MacBreak Weekly 385 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It's time for MacBreak weekly. We are joined as always by Andy Ihnatko, Renee Ritchie, Alex Lindsey dials in from Rwanda to talk about all the Mac news, the new iPad commercial, the new Mac Pro, and why Google bought Nas and not Apple. It's all coming up next on MacBreak weekly!

Leo: This is MacBreak Weekly episode 385, recorded Jan 14, 2014

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Leo: It's time for MacBreak weekly, the show that covers all of your Apple needs in obsessive detail. Andy Ihnatko is here from the Chicago Sun-Times, and the celestial waste of bandwidth. And there he is with Mr. Teller. Now come on, is that at the wax museum?

Andy Ihnatko: No, that's Penn Jillette

Leo: I mean Penn Jillette

Andy: And unless you're running about 6'3?-6'5? that's about as good of photo you're going to get next to him!

Leo: It's a disparity in size!

Andy: A little bit! I could scroll out a little bit to show you the whole photo but that really is the operative.

Leo: I love it!

Andy: They do a meet and greet after their show at the Rio, for anybody who wants to say hello, and I think that if you were to rent an apple box or milk crate, and people who were taking pictures with Pen, you would probably get your ticket price back times two!

Leo: Does Teller go too, to these meet and greets?

Leo: Yes he does.

Leo: Does he speak?

Andy: Indeed he does, he just doesn't speak on stage that's all. Actually... well I don't want to give anything away... you might hear him speak at some point during the show.

Leo: When we were Vegas, Andy and I hung out a little after the media expo, you were debating whether you should see the Pen & Teller show, and obviously you did the right thing

Andy: It's like again, I'm a freelance journalist in a rapidly collapsing market, and I had to... It's more like you know exactly to the penny what your impulse buy level is, and if it's above that, you have to think well, deep down I knew I was going to go, but my Father's voice would not leave my head unless I spent at least two days thinking ?yeah, but what if we spent the money on this instead, or we go out to eat here...? Yeah, it was money well spent. Anytime you are in, through, or over Vegas, definitely check out the Pen & Teller show because even as a long time fan who had seen a lot of the different shows before, it was just fantastic!

Leo: Was it really expensive?! Was it hundreds of dollars? Here I am, sitting in front of a MacPro, I should not be asking that question!

Andy: Well, no, you should be asking that question, because now that you have the MacPro, you have no money left!

Leo: Exactly right!

Andy: It's not that expensive, well, it was like $116 which is... yeah, that's more money that I like to spend on one unit of entertainment but again, I'm a big fan, and again, I'm in Vegas... I figured that was the money that I would have lost if I would have done any gambling whatsoever, and so instead of 45 minutes of losing money and feeling like an idiot, at least I spent the money on something that I got a unit of entertainment out of!

Leo: Well I'm glad you got a full unit of entertainment!

Leo: Also here with us, it's Mr. Rene Ritchie, also back from Vegas. You guys did a great job up there on the stage with Cali Lewis of Geek Beat, that looked like a lot of work!

Rene Ritchie: I have a new-found respect for what you do, Leo, it is so difficult to sit there and just do this for that many hours.

Leo: Yeah, tell me about it!

Rene: I'm lucky I get to do two hours here quickly and then leave, but doing that all day, every day...

Leo: Let me just ask, was the base rumble booth right there next of you as it has been in years past? What's it called?

Rene: The earthquake

Leo: The Earthquake. It was then!

Rene: Yes, it was right there. It was deafening at times!

Leo: It's a really nice combination! Fortunately at least with our mikes, I don't know about your mikes, they roll off below 40hertz, so you can feel it but you don't hear it.

Now I see that Mr. Alex Lindsay has joined us, but I'm not sure from where... Last I saw was a picture of you in a hotel in Rwanda, having a lovely breakfast. Are you still in Kigali?

Alex Lindsay: I am. I'm in the office of the school right now. Everyone has gone, I just finished a class. I'm staying at The Collines, which is known as the Hotel Rwanda.

Leo: What a beautiful picture!

Alex: It's gorgeous!

Leo: Somebody on your Google+ said ?You are single-handedly all by yourself revising my opinion of Rwanda.

Alex: Well I hope so, I'm not hoping that I'm single-handedly doing it but I've been blown away, it's not something that I expected before I came here. Before we decided to work in Rwanda I came here twice just to kind of see what was going on and see what was actually happening, and I spent a lot of time researching before we committed to it, and I've just been blown away ? I'm sitting in Rwanda with a pretty good connection! It just grows so fast, Rwanda is kind of like Dubai where they just tear an entire block down and put up a whole new set of buildings, so every time I come it's like a different city and I keep on getting lost!

Leo: Look at this picture I have on the screen ? this is Alex's breakfast. It looks pretty nice.

Alex: I was fortunate to wake up! My sleep schedule is all off, I got up bright and early, I get up early most of the time but I was up very early so I was able to see it and have my little coffee ? so it was great.

Leo: And you have so much bandwidth there, it looks like a hi-def picture here!

Alex: I know - we have at the school, especially in the evening when we're not competing with anything else, we get about 15 megs up and down. I was complaining about it during the day and I was reminded by my government partner here that we have the 5^th fastest connection in the country, so it's not that everybody has 15 megs, but we do! We teach ? the school - the African digital media academy ? we actually are teaching classes from California and other parts of the United States ? In Kigali, so actually the instructors are in the US and the students are in Kigali, so we've been experimenting with that the last year, that?s what the whole curriculum is going to be based on this year. So I'm down here just making sure all the technical stuff is all set to make that transaction over the next two or three months.

Leo: Awesome.

Alex: It's kind of fun.

Leo: It's great to have all 3 of you, from Montreal, from Kigali, from - I don't know, some small town in Rhode Island, and here we?re in Petaluma . Somebody in the chat room said ?What does Leo need a studio for at all?? Because something has to stitch this all together, and I think if this was all virtual, it's not quite as good as if one person is in a real spot!

Andy: Also, do you really, really, really want to have your business hinge on everybody's Skype connection working?!

Leo: No! Lately Skype has been a bear. Somebody emailed me though and said ?You what is happening, you're being DDOSed ? you're being Skype-DOSed.?. And this apparently - Chad, you might know this - happens on twitch.tv all the time. The greifers will come in and if they can deduce what your Skype handle is, they just kind of bombard you. So the trick is to use a non-guessable Skype handle I guess.

Chad: Right. I know that Brian was hitting that issue a lot, and he had to come up with...

Leo: Brushwood

Chad: Brushwood, yeah, and he was coming up with different user names every week, and we would email back and forth

Leo: If we came up with a 10 digit number...

Chad: Yeah, sudo-random

Leo: Nobody's going to guess it, if they see it on the screen we would have to get a new one... I think we'll probably try that. But yeah, apparently it's a big problem on twitch.tv. So yeah, the internet ? once again, a place where nice people gather to share ideas.

So the big story is sort of a Mac story, sort of not an Apple story. Tony Fidel who was the Vice President in charge of iPod, commonly mistakenly credited with designing the iPod, I don't think that's the case ? although there is the famous scene ? is it in the Isaacson's biography ? Steven Levy refers to it where Fidel comes into the room to present the idea of the iPod to Steve Jobs and has all the components on the table and snaps them together and says here and presents them, with a little bit of Jobs showmanship, and that was apparently the thing that convinced Jobs that yeah, we probably should be doing this product. Fidel founded a company called Nest with Matt... What?s his last name... Rogers? I can't remember his last name. And raised around 150,000 to 2 million dollars to create a very interesting learning thermostat, and more recently a talking smoke alarm, and Google just bought them yesterday for 3.2 billion in cash ? 3.2 billion in cash. That's 5.8% according to ? 5.8% of Google's cash position. So no matter what you think about that number, it?s significant number for both Google and obviously Tony. It's a big thing.

Rene: Google Ventures owned part of it, so I'm guessing part of it was just bank account movement.

Leo: Yeah, no kidding. Google Ventures was an early investor in this, they saw right away the value of Nest. The question a lot of people asked right away is ?Why not Apple?? You think Apple wanted this?

Alex: I was kind of surprised, I just assumed that Apple eventually was going to buy Nest, it was the Apple of other things, and it was surprising to me that Google beat them to it. There's got to be somebody at Apple going ?ARGH I can't believe it?!

Rene: Apple usually is very carefully about verticals that they pick, and they simply might not believe that they are ready to enter into the home automation or home device vertical. They usually do one thing and then annex the things next to it, and this is several orders down the line, even if you counted watches and televisions, it's probably awhile before they want to get to intelligent devices, if at all because maybe IOS in the car will become IOS in the house, IOS on the camera, everywhere. But it's also possible that Tony Fidel doesn't fit into Apple's new leadership, and Tim Cook has shown that he would rather have a cohesive team than just all-star players on that team.

Andy: Also it's kind of hard to even imagine how Google is going to ? how this is going to fit into Google's portfolio ? apart from the idea of observing your movements through the house and being able to learn from you from your position there. It would be an odd thing for Apple to have bought. Philosophically they were a very Apple-like company, when you read the press releases pre-acquisition, there was a lot about the magic and life and saving the planet.. they really were pressing very very hard. This isn't just a thermostat that will pay for itself because of the way that it adjust your heating and cooling settings, this is a device that will help to heal the planet because it will reduce our dependence on greenhouse emissions, and if we're going to survive the next thousand years we're going to need uh blah blah blah blah blah.

Leo: That's by the way why John Dour bet big on it, was the Kleiner Perkins, because they were betting on Cleantech. None of the Cleantech investments that they had did very good until now. I'm sure that in the halls of Kleiner Perkins they?re like ?YES! YES!?

Rene: Everyone's bathing in champagne.

Leo: but you do have to ? it almost feels like Apple is more judicious with it's acquisitions and that this is for Google almost silly money. Like, yeah, 5.8%...

Alex: But for Apple it's REALLY silly money.

Leo: I know, Apple has more cash than Google does.

Alex: They could have bought it and then spent another billion dollars on another team...

Leo: But they don't do that!

Alex: I know they don't do it but I think they should every once in a while because ? the thing is I think what makes a lot of sense for Google is the idea that your whole world ? I think you get more of a sense of this when you wear glass a lot ? I'm not wearing it right now but I do wear it a lot, and you just want all of that information there. So being tied into all the other things you are doing with your ? tying that whole experience in so you're in that environment, and of course the more they can keep you in that environment, the better it is. I don't think they necessarily need to know what your movements are or what temperature you are keeping your house, but I think there's a lot of interest in having it where you don't have to look at another device, you don't have to think about something outside of your ? and them having control of that process is very useful.

Rene: Apple already has a product team; they have a fantastic team...

Leo: I think that's the point...

Rene: They have things like the iPhone and the iPod, Google doesn't, they have Motorola which doesn't have a great product team, and now they have one of the best guys in the world. Apple's equivalent of this would be buying a fantastic server team, which they really need!

Leo: They DO need that! I think you nailed it, Apple does ? Google gets out of this something it does not have, which is a consumer product division and consumer product designers. Apple's got that ? that's what Apple does! So there's less value in Nest to Apple, although there's underlying value to both Google & Apple in the intelligence of these devices, which I think perhaps doesn't get much attention to. But really, Nest isn't about a thermostat or smoke alarm, it's about intelligence and intelligent devices in your home.

