PodSearch

Connected

117: A Friend of Your Uncle of Your Cousin

 

00:00:00   (classical music)

00:00:02   - From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 117.

00:00:10   The show is brought to you this week

00:00:11   by our two sponsors, Casper and Melrout.

00:00:15   My name is Stephen Hackett, and I'm joined

00:00:17   across the internet, Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:19   - Hello, Stephen, hi.

00:00:21   - Hey, buddy.

00:00:22   - I am coming to you from across the world

00:00:24   and the internet, so.

00:00:26   - It's, do you ever have those moments

00:00:28   just think about how absurd all this is? Just like that we do this? It's so strange.

00:00:34   It's kind of romantic even I would say. Wow. A friend of mine is visiting the United States

00:00:40   and he was posting pictures on Facebook and I think I saw a picture of Michael Jackson's

00:00:47   house. What's the one in Memphis? Is that Michael Jackson's? It's Elvis. So he posted

00:00:53   a picture of Elvis and I was like the first thing I thought was not oh cool my friend

00:00:57   is checking out you know Elvis house I was like that's Stevens town.

00:01:02   It's true.

00:01:04   Yeah you changed my perception of Memphis because I associate Memphis with you now.

00:01:11   I took Myke to Graceland. So I'd never been until maybe like five years ago when Myke

00:01:17   came to Memphis and we went together and if you ever come visit me which you totally should

00:01:23   we will go. It is the most surreal tour you'll ever... It is just super strange.

00:01:31   It's very, very, very weird. We went on a Sunday morning and it was like us and

00:01:36   just buses full of tourists. Which is super weird. Like, I'm sure you feel the

00:01:42   same way in Rome, right? Like you see tourist groups and you kind of roll your

00:01:45   eyes. Like it's sort of a strange thing. But we went and it was just like really,

00:01:50   really weird. Was Myke taking pictures? Myke was taking pictures. I'll maybe see if I

00:01:56   find a picture of us and put it in the show notes. Yeah, I hear it's not with us because

00:02:00   he's working on his own Graceland for, you know, when the time will come. Yeah, I mean,

00:02:07   he said there's a plumber coming over, so I assume they're, you know, they're almost

00:02:10   finalizing everything. I guess. The plumber's been there for like eight hours, so I don't

00:02:14   think it's going well. Yeah, well, I mean, Myke's Graceland is a big place, so, you know,

00:02:19   a lot of hours. It's true. Okay, so we should do some follow-up and then we'll get into

00:02:24   things. There are some claims out that in early December we will see a limited run of

00:02:32   AirPods for the first time. So they were due out last month. You will remember Apple made

00:02:37   a statement saying, "They're not quite ready. We need a little more time." So, BRB. And

00:02:43   I don't know if this is true or not, but I would like it for it to be true. As we spoke

00:02:47   about I would like to order these things.

00:02:49   Yeah I mean we got no other official details from Apple just still coming soon. And I don't

00:02:57   understand like a limited run doesn't mean like only some regions get the airports only

00:03:01   some Apple source could be maybe the problem was a production issue and they want to release

00:03:06   them before the end of the year and then you know they're gonna have wider availability

00:03:10   next year could be or it could be January everywhere. This is a rumor from some supply

00:03:15   chain sources I guess, or from an Apple store retail guy. Is that the one from the Apple

00:03:19   store retail person who talked to a friend of your uncle or cousin?

00:03:23   I think so, yeah. Who knows?

00:03:25   That's the story. Okay. Yeah, we'll see.

00:03:28   We'll see. So we will keep tabs on that. Also in the news, something that we've talked

00:03:34   about in the past, this rumor that keeps popping up of like three iPad sizes, so you would

00:03:40   have 9.7 and then 10.9 and then the big one. I guess 4 if you include the

00:03:45   many that Apple apparently still makes. This rumor kind of collides those things

00:03:51   a little bit and sort of the TLDR is that the new this new 10.9 inch model is

00:03:57   basically the 9.7 without any bezels or very small bezels so you know Apple

00:04:03   names their sizes based on the screen size not the device size itself because

00:04:08   you have the bezels and the aluminum and everything. But this would push the iPad into this territory

00:04:15   that we talked about, the unicorn iPhone with no home button, no bezels, all glass. And

00:04:23   this rumor says, well, the iPad may beat it there as early as the spring. What do you

00:04:29   think about this? Because I have lots of questions.

00:04:32   This is interesting, right? Because we're not just talking about a different size. They're

00:04:36   also kind of implying, without bezels, so that what does it happen with the home button?

00:04:41   Do we get an iPad that ditches the home button before the iPhone does? And if it truly is

00:04:48   an iPad with a virtual home button, how does it work in terms of software? Does Apple use

00:04:55   gestures to navigate the iPad, navigate between apps? And it just, the idea sounds amazing

00:05:02   on paper, right? To have like a single piece of glass, large beautiful display that you're

00:05:07   holding in your hands and you don't see the bezels. So in theory that sounds incredible.

00:05:12   But in practice I wonder how is it going to work? Because I already have so many doubts

00:05:19   about the iPhone, but maybe the part in me that wants to believe this rumor, maybe it's

00:05:26   easier for Apple to start doing this on the iPad which is beautiful, which is a beautiful

00:05:32   device to look at in terms of screen size which would make even more of an impression,

00:05:37   but it's also bigger than the iPhone, so it maybe allows Apple to experiment with an

00:05:44   easier device if it makes sense. It must be trickier on the iPhone which is smaller and

00:05:51   everything is super compact, but maybe on the iPad Pro you have a little more leverage

00:05:56   in terms of how much you can arrange under the display. But this is just a crazy theory.

00:06:02   In practice, are we really looking at an iPad that is only a piece of glass with no home

00:06:07   button? How do you make it work? How do you explain that to people? How is that a Pro

00:06:16   feature, I mean I guess you could push the iPad as a piece of glass without bezels. That

00:06:22   could be a selling point for creatives, for artists and in general for people who want

00:06:29   to have the biggest display, the biggest impact on an iPad. That could make sense. But I also,

00:06:37   again, I have many questions about how in practice it's gonna work. How is it gonna

00:06:43   work with Touch ID? How is it going to work if you have some software issue and then you're

00:06:47   stuck with a physical home button? It's true that we're already moving past the traditional

00:06:53   home button with the iPhone 7. I'm both excited by the idea, I think it makes sense on a bunch

00:07:01   of different levels, and I think it's going to be, if it's really just a piece of glass

00:07:07   without bezels and without buttons, it's going to be a beautiful device. But on the other

00:07:11   hand I'm also concerned that it's going to be difficult in a bunch of other ways.

00:07:15   Yeah, I think I agree with all of that and I mean I think back to the the iPad

00:07:23   Mini and then the iPad Air that you know the bezels had been even all the way

00:07:26   around and then now they're skidding on the side which is where we've been for a

00:07:29   while now and just how much better that felt and how old and janky the old

00:07:36   old design felt like instantly.

00:07:39   This idea of just having a piece of glass

00:07:42   really feels like the future,

00:07:43   but there's some real usability questions I have.

