MacBreak Weekly 406 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It’s time for MacBreak Weekly, Andy, Alex and Rene are here, the hangover from WWDC is worn off. Let’s talk about what really happened, what’s really coming in iOS 8, and back OS ten ten(point)ten. We’ll analyze all the details next on MacBreak Weekly.

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Leo: This is MacBreak Weekly Episode Four Hundred Six, recorded June 10^th 2014

Goooooaaallllll!

 MacBreak Weekly is brought to you by Lynda(dot)com, learn what you want when you want, with access to over 2400 high quality online courses all for one low monthly price. To try it free for seven days visit Lynda(dot)com(slash)macbreak. That’s l-y-n-d-a(dot)com(slash)macbreak. And, by audible(dot)com. To download a free audio book of your choice visit audible(dot)com(slash)macbreak. And, by SquareSpace, the all in one platform that makes it fast and, easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio. For, a free two week trial and ten per cent off visit squarespace(dot)com, use the offer code MACBREAK. It’s time for MacBreak Weekly the show where we cover Mac and Apple news weekly, and here we are again. Seems like we did this last week. Alex Lindsay is in the studio once again from the pixelcorp, pixelcorp(dot)com.

Alex Lindsay: I’m here.

Leo: Good to see you.

Alex: It’s good to be here. (pixelcorps.com-@alexlindsay)

Leo: Did you just have your hair cut?

Alex: I did, I get one every quarterly haircut cut. It gets pretty shaggy and I put a lot of proctane and say I am going to take it to Candice.

Leo: Four times a year. Candice. You go to Candice? We share barbers. I see Candice more than you do.

Alex: You do a lot more than I do. (Laughter in the studio) She takes a look at me for a second and makes still recognizes me still.

Leo: Mr Hughes. Also here from imore(dot)com it is Rene Ritchie from Montreal (iMore(dot)com-@reneritchie.

Rene Ritchie: Hi, Mr Studio Leo, I can’t lie to you. You, were so much more three dimensional when I was there.

Leo: It was fun having you guys here, and that great Andy Ihantko you took of all of us. Why was I making a face I don’t understand? Andy Ihantko from Chicago Sun Times is here.

Andy Ihnatko: I don’t know. I think it’s because we, I think that we like had few like five seconds to get it done, because people needed to do it quick and do the count-down 3-2-1 and look presentable and so. (cwob.com-@ihnatko)

Leo: I kind of look like one of those teenagers that doesn’t like having his picture taken and, so is mugging for the camera. (Andy laughing) Here, I have the shot.

Alex: I stick my tongue out at the Sirus in front of the camera.

Rene: Leo look at the camera smile, Leo stop it.

Andy: Yes.

Rene: Leo.

Leo: Trying to load this from the Drop Box you placed in on. You didn’t take it down did you? (talking to Andy)

Andy: No I did not as a matter of fact, or I can with my power of my wall of sound set up here….

Leo: (interrupts) You can actually do that? Put it up there, instead of Craig Federighi. That’s a good shot.

Andy: Yes.

Leo: It’s a gorgeous picture, what happened there? I should make that as my banner for, there I’ve got it now by my screen. It took a while to get there.

Andy: I was worried that it might freak people out, because here we are in this screen then there we are in that screen over there. I would like to blow peoples’ minds with our analysis not with our video-trickery.

Leo: Video-trickery hey, is that what you call it? Yes, I don’t know why I’m doing that. (Leo laughing at picture)

Andy: There, there’s two frames. One of them you had your eyes semi-closed.

Leo: Yes, this is the better of the two I’m sure. You look good.

Andy: I look like I’m in the middle of saying something, which is not the best stance, okay.

Leo: Oh that’s good. I don’t know I look like I’m sitting on something strange.

Alex: Looks like he’s planning his next revolution.

Rene: Andy looks like delightful.

Leo: Rene looks like a nice guy….oh, boy. That’s a great picture. Anyway thank-you for sharing that.

Andy: You’re young only once.

Rene: We were so young and happy back then.

Leo: Those were the days.

Alex: We’re seeing a lot of grey hair yes well weren’t that cross, we didn’t start that way.

Leo: We are grey beards, we are grey hairs, Holy Cow!

Rene: We are like the Craig Federighi Club?

Leo: So, here we have…we would like to do this one week later after it’s all sunk in. Big WWDC is over. Did you, did any of you, I didn’t realize this we had Film Girl on Sunday on Twit, Christina Warren and she won some sort of lottery that she got to stay through the developer conference and even got to abrogate the NDA means that she could see stuff and talk about it, which is the first time Apple’s ever done it.

Andy: Actually, they, they changed the terms of the NDA for the betas and stuff like that. You’re not allowed to post screen shots, you’re certainly not allowed to post code but you can certainly talk about it in the abstract way.

Leo: Right, right.

Andy: Sorry, you can talk about the features you’ve seen, you can talk how you intend to, how excited you are of course. But that, that is interesting twist isn’t it compared to last year. Even the impossibility of previous years of having two thousand people under NDA and no secrets getting out. Now either Apple is becoming more open or they’re simply acknowledging that it’s very, very tough to tell people you’re not allowed to even refer to stuff that was being talked about at WWDC especially now that they’re releasing all the videos to anybody with a developer’s account whether you apply for it or not you get access every single one of those videos now.

Leo: Right.

Rene: Actually, I don’t even think they’re logged in. I think that anybody can go there now. I’ve gone many times there’s never been a pay wall. (Cross talk)

Andy: I’ve kind I’ve been like binge watching these videos. I’m haven’t seen more than two episode of House of Cards, or Game of Thrones but I’ve watched the entire WWDC set. I do remember at one point coming back the next day and trying to refresh the page after logging back in again. I don’t know if it was related to the videos or because of the developer ID.

Leo: But you don’t need a developer account. Anybody can watch.

Alex: Anybody can watch, anybody that’s relevant. I think its relevant as a good example of other people doing conferences. You know that Apple, it’s not about what people are saying…I mean that’s important and what we all want. But that’s not what’s bringing people what’s bringing people to the conferences is the engineers you get to talk to. People that you get to meet and everything else, that’s why it sells out in 45 seconds well once they announce it.

Leo: Well, to be fair Google’s done it for years, Apple….Microsoft did it at Bill’s this year, Apple’s the last of the party.

Alex: No, that’s what I’m saying……

Leo: It makes sense.

Alex:…..work for those, and I think that a lot of ….like me what we do is live streaming, constantly talking to the clients back.

Leo: Open it up, if that’s behind the pay wall a minor wall of any kind.

Alex: Yes.

Leo: We want to express more.

Rene: They did this year too, because they’re going to be doing an open source beta for Yosemite and that’s not going to be, I mean that’s not going to be enforceable and more than that the lottery system for WWDC who can get tickets but they also had some journalists who were given not just journalist tickets but passes for the entire event. And the NDA’s as far as I understand it is no screen shots and no videos and no reviews. And, the reason for that is because things are going to change over the beta, and if you start doing reviews or screen shots and things change it creates false expectations with customers and they think they’re not getting what they should be getting. So that part, you know is fully understandable. But you know it’s a really Craig Federighi Geek Year you know Phil Schiller, more happy at an open sort of a thing. It’s terrific.

Leo: It’s pretty awesome.

Rene: Yes.

Leo: It does feel like a new era finally under Tim Cook. There were so many changes, I think. It was done so differently, it was …you know the only thing was it was like the old….still we’re taking jabs at you Google maybe even more brutally than in the past. But this feels a little bit more open. I, I commend that, I think that’s the right direction.

Rene: So are the leaks. At the same time they were more open, but they were good at SWIFT a secret.

Leo: Isn’t that interesting. We didn’t not know one…..we had not heard not one thing about SWIFT that’s a good example. That’s a good example till the day of….

Alex: Which was a good example. Which we felt everything was going really porous.

Leo: You know here it’s very easy. You can keep people working at Apple quiet. That’s not a problem. It’s the Chinese suppliers, it’s the manufacturers, those guys that can’t keep quiet. So, we know everything there is to know about hard ware, because its being made elsewhere.

Alex: Right.

Leo: But software, you can keep a lid on it. Because those guys now their job is on the line. (Alex Laughing) They work for Apple and perhaps they don’t even have to be told your job is on the line, they care!

Alex: Right.

Leo: They want to keep it a secret. They understand the value of that.

Alex: Right.

Leo: So, did anybody…..so you guys have been perusing the aisles, I’m sure that Alex and I have not. So, I’ll open it up to you Rene and Andy, tell us any sessions, first of all some sessions were blacked out till the day. What did we learn by either by going to WWDC or watching chat sessions all the way?

Andy: Just that everything that was said and the Keynote was just backed up by real content. Every video I looked at….I started off with the most boring one which was, ‘here is what the new cameras APIs are. And, you watch though it and it’s not just,’I suppose we will grudgingly allow you set exposure.’ It’s, ‘No we will let you have like low level fine grade access. So, if you want to do full on computational photography we will let you.’ There’s even a bracketing API…..

Leo: Wow!

Andy: so if you want to take photos with adjustments as you go through there is micro adjustments to focus with some interesting……one of the things that keeps going through all these videos is that Apple’s trying to get away from being specific about…..they, they’re trying to teach developers don’t count on anything about any device that we may or may not ship. First, in the camera video they say

‘We won’t let you specify a focus point because let’s just the distance between the furthest and closest focusing point and the thickness of the device might not be the same from device to device. But, but even this thing will allow you to….they even have access to low level video, so if you want to do like live video transponder configuration, I’m not being as big…..half the ….half of one per cent expert that Alex is I don’t how big an advantage you can take of this API. But I’m surprised that if you want to have access to the video you don’t simply have to have a capture video and, then do something to it later on. You can actually do live processing on it.

Leo: Wow.

Andy: And then when you look at how they’ve made the extensions and, see that no it’s not simply…….in Android there are ways to uuummm drop things into other apps, to pale on top of other apps, there are ways to make notices actionable. But they are kind of……but not very useful but not really ambitious.It becomes really, really clear that what Apple has done is told developers that,’if you can develop an entire separate user interface for your app that only expresses itself within inside the notifications manager and the limit…..and when you insert…..and when you project your features into the camera app or any other app, that lets you, that lets you accept extension is not the simple,’here is the function that you can lend’ you can actually project your app at a user interface from your app into that.’ So, I can’t wait to see how developers really take advantage of it, because as, as I am……I intended to just skim over this, maybe download the PDF, just to get the sense of it but it really is just like when you start getting into Game of Thrones I’ll only watch the one repeated thing, the one which is on trial for whatever, because I didn’t catch what it was. (Laughter from Leo) And then nine hours later,’Oh damn it, is it eleven pm already, oh damn it, I missed my sister’s wedding.’ Because that is…the more you dive into this the more you realize this is the full on the greatest updates that Apple has ever done to Mac OS and iOS.

