MacBreak Weekly 398 (Transcript)
Leo Laporte:
It is time for MacBreak Weekly and Andy
Ihnatko and Rene Ritchie are here. Where is that Mac Mini, anyway, we will ask that question, we will
also talk about Joni Ive he is consolidating his power in the front office and
would you pay a thousand dollars for an iWatch let us talk about it next on
MacBreak Weekly.
Netcasts you love from people you trust, This is Twit!
Bandwidth for MacBreak is provided by CacheFly (spells out the word
CacheFly.com). This is MacBreak Weekly Episode 398 Recorded April 15th 2014
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It is time for MacBreak Weekly, the show where we cover
all your Apple stuff and kind of a dearth of stories this week so it is going
to be rumors central and I will warn up front might be a little bit of a
mention other products from other companies and I hope that you can handle
that. Andy Ihnatko is here and
he might talk about comic books but I cannot promise that he will not. He is
from Chicago Sun Times, back from Boulder.
Andy Ihantko: Back from Boulder where I was……I do not want to say that I was
disappointed that I did not see quite so people many as and quite as high as I
expected them to be but if this is the difference between like a state in which
marijuana could simply be bought by anybody who is an adult and not is it just
that everybody in Massachusetts is high
all the time and I have not noticed it. I was really looking forward to like
walking down the street….walking into a store and say okay I can buy Tictacs
People’s magazine, last week’s Cosmo and Zegnet bar and some pot.
Leo: Purple Khush
please.
Andy:
I do not partake but I was looking forward to that sort of dissonance, but wait
a minute this is supposed to be very, very illegal and I am supposed to be
putting myself in danger somehow by legally by buying this.
Leo: It is legal in Boulder,
so were they selling it the stores?
Andy:
No not that I was able to see but then I was not off campus all that much but
driving around I was expecting…….I guess I did not know what I was expecting to
see…….. (Presenters talking over each other)
Leo: But again, my son
is a student of course at the University of Colorado in Boulder where Andy was just for the Council of World
Affairs and he told me that it’s not like that yet you still have to go to the
dispensaries and stuff.
Andy:
Yes and I was told by a couple of locals that not a whole lot has changed
because they still know somebody who has a goffer in the basement and it is a
lot cheaper to buy from your usual source so why not buy from the usual source.
Leo: This is an unexpected
consequence of the legalization of marijuana. Before we sit and talk more about
the Council for Global Affairs let us say Welcome to Rene Ritchie also from imore.com Hello Rene Good to see
you.
Rene Ritchie:
Well Leo I do not want to get in the way of Andy’s pot talks.
Leo: Is pot legal in
Montreal I know that sex is legal.
Rene:
Everything is legal Leo starting from the age of eighteen.
Leo: So long as you
are of age you can do anything you damn well please, it is just a very French
outlook on life.
Rene:
Absolute Monde.
Leo: Absolute Monde,
you know Harry says that nothing has changed, people…..alcohol is still the
preferred…. So did you have fun at the Council of World Affairs, what is the Council for World
Affairs, you go every year I know it.
Andy:
Basically it is like for the past forty years the University of Colorado gets
together about hundred people from all kinds of disciplines and to talk about
panels about twenty a day and they are open to the public on every issue that
you can imagine. I am part of the Science and Technology track so the usually
put me on things like you know like Web 3.0 and things like what Snowden was up
to, the Maker movement and although it is a really diverse group and I was
on panel about comics and G.K Wilson
who did that really great Miss Marvel comic and couple of other guys. I was on
a panel about Lying with John Roderick and a couple of others and what I love
about this conference is that it is really is like the X GAMES half pipes snow
boarding competition in electrically speaking you cannot really prepare a
twelve minute talk about each of these topics. You have to create at you know
you will start at this point and you are going to end at this point and I am
going to try and do these three things in there and at any point I could land
on my head and basically humiliate myself in a terrible way. But the people
that you meet there are some of my best friend that I have met a this
conference there over the last ten to fifteen years, and even on the ride back
to the airport being driven in a mini van by a student and sharing a van with
somebody who is the Assistant Director of Science and Communications at Nassau
Goddard Space Flight Center, she was telling me about the Pulsars that kind of
freaked me out a little bit…..oh but how can they can be generating more mass
within themselves and they are doing this. I kind of wound up to kind of
furiously download stuff on to my iPad so that I could read it on the plane. So
a week does not go by where I feel I have learnt something really really cool
and met some really cool people and realize exactly how inadequate my own
personal vitae is.
Leo: What fun that is?
Andy:
It is a lot of fun and the fact that you pay your own way to go there and some
of these speakers keep coming back year after year just shows you what a cool
event it is.
Leo: Well we are glad
to have you back and glad that you had a good time. Thank goodness that Sir
Joni Ives has kept busy because if it were not for him we would not have any
Apple news at all. What is going on Rene, we are waiting for the other
shoe to drop I guess with WWDC.
Rene:
(Terrible sound deterioration)
Leo: Did you launch
Chrome again?
Rene:
No I did nothing.
Andy:
That only happens when you start talking it does not happen in the middle.
Leo: It is may be
Skype telling us something.
Andy: Rene usually has so many intelligent things to say Rene the best
thing is for him to keep saying those intelligent things and we will all listen
to the show and also keep the static off the show.
Leo: Begin each
statement with uuummm.
Rene:
Has it really broken again?
Leo: No it is fine. It
is something like this this is my guess I am not going to edit this out because
everybody heard what happened, my theory is that if we do not talk to you and
nothing happens with you Skype does something it goes to sleep and then it
wakes up again. In that wake up period there is some junk. Anyway why is it
that Apple it seemed to me in the years past and this is our eight year of
doing the show we have never this period of just there is nothing to talk
about.
Rene:
It is a combination of things and one that they have gone on these yearly
cycles and so it takes a year roughly and some little quicker and sometimes a
little longer but roughly a year to get to the new version of OS 10 and IOS.
And because they do that every June at WWDC we have to wait again for another
year for another WWDC ( sound distorted again briefly) to see new soft-ware.
They are really pushing hardware and fast as they can go. It does take them a
while to get those devices to market and they were trying to get the iPads out
on time and the iPad mini shipped at the last possible second it should be shipped out, the iPad mini
shipped out and they are just running out of time on these products because of
the yearly cycle again. And we are going to keep seeing that until they
absolutely have to get the product out before we see it.
Leo: I am still hoping
that we see it and that they will do a Mac Mini at some point soon but is that
the kind of thing that you would announce to the WWDC?
Rene:
Maybe because a lot of developers use them, and yes they just slot them into
their existing developments.
Leo: Wasn’t that the
pitch? That was the pitch for the Mac Mini “You are a PC developer you have got
everything you need put a Mac Mini on top of the tower and switch the cables
and now you are good.” I remember that.
Rene:
I know so many developers who have just done that and some were PC developers
and some were just Palm OS developers and they just bought a Mac Mini bring
your own keyboard monitor and mouse and you are good to go.
Andy:
Every time I open the door to someone’s network closet almost in any kind of
office and I will see these like really expensive blade servers and really
complicated servers like the size of phone booths but somewhere there is always
a Mac Mini that is in there somewhere. Not necessarily running all the services
but running all the admin stuff because none of these admin people would like
to administrate any of this stuff with the tools that a non Mac can give them.
Leo: How many Mac
Minis do we have in our server closet downstairs, tons of them. If you are on
Chat-o-matic or our chatroom is running on a Mac mini constantly. Our router is
running on a Mac Mini constantly for the video switch. They are great little
devices.
Andy:
The mini is a killer. I have been looking at the Nas devices and finding
one with an eye on one that is easy
enough to set up and use and administrate and recommend to people and I am not
quite at the point where I am willing to say okay forget about it and just buy
a Mac Mini. But man when I compare the steps that I have to go through to keep
a Nas running and to also make sure that I understand everything that it is
supposed to on the network versus the same tools that are usually free on a Mac
Mini and the cost of a Nas versus a Mac Mini I keep thinking yikes! I should
really be talking about I do not really care whether you are a Windows person
or a Mac Person or any other operating system this is some of the cheapest
money you could buy in terms of having just one box on your network that never
has a monitor connected to it but delivers so many services to all your
devices.
Leo: You know that you
said that you run an Apple OS 10 server even though you still can get it with
Siri?
Andy:
But even for those kind of people who have an iPad mini and once you have one
device on the network that you connect to and share screens with suddenly you
have an iPad that run all your Mac soft-ware and give some good screen
connectors and like some excellent screen connectors for sharing soft-ware for
IOS and now who really needs to get Office for IOS who needs to wait for
Scrivener for IOS because you can run it very very well for IOS from this site.
It might seem counter intuitive to buy a computer for the sole purpose of never
actually sitting in front of it and doing anything with it. But once like six,
seven or eight months incrementally keep on adding more services like a Plex
Server, more file servers and print servers and application servers and by the
time you get this thing finished with these single click installations and you
have got Wow you have so totally crushed everything that you would like to do
and made a really modern world wide sort of global domination computing grid
for yourself.
Leo: It has been a
long time and I love Mac Rumors buying guide because what they do is they not
only keep track not only rumors but also how long it has been for an update,
539 days since an update that is almost two years. Although it is not the I
note the longest time since the update the March 2009 Mac Mini release ended in
574 days drought. But it is coming close because the average is 381 days
between releases. And rumors are abound but none of them have come true one of
them from January said the end of February well we are past that, and it
certainly overdue and certainly Mac Rumors is saying do not buy the updates
soon but when, but when.
Rene:
Sometime.
Leo: The Haswell ships
would make a lot of sense in a Mac Mini not because of battery life but just
because of the lower power and lower heat and faster.
