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Upgrade

26: Ambushed on a Podcast

 

00:00:00   *BEEP*

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 26. Today's very special episode is brought to you by

00:00:15   MailRoute, a secure hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam.

00:00:20   Casper, because everyone deserves a great night's sleep. And Flywheel, simple hosting for your

00:00:25   your WordPress site. My name is Myke Hurley, but I am joined live from San Francisco, Mr.

00:00:31   Jason Snell.

00:00:32   H

00:00:32   Hi Myke, I'm actually speaking to you live from my old stomping grounds in the Macworld

00:00:37   podcast studio, which Susie Oakes, who's the editor of Macworld, offered up to various

00:00:41   podcasters and I set it up so I know where all the buttons are. So, hello from downtown

00:00:47   San Francisco. Today is March 9th, 2014. Is it? I think it will be. Okay. Jason Snell

00:00:55   coming to you from Macworld. Macworld's own Jason Snell. I like that you're there. I like

00:01:01   that you're there. It's fitting. So, we're hot on the heels of a big event today.

00:01:09   It's a huge event. Huge, huge event today. You're referring to the fact that I met Federico

00:01:15   Vittucci, right?

00:01:16   Oh, yeah, of course. That's the only event that I met. This is what was the best-kept

00:01:23   secret of the day, was that Federico Vittucci arrived in San Francisco today to partake

00:01:29   in the Apple event. He got an invite. We'll talk about that on Connected. That's a whole

00:01:34   big story. I'm looking forward to Connected this week, actually.

00:01:37   Or we can talk about it now if you want, Myke.

00:01:40   Oh!

00:01:41   Hello?

00:01:42   Oh my god, that really scared me. Hi Federico!

00:01:45   Hi Myke, how are you?

00:01:46   What are you doing there?

00:01:47   A podcast, obviously.

00:01:48   How long have you been there?

00:01:49   The whole time.

00:01:50   The whole time.

00:01:51   It's good I didn't say anything bad about you. Hey buddy!

00:01:57   - Hi, now I know that I can trust you

00:02:01   because it didn't say anything bad about me.

00:02:03   - Yeah, well it's probably something

00:02:04   along the lines that I love you.

00:02:06   Hey, how you doing?

00:02:07   - I'm doing well, I'm doing well.

00:02:09   Jason was kind enough to invite me here.

00:02:11   It was awesome.

00:02:13   - Federica was kind enough to say,

00:02:14   "Sure, let's do a podcast."

00:02:17   - Federica. - He was like,

00:02:17   "Do you wanna do a podcast with Myke?"

00:02:19   I'm like, "Yeah."

00:02:19   - You're gonna have to keep your special stories

00:02:22   for connected, you know, right?

00:02:23   - Yes. - You can't cheat

00:02:24   on the connected. - We'll focus

00:02:25   on the news of the day and save those stories for Connected.

00:02:28   - That sounds like fun to me.

00:02:29   - You could be like Moises Chuyon's podcast network

00:02:32   and have like a crossover event where Federico appears

00:02:35   on various relay shows to tell various stories

00:02:38   about his trip to San Francisco.

00:02:40   His feelings can be unanalog.

00:02:42   - Do we have a food show, Myke, on relay?

00:02:45   - Yeah, Federico just ate some pasta in a restaurant

00:02:48   in San Francisco and didn't hate it.

00:02:50   - Effectively on Connected this week,

00:02:52   All I really want to understand is Federico Vittucci invades America.

00:02:57   That's kind of all I care about.

00:02:59   Apple Watch, so what?

00:03:00   All right, well-

00:03:01   We'll get that when he's back in Italy.

00:03:03   But now he's here in San Francisco with me because we went to the Apple event today.

00:03:08   I have never been ambushed on a podcast before.

00:03:11   That was very well done.

00:03:13   It's the first time for everything.

00:03:15   My brain kind of exploded a little bit.

00:03:16   I didn't 100% understand what was happening.

00:03:19   I looked at my computer as if I don't know what I would have seen.

00:03:22   Something's happening.

00:03:24   You needed to process all the information and the accent all at once.

00:03:28   Yeah, it was like Jason had learned a very, very good impression.

00:03:31   He spends one day with a biggie to a perch.

00:03:32   We've established that I cannot do a Federico Petici impression, other than to say, "Arrivederci."

00:03:39   But we're not there yet.

00:03:41   Okay, well, now I have the two of you, which is even better.

00:03:45   I guess we can go through this kind of stuff in advance.

00:03:48   I think one of the most interesting things to me, and I kind of

00:03:51   I

00:03:53   Don't want opening statements

00:03:55   We'll cover those at the end kind of like overall feelings of the event

00:03:58   But I think leading up to this one of the interesting things as we were debating

00:04:01   Oh, are we gonna see more than just the watch today and and everyone wasn't sure but we saw a

00:04:09   lot like of the two hours of the event only one hour was the watch and

00:04:14   There was about an hour of other stuff,

00:04:17   which I guess is probably the things

00:04:18   that we'll cover first today.

00:04:20   But being there and looking back on the event,

00:04:23   does that surprise you too?

00:04:25   - It doesn't surprise me.

00:04:27   I think when I made my terrible prediction

00:04:30   where I said I didn't think

00:04:31   there would be an Apple Watch event,

00:04:33   I think this is the good part of that terrible prediction,

00:04:35   which is, you know, if all they're doing

00:04:38   is replaying the event from six months ago,

00:04:40   why have the event, other than just to remind people?

00:04:42   and it was still sort of an hour of reminding people

00:04:45   of the Apple Watch, which you have to do

00:04:47   because now it's real and now they're going to be selling it.

00:04:49   So they had to do it, but boy, it would have been pretty empty

00:04:53   if that was all that we got.

00:04:54   And fortunately, we didn't. We got an hour of new material.

00:04:57   We got a whole bunch of new stuff.

00:04:59   They played the greatest hits at the end there,

00:05:01   but they gave us some of the new material in the first hour.

00:05:04   -I think the explanation of the watch

00:05:06   was a bit more concise and clear.

00:05:09   like they clearly divided the watch into three main features.

00:05:14   And I think they wanted to kind of re-explain it all

00:05:17   from the beginning.

00:05:18   And I think they knew better what they wanted to tell,

00:05:21   like the story that they wanted to tell.

00:05:23   And maybe my memory is a bit, you know,

00:05:27   is imprecise when it comes to remembering the September event

00:05:31   but I think that the watch,

00:05:32   the story that they painted today was very much

00:05:36   kind of obvious in a good way.

00:05:37   It's timekeeping, communication, and fitness.

00:05:40   And I think that, I mean, it's not new stuff,

00:05:43   but I think they told it better.

00:05:45   - I think one of the big differences this time

00:05:48   to what they did in the September event

00:05:50   was because they could show more third-party stuff.

00:05:52   So when Kevin Lynch did that, "Here's a Day in the Life,"

00:05:55   that to me seemed like a much better story

00:05:59   than what they'd previously shown in the September event,

00:06:01   because it gave like a real view of,

00:06:03   this is what this product will do.

00:06:07   Well, let's be honest. Not only was the hardware

00:06:09   not done last September,

00:06:10   the software wasn't done last September.

00:06:12   And Apple employees hadn't been wearing it on their wrists

00:06:16   in public living their lives, at least not to the degree

00:06:19   that they've been doing it for the last six months.

00:06:21   We've heard these stories about how a thousand Apple employees

00:06:24   have Apple watches on their wrists

00:06:26   and have been using them for the last six months.

00:06:28   And they'll even admit

00:06:29   that they have the Apple Watch on their wrist.

00:06:31   They won't demo it for you because that's been

00:06:33   against the rules, but they certainly would say,

00:06:35   sure it's an Apple Watch because it's been out there. You've got to think that that six

00:06:40   months has not only led to this evolution of the hardware and the software, but I really

00:06:45   believe that Apple employees living with this device have made a big difference in them

00:06:50   understanding what people will actually use it for in their real lives. And that came

00:06:55   through. It was a much more focused -- there were still moments of -- like when Christy

00:06:59   Turlington came on the stage, there was no focus there. I thought that would be a great

00:07:05   moment to talk about her running and how it was a how she used it and instead it

00:07:10   was more like "Christie will have a blog where she explains how she uses it in

00:07:14   the future" but you know that was an exception I think they did do a better

00:07:18   job of focusing it more.

00:07:20   My stream kind of died during that moment but I think of

00:07:24   all the times for it to happen that was probably okay.

00:07:27   Yeah that was solid.

00:07:28   Because I was just watching people compare it to Bono on Twitter.

00:07:32   - No, it was, I would say it was much more substantive than that. And it did sort of

00:07:37   mesh with, you know, she's got a charity and it's sort of Apple's whole thing about making

00:07:40   a better world and she was in Africa running the half marathon. It just felt kind of, I

00:07:45   think all the parts were there and I could totally see how somebody at Apple is like,

00:07:48   "Oh, this will be a really good thing. We should put this in the event." It just felt

00:07:52   like all the pieces were there but it didn't come together for me. I just thought it was,

00:07:57   you know. Also, I have to say really interesting content strategy on Apple's part where they're

00:08:02   going to have Christy Turlington blogging on -- the phrase was, "She's going to have

00:08:06   a blog on Apple.com about her using the watch to train." And that's sort of celebrity blogging

00:08:13   on Apple.com is a totally new thing. I mean, I don't think Bono had a blog telling us about

00:08:19   his songs.

00:08:20   - You'll just be automatically subscribed to Bono's blog.

00:08:24   - Why is Bono's blog in my RSS now? Why am I getting push notifications when Bono releases

00:08:31   new blog posts?

00:08:31   Why, don't you want to read?

00:08:33   It's a gift. It's a free blog post. Everybody gets it.

00:08:37   I guess the interesting thing, when looking at that, is we were complaining about there

00:08:46   not being a story, but now they're kind of providing it via means like this, which is

00:08:52   quite interesting, I think.

00:08:54   Yeah. Yeah. It's new. New Apple.

00:08:59   So the first big announcement was the Apple TV and HBO Go. Didn't expect this, and this

00:09:08   seemed really weird to me. Jason, why do you think this got as much stage time as it did?

00:09:14   Well it's a big Hollywood deal. It's getting HBO's over-the-top service, which is the,

00:09:22   you know, you don't have to be a subscriber to watch this service, and getting that as

00:09:27   an exclusive, a launch exclusive on Apple TV. So the only place you'll be able to get

00:09:33   the HBO over-the-top service, which is called, what is it called? It's not HBO--

00:09:38   - HBO Now?

00:09:39   - HBO Now, is that it? It's three letters. It's all capital letters.

00:09:43   - HBO Now, I think.

00:09:44   - That is the only place you'll be able to watch, if you're a cord cutter, watch Game

00:09:49   of Thrones legally when it starts in April. Because I think a three month, I saw the Wall

00:09:55   Wall Street Journal was reporting a three month exclusive before other providers can

00:09:59   offer HBO now. So that's a big coup, but that's also like a exclusive content partnership

00:10:05   kind of deal. And I would imagine that that kind of deal includes a prominent appearance

00:10:11   at an Apple event. It signals that Apple is kind of playing hard at the content game,

00:10:17   which I think is really great. I also had to laugh. We did finally get some Apple TV

00:10:22   news, hardware news, this event. It wasn't new hardware.

00:10:26   And the new pricing. We've got a bunch of old ones to move for

00:10:29   $69 before we can make a new one, apparently. Why do you think they're doing that?

00:10:36   They just want to sell them? I don't know. Yeah. I think that's -- and it's so old, the

00:10:42   margins on them have to be great. So they cut the price, which is good because their

00:10:45   competitors are cheaper, and they have this HBO deal, so they're gonna — I mean, the

00:10:52   somewhat cynical side of me says they make the HBO deal, they sell a lot of $69 Apple

00:10:56   TVs, and then they come in with a $99 brand new fancy Apple TV after they've sold a million

00:11:04   of those cheap old Apple TVs. That may be the plan here, I don't know. But it's still

00:11:10   a coup. We've talked for a long time about having something come exclusive to Apple.

00:11:15   And this is, I mean, it's temporary, but it isn't exclusive to Apple, this HBO service.

00:11:19   That's pretty cool. So that was good news. I felt like for a moment they were going to

00:11:24   do one of those jokey videos where Tim said, "You know, we keep adding channels all the

00:11:29   time. You guys have noticed." And I was waiting for one of those videos with the funny music

00:11:32   that shows somebody scrolling through like 8 million channels on Apple TV. But they'd

00:11:38   only do that if they were going to replace the interface, and they aren't, so oh well.

00:11:43   I wonder if, I mean, it must be an American only service, HBO Now. There's no way to

00:11:49   use it as a European. I mean, unless you have like a fake US account.

00:11:54   Exactly. The classic, the traditional way is to use it as a European.

00:11:57   Yeah.

00:11:58   Old-fashioned way.

00:11:59   Yeah.

00:12:00   The VPN, fake account.

00:12:01   The VPN, fake account, and you use the American service, yeah.

00:12:05   I have no idea what you're talking about.

00:12:07   And then we move on to research kit.

00:12:09   Totally out of left field, this is not something

00:12:12   I think anybody could have put their finger on

00:12:15   to guess about.

00:12:17   This is interesting, Jeff Williams got quite a bit of time

00:12:20   on stage to discuss this.

00:12:22   Now, please correct me if I'm wrong,

00:12:25   is Jeff the person who's heading up the health stuff?

00:12:29   Or is it somebody else?

00:12:30   - I don't know.

00:12:33   Isn't this the guy who famously drives a--

00:12:35   Drives a--

00:12:36   Camry.

00:12:37   Camry, an old Camry.

00:12:40   'Cause there is an executive who is in charge,

00:12:43   I think, of health stuff,

00:12:44   which I remember seeing from the Apple event.

00:12:46   I can't remember.

00:12:48   I'm seeing that Jeff is in operations,

00:12:50   but that kind of, if that's just coming

00:12:52   from Apple's website, that can mean anything.

00:12:53   I know that there is somebody who looks after health stuff.

00:12:58   But anyway, Jeff got quite a bit of time on stage.

