Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:06 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 136. Today's show is brought to you by

00:00:12 ◼   ► Hover, Casper, and Audible. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Mr. Federico

00:00:17 ◼   ► Vigici. Ciao Federico!

00:00:19 ◼   ► Buona sera Myke!

00:00:20 ◼   ► Oh wow! And Mr. Steven Hackett. Hello, how are you?

00:00:23 ◼   ► Howdy y'all.

00:00:24 ◼   ► How- howdy y'all!

00:00:26 ◼   ► Hey!

00:00:27 ◼   ► Hey!

00:00:27 ◼   ► We have a big show today. Oh boy. Oh boy. Howdy. This is the second time in a couple weeks

00:00:33 ◼   ► So we have been rewriting the outline furiously right up until we hit record because minutes before yeah

00:00:40 ◼   ► Because apples got some news and we're gonna get to that

00:00:43 ◼   ► But first we have to follow the book of order and that means follow-up comes first

00:00:49 ◼   ► And if you are I have a question for you actually, is there any news that Apple could give?

00:00:55 ◼   ► That would make you assume the fault like the order like you would just like throw it out the window

00:01:00 ◼   ► We've scared follow-up in the past. I think mostly on shows that I'm not on

00:01:05 ◼   ► So what if what if Apple brings back the Newton the message pad that kind of stuff?

00:01:11 ◼   ► I feel like for Steven that's follow-up though. Yeah. Yeah, that's the ultimate follow-up from 1996

00:01:16 ◼   ► Alright fine

00:01:20 ◼   ► So yeah, so follow-up

00:01:21 ◼   ► We have to follow the Book of Order.

00:01:24 ◼   ► And if you are hearing this once the show is live,

00:01:26 ◼   ► sorry live listeners, you have to wait a little bit longer.

00:01:30 ◼   ► But if you're listening to this,

00:01:31 ◼   ► if you downloaded this episode,

00:01:32 ◼   ► you are listening to it right now,

00:01:33 ◼   ► you should go to the show notes.

00:01:34 ◼   ► And the first link is a link to the WWDC Meetup tickets.

00:01:39 ◼   ► They're up now, as we spoke about last week.

00:01:41 ◼   ► They are free, it is an all ages event.

00:01:43 ◼   ► Bring an ID if you want a beer.

00:01:45 ◼   ► If you don't want a beer or you are not a drinking age,

00:01:49 ◼   ► totally fine, come hang out.

00:01:51 ◼   ► We will be at the San Jose Museum of Textiles,

00:01:53 ◼   ► which is a super cool venue right around the corner

00:01:57 ◼   ► from the conference center.

00:01:57 ◼   ► It's about a six minute walk.

00:01:59 ◼   ► Most of that is walking around the conference center itself

00:02:01 ◼   ► from the front door.

00:02:02 ◼   ► The conference center is huge.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Google Maps, there's like a whole block.

00:02:06 ◼   ► But, so we're super excited to be doing this event.

00:02:10 ◼   ► And you should go get a ticket.

00:02:13 ◼   ► They're gonna go fast, so if you are still listening to me

00:02:15 ◼   ► and you haven't clicked that link yet, go click the link.

00:02:18 ◼   ► - Yep, there will be a waiting list.

00:02:20 ◼   ► you could put your name down and if anything changes,

00:02:23 ◼   ► we won't be able to get you in,

00:02:23 ◼   ► but if you didn't sign up for the mailing list last week,

00:02:26 ◼   ► like we told you, then you may,

00:02:28 ◼   ► you probably won't get a ticket

00:02:29 ◼   ► and you should have listened to what we said last week.

00:02:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, always listen. - That isn't listen

00:02:32 ◼   ► to all of you.

00:02:33 ◼   ► - Always listen.

00:02:34 ◼   ► All right, so we have a little follow-up,

00:02:37 ◼   ► mostly around workflow, as you might imagine,

00:02:41 ◼   ► and listener William wrote in to say,

00:02:44 ◼   ► "The case was made on the podcast,

00:02:46 ◼   ► "while workflow needs to merge with Apple,

00:02:48 ◼   ► But what about the other way around?

00:02:51 ◼   ► Why does Apple need workflow?

00:02:53 ◼   ► Yes, they're acquiring some great developers, but surely they could do that without buying

00:02:57 ◼   ► the app.

00:02:59 ◼   ► So Federico, drop some knowledge on us.

00:03:02 ◼   ► Well, I think the main point here is that, yes, Apple can find great engineers everywhere,

00:03:08 ◼   ► but sometimes it's more about acquiring the talent from a startup.

00:03:14 ◼   ► It is not just about the technical skills of the engineers that you're hiring.

00:03:18 ◼   ► It is more about getting people with skills and with a vision to join your company.

00:03:26 ◼   ► Because Apple could have found, you know, some iOS engineers who are capable of writing

00:03:32 ◼   ► widgets and, you know, creating a framework for extensions quite possibly anywhere.

00:03:39 ◼   ► to get the people who were able to think of something completely new, and especially the

00:03:45 ◼   ► people who had both the skills and the vision to put together the crazy idea that is the

00:03:52 ◼   ► content graph engine. That is remarkable. Those people, Ari and Corinne and Nick, the

00:04:00 ◼   ► original founding team of Workflow, they came up out of the blue with this idea of creating

00:04:06 ◼   ► an engine that is capable of taking a bunch of different formats like images and text

00:04:13 ◼   ► and PDFs, whatever, taking whatever is available and translating it to different compatible

00:04:20 ◼   ► formats. And you don't find those people just around the corner. You need to go scout

00:04:30 ◼   ► that kind of company. You need to go find that kind of talent. And so I think there's

00:04:34 ◼   ► there's a difference between, you know, there's hundreds of amazing engineers at Apple. But

00:04:39 ◼   ► I think the difference this time is you want a company where people with the technical

00:04:46 ◼   ► skills also have the, you know, they want the extra mile because they had a vision and

00:04:53 ◼   ► because they had a clear goal and they can help you now as part of the company execute

00:04:59 ◼   ► on a vision because they have those ideas and they have that drive, that motivation

00:05:07 ◼   ► to make it happen. And it's quite telling, you know, if we follow the argument that why

00:05:12 ◼   ► does Apple need engineers from Workflow specifically when they could just find engineers anywhere?

00:05:20 ◼   ► To that I could reply, why didn't Apple come up with Workflow in the first place if they

00:05:25 ◼   ► they could have found resources inside the company without workflow. So I think there's

00:05:30 ◼   ► a mutual benefit for the workflow team to be able to expand and to be able to say, "Now

00:05:35 ◼   ► we can do workflow as a system feature." And for Apple to have these people with a vision

00:05:42 ◼   ► and to put them in charge and say, "Now you have an infinite budget. Now you have all

00:05:46 ◼   ► the resources you want. You work for us, but we can actually work together with different

00:05:50 ◼   ► teams and we can make you do some pretty cool stuff that wasn't possible before.

00:05:54 ◼   ► That's my, you know, being optimistic, but I think there's a, you know, it's not just

00:06:00 ◼   ► like workflow needs Apple, Apple also needs workflow.

00:06:03 ◼   ► Why would you build it yourself when there are like incredibly capable people who have already done it?

00:06:08 ◼   ► Yeah. Right?

00:06:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's totally fair, and I think part of it is Apple is, you know, seeing, we're going to talk about this a lot later, but Apple is seeing what's going on in the

00:06:19 ◼   ► community and they see that this app and this like this has become a hub for this

00:06:24 ◼   ► sort of work and so why right if they come in and do their own thing and

00:06:29 ◼   ► destroy workflow you know through their own utility that's not great for those

00:06:35 ◼   ► users right but if you can bring it in and fold it in it's kind of best for

00:06:38 ◼   ► everybody I think so totally agree with all of that if you did not read

00:06:42 ◼   ► Federico's workflow article it's up it went up after the show last week about

00:06:47 ◼   ► the future of workflow and in it Federico I think you did a really good

00:06:50 ◼   ► job at outlining sort of a handful of different scenarios that could come

00:06:55 ◼   ► about and your feelings on each one. We tried to do that on the show but I think

00:06:59 ◼   ► you were much more clear on it in the article so if you haven't read that and

00:07:03 ◼   ► you're interested in it go check it out it'll be in the show notes. While we're

00:07:07 ◼   ► talking about a website named Mac stories there's also a link and follow

00:07:10 ◼   ► up about Autosleep. We spoke about this you know whenever we're talking about

00:07:13 ◼   ► sleep tracking a couple of months ago.

00:07:15 ◼   ► Autosleep is a app that you don't have to tell it

00:07:19 ◼   ► you're going to sleep.

00:07:21 ◼   ► It kind of looks at your motion information

00:07:23 ◼   ► and there's a bunch of toggles you can set

00:07:25 ◼   ► and it kind of figures it out.

00:07:26 ◼   ► And we complained about the user interface.

00:07:29 ◼   ► 4.0 shipped like Friday, I think, the end of last week.

00:07:33 ◼   ► The interface is much improved.

00:07:35 ◼   ► It's still very busy, it still is doing a lot of stuff.

00:07:39 ◼   ► It is still the same app, but I think the developers

00:07:41 ◼   ► done a pretty good job of cleaning it up.

00:07:45 ◼   ► But I've realized when this news came up

00:07:49 ◼   ► that I've kind of fallen out of the habit

00:07:51 ◼   ► of tracking my sleep and I'm not really sure why.

00:07:54 ◼   ► You know, I've got the Apple Watch 2,

00:07:57 ◼   ► like the battery life is fine.

00:07:59 ◼   ► I've got an app that I like, I use Sleep++

00:08:01 ◼   ► by friend of the show, _DavidSmith, it's a great app.

00:08:04 ◼   ► I just kind of stopped doing it,

00:08:05 ◼   ► and so I'm gonna try to get back into that habit.

00:08:08 ◼   ► I don't really know what happened.

00:08:09 ◼   ► And I was curious, did the two of you,

00:08:11 ◼   ► Federico do you at least still... are you still tracking your sleep on this thing?

00:08:14 ◼   ► Yeah, every day. I keep my watch on every night. I charge it when I wake up or when

00:08:20 ◼   ► I'm cooking lunch. And yeah, I am assembling this catalog of sleep times

00:08:28 ◼   ► in AutoSleep, which with a side benefit that yes, AutoSleep, the

00:08:34 ◼   ► visual, you know, aspect got much better, but I still prefer to have this

00:08:38 ◼   ► aggregate dashboard of Hellkit data and locations from the Moves app in Gyroscope.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Gyroscope is excellent and it reads sleep data captured by Autosleep thanks to Hellkit.

