Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to episode 6 of Upgrade on Relay FM.

00:00:13 ◼   ► This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by our friends at SMILE with TextExpander

00:00:17 ◼   ► where you can type more with less effort and Hover, simplified domain management.

00:00:22 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined as always by the magnificent Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Hi Myke, how's it going?

00:00:30 ◼   ► - I'm very well, sir, how are you?

00:00:31 ◼   ► - I am fascinated by the idea

00:00:34 ◼   ► that some of our sponsors are our friends

00:00:36 ◼   ► and some of them you didn't call them our friends.

00:00:38 ◼   ► And I'm waiting for the first sponsor who is our enemy.

00:00:41 ◼   ► - They're all our friends.

00:00:43 ◼   ► - No, but wouldn't it be great

00:00:44 ◼   ► if one of our enemies sponsored us just to infiltrate us,

00:00:47 ◼   ► brought to you by our enemies at Microsoft

00:00:51 ◼   ► and just roll with it.

00:00:52 ◼   ► I just, it's a dream I have one day

00:00:55 ◼   ► to be sponsored by an enemy.

00:00:56 ◼   ► 'Cause that's when you really got them,

00:00:57 ◼   ► when the enemies have to sponsor you.

00:00:59 ◼   ► - Well, I'll get working on that.

00:01:00 ◼   ► - All right.

00:01:01 ◼   ► - If any of our enemies would like to sponsor us,

00:01:03 ◼   ► you can go to relay.fm/sponsor

00:01:05 ◼   ► and just put enemy in the subject line

00:01:06 ◼   ► of the email that you sent.

00:01:08 ◼   ► - It will give you the enemy discount,

00:01:10 ◼   ► which is a higher rate.

00:01:11 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Oh, I like that.

00:01:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:14 ◼   ► - I am calling to you from the future.

00:01:16 ◼   ► Hello.

00:01:17 ◼   ► - Hello, future man.

00:01:18 ◼   ► - Here in the future, we have Retina IMAX

00:01:20 ◼   ► and we pay for things with our phones.

00:01:22 ◼   ► - Big show today.

00:01:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, there's a lot going on.

00:01:27 ◼   ► It's a big day today, busy day today, crazy.

00:01:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, very busy.

00:01:31 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:01:31 ◼   ► - I'm using Yosemite and it's making me really upset.

00:01:34 ◼   ► - Uh-oh.

00:01:35 ◼   ► - Maybe we can talk about that a little later.

00:01:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe so.

00:01:38 ◼   ► I've been using it for a while now

00:01:39 ◼   ► and there was a period in there in the betas

00:01:42 ◼   ► where I was unable to do most things relating to audio,

00:01:46 ◼   ► which is a problem for, you know, podcasting.

00:01:48 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:49 ◼   ► But it's been pretty good lately.

00:01:52 ◼   ► That was when I ended up using that DeMarco method

00:01:54 ◼   ► that I wrote about where I ended up doing all my live streaming from an external box

00:01:57 ◼   ► via my iPad because...

00:01:59 ◼   ► Oh, that was why! I thought you were just being fancy.

00:02:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I didn't want to throw a beta of Yosemite under the bus, but Nicecast stopped working

00:02:08 ◼   ► for a while. It was weird and choppy and all of that, and so I just gave up. And, you know,

00:02:15 ◼   ► eliminating software from the equation, or at least your Mac software, can be good for

00:02:19 ◼   ► things involving audio sometimes. But I've been using Yosemite fine lately.

00:02:24 ◼   ► The machine that I'm currently talking to you on is still running Snow Leopard.

00:02:27 ◼   ► Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:02:30 ◼   ► We had one of those at IDG for a long time that was, I think, I mean I assume it's still

00:02:34 ◼   ► there, it still had a Snow Leopard on a partition.

00:02:36 ◼   ► There were certain things in sound related that we could not do if we went to even Lion.

00:02:43 ◼   ► I'm just scared.

00:02:45 ◼   ► No I'm on Lion, sorry I'm on Lion.

00:02:47 ◼   ► Oh okay.

00:02:48 ◼   ► What's wrong with you then?

00:02:49 ◼   ► I'm only on Lion because of Logic Pro X, otherwise I'd still be on like Leopard or

00:02:53 ◼   ► something. I just don't like to touch this machine in any way where I don't have to.

00:03:00 ◼   ► Yeah well I get it. That's why so many things at XOXO somebody recommended an audio plugin

00:03:07 ◼   ► for a voice from oh I can't remember the name now. The name of the plugins Renaissance Vox.

00:03:12 ◼   ► It's from what's the name of the company? Waves I think. And you know you can download

00:03:20 ◼   ► a demo, but not if you're running Yosemite, because they're one of those companies that

00:03:24 ◼   ► like they'll qualify all of their products for the new OS like by the time the next OS

00:03:28 ◼   ► comes out because they're careful and I, you know, it annoys those of us on the on the

00:03:32 ◼   ► cutting edge. But, you know, I understand why they're careful about that stuff.

00:03:38 ◼   ► Do we have some follow up?

00:03:41 ◼   ► Myke, of course we have. The day I know I don't want to say that I was gonna say the

00:03:47 ◼   ► The day we don't have follow-up is the day that this show ends.

00:03:50 ◼   ► You just make it up.

00:03:52 ◼   ► But I would, indeed, I would say, "Let me follow up with people who are emailing me

00:03:56 ◼   ► about other unrelated things.

00:03:57 ◼   ► Let's just read some emails that I got."

00:03:59 ◼   ► Like, "Jason, you may have already won."

00:04:01 ◼   ► Oh, Target sent me some vouchers today.

00:04:04 ◼   ► That's good.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:06 ◼   ► Yeah, there's a house down the block that's for sale.

00:04:09 ◼   ► We could go look at it on Sunday.

00:04:12 ◼   ► Follow-up.

00:04:13 ◼   ► Listener.

00:04:14 ◼   ► So we talked last week about jet lag a little bit.

00:04:17 ◼   ► And listener Manuel wrote in to say

00:04:20 ◼   ► that he uses the exact same technique that I mentioned,

00:04:22 ◼   ► which is, you know, whenever you get to your destination,

00:04:25 ◼   ► you stay up until it's nighttime.

00:04:26 ◼   ► I stay as late as you can until you reach,

00:04:29 ◼   ► ideally you reach bedtime in wherever you are,

00:04:32 ◼   ► or at least as close to it as you can manage

00:04:34 ◼   ► before you pass out.

00:04:35 ◼   ► And he said, it works great.

00:04:37 ◼   ► But then he goes on to say,

00:04:38 ◼   ► I'm afraid it might change when I get older.

00:04:40 ◼   ► I'm 25.

00:04:41 ◼   ► did you handle jet lag better before?

00:04:44 ◼   ► Better before, before what Manuel?

00:04:47 ◼   ► Before I became an old man of 44 years old?

00:04:51 ◼   ► Yes, let me tell you back in the day,

00:04:52 ◼   ► are you calling me old Manuel?

00:04:55 ◼   ► Is that what you're insinuating here?

00:04:57 ◼   ► - When I was 25, we didn't have planes.

00:04:59 ◼   ► - Well, to be honest, when I was in my 20s,

00:05:03 ◼   ► I didn't travel anywhere requiring

00:05:05 ◼   ► any notable amount of jet lag.

00:05:07 ◼   ► I didn't leave the continent of North America,

00:05:10 ◼   ► guess Hawaii accepted until I was just about to turn 30. So I can't tell you how amazing

00:05:20 ◼   ► a jet lag fighter I was. I haven't noticed any difference. I feel like this isn't something

00:05:25 ◼   ► that's related to age but you know maybe old people, truly ancient old wizened people have

00:05:31 ◼   ► problems with jet lag. I don't know. I'm not one of those. That's what I'm saying. Or maybe

00:05:35 ◼   ► Maybe you only just get 25 years of your life in which you can experience jet lag.

00:05:39 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:05:40 ◼   ► So you have until you're 55 and then you can't fly anymore.

00:05:45 ◼   ► That's possible.

00:05:46 ◼   ► Or you can fly but you have to book an extra day to just process your jet lag before you

00:05:52 ◼   ► can move about, go about your business.

00:05:54 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:05:55 ◼   ► When we went, on my first international trip my wife and I went to your place, to the UK,

00:06:02 ◼   ► And I remember we flew overnight and we got into Heathrow at like 6am and it's really

00:06:06 ◼   ► hard to do the stay up until night when you haven't slept all day and now it's daytime

00:06:11 ◼   ► again and it's the start of it.

00:06:13 ◼   ► And I remember we took the bus from London to Bath and we started in Bath and the whole

00:06:17 ◼   ► bus ride.

00:06:19 ◼   ► I just have memories of all of those towns that are between London and Bath just through

00:06:24 ◼   ► the haze of like falling asleep and then waking up and falling just nodding off.

00:06:28 ◼   ► Oh that horrible like head full sound.

00:06:31 ◼   ► And I passed out and woke up and we were in Swindon and I went okay and then I passed

00:06:35 ◼   ► out again.

00:06:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:37 ◼   ► It's a long bus ride.

00:06:40 ◼   ► It is but it was good because the idea there is you start outside of London and you wrap

00:06:44 ◼   ► up in London and then you're not jet lagged anymore when you're back in the city and can

00:06:48 ◼   ► take advantage of being in London which I actually thought was a really good strategy.

00:06:53 ◼   ► There's a guy, Rick Steves, who writes travel books for Americans to go to Europe and that

00:06:58 ◼   ► was his recommendation and we basically followed his like 10 day UK trip plan and it worked

00:07:04 ◼   ► pretty well and that was our first big international trip that we took together. But yeah we did

00:07:09 ◼   ► I think we slept for an hour like in the middle of the day just because we were going to pass

00:07:13 ◼   ► out and then after that even though we were kind of loopy we stayed awake until night

00:07:17 ◼   ► time and I don't know but we were only you know 29 and 28 at that point Manuel so is

00:07:22 ◼   ► that old? You tell me. I don't know.

00:07:26 ◼   ► The best tour of England in 14 days by Rick Steves.

00:07:29 ◼   ► There's a picture of Bath right on the top.

00:07:32 ◼   ► There's good, I mean we did, I think ours was 10, but we went to the Cotswolds and the

00:07:37 ◼   ► Lake District and York and Yorkshire and Edinburgh, all the way up to Edinburgh and then took

00:07:42 ◼   ► the train back to London and spent three days in London.

00:07:44 ◼   ► It was pretty awesome.

00:07:45 ◼   ► You got a nice country there Myke.

00:07:47 ◼   ► Yeah we're pretty lucky.

00:07:48 ◼   ► And it's still together, hooray!

00:07:50 ◼   ► Yeah, that's right.

00:07:52 ◼   ► I didn't need a passport check going into Edinburgh and you still don't.

00:07:57 ◼   ► Lister Thomas by the way, also he is of the opinion that it's coming home is always easier.

00:08:03 ◼   ► And I suppose that's true in some way.

00:08:04 ◼   ► I'm not sure I buy it jet lag wise.

00:08:07 ◼   ► I think flying west is generally better than flying east.

00:08:10 ◼   ► And when I've gone to Hawaii I have not felt the jet lag going to Hawaii and coming home

00:08:15 ◼   ► from Hawaii I have felt the jet lag.

00:08:17 ◼   ► So I'm kind of buying the it's easier to go west than east.

