MacBreak Weekly 409 (Transcript)

Sarah Lane: In this episode of MacBreak Weekly, Andy Ihnatko, Alex Lindsay, Rene Ritchie, and I are all going to talk about all things, Apple, including getting rid of aperture. This sounds like Siri’s going to get a lot better. And, which size should the iPhone be and more coming up next. (saralane twit.tv/ipt)

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Sarah: This is MacBreak Weekly Episode 409 recorded Tuesday July First 2014

A Little Less Fur

This episode of MacBreak Weekly is brought to you by Harry’s for guys and girls who want a great shave experience for a fraction of what you’re paying now. Go to Harry’s(dot)com get five dollars of your first purchase by entering the code: MACBREAK when you check out.

And, by gazelle, the fast and, simple way to sell your used gadgets. Find out where your used iPhone, iPad, and other Apple products are worth at gazelle(dot)com.

Sarah: Hello everybody and, welcome to MacBreak Weekly episode Four hundred and nine. Leo Laporte is on the island of Maui Hawaii, having a wonderful little vacation, time off so they asked me to step and host this episode of MacBreak Weekly, which I haven’t done in about a year I think since Leo went on vacation last time. So, hopefully, I didn’t screw up so badly that they had nobody else to ask. But anyway, we’re going to have a great show, of course I’ve got our wonderful panel all the regulars. We’ve got to my left, Andy Ihnatko, Hello Andy,

Andy Ihnatko: Hello, Sara, how lovely to see you here.

Sarah: Well, how lovely to see you. What do you have behind you a chorus line, and a rodent?

Andy: Well, squirrels are not rodents they’re part of our original taxonomical class, but it was a good spot on the chorus line. I made the mistake of realizing that there’s a lot of like Broadway on Google Play music and, then I swarmed up having to listen to the entire chorus line. And, once you get to the end, that’s pretty much your day for the rest of your day. You’re vacuuming, but you have to do the walk like you’re vacuuming. (both presenters laughing) I’ve got to purge this from my system, but then it will be okay came, there will be very little mournful singing about the things I gave up to pursue my passion during this show. I expect by the second commercial break I’ll have that out of my system. (cwob.com-@ihnatko)

Sarah: After it I mean it’s lovely to look at, a little of everything including a little maple leaf mug. And, to my right we’ve Alex Lindsay who is coming all the way from Rwanda, Hey Alex….

Alex Lindsay: Hey, how is it going? (pixelcorps.com-@alexlindsay.com)

Sarah: It’s going well. So, what’s going on out in Rwanda, I know you go there fairly often, the African tour of duty, but…….(both talking over each other)

Alex: There is the celebration of the……..20^th anniversary of the end of the genocide, so it’s the independence day essentially, 20^th anniversary since the end genocide, so we’re going to be doing live streaming tomorrow morning with some youth programs in one of the hotels here and, then we’re trooping of to the Amahoro Stadium, if you know anything about the Rwandan genocide, that was safe that was one of the big stadium’s that was the safe haven so anyways we’re streaming from Rwanda from Amahoro Stadium on Friday. And, so I’m working here with our local Rwandan crew to just kind of back them up, but they’ve mostly taken over at this point, so they’re running the whole show.

Sarah: Wow, excellent thanks for joining us and yes,

Alex: Thanks,

Sarah: It seems like it’s good work you’re doing. And, of course it is such good timing because, I know it is like a special Canada day we’ve got Rene Ritchie of course of imore and MacBreak Weekly as well, Hi Rene…..

Rene Ritchie: Hi Sara, it’s great to have you on the show again.

Sarah: Well, it’s great to be here and, thanks you know for not protesting, and it is Canada Day and it is like a big deal?

Rene: It is absolutely, it is confederate……..it’s some kind of official name like Confederation Day when everyone, when all twelve provinces, a massive number of provinces signed up to be country.

Sarah: Well, happy Canada Day to you…..Is there anything here that we can do at our end to celebrate in an appropriate way?

Rene: No, no I said in the beginning Chad’s hair being surge red all day is tribute enough.

Sarah: (laughing) Perfect. Chad thanks for helping us celebrate Canada Day.

Chad: Yes, I mean you’ve got to do it for the best country that’s above the United States that there is so….