00:08:54 ◼   ► So I wear the watch at night because there's Autosleep on it. When I wake up I get a

00:09:00 ◼   ► notification on my phone that Autosleep worked and it captured my sleep. I can just confirm that.

00:09:06 ◼   ► Actually, most of the time I don't even open the app, I just see the notification and move

00:09:11 ◼   ► on.

00:09:12 ◼   ► And then, every couple of weeks, I keep an eye on my progress with the Gyroscope dashboard,

00:09:18 ◼   ► which is both on the iPhone and on the web.

00:09:20 ◼   ► It's excellent, the design is amazing, and yeah, I have the pro features.

00:09:27 ◼   ► I really do recommend Gyroscope if you're unhappy with the interface of apps like AutoSleep

00:09:32 ◼   ► and the Apple Health app on the iPhone.

00:09:35 ◼   ► gyroscopy is much better.

00:09:37 ◼   ► Cool. Myke, do you want to tell us about our friend, G. McDonald and her new job?

00:09:43 ◼   ► I do. This is something that I wanted to mention. We've been talking about kind of following the

00:09:48 ◼   ► Manton Reese's microblog Kickstarter campaigns that's been going through and

00:09:53 ◼   ► Manton posted an update a week or two ago.

00:09:56 ◼   ► As you mentioned, as you remember, we've mentioned that he had a stretch goal to hire a

00:10:01 ◼   ► community manager to kind of help him set the tone and guidelines for the service.

00:10:05 ◼   ► He met that and they've announced, well, Manton has announced that Gene McDonald

00:10:10 ◼   ► of AppCamp for Girls fame is going to be coming on board to help him out and I am

00:10:15 ◼   ► so happy about this. Like Gene is amazing, Manton's amazing and I think the two of

00:10:20 ◼   ► them together are gonna make something great. Like I'm becoming increasingly

00:10:25 ◼   ► interested like more and more and more with this service and the idea that

00:10:29 ◼   ► that Gene's gonna be there, like that just makes me feel good. So congratulations to

00:10:35 ◼   ► Gene and Manton and I'm super excited to see what Microblog will be like when it launches.

00:10:40 ◼   ► I think it's coming up pretty soon as well.

00:10:42 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. I got the email that the username registrations with some features should be

00:10:48 ◼   ► available soon. So I'm really excited to check this out and I think it's an amazing combo

00:10:53 ◼   ► of two of my favorite people on the internet, you know, joining forces for this project,

00:10:57 ◼   ► yeah.

00:10:58 ◼   ► I'm super excited.

00:10:59 ◼   ► Uh, Jean is great.

00:11:01 ◼   ► I think all three of us just love her.

00:11:03 ◼   ► She's awesome.

00:11:05 ◼   ► And uh, if, if this is the type of decision making maintenance is going to be making with

00:11:09 ◼   ► this product, then I'm all in.

00:11:11 ◼   ► I'm really excited to see it.

00:11:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:14 ◼   ► So there you go.

00:11:15 ◼   ► I'm very, I'm very pleased about that.

00:11:17 ◼   ► I'm really pleased about that.

00:11:19 ◼   ► So congratulations to everyone.

00:11:21 ◼   ► All right.

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00:13:02 ◼   ► So let's get into the the big story today. This morning on April 4th we all woke up to

00:13:12 ◼   ► a series of articles. John Gruber at Daring Fireball, Matt Panzareno at TechCrunch,

00:13:16 ◼   ► Buzzfeed had a couple. Apple invited some of these journalists to Cupertino to sit down

00:13:24 ◼   ► with them inside the, and I want to get the name right because this place sounds like

00:13:29 ◼   ► an amazing wonderland, Apple's product realization lab for the Mac. So I just want to work in

00:13:35 ◼   ► a place that has realization of the name. I think that that sounds super fun.

00:13:39 ◼   ► You could change the name of your house to the podcast realization environment.

00:13:43 ◼   ► environment. That's what I'm going to call the studio from now on.

00:13:48 ◼   ► The P-R-E. Yeah, that's good.

00:13:52 ◼   ► So basically the TLDR of all of this is that there's a new Mac Pro coming. It will not be this year, but when it comes out it will embrace a modular design like the old one.

00:14:05 ◼   ► There's going to be a "pro external display" for this machine. Don't really know what that means except that it was mentioned.

00:14:11 ◼   ► We're going to see new iMacs later this year with models specifically geared to the pro

00:14:17 ◼   ► market and the 2013 Mac Pro is still on sale but the more expensive SKUs have come down

00:14:23 ◼   ► to replace lower ones.

00:14:25 ◼   ► So you're still getting a 2013 machine with Thunderbolt 2 and the same design but you

00:14:30 ◼   ► get more of that machine for your money now but it's still on sale.

00:14:34 ◼   ► And what I think is the most important news and Panzarena pointed this out, I didn't see

00:14:38 ◼   ► anywhere else, that in the lobby of this building, Apple has a collection of Mac hardware, including

00:14:44 ◼   ► a 20th anniversary Mac.

00:14:45 ◼   ► And really, that's what I want to talk about.

00:14:46 ◼   ► No, it's not the most important thing.

00:14:48 ◼   ► It's not the main point.

00:14:50 ◼   ► It's not the topic we're discussing.

00:14:51 ◼   ► How can you read all of this?

00:14:54 ◼   ► All of this information?

00:14:55 ◼   ► And that is your takeaway.

00:14:56 ◼   ► Your key point is that they have a performer in the lobby, or a TAM in the lobby.

00:15:02 ◼   ► Nobody needs to know this.

00:15:03 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know why Pansarino thought it was important enough to mention.

00:15:07 ◼   ► think he was writing it just for you. I think so. I think so. So yeah, so there's that.

00:15:13 ◼   ► So we can get into the tech stuff, but I think what the three of us are more interested in,

00:15:17 ◼   ► at least today, because the tech stuff is a little light on details, is like the huge

00:15:21 ◼   ► break in Apple's normal press coverage, or you know, press relations. This is a big change.

00:15:28 ◼   ► This is a huge departure from their regular status quo.

00:15:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, you know, Apple is breaking with tradition, which is one of Apple's guiding

00:15:46 ◼   ► ideas in the past has been, "We're going to show you the product once it's ready and pretty

00:15:51 ◼   ► close to shipping to customers." And instead, now they're effectively making promises, even

00:15:57 ◼   ► if I feel pretty confident about Apple's ability to actually execute, because they never do

00:16:03 ◼   ► So, once they do this, you know, it's the real deal.

00:16:08 ◼   ► It is a huge change from the past.

00:16:11 ◼   ► And I was reading Gruber's articles and I was reading Panzareno on TechCrunch, and they

00:16:18 ◼   ► both sort of highlighted how Apple didn't really say, "We're sorry that we screwed

00:16:27 ◼   ► up."

00:16:28 ◼   ► But the subtext was there.

00:16:30 ◼   ► I mean, at some point, I think Federighi said, we designed ourselves into a corner with the

00:16:36 ◼   ► previous Mac Pro design.

00:16:38 ◼   ► And so to have this kind of, you know, I don't want to say that Apple is trashing the trash

00:16:44 ◼   ► can, sort of, you know, sort of like a metaphysical garbage disposal idea.

00:16:50 ◼   ► But to see a company that goes out and say, look, we had this new design, we thought it

00:16:56 ◼   ► was going to be the way going forward, you know, with these dual GPUs on this single

00:17:01 ◼   ► piece in the middle of this circle, you know, it didn't actually pan out, because the PC

00:17:08 ◼   ► industry went in a different direction, and we were stuck with this design that we couldn't

00:17:13 ◼   ► update, because we couldn't put a single, you know, big, huge GPU in the middle of this

00:17:19 ◼   ► computer, so we eventually, we had a bunch of discussions, and Federighi, in the TechCrunch

00:17:24 ◼   ► piece I think he said we went back and forth lots of emotions we went on the

00:17:29 ◼   ► arc from you know sort of denial and then acceptance and eventually we

00:17:34 ◼   ► realized we need to redesign this completely and this is what Apple is

00:17:38 ◼   ► gonna do but this is a big change you know to to you know because Apple knows

00:17:43 ◼   ► there's a lots of criticism for you know how they have dealt with the Mac Pro so

00:17:49 ◼   ► far, sort of ignoring the line and just being quiet about it. And so to go out and say,

00:17:57 ◼   ► we know that some people have had many doubts and questions, and we want to assure you we're

00:18:03 ◼   ► working on this and it's going to be completely different. It's both an admission of defeat

00:18:08 ◼   ► in a way because of course the previous design didn't work out. But it's also in a way exciting

00:18:14 ◼   ► to see a company that says, "We're going to do this. We want to have a better communication

00:18:20 ◼   ► with the pro community, and we want to send this message that we're not abandoning the

00:18:26 ◼   ► Mac and we're not abandoning the Mac for pro users." It is very exciting from a PR perspective,

00:18:33 ◼   ► if only from that perspective. It is an exciting change.

00:18:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I think the conversation around the existing Mac Pro is really eye-opening, and

00:18:41 ◼   ► And I think that the quote is that we designed ourselves

00:18:44 ◼   ► into a circle, saying that the architecture of this machine,

00:18:47 ◼   ► which is something I will say that I was right about,

00:18:52 ◼   ► that that machine didn't work.

00:18:53 ◼   ► That for some reason, they can't upgrade it the way they want to.

00:18:56 ◼   ► And again, they're not going to go into the technical details,

00:18:59 ◼   ► but I think it's pretty easy to understand,

00:19:01 ◼   ► looking at the machine and how it goes together,

00:19:03 ◼   ► that the thermals of that machine

00:19:05 ◼   ► just can't take more than what's in it, potentially.

00:19:07 ◼   ► Or are they having trouble to get GPUs to fit into it?

00:19:09 ◼   ► They talked to you about the dual GPU design.

00:19:11 ◼   ► It just seems like that idea that the very concept at the heart of the machine was flawed

00:19:17 ◼   ► for some reason.

00:19:19 ◼   ► I'm glad they've realized that.

00:19:21 ◼   ► I think it's fair to say that maybe it took them too long to do this, but I for one will

00:19:25 ◼   ► take better late than never.

00:19:26 ◼   ► That Apple very clearly, and they even say it, very clearly listening to the concerns

00:19:33 ◼   ► of their pro users and the people who make their living on the Mac and at the very top

00:19:40 ◼   ► end of the Mac hardware and they want to address it.

00:19:44 ◼   ► We got some numbers in this, which again is a break from normal.