Andy:
Not only the internals but Apple is really becoming a much more design focused
company that ever was and for Apple that is really saying something. They love
to have products that just really look great and I think that right now the Mac
Mini is really the only really boring product that they have. They have totally
re-invented the Mac Pro this is the only thing essentially rounded rectangle
that could be the quick draw 1.0 Cad design tool it has nothing cool or
interesting about it. It is just designed to be cool and efficient and I think
that this design is green and glowing as a target for Joni Ives and his team to
say let us do something that is a radical redesign let us not even assume that
people who buy this even want an internal mechanical hard drive, and what if we
were to make this as slim and compact as possible while still being possible to
having as many ports as some-one would want on a basic PC. I really think that
this is going be the highlight of whatever they come up with year.
Leo: Well look at what
Amazon has done with the Fire TV you know with the arm chips but it is really
an Apple TV sized full blown computer quad core GPU with very little storage.
Have you heard anything maybe Rene about the idea of storage like the
Mac Mini that you just plug stuff into.
Rene:
I have not. I was going to say that the one nice thing about Haswell also is
the Iris Graphics that come with it, (Presenters talking over each other)
Leo: Just like the
motherboard graphics…….(unfinished sentence)
Rene:
Yes. But the original one and Haswell Iris fixed all of that. And the Mac Mini
graphics not the best thing in the world ever and the Iris would really boost
that. But the only thing that I have heard is that the new Mac Mini is coming
and that but that it is currently missing in action and I do not think that
they would storage lists of head lists that is Apple TVs wheel house.
Andy:
It is a little Chromish for a Mac.
Leo: Boy that would be
an interesting product, yes I do not know. According to Ryan Shroudhead at PC
Perspective host of this week at Computer Hardware on this network new Haswell
processors are coming next month for desk tops and mobile twenty seven new desk
top processors and seventeen new mobile CPUs and they will replace the existing
Haswell processors. I am not sure what is new and different in them. The
Haswell refresh platform and its new motherboards and so forth. But the thing
is that I know Apple works ahead with Intel and Apple has very close
relationships with Intel, if they come out with these next month would we see a
Mac Mini next month…no. June would be good because that is WWDC time maybe.
Rene:
They are a really patient company they will wait until they exactly the parts
that they wanted to upgrade. It was the same thing with the Mac Pro they waited
for Intel to ship the Intel processor and then what ever the successor to that
was and wait until they have the components they need.
Andy:
Apple really is a Willy Wonka style company now where they have got so
confident of what they are doing that they are so successful in all their
product lines and they have got so much money that they are sitting on I cannot
imagine a single product track with maybe the exception of the iPad mini where
they feel a lot of pressure from the outside forces to make sure that they keep
rotating it they keep refreshing it and they keep moving things.
Leo: They do not
really care about this.
Andy:
Oh I would not say that they really care. I think with a company like Samsung
all they got is the ability to produce interesting and new products on a
regular schedule. Oh other companies they almost living from hand to mouth as
hard ware manufacturers and if their next Notebook is not a hit then they have
a big problem for the next two years. Apple has the ability to say that we like
the Mac mini and we think that the Mac mini is a great product it is an
important part of our line up however we do have to see that people buy more of
them in 2014. And they are going to be quite aware of what Intel’s road map is
and they are going to be quite aware of what their own internal road map is so
if they feel that as if they kind of let it sit for two years to make a really
killer update in 2016. There is no external force that is saying that no no
that you have to spike the new sales of the Mac Minis this year. So this is an
enviable place for any tech company to be, to be free to only make the products
they really really want to make.
Leo: The next
processor family the successor to Haswell will be Broadwell and that has been
delayed, until the first quarter of next year and, tell me that they are not
waiting for Broadwell?
Rene:
Not of the Mac Mini, no. Broadwell no makes a lot of stuff at the ultra low
end. I mean the ultra low power laptops end but I do not think that the Mac
Minis is restrained by that.
Leo: Yes you just plug
it in. But so it sounds like they are waiting Andy for Joni Ives to come
forward and say I give you the best Mac Mini ever made.
Andy:
Yes I think that it is possibility and even if you were to compare it to the
other so called boring computer that Apple makes the iMAC, they did something
that was a little bit shocking design wise for a desk top a top of the line of
their desk top PC which is to make this tiny tiny razor thin edge so that from
certain angles it just looks like a pane of glass floating in the sky. I
remember that even before that the iMac was very much like the Mac Mini, it was
like a rounded rectangle with a very nicely sculpted base to it but a rounded
rectangle. If it is one places where to let the imagination go free and now
that is the place to do it in the Mac Line……..do something that is so cool just
like that people partly bought the Mac Pro partly oh it is tubular it is a black glossy tube and I must have it. I
think that people who might have held onto their iMacs another couple of years
or decided to keep their media server kept their Mac Mini going for a while
with a circle ring of real beautiful lights around it that communicate the
intentions and the functions this device in any given moment in a subtle way it
is just really, really cool. It enhanced it with a couple of interesting
features and just the design of it would spike an interest in the Mac Mini and
at last get people start remembering that this product exists.
Leo: Yes I think that
this is one of the problems with the Mac Mini isn’t it. It is not something
that comes to mind. You think iMac, you think Mac Book…..(presenters talking
over each other)
Andy:
Oh sorry go ahead Rene.
Rene:
No I was going to say to Andy’s point that like if they are really doing
a redesign then Apple is not a highly parallel company when it comes to new design.
If they are working on a larger iPhone set that needs a new body or if they are
working on a new iWatch again a completely new product. They just finished
doing the Mac Pro they will do that when they have the time to do that but
there is no way that that design department scales to everything.
Leo: Let us take a
break. There is a big design shake-up in Apple soft-ware and that I will give
you an update on my Mac Pro and we will find some other things to talk about
including a rumor that I do not credit but everybody seems to be buying is that
Amazon is going to have a phone later on this year and it will feature 3D
technology. Really,really, really.
Andy:
Yes Okay. Can we please start this week in on Amazon.
Leo: Every time I hear
this rumor it comes from Wall Street Journal……really really…..
Andy:
I cannot wait to use my Amazon phone to stream video directly to my Apple TV. I
think that will happen and it is going to be great.
Leo: Our show today
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Andy:
I hope that you do not get a major peanut butter manufacturer to sponsor
because that could delay this show…..(presenters talking over each other)
Leo: You know that it
was always my dream to have food sponsors on this show.
Andy:
I have got to tell you that…..it was coming over this trip but coming back from
a trip and seeing a box full of snacks,(presenters talking over each other)
suddenly snacks just appear and are here to be eaten.
Leo: That is how it
should be. That is how life should be. Did we send some to you Rene?
Rene:
Yes and they were absolutely fantastic and they lasted in all about a day and
half.
Leo: Well yes that is
the problem. We are going to need a bigger box. So Joni Ives and Gregg Christie
apparently did not quite see eye to eye and Christie is out, Ives is still
there. Christie joined Apple back in 1996 and had been there eighteen years. He
worked on the Newton, when Jobs came back he cleared out a lot of people but
not Gregg Christie. He is listed as the inventor on nearly a hundred patents
and has thirty one pending patents right now. He worked on soft-ware design and
he is widely credited as the co-inventor of slide to unlock. Sources at Apple
say that after eighteen years in the company Gregg has decided to retire and
cash in his shares which is probably at this point worth a quite a bit of
money. Apple says that Gregg is planning to retire later on this year after
nearly twenty years with Apple…although it is not quite twenty years yet.
Twenty years and two years. He has made vital contributions to Apple products
across the board and built a world-class human interface team which has worked
closely with Joni for many years. He did testify in the Apple and Samsung trial
last week in San Jose about slide to unlock. He also gave interviews into the
process of designing the iPhone to the Wall Street Journal and MPR. It is hard
to say 9 to 5 Mac said that it is following friction between top Apple human
interface vice president Gregg Christie and senior vice president Joni Ives.
Apple’s hard-ware and soft-ware design is being shaken up. Ives of course has
always been responsible for hard-ware design and this is seen by some as a
consolidation of his power in soft-ware as well.
Andy:
He already has the power in soft-ware I do not think that it is Peyton Place ish
as people are making it out to be. Gruber USA sources he will look into it and he
says he agrees with me and says it seems to be a case of someone who has been
at the same job for twenty years. And one morning you wake up in the morning
and realize how many tens of millions dollars do I have? Or why am I going to
work in the morning? That is sometimes you are just ready to move on and do
other things and that is what it looks like. I do not think that any other
company provokes so much speculation that any time someone moves in or someone out
then that’s because there is a knife in someone else’s back.
Rene:
It is interesting too that I heard about this when I was out there for Mac
World. They had announced that internally at Apple weeks prior to that.. It was
not public but it was a well-known thing and like R.E Lamer and like Basil
Olding there was a bunch of people who had been at Apple a really long time and
these are the people who basically by force of will got the iPhone to market
and they are tired and they have to testify and they have families that they
would dearly love to spend more time with their money. There is so much of an
incentive for them just to want to take a break (sound interference). At WWDC
last year he did the introduction for the interface talk but he did not do the
interface talk, and it is not the general style of design that he has
historically done so it might be all things considered this is a very graceful
point of exit for him.
Andy:
This is a really common story from really creative companies I have heard ….if you got some job with some creative
responsibility at ILM, Disney or Pixar why would you not stay there for the
rest of your career. And the thing is that a lot of these jobs attract the sort
of people who get restless if they are faced with the same creative problems
and challenges for the five ten fifteen years. Like Bill Atkinson who spent
years developing soft-ware now he wants to do photography this is the lane that
their brain is taking them down.
Leo: In that light it
makes a lot of sense, but I mean both things might be true. You can see Joni
Ives saying this is where are going to with the soft-ware and maybe it does not
fit with Gregg Christie felp clearly if he has been there eighteen years and he
had a lot to do with the original look of the iPhone and not the IOS 7 which
could be a very big departure so all in all he has got some money, he has his
family (Sound interference) it could be so exhausting right.
Rene:
Organizationally it makes a lot of sense too. Previously even though Joni Ives
was put in charge of all human interface Gregg Christie’s department still
reported to Craig Fredericki and Joni would basically come in and sit in on
their meetings and give input, and it was not the sort of pipeline you wanted
to have that track underneath Joni Ives the same way that you had the
industrial design under Joni Ives and know it means that organizationally it
makes a lot more sense as well.