00:08:21 ◼   ► Yeah I disagree with Thomas as well. It's always easier for me to go to the States than

00:08:25 ◼   ► to come home.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Yeah, see? There you go. We solved it. Sorry Thomas.

00:08:29 ◼   ► Welcome to Jetlag Talk with Jason.

00:08:32 ◼   ► I know. I feel like the first five minutes of every episode is going to be some other

00:08:35 ◼   ► podcast that just dropped in that we are going to do one episode of and then it's only five

00:08:41 ◼   ► minutes long and then we're done.

00:08:43 ◼   ► This is how we serve the verticals, Jason.

00:08:45 ◼   ► Yeah that's right. It's the vertical podcast. We should have called it that. It's just five

00:08:48 ◼   ► minutes of obscurity followed by five minutes of a completely different kind of obscurity

00:08:52 ◼   ► followed by follow-up. So last week also we talked we had a little pre-show bit which

00:08:59 ◼   ► was literally our pre-show conversation that you stuck in which was great where we were

00:09:04 ◼   ► talking about ringtones and alarm clocks and using podcast theme songs as alarm tones and

00:09:12 ◼   ► your feelings about that sound that wakes you up at five in the morning and I played

00:09:16 ◼   ► xylophone which is the sound that somebody pointed out is actually a marimba not a xylophone

00:09:22 ◼   ► which may actually be true but it's called xylophone whatever instrument demon instrument

00:09:27 ◼   ► makes it.

00:09:28 ◼   ► Don't they have a marimba?

00:09:30 ◼   ► There is a marimba called marimba.

00:09:32 ◼   ► So maybe they just said marimba one and marimba two.

00:09:34 ◼   ► Exactly and so they felt it was xylophone even if it wasn't a xylophone.

00:09:38 ◼   ► Anyway the point is I'm not the only one who uses xylophone as their alarm sound and I

00:09:43 ◼   ► I heard from several people who heard me play xylophone on the pre-show last week and freaked

00:09:49 ◼   ► out because like me, that is a bad sound.

00:09:53 ◼   ► And then some other people shared other awful sounds that basically I think our thesis was

00:09:58 ◼   ► proven correct which is that noise you use to wake yourself up, you grow to hate that

00:10:02 ◼   ► noise and so don't put anything you like in that as your alarm clock sound.

00:10:09 ◼   ► Ever.

00:10:10 ◼   ► Ever.

00:10:11 ◼   ► So that was "We Learned Something." Listener Patrick wrote in following up about what we

00:10:18 ◼   ► were talking about a few weeks ago about streaming services and how Netflix tends to have TV

00:10:24 ◼   ► shows and movies just vanish one day. And we said that that didn't really happen so

00:10:28 ◼   ► much with music. This is probably the exception that proves the rule, but he said that there's

00:10:33 ◼   ► a well-known rapper in Germany who removed all of his albums from streaming services

00:10:38 ◼   ► one day as some sort of a protest about the

00:10:42 ◼   ► probably the economics of streaming services so it can happen like I said I

00:10:46 ◼   ► think it's

00:10:47 ◼   ► less common but it can happen that even your favorite music can disappear

00:10:52 ◼   ► from your services. This was a popular rapper, not David Hasselhoff by the way.

00:10:58 ◼   ► Talking about music and streaming services, interesting fact that came out today.

00:11:03 ◼   ► In the US there's only been one album that has sold over one million copies this year

00:11:08 ◼   ► and that's Disney's Frozen soundtrack. So potentially this year no artist will go platinum.

00:11:15 ◼   ► It's definitely streaming services that's causing that in my opinion.

00:11:19 ◼   ► I think you're right.

00:11:20 ◼   ► It's a pretty interesting fact though, right? 2014 could be the year of the last platinum

00:11:25 ◼   ► album.

00:11:27 ◼   ► Could be. Well, I mean U2 doesn't count because they cheated.

00:11:32 ◼   ► And they wouldn't have got it.

00:11:34 ◼   ► Well no, because Apple bought a billion copies to give away, right?

00:11:39 ◼   ► But they're not allowed to do that.

00:11:40 ◼   ► While we were talking about streaming, we also talked about Netflix and being spoiled.

00:11:44 ◼   ► Both of us talked about being spoiled about House of Cards, and listener Brian wrote in

00:11:49 ◼   ► with a link to where he got spoiled, which was ironically enough.

00:11:52 ◼   ► Netflix has a funny little site that people should check out if they want a little chuckle,

00:11:57 ◼   ► which is Spoilers.Netflix.com, which is like an interactive quiz about are you a terrible

00:12:01 ◼   ► person who spoils things and apparently it will also spoil you about things. So thanks

00:12:08 ◼   ► Brian for sending that in. That made me laugh. Listener Kyle, Kyle the Grey and listener

00:12:16 ◼   ► Joe Steele.

00:12:18 ◼   ► Like a superhero team.

00:12:21 ◼   ► Kyle the Grey and Joe Steele. Oh yeah, you can't. When their powers merge and they form

00:12:26 ◼   ► gray steel which is like a giant robot and it's steel always gray? It might be kind of

00:12:33 ◼   ► a redundant name but it doesn't matter. Gray steel, amazing superhero, occasionally Kyle

00:12:40 ◼   ► the Grey and Joe Steele. Anyway, superhero talk with Jason and Myke, here we are. Imaginary

00:12:46 ◼   ► superheroes we've known. Anyway, they both just send in some nice feedback when we were

00:12:50 ◼   ► talking about conferences and WWDC and Singleton and OOL, just about how much they, even though

00:12:56 ◼   ► I know Kyle described himself as totally not an app developer, but still love going to

00:13:02 ◼   ► WWDC because they meant so many people.

00:13:04 ◼   ► Joe said, "I think we're groupies to that."

00:13:06 ◼   ► And I would say that what you call that is a community.

00:13:13 ◼   ► This is the sign that there is a real community with real people who like to meet each other

00:13:17 ◼   ► and talk and have a good time.

00:13:19 ◼   ► And I think that's a really healthy thing that people have an emotional attachment to

00:13:25 ◼   ► this community and want to be a part of it. And when things like Mac World Expo are going

00:13:30 ◼   ► away these little conferences and WWDC, even if you're not a practicing programming developer,

00:13:38 ◼   ► are places for community. And so I thought that was really good feedback. And it's totally

00:13:42 ◼   ► true. I mean, when you and I both go to WWDC, we see so many people there. It's just an

00:13:48 ◼   ► amazing experience.

00:13:49 ◼   ► Just fun.

00:13:50 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. Even if you don't sit in a room in Moscone and learn about the latest APIs,

00:13:56 ◼   ► that's kind of, for people like us, it's kind of beside the point.

00:14:00 ◼   ► Never written a line of code, not one. Nope. I've got some terrible Apple script.

00:14:04 ◼   ► I don't think that counts. And basic. 10 print hello 20 go to 10. I was really good at that.

00:14:09 ◼   ► At least you've done some web stuff. Mm-hmm. That's true. I wouldn't call that programming

00:14:15 ◼   ► know nobody knows yeah that's just web pages isn't programming it's just web pages.

00:14:23 ◼   ► Well that will be for next week's show.

00:14:26 ◼   ► Well no I mean like JavaScript is programming if you use JavaScript in your in your in your

00:14:30 ◼   ► web pages it's scripting or programming I would say but I'm terrible at JavaScript but

00:14:34 ◼   ► like HTML and CSS I don't know that's something that feels different to me.

00:14:38 ◼   ► Listener Oz I wanted to say great name had a suggestion following up on our successful

00:14:44 ◼   ► hunt for a euphemism for the thing that you say to she who shall not be named to activate

00:14:49 ◼   ► her, suggested that we go, somebody should go into an Apple store and then shout "Ahoy

00:14:55 ◼   ► telephone!" or perhaps, that's the code, shout the actual thing and see what happens.

00:15:02 ◼   ► So you pranksters, yeah don't shout "Ahoy telephone!" people will, you'll be ushered

00:15:08 ◼   ► out if that happens, but if you shout the thing that we're using "Ahoy telephone" as

00:15:12 ◼   ► code for, what will happen? Has Apple shut that feature off or will a million iPhones

00:15:18 ◼   ► and iPads appear and start talking to you? They are all plugged in. Right, but they may

00:15:27 ◼   ► have that Ahoy telephone feature turned off. Lots of people do lots of really weird things

00:15:34 ◼   ► in Apple stores anyway, like all the dancing videos and such. That's true, they may be

00:15:39 ◼   ► used to it. It's just another viral video. Somebody shouting ahoy telephone. Whatever.

00:15:43 ◼   ► Waiting to happen. Yeah. And that's all the follow up, Myke.

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00:18:19 ◼   ► and for supporting Relay FM.

00:18:22 ◼   ► I was really kind of going for it with the iPad Mega.

00:18:24 ◼   ► - What is the iPad Mega, Myke?

00:18:25 ◼   ► - It was when I was giving the codes to Hover

00:18:30 ◼   ► for this week's shows last week.

00:18:33 ◼   ► It was in my hope that there would be a bigger iPad

00:18:36 ◼   ► as an interesting thing to talk about

00:18:37 ◼   ► and I went with iPad Mega, but no.

00:18:41 ◼   ► Alas, iPad Mega we did not receive.

00:18:45 ◼   ► So Apple Event.

00:18:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, how long ago was that now?

00:18:49 ◼   ► It feels like forever ago.

00:18:50 ◼   ► It was like five days ago.

00:18:51 ◼   ► - That is basically forever.

00:18:53 ◼   ► - Four days ago maybe.

00:18:55 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:18:56 ◼   ► Yeah, Apple Event, I was there.

00:18:57 ◼   ► It felt like I was in the afterlife.

00:19:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause it's like a new beginnings for Jason Snell.

00:19:07 ◼   ► - I went to the last one knowing it was my last event

00:19:10 ◼   ► for Mac world and it was all like, drink it in.

00:19:13 ◼   ► I'm gonna, you know, am I gonna see any of these people again?

00:19:16 ◼   ► I thought, yeah, maybe, but you never know.

00:19:18 ◼   ► And I was like, all right, I'm gonna just appreciate this.

00:19:19 ◼   ► This is the last one.

00:19:21 ◼   ► And honestly, for the last year,

00:19:22 ◼   ► every time I go to one of these, I've been thinking,

00:19:24 ◼   ► is this the last one?

00:19:25 ◼   ► Because I've been thinking of leaving.

00:19:27 ◼   ► And, but I knew that last one.

00:19:29 ◼   ► So now I'm at, a month later, I'm at another Apple event

00:19:32 ◼   ► and it's not all the same people

00:19:33 ◼   ► 'cause it's a much smaller group,

00:19:34 ◼   ► but it's like, you know, the usual suspects are all there

00:19:36 ◼   ► and I'm there.

00:19:38 ◼   ► And that was weird because it did,

00:19:40 ◼   ► it felt a little bit like all these changes have happened

00:19:44 ◼   ► in my life and now I'm here with these people again,

00:19:47 ◼   ► but I have this new role and I'm with my own thing.

00:19:50 ◼   ► And like I said, somebody at Apple referred to me

00:19:53 ◼   ► a few weeks ago in an email as like a independent

00:19:56 ◼   ► thought leader or an independent media something.

00:19:58 ◼   ► I was like, okay, is that what I am now?

00:20:01 ◼   ► What's my role?

00:20:02 ◼   ► So-- - Thanks for defining me.