Alex: I think that's something we saw hints of at CES, is I don't think anybody ? and I think this might be part of why Google is going down this path ? but maybe not ? I don't think anybody other than Nest has really figured out the internet of things very well. You go to CES and you see a lot of miss-fires. Miss-fire, miss-fire, weird protocol, doesn't really work, hard to work with, hard to use, isn't going to work with anything else ? all things I saw last week were just that. So Nest ? it's great, and it just works, and it just does all those things, and I think that that is the future of every piece of electronics that we buy, anything that's got a chip in our house is going to be like that eventually, and I think that Nest is just ahead of everybody.

Andy: It's just hard to guess what the real reason for buying this company was. Because 3.2 billion, that's a lot of money ? even by Google's standards that's a lot of money. If you were to go to the abstract and simply say that ?Our company has a problem in we don't understand how to make consumer electronics, and not just things with keyboards and screens, but things that are more uni-tasking, just one in every house, one in every room of the house sort of things ? we want to have that capability.? If you have a 3.2 billion dollar check book in which to solve that problem, it's interesting that they solved that problem by buying one company as opposed to simply saying ?we're going to get these two hires?, ?we're going to buy these four companies?, ?we're going to buy this manufacturing facility?.

Leo: Well wait a minute though; I don't think they're only going to buy one company! It's interesting that you raise that point, because I think this is the beginning of a buying spree for Google.

Andy: Again... if you start your spree with 3.2 billion dollars in cash?!

Leo: Ok, ok, it's like you bought the oil refinery before you bought the car. I admit it.

Andy: I feel like this is just gut instinct. It feels to me like there's something specific about not just this team of people, but this line of hardware, because not only is it a compelling consumer device, but it also is a sensor based device. I think this is a vote for a sensor based world in which you need to have real time data being collected that you can then leverage into new software products and new hardware products.

Leo: By the way, someone in the chat room asked ?This is 4.6 million Alex's?, if that makes it easier for you to understand.

Alex: See, it seems so much more affordable that way!

I think that they are buying into a company that has a lot of upside too. So you're not buying 3.2 billion just for...

Leo: But they're not going to sell billions of dollars in Nest... are they?!

Alex: No, but we don't know what kind of products they already have ? obviously they have a very large vision of where they want to go, they're doing one thing at a time and at their size they could only do one thing at a time. The question is, with Google money, with more engineering, are they going to put out more products more quickly ? do they have five or six that are already close to the gate? That could be a whole other thing that's there. But I think they can sell a lot of Nest's. The market of people who have a disposable income who would want a Nest is far from penetrated, far from saturated.

Leo: I was penetrated and now I've withdrawn.

Alex: Oh really?

Leo: Yeah. I have two Nest's and decided not to install them in the new house because ? first of all machine intelligence on the thermostat is both overkill and impractical. It was turning the thermostat on when it thought I was around ? my movements are not so predictable that a ?learning thermostat? is going to learn anything. So it was turning on the heat at the wrong time frankly. It was too smart and I didn't see a lot of value to it. Plus it was two hundred fifty smackaroo's!

Rene: The other thing I think is important with this is Nest is a well-respected brand for Geeks. People love it, I've heard untold amounts of stories of people trying to install it, it becomes something you follow your friends doing on Twitter, and Android at home never really took off ? Google doesn't have a great brand of home electronics and they get Tony Fidel if they do want to expand their product division. He's a fantastic name to run that division, or run ?Home? for Google in general.

Leo: Giga Homes-Malic of Gigaom's immediately interviewed Tony, they have a good relationship obviously. Tony said the thing that ? there's no question why it's good for Nest but he said the interesting thing is that he can now go back to focusing on products, and let Google help him scale. One of the problems Nest was having problems getting international. He said it went into the UK and it's a lot of work, and that's just one country and we've got hundreds more to go. So Google can scale them in ways they couldn't in their existing infrastructure.

Alex: I think again, for me, in my office, we started playing with hue lights and once you start having that automation and being attached to your phone and I find it to be fairly addicting.

Leo: I could see Google buying the Hue division ? not Phillips entirely, it's too big of a company obviously, but I could see them buying the hue division, and there's lots of other smart home connected devices internet of things companies that Google is probably looking at. I feel like this is much ? Google has bought 8 robotics companies for Andy Ruben in 2013, I could see Google buying 8 connected home companies in this year...

Rene: And offering a unified offering which would be very...

Leo: And that's what's missing, right?! I would be much more interested in Nest if it wasn't just this island! If it talks to everything else!

Alex: I think part of the problem that stops with a lot of home automation is there's Zigbee, and there's all these different protocols and all these different rules, and Quicky set is doing their own and everybody's got their own little bits... So literally I don?t' know which one to commit to, and I'm just sitting there going I wish Apple ? I had to admit ? I just wish Apple or Google ? or somebody - would just pull this all together and tell me which one should get that will do all the things I want it to do. And do it well. Because a lot of them that are these little bits, like this one part like the lock works well, but if you look at all the other things that they do, it doesn't work that well. And I don't want to compromise, so I've been waiting it out. But I definitely want to automate my house and I think a lot of people want to automate their house. Once you start playing with it, instead of getting sliders for your lights, now it's any color, being able to walk into your house without a key ? key-less existence...

Leo: Unfortunately this is no longer an Apple story, because we've kind of already wrapped up the part about why Apple wouldn't, or didn?t' get them. But Google does have Android at home, this was their home automation initiative from about a year ago, I think that you nailed it ? this is Google's big ambition to go into the home which nobody has successfully done.

Alex: If you can go into the car AND into the home, then they?ve pretty much ? and they've got the glass, they've pretty much got your whole existence tied into one big bow wrapped thing.

Andy: To get Apple back into the conversation, I think that when you are trying to figure out why they made this acquisition, Google is fundamentally a different company from Apple. They are a lot more born out of university research in terms of corporate philosophy, in that they do believe that we're going to fund this idea because it's an interesting idea. It seems to be related to what our larger goal is but we're going to fund this because it's interesting. Whereas Apple, they're not going to put any product on the market, they're not going to make any acquisition unless they are looking at the Lego fortress they built, and they see the one red brick in the white wall, and they say we've got to find something else to put in to that hole right there. So when they buy a sensor company, it's because they have a specific idea of here's the feature we want for the next iPhone, and the only way we're going to be able to do it is buy this company that has the technology for us. Whereas at least there's the possibility that Google is saying We've got lots of money, we believe that home automation is going to be a thing, we believe that sensor data is going to be a thing, and we also believe, in terms of intellectual curiosity, the way we can integrate our products much more conveniently into people's lives if these services have an awareness of their actual day to day activity. So it may not be a specific hole in the wall they're trying to plug with this, it might be that they believe this is going to be an interesting market, and they believe it's ok for us to do something that is a little bit off our direct path.

Leo: That's kind of how I feel, like as much as it is, it's still silly money. It's more than they paid for YouTube!

Andy: but YouTube wasn't making money at the time. YouTube was clearly this is going to hit big, we can either buy early for cheap, or we can let it get into facebook status, and now that it's worth 50 billion dollars, there's no way we can simply buy our own social media network. I think this is a different thing. 3.2 billion ? we all read lots of reports about acquisitions and money being moved from one calm to another as Rene suggested, but 3.2 billion, when you can express any amount of money as a multiple percentage point of Google's money... that's a big frickin' check! That's the ?I'm sorry, I really want to close this deal but I'm going to have to call my spouse for approval on this check before I write it?!

Rene: If you're building a Star Trek machine, you're going to want to know what temperature it is in the room. That's their big dream, their big goal, to make Star Trek a reality. I think there's just so many things involved ? the synergy of the product division, the ability to get data out of your houses... In many ways, this is a great fit for Google and I think the amount of money they paid for it, to Andy's point, shows that.

Andy: They dream of being Star Trek ? the next generation, but turned out to be Star Trek Voyager!

Rene: You can't follow that, that's just too perfect.

Leo: What we don't know, actually, is how much Google Ventures investment was. If they had 10% then they saved 320 million on the deal.

Rene: Probably a successful year for them.

Leo: It's interesting, the two big investors, KP and Shasta, both basically are made whole by this. The Shasta fund is basically paid back, and based on Nest alone, Kleiner-Perkins generates a 20x return on their investment, which means that Kleiner returns over 60% of the fund with that Nest investment alone, of it's Clean-Tech fund.

Alex: That's how venture capital works - you've got 10 bad ones, 1 big one, and you're set

Leo: It's like the movie industry, and TwiT. I put myself right in that category.

Enough said about that, but a very interesting story. There will be much more to say about it in time, including of course the big privacy question ? do you really want a Google eye in your house watching you as you wander?

Rene: Leo's at 60 degrees! Leo's at 60 degrees!

Leo: It doesn't bother me at all, but then I have a connect in my living room and I dance naked in front of it nightly, so I guess I just...

Rene: The NSA really doesn't like that Leo!

Leo: I do it FOR the NSA! I do it for them.

Great panel as always, I'm so glad Alex could join us from Rwanda, from Montreal, Rene Ritchie of iMore.com ? you didn't get sick at CES, did you!

Rene: No, I this thing where I just refuse to do it now, and it seems to work. The first couple years I got the plague every time and then I thought it was silly, we better stop doing this, and so far that works!

Leo: I know what happened ? none of the east coasters could get there because of the snow ? they're the ones that bring the disease.

Rene: We had people miss the show ? their planes got canceled and they could only come in on Wednesday, and the show was over...

Leo: So they gave up! Those were the people who bring the disease!

Alex: I stopped, mostly when I stopped drinking like a fish and started sleeping normally, turned out...

Leo: Go to bed at 10... Cali lost her voice though I think.

Rene: Yeah, she was drinking really hard.

Leo: We're going to take a break, Andy also here from the Chicago Sun-Times, lots more to talk about and yes, I have the MacPro thanks to Ed Inkbur who very kindly drove it up from Saratoga this week so that I could play with it. I was wrong... I'm just going to say that I was wrong about the MacPro. This thing is SWEET! But first, a word from Legalzoom.com.

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Leo: MacBreak Weekly on the air, Alex Lindsey is here, Andy Ihnatko, Rene Ritchie...

So how many MacPro's did you order, Alex?

Alex: We're still trying to work out with our business rep, the lease...

Leo: It takes a while right?! We're into February now... March?

Alex: Yeah, I think February or March. It's mostly just us sorting it out, we have a lot of computers on the lease, so we're just trying to make sure we can sort through it all. We're probably going to get 7.

Leo: I was so skeptical about the shape and the size ? I was wrong. When I wanted to bring this in today I just unplugged it, lifted it up, it was so easy ? I just lifted it up ? you can carry it in one hand! It is very fast, it's beautiful, yes! By the way, I do have it on the desk ? it's smaller than you think so I have it on the desk at home, hooked it to the dual 27? monitors. A couple of important points, besides the fact that you already know it's very expensive ? and very fast ? it's as fast as it is expensive. You're going to want expansion stuff, and I'm curious, Alex, what you're going to ? There's a lot of ?Thunder bolts? stuff that's out, that's really just ?re-purposed USB3?, in fact I have 2 devices connected via USB3. You don't get all the bandwidth that you should get, what you're looking for is a TRUE thunderbolt 2 device, and there's a dearth of those, and they're very expensive. One thing I saw on the Apple site, is a promise RAID-array that is truly thunderbolt 2. Otherwise you're not going to get the thru-put you want.

Alex: Depends on what kind of thru-put you need.

Leo: I'm using... For instance, the drive is only 256gb in this base model. So I got... this is the other world computing SSD USB3 SSD, it's my data drive, it's another 256gb, it's the only way I could use this.