Rene: America’s hat

Sarah: That’s right. It is and a fine hat indeed. A fine hat…..so let’s talk some about some of our, I guess, top Apple news. What do we all think about Apple saying that they’re not going to keep developing aperture in OS ten we all heard at WWDC. That the new photos app was going to basically be the successor to iPhoto but it sounds like it’s going to be the successor to aperture as well, which I guess means that it is more of pro tool than anything that we’ve seen before on the OS ten side. But I don’t know Andy were you a big aperture user?

Andy: Yes, I mean I spend more time in aperture having fun than in gaming or watching movies probably. It’s such a slick app for turning the photo that you’re camera shot into the photo that is the scene as you remembered it. So, I like most people who’re using aperture are kind of disappointed that for the couple of years we haven’t seen any movement from it. I’m being not a pro I wasn’t really tempted to move to Light Room yet. So, it’s not as though it’s something that who’re not kind of expecting, but you’re still kind of sad once the shoe drops.

But I’m not sure that if it’s necessarily that, that, Photos are going to replace aperture I think. I wrote a column about this a few days ago when the news finally hit that it’s possible that Apple has announced another app that is a replacement for aperture but they’re not ready to announce it yet. Or, it’s possible that they simply think that because Photos is so extensible someone can come in and write an extension that can deliver aperture, aperture style editing into the Photos app. Or, it’s possible they’re saying look we’re totally redoing Photos for Mac OS. Photos is not just a replacement for iPhotos, it’s not just your photo library, it is going to be the resource that’s going to deliver Photos everywhere, that every app every user wants it on every device, I don’t know whether you’re using mobile or desktop.

So, it’s possible that Apple’s just saying that we’re going to retract our responsibility to us making sure that any app for photos can get their hands on whatever the photo user wants to start with working with. So, we’re going to leave that as an opportunity for others. Do remember that Apple never got around to creating their own version of PhotoShop. So, just because they’re not doing a pro app for Photos doesn’t mean they don’t care about but still?

I’m wondering whether it’s time to finally take advantage that part of my adobe creative studio video subscription now, yes.

Sarah: Oh Alex I know you do a lot with professional photography I mean was aperture ever enough of a program for you?

Alex: Yes, no I actually have been using aperture almost since day one……..so it’s actually since day one (laughing) for most of my apps, sorry (bad sound)…..sorry I don’t know what’s happening there.

There have been some stability issues that have actually had me a little concerned about the aperture in general, so I haven’t really been sure if I was going to stay with Photos before I decide what I’m going to do. I think there’s a lot of…… you know it’s hard to see until we see it. But, I don’t know if I’m using aperture heavy enough even if there’s a lot of features that get put into photos. I wouldn’t say that I’m pushing aperture very hard for the corrections that I do. I think they could definitely put most of that in the photos, I’d probably be pretty happy, you know. Any time I want to do anything serious, it’s Photo Shop anyway, so it’s not been……maybe I should be in Light Room, I don’t know. (laughs) Many of my friends are, so I’m still trying to figure that out. So, but anyway I think that I’ll be interested to see it before I make a decision. I, also think there’s still an opportunity for Apple to make it extensible enough for people(bad sound) to start adding a lot of plug-ins and so on and so forth to open up the API to a point where people could actually do something really useful like replace some other functionality in PhotoShop. So, there’s a lot of opportunity there right now.

Sarah: I guess I’m probably one of those…..well I know there’s a few, a few of me, but I almost do all of my photos taking on my iPhone and then my photo editing on my iPhone. I’m never really an iPhoto, I don’t even know if I have probably used aperture. I’ve probably looked at it here and there, but I’m not even sure what my options going forward…..what my best options are. Rene, obviously you know at least, we are to expect from the photos app? Is that something you think is going in the right direction for Apple, or do they just want to move away from this sort of pro-photography universe that they know don’t appeal to a lot of people?

Rene: Yes, I think that’s absolutely right. For a while the writing on the wall was fairly clear that Apple didn’t care about pro-user features as much as they care about power user features,….….as much as they cared for power features they cared about powering user features. They wanted to make starting with iMovies using Final Cut Pro, even Logic Pro 10, to some extent be accessible to a wider range of people, sort of growing pro-Sumer market which was middle ground in between bringing brand new people to the platform and, pros.

I, like Alex and Andy have been using aperture for a long time, but I have been using Photo Shop for decades. My biggest aperture action is right click and edit in Photo Shop. I just use aperture because I like the way it organized things and didn’t like the Work Flow that the Light Room tries to impose on me again. I didn’t need Light Room specifically.

