MacBreak Weekly 401 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It is time for Mac Break Weekly and Andy and Alex and Rene are here and we will talk about the latest Mac news, Apple and Samsung’s law suit and is it over for now and should it be over forever? What is going on with the iWatch and the Apple TV and what we are going to see at the WWDC, our predictions, it is all coming next on Mac Break Weekly.

Advert: Netcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. Bandwidth from Mac Break Weekly is provided by Cache Fly (Presenter spells out Cache Fly.com)

This is Mac Break Weekly, Episode 401 recorded May 6^th 2014

Eat the Paperwork

Mac Break Weekly is brought to you by Gazelle, the fast and simple way to sell your used gadgets. Find out what your used iPhones, iPads or other Apple product is worth at Gazelle.com, and by SquareSpace.com, the all in one platform that makes it fast and easy to create way to create your own website or online portfolio for a free two week trial and ten percent off, go to SquareSpace.com and use the offer code Mac Break, and by 99 Designs the world’s largest graphic design market place. 99 Designs connects businesses seeking quality and affordable designs with a community of almost 300,000 graphic designers visit 99designs.com/mbw to receive a free power pack valued at 99 bucks.

Leo: It is time for Mac Break Weekly, the show that covers weekly your Mac Break and every week of the year, what Mr Alex Lindsay..

Alex Lindsay: Again. Shall I sneak up you again?

Leo: He is in town once more, and now it is good to see you.

Alex: It is good to see you.

Leo: Of course you were here when Pampel mousse was here on Sunday or Saturday.

Leo: He fell in love with you. Infact they sent us an email to say who was that guy that we spoke from next door with the green screen and the Mo cap?

Alex: Boy I have to admit that I thought that they were coming on Wednesday no Monday. I was at home and the only reason that I came home midweek was that I looked over and Lisa had posted something on GPlus. Obviously when I came in I was very scruffy when they showed up.

Leo: Oh they were very happy to talk to you. It was a good thing that you came in.

Alex: Yes I think that they will be a lot of fun. It will be great. (Presenters talking over each other)

Leo: I will explain all of that, but first of all the rest of the crew. Rene Ritchie from imore.com from beautiful Montreal where he is ex-man comic has pushed ICEO to the back. Looks like Steve is like let me in. Let me in.

Rene: He is just chilling there, it is dark in there.

Leo: Hey I am back here behind the iPhone. Hey it is me Steve.

Andy Ihnatko: Mine was snuggy but not boarded and not graded.

Leo: And there was Obi Wan Kanobi, he said gentlemen.

Andy: No, no that is Obi Bob Kanobi. (Presenters talking over each other) You did not see him he was on the Big Bang Theory, last week and ….

Leo: Okay, forget him Bob.

Andy: Good Heavens.

Leo: Okay forgive me Bob.

Andy: Not only is Bob Newhart still alive but he is still Bob Newhart, Leo. Were that any of us at any age could make that claim.

Leo: I would now like to watch the Big Bang Theory so I can see Bob Newhart as Obi Wan.

Rene: That is great.

Leo: Good, that is great. I like it. So, Oh My God the IOS 7 does not encrypt the email attachments. Rene, you posted the calm down that everybody posts, would you explain this?

Rene: It seems to be happening more and more often lately that this is a security story and no-one bothers to read it, and then they post really scary things, and get people afraid. So we looked into it and we did the best we could find out about it and I actually got a chance to speak to someone from Apple and get a comment on it. And it turns out that yes there is a problem with email attachment encryption on the iPhone. But, it only affects people who are using an iPhone 4 currently because the other version of IOS cannot be jail broken, and you need to be able to get past some-one’s pass code to use this bug.

Leo: So you would have to have physical access to the device?

Rene: Yes. And it is prolonged physical access, and you have to use jailbreak tools to get into it. You have to build a get into the file system and then pull out the email attachments. If there is no pass code of-course you can just launch Maildotapp. There is no need to use any exploits. So once again always, always use your pass code. But because it is only the iPhone 4 with a physical hardware jailbreak, you can get past that on anything including IOS 7.1.1. There is no jailbreak for the iPhone 4S, 5, 5S on IOS 7.1.1, and so you are safe if you have got a pass code or password or touch ID enabled.

Leo: Okay, so there is nothing to worry about I mean. I think that we need a grading system on Exploits.

Rene: The Defcon System.

Alex: Ooh that is a good idea.

Leo: On a scale of 0 to 5 this is Defcon one.

Rene: One is really, really bad.

Leo: Oh God.

Alex: I think there is just zero and then one and then one to five. (Presenters talking over each other)

Leo: Okay so this is a Defcon 4 or 5 which would make every-body relax.

Rene: If you have an iPhone 4 and someone manages to get physical possession of it so that they can get to your email attachments. That is the worst case scenario and the best case scenario is that you have iPhone 4 S or higher and you have your passcode and you are perfectly safe as long as you are on IOS 7.1.1.

Leo: And they will fix it.

Rene: Yes. Apple is working on a fix now but some people are upset that they have not fixed it already.

Leo: When did they break it?

Rene: It was broken in IOS 7. It was reported previously I do not have any direct knowledge but my understanding is that there is of course a priority list of bugs but Go To Fail is very high priority.

Leo: Okay, here we go Defcon 5 fade out is the state of readiness and normal readiness, and it is blue. Defcon 4 double take whooo…, increased intelligence watch and strengthened security measures above normal readiness.

Alex: I think that we almost always on Defcon 4 or almost always.

Leo: Oh yes. How are we going to get to the National. Go Back a bit and currently we are at 5. That web page does not inspire me, it was number 1 when you Googled that one. (Presenters talking over one another) I would like to think that it was designed right at the time of the War Games I think.

Unknown Voice: Do you want your radiations report? So here is the radiations report so if you need them.

Alex: It has got weather too. (Presenters talking over each other)

Leo: Okay, you know what, this is very nice, Okay Defcon 3 Roundhouse that means that it is punch right? Exercise term Roundhouse. Increased force readiness above that required for normal readiness. It is ready to mobilize in 15 minutes. Defcon 2 is fast paced, are those code names?

Unknown Voice: Exercise item.

Leo: I understand but why? If it was an exercise then it would be Defcon2 and not fast paced? Next step to nuclear war. Armed forces ready to deploy and engage in less than 6 hours and Defcon 1 is cocked pistol and nuclear war is imminent, well it is good I said Defcon 1 and I meant Defcon 4.8 I think. Can you do points?

Rene: Yes the Swedish judge that is the Defconcept. It is a security exploit that Apple has to fix and it is not low priority but it is not the highest priority.

Leo: Here is another number 68 million dollars that is what Angela Ahrendts gets the new chief of retail at Apple, stock grants worth 68 million today, although the way that the Apple stock has been going up can be worth more tomorrow.

Alex: Not bad Well played.

Leo: 113,000 restricted stock units. That is nice when you get a job and they give you money even before you do anything.

Rene: More than John Browit.

Alex: I think that she has to stay with the company…

Leo: They do not vest till 2018. There is four more years of this.

Alex: If you think of this like in the beginning and stay for four years.

Leo: Browit only got 60 million dollars when he was hired. That was the predecessor. But he was hired in 2012 and he did not make it so I bet he did not invest it. Well now wait a minute because he was let go right?

Rene: Are you thinking golden parachute Leo?

Leo: I am thinking golden parachute. It is called golden handcuffs till you are fired, and then it is golden parachute.

Rene: It is an exercise term.

Alex: That is a really, really heavy golden pair of golden hand cuffs that is all I can say.

Leo: 68 million dollars, what is going on….

Alex: Her top was down on the way here and I just have not been able to calm it down again. So that what happens I have this crazy look.

Leo: What top was down?

Alex: It was on my convertible.

Leo: What kind of a car do you have?

Alex: I have a very old BMW, yes 2005 Beamer (Presenters talking over each other) and you know my kids love me to take them school in a convertible with the top down.

Leo: You should see how they look, you should see the other guy.

Alex: Then usually I get all cleaned up and hear that the top was down and you know what do you think, it is my crazy look.

Leo: I love it.

Alex: By the next Mac Break it will all be short again because it is the time.

Leo: Ahrendts was hired from Burberry’s where she was CEO so you have to give a little credit.

Alex: She is pretty amazing, and I have actually dealt with her a lot because she used to do a lot of sales force events.

Leo: So you know Angela. I am sorry Dame Angela.

Alex: So yes she is a pretty cool person. So anyway it is very good hire on their part. They basically built up Burberry the way it is and I mean it has become quite a brand. And so she is super smart and she really understands the next generation of retail I mean that is what they are really responsive, very techie so it was  definitely very much a better mix for what Apple does so it is nuanced and high end view of retail.

Leo: The company themselves said this is just your father’s head of retail. This is a newly created executive level position.

Rene: It is online and retail.

Leo: This stuff is so important to Apple at this point that and you are really up there in the stratosphere.

Rene: I think that Ben Thompson pointed out that being the head of retail is closest to being like there is to being a president or a CEO at Apple.

Leo: That is who I was trying to remember Mr Stratechery.

Andy: One of the big questions is going to be though is that is Apple trying to pick up crumbs that they were missing earlier or are they just going to stay the course as they are doing right now?

Leo: Well that is the interesting thing as Ben pointed out that some store sales were down by five percent last quarter and have been hovering at zero growth for several quarters. I do not know if that is Apple decline or retail decline but that is not good. They have opened a lot of new stores they have 19 stores in Japan, China and HongKong and that is not as many Ben says as they ought to have.

Rene: They were no directionally have a head of retail, I mean you could include Browit for a couple of years since Ron Johnson left. It is important to have someone in there with a vision and not just implementing the same policies over and over again.

Alex: I mean I still think that they hold the record for making the most amount of money per square foot for a retailer in the world. That is the stat for the Apple Store. My biggest problem with going into an Apple Store even with all of the stuff that they have done I still that I wanted to buy an iPhone and had to wait 45 minutes before I spoke to some body. All I want to do is walk in and buy it and it is not like turning in the lines or anything else it is just the process.

Rene: You press the button on the iPad and it say Representative Alex.

Alex: There is a button on the iPad that says Representative?

Andy: You also have to take advantage of the fact that those very big thick heavy tables, and so if you want you can climb right up on the top there and shout,”Do you know who I am?”

Rene: It is like Star Wars all over again.

Leo: She is famous for taking Burberrys and making it somewhat of a stylish brand. I mean she does not need to do that.

Andy: No, but that is a useful skill if you are bringing in the ability to understand how to best serve people who are already very well disposed to give this company your money. That is not the same challenge as trying to convince some body to buy their snow tyres pretty much at any depot anywhere to pick your place instead of the rest. It is like Alex just said that I have had that same experience through the Apple stores where the one thing that I could even claim as a negative experience is having to wait a long, long, long, long time to do something very simple, simply because it has become a like a club house and an embassy.