Rene: I think the PCI lanes are set up to prioritize the graphics card and then the Thunderbolt and USB3 are sharing PCI lanes instead of getting a dedicated one.

Leo: Buffalo sells this as a Thunderbolt device, it's a bus driven drive, 5400rpm drive so there's a problem... And it's really just USB3 with a Thunderbolt interface on it, right?

Alex: What's really the limiter there is not going to be the USB3, the drive speed is really going to slow you down.

Leo: Absolutely. But even on this really fast SSD, it's not ? you know...

And then the second issue is 4K monitors, and we talked about this on TWiT with Marques Brownlee who has a MacPro. If you're going to get a REAL... most monitors are 30hertz refresh rate

Alex: Because they didn't know how people were going to connect to it, I think this is kind of the wild, wild west right now, everyone's trying to figure out what that format is going to look like. And rather than getting together and talking about it, they're all trying to be the one that everyone follows.

Leo: Right. So you're going to want to look for one that's faster. Marques brought an Asus, Apple is selling a Sharp, both of them are over $3,000 for 30-31? displays.

Alex: I have to admit, I was actually not that sure about 4k ? we were streaming from Panisonics while I was in the Panisonics booth all day, and looking back and forth, and Im afraid it happened where you know your eye switches? And I was going ?Asus is fine, and 4k is whatever?... and then suddenly HD was mush.

Leo: You start to see it!

Alex: Like back forth back forth ? I didn't really see it, and then suddenly with the two of them sitting next to each other all day, and walking by it, and suddenly you look at it and it looks the way HD did to me when I was comparing it to SD. But it took a little longer than SD did to click like that, but now it's this nice sharp image. I'm still going to wait because I think the format is a little messy, and I think that we need the prices to come down a little bit. But Visio is getting down to a reasonable size, at least for a TV set.

Rene: I think we need better OS 10 support because some of the windows drivers are doing a better job ? my boss ordered the MacPro, he hasn't got it yet, but he got three 4k monitors that arrived already, so he's been trying to hook them up to his MacBook Pro, and at first he could only get one running on Thunderbolt, one running on HDMI, both at 30hertz, now he's got both of them running off of Thunderbolt but the HDIM is only giving him 1080 and he had to hack to get ? because I think he got the Dell's and they are not officially supported yet, so he had to hack to make it recognize the Dell's as 4k monitors. So he's got it running but the pixels are still tiny because you can't do the over-scan or the scaling modes like you can on the retina MacBook Pro displays. So we need both a better standard for it and better support from OS10 before we get the glorious giant screens that we want.

Leo: So it's just a little caveat that you're going to get this thing and you're going to find that the support for the eco system is not there yet, it's just the early days.

Rene: It's bleeding edge still.

Leo: However, It's beautiful!

Rene: I was looking at the screens this morning, and the stuff is tiny, but it's so gorgeous.

Leo: It's beautiful! And on the MacPro's, the design is exactly right, this giant thermal core with a single big fan at the bottom that takes air from the bottom and blows it up to the top, even when working. It's hard to get this thing to work hard, this is a base unit, 3.7GHz xeon E5 quad-core, but it's hard to get it to work, work at all. So I ran Bio-Shock infinite at the highest settings, didn?t challenge it in the least, but if it were to get hot, the cooling is excellent. I can't get it to heat up. And it's dead silent. It's funny, when I hooked up the buffalo drive, all of a sudden I said ?What's that sound?? and then I realized, no, the hard drive ? I'm not hearing the computer AT ALL. Zero DB ? it is silent. It's so silent, that this (buffalo drive) was making a ruckus!

Rene: Apparently the GPU's and the CPU aren't expected to all be on at the same time anyway, so the thermal core is more than sufficient at moving whichever one, or maybe for a few seconds two of them are actually working.

Leo: It's well designed. So I'm going to have to shoot some 4k video ? Hey, do we still have that black magic 4k camera?

Alex: We have Reds downstairs.

Leo: Oh. Maybe I'll go down to the basement and say ?hi? to Red. I need some 4k ? what is it, 222 video? What do I want? Something completely uncompressed

Andy: You could shoot raw with the Red.

Leo: And then what should I do, I could render it with the Mpeg4... see how long that takes!

Andy: Real player?

Leo: Real player, that's it. Go to the Real format.

Anyway, if you've got $3,000.00 burning a hole in your pocket, I'm glad I got it. Thank you Eddy for making that possible. And Alex, when you get back, you can play with it.

Andy: I do think that Apple kind of did a great service to everybody by having supplies so constrained so early, because you get ? whatever horniness that you had to immediately buy one ? if they were available in quantity the day that they originally shipped to anybody, there would be a lot of people that now, a month later are thinking, Then again, if I'm going to spend $3,000.00 let? s wait to see if other people ? if they're really that good...

Rene: Someone was ready to marry one, but even Massachusetts wouldn't allow that!

Andy: ?Even Massachusetts? says the Canadian!

Leo: You know, the first state that legalizes marriages between Geek's and MacPro's, I'm moving!

I'm trying to find my black magic disc benchmark because the internal drive is so fast, you just go... What a... Wow!

Alex: And then you start trying to figure out what to do with that.

Leo: Yeah, there's nothing I could do with it ? It's Crazy ? Cra-Cra fast.

Alex: Yeah, for the machines we will be using for Hangouts our plan was to get the very base model, but for the production machines, we're probably going to go ahead and put as much of the drive in as we can, just because we know there will be times we are going to want to use it.

Leo: So Black Magic does this so you can see whether it can ingest your video, it's green check marks in every square. A write speed of 756mb per second, read speed of very close to 1gb per second, it pegged this meter like Boom!

Alex: And we always have to put this in perspective, I think in 1994 we had to re-format our raids every week to make sure we could maintain 30megs per second, on our media 100.

Leo: Right, 30 megs!

Alex: And that was so we could get uncompressed ? not even uncompressed but mostly uncompressed SD so that we could work, and then uncompressed we had to build raids... 2005 we're building those huge raids for MacBreak and those just had to tag out at 220 megs a second, and those were like $11,000.00 each. And now it's like any computer.

Leo: Apple's done a lot to make that fast, but boy it's fast!

Alex: And by the way, one of the things that it's really good for, for those of you wondering what you would do with that kind of speed, compression ? if you're doing a lot of compressions, one of the things that ? you're grabbing a lot of footage and you're churning it through and the processor actually handles that really quickly. What often times is the limiter, is the actual drive. So having a drive with that kind of read-write speed will oftentimes speed up if you're trying to compress to H264 from an uncompressed file, or an apple pro-res file or something like that, you may see a lot of increases. So something a little bit more mundane like 3d or other heavy big editing tools, if you're doing that, it's another reason to have really, really fast drives.

Andy: Do you think that this will ever be a good buy for just your average user?

Leo: Well it really runs Safari very quickly.

Rene: My Mom would love this!

Andy: It could almost run flash!

Alex: This is really cool, I can definitely see producers in Hollywood getting it because it looks really cool, but the iMac's are pretty beefy at this point.

Leo: That's what Ed did, the reason I have this is because Ed had buyer?s remorse and said I don't need this, I'm going to get an iMac, and he was absolutely right, that's the thing to get for 99.9%. But for the 1%er's...

Andy: And also, it's not like an iMac where they can't tell which one you actually have, either you have that latest, greatest, incredibly awesome xenon based MacPro, or you do not. And if you do not, if you're sufficiently weak willed, that's a problem worth $3,000.00

Leo: I actually put this in the window of my house with a light on it!

Andy: Like the Swiss Army knife display with a light on it ? you just need to have it slowly rotating.

Rene: Just wear it Leo! At this point, just wear it!

Leo: What is interesting is it comes with black Apple stickers. It's the only ones I've ever seen that are black, normally they are white, right? So there's that!

Alex: That means you can put it on the bumper of your car and everyone knows that you have it.

Leo: It's basically saying ?Follow me home and steal my computer?!

Alex: It saves you from having to put it in the back seat window all the time to show it off. Now you can just put a sticker there!

Leo: I feel SO guilty owning this. I just feel so guilty!

Andy: Maybe that's another third-party opportunity. If you can manufacture ? out of a good light weight plastic, a rim like this big, plastic that you could snap on to the bottom of it so you can wear it like an Abe Lincoln hat when you go out. Nobody is going to steal it from your office, and everyone will know that you own the Abe Lincoln MacPro! It will conduct heat off of the top of your head on hot days. That's reducing your summer thermal load by at least 8%.

Leo: And on cold days, turn it around and it will blow warm air down on to your head!

Andy: No, you just wear it upside down on cold days.

Leo: I've got to say, Dark Castle runs great on this though.

I come from an era, I literally remember a 386 digital equipment PC worth $10,000.00 at my desk, this is many years ago, but that was a 386!

Rene: Alisa was like that, I think, too.

Leo: Yeah. So this is not...

Rene: That was REAL money back then, Leo.

Leo: Yeah! 10K was a lot of money back then!

Andy: But the differences back then... what was the mid-range computer back then?

Leo: This was definitely considered high-end, this was basically considered a work station at that time. So I've got to point out one other thing. You would think for all that money, Apple would throw in a mouse and a keyboard. Nope, nothing! Not a Thunderbolt cable, nothing!

Rene: You got a power cable Leo, and you're happy to get it!

Leo: A power cable and black stickers.

Alex: Does it have a special power cable or is it normal power cable?

Leo: It's black...

Alex: Is it two-prong, three-prong...

Leo: It's the same one as on the... It's the normal one ? you can see it here right? And it's got that nice soft silicone that Apple does for it's power.

Rene: They do that really well, they do that on the HDMI cables too.

Alex: All of our HDMI cables that we use for production are Apple one's, because they're not as harsh and they pop right out, they're not too thin ? it's very weird. I don't know why someone else doesn't do that.

Andy: It's also something to think about when you see that kind of packaging, that is part of the factor when they are budgeting things out ? how much will it cost to ship these across the country and across the world, and that's what minimalist packaging is all about, if they can get one more unit per box, if they can get X more units per container, they know just how much money they are saving on that. But enjoy the free stickers!

In terms of adding to the bulk of that package, they will give you anything that is flat and made out of plastic!

Leo: Yeah, the manual and a sticker.

Rene: Where's the black keyboard and mouse though Leo? You need color coordinate now!

Leo: That's right! I mean, come on Apple! I spent like $3,300.00 on this thing, give me a keyboard, a mouse, something!

Andy: That is consistently something I don't like about the Apple stores, because they are 10 out of 10 in every single category. When I spent $1500.00 on Google Glass, I was like one of those high-society Dame's getting a $5,000 nail treatment. It was like a salon, they asked me if I wanted a beverage, they set it up for me, they stayed with me for an hour... but the 2 times I've bought MacBooks in the Mac store, they're like Oh, you're here to pick up that thing you dropped $2,000 on, here, bye.

Leo: I agree, they're way to causal! I want a lineup of blue-shirted employees clapping and saying Well done! You've just spent thousands of dollars on hardware from Apple... A little neck massage...

 

Andy: Can I at least use your bathroom? ?No?.

Leo: No. Employee's only ? you got a blue t-shirt?

I do have to say that I was completely wrong. I really thought that this would be a mega-bundle. It would have been a very cheap way for Apple to make this more palatable is by bundling all the pro apps on it or something. They don't even give you a god-damn keyboard. So I was wrong.

Andy: But what kind of keyboard could they bundle with it that would satisfy people who are buying a MacPro?

