼   ► a lot of themes are just not contrasty enough for me, for my tastes. And so I built my own,

01:21:20 ◼   ► which is great. I'm hoping that maybe one day they'll sync themes across between iOS

01:21:25 ◼   ► and macOS. That would be really great if I could use my same theme everywhere. I love

01:21:29 ◼   ► that the my, you know, my mutes and things all all work. I was doing a lot of muting

01:21:34 ◼   ► on the service of people because that was the only reliable or semi reliable way of

01:21:41 ◼   ► muting somebody and now with using Twitterific everywhere I just I can

01:21:47 ◼   ► I can muffle and mute people on the client and that works just as well which

01:21:51 ◼   ► is again something that if you had a unified set of clients before you got to

01:21:55 ◼   ► experience but I didn't so I'm really happy about it. It's kind of amazing that

01:22:01 ◼   ► I remain spoiler free for The Force Awakens because at that time I was using

01:22:06 ◼   ► the Mac version of Twitterific and there was there was not muting or filtering

01:22:09 ◼   ► like the same way that my iOS one was, so the Mac was like a doubly dangerous place for me to be

01:22:14 ◼   ► because I could think, "Should I look at Twitter? Oh, it doesn't have all my mutes. It might be dangerous."

01:22:19 ◼   ► But I managed to make it through.

01:22:21 ◼   ► Yeah, one thing I heard you and Merlin talking about that I was a little surprised by is I use Twitter lists all the time.

01:22:28 ◼   ► Well, not all the time, but I have a couple of Twitter lists, and basically what it does is it allows me to section off a subject area that I'm interested in.

01:22:37 ◼   ► so like I've got a science list and I've got a sports list and that allows me to sort of,

01:22:42 ◼   ► I've got my main list which is mostly like tech people and some pop culture people I

01:22:48 ◼   ► follow, but it lets me put the sports stuff on the side. So like when sporting events

01:22:53 ◼   ► are going on I can look at the sports people and I can dip in and check on the sports people,

01:22:57 ◼   ► but there's enough of them that I wouldn't want them filling my entire timeline all the

01:23:00 ◼   ► time and so I just kind of put them on the side and I do that with the scientists and

01:23:05 ◼   ► science journalists, people too, and that's great. So I'm surprised that you don't use

01:23:11 ◼   ► lists because I love them.

01:23:14 ◼   ► Well, but I'm the unified timeline person. I have one list of things to scroll through

01:23:17 ◼   ► and that's it, and lists are a separate place for me to go.

01:23:19 ◼   ► And you're a completist too, or at least as much as possible a completist.

01:23:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I was better at it before, but yeah, mostly I'm a completionist. I want to see

01:23:27 ◼   ► all the tweets and I, you know, I, what do you call it, I trim my follow list to make

01:23:33 ◼   ► it so that I can get through all the tweets.

01:23:35 ◼   ► So that's my axis of control is not, "Oh, I'm going to skip my axis of control.

01:23:39 ◼   ► It's time to unfollow some people because I can't read through all these in the time

01:23:43 ◼   ► allotted for Twitter."

01:23:44 ◼   ► So I do that control.

01:23:45 ◼   ► But if I had a separate domain, like I've considered this for the one instance where

01:23:50 ◼   ► I actually use hashtags.

01:23:51 ◼   ► I tend not to use them because I feel like, "Look, if you're following me, you get all

01:23:55 ◼   ► of me," which is a separate thing that you've talked about in the past and that we're all

01:23:59 ◼   ► familiar with.

01:24:00 ◼   ► But I do throw out a hashtag #destiny on my tweets that are about destiny because they're

01:24:06 ◼   ► so obscure and make no sense if you're not into destiny.

01:24:09 ◼   ► And so I want to give the people, as a courtesy, give people a way to filter out that.

01:24:14 ◼   ► Not because I don't want to clutter up their timeline with it, but just because I don't

01:24:18 ◼   ► want to have to entertain the questions about like, "What are you saying?

01:24:21 ◼   ► What is that?

01:24:22 ◼   ► I don't understand."

01:24:23 ◼   ► It's like, yes, you don't.

01:24:24 ◼   ► It's a destiny thing.

01:24:25 ◼   ► Don't worry about it.

01:24:26 ◼   ► If I had a ton of people who I followed on Twitter who were like a destiny community

01:24:28 ◼   ► in the same way that you have a sports community. I might think of combining them into a list.