00:19:47 ◼   ► So 80% of Macs sold are laptops, 20% are desktops.

00:19:52 ◼   ► Honestly and Gruber said this too, I'm surprised it's not 85-15.

00:19:55 ◼   ► 20% is bigger than I thought it would be for the desktop.

00:19:58 ◼   ► But of the 20%, quote, single digit percentage

00:20:02 ◼   ► by the Mac Pro.

00:20:05 ◼   ► Now that may be because the Mac Pro now is super old

00:20:08 ◼   ► and janky and so that number has sunk.

00:20:10 ◼   ► Will that number rebound after a new Mac Pro is out?

00:20:14 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:20:15 ◼   ► But what it's showing is that Apple's paying attention

00:20:18 ◼   ► to these very small clusters of customers.

00:20:22 ◼   ► And the third number they shared,

00:20:24 ◼   ► which maybe was the most surprising to me

00:20:27 ◼   ► of all of them is that 30% of Mac users

00:20:30 ◼   ► open a pro-level application on a weekly basis,

00:20:34 ◼   ► and 15% open it, like I think they said,

00:20:36 ◼   ► on a near daily basis, so things like Photoshop,

00:20:39 ◼   ► Illustrator, Logic, Final Cut, Audition, Premiere,

00:20:42 ◼   ► you know, these high-end apps that people like me

00:20:46 ◼   ► are in all day, 30% of Mac users are using those

00:20:49 ◼   ► on a weekly basis, and that is,

00:20:53 ◼   ► that's encouraging to me that in this climate

00:20:56 ◼   ► of a lot of angst about the Mac,

00:20:59 ◼   ► and I think a lot of people have felt,

00:21:02 ◼   ► and I will count myself in them to a degree,

00:21:06 ◼   ► that I am part of a dying breed, right?

00:21:09 ◼   ► That I am doing heavy duty professional audio and video

00:21:12 ◼   ► work on my Mac, and the world is passing me by.

00:21:16 ◼   ► And A, that's silly, right?

00:21:20 ◼   ► B, it's not really true,

00:21:22 ◼   ► and C, Apple knows those things, right?

00:21:24 ◼   ► that it knows that there are people doing this.

00:21:27 ◼   ► And you know, the iPad can race ahead

00:21:29 ◼   ► and the iPad can take over notebooks

00:21:31 ◼   ► and take over a lot of use for a lot of people,

00:21:34 ◼   ► and that's great, and I encourage it.

00:21:36 ◼   ► I think it's awesome, and the two of you

00:21:38 ◼   ► are leading the way on that.

00:21:39 ◼   ► You're at the front of the pack, you know, charging it.

00:21:42 ◼   ► But there are people who, for whatever reason,

00:21:45 ◼   ► either it's due to habit or that the iPad

00:21:47 ◼   ► can't do the things we need it to do yet,

00:21:49 ◼   ► that still require things like high-end iMacs and Mac Pros,

00:21:53 ◼   ► and Apple's listening to that.

00:21:54 ◼   ► And out of all of this stuff today,

00:21:58 ◼   ► new hardware stuff, the fact that it was in this weird

00:22:00 ◼   ► secret lab that was like a bouncy castle for nerds,

00:22:05 ◼   ► the core message I walk away with this

00:22:10 ◼   ► is that Apple listens to its users

00:22:12 ◼   ► and that for all of the hand-wring that has been done

00:22:17 ◼   ► over the last couple years over this machine,

00:22:20 ◼   ► that it hasn't been for nothing.

00:22:23 ◼   ► Someone on Twitter mentioned me a couple minutes ago

00:22:25 ◼   ► and said, "Hey, that's great, but if we hadn't complained,

00:22:29 ◼   ► "would Apple just let the Mac Pro die?"

00:22:30 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know that or not.

00:22:32 ◼   ► I guess it's impossible to know,

00:22:33 ◼   ► but my guess is that people sharing their thoughts on this

00:22:38 ◼   ► only benefited those people in the long run, right?

00:22:40 ◼   ► That if the Mac Pro had been,

00:22:43 ◼   ► the 2013 Mac Pro had been a failure,

00:22:45 ◼   ► and I think we can all say,

00:22:46 ◼   ► I think Apple is saying to a degree that it was,

00:22:49 ◼   ► and no one complained,

00:22:50 ◼   ► then they don't have to replace the Mac Pro,

00:22:52 ◼   ► but because people shared their thoughts on it

00:22:54 ◼   ► and approached Apple again and again,

00:22:56 ◼   ► saying, "Look, we need more.

00:22:58 ◼   ► We need a machine that we can depend on."

00:23:02 ◼   ► And Apple doing something about that,

00:23:05 ◼   ► it's just like, thumbs up for me.

00:23:06 ◼   ► I appreciate the honesty, I appreciate the transparency,

00:23:09 ◼   ► and I think there's a level of humility in these quotes

00:23:11 ◼   ► that is refreshing.

00:23:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think from an ideological point of view,

00:23:16 ◼   ► there's a sort of a,

00:23:17 ◼   ► I can see Steve Jobs in these,

00:23:21 ◼   ► to be able to say we still want to try bold things and we don't want to dwell on what

00:23:28 ◼   ► didn't work and we want to move on from mistakes we made and try something new and listen to

00:23:34 ◼   ► people. I think it's very humble to say we were wrong and the industry moved in different

00:23:42 ◼   ► directions and we were unable to keep making that product at the best of our possibilities.

00:23:51 ◼   ► There's also, from a strategic point of view, even if the Mac power users, you could say,

00:23:59 ◼   ► are literally the 1% for Apple, it is important to see this company that wants to keep making

00:24:10 ◼   ► the most powerful computer that they can possibly make.

00:24:13 ◼   ► It's funny because when Tim Cook goes out and says, "We think there's lots of potential

00:24:19 ◼   ► for AR. We think AR is the future. And when you see Federighi in these interviews today

00:24:26 ◼   ► saying whether we need the capabilities for 3G graphics, we need it, some people need

00:24:31 ◼   ► it for VR, other people need it for video. So it is important, it is strategic for Apple

00:24:37 ◼   ► to keep making this computer, even if only because that 1% or 5% or 9%, whatever it is

00:24:45 ◼   ► below the 10% threshold that needs this computer, those people usually make art, or they make

00:24:55 ◼   ► services, or they make infrastructures upon which millions of other people rely on, either

00:25:01 ◼   ► for entertainment or for productivity. So there's this discrepancy, you know, the 1-9%

00:25:09 ◼   ► of people making games, movies, services, scientific programs, that those benefits help

00:25:18 ◼   ► millions of people. And so I think it is important to make that computer, because even if it

00:25:24 ◼   ► doesn't make a lot of money, and even if it doesn't appeal to millions of people, it fosters

00:25:30 ◼   ► an environment where millions of others, including us, can reap the benefits of stuff that happens

00:25:38 ◼   ► because of the computer. And one of the key things about this, right, is like we

00:25:43 ◼   ► spoke about this is a small percentage like some of these people are a

00:25:46 ◼   ► percentage of inner percentage of inner percentage. But I think it's been shown

00:25:51 ◼   ► over the last couple of months that those people were the ones that are the

00:25:56 ◼   ► most vocal because they tend to care the most, right? They're the most invested.

00:25:59 ◼   ► So like Apple doing this is a good sign but what's even more is

00:26:04 ◼   ► something that Shilla was saying about they're trying to find ways to do this

00:26:09 ◼   ► stuff better to communicate better with the pro market and I guess this is step

00:26:14 ◼   ► one of that but this is exactly what this market needs I think for some of

00:26:17 ◼   ► this pro stuff especially this Mac Pro it's not good it's not gonna be the

00:26:22 ◼   ► sexiest thing ever right like it's not gonna be the thing that makes the front

00:26:25 ◼   ► page. Speak for yourself big boy. I'm so sorry but you know it's not gonna be

00:26:30 ◼   ► it's not going to be on the front page of the New York Times when they unveil it, right?

00:26:34 ◼   ► Like the iPhone would be. So the secrecy thing, I don't think is as important here. And really,

00:26:40 ◼   ► I know, as we've seen, it actually just serves to harm. And if they're more open with this market,

00:26:46 ◼   ► the market can feel more comfortable because when you're in a situation where like,

00:26:50 ◼   ► you don't know if your platform's going to be updated, then you maybe have to make some

00:26:54 ◼   ► difficult decisions. And Apple can clearly understand this. And they've obviously been

00:26:59 ◼   ► wrestling internally about how to do with it because this is a huge break from the norm.

00:27:03 ◼   ► Like this isn't just saying, oh, we've got great stuff coming in the future. They have given

00:27:08 ◼   ► actual details about what this computer might look like. Calling it modular means something,

00:27:15 ◼   ► right? It means new design and they don't talk about new design, but they have today. And I

00:27:20 ◼   ► think that that is a very important thing. And Shilla said, like, just a kind of a quote from

00:27:25 ◼   ► him, we're really serious about the idea that we want to figure out how to better communicate

00:27:28 ◼   ► We understand that their jobs rely on this stuff.

00:27:31 ◼   ► They make important decisions about this stuff.

00:27:32 ◼   ► They need to hear from us.

00:27:34 ◼   ► It's great.

00:27:36 ◼   ► It's really, really good news.

00:27:37 ◼   ► - It's encouraging.

00:27:38 ◼   ► And I hope, I mean,

00:27:40 ◼   ► like looking forward from today, right,

00:27:44 ◼   ► the question is, can they do that?

00:27:47 ◼   ► You know, can, even can they build a machine

00:27:50 ◼   ► that they, you know, they can update on a regular basis?

00:27:53 ◼   ► What he says, right, we wanna be modular,

00:27:55 ◼   ► we wanna build a platform that we can update

00:27:56 ◼   ► on a regular basis.

00:27:58 ◼   ► Even the cheese grater struggled at that at times.

00:28:00 ◼   ► And I just hope that they can make that work.

00:28:06 ◼   ► I think that today,

00:28:09 ◼   ► if you look at some other stuff Apple's done, right,

00:28:11 ◼   ► talking to Gruber on the talk show,

00:28:14 ◼   ► having some of these like in-depth product interviews,

00:28:16 ◼   ► like they have been moving this direction,

00:28:18 ◼   ► but today feels like a big jump forward down that line.

00:28:21 ◼   ► And I hope that they can continue that.

00:28:24 ◼   ► And the fact that Phil Schiller,

00:28:27 ◼   ► He seems to be the Mac cheerleader on the executive team.

00:28:30 ◼   ► I think him and Federighi care about it the most.

00:28:33 ◼   ► They're in this meeting right there,

00:28:34 ◼   ► the ones having the quotes.