00:07:46   They've gotten a lot better at the thumb detection

00:07:50   on the sides if you're holding and scrolling,

00:07:51   your thumb doesn't stop to scroll.

00:07:54   Obviously that would have to be really bulletproof

00:07:56   because these things are too big,

00:07:58   at least for me, I can't palm a 9.7 inch iPad.

00:08:03   I can iPad mini, but I gotta hold it with my thumb around the front and so

00:08:08   That's where technology has to be like perfect in a situation like this or just be really frustrating to use right?

00:08:15   It's like you're just trying to use your your iPad and your you know

00:08:18   You can't because you have to hold it then you're like balancing it and you drop it. I don't know

00:08:22   I would find it interesting if the iPad beats the iPhone here because the iPhone is the the product

00:08:30   You know, maybe it's it's like you say the iPhone would be harder to do because everything's smaller

00:08:34   and so this is like a proof of concept like a proving ground for the technology, but

00:08:39   So many questions

00:08:44   But it does seem to gel with what you've been saying that this is the iPad is going to be on a spring cycle

00:08:50   From now on which I you know now it seems

00:08:53   The fall is over. They're not doing any any more stuff between now the end of the year

00:08:59   And I don't think they can go all the way until the fall again with the iPad so I think I think this like

00:09:04   February March April time frame is is sort of

00:09:08   Home for the iPad now and I for one I'm glad like I think the iPad

00:09:14   needs some breathing room from the iPhone as far as like product cycle stuff and

00:09:19   It of course gives all the Apple press including me and you

00:09:25   something to talk about this spring besides just WWC predictions for months and months.

00:09:32   So I think you get the emoji with sunglasses. I think that's you right now.

00:09:39   I mean, the timeframe seems to be holding up. And again, the last time I checked, the

00:09:47   idea seemed to be that there's some big software features coming to the iPad and coming to

00:09:53   the iPad Pro line and I don't know yet the extent of those changes or the details of

00:10:00   those changes. I wouldn't be surprised, this is my personal speculation, I wouldn't

00:10:03   be surprised if we're looking at a home screen revamp or multitasking changes in terms

00:10:09   of split view and slide over seems to be a given, but I feel like Apple is planning a

00:10:13   really big update. And while last year with iOS 9.3 we saw big changes to education, I

00:10:21   I feel like we're going to have a repeat of that style, but only big changes for everyone,

00:10:27   not just educators and school institutions. I feel like it's going to be the same style

00:10:32   of last year when we got an announcement in January and a release in March, I think. So

00:10:38   I'm curious to see, does Apple make it to the end of the year with no new announcements

00:10:44   besides what we saw today. And then we're looking at a January announcement of some

00:10:51   kind of Apple event maybe, or new iPads announced, or are we just gonna get a web page about

00:10:57   10.3 with the developer beta, and then a proper announcement in the spring with an iPad event

00:11:04   where they also show off the new hardware. Could be. But it definitely seems like we're

00:11:11   gonna have, as we heard last year, we're gonna have an iPad release cycle separate

00:11:17   from the iPhone. I would love to see some of those education

00:11:21   features trickle down, especially the multiple user deal. So a situation I have right now

00:11:26   at home, my kids' school, they have a lot of their homework is in this, it's a web

00:11:35   app that runs on the iPad, it's actually pretty nice. So my kids are doing homework

00:11:39   on the iPad and right now we have three iPads in the house.

00:11:42   We have My Pro, we have my wife's iPad Air 2,

00:11:46   and then I have an iPad Mini 2 that the kids have just,

00:11:51   we've had it just like the random kid iPad.

00:11:53   But now we're in a situation where both kids

00:11:55   need one for school and so like they're using

00:11:58   my wife's iPad Air, some if they're not sharing

00:12:01   or they're using her MacBook for it,

00:12:03   and multiple users would be really nice

00:12:07   because you would be able to have the kids get on there

00:12:10   and do their thing and not deleting her email

00:12:14   or unassigned after something.

00:12:16   So we've even talked about it,

00:12:20   about can you do multiple users?

00:12:22   Like, oh no, not yet.

00:12:23   And you can kind of fake it.

00:12:24   Like if you run an OSN server

00:12:26   and basically trick the iPad into that

00:12:28   you're an education client, but it'd be great to have.

00:12:33   and I'm holding out until we see what's coming in the spring

00:12:38   before I buy another iPad Mini.

00:12:39   Because if they do multiple users, that would get us by.

00:12:42   And they could get a lot of people by in that situation

00:12:44   where you share an iPad with a spouse

00:12:46   or a significant other or your kid,

00:12:48   and you don't, you know, it's like a computer.

00:12:51   You want your stuff to kind of be in your area

00:12:54   and their stuff in theirs.

00:12:55   So I, for one, would be super pumped if that made it

00:13:00   into a future version of iOS 10 for the public.

00:13:04   But who knows?

00:13:06   Right now it's so dependent on having a server

00:13:08   and having some infrastructure that most people don't have.

00:13:10   They'd have to, I guess, port all that stuff to iCloud

00:13:13   or something.

00:13:13   But it'd be fun.

00:13:17   So up next, we have a release date for Super Mario Run.

00:13:23   Finally.

00:13:25   It's coming out next month on December 15th on the App Store.

00:13:28   It's gonna be a global launch in 151 countries, which should be every country where the App Store is available.

00:13:34   It's gonna be a free download and as Nintendo previously announced, there's going to be a single In-App Purchase to unlock all content.

00:13:40   We didn't know the pricing before, now Nintendo this morning and the App Store account on Twitter,

00:13:45   they revealed it's going to be a $9.99 In-App Purchase to unlock all of the three game modes in Super Mario Run, every level.

00:13:55   no recurring fees, no subscriptions, no ads, hopefully.

00:13:58   And this is it, free download, $10 to unlock everything,

00:14:02   it's coming out in a month.

00:14:03   It's gonna be awesome.

00:14:04   - I'm excited.

00:14:05   - Yeah, me too.

00:14:06   I'm gonna spend so much time playing this game.

00:14:09   - All right, so we have a bunch of topics this week,

00:14:11   but first I wanna tell you about our first sponsor this week

00:14:15   which is Casper.

00:14:18   Casper is a company that is focused on sleep.

00:14:23   Which like, I just love that sentence,

00:14:24   the company's devoted to making people have a better night's rest. They have created one

00:14:30   perfect mattress and they sell it directly to consumers, eliminating the weird commission-driven

00:14:35   inflated prices thing you get when you go and buy a mattress. Because the mattress industry

00:14:41   is being revolutionized by Casper because they're cutting the cost of dealing with

00:14:45   resellers and showrooms and passing that savings directly to us, the consumers.

00:14:51   It's an award-winning mattress that was developed in-house

00:14:53   that has a sleek design and is delivered in an impossibly small box.

00:14:58   I mean, this thing comes in, you slide it in your bedroom, you cut it open,

00:15:00   it just sucks all the air out of the room and expands.

00:15:03   It's really amazing.

00:15:04   In fact, I periscoped the opening of ours because I found it so much fun.

00:15:08   In addition to this mattress,

00:15:10   Casper now also offers an adaptive pillow and soft, breathable sheets.