So, I think this move……one of the biggest complaints I’ve heard over and over again is that iPhoto just wasn’t enough. It had okay features but it wasn’t what everybody really wanted. It, wasn’t that sophisticated. And, now it looks like we’re getting the eighty per cent so that the aperture does really well put into the new photos app.

And, yes the twenty per cent the power users really wanted won’t be there. They, do have other options and I think Apple’s always better served when they’re sort of democratizing computing technology, and that look like what Photos is going to do again.

Andy: Yes…..(cross talk)

Alex: I mean Apple’s always been……..it’s what we’ve talked about in the past, Apple’s always like what will 90 per cent of the people need 90 per cent of the time. And, I think that what we get with Photos (bad sound)…… comes out of Apple with that necessity and, their quite happy to lose the other 10 per cent to Light Room if they need to.

Andy: Yes, that’s exactly right, I……and it’s, it’s also interesting to think about what kind of future iWork might have, given that it was really created so that

Apple would have plan B if Microsoft ever decided to sort of ease back on the development of Microsoft Office. Now, that’s not really an issue for them, maybe a year from now, two years from now or three years from we’ll have the exact same thing. Maybe a year or a year and half of no serious updates, and then they’ll after sort of encouraging……..instead of kicking people out of the nest so that the mamma bird doesn’t come back to the nest very often, then after a year the baby birds decide, okay, I guess Mom’s not coming back, damn it we’ll have to leave now and, then go find our food from now on.

So, I think that this is Apple’s best way encouraging people not to rely on them for the real hard stuff. (short pause)

Sarah: Well, shall we move onto……this actually……did anyone read this story in Tech Pinions about understanding a wearable strategy that might point to how they’re doing things at Disney Theme Parks?

Andy: Yes, I read that, and that’s exactly the sort of ……..these Disney Theme Park bands are exactly the way that I imagined Apple wanting to do a wearable. Because, if you have a band that’s just a sensor that can make magical things happen with the hard ware around you, even if one of the limiting things that it does is you wear and, suddenly you don’t have to even bother to thumb print to unlock a phone anymore. Or, now you’re in a store and or now your simply presence there in the store gives you access to your Starbucks account lets you pay. That’s worth a certain amount of money. And, the other big advantage of a system like that is that if you’re not building a huge giant touch screen device, you’re building something that people will actually want to wear which is a good thing, if you’re trying to sell these things. And, you’re also building something that you can sell cheaply, which is another thing and, if you’re trying to get people to break their…… to create a brand new habit of here’s a new addition to the things that I do after I jump out of the shower every morning, not only do I get my wallet, my watch and my good pen, but now I also strap on this sensor.

So, it’s good stuff, it’s, it isn’t exactly what Apple would do with such technology, but it really does point the way to Apple creating something that they can sell as opposed to something that they can demo in June and, hope that people don’t ask about the sales figures for it by September.

Sarah: For anybody who hasn’t read this, it’s a post by Tim Bajrin…..I hope that’s how you say it…..

Rene:…..Behrens….

Sarah: And, he took us around Disney World and he says this is how it works like, it went off without a hitch, you ummmm……connect a band to a credit card that they’re supposed to use at the Parks, you’ve got a pin number that you’re using for shops and restaurants, you can use your wrist band once you’re wearing to get into your room if you’re staying at a Disney Hotel instead of a key card. The wrist bands came to the house couple of weeks before the vacation, so I guess so long as……ahhhh….. you book ahead of time and, then they’re using RFID radios to communicate with door locks and restaurant terminals, the park entrance gates, you sync your band to the finger print reader for double authentication, if that’s what you want to do.

You can use them in kiosks and various restaurants on the Disney properties, I mean, it does sound like as long as long as you don’t mind wearing them as wrist bands it is the ultimate in convenience and, you don’t have to think about it too much.

Of course that’s within a Disney Park, but that’s not where most people live…..

Rene: Magical world…..

Alex: Well, I think that there’s another step that I think we’ll see in places like this, which being able to have the wrist bands on your kids. The kids will be able to know….you’ll know where your kids are. (Bad Sound) as a father of a four year and a six year old that’s a constant concern (laughing) of where they actually are at a park like that. And, Disney Land is as safe as they can be, but still it’s something that you want see at shopping malls, in, in Chucky Cheese, you know being able to put a wrist band on your kid and, know precisely where they are, and with Bluetooth LE we should be able to pinpoint their position within a foot, and believe me within a foot is very important at some of these locations. (panelists cross talking)

Andy: I’m sorry Rene, go ahead.