01:24:33 ◼   ► I do actually have some lists made of subject areas. I just never, ever look at them. So

01:24:38 ◼   ► once I've discovered that, "Look, I never look at these lists. It's not making them,"

01:24:42 ◼   ► and so I haven't made a list for Destiny, it's all kind of in the mix for me. And that

01:24:46 ◼   ► one hashtag is on the output side, the only thing I do to segregate Twitter in any way.

01:24:51 ◼   ► And who knows if the people following me, they probably don't have Destiny hashtag filters,

01:24:54 ◼   ► I tweet about with that hashtag like once every month and a half, so I feel like I'm

01:24:59 ◼   ► not overwhelming my audience with Destiny spam.

01:25:01 ◼   ► Yeah, but if you don't like it, you can mute that out and then it's gone. I do that occasionally

01:25:06 ◼   ► now and it's kind of nice to be like, "Oh, this is a—" Actually, for one of my sports

01:25:10 ◼   ► things, I've got a sports person I follow and half of what they do I'm not interested

01:25:14 ◼   ► in and they are a pretty good hashtag or mention person and I could put in a few mentions and

01:25:21 ◼   ► and then the stuff that I don't care about just doesn't show up. And it's great.

01:25:25 ◼   ► Yeah, and you don't need to use hashtags for that. Just pick any word.

01:25:29 ◼   ► I keep meaning to do this. I'm going to talk about it now, and maybe this will motivate me to actually do it.

01:25:35 ◼   ► I would love to put a mute on Lucy K-O-I-H or whatever. Am I saying the name wrong?

01:25:41 ◼   ► Do you know why I want to mute that? This name that I can't spell? Maybe that's why I never put the thing, because I can't remember the spelling.

01:25:47 ◼   ► because one person I follow does a running joke

01:25:49 ◼   ► about some judge that was mean to Apple

01:25:51 ◼   ► like five years ago.

01:25:52 ◼   ► Contra does that.

01:25:54 ◼   ► I never want to see those tweets.

01:25:55 ◼   ► That joke, it's played out, I get it.

01:25:57 ◼   ► The judge was mean to Apple, right?

01:25:59 ◼   ► You can't do that joke for five years.

01:26:01 ◼   ► So I should just mute it, right?

01:26:02 ◼   ► Judge Lucy Ko, K-O-H.

01:26:05 ◼   ► I should just put in my mutes, Lucy Ko,

01:26:07 ◼   ► and I just forget to do it.

01:26:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, that'd be good.

01:26:10 ◼   ► - So that's, you know, it doesn't need to be a hashtag.

01:26:12 ◼   ► You can put any words there.

01:26:13 ◼   ► And the odds of Lucy Ko coming up

01:26:15 ◼   ► in a legit non-contra joke context are very slim,

01:26:18 ◼   ► so I don't feel like I'd miss anything.

01:26:20 ◼   ► - One more thing before we go,

01:26:22 ◼   ► 'cause we do not have time for Ask Upgrade,

01:26:24 ◼   ► but I did want to ask you one thing,

01:26:25 ◼   ► which is in the show notes as old men

01:26:29 ◼   ► talk about keyboard shortcuts, since you mentioned earlier

01:26:32 ◼   ► that this is just an all old people podcast right now.

01:26:35 ◼   ► Speaking of old people, Dr. Drang wrote a blog post

01:26:39 ◼   ► saying the right order for referring to modifier keys

01:26:43 ◼   ► keyboard shortcuts is, let me get this right, control option command and it's

01:26:51 ◼   ► actually control option space command. So if you had a keyboard shortcut that used

01:26:55 ◼   ► all of those things you would say press control option shift command N. So in

01:27:01 ◼   ► other words if you're taking a screenshot what you should write or say

01:27:04 ◼   ► is press shift command 3 to take a screenshot. And this is actually there is

01:27:11 ◼   ► an Apple style guide that you can get on iBooks. There's a TechNote. Generally, all of Apple's

01:27:16 ◼   ► publications do it in this order. And I was curious what you thought about this only because

01:27:23 ◼   ► I completely disagree and command always comes first for me.