Leo: This is part of the C change too. Opening up these APIs and letting people in. I mean this is one of the things you could never do on the iPhone before you know. It was Apple’s way, Apple did it but no-one else (cross talk with Alex)

Alex: You know that’s how it started off, you know Apple’s, you know when I found my original my 3G nerd….

Leo: I had mine over in the other room, I had to find the thirty pin cable to charge it with.

Alex: I can’t get anything to launch right now, but I was going to give it to my son, but I prefer playing with it.

Leo: Wow.

Alex: You know that was like the, when you got it……(incomplete sentence)

Leo: It was pretty primitive.

Alex: When you got it, you were just like oh my gosh….

Leo: Yes, we were thrilled. I waited six hours in line for that thing.

Alex: Yes, I know and it was the best phone we ever had.

Leo: It’s so much better than anything we’ve ever had. (Cross Talk) Go ahead..

Rene: I was just going to say one of the things for me is about the new openness. They had people like Mike Stern ummmm the Apple user experience evangelist, at one of the Apple user evangelist event he did a whole talk just on design language and, how they implemented it on os 10 Yosemite and what they look for in great apps. Ken Kashinda who’s one of the original web kit engineers who made the keyboard, he just did a talk about the lessons he learned trying to manage projects at Apple, which is not your typical WWDC talk but is a fantastic talk. And, to Andy’s point Apple had been working in inter app communications for years. It’s, not like it’s Bush’s administration okay, you guys go do this. It’s just that it took them a long time, it took them three years to get copy paste. They had to figure out a system where malware couldn’t travel anywhere between apps. And, the reason that the different views are in different containers is for security. Because security first operating system but also let’s say you have Facebook, which is not the sveldest of applications and that’s running and suddenly you have a Facebook notification or a widget and you decide to jettison the Facebook app not because it’s hogging memory, what happens to the widget or what happens to that notification.

Leo: Right.

Rene: Well, if it’s in own container or in its own demon nothing happens to it. You’re totally free to do it. So, by making it right even though it took a long time, it opens up so much more functionality for a better user experience. I would have liked it sooner, but I’m happy the way the way did it.

Leo: I did complain about the extensions.( cross talk)

Andy: I know…..

Leo: Go ahead.

Andy: Apple, Apple has previously on the iPhone has an about face on philosophy. Every one that I have spoken in allowing third party apps says that this was a change of tactics, that they really did think that web apps were going to be the way to go and then changed their mind. Which who knows for sure but everyone I have been speaking to since say that their apps was actually a change of opinion. But here I hedged my bets last week because I didn’t know whether this new opener was a change of philosophy, or as Rene said it took them a long time to figure out in a way in how to do this that they felt was going to be safe for the platform. And, over the past week every one I have spoken to has said exactly that it really has been, it took four years to figure out how to make apps work together in such a way that it’s not going to cause malware, it’s not going to cause de-stability. That’s going to be a net positive instead of disappointments for everybody.

Rene: It is a bit of a mix, Andy’s point you could have built all this stuff and went high up and just say no and then after a while a change in Apple and the person and say yes. But they have been working on it for a long time.

(Laughing)

Leo: It’s hard to do that and, maintain security in, after…..you know one of the things is that they changed a lot of things in iOS seven when the iPhone five X was a security model. Significant changes, ……

Alex: Yes.

Leo: and it may be that they wanted to wait till those were implemented and then you can start talking about opening an API, because now you know what the safety parameters are. You also have hard ware support for encryption and things. And, I for one, I read the extension safety and, I was very impressed. It seems a very clean elegant implementation that both protects the user and gives developers a chance to kind of start hooking into other apps I think it’s good.

Alex: Well, I think it’s, I think that number one part of it is I think is also the maturity of the operating system.

Leo: Yes, yes.

Alex: When you open up that API, that means that you’re now locked in……

Leo: Right.

Alex: This is not just that you’re giving access to people access to your operating system. It’s that you’re making an agreement that you’re only going to change it at a certain pace after that and, so by opening this up we’re we’ve gotten to most of the added to want we want…we’re just going to keep on changing it but, it’s not going to change the pace that it changed at before. The other thing that I was saying with the privacy, I think that what Apple is doing is playing a game that a lot of competitors like Google want to play, because Google’s obviously want to work on their encrypting email, now they are working on privacy. This backend issue of wanting to run ads and running to get information and Apple is I think we’re going to continually see Apple doing things that break those things. You know, that’s not because their trying to hurt Google but, because they are differentiating themselves from many of the other competitors who are trying to run on ad based model.

Leo:(interrupts) We spent a lot of time on Sunday at Twit talking about this and saying that both Apple and Microsoft have an opportunity here to say,’We’re going to be anti-Google.’

Alex: Yes, you are going to pay us upfront and, it’s going to cost more and what you’re going to get from that is privacy, you know. People are not going to know when you’re walking by, unless you decide you want them to know. I’m not going to……I mean I can see Apple doing this kind of thing that you’re talking about…..where you’ve different credit card number every single time you make a purchase. (Leo cross talking) And those are the kind of things that you can implement that’s difficult.

Leo: Cryto-graphic…base…..in the in the hard ware. (pulls out his original iPhone from pocket. Which reminds me I brought my original iPhone.’This is the thickest, heaviest smallest iPhone we’ve ever made.’ This thing is noticeably thicker and heavier, and…..

Rene: You’re not going to sell any of those. (Leo laughing)

Alex: Yes, exactly.

Leo: It’s so, it’s so small, just look at how big the head-phone jack is…look, looks on this thing, it looks monstrous.

Andy: Although, I remember we had to drill it out…..(cross talk)

Andy: Before we could put in a standard headphone connector inside.

Leo: Yes, that’s right.

Alex: Remember that little adaptor that we had.

Leo: 3 Gs I think.

Rene: It’s still a good-looking phone. (Cross talk)

Andy: It’s still a good - looking guy. If that were in a call machine in a supermarket I’d definitely risk putting two quarters to get that.

Leo: (comparing two phones) Is this the original one or is this the original one.

Andy: The one of the right is the original one right speed with the antenna cut out. (all presenters talking over each other)

Alex: I charged mine up and then that wouldn’t start.

Andy: I charged mine up about a few….. a year ago, because I was doing like one of my huge camera shoot out and I thought, ’Well let’s compare this to’, let me tell you this is freaking me out that when I look into this camera, I have like the live mirror shot over there and then I see you all at the back in there smiling and patiently waiting for a half a second, I think that maybe the video has frozen and, I tell my brain not to worry about that anymore. But, I charged it up, I couldn’t believe how slow this thing was, I couldn’t believe how crappy the screen was. It’s like it’s the best way to understand exactly how good a job Apple has done developing the iPhone is to spend ten minutes with the iPhone One and see this used to be the greatest phone in the world the kind that people line for six hours to go get.

Leo: Six hours of my life. But I met some nice people in that line. (Laughter)

Alex: Apply buyers are always fun people.

Leo: You can see it’s dead. It’ll come back, I mean why shouldn’t it. It’s all solid state.

Rene: Yes.

Alex: Mine came back in just as I started to open an app.

Leo: Well, I’ll let you know, before the show’s over, boot the iPhone, the original iPhone and see what happens. It’ll be a little slice of my life from 2007. One of the things that been paid to a lot of attention is the X Code SIX. You know when you develop two X codes you can have talk on iPhone devices, iPhone 5 has, and yes you can have an iPad. And, you have independent or variable screen resolution devices and, and, a couple of people said there were a number of mentions about this in the, the, sessions as well at the WWDC. Did one of you have anything to say about that? Are we going to…..is that Apple merely saying that they’re going to be more flexible or is that paving the way for the new screen sizes.

Andy: This is Apple’s……. trying to emphasize to the developers do not count on your app being projected into to a screen of any specific size. I thought, I, and they’re doing this without having 8 hundred bogus screen sizes in there. They get it by saying here is the interface builder, here is a square to populate. So, they’re really trying to get people to figure out, think of your property, think of your app filling into an iPhone screen or into an iPad screen small iPad screen, into the dashboard of a car, think about it as something that could fill an Apple TV screen and, any other device that may come and go. Apple’s, this is not a new thing. Apple’s been talking about the screen size dependence and auto-fill and auto flow operations for years now. This is the first time that they have really kicked people in the head and said that we don’t want to create an interface builder environment that makes you think in terms of filling this iPhone size device. We want to you to think of a blank screen of any size that you’re going to have to populate with your inter face. Now, now that you’re projecting parts of your interface into other apps, that’s also important because even if Apple doesn’t do a wrist watch with a color touch LCD screen, you’re still going to have to think about how can you make your photo app or your scheduling app useful, and a square, a square sized real estate?

Leo: By the way we do have the question engine up twit(dot)to(slash)mbw406.

Alex: Yes, yes, yes.

Leo: Dot t-o

Alex: No dash this time, no.

Leo: We don’t need that any more we control our own shortner, twit(dot)to(slash)mbw406. It says 401 on there?

Alex: I, screwed up on there, it was the wrong date. I……

Leo: Ignore that, that’s ours, and…..

Alex: Standing on a plane to get here.

Leo: We use the question engine a chance to ask questions and vote up or down questions you want to have answered and we’ll talk about those in just a little bit as well. Well, what else did we, before we wrap this up….(Rene interrupts)

Rene: The other thing Leo is this thing about scaling stuff and they showed this off in the state of the union. To see a higher level version of that just go to the union video. It’s provides constraint based layer, exactly what Andy said, and you could imagine that could be all the different screen sizes. They started of with you know this is a 3.5 inch iPhone or 4 inch iPhon, iPad, this is horizontal. But very quickly they got into compact rectangle, small, and you can imagine that for different screen sizes, but also when you start having you know multiple panes in the same window, you know you have, and they explained this nicely, you know they haven’t, for customers it’s no knowledge. It’s knowing inside what the iPhone one column shown at a time, whereas the iPad is shown as two column at a time.

Leo: Oh.

Rene: That’s not dependent on the device. You could eventually have maybe two different apps side by side, or one small and one big app side by side. It’s just liberates them to do more stuff on the OS, than the pixel for pixel interface did.

Leo: I’m excited. How about finger-print ID? Touch ID? Did they…..how is the API there, does it look like Appley enough.