Andy:
I do not think that this was as a result of fight with one person wound up winning
and the other person going home, nonetheless it is going to be interesting to
see what happens to the interfaces of everything that Apple has made over the
last two or three years and Joni Ives gets more and more control over more and
more aspects of things. There are a few people to really talk to not that Apple
has any one person deciding the way that we are doing things. It is clear that
we are moving towards a place where Apple’s user interface design is going to
be turning to the vision of a specific director so to speak. It will be just a
lot of different products with a common sort of design language and clearly
came out of the same factory and the same foundries. We are now talking about a
small group of people who have a specific vision of what is best for humans and
computers and being able to consistently apply that one vision. That is a great
thing because Apple has always been tops of the heap in terms of making things
that work together very very well and making sure that you buy a brand new
product that you have never used before and the fact that it came out of that
same foundry and that same shop that you are going to be 75% familiar with how
to operate it. But I was thinking about this the other day that Apple’s design
direction is not like if it going to appear like two directors it is not like Scorsese
or Spielberg, where there is a certain finger print on it is kind of generic enough that it does not
overwhelm how you overcome as to how you would come and approach the product. I
think that Apple’s design has been getting a little bit more towards like Wes
Anderson or David Lynch. Well maybe not as extreme as that but it is definitely
a point of view and there is no way of getting around that specific point of
view. So if you do not like that point of view of minimalist, minimalist,
minimalist take away as much detail as possible make it an as quiet an
experience as they can put into pixel forms. If you do not agree with that then
well you are kind of stuck, because that is the emphatic statement being made
on every single device that they make. So I have never been so eager to see a
new version of Mac OS as I am right now.
Leo: One thing we know
for sure is that or maybe we do not and correct me if I am wrong but according
to 9 to 5 Mac that means that all soft-ware designers instead of working
directly under Craig Fredericki now work under Joni Ives directly with his
industrial design team.
Rene:
My understanding as well.
Leo: Now that is a
significant change.
Rene:
If you think about it again five years ago Steve Jobs had a general idea of
what he wanted and the design team could make him twenty versions of texture
and Scott Forstall would say that these are three that Steve will like and then
Steve would choose one of those. So now that entire process does not exist
anymore but Apple has to realign whether Joni Ives is the hauter at Apple or
not and Steve Jobs got forced out and does not exist anymore, and things have
to change around that.
Leo: I would guess
that Joni is talking Steve Jobs role…that is what we are going to do right and
maybe they are bringing it to Tim Cook and asking him Tim what do you think?
Andy:
I think that the impression that I get from my sources on the inside are not
really as good as some of the other commentators, but the impression is that
no-one has settled into the Steve Jobs role at Apple. There is the group mind
that is more powerful than any one single mind.
Rene:
Yes and it is my understanding as well.
Leo: You agree with
that as well. I know nothing and you guys know more than what I do so.
Rene:
Well they have really talented people. If you look at Joni Ives and what he
still does at industrial design they prototype everything and they sit and
discuss everything and try to get to the essential nature of it. It is a very
procedural thing and my guess that the same will carry over to the human
interface.
Andy:
When you look at the history of significant Apple products including the ones
that were developed under Jobs with lots and lots of people having lots and
lots of discussions before it comes down to those three options that got
presented to Steve. So it is not much as I would like to make Wes Anderson
comparison because seeing Grand Budapest Hotel is tax deductible and I am glad
that I mentioned it on a podcast.
Leo: You try to deduct
your movie admission tickets.
Andy:
I would not even dare and I do not want to talk about taxes because this would
be as bad as talking about Android on the Mac Break show.
Leo: It is April 15th I just wanted to point that out.
Andy:
There were so many years in my early career that I just short formed it because
I did not want to figure out that Okay I did fly out to Mac World to write a
bunch of columns but while I was there I did see some friends and so if they
challenge this…..okay let us not take this…..(unfinished sentence)
Leo: They count on
that. That is why Larry and Sergie pay so little tax and you pay so much
relatively speaking.
Andy:
Because they contribute so much more to the economy. I might have sold a few
movie tickets today but it is basically all I do for other industries.
Leo: Did you guys read
Don Melton’s long piece it was originally in Loop Magazine in Jim Daltons app.
Don Melton the creator of Safari and long time Apple employee of, gone back to
Next I think wrote a long article on his blog called “Memories of Steve”. Now
he was not exactly an intimate of Steve’s but he….it is an interesting story he
started the web kip project at Apple, he says that today he is a recovering
programmer and yes it fun to read. He will not see the Steve Jobs movie, he did
not read the Walter Isaacs bio because he has few precious memories of working
with Steve and does not wanting colored by other peoples impressions which I
kind of understand.
Andy:
There is a Sundance premiered January of the biography of Roger Riva and I can
download KickStarter to watch it streamed. It is a very very weird thing when
someone that you knew very very well and is now the subject of a film or a
documentary that is designed for people who never knew him. And so it is a
weird experience and I definitely understand that.
Rene:
I was privileged to call Don a friend he is a remarkable guy. He did Bozilla,
he did Nautilis, he did Web Kit and then he did Safari. He was also responsible
for hiring a ton of people who now have very senior positions at Apple. And his
stories are fantastic and those stories in particular there are just terrific.
If you go through the one where ends sitting back down again saying,”I am so
fired.”Just because they had a lot of the flavor about people who work at Apple
and like every company are human beings and not just drones out there to
frustrate us and not give us what we want when we want.
Leo: There is the
story of sitting in the Apple cafeteria eating and there were a few empty seats
and they noticed a familiar face looking for an open table and it was a long
time Mackintosh designer and co-founder of Next and they all knew Bud Triple so
they said hey there is Bud over there what is he doing here. Ken and I had not
seen Bud in months and since his easel had shut down and we were all making
guesses for the reason of his visit and finally got tired of my conjecture
cupped my hand and called out to him,”Hey Bud come over and speak to your old
pals when you are done talking to that guy.” Bud looked up and there was a
slight pause and that guy turned around and stare me it was Steve Jobs. I will forever remember his look because of
slightly lopsided, tight lipped half smile eyes and I have seen that look
actually as if to say I do not know who you are but I will not forget that.
When I sat back down I did not say something smart arse like, “I am so fired in
front of my two engineers, although that was my thought at the time.”Kenny
Richards thought it was pretty funny till Steve turn around and even Triple was
holding his breathe too and I did not get fired. Hey Bud! Yes it was fun. Did
you Don before he went to Apple or…?
Rene:
No I knew him afterwards. He came up to one of the podcasts and we had a good
conversation and now once a month I get together with Don Matt Grant and Guy
English and we talk about the 80s movies.
Leo: Well it is nice
and it is a very long blog post it is definitely one for pocket or read it
later.
Andy:
This is something I keep coming back to because it must be really, really hard
to be at a senior level at Apple knowing that so many people outside of Apple
imagine a reality series and they try and cast you in whatever role they need
you to fill in that reality series as a person who has just partly the old
guard who are going to be swept aside by the new designers as the person who
has the new vision of Apple and is trying to be commentative and argumentative
as the person who is carrying the spirit of Apple within them and defending
them against the incoming ogres and barbarians. It is something that you do not
get at Samsung or Google or any other company where you are just allowed to
your job and do your projects without other people imagining that they know what
your point of view is and what your goals are in the company.
Leo: He talks about
the rehearsing for the Safari announcement, Jobs wanted to prank Phil Schiller so
he has a slide deck all along and then in the last slide I guess he is talking
about let me see I should get 1.4 million a month in December alone to the
store and so he said to all of you in the press who doubted us, and then he
throws up the slide which has the 1940s style rendering a greeting of man
holding a big mug of coffee next to his and says,” How about a nice cup of
STFU?” Although he spelled out STFU. He
looks at Phil and says,”What do you think Phil?” Too much and of course it was
joke and it did not make to the deck but it is actually good to hear stories
about Steve Jobs being light-hearted and fun. These days all we are hearing
about Steve the Tyrant. So it is nice to
hear the other side as well.
Rene:
Also those parts of the Coda Interviews where he and Steve would decide how a
feature should work in a program. It is nice to know that Steve Jobs was looking
at how that bar filled itself.
Leo: Right, right. Yes
talking about the Safari for Windows and so forth. And by the way he had a kind
thing to say about Scott Forstall as well. Scott made a great boss he backed me
up.
Rene:
He did some amazing things. He championed…he championed the app store.
Leo: Worth reading if
you want to add to your stories about Apple and understanding Apple under Steve
Jobs. Let us see Apple is testing Maps notifications to and from problems that
have been fixed. That will never make into a product.
Rene:
People are occasionally getting them.
Leo: Mac Rumors says
that some of their readers have reported with screen shots that they have
received push notifications. So if you were to report a problem like that
bridge is out, later when Apple fixes the map, maybe you can expect a little
notification thing that problem has been fixed. Unclear whether that will be in
the ……(did not finish the sentence.)
Andy:
That is a really smart thing we are all used to the idea that when you click on
the button and say yes please report this crash you imagine that this goes into
this big, big hopper where it is mixed up all kinds of extra electrons. God
knows whether that has any positive effect ever, but as soon as you get some
sort of a feed back and yes some one did look at this and that has actually
enhanced the experience that is going to encourage to go out through your own
local neighbor hood and fix as much of the map as you possibly can and that is
the strength of any map service it is not about to get from Boston to Newark
high way system, it is about how to from the post office in Denham
Massachusetts to the Chipotle on route one in Norwood. It is these little
street things that tell you that no, no you do not want to take the one but
there is one A next to it that has absolutely has no red lights and will get
you there faster. If you can trick people into thinking that their help
actually has an effect you can get a really greatest ground crew and create a
really kick butt mapping service.
Leo: Here is the shot
from Mac Rumors.com sent in by one of its readers who had reported a problem
and then they got a little notification saying that the problem you had
reported on April 6th has now been addressed, thank-you for reporting
the problem. They should do that that is a great idea. It encourages people to
do it. So you are being heard and I like that idea.