Rene: I was going to say the thing that I thought when dealing with this thing is that Apple is their best when they have to solve problems. What’s the problem with current wearable’s, what’s the current problem with mobiles that you actually have to go to get it wearable. And, it seems that falling into these distinct categories like the projection of notifications, the logging of information and you know exercise tracking and things like that. Things like authentication with Blue Tooth trusted object or door RFID or things like that. There’s, there’s several tasks that they can be good at, Apple’s usually good at focusing on one or two of those, they don’t try to be too broad. And, I very much like this idea of things just happening because the biggest advances in computing happen with advances in interface with multi-touch made all the difference when it came to mobile devices. Their previous technologies key board resistive it just wasn’t as good as, multi touch let more and more people use them, and I think that we’re going to need something more in advance, in wearable, like proximity where things magically happened when you’re within the right place, and when you have the right sort of permissions. And, that will probably make them more useful than just another current generation screen on a device.

Sarah: Do we think we’re going to see an Apple….. wrist device, I didn’t want to really call it an iWatch, because I don’t know if that’s what it’s going to be called but is, is that going to happen this September or October, or you think.

Rene: October, yes October………..

Sarah: I can bet some money on it?

Alex: Yes.

Sarah: I want this. I’ve finally put away my hopes for an Apple television, I was not even going to think about that any-more. I need to believe in something now.

Alex: I think we’re going to see, I….I think….I don’t know if we’re going to see an Apple TV as an LED or an LCD, but I do think we’re going to see a new update to Apple TV whatever that is ummm…. we’re going to get a lot more features, and so and so forth. I…I…. but, I do think a wearable make sense, the idea that you’re constantly connecting to things is around to make your life more convenient, I think is probably going to be thrust and, I think somebody will do that probably well.

Andy: Yes, well we’re coming right after the first show that we’ve done after they talked at length after they did Google IO keynote. I think they talked much about the wearable’s that they’ve done. I feel that the only thing that occurred to me that’s relevant to Apple is that the Samsung and LG…… Google wear watches……android wear watches, really makes think about the differences between the way that Google does things the way Apple does things. Where, I think Google made a watch that is features complete that does really far reaching broad things. That’s first day out of the door and, then take a couple of years to get the hard ware right. I think that Apple’s attack would be to do the exact opposite which is to get the hard ware right, right out of the gate, make it feature incomplete but in two years start building in the features that you associate with a wearable device. (Short pause)

Sarah: So, does anyone here use iTunes You Much the app? I love it and yet I find that it sort of sit’s dormant on my iPad not being used, even though basically I can take free college classes. The reason I’m asking of course is because Apple had announced an iTunes You update we talked about it on iPad yesterday that allows you to create more things from the iPad itself rather than just participating in classes, and say a little bit more about fact channel discussions. But, is anybody using iTunes U on a regular basis or do you know anybody who is?

Andy: I got to say like the iTunes U on my iPad is like having a copy of brief history of time on my coffee table, I have it, I proud of myself for having it, I want other people to think that I use it, but no, I haven’t ranked that a lot. I’m just not that bright.

Alex: And, it’s something that we’re looking at actually implementing for the school here actually to run most of our education. And, we haven’t got it working the way we exactly wanted it authoring it to the level that we wanted it to work. (poor sound quality), we’re going to make another pass at it based on this upgrade you know for the fall. So we are going to take a look at it, we’re excited here, we just haven’t found the solution completely compelling yet.

Sarah: So, Alex the solution from your end you would want to be able to conduct classes…..that have people follow along you know with a syllabus through iTunes U?

Alex: Yes, I mean……a lot of our stuff is (bad sound) is self-based so what we do the only time we’re in a class-class is when we’re discussing stuff that they’ve already done, so they’re given…..so there are some ones where we’re showing things around in actually in the studio and we (bad sound) Google Plus hang out to connect to Rwanda to our… to Petaluma.