Alex: And you know what I think is that what she understands about what Burberry was really built on was the brand and I mean the idea of Burberry, the idea of much in the same way that Apple built on that. So understanding that high end brand, and high end mentality I think that the last head of retail did not understand at all. You know because he came from a discount electronic store that is really horrible.

Leo: It was Dixons.

Alex: Wasn’t it Dixons or whatever. You know they still BJM monitors and….

Leo: Her predecessor went to Ron Johnson went to……(did not complete the sentence)

Andy: Those tables were very well made.

Leo: Went to Pennies I believe. Casey Pennies.

Rene: Burberrys is also very successful I believe in penetrating the Asian market with retail which is something that Apple really wants to do.

Leo: See now you are kicking it. It is not all Oh I got all trendy, it is that they have gotten to Asia. Look at this graph and this is to the point of two points that Apple have to solve. One is that Apple has to penetrate the Asian market, and they have to penetrate the lower end of the market. This is a Facebook, this is a weird app and let me explain it FaceBook Active monthly users by Android or IOS. Android is black and IOS is light grey. Greenwich Connecticut 20 percent Android and 80 percent IOS and I bet there were a lot of Burberry too there. San Francisco well it is twice that now 40 percent Android and New York city 45 percent, total USA about 45 percent, Detroit okay 58 percent, global a little over 60 percent,

India 92 percent Android this tiny little sliver of IOS and now that is just Face Book, but I think that is pretty close to the overall mobile usage and so it shows you that the iPhone does great amongst our quarts in Silicon Valley, Montreal and Baston, less so in US total and even less in the poor part of the US, and really less so globally. So this is an opportunity as well as a challenge.

Rene: It is important to remember about the stats that in countries like India the cell phone market is abysmal and the government does not allow a lot of competition there. I think that getting a cheap phone is really important, and some phones are only sold with a Face Book plan. So you could usually get something like a BBM plan in the old days and you can buy a phone on the surface for a few pennies to book access and that is super cheap Android but the phone will have astronomical Face Book usage in that market. So this stuff still needs segmentation before is usable.

Andy: It is exactly what Rene said that it has been working with Face Book very hard to make those plans very very easy for a local Telco to implement and enforce.

Leo: Do you not think that Apple needs to do that too?

Andy: I think that they need to be a global company, and they need to be a force in every single country in which they are capable of operating. However their only limitation is they have emphatically produced a product line that is not inclined towards making cheap stuff. And sometimes, cheap means flimsy, plastic and floats on water and that sort of stuff, and sometimes it just means that it is affordable to the widest range of people. The reason why they have got so many hundred and millions of dollars to have pillow fights with in the commissary every Tuesday afternoon is that they are going for the high end market and high end people. I think that unless they were to change that strategy and change their thinking in fundamental way I think that they have to be resigned to the fact that there are going to be markets that they are just never going to reach. Which is fine because again this is so profitable for them that they can continue to manufacture their own destiny which is not something that most companies get to do these days.

Alex: There are car companies that are trying to reach India….so people can decide what…

Leo: You mean like TA TAs, not big TA TAs but little TA TAs.

Alex: I was not going to go down that path (Presenter talking over each other)

Leo: They drive those big TA TAs in most of the cities in India.

Alex: No we are not talking about those. (Presenters still arguing over what is TA TA)

Leo: I am talking about India’s largest automobile manufacturer TA TA Motors. Today, you have learned about TA TAs.

Alex: Bit Gravity for instance is owned by TA TAs.

Leo: Oh wait a minute our Bit Gravity is owned by TA TA Motors.

Alex: Yes by TA TA but not TA TA Motors.

Leo: I love TA TAs. I have been a TA TA fan since birth.

Andy: So if you were to go in to your server room would there be like a hundred students clinging to the side of every single server?

Leo: Yes. By the way they own Jaguar and Land Rover.

Andy: So it is not just a regional thing then?

Alex: They are kind of like Samsung in a way that they have a not just TA TA Motors but they make all kinds of stuff and it is giant.

Leo:  The newest utility vehicle is the TA TA Nano. We are going to take break and when we come back we are going to take questions from our audience and our question engine is at bit.ly.com/mbw401.

Alex: Actually today it is mb401 because some-body already took mbw.

Leo: Who would do that?

Alex: I went there to bind and draw them but it was gone.

Leo: MB401.

Alex: Correct.

Leo: When you go there you could watch the stream there. Alex has very kindly put the stream but if you are already watching the stream then please do not open another stream, because that would be awful.

Alex: You can also if you are there and you have a stream and stream, and you can also just pop out the stream and then pop out the video and close the window. Then you will just have text.

Leo: Now that is very cool. So I am popping out the video and then I am going to close this tab, now I have questions on their tabs and they are just questions. MB401 you know what happened did we not have our own shortener twit that I am? We got to do that and get that back.

Alex: So this the time when we can add ask questions, vote on questions.

Leo: Pay attention to the ad with all your might of course.

Alex: Exactly, of course.

Leo: But then after that when you have learned everything that you need to learn from this advertisement go in there and vote. Voting up or down is also a consideration, and you can comment.

Alex: You can comment too.

Leo: Holy Cow this does it all.

Alex: My windblown look.

Leo: Our show today brought to you by gazelle. That is the great place to sell your phone, your tablet, your iPad, your MAC and get something new. Something sweet. The point being that there is cash in their drawers and closets, under your bed, over your head where ever you store your old used stuff. Why leave it there gathering dust when you could get cash on the barrel head, money American dollars and green backs and saw bucks, fins in some cases hundos. All you got to do is go to, see I also speak the language of the street.

Alex: Yes.

Leo: I am a man of the people. All you have got to do is go to gazelle (spells out gazelle.com) and you just pick the thing that you have got and you say what is it worth, are you getting the new iPad, is there a new iPad out? Well there will be.

Alex: Someday.

Leo: Go and see what your old iPad is worth and they will even buy broken iPads, broken iPods so you know that if you have a 4S that you cracked which you do not want to get repaired just bring it to gazelle. Actually, you do not even have to bring it. You get the price, you get the quote and then get more stuff. Get it altogether and put it in your shopping basket, when you checkout and it is a kind of the reverse of a checkout, instead of you sending them money, they will send you a box pre-paid, postage paid on anything worth more than buck, and you pile into that box and you send it to them, and then they send you money. They send you the money it is opposite of the shopping basket. What would be the opposite of a shopping basket where you pile stuff into like a wheel barrow.

Andy: A selling box.

Alex: It is the selling box.

Leo: Visit gazelle.com and fill your sell box topped with sells and other stuff and then they will pay fast by check and PayPal or if you buy a lot stuff from Amazon then that 5 Percent rally helps because they give you an extra 5 percent on the Amazon gift card. (Spells out gazelle.com) Join more than 700,000 happy folks who have been paid more than 100 million dollars by gazelle. Cash for your stuff.(Spells out gazelle.com)

Alex: It is a much better idea than what I do with my old stuff. I just disassemble it.

Leo: You take it apart.

Alex: There are pieces of things everywhere that I took apart and crashed through helicopters and so my son has a pretty good idea of how those helicopters work now. We had a long discussions about capacitors.

Leo: And do not touch them. Did he find out did he learn.

Alex: Oh no it was not charged but we are trying to build a new helicopter from the pieces of the old helicopter which you know.

Leo: Good luck it is not as easy as it sounds.

Alex: Not, at all. It is the processors that are hard to figure out.

Leo: When I was a youngster I would disassemble things like abacuses to figure out how they worked. No, I used to take apart pocket watches. The problem with taking apart a watch is that when you open it up, and the thing goes boing, and you can never get it back.

Alex: And you can never replace that back.

Leo: However much you jam. Question number one the most up voted question thirty five times, comes to us from South West Ohio from Macmann, he is in South West Ohio,” Where in hell is the refreshed Mac Mini?” I am not sure whether he got the votes for the curse or just because everyone wants to know.

Alex: Everybody wants to know and I want to know?

Leo: We do not know.

Alex: We do not know.

Rene: We have to stick to where hell is on the 37^th layer in hell maybe or the 66^th layer.

Leo: It is over there. No there is no new Mac Mini.

Alex: I just thought that the question led to was what would we want to see in a new Mac Mini?

Leo: Wow, that is cool and how did it get to being answered on air?

Alex: I hit answer. So now you know that it is being answered right now.

Leo: That is so sweet. It is being answered right not South West Ohio Mac Man.

Alex: I think that one of the things that we want to see obviously is faster processors and what I would love to see is a faster GPU. That is the big thing that the lap-tops have.

Leo: That does not even have a Haswell Mac Mini.

Rene: Nope no Haswell.

Alex: It is such a great machine.

Leo: It has more Iris than I would care to have. Haswell’s features is the current processor from Intel is lower, better battery so it is good for a lap-top but that does not matter for the Mac Mini, because it is always plugged in better performance ofcourse. Lower power means cooler so it is nice for a very compact box but what you really want is the onboard graphics, Iris Pro graphics, do they put a GPU in the Mac Mini?

Alex: I do not know but whatever is in there is not fast.

Leo: It would be nice to have a bit of better GPU.

Rene: Yes it is on board and CPI flash, it should be nice.

Leo: Then I might trade in my Mac Pro.

Alex: Well that I think is the problem right.

Leo: Oh, that is why they do not want to do it.

Alex: It is just that the Mac Mini is so utilitarian that it is just so useful and we have so many of them. You can use them as little servers, you can use them as a little connection thing, it is great little piece of glue, it is. It is amazing.

Leo: If you had an Iris Pro 5000 graphics and you had a PCIESRD in there, and you know a fast I7 or

Alex: Or a Thunderbolt 2

Leo: Thunderbolt 2 would be great. Thunderbolt 2 would be very nice. Right that is better for most people than the Mac Pro., and that is it. It is everything that you need you will get with the MAC Pro dual GPUs and you know really higher. You know that it is the more beefy processor. Are you using that?

Rene: It is the family sedan version of the Mac Pro.

Leo: You know what it would be, it would be the SS, the Chevy SS. That is the four door sedan that the Chevy makes with the Camaro Drive Train.

Andy: There you have it.

Alex: That is what you want.

Andy: What I want is that I want to see a Mac Mini that is as smart online as the Apple TV believe it not and where it will make it really, really slim and make it SSD if you have to but also make the power requirements so minimal that you will have no problems keeping this on all the time, because the amount of services that even a headless Mac can deliver to you in home network is phenomenal if you have this one machine that has this 100 percent up time 24/7 that is always going to be serving documents, that is always going to be serving applications and always going to be serving media. It is always going to be keeping an eye on the health and the backup of the rest of the network, WOW, that would turn  lot of people from who do not even know whether Apple even makes a mini to some-one who is willing to buy a 500 dollar Mac Mini even just as an accessory to what they have got already without any intention of ever using it. And if that thing is easy to Velcro onto the back of a monitor to be the budget entry level Mac for the rest of the world so much the better. I am not looking for power as much as I am looking for accessibility for the rest of the world.