00:15:14   This thing has quality written all over it.

00:15:17   An in-house team of engineers spent thousands of hours

00:15:20   developing the Casper mattress. It's obsessively engineered at a shockingly

00:15:24   fair price. It combines springy latex and supportive memory foam to create a

00:15:28   mattress that has just the right sink and just the right bounce. Plus it's

00:15:32   breathable so you can help regulate your temperature throughout the night.

00:15:36   Mattresses are expensive. They can often cost well over $1,500 but the Casper

00:15:42   mattress costs $500 for a twin, $600 for a twin XL, $750 for a full, $850 for a queen,

00:15:48   and $9.50 for a king-size mattress and they're made right here in America.

00:15:53   Buying a Casper mattress is completely risk-free. They offer free delivery and

00:15:58   free returns in the US and Canada with a hundred night in-home trial. If you don't

00:16:03   love it they'll pick it up and refund you everything. Because Casper

00:16:06   understands the importance of truly sleeping on a mattress before you commit

00:16:10   to it, especially considering you're going to spend a third of your life on it.

00:16:14   You can get $50 toward any mattress purchase by visiting Casper.com/connected and using

00:16:21   connected at checkout.

00:16:23   Terms and conditions apply.

00:16:24   Thank you so much to Casper for their support of this show and all of Relay FM.

00:16:28   So I wake up, I was telling you before we started recording, I wake up and I'm, you

00:16:33   know, kind of just on my phone looking through Twitter and all of a sudden people are like

00:16:36   paging ISMAs, like, where is he?

00:16:38   Wake up.

00:16:40   Apple made a press announcement this morning. Yes that they are starting tomorrow going to be selling a book

00:16:47   Highlighting the last 20 years of Apple design. So basically starting the way I read it starting at the iMac g3

00:16:54   which I know a few things about and it is

00:16:58   going to be

00:17:01   Full of like 450 photographs. It's going to be available in two sizes

00:17:07   basically 10 by 12 at $199, 13 by 16 inches at $299, and limited availability in retail.

00:17:17   This is A) exciting for me because I like this stuff and like people on Twitter are

00:17:22   like, "I don't know who to spend money on this. I'm spending money on this." But

00:17:25   I'm me. It's right in my wheelhouse.

00:17:28   It's like it's gonna be like a new, I don't know, like the book that you buy multiple

00:17:34   versions and you just place around the house in multiple spots. It's going to be like

00:17:39   the new kitchen coffee table book for you.

00:17:42   As excited as I am about it and as excited as some Apple fans are, and I totally understand

00:17:48   that people are thinking this is nuts because it is a lot of money, what is going on here?

00:17:54   So this is, you know, Apple doesn't look back very often. They did their 40 years and

00:18:01   40 seconds video last year.

00:18:03   It was pretty easy to write that off as like,

00:18:06   oh, where they're leaving town hall behind

00:18:09   and they wanna kinda remember what it's given the company.

00:18:13   But this is something different.

00:18:17   And I would argue it's not really even Apple history.

00:18:20   This is Johnny Ive history.

00:18:22   And yes, he did design stuff before the iMac,

00:18:25   but the iMac was the big hit.

00:18:28   This feels, to me at least,

00:18:30   want to see what you think about this. This feels a little bit like a Johnny

00:18:34   Ive like farewell tour like when a band puts out the their best of record you

00:18:39   kind of know they're done right like? I've been thinking about this. Okay. So

00:18:44   I've been thinking about the reasons why why a band does the greatest hits and I

00:18:48   came up with three reasons I think. One is the farewell tour like they're saying

00:18:53   goodbye and they want to be remembered with their best songs. The second reason

00:18:57   is sometimes you see a band doing the greatest hits because they want to sort of have a clean

00:19:02   slate, so they do the greatest hits and then they start doing something new. Whether they

00:19:06   switch genres or they switch the lineup of the band, they do the greatest hits and then

00:19:11   they continue doing something different. And then there's the money grab, when they just

00:19:16   want to make a quick buck and they release the greatest hits with minimum work and they

00:19:22   put together a bunch of songs, they don't do any remasters, they just do a fancy booklet

00:19:26   maybe, with some really inexpensive extras and they sell you for like $15 or $20. And

00:19:34   those are the three reasons. Now I don't see Apple having to make a quick buck from

00:19:37   a book, you know, because they have a lot of money. So the two reasons that I'm left

00:19:44   wondering about is, is Johnny Ive saying goodbye or is Johnny Ive ready for something new and

00:19:50   he wants to have this kind of compendium, if you will, this kind of collection about

00:19:55   everything before he moves on to the next big thing. And I honestly don't know because

00:20:01   on the one hand I'm kind of concerned about, you know, being to, and you wrote this on

00:20:06   your post on 512, Apple has been more in touch with its past lately, for these past few years

00:20:12   we've seen the Mac celebration, you know, with 20 years of Macintosh, there was some

00:20:18   kind of other video last year, the callout to old Macs at the Mac event, and it seems

00:20:24   seems like the general feeling is we're celebrating, we're thinking about our past more. And

00:20:30   it's cool, you know, every once in a while, but when I woke up this morning and I saw

00:20:36   the press release, my first reaction was, "Oh, cool, they're going to have another

00:20:40   web page," you know, when I saw "Designed by Apple in California." My first reaction

00:20:44   is, "It's going to be a web page or a video." And instead it's going to be…

00:20:47   not a $300 book. It's gonna be a $300 book and that makes me think, you know, it's

00:20:55   cool to be nostalgic but it's another thing to make a $200 book for how beautiful it must

00:21:02   be, you know, great photos, whatever. There's a description of the, of course, of the engineering

00:21:08   process behind the making of the book which I really don't want to read because I know

00:21:13   half of these words. But I'm kind of concerned on the other hand because, you know, it's,

00:21:20   you know, when you're being too nostalgic, when you're thinking too much about your past,

00:21:27   that's not, you know, something that I envision Apple doing often. So I'm kind of torn between

00:21:33   to stances here. It's nice, it's beautiful, Apple products and Apple design has to be

00:21:43   celebrated because it's unlike anything else. But also, Apple is very famously the company

00:21:48   who doesn't like to dwell on their past. They like to move forward, they like to do the

00:21:52   next thing. And so to have a press release and a $200 book with a $300 version for the

00:21:58   the plus model, it's kind of odd.

00:22:01   - Did she just call it the plus model?

00:22:04   - No, it must be, it must be called internally.

00:22:06   - So I've been thinking about this too,

00:22:08   and I think I'm gonna amend my blog post

00:22:12   or post an update to it.

00:22:14   I think my position has changed a little bit

00:22:16   in that Steve Jobs is not like looking back.

00:22:19   I linked to it in my blog post.

00:22:21   When Jobs returned to Apple in '97,

00:22:24   Apple had been curating a large

00:22:27   internal historical library and he came in and donated the entire thing to Stanford.

00:22:32   It's like back your truck up to the door and take it all.

00:22:36   Apple has since been slowly rebuilding that.