Rene:
Makes you feel good about the product.
Leo: It is not in any
way an admission of failure or shouldn’t to be seen that way. All maps have to
be updated all the time. It is not a bad thing.
Andy:
Do they still call the Public Garden the Public Gardens in Boston?
Leo: Oh you fixed
that……..
Andy:
I have got to check that again. This is like if a movie gets filmed at your
former high school and they show a chase going from the cafeteria through the
English department let us say,” The cafeteria is near the Science Wing and not
the English department.” So I know that this is a pathetic thing to complaining
about but I keep noticing it and it bothers me.
Leo: Maybe you would
like to know that according to Apple and Apple Cyder are using access points
for neuro navigation and they will fix that in 3D positioning. It is a patent
though and it doesn’t mean that they have implemented it yet. It was a patent
that was granted to Apple this Tuesday and it provides a robust system and
provides GPS, WIFI access points and onboard location data bases provide mobile
devices accurate positioning even when you are inside and you will know
that when you are inside that cafeteria
is. About time. Are we going to see a big new version of Maps before IOS 8 Rene or is all of this because they have acquired HopStop, Locationery, Broadwalk Embark.
They are really beefing up their data. They could do it sooner I suppose than
IOS 8. Will they wait till IOS 8?
Rene:
I think that the answer to that is an appalling yes and no. The thing is that
adding in new features like the new buttons like trans is going to require a
new interface and new way of presenting data so that will be IOS 8 specific.
Things like improving the back-end they are going to be doing a lot of data
sanitizing and data cleansing and just making the stuff that they have already
got. They do have great TOM TOM data they have great data from several
providers and they are just making it more uniform and more accurate and that
will depend how they stage all the roles on the server sides stuff. (Distorted
Sound)It could be a combination of both those things and whether they Beta test
the server side stuff during the IOS 8 Beta just because it is convenient and
makes a lot of sense to them and I do not know and that certainly is a
possibility.
Leo: That would be
nice. I mean Google updates Maps every five minutes, you know why not?
Rene:
You are standing there and they are updated.
Leo: And by the way
new interface and a new buttons no
problem. FaceBook does that too.
Andy:
But that also points out that you have to be really conservative and really
protect the integrity of your map data. It is well known that a lot of
businesses are gaming Google maps like if you call for a locksmith or I need a
snow plough service or I need whatever because they can add to the maps
themselves, there is a system for enhancing maps where they basically flood a
certain area like ‘hundreds and hundreds’ local snow plough or locksmith
services so that instead of calling what you think is a shop is going to be
located 2.2 miles away you are actually calling a call center that will then
dispatch some one that has subscribed to a service that they run and so there
is nothing that cannot be ruined by commerce by adding a little bit of too much
freedom to the mix.
Leo: Scooter in our
chat room says that Apple reports a Carers Restaurant in a nearby park and I
have reported it many times and it is still there.
Andy:
You should open one there. Think of the business you would get. I think that a
chicken fried steak in the middle of a park that sounds like a good meal to me.
Rene:
Who are you to turn down free location advice from people who run the Apple
stores.
Leo: I used to go into
the local Caros just to get the chicken fried steak and that is why I will be
dead in the next five years.
Our show today is brough to you by Gazelle. Ladies and
gentlemen I know that you have a hankering for the latest greatest shiny toy or
gadget. How do you pay for the do you sell your old gadgets. Sometimes people
do and chat mod Dan is famous for having all the latest greatest stuff in his
den, given what we pay you which is nothing I do not know how you that. He says
well I sell them. I sell the old ones and it is the easiest way to get cash
even for a broken iPhone or a broken iPad. Cash for your Samsung device- time
to get out of that. You thought it was a good idea at the time and now you are
realizing that you miss your iPhone. Sell your old stuff on Gazelle, got an old
iPhone five want to get some cash so you can get the new one no cracks no
problem………just look at that price and you could unlock and get 40 bucks more or
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they will buy your Google Nexus Tablet your Samsung or Asus Tablet, even a
Kindle Fire. And the nice thing about this is that the quote that you are going
to get is guaranteed for thirty days, so when you see that quote…..Kindle Fire
is not worth much, the resale value on the Kindle not great value but the Apple
stuff really resale value holds wonderfully. When you see that quote, you have
time now and you can say no I think that I am going to wait and see what they
come up with next, I am going to transfer my data over and then within 30 days
you can pull the trigger they will send you a box prepaid mailing label on
everything and pile all that stuff that you have gathered in the closets, step
on the stuff that is just sitting around gathering dust. Here is an old Apple
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because that is an additional five percent bump you up on that. Gazelle has
paid out over one hundred millions dollars to customers and they are the guys
and gals and the people to bring your stuff to. Gazelle.com do it today and I
thank you for it. So I am not going to Gazelle my Mac Pro good news but it is
interesting that there is some problems with the Mac Pros and I mentioned last
week that they were doing s capture and mine is not in that range of serial
numbers but after I sent them the log it showed repeated crashes, kernels and
reboots and they said we had better send you a new one. So we are going to do a
swop which I am happy about. But the stock is still very limited on these Mac
Pros. By the way I think that I got a bad one but most people are happy with
them and I do not hear wide spread problem reports. Do you think that the stock
is so limited because they cannot make them quick enough or they cannot get the
parts or the demand is so high? Are there any rumors Rene, you have got
your ear to the ground
Rene:
Well the components I believe right now but as of a month ago I think all those
base components and especially the graphics card and the chips were still in
slow supply. It is a new manufacturing process which always takes time to ramp
up and because people have been waiting for so long that there will be more
orders than there would be over the normal course of a couple of years.
Leo: Pent up demand.
Rene:
Yes it is pent up demand with a slow ability to supply that demand.
Leo: You know that my
advice and I know Alex Lindsay always said this he just does not want to buy
the first one of the line except that we always do because we always want to be
the first.
Rene:
Do not buy Reve boards if you do not want Reve boards.
Leo: Reve Boards but
is it even more the case where it not only the Reve board but a brand new plant
and manufacturing process and brand new everything and that has seems to be
that there is much more likely to be some kinks initially.
Andy:
Yes that is my constant advice to everybody whenever….I do not have any problem
when Apple uses the same body design and then simply upgrades the CPU and the
internals but when they go to a brand new body design though, they really have
not figured out how to make this in quantity until they made them in quantity
and that is the only time to figure out that Okay let us put adhesive on this
spot because it is causing heat build-up and so that is why I tend to wait for
till you have made millions of these.
Leo: It is true for
cars, you do not want to buy the first car on a brand new product line.
Andy:
My favorite cars are fleet style vehicles because by the time they have been
making that Toyota for eight years they have cranked out so many copies that
every single defect has been dealt with and if it has been designed to be run
by cops and taxi drivers that big block engine is just not going to screw up. I
have an old car it is got high mileage and the engine is that you cannot
destroy….I blew a cooling hose on my drive back from the airport and then I
thought that this it but no driving it around hot for five miles did nothing to
the engine just a new hose and a no change bulbs and it is good. I think that
the same principal affects technology too. You should be a little bit not
skeptical but cautious about getting the first version of a brand new design
because they do all the due diligence that they have to do and it is the best
thing to make at that point but you will never what the weaknesses in the
manufacturing process are till you are pushed to run the beast.(Presenters
talking over each other) I am telling that if any product whether it is a car,
computer or a pizza if they ask you would you like the Police Pursuit Package,
yes of course why would I not want something called the Police pursuit package.
Leo: I did not find
the police pursuit package on my Mac Pro however.
Rene:
It is like having competing nerds. You have one nerd on your one shoulder do
not buy the Rave boards package and on
the other of course I want the Mac Pro.
Leo: Well I did it and
I have an excuse that I wanted to review as fast as possible and thanks to Ed
Ingram who is one of our listeners who did buy it the first…….I did not buy it
the first day and then I found out that I will not be getting it for a month
and a half or whatever. Fortunately he did and then he had second thoughts and
got an iMac instead probably a wise decision and I bought it from him, he
transferred it over to me so it is under warranty and all that stuff because he
never even got the box it just came straight to me. One thing about the Mac Pro
we mocked a little bit about the design and it was under the table but it
really is so small that you really do keep it on your desk and it is pretty
there and it is also convenient because you plug stuff in and out. It really
looks good on the desk top and I think that it is going to be great model as
soon as I work it out.
Andy:
Is it clean or is it getting dusty?
Leo: It is not getting
dusty, and although from now on Apple and this is just a little tip ship it
with white gloves. I have literally received speakers, I think it was a Parium
either Emo Tivo or Parium ships with white gloves with their speakers and if
Apple would only do that then I would not have to…..when you take it out and
you hold and I have got finger prints on the side of it. So it should be white
gloves.
Andy:
If nothing else a pair white cotton gloves got to cost something like 20c but
the impact that you make. Sometimes I am shown stuff like six to eight months
before it is being announced or shipped and I know that it is really big deal
if it is in custom anvil case and I know that it is even a bigger deal if the
first thing that they see after they take off that little egg crate like foam
so that there are two sets of gloves that whoever picks this up does not put
any skin or oil on it or anything like that. I do not know if that is little be
of the theatrics but again if you have paid three thousand dollars for a desk
top computer give me the theatrics give me the full experience, give me cotton
gloves.
Leo: Yes. What else
was I going to say about …..silence yes. I have been running you Bio Shock I
tried to tax the damn thing and I cannot and I am not editing a 4K video, but
no matter what I do I do not hear a thing and infact I told you the other day
is that the loudest thing is the old fire wire drive that I have on the desk as
aback up drive and I want to get rid of it. I turn it off because I do not
want……everything is dead silence and it is so nice. And as far as I can tell
that when I put my hand right over that fan it is little warm sometimes. I do
not ever feel the heat it really is nice piece of hard-ware. I do not want to
scare anybody off because of my issues because I suspect that they have fixed
them by now.
iWatch forecast from a company called KGI and our
favorite Ming Chi Qou. Ming is pretty good right, am I right he is pretty good.