Rene: That is really getting to the problem with the touch ID previously, is that for example if you just a touch ID is that all it does is that is yes/no token. And, there is concerns that an app could spoof that. It’s not very secure. There were some circumstances with PayPal on Samsung. Immediately, that gets compromised, and yes that was a CIS spoof or whatever. With this it goes into key chain so the token is actually being given to key chain. It’s not being given to developers and the key chain, which is an existing system in iOS and iOS ten since last year verifies the user. (Cross talk with Leo)

Leo: Again an example they wanted to get the foundation with in there, which is the key chain. So they could do this in a responsible and effective way.

Rene: Yes, security first.

Leo: Yes, security first. You’ve got to admire that, I really think, you’ve got to admire that, what they’re doing. You know this response to the analyst who said Apple has 60 days, why are they doing it so long? Apple has been moving fairly methodically and, carefully that’s why they didn’t even mention the iWatch. But they’re laying it seems to me right with the variable screen resolution. Laying the foundation for some interesting….(unfinished sentence)

Alex: You could see that, I think that they wouldn’t have shown that in any way. It would never appear no matter the analyst said, what people were saying before last year. The Apple crew is kind like you know, yes, yes…..We’ve got some interesting stuff to get back to you.

Leo: We’ve got some interesting stuff, yes.

Alex: We’re looking on four thousand API, it’s like it’s at the back of their heads, like. (Laughing) Yes we got the four thousand APIs.

Leo: And those are just iOS 8 Apps.

Rene: And that was the note, security first, privacy first, people first. When you look at their approach to something like Handoff or Test Flight or Family Sharing, it’s not based under license anymore, it’s based on your Apple ID on people. And that’s a completely different thing, their Windows is doing the first interface, the same interface everywhere….

Leo: Right.

Rene: Google’s always been cloud twist, first you log into the cloud everywhere. Apple’s no – you’re people and as long as we can identify you, as long as you have a credit card, as long as we know it’s your device, it’s about you and your content. It’s not about our devices or our cloud services or anything else, which is an interesting take for them, a very human take.

Leo: I want to be very fair, because there’s other stuff and, I compliment other stuff. I thought that the Samsung approach was try everything, release everything, see what consumers like. It was an interesting approach. But we’ve often criticized companies for moving, you know thinking in terms of the quarterly result and, moving too quickly, and moving this way and that way. So, when a company does something the market’s not going to like and, analysts are going to complain about and, even users are going to complain about. But, does it right, methodically, slowly and, carefully, I have to praise them. I think that’s really remarkable in this day and age.

Andy: It comes down to the real benefit of all the money that Apple has. Isn’t the ability to buy Beats, isn’t the ability to control and dictate their own destiny. They don’t have to listen to any body, they don’t have any pressure from anybody to anything other than exactly what they want to do. And, when they have a road map that is so clearly going to pay off big, boy does it pay off.

Now I’m glad there are multiple companies who are pursuing multiple points of views, and I’m glad that…..(Interrupted by Leo)

Leo: Why Google?

Andy: Google, particularly because right now that we have on the immediate horizon, inter app communications, inter app functionality, etc, extensions, notifications etc, are actionable, some customizations going on, some new widgets and stuff that’ll happen and that will help you out when you’re launching apps and managing people now that we have it. Remember that for years we had no idea that Apple even had any interest in that. And, meanwhile for two years, that was all available to anybody who had an Android device and it worked very well. So, I’m just glad that there are so many different points of view being represented with different operating systems and different hard ware.

Leo: We’re going to take a break and talk more. There’s lots more to say about what we’ve learned after WWDC. Some, interesting rumors, and, speculation about the Beats acquisition, and, more still to come. Andy Ihantko, from the Chicago Sun Times, from imore(dot)com, Rene Ritchie and Alex Lindsay of the pixelcorps.

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Leo: When?

Alex: The second week.

Leo: I have known Lynda Wyman since she was on the screen savers, did great books on web design. They have classes you know even on business skills classes, business software, of course business skills like negotiations, communications, data analysis, online marketing, CAD, Design, of course Photoshop, Bob Monterey’s Photoshop, incredible Photoshop videos are free at the beginning of each week, you can watch them. Ummmm, Light Room Five basics of image sharing up, and, running with Quick Books online getting things done. Steam OS for developers for First Look, things like that. I mean this is a great resource for anybody. But, what’s nice is its flat fee 25 dollars a month gives you access to all of the courses. For 37.50 a month you can get the premium plan which gives you exercise files so you can work along with your instructors. But right now we’re giving you seven days of complete run of the place for free which is pretty cool.

Alex: If you haven’t done this, just take the seven days go out and check it out.

Leo: Yes, how much can you learn in seven days. (presenters talking over each other)

Alex: But, you very quickly you realize that you’ve got this huge resource of professional levels of how-tos’ that, that you can through. It’s not just that it’s nine hours of Photo shop, it’s broken all up into little bits and pieces, oh I need to learn this one little thing. I was checking my work for my ….. micro phone class for our students in Rwanda and, I was checking my work and I ended up on Lynda(dot)com and, there was video on how to do them and put wax on them.

Leo: Yes, yes.

Alex: That was a great well shot video and you know, almost anything you can think of especially media. But, they’ve like expanded into a lot of other things and you realize that for 25 bucks a month, that you have little thing in your back pocket that you can just jump in and grab a little bit of knowledge here and there as you need it. Almost, everybody I know has a subscription.

Leo: Chris Bream teaches for them. I mean everybody does. It’s really a great place, so get the seven days free, give you a good idea of how much fun it is by the way, we should say and it’s fun to learn at Lynda(dot)com. Not only effective but fun. Lynda(dot)com(slash)macbreak for your seven days free, do give it a try, it is a great way to learn. They have corporate member ships, we’ve of course have group membership for our staff if they want to polish up their skills. Good thing for a company to do, l-y-n-d-a (dot)com(slash)macbreak. (Leo holds up old iPhone) Oh, it’s finally got enough juice to it’s starting to move.

Leo: Oh, wait a minute……

Andy: (Laughing) Hello, planet,

Leo: Oh, wait a minute, waiting for activation, this may take some time. It could take a long, long time….. (Rene interrupts)

Rene: Put your AT&T sim……, your mini sim

Leo: You know, it’s interesting it’s got the right date and time. That’s pretty impressive isn’t it? Low battery, I know, so here is, this is the original iPhone. You know what I must have wiped it because this is the bit, this is the way it came out of the box right?

Rene: These are the updates it gave at the apps store.

Leo: Oh, is this the…..

Rene: The iOS 2.0.

Leo: Oh, look it’s got an app date at the app store. Wow! So this is the iOS 2.0? That’s fun.

Andy: Look how long it took to open that.

Leo: And, yet it doesn’t look so very different does it? I’m actually kind of impressed.

Andy: In stripes.

Leo: Look at the back ground and the linens and, all that.

Andy: It does iOS seven in perspective that this was, this had been an operating system that user interface had been pretty static for like six years.

Leo: Right.

Andy: And, so it was probably time to annoy a lot of people but make some big changes.

Leo: (Switches phone on and off) Like I’m seeing an old friend once again. Wow. Maps. Here’s Google Maps. (Laughing) Remember that Rene, it came with Google.

(Cross Talk)

Rene: Did they like declutter?

Unknown voice: It doesn’t have the updated Wi-Fi chip so (Leo fidgeting with the iPhone)….so it’s like A and B in there…..so

Leo: It’s so slow….

Andy: I think it’s trying to find your notebook, which today is the hub of your digital experience. (Presenters laughing in the studio)

Unknown voice: Have you synced it with iTunes yet? Because that might…

Leo: I haven’t, oh it does say welcome to you new iPhone. It’s also offering to restore my back up from the iPhone five. That probably is not a good idea.

Andy: No, I assumed you purchased this new because it’s really old.

Leo: Wow, we’ve never seen anything quite so old. Hush I don’t know.

Rene: It’s a revolutionary phone Leo. You’re holding revolution in your hands.

Leo: I’m kind of sad that I wiped it. So kids, something just little, if you’re not going to sell it on Gazelle, if you’re going to keep it around as I have, don’t wipe it because that’s your little time machine app.

Andy: I still have my message pad 2000. That still has every friend I was in regular contact with back then, every meeting that I was taking back then, notes on everything I was writing back then. And, every time I popped fresh triple a’s in there, it’s like ohhhhh hello 1997 Andy!

Leo:(Laughing) I have mine as well, several new……all the new data. It’s not that Newton gave you the easy way to wipe it that’s probably why. (small amounts of cross-talk) I keep trying to log in but it won’t let me. It does see them know.

Unknown voice: It does see them.

Leo: Yes, the FPI surveillance fan too, right is that you guys! It must be Pixel Corps would be a good one,…..

Unknown Voice: Try guest.

Leo: Oh guest would be a good one, hit production, but that might be too hard.

Andy: They make sure you hit the crappy old router for the guest.

Leo: I don’t even know what the password for this is. It’s the same as you would expect.

Unknown Voice: No not that one.

Leo: It’s not twit guest?

Unknown Voice: No. (CrossTalk)

Leo: (Laughing) Anyways I don’t want to waste a lot time trying to get this thing working. It’s fun that it’s there. Welcome to your new iPhone. Doesn’t match any of these pictures on it.

Andy: If you took good care of there’s no scratches, Gazelle will give you a pretty penny for it.

Leo: Oh, I wonder, if we do Gazelle on them may I ask how much the original iPhone is worth. You know this is something that’s probably going up in value.

Alex: Yes, it’s a collector’s item now.

Leo: You wait long enough they go up in value. Still the same crappy key board though. I’m so excited about the new keyboard, the new keyboards. I know I’m dumb, I’m very intrigued by what Apple’s going to do with iOS 8. How about how about, Yosemite, how about Yosemite anything to say about that? When will that public beta go open to everybody? Do we have any idea?

Rene: I don’t know, but six months from now.

Leo: How about the speculation that one of the reasons that Apple bought Beats was that they could use the lighting cable? I’m not sure why they’d want to use the lighting cable for headphones, to eliminate the headphones jack?

Alex: Yes, I mean…..(cross talk)

Rene: I mean they could do that internally, they wouldn’t need Beats to do that. They can do that on their own.

Leo: They don’t need to do that. (presenters talk over each other- Andy gets in)

Andy: Also, I had to write something about that, because I, I found this rumor first came up a few weeks ago. And, it was dismissed as completely silly and there’s no need to talk about it. I found I had to write about it last week, and now the mainstream out listers are saying that Apple’s going to remove the headphone jack, which is stupid. They’re, they’re a lot of ways they can make a lighting enabled headphone if you did want to have headphones that had biometric sensors in it, if you really wanted to have headphones that had some sort of advanced control inside that can do, that can let you keep your iPhone or whatever it is inside whatever, you’re carrying around, and just to navigate new play lists and stuff like that. So it’s not like it does not make sense, it doesn’t make sense for them to delete a headphone jack completely.