00:20:04 ◼   ► - And I always used to pick up Dan Morin at the BART station

00:20:08 ◼   ► on my way down to Cupertino and we'd ride down together

00:20:12 ◼   ► 'cause he'd stay in a hotel down in San Francisco

00:20:14 ◼   ► and you know, Dan wasn't out, he was watching.

00:20:16 ◼   ► So first Apple event he's missed since the iPhone launch,

00:20:20 ◼   ► the original iPhone launch, which he missed

00:20:22 ◼   ► 'cause we made him go to CES instead.

00:20:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:20:25 ◼   ► Poor guy, poor guy.

00:20:27 ◼   ► I know, I'm surprised he doesn't hate me for that.

00:20:31 ◼   ► He's got other reasons I suppose to hate me

00:20:33 ◼   ► but that would be enough.

00:20:34 ◼   ► That would be sufficient. - That would be high up.

00:20:35 ◼   ► And so he wasn't out.

00:20:38 ◼   ► But at Singleton, I was talking to Gruber.

00:20:41 ◼   ► And he said, you know, you're not--

00:20:45 ◼   ► basically, it was like, you're not

00:20:46 ◼   ► going through downtown on your way to Cupertino or something.

00:20:49 ◼   ► Because he stays downtown at a hotel in downtown San Francisco.

00:20:53 ◼   ► And I said, well, I always had Dan just pop over on the BART.

00:20:57 ◼   ► It's like a 10-minute ride on the train.

00:20:59 ◼   ► And then I pick him up.

00:21:00 ◼   ► And so I was--

00:21:01 ◼   ► in addition to being an independent thought leader

00:21:04 ◼   ► or whatever I am, I am also John Gruber's driver.

00:21:07 ◼   ► - Well, so now you've gone from, you know,

00:21:09 ◼   ► picking up your colleague to like to picking up,

00:21:13 ◼   ► you know, just like your industry buddy.

00:21:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:21:17 ◼   ► No, it was fun and it was a good conversation.

00:21:19 ◼   ► We started, it was very much like an episode of the talk show

00:21:21 ◼   ► we started talking about baseball

00:21:23 ◼   ► and then we moved on to Apple analysis.

00:21:25 ◼   ► And at several points, I thought to myself,

00:21:27 ◼   ► it's really a shame that we're not recording this

00:21:29 ◼   ► 'cause this is a podcast happening

00:21:32 ◼   ► or two halves of a podcast happening to and from,

00:21:34 ◼   ► 'cause I drove him back in that car.

00:21:37 ◼   ► But yeah, so-

00:21:37 ◼   ► - Podcasts using cars going to Apple events.

00:21:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, so it was so much like it used to be

00:21:44 ◼   ► at these events, except it was different.

00:21:46 ◼   ► You know, the people were a little different

00:21:47 ◼   ► and Dan Frakes was there

00:21:49 ◼   ► and we almost never sent him from Macworld.

00:21:52 ◼   ► And yet now leaving Macworld,

00:21:54 ◼   ► he finally gets to go to an Apple event.

00:21:57 ◼   ► And so I got to see him and I got to see my usual,

00:22:00 ◼   ► you know, people and Susie from Macworld was there.

00:22:02 ◼   ► So I got to say hi to her and give her a high five

00:22:04 ◼   ► 'cause she's working really hard

00:22:06 ◼   ► to keep Mac World up and running.

00:22:08 ◼   ► And yeah, it was, so it was weird.

00:22:12 ◼   ► It was weird being there.

00:22:13 ◼   ► And then, you know, it wasn't the usual thing

00:22:15 ◼   ► 'cause we went through R&D one,

00:22:17 ◼   ► which is the main entrance right next to the company store,

00:22:21 ◼   ► the main entrance, which is not where you usually go

00:22:24 ◼   ► for these town hall events.

00:22:25 ◼   ► In the past, you would drive around

00:22:27 ◼   ► the backside of the loop, park behind the whole,

00:22:32 ◼   ► loop structure and then walk over to R&D, I don't know, 4?

00:22:37 ◼   ► And that's where the town hall is and they basically check you in right there

00:22:41 ◼   ► and there'd be this little narrow room that you would hang out in and maybe there was some like

00:22:45 ◼   ► coffee on the side or something and then later they had like an upstairs that was still crowded

00:22:50 ◼   ► but they had some food up there and they didn't do that this time. This time they had us go through the main entrance

00:22:54 ◼   ► It's like the third time I've ever been through the main doors at R&D, you know at one infinite loop

00:22:59 ◼   ► So that was kind of cool. And then they had like Apple, I think they were retail people,

00:23:05 ◼   ► stationed the entire walkway through the center of the campus leading over to the cafeteria

00:23:11 ◼   ► and to where the town hall is. Like, you know, essentially as security, they were helpful

00:23:15 ◼   ► people who were there so that you didn't like run off course and go somewhere else at Apple

00:23:20 ◼   ► that you weren't supposed to be at. But they were with a smile. And so they did, we walked

00:23:27 ◼   ► through the center of campus and then over to this little corner behind the building

00:23:33 ◼   ► where the town hall area is and that was our waiting area. So it was really nice. You can

00:23:39 ◼   ► tell that with Katie Cotton having left that whoever is doing -- because events were her

00:23:43 ◼   ► bag -- and with her gone, whoever's doing the events now is rethinking everything they

00:23:48 ◼   ► do even down to the -- I realize this is inside baseball -- but like where the journalists

00:23:54 ◼   ► and VIPs come in and where you put them before you load up the building. Once we got in there,

00:24:01 ◼   ► it was town hall, it was the usual tiny, crowded, really small space kind of thing, but it's

00:24:08 ◼   ► fascinating to see just even for little stuff like that, that it's just not the same as

00:24:12 ◼   ► it was a year ago and it had been that same playbook for years before that.

00:24:17 ◼   ► Do you find it a better experience now?

00:24:21 ◼   ► Well, I mean, they're taking better care of us. I don't know if anybody else cares about

00:24:27 ◼   ► that, but the fact that they're using their own catering to feed us beforehand and stuff,

00:24:31 ◼   ► and instead of us just sort of standing in a huddle for an hour waiting to go in, it

00:24:37 ◼   ► was a little more conversational. But the actual event, they redid Town Hall, I think,

00:24:43 ◼   ► to increase the capacity, and also they put power at every seat, but the result is that

00:24:49 ◼   ► like a really crowded college lecture hall or something, and it's really cramped. So

00:24:56 ◼   ► it's not really that comfortable. There's very little leg room. It's a tight fit. But

00:25:00 ◼   ► you know, again, we're at an Apple event. It's not really about us. That's all inside

00:25:05 ◼   ► baseball stuff. But they've made changes. It's interesting.

00:25:09 ◼   ► This was a grab bag, too. I mean, to talk about the actual event, this was a grab bag.

00:25:13 ◼   ► When they sent out those invitations that said, "It's been too long," I think in hindsight

00:25:18 ◼   ► we can very clearly say they're just making a joke about how they did a big event a month

00:25:22 ◼   ► ago and it's literally like here's what was left over.

00:25:27 ◼   ► Let's get this all, we got a bunch of other stuff.

00:25:30 ◼   ► Even the intro at the beginning of the event was like Tim Cook saying, "Hey, we got a bunch

00:25:34 ◼   ► of stuff that we want to get out before the end of the year."

00:25:36 ◼   ► So here it is.

00:25:39 ◼   ► I find it interesting that they used the coloured logo, like the thin-lined coloured logo.

00:25:46 ◼   ► Yeah, who knows? They're doing all sorts of crazy stuff. I don't know. It's interesting.

00:25:59 ◼   ► I was happy to be there, quite honestly. Number one in my mind was, "I'm glad I got invited

00:26:04 ◼   ► to this." I kind of expected that I would not if I had to pick, but I was very happy

00:26:12 ◼   ► to be asked to go. Then Jon got a ride.

00:26:15 ◼   ► How was it like live blogging?

00:26:18 ◼   ► You went with Twitter in the end, right?

00:26:20 ◼   ► Yeah, we did Twitter.

00:26:21 ◼   ► We talked about that last week, what we were going to do, and I decided rather than go

00:26:24 ◼   ► with the weird kind of open source, free, hosted, we don't know how they make their

00:26:30 ◼   ► money kind of platform, which could also have gotten crashed immediately or does it do weird

00:26:34 ◼   ► things, insert ads, I don't know.

00:26:37 ◼   ► We just decided to do a Twitter embed, so we put a Twitter embed on the Six Colors website

00:26:42 ◼   ► and then I created an account that's at Six Colors event

00:26:45 ◼   ► and then Dan Morin and I tweeted from there during the event

00:26:51 ◼   ► me in the building and Dan doing some jokes

00:26:54 ◼   ► and color commentary and things from his place

00:26:57 ◼   ► back in Massachusetts and it worked fine.

00:26:59 ◼   ► - I enjoyed it a lot actually.

00:27:01 ◼   ► I thought it was quite funny,

00:27:02 ◼   ► especially when you two were arguing.

00:27:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:27:05 ◼   ► About things, I enjoyed it, it was funny.

00:27:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, it worked okay and I think the tweet length

00:27:11 ◼   ► fine for that and we didn't want to, especially when it's already being live streamed, you're

00:27:16 ◼   ► really at hitting the highlights and doing some commentary and not trying to provide

00:27:21 ◼   ► a transcript of what everybody's about. You know, we were 30 seconds or a minute ahead,

00:27:25 ◼   ► so it's like a transcript of what you're about to hear is sort of pointless. So it was, I

00:27:30 ◼   ► was happy with it. I think we'll do it again like that. That was a compromise between doing

00:27:34 ◼   ► the grouper thing of sitting there with your pencil and just pondering and doing the full

00:27:39 ◼   ► out like crazy frantic typing. I mean I took some pictures too but again I didn't feel

00:27:45 ◼   ► like the need to document every last thing that happened on stage. I just took some pictures

00:27:52 ◼   ► for illustration and dragged them into the Twitter client and posted them and that was

00:27:57 ◼   ► nice too. That worked out pretty well. And then I put, I saved those, I shared those

00:28:01 ◼   ► out so our buddy Mr. Teachy used them on Mac Stories which was nice too.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Teach.

00:28:09 ◼   ► Teach.

00:28:10 ◼   ► Oh, buddy teach.

00:28:11 ◼   ► Federico Viticci, I'll just say that, and I also want to apologize to Federico for my

00:28:13 ◼   ► terrible impression of him on the last show.

00:28:18 ◼   ► It was terrible.

00:28:19 ◼   ► I apologize to all of Italy, but it was a much better impression if you could see my

00:28:23 ◼   ► hand gestures.

00:28:25 ◼   ► Those were good.

00:28:26 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:28:27 ◼   ► A lot of people said that the event was boring.

00:28:33 ◼   ► What was your impression being there?

00:28:34 ◼   ► It's a lot less boring when you're frantically typing and taking pictures and uploading them

00:28:38 ◼   ► and things. It's a lot less boring than... It's really hard. It's just like people talk

00:28:43 ◼   ► about the little finger thing with Tim and Bono. We didn't even see that. We were in

00:28:49 ◼   ► the back row. There were people standing up in front of us. So your perspective when you're

00:28:54 ◼   ► there versus watching it as a show on your computer or on your TV or something is totally

00:28:59 ◼   ► different. So covering it, I get it because the first half hour, I mean Dan and I both

00:29:05 ◼   ► said this in the live blog, the first half hour was like things that everybody already

00:29:09 ◼   ► knows.