00:13:03   stage, talk about research kit. Now I don't know if you guys were following along on Twitter

00:13:09   that there were a lot of people talking about how boring this section was and it maybe wasn't

00:13:13   necessarily riveting but it's a world-changing type type scenario.

00:13:22   Yeah it's I as I was sitting there I wasn't checking Twitter but I think I've gotten to

00:13:27   emulate Twitter in my head pretty well. I thought there will be a lot of cynical people

00:13:31   who will say, "This is boring. I don't care about this. Bring on the new products." But

00:13:38   I thought, you know, this is Apple making some decisions about wanting to send a message

00:13:43   that their products do change the world. They change the world in ways that go beyond just

00:13:50   your own personal interaction with the phone, that they're working to make interesting partnerships

00:13:56   to find better ways to use those sensors for things that can improve the world. You know,

00:14:01   it was sending that message.

00:14:02   And sure, Apple's hardware is at the center of it all.

00:14:04   I also think it's sending a somewhat subtle message

00:14:07   about the fact that Apple is the company

00:14:09   that you're more likely to trust

00:14:10   with your sensitive health data

00:14:11   because they don't make a business model

00:14:14   of selling your information

00:14:16   like many of their competitors do.

00:14:18   - They had this big slide,

00:14:19   Apple will never see your data.

00:14:21   - Yeah. - And I took a picture

00:14:22   because it was, and I tweeted it

00:14:24   because I think, yeah, it was kind of a,

00:14:26   you were telling me before it was kind of like a sub-tweet

00:14:28   in a way. - Yeah, yeah.

00:14:29   - To Google and other companies.

00:14:30   We didn't say anything about Google. I don't know what you're talking about. But, you know,

00:14:34   I think it, yeah, sure, it's self-serving because everything in a thing like that is

00:14:38   self-serving. But I don't, I'm going to try to not be cynical about it and say, look,

00:14:43   this is something Apple is proud of and Apple wants these, you know, these devices to do

00:14:48   more than just be the thing you use to check email. They want them to be, to have other

00:14:54   applications in the world and that's good for their business, but it's also good for

00:14:57   the world and that Apple loves to send that message

00:15:01   that their technology is changing the world,

00:15:03   and this is one way that they could do that.

00:15:05   For their perspective, it's not a huge amount of effort

00:15:08   to do something that can have a big impact.

00:15:10   -Yeah, I mean, I went through medical research myself

00:15:14   as a patient because when I was doing chemo treatments,

00:15:18   they wanted me to try these experimental drugs,

00:15:21   and to do so, at least I had to go through all this paperwork

00:15:26   and to sign this stuff and to weekly or bi-weekly report all this information about how I was feeling.

00:15:32   And you know, when you're feeling sick, it can be a bit of a burden to do that kind of stuff

00:15:38   and to sit there and say, "Yeah, I'm feeling this way," or "I'm doing this, I'm doing that."

00:15:43   And the thought of having apps and the iPhone, so not special sensors that you have to wear

00:15:50   or machinery that you have to operate.

00:15:53   Just my phone and to take simple tests

00:15:56   because it's got a microphone,

00:15:57   because it's got other sensors.

00:15:59   I think that's really, it's a big change

00:16:02   because I saw one side of the equation,

00:16:05   myself as a patient, and I think it's a big change.

00:16:08   And the feeling that I got in the room

00:16:12   was that it really mattered to people there.

00:16:15   And as you said, I imagine Twitter in my head.

00:16:18   And I'm like, yeah, people on Twitter are going to be,

00:16:20   oh, this is boring, bring us the Apple Watch.

00:16:23   But I think personally, it's a big change, I think.

00:16:26   And also, kind of interesting,

00:16:28   it is going to be open source.

00:16:29   So we'll have to see if it'll be open source

00:16:32   like FaceTime was supposed to be,

00:16:35   or if it'll be really open source

00:16:37   and available to other companies to use.

00:16:40   - It was Jay Blannock that I was thinking of.

00:16:43   Jay Blannock is the Director of Fitness

00:16:46   health technologies for Apple. He was the guy who narrated the watch fitness video.

00:16:53   So that was who I was thinking of.

00:16:56   Good knowledge, Myke.

00:16:57   Solid knowledge.

00:16:58   Only because I watched the original keynote like two days ago. So I kind of got them mixed

00:17:04   around in my brain.

00:17:05   Ah. Oh my God. You watched them both. That's good grief. Did it feel a little bit like

00:17:10   a rerun?

00:17:11   Do you know what? It didn't.

00:17:12   Oh, good.

00:17:13   It didn't.

00:17:14   Well, that goes with what we were saying then.

00:17:15   That's good. I'm glad.

00:17:16   The demo room afterward felt like a rerun

00:17:18   because it was the same tables with the same watches on them,

00:17:21   although you could touch them now

00:17:22   and they wouldn't look at you angrily.

00:17:25   So that's something.

00:17:26   They -- the things that were the same,

00:17:29   they kind of covered those really quickly.

00:17:31   But the interesting thing is seeing

00:17:33   how much of the UI has changed.

00:17:34   So you know the people picker?

00:17:38   That's a totally different UI.

00:17:39   In the original one, it's just a great --

00:17:40   Yeah, but with a little circular thing.

00:17:42   - Yeah.

00:17:43   That was nice.

00:17:45   Jason, do you think, what are your thoughts

00:17:48   on the open source?

00:17:49   Do you think that Apple will be committed to this?

00:17:52   - Well, I think this one doesn't have the encumbrances

00:17:54   that maybe FaceTime did.

00:17:56   And the question is, will it be useful open source or not?

00:17:59   And that's a mystery to me, because, you know,

00:18:02   is this code the kind of code

00:18:03   that people are gonna wanna take up and use,

00:18:05   and will it be valuable to somebody

00:18:06   either on Apple's platform or some other platform?

00:18:09   And, you know, I think it's a nice gesture that Apple's not trying to make this a trade

00:18:14   secret and so—but that's where it ends as a gesture and it begins as, you know, can

00:18:21   it be used?

00:18:22   How was it built?

00:18:23   Is this going to work its way into other projects?

00:18:25   But I think it's a great—I mean, it may be as simple as like somebody saying, "Look,

00:18:31   in order to get funding for my grant, I need to use open source software.

00:18:35   I can't use anything proprietary."

00:18:36   I don't know.

00:18:37   I know some doctors who I'm going to talk to about this.

00:18:39   I have a friend of mine who is a cancer specialist at UC San Francisco, and I'm going to ask

00:18:44   him what his take on this is, because the people who are in this industry will probably

00:18:49   have a very interesting and different take than those of us who are just like, "I've

00:18:53   seen the doctor."

00:18:54   So, we'll see.

00:18:56   But I think it's a good gesture, and then there's just the question of what's the code

00:19:01   that's open-sourced, and who can use it?

00:19:03   Is it all Swift and Objective-C that is not going to be useful outside of Apple's platforms?

00:19:10   I don't know.

00:19:11   It'll be interesting to see how long it'll take for this, if it works as a plan.

00:19:17   If it'll expand internationally to Europe and other countries, or if it'll stay, again,

00:19:23   a U.S.-only thing, because they announce all these bunch of apps that they will implement

00:19:28   research kit, and it's all U.S.-based institutions, I think.

00:19:32   I think I saw, I think there's an English Oxford.

00:19:37   - Yeah. - There was.

00:19:38   You're right.

00:19:39   - So there's hope, I think.

00:19:41   - Yeah.

00:19:41   One of the researchers was from the UK,

00:19:44   and they weren't just British.

00:19:45   Like, they were in a UK environment,

00:19:47   and it came up, I think it might have been Oxford, Jason.

00:19:51   I think you might be right.

00:19:52   - Yeah.

00:19:53   - But I remember seeing it at the time

00:19:54   and thinking that was interesting.

00:19:55   I thought, oh, it's gonna be, no, it's not gonna be.

00:19:58   So there you go.

00:19:59   Jason, are you gonna be signing up

00:20:01   to participate your health data?

00:20:04   - Well, we'll talk about it.

00:20:06   None of the apps affect me right now, but, you know, sure.

00:20:10   I would love that if I had information

00:20:14   that was useful for something like this.

00:20:16   I think a lot of people feel that way.

00:20:17   - Yeah, that's why I think it's good.

00:20:19   I would do it.

00:20:20   You feel like you're at least doing something.

00:20:22   - Sure. - You know?

00:20:23   Anyway, okay, I want to talk about the MacBook next.

00:20:25   Before we do that, let me take our first break

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00:22:39   So we saw the MacBook today and it's called the MacBook, right?

00:22:43   First off, that surprise?

00:22:44   Because now the MacBook Air is thicker and heavier than the MacBook.

00:22:48   Yeah, well, you know, products.

00:22:51   - This is another one of those situations.

00:22:54   There used to be a couple of years ago,

00:22:56   I think some weird stuff about the MacBook lineup.

00:23:00   There was like the basic MacBook

00:23:03   and then there was like a different,

00:23:05   gosh, I can't remember.

00:23:06   I think it was a couple of years ago

00:23:07   and people were confused by the product lineup

00:23:10   and they were like, why does this MacBook exist?

00:23:13   And kind of now in a way,

00:23:14   there's this new MacBook and the MacBook Air,

00:23:17   but it's still heavier and thicker than the other one.

00:23:20   - But cheaper.

00:23:21   I mean the MacBook Air now is the cheap laptop.

00:23:24   It always was, but all those people who predicted

00:23:27   that this was the low cost laptop,

00:23:28   and we said, well it's gonna be super thin and light

00:23:30   and retina, nuh-uh.

00:23:33   I feel good about those predictions that we made

00:23:35   because we were right, and this is not a,

00:23:37   I mean it's not super expensive either,

00:23:39   but it's not a $999 or $799 or whatever.

00:23:44   It's what, $1299?

00:23:46   - Yeah, I think so.

00:23:47   - I don't have my notes.

00:23:48   I just tweeted all my notes so people could check

00:23:50   Twitter account. All the predictions about the lack of physical ports. And when we, I think we talked

00:23:57   about it on Connected, Myke, when we were saying, well they're just gonna use it, you know, all the

00:24:01   wireless technologies for AirDrop and other stuff. And I don't know if it's available on the website,

00:24:07   I'm pretty sure it is, but Apple told me there's going to be a USB-C adapter if you want to connect

00:24:12   multiple devices at once. Right, yeah, $79. Oh yeah? Did you see the product page? Okay.

00:24:18   And it has a HDMI port, a USB, it has another USB-C, I think, and a regular USB.

00:24:27   That's it, $79. Well, they'll be good. That's too bad. So basically you plug

00:24:34   the power cable into your other USB-C, so then you get one USB and

00:24:41   of HDMI is kind of pointless. That's dumb. No, I have the Thunderbolt

00:24:46   dock that I bought for my MacBook Air and it's great because it's got, you know,

00:24:49   it's got video out and it's got multiple USBs and firewires and

00:24:54   Thunderbolts and all of that and, you know, that's sort of more what I

00:24:59   would want out of something like this. But, you know, maybe this is enough

00:25:03   for somebody. I don't know. That's weird. So some things that you guys

00:25:09   might not be aware of and Steven is doing a great job. This is this is such

00:25:12   a collaboration right now he's telling me things at the moment. There's two

00:25:15   configurations they have a USB HDMI and USB C and a USB VGA and USB C they're

00:25:20   both 79 bucks and the really interesting thing about this and Steven has a good

00:25:24   post on 512 pixels with all of that. Of course he does. Of course. Where it's

00:25:32   basically the configuration page is like an iPad page. Like all of the

00:25:39   configurations are locked, there's no build to order models. You pick

00:25:43   silver, gold, space, grey and then you either pick the, what is it, the 256 or the

00:25:49   512 storage and a 1.1 gigahertz dual core or a 1.2. That's it.

00:25:56   and they're both locked to 8GB RAM as well.

00:25:59   Well, they said we took everything we learned from making iPads

00:26:05   and put it into making this MacBook, and I think that's accurate.

00:26:09   I think from my notes, one of the bits that I saved

00:26:13   is how making iOS devices and the watch kind of informed

00:26:18   the making of this MacBook, and you see that not just in the lighter

00:26:22   and thinner hardware,

00:26:24   but also in the way the Force Touch was implemented.

00:26:26   -Oh, man. That trackpad is the most notable thing

00:26:29   about this product. You guys have used it.

00:26:31   Tell me about it. -Yes.

00:26:33   It freaked me out because I thought I was breaking it.

00:26:36   Because basically when you touch it --

00:26:38   Jason can explain this better

00:26:39   because he has all the technical knowledge.

00:26:41   But basically from my simple perspective

00:26:46   of a not heavy Mac user,

00:26:48   When you try the track pad, it doesn't physically move,

00:26:52   but it feels like you're depressing,

00:26:54   like you're going deep into the track pad.

00:26:57   But actually it doesn't move, but with your finger,

00:26:59   you feel like little steps

00:27:01   when you apply different levels of pressure.

00:27:03   But that's not actually going down

00:27:05   with your finger physically into the machine.

00:27:07   It's the haptic engine responding with feedback,

00:27:11   and it responds by sideways, by moving the--

00:27:15   - Yeah, it's crazy.

00:27:16   So in fact, in the QuickTime demo,

00:27:18   where you can actually have the different levels of fast forward,

00:27:21   and they're all based on different gradations of touch,

00:27:25   you can actually keep pushing harder.

00:27:28   And as you push harder, every so often there's this little tick,

00:27:33   like the whole track pad got a little bit,

00:27:37   just ticked down a little lower, like it's ratcheting down.

00:27:40   And then you push harder and it ticks again,

00:27:42   and it feels like it's even lower.

00:27:44   But in fact, none of that is happening.

00:27:46   And the Taptic Engine, I don't want to say

00:27:48   that when you click it, it doesn't move,

00:27:50   because that's not true.

00:27:51   When you click the track pad surface, it moves.

00:27:54   But it doesn't move down

00:27:56   because you physically pushed it down.

00:27:58   It moves because the force sensors feel

00:28:00   the force of your finger kick the Taptic Engine into life,

00:28:04   and it does a shake that's actually side to side,

00:28:08   not up and down, but you would never know.

00:28:12   When you click, the first time I used it,

00:28:15   I just moved the mouse, not even thinking,

00:28:17   I just moved the mouse and clicked.