Alex: Well, I……(Leo interrupts)

Leo: Could it be to get digital out? Because, you can do digital out….?

Andy: I’m not quite sure but (laughing) you got Beats headphone you’re not going to be concerned about it.

Rene: What about the HTC phone, the HTC phone didn’t have phone jack in it. You put that dongle splitter in and then……

Leo: Such a bad idea.

Alex: But, Apple one thing it gives them is a lot of market to work with. So, rather than persuading everyone what Apple can do is go what we’re going to do a Beats iTunes, you can get the lighting cable for the Beats One that’ll not require to use that, and you can have two cables that go into the headset but it had extra features and whatever and slowly and actually move it with a lot of people using it an one time in one direction or the other. That does I think, I know that Apple would love to get rid of another jack. (Alex laughing)

Rene: Most important thing to remember is that Apple proto types everything so, if you can think of it, they’ve probably done, it doesn’t mean they’re going to do it, but it means that they wanted to try it themselves to see if it was a good idea or not.

Leo: You wrote a good article Rene on the Swift language four years in the making according to Chris Latiner. He started on in July 2010.

Rene: He’s a smart guy.

Leo: Wow! Interesting that Apple worked on the Swift language for years. Some people say what do need another language for, but so far this actually seems to be pretty positive.

Rene: The way Apple works is that they try a lot of stuff. So they had Latiner working on this, they had some people looking at Mac Ruby, and people looking at various computing languages. They sort of, over time they figure out which direction they want to go. And then it went to the Dev Tools team and, they worked on it. Yes, Apple kept this a secret, because almost nobody inside Apple knew about this, very, very, few people inside of Apple knew about it. And, then you know sort of the day of the Keynote,’ Hey, you guys should go and checkout these resources because this is what you’re going to be using in the future.

Leo: You know to me the biggest testament seems to be folks at full stacks io who are going to ……..they’re planning a course in Swift and within hours they had Flappy Bird implemented in Swift and you can download it on Kit Hub, not that Flappy Bird is the hardest thing in the world to create. And Open Source code exists.

Andy: But the fact is that this is the language a person had never even heard of.

Leo: Right.

Andy: Until a week ago and now have a working thing based on it.

Leo: Right.

Andy: I’ve talked about it to a lot of developers about it and, believe me I’ve heard from a survivor from a developers about iCloud and I know when developers are cranky, and (laughing) there are some nitpicks mostly about memory management I’ve heard about. But, mostly everyone I’ve talked to even if they’ve said they’re going to switch over all of their development to Swift, they’re very impressed, they think it’s a great thing. When I say that…..the usual leading question is that if I were, if I had never developed Mac or iOS soft-ware before and I’ve the choice of either learning objective C or learning Swift, I’d probably be learning Swift. Yes, absolutely for me that would definitely be the way to go.

Leo: Although, somebody pointed out on Sunday on Twit, you’re going to learn a language and it’s going to have features that are changed right?

Rene: It’s not even a 1.0 yet right?

Andy: It’s beta right?

Leo: So, you might not to want abandon Objective C yet?

Alex: Yes, I agree.

Andy: I don’t think it’s the sort of thing that’s going to lead people to abandon Objective C, if they’ve already developed those skills.

Leo: Right.

Andy: But, I think that if you’re coming in as new developer, not, not a new developer in general but, if you’ve never developed for Mac or iOS before…..given the choice between, especially given the range of languages you have available to you if you have been developing other systems. Now, you have the difference of using Objective C or Swift, I do think that most people are going to naturally say I would rather do Swift because it’s much easier and much simpler. The, the given that the signature features of it, or one of them anyway is that bone head mistakes that cost you time and debugging are now completely impossible. That alone for a developer who like me writes you one app a year is a big win.

Leo: Yes, yes.

Rene: There was a great blog post from Brad Simmons on InnerEssentials(dot)com, for Mac right now and, he wants to write a ton of Swift code. He doesn’t want to….he wrote News Wire…….he knows Objective C probably inside out frontwards and, backwards. But his so excited to write it in Swift and, I think you’ll get a lot of that because you will have everyone wants to go before Yosemite launches anyway. So, you’ll have time to look at it. For a lot of developers it might be nice to see something new.

Leo: I think it was Brad was the one who wrote about all the bugs that wouldn’t have happened had he been developing all along in Swift, so…

Andy: Let’s not overlook the fact that that it is a fact…..if you write it in Swift, it will be a faster app. Because the speed, the speed, the speed, comparison was no baloney. They’re people who are testing this, are telling me they’re just seeing all these huge speed improvements that they’re getting absolutely for free. They don’t have to optimize anything, all they have to do is rewrite it in this language and they get that free speed limit which……so that, that’s not a trivial thing that that’s something that might even convince people to, if they want to start converting part of their code into Swift to actually do that, if they want, if they’ve been stuck with speed bottle necks in certain places.

Rene: And, it goes back exactly to what Leo said, years ago they did LLVM with Latiner because his project was LLVM, which got him hired which was a low level ritual machine and he declined. He did all these things that let them get to the point where they had their own language written for their own pilot structure, everything that they could control and optimize, so you get those speed benefits, so that’s a multi-year plan coming to fruition.

Leo: Landers on Twitter and, he says Twitter,’ Swift is a pragmatic not a religious language. It tries to get the defaults right, but it allows you change some of the things if they don’t suit.’

Alex: I think that every developer that I’ve talked to so far has been pretty excited about it. A lot of them didn’t say they were going to leave. A lot of them said that you should still learn Objective C and they’re not going to leave it soon but, completely but they love a lot of the new features. I haven’t talked to anyone that didn’t like what they saw.

Leo: You know what’s really cool and I’m very intrigued by it supports Shebang scripts. So for those of you who have been Bash-shell scripts, you can write your shell scripts in Swift and execute them with XC run. Swift-I, this is something from Latiner’s Twitter that is interesting. What it means is that you have a new scripting language for a iOS, iOS ten as well.

Alex: Right.

Leo: Which, really intrigues me.

Rene: It’s great that Latiner’s tweeting.

Leo: Ahhhh, this is great stuff he is talking about.

Andy: Yes.

Leo: I think the playground is really huge. And, I do hope that people, this could mean that this could well become the teaching language. I think….(Rene trying to talk) Go ahead…..

Rene: It’s Latiner(underscore) LLVM on twitter.

Leo: Yes, yes.

Rene: I want to check him out.

Leo: Let us take some questions from the question engine. The fabulous Pixel Corps engine, there’s one Luke Luxston from Toronto has gotten way voted up, you better take that one first, ‘Any tips about the best way to start learning Apple’s Swift from scratch without any programming experience?’ You seem like you’ve done a lot on this Rene, is Swift a good language to learn as a first language, do you think?

Rene: That was one of the things that was most popular topics at WWDC, when people got a chance to look at that. And, I think that we might have mentioned it that we grew up being able to type basic into an Apple Two or being able to play with Logo.

Leo: Right.

Rene: There was no way that we were going to get Objective C into it you know into elementary school, but things like APP camps for girls or biometric schools the Swift playground, even Repal maybe, you can absolutely introduce some-one to that you may want to start with something easier. But, this at least makes it access able to way more people and way more levels.

Leo: I don’t think that it’s going be long before somebody writes, ‘How to think like a computer scientist in Swift,’. The thing is about Python and Ruby Two, there’re so many free excellent documentation, you can really, and the languages are free, and the biggest difference is that they are cross-platform.

Rene: Yes, yes.

Leo: And, I think that makes a huge difference and, it might be a reason, but I’m not sure I recommend Swift. Did Latiner say anything about the idea about making this open, making this cross-platform?

Rene: Yes, some-one asked him and he said his goal is to get it to 1(point)O. He can’t think about Open Source till he gets into 1(point)O. It’s the sort of best Apple answer that you could give it. (Cross Talk)

Alex: I think the other thing is that I don’t think that Apple has any interest in it. Because what it gives them is a coding language, which, that is now very tight and they can build it with the whole language which is thinking about the hard-ware and the software that they provide. Ummmm just like X Code was you know very one sided, this is just another step in that direction.

Leo: Yes.

Rene: Although, Latiner is a huge Open Source guy and LLVM and inclined to all Open Source projects.

Leo: Good.

Alex: Maybe somewhere down the road, but I don’t think it’s going to happen in iOS.

Leo: Right now, I’d still use Python or Ruby perhaps to learn. I’m a big, big fan of Scheme and Lisp but I’m the only man is still standing who believes in that.

Alex: We wrote in Assembler, we wrote it in Assembler.

Leo: I’m an old timer actually learning to program with assembler is not as bad as it might sound. You learn a lot about how the machine works. In fact many of my first programs were written in Assembler for the 68,000 for the early Macintosh.

Andy: I know that my old iPhone is one of my prized possessions that I had as a kid, the beige small binder with the instructions, which said, ‘For my Merlin Assembler.’ (Laughter).

Leo: Assembly’s not a bad thing, umm I think sometimes people think it is. And, boy, and the days, I don’t know what they’ve lately in X code in the Assembly. But, in the early days of the Mac MPW you had a great Macro Assembler language that was beautiful, elegant easy to program, great de-bugging. Umm I liked it but no body. I guess there’s no point in worrying about it.

Andy: Yes, exactly. Remember back then you had a combo 62 or an Apple Two that was probably the last time that it was possible for an average person to have absolute mastery and control over an entire computer.

Leo: Right, right, right.

Andy: Even when they went into MS Dos, it was….. there was points at which you can’t learn all about how this controller card works or how this interface works you’re just going to have to learn how to deal with it or else. The first time in school when I was forced to take a basic programming course and because I knew Assembly language I which I was able to say I don’t like this character set up I want upper and lower case, so I wrote in Assembler in upper and lower case just to freak out my teacher. That was funny.

Alex: Why didn’t I think of that?

Andy: I’m not going to tell you how I did it.

Alex: The real, as an old curmudgeon, I think that the, the best thing for me when I learned Assembly line was just really taught me structure of you know how important it is. You couldn’t you know like basic you could do a lot of, you could run pretty loose you know still get something to come out the other end. And I found you know using Assembly you know and even using Pascal using assembly you learned much more about programming than I think is useful. You know a lot of times it’s, whippers, snappers now they don’t have to pay attention to all these things, you know, we all now know sufficient code.

Andy: I was jealous as hell. If I had APIs available to me and all I had to do is learn how to make this, make this little, little mouse inside that’s hiding inside my computer and put on the top hat and dance the way I wanted it to dance I don’t have to build a mouse…

Leo: Oh yes, oh yes….