00:28:35 ◼   ► Anytime there's Mac news, Schiller or Federighi

00:28:38 ◼   ► are out there in front talking about it.

00:28:40 ◼   ► That's encouraging and I think that we will continue

00:28:42 ◼   ► to see that, but at the same time,

00:28:45 ◼   ► I hope that they don't end up in a situation again

00:28:46 ◼   ► where they have to do this, right?

00:28:49 ◼   ► I mean, their back was against the wall in this

00:28:52 ◼   ► and it's up to Apple to be proactive enough

00:28:55 ◼   ► or in this case to build a machine that's flexible enough

00:28:58 ◼   ► that they don't get stuck in the situation again.

00:29:01 ◼   ► - A common reaction that I'm already seeing on Twitter

00:29:05 ◼   ► and that is fascinating to me is a lot of people saying

00:29:10 ◼   ► that this is not a great announcement because it's too late

00:29:14 ◼   ► and it's still an embarrassment.

00:29:17 ◼   ► So I don't understand how some people can be both unhappy

00:29:23 ◼   ► if Apple does nothing and still unhappy if Apple does something. So whatever they did

00:29:29 ◼   ► with the Mac Pro, still wrong. So I don't understand that these people, they probably

00:29:34 ◼   ► want, I don't know, Johnny Ive going door to door to apologize to them personally, or

00:29:39 ◼   ► maybe Schiller setting himself on fire, some big apology.

00:29:44 ◼   ► For some people there's nothing. If they would have turned around today with that product

00:29:48 ◼   ► and said it's available today, it's still, people still would have said it was too little

00:29:52 ◼   ► too late, you know, like, okay, I'm really happy that this is here. It's awesome, but

00:29:55 ◼   ► it's too late. Like, there is a certain subset of people that are frustrated enough that

00:30:00 ◼   ► they're not going to be happy with anything that happens. I mean, my feeling on this is

00:30:04 ◼   ► like, what more? I don't really think you can ask much more than this, right? Like,

00:30:08 ◼   ► you can ask for the product to exist, but it doesn't. So the best thing that you can

00:30:12 ◼   ► have is Apple effectively coming hat in hand to the professional Mac users and giving them

00:30:19 ◼   ► details that they've never had before, which surely we find interesting, right?

00:30:23 ◼   ► Like if you care, you find it interesting, but also to kind of,

00:30:26 ◼   ► they apologized like this is an apology. Like they actually,

00:30:30 ◼   ► the word sorry is used in this. Yes. Um, they say that they're sorry,

00:30:34 ◼   ► like that this happened. They've given clear details.

00:30:36 ◼   ► They've explained the situation and then they provided a way forward. Like,

00:30:41 ◼   ► this is exactly what you would want. I mean,

00:30:45 ◼   ► there are other questions about other product lines, right?

00:30:48 ◼   ► and what is happening with those. I think... Matt Panzareno asked about the Mac Mini.

00:30:56 ◼   ► I think it was John...

00:30:57 ◼   ► Paxowski.

00:30:58 ◼   ► Paxowski? How do you say that?

00:31:00 ◼   ► I think it's Paxowski. And they were like, "Yeah, we're like, you know, it's different.

00:31:05 ◼   ► This isn't... Shush!" Right? Was effectively what they said.

00:31:09 ◼   ► Keep quiet! You there! This is why you want to talk about the Mac Mini? What's the matter?

00:31:12 ◼   ► Why are you even here?

00:31:17 ◼   ► But this is clearly a good sign for the people that need this information.

00:31:22 ◼   ► And I would argue that this is the one that needs to be addressed the most in a professional

00:31:28 ◼   ► Mac user base.

00:31:29 ◼   ► Because it's the most entrenched, it's the one that's hardest to move, it's the one where

00:31:33 ◼   ► the people that use those machines would have a tougher time finding replacements that would

00:31:39 ◼   ► meet their requirements and needs.

00:31:41 ◼   ► So I think that Apple has done the right thing here.

00:31:46 ◼   ► But they did address the iPad.

00:31:50 ◼   ► And it was really funny.

00:31:51 ◼   ► Like, should I just read this quote from Federighi?

00:31:54 ◼   ► Yes.

00:31:55 ◼   ► All right.

00:31:56 ◼   ► "We certainly see, as I know you do, a wide spectrum of views expressed in internet forums"

00:32:00 ◼   ► What forums?

00:32:01 ◼   ► Do they actually mean like message boards or like in different places?

00:32:04 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:32:05 ◼   ► "In internet forums about all things, including our products.

00:32:07 ◼   ► I think it's not entirely unreasonable and it's understandable that some people who love

00:32:11 ◼   ► their Macs so much and see something new that Apple was talking about in the form of iPad

00:32:16 ◼   ► creating in some of them a sense of insecurity.

00:32:19 ◼   ► What does this mean?

00:32:21 ◼   ► That's the thing I really care about,

00:32:22 ◼   ► and I don't want to see it go away.

00:32:24 ◼   ► I see this other new thing on the scene.

00:32:25 ◼   ► What does this mean to me?

00:32:26 ◼   ► What does this mean to the product I love?

00:32:28 ◼   ► You should be a blogger.

00:32:30 ◼   ► You should be.

00:32:31 ◼   ► So I understand how that will come out

00:32:33 ◼   ► in the form of concern that this is happening,

00:32:34 ◼   ► but this is not happening.

00:32:35 ◼   ► The Mac is, we say it over and over.

00:32:38 ◼   ► We're saying it again here, a huge part of our future.

00:32:40 ◼   ► We're deeply invested in it.

00:32:41 ◼   ► Good quote.

00:32:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:45 ◼   ► That's a very accurate description of what's going on.

00:32:47 ◼   ► Thanks for listening, Craig.

00:32:49 ◼   ► What goes on on internet forums about all things.

00:32:53 ◼   ► Yes, the internet forums about all things similarly have components.

00:32:58 ◼   ► You should see those mountain bike forums.

00:32:59 ◼   ► They won't stop complaining about the Mac.

00:33:01 ◼   ► It's crazy.

00:33:03 ◼   ► Have you ever been to the all things forums?

00:33:07 ◼   ► It's a very great place to hang out.

00:33:09 ◼   ► They talk about all things.

00:33:11 ◼   ► Everything is in there.

00:33:12 ◼   ► It's all in there.

00:33:13 ◼   ► All the great things.

00:33:15 ◼   ► It does raise a good point though about Apple being committed to either one thing or the

00:33:23 ◼   ► other. So it's either the Mac or the iPad. It doesn't help that Tim Cook says, you know,

00:33:27 ◼   ► we believe the iPad is the future of computing. So I believe there's a, you know, we got out

00:33:32 ◼   ► fall somewhere in the middle here. Maybe the iPad in the sense of there's this screen that

00:33:39 ◼   ► you hold and for the masses it is the future of computing. But there's also the future

00:33:46 ◼   ► where I create programs for, you know, I design the architecture behind the Tesla engine.

00:33:56 ◼   ► I need to have this powerful computer that makes me do these complex calculations. Or

00:34:02 ◼   ► I'm an architect and I need 3D graphics. There's also the argument for those people that the

00:34:06 ◼   ► the Mac is the future, and that a professional Mac is the future. So I think, you know, even

00:34:13 ◼   ► if the, with the generic description that he gave of what goes on on the internet forums

00:34:19 ◼   ► about all things, it is a good point of, you know, it doesn't have to be one or the other.

00:34:25 ◼   ► We are, you know, I'm reading between the lines here, of course, but it's Apple saying

00:34:30 ◼   ► we believe the Mac is here to say, we also believe the iPad is the future, but one doesn't

00:34:35 ◼   ► exclude the other, they're not mutually exclusive. Whereas I think a lot of people see them as,

00:34:40 ◼   ► well, one is gonna die, so what's it gonna be? And I don't think Apple sees it that way.

00:34:45 ◼   ► Yeah, and we only know this when they tell us.

00:34:47 ◼   ► Right, we're based on, you know, Tim Cook goes out and says, well, the iPad is the future,

00:34:52 ◼   ► millions of people are leaving PCs for the iPad. Well, okay then. It's a complex discussion,

00:34:59 ◼   ► one that is best to have that discussion on the internet forums, I'm sure.

00:35:04 ◼   ► all things. About all things. So, Frederick I know your answer, so I'm just gonna ask

00:35:12 ◼   ► Myke. Michael, is this a computer you'd be interested in when it eventually ships? I

00:35:18 ◼   ► don't think I'd need it. Especially if they're looking at making the iMac even more powerful,

00:35:24 ◼   ► right? Because they spoke about that. That they're working on new iMac configurations

00:35:29 ◼   ► and some of them will be to address pro users. Like, that iMac is gonna be all the iMac I'm

00:35:34 ◼   ► ever gonna need right even if I would want that like whenever I come to

00:35:37 ◼   ► upgrade my iMac which is I reckon a couple of years away at least at this

00:35:41 ◼   ► point because this thing is fine the most power that I'm probably gonna need

00:35:46 ◼   ► will be served in that machine right like I'm not gonna need the modular

00:35:49 ◼   ► stuff like my iMac right now is handling everything great and the things that I

00:35:54 ◼   ► do I can't imagine there being huge jumps sure and like maybe video or audio

00:35:59 ◼   ► right like that I'm gonna need something which is insanely powerful I expect that

00:36:03 ◼   ► whatever they do to the iMac line is going to be enough for me and the

00:36:06 ◼   ► commitment to continue updating that line and to continue making it stronger

00:36:09 ◼   ► and more powerful. That's probably all I'm ever going to need. What about you?

00:36:15 ◼   ► So I like you, I'm on a 5k retina iMac which I love. It's a great machine. It's

00:36:21 ◼   ► probably one of my favorite computers I've ever owned and you know

00:36:26 ◼   ► again I expect to have years out of this machine. I should for what we paid for it

00:36:30 ◼   ► But I do wonder, you know, when the time comes,

00:36:34 ◼   ► what I would look at.

00:36:37 ◼   ► I like the all-in-one approach.

00:36:39 ◼   ► I like that I don't have a lot of stuff

00:36:40 ◼   ► spewed all over my desk.

00:36:42 ◼   ► I don't have something on the floor.

00:36:43 ◼   ► You know, the fans in it,

00:36:44 ◼   ► it's all just on the desk, nice and neat.

00:36:47 ◼   ► I'm very interested in what a, quote,

00:36:50 ◼   ► "professional iMac" could look like.

00:36:52 ◼   ► We've spoken about this at length.

00:36:54 ◼   ► You know, what would this mean?