Alex: I mean I almost think that is almost to at the base two different things where you have Apple TV at 99 dollars, a Mac Mini Mini whatever Nano at 250 dollars and 300 dollars and then the base Mac Mini which is say 600 or 700 dollars, I think that could be incredible…. A lot of people really interested, I know that I would be interested in it.

Rene: A Nano.

Leo: Okay, next question that is the end of the conversation. So where is it who the hell knows.

Rene: Sitting in the laps.

Leo: Only Angela Ahrendts knows and it is in the lab.

Rene: She has got one.

Leo: We think there might be one at the WWDC which is at the end of June.

Rene: Or they could drop it in a press release.

Leo: They announced the Mac Books at the last one.

Rene: And the Mac Pro T.

Leo: Okay I am going to predict this that you are never going to see the new Mac Mini. They do not care.

Alex; But that is what we thought of the Mac Book Pro too.

Leo: No, it took a while but they had given up. I like that Mac Book Pro by the way. I am not knocking the Mac Book Pro and I am very happy with it. I did my surfing, all my emails all very fast.

Rene: So why don’t we email Tim Cook and ask him because he will respond to things like that sometimes and he will say that Apple has got plans for next year.

Leo: In wonderful new categories which means shades of Purple I do not know or something.

Andy: So the next Mac Mini is going to be a wearable Mac Mini. Yes, it is going to be a head band.

Rene: Back packable Mac Mini.

Andy: I think that the Mac Mini is more in line with the consumer focus than the Mac Pro is. I think that the Mac Mini fills in a lot of gaps that Apple does not want to avoid and so they cannot sell necessarily 500 iMacs to a school system but they can make the sale for the less expensive and the less complicated Mac Mini that they can simply flop whatever that they have got out there to a brand new Mac Mini deck. So I do think that there is a role for it and I do not think that it is a dead product, it is just, we keep reminding ourselves that Apple for all the fact that they are building a twelve thousand person space ship to replace their new headquarters, they really are a company that feels as though have limited resources and limited people and limited attention span. So if their focus is on other products, then other things in the product line are going to be ignored for a while and the Mac Mini fortunately is not the hot product that it is going to be. It is going to wait until there is a long enough gap in the product line development to actually put people on this project to make that a hot product again.

Rene: It would be nice if they showed that at the WWDC along with the 10.10. It would be nice.

Leo: Apple as we know walks to the beat of their own drummer. And you know you are exactly right and we said the same thing about the Mac Pro.

Alex: You can either dance or you do not dance and they are not going to listen to you.

Leo: This is why it is nice to have something that is made by a lot of different companies and which is why Apple have stopped doing that. They do not want to control it.

Alex: I think that that would be something that is very exciting is to see Apple in release OS 10.

Leo: Jersey Fudge asks, first of all I am going to explain Jersey Fudge…..

Andy: Should you put that through the Urban dictionary?

Leo: I understand that you immediately leap to that juncture but in fact I know this guy because he has brought me fudge from Jersey, not New Jersey it is the Old Jersey from the Island of Jersey where the cows are happier.

Alex: Nice.

Leo: The cream is better and the fudge is finer.

Alex: They are truly happier cows.

Rene: Where Jersey is spelt with 19 letters.

Leo: His question has disappeared. We are answering it. He says can Josh be kicked out of the chat-room? Who is Josh is he in the stockroom?

Alex: The bottom line is that people are not going to see it if we do not talk about Josh anymore because there is so many high voted questions at this point. We do not have kick functions yet, but we are working on them.

Leo: We do not care. Oh I see Josh he is from New South Wales, and he always get down voted because he says bad things about people who cares?

Will OS 10.10.10, so we are currently OS 10.9, OS 10.10.9.2….

Alex: This is going to be so confusing.

Leo So next it will be OS 10.10.10, will it be named after a beach.

Rene: Yes.

Alex: This is all so confusing.

Rene: It will be named after a California landmark.

Alex: I think that it will be called Half-Moon.

Leo: And the questions was will it be a huge update or will just be UI change or where is it  in the Tick Tock, are they still doing the Tick Tock, remember they are still doing Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion, Mavericks.

Rene: I do consider a huge design update because a lot of developers and a lot of people who work in the industry will tell you that design directly affects user experience, and that is one of the most important and value able characteristics of what they do. I mean Apple spent a year or close to a year, nearly ten months at break neck speed redesigning IOS 7 because they felt it was really, really important, and they are doing the same thing with the OS 10.10.10 now and that is absolutely a big thing. (some sound distortion)

Leo: Did they put one person on renaming that? Just one.

Alex: That is why they call it Mavericks so no one has to say that.

Leo: Or they could call it Triple OSX.

Rene: Code named Syrah you can call it that.

Leo: Syrah, like que sarah or like the wine or like the French pointelist of the nineteenth century? George Syrah or is it like the petite Syrah? (Presenters talking over each other)

Andy: Too many details. It does make you wonder that they are saving eleven for because the last time they went up a full number was when they went from OS 9 to OS 10, and you feel as if they are saving it for the day when they can say that they are doing something as revolutionary up as able to break your old experience as OS 10 was for OS 9.

Leo: We do know that OS 10 10.9.3 is being ceded to developers so we will see that sooner than later. They ceded that five or six days ago Rene is that right?

Rene: Yes in the new Apple C program and even if you are not a developer you can sign up and test the betas, but do not do that on your primary machine by the way.

Leo: If you do that are you NDA’d.

Rene: You are NDa’d and also you give up your Apple Care privileges because the front facing part of the consumer Apple does not take care of Beta soft-ware for you only. Only, if you are really rugged and curious and have a spare machine.

Leo: So I am sure that some-one in the iMore team is rugged and curious?

Rene: My boss is running three 4k monitors of 10.10 sorry 10.10.3 and he is loving it.

Leo: Three 4k monitors and does he have a Mac Pro?

Alex: That is a lot of resolution.

Rene: Yes he does.

Leo: That is tempting. You know the only person I know who has actually good 4k monitors as we had him on Twit on Sundays is Marcus Brown Leigh who has 60 hertz 4k monitors. I bet that your boss has those 30 k monitors.

Rene: No he got them in the Christmas sale of Dell and they are running on the 60 k U Bells of OS 10.

Leo: Oh that is interesting and that is OS 10 specific thing.

Rene: Yes you can get really crappy 30 hertz.

Leo: Yes, yes but they cannot do more but if you get the new ones then the newest ones, when did that kick in?

Rene: I think that the first 10.9 pre beta had that.

Leo: So that is something to look forward to. There are four of us who have Pros. Does it look like really nice. (Presenters talking over each other)

Rene: Yes we have a picture of it and it looks mind boggling.

Leo: And are they 27 inches or 30 inches or bigger?

Rene: I think that they are 27 or 30 I forget the exact size whatever ones, that Dell were selling over there. I believe it is a 27.

Leo: Those covetous must look fabulous.

Rene: You can see every hair Leo.

Leo: Okay, I will look forward to it and build 13 D 55 10.9.3, what do we have for a kind of time frame do you think that we have based on this is what the 9^th update, 9^th seed of developers.

Rene: Something like that, they may release it at the WWDC and I do not know if they will be in rush too.

Leo: Will they release it at the WWDC?

Rene: I think they will release it when they are ready, I should not pressure them.

Leo: Apple has a few acquisitions with this little lawsuit going on, and the jury seem to think that Apple is worth 119 million dollars, a little less than 2.2 billion they wanted? And it is kind of a mixed verdict because they gave Samsung a little something. We will talk about what all that means to the “great smart phone wars”, Vanity Fair calls it. The big hoax that fooled pretty much everybody, the bio-metric and we will talk about that the biometric ear bugs and why you might not want to buy the brand new Mac Book Air? But first a word from Square Space, I know that you want Square Space, the place to make your next website. SquareSpace.com if you go and visit as many of you have, and click the Get Started button and you will immediately enter the Square Space universe and now this is hosting and the best hosting there is and there is nothing better. You cannot bring a Square Space site down, so many is the time that we go to a website and bring it to its knees. And we wish gosh I wish I was on Square Space, and we will never have to worry about that. Plus amazing software, you know the website because they like to show off like all the stuff their templates can do, like the Parallax scrolling and all that stuff. You start with 25 beautiful designer templates, you they are the state of the art, I mean these are award winning templates, they are just gorgeous and then look at all the people who have used the templates and what they have done with it. Everything from hotdogs to gardens, I just want to see this because I am curious about where Harry Curtis Hot Dogs are? I guess he is available for hire established 2013. Okay you could make your site look like that, to look at this The Indian Garden, this is beautiful Sedona, Arizona, café and market. So these templates have another nice feature which no matter what size screen they will look gorgeous. This is the new thing and this is what I like using about Square Space is that your site will look modern no matter what and the new thing now is big images what we call full oblique and they fill the whole screen right and they are just gorgeous. You do not have to think about it. It is all done for you. Whenever you add images they are resized to nine different thumb nails so that they will always fit whatever it is you are trying to fit.  And you know this is a magazine and you know they are going to want their site to look gorgeous right? And then you go and buy the magazine. Every template has commerce built in, so you do not have to think about it, look this magazine they are taking orders Add To Cart all within Square Space they support there is the cart it is just beautiful, this is like elegant you know you do not have to think about all this stuff.

Alex: And it is mobile and desk-top, that takes a lot of work believe me.

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I do not like to normally like to talk about law suits I do not want to encourage this. But the jury did come in fact that they are deliberating today for little bit of a second thing. No I think that was done.

Rene: That was yesterday.

Leo: That was yesterday, and they recalculated the verdict 119 million dollars and that is a lot less than the previous award so the first Apple Samsung trial was over trade dress, how the thing looked. It was whether it was confusing if when you go into the store and you see this, which is a Samsung Phone and you think that you are buying an iPhone. And that jury gave Samsung more than billion dollars and that judgment is still with Apple. I am sorry took from Samsung and gave it to Apple. In this one it is very similar although it was about five patents, things like slide to unlock, and click text message to dial phone number. The jury did yes there was infringement but a lot less though 119.6 million dollars to Apple. Samsung which counter sued got a 154,000 sorry 115,000 dollars. So the jury is sending a little bit of message that it is not like there was this pervasive Samsung stealing things, the did (did not complete the sentence).

Andy: You kind of wonder how much damage is being done to both parties by these protracted law suits. It is not just that Samsung is losing some, it is not just that they had to write a check out of their pocket when for 150,000 dollars Apple has to pay that check. It is just that every time these law suits go forward there is the discovery process where there is more documents are brought to light. And as more scrutiny gets paid to every single patent that Apple  and Samsung and all these other types of companies have taken off the courts are getting a little bit more skeptical that any of these patents should have been actually issued to begin with. So I hope that we see an end to the scorched earth policy because right now I think that within a year we are going to enter our Aussie Mendez phase where Apple is going to be the statue in the desert that won all the law suits but the inscription on that statue will ever be made is we won all those law suits, Oh well!