01:27:27 ◼   ► Yeah, so this, just to give some context, another thing related to this subject that

01:27:34 ◼   ► comes up a lot in this conversation is the order of adjectives in English. Like that

01:27:39 ◼   ► there is an implied order that nobody thinks about, but if you hear it the other way, it

01:27:43 ◼   ► sounds strange. And I forget what the whole sequence is. You can Google for it and find

01:27:46 ◼   ► it. But the easiest example is if there is a bear and the bear happens to be the color

01:27:51 ◼   ► brown and the bear is also large, you would say you have a big brown bear. But if you

01:27:57 ◼   ► had a brown big bear, people might think that you are not a native English speaker because

01:28:01 ◼   ► you would not say a brown big bear. You'd say it's a big brown bear. Everybody says

01:28:04 ◼   ► a big brown bear. And that's just size and color. There's a whole bunch of other ones

01:28:07 ◼   ► that they come in a particular order, and we are sensitive to that order whether we

01:28:11 ◼   ► know it or not. Now, both of us being old fogies, I think, are sensitive to the order

01:28:15 ◼   ► of describing corded keyboard shortcuts with modifiers on the Mac, probably for basically

01:28:21 ◼   ► the same reason as the English modifiers. You hear them, and it just becomes sort of

01:28:25 ◼   ► a self-fulfilling prophecy as you're growing up and you hear everyone refer to it this

01:28:29 ◼   ► way, and you sort of—as even for new things like this where it's not like we're inventing

01:28:33 ◼   ► color and size, but like, "Oh, modifiers exist and computers exist, and let's just

01:28:36 ◼   ► all discuss them and somehow we sort of settle on a sequence of talking about them and we

01:28:42 ◼   ► do better than with GIF/GIF and we sort of all collectively agree. Command-Shift-3 is

01:28:47 ◼   ► how you take a screenshot. Everyone is going to say Command-Shift-3. And it only takes

01:28:51 ◼   ► a couple of decades of hearing Command-Shift-3 to think that Shift-Command-3 sounds just

01:28:56 ◼   ► as weird as Brown Big Bear. And I'm with you. Command-Shift-3 is how it goes. And in response

01:29:03 ◼   ► conversation, I'm thinking, how do I add the other ones in?

01:29:05 ◼   ► And this is where you start getting into more obscure things

01:29:08 ◼   ► because command fine, command shift fine is a lot of those

01:29:12 ◼   ► command option. Are you with me on that one? It's not option

01:29:15 ◼   ► command, it's command option. Right? Now we start throwing in

01:29:19 ◼   ► control, which used to not be a thing on Apple's products,

01:29:24 ◼   ► especially not in keyboard shortcuts, right? Start throwing

01:29:28 ◼   ► that in. I'm trying to think of, let's see, command Ctrl D.

01:29:32 ◼   ► That's how I would say that one.

01:29:33 ◼   ► Let's see, would I do command-control-option?

01:29:40 ◼   ► I think. I wouldn't do command-option-control.

01:29:42 ◼   ► I would do command-control-option.

01:29:43 ◼   ► Do you agree with me on that one?

01:29:45 ◼   ► I don't think so.

01:29:46 ◼   ► I think what I discovered is that my internal style guide

01:29:49 ◼   ► is the opposite of Apple's and goes out from the space bar.

01:29:53 ◼   ► So it would be command-option-control-shift.

01:29:57 ◼   ► See, once you get into the more obscure ones,

01:29:59 ◼   ► there's less societal sort of we've all agreed upon

01:30:01 ◼   ► how to talk about this. It's true. Because of old Fogy Mac users, there's less of that because there's less occasion to say these very, in fact,

01:30:07 ◼   ► the only reason we ever had these very large

01:30:09 ◼   ► sequences is usually if we're using like

01:30:11 ◼   ► quick keys for the old people or keyboard maestro for the new people. Like you're making up your own keyboard shortcut

01:30:15 ◼   ► that's not taken by anything else and so you were forced to use this very large coordinate thing. I think my sequence, my

01:30:21 ◼   ► sort of system for determining this once you get into the more obscure ones, is

01:30:25 ◼   ► the sequence in which I lay my fingers down. So I would hit command, control, and then option.

01:30:31 ◼   ► with my fingers. Command with my thumb, control with my ring finger, or with my...