Rene: Just make it black. That would be fine.

Andy I think I could come up with a long list of things that I'm officially over. I'm over the idea that Apple doesn?t' include USB accessories with these devices, because it would be nice to get these things, but truth be told, over on my desk over there, there is a beautiful Logitech keyboard that I've been using for 3 1/2 years because it's my favorite. That will not displace whatever is cheap and light and thin enough to include in a package. I'm all for it.

Leo: I've just got to say, you buy an iMac, you get a keyboard and a mouse.

Alex: One of the things, I think the design team went all out, I personally thing this is probably the last form factor of the MacPro ever.

Leo: It's perfect. You should not change this.

Alex: What I'm saying is I don't mean that it's going to change, I just think it's the last time they're going to change this. When we look at how long it took to get from the cheese grater to this...

Leo: No, 5 years from now they are going to have a new MacPro. Come on, right?

Rene: 20 years?

Leo: No, 5. 3.

Rene: It will be half the size, Alex, it will be half the size.

Leo: You compare this to the cheese grater MacPro, admittedly that had 6 drive bays, but this is so fast, there is so much power in this little bitty thing. It's pretty cool for that reason alone.

Alex: I think it's awesome...

Leo: Are you saying there's going to be no more MacPro's, or they're just going to continue MacPro's that look like this.

Alex: They will continue to make MacPro's like this until there are no MacPro's.

Leo: But when will there be no more MacPro's?

Alex: 10 years from now.

Leo: What will you get instead?

Alex: Whatever your touch-screen things they have out now are fast enough, and you won't ? it's just not going to be their market. I still think they are moving away from this, I think this is a great way to close that off and build something that we are all going to be happy with for at least 4 or 5 years...

Leo: I can see them doing one that is the size and shape of a Rubik Cube.

Andy: I just can't help but think that in a couple weeks it will be the 30^th anniversary of the original Macintosh, and although the shape has changed, the form has changed, we still have keyboard here, pointing device here, screen here. That hasn't changed, that basic design has gone at least 10 years before that.

Alex: I'm not saying the computer will change, I just think we should enjoy the moment and the fact that we have this crazy-fast computer and the fact that this is not Apple's market anymore. And I think they are going to give us this last little push out and we're going to keep on using it and loving it... I don't mean to bring everybody down...

Andy: I don't think it's going to be that blatant, I think that in 5 years? time, it's possible that Apple has ? they do what they want and what they want to do is something they do extremely well, and I think that if in 5 years there's no more MacPro, it's because they have figured out how to make beautiful computer's for the majority of the population that works for them even better than a computer that costs half as much, they can possibly afford, but maybe they will start to let go of a lot of the Pro-Users, and a lot of the Pro-Users in frustration will leave for other platforms.

Alex: And they gave up the server, they decided that wasn?t a market that was big enough to be worth the trouble.

Andy: A server isn?t something that Apple was ever really, really, really good at. The Mac Mini has been in every single server room I?ve seen but that?s sort of a freak case I think. In terms of what administrators really want to see from servers, Apple is just not interested or willing to make that. But Apple?s done really, really, well at making pro level computers in terms of ? A tool that is manifestly the weapon of a warrior for creative people for finding the creative?

Leo: Oh fondle fondle fondle, oh quarter radius, oh index of refraction of the paint gloss...

Andy: Exactly!

Leo: I?m just going to say this is the last Mac Pro I?ll ever own. I love it!

Andy: You look like you?re fondling Mr. Bigglesworth.

Leo: I?ll never leave you!

Andy: For the record there are 5 different witticisms I?ve thought of and that No, we?d better not say that. I like doing this show and I like TWiT existing and if I said one of those things one or both of those things would cease to be true anymore.

Leo: I think that what really ? And by the way please don?t send me an email saying ?You knit whit, you could buy a keyboard and mouse for only 15 dollars. I know that, I have plenty of keyboards and mice. I?m just joking. I do have to say and a final word on this. For whatever it?s way overpriced, nobody needs the power blah blah blah. This is a computer you literally can fall in love with. I?m just saying.

Andy: Apple does that so well.

Rene: It?s kind of like owning a Lamborghini.

Leo: I?m kind of fond of it.

Alex: I don?t know I kind of think I would get more day to day enjoyment from a Mac Pro than a Lamborghini in my opinion.

Leo: I sit down, every night I sit down and go what am I going to do with you? And I open the browser and I go to facebook. It?s depressing.

Andy: I?m not likely to send a Mac Pro into the ditch by the side of a road, that?s one thing.

Rene: Leo, how is this as a home theater PC?

Leo: I?m not?. You know believe it or not the Xbox 1 is a perfect home theater PC. And I?m using that as my home theater PC. And that?s fine.

Rene: It?s too inexpensive. You need a much more expensive one.

Leo: The real truth is I have absolutely zero need for this but I do love it. There?s something about it, you just kind of fall in love with it. It?s hard to describe.

Andy: That?s always been one of Apple?s strengths. It?s not a trivial thing either.

Leo: You?re saying it?s okay Andy? For me to love it?

Andy: No, I?m saying there are objects in that very room that you?re sitting in right now that are capable of returning your love in a significant way that will pay off in the long run, as opposed to forcing you to go find a box of wet naps and get that stuff off of your Mac Pro. I?m just saying that there are so many laptops out there that I think are really really great. I really like my new retina Mac Book, but I also like these 250 dollar Chrome Books. Whatever the advantages of a Chrome Book are, when you take it out of the box you don?t feel like OH MAN, that is manifestly the weapon of a king. This is a beautiful thing.

Rene: --- fondle cam.

Leo: Welcome to Cinemax 1 A.M, coming up at 1:10? Look the reason we get into this business for a lot of us, certainly it was for me, is a love of technology, Apple?s taught us a love of design.

Rene: Dare not speak it's name.

Every once in a while an object comes out that?s really fetishtistically beautiful. And they?re rare and when they come out you want to celebrate them and honor them.

Andy: There is a reason so many of the people on this show and listening to this show have a G4 Mac Cube.

Leo: Exactly.

Andy: That?s not in stores, it's not being given away, it?s a beautiful object that gives them pleasure to simply have it on the shelf somewhere. That?s not an easy thing for tech companies... Ok now you are freaking me out a little bit.

Leo: I shall call her Her... Her.

Andy: If next week we finally pull a set of wax lips on the side of that... I might have to sit out a couple of shows.

Andy: It could be fun in that forever staying young...

Leo: It could be my pillow wife. Alright enough of this silly

Alex: You know what we ought to do, I have to admit it because it would show all of... we should go back to when they first announced one of these and have all of our comments.

Leo: I completely admit, I mocked it, I thought it was stupid, I said who?s going to want to buy this. It starts at $3,000 but by the time you equip it properly you?re talking 10 grand. All of that?s still true. In fact...

Rene: And then you saw it.

Leo: And then I saw it.

Rene: Go to the harp music. (sings)

Leo: It?s like if you knew that falling in love with Scarlett Johansson would cost you a lot of money and a lot of heart break, and that eventually George Clooney would come along and steal her away, but you still?.

Rene: Mac Pro, you complete me.

Leo: It is the 30^th anniversary. Hey look, I remember going to Macy?s in March 1984, plunking down my Macy?s card, spending 2500 bucks for a Mac ? The original Macintosh. That did nothing basically. You had to swap this 100 times to copy a file. And I loved that too just as much. 30 years ago, and in fact January 25^th there is an event you should all come to in Cupertino at the Flint center. Where the Macintosh was originally announced on January 25^th 30 years ago 1984. Mark Canter sent me a little video inviting you and me and everybody else. Before there was Google, Facebook, Twitter there was the Macintosh. I don?t know where this panel discussion was but Steve Jobs, introducing the Mac Team ?

(Video playing, people introducing themselves)

Leo: That is going to be an event. I?m looking forward to going to that, celebrating the 30^th anniversary of the announcement of the Macintosh, at the Flint center. Same place. I expect many of those people - obviously a few won?t but many of those people will be there. And I?m sure Woz will be there. I know I?ve heard from a lot of people.

Andy: They should let us stream it.

Leo: Mark, let us stream it. That?s a great idea.

Andy: At least stream it the next day.

Leo: That?s a great idea. Let me send him an email. That?s a very good idea. Cause that?s the kind of thing I know our audience would be very very interested in. Let?s take a break. I?m getting a little emotional here.

Andy: Mop for Mr. Laporte, mop for Mr. Laporte.

Rene: Remove the Mac Pro out of his eye line.

Leo: It?s so beautiful. There?s nothing I can do with it. Well I have an I-movie I?d like to work on and then I?m going to email some people. Maybe go do some Sudoku puzzles.

Andy: We?re all very happy for you Leo. We joke but we?re all really very happy for you.

Rene: Does it launch quicklook at an acceptable speed, that's all I want to know.

Leo: Oh you mean when you press the space bar. Yes it does, there?s no hesitation with anything it does. It does it with confidence and assurance.

Andy: So when you do a spot light search it?ll actually search on the search term you type? Not on the 4 letters 4-19?

Leo: Yes that?s right, even with Mavericks.

Andy: That?s worth 3 grand right there.

Rene: It?ll give you the result before you search.

Leo: Fondle, nice

(Music playing and singing)

Andy: (singing) I?m here in your heart and my heart will go on.

Leo: It?s so wrong. I need Bruno Mars, some flowers, a little champagne, some --- maybe. Some candle light.

Rene: You guys want to be alone Leo?

Leo: I do. I really just want to leave right now with my Mac Pro. Design is very important to those of us who live in the Apple world. Anybody who kind of follows Apple for any length of time understands that I think. Right? And of course as Steve Jobs always says, It?s the intersection of technology and science and liberal arts. If you are a great scientist, a great programmer, maybe you?re a great cook, but you need great designs. I want to tell you about 99 designs. 99 designs brings you the world?s largest graphic design market place. To over a quarter of a million graphic designers, who are waiting to help you make your stuff look better. Perhaps, you?re interested in a landing page design. That?s really?you know, the first thing people see of your business, off and on the web. 99 designs you tell them what you need, dozens of designers from the community well say, ?Okay, I?ve got an idea. What about this?? You give them some feedback, you refine the design, you select the design you want, and you pay for your favorite. Do you need fresh marketing collateral? 99 designs offers all kinds of marketing designs. You can get a sleek affordable email template, a banner ad and info graphic. You could do a vehicle wrap design! We do t-shirts. AP designers use 99 designs. Landing pages start at just $2.99. You could start your next graphic design project at 99designs.com for as little as $199. And I invite you to go to 99designs.com/mbw to get your $99 power pack of services, for free. That gives you more designer time and attention. 99 designs will bold, highlight, and feature your design project, in their market place, so you get roughly twice as many designers. Right now, at 99designs.com there are thousands of design contests going on. There are hundreds of thousands of designers participating. Payouts last month alone, 1.4 million dollars to designers. 66 million dollars to date! 99designs, you?re going to love it. 99designs.com/mbw, for that 99 dollar power pack of services, for free. Leo Laporte with Andy Ihnatko, With Rene Ritchie, with Alex Lindsay. Okay, let?s go from the sublime to the ridiculous. If you were watching the NFL playoffs... Do you get to see football at all in the Glilgaly? No, probably not.

Alex: Yeah, I?ve been?The problem is both weekends, I?ve been flying. So I just see it as I go through the airport. So I think I was at Houston in the lounge or something when the game was going on.