Leo: If I remember Apple and Samsung is a proxy right? Do Google directly and for some reason they haven’t and the jury even mentioned that saying why don’t you sue Google.

Rene: It is hard to prove that Google earned any money from Android.

Leo: That is the problem. And Google is backing Samsung and agreed to indemnify them  on at least two of the patents so that is the 190 million out of Google’s pocket.

Alex: I do not know what their intentions is but it might my guess is that it creates a chilling effect on other people who think that they are going to any other manufacturer, maybe not Samsung, but everybody else who thinks that they might do something like Apple has already done or patented, Apple is going to make it clear to them that we will take you to court and we will keep it in court forever. I do not think that they care how much money they win what they want to do is to create an unsafe environment for anyone who thinks that they is going to copy something like what they did. Now I do not know whether that is valid or not but I think that might be the play here. It is not just for Samsung, but for every manufacturer using Android. It is also possible that Samsung will not even be an Android developer in three to four years. They are probably going to be in their own little world. And it is a pretty big message to the rest of Android platform that Apple will bring to bear and keep on pounding until there is nothing left to pound.

Leo: According to Ena Fried writing in Ricod the two patents that Google has said will indemnify you on is the back drop synchronization universal search and the jury said Samsung did not infringe. So I guess Google will not have to help Samsung out at all. Samsung cannot afford this. However the two patents the jury did said they did infringe were the quick links patents and the slide to unlock patent, which surprises me that there is clear prior ordinance I mean clear prior.  A third patent which was automatic word correction, auto correct was determined by the court to have infringed, and the court said no, and all the jury had to do was decide damages. So a victory for Apple, but I think that you are right a quick victory. Although I have heard some say that this will never end. Apple is going to continue to go after these companies, forever.

Rene: There is a thing inside Apple. Apple is a very personal company. It is not run like IBM or a company like that it is a lot of individuals, and to their core and Steve Jobs was the most famous one who truly believed that they did something special with the iPhone in 2007 and that their manufacturing partner at the time, and that their services partner at the time Samsung and Google used their relationships to learn how to make a modern smart phone and then in Apple’s way of thinking betray them, copy them and leveraged all of Apple’s research development, sweat, tears design, engineering and everything to basically jump start their own entry into the market.

Leo: Isn’t that patently false?

Rene: It is not patently false but it also may not be illegal.

Leo: I think it is false. Give Apple the credit that the first iPhone was a total break through and everybody in the industry sat up and said WOW! But that was in 2007 and I do not think that you can say that we ought to own this lab glass face.

Alex: The early Samsung phones were specifically looking like Apple, specifically so they would get sales.

Rene: If Samsung had made a Blackberry when BlackBerry was popular when the Windows mobile phone came out and that was popular, they made a power cord that looked like Apple. And if you read the Vanity Fair article it is amazing, and it tells you that and I have worked with companies in Japan and which is very similar and there is a very different philosophy there because they do not see that as copying they see that this is what the market is doing and we are going to do what the market wants. It is an incredibly different outlook in American companies sometimes react like the television industry and the computer industry did and like the mobile industry is doing now considers that copying and they just consider making the product that the market want. And those two philosophies do not co-exist very well, and also sometimes there are incredibly bad losses. I had a friend who worked in refrigerators who said the same thing about Samsung or someone and he said they copied our bottom pull out fridge drawer we were in litigation forever and there are fridge patents that have to be respected and these things get worked out. But mobile is incredibly new business and none of that stuff has been worked out legally yet.

Alex: Well I think that some of the frustration of folks that are trying to figure things out and obviously that and the more R &D goes on the argument is that more R&D stakes for some of the stuff and that when people just copy it and it does not account for that R&D. It goes into it and it not just the cost of the item but also the cost of getting it out there because it can overall suppress the market and the area. I do not think that it does it here because Apple was making plenty of money. So I am not sure I agree with it but that is the argument. You know it does take a while to do it well.

Andy: The other thing is that there has to be a line drawn between what Samsung did certainly with the first generations of their phones which is obviously let us make as close a knock off of the iPhone as we possibly can, and the basic idea that has been the engine of almost every major advance over the last twenty, thirty, forty years that is to say is that was not my original idea and that this concept is really, really, strong I am going to take that concept and use that to affect my thinking and use that to affect the mind and ideas of my products that I am going to be cultivating. So if you decide that the first person to do a four wheeled vehicle now owns the concept of four wheels, now you can do three wheels, you can do five wheels and you can do six wheels, as long as you do not put those four of those back wheels close together enough so that it looks like four wheels that absolutely ends all innovation. So that also sort of makes a mockery of the nature of ideas and ideas is of all is that if you get inspired by all forces and, sometimes that is something that lawyers have to argue about is whether there was an actual infringement or not. But you cannot deny that if everybody who worked on the iPhone were to re- tele - port it onto the Mars base without any connection to anything that had ever been done before they would have created something that was totally the same thing totally unique and totally within itself that had no inspiration from anything else. I just think that we should make sure that we observe that line between the two. You can innovate, you can develop and you can move technology forward whilst being the part of the world that you live in. It is hard to justify creating a device that can never have any overlap with anything else that has come before.

Rene: The thing with Samsung especially I love the Motorola stuff and I love the HDC stuff but I have never bought a Samsung thing, and a little bit of it is that I feel that their products are derivative and you can say you know they copied the iPhone with Verizon. No there were no Verizon iPhones they made something that was close to a Verizon iPhone but I have covered Samsung events like Andy has and some of the same ones. The Galaxy three event and they said oh look we are making a Riverstone and no-one has ever done this before and conductive charging no-one has ever done this before and I was at the Palm Pre-Event two years ago, and saw that exact same announcement, and that as a consumer does not bother me but disappoints because I would like to have something that is amazingly like Samsung which is what they are doing more of now.

Andy: I think that is the problem and we are getting things that are amazingly Samsung now in each and every revision of their phones. There is another reason why I cannot be so quite angry with Samsung because who in the end pays the price for operating your business that way. When was the last time that Samsung came out with a flag-ship phone that everybody said WOW! this is so new and it is exactly like the way I would like an Android phone to be. I mean Nokia has done fantastic things with the 10/20 and the 15/20 and the other phones that they have done in the Lumia line, HTC, their HTC One line is amazing Sony Xperia is an amazing phone that gets lots and lots of people writing positive things about it because it is such wonderful piece of design. The S3 was probably the last really great phone that Samsung put out because it was the last one that seemed to have its own style and its own bit of panache about it. But they are not doing that warriors journey of meditating under a waterfall for three or four days until inspiration hits. They are really just trying to take whatever from the other warriors and from their meditations last year. And it shows in the product line, they have done some good stuff but they have never done anything really great.

Leo: Okay and I would agree and I would not buy another Samsung phone unless you know they fix this stuff up and they spend so much money on marketing it that they have anomaly because they buy the ads. But you cannot sue some body for that. Well you can you can sue anybody for anything, but you should not sue them for that. (Presenters talking over each other) I would say that it is time for Apple to lay down arms and Samsung lay down arms and just calm down. You are in different enough spaces now. If Apple continues to go after Samsung there are two possibilities. One is that Steve Jobs is so revered that his holy war will just continue forever and that is not good for Apple. Or two they are so afraid of Samsung that they do not dare let up.

Alex: I do not think that they are afraid of Samsung but I still think that this is good marketing from Apple to other Android developers, that is what I think this message is. I do not think that Apple and it does not cost them anything to do this and they won enough in this one and whatever and this all noise to them, and we know about Apple suing Samsung but the average person I mean my parents do not know anything about the Apple law suit, and my dad is a lawyer.

Leo: Oh really.

Alex: He does not care about this.

Leo: Yes but he must have heard about this. (Presenters talking over each other)

Alex: I think that 99 percent of the users even if they have heard about it, it is kind of back ground noise. But I think that people who are developing for Android will pay a lot of attention to it. But I do not think that the average knows who owns the phone, or even if they know cares at all.

Andy: They also do not care if Samsung stole the ideas or entire phone designs from Apple.

Leo: Give me a good phone.

Alex: I think that for the average consumers this happens way in the background. It is kind of a side story for people who are in the know I think and…(incomplete sentence)

Leo: I am impressed by how much consumer seem to know about the mobile market. I think that is different they take it much more personally and surprisingly a large number people know a lot about stuff that we think is completely inside baseball. My kids break their phones every three weeks and so I spend a lot of time in the AT&T store, and it surprising how much consumers and even normal people know.

Rene: That article in Vanity Fair Leo that is not a trade publication.

Leo: What Vanity Fair for crying out loud.  They must care, why would they The Great Smart Phone War.

Rene: I want that film I want to see people eating the papers.

Leo: Ikenwold, for three years Apple and Samsung have clashed, but this does not mean that you have to know or care about it because he sets it up so that you care about it.” For three years Apple and Samsung have clashed on a scale unprecedented in business history. Their legal war costing more than a billion dollars and spanning four continents…” this could be like the next three hundred….(Presenters shouting)

Rene: It is an amazing story, and not Apple but Korean investigators were going after them for price fixing on LCDs, and are trying to get in there and are stalling them with drop out computers and eat the paper work. But I love my company but I am not going to eat the paper work.

Leo: Eat the paper work. So I have not read the article yet but I was busy looking at the pictures of Madonna, but is it good?

Rene: It shows you how insane these companies are and again anyone who has dealt with cadets in Japan in the 80s or would be conglomerates in Korea in this decade it is enlightening to feel how much of people’s lives are how big and how powerful and how all encompassing all these companies are.

Leo: He talks about the Purple dorm. The Purple dorm smelt like pizza occupying a building at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino. So the dorm was named because the employees were the 24/7 with the ever present odor of fast food. I do not know where the Purple comes from was the site of the company’s most secret undertaking code named “Project Purple”.

Rene: The iPhone was named Purple.

Leo: Project Purple and they called it the Purple Dorm. You know that the dorm that I visited at the University of Colorado Boulder did not smell like fast food.

Alex: No there is not in Boulder that smells like fast food. That was not very popular however there are other things that are more popular. (Presenters talking over each other)

Leo: You know me I read all these back ground books, and assume that this is the beginning of Curt is going to write a book that will be this story although we have seen this for this book. I guess that we have not seen a Samsung Apple book also the Google Apple book.

Andy: We have not seen whole load of books that really got the journalism down cold. I have seen a lot that hovered around it but I could not believe what you cannot believe and you have the authoritative state of biographies that are breathtaking in some of the insights but really made you look at the bare patches of unpainted wood that should have really been in there. We are still waiting for really good journalist powered book on the development of these devices. Solve a New Machine is still a fascinating book, but even if you have absolutely no interest in micro-processors design any processor that tell you about how interesting and creative people struggle to complete a project and bring a vision into reality from neuro synaptic miss-firings out of your head into an actual commercial product, that is a great project to watch and so that is why I want to see more stories like this.