Rene:
It depends if you are creating a kind of curve. I got into argument about this
because people say he is unreliable and if you look at the 2014 road map which
is usually the least reliable things because it is only April and he is predicting
stuff till the end of October and that is really, really hard to do through the
supply chain sources. But if you look at the (sound interference) a percentage
of that is Apple is going to make a new iPad, it is going to make a new iPhone,
so it is worth looking and worth discussing but I would not be placing large
wagers on them.
Leo: I am going to
look up his 2013 road map quickly just to see. This is the nice thing about the
Internet….
Rene:
He had a new Apple TV and he had new Mac Mini and he had a redesigned Mac Book
Pro, argue that maybe the 13 there was no new Mac Pro on his road map.
Leo: Here is his 2013
Apple TV refreshed did that happen?
Rene:
No.
Leo: Ifour IS third
quarter yes, new design iPhoto five yes the iPad air five yes, ipad mini two
yes. He was right on the Mac Book Air coming out at the Q2 towards the end and
focourse that was WWDC. In fact the new design retina came out then and that is
two he was little off on the timing on that. He did say that there would be a
new iMac and a new Mac mini in the first quarter of last year no, modified iPod
touch five, no iPod NANO fresh no.
Rene:
And the stuff that he did get right is the stuff that Apple has done in the
previous years in those time slots.
Leo: That was more
induction than deduction.
Rene:
Well there is going to be a new iPad five and a new iPad mini this year because
there was one last year (sound distortion) Again he might have sources saying
that.
Leo: But here is the
interesting thing he says that towards the end of the third quarter all new
twelve inch ultra slim Mac Book and Mac Book Pro Retina and we have talked
about that before and he says that around the same time an Apple TV will be
upgraded. I do not think that anyone is waiting for bated breath for an
upgraded to the Apple TV are they?
Andy:
I think that Apple is going to be feeling a lot pressure to do something really
big with the Apple TV. You compare it with what Amazon just did with Fire TV
and I am switching AB between these two and the Apple TV feels slow and the
interface seems confusing and the soft-ware feels like it is right from 2004,
2005, 2006 and again in an AB test it is no comparision.
Leo: And yet if Apple
is not good at multi-tasking it seems that Apple TV is not a high priority
development and what you described is a major redesign not to refresh.
Andy:
Well they need a new CPU to make it more fluid, a new interface would make more
IOS like and believe it not although everybody is pretty much half and half
about what they like and they do not like about IOS 7 it is a revamp that would
look really great on a TV screen it
would make darker as opposed to lighter. They would not have to throw
everything away and start all over again much as just tweak the interface so
that it does not look so primeful for 480 pixels standard definition TV.
Leo: So are you voting
for it or you saying that it is likely?
Andy:
I hesitate to say anything that is unlikely unless Apple is on a regular
schedule of releasing something on a certain day. Not only is it a prime for an
update, it is different from the Mac Mini which this is a very important market
for them.
Leo: It is not a hobby
anymore?
Andy:
Yes and it is not just the 99 dollar box it is the gateway to selling all kinds
of content through the iTunes store. And also Apple’s language on the Apple TV
has changed so much in the past eight months that not only did Tim Cook say
that it is hard for us to call this a hobby any more but they are willing to
talk about how much money they are making now off this thing. I am sure that
this is as big a problem of lawyer stuff and legal deals as it is engineering
but this is something that for Apple be a full event of how much stuff they
bring to the Apple TV at this point. I hope so because again it has become such
an interesting segment of the market right now. Where, on my own TV, I’ve got
the Roku three, I’ve got the Amazon Fire box, and I’ve got the Apple TV, and I
can have a nice debate about the difference between the Roku 3 and the Amazon.
This does this better, this one does the other thing better. But I mean, Apple
TV is like the number 3 superpower at this point. There’s number 1 and number 2
and then there’s a hell of a drop off before number three right now.
Leo: Yeah. Do you agree Rene?
Rene: Yeah. No, I mean it’s old. The 2012, spring 2012
hardware was announced along with the IPad 3, and look how far we’ve come with
the IPad.
Leo: Right. We should at least put an A7 in that sucker.
Rene: Yeah. It’s a single core, A5. Its 8 gigabytes of Nan
memory. It’s not equipped to do the kinds of stuff that fire TV is doing. Even
if they just modernize it, if there was an A7 in there, if they give it more
storage, if it was given more RAM. I think its 512 now. If it went up to a gig
or 2 of ram. If Apple finally put the Sk in the field. Even if it’s not an appa
SK, if it’s a game SDK, IOS is one of the best gaming… Maybe best is the wrong
word, but one of the premier gaming platforms right now, and there’s just so
many people, and so many games that could add so much value to the ecosystem.
Throw spotlight international search on there. Refresh the interface to IOS 7.
We do know that Apple has some incredibly talented people working on software
right now. Mark Irman has heard about a new box. Jim Dowripple said it’s not
coming any time soon. I don’t know how big or small those time lines are, but I
think we hopefully will see one this year. And I think that will be a much more
competitive version.
Leo: Amazons Fire TV does pose a threat to the Ecosystem,
doesn’t it?
Rene: In the US.
Leo: in the US. Not in your neck of the woods. Because it
is an incredible gaming device. It’s basically an Android device with quad
core, two gigs of ram. Dedicated GPU, a controller for additional 40 dollars.
And Amazon’s really, in fact, they’ve got a gaming studio. They’re really
pushing the notion that it is a gaming platform.
Rene: It gives them an ecosystem play to put against Apples.
Leo: And they have an ecosystem play. It’s the app store,
is Amazons, the content is Amazons, the games are Amazons.
Rene: The phone might be Amazons.
Leo: Yeah, maybe the phone. We’ll talk about that in a
little bit.
Andy: And it is a full Android box, so at least their
ambitions for this are not limited to just let’s have a host of yes to run an
Netflix app, and a hullo app, this can really do absolutely anything that
Amazon decides that it wants it to do. And the other advantage is that, you
can’t ignore that the Apple TV is a fantastic gaming device, so long as you
have a 400 dollar iPad to play it with. So long as you have a 200 dollar iPhone
to play it with. With the fire TV, 99 bucks plus let’s say 40 dollars for that
really good controller. And you have a 140 gaming console, that’s going to be
really really attractive to people like me. I have an interest in gaming but
there’s no way in hell am I going to be spending 500 dollars for next
generation console. I just want something so I can play my little racing games,
and play cannonball, and other games like that. On a big TV from the comfort of
a Sofa, with a really good control in my hands.
Leo: Alright, okay. And I do think the 12 inch is fairly
credible. Other things he says will happen, he says the watch, I watch will
come out mid third quarter. In two sizes. What’s that based on, Rene? You have
any idea?
Rene: That’s the theory that you’d need, because there’s
different sized people. Men, women, kids, young, old, that you’d need at least
two sizes.
Leo: Oh, that kind of size. Not like the Samsung gear where
it’s got a band one and a square one, don’t so different.
Rene: No, screen size.
Leo: Okay, all new, and this is the other one we’re hearing
a lot of rumors about. All new iPhone designs two of them. 4.7 inch iPhone.
Rene: Oh Leo, before you go on, you skipped the part where
he thinks there might be an Iwatch up to 1, 2, or 3 thousand dollars.
Leo: Oh my god! The most expensive version costing upwards
of 1,000 bucks. He pays it will come in a 1.3 inch and 1.5 inch flexible amulet
display. Safire covered lens. I think that’s reasonable. Biometric recognition.
Can you put a fingerprint reader in that, I don’t know?
Andy: I think that’s ridiculous.
Leo: That takes up a lot of space.
Andy: When people are speculating a lot of things, they
might have sources they can’t reveal, and they might have an inside they can’t
really share. But, and I’m willing to say that, who knows? Many things are
possible, but as soon as you start talking about a thousand dollar watch,
that’s ridiculous. The moment that Apple, and I expect this to come back to
haunt me, but I will phrase this the way that I want to phrase this. The moment
that Apple comes out with a 1,000 dollar wrist watch, is the moment I think we
can be a little bit concerned about their grip on reality. That’s a fine price
for Google to put on to a device, that they don’t know they’re going to market
or not. So they can say that look, we’re only making about 5 to 8 thousand of
these, so we have to make sure we can manufacture these, and not lose our
shirts in the process. Okay that’s fine, so now you’re a special person with
one of only 5,000 Johnny Ive design wristwatches. But if they’re expecting
anybody to do… this is not the company that I know. So this is the reason why
I’m willing to simply completely dismiss that is…it’s just not reality.
Leo: Jason Snell tweeted, according to Scooter X, he
believes we’ll use the IPod name.
Rene: Goober said that recently too.
Andy: I don’t think so.
Rene: I think it would be interesting. The way Apple
replaced the iPod, originally with the iPhone, and they used the iPad to hedge
against lower mac sales. I think the iPod continues to go, it plummets in terms
of how much money it’s making for Apple. That a wearable could be something
that replaces that revenue. And they’ve had wearable iPod in the past. The iPod
shuffle clipped on to your tie. The iPod Nano that clipped on. Those were
wearable devices, and these could be wearable devices that run IOS, but I mean,
it could go either way. I agree with Andy, that the really expensive one makes
very little sense to me. I could see a range of products from a very cheap
shuffle, to an exercise band. To a Nano, to maybe a 400 dollar premium version
that does magical things. If you start making a golden diamond incrusted one.
No matter how many fashionistas you hire, that does not seem like a traditional
Apple product.
Leo: No! No! I don’t think that’s the case. But I do think
it’s possible that Apple will say look, if we are willing to charge a thousand
bucks, we can put really interesting new technology in this thing that we
couldn’t put in a 200 or 300 dollar one. Why don’t we do a reference design? We
don’t expect a lot of people to buy it, but we just want to say, and it’s not going
to be diamond and gold. I mean, that’s not the point of it, I’m sure all of
them will be good looking because of the highers. But what if they say, there’s
technologies we could put in here. I don’t know what they are, holographic 3D
projection, I don’t know!