00:29:10 ◼   ► And literally, if you follow this stuff closely, that part was totally boring, because Apple

00:29:17 ◼   ► was doing that because Apple wanted to set the stage.

00:29:20 ◼   ► Something I learned writing about OS X actually over the years is that we would write these

00:29:26 ◼   ► stories about OS X when it was announced at WWDC and it would be like, "Everything you

00:29:30 ◼   ► need to know about OS X 10.3 or whatever."

00:29:34 ◼   ► And then months would pass and the OS would be about ready to come out and you'd think

00:29:38 ◼   ► "Boy, this is all old news" and people would be like "Hey, there's a new version of OS

00:29:42 ◼   ► 10, what should I know about it?"

00:29:44 ◼   ► Like literally there is the universe of people who care so much that they knew it the moment

00:29:52 ◼   ► that it was announced at WWDC.

00:29:54 ◼   ► And then there's this whole other universe of people who don't care until it pops up

00:29:59 ◼   ► on their computer saying there's an update to Yosemite.

00:30:03 ◼   ► At that moment they're like, "Oh, Yosemite, what is this?

00:30:06 ◼   ► Tell me more."

00:30:07 ◼   ► I feel like that 30 minutes of this Apple event, it was for those people and for the

00:30:12 ◼   ► press who reached those people.

00:30:15 ◼   ► It's for the more casual users of Apple products.

00:30:21 ◼   ► You can't announce an OS in June, detail all of its features, and then when October comes

00:30:28 ◼   ► around just release it and not say anything.

00:30:31 ◼   ► We already said everything that there is to say about this, so here it is.

00:30:34 ◼   ► You remember that thing from months ago?

00:30:36 ◼   ► Here it is.

00:30:37 ◼   ► So you got to tell that story.

00:30:39 ◼   ► But if the people already know the story, it's really boring.

00:30:42 ◼   ► And that was the deal.

00:30:44 ◼   ► It was like continuity.

00:30:46 ◼   ► We've seen that before.

00:30:47 ◼   ► You know, Yosemite, we've seen that before.

00:30:49 ◼   ► But they needed to do it because, or at least I understand why they feel the need to do

00:30:55 ◼   ► it because not everybody is paying attention to what happened at WWDC.

00:31:00 ◼   ► for those of us who were, yeah, it was a repeat.

00:31:04 ◼   ► I mean, that's what Dan said, I think, in our Twitter thing,

00:31:05 ◼   ► was, "I think this is a repeat."

00:31:07 ◼   ► Like, I was waiting--

00:31:09 ◼   ► - I've seen this one.

00:31:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, is Steve Jobs in this one?

00:31:11 ◼   ► I think I've seen this one before.

00:31:13 ◼   ► And it was a little bit like that for the first,

00:31:15 ◼   ► yeah, first half hour, 40 minutes, certainly,

00:31:16 ◼   ► there was like no news at all.

00:31:18 ◼   ► - It's tough to watch, but I get why they do it.

00:31:22 ◼   ► This is their time where they are able to talk about

00:31:25 ◼   ► all the things they want people in the world to know about.

00:31:28 ◼   ► So if they've got some stuff that they wanna say

00:31:30 ◼   ► about OS X or they just want to show OS X again, then show it. You know, you could tell

00:31:35 ◼   ► that they were aware of that because they tried to make the whole thing humorous.

00:31:39 ◼   ► Comedy, yeah, entertaining. I actually liked the extent, even though it was an extended

00:31:45 ◼   ► comedy bit and I know people don't like that or some people don't like that, I actually

00:31:49 ◼   ► thought the Colbert thing was fine, but what I liked about it was that it was trying to

00:31:54 ◼   ► throw a whole lot of continuity context at you in a way where you almost like don't...

00:32:02 ◼   ► it wasn't like, "and now I'm going to do this, see this feature, and now I'm going to do..."

00:32:06 ◼   ► it felt a little more natural, it wasn't natural, but it felt like they did a whole bunch of

00:32:11 ◼   ► things.

00:32:12 ◼   ► They did a whole bunch of things that were all continuity without it being like, "let

00:32:16 ◼   ► me list, let me show you the five things you can do with continuity."

00:32:19 ◼   ► It was more like, here's a story where continuity is useful.

00:32:23 ◼   ► And you know, yeah.

00:32:25 ◼   ► I mean, so they tried to make it different

00:32:26 ◼   ► and they tried to make it funny.

00:32:27 ◼   ► And I liked the Colbert bits.

00:32:28 ◼   ► I thought that was kind of amusing.

00:32:30 ◼   ► And I like Apple poking fun at itself,

00:32:33 ◼   ► the doubling down on secrecy jokes

00:32:35 ◼   ► and the flying campus spaceship thing.

00:32:40 ◼   ► That was, I thought that was fine

00:32:41 ◼   ► because that is, you get away with a little bit more

00:32:45 ◼   ► if you're poking fun at yourself,

00:32:46 ◼   ► which is what they were doing.

00:32:48 ◼   ► The Colbert bit was actually the bit that I found the least entertaining.

00:32:53 ◼   ► I think that there might be an element of just like, "I don't really know much about

00:32:59 ◼   ► him."

00:33:00 ◼   ► So I think that there's a lot of carryover.

00:33:03 ◼   ► I saw a lot of people say they felt like it was a very US-centric show too.

00:33:07 ◼   ► These are jokes that make sense to all the Americans who work at Apple.

00:33:14 ◼   ► if they're not Americans they're living in the US and maybe outside of the US it didn't

00:33:20 ◼   ► play quite as well. Because Stephen Colbert is like, he's someone I know because people

00:33:24 ◼   ► tweet about him. You know like if I can't watch anything from his show because comedy

00:33:29 ◼   ► is he on Comedy Central or is it somebody else? Yeah he's on right after Jon Stewart

00:33:33 ◼   ► although he's going to be David Letterman's replacement at CBS. Oh yes I remember that.

00:33:38 ◼   ► Yeah like any links to the clips are just banned and it's like you should go to a different

00:33:44 ◼   ► country!" and I was like "Mmm, okay, thank you."

00:33:46 ◼   ► I was trying to tell you something, Myke. I think so. But I enjoyed the handshake video,

00:33:52 ◼   ► I thought that was quite funny. It's an interesting move, it's very different. I

00:33:57 ◼   ► can see why they do it. I think we just need a little bit more time for it

00:34:02 ◼   ► to bed in and I think Apple need to get used to the amount of comedy that they

00:34:06 ◼   ► want. I think that the WWDC presentation, Craig's WWDC presentation,

00:34:12 ◼   ► I think that was just the right amount of comedy.

00:34:15 ◼   ► I think there was maybe a little bit too much this time, but I can see why they did it because

00:34:20 ◼   ► they know they had to reshoot all this stuff so let's turn it into a fun keynote presentation

00:34:24 ◼   ► instead.

00:34:25 ◼   ► WWDC was like jokes in the presentation and this was like skits in the presentation.

00:34:32 ◼   ► Let's stop the presentation to do a bit instead of Federici just having funny examples as

00:34:39 ◼   ► he went through it which is more of what it was at WWDC.

00:34:42 ◼   ► But I get it, I think this is all part of the same thing, which is this was a repeat,

00:34:46 ◼   ► they knew it was a repeat, they tried to make it a little bit more palatable by coding it

00:34:51 ◼   ► in zaniness.

00:34:53 ◼   ► But yeah, it was a repeat.

00:34:55 ◼   ► Until they got to the hardware, there was nothing new here.

00:34:59 ◼   ► I mean a lot of that to be fair is pretty much a repeat as well.

00:35:02 ◼   ► Yeah, well that's true, but at least there were tidbits there in a way that there were

00:35:06 ◼   ► not with the...

00:35:08 ◼   ► the, yeah well you know you get everything spoiled in advance and yeah I mean everybody,

00:35:17 ◼   ► if you're watching a live Apple event waiting for that one moment of the thing that just

00:35:21 ◼   ► didn't leak and was totally rumor free and it's going to blow your mind, I feel like

00:35:24 ◼   ► you're never going to be satisfied because that's just not, that didn't happen anymore.

00:35:31 ◼   ► You get it once every couple of years and we had ours last month, you know, the iWatch.

00:35:34 ◼   ► Yeah, even then a lot of the details leaked, but there were a lot that didn't leak.

00:35:40 ◼   ► But that's a rare occurrence for a brand new product.

00:35:44 ◼   ► Or it's something that's a surprise, like when they did whatever that was, Mountain

00:35:47 ◼   ► Lion, where it was just out of the blue and nobody realized it was going to happen.

00:35:52 ◼   ► But that's so rare.

00:35:53 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, software's easier to do though, isn't it, I guess.

00:35:56 ◼   ► Yeah, if it's inside Cupertino, they can keep a lid on it.

00:36:00 ◼   ► AF Waller in the chat room pointing out Swift.

00:36:03 ◼   ► I was sitting right next to Syracuse when they announced that.

00:36:06 ◼   ► That was a beautiful thing.

00:36:08 ◼   ► But yeah, if it's in Cupertino and doesn't require partners, bring in third party developers

00:36:17 ◼   ► to try out this new thing.

00:36:19 ◼   ► The more lockdown it is in Cupertino, the more likely it is to not leak, because they're

00:36:22 ◼   ► pretty good about that stuff.

00:36:25 ◼   ► Let's talk about the real darling of the show, the Mac Mini.

00:36:28 ◼   ► Yes, they spent at least like 30 seconds on the Mac Mini.

00:36:32 ◼   ► It got more time than the iPad mini.

00:36:34 ◼   ► Almost as much time as the iPad mini 2, 3?

00:36:42 ◼   ► That's just depressing.

00:36:43 ◼   ► Mac mini got updated.

00:36:44 ◼   ► Lots of people, it's been two years, people were really excited that Mac mini got updated.

00:36:48 ◼   ► I saw it on the slide and it's like, "Hey, Mac mini also getting updated today with no

00:36:53 ◼   ► information."

00:36:54 ◼   ► I didn't expect information.