Leo: Let me play this for you, because you would have seen this in the NFL playoffs, and I wonder?this is the new IPad ad, and I really wonder what the reaction of people is. Particularly the narration, Listen.

Commercial: We don?t read and write poetry because it?s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race and the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, Law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits necessary to substation life. Poetry, beauty, romance, love. These are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, ?oh me, oh life of the questions of these recurring. Of the endless strains of the faithless, of cities filled with the foolish, what good it meant these, of me, oh life, answer, will you, are here.

Andy: Does it work with USB?

Commercial: The powerful play goes on and you can contribute a verse.

Alex: Does it come with the case for that?

Leo: Does it come with a giant windmill? And who is this guy, and why is he looking at me like that?

Commercial: What will your verse be?

Leo: I?ve got to say it makes me want to go out and rent Dead Poets Society and I bet that the rental for Dead Poets Society is through the roof!

Andy: I was wondering who did the voice for that.

Leo: It?s Robin Williams, and from Dead Poets Society that?s why the audio is so crappy. You can hardly hear what he?s saying.

Andy: Oh, ok. I?ve never seen dead Poets Society, so I don?t know

Leo: Ohh! Andy, it?s a great movie! It?s wicked good.

Indy: But what? I was in my nonRobin Williams drama phase. I?ve been burned too often.

Leo: That?s kind of a permanent phase?This was a good one, this was a good one. But I just? so a couple of things come to mind. A number of people have said that it sounds much like a voice in the 1984 commercial. The big brother voice. Okay, that?s weird. It also feels like it?s somebody at apple trying to do ?here?s to the crazy ones?, but failing. And couldn?t they just have brought Robin in to recreate that in a sound booth where it sound good.

Rene: He must have said no.

Indy: I don?t know.

Leo: I, It?s just puzzling. Is that a successful ad?

Andy: It?s a very pretty object, I?ll put it that way.

Leo: Oh I think the images are brilliant, I love the images.

Andy: Unfortunately that?s all I?m left saying. I don?t know if it was a good ad or a bad ad because only someone inside apple, apparently, would know what that was meant to achieve. But I mean? I was joking around during the voice over, but I think that most people, when they?re looking at a commercial like that, they?re thinking what is being advertised here? How much does it cost? What could it do for me? And there?s inspirational advertising. And a lot of advertising not only gives you the practical stuff but also just gets you in the mood, where you start feeling. Then your imagination runs wild about the product. But I think this sort of tips over to the other side where, again, what are you advertising for me? Again, I rarely scuba with a tablet computer so perhaps that?s not the computer for me?

Alex: If you actually go to the website, they actually are breaking down a lot of the ads, So the ad actually is? they?re showing a lot of the pieces from the ads and how the iPad is being used in those areas.

Leo: Taking an expedition to new depths so that?s the ocean. Elevating the expedition world class mountaineers?

Andy: A commercial you?ll understand after you go to the website. That?s always the..

Alex: Well, but I think that a lot of this is...I think that part of this is really pushing the iPad as a creation device, rather than a consumption device because you look at how that juxtaposes this against the Kindle which is purely a consumption device.

Leo: Yeah. These are all creative enterprise, this is not just somebody playing video games. You?re absolutely right. And the question, it?s obviously the beginning of a campaign that will answer the question what will your verse be?

Rene: And it?s also not productivity, it?s creation. And one of the problems Apple has had recently is they didn?t show off the iPad on stage. Since, I think, Steve jobs in 2011 with the iPad 2, and they did that awesome ?technology alone is not enough, we believe? commercial and then they let the story of the iPad die. And they talked about retina displays, and they talked about speeds and fees which is usually something they don?t do. And, only recently, with the iPad life commercial, did they get back to try telling the story of iPad again. And this might not be a 100 percent successful. I found it really heavy, both Williams narrative and the music that was accompanying it was?

Leo: Yeah, very grim.

Rene: ? very strong and overbearing almost. And it wasn?t as good as it could have been, but I?m delighted that apple is once again talking about what you can do with an iPad, and not just the technology that?s into it.

Andy: It definitely continues the message with the story they started off with introduction of the Air. Remember, we were talking about that after the launch event? About how this is one of the first times in a while which the promo was not, again, kids playing virtual piano and people playing games, and entertaining themselves. It was part of that first push, saying the iPad is now officially a computer in the eyes of Apple. It?s not something we don?t know exactly what it is, but we?re happy to let you guys figure out what it is. It really does now? it does occupy the good slot in the good better best slot of mobile computers, but it?s just that?the only thing that I worry?. Well, worry is too strong of a word, but the only thing on my mind, is that while people are looking at that ad, the next commercial break there is one of the most to the point and in your face Kindle Fire commercials, that says here is what the iPad Air does. Here is what the Kindle Fire does. Here?s how much this costs, and here?s how much that costs. And you figure up for yourselves whether or not this amount of money is really worth it.

Alex: I think that is exactly the point and what apple is saying. Yeah, if you compare those things together, maybe our product doesn?t look like Kindle Fire. But if you think about it as a creation device lets have the Kindle Fire try go do that with us head to head.

Andy: That?s absolutely true. I?m just saying, I don?t know if that ad that apple put together is making that point effectively. I guess the way I could describe it is, to me, it feels like a screensaver commercial. Where it?s just playing, and it?s better than a blank screen, and it holds your attention in that way. But it doesn?t guide your thinking in any way and it doesn?t leave you with a message. All it leaves me is with the awareness that there are things called iPad out there, and people do things with them.

Leo: It is two very different? Here?s the Kindle fire advertisement by the way. It is two very different advertising styles. This is utilitarian, this is like here?s what it does and here?s what it costs. And the Apple ad is very much an aspirational ad. The message, I guess, from the apple ad is if you use an IPad, you conspire to great things. What will your great thing be? And like that idea, this is much more? this kindle ad is very? you know, it?s a price, it?s about? you know?And I would expect this by the way, from Amazon, which is much more a utilitarian company than Apple is.

Alex: Oh, I think that, as the beginning of a campaign? where they?re talking I?m suspecting that after this, that what we?re going to see a lot of in iPad, I still think we?re in this very long curve where Apple is moving away from, I know I?m excited for Os10?

Leo: I agree.

Alex: ?To IOS. And now we?re going to basically spend the next two years explaining to you why you don?t need your laptop and, so you know, it?s being developed as a creation device. And I think the other possible reason for this is that an ad exec. Was sitting around with his Apple client and said let?s make a Terrence Malick

Leo: Right, It was. that?s exactly what it was!

Alex: I love Terrence Malick. You can make a whole commercial

Leo: The tree of life was equally puzzling to me.

Alex: Do you think we could hire Terrence Malick to do this? Oh I don?t know, I think we could just watch a whole bunch of Terrence Malick films and then we?ll make it just like that.

Leo: I think Rene said that it made him feel creeped. And it was creepy with the voodoo dancer looking at you at. It?s like why, what are you doing, what? Me? It didn?t make you look good.

Rene: It?s a very important lesson on how certain visuals and certain sounds can come together to create a mood that is just a little bit off of what you want. Like, a little bit lighter music. If they?d change some of the shots differently than you have that every day photo commercial that everybody loved. But you? But the music is too hard. The narrative is too serious, and the people keep staring at you like that, and suddenly, it takes what could have been a fantastic commercial, and makes it a good direction, not perfect delivery.

Leo: Well you?ve seen the?

Andy: I think the main problem with it is, that they?re showing me all these great visuals, but they?re not showing me a single thing that I, myself, could see myself ever doing. If you?d put into a classroom, if you put in a coffee shop, if you put it into a living room, and you show me that this can be done with a lot more things than I imagined it could be done. I could imagine myself wanting to do those things. But, again, I?ve been scuba diving once, loved it. Would love to do it again. I?m not sure I would ever take an iPad down there with me.

Rene: Peter said it made him feel bad about himself.

Andy: If he?s a bad person than he should feel bad.

Leo: If you watched Tech News Today this morning, Horace Dediu?Who I always admire and read with great interest. Even though I don?t understand everything he ever says, ?of Simco joined Mike and Sarah talking about his blog post of yesterday. When Apple reached parody with windows. He made what I thought was a really interesting point. He said, Ten years ago, the way computer purchases worked, was the biggest buyers were big companies. IT directors who bought thousands of PCs, running windows, for the company. And then the employees went home and bought windows computers at home, because that?s what the IT guys said you should have. And it drove sales and it was why windows became absolutely dominant in the 90s, and to some degrees the 2000s. He said the big change was when people started bringing in their own devices. Suddenly, it cracked the Windows monopoly because people saw other devices, they tried other devices. They said what really happens now is there?s a much broader diversity. Yes, there are still more Windows PCs by far. 337 million Windows PCs sold in 2012 compared to, perhaps 17 million Macintosh. It?s a big difference. But because of the broad diversity of the market, in a fact, he says Apple has reached parody with Windows. It?s no longer a Windows world and, I thought that was very interesting. And a lot of that is because of these devices. Because of iPhones and IPad. That?s what cracked the Windows monopoly. I fact Microsoft is struggling with windows 8.1. I mean, it is a bomb!

Alex: If you look at Apple taking the iPad and really turning it into your next laptop, you know IPads have already pooled all this funnel in with them and really undercut that market. If they really move it into something that people feel like? you know, I have a couple iPads and I still feel like I have to do real work on my laptop. I?m not sold on that yet, but I think if they can move that to a large population, I think, that that continues to drive that market down.

Leo: Yeah.

Rene: I use to work at Enterprise and I remember it was pcs as far as the eye could see. Pc on every desk

Leo: Absolutely.

Rene: Pcs on the servers, server room everyone had Windows mobile phones, some Blackberries and then the CEO got an iPhone he thought it was cool and then the VP of research and development got an iPhone. And then the head of tech support got an iPhone. And suddenly we had to support iPhones. And then I got a laptop because I was a design guy. Because design guys could have a MacBook. And the head of development got a MacBook because he wanted the battery life. He got a MacBook Air. And so, you know, another guy got it and all the sudden the Apple stuff started moving from the top down, instead of IT up and they were just forced to support it.

Leo: Exactly.

Rene: And it continued to move from there. It was a total reversal of the previous model.

Leo: We all saw it happening. In fact, here?s an article this week. In the Wall Street Journal. Apple devices flow into the corporate world. The popularity of iPhone and IPad among corporate employees is prompting corporate tech managers to rewrite policies, and change traditional buying patterns. And, by the way, another big looser, Blackberry. Apple has, according to the journal, 8 percent of global business in government spending in 2012. That?s up from 1 percent in 2009.

Rene: When I was leaving they were replacing all the GV8 projectors with apple TVs.

Leo: Yeah, exactly. People start with the iPhone, it?s the tip of the sphere. It says, Chip Pearson, chief executive of JMF software. And then they realize that ITunes are Windows? stinks.

Laughs

Leo: Well played Apple, well played.

Andy: I do think that interoperability is as big as a factor, really, as whatever apple has done. Because back when, although, that original model was certainly relevant, there was a time when you couldn?t even have a Windows machine and a different kind of machine on the same network, and expect those two things to work together

Leo: Right. Apple did a very good job of that. They really focused on that.