Rene: It’s the Macpro of watches.
Leo: Yeah! They did it with the MacPro didn’t they?
Andy: No, but that’s still a credible product.
Leo: Because there’s a market.
Andy: And let’s not forget, the people who are buying a
MacPro expect to make money with use of this MacpPro. Apple, as much as we joke
about how there’s an Apple tax that you have to spend an extra 3 or 400 dollars
for a laptop, because of the Apple logo, and the Apple design. As much as we
might joke about how infatuated apple can be about design sometimes, to the
extent of making a Pro level MacBook, that doesn’t have a networking port on
it. They are still a consumer focused, consumer driven company. And I think
they appreciate that once they put a thousand dollar price tag on a watch, the
expectations of what this is supposed to do, and the amount of pleasure it’s
supposed to give the user, will be so high out of proportion that they would
just throw it right off the drawing board. I even think that 500 dollars would
be a stretch. Although, I think that would be, in my own mind that’s sort of
the high mark for what Apple might charge for such thing. But again, this would
still be a premier item, with styling that has no compromises, and a display
technology that we haven’t really seen in a mass market device before. You’ve
got great devices that are going for 130 dollars right now. And a lot of
different makers that seem to be aiming for $250 as a price point. And I think
when you’re trying to get people to buy something that they’ve never really
heard of before, let alone owned before. Wow, every 50 dollars takes 10% of
their interest away.
Leo: There is a group of people who pay more than 1,000
dollars for a watch, I mean…
Andy: But these are people who are real fans of watches.
I’ve got a couple friends who are watch collectors who’ll show me this 1,200
dollar watch they bought, and they will talk really passionately about how that
it was manufactured, and how the movement works, the design, the simplicity,
how it was completely manufactured by hand. They’re not the people…
Leo: But we’re not talking about swatch buyers either.
There’s got to be some middle ground.
Andy: But I’m saying, you’re not going to get people who
simply love watches spending 1,000 on this watch.
Leo: No.
Andy: Unless it’s like a Johnny Ive read model. Which beings
we’re only making 50 of these that cost $10,000 dollars and most of that goes
to some sort of charity. Then sure.
Leo: Well it also says an NFC chip. I don’t buy that.
Apple’s done nothing with NFC for…
Andy: They couldn’t care less with NFC, with Bluetooth.
Leo: Wireless charging. Yes that’s important. I don’t know
if you can… because you just can’t… it’s a real pain in the butt to charge a
pebble, right chad?
Chad: It’s not a big pain in the butt! It lasts four days!
Leo: Well that’s the difference.
Andy: But apple will care about, if they’re going to do that
kind of a charger, they’re going to have to mar the side of it with two little
copper contacts, for the magnetic thing to plug into.
Leo: Right that’s ugly. I want to take of my watch at
night, put it on a pad, then it can charge every night.
Chad: I don’t even want that. I want them to make a Velcro
strap that you wrist over your wrist.
Leo: Oh please! There’s not going to be any Velcro in an
apple watch!
Chad: Okay, a magnetic strip!
Leo: Velcro!
Chad: A magnetic
strip!
Leo: What are you an astronaut?
Chad: Sorry.
Leo: What do you want Velcro for? So go ahead Rene, we cut
you off.
Rene: No, I was just laughing at the Velcro thing. But I
think that both the iPhone and the iPad entered mature gadget markets, they
weren’t widely adopted but…. For a long time.
Leo: Right, it’s a new market! Not mature anyway.
Rene: Blackberry had been a thing. This is brand new, this
is more like the iPod, where apple put out a device that was expensive for what
it did at the time. The original iPod was very expensive, held very few songs,
but it was something that over time began to appeal to a wider audience, and
Apple fully diversified the product family. And the IWatch could be similar,
where the first ones, because of all the technology they’re going to put in are
going to be towards that 500 dollar mark that Andy mentioned. But in 3 to 4
years we could have a wide array from 50 dollars to up to 500 dollars again. Apple
likes those hundred dollar, or 50 dollar increments, and they like spreading
themselves across.
Leo; Yeah. I have to say, one of the things that comes
out of this discussion is that it’s obvious that there’s a wide range of people
with a wide range of ideas of what a Watch is. Chad wants a velcro strap.
Chad: Okay, magnetic! Magnetic! Changed my mind.
Leo: No, Velcro! Don’t change your mind! Because that’s the
point, is wrist watches are super personal. I’m willing to spend… I’m a watch
buff, I’m willing to spend a lot of money on a watch, and have. Andy, perhaps
is more utilitarian. This is a very odd market for Apple.
Andy: But there’s also so many little complicated things. I
have been hauling out, like last week you saw me, I was wearing my Microsoft
spot watch from 10 years ago. I’ve been hauling out anything that’s a wearable
technology, just to sort of remind myself of the past. And here, I’ve shown
this before, the on hand wrist PC, and I can’t wear it because look, this
crappy little jelly strap broke after….
Leo: Right. You’ve got to get rid of that stuff.
Andy: So that’s going to be as important to the user as what
this little screen actually does.
Leo: And may I point out that people, I don’t know in what
numbers, but a fairly large number of people are paying 1,500 dollars for
Google glass.
Andy: But again, that’s totally different.
Leo: But not much utility!
Rene: No.
Andy: They’re not buying it for a useful piece of
technology. They’re buying it because here is something brand new that they can
sort of start investigating. That might even fit in perfectly with how they use
the computer.
Leo: Uh huh.
Andy: I think this is the perfect way to introduce a product
like that. Where you can charge 1,500 dollars because you are finding people
who are… journalist accepted, they’re buying this because they are preselected
to be interested in this sort of technology. If it were a hundred bucks, they’d
wear it for about 2 days, record some stupid stuff. Write about what a piece of
crap this is with absolutely no purpose, when you get people who are that
interested as the first adopters though. They’re the people who can appreciate
that look, when I go on my five mile walk every day, this lets me really stay
tuned in with my environment, and now I can record things, experiences that
would have passed me by, and Blah, blah, blah. There’s still a lot of steps to
make this into a practical consumer product but the whole purpose of this
experiment has always been let’s make this and see what people use with it. If
Apple is making a real watch, and I’m not even 100% convinced that they’re
making a watch, as opposed to something simple like a sports band.
Rene: Yeah.
Andy: They’re going to have to absolutely come off the
block. Those starting blocks at full speed. It’s going to have to be an iPhone
watch. It’s going to have to be an iPad launch. It can’t be like Apple TV,
where they say here’s something we’re playing with and it’s a hobby for us, see
If you like it. We’ll keep it on the….
Leo: I love what you Rene, and Jason Snell, concluded, that
Apple is not here to entertain us, and that, I mean that was a good article,
however, damn this is good entertaining.
Rene: Well the thing is we actually had that conversation
right after being on MacBreak together. We went next door, got some food, and
had that conversation, and that strikes two things for me. One is that if Apple
makes a watch, it discludes a large amount of the market. People who want
fashionable high end Panorias, and roll Exs, people who have watches for
diving, because no one is going to wear two watches at the same time. Or very
few people. But if it’s a band, you can wear it with a watch, you can wear it
without a watch. You can wear on the opposite arm from a watch. You can even
wear multiple bands, if you want to have an arm from the 80s. And that sort of
feels more like an Apple market. And even taken from a band, Ben Behrens is
very good at putting these numbers up, there, you would have to sell so many
bands, at such a high price, to come anywhere near iPad, or iPhone money, that
it’s hard to think of an iWatch as anything but an apple TV style ecosystem
booster product for Apple, and not the next big thing.
Chad: This is why I think that Android has the leg up on
this. Because if you use Glass for a little while, I realized immediately that
this was just a boon, until they get it off your face and on to your watch.
Because every swipe, every gesture, is perfect for fitting onto a watch, where
you have lots of screen real estate.
Leo: By the way, that voice is Chad Johnson, our producer.
Chad: I’m the video guy.
Leo: And a wearer of a Pebble, and I should point out,
that’s what I’ve been thinking about, Glass, is it’s elaborate for Google, it
may not even be a product forever for Google, but they want to understand
wearable’s. And I’m sure Apples watching with great interest. How many of the
Apple design team do you think are wearing Glass?
Chad: And just like…
Andy: The A bomb for Google is Google now, and their
notifications. The more I see as this system matures, and I see what they’re
able to do in this little square that’s two inches by two inches. The amount of
utility that they can deliver and the amount of information, context perfect
information they can deliver, I think about how well this works in a google
glass environment. I think about how well it works on a watch screen. I think
about if Google is actually going to come up with their own… They’re own Roku
style box. The idea of you’re watching Netflix, you’re watching hullo, and this
ability from this tiny little notification to ease in to tell you about
something, oh by the way, you have this appointment at 4:00. Traffic is such
that you should really leave right now. Here is a map. If you want to action
your way into that map, here’s something you can do. It’s a secret sauce that
adds so much zest and so much utility to a wide range of products. I don’t
think Apple has demonstrated quite the same sort of thing with Siri, and it’s
because they’ve sort of cut Siri off with that sort of visual indication.
Chad: And just like Rene and Leo were saying, there’s no way
that you’re going to able to make a watch for every person. But that’s not what
Google is promising. That’s why you have LG, and Motorola.
Leo: Google is smart, make an API, make an SDK and let
everyone.
Chad: An SDK. Yeah!
Leo: But Apple can’t do that. Apple is a hardware
manufacture. And they don’t have google now kinds of information, because
they’ve decided up front that they don’t want to infringe on people’s privacy,
and that’s one of the valued appositions of Apples phones.
Rene: Well they’ve both deliberately made card style
interfaces for post to post PCs.
Leo: Interesting isn’t it.
Rene: There’s no accident that they made Google now, and
Siri the way they made it. They were looking beyond phones when they made it.
Leo: I think they should sue google because they invented
the card interface with HyperCard. Way back when!