And so we have those classes about once or twice a week, but then the rest of the time is spent you know doing videos and so on and so forth. So, one of the things we’re going to be ramping up to over 200 students this fall, and managing that is going to be mostly training videos that are then followed up with challenges and discussions about those processes. So for that, especially I think there are going to some good solutions trying to figure out what platform we’re going to roll that out in, right now it’s probably the inside track is using iTunes U.

Sarah: I think one of the strangest things about iTunes U is, I’m sort of looking at it on my iPad now, is it’s not laid out very well, there’s a lot there but it’s almost like if the app store was even worse at finding at being able to navigate through and find the apps you want based on the exact name of the app, that’s kind of how I feel about iTunes U, that’s I think why I ended up and I check it out, wow cool I could, I could, I could be part of this course on the history of Rock n’ Roll that…..Ohio university……the university of……you which one I’m talking about, is just going to give me for free. Then I don’t really understand how to navigate it very well. So I think that is one of the issues and perhaps this update will make it easier for all of us. (Cross talk)

Rene: All of us linked up to it……the iOS. I saw a link to Stanford Developers Course for example at Lincoln Gott there. I never even really considered using it as a browsing to discover things.

Sarah:ummmm(Panelists talking at once)

Andy: Go ahead Rene…….I was going to say there’s so many gems inside there that like Rene I’m so entertained and amazed when people send me a link to something ……like oh my goodness that I can actually learn about this and in a self-based way and it’s free. I wish it were more like the app store, where it was easy to simply have my attention call to something that story think that I might find interesting because again it is like the first time you get that library pass that gets you into the Stacks and you get to see wow popular photography from 1972 through to 1988, or these gems that……this has been here all the time…..why wasn’t I informed?

Rene: That’ actually really interesting because the way Apple works internally is that there’s store managers, then there’s editorial people, there’s app store editorial, or an iTunes editorial, and there’s that for music and movies, that for apps and there’s even that for podcasts. I don’t know if there’s editorial teams for iTunes U or if there is maybe one person or two people. Maybe ramping up on editorial would be a way to help people discover the best stuff.

Sarah: Yes, yes I would like to see stuff iTunes U set up……is like the app store where it’s here are the best science classes of this semester or, if you’re looking to get into coding then these would be the places where great courses to start. I don’t see that curation going on. It would be nice to know who are the people that are curating, because clearly, even if you have an issue with or without the way that iTunes are laid is there are people who are putting apps right in the center, which app is going to be free for the week.

Rene & Andy & Alex: (talking at once and saying the same thing) It’s all like in the app store…..Andy: I’ve interrupted you twice….(To Alex) why don’t you go ahead.

Alex: (Laughing) I also think it’s very hard……I think a special person would do self-based training, you know and so you know that’s always the difficulty that we see across the board because we build a lot of the stuff and, you know having something you can do with a lot of people, I think is finding ways that is really important. I think one of the ways is….., one of the other challenges is building an online support for real time classrooms is you know…..this is going to be sacrilegious to say for a lot of people. It’s kind of building into the past because the way we run classrooms right now is not the way we’re going to run them ten years from now.

You know it’s technology, as we really start using technology and not just kind of use it to kind of just brace the old fashioned kind of way of dealing with people (sound quality bad) so I think it’s very….it’s kind of right we’re trying now fitting a square peg into a round hole.

Sarah: Andy, I know you wanted to say something before we all move on.

Andy: Just that, just that I think Apple’s missing a trick because they’ve always, they’ve always used the app store as things that are content in the app store and content in the iTunes store, are valuable in and out of themselves. They make money when people download movies and when they download music and, stuff like that. But, I really think iTunes U is there to sell iPads by the hundreds to sell to schools, universities. So, I think the way that the, the way that part of the store operates reflects that it doesn’t really pay for Apple to let civilians into this library. They’ll certainly welcome and check it out but why would Apple ……..I think the thinking is that why should spend a lot of time, effort and money and be it personnel into helping who can’t, helping people who can’t do a purchase order for 500 iPads and, get access content finder and find some interesting things.

Sarah: Well, shall we take a break, I think that makes sense, Chad, I think it’s a good time for that…..he says ‘Thumbs up’ from the TD desk, alright. Alright then let’s a take a moment then to thank Harry’s for sponsoring this episode of MacBreak Weekly. It’s always funny because people ‘yes, that’s good for guys’ and I’m like excuse me it could be good for girls too, or you know who ever who would like a little bit less fur on their body wherever that might be.