Andy: Yeah, and I?m saying that the world moved, the new technologies of networking and, really the world in general, made it less painful to pick whatever device you personally like. I mean, another interesting statistic over the last quarter is, if you compare the amount of absorption of google chrome books enterprise verses Windows notebooks. Chrome books are just kicking butt. And if you incorrectly look at the numbers, you mind even think they?re actually outselling Windows. But the rate at which Chrome books are being taking up by enterprise right now, simply by virtue of the fact that it?s not even necessary to have a compatible operating systems that run, what you might call, ?real aps? anymore. So as long as you have a network, cable computer that can connect with central server where the real aps are being hosted. As long as you can connect to where the data is being hosted, everything else is kind of irrelevant. A lot of companies are finding out that we don?t actually even need a MacBook air! We can just simply issue these affordable devices, that can easily be left in cab without causing a whole bunch of damage, to a lot of people. That?s how big this interoperability has brought.

Leo: Your, right and that means it?s easier to bring a Chrome book in to work, or a mac into work, or an ipad into work. And once it becomes easier to do that, a huge diverse ecosystem blooms and that?s what Horace is saying.

Andy: But it does show what Microsoft is in, because their business has always been about selling Microsoft licenses and now it?s no longer?it?s still immensely popular, but it?s not driving a lot of new Windows licenses through upgrades or through purchases of new hardware. Now the iPad is eating into that, and now that other manufacturers are eating into that. Microsoft is big enough that they can, you know, figure things out. But man, if they were in a weaker position, this would be one of those points where you were wondering how much longer can Microsoft keep this up.

Leo: Somebody in chat room was saying you?re kidding Chrome books in business? That?s exactly the shocking headline men? Chrome books were enjoying 21 percent of business, now this is business notebook sales, not home sales, business notebook sales in 2013. 21 percent! That?s a lot of Chrome books in business. I don?t know who?s using and I feel sorry for them but?laughs.

Andy: Well if it gets back to the idea of IT departments approving hardware. A lot of departments will love a Chrome book because the damn thing is damn near indestructible. They configure themselves, they run themselves.

Leo: Exactly.

Andy: And, once again, if someone leaves something behind in a cab, that?s significantly less of a significant problem than if someone leaves a windows 8 or windows 7 notebook and tab in a cab.

Leo: from the Wall Street Journal article, Nordstrom, this is all antidotal but it gives you an idea, Nordstrom has deployed 24,000 iPad at its 261 stores, replacing their point of sales machines. Urban Outfitters, staff uses customized iPod touches to check out customers, handling returns, and ordering out of stock products. They?ve deployed more than 1,000 iPod touches at its stores including anthropology. They referred to a Cranston Rhode Island Jewelry store. And I go there all the time, and Alex and Annies, known for its bangle bracelets. They were using laptops, running a web based payment system. They replaced them with iPod touches using a custom AP. They have 37 stores, they said that their wait times dropped significantly from mother?s day last year, to mother?s day in 2013. Less than 10 minutes, same store revenue doubled, because of the shift to iPod touches. So that?s all antidotal, I admit, but its definitely a new world and its, good?it?s bad for Blackberry, probably bad for Microsoft. Good for Google, good for Apple.

Andy: Yeah

Leo: And really, it?s good for the user because it means diversity is okay, you can choose the one you want.

Andy: Yep, it?s like a horrible wind of fresh air to designers or companies that was?perhaps use to be patting themselves on the back saying, ?we?ve made the perfect device, and people have responded to it because it is, indeed, exactly what the future is supposed to be like and exactly attaching to their needs.? But then, a new device, like a tablet comes out, or like a really good powerful smart phone comes out, and that?s when you find out that the reason why people were buying your notebooks was not because you built the perfect notebook, but simply because it was the only device that could handle the tasks that they had at that time. And all along, it wasn?t that it was the device that they really wanted but it was the only device that was available for sale.

Leo: Right.

Andy: and once you say well what if we take away the keyboard? What if we add battery life? What if we don?t let you run desktop aps but we run aps that are good enough, and we sell it to you for $250? Would that do it for you? Why yes, it would. Thank you very much.

Leo: Yes

Alex: And you look at countries like Rwanda, the entire governments standard issue is and IPad. That?s what all the officials and everyone you work with in the ministry.

Leo: Wow, really?

Alex: No, no the entire government is IPad! No one that you work with has a laptop. They?re all just wondering around, just typing away, they run the entire Rwandan government on iPads.

Leo: Bad news for Apple. They wanted to get their antitrust judge replaced. We?ve talked before about the complaints apple had about Michael Bromwich. He was put in place by judge Kotey. Apple felt that both, Kotey and Bromwich were biased against Apple. This is all in the eBooks case.

Rene: So bizarre.

Leo: The department of justice has responded to Apple in their request that Bromwich be removed because he?s anti Apple. The DOJ says, ?Regrettably, it?s now clear that Apple has chosen a campaign of character assassination over a culture of compliance. Apple could?,? This is the department of justice attorneys, ??Apple could have been spending the past months working with the external and eternal compliance monitor, with the ultimate goal of reforming its policies in training. And in the process change its corporate tone to one that reflects a commitment to abiding by the requirements of antitrust law. Instead they?ve focused on personally attacking Mr. Bromwich and thwarting him from performing even the most basic of his court ordered functions.? They felt that?Apple felt that Bromwich was over reaching. He was trying to interview Apple execs not related to the trail. The judge denied the bid, saying, Nope! Bromwich is there, you better live with it.

Alex: Well, it could be appealed.

Leo: Well of course it can be appealed, I?m guessing it will be appealed.

Alex: I mean, if you?re Apple this is a good way to drag it out.

Leo: Well I think Apple, legitimately perhaps, but I think Apple definitely believes, that both Kotey and Bromwich are acting in biased fashion.

Rene: And the DOJ, its such a bizarre case. You?d think it was one of those crazy William Shatner led trials from the TV show

Leo: I know!

Rene: Like, the judges are meeting with peoples, are they old friends?

Leo: Denny Crane

Rene: Yeah, Absolutely Denny Crane. Like the Judge and this guy are old friends. And there?s an article on Slayed too, where they basically said that Amazon was getting everything they wanted out of this. Because now they?re free to do? I mean, it?s not that the government went after fixing the eBook industry, they went after Apple and left Amazon all by itself. Which struck some people the wrong cord as well. But the entire thing, is even if the stuff is incorrect, it looks like that just for the sake of justice and propriety, they should at least appoint someone who is external to get involved at this point.

Leo: Well the court just said, ?No, this is the guy you?ve got, you better work with them.?

Alex: Well the court, so far.

Leo: So far.

Alex: I think the thing also, is that Apple has made it clear that they?re going to take the offence on this. And I think the other thing is? When we see this in DC, the little push and pull, Apple wouldn?t have pushed and pulled if they didn?t think they didn?t have a dog to hunt. And doing this from a political perspective, I think, it also allows them to put, both the Judge?. I think the Judge and the attorney probably stepped out of bounds somewhere, and apple has a pretty good idea that they did. Or has a good assumption that they did, and I think they?re going to keep on trying to hide that. And by doing that, it pushes them all back from Apple. And if it was any propriety that has already been denied, that?s called perjury and so now both of those folks, if they crossed any lines, and if they lied about it, Apple has them in a vise. Because they?re just going to keep on pushing and digging and it means that if he keeps on pushing in, they have something to keep on wrapping around. So I think that if I was Apple, I would do exactly the same thing.

Leo: I think you?ve nailed Apples strategy on this, and, I think, from the things Apple has said, it?s pretty clear that they feel that both the Judge and Bromwich have overstepped their bounds. And I?m sure that they expect, at some point, to get to a court that will agree with them and take Judge Kotey off the case and replace Bromwich.

 

Alex: Kotey should not be taken off the case, but being taken off the bench.

Leo: Right, you?re talking serious. I can see your dads influence on this by the way?Does he still work?

Alex: No, my dad still, he?s a very, very accomplished lawyer, a federal prosecutor.

Leo: You know a little about what you?re talking about here.

Alex: This is something I grew up... When I was seven, I use to go watch court cases about this, and this is how?people saying, ?I never did this, and we never had these meetings? is how this always begins. You know the thing is this is a very? I?m not saying that I don?t know, I wasn?t there, I don?t know what happened, but I?m saying that it really smells like someone stepped in the wrong, you know?

Leo: I?ve got to say, I?m not an attorney but it seems like an extraordinarily strongly worded letter from the DOJ.

Rene: Apple, its? one of those Oliver Badwich moments, where if you lied, if you lied once, that?s game over.

Leo: Right.

Rene: The thing in the chat room, people are saying that she formed an opinion before the trial started, but in this case that?s her job. She had all the evidence. And she?d formed a preliminary opinion, and then it?s up to Apple and the DOJ to argue the case. So it?s not that she was biased from the outset, but I think it?s the questions that Alex mentioned about her are not her friendship with the monitors. The amount he?s charging, the fact that he wasn?t experienced in the job that he was hired to do so he had to hire an outside person, double the billing rate that he was hired to do, and he wanted to interview every person from Johnny Ive to the janitors, he mainly?There?s enough craziness going on that it makes something smell bad.

Leo: It does. I feel the same way, and we?ve talked about this before. This is just yet another scrimmage in the ongoing war.

Alex: And even if they didn?t do it in the legal, Apple is going to keep on making it smell until? and they?re going to try to get them to give up by just keeping on dragging it out. And I?m sure that you can? these guys can be assured that there are all kinds of private investigators doing what they can legally do to figure out what?s going on, and everything else about them. This is definitely personal, I think, for Apple.

Leo: Yeah

Rene: They feel wronged.

Leo: Hey, good news! You?ve been waiting for it. Aaron Sorkin has announced that he?s completed the screen play for the SEV jobs biopic.

All: Laughs

Rene: How many Sorkin is there in it? Do we know yet?

Leo: We don?t know, we don?t know. I?m trying to get the script from his trash.

All: Laughs

Rene: I?m just going to go back to the Sorkinisms from the YouTube thing and I?m just going to write Funny.

Andy: I was watching it this morning again.

Rene: Oh my gosh.

I can?t watch any of his stuff anymore because I just, either I?m hearing it, or I?m waiting for it.

Leo: It took him almost two years to write this script. He first got the job in the spring of 2012, and here we are almost the spring of 2014 and he?s just?

Alex: He decided, I think when he announced it was when sorkinisms first came out and I think he decided he was going to try to write an entire script on sorkinsims

Leo: With that one?

Alex: And he realized how hard that is.

Leo: So hard, so hard.

Rene: He had newsroom, the story came from the renewal of newsroom season 3, which apparently was excruciating negations.

Leo: Ahh

Rene: And the last paragraph was, ?Oh by the way he?s also turned in the script for?and the Kutcher free Steve Jaws movie.

Leo: Laughs, as it will forever be known now. We talked about this a little bit already, was it on TWiT? The 7^th anniversary of the iPhone announcement, and I was thinking back, we even played a little bit of the announcement. I think it was on TWiT, wasn?t it Chad? It was seven years ago this week that, I think, Alex, you were with me, right, and Andy were you there to, and you were there, and you were there, and you and you and you were there. I was sitting next to Scott Borne, Alex Lindsay, Merlin Mann. Remember we were talking on Macbreak weekly for months about an Apple phone. Whether it would be called the iPhone. Scott Borne was so convinced. He was so excited. Umm. Let me play a little bit of the key note, because, I would say the moment in this keynote when he first introduces the iPhone, today still gives me chills.

Alex: A key note from a guy whose life was filled with great keynotes.

Leo: There?s no doubt in my mind and I think about the iPad, by the way, this could be the backbone of Aaron sorkins movie, is announcements, but not the ones we?re thinking. The IPod announcements, the Macintosh announcements according to what he said a year and a half ago and all things be.

Rene: And the Next Cube announcement.