Rene: Look what you started, Leo!
Leo: Oh I’m in trouble now. Now let’s move on to iPhone,
4.7 inch pones. That’s smaller than the existing IPhone 5S. And the 5.5 inch
phone. You think both?
Rene: No. Right now it’s four inches. 4.7 inches would be
the size roughly.
Leo: I thought a 5 was 5 inches! Its 4 inches?
Rene: its 4 inches.
Leo: That’s so small! How can you people use that?
Rene: We have hawk like vision.
Leo: Wait a minute! The 5 was 4 inches, so what was the 4S?
Rene: 3.5
Leo: Holy cow! How did you use that?
Rene: It was almost a palm veer. Almost a veer size.
Leo: And meanwhile I see Jason Snell over here with what is
it? 5.5, 5.7 inch galaxy S5 taking pictures. So really Apple is going to move
into the modern world with a 4.7 inch phone? That’s my motto X, and it’s a
perfect size, by the way, you can still hold it in my hand, and it feels good.
Rene: If they stay with 4 inches. Because a lot of people do
like 4 inch phones. If you look at the numbers of what sells, especially in the
north American market. Supersize phones have not done as well here as they’ve
done in Asia. And Apple has done extremely well with 4 inch. Phones. So if they
keep that around, even just to ease people out of them, go to 4 and then 4.7.
That makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve only heard about one bigger phone this
year. I’ve not heard about two. It doesn’t mean there’s something bigger that’s
just not being called a phone, or I’m not hearing about it. Or it’s for later
in the year, or next year. But I think to me, if you move the 5S, whether you
call it a 5SC or whatever. If you move it down, and introduce the 4.7 above it,
that seems like a smart line up.
Leo: That might be what they do. And I have to say, I
actually agree the 4.7 is just right. I’ve been carrying this HTC one, and it’s
5 inches. And when I go back and touch my Moto X, which is 4.7, I go you know
what? This is a better size. This is the right size. 4.7 is a good size.
Andy: Yeah, in any event, if Apple doesn’t… I feel that
Apple has to do a larger screen phone at this point. To the Apple has to do
anything. But I think that the, I think it would be a mistake to ignore the
popularity of these larger screen phones, and stick with that form factor. If
they are serious about the value of the iTunes content market, god, that’s the,
the iPhone is like the third or fourth device I would like to read a book on,
or watch a movie on at this point.
Leo: Right. It seems to me that there is a sweet spot,
maybe everybody is different, high end sizes are different and so forth. It
seems to me that there is a sweet spot, and after going back and forth with
littler, and smaller, and stuff. I have to say 4.7 feels like it’s the sweet
spot for everybody! Maybe I’m wrong.
Andy: I had the Nokia 1520 phone, which is so big that I
actually had to,
Leo: 6 inches! A two hander!
Andy: I actually had to make a purchase in the grocery store,
to prove a theory that it’s as big as one and a half pop tarts. That’s how big
this telephone is.
Rene: A pop tart and a halfer!
Leo: Now you can deduct pop tarts Andy!
Rene: There you go.
Andy: I don’t care about deductions! I want sponsorship
deals. I want to be on podcasts with a pop tarts patch and a crown Victoria
patch.
Leo: We could totally do that! I’d like that.
Andy: But there is a sweet spot, and I did pull out my Moto
X just like you, believe it or not, a few weeks ago, and started firing it up
again to take a look at it and there is something about that size that is…
Leo: Just right, yeah.
Andy: It’s larger than the iPhone, to give a much more error
to the user interface, and much more content. And it’s not as overt as the HTC
one. Which is a brilliant phone but there are times when you feel like, if you
take this out in any environment, and it’s all about hi, this is me and I’m
wearing my mini tablet device, because sometime you just want the expression of
a personal communication device.
Leo: We’re going to take a break and come back with your
picks of the week. So gentlemen, fire them up! Our show today brought to you by
our friends at Shutterstock.com, Shutterstock is the place to go to get royalty
free images, vectors, and videos, and good lord! Do they have a huge selection!
And last count lets go down to the bottom of the page, I love this. 35 million
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even add images to the light box. So I’m looking for watches for instance.
Here’s some beautiful watches. And so you add them to your light box, so you
can save them for later, reference or share them with a colleague. You can also
take the noun, which is normally what you would search for, and you can narrow
it down so they have a… if you want to refine your search they have a great
color picker, that says well I only want blue watches, or green watches, or red
watches. You can narrow it down by category. You can say I only want photos, or
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I could exclude keywords. I mean, you could say only images with people, only
images without people. Editorial or not. You can even say I only want images
with females. I love this! From 40 to 49 of African American ethnicity. And
there should be three people in the picture. Do you think I’m going to be able
to do… will this result to anything? I don’t know, maybe I narrowed it down too
much. Nope. So maybe I should take out…
Rene: Remove watches.
Leo: Oh yeah. No watches is the search. I mean, I know..
There you go. So here’s three people pictures, with watches. (Laughs) And
women, 40 to 49. That’s bizarre. Wait a minute, they’ve got a guy in there. Get
him out of there! Oh they’ve got to have him in there because he’s got the
watch. It’s fun to play with Shutterstock. With the light box. If you create
the account, then you can really play with it. Featured, if you’re a member,
you get, I think there’s a free clip every week that you can take a look at.
Now, when you decide to buy, you can buy individual clips, individual photos, a
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to save 20%. Andy Ihnatko. I bet you have a pick of the week.
Andy: Yes, and this is a really great one, although this is
going to be a little bit divisive, I think 90% of the people listening will say
oh my god, that’s such an incredible thing! I had no idea that was possible.
And 10% are going to be saying oh my god, I can’t believe that features been
around for so long, and you’re just hearing about it now. But yes, I just heard
about this now. If you look in the back of your cable box, your HD Cable box.
You will see a fire wire port there.
Leo: Yeah?
Andy: And it looks like a fire wire port because it is a
fire wire port.
Leo: It doesn’t do anything.
Andy: Oh yes it does!
Leo: What?!
Andy: in 2004 there, from 2004 afterwards makers of high def
cable boxes are required to include a fire wire port that allows people to
record TV shows in a digital format. This preserves the VHS sort of functions
of analog television. Where if you want to record Dave you can put a cassette
in. So that’s exactly what that port is, although the cable companies don’t
really want to tell you that. So if you connect a fire wire cable to that, and
sort of mojo you need to hook it up to your thunderbolt thing, you can actually
record anything that’s going on, on your cable box, there. This is last night’s
Letterman show, recorded, not converted from analog to digital the pure 10 80HD
digital screen with no conversion whatsoever.
Leo: What? I do not think this is widely known at all.
Andy: And it works. So all you need is whatever cable you
need to get it done, and it cost me all of 35$ to get the right adapter, and a
free app called fire record, that hasn’t been updated in several years, but it
works. And what it does, multiple things for you. The simplest thing it does
for you is you just, whatever is coming, whatever your cable box is playing, if
it’s an unprotected channel it will just simply record whatever its spitting
out into an mpeg 2 file. It can also actually control your cable box, so you
can actually tell it, please tune into CBS at 11:35 PM, and record for one
hour, and then stop recording. And stash it to a file.
Leo: Now, it only does life right? You can’t take something
you DVRd?
Andy: Again the function of this is to make sure that people
don’t get cheated out of the normal functions of an analog VCR. So this morning,
I asked myself the same question, if you have stuff you’ve DVRd, you can simply
press the record button on this app, and then start playing something that you
recorded like a month ago, and you can capture all that then in full HD.
Leo: Oh sure. Mpeg 2?
Andy: It’s Mpeg 2 to so you need the VLC, the free video
player to play it. What I do instead is simply convert that file using a head
break and convert it to an MP4 and now you can use it on iTunes, you can sync
it to your iPad. You can convert it. Now that Letterman is on his way out, and
maybe Craig Ferguson too, I want to start recording shows that I don’t want to
lose.
Leo: Oh I love Craig Ferguson, he’s on the block?
Andy: Without getting into a rat whole, the CBS decided
instead of making him the host of the late show to pay him the millions of
dollars he’s going to get, if he’s not offered the late show. So that leaves a
question of, A. are they interested in keeping him as the host of 12:30, or
will Craig be interested in keeping on at the host of the 12:30 show.
Leo: Oh I love him!
Andy: But this is something I’ve been missing for years, and
years since the digital changeover. Sometimes there’s a program you like it so
much you want to be able to keep it and watch it again, and again. And don’t think
this is just limited to broadcast channels. It’ll depend on your cable line.
Any channel they have not scrambled, or put DRM on, it can record. So I
recorded a DVRd show from a month ago I recorded of the discovery channel.
National geographic channel recorded just fine. Unfortunately I don’t think it
works with turner classic movies, from my cable line up. But believe me, I’m
about to systematically test every single channel.
Leo: So if it’s encrypted, if it’s like HBO, you cannot do
this.
Andy: Right, it’ll record an hour of stuff, but it’ll not
play because there will be a mojo on the channel saying oh by the way don’t let
this guy play this.
Leo: I think almost everything on my cable box now, Comcast
protects everything.
Andy: Well its broadcast channels are definitely not going
to be locked, because they’re not allowed to lock those channels. You’re
supposed to be able to just plug your cable, if you’re subscribing to cable, if
you have a cable in your house, you’re supposed to be able to plug that into a
TV with a digital tuner and get your local broadcast channels, but as I found
out, and was a little bit surprised to find out your channels that are… at
least on my system, that are unlocked and fully recordable.
Leo: Wow.
Andy: Unfortunately see I've got like have of my DVR hard
drive tied up with stuff that I want to keep and some the stuff’s been on there
for about a year waiting for me to like “I think I'm going to hook up my DVR,
my DVD recorder to the analog channels just make up a copy out of it”, and now
I'm just I'm just going to buy a hard drive to make sure I can keep like ten
hours, twenty, thirty hours of HD TV. It is absolutely brilliant, it works just
great. The worst thing that I can tell you is that once or twice Fire record
has lost its connection to the cable box which case you quit, re-launch and it
works just fine. It really is as simple as I'm making it sound.