Harry’s is…..’what are you laughing at,’ you know what I meant, every body’s got it. There’s various degrees of how free people want to be. Yes, they’re a fairly new advertiser on the Twit network and you guys might know exactly what they do. But, if you don’t I’ll tell they are making it much easier and much more affordable

to have quality razors, they will deliver these razors to you to your address of choice so, you don’t have to go into Walgreens and see CBS, wherever you’re getting your razors now, you have to track down some body that works there, because they’ve locked up the razors because people steal them. Razors are way over-priced, they’re crazy, I don’t care what kind of razor you have, if you’re getting them from a drug store, you’re paying way too much to the Gillettes and they’ve jacked up the price so much that it doesn’t make a lot of sense any more. The folks who started Harry’s-Andy and Jeff knew that there’s a better to give people a great shaving experience at a fraction of the cost. It’s minimal but you’ve got nice stuff. In your Harry’s box you got your razor, you’ve got, you’ve got your….your replacement razors, a nice shave cream, I mean that I mean I even like the packaging the whole thing is lovely, plus a little shave guide a little extra information about Harry’s was started.

Now, this might sound somewhat familiar to you, Warby Parker is another sponsor for Twit, and this one is actually the same model because Jeff is also one of the co-founded Warby Parker that’s the eye wear brand.

The idea is that the razor model emphasizes good design, craftsman ship, value and it’s a lot like the sunglasses, where the prices are marked for no reason. So, if you want to go to Harry’s(dot)com and get let’s say an engraved set, yes send me twelve blades, here is how many I need these are, how often I go through razors-three creams every five months, there you go they’ll let you know what you’re price is going to be, and then you’re just in the system, it gets shipped to your door. The set is lovely, you know, again it’s minimal but it’s very nice and the price is way better than what you would get if you were to go ahead and buy all these items individually. And you don’t have to go anywhere. You never have to go get razors again. I’ve just had a friend who’s in Europe had a bunch of razors delivered to me here at Twit to put into my suitcase to bring to her because she’s desperate. She doesn’t know where to buy razors anymore. Now if she had Harry’s then she would have been fine, she should have done that ahead of time.

Here it is you go to Harry’s(dot)com, that’s H-a-r-r-y’s d-o-t c-o-m and use the promo code MacBreak and you’ll get five dollars of your first purchase. That’s Harry’s (dot)com promo code MacBreak and we thank Harry’s for the support of MacBreak Weekly.

Is anyone excited about Apple’s Car Play? If, so it’s coming to nine new automakers that include Alfa Romeo, because I know we’ve all got one of those, Audi, Dodge, Mazda, Ram. I know car play is supposed to be integrated into the kind of car that I have, it isn’t yet, I like the idea in theory, it’s not as if there’s been any real world experimentation, I can do with car play. What does everybody think of the future of this? (panelists talking over each other)

Rene: Holding of for a Lamborghini still Sara.

Sarah: Oh, yes of course right.

Alex: I’m holding of a for a Ferrari myself. I think, I think that the issue here I know that from me on a day to day basis the quality of the connection between my iPhone and, my car would make much more of difference than how the performance and many of the other do-das that they add to the car, because that’s something I’m doing every day. That’s something I’d with an older car that doesn’t integrate with my phone, I’m very bitter about it. And, I think

It may eventually replace, put some kind of weird wiring in it because …….I can’t…..it drives me absolutely crazy that I can’t connect my phone and so when I rent cars and, they have them I realize how nice that it is. And, so I think definitely as I buy a new car, how this integrates with android or our iPhone is going to be a very big decision factor I think it’s what a lot of people are betting on.

Andy: Yes, I agree…..I vastly prefer having a car mount for my phone because I’m kind of picky where the phone is in relation to my eyes and the steering wheel. But, that’s certain I’m not in the majority of it. I’m not sure if some-one would pick one car over another based on phone integration though because I think they care, people actually care more about where the cup holder is than do they have the right phone, how do they connect the phone to the center console. What apps do they have that can exploit that center console. It’s a nice feature if you discover it one or two years into ownership of this car, but I’m not sure if that’s going to steer a decision.

I am very cheered by…..by the information over the past week ever since Google came out with their own car dash scenario that they’re multiple makers that have announced the intention to support Apple and the android system, because……what’s as the former owner of a car that had a center dash stereo that could not be replaced because Ford decided…..hey what if we made car stereos in the shape of an oval, and you couldn’t replace it with anything you like later on from Pioneer and everybody else.