Leo: This is his concluding paragraphs there have been moments that bordered on the absurd when the patents by Apple as a single sentence claim with diagrams for a rectangular device with rounded corners, not a particular device just a the rectangle itself. While all that seeming silliness seems to practically demonstrate to be important by Samsung’s own lawyers when Federal Judge Lucy Coe was still the judge in all of this stuff held up the iPad and the Galaxy 10 and asked a lawyer can you tell which is which. Not at this distance your honor said the lawyer, he was standing ten feet away. No one can claim a total victory in the global litigation wars. One person close to Apple said that the endless fighting has been a drain on the company both emotionally and financially. Meanwhile as has happened with other cases where Samsung had violated a company’s patents it has continued to develop new and better phones throughout the litigation point where even some people who work with Apple say that the Korean company is now strong competitor on the technology and not just a copycat. We would agree on that? Yes.

Alex: Yes.

Leo: Despite his role in propelling the law suits Jobs who died in 2011 by now and I disagree with this part might have looked at the scorched earth left behind by the litigation and followed his own advice that it was time to move on. I do not think that Steve would be moving on. I have looked at the mirror every morning and asked myself if today were the last day of my life would I want to do what I am about to do today this is from his famous Stansford comments. Yes he would still be oh yes.

Rene: The best thing about these lawsuits is how much of the history of the development of the iPhone was made public because given their own brothers would not make any of this important, cultural object benefit to us.

Leo: Benefit to us.

Rene: Absolutely and we have learned about the Project Purple and the dorm.

Leo: Yes and the dorm. By the way some-one in the chatroom said it was known as Henry’s Purple Haze Dorm. And that is actually quite correct. There was more than a thousand days of litigation in the hope that fully one morning Curt finishes up soon and executives at Samsung and Apple look at their reflection and at long last hit their limit of nos. That is where he ends but I do not know.

Rene: Apple signed deals with Motorola, Apple signed deals with HTC and it is not smart.

Leo: It is settled, yes, it is settled. This is now the diminishing returns 1.1 billion the first time and 119 million the second time and the third time it is going to be eleven million and then it is going to be about fifty million.

Andy: 2012 was the big win. I mean that was the one with look here is two billion dollars in infringements and not only that but as you guys have been saying a very strong warning against anybody else who wants to be a major player, and wants to make a phone that is too similar to the iPhone. A major victory there and also a major philosophical victory of having the court say yes and it is not simply having Apple say things they put a lot of passion in this and they put a lot of innovation, and they built a lot of patents that they should have been issued and that those are being defended in court. Everything after that is kind of crumbs and so I do not know what Steve would or would not have done and I do not know what is in Apple’s best interest right now but I think that whatever they needed to achieve by suing Samsung they got a couple of years ago and I do expect that we are going to see diminishing lawsuits and diminishing aggressions on this front… I mean, if they’re trying to kill Android at this point, yikes!

Alex: I don’t think it’s a kill.

Andy: There’s a time you can’t kill cockroaches anymore, you can only kick them off to the sidelines.

Leo: Coexist.

Alex: I don’t think the point is to kill Android, I think the point is to make it unsafe for developers, so when they look at that and say, “Oh I’m just going to copy something, whatever apple just did that’s great.” So to think about that on the other end, I know that as a company, there’s a lot of legal things you always look at, you know whether it’s how you develop things, what you do, how you deal with your employees, all those things. That every decision is informed by the legal issues that are around it, and so what Apple is doing is simply creating those legal issues, so that everyone gets when you see Apple do something really cool, and you think that you’re going to add that to your operating system, they’re going to be relentless.

Leo: Meanwhile, I continue, Samsung says they’re going to appeal, and they’re doing an event, just a few days before WWDC, May 28^th, to kick off a new conversation around health. But wait? Isn’t Apple going to kick off the…? John Patchikowski writing in Recode, says Word of advice, if you’ve been anticipating finding hardware at WWDC, dial back your expectations, or be disappointed. No new Apple TV. Tim cook, according to sources, will not show off a wearable device, will not even preview new software for the Apple TV. Mark German says OS101010, and IOS 8, and maybe that health book app, but don’t expect much more. You guys agree?

Andy: They did say that a couple days ago that this is the last week for any pendant or analyst to make predictions about WWDC. If you want to make sure readers forget what was actually said at the time the announcements are actually made.

Leo: You have to have 30 days prediction in the actual event.

Rene: The return window for your predications.

Leo: The biometric ear pods… No, not so much. It was posed on secret. Now anybody who reports a tech rumor that they heard on secret… I read a lot of tech rumors on secret, the very least what you should do is say, well, okay. I saw it on secret! This was the post. Apple’s new ear pods will have sensors in them for heart rate, and blood pressure, also eye beacons so they don’t get lost. Though require the lightening port, was why the audio jack was moved to the bottom. Whoever wrote this obviously smart, Apple did have, does have a patent for biometric sensors in the ears. Ibeacons lightening port, I don’t know. It’s credible, isn’t it? And that’s probably why…

Alex: I think the thing is, the best thing about a rumor is when it’s close enough that you go, “Oh that makes sense!” Because you’re really against soft tissue, and you theoretically get that data.

Leo: The leaker says…

Alex: This just doesn’t seem like something that Apple would do.

Leo: Again, so first of all, we did not report it last week. And if we did we would have said, oh yeah, this seems like a rumor. But all the tech places… but you know, I have mixed feelings about reporting Apple rumors in general. Rumors are not news! Rumors are just stuff floating around, often wrong.

Alex: It’s a good conversation piece, it gives you something to talk about, as long as we tell people though.

Andy: Yeah, exactly. I mean they’re interesting as launching off points for ideas on where Apple might be headed. Or the company we think we understand, how would they actually do this sort of idea. But yeah, there’s a reason why no one...no journalist who likes their safety will ever speculate on anything that Apple might do. Any closer than 10 days before any sort of a media event. Because they are a company that can do almost literally anything, and that can change their minds in a shorter time frame than you could ever imagine. So it’s interesting to have a conversation about how health is going to be increasingly important to Apple. It’s such a perfect fit that would sort of mandate that they give themselves, to not only make a lot of money selling technology, but also improve people’s lives, and create brand new things. And I don’t think there’s been a device right now that really cracks that for now. And the idea of having a health device that can really be, to take away all the problems of wanting to monitor your activity, monitor your fitness, that’s something Apple would be into with both hands.

Leo: Yeah, I can’t imagine them putting ibeacons in this. That would cause… the thing would cost too much, it would have to have battery life.

Andy: My thing is the strain relieve of having all that strain on a lightening connector. I don’t think a lightening connecter is something they want to use for something that’s going to be bounced around and jostled around a lot.

Leo: So the guy who created the original secret, created a tumble log and then linked to it from that secret post, is tumble log post, close the ear pod doors please, how an apology. I leaked the story about biometric ear pods, but I’m not proud of it. Hundreds of blog posts, thousands of tweets, all the news items from the daily mail in the UK, to the evening news in the US, all because of a post on secret. He says I wrote it five minutes after I woke up on the first of May. I was blurried eyed, I had a headache, I was on the toilet, and worried about my blood pressure. I’d been messing around with secret as an outlet for comedy. He said it was a joke!

Alex: Right.

Leo: But you know you post this stuff….

Alex: Well played.

Andy: But good on him, because if you read the entire post, the tumbler post, he said the reason why he’s coming clean is because now he’s afraid that the people inside Apple are going to get investigated or fired for, quote, leaking out information. The idea…

Leo: Wouldn’t that be ironic.

Andy: Well yeah, well.

Rene: He caused Apple to cancel the biometric headgear.

Leo: He says that “the first thing I felt was fear.” He says, “I didn’t put it on Reddit.” I guess that’s where it goes next right? It goes from secret to Reddit, and from reddit to tech crunch and from tech crunch to bigger mainstream media outlet, and from then it’s true.

Alex: Right.

Rene: You get to have apple in a headline, and you didn’t create the rumor, so if it’s wrong you’ll just do another follow-up story that has Apple in the headline.

Leo:  He says, I just made it all up on the crapper. (Laughs)

Alex: Well done. Why can’t I create some kind of viral rumor that you know…

Leo: Okay, anyway it’s fake.

Andy: I posted something that was five thousand words long last week that probably didn’t get as much attention as this.

Leo: That’s where the frustration is.

Andy: I should run my WIFI router into the bathroom where…

Alex: You were generating your post from the wrong desk.

Andy: I thought you were going to say generating the post from the wrong end, but you didn’t.

(Laughs)

Leo: Ladies and gentlemen, I am so excited. This is going to be my pick of the week! Give it to me, give it to me! This is my pick of the week. We’re going to get to our pick of the weeks in just a second. So Lisa says I’ve been making bran muffins. Healthy bran muffins. But she says, I don’t want the muffin, I just want the top! I said well you’ve got to have the muffin if you’re going to have the top! She said no! I’m going to find muffin top pans! They make pans that are just muffin tops!

Alex: I had no idea! You’re right, there’s no reason to eat the rest of it. You just want the muffin top.

Leo: Ladies and gentlemen, I give you from Chicago Metallic.

Alex: Oh man.

Leo: The original muffin top pan.

Alex: That is awesome.

Leo: My pick of the week, ladies and gentleman!

Alex: You know what else that would be really good for? You know what else that’s good for?

Leo: What?

Alex: You could use that to cook your little egg sandwiches that go in an English muffin with a little piece of ham.

Leo: I’m going to make all sorts of stuff in the muffin top.

Alex: Small Pancakes.

Leo: Do we have any questions Alex Lindsay?

Alex: Oh yes, we do!

Leo: Bycly/mb401 for our question engine.

Alex: Okay, this is our most, and what’s interesting about this, by the way, is if you look at the questions there’s like five of them that are very popular and the rest of them are just…

Leo: How do I get that interface?

Alex: Dashboard. I don’t think I have you… I think you’re an admin...

Leo: I am an admin. Dashboard! Look at this, look at this! There’s a graph, you do a graph of questions asked over time.

Alex: You can’t show people that yet.

Leo: Don’t look! There’s no graph!

Alex: But it’s interesting. Go back to dashboard one more time, I’ll show you one more thing.

Leo: You can show this Chad, even though it’s not good.

Alex: But you have, we’ve had 169 people.

Leo: Yep, registered.

Alex: 282 questions.

Leo: 282 questions.

Alex: A lot of them trolls.

Leo: 18 answered. Some of t hose answered off the air, obviously.

Alex: Yeah, I answered some of them. But then you can the graph.

Leo: That’s cool. So then I can look at questions here?

Alex: Okay now Chad, turn that part off. So anyway, so now click on that little thing that looks like an IPhone.

Leo: Oh this is the pretty interface.

Alex: Right. Now when you click on…

Leo: Back to Jersey judge.

Alex: Click on this little gear.

Leo: okay the gear. You can show this Chad, it’s not secret.

Alex: High answered questions.

Leo: High answered questions, close it. This is like you put effort into this?

Alex: We did! We put a lot of effort into this.