00:28:18   And I thought, wait a second,

00:28:20   it just clicks like a normal track pad.

00:28:22   What's going on here?

00:28:23   It's an illusion, but it's perfect.

00:28:27   It's a perfect illusion.

00:28:28   The difference being that it's all controlled by software.

00:28:30   So you can change the sensitivity of clicks.

00:28:33   You can have multiple clicks at multiple force points,

00:28:35   like the QuickTime demo.

00:28:37   - Developers will have first touch APIs

00:28:40   for third-party apps.

00:28:41   - Yeah, and so yeah,

00:28:42   this force click idea is a new gesture

00:28:46   that developers will be able to build in support for.

00:28:49   That if you do sort of an extra hard click

00:28:52   or you click and then push further,

00:28:53   that something different happens than a normal click

00:28:56   or a control click.

00:28:57   - This is gonna be a feature of the iPhone 7, right?

00:28:59   - Yeah, yeah.

00:29:00   I think so.

00:29:01   - You would think.

00:29:02   - It makes sense.

00:29:03   - It's permeating across everything now.

00:29:04   It's like the new retina, you know?

00:29:06   It's like it means different things in different products,

00:29:08   but it's kind of there across all of them.

00:29:11   If—unless this turns out to be a dead end,

00:29:13   if this is a popular thing,

00:29:15   and Apple seems to think it will be, yeah,

00:29:17   it would be hard not to see that this will go to the iPhone

00:29:19   and the iPad eventually, this idea that you can—

00:29:22   you can have pressure sensitivity

00:29:24   as a different way to do, you know, to do gestures.

00:29:27   -I just want to be able to activate extensions

00:29:30   with Force Touch.

00:29:31   Just click down a link and it pops up the share sheet.

00:29:34   -Wouldn't that be nice? -Yeah, that'd be cool.

00:29:36   -See, now we're talking about iPads,

00:29:37   because Federico's here.

00:29:39   Oh, here we go.

00:29:40   - JasonSlade401 in the chat room is interested

00:29:42   to know how the keyboard feels.

00:29:45   - Okay, so the keyboard, it's different.

00:29:49   It is full-sized.

00:29:51   The rumors that it was shrunken down seem to not be true.

00:29:54   The keycaps are larger than on the old model,

00:29:58   so there's less space between them.

00:30:00   - It looks like the fonts in San Francisco.

00:30:02   Am I right in thinking that?

00:30:03   - No, I don't know that.

00:30:04   I don't have one in front of me, so I can't tell you that.

00:30:07   - The press shots do look different to me.

00:30:09   Here's the thing that's the weirdest thing about it.

00:30:11   Oh, and every key has an LED behind it.

00:30:13   They're individually backlit, which I was wondering,

00:30:15   is there a controller for that?

00:30:16   Can you have it light up certain keys?

00:30:18   Probably not, but wouldn't that be amazing if you could?

00:30:20   I'll have it light up the key you're pressing at the moment

00:30:23   and make a little--

00:30:23   - Can you hook up your keyboard keys to IFTTT?

00:30:26   Automate your lighting?

00:30:28   - The, like a Christmas tree, except it's a keyboard.

00:30:32   The field, there's very little key travel.

00:30:35   So it takes some getting used to.

00:30:38   And the people at Apple who were showing it off said,

00:30:40   "Look, you know, it's weird to start,

00:30:42   but you get used to it."

00:30:44   And I want to --

00:30:46   I was able to type really fast on it, like normal speed.

00:30:49   I want to spend some time with it

00:30:51   and get a better sense of it.

00:30:52   My sense is that you don't think about your keyboard style

00:30:57   when you're typing. It's just your style.

00:30:59   But when you're confronted with a very different keyboard,

00:31:02   you start to think about it.

00:31:03   And I think when I was typing on the MacBook,

00:31:06   What it reminded me is that on Apple's current keyboards,

00:31:11   which are all exactly the same,

00:31:12   and that's basically what I use,

00:31:14   and the Logitech keyboard I use,

00:31:15   it feels exactly like the Apple keyboards too.

00:31:18   What I find is that I'm pressing down

00:31:21   until my finger makes contact,

00:31:23   and then I'm almost following through

00:31:25   with an extra flick or press to push it all the way down.

00:31:29   And when I started trying to do that on this new keyboard,

00:31:32   what I found is I would do that touchdown,

00:31:36   And then the further press didn't do anything

00:31:39   'cause it was already down.

00:31:40   It couldn't go down any further.

00:31:42   And so then I started typing where I just said to myself,

00:31:45   sort of like typing on an iPad screen,

00:31:47   we joked about that with Federico,

00:31:48   if you just tap and then you move on.

00:31:52   Once your finger taps the key, the key is tapped.

00:31:54   You just move on, you don't press it harder.

00:31:56   Then my speed picked up dramatically.

00:31:59   So I think some of it is just, you get used to it.

00:32:02   Your muscle memory changes

00:32:03   and you know when you type on this keyboard.

00:32:06   I'm sure that people will be freaked out by it

00:32:08   because people are always freaked out by keyboards.

00:32:10   The last time Apple changed the keyboard,

00:32:11   they were freaked out about it.

00:32:12   Some people are very finicky with keyboards

00:32:14   and so I'm sure some of them will be unhappy with it.

00:32:18   I approached it with a lot of skepticism

00:32:22   and I'm not sure I like it,

00:32:24   but I was able to type it at perfectly fine speeds with it.

00:32:27   And they're very proud of the fact

00:32:28   that it's got this crazy butterfly switch

00:32:30   and their little stainless steel thingy that you press

00:32:33   and it doesn't wobble or anything like that.

00:32:35   They're very proud of that stuff.

00:32:36   Apple likes to talk about that stuff.

00:32:38   But, you know, it doesn't feel cheap,

00:32:40   but if you're somebody who really likes

00:32:43   a lot of key travel on your keys,

00:32:44   you will not be happy with it because it doesn't have a lot.

00:32:48   And they're not doing a -- they have not yet --

00:32:49   they cannot yet afford to put a Taptic Engine

00:32:51   underneath each keyboard key --

00:32:53   under each key that shakes an individual key when you press it

00:32:56   and makes you think you push it down.

00:32:58   But you know what? After feeling that trackpad today,

00:33:01   that day is probably coming.

00:33:02   No, seriously, Myke, the track pad is so weird at first.

00:33:07   Like, what is going on?

00:33:09   -It feels normal.

00:33:10   It's when they tell you how it works

00:33:11   that you realize that it's all a lie.

00:33:14   -Basically, you try it,

00:33:16   and you form this thought in your head.

00:33:19   It's like, "Okay, I know how this works."

00:33:21   And then they tell you, and you're like,

00:33:22   "No, that's not true. You're lying to me."

00:33:24   And that was my reaction.

00:33:27   -I'm very interested to try this thing out now.

00:33:31   - Yeah, so I mean, again, you can tell me

00:33:35   what it feels like on the Apple Watch,

00:33:36   but do you actually feel your finger going into it?

00:33:39   It's just not like that, right?

00:33:41   - Yeah, your brain feels your pressure

00:33:46   that you're putting on the track pad,

00:33:49   and it feels the movement of the track pad,

00:33:52   which is the taptic engine.

00:33:54   And, well, I can't speak for your brain, actually, Myke.

00:33:56   My brain translates that as I just pressed it down

00:34:00   and it went down, even though that's not what happened.

00:34:03   It's pretty crazy.

00:34:06   But again, if you didn't know and you were just using it,

00:34:08   you would never think about it.

00:34:10   Like I said, the very first time I clicked,

00:34:12   I wasn't thinking about the fact that this was the new trackpad,

00:34:14   and it clicked and it felt perfectly normal.

00:34:17   Then I stopped myself and said, "Wait a second.

00:34:19   They said there were new trackpads on these things."

00:34:23   And then I kept looking at it and trying to see

00:34:25   if it moved or not, and like I said, it does move.

00:34:28   It just doesn't move because I --

00:34:30   well, it does move because I pressed it.

00:34:31   It doesn't move down because my finger is pushing it down.

00:34:34   That's what doesn't happen.

00:34:36   Instead, you give it pressure, and then it shakes itself

00:34:39   to fool you into thinking you did it.

00:34:41   It's weird, but it's good. It's really well done.

00:34:44   -Yeah. -And because it's programmable,

00:34:46   it can be, like Federico was saying in that QuickTime thing,

00:34:49   you can program in five different stops

00:34:50   at five different pressure points if you wanted to,

00:34:52   and then it would feel like you were pushing through

00:34:54   tick, tick, tick, tick, tick and pushing it down.

00:34:56   - Yeah, actually in the demo that I tried on QuickTime,

00:34:59   there was also a feature that basically

00:35:01   you do the Force Touch and you can change,

00:35:04   I think, the template of a QuickTime movie.

00:35:07   So you get like an extra menu if you do the Force Touch

00:35:10   instead of having to right click and choose a template.

00:35:13   So you get all these new shortcuts and it's really cool.

00:35:16   - QuickLook is gonna be,

00:35:17   QuickLook in the Finder is like that

00:35:18   where if you Force Touch on a file, QuickLook opens.

00:35:22   And it can be implemented in any different app.

00:35:24   They had a bunch of different examples.

00:35:25   I think in Safari they've got it so that it does a dictionary definition or a Wikipedia

00:35:29   lookup. It's basically all the Apple data detector stuff that they have. Those are all

00:35:34   triggered by Force Touch now.

00:35:36   It's going to be really good in Pro Apps, like as a way to bring up different tools

00:35:39   and stuff like that. Like I'm thinking about Logic Pro and like...

00:35:42   That it's like a control surface kind of thing.

00:35:45   But on a MacBook Pro Apps.

00:35:46   Yeah. Yeah, because it is like Intel Core M. It's not exactly the top of the line. It's

00:35:52   a power sipping. It's a good processor, but it's, you know, it's, I don't know. We'll

00:35:58   see. Well, they've put this into the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. Oh, that's true. They

00:36:03   did. The 13-inch. So there you go. So you do your logic editing on the 13-inch Retina

00:36:07   MacBook Pro with this trackpad. That's true. Good point. And I had a couple people say

00:36:12   to me, I wonder if they'll revise the Magic Trackpad to have it do this too. I mean, it

00:36:18   would be, you know, not that they need the space,

00:36:21   but although it do— as a Magic Trackpad user,

00:36:24   if you get it in the right place, you can't click.

00:36:27   If you get it in certain locations on a desk

00:36:30   that's got like an angle or a bump on it,

00:36:32   it depresses itself, and then you kind of can't click on it.

00:36:37   So it would be an interesting change to move—

00:36:39   to eliminate that moving part,

00:36:41   and instead have one that has force touch,

00:36:44   which they seem to want in every product now.

00:36:47   This is, I can't believe how much time

00:36:50   we spent on the track pad, but it is really interesting.

00:36:51   So I kind of have a little bit

00:36:53   of a philosophical question about it.

00:36:55   So, and this is going back to the movement in it, right?

00:36:58   If it isn't moving, it's like if there's a tree in the woods,

00:37:02   if it isn't moving, but your brain thinks it's moving,

00:37:07   like it's tricking you into thinking it's moving,

00:37:09   are you okay with that?

00:37:10   'Cause I know that there will be people

00:37:12   that just flat out won't be, but you two both,

00:37:16   Like, does that feel okay to you?

00:37:18   The fact that it feels this way,

00:37:19   does it make a difference wherever it is or it doesn't?

00:37:21   - I mean, the illusion is very strong.

00:37:29   I mean, I just thought it felt really cool, you know?

00:37:34   So I don't necessarily,

00:37:36   I think based on my quick impression,

00:37:39   I don't necessarily care whether it's true or not,

00:37:42   as long as it's implemented really well.

00:37:46   I guess, my perspective.

00:37:48   I mean, it's done really well once you try it.

00:37:50   - And they have a good reason for it,

00:37:51   which is they're trying to minimize the space,

00:37:54   the moving parts in this thing because it's so thin.

00:37:57   - I still have more I wanna talk to you about

00:38:03   about the MacBook.

00:38:04   Who is this product for?

00:38:06   That's a good question. - 'Cause that's what

00:38:10   I'm struggling with with this.

00:38:11   This is what my original feeling about

00:38:14   when we heard about this product,

00:38:17   is that what Apple is doing again

00:38:18   is they are creating the archetype for the next 10 years,

00:38:21   like they did with the original MacBook Air, right?

00:38:23   So it's like this thing is not really for anybody right now.

00:38:26   Like it doesn't, you know,

00:38:30   this isn't a product that fits for people.

00:38:33   - Yeah, it's, well, I mean, part of it is

00:38:36   this is the future product,

00:38:37   and part of it is this is for the person

00:38:39   who wants the thinnest, lightest, coolest laptop,

00:38:41   because it is that.

00:38:42   And it's, you know, I wrote a piece on six colors about this,

00:38:45   about before it came out when the rumors were out there

00:38:48   that very much, you know,

00:38:49   this is the spirit of the original MacBook Air.

00:38:51   This is the, you know, compromises

00:38:52   as thin and light as possible.

00:38:53   We don't, you know, I'm not so concerned about power.

00:38:56   I'm not so concerned about convenience of ports

00:38:58   or anything like that.

00:38:59   I just want a really cool, thin, light, small laptop,

00:39:03   which now, you know, which has good battery life

00:39:05   and a retina display.

00:39:07   So it's for people who don't have all of the specific needs

00:39:11   that some of us tech nerds have,

00:39:14   but just want this really great laptop.

00:39:15   It is, in fact, I would argue it's for the person

00:39:18   who loves their iPad and also wants a laptop.

00:39:21   -I was just about to say it's the iPad

00:39:23   for people who want a Mac. -Yeah.

00:39:25   -So you're going to get one then.

00:39:28   -I need a Mac, Myke. I don't want a Mac.

00:39:31   -Yeah, it does, but with the -- I mean, it has that feel.

00:39:34   It is the laptop from the people who brought you the iPad.

00:39:38   -Yeah. -And, you know,

00:39:39   and I think there's an audience for that.

00:39:41   the fact that this is not a $2,000 laptop either.