00:22:38   On occasion you see these stories or if you're like in this world you know that Apple will

00:22:41   sometimes reach out to people to want to purchase software, purchase a piece of hardware, that

00:22:46   they are building a collection internally.

00:22:48   There's a story that they're going to be reopening a museum at campus too.

00:22:54   So what I think is that Jobs didn't like to look back

00:22:57   and that Apple in the year since Steve's passing

00:23:01   has changed about that.

00:23:03   And it's weird because it's still new,

00:23:07   but I think we're gonna see more of this in the future.

00:23:12   But it's just, the thing to me that I keep coming back to

00:23:14   is like what does it mean for Ive?

00:23:18   What does it mean for, like you said,

00:23:20   what direction is he going?

00:23:22   Is this a swan song type deal?

00:23:24   Or is this a hey, this is what we've done

00:23:26   for the last 20 years, buckle up because some new stuff

00:23:29   is coming and we can talk about some of that new stuff.

00:23:34   We have one of those topics later in the show.

00:23:37   But it's just an odd moment because this sort of

00:23:41   retrospective look is still fresh from Apple

00:23:45   and a little bit uncomfortable I think for some of us who

00:23:49   just, you know, when you first think about Apple looking back, you know, you think about

00:23:52   how Jobs didn't like doing that and now they're doing it. But, um, yeah, I gotta say it's

00:23:59   the most Johnny Ive product ever. Here's what I want to ask you. A couple of weeks ago,

00:24:07   John Gruber had this article on Daring Fireball about how if you think Apple is going to do

00:24:11   a 10 year anniversary iPhone, you're kidding yourself. That was the extent of the story.

00:24:17   Now if a company does a book with, you know, 450 photos and it sells it for $200 and $300,

00:24:27   is it also the company who's never going to do a 10-year anniversary iPhone?

00:24:31   Yeah, I don't know. I mean the…Tibet Gruber's argument, a book that only a few

00:24:42   people are going to buy drastically different than the world's biggest consumer electronics

00:24:47   product.

00:24:48   I agree. I agree.

00:24:49   But you never know. I don't know.

00:24:52   But it's – you can – I guess you can be nostalgic for things that don't matter

00:24:57   and not nostalgic for the product that gives you the most income. So when it comes to the

00:25:04   iPhone you're always looking forward but when it comes to a book, whatever, let's

00:25:09   make money off old products, but it sort of… I think this book betrays the fact that there

00:25:19   is an underlying feeling or thought process inside Apple that has a bunch of executives

00:25:29   who like to celebrate old things. So it's not completely unlike Apple at this point

00:25:36   to be nostalgic. We could argue that they're never going to do this for the iPhone or for

00:25:42   current products. We could argue that they're going to do it for things that are just minor,

00:25:49   you know, minor announcements like a book or like, I don't know, a poster. I mean,

00:25:52   it could be anything at this point. But to say that Apple is not 100% nostalgic, that

00:26:00   Apple never looks back, that at this point is incorrect because they are looking back.

00:26:05   Yeah, absolutely. You know, maybe in two years they will do a 20th anniversary iMac and it

00:26:10   will be, you know, beautiful 5k display covered in blue, green, translucent plastic. So yeah,

00:26:19   so I will, like I said, I'm going to be ordering one. I would point people to Iconic Book.

00:26:24   They'll be linked in the show notes. If you are into this sort of thing but you want more

00:26:28   than just the last 20 years, if you want to see a bunch of stuff before that, this is

00:26:34   This is a book by a friend of mine, a guy named Jonathan,

00:26:38   and it is a really, it's like this, right?

00:26:42   It's like high production photography.

00:26:44   He traveled the world taking pictures

00:26:45   of people's collections and rare items.

00:26:48   And so we'll have a link to that in the show notes.

00:26:50   They have been a sponsor in the past.

00:26:51   They're not sponsoring this.

00:26:53   I just really like the book.

00:26:55   In fact, he sent me, I feel like,

00:26:56   a pre-production copy of it here,

00:26:59   and it's a really nice gift or something, you know?

00:27:03   know both of these things are gonna be nice gifts for Apple nerds in your life this Christmas.

00:27:07   But it's, you know, there's a lot of resources out there if you're into this sort of stuff

00:27:12   and don't want to spend 300 bucks for a, well how did Apple describe it? Specially milled

00:27:18   custom dyed paper with gilded matte silver edges using eight color separations in logo

00:27:23   stink. Linden bound. I mean, what is happening?

00:27:28   It has to be like some kind of secret code if you're also an engineer and you hear somebody

00:27:33   talking this way, you know they're like you because they are using the same words,

00:27:38   like a special passphrase, you know.

00:27:41   - "LogoSt, Inc." is gonna be my new band name. They did say it's been in development

00:27:46   for eight years, so Jobs was around for at least the beginning of this. I like to think

00:27:50   that it was like a secret, like Johnny Ivehead on his personal Dropbox account, was like

00:27:53   just taking pictures at night, and it's like, "One day I'll do it, and tomorrow

00:27:58   is that day!"

00:27:59   got one detail wrong it was iDisk but not Dropbox but still. There you go. Yeah. Look

00:28:05   at you. Yeah I know all stuff too. You should do some of that on your website one day. Yeah

00:28:13   I guess maybe. So MacBook Pro with Touch Bar reviews are in. Neither of us has spent time

00:28:23   with one. It's on my to-do list this week to go to the Apple store. But I think there's

00:28:28   some pretty like clear general thoughts across these reviews and so we have a

00:28:32   bunch of friends who wrote some there's some links in the show notes it's early

00:28:36   days for this touch bar and it seems really inconsistent at times like even

00:28:41   Apple's own apps like pages may do one thing and then Final Cut Pro did

00:28:46   something like drastically different like conceptually different with it

00:28:50   that's not surprising to me I mean I think it's pretty clear that Apple's

00:28:55   software division has pockets and like, not everything is even developed in Cupertino.

00:29:00   So like a lot of the logic team is in Europe. And there was I work team lives for a while,

00:29:05   I think in Canada somewhere like these groups are independent to a degree. And so, you know,

00:29:12   early days, I think there will be a consistent, like use case for this even in third party

00:29:18   apps, like Jason was talking on upgrade this week, which if you haven't listened to, you

00:29:22   you should go listen to, he talks a lot about the touch bar,

00:29:25   that even in development of PCALC,

00:29:27   James Thompson has been changing the way things work

00:29:30   based on feedback and trying to fit into

00:29:33   what is going on with use case.

00:29:40   When does it make sense to leave your keyboard

00:29:42   and touch the touch bar and then come back?

00:29:44   When does it make sense to do something in the touch bar

00:29:46   then you have to go to the track pad and look at the screen?

00:29:49   These things all just seem all over the place right now,

00:29:52   but I think it will get better over time

00:29:55   as like consistent use case kind of builds.

00:29:58   I mean, I think it's similar to like some stuff

00:30:00   we've seen on iOS with like some of the early days

00:30:04   of like the extensions, or you would see like

00:30:07   one developer implement something

00:30:09   and then another developer implement

00:30:11   like what would be the same feature,

00:30:13   but in a drastically different way.