00:36:56 ◼   ► What would Apple include there?

00:36:58 ◼   ► My guess is today that we see something beyond quad core, but it's still sort of consumer-oriented

00:37:05 ◼   ► processors, maybe something with a really nice GPU option.

00:37:09 ◼   ► But again, like you, I don't think I would need something more.

00:37:15 ◼   ► I mean, my iMac now is great, and I'm in these professional applications all the time.

00:37:20 ◼   ► Now that doesn't mean that when this comes out that I won't look at it, right?

00:37:25 ◼   ► or that when it's time to replace this iMac

00:37:26 ◼   ► that I wanna look at Mac Pro versus the iMac.

00:37:30 ◼   ► But I think there are definitely people

00:37:32 ◼   ► who do need every ounce of power

00:37:35 ◼   ► or who just want the modularity, right,

00:37:37 ◼   ► that you can put in drives and put in cards and stuff.

00:37:41 ◼   ► And for my needs now, the iMac meets them,

00:37:43 ◼   ► but at the very least, I will be happy

00:37:45 ◼   ► to have options in the future.

00:37:47 ◼   ► When I bought this iMac, there was no other option, right?

00:37:49 ◼   ► I was not gonna buy a three-year-old Mac Pro.

00:37:53 ◼   ► There's no way.

00:37:55 ◼   ► So at the very least I will be glad that when I need to buy a machine again in three years

00:37:58 ◼   ► that there will be options available.

00:38:01 ◼   ► That alone is enough for me today.

00:38:05 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm on 2011 MacBook Air and I'm definitely not buying a Mac Pro.

00:38:13 ◼   ► Should I?

00:38:14 ◼   ► What we have to do is just get you to buy any computer really.

00:38:18 ◼   ► Would you want me to buy a Mac Pro?

00:38:20 ◼   ► Sure, I mean I don't care what you buy as long as it's something.

00:38:23 ◼   ► Okay, well, so we've reached this point.

00:38:27 ◼   ► We're each, okay, okay, fine, fine.

00:38:29 ◼   ► How many keys have fallen off the...

00:38:32 ◼   ► At this point, three, but I should say, I have a plan.

00:38:38 ◼   ► I told you guys, I have a plan.

00:38:41 ◼   ► I cannot spoil this plan

00:38:43 ◼   ► because it's gonna ruin a bunch of surprises,

00:38:46 ◼   ► but I have a plan.

00:38:48 ◼   ► It doesn't involve the Mac Pro,

00:38:49 ◼   ► But I think I'm finally in a few months leaving the,

00:38:54 ◼   ► you know, these, I don't even know how to describe it,

00:38:57 ◼   ► this computer behind this--

00:38:59 ◼   ► - Sad, broken, dilapidated.

00:39:02 ◼   ► - Yes, probably.

00:39:04 ◼   ► Like a poor animal lying on the ground.

00:39:07 ◼   ► It's very sad to watch.

00:39:09 ◼   ► - Oh man.

00:39:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:39:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's happening.

00:39:14 ◼   ► It's not gonna be a Mac Pro, but it's happening.

00:39:16 ◼   ► - What are you gonna get?

00:39:18 ◼   ► You can't leave us hanging.

00:39:19 ◼   ► No, no, that's the point.

00:39:20 ◼   ► Well, but then follow up.

00:39:23 ◼   ► It's going to be a long-term follow up, Steven.

00:39:26 ◼   ► It's good.

00:39:27 ◼   ► Just for you.

00:39:28 ◼   ► Just for you.

00:39:29 ◼   ► LTFU.

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00:41:47 ◼   ► So

00:41:50 ◼   ► Okay, so we're gonna follow up an Apple announcement. Well an Apple thing. I don't know it was an announcement

00:41:56 ◼   ► But what would you call that? What we just had? What would you call that an Apple what press an Apple an Apple?

00:42:03 ◼   ► Roundtable? Roundtable. Roundtable, maybe?

00:42:07 ◼   ► We're going to follow up some interesting Apple news by talking about Samsung's new phones.

00:42:11 ◼   ► This is a very related follow-up. Okay.

00:42:15 ◼   ► Now these phones are very interesting to me. So

00:42:19 ◼   ► last week Samsung announced the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8+.

00:42:23 ◼   ► Now, ladies and gentlemen of the connected audience, I'm going to give you a quick

00:42:27 ◼   ► rundown of some specifications here.

00:42:29 ◼   ► So these two phones come with what Samsung is calling the infinity display

00:42:33 ◼   ► Which basically means super slim bezels and it kind of drips off the side, right?

00:42:38 ◼   ► So it like it's got you got it on the front and it goes around the corners

00:42:40 ◼   ► They're calling it the infinity display. It reminds me of infinity pools

00:42:43 ◼   ► You know those pools look like they don't have any walls on them and you could just swim straight off

00:42:47 ◼   ► It's like one of those the s8 has a 5.8 inch screen and the s8 plus has a 6.2 inch screen

00:42:53 ◼   ► But the both of them like the actual physical size of the phones is around comparable to the iPhone sizes

00:42:59 ◼   ► like the 7 and 7 Plus, so they have way bigger screens for the body size that they're in

00:43:03 ◼   ► because of the infinity display.

00:43:05 ◼   ► And I just want to put this to bed super super quick.

00:43:08 ◼   ► Samsung has been using Plus as a way to name models of their Galaxy phones since at least

00:43:12 ◼   ► 2013.

00:43:13 ◼   ► I saw a lot of people being like "Ho ho ho, they even copied Apple's name!"

00:43:17 ◼   ► No, they've been using the Plus name for a long time.

00:43:20 ◼   ► I just wanted to say that.

00:43:22 ◼   ► The phones have an 18.5 by 9 aspect ratio, which is an aspect ratio I have never heard

00:43:28 ◼   ► before. These phones are really tall and they do a few things

00:43:33 ◼   ► of video. They kind of black bar the sides so you can zoom them

00:43:35 ◼   ► in and there's stuff that I like about what you can do with some

00:43:38 ◼   ► UI. Like when you see any of these phones, these phones that

00:43:41 ◼   ► have these tall screens now, which is a thing that's

00:43:43 ◼   ► happening within the camera, right? So they don't change the

00:43:47 ◼   ► size of the image, but you can get more information. You can

00:43:50 ◼   ► see previous images and stuff like that, like on the screen

00:43:53 ◼   ► because they have more kind of space to play with. There's no

00:43:56 ◼   ► physical home button. It's pressure sensitive just in the home button area.

00:44:00 ◼   ► It uses haptics kind of like force touch so you press on the screen harder and

00:44:05 ◼   ► then you go back to home and you feel it. It has IP68 water and dust resistance,

00:44:09 ◼   ► wireless charging capable and has a headphone jack.

00:44:14 ◼   ► Are we still talking about that really?

00:44:17 ◼   ► Well it has it though but it has it you know? Isn't it better to have it than not to have it?

00:44:23 ◼   ► Yes, yes it is.

00:44:26 ◼   ► How could you argue? It's better to have a headphone jack than not to have a headphone jack.

00:44:30 ◼   ► It's better to have a horse than not have a horse?

00:44:33 ◼   ► If I need a horse, if I have like a horse compatible legs that I can plug into.

00:44:38 ◼   ► Do you need a headphone jack all the time with your iPhone?

00:44:41 ◼   ► When I'm listening to anything outside the house, previously to using Bluetooth, yes.

00:44:46 ◼   ► It would be great to have it. It would be nicer to have it than not to have it.

00:44:49 ◼   ► I don't lose anything by having it, I only gain.

00:44:52 ◼   ► Sure, okay.

00:44:54 ◼   ► It's an interesting hill to die on.

00:44:56 ◼   ► Iris scanning and face scanning as additional ways of unlocking your phone.

00:45:01 ◼   ► They also have their own assistant called Bixby, which is my new favorite assistant

00:45:06 ◼   ► name of all of the digital assistants because Bixby sounds like a British butler type character.

00:45:12 ◼   ► I imagine a little top hat and a monocle.

00:45:14 ◼   ► Bixby, I like the sound of Bixby.

00:45:16 ◼   ► But they haven't really shown anything of Bixby yet and apparently all of the demo devices

00:45:21 ◼   ► haven't got it on and we need to wait for the reviews which is not a good sign.

00:45:24 ◼   ► That's not a good sign. If they're like "oh no it's great but like you can't look at it

00:45:29 ◼   ► yet" that's never it's never a good sign and they even have a dedicated Bixby button.

00:45:33 ◼   ► Yeah what? Physical button on the phone.

00:45:35 ◼   ► Which is like wow you are really going in.

00:45:38 ◼   ► So they are the specifications. So let's talk about some of the stories that surround these

00:45:43 ◼   ► phones right? Explosions. Explosions are important and they shouldn't happen.

00:45:51 ◼   ► And obviously Samsung has had exploding phone problems in the last year.

00:45:56 ◼   ► And they have really been trying to underscore how important safety and testing is for them.

00:46:01 ◼   ► It was like one of their top things in the presentation. They've been inviting

00:46:05 ◼   ► the press to come and see their labs and stuff like that. Like all they want to show them how

00:46:09 ◼   ► much they test batteries and like what it takes to make their batteries explode.

00:46:13 ◼   ► So my question to you, I will ask you first Federico, because I know you are in tune with

00:46:18 ◼   ► the people. Do you think that people will forget?

00:46:26 ◼   ► No.

00:46:27 ◼   ► Do you think that it will turn people off buying the next Samsung phone because the

00:46:31 ◼   ► last one exploded? Like genuinely, what do you think?

00:46:34 ◼   ► I think it's a genuine problem. I was on a taxi ride just a few days ago and I think

00:46:39 ◼   ► the taxi driver noticed the amount of accessories, like tech devices that I had. I have my back

00:46:46 ◼   ► with me.

00:46:47 ◼   ► spreading them all out in the taxi, like just laying them down.

00:46:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I was charging my phone, I had my AirPods, it was a bunch of stuff. So the guy turns

00:46:55 ◼   ► and looks at me and is like, "So you're an Apple guy, huh?" Like, yeah, and so we start

00:46:59 ◼   ► talking about my job and it's like, well, I'm the taxi driver says, I'm an Android person

00:47:05 ◼   ► myself. I've always liked the idea that I can tweak Android, that I can use my own SD

00:47:11 ◼   ► card, you know, the usual arguments in favor of Android. And then he said, but you know,

00:47:15 ◼   ► I have an old Samsung. He had a Galaxy Note 5, maybe a couple of years ago, really. And

00:47:23 ◼   ► then he's like, "I want to buy the latest one, but man, have you seen that the batteries

00:47:27 ◼   ► explode?" And, you know, these things people don't forget. So I think tech people are more

00:47:34 ◼   ► inclined to forget and forgive than normal people.