Leo: Well that makes the Mac Mini an even more – well do
they have Firewire on the – current—
Andy: I don’t have Firewire on what I've got here. Again, a
thirty dollar Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter, all you need is another adapter
cable that will convert the letter v shaped, letter u shaped connector to the
newer square type connector and that’s it, there's no—
Leo: And Fire Record has all the scheduling features and
everything that you want or.
Andy: Yeah it’s pretty basic, it looks like something that
could easily be done with Apple Script Studios as a matter of fact. I mean as
you can see, this really is the entire interface to it.
Leo: Uh-huh.
Andy: And so if you’d - you could definitely set it up to
record your favorite programs directly. I think it’s simpler to just let your
DVR do the job and then tell it to record the ones that you want unless you do
really want to be an archivist and say “I really want every episode of Bob’s
Burgers digitally”, in which case you can certainly do that, the problem is
though that if you are changing the channel while that thing is being recorded
then your recording will have changing the channel to the Amazing Race or
changing the channel to 60 minutes of whatever. So – but again, it works, it
works, it works and boy do I feel dumb for not finding this out until last
week.
Leo: Yeah, now I really can use my Mac Pro as a home
theatre PC.
Andy: You know, actually you should buy a second one for
that purpose.
Leo: [laughs] you know the guy, the Apple Rep I've been
talking to listens to MacBreak Weekly and he called after I complained last
week. He said “No, no really, we can look at your log, we’ll know it’s been
rebooting” and then I send him the log he said “Yes” but he also said “No it’s
part of the process we ask you how you're using your Mac Pro and are you still
using it as a home theatre PC?” And then I said that was just a joke, I never
meant to use it as a home theatre PC. But now with Fire Record maybe I will.
Andy: I wish I knew about this when the Oscars was airing or
the Grammys were airing or other things.
Leo: Yeah well you got Ron Swanson on your TV that’s good
for me.
Andy: There you go, that’s about as good as it gets.
Leo: With the beard. Rene Ritchie, your pick of the week?
Rene: So Andy mentioned this actually earlier, it’s an app
called Screens VNC, it’s made by Edovia and they’ve just released version 3 of
the Mac version of Screens. They’ve done the IOS version re-do a few months
ago, it was really, really good. The Mac version is now out. I believe it costs
45 or 49 dollars but what it is is a VNC client so it lets your share the
screen of other computers, whether they're Windows computers or Macs computers
or Linux computers. If you have that Mac Mini that you have in the closet or
the server room, you can access that. If you have a Linux box at the data
center, you can access that. It’s a very Mac like experience, there's tons of
really good VNC clients available for the Mac but not all of them are very Mac
like, very few of them are actually Mac like. And Edovia has taken a lot of
time and effort to make it. It’s not an IOS 7 makeover it’s distinct from their
IOS 7 – fits right in. It’s sort of what I imagine maybe an Apple IOS 7
redesign for the Mac would be like just very clear, a lot of deference, there’s
not a lot of chrome there, and what chrome there is is easily hidden. All you
do is launch whatever computer you want to log in to, you log into it. If you
hold down the icon on the Dock bar it’ll give you a list of recently launched
computers so you can go instantly back to them. It’s sort of like Apple back to
the Mac if it worked really, really, really well. And I find myself using it
all the time just to hook up to my podcasting machine to start a hang out if
I'm in a different room or connecting to my mom’s computer to help fix a
couple of things or change some settings. If you get the Mac app store version,
which uses iCloud, it’ll sync all of your remote computers via iCloud and that
means everything that you have on your iPhone and your iPad you also have on
your Mac. So you can do all the same things when you're out traveling with the
device on LTE or wi-fi and that just makes it a very nice solution for me.
Leo: By the way I was not wrong, Comcast does in fact
encrypt basic cable. I had an el gato and all of a sudden I couldn’t use it
anymore and that’s because my – in their infinite wisdom, my cable company
encrypts everything. Maybe local TV’s not encrypted, I’ll have to try that the
live TV. But thank you Comcast. Once again the worst company in America about
to get a lot bigger.
Andy: Thank god.
Rene: Bigger and worser.
Leo: Yeah bigger and worser. It just cracks me up when
Bryan Roberts the CEO of Comcast say “We’re modeling our company on Apple”. In
what way exactly? You want to just – the profits, basically right?
Andy: Yes.
Leo: Because in no other way is Comcast anything like
Apple. My tip of the week, maybe some of you will just throw up a little in
your mouth when I mention it is Office, Microsoft Office. They announced a very
affordable subscription now for a single Mac plus one iPad or I guess you could
use it on Windows if you want. 6.99 a month for Office which includes Word,
Excel, Powerpoint, One Note. And I think it’s $72 for a year, something like
that. It’s a very affordable way to get office, you know if you’ve ever gone to
the store. I remember the last Office upgrade, going you know – Office 2010 or
something, I went to the store and it was like $800 for the box of Office. I
just couldn’t do it, I could not bring myself to write that check. 6.99 a
month, not so bad. And includes some cloud storage, Skype minutes and so forth.
So just announced today, I know most of you are very happy with other solutions
for Office but if you have to use Word for some reason or Excel I'm glad that
there is a very affordable way to do it.
Rene: Awesome deal.
Leo: Yeah, I think so, I think so. I actually have the $10
small business one and that gives me five computers which is great. And that
can be a mix, a heterogeneous mix of PCs and Macs so I have some Windows and
some Macs. They also promise that when they update Office for the Mac, which is
probably in the next year, you'll get that automatically, you don’t pay
addition.
Andy: I'm glad that there's proving to be an actual upside
to the subscription model at least for Microsoft and Adobe customers because it
stinks to say that you're going to have to pay X dollars forever to get access
to Photoshop but at least they’re saying “Well look here are ways that we’re
extending and enhancing it for you so that maybe you will be happy to be
spending money every month for the rest of your life for the ability to edit
photos.”
Leo: Andy Ihnatko you are my man. My man.
Andy: Dude.
Leo: Dude, that picture by the way that’s been behind him
again is Boulder, Colorado and the beautiful flat iron mountains in Boulder. It
is really pretty there, and I know that because my son goes to school there and
it’s just gorgeous. Was it warming up a little bit when you were there?
Andy: God, I packed up short sleeve shirts, it was like in
the 60s and 70s and then the day after I left it was like, they got snow. So
welcome to Boulder. I've been going to this conference for fifteen years and
for the first six of it I’d no idea how to pack for the snow one day and then
80 degrees the next day.
Leo: It’s awesome, it’s awesome he’s – my son’s a complete
native Californian, never saw snow once in his life but he’s acclimated well.
He’s snowboarding and everything, he loves it.
Andy: It could do it some more oxygen.
Leo: It’s in altitude.
Andy: It provokes a problem, that’s okay.
Leo: I'm huffin and puffin a little bit as I hike around town.
Andy: A lot of the sidewalks are very comfortable to sleep
on.
[laughter]
Leo: Thank you Andy, always a pleasure. You can see Andy
Ihnatko’s almanac at 5by5 TV. Are you doing anything else you want to plug?
Andy: Epic show 100 next week.
Leo: Ooh.
Andy: Reviving old tech news so that you can see an
audiobook version of my tech writings for the Sun Times elsewhere. And pretty
much that’s it so far.
Leo: Where can we find Old tech news?
Andy: It’s also going to be on the 5by5 network, you will
see it, I've recorded a show yesterday and another show’s coming up on
Thursday.
Leo: So you read your old columns?
Andy: It’s sort of – exactly, that’s why I call it Old Tech
News because by the time you get it it’s probably about a week old.
Leo: Oh it’s not that old.
Andy: But so long as you know you put it out there, I think
it’s okay.
Leo: It’s not like you're reading the 1983 version of the
Ihnatko.
Andy: Exacty, exactly and it’s a lot of fun because I like
the – it seems to me the only way I can talk about a subject and make the show
less than thirty minutes if I had actually written out fifteen hundred words so
I can simply read it back. So it’s a lot of fun and it satisfies my urge to do
a compact one topic show as opposed to an Ihnatko Almanac which is “What do I
think would make an interesting conversation today?” and then you realize that
“Oh that episode was two hours long, perhaps we should have some sort of a bell
attached to a timer to stop that from happening again. It was fun buy maybe it
was more fun for me than to listen to it.
Leo: We’ll look forward to episode 100 coming soon to
5by5.tv/ia. Rene Ritchie does his share of podcasts too for Mobile Nations. You
can catch his work at iMore.com. What’s next – what’s new on the iMore podcast?
Rene: We just – this week’s debug has Ken Ferry who did the understudy for iPad app
but before that he did Auto Layout and Passbook for Apple and especially if you
just saw the, you know Windows phone 8.1 just launched and Microsoft is loading
Passbook into Microsoft wallet so if you're interested in that kind of Drama or
just how it works in general, you can check that show out.
Leo: God, I'm looking at the podcast you guys do. You're, it’s amazing. Here I am,
little old me, I thought I was the most prolific. I'm going to lose my crown
any moment now.
Andy: We should form a supergroup.
Rene: I don’t to all of those.
Leo: A supergroup.
Rene: Yes.
Andy: Like ABBA plus the living Beatles plus the living Who.
Leo: Yeah, supergroup. Thank you Rene, thank you everybody
for joining us. We do Macbreak weekly at Tuesday mornings, 11 am pacific, 2 pm
eastern time. That’s 18:00 UTC, Tuesday evenings if you're in the UTC time zone
on twit.tv. Please watch live, we’d love it if you're in the chat room and I
can see your thoughts or comments but if you can’t, on demand versions of all
of our shows are always available at our website. In this case twit.tv/mbw or
whereever finer netcasts are aggregated like iTunes and Instacast of the
podcast client on your favorite device. Thank you for joining us, now my
friends I hate to say it but time to get back to work because break time is
over!