00:39:44   It's decently priced, and I think over time,

00:39:46   the MacBook Air will fade away

00:39:48   or will just keep going kind of down in the market,

00:39:52   but I think at some point, yeah, it'll fade away,

00:39:54   and you'll be left with MacBook and MacBook Pro,

00:39:56   and they'll both be Retina,

00:39:57   and this will be the one that's thinner and lighter

00:40:00   and less powerful, but that's okay

00:40:03   because there's an audience for it.

00:40:04   In the short term, it's a better question to ask

00:40:07   because the Air is still out there

00:40:09   and the Pro is still out there,

00:40:10   But like with that original Air, it's very clear this is the future of this product line.

00:40:16   Because the technologies that they show is the reason that only one USB

00:40:20   connector is okay. They're kind of not really there. They're saying, "Oh, you can do everything

00:40:29   with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi." Well, I guess, sure, not really though.

00:40:33   They said that with the MacBook Air, whatever, five years ago too. They said the exact same.

00:40:37   Steve Jobs made that same claim, "Well, you know, wireless is fine." And the fact is,

00:40:42   you know, I've got three MacBook Airs in my house now.

00:40:46   Yeah, but like if you think of some of the other stuff they took away, like it was the

00:40:51   first machine to lose an optical drive, and that's totally fine now. Like, it's not a

00:40:56   problem at all for like the majority of people. So, I mean, I just wonder, like, is it okay

00:41:01   to take all the USB ports and Thunderbolt ports? Like, is Thunderbolt dead?

00:41:07   I'm not feeling very good about it now.

00:41:09   Because there isn't even an adapter, a USB-C to Thunderbolt adapter.

00:41:16   Well, the MacBook Air got the upgrades to Thunderbolt 2.

00:41:19   Yeah, got the upgrades to Thunderbolt 2, that's right.

00:41:23   I don't know, I don't know.

00:41:24   Or maybe they just think that it's not necessary.

00:41:28   We'll see how the USB-C thing does too.

00:41:30   Maybe is Apple going all in on this or is this just this one weird product?

00:41:34   You know, that happens with Apple,

00:41:35   where sometimes they do products and a year or two later,

00:41:38   you realize that they've taken a couple steps.

00:41:40   They say, "All right, that was a little too far.

00:41:41   We went a little far."

00:41:43   And this is the kind of product that that happens with,

00:41:45   where sometimes they say, "Oh, okay.

00:41:48   We should have kept FireWire on that MacBook Pro.

00:41:51   We're sorry that we took it off."

00:41:52   Things like that. And that might happen here,

00:41:55   although there's not a lot of room for ports on it.

00:41:58   -So, again, our friendly neighborhood Mac nerd,

00:42:01   Mr. Stephen Hackett, is telling me,

00:42:02   the Intel Core M doesn't support Thunderbolt,

00:42:05   which is the chip, so maybe that's the problem.

00:42:07   Maybe other devices would have both still.

00:42:10   - Interesting.

00:42:12   - But that kind of sucks.

00:42:13   So there is an Ask Upgrade question,

00:42:15   which we'll get to those later on.

00:42:18   - Eventually, yeah.

00:42:19   - But Katie Floyd asked, what do we do,

00:42:21   what do us existing Thunderbolt display users do?

00:42:24   Well, it kind of looks like nothing is probably the answer.

00:42:27   You can't use this machine with that display,

00:42:29   I would assume is the case.

00:42:31   - That's right, I would assume.

00:42:32   If the chipset doesn't support it,

00:42:33   like no amount of adapters can help you.

00:42:36   - Yeah.

00:42:39   - So there you go.

00:42:39   - Yeah.

00:42:40   Weird.

00:42:41   It's a weird,

00:42:42   again, I have to keep coming back

00:42:43   to the original MacBook Air.

00:42:45   That was a weird product.

00:42:47   That was non-standard in so many different ways.

00:42:50   It didn't have firewire,

00:42:51   the weird little door that came down.

00:42:53   It didn't have an optical drive.

00:42:54   It was a weird, one USB port.

00:42:56   It was a weird computer.

00:42:57   And this is like that.

00:42:58   This is a weird computer.

00:42:59   It's really, the things that make it cool

00:43:01   also sort of make it weird.

00:43:03   And if you're somebody who,

00:43:04   I mean, there's this tendency, right,

00:43:08   for you to say, well, it's not for me,

00:43:09   so I don't like it.

00:43:10   It's like, well, yeah, there is a whole range of people

00:43:13   for whom this product is not for them.

00:43:15   It's just, it's not for them.

00:43:17   If you've got a Thunderbolt display,

00:43:19   it's really not for you, 'cause it doesn't do Thunderbolt.

00:43:22   But there are gonna be a whole lot of people

00:43:24   for whom this is the right product.

00:43:27   but it is not a product that's meant to appeal to everybody.

00:43:31   And maybe it will be—

00:43:33   like the MacBook Air has much broader appeal now.

00:43:35   MacBook Air is sort of like the winner

00:43:38   in the MacBook product line,

00:43:40   but it started out as the weirdest of weird,

00:43:44   overpriced, underpowered computers,

00:43:46   and it took a long time for it to evolve from there.

00:43:49   - Mr. Jason Snell, I think it's time for a break

00:43:52   and we can switch topic.

00:43:54   But for this lovely commercial break,

00:43:56   could you please tell me about our friends over at Casper?

00:43:59   - I would be happy to.

00:44:00   Now the reason that I'm reading this ad

00:44:02   is that I sleep every night on a Casper mattress.

00:44:04   And so, and you do not, Myke, because you do not sleep,

00:44:08   for you are not a human anymore.

00:44:10   You are a vampire. - Sleep?

00:44:11   I scoff at sleep.

00:44:13   - Yeah.

00:44:14   Casper's an online retailer of premium mattresses,

00:44:16   and they cost a fraction of the price

00:44:18   of most premium mattresses

00:44:19   because they eliminate the middleman.

00:44:21   These are, I think, Silicon Valley guys

00:44:24   who have ended up saying they want to disrupt

00:44:27   the mattress industry and get away from forcing consumers

00:44:32   to pay notoriously high markups on mattresses.

00:44:35   So it's this cool new kind of product.

00:44:39   It's a hybrid mattress.

00:44:40   It's got latex foam and memory foam combined.

00:44:43   So you end up with the support of the memory foam

00:44:46   and then this really soft comfy latex foam

00:44:49   on the top of that.

00:44:50   And it's just a comfy mattress.

00:44:52   I have one at home.

00:44:54   My old mattress, you'd sit down on it,

00:44:55   and if there was somebody else, like I have a cat,

00:44:57   the cat would be on the bed,

00:44:58   and I'd sit down on the bed, and the cat would jump up,

00:45:00   because it was like a trampoline.

00:45:01   Like you sit down in one place,

00:45:02   and everything else goes flying.

00:45:04   This bed doesn't do that.

00:45:05   It's just super soft and comfy, and I really like it.

00:45:09   Mattresses can cost over $1,500.

00:45:12   Casper mattresses cost between 500 for a twin,

00:45:15   600 for a twin extra long, 750 full,

00:45:18   850 queen, and 950 king.

00:45:19   So they're really good prices.

00:45:21   And you buy it online.

00:45:22   this is one of those revolutionary things, you buy it online and it's risk-free. They

00:45:26   will deliver a box to you in which will be a vacuum-packed Casper mattress. You open

00:45:31   it up in the room where you're going to use it because then it expands upon getting the

00:45:36   sweet, sweet air and then fills the room to its full size. And then you try it out. And

00:45:43   if you don't like it, you can return it. It's a mattress you can return. There's a 100-day

00:45:46   trial period. So if you don't like it, you don't have any risk of being stuck with a

00:45:50   mattress you don't like, you can send it back. I've had mine more than 100 days now because

00:45:55   I slept on it like two days and I said, "Yeah, we're keeping this mattress." And we like

00:45:58   -- it was a big happy change to have this nice new mattress. If you -- you can go to

00:46:05   a showroom and lay on a bed for four minutes, it will have no correlation on whether you're

00:46:08   actually going to be comfortable sleeping on it. And so now you can have 100 days to

00:46:12   try it out. It's made in America. They want to mention that too on top of everything else.

00:46:18   not like the shifty countries like they have in the UK or Italy where there are untrustworthy

00:46:24   people. And here's where you need to go to find out more. If you would like to join me

00:46:30   in sleeping on a Casper mattress, you have to get your own. You can't sleep on my mattress.

00:46:34   It's mine. Get your own. Go to casper.com/upgrade and use promo code upgrade. You can get $50

00:46:42   toward any mattress purchase.

00:46:45   So Casper, thank you for being a friend,

00:46:48   for giving me a very comfy mattress to sleep on

00:46:50   and for sponsoring Upgrade.

00:46:51   - I would like to say on Casper's behalf

00:46:54   that it's Jason Snell who thinks that people

00:46:56   from the UK and Italy are untrustworthy.

00:46:58   - Yes, that's true.

00:47:00   I'm just playing to my audience here.

00:47:02   We love you.

00:47:03   I'm sorry that it's made in the USA.

00:47:07   Maybe you can also get it in the UK, made in the USA.

00:47:11   But it's comfy, I gotta say that.

00:47:13   Bottom line, I really enjoy sleeping on that mattress.

00:47:16   - Now, our lovely Italian friend,

00:47:20   who gave me a minor heart attack about an hour ago.

00:47:24   Yes, he has to get back on a plane

00:47:27   so he can be home in time to record Connected.

00:47:30   - Exactly. - Yes, that's the reason.

00:47:32   (laughing)

00:47:34   - So we're gonna talk about the watch,

00:47:36   but Federico, this is the first time

00:47:40   you've put your hands on one of these babies. Do you want to give me a

00:47:45   couple of minutes, like what are your first impressions of holding one of

00:47:48   these things? Sure. My first thought, and I talk to other people and it seems to

00:47:57   be a common impression, is how small it seems to be. I thought it would be much

00:48:02   much bigger. Even I tried both the 38 and 42 millimeter versions and I thought it

00:48:08   was going to be much bigger and it's actually pretty small, it's very compact.

00:48:15   The idea that I got from those 10 minutes of demo, it's really compact and it feels,

00:48:23   I tried the 42 version with the middle-laced loop on me and it felt great.

00:48:30   I mean the loop itself was super smooth and like when you touch it, I mean it's all made

00:48:38   of steel, I guess, but it's very soft and you can tell that it's been made in a very

00:48:45   premium process. The watch is kind of different because there's all these bunch of gestures

00:48:52   and the click wheel that you need to learn how to operate. It can be a little confusing

00:48:59   at first. I got stuck myself a couple of times to navigate the home screen because it can

00:49:06   be a little different to pan around and then you gotta click the

00:49:10   click wheel to return to the watch face and then you gotta activate the

00:49:14   glances. It can be a little different coming from the iPhone and iPad

00:49:17   perspective because it's not the same iOS structure, the way that things are

00:49:22   laid out and arranged on screen. I think based on the limited time

00:49:32   that I had. It is going to be, and I'm talking personally, it is going to be

00:49:39   useful for me when it comes to exercises, when it comes to tracking my daily

00:49:44   physical activity and I cannot wait to see how developers will plug into these

00:49:50   new features, you know, the heart rate, the activity monitoring and the way that

00:49:55   you can use an iPhone app as a back end and sync specific subset of

00:50:01   functionality and data back to the phone. What I tried was...

00:50:07   I didn't get a demo of the communication features because I focused on the

00:50:12   home screen, notifications and the fitness stuff. So it was really... I mean I

00:50:19   guess I have big hands and big fingers, I don't know, but it felt really small to

00:50:24   me even the the 42 version and so that was kind of off-putting

00:50:30   I wasn't expecting that and touching the icons on the home screen is also quite

00:50:37   strange because like the way that you pan around and zoom and use the click

00:50:42   wheel it's kind of I don't know it felt different to me but I think also the

00:50:47   sensor is super cool that you have in the back of the device. Apple

00:50:53   People didn't let me exchange the band on my own.

00:50:57   They told me they were taking care of changing the bands for me.

00:51:02   Not sure why they didn't want me.

00:51:03   I saw the bloggers saying that the Apple representatives didn't let them change the bands just yet.

00:51:12   Probably because they don't want to see, you know, don't want to make people try the mechanism,

00:51:16   I don't know.

00:51:17   I saw a Panzarin tweet that he mentioned and he wrote about the port that's in there.

00:51:27   He says that he was able to confirm that the ones that are in the demo unit still had that

00:51:31   port in them.

00:51:33   And he doesn't, maybe they've still got it in their diagnostics port and they'll be coming

00:51:38   out in the shipping version so they didn't want you to see that maybe.

00:51:41   That makes sense.

00:51:42   So it was smaller than I was expecting.

00:51:45   The screen looks gorgeous, very colourful, very high quality I guess.

00:51:51   I'm really excited about the fitness features and getting reminders on my wrist when I'm

00:51:56   walking or exercising in general.

00:51:59   I think it'll be a big deal for people who want to keep track of these sort of things.

00:52:03   But also I think for...

00:52:04   So I couldn't get a demo of the communication features, but based on what I saw on stage

00:52:09   it feels really intimate in the way that you talk to people and interact with close friends

00:52:15   and family, I think it'll be an interesting addition to the iOS lineup.

00:52:22   I think it'll be, I mean I still don't know, will I use my phone less, will I still use

00:52:29   my iPhone just as much as I'm using it now, will I do some tasks on the watch.

00:52:35   We were, I was talking to Jason at lunch and all these apps that are promising to do all

00:52:41   the things that you can do on a phone now on a watch, I'm very skeptical of those kinds

00:52:46   of apps.

00:52:47   I do want to see apps that do only some stuff on the watch because it makes sense to put

00:52:53   that kind of functionality on the watch.

00:52:56   So we'll see.

00:52:57   But yeah, from a hardware perspective, much smaller and the Milanese loop is super fashionable

00:53:04   and really premium feeling overall.

00:53:09   Thank you Federico.

00:53:10   And thank you for joining us today.

00:53:13   Thank you guys for having me.

00:53:15   Surprise!

00:53:16   It's great to talk to you even though you've shortened my life expectancy a little bit.

00:53:21   I'm sorry.

00:53:23   And I'm very happy that you were there and I'm very excited to talk to you on Connected

00:53:28   this week.