00:36:55 ◼   ► about the Mac mini, you know, don't it getting its existence being acknowledged on stage

00:37:03 ◼   ► in an Apple event is like, that's the checkbox. That's like, I can't believe they admitted

00:37:09 ◼   ► that they make this thing because they're not going to talk about it proudly. That's

00:37:13 ◼   ► never going to happen. Uh, just admit that it exists and give us an update. And so I

00:37:19 ◼   ► was pretty excited, um, by the, that it got an update cause it's been two years and I

00:37:24 ◼   ► was in marker for one. The fact that it wasn't just a quiet refresh, that's a good thing,

00:37:31 ◼   ► at least. Yeah, then I found the specs out and I was not as excited anymore. Why? Well,

00:37:39 ◼   ► a couple things. One, and listener Brian actually, this is not follow up quite, but listener

00:37:46 ◼   ► feedback nonetheless, listener Brian pointed out that it's essentially the same process

00:37:50 ◼   ► that's in that sad cheap iMac that they rolled out last year that's like the

00:37:53 ◼   ► lowest of the low iMacs where Macworld did a bunch of testing about it and

00:37:58 ◼   ► basically said you could buy this but why? It's like it's already it's already

00:38:04 ◼   ► slow and for $150 more or something you could get one that's modern and instead

00:38:09 ◼   ► it's this old processor. Well that's the bottom of the Mac mini line now and it's

00:38:12 ◼   ► the same thing if you try to configure it it won't let you upgrade the

00:38:15 ◼   ► processor you gotta go the $499 is like with that low low low priced iMac it's

00:38:21 ◼   ► to get you in the door but it has no options like if you want I think you can

00:38:26 ◼   ► upgrade the RAM but that's it if you want anything better you need to move up

00:38:31 ◼   ► out of the $499 model to one of the higher-end models so that's that's kind

00:38:36 ◼   ► of sad but the really super sad thing is that they used to make surprisingly

00:38:41 ◼   ► high-end Mac Minis at the high end of the configuration tree you could do a

00:38:46 ◼   ► quad-core processor and like like on the iMacs and you can't now. The Mac Mini is

00:38:52 ◼   ► a dual core only machine and as somebody who is looking at getting a Mac Mini

00:38:56 ◼   ► because my dual core MacBook Air is just not quite fast enough for doing some

00:39:01 ◼   ► video stuff and video streaming which I'd like to do more of for for the

00:39:05 ◼   ► incomparable like for our D&D podcast I was looking at that quad-core Mini. Well

00:39:10 ◼   ► the quad core mini is gone. It's gone. If you want quad core, you want more than two

00:39:14 ◼   ► cores in a desktop, you need the iMac or the Mac Pro at this point. The Mac mini is, so

00:39:22 ◼   ► it's become a lower end product than it used to be. And the server configuration is gone

00:39:27 ◼   ► too. They used to have this high end two, two terabyte drive. It was the only more than

00:39:32 ◼   ► one terabyte drive configuration in Apple's product line for any product and it's gone.

00:39:38 ◼   ► not selling that anymore. So the Mac Mini has sort of been redefined down, I think.

00:39:44 ◼   ► I think I might get one. And that sounds crazy after you've said all of that.

00:39:50 ◼   ► Yeah, you crazy guy. So what would make you want to get one?

00:39:53 ◼   ► So I want to upgrade the production machine. Good word, upgrade. I like it.

00:39:58 ◼   ► Thank you. I like it too. Because I'm using a Mac Mini at the moment, and it's got a spinning

00:40:04 ◼   ► disk. And I don't want an iMac for a silly reason, but a reason that's

00:40:12 ◼   ► important to me. I just want dedicated audio in and audio out. The iMac

00:40:18 ◼   ► doesn't have that. My only two options then are the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro.

00:40:21 ◼   ► And I don't need a Mac, I just don't need a Mac Pro. Quite simply I don't need one.

00:40:26 ◼   ► So I can upgrade the Mac Mini and I can do it for about, I mean I know they're not comparable, but

00:40:35 ◼   ► I can do it for about a thousand pounds cheaper than buying the iMac Retina and that's with 16

00:40:42 ◼   ► gigabytes of RAM maxed out processor and 512 megabytes of solid state. So that will be more

00:40:52 ◼   ► than enough in power for the podcasting stuff. Sure. So I'm thinking about

00:40:57 ◼   ► thinking about going that route in the not too distant future. I think

00:41:01 ◼   ► that's perfectly sensible. I just am so sad that they're not letting you

00:41:05 ◼   ► configure that with the quad core. It is frustrating. Because that's just I mean

00:41:11 ◼   ► again it was there and now it's gone. It's like they had that quad core, you

00:41:15 ◼   ► could get it in dual core, it was default dual core but you could go up to the

00:41:18 ◼   ► quad core if you wanted to and they've just decided you know they're not going

00:41:23 ◼   ► to do that that this is this is one of those areas where Apple has withholding

00:41:26 ◼   ► features because they basically are saying if you want that you need to pay

00:41:29 ◼   ► us more money but Mac Mini is such a different product than the iMac and the

00:41:33 ◼   ► Mac Pro as you pointed out that it's it's kind of a shame that that it's just

00:41:37 ◼   ► not an option. It is a shame because the retina which we're going to talk about

00:41:42 ◼   ► in a minute is priced very well here. It's like 2,000 pounds? 2,000 pounds

00:41:48 ◼   ► which is very surprising for it to be less than the US dollar amount, you know,

00:41:53 ◼   ► like for it not to be £2,500. That is an incredible amount of machine for

00:42:00 ◼   ► that money. But it's... Look, I know that there are little dongles you can get

00:42:07 ◼   ► that you can plug in that will split the audio in and out. I just don't... I just

00:42:11 ◼   ► want it. I just want a dedicated audio in and audio out. It's always good for backup,

00:42:15 ◼   ► I think the more audio related ports I can have considering what I do the better I feel

00:42:21 ◼   ► We'll see

00:42:24 ◼   ► We'll see

00:42:25 ◼   ► Yeah

00:42:27 ◼   ► So should we should we take a break for our second sponsor and then talk about iPads and then the retina?

00:42:32 ◼   ► I'm a bit more. I think that's a good idea. I hope this next sponsor is also a friend and not an enemy

00:42:37 ◼   ► Oh these these are friends. These are great friends. This is our friends that smile. Oh, they are our friends

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00:43:42 ◼   ► on iOS, meaning that all of your snippets are going to stay in sync on all of your devices.

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00:44:05 ◼   ► But the really cool thing is with iOS 8 came TextExpander Touch 3 which brought along with

00:44:10 ◼   ► it the TextExpander custom keyboard so you can expand abbreviations in all of your apps

00:44:14 ◼   ► on iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

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00:44:23 ◼   ► that fantastic time and hassle and get all of the benefits of TextExpander absolutely

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00:44:35 ◼   ► The TextExpander keyboard has quickly become the favorite of many on iOS 8, including myself.

00:44:41 ◼   ► I love the fact that I'm able to just jump into any application now and just expand a

00:44:45 ◼   ► shipping address.

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00:44:55 ◼   ► on my show or something like that.

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00:45:40 ◼   ► So iPads.

00:45:41 ◼   ► iPads.

00:45:42 ◼   ► There are a lot of iPads now.

00:45:46 ◼   ► There are a shed load of iPads.

00:45:51 ◼   ► It's like an army.

00:45:53 ◼   ► They remember when people were saying how Beats was going to help Apple deal with products

00:45:58 ◼   ► that had lots of SKUs because they're all those Beats headphone colors and things like

00:46:01 ◼   ► that.

00:46:04 ◼   ► I didn't count.

00:46:05 ◼   ► How many iPad models are there now?

00:46:07 ◼   ► Like 50?

00:46:08 ◼   ► There's currently five iPads on sale.

00:46:10 ◼   ► Well no, but then you've got the different sizes and the different colors.

00:46:13 ◼   ► So somebody counted how many SKUs it is now and it's an enormous number because you've

00:46:18 ◼   ► got every size in three different colors and then you've got the older models that are

00:46:24 ◼   ► also available like the two and the original iPad mini and both the Air models are out

00:46:30 ◼   ► there. There's a lot of iPads. Before color, because I've just done a quick

00:46:34 ◼   ► count, before colors, if you just take the different storage sizes and Wi-Fi and cellular,

00:46:39 ◼   ► there are 22. So then for the two new models, there's multiplied by three. And then for

00:46:46 ◼   ► the two older models, there's multiplied by two.

00:46:48 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a lot of iPads. It's a ridiculous amount of iPads.

00:46:51 ◼   ► Collect them all.

00:46:53 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:46:55 ◼   ► I dare you.

00:46:57 ◼   ► Someone has. Use Apple Pay.

00:46:59 ◼   ► But then the weird thing is,

00:47:01 ◼   ► so you have these different, it's so strange to me

00:47:03 ◼   ► because you have five iPads

00:47:05 ◼   ► that you can purchase

00:47:07 ◼   ► but they're kind of only two

00:47:09 ◼   ► models, really, the iPad Air and the iPad Mini.

00:47:11 ◼   ► But then there's different

00:47:13 ◼   ► iterations on them from what's inside.

00:47:15 ◼   ► Then there's different iterations for the storage.

00:47:17 ◼   ► Then there's color. It's so confusing.

00:47:19 ◼   ► fusing? It's like they're trying to dazzle people into buying their products.

00:47:26 ◼   ► I think what they're... I mean what's happening with the old models is simply

00:47:29 ◼   ► that they want to have something... it is the get them in the door with a low

00:47:34 ◼   ► low price thing just like I was saying about the Mac Mini and that low priced

00:47:38 ◼   ► iMac. It's the... their competitors have these cheap tablets and they don't want

00:47:45 ◼   ► to make a cheap tablet so instead they just sell their old tablet for cheap so

00:47:49 ◼   ► So the fact that the iPad mini is out there, the original iPad mini, first off all the

00:47:54 ◼   ► developers are just beside themselves because it's got an A5 chip in it just like the lingering

00:47:59 ◼   ► iPod touch that's out there also has the A5.

00:48:02 ◼   ► The iPad 2 essentially is still available as a new device that you can buy today, new

00:48:07 ◼   ► from Apple, which is crazy.

00:48:11 ◼   ► So that's one, is just to provide some pricing variety, that adds to the confusion.

00:48:15 ◼   ► three models of iPad that the two, the original, the Mini 2, the Mini 1, and the Air 1. And

00:48:25 ◼   ► then, you know, the color variation is nice. I don't have a problem with that. I don't

00:48:28 ◼   ► think that's too confusing. The iPad was already so confusing because it's got cellular and

00:48:32 ◼   ► not and it's got the different sizes, so it's just cranking it up another notch. But the,

00:48:38 ◼   ► you know, having, it must be really important to them to say iPad starts at whatever it

00:48:42 ◼   ► is now $239, I don't know what it is for that original, don't buy that model, but it's there

00:48:50 ◼   ► and it's cheaper. The original Air for $100 less is not a bad deal, and the iPad Mini

00:48:57 ◼   ► 2 I would argue is actually the best deal of the iPad Mini line. I would recommend people

00:49:02 ◼   ► buy the iPad Mini 2 and save their money and not buy the iPad Mini 3 unless they really

00:49:06 ◼   ► need 128 gigs or 64 gigs of storage because it's exactly the same as the iPad Mini 3 except

00:49:14 ◼   ► for Touch ID.

00:49:16 ◼   ► You can live without it.

00:49:19 ◼   ► It's crazy, I cannot believe they didn't update the processor in any way for the iPad Mini

00:49:25 ◼   ► 3.

00:49:26 ◼   ► Because we were given this incredible device with the Mini 2, which is now called the Mini

00:49:31 ◼   ► 2.

00:49:33 ◼   ► I have to say that Mini 2 and Mini 3 is awkward, but I'm having Mini with Retina display was

00:49:38 ◼   ► more awkward.

00:49:39 ◼   ► Yeah, it was the worst.

00:49:40 ◼   ► It's just funny that they've renamed it retroactively as the i5 Mini 2.

00:49:43 ◼   ► I like that they were like, "No, numbers are too confusing, we're going to give them product

00:49:47 ◼   ► names."

00:49:48 ◼   ► No, product names are too confusing, we're going to give them product names and numbers.

00:49:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it's going to be numbers from here on out instead of specifying that it's a Retina

00:49:56 ◼   ► display and by the way, here's the iMac Retina 5K.

00:50:00 ◼   ► the iMac 5K, the 5K 2.