00:30:17   and I think that that will sort of all gel over time.

00:30:22   - Yeah, I saw a few screenshots.

00:30:25   Of course, this is not high on my list of things

00:30:28   I'm interested in, but I read the reviews.

00:30:31   I still had to watch the Casey Neistat review

00:30:34   that Myke sent us a link this morning.

00:30:37   I think it's gonna be interesting to see

00:30:41   how both Apple and developers figure out

00:30:43   the touch bar together.

00:30:45   reminds me of widgets in a way that initially it's all over the place and maybe Apple

00:30:50   will sort of revise and redesign some of their implementations. One striking difference I

00:30:59   think is on iOS with extensions and widgets we saw some app store rejections because some

00:31:09   developers were trying ideas that Apple said "well, maybe you shouldn't really do this

00:31:14   kind of widget on the iPhone. So we saw a bunch of come forth for these new designs,

00:31:20   new features, so I don't think we're gonna see the same on the Mac, because I mean, the

00:31:25   Mac App Store is already a problem, now you're gonna even reject apps, and so I don't think

00:31:29   that we'll have that kind of scenario on Mac OS. But it's definitely interesting to keep

00:31:35   an eye on what developers do and what's gonna happen.

00:31:39   I do like that it's open to developers right out of the gate.

00:31:42   This is not something that is tied to the Mac App Store.

00:31:46   Like 2011, Apple would have been like, "You can only use it if you're in the Mac App Store,

00:31:49   and now you can even use iCloud stuff."

00:31:54   So I like that it's open, but the trade-off there is that it's going to be messy for a

00:31:58   little while.

00:31:59   Something that Jason said that I've been thinking about, I thought this initially, I think some

00:32:04   people said it was that it being only on the notebooks was going to limit their

00:32:11   like penetration of this technology that just being a laptops means that pros

00:32:16   won't have it and to Jason's point the notebooks are like two-thirds of Mac

00:32:21   sales these days and even though it's just on the most expensive models it

00:32:24   will trickle down and so even if it's never on the iMac which I hope it is as

00:32:29   an iMac user that it's still gonna have like wide adoption in the Mac community

00:32:34   eventually. So speaking of the touch bar, if you have a Mac without one, if you don't have one of the new MacBook Pros, our friend Daniel Jackut is making a

00:32:47   touche, which basically simulates a virtual touch bar on your Mac. We've seen a bunch of these utilities on GitHub over the past couple of weeks. I think this is an easier way to install this kind of app to simulate

00:33:04   the touch bar on the screen, which is completely not like having the real thing of course,

00:33:10   but it helps you one, understand what it looks like in software, and two, it helps you take

00:33:18   screenshots of the touch bar, which I don't think is natively supported on the MacBook

00:33:23   Pro. So if you're looking for a way to sort of see what the buttons look like, what the

00:33:28   interactions look like and what the general feel of the touch bar could be, it's a free

00:33:33   download from the red sweater website. I still haven't run this on my Mac because I feel

00:33:40   like it's going to die because if I install this kind of hack, and I don't want my MacBook

00:33:46   to die just yet, but I think it's interesting especially if you want to open multiple apps

00:33:52   that have been updated for Sierra and you want to see how the shortcuts and the buttons

00:33:59   not just when you switch between apps, but also when you change the view inside

00:34:04   of the same app. So the touch bar, the controls can change whether you're

00:34:09   editing a document or creating a new document for example. So that could be

00:34:13   interesting to check out.

00:34:14   Yeah, so I did install it on my new non-touch bar, MapUp Pro, and it's

00:34:20   interesting to see how the context switching works and to see how, you know,

00:34:25   the software interacts with it.

00:34:27   It's weird and not very useful,

00:34:29   'cause you can't actually touch it,

00:34:30   although I did find myself wanting to touch my screen,

00:34:33   which was really concerning as someone

00:34:35   who tries really hard not to do that.

00:34:38   But I think overall it's a good example of how it works,

00:34:41   but I think actually having it,

00:34:44   the physical touch bar obviously is way better.

00:34:46   I mean, this thing is only useful to understand

00:34:48   how it works and take some screenshots.

00:34:50   But props to Daniel for making it,

00:34:52   'cause I was having trouble understanding

00:34:55   the control strip which is like the system controls on the right hand side.

00:34:58   How that interacted with the rest of it and like the different modes and this

00:35:03   did help me sort of grok that a little bit better.

00:35:06   So if you want to play with it, it's just a free little download and you can kind

00:35:11   of see how it would work.

00:35:14   I will say that so far I'm still okay with my purchase of the non-touch bar

00:35:19   MacBook Pro really for the same reasons I said initially the cost and because

00:35:25   because I'm using an iMac now at my desk,

00:35:27   I didn't want to be in a situation

00:35:29   where I had the touch bar just sometimes,

00:35:30   in case I did find it really useful.

00:35:32   And I was a little afraid of that

00:35:36   becoming a stress point in my setup.

00:35:38   So I'm still okay with the fact

00:35:40   that I bought the cheapest one.

00:35:42   The battery life seems to be better.

00:35:43   The reviews, something that's in all of them

00:35:46   is like battery life is kind of really consistent,

00:35:48   and I had that on mine.

00:35:49   Like last night I was using it,

00:35:51   and the battery life was amazing.

00:35:53   But like two days ago, last time I pulled it out, it wasn't.

00:35:56   So there seems to be some issues there maybe,

00:35:58   but the non-touch one is perfect for my needs.

00:36:02   I really wanted to run a MacBook Air

00:36:04   and that's really what I have here.

00:36:06   So it's an exciting time if you're in the market

00:36:10   for a Mac notebook.

00:36:12   There are, like in Casey's video,

00:36:14   there are disadvantages if you're a professional.

00:36:16   Like just the other day actually,

00:36:18   I was out taking some pictures and I wanted,

00:36:20   I had grabbed my MacBook Pro.

00:36:22   I wanted to import some of them,

00:36:23   but I didn't have the SD card reader with me.

00:36:28   And I cannot believe that's gone from the new machine.

00:36:30   It's super frustrating.

00:36:32   But there are those trade-offs.

00:36:33   But if you're in the market for a new machine

00:36:35   or the touch bar really calls you,

00:36:37   I don't think there's anything in these reviews

00:36:38   to dissuade you.

00:36:40   I think the worst thing in these reviews

00:36:42   is that right now the touch bar may be a little gimmicky

00:36:44   until developers take full use of it.

00:36:47   But I think if you need a new machine,

00:36:51   I would say these are perfectly good options.

00:36:54   So I think that does it for MacBook Pros.

00:36:58   We're gonna get into some really

00:37:01   strange stuff here after this break.

00:37:05   But this show is also brought to you by MailRoute.

00:37:09   Do you know who should be handling

00:37:10   your email security and delivery?

00:37:13   People who do just that, and that's MailRoute.

00:37:17   All the big companies are bowing out

00:37:18   of the email protection business

00:37:20   because it's hard work.

00:37:22   Postini went away, and now McAfee and MX Logic.

00:37:25   Google even came out and said that if you

00:37:27   want to use a gateway service like mail routes,

00:37:29   that they would prefer you do that so they don't have to

00:37:31   filter your Google Apps email.