Leo: And the next cube announcement, which is a very strange one to pick.

Rene: It was perfect.

Leo: Huh?

Andy: According to the sto?if you?re telling the story of Steve Jobs and you meant the Next Cube, you failed because Next is the part of his life, where he stopped being somebody who is part of, that did not have complete and total control over a company top to bottom, and where he became the CEO. It was the first CEO position of many.

Leo: I think you?re right. I don?t know why? You tube is this our bandwidth, or is it YouTube, I want to play this clip gosh darn it.

Rene: Well, the CES video is processing.

Leo: You know, if I had a mac pro right now I probably wouldn?t be having this trouble.

Rene: You know, we had 60 ought bandwidth at the hotel, and it was taking forty minutes to upload a video, because YouTube was so backed up.

Leo: Yeah, yeah. Let me see if I can find the seminal moment. Alright Steve Jobs. And I wish there was a little video of you, me and Scott Borne, and the audience reacting to this.

Keynote: Its 2001 we introduce the first IPod. And?

Leo: This, by the way, he plays the audience so well in this. His sense of drama and music is impeccable.

Keynote: It changed the entire music industry well. Today we?re introducing 3 revolutionary products of this class

Leo: Scott Borne goes ?whaaat???

Keynote: The first one, is a widescreen iPod with touch controls.

Leo: The audience, I think a little baffled at this point, We?re expecting an iPhone announcement, but you don?t know for sure.

Keynote: The second the second is a revolutionary mobile phone.

Leo: That?s the one Scott borne wanted to here, and they?re showing the interface?that?s right that?s the first time he saw that isn?t it!

Keynote: And the 3^rd is a breakthrough internet communications device.

Leo: Now, they?re really confused! Really confused.

Keynote: So, 3 things, a wide screen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet device. An IPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. An IPod, a phone, and an internet communicator.

Leo: Single greatest moment in Keynote history right there!

Keynote: These are not three separate devices, this is one device!

All: Laughs

Keynote: And we are calling it iPhone. Today, today apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is.

Leo: Very nicely done. I thought. He shows an iPod with a dial on it. Actually, as we learn from Fred Vogelstein?s book, Dog Fight which has this whole?

Leo: You?ve got to read, watch this keynote and then read the backstory of all the iPhone developers in the front row drinking heavily during this ?.

Rene: Yeah

Leo: And apparently during this? the backstory is that they did, in fact, consider an iPhone with a click wheel. It would look just like an iPod with a click wheel.

Rene: Tony Fidel?s iPhone.

Leo: yeah

Andy: And you should seek that video out and play it all the way to the end and realize that as the keynote was over, and I was standing there, and everyone was cheering and jumping around, and the first thing I thought was, if the last thing that Steve Jobs had said at the end of the keynote was, ?Now go out in kill in my name.? That would have been a very bad day for San Francisco. That?s what you call a successful keynote.

Alex: And you look at that, and having one keynote, when you talk to engineers that work on phones. We do a lot of stuff around phone engineers?all of them pretty much had to take everything they were doing, throw it away, and start all over again.

Leo: That?s exactly what they were doing in Google.

Andy: When he said they reinvented it.

Leo: That?s what Vogelstein talks about in Dog Fight, is that google engineers looked at it and said, ?ohh.? And they threw out everything that they?d done to that date.

Andy: And the ones that didn?t are going under.

Leo: And Samsung said quick, ?copy it.? (Laughs) Pretty, pretty cool stuff. Seven years ago. That?s been a fast seven years, hasn?t it? Amazing.

Leo: All of those transitions we just talked about in business, the move to mobile, the move to touch, the internet and things. All of this has happened since then, in seven years. What an amazing era. Aren?t we lucky to live in this time?

Rene: It makes you wonder, when you talk about future apple products, if you put that sentence today, ?Apple reinvents the blank.? What word could you put there, that would be as significant as phone?

Leo: The wristwatch? I don?t think so.

Rene: The wristwatch doesn?t sound as big. TV doesn?t sound as big.

Leo: TV maybe.

Andy: How about the word home?

Leo: Yeah, see that?s where the NASDAQ tradition was very strategically intriguing to go full circle here. Was its google saying, we?re going to reinvent the home? not apple today. That?s very interesting.

Rene: We?re going to learn how to use it.

Leo: We?re going to take a break and come back with our picks of the week. And Andy Ihnakto, Rene Ritchtie, and Alex Lindsay. Our show today, brought to you by audible.com. I?m looking at the screensaver on my MacPro and, you know, it puts up the album mart, and can you see that it?s a lot of audible books. I listen to some music, but a lot of audible books. Heres the ptownsa book, Who I Am. Boy that was a great book Margret Atwood?s The Blind Assisn, great book, The Hours, great book. I?m just thinking? Crime and Punishment, The Dangerous Animal, book by Steven Polostky. That was your recommendation, Andy

Andy: One of my favorite pics ever, one of my favorite audio books ever.

Leo: Yeah, no easy day, the story of the seal team that got Osama bin Laden. The iliad of Homer. I listened to that when we went to troy. I loved walking through the walls of troy, listening to the iliad. That was a moment. This is why I love audible. Steven King, ohhh. The gun Slinger, what a great book. This is why I love audible. I have been listening to audio books from Audbidle.com since 2000. I have over 500 books in my library. That?s a lot of them right there, and to me it?s just a world of wonderful entertainment, of learning, great way to pass the time in the car. I?m a horrible commuter stuck in a plane for 12 hours, even at the gym in the treadmill. I mean, as bad as being stuck in a plane for 12, hours being on the treadmill for an hour is pretty much right up there. But if I?ve got audible, it goes by like that! I?ll even put a few minutes extra on the treadmill because I?m listening to a great book! I want you to try audible.com. With more than 150,000 titles in every area. Fiction, nonfiction, history, periodicals, you?re sure to find something you like. The trick is finding that one audio book that I?m going to give you, for free, when you visit audible.com/macbreak. Fortunately we have Andy ihnatko with us and he?s always recommending great books. Before you do mention your book, I do want to mention yesterday of triangulation, we interviewed Brad Stone about his book, which I?ve been listening to audible, it?s the everything story of Amazon and Jeff Bezos, and it?s a great audible listen and a great book. So I?m going to recommend that, and along with it, listen to our interview yesterday with the author, Brad Stone. Andy, what are you listening to?

Andy: This is sort of a personal pick. Okay, they?re all personal picks. I?ve recently become a little bit fascinated by Truman Capote, because after listening to both of the bio picks about him writing, In Cold Blood, both of the movies really made the case. Writing this book broke him about half way. So I started reading a little bit about his life. Turns out he wrote a second book that was also? that really, for some reason just destroyed him. The second one was a book called Answered Prayers, in which is social life was all about these New York high society women. And so he wrote his thinly veiled novel in which he basically used every piece of gossip that they ever gave him, and published them in this series of short stories for this book that he got a million dollar advance for. But as soon as esquire started excerpting early chapters from this, instantly he became a pariah in New York. So any story about Truman Capote becomes a discussion of why the hell did he write this book?

Leo: Because he was Truman Capote!

Andy: Exactly. And the discussion being split between that he literally thought that the reason why all the society dames were telling him this gossip was because they knew that he was a writer, and they knew that he would use it, and this was all fair game. And other people saying, again, that he was just broken at that point and this was the start of his self-destructive spiral that would take him all the way to an early grave. Sex, drugs, alcohol and everything.

Leo: Sounds good, I?ll take it.

Andy: (Laughs.) Exactly. So this is book all about that second book he wrote. Answered Prayers and again, getting into the world he was living in at that time, and speculating why he did it and what his motivations were, and what New York society life was like in the late 60s and mid 70s and this is almost like a centrality of books. That?s audio books that I?ve listened to about Truman Capote. The second one, being a book about the black and white ball that he threw to celebrate the publication of ?In cold Blood? Which, in itself, was a pretty exciting book. So, they?re books that I recommend because, like Dangerous Animals is just a fantastic book for everybody. A 10 out of 10 for everything. This time I?m really interested in the story, I?ve got a lot of driving coming up, so I know that this is going to be a good thing to listen to and also, it?s narrated by Alex Hide, which is one of my favorite narrators.

Leo: I?m fascinated by Truman Capote. I totally share your interest. And, of course, In Cold Blood is an amazing piece of journalism. And Breakfast at Tiffanies, you know, who could forget that. But I didn?t know this story about Answered Prayers and about self-destructing. So really, I can?t wait to read this.

Andy: It was his unfinished book and it?s also legendary because he promised everybody he had written it. He?d shown the manuscript to people and yet, when he died it was incomplete and nobody could find the complete manuscript he had referred to, that he had quoted from, again it sounds like he was BSing people. He would come to people?s house, like a friend, to sort of bounce ideas off them, and would read like multiple chapters. So this is just part of the mystery of this book that, again, ruined a great writer. Or excuse me, yet another weapon with which he decided to do suicide by society dame.

Leo: Yeah, fascinating, tiny terror, it?s called. And I share your fascination with Truman Capote. It?s interesting. I guess because? I mean you?re not old enough, but I grew up seeing him on the tonight show with Johnny Carson and stuff. And he was quite a character, a celebrity. And then you see his body of work and he was actually a great writer. Good choice. So here?s how you get this for free. Audible.com/macbreak. You?ll be signing up for the gold plan, that?s a book a month subscription. The nice? The first 30 days are free, you pay for nothing. You get a book you can keep it, cancel it in the first 30 days, that?s it. And you pay nothing, that?s it. The book is yours forever. But I don?t think you?re going to want to cancel it. I mean, there are so many great books on audible.com. It?s an endless supply of entertainment, information, education. Audible.com/macbreak, try it out, today. I?m just looking at my screen saver. God is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens, another great book. Steven king, Wolves of Calla that?s part of that whole weird Gun Slinger series, that I?ve never quite finished. Legion, that was a great book. Really enjoyed that. It?s kind of fun, it?s a nice screensaver. My all mart screensaver.

Andy: It shows how educomated you are, Leo.

Leo: I?m an educamated man. I?ve read many books, Listened to Deaf Jam and Johnny Cash together and you know, that just kind of does it all for me. I don?t know? need to tell you what my pick of the week is.

Laughs.

Leo: It?s my baby. How precious.

Andy: Hey man secret weapon.

Leo: I will do a full review of it on Before You Buy, later this afternoon. Suffice to say, while I was skeptical, Apple really did knock it out of the park, it?s a beautiful thing. And you know the gaffers tape is good too. Alex Lindsay, in Gilgally Rwanda, with the best connection of anybody. What?s your pick of the week?

Alex: So, when I?m traveling I?m always thinking about? the whole, what we?re traveling with, and one of the things we have gotten into buying when we?re traveling. This is when you?re powering your mac on the road. All right have you seen these, these are international?

Leo: Ohhh..

Alex: Yeah, so?

Leo: So that handles any kind of plug?

Alex: Any kind of plug and 110 and 240 so anytime you want to plug it in you can plug it in.

Leo: So that?s a universal power strip but what?s on the other end? I mean, what do you plug it in to?

Alex: This just has a regular .you can buy them a lot of different ways.

Leo: So that would be using international products in the US because it has a US plug on it.

Alex: It is, but what you can do is, a lot of time when we?re on the road, you may have things that you have locally..

Leo: I should have never said anything bout your bandwidth.. All the sudden it?s falling apart.

Alex: I know, I know,

Leo: Everybody went to school what time is it in Gilgally?