00:53:29   Me too.

00:53:30   About the experience and some of the things that you've gotten up to today, which I cannot

00:53:37   wait to hear all these stories.

00:53:39   I said it was a little bit like going beyond the set of a TV show or something.

00:53:43   Federico said earlier today it's like seeing everybody from Twitter in person.

00:53:48   Real life Twitter.

00:53:49   It was weird.

00:53:51   Yeah.

00:53:52   So Federico Vittucci, where can people, where can they find you?

00:53:56   They've never heard from you before.

00:53:57   Please not at the airport today.

00:53:58   No.

00:53:59   They wanted to do it yesterday.

00:54:00   Don't come looking for him.

00:54:01   Don't come looking for me, please.

00:54:02   I'm super tired.

00:54:04   They can find me on Twitter, V-I-T-I-C-C-I, that's @Vittici,

00:54:08   and my website that I, I guess I run,

00:54:12   with other people, that's maxsories.net,

00:54:15   and that's the two places where you can find me.

00:54:18   - And the connected podcast and virtual podcast.

00:54:20   - Oh yeah, I'm sorry.

00:54:21   I just take it for granted. - All the great shows.

00:54:23   - All the great shows.

00:54:25   - On Relay FM. - Yes.

00:54:27   - Including this one now.

00:54:29   You know, this is the first time that Federico and I

00:54:31   have been on a podcast together.

00:54:33   just together in general.

00:54:35   - Well, that's true too,

00:54:36   but I've been on the prompt and connected,

00:54:39   but only when you weren't there.

00:54:40   - That's right.

00:54:42   That's right. - I know.

00:54:43   So I had to get him to California to make it happen.

00:54:45   - If you're not had him on Clockwise yet.

00:54:47   - And, but you know, we haven't.

00:54:48   Oh, we should do that.

00:54:50   Oh, that's a good idea.

00:54:52   Hmm.

00:54:54   We're, Clockwise is branching out.

00:54:55   We have all these European people on Clockwise now.

00:54:57   - Yeah, 'cause the time works very well for us.

00:54:59   - 'Cause the time really works well for that.

00:55:01   That's true.

00:55:01   That's very true.

00:55:03   No, this has been great. It's been a real treat.

00:55:06   Everybody has been excited to meet Federico.

00:55:09   I've been really enjoying the introductions where I say,

00:55:11   "Oh, have you met Federico Medici?

00:55:13   Here he is. He's really here."

00:55:14   Jason has been super awesome.

00:55:16   You have been super awesome with all your advice and messages,

00:55:21   and everybody has been so kind.

00:55:23   Well, don't forget my live blogging of your entire day

00:55:26   that I have been completing.

00:55:28   It was amazing. Everybody was super kind.

00:55:30   And yeah, I had a great time here.

00:55:33   And now I'll go back to Italy.

00:55:35   Hopefully it'll be a smooth flight back.

00:55:37   - You can take a nice long rest on the plane.

00:55:41   - Yeah.

00:55:42   - All right, well, so here's,

00:55:43   this is the weird thing that's gonna happen.

00:55:44   We are going to break, let Federico go,

00:55:48   and then we will resume upgrade.

00:55:51   And those of you listening on the podcast,

00:55:55   we'll never know that there was a delay in between.

00:55:58   Alright Myke, I'll see you on the other side.

00:56:00   - Okay.

00:56:01   - Okay, so Federico is gone.

00:56:03   - It was a pleasure having him.

00:56:06   - It was, but he's gone now.

00:56:08   He's gone to the airport and I've gone home

00:56:10   and an upgrade continues.

00:56:13   - It does, so we should talk about the watch then.

00:56:15   So, this is, you know, everybody's seen the video before,

00:56:20   but this is also your second time having a demo.

00:56:25   I mean, my assumption is the demo

00:56:28   that you've got yourself today

00:56:31   has been more comprehensive than the demo

00:56:33   that you had previously?

00:56:34   - Well, it wasn't the don't touch.

00:56:37   The previous demo was you could put a watch on your wrist

00:56:44   that was running in a loop of like samples, no interaction.

00:56:49   And then an Apple employee had one

00:56:53   and they would go through a script

00:56:54   of sort of, you could do this and you could do this.

00:56:57   But it was very much like you couldn't get them off the path

00:56:59   because there was stuff they just didn't want to show

00:57:01   and that wasn't ready and that things would crash

00:57:03   or break or whatever.

00:57:04   This time when they put the watch on your wrist,

00:57:09   they still told you what you could do, but you could do it.

00:57:14   So it was a little more advanced.

00:57:17   There are definitely further along than it was.

00:57:19   So a little more sense of it.

00:57:21   I mean, it was very similar to the,

00:57:24   I've seen it before.

00:57:25   So it was not new to me.

00:57:27   I'm glad it's close, but it wasn't new.

00:57:32   For somebody like Federico,

00:57:33   who had never seen it in person,

00:57:35   I think that was a really valuable thing.

00:57:38   For the rest of us, we've sort of seen it before.

00:57:40   It definitely is not, it looks bigger, I think.

00:57:43   I think it's bigger in people's minds

00:57:45   than it will be on their wrists.

00:57:46   I guess I could put it that way.

00:57:48   I think, and as somebody who's been wearing a pebble,

00:57:51   it doesn't look that big.

00:57:53   It's not that big.

00:57:54   Even the big one is not a huge one.

00:57:57   It's not big.

00:57:58   And they're pretty.

00:58:00   I was gonna say this when we were talking with Federico.

00:58:03   Apple has for years now,

00:58:06   since the big Bob Mansfield days, I think,

00:58:08   Apple has prided itself on its metal work.

00:58:13   They've had videos with Johnny Ive or with Bob Mansfield,

00:58:18   where they talk about the enclosures of MacBooks

00:58:21   and the unibody MacBooks and all that,

00:58:25   Apple really thinks one of its key attributes

00:58:30   that it has over its competition

00:58:33   is its ability to really understand materials.

00:58:37   And you see it in the two videos they showed in the event

00:58:40   and the other one they put on the website

00:58:41   about the materials that make up the watch.

00:58:45   They're really proud of that.

00:58:46   But at the same time, you feel it in the products.

00:58:50   the materials they use on their products,

00:58:54   on iPhones and iPads, on Macs,

00:58:57   and especially on this new MacBook,

00:58:58   and on the watch, they're extremely high quality,

00:59:03   made extremely well.

00:59:05   And the watch, you know, you wear it, you look at it,

00:59:08   you can tell.

00:59:09   This is, you know, not to bring a pebble again,

00:59:12   but it's a nice product, but the hardware,

00:59:16   you know, it's pedestrian hardware.

00:59:18   It's fine, but Apple's playing a different game from Pebble,

00:59:22   and you can see it.

00:59:23   So the advantage of seeing that watch in person,

00:59:25   not only do you get to gauge the size of it,

00:59:26   but you get to look at the metal and how it's been built.

00:59:30   And that's something, that's a skill that Apple has.

00:59:33   We talk about the combination of hardware and software

00:59:36   and their clever hardware design,

00:59:37   but their materials and machining and all those things

00:59:41   that go into that finished product,

00:59:43   they're really good at that too.

00:59:45   And the watch is a really great example of it,

00:59:46   there's not a lot of hardware there so it needs to be really good and the watch

00:59:49   looks and feels you know really good you can you can make some style judgments

00:59:54   about it I know I've heard some people say that they think that the Apple watch

00:59:57   looks ugly fair enough but it is made with it is purpose-built it is made with

01:00:02   a lot of care and it is beautiful in that way I want to come back to this in

01:00:08   a second I want to talk about those videos but I want to go back to the

01:00:12   MacBook again talking about machining and we didn't really talk about this the

01:00:19   things that they're doing inside of that computer it's like witchcraft like yeah

01:00:27   like the logic board and the stuff they're doing a battery and the terrace

01:00:31   the terrorist batteries right it's insane it is insane I had that thought

01:00:36   of like how do you so then you need a battery replacement or something it's

01:00:40   It's like, well, there's a custom, well, you go into the Apple store and there's a custom

01:00:45   battery that they'll order or that they have on hand that they put in there, part seven

01:00:52   that goes in that corner.

01:00:54   But that's how you do it.

01:00:56   This is the thing about Apple, is Apple is not a company that's taking stock parts off

01:01:02   of a parts list and putting them together and saying, "Look, we made a computer."

01:01:06   And in fact, Apple of today is not even playing the same game as Apple of five or ten years

01:01:12   ago, where there's so much that they do that's original.

01:01:18   And that allows them to push the categories that they're in forward.

01:01:22   And it's amazing to see that that logic board on that MacBook is super tiny.

01:01:30   I mean, there's nothing to it.

01:01:31   It's a whole computer on this little tiny thing.

01:01:34   And then I love what Apple said about it, what Phil Schiller said about it, which is,

01:01:39   you know, what do we do with the rest of it?

01:01:40   Fill it with batteries.

01:01:41   What are we going to ship a product full of air?

01:01:44   No, we want it full of battery.

01:01:46   That was my favorite line.

01:01:48   Yeah.

01:01:49   And it makes sense that you would, and they did.

01:01:51   To the greatest degree possible, every other space in that entire thing is just battery.

01:02:00   So back to the watches.

01:02:04   girlfriend arrived home I was watching I was watching the the event on like on

01:02:09   like the TV that I use for the Mac Pro. Oh right. And so it was nice to watch

01:02:15   the videos that they were showing especially because they just started

01:02:19   showing like the way you know the sort of the vignettes that they have for each

01:02:23   material and they only showed the steel and aluminum videos I believe and she

01:02:29   kind of came in and she's just watching it I was like the level of care they put

01:02:34   in CDC videos, nobody else will do this.

01:02:37   - We were talking about that at lunch.

01:02:39   I think I had that thought while I was watching them

01:02:42   that I wonder who they hire to direct those

01:02:45   because that looked to me like world-class A-level

01:02:49   like commercial director or maybe documentary director.

01:02:54   But that is not like industrial films

01:02:58   that they show in high schools.

01:03:00   That was like filmmaking.

01:03:02   the shots of the metalwork and stuff were artful and beautiful, which is crazy. That's a crazy

01:03:11   level of detail. It's totally unnecessary. Totally unnecessary, but amazing. -The Ive piece

01:03:19   in the New Yorker suggested that they were doing the previous watch videos in-house. Do you think

01:03:25   that there's a chance that there's maybe somebody who works in the design team now whose job it is

01:03:31   to make these videos and they've hired a filmmaker?

01:03:33   - I don't know.

01:03:35   I don't know if it is.

01:03:36   It felt much more like a, much more stylish than,

01:03:40   but this wasn't the Johnny Ive

01:03:42   sits in a white room kind of video.

01:03:44   It was a different kind of video.

01:03:45   And if that's an in-house person, then yeah,

01:03:48   I think that person or the people who built this

01:03:50   are very talented because that's what it felt like to me.

01:03:52   I noticed how good it looked

01:03:55   and how it really didn't need to look that good

01:03:58   and be that attractive.

01:04:00   and I thought, you know, this is the kind of thing where they hire an A-list commercial

01:04:05   director or a photographer or somebody who also does commercials, somebody who is just

01:04:12   really talented at this sort of thing. Because it was, yeah, it was much more artful and

01:04:16   beautiful piece of work than a thing about the metal that goes into a watch ever needs

01:04:23   to be.

01:04:24   David: Johnny's role in these product introduction videos seems to be increasing.

01:04:28   - Yeah, I think they've decided that he is the narrator

01:04:32   of the product creation experience at Apple,

01:04:36   really for lack of a better way to phrase it.

01:04:38   That if you're creating this,

01:04:40   I always used to say that Steve Jobs

01:04:41   was doing like technological advancement

01:04:44   live on stage as a stage show, which is not true,

01:04:47   but that was like how you felt in a Steve Jobs keynote

01:04:49   was like, and we just invented this thing and here it is,

01:04:53   which is, you know, the work of doing that is long

01:04:55   and boring and to make it exciting,

01:04:58   you need that showmanship.

01:04:59   I think that maybe the Johnny Ive videos

01:05:01   are like a different version of that.

01:05:04   They don't have Steve anymore, but they've got Johnny Ive.

01:05:06   And he is, doesn't want to be live on stage,

01:05:08   but he's pretty good at doing those videos.

01:05:11   And it captures some of that mystique.

01:05:13   It captures some of that only Apple kind of approach,

01:05:18   as well as telling a story about a way

01:05:22   that they're very different.

01:05:23   So I think it's an interesting way

01:05:24   to spin that same idea, that you're trying to communicate

01:05:27   these things that are probably not gonna be interesting

01:05:32   in some other format, and how do you make them more exciting?

01:05:36   And one of the ways is you have these,

01:05:38   you built this visual language

01:05:40   for these white room kind of videos,

01:05:42   and you've got Johnny Ive narrating it,

01:05:44   and he brings some weight to it as the,

01:05:46   Mr. Design Genius tells you why this product is awesome.

01:05:51   I mean, that's a good, that's good for Apple

01:05:55   to have that kind of thing that it can play.

01:05:57   So I do think they're kind of coming into their own

01:05:59   as a standard way where Johnny will explain

01:06:03   the thinking behind the product and why,

01:06:06   and it's always too, why we put so much extra work into it.

01:06:09   We reinvented keyboards so that we can make the keyboard

01:06:13   in the MacBook with this stainless steel thing here

01:06:16   and this butterfly thing here.

01:06:17   I mean, Apple loves telling those kinds of stories

01:06:20   And the Jonathan Ive videos are a very good way

01:06:22   to tell the stories, I think.

01:06:23   - Yeah, like they mentioned in the MacBook introduction,

01:06:27   they spoke about it a little bit,

01:06:30   I can't remember the exact words,

01:06:32   but just about the amount of invention

01:06:34   that has to occur for a product like this to exist.

01:06:37   Like every piece has to be reinvented.

01:06:39   Like that's how you create something like that.

01:06:41   - Yeah, yeah.

01:06:42   And not many companies doing that right now.

01:06:46   And Apple knows it.

01:06:47   And Apple knows that that's how they're different,

01:06:49   is by having these things, not just the, like I said,

01:06:52   this loving, you know, material science kind of stuff

01:06:56   that they do.