Leo:  you programmed this!

Alex: Andy, our programmer.

Leo: What do you write it in? Is it python?

Alex: It sits in Roku.

Leo: Oh its rubi amathon!

Alex: So anyway so…

Leo: If you were put in charge, asked Kester JTT from Trinidad and Tobago.

Alex: Wait, wait, and click on this. Watch this.

Leo: What happens? Is it a big question?

Alex: Click on this and hit answer.

Leo: If you were put in charge of the Apple TV? What are the three main things you would change or add? This is good Alex, I like this. Are you going to sell this?

Alex: That’s the plan.

Leo: What’s the name?

Alex: Andy Abgotsen.

Leo: Andy Abgotsen. Thank you!

Alex: I think I said the name, Andy’s name right. Andy, I know you’re watching so I’m sorry if I didn’t say it right, abgotsen. Most people just call him spoon. But Andy is the one who built this.

Leo: Spoon wrote this. If you were put in charge of the next “apple TV kids, what are the three main things you would change or add? Games, or app. No! Just forget games, Apps!

Alex: Apps, that’s the number one!

Andy: Open it up for an app store.

Leo: Store! One, number 2

Rene: Universal search!

Leo: Universal search bingo!

Andy: Survey says!

Leo: Survey says universal search. Number 2!

Rene: Webcam!

Leo: No!

Andy: Notifications.

Leo: You lose. Survey says!

Andy: I want it to be a server for notifications too. So I can…

Leo: Speech enabled.

Rene: Yeah, Siri.

Andy: That’s so hard!

Leo: I do not want notifications on my TV! I do not!

Rene: You could have Skype side bar!

Alex: I hate it when people call and I get their phone number in front of Game of Thrones, or 24…

Andy: Okay, but that’s why you have a notifications manager for this that lets you say, I want to hear things from this app, this app, this app, but not this one, this one, or this one. The number of times I’m watching TV and I’ve got my phone handy, or my computer handy, not because there’s something I’m actively doing, but because there’s something I actively want to keep an eye on. I want the Apple TV to be less a thing that I put, I want it to be less of a streaming music player, and a way to integrate this big huge wonderful screen that’s in the social area of my house…

Leo: You want that more than speech?

Andy: … Into the services that I’ve got on my digital network, that’s all.

Leo: You want that more than speech?

Andy: Okay, speech is fine, but how are you going to use it? It works great on the fire TV as a way of not having to type out, you know,

Leo: It does. Game of thrones.

Andy: Exactly, but in terms of voice command, are you going to have it listening all the time for an activation word?

Leo: No, my Xbox one does that and that’s not very useful.

Andy: Are you going to make sure it’s going to have a wide enough library of commands that I don’t have to have a card handy, to say oh wait, it’s supposed to say, find me game of  thrones on the DVR.

Leo: No, that’s what’s nice about Android, you just say the name, there’s no command. But there are two commands I like.

Andy: You have to hold down a microphone button on the remote to activate it. Google now could make that work, but only if, it’s amazing to me the more of these devices that I try, the more interfaces that I try, how few of them do anything better than up, down, left, right, okay. On an actually nicely made remote control.

Leo: I know. But I got to tell you the thing I use it all the time on the Xbox 1. Xbox pause. If you want to get up and go to the peepee, you say, Xbox pause, you don’t touch anything. And it stops! And then you come back into the room, you say, Xbox play. So pause, play. There are… okay, so this is it! We’re tabling this conversation to answer Kester JJ, we all agree, App store, we all agree universal search.

Andy: Better launcher too. We got this big grid that is just scroll, scroll, scroll, I can scroll, I can hide, I can show.

Leo: You’re right, they’ve got to fix that.

Andy: I will never, ever, ever, use ESPN channel ocho.

Leo: You can remove it. Andy you can remove it. But you have to do it in the parental controls.

Rene: You can hide it form the screen now, it trickles…

Andy: But we do have to see an overhaul of the interface. It also has to be faster. I switched back to the Apple TV for a couple weeks just to make sure I’m recentering my expectations, and the number of times that I have to look at a spinning progress bar, or something that says authenticating right now, compared to the Roku, or anything else I’ve got plugged into my TV, it’s like wow, that is so freaking slow.

Rene: On the plus side, Apple is paying their own transit fees for Netflix so its…

Leo: I agree, best Netflix ever! Dan Rayburn said that.

Andy: The interface sucks, but good play back.

Leo: I’m going to be judge Lucy Co right now. Okay, I’m tempted but I’m not going to do an accent! Number one app store, we all agree, number two we all agree universal search. Number 3, we mostly agree, voice,

Alex:  with a webcam!

Leo: With a… No, honey! No! Give me a new question!

Alex: Hit done!

Leo: Oh wait, I hit a escape!

Alex: Uh oh. We’ll see how that goes.

Leo: Is escape a mistake?

Alex: Well it won’t mark it as done.

Leo: Google releases classroom today, uh oh…

Alex: Now it’s confused.

Leo: Now it’s confused. I broke it! See that took…

Alex: We’re working on it!

Leo: That was easy!

Alex: This is why we beta test it on the show, so…

Leo: How do I get it big?

Alex: I don’t know if you can right now, because it’s probably still on another page.

Leo: Oh maybe there’s still another page open on my browser? No.

Alex: You put it into a new state.

Leo: Lets press back. Okay, back. And then IPhone interface, and then answer. Adrian Merrington or Midland MI, says, Google releases Classroom today… I don’t know about that.

Alex: So classroom is an integrated solution to… It basically takes Google docs and adds a wrapper around that to make it easier for assignments and classes, and everything else. So you can use it in a school and assign students stuff, and all the google docs are easy to register, and the teacher can look at them, and all that stuff.

Leo: Gotcha. But Adrian says, Apple seems to have forgotten about schools. What do they need to do to remain relevant to the classroom? They’ve done one thing already, and that was an $899 MacBook air. And I think that was directly aimed at that. I can only think of the IPad of being common in classrooms. They own classrooms with the iPad, don’t you think?

Alex: They do pretty well with them.

Leo: Textbooks, they let drop. They let slide.

Alex: I think that there’s an opportunity to redefine what a classroom is, which is not what anybody is doing right now. Anyway…

Andy: Just the fact that I think Google docs is now the air, and the oxygen and the atmosphere of education at this point.

Rene: It can be.

Leo: More choices, they’re announcing new chrome books today. There’s more choices, I just feel like that’s a strong contender, apples really good that…

Andy: It’s a more democratic system. No matter what it is you’re running at home, or no matter what you have access to, it can run Google Docs, that’s not true of pretty much anything other solution you come up with.

Leo: ICloud won’t do that?

Andy: Well again, you’re stuck with a 350 dollar buy in for anything.

Leo: That’s right. No school, no government, no local government wants to tell parents you have to be in the Apple ecoverse.

Andy: And I’m sure they don’t want them to have a 5 year plan that says at no point can we ever add anything to this group that doesn’t have an Apple logo on it. The web apps are really good, but it’s not up to what educators want. And also, they’re running into the same effect that Microsoft got with Microsoft office where it no longer has to be the greatest suite in the world. It just happens to be the suite that everybody knows how to use, and they just don’t want to have to train people up on a brand new system, or every time you get a new employee, train that person up on a whole new system, and it’s not fud either, it’s how much time you want to spend on…

Leo: Okay, we’re doing lightning rods, so we’re going to move on! Paul Franz from Pennsylvania. Given that the Apple TV… More apple TV stuff, when will it get a UI update, and when will it require new hardware. Rene Ritchie? You know.

Rene: There will probably be a version that runs on existing hardware, but the new interface will probably come with a new refreshed interface.

Leo: What’s next for icloud.com asks Mark in Atlanta, ITunes? Imessage? Iphoto? I give up.

Alex: I work. I mean that it works. That it’s smooth that it works. I think that’s all they need to do.

Leo: You’re wrong, Apple will give up cloud entirely, and just say buy more hardware.

Andy: photo and video are going to be the next ups.

Rene: Yeah, photo and video.

Leo: They need to. They killed the photo gallery, and they haven’t put it back yet! What are the challenges, this is from Awakened Sleeper, sorry sleeper, I didn’t mean to shout. Los Angeles CA… What are the challengers or road-blocks for Apple… What is the blue line doing going across?

Alex: It’s refreshing. It doesn’t do that with a single page.

Leo: Got it. What are the challenges or road-blocks for Apple to open up Apple TV for Developers? I love my Amazon Fire TV. Which buy the way works with Koshes all cast... So it is open, because it said, it’s using dial, it seems to be pretty open.

Alex: I think the roadblock is Apple just doesn’t want to do it. I think they’re afraid of making it complicated and messy and everything else. And I think they need to. They’ve been able to do anything, it’s just an IOS app.

Rene: They just need a new hardware.

Leo: Nick Costa, Hyde Park NY. With a beautiful franklin Delano Roosevelt hometown museum. Will iTunes on the Mac be split into different apps?

Rene: As soon as it leaves windows. Absolutely I mean they have to put it to windows so they bundle it up in one big thing.

Leo: They can’t do it in windows yeah. Will they ever give up on windows?

Andy: NO, because they want to sell those guys iPhone too, remember.

Leo: Kevin, Ocala FL. Since W8 has been use a poop fest…he uses the word disaster, but I know he meant poop fest. Do you think Apple is more likely to keep OSX a “True” Desktop/laptop OS?

Andy: They’ve already said they don’t want any interested in hybridizing the desktop operating system, they want to take great ideas from a power management and a cleaner interface from IOS, but they never want to give someone a confusing choice between an iPad and a MacBook air. So I think we’ll see a lot of big redesign, but I don’t think we’ll see anything that’s as aggressive as Windows 8.

Leo: Is it doing it in order automatically. I don’t have to…

Alex: Nope it’s in order. It’s just that you’ve gotten rid of all the most asked ones, now these are all…

Leo: One more. This is for Andy Ihnatko, from JZ in the United States of America. Andy, would you ever consider hosting your own comic, photo, tech show on TWiT? You already do one!

Andy: I do one on the five by five network, also we’re bring back old tech news where I do sort of audio books versions of my tech writings for Chicago sun times, and elsewhere. But to answer your question, anytime my sward and my shield are always available to TWIT for any show they would like me to call upon them, or anything they’d like me to do, or just guest on them every now and then.

Leo: To be fair. Andy, did come to us and say I’d like to do Inhatkos almanac. He gave us right of first refusal, even though it’s not in your contract.

Andy: Right.

Leo: And we said, no, hell no!

Andy: Okay, hold for editing’s. Do you want to change that to a little bit…

Leo: No I foolishly probably said, you know, we’ve done some geek cultures that haven’t done all that well, it’s fine with me if you want to do it with Dan over at 5 by 5. I think that would probably be a good place for you to do it. And it has done very well over at 5X5.

Andy: Yep, we just did our 100^th episode and after 100 episodes I think I’ve figured out how to do that, so hopefully the next ones will be even better!