Alex: Almost 11.

Leo: At night or in the morning?

Alex: At night, but I?ve been having trouble with my? Actually I?ve been having trouble with my webcam so it might actually be something else, it keeps on popping so we?ll see how this goes.

Leo: That is a really interesting product. It?s a power strip with international plugs.

Alex: Yeah, and what we do, you can just buy, any kind of little adapter for 10 bucks, that?ll convert to anything you can plug in to. So what I do is get those and get this, so that means I can plug anything into here. So when I?m there, if someone else has a charger they want to use? with a crew we can just plug anything in. So, by the way, there?s hotel rooms with these in the wall and that is the way to go. I don?t understand why any hotel doesn?t just plug these into their wall, because anybody visiting can make it work. Another thing I?ve talked about before, when I?m traveling these are?operations, these are different iPods. This is the one I use in the US. This is a Verizon LTE and this one is the one you can get, it doesn?t matter what you get in another country. When I go into a country I buy them in almost every country, if I think I?m going to come back. I think I could try to figure out SIMs and everything else. The last time I didn?t have one in Rwanda the bill was, yea, it was bad, really bad. $2,200 or something like that, in phone calls. So what you do is, of course, use this and then use face time audio. I meet everyone on GoToMeeting. I can do a lot of things. Do FaceTime, all those things so by having one of these, you don?t worry about your minutes. You make all of those phone calls without spending a penny on it and, of course, all your iMessages go through to all your iPhone friends. So these are just key. The most important thing about it is, if anyone asks you, you put these in your back pocket and you always, whenever necessary you can just say, I?ve got bandwidth coming out my ass.

Everyone Laughs

Leo: Okay, I was explaining what a shaggy dog story was to Michael at the end of the day. That was a shaggy dog story, a long way to go for a pun. Silly punch line. I?ve got bandwidth coming out of my ass. Thank you Alex Lindsay. Rene Ritchey, your pick of the week?

Rene. I have two, I have one that?s a little self-serving at first. We launched a new website because web 0S nation is now on blocks up in our smartphone experts driveway. We?re not doing much to that anymore. Crackberry is not as busy as it use to be, so we took the guy who was managing Crackberry, Adam Iyes and he started a new site for us called Smart Watch Fans.

Leo: Ohh, your looking ahead.

Rene: Yeah, its, I mean CES had a whole, you know risk power pavilion. They had a Pebble steel announcement, they had more smart watches than I could keep track of, and I was lucky, I didn?t have to because Adam was doing it all on SmartWatchFans. We also went down to San Palo alto also when I came up to Petaluma that day, and we interviewed Pebble and did interviews with everybody. So this is where we?re going to be putting our Smartwatch coverage going forward.

Leo: That?s a rather interesting choice. It?s a very narrow vertical instead of saying a wearable?s site you said we?re going to go with fans. Is that your experience, the more narrow the more likely you?re going to build a crowd

Rene: Yeah, well our sites are always community driven. I mean, we started with visor central and that was?

Leo: Right

Rene: And we started with visor central and its always been about the community, and those people tend to want to talk about specific things, and otherwise they spend a lot of time fighting. And yeah, they don?t mind fighting about what iPhone you get, but it?s better than the perpetual battle that?s in iPhone, and you know?

Leo: That?s an interesting point, the community would be less fractious if you?re more narrowly focused.

Rene: It has its pros and cons. Because, for example, you put all our sites together, we?re fairly large but nobody sees us that way. So it ends up looking like a bunch of knee sites.

Leo: Right

Rene: So there?s pros and cons, but so far this approach has worked for us. And we wanted to start another site, and we managed to squeak it through right at New Years. So it?s where I?m going now for all my smartphone stuff and it?s going to have a lot of great coverage. Especially coming out of CES with all the new watches that were announced.

Leo: So Imore.com android central, Crackberry, not so busy these days. Windows phone central, wp central and smartwatches. Is at smartwatchfans.com and you said there?s a new one a mobile phone one?

Rene: No, well that?s the new one is smart watch fans. We launched it on new years

Leo: Congratulations.

Rene: oh, thank you. My other pick of the week is, I actually searched this up, and I picked it before and it was the same time of the year, and I know immediately why. And it?s Trip It pro and it?s because I start the trade show season. And I start traveling, and so far nothing has been better for me to keep track of all that stuff than Trip it pro. I get a reservation for a plane or hotel, I email it to trip it pro and it just takes care of it for me. I have my most recent trip up on my iPhone screen now, and it is bright red from delays. And it has never failed to alert me, not only before the airline does, but hours and hours before the airline does about delays. So in Vegas, I didn?t even go to the airport because Air Canada told me the flight was fine, and Trip it told me it was 2 and then 3 hours delayed. And if I would have just listened to the airlines, I would have been sitting in the airport waiting instead of sitting in a Vegas hotel waiting. I pay for the Trip it pro and I pay for the ad free AP. They have more than made up for the, you know, small subscription fee that they charge. And I just don?t go traveling without it anymore. All my reservations all my trips are you know, a couple taps away.

Leo: You travel a lot, Alex, so I know you probably have a lot of things to say about this.

Alex: I?ve compared a lot of them and I?m happy with Trip it pro as well. So Trip it pro is the one I?ve been using recently. One thing I?ve been looking it is they have a whole admin tool so if you have a bunch of people traveling with you, you can have someone administering and managing everybody?s Trip it, knowing where everybody is and everything else. So that?s what we?re getting ready to move in to.

Leo: Isn?t that handy?

Rene: You can also share, Like Phil Nickerson, from Android and I are buddies, so we can see each other?s trips because we travel a lot. And, if you want to, if you?re comfortable doing it, you can share your Gmail credentials and you don?t even have to forward your stuff to Trip it. They?ll just pull that stuff out of your Gmail as you get it.

Leo: That?s what I do. And there is some a little bit of socialist stuff so I?m in second place for the number of countries visited after Neil Morales. But apparently I?m not following Alex, because he?d probably be in first place there. I?ve traveled 243,160 miles to 68 locations. I?m going to ad you, Rene to my trip it friends so I can compete with you. I love Trip it. I really do, it?s so great.

Rene: It?s fantastic.

Leo: The pro fee really isn?t that expensive.

Rene: No, and they redesigned their IOS AP now for IOS 7 and it?s got a card based interface that is really nice. When you?re moving through the airport, the last thing you want to do is start looking for small amounts of text so the cards are really glanceable, gives you all the information I can typically find my flight information faster on Trip it than I can on my emails or my tickets and stuff.

Leo: Yeah, I live on it and I don?t travel near as much as you an Alex do.

Andy: When I started business traveling at age 19 or 20 I really wish that now I?d taken a picture of everything that I carried in my bags, and everything I carried in my pockets when I left for an airport and could just cross off like 90 percent of the stuff that I don?t need to take anymore. All the way from, like all the alligator clips that would get me to plug into whatever hotel phone that was there. All the way to all the pieces of paper that I?d need that would get me from? The information I?d need to have handy. Yeah. Trip it is like magical. You pull up this one AP, and you tap this one button, and it recognizes that, oh, today is the day you?re taking off, so I bet your really interested in seeing in how your flight to San Francisco is doing. Marvelous stuff.

Leo: Finally, Andy Ihnatko. Your pick of the week.

Andy: My pick is a website called instantwatcher.com which is, invaluable if you?re a Netflix subscriber because it?s a much, much easier, more flexible way of seeing what?s available on the service than anything that any of the Netflix aps lets you do. And the biggest things, is one of the tabs that simply says ?new?. And it will show you anything that?s recently been added to Netflix, because you know, they have package deals that keep coming in and coming out. And so they lose a bunch of the Disney movies but then they get back in Raging Bull, and to Mel Brooks movies. And Some Like it Hot, and you might not even know that they?re available. Like there you go, there?s Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie, there?s Amole, which I haven?t seen in it years. And wouldn?t have known it was on Netflix until I saw it just arrived back on net flex on Jan. 6. And Leave it to Beaver season six. A long list.

Leo: If you go to page 4 they have like all 12 seasons of Murder She Wrote, and before you get too excited about that, 6 My Little Pony specials, A Very Minty Christmas, Dancing in the Clouds, Friends are Never Far Away, The Princess Pomade, and The Runaway Rainbow. Plus a special bonus, Tinkle wish Adventure. Wow.

Andy: No, that?s Twinkle Wish Adventure.

Leo:Oh sorry. Laughs

Andy: That?s a different streaming service all together, no pun intended.

Leo: Raging bill is now on Netflix. See, I wouldn?t have known that, that?s awesome.

Andy: And even for stuff that?s been on their for a while, It?s just so easy to just click on buttons and browse by category. They also have categories for New York Times picks, Rotten Tomato, Rated Fresh. I don?t know why Netflix doesn?t just make this part of their site because as it is it?s just too hard to find. They?ll recommend things for you, and that?s kind of okay but there?s something that?s so?as disgustingly analog as this is, you just scroll through a list and look for things that kind of jump out at you. And that?s how you find a lot of great movies.

Rene: I use the Canadian version of these and to? Andy?s point I go on this, and I look at, it?s so confusing, latest added new features and none of them are actually new. I?ve seen them there for months, so I go to a website like this and I find something immediately. I just started watching Colvert Affairs last week because I found it there and I still can?t find it on the Netflix site.

Leo: Wow. This is really great. Instantwatcher.com. Great pick, thank you Andy. I much appreciate that. Friends, that concludes this edition of Macbreak weekly! Thank you to Rene Ritchy, Imore.com and of course, the new site smartwatchtoday?what is it?

Rene: Smartwatchfans.com

Leo: Smartwatchfans

Rene: We were joking because at CES no one could get it right, people were calling it smartphonefans people were calling it smartwatchphonefans. So were just sort of joking you know, smartwatchphonefans.co.uk is what we make it as long as possible

Laughs

Leo: Smartwatchfans.com. Thank you Rene, great to see you again. Alex Lindsay, enjoy your evening in gilgally. You?re free now for a few more hours

Alex: I will, and if anyone is interested I did a bunch of all my reviews CES fort worth glass and it would be really fun to get peoples feedback on it. It?s on my gplus page. So I shot the whole thing with glass and I think it actually worked out pretty well but definitely take a look at it, and let me know what you think.

Leo: He?s plus Alex Lindsay on google plus. And yeah, really I think a great way to do it.

Alex: Yeah it works really well you have a lot of, you know, you have your hands back and what was surprising was it was in a really loud environment and I was able to? I didn?t use anything extra I just literally just shot it and I was really surprised the audio isn?t perfect but it was a lot better than I expected.

Andy: I posted some side by side by side comparisons of photos just getting peoples opinions on what photo do you like best and I tossed in a couple of google glass photos and I was kind of surprised of how many people liked the google glass photo compared to how they like the IPhone 5S photo. I got the new version of glass and it?s broken, it doesn?t work anymore.

All: Ohh man. Aww

Andy: I have to go back to the silo.

Leo: Yeah, break your glass. Break your mothers back. Andy Ihnatko, Chicago sun times, Celestial waste of bandwidth and of course Ihnatkos almanac 5X5 TV. ?. Thank you Andy, for being here.

Leo: Thanks everybody for watching the show! 11 AM pacific, 2 PM Eastern time, 1900 UTC weekdays. If you want to watch live, we love if you do. If you can?t though, don?t worry about it, on demand audio and video available after the fact, always at TWiT.tv/mbw or on iTunes or wherever else you get your net casts. Time to get back to work because, you know what? Break time?s over!