01:06:57   Also the things like the custom logic boards

01:06:59   and things like that.

01:07:00   I mean, that's what makes Apple, Apple.

01:07:03   - Yeah, 'cause like why would you?

01:07:05   - Yeah.

01:07:05   - Why would you do that?

01:07:07   But they do.

01:07:08   - Because you're never satisfied

01:07:09   and you wanna make it, you know,

01:07:11   that much thinner or that much better.

01:07:12   And I love that Apple's got that drive.

01:07:14   That will, you know, when I was ranting earlier

01:07:17   about the new MacBook is not for a lot of people,

01:07:22   and it may be pushing it a little too far

01:07:24   like the original MacBook Air.

01:07:26   That's true, but that's a side effect

01:07:29   of being unsatisfied with things the way they are

01:07:33   and always trying to push forward,

01:07:35   which is something I really admire

01:07:36   about Apple's approach to product design,

01:07:38   that they are always trying to do that crazy next thing,

01:07:42   and they're never really satisfied with where they are.

01:07:44   And sometimes, yeah, that leads to kind of weird,

01:07:46   crazy products, but it also drives them to innovate, and that's the stuff that

01:07:53   pushes not only their products forward, but a lot of times is influential in

01:07:56   pushing the whole, you know, whatever category it is forward. It's like a

01:08:01   relentless march forward, like it's just part of that, right? That's what it is

01:08:05   that drives them to do this. They just will keep, keep pushing, keep pushing, keep

01:08:08   pushing. Yeah. Did you find out, or have you come across any additional

01:08:14   information about the watch that has intrigued you in any way?

01:08:20   Oh, uh, the thing that intrigued me the most

01:08:24   is probably the price because I really had

01:08:27   talked myself into thinking that the Apple Watch

01:08:31   collection also I- I'll pause for a moment to say I laughed when they

01:08:36   said, uh, when Tim Cook described the formation of these three different

01:08:40   product lines as "curation". We curated the watch into these

01:08:44   different lines. Really? Curated is the word you're looking for there? I guess that

01:08:47   means we pick what bands go with what watches?

01:08:51   It was just such the wrong word. Like, yeah, it was like, oh, there were all these

01:08:58   watches that existed in the world and then we brought them together and got

01:09:02   rid of the ones we didn't like. No, no, no, no, they're all yours. You make them all.

01:09:07   It's a very peculiar word and I think it's because they've kind of boxed

01:09:12   themselves into a corner of the words they can use by taking the word "edition"

01:09:17   and then also by calling them, calling one of the collections "Apple Watch". Like

01:09:23   I feel like that they've ended up with the naming that they've chosen they've

01:09:26   put themselves where it actually makes it very difficult to describe what's

01:09:30   what. I think that's, they kind of found themselves in this weird naming

01:09:36   problem. But so tell me what you think about the pricing then. So I was really

01:09:40   happy that the Apple Watch was less than I thought.

01:09:45   But then I walked into the demo room and I looked at them

01:09:51   and I thought, you know, the Apple Watch blank,

01:09:56   the stainless steel one, it's this shiny stainless steel.

01:09:58   It reminds me of a back of an iPod, the early iPods,

01:10:01   you know, those shiny stainless steel backs

01:10:03   where they get covered in fingerprints and stuff.

01:10:06   And then I looked at the amortized aluminum

01:10:10   that's got as the materials video said, a satin finish,

01:10:14   aluminum with a satin finish.

01:10:16   And I thought, I actually liked that better.

01:10:21   So now I don't know.

01:10:23   Now I kind of think the sport looks better.

01:10:27   Although the space black of the Apple Watch,

01:10:32   nameless, looks pretty slick too.

01:10:36   So I don't know.

01:10:36   I don't like that rubber band,

01:10:38   which, you know, fluoro elastomer, fluoro elastomer.

01:10:43   I don't like that one, so I don't know what I'm gonna do.

01:10:46   But I like that the middle one is cheaper,

01:10:49   and I'm just not sure if I want a shiny,

01:10:51   stainless steel watch.

01:10:52   - So this might be something you're not yet aware of,

01:10:56   but there are a whole selection of straps

01:11:00   that you can buy on the Apple Store.

01:11:03   They're basically selling them all.

01:11:05   - They are selling them all.

01:11:07   "Oh, that's good." Well, that was what I was saying,

01:11:10   and people were doubting me and thinking.

01:11:11   I had people asking, like, "Oh, Apple will just make them

01:11:14   that they're not compatible or something like that."

01:11:16   I can't see that. I can't see that happening.

01:11:20   - Yeah, so basically what they have is

01:11:22   there are certain SKUs that you can buy.

01:11:25   Like, for example, with the Spult,

01:11:26   you can only pick up the fluoroelastomer bands,

01:11:30   but they have a selection on the store,

01:11:32   and it's got all the bands there, and you click through,

01:11:35   and it doesn't tell you that they can only be used

01:11:37   certain watches. So the just the perceived notion is that you can use it

01:11:42   and I've seen people, some journalists and people tweeting that they have they

01:11:46   had they confirmed with Apple that you can use any strap on any watch.

01:11:53   Yeah, which I think...

01:11:55   The ones that are missing here are there's none of the

01:11:57   edition ones which you know also makes sense.

01:11:59   Right, right which actually is the way

01:12:01   that they described it on stage was these are special limited edition watches with special

01:12:08   super high quality materials. Although the Milenase Loop, I was impressed that you can just go ahead

01:12:23   and buy that. I mean it's 150 bucks but that's what you got to do. I think right now if I were

01:12:28   gonna say I'm placing an order I would probably place an order for the sport

01:12:34   with with a leather band but I don't that I would add on but I don't know

01:12:42   which leather band probably the black classic the classic buckle I think so

01:12:51   yeah I have a lot more looking at these pages to go before before I'm even

01:12:57   nearly at the point where I have any idea what I'm ordering yet.

01:13:00   Nearly every watch that I own is or have ever owned has had a

01:13:05   since I had a Casio keyboard or Casio calculator watch with a plastic strap

01:13:10   since then they've pretty much all been black leather or

01:13:13   it in the case of one it was brown leather strap

01:13:17   but that was that was always sort of like that that meant watch to me

01:13:21   and in fact my dad my dad gave me his Rolex

01:13:25   and it came with this metal link band and I just, I hate metal link bands, so I actually have a

01:13:30   leather band for that, even though I'm sure that the right thing to do would be to pay hundreds and

01:13:34   hundreds of dollars to fix the broken links in the metal band, but I would never wear it because

01:13:39   I hate wearing watches with metal bands, so we'll see. I'm looking forward to it, but that's good. I

01:13:45   think it would have been crazy for Apple to sort of say, "We're only selling certain bands with

01:13:50   certain models. I get the curation part of it, pardon the expression of like, "Well,

01:13:56   the sport edition comes with a sport band, period. We're not gonna make it more complicated

01:13:59   than that, and if you want to buy another band, go buy another band, but we're not gonna

01:14:04   have you build to order your watch with 80 different band choices, because that's too

01:14:08   crazy." So, fair enough.

01:14:11   So, battery life. This is, we have more information on battery life, well we have some information

01:14:19   where previously we had none. What's your take on the battery life?

01:14:25   Well, they had to do a day. So I wrote two things after we talked last week, I wrote

01:14:32   two things on the Apple Watch, one for Macworld and one for iMore. And on the iMore one, which

01:14:39   my list of like things that the Apple Watch needs to do. One of them was, it needs to

01:14:43   last all day. Doesn't need to last two days, but it needs to last all day. And they said

01:14:47   18 hours, which should be enough for most people, I think Tim Cook said. And 18 hours,

01:14:52   how do you get that number? I'm sure they've got some sort of algorithm that they use,

01:14:56   some sort of testing suite that they use, which is it's for every hour, it's this much

01:15:00   of this and this much of that. And, you know, just like trying to emulate, probably based

01:15:04   on actual user data what the average day is for an average Apple Watch user. They've got

01:15:09   a lot of user data now. If they've truly got a thousand people at Apple wearing these things,

01:15:13   they've got a lot of user data.

01:15:14   I can tell you actually what they think it is.

01:15:17   Oh yeah? Okay.

01:15:18   Because they've got a page as an apple.com/watch/battery page.

01:15:24   We make a great team. The guy who's looking at all the web pages and the guy who just

01:15:27   went to the event and doesn't know anything about what's on the internet. This is perfect.

01:15:31   This is the reason why I turned down all the invitations that I get.

01:15:34   Yes, I can be here with my finger on the pulse. You're needed.

01:15:37   All day battery life up to 18 hours. Testing conducted by Apple in March of

01:15:42   2015 using pre-production Apple Watch and software paired with an iPhone using pre-production software.

01:15:48   All day battery life is based on 18 hours with the following use. 90 time checks, 90 notifications,

01:15:55   45 minutes of app use and a 30 minute workout with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth

01:16:01   over the course of 18 hours.

01:16:04   Battery life varies by use, configuration,

01:16:06   and many other factors.

01:16:07   Actual results may vary.

01:16:09   - I think that's pretty good.

01:16:11   I think that's pretty good.

01:16:13   - And then they have a couple of other things,

01:16:14   like how much talk time you can get,

01:16:17   how much audio, how much watch.

01:16:20   And one of the things that I find really interesting,

01:16:22   or two things actually, sorry, charge time.

01:16:25   It takes about one and a half hours to charge it to 80%,

01:16:28   and two and a half hours to 100%,

01:16:30   which I think they're pretty fair.

01:16:32   I mean, if it-- - I agree.

01:16:34   - I have no problem with it taking an hour and a half

01:16:38   to charge at 80%, like that's great.

01:16:42   You just sit it down. - Clearly the use case

01:16:44   is you go to bed and you take it off and charge it.

01:16:48   That's the use case and that makes sense.

01:16:50   - The 42 millimeter typically experiences

01:16:52   longer battery life, it's on the page as well.

01:16:54   - Yeah, I think, and so I think they made it.

01:16:58   We'll see whether those models really match reality, but I bet you they're pretty close.

01:17:02   I bet they have a pretty good idea of this and how it gets used.

01:17:07   And that's good because it doesn't need to last all day.

01:17:11   Your watch cannot die because it's four in the afternoon.

01:17:15   No, it cannot do that.

01:17:18   So they have to make it that way or that product's a failure if it doesn't last all day.

01:17:23   So I think they made it last all day.

01:17:25   I think that's great.

01:17:26   I think that's great to hear.

01:17:28   And who knows what kind of things?

01:17:30   Well, we may find out what kind of things they've done in the software

01:17:33   in order to get it to work like that, but they had to do it.

01:17:38   That's a number they had to hit. It had to last all day.

01:17:40   - My personal history with Apple battery estimation has always been good,

01:17:46   so I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt

01:17:51   and say that I'm going to believe this.

01:17:54   Yeah, those numbers are real. I actually, I don't know if he worked on this one or not, but

01:18:01   I'll put it this way. People I have worked with in the past who worked at Macworld and MacUser in the

01:18:08   labs now work at Apple, and this is what they do, is they do product testing. But instead of

01:18:14   publishing the results on a website, they come up with what the tests are and they do the methodology

01:18:21   and they come up with the numbers and that helps inform how they market the battery life

01:18:25   and other things. And I don't know, literally don't know anything about what they've done

01:18:28   since they've gone on the inside, but I do know that there are a whole bunch of people who used to

01:18:31   do public tests for magazines and websites like Macworld and Macuser back in the day are now doing

01:18:39   that at Apple. These are professionals. They know what they're doing. These numbers, Apple is always

01:18:43   going to pick the numbers that reflect best on them, but they are not, Apple is not motivated to

01:18:49   make up bogus tests that are not matching the real world. And actually, for the last

01:18:54   few years, that's absolutely been the case, that Apple tries to pick fairly realistic

01:18:58   — again, reflecting positively on Apple, of course they're going to do that — but

01:19:02   fairly realistic tests of real world usage, so that they don't want to get in that game

01:19:08   where they claim that there's 15 hours of battery life, but that it turns out that everybody

01:19:13   knows it's only four. They try to avoid that, and they've done a pretty good job of making

01:19:18   their tests more realistic than they used to be. I did have a little gripe that

01:19:23   I just wanted to mention which is not with Apple it's with people. So Apple

01:19:30   said that all day battery life for the watch is 18 hours and they said that the

01:19:34   the new MacBook gets 10 hours of battery life and that's also they called it all

01:19:39   day battery life. Yes. And I've seen people say like oh how's that the same

01:19:43   two definitions of all day. I was like no it's all day for what you use them for.

01:19:47   for like a watch all day is whenever I'm awake.

01:19:52   A laptop is whenever I'm using a laptop,

01:19:55   which shouldn't be for every hour I'm awake.

01:19:57   - When I'm walking somewhere, I am not using my laptop,

01:20:00   but I don't take off my watch at any point during the day.

01:20:04   So they're different and yeah,

01:20:06   you use your laptop in a very different way

01:20:09   than you use your watch.

01:20:10   You gotta get people to the end of the day, right?

01:20:13   That's the, I mean, really your feet hit the floor

01:20:16   in the morning and you may be okay, you step out of the shower in the morning,

01:20:20   you get dressed and you put on your watch.

01:20:21   That should be the start of the clock.

01:20:23   And the end of the clock is it's the end of the day and you take off your

01:20:26   watch and click it into the little charger and then go to bed.

01:20:28   Can you make it from start to finish and Apple that's Apple's challenge.

01:20:33   And, uh, you know, they seem to think that they made it.

01:20:36   Um, availability.

01:20:40   So it seems that we're going to be getting pre-orders on April 10th with

01:20:45   availability on April 24th. The UK is included which is great news so I'll be

01:20:53   I'll be pre-ordering. And there's also going to be select Apple stores.