I know…I know what it’s like when you’re inside that car and you go …..Oh! so this could do something……I could be doing something really wonderful with this phone, or this technology that all my friends can do, but I can’t because it would be a stupid marking decision to bet on one solution to lock out all others.

So, we’ll see how that shakes out, but I’m happy with what I have right now, and I think it’s going to take a while for features like this to be part of every car as opposed to something you have get the right model in order to get this thing to work. It’s just to know……just to button up a rambling rant……the other good news after the announcements about these car systems is that it’s no longer the Ferrari logo, no longer the Audi logo, you’re actually seeing this stuff appearing in twenty thousand Ford cars, and GM cars.

So, so long as this becomes something that everybody has access to that’s a win for everybody.

Sarah: Something that works well in a car is of waist control-hand free, yes I use Siri in a fair amount in my car, it seems to write down little appointments where I know I’m going to forget by the time I park. But, an interesting article in Wired that got written up, I guess that it was last night that there’s something called neuro rhythm algorhythms will be coming to Siri in a big way making Siri much better. Something that Google has started to use with the android’s voice recognition which is, I don’t about all of you……but it’s Google Now voice recognition is head and shoulders above anything that Apple can do. I don’t why it has to be so much worse on the iOS side but……..

Rene: Google invested early on, I mean they hired co-founder of Nuance you know he was one of the big patent holders in all this technology. They’ve been investing in it heavily. They do thing like putting in natural language and context aware co-processes. And, Apple is still a licensee of Nuance and what they want to do is distance themselves to make their own technology, but they’re not as far ahead in this. But, this is one of my favorite things, I use Siri all the time iOS you can say hey Siri and start talking and I use it to say you know things that I don’t want to forget, including sometimes entire blog posts while I’m driving. And, that to me is the key because I was watching the android auto-stuff and I was watching the car play stuff, and especially the variety of control schemes from knobs resistor screens to capacitor screens and, all of these to me still are very distracting.

I still remember being terrified as a kid when my friends would drive around with their heads buried in a push button radio station just to find their favorite songs. That…..the ability to touch things……big finger friendly controls is still not a lot of attention to me…..so again with that transitioning of interface, I think getting that to be voice controlled that may have kids screaming in the back ground, it might not always work. But, getting as much as possible there is good and I think it’s also important to remember this is all 1.0 stuff because things like extensibility and, where we’re going in the future where audio is being streamed and, audio’s being processed bringing all your network connections to it, we’re basically using the worst version of this stuff right now, and, it’s going to become better and, faster more quickly.

Andy: Yes, I think that central point is really a good one. I really think that if you’re trying to integrate the phone into the car, I hope that these interface makers take more of smart watch approach rather than a phone approach.

Where every time you see one of these, you know whether it’s a Pebble, whether it’s android wear device, the idea is to say well it doesn’t make sense for a full interface here (Andy holding up wrist and pointing) is to put a simple feature…..to make sure that people can access the most relevant and simplest feature of an app and do it in the simplest way possible. We’re not going to give you that full view functionality. It would be a very bad thing if the end result of all these phones in the car solutions is to don’t worry all of your apps you can have icons on the dashboard – you can actually use them, you can ……….we want to encourage you to respond to all of your texts to clear out your inbox and get it to zero- at a sprightly 72 miles an hour. I hope there’s a certain level of strength that we will let you terminate…..we will let you quickly conclude a text and a phone call and quickly answer a text, we will let you switch between entertainment and navigate options, but we are not here to let you play angry birds inside your car via by voice command.

Sarah:(Laughs) We saw Microsoft earlier this year show off neuro-networking which I guess is going to be this new term as voice recognition gets really, really smart. Skype-translate which I believe only works from English to German….at least that was how it was demonstrated at this point, but I cannot wait for this…..I’m so excited…..like I need to make a bunch of friends in other countries who either can’t speak the same language as so we could have Skype conversations where we don’t have to learn the other language. It’s very fun but…..

Rene: Side-tracked…..

Sarah: Apple hired one of the …..sorry what was that Rene…

Rene: Like Star Trek.

Sarah: Yes, exactly.

Rene: Universal translator.