Andy: Or ever teach it to dance. I would be writing my own graphics.

Alex: I had to do my own graphics because nothing existed and the Apple came…. The Mac came out and I was like their drawing program is much better than my drawing program that was the end of my programming. Looking like I’m never going to catch up now. (Laughing)

Leo: I don’t know, I’m just going to mention this Tweet that I just saw from Paul Finch, the Stanley Kubrick letter to Metro pole De Mayer in August 27^th 1979, did. Did you see this Andy?

Andy: I have seen this.

Leo: (Reading the letter) Dear James,

It has come to my attention that you and your studios are considering to produce a sequel to ‘2001 Space Odyssey’ over my objections. My attorney informs me that you hold the option and, legally there is little I can do to stop you.

However, I’d like you to know that I own the tapir bone prop from 2001-the one ‘Moon watcher’ throws into the sky. If you attempt to make a sequel I will cram that femur up your behind, as far as it will take an undiscovered alien super-intelligence to figure out how to dislodge it. Seriously don’t mess with me.

Leo: And I took out some of the bad words by Stanley. (Laughter)By the way they never did make a sequel, or they did they made a horrible in 2010.

Andy: I don’t know Roy Schneider and Helen Mirren that’s at least 40 percent, and Bob Malaman, I think those three people are 50 percent of any good movie.

Leo: Okay.

Andy: Even in the far, far distant future with people using the Apple two CCs for their computers.

Leo: I think they might have made that movie after Mr. Clarke passed…, is he still with us, no wait a minute, I don’t want to say he’s dead yet.

Andy: I think he’s passed on I think 2010, I that was while both obviously Clarke Kent(incomplete sentence) . He, was based on the sequel that he wrote or partly.

Leo: Yes, that’s right Clarke had something to do with it not Cooper Calves.

Andy: Yes.

Leo: Yes, I wonder who has that tapier bone now?

Andy: His too busy making Eyes not wide shut.

Leo: Oh God! So to finally answer that question there are some people who will target Swift, if you want to learn Swift I don’t think these will be courses for first time programmers though.

Alex: I think the first course is going to be, there’s a big market right now is going to be teaching folks that are going to be an executive c into Swift, I mean and the next round will be all the newbies.

Andy: And, also now that Java Script is now actual system scripting language that might be, if you want to do your first programming to do productive interesting things with it the Java Script might be a way to go. If, you don’t want to go to Apple’s script.

Leo: Unfortunately, that letter like the very famous Sean Connery letter is a fake. (Laughter)

Alex: Darn it.

Leo: So sad. (Laughter)

Rene: We can’t have this thing.

Leo: Oh, well it is too good to be true. I mean that’s really the fact of it, anyway.

Andy: What a life accomplishment what praise for a person that led a life like, a letter like that could surface, yes I could definitely see Stanley Kubrick sending a letter like that.

Leo: Yes, here’s a question from New Orleans Jeff Richardson voted it up by our questions on air team that is you. You can go to twit(dot) to(slash)mbw406. Alex interrupts:

Alex: There’s, 50 0r 60 questions to vote.

Leo: Vote, on them don’t just ask questions. This one Jeff ask, ‘What are your….this is a good one to close out this section this show….what are your favorite iOS 8 features that have received the least attention so far, Andy?

Andy: I would have to say the camera features because as good as the camera is there’s always those, limitations that are limited to being just a phone camera. And, not only is it the amount of control you’ll be able to have on for picture taking but also the kind of camera apps that’ll will now be possible. I mean computational photography is a phrase if you don’t know by now will know next year. The ability to take this tiny little lens, tiny little image sensor and, by doing lots and lots of math and, taking lots of different pictures and building a synthetic image that is as good in quality as a 35mm film camera, those things are possible with an A7 processor and the ability to have full control over the imaging features. So, I think photography this time next year is going to be a totally different beast on the iPhone than before.

Leo: Rene, what do you think?

Rene: I quite a lot of the privacy features my feeling Andy that they’re not getting a lot of attention yet. They are doing a randomization of Mac addresses.. and standing for the internet and they can’t track you.

Andy: When you walk through a mall, just the fact that your phone is searching for Wi-Fi play station. And, if you don’t connect the fact that you’re ID is being broadcast and can be collected and used, like that’s why I always try and remember to turn off my phone, and I ‘m sorry (Holding up his hands in front of his face) Yes I ‘m excited too.

Leo: (Laughing)

Rene: Boy, Andy was showing off a bag that he bought his phone a few weeks ago to make sure they couldn’t track him. And that also when you go into private browsing mode now it just ships you over to a whole new window and I think they show them for the Mac, I don’ think they show for iOS or not yet. But it switches to dot dot go mode that fact…

Leo: Right.

Rene: Do we either.

Leo: Right.

Rene: Throughout the entire thing they’ve architected it for security and privacy. And that is absolutely a differentiator that’ll matter to some people, and I’m glad that they are, because they don’t make their money on that of course they can afford to be as generous as they possibly can with that. I for one appreciate it.

Leo: So iOS in Luke actually asked about this too is using fake or random network identifiers work, random…. is it Mac addresses?

Rene: Yes Mac addresses, randomizer Mac addresses.

Leo: For, the phone?

Rene: Yes.

Andy: What if if …..not only….

Leo: Wow!

Andy: But, only like that in that mode not connecting to locate a play station when you connect and, then it goes to the real McCoy.

Leo: Sometimes you would walk….

Andy: You’re not getting away….. you’re not broadcasting your identity for free when you walk through a mall anymore.

Leo: Are you sure you want the Mac address to be stable when you’re doing a Mac Air filter.

Alex: I mean Apple… this is a trend really across the hard ware, operating systems just about everything is…..Apple’s constantly going to give you the choice of I want to be anonymous, I want to be secure or, or I want to be known.

Leo: Right:

Alex: But as the user Apple doesn’t have any vested interest other than providing for any of these services.

Leo: That’s super smart.

Rene: It’s the same thing like the keyboard feature. The built in keyboard is local only, all the keyboard is local stuff. If you want a fancy Internet keyboard you’ve expressly tell it. Siri doesn’t listen to you, you have to plug it in and expressly allow Siri to do the,’Hey Siri,’ stuff so it’s not automatically listening to you all the time. (Cross Talk)

Leo: You, have to plug it in, I keep stumbling on that.

Rene: They don’t have co-writer processor, so leaving the speaker on looks like…..

Leo: So, it’s battery?

Rene: it’s still a feature you can learn to disable it. It’s something that they’re very conscientious of not wanting to do too much of your stuff on the cloud.

Andy: But that works on the Nexus Five or Two. If you’re in the launcher then you can simply say, ‘Okay, Google’ and it will go.’

Leo: Yes, I love that feature. Moto X has got smarter and smarter, now you can tell the Moto X it was just updated yesterday, that you’re home, what your home address is. When you’re home you can turn it on and it will read you names of people calling, it’ll read you text, it’ll allow you, and so much like this,’Hey Siri,’ mode the intent is that you have phone docked charging next to your computer and now it’s that little assistant that is talking to you. I think that’s why you say,’Hey Siri’ only when plugged in and kind of makes sense.

Andy: If I can un bowel some more excitement, there’s another thing that I just thought, remembered that now there seems to be a new feature of location awareness, of putting the right app on the lock screen, so that they…(Leo interrupts)

Leo: Love that, DEV was not talked about and people have seen that in the iOS beta.

Andy: Right, if you’re like at a Starbucks and you take out your phone the Starbucks app if you haven’t installed it will be on the lock screen and no other apps apart from the camera app. And, so long as that’s being done beyond like iBeacons and promotional things, so long as it’s smart enough to know that actually you’re at home right now so I’ll make sure your sonus controller is handy. That, that that’s one of the add on apps that I absolutely love on my android device that will put,…….it does give you a splat of five hundred apps, oh and I’m guessing you’re right here in the situation, I’m guessing that only these apps are going to be relevant to you.

Leo: There have been a number of watches on the android segment by how they’ve attempted to change how they look, depending on where you are, I’ve never been happy with those.

Rene: That’s how Hand off works its proximity based except that you’re working on an email put the icon for your email either in the dock if it’s on the Mac or in, in opposite the camera icon if you’re on your iPhone or your iPad.

Leo: You know obviously, all of this has to be implemented and I want to see how it’s implemented. Right, that’s very exciting. Go ahead to (Andy)

Andy : Thinking new I would suggest a new game, every time we say the word exciting should take a shower every half hour……, in any rational discussion about iOS 8 and Yosemite. And, if you’re not really excited about what’s going to be happening over the next year in Apple you are brain dead or you’re on the insistent on the belief that, that Apple is doomed.

Leo: Randy Lominick in Mississippi asks this question and we’ll wrap on this segment’ Do you think that the number of new products and openness at Apple are due to the fact that everything doesn’t go through one person anymore? Tim Cook seems to be delegating more get the right team in place and letting them run it? That does seem to be the case, right?

Alex: It definitely looks like it, I don’t know that what we’re seeing so far is a result of that, but I definitely think that what we’re seeing is a lot more of him spreading that out which is definitely the next big thing you do after you have is very strong leader is to delegate effectively. He’s the perfect person to do that.

Andy: Two, two observations……I can’t know for sure because I don’t work inside of Apple,……... Lots of conversations with lots of different people but one I don’t think that it’s ever been really been understood exactly how much, hhhow many people contributed to almost every decision that was happening inside of Apple, where the idea of Steve everything going through Steve and having to really sign off apps to signing off but not necessarily having to steer the ship in every direction. I think there was a lot less of that than we think there was. But, but, but also to that point I do know, I’ve heard from multiple people that there is a lot more freedom to get out of your own lane inside of Apple, if you think you, if you want, if you want there’s a lot more voices in certain decisions, there’re a lot more contributions that are getting across different across different disciplines. And whereas before you might have five, six or seven years ago you might have worried okay, fine if I say this about this I’m stepping on some-one else’s toes it’s going to blow back to me. Am I going to be told that I need to be focused on things that I am supposed to be focusing on. There seems to be a lot more opportunities for a lot more voices to contribute to things so on that basis I would say yes.

Leo: Our show today, thank-you Andy, our show brought to today by audible.com my favorite place to go for audio books. I’m doing something I don’t like to do right now like I’m listening to two audio books simultaneously.

Alex: Schizophrenic.