01:30:36 ◼   ► yeah, with my ring finger. No, yeah, let me see. Anyway, it's... my fingers do it and

01:30:42 ◼   ► they do it in that sequence, which is why I would say, you know, command option shift,

01:30:47 ◼   ► because I would roll my finger that way, right? But command control option, I would do command

01:30:52 ◼   ► then control and I would locate option by being the finger in between the ones I had on command

01:30:56 ◼   ► and control. Anyway, I think it gets obscure after that, but if we can't even agree with the Apple

01:31:01 ◼   ► style guide on command. I'm totally with you that if you talk to an old Mac user, no one

01:31:05 ◼   ► is going to say shift command three. That will never leave the lips of an old school

01:31:11 ◼   ► Mac user. And how Apple has settled on that as their guide, probably because someone found

01:31:17 ◼   ► the regularity of it irresistible, that there was a system and then here's the order and

01:31:21 ◼   ► just we'll just always refer to it that way. But it flies in the face of decades of Mac

01:31:25 ◼   ► culture. And so, you know, I'm going to have to give a hard note of that one.

01:31:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

01:31:30 ◼   ► I just discovered that mentally command is always first.

01:31:34 ◼   ► And there is, I think you're right,

01:31:36 ◼   ► there are some ones where I waver,

01:31:37 ◼   ► I'm like, "Oh, I don't know whether that's right or not."

01:31:40 ◼   ► And you're right, also like control wasn't on keyboards

01:31:42 ◼   ► for a while and wasn't used as a shortcut.

01:31:45 ◼   ► I looked around, people theorize that maybe the reason

01:31:49 ◼   ► that control was not a major part of Apple's platforms

01:31:52 ◼   ► was because on the Apple II,

01:31:54 ◼   ► the ASCII control characters were used for flow and stuff.

01:31:59 ◼   ► stuff like they are on Unix where you know it they didn't want to interrupt

01:32:03 ◼   ► those and of course the Apple key itself that is command or Apple or open Apple

01:32:09 ◼   ► there was an open and closed Apple key on the Apple 2e which was mapped to the

01:32:14 ◼   ► paddle buttons on the little paddle game paddles there's a whole history here

01:32:18 ◼   ► that starts to unravel when you do this and I'll also point out control alt delete

01:32:24 ◼   ► on Windows, Control comes first and then Alt, which is Option, because we all know about

01:32:30 ◼   ► Control Alt Delete, which is a totally different sequence, but the Mac and Windows have never

01:32:34 ◼   ► really gotten along when it comes to keyboard shortcuts anyway. Yeah, I think I brought this

01:32:38 ◼   ► up at other times we've discussed modifiers on Mac things, but one of the sort of great joys of

01:32:43 ◼   ► my life, one of the small great joys of my life and one of the smartest, probably accidental,

01:32:48 ◼   ► things that Apple ever did was to choose for the Mac platform to have to use command as

01:32:54 ◼   ► sort of the main modifier for its commands, like that's your go-to, and then if you have

01:32:58 ◼   ► to keep going to like shift an option and other stuff, and to leave control alone.

01:33:03 ◼   ► Because later, well even in the early days when you had a terminal on a Unix system,

01:33:08 ◼   ► but later when they actually based their operating system on Unix, it leaves control safely off

01:33:14 ◼   ► to the side for the Unix stuff.

01:33:16 ◼   ► So there's no conflict.

01:33:17 ◼   ► Like when you hit Ctrl+C to send the interrupt signal to stop a command, there's no ambiguity

01:33:22 ◼   ► that you're trying to copy text.

01:33:24 ◼   ► Windows chose to use control, and so any integration of Unix-style stuff into Windows is a constant

01:33:30 ◼   ► fight over the control key.

01:33:31 ◼   ► Now, yeah, the Mac does use the control key sometimes for some things, but it's like your

01:33:34 ◼   ► third or fourth choice.

01:33:36 ◼   ► It is not the primary control key.

01:33:38 ◼   ► And that sounds like a little thing, but you make that choice wrong, there's no escaping

01:33:42 ◼   ► it.

01:33:43 ◼   ► Shift-Insert and other ridiculous keyboard sequences, but only when you're in the terminal

01:33:48 ◼   ► program and other places you can do Ctrl-C. It is a huge quality of life issue for the

01:33:53 ◼   ► particular kind of nerd who does Uni-C things on their computer, on their Mac or PC. And

01:33:59 ◼   ► I'm thankful for it all the time. I'm thankful for it every time I have to do Ctrl-Insert

01:34:05 ◼   ► or Shift-Insert on some stupid Windows thing. I say, "Oh, just how can you live like this?"