00:47:38 ◼   ► You know, we may be more trusting of the ability for people who know technology to fix problems,

00:47:42 ◼   ► right?

00:47:43 ◼   ► we have a fascination for the idea of a tech company that screws up and then invites you

00:47:48 ◼   ► to the lab. And it's like, look, we have scientists doing cool things to fix the problem. And

00:47:54 ◼   ► we're like, oh, man, have you seen the research facilities?

00:47:56 ◼   ► Look, he's wearing a white coat. He's so small.

00:47:58 ◼   ► He's wearing a white man. He's doing science with those batteries. And so we have this

00:48:02 ◼   ► love for the company that screws up and comes back. It's a very tech industry, you know,

00:48:10 ◼   ► sort of romantic idea of the company that screws up and then invites the press to the

00:48:16 ◼   ► lab with the scientists. I mean, Apple did this, you know, with Antennagate. They showed

00:48:20 ◼   ► people the radio testing tools that they had. So we have a fascination for this stuff. We're

00:48:26 ◼   ► more inclined to forgive and forget. I think it's going to stuck a little longer with people.

00:48:31 ◼   ► What about you, Stephen? Yeah, I think they've got to prove that this

00:48:37 ◼   ► new phone is safe and up until this event I think they did a pretty poor job

00:48:43 ◼   ► at addressing it. I think with this event and like Dan Siefert and some others went

00:48:48 ◼   ► to Korea and like I said, the factory saw what was going on. All that's good stuff.

00:48:54 ◼   ► I don't know if it would hurt the sales of this phone as much as it would hurt a

00:49:00 ◼   ► new Note phone which I mean all all reports say that there will be a Note 8

00:49:07 ◼   ► And it is crazy to me to think they're going to revive that brand after

00:49:11 ◼   ► After what happened they are currently refurbishing note sevens putting the back on sale

00:49:16 ◼   ► Why like I don't know what if a single one of those goes up in smoke like you're screwed. Yep

00:49:25 ◼   ► but so all that aside

00:49:28 ◼   ► I

00:49:30 ◼   ► Think with these new phones by all reports. They're being very conservative with the batteries in these phones

00:49:34 ◼   ► They're not putting as big of batteries as some other phones in this size class have

00:49:38 ◼   ► That may hurt battery life, but I think they're gonna play it safe this time

00:49:43 ◼   ► And I don't think this these phones will have any problems

00:49:46 ◼   ► I think that they have solved the problem and if they have it

00:49:50 ◼   ► They're there you can't have two phones back-to-back that do this like game over no

00:49:55 ◼   ► So I have faith that they fixed it

00:49:58 ◼   ► My feeling on this is that this phone will not sell as many as it could have

00:50:03 ◼   ► But it will still sell more than enough because it looks so good. It looks great

00:50:07 ◼   ► It looks great the fact that they've created something that is so beautiful looking

00:50:12 ◼   ► Will help them push models because it's gonna entice people and I think it just gonna take a little while

00:50:18 ◼   ► You know, the initial sales might be slower right because people were just like waiting and seeing but I think

00:50:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm genuine like

00:50:29 ◼   ► right? If I was gonna buy one of these I would maybe like just just just hold back

00:50:34 ◼   ► give it a week to warm up? Couple of weeks to warm up wow couple of weeks and just make sure

00:50:40 ◼   ► that it's okay yeah I would say if I was in the market for a phone like if I was

00:50:46 ◼   ► in a market like me not like me if I was not the person I am but me knowing technology

00:50:50 ◼   ► if I was in the market for phone if I was in the Android camp I would want to buy this because I

00:50:54 ◼   ► I think it's the best looking phone I have ever seen.

00:50:56 ◼   ► It is.

00:50:57 ◼   ► It is everything I want my phone to look like.

00:51:02 ◼   ► Like the screen just looks incredible, like incredible.

00:51:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:06 ◼   ► Like the hardware design itself is amazing.

00:51:07 ◼   ► There are some weird stuff we'll get to in a moment, but like the overall look of it

00:51:11 ◼   ► is just superb and I would be sorely tempted.

00:51:16 ◼   ► And I think it is that the fact that lots of people will be tempted by this, that it

00:51:20 ◼   ► will help them sell, but I don't think they'll sell as many as they could have.

00:51:23 ◼   ► And I think by the time they get to like the S9, this won't be so much of a problem for

00:51:29 ◼   ► them anymore. There will always be people that remember it, right? Like there will always

00:51:31 ◼   ► be people that think if you squeeze your iPhone, the signal will go down, right? Or like that

00:51:36 ◼   ► they all bend. There's always like an amount of people that will always remember these

00:51:39 ◼   ► things.

00:51:40 ◼   ► That is true. That is true.

00:51:41 ◼   ► But I think over time, if Samsung continue pushing and pushing and pushing in the right

00:51:46 ◼   ► way and safe ways, then they're going to be able to get through this. And I'm pleased

00:51:50 ◼   ► of what they've done with this phone. It is really funny, the silver is called Arctic

00:51:54 ◼   ► Silver. It's like, and I think that is hilarious. You said this, they would choose a name that

00:52:00 ◼   ► goes against the idea of explosions? Yes, Arctic Silver is the name of one of those

00:52:05 ◼   ► phones. Arctic, it is pretty, pretty, pretty the opposite of explosions, yes. Now because

00:52:11 ◼   ► they have removed the home button and they've removed the chin, they had to put their fingerprint

00:52:14 ◼   ► sensor somewhere. The fingerprint sensor was previously built into the home button, so

00:52:18 ◼   ► So they put it on the back of the phone, which I think we spoke about this a couple of times,

00:52:21 ◼   ► especially me and Steven as we've tried Android phones that have this.

00:52:24 ◼   ► The back of the phone is a perfectly fine place, in some ways a nicer place to have

00:52:29 ◼   ► the fingerprint sensor.

00:52:30 ◼   ► However, Samsung put it next to the camera, which is like directly next to the camera

00:52:35 ◼   ► lens, which is a really weird and kind of bad idea because it's not in the center of

00:52:41 ◼   ► the phone.

00:52:42 ◼   ► So if you hold your phone in your left hand, it's going to be basically impossible to reach

00:52:45 ◼   ► it.

00:52:46 ◼   ► It's also a little kind of glass smooth panel,

00:52:49 ◼   ► which is next to directly another glass smooth panel.

00:52:52 ◼   ► So people are just gonna be rubbing their fingers

00:52:54 ◼   ► against the camera all the time, just smudging it all up.

00:52:59 ◼   ► I think that located in the middle of the back of the phone

00:53:03 ◼   ► is a perfectly valid thing.

00:53:05 ◼   ► I'm still putting my bets on that's where Apple's Touch ID

00:53:08 ◼   ► goes in this next phone.

00:53:09 ◼   ► But I think Samsung made a bad mistake

00:53:13 ◼   ► with putting it right next to the camera.

00:53:15 ◼   ► that's super super stupid. Yeah I don't get the the placement in the back next

00:53:21 ◼   ► to the camera it just it looks bad and I think in practice it's gonna it's gonna

00:53:25 ◼   ► just it won't work well but I gotta say it does look impressive like overall the

00:53:34 ◼   ► idea of embracing this screen so much I think it's super clever and it looks

00:53:40 ◼   ► fantastic we were watching the news a few days ago and this Samsung commercial

00:53:45 ◼   ► are all over the place for the S8 and the S8 Plus. And Sylvia, she saw the commercial

00:53:51 ◼   ► and she said, well, so Samsung is doing it first, you know, the screen, the all-screen

00:53:56 ◼   ► thing. There's a perception, I think, that phones are moving to this idea of it's a screen

00:54:03 ◼   ► that you hold in your hands. And Samsung is, you know, sort of by pushing these phones

00:54:10 ◼   ► to be first, at least not necessarily first technically, but the first big brand and big

00:54:16 ◼   ► launch to have this feature before Apple and the iPhone, I think it's a great move. I still

00:54:21 ◼   ► believe that Apple is going to do more than this. It's going to be sort of similar to

00:54:27 ◼   ► what Andy Rubin is teasing with the essential Android phone. It's going to be all screen,

00:54:34 ◼   ► no chin, no even small bezel at the top and the bottom. I think Apple wants to do like

00:54:44 ◼   ► an insane screen to body ratio, and if you follow the rumors, if you follow what especially

00:54:49 ◼   ► what KGI has been saying in terms of screen resolution and stuff, it does look like Apple

00:54:56 ◼   ► wants to go beyond what Samsung has been doing, but that's a rumor, and Samsung is shipping

00:55:02 ◼   ► this phone and that's impressive. So, you know, I'm not gonna buy a Samsung S8 but it

00:55:09 ◼   ► does look great. And I think if you're in the market for it.

00:55:12 ◼   ► I tell you what I wonder about. Is it, I wonder if it's gonna look better if it's just like

00:55:17 ◼   ► super super slim, super slim bezels as opposed to the way that Samsung curves. I wonder what

00:55:23 ◼   ► will look better. Because I really like that curve, you know.

00:55:28 ◼   ► I do, but I also think looking at the photo that Andy Rubin has tweeted, and also looking

00:55:34 ◼   ► at that Xiaomi phone from a few months ago, I think even the super thin bezel looks great,

00:55:41 ◼   ► because it really gives you the idea of this is just a screen.

00:55:45 ◼   ► Even if it doesn't curve, I think it looks fantastic.

00:55:47 ◼   ► It looks incredible, they do.

00:55:48 ◼   ► Like the LG one we were talking about a couple of weeks ago as well, but I think maybe I'm

00:55:53 ◼   ► a little bit more partial to the screen curving, right?

00:55:55 ◼   ► Because I've been talking about these Samsung phones for ages, like I think that they look

00:55:58 ◼   ► incredible.

00:55:59 ◼   ► I just think it's so interesting that in 2017 Samsung is iterating their hardware design

00:56:08 ◼   ► faster than Apple.

00:56:11 ◼   ► That's really interesting to me.

00:56:12 ◼   ► I don't know if I would have believed that if you would have told me that four or five

00:56:14 ◼   ► years ago.

00:56:15 ◼   ► Apple's been busy building a new Mac Pro.

00:56:17 ◼   ► That's true.

00:56:18 ◼   ► That is true.

00:56:20 ◼   ► - True.

00:56:21 ◼   ► - So, I mean, you know.