00:37:33   So who can you trust to do this job properly

00:37:35   and be around for a long time?

00:37:37   That's MailRoute.

00:37:38   Their team has been focused entirely on email security

00:37:41   since 1997.

00:37:43   They know what they're doing.

00:37:44   They protect your email and hardware against spam,

00:37:46   viruses, and other threats.

00:37:48   and they deliver your email even when your mail server cannot.

00:37:52   Now unlike some of these services,

00:37:54   there's no hardware or software to install.

00:37:56   If you own your domain, that's all you need to use MailRoute.

00:38:00   The interface is easy to navigate and loaded

00:38:02   with admin tools, including an API.

00:38:04   And it's all designed to make your life better.

00:38:07   No spam, no viruses, no balanced mail.

00:38:11   Whether you're a small home business or a huge ISP,

00:38:14   MailRoute can handle you.

00:38:15   handle customers of all sizes and provide the same level of outstanding

00:38:20   tech support to everyone. MailRoute protects your email from spam and viruses and

00:38:25   guarantees mail access during outages. That's it, that's all they do and they do

00:38:29   it better because they've been doing it longer than anyone else.

00:38:32   Stop spam today and sign up for a 30-day trial at mailroute.net/connected

00:38:38   and because you're a listener of this show you'll get 10% off for the lifetime of

00:38:43   of your account. Thank you so much to Marat for the support of this show and Relay FM.

00:38:49   So tell me about Spectacles.

00:38:52   This must be great for you, Steven.

00:38:54   Yeah, I wish... tell me about Spectacles.

00:38:59   So are you aware of teenagers, right?

00:39:02   I see them roaming the streets in packs.

00:39:05   Well, there's many of them and they use this app called Snapchat, right? And Snapchat is

00:39:11   now making sunglasses that have a camera, actually I think two cameras maybe, or maybe

00:39:16   one camera.

00:39:17   Just one.

00:39:18   Just one, just one camera, and it records circular video from the sunglasses, and that

00:39:27   you can watch on your phone because there's an automatic Bluetooth transfer for standard

00:39:33   definition video or Wi-Fi transfer for HD video, but according to most reviews the difference

00:39:38   is not that noticeable.

00:39:39   So it puts that video on your phone and the, I guess the gimmick or the feature here is

00:39:44   that you can rotate your phone in area orientation and because the video is a circle you don't

00:39:50   see any black bars around the video.

00:39:53   It's very smooth, very clever.

00:39:55   Now the news here, because the Spectacles announcement came a few months ago, the news

00:40:01   is they're selling these devices, these sunglasses out of vending machines called the SnapBot,

00:40:08   which is a yellow vending machine with a screen with a Snapchat logo.

00:40:14   And it's all very strange and all very Snapchatty in many, many ways.

00:40:19   You can only buy from the vending machine.

00:40:21   There's a screen on the vending machine that shows you a preview of what the spectacles

00:40:25   will look like on your face.

00:40:27   And the vending machines appear in seemingly random locations around the United States.

00:40:34   And to catch one of these locations, you have to follow the website, and almost every day

00:40:38   there's a new location on the map. So they started from Venice Beach, so LA, California,

00:40:45   they moved up to Big Shore, and then they're selling them in Oklahoma today, I think. It's

00:40:51   all very strange, and it's all very different. It's not a traditional tech product in any

00:40:58   There was no tech review embargo.

00:41:02   There was no big reveal to bloggers.

00:41:06   One day they just showed this video of a vending machine dropping from the sky, which I really

00:41:12   don't think was the case, but it was like a simulation.

00:41:15   But still the idea is just one day the vending machine appeared and people started to line

00:41:20   up.

00:41:21   And of course there's going to be people who are selling these spectacles on eBay,

00:41:24   But you know, it's, I have to say, it's very different.

00:41:30   But it's also kind of cool.

00:41:31   I think the idea is, I think the idea of driving with your friends on a road trip to find a

00:41:37   vending machine as this sort of, I don't know, it's a, it's a cool idea.

00:41:42   It's different and it makes total sense for Snapchat to do something like this, which

00:41:47   feels more approachable than having this beautiful, elegant retail store where everyone greets

00:41:54   you and gives you the sunglasses. No, you're just going to go on a road trip with a bunch

00:41:58   of friends and find a vending machine somewhere in the woods, which sounds kind of crazy.

00:42:03   It is crazy, but it's sort of perfect for the company. I missed the episode where you

00:42:11   guys talked about Snapchat. I have an account. I rarely use it. But their vibe of the company

00:42:16   and the app, this fits it perfectly. These vending machines are super weird but super

00:42:21   Adorable like like the minions out of the animated movies that if you're a parent

00:42:25   You're groaning inside

00:42:28   thinking about that, but it's I like that it is not like this big tech product that is just something that they made and

00:42:35   They're just putting it random places and I let their fans find them

00:42:40   I think it's cool and you know, there are some like hands-on impressions. There are some reviews the verge had one

00:42:45   Mashable's got one

00:42:47   Austin Evans has a good video and then the guy did the video with cut him in half which is sort of hilarious

00:42:53   but it's

00:42:55   It's just one of those things that gets so different from what we normally see in the industry that you have to pay attention to

00:43:00   It even if you don't use snapchat or like don't understand it

00:43:03   Or think it's silly you have to respect them for doing something that is

00:43:08   Both like totally different from everybody else like perfectly on brand for what they do

00:43:13   Definitely, I mean it

00:43:16   completely unlike what we've seen before. Compare this to the Google Glass announcement,

00:43:23   the reviews from the press. It's not a tech product in any sense. It's almost like a fashion object

00:43:34   and in this case scarcity is increasing demand I think and it's creating this cool factor that

00:43:41   Because it's not sold in Best Buy or in retail stores, in the traditional sense of a computer

00:43:49   or of a tech gadget, it feels more for normal people, in the sense that lining up to buy

00:43:58   a new iPhone isn't.

00:44:02   We've seen this from Snapchat before, how they can use tech to reach this much more

00:44:09   normal audience of everyday teenagers, everyday people, not the ones who obsess over megabytes

00:44:16   and standard resolution. I bet that most people don't even know that the camera has two resolutions

00:44:22   in the spectacles because it doesn't matter. They're selling this accessory and this idea

00:44:28   they're not selling a camera on the glasses. Google Glass was a camera with a bunch of

00:44:33   Google features. This is a pair of sunglasses that work with Snapchat and that's it. It

00:44:40   doesn't feel like a tech product. It looks stylish to me. I don't know if it's going

00:44:44   to be a big thing, if it's going to be a fad, if Snapchat is going to care about an international

00:44:49   launch but the feeling seems about right to me.

00:44:54   Yeah, I think so. And I agree with you, they look good. They're not as cyborg as the Google

00:45:02   Google Glass were.

00:45:04   And I think they've taken some lessons from Google Glass

00:45:06   where you have the camera, on the other side you have

00:45:09   a little ring of LEDs that spin.

00:45:11   When you're recording it's very clear.