00:50:03 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, it's for one shining moment last year the iPad mini and the iPad Air

00:50:11 ◼   ► were at equivalence, right? But before that, the previous year, the iPad

00:50:16 ◼   ► mini was underpowered compared to the iPad 4, as I recall. And I think so. I'm

00:50:22 ◼   ► not a hundred percent on that one. And then now we're back to that, which is

00:50:25 ◼   ► they've upgraded the Air and they're not worried about the mini. And I guess the

00:50:28 ◼   ► question there is, is that because they really just want the Mini to be out there and be

00:50:31 ◼   ► cheap and this way it can be cheap and their margins can be good or is it that it doesn't

00:50:37 ◼   ► sell very well? I think that, I think, you know, I've read a lot of stories that suggest

00:50:41 ◼   ► that the Mini, they thought the Mini would sell better and that the Air is the winner

00:50:47 ◼   ► there and that, you know, the existence of the iPhone 6 Plus calls the iPad Mini further

00:50:52 ◼   ► into question which you know I dispute because I use an iPad mini 2 every day and love it

00:50:58 ◼   ► and I didn't buy the 6 plus I bought the 6 and I'm happy with that combination but I

00:51:04 ◼   ► am prepared to accept that I'm out of line when it comes to what people like with their

00:51:09 ◼   ► iPads.

00:51:12 ◼   ► I want to talk about the Air 2 because you've seen one I assume.

00:51:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:18 ◼   ► The thinness and the lightness, how much of a jump is it?

00:51:22 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:51:26 ◼   ► I mean, it feels thinner than the Air,

00:51:28 ◼   ► but it was already pretty thin.

00:51:30 ◼   ► And I'd say it's imperceptible, the weight is imperceptible.

00:51:34 ◼   ► I think, you know, iPads are not,

00:51:37 ◼   ► what we've learned about these devices

00:51:39 ◼   ► is that they're not a one-year upgrade cycle.

00:51:41 ◼   ► So the real question should probably be

00:51:43 ◼   ► compared to an iPad 3 or 4, how is the Air 2?

00:51:47 ◼   ► and is way lighter and thinner than those,

00:51:51 ◼   ► but it's incremental compared to the air.

00:51:53 ◼   ► It is noticeable, but not, you know,

00:51:57 ◼   ► it's not gonna blow you away.

00:51:58 ◼   ► And I don't think they're gonna be able to blow people away

00:52:00 ◼   ► with thinness and lightness again,

00:52:02 ◼   ► because there's not a lot left.

00:52:04 ◼   ► Until they float and are so thin

00:52:08 ◼   ► that they are extruded into a different dimension,

00:52:10 ◼   ► I think they're not gonna get much thinner or lighter.

00:52:12 ◼   ► I could be wrong.

00:52:14 ◼   ► People could like get their arms cut off

00:52:15 ◼   ► by the wrong angle of an iPad, but probably not.

00:52:19 ◼   ► So yeah, it's a little bit thinner, a little bit lighter.

00:52:22 ◼   ► I really wonder at one point,

00:52:23 ◼   ► the thin and light thing comes to an end.

00:52:25 ◼   ► I'm gonna write something about this at some point

00:52:27 ◼   ► on six colors, but you know, at some point,

00:52:31 ◼   ► thin is not an advantage anymore.

00:52:32 ◼   ► At some point it's a disadvantage

00:52:34 ◼   ► 'cause it causes you to make a lot of trade-offs

00:52:36 ◼   ► in other areas.

00:52:37 ◼   ► And I'm not sure they needed to make the iPad Air

00:52:42 ◼   ► any thinner than it already was, but they did.

00:52:44 ◼   ► So that's fine. It's nice and thin.

00:52:47 ◼   ► Just at some point it's too thin.

00:52:51 ◼   ► And I wonder if what else they're sacrificing now

00:52:56 ◼   ► would be more important to more people

00:52:59 ◼   ► than it just being a little bit thinner.

00:53:01 ◼   ► - At 6.1 millimeters, can it actually,

00:53:07 ◼   ► I mean, I feel like we say this every time,

00:53:09 ◼   ► how much thinner can it actually get?

00:53:12 ◼   ► Like the components that they're putting in there

00:53:14 ◼   ► have to have a minimum thickness to them.

00:53:19 ◼   ► At some point it has to stop, right?

00:53:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean this is, and this is what I want to write

00:53:26 ◼   ► about too, is that at some point it's so thin

00:53:28 ◼   ► that it cuts you, right?

00:53:29 ◼   ► So at some point, even if you could make it thinner

00:53:32 ◼   ► and all the components can be thinner,

00:53:35 ◼   ► and that's not true, they can't.

00:53:37 ◼   ► Like the glass, there's a point physically

00:53:38 ◼   ► where the glass won't be able to get any thinner

00:53:40 ◼   ► and the, you know, and it may be a lot more

00:53:43 ◼   ► than we, that it is capable of being today.

00:53:45 ◼   ► But at some point it's, we're talking about just physics

00:53:48 ◼   ► and the size of molecules.

00:53:50 ◼   ► And so at some point it won't be able to get any thinner

00:53:54 ◼   ► without dramatic changes.

00:53:55 ◼   ► I can't decide whether Apple's goal here

00:53:58 ◼   ► is to eventually make it a flexible thing

00:54:00 ◼   ► that you just roll up and put in your pocket or something,

00:54:03 ◼   ► that it's a piece of paper.

00:54:05 ◼   ► And if that's what they're going for,

00:54:07 ◼   ► but short of that, short of a piece of paper

00:54:11 ◼   ► that is actually an iPad.

00:54:13 ◼   ► And even then you want it to be rigid enough

00:54:17 ◼   ► when you're using it to touch on the screen and stuff

00:54:19 ◼   ► and not have it like curl away.

00:54:21 ◼   ► I don't know, I feel like they're reaching the end

00:54:24 ◼   ► of the thinness thing and they need to be focused on,

00:54:27 ◼   ► you know, better battery life and less power consumption

00:54:31 ◼   ► and reducing screen glare,

00:54:33 ◼   ► which they actually are trying to do

00:54:34 ◼   ► with the Air 2 a little bit.

00:54:36 ◼   ► And other features like that,

00:54:38 ◼   ► that are more important than thinness,

00:54:40 ◼   ► because at this point the device is plenty thin and light.

00:54:44 ◼   ► Having moved to the laminated screen

00:54:45 ◼   ► where the screen like on the iPhone now

00:54:47 ◼   ► with a there's no air gap between the screen

00:54:50 ◼   ► and the glass that covers it, that's good.

00:54:54 ◼   ► That's a step forward because it makes the screen

00:54:57 ◼   ► seem more directly under your finger

00:55:00 ◼   ► when you're touching on it.

00:55:01 ◼   ► But yeah, I feel like we are at the point

00:55:06 ◼   ► where thinness is no longer the dimension they need to be worried about, or the dimension

00:55:13 ◼   ► is the wrong word there, it's literally a dimension, the feature that is the thing that

00:55:18 ◼   ► drives them forward. It feels like they've got thinness pretty well licked and they should

00:55:23 ◼   ► move on to something else.

00:55:25 ◼   ► So the iPad Air, I think, is starting to show not like seams or cracks in the fact that

00:55:32 ◼   ► it's thin, but there are hardware changes that are occurring that to me indicate

00:55:37 ◼   ► the trade-offs they're having to make. So the rotation lock switch is gone.

00:55:43 ◼   ► Yes. And the Apple SIM. Now the Apple SIM is a very interesting thing because it's

00:55:49 ◼   ► basically allowing Apple to put their own kind of SIM card into this thing, but

00:55:56 ◼   ► what it's showing is they are struggling now to be able to have a removable SIM

00:56:00 ◼   ► Now obviously it's a benefit, the Apple sim is kind of a great benefit, but it's showing

00:56:08 ◼   ► to me that we're at the point now where they're having to make hardware decisions based on

00:56:12 ◼   ► the thinness.

00:56:13 ◼   ► So I just wonder, in my thinking, how much further does it go?

00:56:20 ◼   ► I don't think the Apple sim is because of thinness.

00:56:22 ◼   ► I think the Apple sim is because the last thing you want to do when you're stocking

00:56:26 ◼   ► 70 different models of iPad is have to have yet again another multiplier because there's

00:56:33 ◼   ► the one that's got this company's SIM card in it or this company's technology in it.

00:56:37 ◼   ► They're trying to reduce that as much as possible so like everyone right out of the box will

00:56:41 ◼   ► work with whatever and it's all in software and you don't have to pop out something because

00:56:46 ◼   ► that is kind of ridiculous and primitive, right?

00:56:48 ◼   ► So I feel like that's where they're going.

00:56:50 ◼   ► They're probably motivated by thinness and I think the Switch is probably motivated by

00:56:54 ◼   ► and thinness, but also I bet they would tell you that they found that people don't use the switch very much.

00:57:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I never use mine.

00:57:06 ◼   ► I use mine, but I use it as a mute switch. I don't use it as an orientation lock.

00:57:12 ◼   ► And I don't use it that often. It usually just stays muted.

00:57:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:57:19 ◼   ► So, and they probably know, right?

00:57:22 ◼   ► They probably have statistics of like the number of flips of that switch that happen

00:57:26 ◼   ► on iPads, and it's probably not very much.

00:57:29 ◼   ► And they say, look, we can lose it.

00:57:30 ◼   ► And we'll, we're, we're getting rid of one moving part and it simplifies the hardware

00:57:35 ◼   ► design and maybe it allows us to make it thinner.

00:57:37 ◼   ► But you're right.

00:57:38 ◼   ► At some point you're sacrificing like battery life.

00:57:41 ◼   ► At some point you're sacrificing battery life because of this obsession with thinness and

00:57:44 ◼   ► lightness.

00:57:45 ◼   ► And at some point, battery, there's enough battery.

00:57:50 ◼   ► I'm not sure their products are quite at there's enough battery yet.

00:57:53 ◼   ► Certainly the phone's not, but even the iPad, you could argue, could have a little more battery

00:57:57 ◼   ► and that people might prefer a little more battery, 14 hours or 16 hours, rather than having it be a few millimeters thinner.

00:58:06 ◼   ► Do you have any sort of steer? Is it worth upgrading to the Air 2 if you have an Air?

00:58:13 ◼   ► Is it beneficial?

00:58:14 ◼   ► No, you don't think so?

00:58:15 ◼   ► Unless you really, really, really want Touch ID and you've got somebody who you can hand

00:58:21 ◼   ► down your iPad Air 1, 2 in your family or something like that.

00:58:26 ◼   ► But I don't think these are products that are made for a one year buying cycle.

00:58:33 ◼   ► They're not.

00:58:34 ◼   ► They're not.

00:58:35 ◼   ► There's nothing that jumps out.

00:58:36 ◼   ► I think even the glare thing isn't quite -- it's better but it's not like they solved the glare

00:58:40 ◼   ► and now it's like a Kindle Paperwhite. That was foreshadowing by the way. It's not like

00:58:46 ◼   ► that. This is a product that the real question is, is it a lot better and thinner and lighter

00:58:50 ◼   ► and faster than the iPad 3 and the iPad 4? And it is. And it is. But if you've got a

00:58:55 ◼   ► 3, I wouldn't unless you just are somebody who loves, loves, loves Touch ID. And you

00:59:02 ◼   ► know, shine on you crazy diamond if that's you. And then for the iPad Mini 3, I wouldn't

00:59:07 ◼   ► recommend it to, you know, anyone who's got an iPad mini too.