Leo: I don’t like to do that. I like to stick with one and then get all the way through it and then go to the next one. But, I’ve got a good reason for it. I’m listening to the Beatles biography that you recommended Andy, ‘Tune In’ is the first of a trilogy of Beatles books the, the total trilogy is called ‘All These Years’ and the first one ‘Tune In’ is what forty three hours in length. So, I think you can forgive me for occasionally dabbling in another book. I have to say this you, you have nailed it. This book by Mark Lewisohn is going to be the definitive biography of The Beatles and it’s amazing. I highly like it. But then I saw on Brain Brushwood recommended, ‘The Martian’ and so Lisa and I, this is different, because you know Lisa loves audio books loves audio books are listening to this together and she says it’s kind of like watching you know ‘Game of Thrones’ or, ’House of Cards’ don’t you cheat on me and watch it without me. (Laughter) So I can listen to it when Lisa and I are in the same room.

Alex: That’s funny.

Leo: But this is great, it’s really Robinson Crusoe on Mars, he is an astronaut who gets stranded on Mars through no fault of his own or his team. It’s it’s just an accident and needs to survive for four years on the red planet to have any hope of rescue. And, it’s really is a great book, I love it. So there’re two good books that I highly recommend on audible, but Andy has another recommendation.

Andy: Yes, it is called Billy Lynn’s, ‘Long Half Time Walk’. It was recommended to me by my friend Bill Mac, his recommendations are always worth checking out.

Leo: I read Bill Mac’s books not so long ago. (Cross Talk)

Andy: He’s a legendary sports writer, specially a legend for horse racing and he wrote something brand new about the Triple Crown PSI(dot)com, he is always reading. This one is, it’s about this this platoon, in the beginning this group of soldiers fighting in Iraq and they get caught in this ferocious firefight and there is also an embedded Fox news camera crew with them. So the footage like goes absolutely international and the Bush administration goes, ‘Oh my god there is opportunity everyone is filled with love for the soldiers, let’s bring them in and have them tour the country to like get more support for the war,’ and so this is all, like at the end of that two week tour around the country and they’re going to be walking out and presented with whatever at the half-time show at Dell’s cowboy game. This is like their last hoorah before they go back to Iraq. So it’s just one day on Thanksgiving in these people’s lives. I’ve only read the first four chapters of it, right now I’ve got it on Kindle but  already it’s funny, it’s interesting, it’s insightful and I’m kind of eager to get to chapter five of it.

Leo: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. By the way, what is awesome about this book and many of the books on audible.com is that it is whisper sync for voice ready. And that means if you get the Kindle edition of it, and you get a discounted version of the Kindle edition. They just did this on iOS’s and it is so exciting. You use the Kindle reader on iOS and you can take up where you left off, you can be listening to the book and go to the Kindle app and open the book and it will start at that page. So you can mix and match reading and listening.

Alex: It is a really cool feature.

Leo: What a great idea. This is whisper sync for voice ready. Another great feature of audible.com and they just updated the mobile apps for Kindle to support this. So this is really, really great. All right. So you might say alright I am sold I’d like to find out more about listening to audiobooks at work, at school, cleaning, while walking the dog, in the gym. The most boring thing is the treadmill but not anymore thanks to audible.com. And of course if you have a commute, you’ve got to have audible.com. Try it today. You can pick from more than 150,000 titles, fiction, nonfiction, science fiction, and what you are going to do is if you go to audible.com/Macbreak you will be signing up for the gold account. That is the book a month subscription. It is a lot cheaper to have a subscription. It also gives you the daily digest of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. It is really affordable. The first 30 days are free. Pick a book, get it, listen to it, listen to the daily digest, the Times or the Journal and then after 30 days if you don’t like it and you cancel, you pay nothing. And you keep the book by the way. But if you decide to stick around you are going to hear our recommendations on almost every show, because we love talking about it. You will find that is true. When you meet people that are Audible listeners, you have a lot to talk about. It is so much fun. audible.com/Macbreak for your free book. Try it today.

Leo: Assuming we get an Apple TV refresh, asks Curtis in Utah, in the US of A. Do we assume it will run full iOS 8? Everyone still wants the apps but he’s more interested in a hand off to his TV.

Rene: They didn’t discuss hand-off to medial at all yet. That is probably going to be the subject of a Fall talk. I would be happy with one that just runs metal, believe me.

Leo: Yeah. Put an MA in there and metal.

Andy: It seems like the obvious target for metal.

Rene: It’s not the point. Hand-off will be great if I come in from the car or the library and I will be watching something on NetFlix, the ability to hand off that video to Apple TV without having to open us a player, without having to tap on Air Play, without having to do this, that and the other. If is just simply smart enough to say, “Thanks to the fact that your Apple TV is also an iBeacon I see that you within 4 feet of Apple TV so I am simply going to let you throw this video right to the screen.”

Leo: That seems so sensible. In fact other devices already do that. Right?

Rene: You need a home kit to make the TV turn on first right? Again it is in conjunction with all these things.

Leo: I pray that they make this home automation work. I am ready. I’ve always wanted to do total home automation and I’ve dabbled in it but I am ready to have the whole house not only controlled from an iPhone but you’ve got to make this happen and it has to be a standard. I will spend $1000, you’ll have to buy a hub and devices that work with a hub right?

Alex: I think one of the things about the Watch because when you have it on it is going to tell you what room you are in. So lights turn on, the locks as you leave.

Leo: If you go to Bill Gates mansion every person has some sort of identifier that they are walking around with. So when you go in a room the high res screens in the wall would have paintings that you liked would come up. So it would reprogram all the screens in the room. That is the kind of thing we are talking about.

Alex: I think you can look at behavioral stuff. Like if I sit down at the couch I know that you want to watch the TV so I turn on the TV and take you to the favorite shows that you are watching. Or show you some kind of interface. There are a lot of those kind of things that were very sci-fi only a couple years ago and will probably be very normal not that many years in front of us.

Rene: Scarlett Johansson.

Leo: I can’t wait. That little giggle and the breath. She is so cute. If you watch her you could see how Joaquin Phoenix could fall in love with her. She’s so adorable. I can’t wait. It is going to happen when I’m in the home, which is good. I’ll be in the nursing home. With my OS girlfriend and I’ll be happy. The Oculus Rift Paris helmet on. It is going to be great.

Alex: You can walk anywhere.

Leo: I’m going to Paris with Scarlett Johansson. That’s my goal for the retirement home.

Alex: I’ll be sledding with Hobbs.

Leo: That would be good too! John Pactowsky. I don’t know how he knows. Here we are in June and he says, “Yes, Apple’s first wearable device is slated for October”. How does John know that? People familiar with Apple’s plans.

Rene: That is the scuttlebutt.

Leo: Tells Code Red, the company that helps schedule a special event in October to show of the device. You don’t have to ask somebody. September iPhone, October iPad. That is how they do it anyway.

Alex: They are definitely not doing it over the summer. There is no reason for that. I think we might see some hardware computer wise happen over the summer but obviously the big push is going to be for Christmas. I think we will see the big upgrades maybe late August but that late August to mid-October is the window where I think we will see a lot of announcements, consumer wise.

Leo: Nikkei says not only is it going to be in October but that Apple plans to produce 3 to 5 million units a month this Fall. So that is going to sell well.

Andy: Does that sound low though? If that is true, if they think they are going to only sell 3 to 5 million of these world-wide that suggests that it wouldn’t a $99 fitness band.

Leo: Latest iPhone 5S ad features the wahoo fitness blue SC speed cadence sensor, the wiThings health mate, the Zepp golf sensor, the misfit shine, the Adidas miCoach smart ball. That is how many wearable devices are seen in this one ad. Of course at the very end you see the girl running by with the iPhone on her bicep. I don’t think that is…

Rene: This is pre-health kit too.

Leo: This is an older ad, right?

Alex: I’ve been thinking a lot about the future integration with exercise, where I walk up to whatever I am doing that is keeping track of what I’m doing and it is a lot easier to track with a wrist watch.

Leo: Can I just point out that Microsoft said at E3 that they are going to build Connect into the next Windows phone? You know, right now when you work out in front of your Xbox Connect senses muscle activity? Because it’s got infrared sensing. Heart rate. It actually tunes your exercise to its image of you and says, “You need to work harder on that area so let’s so more of those”. Imagine if that were in the phone.

Rene: Like an airport scanner.

Andy: But the key difference is that the iPhone is the iPhone and Windows Phone is Windows Phone. When it is on the most popular phone in the world that means that everybody is going to support it.

Alex: Again, I see myself being able to walk up to a machine, see videos on how to use that machine. Look at the meCoach software there are hundreds of animations of exactly how to produce from experts. True experts. All these different exercises. And the next step up from there is to measure how many you actual did and exactly what weight you used. Being that could get to the point that you could just do the work out and all that information goes in. If everything is smart, if your dumbbells have blue tooth and all the machines have those and everything knows that. Then I simply do my work out and I look down and it says, “You are going to do curls. Pick up 35 pounds”.

Leo: You are a big P90X guy, so you like being beaten up.

Alex: Right now all I’m doing is just lifting. I’m just going to the gym. I have more time to think about it because I am resting for 90 seconds.

Leo: I’ve had little apps that record your reps with little timers.

Alex: I should just be able to walk in the gym and then do it.

Leo: And then it will tell you you’ve just done 180 pound bench press. Now try a hundred and 90.

Alex: Or have it say oh you didn’t hit that. Because that is all the decision process.

Leo: By the way, that ad that I just showed. Is that the last ad? Apple is shifting its ads in-house. They are hiring as many as 1000 in-house ad people to produce their own TV ads. The Apple team made the iPad air ad. The internal team includes at least two people that Apple stole from, oh I’m sorry, hired away from Media Arts Lab unit that was designed just to serve iPhone. So it they are bringing these people in house. You know, for did this. Ford brought in the ad agencies that were writing stuff out of house and brought them into Ford.

Alex: A lot of the print stuff. The stuff that you see in the store. That has been in-house for a long time. It is top-secret, it has to really, really deal with all the new stuff.

Leo: One of the guys that they brought in I think we interviewed. He was at Wieden and Kennedy. I think he was part of the Old Spice campaign. He went from there to media arts Lab. His name is Tyler Whisnand. he is going to lead the creative team. These are good people. Music director David Taylor, another Wieden and Kennedy guy, Bill Davenport. So, really 1000 people. Apple has always been the best at marketing.

Alex: It has always been that they’ve been very controlling about it. Now they get to have ultimate control. The reality is that it may not cost them any more than what it was doing before.

Rene: It looks like they did find their wallet for the marketing team. That was a really small team.

Leo: 1000 people is big growth. That iPhone ad was produced by media arts Lab. The chicken fat. We didn’t play this song.

Andy: It was in the background. It was kind of weird.

Leo: I think the audience wanted to hear chicken fat.