Leo: Last question, and I’ll tell you why. It comes from somebody named Lisa, in Petaluma CA.

Alex: Who could that be?

Leo: Could Rene explain what is behind him on the shelf? Have we ever done that? Have we ever done a tour of the shelf? Bit by bit.

Rene: Yeah, so we have a Lego batman arhamsylum, the original iPad, and original iPad mini. A bunch of canon photo equipment. The original apple TV, and a second generation Apple TV. All the iPhones with a bunch of Steve Jobs avatars, I don’t know what the right word is. A bunch of Nokia, Palm, and Blackberry devices. Cheese grader mac, and the rest is not finished yet!

Andy: I just want to reach up to the top shelf and tap the first iPod box on the immediate right to see all of them sort of domino over. That’s all I want to do.

Rene: I had an Xman number one up there, but it kept falling down so I took it down so it wouldn’t get damaged.

Leo: Do you dust before the show, as I cleaned the house before the cleaning lady?

Rene: I Swiffer as vigorously as  I possibly can.

Leo: He Swiffer’s! Not a wet Swiffer I hope, but a dry Swiffer.

Rene: No! Yes.

Leo: You know Cat Schwartz, a woman I use to work with on Call for Help, she was one of our producers at Tech TV, swore that she invented the Swiffer and never got a penny for it. She was in a meeting in the company who invented it, whoever it is, and she said, you know what we need. What the world really needs, is a rag attached to a piece of plastic, attached to a pole that you can dust with. And the Swiffer was born.

Rene: And can I thank Lisa in Petaluma for that wonderful question?

Andy: Scorched earth, Leo.

Leo: She should! We’re going to take a break, when we come back, ready your picks of the week my friends. It is time. You know who’s here yesterday, and I really had fun meeting with them, is the team from 99designs. We love 99designs! These guys help businesses who are looking for logos, menus, landing pages on Facebook, any kind of branding, to help them really look great. We do our T-shirt designs there, and we love 99designs! Quality, affordable designs from a gigantic community of designers. Almost 300,000 graphic designers now, at 99designs.com. It’s so important that you have a brand that works. We got an email from a pastor at the east point church in Ohio. Lisa forwarded it on to me, and to 99 designs, it was really cool. And I know Pastor Chadwick watches, he heard us talking about it and he said, I think it’s time for a new logo for the church. And he had ideas about what he wanted, so what he did was he made a contest, that’s what they call them, design contests, on 99designs. Within days they had over 100 logo options to look through. He says we took about a month to go through the options, to choose our winning design. The designer got paid, East point church got a fantastic new logo. He says, “It was a logo that respected our heritage but was fresh and modern.” I just, Pater Chadwick, that you for sending that email along, He writes, “Quote, thank you for 99designs for helping our church move into the 21^st century with a great looking design, it’s a great way to get high quality graphics at affordable price. Thank you. Thank you 99 designs. Great designers from all over the world, await you. I want you to visit 99designes.com/mbw. You will automatically get a 99 dollar power pack of services free, it gives you more designer time and attention. They’ll bold, highlight, and feature your project in the 99 designs market place. What will you get? Nearly twice as many designs. Look how close they are to 300,000 designers. 299,512 designers! If we could get just 488 more designers in there! By next week, they will have it! Designers love 99deisngs. It’s a chance for them to work and make money, and have fun!  You see that 99designs has paid out, what is it? It says at the bottom what they’ve paid out so far. There is it? There it is! Last month, 2 million dollar sin payouts. 74 million in payouts today. 99designs.com/mbw. Everybody wins at 99diesngs. Especially you when you get that power pack of savings for free. Andy Ihnatko, your pick of the week, my friend.

Andy: I’ve got a quick one, and a little longer one. This one, the quick one is this thing I just started getting into couple weeks ago, this is just any brand of silicon tape. It’s one of those things you keep it around the house, you keep it around the garage, and you’ll find uses for it. It’s just pure silicon, and it sticks to only itself.

Leo: How is it different from electricians tape? I don’t understand the difference.

Andy: It has no adhesive. It only sticks to itself. It won’t stick to the thing that you’re wrapping it around, which means that if you’ve got a tangle of cables underneath your desk, and you just want to take these four cords and make them into one cord, you can quickly do a couple of wraps, one, two, three, four around it, and not only will it just stay together pretty much for life, but as soon as you cut it off it’ll just pop without leaving any residue behind.

Leo: I want this!

Andy: They’re great for repairing cables like, if you’ve got those older IOS cables that get brittle with heat, and now there’s kind of a break in it, you can just easily wrap it and heal it up. Again it’ll stick to itself and not anything else. So it’s not like electrical tape, where it’ll cause this gummy mess. And also there’s the, it’s heat proof up to 500 degrees, and it’s freeze proof down to minus something, so if you have this in the glove box in your car and you bust a hose, or something like this, you can fix it right there by the side of the road. And it’s not just, oh we can limp along, but you can probably get home, or get to your garage on it, so long as you replace whatever coolant you lost at the time. It’s good for wrapping handles of things for making good handles. I repaired my snow shovels before putting it away.

Leo: But what brand, because you’re showing Xtreme tape… does it matter?

Andy: This is 3m tape, a whole bunch of other people make it. This brand is cheaper than probably what you’ll find from 3m. Also you can get it at home depot it’s like 6 bucks for a roll.

Leo: But I don’t get out of my chair, so I’m going to order it on Amazon.

Andy: Exactly. So it’s good for minus 60 degrees F. to 500 degrees F. Permanent air and water tight seal. Insulates to 400 volts, and so like I said, if you’ve got, if there’s any time where I’ve got a busted washing machine hose in here, I don’t want to.. The reason why I’ve definitely bought this was because I’ve thought about this, I’ve read all the recommendations of it, I knew that if  I ever have an emergency with a washing machine, or the dishwasher, and I’m struggling to prevent  a flood I’d be thinking you know, now would be a good time to reach into the kitchen drawer and pull out this tape that someone recommended to me four weeks ago, that could have solved this problem immediately, but so you decided to maybe not, okay 6 dollars, good. Whatever! So it’s on that list of tools where buy it, have it around, you will find uses for it. Because this is now the third roll that I’ve bought because, I bought one to play with, and I bought a second roll to have on the second floor of the house, and a third roll to have inside the car, because, again, I’ve got a high mileage car, it runs great, but I’m sure that at some point it’s going to say, … it’s going to go blues mobile on me and say Yeah, I’ve had a good run but I’m going to go to Jesus right now. And this will at least help me get home instead of getting a 15 mile tow back to the garage.

Leo; I buy all this crap you come up with. I bought, I still have like 4 rolls of Velcro twist cable ties that I… I just love this stuff!

Andy: Exactly! It’s always like there’s 5 or 6 of them permanently inside my roll away bag, because it’s the only way to keep anything in order is to have lots of these handy.

Leo: I’m buying three rolls right now.

Andy: There you go. Another quick thing is, an update to a recommendation I probably made last year. Ulysses is one of, is a tech senator for MAC OS, it’s a markdown editor, and they’ve just update to 1.2 and added a whole bunch of really nice features that make it easy to manage a multiple document project. There are a lot of simple plain markdown editors. Ulysses is probably the only one of those that is really good at organizing projects that are spread across several files, which is pretty much anything you’re doing. If you’re writing a book project, or a novel, or a lot of things for different websites, it’s the only way to keep things organized. There are a bunch of really good features, but the really good reason for recommending Ulysses is that right now, there are only three really good solutions If you want to use an iPad and a MAC as your writing tool, and be able to switch effortlessly between those two. One is IWork, the other is Microsoft office right now.  Ulysses is the other one, because they have the same manufacture, the same maker of this app has a companion app called dataless that brings over 95% off the features of Ulysses and if you’re using ICloud or drop box for synching you can just walk away from your Mac, pick up your IPad and all of your documents and projects are right where you left them and how you left them. And it is a plain text editor, but it really does embrace the markdown spirit so it can spit out really nicely formatted documents in whatever format you want. One of the new features of 1.2 is a styles library. So after you’ve done this in plain text and markdown, no matter how you want to make it look you don’t have to necessarily roll your own, you can basically go to this little style gallery that’s being contributed to by lots of different people and select how you’d like this document to finally work. And you can also just, right now, just drag and drop DocX files right into it to continue on your editing. So it’s a $45, $44.95, so it’s not necessarily cheap but it’s certainly well worth it. Its load for Mac OS app. And until Scrimner becomes available for IOS and that project is continuing onward, this is going to be one of the three really great ways to transition, to have it basically not matter whether you’re using a Mac or an IPad. Because the IPad is really a great, great writing tool. It’s not great at every single thing you might use a notebook for, but it is a superlative writing tool.

Leo: I think Alex Lyndsey is going to like Rene Ritchie’s pick of the week. Rene?

Rene: So this exploded on my twitter stream this morning. And it’s always funny because geeks have bought every single coffee making implement they can. So the new thing is sous vide machines. There are several really good ones. Several really interesting ones. This is a second generation one from Anova and it fixes a lot of things that were wrong with the first one, but it also adds IPhone connectivity. So no longer do humans like me have to screw up our steaks, now the use, pick what you want to cook and it’ll cook for you.

Leo: So, okay, what is this? Alex is a big Sous Vide guy.

Rene: Sous Vide is just a fancy term for precision immersion cooking. So you’re putting your food into water that is perfectly temperature controlled and then heating it at precisely that temperature for usually a long period of time.

Leo: The temperature is very low we should point out.

Alex: It’s not always very low, it just depends on what you want to do with it. So, but the main thing is that it keeps the temperature within exactly .1 degrees for any period of time. But really plus or minus 1 or 2 degrees wouldn’t matter for most things.

Leo: So you’re buying what? You’re buying this tool that you put in a pot?

Alex: Yes. And its circular, it’s basically pushing the water around…

Leo: And then you use a giant alligator clip to clip a Ziploc bag… and then you put meat in there. This is, by the way, incredibly dangerous. The USDA is going to come down on you.

Alex: What do you mean, the plastic? Because we don’t, never buy any meat with plastic.

Leo: Okay, you’re cooking it at like what, 102 degrees?

Alex: No, 132.

Andy: Its meat save temperatures.

Leo: No, it’s not meat save temperatures.

Alex: 132 degrees is the minimum, that is rare. If you decide that you want it well done, make it 150. You can make it whatever you want.

Leo: But you’re not cooking it at a temperature that kills bacteria.

Alex: Yeah, 132 degrees brings it to a temperature that would kill everything in it. Absolutely.

Rene: You will not be getting any Denny Crane style mad cow disease.

Leo: There’ll be no mad cow in my meat.

Rene: You can buy immersion cookers that are the whole thing there’s another one that was on…

Leo: They’re much more expensive.

Rene: They’re 300, 400 dollars. This was available for 99 dollars but that price went, I think, by the time it took me to write about it, that price was gone, I got in at the $120 mark I think and they have a couple straight ations of early bird specials.