00:45:13   When it's recording, which I think was one of the,

00:45:15   even if it wasn't an actual problem with Google Glass,

00:45:17   it was a perceived problem that people are recording

00:45:19   and you don't know it.

00:45:21   This helps with that, I think.

00:45:23   I think it's pretty clear that if you see spinning LEDs,

00:45:25   you may not know it's a camera,

00:45:27   but you know they're doing something.

00:45:30   and I think that's coupled with the fact

00:45:33   that they're sunglasses that you're not wearing these

00:45:37   indoors, like there was that--

00:45:39   - Unless you're crazy.

00:45:40   - Yeah, I mean unless you just are super way cooler

00:45:42   than we are.

00:45:43   It is a different thing, like if it's something

00:45:48   that you're gonna put on, how much video do they shoot

00:45:51   or how long is it battery, it's like 16 minutes

00:45:53   of battery life or something, like this is not something

00:45:56   you're gonna wear all day and it's gonna be part,

00:45:58   it's not gonna be like an Apple Watch

00:45:59   it's something that you interact with throughout the day.

00:46:01   It's something that you put on,

00:46:03   maybe you're wearing it,

00:46:04   but you're using it for very short periods of time.

00:46:06   My guess is you'd be using it

00:46:08   in situations where people may know what they are.

00:46:13   I mean, I think the fact that they

00:46:16   have this buzz around them and they look the way they look,

00:46:18   maybe that helps.

00:46:19   But the tech is pretty interesting too.

00:46:22   So you mentioned this, the video is circular.

00:46:26   And so basically you're looking at one of these videos

00:46:29   and as you turn your phone in your hand

00:46:30   from portrait to landscape and beyond,

00:46:32   the viewfinder shifts around the image.

00:46:38   That's super hard to explain.

00:46:40   Go look at some of these links and watch it

00:46:42   if you haven't seen it.

00:46:43   It's a really cool effect, and I think there's a lot

00:46:47   of opportunity for creativity in that.

00:46:49   You can have something like hiding in your field of view

00:46:51   that people don't see until they turn their phone.

00:46:54   I think people are gonna really play with this format

00:46:57   because it is a new format to a degree. I think that opens a lot of doors.

00:47:01   Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if this is going to be eventually a mode or an API in the iOS camera.

00:47:09   Because the interaction is very smooth and it captures this beautiful edge-to-edge video that you can rotate

00:47:17   and it keeps the center, doesn't show you any UI chrome around. It's all very smooth, all very different.

00:47:25   And I feel like once you see it, you're going to want all of your videos to be like that.

00:47:31   So definitely a very smart interaction from Snapchat.

00:47:34   It's not new.

00:47:36   Snapchat is not new to creating this sort of UI paradigms that other companies are going

00:47:42   to follow.

00:47:43   Because even if you look at the iMessage, there's a bunch of features that Snapchat

00:47:46   pioneered, you know, whether it's drawing on pictures or, you know, the big emoji and

00:47:50   whatever.

00:47:53   I would keep an eye on what Snapchat is doing because even if we're probably not Snapchat's

00:48:01   big audience, they know what they're doing.

00:48:04   They're not clueless as most of us think.

00:48:08   They're not just throwing interfaces at the wall and see what sticks.

00:48:13   They know exactly what they're doing.

00:48:14   They're just doing it very much differently from what we're used to.

00:48:19   So this is the background for a report in Bloomberg yesterday.

00:48:24   And it is by our friend Mark Gerben and some Bloomberg colleagues.

00:48:30   And I'm just going to read you the lead.

00:48:33   "Apple is weighing an expansion in digital glasses, a risky but potentially lucrative

00:48:38   area of wearable computing according to people familiar with the matter."

00:48:42   - Okay.

00:48:43   - So, super early days on this.

00:48:48   The thing in this report that jumps out at me the most

00:48:52   is Germin does a good job at highlighting all the times

00:48:56   Cook has talked about AR.

00:48:58   So this idea of augmented reality,

00:49:01   that you were seeing the world,

00:49:02   but you were seeing things layered on top of it.

00:49:05   Cook seems to be interested in this.

00:49:07   And Apple's, another way that Apple has changed

00:49:10   is that they talk about things now,

00:49:12   and like Jeff Williams made the comment about the car

00:49:15   being the ultimate portable device.

00:49:18   Cook was on stage talking about

00:49:21   ways to track the human body and sensors and stuff,

00:49:27   and we got the Apple Watch.

00:49:29   I think Apple is definitely looking at AR.

00:49:32   - Yeah.

00:49:33   - And the only way you do that is with a headset

00:49:34   or glasses, right?

00:49:35   No one wants to hold up the phone and look through their

00:49:36   phone like Pokemon Go all day.

00:49:40   And so I think that if Apple is really looking at AR, then they have to be looking at some

00:49:46   sort of glasses or, you know, like head unit of some sort, right?

00:49:52   >> Yeah.

00:49:53   I agree.

00:49:54   It feels like the best way to present an interface that augments what you're seeing, whether

00:50:05   it's AR or mixed reality, whatever these people are calling it. And we talked before about

00:50:12   how products like Apple Maps, for example, could be enhanced by AR. I just, again, I'm

00:50:23   torn here because on the one hand it feels like a repeat of the initial Apple Watch rumors.

00:50:29   you know, we started hearing these sort of conversations a couple of years before the

00:50:36   actual Apple Watch was announced. And so it seems to be a pattern of modern Apple entering

00:50:44   a new category of devices that a couple of years before you start hearing these rumors.

00:50:49   Apple is considering these glasses according to people familiar with the matter because

00:50:53   it sort of eases people into the idea of what they're going to see, you know, like in 2018

00:51:00   for example. But also, I remember Tim Cook's comment on "I wear eyeglasses because I have

00:51:10   to, not because I want to". So, you know, people are not going to want to wear eyeglasses

00:51:17   because of a bunch of AR features.

00:51:21   You know, most people don't like eyeglasses. I wear eyeglasses because I find

00:51:25   contacts disgusting, but if I had a choice

00:51:29   I would not wear eyeglasses. So the only type of glasses that are suitable

00:51:33   for most people are sunglasses. And this to me feels like a response

00:51:37   to the buzz around Snapchat and the spectacles. Because

00:51:41   the type of glasses that people want to wear are sunglasses.

00:51:45   So are we looking at Apple sunglasses? Are we looking at the real version of the emoji

00:51:51   with the sunglasses? Is that some kind of teaser? I feel like with Apple's involvement

00:51:59   with the Apple Watch, with a bunch of different fashion companies, it's not too crazy at

00:52:02   this point to imagine Apple doing their own sunglasses with a bunch of partnerships with

00:52:08   Gucci or Ray-Ban, for example, and to have... Maybe Apple could be a provider of AR features

00:52:15   for other type of sunglasses, because you also need to consider that unlike the Apple

00:52:21   Watch, the wrist is pretty much universal, right? The wrist is a universal point of the

00:52:29   human body, in the sense that once you nail the concept of the band, and the measurements

00:52:35   and the size of the band, you don't have any special requirements for the wrist, it's

00:52:40   just a wrist, you just put the watch in there in your set, you just need to adjust the band.