00:56:22 ◼   ► - I spent some time with the S7 Edge last year

00:56:26 ◼   ► and the curves are nice.

00:56:27 ◼   ► I think they photograph better than they are

00:56:30 ◼   ► in real life a little bit.

00:56:31 ◼   ► You get some light refraction and stuff.

00:56:33 ◼   ► It does seem like this new design is less raked

00:56:36 ◼   ► than the S7 Edge was, so maybe they can reduce that glare

00:56:40 ◼   ► and reduce the sort of optical weirdness you have

00:56:44 ◼   ► at the edges, but yeah, either way it looks,

00:56:48 ◼   ► I mean this phone instantly makes the iPhone design language look old.

00:56:51 ◼   ► Like just shockingly fast.

00:56:57 ◼   ► The software, I mean it's still not like straight up Android, right?

00:57:02 ◼   ► Like they still put their skin on it.

00:57:04 ◼   ► Still kind of gross.

00:57:06 ◼   ► I think it looks okay.

00:57:09 ◼   ► The walkthroughs that I've seen, I think it looks fine.

00:57:12 ◼   ► There's some nice design about it.

00:57:15 ◼   ► It's not like it used to be where it was pebbles and water everywhere, right?

00:57:19 ◼   ► I think it looks fine.

00:57:21 ◼   ► I mean, I feel like I would prefer stock Android just because I know it's there and because

00:57:27 ◼   ► that's what I'm used to with iOS, right?

00:57:29 ◼   ► I feel like I would want stock.

00:57:31 ◼   ► But I mean, Samsung put some interesting stuff into their phones, like in the Note lens with

00:57:35 ◼   ► what they do with the pens and stuff like that.

00:57:37 ◼   ► They add a bunch of bloat, but they do add some interesting features as well, I guess.

00:57:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, and they have been better about updating

00:57:44 ◼   ► than they have been in the past.

00:57:46 ◼   ► Currently, I think you go back two generations

00:57:48 ◼   ► and you're still on Android 7.0,

00:57:50 ◼   ► so I think that argument is less of a point

00:57:53 ◼   ► than it once was.

00:57:54 ◼   ► I think for me, thinking about stock Android

00:57:56 ◼   ► versus something like this is not necessarily the skin,

00:57:59 ◼   ► 'cause you can replace the launcher and stuff,

00:58:01 ◼   ► but having a bunch of apps, like bundled apps

00:58:05 ◼   ► that I don't want, like Samsung in particular

00:58:06 ◼   ► duplicates a lot of Android apps,

00:58:09 ◼   ► and they kinda get in your way.

00:58:11 ◼   ► You can hide some of them on some phones,

00:58:12 ◼   ► and you can get rid of some of them,

00:58:13 ◼   ► but I still think, again, from being an iPhone user

00:58:17 ◼   ► for the majority of the time the iPhone has been out,

00:58:21 ◼   ► I wouldn't want stock, but the hardware's really compelling

00:58:25 ◼   ► and I'm curious too to see what Google does with this,

00:58:29 ◼   ► with the Pixel 2, which they have said is coming.

00:58:32 ◼   ► We'll see what they do there.

00:58:36 ◼   ► The current Pixel, it's a great phone,

00:58:38 ◼   ► but the industrial design is pretty mediocre at best,

00:58:42 ◼   ► I think, and you could see Google really pushing

00:58:46 ◼   ► on this as well, and this ushering in sort of a new chapter

00:58:50 ◼   ► in smartphone industrial design, at least on the high end,

00:58:56 ◼   ► and to your point, it's one that Samsung is leading

00:58:58 ◼   ► the way on and not Apple, and if you look at maybe

00:59:02 ◼   ► what the next couple years are gonna look like,

00:59:03 ◼   ► Samsung will be the company that was there first

00:59:05 ◼   ► and not the iPhone, which is just,

00:59:08 ◼   ► it's a big change of pace.

00:59:09 ◼   ► - This week's episode is brought to you by Audible.

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01:01:04 ◼   ► Cool. So back at the end of March, we've punted this a couple weeks, but I crossed my 10-year

01:01:14 ◼   ► anniversary on Twitter. So I wrote this thing about it. I found my first tweet. All it is

01:01:19 ◼   ► is laying out the paper. In college, I worked at my college newspaper as the news editor.

01:01:25 ◼   ► One of my jobs was designing the actual pages.

01:01:28 ◼   ► Kids, you used to get your news the next day on dead trees.

01:01:31 ◼   ► It was crazy.

01:01:33 ◼   ► I have that skill, completely useless now.

01:01:36 ◼   ► So I kind of just combed through my Twitter history

01:01:40 ◼   ► and wrote this thing about it.

01:01:43 ◼   ► Anytime you have an anniversary,

01:01:44 ◼   ► at least if you're sentimental like me,

01:01:46 ◼   ► you try to think about what it means.

01:01:49 ◼   ► Okay, I've spent a decade, I'm 31,

01:01:51 ◼   ► I've spent a third of my life

01:01:54 ◼   ► putting thoughts and words into the universe,

01:01:58 ◼   ► 140 characters at a time,

01:02:01 ◼   ► and that is super depressing and silly,

01:02:03 ◼   ► but Twitter is a meaningful part of our culture.

01:02:08 ◼   ► And not just like nerd culture, but like out in the world.

01:02:11 ◼   ► Like you watch ESPN and like, you know,

01:02:13 ◼   ► there's little things about, you know,

01:02:16 ◼   ► what athletes are tweeting.

01:02:18 ◼   ► You know, our president spends time on Twitter,

01:02:20 ◼   ► and every time he tweets, there's a news story about it.

01:02:22 ◼   ► Twitter is a thing.

01:02:24 ◼   ► It is a part of our culture.

01:02:26 ◼   ► For me, at least, I owe a lot to it.

01:02:32 ◼   ► Many of the amazing people that we work with on Relay,

01:02:35 ◼   ► my first interactions were on Twitter,

01:02:36 ◼   ► so I embedded in my blog post the first time

01:02:39 ◼   ► that I could find Myke and I interacting on Twitter.

01:02:43 ◼   ► I believe that I wrote a blog post linking

01:02:45 ◼   ► to his Enough podcast with Patrick Caron at the time,

01:02:48 ◼   ► and you tweeted me a thanks and said,

01:02:51 ◼   ► "Hey, I'll be in touch about a birth show appearance,"

01:02:52 ◼   ► and then I was on your show,

01:02:53 ◼   ► and now we have company together.

01:02:54 ◼   ► It's crazy, right?

01:02:56 ◼   ► And that was only six years ago, which is just bananas.

01:03:00 ◼   ► But so many people I work with,

01:03:03 ◼   ► and so many people who are important to me,

01:03:06 ◼   ► I've met on Twitter.

01:03:08 ◼   ► And that is just really something.

01:03:10 ◼   ► You know, I didn't embed it,

01:03:12 ◼   ► but the first time Jason Snell and I interacted,

01:03:15 ◼   ► he called me out on something that I wrote

01:03:19 ◼   ► in response to a piece he had on Macworld.

01:03:21 ◼   ► he disagreed with me and we had a back and forth and he changed my mind. And so I updated

01:03:25 ◼   ► my blog post and he said thanks. Like a super meaningful interaction from a guy who I continue

01:03:30 ◼   ► to look up to and now we work together. And Twitter is really unique in that, at least

01:03:37 ◼   ► for people our age, at least for, you know, like I think to speak to all three of us,

01:03:42 ◼   ► like we owe a lot of our careers to Twitter. But at the same time, like Twitter is deeply

01:03:48 ◼   ► flawed and the company seems to be really good at making really bad decisions. Just

01:03:54 ◼   ► this last week they broke replies for everybody and no one knows how they work anymore. Unless

01:03:59 ◼   ► you keep using tweetbot, Twitterific and things just work the way they always have. But for

01:04:03 ◼   ► now, and Twitter feels really fragile. The type, the version of Twitter that the three

01:04:07 ◼   ► of us use and people who use third party apps, that feels increasingly fragile and increasingly

01:04:12 ◼   ► like it's just going to go away. The whole company could go away. They're not doing well

01:04:16 ◼   ► financially leadership seems like a revolving door.

01:04:20 ◼   ► There's lots of problems.

01:04:21 ◼   ► They have huge harassment issues,

01:04:22 ◼   ► and instead of dealing with that,

01:04:24 ◼   ► they change the default logo from eggs to a human blob,

01:04:27 ◼   ► and they say, "Oh, eggs have been associated with

01:04:29 ◼   ► "you know, abuse and terrorism on Twitter."

01:04:33 ◼   ► It's like, well, no, it's the people,

01:04:35 ◼   ► and it's the fact that you don't have a way

01:04:36 ◼   ► to filter the stuff that works.

01:04:38 ◼   ► You don't have a way to authenticate people as real humans,

01:04:40 ◼   ► and so people just write garbage on your service all day.

01:04:44 ◼   ► Twitter's deeply problematic,

01:04:46 ◼   ► And that makes me sad because it's important to me.

01:04:48 ◼   ► And I'm very curious to know about what the two of you guys

01:04:52 ◼   ► think about Twitter and like, is there any hope for it?

01:04:56 ◼   ► Or like, are we all just gonna use man's thing

01:04:58 ◼   ► and that's gonna be where we hang out now?

01:05:00 ◼   ► - So I still use Twitter every day

01:05:04 ◼   ► and I do owe a lot to Twitter, you know,

01:05:08 ◼   ► like you and I think Myke as well.

01:05:11 ◼   ► I made some amazing connections.

01:05:13 ◼   ► I met most of my, what I consider my friends,

01:05:18 ◼   ► via Twitter first.

01:05:20 ◼   ► And over the years, whether it was for personal relationships

01:05:25 ◼   ► or for being in touch with readers of my website,

01:05:29 ◼   ► especially after we removed comments

01:05:32 ◼   ► from Max's stories several years ago.

01:05:34 ◼   ► - Man, remember when comments were a thing?

01:05:37 ◼   ► Wow. - Remember when comments,

01:05:38 ◼   ► and where people would get upset

01:05:40 ◼   ► that you would remove comments?

01:05:42 ◼   ► So yeah, it's been an incredible tool, but I'm kind of down on it lately.