01:34:10 ◼   ► God for command and that we left control alone because we knew that in 1997 Steve Jobs would

01:34:16 ◼   ► come back with a Unix-based operating system and everything would be great.

01:34:18 ◼   ► Yep, that was all part of the plan.

01:34:20 ◼   ► You said we can't escape it.

01:34:21 ◼   ► That was like a little keyboard joke.

01:34:26 ◼   ► Before we go, one more thing I wanted to mention is just there's a—I'll put a link in the

01:34:28 ◼   ► show notes—there is a folklore.org little bit by Andy Hertzfeld about why Apple went

01:34:36 ◼   ► from the Apple key to the command key because the Apple key was this was a

01:34:42 ◼   ► thing that was on the Lisa was on the Apple IIe and the answer is as you might

01:34:48 ◼   ► expect Steve Jobs burst into a building and declared that the Apple logo was in

01:34:53 ◼   ► too many places that it was ridiculous and that they were taking the Apple logo

01:34:57 ◼   ► in vain and then demanded that that key be given some other symbol at which

01:35:03 ◼   ► point Susan Kerr looked through her notes and found that, you know, interesting outdoor

01:35:09 ◼   ► place of interest symbol that's in various places in Scandinavia. And that's our little

01:35:16 ◼   ► propeller-y command symbol to this day. And then it was on there with the Apple for a

01:35:20 ◼   ► while and then because there were some keyboards, there was a key that could be connected to

01:35:24 ◼   ► computers that had the Apple key versus the command key. And then over time, it evolved

01:35:28 ◼   ► to just say command with the little propeller-y symbol.

01:35:31 ◼   ► And he was right.

01:35:32 ◼   ► I mean, he never really changed his mind about that.

01:35:34 ◼   ► That's why there was no Apple logo on the front of the iPhone, right?

01:35:37 ◼   ► You can use the Apple logo, but use it well.

01:35:41 ◼   ► Use it strategically.

01:35:42 ◼   ► Don't just say, oh, Apple logo's on everything.

01:35:44 ◼   ► Cover everything we make with Apple logos, because it devalues the logo.

01:35:48 ◼   ► On the Mac screen, it appears in one place, in one very important place, and that's it.

01:35:54 ◼   ► I'm actually kind of surprised that the iMacs have the Apple logo on the front of it, because

01:35:58 ◼   ► seems counter to what Steve Jobs might have wanted. But, you know, he was here when those

01:36:04 ◼   ► iMacs came out, so I guess I got past them. But yeah, you don't want your logo everywhere.

01:36:07 ◼   ► It devalues it, you got to use strategically. And that little, you know, place of interest

01:36:12 ◼   ► Swedish campground symbol, that's a great symbol. It is. It doesn't really, you know,

01:36:16 ◼   ► I don't know if it says command at all, other than the association that we make with it,

01:36:20 ◼   ► but boy, what a great symbol. I agree. I saw it once in Denmark or Sweden, somewhere. I saw it,

01:36:28 ◼   ► being used as the actual thing that it's supposed to be used for. I was like, Oh my God, there

01:36:31 ◼   ► it is. I took a picture of it. It was like, did you put a letter after it so it can make

01:36:36 ◼   ► a key sequence? Cause it's just a command by itself. That's nothing. You're right. That's

01:36:40 ◼   ► a good point. Well, John, thank you so much for being my guest on, um, on this Thanksgiving

01:36:46 ◼   ► week on upgrade while Myke is traveling. It's always nice to check in with you and talk

01:36:50 ◼   ► to you about what's going on and take a little steal a little of your time away from ATP.

01:36:54 ◼   ► It was a pleasure, Jason. I just have one more tech podcast to do today and then I'll

01:36:58 ◼   ► be done.

01:36:59 ◼   ► It'll be done. That's easy. It's easy, but that one's not going to come out for days,

01:37:02 ◼   ► maybe. I don't know. I don't know how you guys do it with the ATP. But thank you for

01:37:07 ◼   ► being here. Thank you to our sponsors, FreshBooks, Encapsula, and AppOptics. Thanks to everybody

01:37:12 ◼   ► out there for listening. Myke and #AskUpgrade will be back next week. But until then, say

01:37:19 ◼   ► goodbye, John Syracuse.

01:37:20 ◼   ► Goodbye, John Syracuse.

01:37:21 ◼   ► John Sarguso.

01:37:28 ◼   ► [Music]