00:52:45   but putting something on your face and in front of your eyes, well, that's a much higher

00:52:50   degree of complexity because people have different eyesights, because people have different eyesight-related

00:52:56   problems, and also something on your face sticks out much more than a watch on your

00:53:02   wrist. So the degree of complexity and the proposition that you make to people has to

00:53:10   be so perfect, has to be at the same time so versatile, because otherwise we're just

00:53:15   gonna look, everybody's gonna look like, you know, like robots wearing the same AR glasses

00:53:22   on our faces. Now, I find Snapchat is doing much more simple to get people into this idea,

00:53:30   you know? You don't see an interface in front of you, it's just a pair of sunglasses with

00:53:33   a camera, and you see the video on your phone. But the rumor here is Apple is exploring AR,

00:53:39   going to put an interface in front of your eyes. And the way they're going to do it,

00:53:43   it's going to be sunglasses, it's going to be eyeglasses, it's going to be a special

00:53:46   type of visor like the Google class. I don't think so. I think we're looking at sunglasses,

00:53:51   and I think we're looking at a fashion focus, if this is true. Otherwise, you know, it could

00:53:56   be just a concept and it's going to go nowhere.

00:53:59   Yeah, and it's, I think that's an important distinction. Like, I think if we, if Apple's

00:54:06   Apple's working on what I think you and I believe they are.

00:54:09   It is drastically different from what Snapchat is doing.

00:54:13   But what Snapchat can do is they can

00:54:17   help normalize technology on the face.

00:54:19   Google Glass did not do that.

00:54:20   In fact, people, there was severe backlash to Google Glass,

00:54:25   right, and people were very turned off by it

00:54:29   and there were some horrible stories of people wearing them

00:54:32   like being attacked, like there was some terrible stuff

00:54:34   that happened.

00:54:35   Apple's not full of dummies, they know that happened.

00:54:39   And so anything they introduce is coming into a world

00:54:43   that is hostile, historically, to on-face technology.

00:54:48   But if Snapchat and Spectacles can break that down

00:54:52   a little bit and they can normalize people

00:54:57   to the idea of it, then if Apple's coming along

00:55:00   in a couple years with something,

00:55:02   maybe that landscape has changed.

00:55:04   Maybe Apple benefits from Snapchat

00:55:07   kind of softening the blow a little bit

00:55:09   when it comes to this thing.

00:55:11   Who knows if Apple will ship something?

00:55:13   You know, it seems,

00:55:15   Gorman actually writes it,

00:55:17   that there's tons of stuff that happens within Apple.

00:55:18   They build prototypes that never ship.

00:55:21   Maybe the car was one of them.

00:55:23   They work on things for a long time

00:55:25   that don't necessarily ever get out the door.

00:55:29   And it's another way Apple has changed

00:55:31   over the years, by the way.

00:55:34   So, this may be just early days that something that they're playing with but never shipped.

00:55:39   But I think it's interesting that Cook keeps talking about it. I think it's interesting

00:55:43   that there is something in his mind and something that he wants to share with people about his

00:55:49   thoughts on this. At first I thought it was a defensive move against VR of saying, you

00:55:54   know, VR is going to be big in gaming. We don't have a VR headset because we don't think

00:55:58   that's the future. We think AR is the future.

00:56:00   Yeah, everybody's everybody's talking about VR, but we're also doing this thing just with a different letter. It's AR

00:56:07   Cool guys, it's we're doing this one. I mean they are fundamentally different and and I initially thought that Cook was saying

00:56:14   we don't believe VR is where we want to go and

00:56:17   That was just a defensive move. But you know, maybe it wasn't maybe it is a hint of something to come

00:56:22   Who knows like all of this stuff you have to take with a huge grain of salt?

00:56:27   But I thought was super interesting the timing of this leak

00:56:30   being days after

00:56:33   Giant yellow robots start dispensing spectacles in random towns across the United States like the timing is so interesting and

00:56:40   if

00:56:43   snapchat can

00:56:44   Change the perception of technology you wear on your face

00:56:48   Then Apple only benefits from that and they don't have to come into a world like I said where

00:56:52   Google if it poisoned to people's minds

00:56:56   Yeah, I'm very optimistic personally about Snapchat and the Spectacles. It feels like

00:57:02   like a continuation of the fact that

00:57:05   And I see this with a lot of my friends

00:57:07   It's become totally normal to use GoPros for example to capture

00:57:12   what's in front of you in during special occasions and I feel like there's there's been a barrier coming down of what's acceptable when you're having a

00:57:22   a shared experience, whether it's a concert or you're going for a hike, and you're capturing

00:57:27   what you see, which is also very cool when you watch afterwards. And so I think they're

00:57:32   sort of riding on that sort of changing perception with a product that is much cooler than a

00:57:40   GoPro and that is also quite useful because it's sunglasses. And it makes total sense

00:57:45   for when you go to concerts or when you spend a weekend at the beach, for example. I think

00:57:52   it's a very sensible use of a device that is meant to be used outside, with what Snapchat

00:58:03   is best at doing, which is letting people share memories in a non-creepy way. If Apple

00:58:11   can do this much more difficult thing, which is to show me a computer on my retina, in

00:58:23   the literal sense. Now we're talking about something completely different, way into the

00:58:29   future, at least a couple of years I would say, and it does feel like the first Apple

00:58:36   Watch rumors, and if you remember back then we were already doing this show, and we were

00:58:41   talking about all kinds of different features like "oh it's gonna monitor my skin conductive

00:58:52   level" whatever, it's gonna do this crazy health feature and it ended up being a much

00:58:57   more restricted, much more limited kind of fashion/computer accessory.

00:59:04   So now when we're talking about AR we're in the rumors stage and we're picturing all of

00:59:08   these kind of crazy ideas and if it's true the final product will likely be more limited,

00:59:16   more simple in a way type of interface, type of computer product that does stuff for you.

00:59:27   There's going to be Siri, there's going to be Apple Maps, but it's not going to be, you

00:59:30   know, "Oh my god, I'm going to buy the Apple glasses and now, you know, hello everyone,

00:59:36   I'm Robocop, you know? It's not gonna be that. But it's also more difficult than, you know,

00:59:43   sunglasses that capture video. So I guess it's the new thing we're keeping an eye on

00:59:49   because now that the Apple Watch is with us, we needed this new kind of product category

00:59:54   and so I guess this is the rumor. You know, with the car now on the side, now we're gonna

00:59:59   talk about glasses. So, yay.

01:00:05   So if you want to find links to all this stuff this week you can do so at relay.fm/connected/117.

01:00:13   You can find our dearly departed co-host on Twitter @imyke.

01:00:18   You can find Federico @maxstories.net and Vitici on Twitter.

01:00:23   You can find me at 5fulpixels.net and ismh.

01:00:27   If you want to send feedback for the show you can do it via email or via Twitter.

01:00:32   The show is @_connectedfm.

01:00:34   It's always good to have follow-up from people.

01:00:37   Until next week, Federico, say goodbye.

01:00:40   - Adios. - Adios.

01:00:41   us.