Andy: You can play it if you want.

Leo: That is okay. It is a strange song to play on a fitness commercial, I must admit. Let’s just see how the Apple stock is doing. The 7 for 1 split happened so if you say wow, Apple is only $100. That is because you get seven shares for every one share. They are at $94.19 so they are doing okay. In fact let’s look at the one month trend. They seem to be doing all right.

Alex: I think that the number one reason is to not make it more available for the consumer, which I don’t believe.

Leo: That is what they always say. Everybody could buy a share now.

Alex: The big thing is that Apple cannot become part of the Dow industrials stock over 200. Most of them are over 100. I think Apple would like to be a part of that.

Leo: Google did the same thing. But a 7 for 1 split. Apple went from $646 on Friday to $93 on Monday.

Rene: Now I have 7×0 shares. Amazing.

Leo: Me too. Oh well. Last time I had Apple shares was before I covered Apple on a regular basis. They probably were $30 or $40 shares. I would be rich today. Have we heard anything about Angela Ahrendts? We didn’t see Jimmy Ivy. Or Angela Ahrendts. have we heard anything from her? Or is she just knows to the grindstone to getting everything going.

Alex: I think she would be refreshing to see in an all-male presentation. She is a really good presenter and a great speaker so there is not any reason why she shouldn’t. But I imagine she is probably going to want to be doing what she’s doing and proving it before she gets up and talks about it.

Andy: I do want to talk about the Apple Store under her. When she has been doing it for a while, she will come up and talk about it and what she’s been doing with the store.

Leo: I would like to see more of Jimmy Ivy.

Rene: He is unveiling all the tarps, Leo.

Leo: The patent troll. Oh my God. The patent troll named Vernet X, they bought patents. Their only business is in forcing those patents. They sued Apple in East Texas, the jury in East Texas ordered Apple to pay $360 million for infringing Viernet X patents on FaceTime and VPN on demand…

Rene: although I think the original patent had nothing to do with those.

Leo: That is usually…. they write the patents as broadly as they can and then they look for companies that have infringed the super broad patent and then sue. Then, in March the judge in the matter, Leonard Davis, ordered an ongoing royalty of almost 1% of revenue from iPhones and iPads from Apple to Viernet X. 1%! Apple is appealing this and fighting this. But the decision published last week says that Apple was pursuing a poor strategy. It sounds like the judge wasn’t too happy. It looks like Viernet X could start collecting this royalty pretty soon.

Alex: I really think we always complain about it every time we talk about these patents but I feel like some of the has to prove that they actually did something with the patent. I think just thinking up the idea should not be enough.

Leo: Or worse, thinking up the idea and then selling it many years later to another company that doesn’t do anything but sue people.

Rene: Who determines face time and VPN are worth 1%?

Leo: That is a lot.

Rene: It is disgraceful.

Leo: By the way, Viernet X has reached license deals with NEC and Avia. They want to hundred million dollars from Microsoft and even after doing that they sued them again. It really is a shame. And by the way, other companies are challenging Viernet X saying, we have the patent.

We have said this before but just a reminder that two of the best, This American Lives, were the whole thing about Trolls.

 Leo: Do listen to that.

Alex: It is just a great, great pair. They were done a year or two apart so you get the first piece and then you get what happened later.

Leo: Let’s move on. You know, we have talked before about the for sale doctrine. The idea that when you buy stuff from Amazon and put it on your Kindle player, digital goods. Or from iTunes. You cannot hand those down as you could a physical book or a DVD. And so members of Congress had been investigating whether copyright laws should be changed so that you could resell, lend out or will your digital goods to other people. But so far, this has not gone well.

Andy: Secondhand iTunes signals.

Alex: I think in a lot of ways in some of the things prices are really dropping off. So, though we can’t hand it off it is also less expensive.

Leo: Who is going to want my little DVDs? Nobody. I can tell you right now. But on the other hand, books have a real intrinsic value. My Oxford dictionary, my 1999 world book Encyclopedia. My collected edition.

Alex: My question is do we really think the price is going to continue to remain what it is For digital goods down the road? I think that what we have seen in the app world is probably going to happen more as that market gets a lot wider. A lot of these things don’t make sense when there is a handful of people, but now when you get to a point where there are 1 billion people buying digital books, the idea of making them the least expensive at $2.99 or $3.99 it starts to make more sense. In the small market, I think the majority of what Amazon is selling now is not to a billion people.

Rene: And Netflix model kind of fixes this to because you will just have a subscription account that you get everything anyway. And if you pass away, your family has lost a subscription again.

Alex: There is also the balance between creators who are suffering from subscription models like that. Where if you can’t necessarily give your digital copies of books and movies and whatever to other people, it forces you to buy another copy of it that is not necessarily a horrible thing for a book author.

Leo: That is why family sharing may not be so popular with authors, right?

Andy: It is not really even popular with the developers because now, already developers are being forced into a market where you can’t charge $10 for an app no matter how much it costs to make it. Now they are saying not only do you have to charge $2.99 for this but I only get to sell one copy to a family if they are using family sharing. That could potentially be two or three other sales that are going out the window, especially with the game.

Alex: I think that is an argument that the other side is that you have what used to be a vibrant's piracy market, it is still vibrant to some degree, but…

Leo: I have been doing it all along with a single Apple ID. This just makes it a little easier to manage.

Andy: And it does also push more developers into the app purchase model. Because if already they know that every person in this family is going to be getting a free copy of my game or might add up, you may as well try to sell them with an Apple ID tailored content.

Alex: What I am really interested in is this inter-app stuff that we are talking about and how it could change so that all kinds of in app purchases that theoretically could happen between different applications, because one of the things that I have always felt with highly technical applications even stuff like Excel or Word is if you have this huge install base I don’t think you should just be making money selling that one thing. You should build an entire infrastructure that lets people sell the content, but also training.

Leo: If you are Flappy Bird you are not going to do that.

Alex: $1.99 or free makes sense for Flappy Bird, it doesn’t make sense for Photoshop. The thing is that if you build an infrastructure where I can learn how to use the clone tool, I am going to pay six dollars to see a great tutorial for that, a running application I think there is a lot of opportunity there. That is where the developers need to go.

Leo: Will developers raise prices on apps to get a response to this?

Andy: There are already people who are making serious money, like quit my full time job money, making mine craft videos on YouTube. It will be difficult to be a developer to not only produce the actual app and support the app but also produce the content as an in-app purchase that is going to compete with a free YouTube video.

Alex: The thing is, I am thinking about a professional market where I need to know how to do something. The first twit that I did, I told Leo that I could do a multi-cam edit in Final Cut and I got back to the office and I had no idea. I got it done that night, but I didn’t sleep. At 4 o’clock in the morning it was done. But it was one of those things when I would’ve paid $100 at that moment when I got back to watch some 10 minutes saying that showed me how to do it and actually ran the application. There are a lot of people that want to figure out how to do things in Excel.

Andy: It is a philosophical discussion. I would feel a little bit weird that, as a developer, or if Apple’s motivation is let's make sure this is as easy as possible so that people can figure it out, the documentation we give out is really good and we will also charge you $100 to teach you how to do this. It just seems more pure when you have to go to Lynda for that, versus training that is free.

Alex: But there is no way you are going to know how to do everything in Final Cut, there is no way they are going to know how to do everything in Photoshop. Those are deep applications. And I am not talking about $100. There are many times when I need to know how to use one feature and I would be happy to pay $10 for that.

Andy: Even Caesar’s wife must be beyond reproach. And I think you cross that line if I am responsible for not only giving you a good experience for this app but I am also going to sell you content that will teach you how to do something that you couldn’t figure out on your own.

Leo: Was that a Superman quote? Caesar’s wife!

Alex: I think the thing is, that I think part of what makes the app better is training.

Andy: I get you.

Alex: The thing is, for instance…

Leo: We say this all the time, when people get media by the internet you remedy it by providing service, by providing value added in other ways. It is just a way of rethinking your business model.

Alex: I will argue also for complex apps and even relatively simple apps, even our hardware at home… again it increases the value of that item because I know more about how to use it. I bought my wife this crazy expensive microwave from Panasonic that has all these features…. it was the nicest microwave I could find for my wife, and all she does is all I do is turn this little dial that sets the time and then his start. That is it. But if I knew how to do the staff. But you open the manual and it is the most opaque thing written by someone in Japan and then translated badly into English. And a piece of paper that you lose immediately.

Rene: You need Scarlett Johansson.

Alex: If Scarlett Johansson did videos on how to use that…

Leo: Why is it so fancy?

Alex: It’s not that one. That is not a Panasonic. it is like that. I think that’s the exact one. It might be a little bit bigger than that one. But it is like that. All we know how to use as the dial. At the dial does work really well.

Leo: Well that is all you need to use.

Alex: If it was Apple, that is all it would be and it would be really nice dial.

Leo: They shouldn’t have added all those other buttons. They just added all that grief.

Andy: You need two buttons. Minute, plus and start.

Alex: Apple should make a microwave. That’s all I’m saying. It would just be a dial with a little button, you push the dial in to set things.

Rene: A spoon with the diamond chip. You can control it with your iPhone.

Andy: And because it had to be flat and made out of aluminum all it does is make toast.

Alex: Noooo, it would make pizza! Well what Apple will have realized is that everybody only does one thing. Set the time and medium or whatever. So they build one of those, but you type into your iPhone so you know everything about the meat or whatever on an app. in fact, they would make that an open API so that people could just build on that.

Leo: And the controls are very simple.

Alex: They have those.

Leo: Going back to the question engine. Any thoughts on Photos, the Mac app to be released next year. Why did they announce it now, so early. Will it replace iPhoto? And may be even aperture mask. We don’t know much about it do we?

Alex: I think that is the direction that they are going.

Rene: They had to announce it because of the cloud stuff. Where your photos are going to go on the Mac is an obvious question.

Andy: And also there is one feature that shows off so much of what iOS eight and proximity do. between the cloud sharing app, between the proximity apps, it is a good demo for everything.