Leo: What do you think, Anova- Alex, what do you use?

Alex: I have a sous vide, it’s a sous vide supreme or whatever, it’s like a box.

Leo: This is a very competitive thing. These Anova people are kind of a couple right?

Rene: And IPhone connected Leo.

Leo: That’s kind of the selling point isn’t it?

Alex: No, I think this is- I’m definitely going to get one.

Leo: Because, you know, I use the IGrill, the same thing, it keeps the- track of your grill temperature.

Alex: The IGrill is great.

Rene: it does only ship in October though, it’s the one thing to remember.

Alex: So the thing about this is that a lot of times if you’re doing a get together or you’re doing a larger thing, you want to actually have multiple of these. And it’s much nicer, I don’t want to really have…

Leo: You want more than one?

Alex: Yeah, and here’s why. Because your chicken is at one thing and your beef is in another, and your fish is in another.

Leo: How long?

Alex: It depends on what you want to do with it. So what happens is if you take a, let’s say a tri tip and you put it in a sous vide cooker. It’ll be cooked in an hour or two, but the longer you leave it in, it just continues to break down the toughness of it. So what you end up with, you leave it there for two days, which I’ve done, and you end up with something that has the consistency of, it has the taste of a tri tip with the consistency of filet mignon. So it’s a, and then you know, you just fry it a little on the outside and you’re done. What’s really cool about it, when you’re hosting people at your house, is that everything is just cooked and it’s waiting. Because time is not a precise thing. So you get all your meat to where you want it, and you leave it all there, you let your wife take as long as she’s going to take to make the vegetables, which is, my wife is not very fast. She makes incredible vegetables, just not fast.

Leo: Not sous vide though.

Alex: No, I could but the problem is…

Leo: So this is primarily for meat?

Alex: No, you can do vegetables, you can do eggs. I do eggs. Sous vide soft boiled eggs is amazing because it’s just perfect every time. It’s exactly the same every time.

Leo: How long does it take to cook them?

Alex: 15 minutes, 10 minutes. What happens is, you’re getting ready for your shower and you just drop them in because it doesn’t matter how long.

Leo: What temperature do you cook the egg at?

Alex: I cook it at 64 degrees Celsius. I don’t know what that it in… but anyways, it’s like 160 degrees or something like that. So, but the main thing is, you have a bunch of people coming over and when they all get there and you’re all ready to go and you want to eat, you’re not, oh, you don’t have to time an hour and half broil, you just literally pull it out and throw it into a broiler on a pan or a barbeque and its done and ready to go. It’s a great product and the fact that its iPhone- but anyway, I’ve been thinking about making them. I’m not going to make them if they’re 160 dollars. You know I’m just going to buy them…

Leo: So there’s a number of companies doing these, so Sous Vide is spelled s-o-u-s v-i-d-e. And all three of these guys have been on Kickstarter.

Alex: I think this is the only one that does IPhone which for me would be the kicker.

Leo: That’s kind of an interesting-

Rene: I think the 500 dollar one does IPhone too but that’s also brand new.

Leo: Yeah.

Andy: it’s on 800 watts, is that every time it’s actually cooking something?

Leo: That would be an awful lot of power.

Alex: I think typically what happens is, it’s not leaving it on the whole time, what it’s doing is it turns on and off, so once it gets to temperature- now the thing is that it will stay at temperature and be much more efficient if you put it in something that’s much more insulated. Because it’s just measuring the water and adding it. So the advantage of the cooker that I have is that it’s very well insulated so it doesn’t- once it gets the water to that temperature it doesn’t, you know, have to do a lot of work.

Leo: That might be a reason to get something like that as opposed to something like this which is just really a prong that you put in your crock.

Alex: This is exactly what Suzanne Luellen, has our office manager, her husband Tom Anderson and I were talking about building one of these and this is pretty much what we had planned.

Andy: I know a bunch of people who have these and they absolutely love them to the extent that now they are cooking way more aggressively than they ever did because it’s the chainsaw principle. Let’s see if it’ll cut this now. So they’re trying to see what they can actually cook in these things. As a bachelor I’m just glad that boil in the bag dinners are finally getting the credit that they deserve.

Leo: Thanks to PCguy88 the food safe, minimum cooking temperature from foodsafety.gov for ground meat and meat mixtures, beef, pork, veal, lamb, turkey or chicken is 160 degrees. For poultry, 165.

That’s great but if you ask for a rare beef, its 132.

Leo: I understand I just don’t want anybody to die because they heard this show.

Right, right, there you go.

Leo: Anova is the product. A-N-O-V-A on Kickstarter if you would like to bid, and remember, all bids on Kickstarter at your own risk. And now Alex Lindsay’s pick of the week.

Alex: I’d like to pick an app into the future.

Leo: Okay.

Alex: it’s a replacement for Twist. What happened to Twist?

Leo: What do you mean? It’s still here.

Andy: No, they died, they died.

Leo: What? Now there’s Glimpse.

Andy: They’re not very good. It’s not the same thing.

Leo: You prefer Twist to Glimpse?

Alex: By a long shot.

Leo: Well why did Twist die then?

Alex: We don’t know, they didn’t charge anything. What was the business model? I think they didn’t have a business model.

Andy: I talked to one of the developers and they would not go into detail as to what actually went wrong. Except I confirmed that, yes, this is an ex parrot, its run down the curtain…

Leo: So the idea of these apps, Glimpse and Twist, is that when you’re late, you…

Alex: For a long time we had- I’m just- here all I’m saying is that Glimpse isn’t the solution and Twist is, was, not the perfect solution, but a great solution, what we did is for everybody on our crew, we expected about an hour before an event for you to twist us. So we just knew where you were. You know, like, are you coming, are you caught in traffic-

Leo: And it creates a live map that your phone updates as you move closer to the event.

Alex: so if I want to know where Jo is, I know exactly where he is, has stuck in traffic right here, or now at the, you know, bar.

Leo: Doesn’t Google have some sort of similar functionality?

Andy: The win is not simply tracking, because a lot of apps do that, for me the unique win of Twist was that all you have to do is when you set out you say “tell this person that I’m on my way”, and then it will immediately text them your ETA, not when you first create the twist, but when you first start moving. So if you’re still in your car that’ll- and it will not update them unless there’s a change to your ETA. So if you’re stuck in traffic or you stopped to pick up your dry cleaning it will automatically, without any interference from you so you don’t have to do anything and the recipient doesn’t have to do anything you just automatically-

Leo: This is what Glimpse does though.

Alex: Yeah it just doesn’t do it very well, it’s just cumbersome. And everyone in our company is like, they’re all using Glimpse now and they’re all like “this sucks”. You know, so anyway.

Leo: So like you want someone to come along and create another twist-

Alex: I don’t have time.

Leo: Even though the company went out of business?

Alex: It’s because they didn’t charge anything. I would have paid, I literally would have paid ten dollars per app for everyone in my company to have this app.

Leo: I feel like this is built into something.

Andy: Can I say though that I’ve talked to a lot of developers, like developers who are just, socially, and were all talking about “oh God, too bad Twist is dead because we all loved it”, and the conversation, three times now the conversation has brought up, you know we should do an app like Twist because we just want the app back now, shouldn’t be too hard to do.

Leo: I think Windows phone does that. Alright I’m going to wrap this sucker up because we’ve got to get going. Hey thank you very much, all of you, for your fabulous contributions today. Thank you especially Alex Lindsay for your Q&A-

Alex: It’s kind of fun.

Leo: I think it added immensely to the show, we’ll continue to use it. As long as you let us. I have a feeling that this is free until we get hooked.

Alex: you’re the first one, we’re just trying to test it.

Andy: I’ll tell the government agency that Alex has been working for comes out and says “as terms your contract, we now own this.”

Alex: We’re just trying to figure it out right now.

Leo: Alex is at pixelcorps.com, I don’t know why I tell you this, but he is.

Alex: Oh, and by the way, tomorrow, Wednesday, at 9am Pacific Standard we’re going to use this question app but I’m going to do a class in Rwanda for, on Greenscreen, but I am going to include everybody. So were going to stream it to YouTube and we’re going to put it into the question engine. So if you want to learn about Greenscreen tomorrow at 9am, pacific standard, sorry this is in the morning but- it’s like multiple camera, it’s not like me sitting there on my computer talking about Greenscreen, I’m going to be walking around, showing stuff, experimenting with a new classroom format. So if you want to do that come and join us and…

Leo: How do you- follow @alexlindsay on twitter?

Alex: Yeah, follow me on twitter, I meant to put it up, but it’ll be, come back to me in one second and I’ll have it for you.

Leo: @alexlindsay on twitter. Mister Andy Ihnatko is at the Chicago Sun Times, the host as you’ve heard, of many shows on other networks. And he is close friends with Obi Bob Newhart.

Andy: I got a tweet back from ILM saying “glad you liked it”. So I didn’t know, did they make the- these robes are perfect. And so I took a chance and said “well here are my, I’ll tell you my measurements if you want them”.

Leo: You should have Jedi Master Robes, I think you should.

Andy: Speaking of which, Alex, I’m glad that you held firm and did not answer the question about what you or your company may or may not be doing to work on the new Star Wars films. So. We respect your decision not to answer that question. 

Alex: No comment.

Andy: Exactly.

Leo: Really? Why…

Alex: All I said was no comment.

Andy: I think it’s wonderful that there are social conventions that you can actually answer the question without breaking the confidentiality.

Leo: Alex worked personally worked on episode 1. We all know that.

Alex: This is how rumors are very effectively started.

Leo: No comment.

Andy: I know that Alex, I know that very well Alex, why do you think I’m doing this Alex?

Rene: Andy can you put that up on Secret so we can blog it please?

Andy: Exactly.

Leo: And Mr. Rene Ritchie imore.com, the place to go if you want to keep up on this stuff. They really do a good job. I-m-o-r-e.com. thanks for being here Rene.

Rene: Thank you Leo.

Leo: Okay Alex. He still can’t do it. He’s trying to do it, has trying to set it up. Just, you know what, follow him on twitter. A-l-e-x-l-i-n-d-s-a-y.

Alex: There you go, there you go. Ill post it, I’ll tweet it out.

Leo: Or Google+, you still do that.

Alex: I do do Google+, ill post it in both places today.

Leo: I want to thank everybody for joining us, we do MacBreak Weekly, if Leo shows up on time, 11am pacific, 2pm eastern time, 1800 UTC. On twit.tv. You can watch live but if not, if you want to begin precisely on time, merely download a copy to your device and start it whenever you wish. You’ll find copies at twit.tv/mbw, you’ll find it on stitcher, you’ll find it on ITunes, you’ll find it on wherever podcasts are displayed for your consumption at a later date. Not in violation of any existing patents. We’ll see you next time, now get back to work because you know what? Oh you know what? Back to work. That’s Merlin Mann’s show. I’ve been plugging Merlin Mann’s show for the last 400 episodes. Now get back to work, because you know what, break time’s over!