01:20:59   And I have seen, and I saw this fly by a couple of times on Twitter today,

01:21:04   I do not have a clarification on it just yet, that in the UK, in London, they

01:21:12   will be having the Apple Watch in the Selfridges department store as well so

01:21:18   you'll be able to go in and see them in person. Now I need to get that confirmed

01:21:23   but that would be very interesting if that was the case considering there are

01:21:28   two of the world's flagship stores and one of them is just a stone throwaway

01:21:34   but it would make sense because Selfridges is a world known department

01:21:39   store so it would be very sensible I think because as well the incredible

01:21:43   luxury so the way that I expect it to be is the additions are there and the other

01:21:47   the regular stores have the the other models what I going back to the

01:21:54   availability a little bit about the addition they said select Apple stores

01:21:58   limited edition I think Apple have answered the question of store redesign

01:22:02   there ain't gonna be one yeah I mean maybe there will be but it's not about

01:22:06   this. I think that's the way to do it. They don't need to redesign the stores because

01:22:10   they'll just, for the stores that have them, they'll just have a room in the back that

01:22:14   you go to by appointment like it's whatever. Yeah in the special stores. Yeah I think that's

01:22:20   right and I wouldn't surprise me if one day they're in, the additions are in high-end,

01:22:26   you know specific high-end jewelry stores or department stores, but Apple retail is

01:22:31   in lots of places and they're in the places where there's the most money so starting there

01:22:35   seems like a good idea. Yeah so we'll, I like what they're also going to do is

01:22:41   they're gonna have demo units from the 10th. This is the way it should be. I

01:22:45   think this makes a lot of sense for this product, is there'll be a pre-ordering

01:22:49   process and then a buying process and in between the two of them you'll be able

01:22:53   to go and try them on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The pre-order, well the pre-order is

01:22:59   April 10th right? And that's when the try-on I think starts around then too.

01:23:04   But yeah, it's a good, it's trying, the try-on thing is good. That's gonna be, it's gonna be new for Apple to do that.

01:23:09   But you've got to do that.

01:23:10   You've got to get it on people's wrists and have them understand it before they put the money down for that.

01:23:15   They showed the table, right? Which is very similar to the table I think you've seen.

01:23:19   Yeah, it's the, it's the same table. They had it again today.

01:23:22   Although, you know, they had it with glass over it. But and then we saw that table at a, at a,

01:23:30   the event six months ago too. They are gonna be swamped. Just it's gonna be a nightmare in the stores.

01:23:38   That's a good problem for Apple to have I think. Yeah so I'm hoping that they'll do

01:23:43   pre-order for in-store pickup that's what I that that would be my my dream

01:23:47   scenario there. I have found with with Apple products delivery to be lacking in

01:23:55   some instances. I've had many problems in the past with things not getting delivered

01:23:59   because of demand on launch days and in courier companies just stop working at

01:24:04   some points in the day. You're lucky though, I don't think we

01:24:09   mentioned this earlier, you are one, unlike Federico, you are one of the nine

01:24:12   countries that will be getting the watch on day one. Yeah, I would have been

01:24:17   surprised if it would have been outside of the US. It wasn't my concern that if

01:24:24   if it was outside of the US would the UK be one? My concern was would it be outside of the US?

01:24:30   Right, right. But I was surprised that nine countries are getting it on day one and not just the US.

01:24:35   So that was something.

01:24:37   Because the UK has been part of the launch countries for a long time.

01:24:42   Or at least, you know, of the second round,

01:24:47   always in that one with the first round just being US and Canada or whatever.

01:24:52   So I'm yeah, I'm very I'm very happy that we're getting it

01:24:55   Yeah, that makes me makes me smile because that sucks to wait it's yeah, whatever it just it does

01:25:02   Now we have some ask upgrade

01:25:06   But I kind of have to two last questions and then we'll do some quickfire ask upgrade

01:25:12   Do you have any more thoughts about the design or overall about the Apple watch?

01:25:17   and

01:25:19   and what were your overall impressions

01:25:21   of how this keynote played out?

01:25:23   - I have my, let's see.

01:25:29   My only other thoughts about the design of the Apple Watch

01:25:32   is I'm interested in the fact

01:25:37   that there are these very specific bands

01:25:44   that they've created, and I'm not enough of a watch person

01:25:48   to have had the experience with lots and lots of bands.

01:25:50   Like I said, a traditional leather band

01:25:53   is about all I have used.

01:25:55   I'm struck by the fact that they all seem to have

01:25:58   clever ways of clasping.

01:26:00   And I suppose you get used to it,

01:26:04   but I had that moment where I thought to myself,

01:26:07   "Oh, the Apple Watch isn't good enough

01:26:09   to just have a regular band

01:26:11   that everybody knows how to use."

01:26:13   (laughs)

01:26:14   They are all a little bit clever.

01:26:16   And that's fine.

01:26:17   Maybe I will figure that out.

01:26:19   But like even the sport band, I'm like, you know,

01:26:21   you gotta kinda figure out which hole

01:26:23   there's the little thing and you push the little thing

01:26:25   into the hole and I don't know.

01:26:27   It just seemed kind of complicated to me.

01:26:29   And I thought that was kind of funny.

01:26:30   And it's like, I get that they're trying to make these

01:26:33   a special experience, but I think it takes

01:26:36   a little getting used to.

01:26:38   So every time I've had one of these Apple watches on,

01:26:40   it's been like a, like I have the Apple person,

01:26:43   they apply the watch to my wrist.

01:26:46   I thought, is this weird that none of us,

01:26:50   or at least me and I think some of the people around me,

01:26:54   couldn't put it on ourselves?

01:26:56   That it's odd enough that we had to have the expert

01:27:00   who's been trained in putting on our watch band

01:27:03   do that for us?

01:27:04   I don't know.

01:27:05   They're different than what I'm used to,

01:27:09   so it's gonna take some getting used to.

01:27:11   And the only other thing I would say is,

01:27:13   like I said earlier,

01:27:14   The stainless steel is really shiny.

01:27:20   The stainless steel space black is shiny black,

01:27:24   whereas the sport is that anodized aluminum,

01:27:27   so it's a satin finish and it's more matte.

01:27:31   And I like that.

01:27:33   And it makes me interested in that one,

01:27:37   which surprised me a little bit

01:27:40   'cause I was thinking much more about the stainless.

01:27:42   The stainless is really beautiful too.

01:27:44   They all look, they look great.

01:27:45   They do definitely look beautifully manufactured.

01:27:48   And I think that Apple has worked hard

01:27:50   to make this a super high quality product

01:27:55   in terms of the manufacturing.

01:27:56   So that's about it.

01:27:57   - Interesting stuff.

01:27:59   Cool.

01:28:00   Why don't we thank our Ask Upgrade sponsor?

01:28:05   - Ah, yes.

01:28:06   - And I'll sort of, I'll fire these out at you.

01:28:08   - Okay.

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01:31:03   good friend indeed. Okay, Mr. Jason Snow. Let's try and knock through some of these.

01:31:09   Mr. iMichael. I guess these are some of the answers to these questions are like I guess

01:31:16   it's gonna be what do we think rather than what do we know. Will HBO Go continue with

01:31:21   HBO Now around? Yes, they may be similar or the same but HBO Go is for subscribers to

01:31:28   HBO, and HBO Now is this over-the-top service. So I assume that they will be—that there's

01:31:37   sort of like, you can subscribe to HBO or you can subscribe to HBO Now, and HBO subscribers

01:31:42   also get HBO Go with it. You know, are there gonna be two different icons? I don't know.

01:31:47   Maybe? Maybe not. I don't know that part, but I feel like there's a differentiator there

01:31:52   between HBO Go, which is the mobile service for people who are buying the television subscription,

01:31:58   and then HBO Now is the unbundled, just HBO streaming. That's my guess.

01:32:03   That was from Brian. Rob asks, "Why no new Apple TV?"

01:32:08   We got a lot of old Apple TVs to move. We're going to cut the price and sell those out,

01:32:13   and then we'll make a new Apple TV later. That's my guess, is that there will probably

01:32:16   be a new Apple TV, a new interface, and that's coming, but whether it's because they've got

01:32:21   a lot of stock or whether because it's just not ready yet. I think the 69 whatever is

01:32:26   a 69 price point for the niche for the old Apple TV. I mean that kind of makes sense.

01:32:30   There are huge margins on that they can sell that because it's so it's been around so long

01:32:35   the margins have got to be pretty good and yeah they really need to be a new Apple TV

01:32:39   but not yet not yet maybe maybe soon it's a if I were Tim Cook I really wish that I

01:32:46   had made an Apple TV announcement today that was not just HBO and maybe I would be unhappy

01:32:51   with the person who was in charge of getting that new Apple TV out the door, or maybe not,

01:32:57   but they desperately need one, I think, just because they're falling behind their competitors.

01:33:01   But now they've got HBO on their side, so that's something.

01:33:05   Oh, Joe Steele asked a question.

01:33:07   Yeah, it's similar.

01:33:08   Like, are there any hardware changes to the TV at all?

01:33:12   Not my understanding, but I don't know any details, but it seems to me that it's just

01:33:17   whatever the last rev.

01:33:18   I mean, they've done a lot of stealth updates to that thing that are incredibly minor, but

01:33:23   yes, it is a two-plus-year-old box discounted to $69, and, you know, with any luck, they'll

01:33:30   introduce a new one and that one will fade away.

01:33:34   Okay, and then let's move on to the MacBook.

01:33:38   Jason asks, this isn't you, this is somebody else.

01:33:43   Why won't Apple go 2mm thicker and add a cellular modem to the 0.92kg ultra ultra portable?

01:33:51   Now I think Apple answered this themselves, but why do you think this is?

01:33:57   I think tethering is built into Mac OS and iOS and if you want to use cellular you are

01:34:06   going to use it attached to your phone or your iPad and so they're not going to bother

01:34:11   and they've never bothered.

01:34:12   And now they need to bother even less

01:34:14   because of the features they added in Yosemite.

01:34:17   So I think it's that simple.

01:34:18   They don't, it adds complexity, it takes up space.

01:34:22   They must have some research that shows

01:34:24   that most people don't use it.

01:34:25   And that if people wanted to,

01:34:27   who opt for that on PCs, let's say,

01:34:30   or don't want it.

01:34:32   And the feature's there to connect pretty easily

01:34:35   to your phone or your iPad to get on cellular.

01:34:39   So I just think it's not a priority for them.

01:34:40   They think there are perfectly fine other options

01:34:43   that don't require them to engineer a space

01:34:45   for a cellular modem.

01:34:47   - Yeah, they literally said it.

01:34:51   Like, at one point they were like,

01:34:53   "You can just use the tethering."

01:34:54   It's like, well, that's why.

01:34:55   They built it into the OS.

01:34:56   Like, why add it?

01:34:57   It's not needed.

01:34:58   - Absolutely.

01:34:59   And it's much easier.

01:35:00   And it used to be more complicated,

01:35:02   but now, yeah, it's fine.

01:35:03   - Look, I understand that not everybody has a tethering.

01:35:10   as an iPhone or an iPad, but it's gotta be

01:35:15   a small percentage at this point, I think.

01:35:18   - Yeah, it's not their priority to provide cellular data

01:35:22   for laptop users who don't have another device

01:35:25   that can give them cellular data.

01:35:27   I just, I totally see it now.

01:35:30   I would have really liked for there to be a cellular option

01:35:34   on MacBooks at some point, but I've got a cellular iPad

01:35:37   and with a free T-Mobile plan

01:35:42   that gives me a little bit of data every month

01:35:44   and I never use it.

01:35:46   I just never use it, 'cause I've got it on my phone.

01:35:48   - Right, so what else do we have here?

01:35:53   - John?

01:35:54   - Yes, John Voorhees wants to know,

01:35:57   "What does the new MacBook mean for Thunderbolt?"

01:36:01   I guess we kind of spoke about this a little bit earlier.

01:36:03   - We talked about that a little bit,

01:36:04   that it seems like that Intel reference board

01:36:08   doesn't support Thunderbolt.

01:36:09   I don't know if it means anything.

01:36:10   I think it's not a great sign that Apple is embracing USB-C,

01:36:14   but I feel like Thunderbolt may still be kicking around

01:36:17   in lots of other systems because it's versatile.

01:36:21   But if Apple finds that USB-C is this versatile and good,

01:36:26   then it might decide that it doesn't need Thunderbolt

01:36:28   anymore, that could happen.

01:36:30   I don't think it's a good sign.

01:36:31   I don't think it's a sign of Apple's complete abandonment,

01:36:33   but I don't think it's a good sign that Apple is going down that path with anything. But

01:36:37   we'll see. We'll see.

01:36:40   And then John asks about the gold. Does the gold look... John doesn't think it looks good.

01:36:48   What do you think?

01:36:49   Yeah, his question was, is it as ugly as it seems in photos? And the answer is, I haven't

01:36:54   seen any photos of it. I've only seen it in person. So I'm going to say no, because I

01:36:58   think it looks pretty.

01:37:00   Cool. Would you buy one?

01:37:03   Would I buy a gold MacBook?

01:37:06   I'm more of a space grey guy, although I do like the gold MacBook, but I'm more of a space grey.

01:37:13   I think I would go with the space grey MacBook.

01:37:15   Okay.

01:37:17   Now we have Aaron. Aaron, what do you think of the MacBook naming?

01:37:22   It seems more high-end than the MacBooks of recent history.

01:37:26   Right. I think this is a repositioning of the MacBook name.

01:37:28   I think if you look out two, three years, we're going to have the MacBook and the MacBook Pro.

01:37:33   And that's it.

01:37:34   MacBook Air will fade into history at some point.

01:37:38   - I feel like Apple have never gotten over

01:37:41   taking the PowerBook name away.

01:37:43   - Yeah, Steve Jobs was tired of power.

01:37:47   (both laughing)

01:37:48   He didn't wanna talk about power anymore.

01:37:50   And it's fine.

01:37:51   It's fine, I've gotten used to MacBook.

01:37:52   But I think I liked the MacBook with no adjective name

01:37:56   and I'm kinda glad it's back.

01:37:57   And I think they're all thin and light

01:37:59   and the Air thing doesn't need to kick around anymore

01:38:02   on, I'm actually surprised it's on the iPad too,

01:38:05   but I don't think it needs to kick around

01:38:07   in this product line in the long term.

01:38:10   So I think it's fine to restate that this is a,

01:38:13   you know, I know there's a generation of people

01:38:15   who think of Mac book as the cheap plastic laptop,

01:38:18   but you know, Apple shown that they're not afraid

01:38:20   to redefine the names of stuff that they've,

01:38:24   of old products and reuse them.