00:59:12 ◼   ► There's no point. So let's talk about that Retina iMac.

00:59:18 ◼   ► Yeah, it's right behind me. Have you set it up?

00:59:21 ◼   ► I'm in the future, yeah, it's right here. And how do you feel about it?

00:59:27 ◼   ► Like, what was your initial impression when Apple showed it off and you got

00:59:30 ◼   ► to see it for the first time? Was it like the, you know, how you

00:59:33 ◼   ► mentioned that if you look at it, like, you lose $2,500 from your

00:59:37 ◼   ► wallet like that is that how it is? It's beamed out.

00:59:42 ◼   ► Well I'm in a weird position too because I've got a I've got a amount of

00:59:48 ◼   ► money on Lex Friedman and Dan Morin and John Moltz's podcast or The Rebound.

00:59:53 ◼   ► Dan was referring to this as his like his his rich uncle died and

00:59:58 ◼   ► left him some money for a computer but you know the reality is much more boring

01:00:03 ◼   ► which is that there's some money that those of us who left IDG get to toward our future,

01:00:08 ◼   ► you know, work endeavors. And one of the things we can do is buy computer equipment with it.

01:00:12 ◼   ► And at the event, Dan Frakes reminded me that that was the case. And I was like, oh no,

01:00:16 ◼   ► because now I look at that iMac and I think, oh, I've got to buy a computer. It could be that iMac.

01:00:23 ◼   ► If you've seen the retina MacBook Pro, that was the revelation, right? Cause it was like,

01:00:29 ◼   ► like "oh my god it's a Mac at retina

01:00:31 ◼   ► resolution" this is, I mean it's like

01:00:34 ◼   ► four of those screen style together but

01:00:37 ◼   ► that's what it is it's a retina Mac it's

01:00:40 ◼   ► not revelatory in that way because it's

01:00:42 ◼   ► just a retina Mac now it's huge and

01:00:46 ◼   ► because the 27 I mean it's a huge screen

01:00:48 ◼   ► it's all retina it's a pretty powerful

01:00:51 ◼   ► computer too I mean it's easy to lose

01:00:53 ◼   ► sight of that but this is the you know

01:00:55 ◼   ► both of the processor options for this

01:00:57 ◼   ► thing are powerful quad-core, you know, there's an i5 and an i7 with some pretty impressive

01:01:04 ◼   ► graphics capabilities. So the specs look really good, which is why so many people we know

01:01:09 ◼   ► who are really gigantic Mac nerds, who are Mac Pro users or Mac Mini users, are talking

01:01:17 ◼   ► about buying an iMac. And these are people who back in the day, remember the iMac was

01:01:20 ◼   ► the low-end computer for not serious people. This is the opposite of that. This is the

01:01:27 ◼   ► antithesis of the original iMac, other than that it's an all-in-one, because this is an

01:01:33 ◼   ► amazingly powerful thing with this crazy screen on it. Like Marco Arment, he made an order.

01:01:40 ◼   ► He's going to buy one. He's going to ditch that Mac Pro that they spent a year talking

01:01:44 ◼   ► about on ATP. I totally understand that. I'm probably going to get one myself. I made an

01:01:50 ◼   ► order and then I cancelled it when I found out I was going to be reviewing one because

01:01:53 ◼   ► I'll find out a lot more about what I feel about it by using it myself for my review

01:01:58 ◼   ► and then I can make an order if I want to buy one. But it's understandable why people

01:02:04 ◼   ► who would not have bought an iMac before would want this thing, not just for the screen but

01:02:08 ◼   ► because of all the other specs. But it's not for you, right? You're not going to get something

01:02:16 ◼   ► I mean, even if it's a good deal at £2,500 or £2,000, that's still a lot of money.

01:02:21 ◼   ► So I have a lot of money.

01:02:23 ◼   ► It's a good deal, but it's really expensive.

01:02:25 ◼   ► And what you do, and really what I do, but what you do is, I mean, a big screen is nice,

01:02:32 ◼   ► but it's not quite as necessary.

01:02:35 ◼   ► No, I'm not massively interested in putting my money into the desktop computer.

01:02:40 ◼   ► I just need something that can process audio quickly.

01:02:43 ◼   ► Right.

01:02:44 ◼   ► never do anything on it other than the editing. So I just need RAM and an SSD

01:02:49 ◼   ► really. I have a decent amount of RAM in the Mac Mini. I can't remember how

01:02:53 ◼   ► much I stopped my head but I never have problems there. It's just the speed that

01:02:56 ◼   ► it takes to read and write from the disks that causes me problems. And you

01:03:00 ◼   ► wouldn't get a Retina MacBook Pro because of the audio in and out dedicated?

01:03:03 ◼   ► Well I'm using a Retina MacBook Pro now as my main computer but I don't ever

01:03:09 ◼   ► record on it. So like for example to do all of the work I have a Retina MacBook

01:03:15 ◼   ► Pro like to do all of the show stuff and things like that that's my machine but

01:03:20 ◼   ► the production machine the mini. It's a mini is just for production. It's

01:03:23 ◼   ► purely for Skype calls and recording and the posting of the episodes but

01:03:27 ◼   ► everything else I do in a Retina MacBook Pro which I adore but my main computer

01:03:32 ◼   ► the computer that I'm spending a lot of money on I would want it to be a laptop

01:03:35 ◼   ► Right. Because you get the added benefit of portability.

01:03:39 ◼   ► Yeah, having a pretty good

01:03:43 ◼   ► MacBook Air, which is what I use as my main system now,

01:03:47 ◼   ► what this would do if I got the iMac, I mean now that I've got this office in my garage

01:03:51 ◼   ► and I'm working out here, I realized that's why I was in the market for

01:03:55 ◼   ► a Mac Mini, is I thought, you know, I leave

01:03:59 ◼   ► the laptop docked a lot of the time, and maybe I should just get a desktop

01:04:03 ◼   ► and have the laptop live in the house, the rest of the house, and me use it when

01:04:09 ◼   ► I'm on the couch and things, which a laptop is good for, and have something

01:04:12 ◼   ► dedicated out here. And so I'm still thinking about that, but I agree with

01:04:18 ◼   ► you. If I had to choose, I would not want to have some like compromised

01:04:24 ◼   ► awful thing that I could take around with me and have some amazing thing that

01:04:28 ◼   ► stayed rooted to the desk, but I'm fortunate to have a pretty good MacBook

01:04:32 ◼   ► Air, it's a last year's model so it's in great shape so I get to do both if I get that iMac.

01:04:43 ◼   ► It's good though, I mean it looks great, we'll see how it performs, everybody's got questions

01:04:48 ◼   ► and I'm looking forward to testing it out but in terms of what it looks like, it looks

01:04:52 ◼   ► like an iMac and in terms of what the screen looks like, it looks like the Retina MacBook

01:04:56 ◼   ► Pro except more, much, much, much more.

01:05:01 ◼   ► More Retina.

01:05:02 ◼   ► Yeah, more pixels, right? Because it's just enormous.

01:05:05 ◼   ► It's a 15 and a 13 inch diagonal on those MacBook Pros and this is a 27, so...

01:05:10 ◼   ► It's a lot of dots. That's an awful lot of dots.

01:05:13 ◼   ► Is the pixels per inch lower?

01:05:15 ◼   ► I don't know. I haven't looked.

01:05:19 ◼   ► Uhhh... Probably not. But I don't know.

01:05:23 ◼   ► I can't remember. I think I saw something about it, but...

01:05:27 ◼   ► Because I guess with a screen that size, it probably doesn't need to be that high

01:05:32 ◼   ► because you're far away from it anyway.

01:05:34 ◼   ► Because that's the thing, right?

01:05:35 ◼   ► Retina's relative pretty much.

01:05:38 ◼   ► It kind of just depends how close you are to it.

01:05:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's all about how close you are.

01:05:45 ◼   ► - I'm on the site now trying to find something,

01:05:49 ◼   ► just anything that would give me that information.

01:05:52 ◼   ► But I'm not having much luck at the moment.

01:05:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

01:05:55 ◼   ► - So let's say yes and or no.

01:05:57 ◼   ► - Sure, it's one of those.

01:05:59 ◼   ► I'm sure we'll get some follow up on that

01:06:02 ◼   ► and we'll feed back on it next week, how about that?

01:06:04 ◼   ► - Chat room real time follow up, 218 PPI on the Retina iMac.

01:06:10 ◼   ► - 218. - That's Neil Posner,

01:06:13 ◼   ► I think, in the chat room.

01:06:14 ◼   ► 218, so it's lower than on a phone,

01:06:17 ◼   ► but the idea there is that's always been the case

01:06:19 ◼   ► with the Mac that you're using it

01:06:23 ◼   ► from a little bit further away.

01:06:24 ◼   ► - Cool. - That's a lot of dots.

01:06:28 ◼   ► - iOS 8.1 was released today.

01:06:30 ◼   ► - It was.

01:06:32 ◼   ► I updated immediately because nothing ever happens

01:06:35 ◼   ► that's bad.

01:06:36 ◼   ► - I updated-- - You update your iOS

01:06:37 ◼   ► immediately.

01:06:38 ◼   ► - I was terrified to do it, but I did it anyway.

01:06:40 ◼   ► - Why'd you do that?

01:06:43 ◼   ► Just because you wanted to have it?

01:06:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, why not?

01:06:47 ◼   ► - Dangerous.

01:06:50 ◼   ► - I need to have faith. - But it worked out.

01:06:51 ◼   ► - I need to have faith. - It worked fine.

01:06:52 ◼   ► It worked fine.

01:06:53 ◼   ► Well, I wanted it 'cause I wanted to try out Apple Pay.

01:06:56 ◼   ► So I, you know, so I could write something about Apple pay, which I did.

01:07:00 ◼   ► I downloaded it and walked to.

01:07:02 ◼   ► Whole foods and bought some stuff and I use my phone and it worked.

01:07:08 ◼   ► And then I walked home and I blew away the, uh, the, uh, the guy at the

01:07:13 ◼   ► checkout line, cause he was like, what just happened because, I mean,

01:07:16 ◼   ► he knew I was doing it because they have little stickers everywhere.

01:07:18 ◼   ► That's like, Oh, Apple pay.

01:07:19 ◼   ► You can use that now.

01:07:20 ◼   ► But, um, it was all very abrupt.

01:07:23 ◼   ► just sort of like he was waiting for my next part in the payment process and instead the

01:07:29 ◼   ► receipt just printed out.

01:07:32 ◼   ► I pulled out the lines from your review, your live review of Apple Pay.

01:07:39 ◼   ► Tyler, your checkout assistant, said both "oh you're gonna try that when you try to

01:07:45 ◼   ► do it" and "whoa I don't know what happened" like I love that clearly Whole Foods had not

01:07:51 ◼   ► trained him at all on what he was going to be using today.