01:05:52 ◼   ► And of course what I'm gonna mention here is, you know, it pales in comparison to the

01:05:57 ◼   ► problems that other people, and that women especially, had on Twitter in terms of abuse

01:06:03 ◼   ► and harassment, and that's, you know, possibly the biggest mistake that Twitter has done

01:06:08 ◼   ► as a company is not to address those issues for years. But from my limited personal, and

01:06:16 ◼   ► I should say privileged perspective, it just feels like something has changed in terms

01:06:24 ◼   ► of, maybe it's just my followers, I don't know, but it does feel like there's a, in

01:06:32 ◼   ► this community of, you know, this very narrow community of people with an interest in technology

01:06:38 ◼   ► and in what Apple does, so it's a community within a community in Twitter, it feels like

01:06:45 ◼   ► there's a lot more complaining every single day. And it may be just me growing older and

01:06:53 ◼   ► more cynical, I don't know, but it just feels like whenever something happens a lot of people

01:07:00 ◼   ► start replying to you and pile on to each other with some negative comments. And it

01:07:07 ◼   ► just feels like it's more of that every single day. And it feels to me like from my personal

01:07:17 ◼   ► point of view, in terms of how does it feel to use Twitter. And I find myself double and

01:07:28 ◼   ► triple checking every time I compose a tweet and I stop midway and I'm like

01:07:35 ◼   ► do I really need to share this? How many replies am I gonna get? So I feel a lot

01:07:40 ◼   ► more self-conscious about it and I feel that way because I know that it's

01:07:45 ◼   ► gonna make someone unhappy and that someone is gonna reply to me and other

01:07:50 ◼   ► people are gonna see the reply and so it's just gonna be a mess and I feel bad

01:07:55 ◼   ► about it and I just won't open Twitter for a while. And maybe this comes with the territory

01:08:00 ◼   ► in the sense that when you get X amount of followers, you expose yourself to this kind

01:08:06 ◼   ► of human behavior. This is what I was just about to say. I'm not sure if this is a Twitter's

01:08:12 ◼   ► changed problem for you. I think it is the problem of somebody who has 50,000 Twitter

01:08:18 ◼   ► followers. It is a byproduct, it is maybe a byproduct of that exposure, because once

01:08:24 ◼   ► again I feel so conflicted about it because on one hand it is the second

01:08:29 ◼   ► biggest source of traffic and that has contributed to, you know, that sort of

01:08:34 ◼   ► growing audience that has brought me to this point. So it's not like I wanna, you

01:08:41 ◼   ► know, I want to say "well Twitter has always been bad to me". It just feels like

01:08:45 ◼   ► maybe I had forgotten this from my days spent in the internet forums, the same

01:08:51 ◼   ► ones where Craig hangs out. Maybe I'd forgotten from those days that people tend to be aggressive,

01:09:02 ◼   ► people tend to be negative, people tend to complain. It's just how the internet works.

01:09:07 ◼   ► But especially in the past year I've felt that way again with Twitter and I don't like

01:09:13 ◼   ► it. So I'm trying to tweet less, I'm trying to tweet only when necessary. And also because

01:09:20 ◼   ► Because I've noticed, you know, when I don't open tweetbot, when I don't open Twitter,

01:09:25 ◼   ► when I stay focused, I get a lot more done.

01:09:28 ◼   ► And that was also the result of tracking my time with toggle and looking at the time that

01:09:34 ◼   ► I spent on Twitter, I knew that I needed to cut on that time.

01:09:37 ◼   ► So I have very mixed feelings about it.

01:09:40 ◼   ► I think Twitter as an idea is amazing.

01:09:44 ◼   ► as a company is a mess and my personal usage of Twitter has decreased over the years, especially

01:09:52 ◼   ► in the past few months. I wanna like Twitter more, but I maybe just need to accept that

01:10:02 ◼   ► what I'm gonna see on Twitter is never gonna be what I used to see, you know, four years

01:10:08 ◼   ► ago, five years ago. And maybe I'm just struggling to accept that.

01:10:12 ◼   ► I think I sit somewhere in the middle of all of it and the way, how you both feel.

01:10:21 ◼   ► And I kind of think of two Twitters, Twitter with a capital T and Twitter with a lowercase t.

01:10:28 ◼   ► You know, lowercase t Twitter is the thing that I, the service I joined 10 years ago,

01:10:34 ◼   ► where I met all the people that I work with now, where I get to have meaningful and interesting

01:10:41 ◼   ► conversations and debates with listeners and stuff like that. And I get what you're saying,

01:10:46 ◼   ► Federico, and there are times where things can feel a little bit overwhelming, but I really do

01:10:51 ◼   ► believe that the issue that you are having is an issue of scale, just personally. There's just more

01:11:00 ◼   ► people, more and more people every day that want to talk to you. And as is normal, because this is

01:11:06 ◼   ► our humans are. The things that are bad outweigh the things that are good in your brain even

01:11:12 ◼   ► if there are less of them.

01:11:13 ◼   ► That is true.

01:11:14 ◼   ► The show is becoming very analogue right now. Casey would fit in great in this discussion.

01:11:19 ◼   ► But the big T-Twitter is a problem, right? The company, you know, like Steven and Kathy,

01:11:27 ◼   ► you did a good job of summing all that up. Like they seem to have functional problems

01:11:30 ◼   ► from just an organisational perspective and just as a product perspective. But small T-Twitter

01:11:36 ◼   ► is an important thing to me. It's like a list of people that I've cultivated over

01:11:40 ◼   ► 10 years. I learn from them, it makes me laugh, it's an important part of my

01:11:45 ◼   ► online life. It's a way that I get feedback about the work that I do, it's a

01:11:49 ◼   ► place for me to share ideas. It's very important and if it went away I'd be sad

01:11:53 ◼   ► but with what I use it for and what really means something to me, I'm very

01:11:58 ◼   ► confident that there would be something else that I could replace it with

01:12:01 ◼   ► with because the people that I follow, I think, care about having that service as much as

01:12:07 ◼   ► I do and people would move.

01:12:08 ◼   ► And I think if you were building from the ground up, you could make a different experience.

01:12:12 ◼   ► It maybe wouldn't be as good in some ways and it would be better in others.

01:12:16 ◼   ► But like I've taken times where I've taken breaks on Twitter and it's helped kind of put

01:12:21 ◼   ► things into perspective for me that I don't need it to live.

01:12:24 ◼   ► Right. Like even though it's something that I spend so much of my time on, it's not it's

01:12:29 ◼   ► easy to replace with other things, right? I just log in to RSS and log in to whatever

01:12:35 ◼   ► servers I'm using and get my news that way, right? And then just text people. I mean,

01:12:39 ◼   ► you lose a lot, but you don't lose everything. And I would be really sad if Twitter goes

01:12:44 ◼   ► away, but I would be so much happier if it could be fixed. And it can be fixed by somebody

01:12:50 ◼   ► else or it can be fixed by them, I don't care. But I think there's a lot that needs to change.

01:12:56 ◼   ► But it is something that's so important in my life that I will continue to use it every

01:13:00 ◼   ► day because I enjoy what I get out of it.

01:13:05 ◼   ► And I don't owe any, you know, I know that you didn't mean this Stephen, but like you

01:13:08 ◼   ► kind of said you owe, you feel like you owe a lot to Twitter.

01:13:10 ◼   ► It's not the company.

01:13:11 ◼   ► And I know you're not saying that.

01:13:13 ◼   ► It's the community.

01:13:14 ◼   ► It's the community.

01:13:15 ◼   ► It's the community that we owe something to, right?

01:13:18 ◼   ► You know, it's the people that help and move you along and that community is gonna move

01:13:24 ◼   ► whether it's on the forum of all things or whether it's here on Twitter or whether it's

01:13:29 ◼   ► going to be, you know, if it's going to go and be on Manson's service, right? Like the

01:13:34 ◼   ► microblogging service he's working on. Or if, you know, app.net spins up again, right?

01:13:40 ◼   ► Like it doesn't, you know, wherever it's going to be, the community will continue. And that's

01:13:44 ◼   ► all I care about. I just hope that the community that we're a part of has places to continue

01:13:48 ◼   ► to have the creative outlet. And I think Twitter needs to be it. It's 10 years old now.

01:13:53 ◼   ► I just need to say this. I don't feel like, you know, we're, we, we have a, I have an

01:14:00 ◼   ► English website, we talk in English on the podcast and we tend to follow British, Canadian,

01:14:06 ◼   ► American, Australian people, you know, people who speak English, we tend to follow. And

01:14:10 ◼   ► so it's inevitable, I think, with the current political scenario that there's some, you

01:14:15 ◼   ► know, a lot of people, I don't want to say everyone because we disagree, but a lot of

01:14:20 ◼   ► people are not feeling great about what is going on in the world lately. And so I think

01:14:25 ◼   ► it's only natural that, you know, when I say everyone seems so negative, I think that's

01:14:31 ◼   ► also a consequence of what's going on around us. And maybe my take away is not just about

01:14:37 ◼   ► Twitter, but it's just, you know, as a society lately, we're not living our best years, you

01:14:43 ◼   ► know, as people on earth. It's not our brightest moment. And that is, you know, hopefully it's

01:14:49 ◼   ► something that will pass or maybe we're just setting ourselves up for being doomed. I don't

01:14:55 ◼   ► know. But whatever it is, I think we used to live in brighter times. Look, I'm becoming

01:15:04 ◼   ► like Steven, man. This is concerning. Next thing you know, I'm gonna buy a Performer.

01:15:10 ◼   ► Shit. All of them.

01:15:12 ◼   ► Is there multiple ones actually? I didn't know that.

01:15:16 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:15:18 ◼   ► If you want to find our show notes for this week head on over to relay.fm/connected/136

01:15:24 ◼   ► We do actually all love you, you know, a lot and we want to hear from you.

01:15:29 ◼   ► And you can contact us via Twitter.

01:15:32 ◼   ► I think it would be better than email anyway, right?

01:15:36 ◼   ► I think we can all agree on that.

01:15:37 ◼   ► that. Email is worse than Twitter. And you can find us at IMIKE. Federico is @Vittici.

01:15:45 ◼   ► V-I-T-I-C-C-I. But you probably already follow Federico because he has like a million followers.

01:15:50 ◼   ► Everyone does.

01:15:51 ◼   ► I don't. I really don't.

01:15:53 ◼   ► He has collected all of the internet in his beautiful arms. And Stephen is @ismh on Twitter.

01:16:01 ◼   ► Stephen writes at phytopixels.net. Federico writes at macstories.net. I want to take one

01:16:05 ◼   ► more moment to thank our sponsors for this week, Hover, Casper and Audible. We'll be

01:16:10 ◼   ► back next time, and I don't think I will be actually, I'm going to be at the All Conference

01:16:15 ◼   ► if you're there, come and say hello. Thanks so much for listening. Until then, say goodbye

01:16:21 ◼   ► guys. Adios, derti. Adios.

01:16:23 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]