Leo: All right, we are going to take a break and come back with your picks of the week. But first I am going to give you my pic. squarespace.com your place to create your new website. Even if you are already hosting the website, especially if you are already hosting the website and you are not happy with the results you are getting. You ought to take a look at Squarespace. Squarespace is website hosting plus the state of the art modern software that makes your website sing. One of the things we are learning now here at twit as we work on our new website, one of the things that really is hard to do is keep up with the web. What people expect, the standards, they change almost monthly. With squarespace you don’t have to worry about that. They are incredibly talented designers and developers. Make sure that your website is gorgeous, that it works perfectly, that it lives up to all the modern web standards. For instance mobile responsive. Design your site so that it will look great no matter what size screen. E-commerce is built into every single template. 25 design templates, that is where you start. They use the latest technology, beautifully written code, but then you get to point and click, drag and drop, even if you don’t know anything about CSS or JavaScript, create a gorgeous website. By the way, if you do know about CSS and JavaScript they have a developer platform that is stunning. I want you to visit squarespace.com, click the get started button, you don’t need a credit card, you can actually play with your squarespace site, import all your content and start using it for free for two weeks right now. Literally import your existing site. They have fabulous apps from the mobile app, I think they do this just to show we can develop on any platform. They have got the blog app which lets you post and moderate comments. Post articles, modify your site from your iPhone or your iPad. The metrics app which lets you check followers even on social media and things like that. There is a portfolio app there is even a note taking app. They really are so talented in what they do. The portfolio app is a simple white labeled app that will synchronize with the galleries on your squarespace site. So if you are a photographer you can create the squarespace site, create the portfolio, and then use the portfolio app to showcase your work, even without an Internet connection. This is a really sweet idea. These guys are great. Go to squarespace.com, pay them a visit, take a look at all they can do, try it out. The pricing is amazing. It starts at eight dollars a month and that includes a free domain name when you register for the annual plan, and e-commerce for one item or donations, cash only wedding registry and things like that, if you want full commerce it is $24 a month. You get so much from shipping calculators, inventory control things like that. squarespace.com. When you do decide to sign up, use our author code Mac break and we will get you 10% off. Best support two, right from the squarespace office. The support people are so good. Congratulation to my friends at squarespace they receive for Web awards this year. squarespace.com and use the offer code Mac break. Now it is time for our picks of the week. Let’s start with the expensive guy, Mr. Alex Lindsay.

Alex: I was going to do something cheap but now that you said expensive. Okay, I’ll go both directions. I think they are stuff that I’ve talked about in the past. So they are not brand-new. But they are things to remind people that haven’t heard. Number one is the thing that we helped develop. It is free now. A lot of people ask us in our live classes how we do it. So I realize a lot of people haven’t heard of it. It’s called Pixel Conduit. It is free. For $20 you can get a web interface. It is a great little app that does a lot of visual effect and video processing. We used it for the scopes, we use it for a lot of other things. We never did figure out the business model that made it totally work and so we just decided to make it available to everyone. You cannot believe kind of tools that are built into this thing. Stuff that I don’t even know how to use.

Leo: Just what I want. Stuff that you don’t even know how to use.

Alex: There are scopes. There is green screen and there is all kinds of things that I use. On a day-to-day basis. But there are all kinds of image blending and crazy math and all of that stuff is stuff that you can download. So just download it and play with it. We use it every day. When people were asking about it a lot during one of my classes I thought I would bring it back up again. So that is the free thing. The other thing is that there is a new version out and we love it even more. I know you guys use it here. The two things that you want to think about when you do life streaming is Wire Cast software. It is the best thing to get started with. It does a lot of things that are great. When you go to an industrial scale elementals are… and we have a lot of them now. I think we have 16 of them.

Leo: How much of those elementals, Alex?

Alex: I think the ones that we have are somewhere between $12,000 and $25,000. It depends on what you are getting. Here's the deal. We had an issue yesterday with the stream and to be able to jump in, manage something quickly and get out and have it go is just amazing. But both of them are great applications. Obviously wire cast is a little more affordable and more flexible. You can do editing with it. We figured out how to get four cameras into a laptop and added them all and add graphics and video and everything else. So as a Swiss Army knife it is great. A lot of people asking them questions like that I would bring it up and that is all.

Leo: Good one. We use Wire Cast for special effects. Things Tri-Caster can do I’m sure but it is just easier to use Wire Cast.

Alex: you can do it on any laptop. That is the big thing. There is a free version for you to stream to YouTube so you can download it for free and that does a lot of great basics. For YouTube live.

Leo: Can you do hang out with it?

Alex: A lot of people do use it for hangouts. People use it to add effects and then pass it into hangouts. And has his own little web tool that will let hang out and a couple other things, not Skype. Wire Cast, we use it a lot on the road. It is the thing that we use as our backup for our elementals. It is the thing we use when someone has a lower budget, more corporate or educational type of thing. It is a great application.

Leo: And we thank you. Andy Ihnatko, your pick of the week.

Andy: It is a really great utility called WiFi Explorer that you are probably familiar with. the most sold sucking diagnostic that you have to do is figure out why, if you are using WiFi, why does something drop off, why is an app suddenly disconnecting and reconnecting. And Wi-Fi Explorer is a really easy to dollar $2.99 utility that will just simply show you graphs and show you what your Wi-Fi network is doing at any given moment. It will also, for instance just last week I chat messages would keep randomly connecting and disconnecting and I thought is it a signal problem? It would have been difficult to figure that out ordinarily that all I had to do was leave this thing running and as soon as I get an audio signal that I chat has lost its connection I checked that graph and see that okay the Wi-Fi connection was stable, it must be something else. It can also do things like take a look at every single Wi-Fi swords that is visible to your computer. You can see what the signal ratio is, you can see if there are other things and other devices that are trying to halt the Wi-Fi bandwidth. It is a really quick way to just get your eyeballs on what is happening in the Wi-Fi spectrum around her house. You have no idea how many Wi-Fi devices you actually have insight house or next-door to you. Until you have run this app and see there are a lot of devices. My neighbor bought a new printer and it is using the same channel as my main station is. That could be a problem. It is a really egalitarian tool, because if you are a professional you might be using this tool once you get a client’s office to see exactly what is going on and to easily spot a problem. Something that may take others hours and hours to do. If you are not an expert it will just give you a quick thumbs-up or thumbs down. Are you losing signal? Do you have a good strong signal? Are there other devices in range that are trying to halt the same channels? It is a very, very quick way to solve simple problems.

Leo: Wi-Fi Explorer. It is a must-have. And it is in the app store. Mr. Rene Ritchie what is your pick of the week?

Rene: Mine is super quick. It is RSS reader on Red. It is a very simple, very elegant RSS reader and the iPad version just came out yesterday.

Leo: I bought it. I love the new Mac version. Love it 2.0.

Rene: So if you use it on the iPhone, you want to use it on the iPad. It is just Unread. If you are still into RSS, and you should be, it is a great way to do it.

Leo: Okay, you are talking Unread. I just got reader for the app store. Do you like Reeder on the desktop?

Rene: I do.

Leo: I guess I will make that my pick. I was going to show you a whole bunch of ways to watch the World Cup online but, since you did Unread on the iPad let’s keep RSS alive. But apparently Apple has decided to do that too. Which kind of shocked me.

Alex: Which makes you wonder what they have planned.

Leo: This is $10 but boy is it great. It is just like bringing back Google reader, you can sign into your other feeds, it is what I use now to go through all the news. And 2.0 just came out for $10, fortunately. It is well worth it. Really great. I was going to give you a little tip because on ESPN you can watch the World Cup. It is starting Wednesday, tomorrow. Right or is it next Wednesday? Starting tomorrow. US doesn’t play until next week.

Alex: This is the first time I've ever been in the country when the World Cup is on. I’m always like somewhere watching it where people care. It is just this cultural thing that as Americans we often miss out on. But it is a lot of fun.

Leo: Even though I am not a huge soccer fan, three years out of the four, come year four the World Cup just makes me so excited. I was so sad when the World Cup ended last time in South Africa. Spain won, US did all right, but whatever country you are in if you are in the US, ESPN is a sucky way to watch it. They have a Watch ESPN app but your cable company has to support it, DirecTV does not. It is that same thing where you have to login with your cable account, etc. So if you are Cord Cutter, you have to understand Spanish but soccer is better in spanish anyway! The Desportes App will, without logging in to your cable company or anything let you watch the World Cup in spanish. Nowyou can set the app itself to English which is great but the game will be in Spanish. However, as long as you can see what is going on, it doesn’t really matter right?

Alex: Yes.

Leo: I’ll tell you something…. “GOAL, GOAL, GOAL, GOAL” is the same in every language!

Alex: Wait ’til they are all clapping.

Leo: GOAL! Futball! Univision Deportes App. You must get it and we will all be watching. And it is free on the iPad. As far as I can tell, you don’t have to sign up with your cable company or anything, they are just going to have the games. Isn’t that great? In Spanish. I think most other countries are probably allowing this.

Rene: They are so excited. Their commentary is amazing.

Leo: Even though I don’t understand the Spanish very well, I kind of understand it. I prefer to watch it in Spanish because they get so excited. Scottish would be good. I should check and see if the Scottish national network…

Alex: I think I would have the same trouble actually understanding what was going on as I would with Spanish.

Andy: Did you see John Oliver’s takedown of FIFA on Sunday?

Leo: Oh my God. FIFA is so corrupt. They are so corrupt, I think. I didn’t see what he said.

Alex: He went all out. That was a whole new level.

Leo: Because, I guess the next… in eight years is going to be in a country that doesn’t actually…

Alex: Four thousand people will die between now and then just to build the stadiums.

Andy: But also again, people die rebuilding these stadiums. Brazil, where the FIFA has the power to basically create its own laws. They had their own police force essentially and someone who caused disruption was arrested on Wednesday, tried on Thursday, and started a 20 year jail sentence on Friday.

Leo: Accelerated access to justice.

Andy: Certainly faster than the goal scoring in any of their games.

Leo: Do they will in Montréal? I would imagine that soccer is a fairly important sport.

Rene: We have the Montréal Impact. We have very few sports teams now so we guard them jealously. We don’t want the Americans to steal them and make them into champions. We lost the Nordics, the Expos, the Royals.

Leo: That’s right. The Expos and the Royals, I remember them. I will always be a fan of the Bruins but if I have a pic of the greatest name in professional hockey it is the Quebec Nordic’s. I love that name Nordic. Even better than the Maple Leafs. Leafs.

All right my friends. We are done. We have cooked it. We do this show every Tuesday at 11 AM Pacific, 2 PM Eastern time. 1800 UTC on twit.tv. Please join us and watch live. We appreciate it if you do, and if not on demand audio and video shall be made available and all the usual places including the twit apps, which are really great. We don’t do them but I do recommend them on iPad, iPhone and even Windows phone android. We will be back next week, thanks so much to René Ritchie from iMore.com for being here. And Alex Lindsey will you come back to town next week?

Alex: Next Wednesday I do plan to be here.

Leo: Will you return for us?

Alex: Yes.

Leo: Andy Ihnatko from the Chicago Sun Times. So good to have you all. This show is so much fun to do and thank you for being here and for watching. Unfortunately it is time to say “Back to work because Break time is over! “