01:07:55 ◼   ► It felt to me like he had been trained. So he was ready to do it, but he'd never seen

01:08:01 ◼   ► it actually work with a customer before. Because I mean, literally I walked over there as soon

01:08:05 ◼   ► as my phone rebooted. So unless they had some sort of beta, you know, Apple beta tester

01:08:10 ◼   ► person, they just got the corporate training about it, but nobody had actually used it

01:08:13 ◼   ► in practice. I was probably the first person in their store to use it. And so I told him

01:08:18 ◼   ► I was going to do it and he was like, "Oh." And it sounded very much like, "Oh yeah, they

01:08:21 ◼   ► told us about this but I've never seen it and then so then he saw it in action

01:08:25 ◼   ► it's like whoa it's you know is what just happened was very much like you

01:08:29 ◼   ► know unbelievable you didn't do anything you were just standing with your phone

01:08:32 ◼   ► and it says you paid which is true that's exactly what it was I mean the

01:08:36 ◼   ► the I didn't even need to like tap the phone to the thing I just I kind of held

01:08:41 ◼   ► it in my hand and roughly in front of where that was the little terminal was

01:08:46 ◼   ► and it and it slid out the little Apple pay thing and I put my I put my thumb

01:08:50 ◼   ► I put my thumb on the Touch ID to unlock the phone to do something.

01:08:55 ◼   ► I wasn't really thinking straight about what I was doing.

01:08:58 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, well, this Apple Pay thing is happening.

01:09:00 ◼   ► I'll unlock my phone and see what I do next."

01:09:02 ◼   ► That just paid for it.

01:09:04 ◼   ► I just put my thumb on it.

01:09:06 ◼   ► It just paid, which is fine because that's what I wanted to do.

01:09:08 ◼   ► Just before I knew it, I had paid for my chicken and peanut butter and I was out of there.

01:09:14 ◼   ► Aren't you going to get Manchego?

01:09:15 ◼   ► I don't even know what that is.

01:09:17 ◼   ► Manchego is a kind of cheese.

01:09:19 ◼   ► from Spain so it's near you Myke and it's a very tasty tasty cheese and I was going

01:09:24 ◼   ► to get some manchego and some beer too but this morning when I was running over there

01:09:28 ◼   ► my wife said we need chicken for dinner tonight so buy some chicken and I was like alright

01:09:32 ◼   ► and I didn't want to do a big shopping trip because I really needed to get back and write

01:09:36 ◼   ► the story before my phone call with Apple actually about the iMac so yeah I didn't get

01:09:45 ◼   ► the cheese. I'll have to go back over there sometime. I can go...

01:09:48 ◼   ► Whole Foods is five minutes from my house. I can go there anytime I want and I

01:09:51 ◼   ► don't even need to bring anything but my phone and I can buy everything in the

01:09:54 ◼   ► store.

01:09:55 ◼   ► That's how it works, right? Yeah, I mean because it's free money.

01:09:58 ◼   ► Yeah, it's just my phone. It's Apple's money. I think that's what that means. Apple pays.

01:10:03 ◼   ► I think that's what that means.

01:10:04 ◼   ► I think that's probably it. Apple's paying for this.

01:10:08 ◼   ► Apple will pay. If they were our enemy, we'd say someday Apple

01:10:11 ◼   ► you'll pay. You'll pay, Apple. But now they pay every day now.

01:10:15 ◼   ► Apparently so yeah. Yeah, I'll have to go back for some Manchego later because that's a good cheese

01:10:19 ◼   ► Seems like that it hasn't moved out the hiccups though. I've seen a couple of people just either a like it's just not working

01:10:28 ◼   ► or be

01:10:30 ◼   ► Apple said these cars would work. However, no

01:10:33 ◼   ► It's day. Well, it's it's the morning of day one. And so I think

01:10:37 ◼   ► some

01:10:39 ◼   ► Some people like Dan Morin found out like his cards are supposedly

01:10:44 ◼   ► supposedly work but don't.

01:10:47 ◼   ► But I'm unclear on whose cards are working today

01:10:51 ◼   ► and whose cards are working eventually.

01:10:54 ◼   ► I have a Chase Sapphire card and it worked.

01:10:58 ◼   ► I couldn't take a picture of it,

01:11:02 ◼   ► use the camera to enter in the numbers thing though

01:11:04 ◼   ► because my credit card's strange

01:11:06 ◼   ► and puts the numbers on the back instead of the front.

01:11:09 ◼   ► It just confuses everybody.

01:11:10 ◼   ► I don't know why they do it.

01:11:12 ◼   ► - It's to make you look more elite, Jason.

01:11:14 ◼   ► - I think so, it's a weird credit card.

01:11:16 ◼   ► But anyway, it was in there.

01:11:17 ◼   ► But this is gonna take time 'cause it's not just Apple,

01:11:20 ◼   ► it's your bank has to be an Apple system

01:11:23 ◼   ► and support the new thing.

01:11:25 ◼   ► And that's gonna take time.

01:11:27 ◼   ► And this is all US only, we should say.

01:11:28 ◼   ► I mean, this rollout is starting in the US

01:11:31 ◼   ► and will eventually go elsewhere.

01:11:32 ◼   ► The US is certainly ripe for disruption in this area.

01:11:36 ◼   ► But it was cool, it was fun, I'll do it again.

01:11:40 ◼   ► It beats, even if I have a card in my wallet, in my pocket,

01:11:45 ◼   ► it beats taking out the card and swiping it

01:11:48 ◼   ► and saying okay and signing and all that.

01:11:52 ◼   ► I mean, I'm not gonna sit there with like the lady

01:11:54 ◼   ► in the video and be like, oh, getting this card out,

01:11:57 ◼   ► it's so hard.

01:11:58 ◼   ► I wish there was a better way.

01:11:59 ◼   ► Apple Pay.

01:12:00 ◼   ► - Thank you for saving the day.

01:12:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:12:06 ◼   ► Thanks Apple Pay, you made it all better.

01:12:09 ◼   ► something like that.

01:12:10 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:12:13 ◼   ► It was, I'll do it again.

01:12:17 ◼   ► It was fun.

01:12:18 ◼   ► It was fun and it's easy.

01:12:19 ◼   ► And everybody who's used to having their phone out

01:12:21 ◼   ► in the checkout line anyway, 'cause they're bored,

01:12:24 ◼   ► now you just leave it out and pay and you're done

01:12:26 ◼   ► and you walk away.

01:12:27 ◼   ► It's pretty cool.

01:12:28 ◼   ► But it's early days.

01:12:29 ◼   ► - From a pure infrastructure perspective,

01:12:32 ◼   ► it's very surprising to me that like stores,

01:12:37 ◼   ► like Whole Foods and I've seen other people

01:12:39 ◼   ► like tweeting of the other things that they've been buying today.

01:12:42 ◼   ► It's just interesting that everyone's ready.

01:12:46 ◼   ► You know, I know that there's hiccups, but it's a huge undertaking.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Yeah, and then they announced it, giving them a month to prepare further, sort of openly

01:12:57 ◼   ► about it.

01:12:58 ◼   ► But yeah, Apple's got some clout and they've got good connections with the banks and retailers

01:13:02 ◼   ► are getting on board.

01:13:03 ◼   ► And I'm sure, you know, the part that we don't read about is the people who make these systems,

01:13:09 ◼   ► and presumably that's a big part of this too, is the people who make the payment systems

01:13:13 ◼   ► who are integrating the payment systems with all these companies, you know, they're probably

01:13:16 ◼   ► getting leaned on by the retailer saying, "Well, this sounds cool.

01:13:20 ◼   ► Maybe we should support this."

01:13:21 ◼   ► And they're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:13:22 ◼   ► We've got a software update that'll do that."

01:13:24 ◼   ► And so that's the part beneath the waterline here that's also going on, which is, you know,

01:13:29 ◼   ► provider of payment systems to these five major companies and they've got an update

01:13:37 ◼   ► in a month that will support Apple Pay and then they'll be on board with it.

01:13:42 ◼   ► That's all.

01:13:43 ◼   ► It's amazing.

01:13:44 ◼   ► That's why I chose to walk to Whole Foods.

01:13:47 ◼   ► Whole Foods was one of the five places on that slide on the announcement.

01:13:52 ◼   ► I thought, "Okay, they've got a lockdown with Whole Foods."

01:13:54 ◼   ► I've been to our Whole Foods and I've seen the new terminals.

01:13:56 ◼   ► I know they're ready to go.

01:13:59 ◼   ► Likewise, I knew which one of my credit cards was on the slide on day one when they announced

01:14:03 ◼   ► this thing and it sent us an email saying, "You can now use Apple Pay."

01:14:07 ◼   ► And I thought, "Alright, I can do this."

01:14:09 ◼   ► Not everybody can yet, but I'm going to make the best case scenario here, which I did,

01:14:14 ◼   ► and I got peanut butter out of it.

01:14:16 ◼   ► So, and check it.

01:14:17 ◼   ► Yeah, they were probably a pretty good bet for one of the ones that was going to work

01:14:20 ◼   ► if you went there.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:14:22 ◼   ► And I mean, I would have written about it if it didn't work.

01:14:24 ◼   ► That would have been an interesting story, but it worked.

01:14:26 ◼   ► It worked fine.

01:14:27 ◼   ► And putting in the number was easy too.

01:14:28 ◼   ► I mean it's literally like filling out a form to buy something online.

01:14:31 ◼   ► You put in your credit card number and your expiration and all that.

01:14:36 ◼   ► And then my bank, it was a two factor.

01:14:39 ◼   ► It sent a text to my wife's cell phone with a code and then I entered in that code and

01:14:44 ◼   ► then it was authorized.

01:14:45 ◼   ► So it was all, it was pretty easy and it felt fairly secure.

01:14:49 ◼   ► So yeah.

01:14:52 ◼   ► So that about wraps it up for today's episode of Upgrade.

01:14:54 ◼   ► If you'd like to catch the show notes for today, you can go to relay.fm/upgrade/six.

01:15:02 ◼   ► If you'd like to find us online, I am @imyke.

01:15:06 ◼   ► Jason is @jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L, and he writes over at the fantastic sixcolors.com.

01:15:13 ◼   ► If for some crazy reason you listen to the show and don't read Six Colors, you're missing

01:15:16 ◼   ► out.

01:15:17 ◼   ► It's really one of my favorite new websites on the web, and I don't just say that because

01:15:21 ◼   ► I get to talk to this guy every week.

01:15:23 ◼   ► Thank you, Myke.

01:15:25 ◼   ► Our friends over at Six Colors, wait a second, that's me over there.

01:15:31 ◼   ► And I'm getting my Kindle tomorrow, so we've got more things to talk about.

01:15:34 ◼   ► And Yosemite came out, and we haven't talked about that yet.

01:15:36 ◼   ► Poor little Kindle.

01:15:37 ◼   ► One day, Kindle, one day.

01:15:39 ◼   ► Next week.

01:15:40 ◼   ► I will have used the Retina iMac, so I think next week might be the week for the Kindle

01:15:44 ◼   ► talk, but we'll see.

01:15:45 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:15:46 ◼   ► Kindle talk with Jason and Myke.

01:15:48 ◼   ► That could be our five-minute vertical podcast at the beginning of the show before the real

01:15:52 ◼   ► show starts.

01:15:53 ◼   ► And thank you so much to our sponsors for this week, Smile on Hover.

01:15:58 ◼   ► Friend.

01:15:59 ◼   ► Friend.

01:16:00 ◼   ► Our friends.

01:16:01 ◼   ► Friends and sponsors, Smile on Hover will be back next time.

01:16:02 ◼   ► Say goodbye, Jesus.

01:16:04 ◼   ► Goodbye, Myke.

01:16:05 ◼   ► Goodbye, everybody.

01:16:06 ◼   ► [Music]

01:16:06 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:16:09 ◼   ► [Music]

01:16:16 ◼   ► Cool.