01:38:27   And I think it's fine.

01:38:29   I like that it doesn't have another cutesy suffix.

01:38:33   I'm happy for it to just be the MacBook.

01:38:35   - Yeah, I think it's just they're gonna get rid

01:38:39   of the MacBook Air again.

01:38:42   - Sure, in a couple of years.

01:38:43   I don't know, today it may have gone away, I don't know,

01:38:48   but last time I checked the 13-inch non-retina MacBook Pro

01:38:52   was still on the price list.

01:38:53   So these things tend to stick around for a while,

01:38:55   and like I said, the conventional wisdom

01:38:58   as the margins get better and better,

01:38:59   the longer those products are out there.

01:39:01   And that's their low price laptop right now.

01:39:04   That's the one that they can sell for under $1,000.

01:39:07   So they'll keep selling it for under $1,000

01:39:09   and it may stick around for longer than we expect.

01:39:13   But as a non-retina system,

01:39:16   it suddenly looks like the low end

01:39:19   and it's priced to match it.

01:39:21   - Joe on Twitter has asked,

01:39:25   how can we charge and use something via USB at the same time on the new MacBook?

01:39:29   Now, if you buy one of those fancy, extremely expensive USB things, you can use that. I just

01:39:36   wondered if maybe you had heard or seen anything different, but I assume not.

01:39:40   Get a hub. I think there are going to be some... Apple's got the one. I think there'll be some

01:39:46   other really interesting things eventually out there that will be other options for people,

01:39:51   and you'll be able to pick sort of what works for you, and apples will probably be the most

01:39:55   basic, which is, you know, USB and video out. But that's it. There's no other way to do

01:40:03   it. You can't charge and use something via USB at the same time without getting an accessory.

01:40:11   Pretty crazy.

01:40:13   David on Twitter. Where am I going to get MacBook benchmarks without MacWorld Labs?

01:40:18   - It's a good question.

01:40:19   Macworld will probably test systems.

01:40:23   They might not, you know, they won't use speed mark,

01:40:25   but they'll probably use some benchmarks

01:40:27   and run some tests.

01:40:30   I will test everything that I get,

01:40:32   but I don't know what I'm gonna get.

01:40:34   I don't know if I'm gonna get new MacBooks.

01:40:36   I don't know if I'm gonna get, you know,

01:40:38   I don't know what I'm gonna get

01:40:39   in terms of reviews from Apple,

01:40:40   but I know Macworld likes to get review units.

01:40:43   I'm not sure whether they've got the budget anymore

01:40:45   to do what we used to do in Macworld,

01:40:46   which is buy all the units that Apple couldn't get us ones of.

01:40:50   So, you know, Apple would say,

01:40:51   "We'll get you one of each of these two,

01:40:52   but there are three other SKUs out there

01:40:54   that we can't get you. We just buy those."

01:40:56   And I don't know if they have the budget for that anymore.

01:40:59   So we will see.

01:41:02   But I'm sure Macworld will do reviews of some of these systems

01:41:05   and we'll test them.

01:41:06   And, you know, I ran tests on the 5K iMac,

01:41:11   and will do so any other MacBooks or other Macs

01:41:14   that I review on Six Colors, I will run some tests

01:41:18   and compare them.

01:41:19   But it's not like the good old days, I think, anymore.

01:41:22   But there will still be people out there

01:41:24   running tests on this stuff.

01:41:25   - Now we have some, to round off the episode today,

01:41:29   some Apple Watch- - All right.

01:41:30   - Related ask upgrade.

01:41:32   This comes from Jeff.

01:41:33   Does the Milanese loop puller arm hairs?

01:41:36   - Ah, I wish we had gotten this when Federico was here.

01:41:40   I don't know, and I am curious about this too.

01:41:44   Federico said it was really soft

01:41:47   and a little more like fabric than metal.

01:41:52   This would be my question too, 'cause it looks great.

01:41:55   But, and I alluded to this earlier,

01:41:59   the reason I don't like metal link watch bands

01:42:02   is that they pull all my arm hairs out

01:42:04   and it hurts and it sucks and it snags on them

01:42:08   and it's just crappy.

01:42:10   So I can't wear them, I just can't.

01:42:12   If this doesn't do that, then, you know,

01:42:16   certainly very attractive, then I would be interested.

01:42:19   So I'm gonna have to try one on and see,

01:42:20   but I don't know for sure.

01:42:22   My guess is that maybe not, because it's woven.

01:42:25   So it's much more like fabric

01:42:27   than the kind of metal bracelets that you think of,

01:42:31   but I don't know for sure.

01:42:33   - I bet it still would though.

01:42:35   - Probably.

01:42:36   - Honestly, I think it still would.

01:42:37   - Probably, I don't know.

01:42:38   I'll have to see.

01:42:39   That's why I'm going leather.

01:42:40   Leather.

01:42:42   basically it's gonna be infinitely more than leather does, you know?

01:42:45   How much it does. It goes from

01:42:49   Oz to Mia on Twitter. I've got a couple here. Do you have any details about water resistance anything additional?

01:42:58   A bunch of us overheard Tim Cook in the area after the event talking to somebody who asked about

01:43:02   Waterproof and he said you can take a shower with it. You could probably swim with it. Just don't take a diving

01:43:08   So I think it's gonna be that I think it's gonna be like you see on a lot of these products

01:43:12   I think the pebble is like this too that that what they're saying is, you know, whatever five meters or something like that

01:43:18   There's some there's some qualification that basically means you could take it in the pool, but don't take it scuba diving

01:43:23   Ahoy telephone

01:43:27   Yes

01:43:28   So ahoy telephone happened today because they did a demo and I heard from a bunch of people on Twitter who got ahoy

01:43:35   telephone by Apple during the event when they demoed, when the guy who used to be at Adobe

01:43:40   demoed the fact that, and we, I don't think we knew this for sure because all of Apple's

01:43:47   documentation on the website says you press the digital crown and you can get Ahoy! telephone.

01:43:53   You can get Siri to appear and then you talk to her. But it turns out, yes, you can say,

01:44:00   a hoy timepiece and then she will listen to you.

01:44:05   I assume that can be turned off, but I don't know for sure.

01:44:10   But it's a good question 'cause we all did get

01:44:12   a hoy telephoned or a hoy timepiece today.

01:44:14   - Do you have any sense of what the Apple Watch can do

01:44:19   when it's unpaired from a phone?

01:44:20   - Well, unpaired, I'm not sure if it does anything.

01:44:24   When it loses its connection, when you go running

01:44:27   and you leave your phone at home,

01:44:29   It'll do steps and it will do the onboard apps

01:44:33   that are Apple's onboard apps, like the music player.

01:44:37   So you could actually take Bluetooth headphones

01:44:39   and go for a run and it would do step data

01:44:41   and it would play music that you had loaded onto the watch.

01:44:45   Those are things that it can do.

01:44:46   Doesn't have a GPS,

01:44:47   so it's not gonna be able to map your run,

01:44:49   but it would be able to monitor your vitals

01:44:53   and log that stuff.

01:44:54   And when it reconnected back to the phone,

01:44:56   put all that stuff back in the health app and all of that.

01:45:01   So it's not super useful, but it's also not useless.

01:45:06   And if you were validated and you went for a run

01:45:09   and stopped off at Whole Foods to buy some peanut butter

01:45:11   and Manchego, you could buy,

01:45:14   you could use Apple Pay on it too.

01:45:15   It doesn't need to have the phone.

01:45:16   Once it's authorized, you could use it for Apple Pay.

01:45:19   If you took it off, then it would de-off itself.

01:45:23   But if you're wearing it,

01:45:25   you would be able to use it for Apple Pay too.

01:45:27   - Brian Hamilton asks,

01:45:29   "Do you think the Apple Watch pricing is alienating

01:45:32   to Apple's core audience?

01:45:33   Does it matter?"

01:45:34   - I think because they start at 349, I don't think it is.

01:45:40   I think it's fine.

01:45:41   And then the other one is five something.

01:45:43   These don't feel like alienated prices.

01:45:45   10,000, there were gasps in the hall

01:45:47   when he said they started 10,000,

01:45:49   but also you got a lot of, for the edition,

01:45:51   but you got a lot of downplaying.

01:45:52   They were like, and then there's the edition,

01:45:54   It's a super special thing.

01:45:55   It's only in it's limited quantities and it's in special

01:45:57   stores and it's very special.

01:45:59   And, you know, it was the nicest way possible of saying, um, saying if

01:46:04   you need to know how much it costs, don't ask, uh, you can't afford it.

01:46:08   Uh, but he was really trying to say, look, that's a thing we're doing.

01:46:11   That is like special and not like, you know, this is our $10,000 watch,

01:46:17   but very much more like it's jewelry and will be sold as such.

01:46:21   Here are our core products.

01:46:22   These are more reasonably priced.

01:46:25   They're not cheap.

01:46:26   They're expensive things.

01:46:26   We're talking about, you know, five, $600 for a watch,

01:46:29   but I don't think it's, it doesn't feel alienating.

01:46:32   Apple's always sold to people who spend more money

01:46:36   on technology.

01:46:37   I don't think this is any different.

01:46:38   So I think not.

01:46:40   I think it's a really good question to ask, but I think not.

01:46:43   People in the chat room, real-time follow-up,

01:46:45   we have not waterproof,

01:46:48   not, submerging Apple Watch is not recommended.

01:46:51   That's what Apple says.

01:46:52   All I can tell you is what Tim Cook said,

01:46:54   which was don't go diving with it.

01:46:56   So we'll see.

01:46:58   It's supposed to be, you know, we'll see.

01:47:01   Somebody will take it swimming

01:47:04   and we'll find out whether it survives that or not.

01:47:06   It is supposed to be pretty water resistant.

01:47:08   So, you know, but I don't know.

01:47:11   - This is the problem with the way that people

01:47:13   always get the lines between waterproof

01:47:17   and water resistant blurred.

01:47:19   - Right.

01:47:20   I think, you know, what Tim Cook was saying

01:47:23   is basically like, yeah, if you wanna shower with it,

01:47:26   it's fine.

01:47:27   With the, obviously with the sport band,

01:47:31   not with the expensive, nice materials bands,

01:47:34   'cause you'll ruin them.

01:47:36   That would be my guess.

01:47:37   But they may not want to say that

01:47:39   in their marketing materials

01:47:41   for fear of some class action lawsuit.

01:47:45   But it's a good question.

01:47:47   But I don't know, CEO of the company seems to think

01:47:50   you just need to not take a diving.

01:47:52   So I'm gonna go with that.

01:47:54   I think you don't need to be terrified

01:47:55   that it's a piece of electronics

01:47:56   and it's gonna get wet and it's gonna get ruined.

01:47:58   I don't think that's the case.

01:48:00   Whether you can wear it while you're swimming,

01:48:02   I don't know because, and that's a good question

01:48:04   'cause that would be a great use case, right?

01:48:06   Is to wear my Apple Watch Sport while I'm swimming

01:48:10   and have it log my swimming.

01:48:13   That would be great.

01:48:14   You should be able to do that.

01:48:15   I don't know if you can.

01:48:19   feels like a really ambitious thing to do in a version one with the amount that's going

01:48:23   on inside of the thing. Like, you know, to be that. All I know is I never took my pebble

01:48:29   swimming. Yeah, and you're supposed to be able to do that too. Yeah, but it's just there are

01:48:34   certain things where it's like, "I'm not gonna do that." Yeah. Jason, I think that about brings us

01:48:40   to the end of this bumper post-keynotes. It's epic. Two locations, surprise guests.

01:48:46   guest. I have no extra extra guests for you to surprise you. I don't want to kill you.

01:48:52   A big day, big day, much, much more to talk about this week on all of your other podcasts. But,

01:48:58   and I've got a lot more to think about and to write and all of that. I haven't written anything

01:49:04   yet. It's all been just like running around and then doing this podcast and then getting home.

01:49:08   But, but it's good. It's fun having an Apple event and there's so much more to talk about.

01:49:13   I'm so happy that it's not just a rerun of the old event, that we got the new stuff,

01:49:19   that we got the tidbits about Apple TV and the research kit stuff, and then we got the

01:49:25   MacBook.

01:49:26   That is really exciting too, that we got an upgraded MacBooks that merited one slide.

01:49:34   But still, I'm glad we got that kind of news too, and it wasn't just a replay of the Apple

01:49:38   Watch with a few more details.

01:49:40   They had to do that.

01:49:41   Six months is a long time.

01:49:43   months ago when they announced the Apple Watch, I was working at MacWorld. A lot has happened

01:49:48   between then and now, right? That's how long it's been since they introduced the Apple

01:49:55   Watch to the world. People forget. So they had to do it, but I'm glad they did a lot

01:49:59   more than that. That gives us a lot more to talk about rather than just rehashing the

01:50:04   aluminum videos from Jonny Ive and the like.

01:50:10   If you'd like to find the show notes for this week's episode then you should head on over to relay.fm/upgrade/26

01:50:19   Or you can find them in your podcast app of choice. If you would like to find us online you can find Mr. Jason Snell

01:50:25   He is... I'm gonna call you the editor-in-chief of SixColors.com

01:50:30   That's what it says on my business card.

01:50:31   It does it?

01:50:32   It does.

01:50:33   Awesome. Well, I mean you do have people there, you know, it's not just you. It's not just you.

01:50:37   It's not just me.

01:50:38   No, you're not like these other Apple bloggers. You have a team, Six Colors Incorporated.

01:50:44   Yeah. Well, me and Federico both. We got people.

01:50:47   You got the people to do the work when you're off gallivanting around in San Francisco.

01:50:54   You can find Jason on Twitter. He's @jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L-L. And I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E.

01:51:00   And if you have enjoyed this episode, I urge you to go and check out other episodes of

01:51:04   this show you can find them at relay.fm/upgrade and also go to relay.fm and find out about

01:51:10   the other shows that we have on this fine network. I want to thank you all for listening,

01:51:15   thanks to everyone who submitted their questions as always, thank you to Federico for joining

01:51:19   us, thank you to Casper, MailRoute and Flywheel for sponsoring this week's episode and we'll

01:51:25   be back next time. Until then, arrivederci! Adios! Bye!

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