Sarah: Very much, yes. Apple hired Alex Sessoro who had been the senior director, or he is now the senior director in Apple’s Siri group but was at Microsoft for almost twenty years researching speech technology so, he is sort of the catalyst to this article being written in Wired, that Apple is obviously taking this seriously and doesn’t want to be left in the dust when it comes to speech recognition that works and is helpful and, can give you the answers that you need.

Because, I,……I do…..I agree with you Rene, use Siri as much as I can but I do find that the speech recognition often misunderstands me. Yes, I’m trying to speak as clearly as possible, and it’s like it just needs to be better.

Andy: Yes, it’s interesting to see that there’s two…..I think there’s the one really clear to horse race that Apple and, Google have together because this is….and speech recognition and, voice control is not something where Apple’s industrial design can help them in way shape or form. It really comes down to what features can you implement and how well do they work.

And, so to see these two people……these two companies trading off in different tech……underlying technologies, that different ways to surface that in a way that’s useful to the user, it’s a little bit breath-tasking and, now it really gets down to the basics core competency of developing technology.

I…I agree with you that android is ahead of Apple right now but I’m excited to see what they choose to do with Siri as the next logical step.

Rene: The biggest for me is that…….I used to remember everybody’s phone numbers, now that I have contacts on my phone I don’t remember anybody’s phone numbers any more. I have the same problem with Maps and the same problem with Siri now.

All this stuff is incredibly convenient, but no-one is doing it well enough now, no-one’s doing Maps well enough, no-one is doing voice recognition well enough. Because the minute it fails I’m completely lost or I lose my ability to function on the device that I’m trying to use voice control with. And, that’s the sort of the challenge of the stuff is, yes we’re going to show that it’s incredibly convenient- you don’t have to worry about getting lost anymore, you don’t have to worry not having to touch your phone anymore, but it’s got to be rock solid, it’s got to be all the time. We’re still in this transitional turbulent period where most of the time it’s okay but still sometime it’s the wrong exit number on the high way, sometimes you ask it to find you a song and it tries to dial somebody’s phone number and, each of those things is much worse now that we are so dependent on them. I think they have to think very seriously before going forward. (Cross talk)

Alex: That’s the thing that worries me about the whole Google car without any steering wheel. I just know that I’m end up at a dead end running into a construction zone, there’s nothing I can do other than just sit there.

Andy: One of the classic differences for me between android and, and, and ios was that there’s a restaurant that I really, really like that has a sort of screwed up kind of name and, Siri, every….Siri is impossible for me to call and make a reservation at my favorite restaurant by actually speaking the name. It is a comedy act like who’s on first, me trying to say okay…you don’t understand Zafticks how about Soft Eggs! What, what if I enunciated in terms of English words, it will always do a search for it thinks that I have. But, really basic voice recognition and attaching it to functions is good. What I’m really looking forward is when both of these systems ios particularly has that agility where it can have a conversation with you.

It’s annoying to me to try to have to remember if I’m going to create an appointment, what order so I have to put this information in to make sure that the system is going to get and, put it in correctly. I want to be able to simply say okay make an appointment….okay great what do you want to remember I have a meeting with Ted next week. Great! What day, what time? Uuuu this that and the other…..no wait go back one….I forgot to say that I’ve got to get there 30 minutes early and make those corrections as I go. That’s how I think and that’s how I talk to people.

So if you’re having an interface where you’re essentially talking to someone, you really have to have that somebody be able to have a conversation. That’s going to be interesting when they come out with that sort of stuff

Alex: And, I think there’s a there’s a big jump in……I think that Google Now does to some degree and that to a large extent contextually really understanding, not just contextually how words fit together? But, contextually how they

 fit together for you. So, if you want to say, ’I have a doctor’s appointment,’ then the first thing that it should be looking at is, the six doctors that you work with. (Alex laughing)

Now, it gets much more accurate, because these are the…..you know the ones that you’re most likely see next. And, those are the types of things, I think that we’re are just seeing the front-end of as the information gathering systems start to work and, we want to know where you are, we know where you like to go, you know those types of things allow it to zero in, because a lot of what makes speech recognition inaccurate is that it has so many variables that it has to solve at the one time. As, we reduce those variables when talking we become much accurate, much more accurate you know. If, you say one through to twenty, it knows someone is looking for one through twenty. You can have all kinds of accents, and it’ll hit it every single time.

Rene: That’s the interesting thing, if you remember Jeff Hawkins who was the co-founder of Palm, he did graffiti and now he’s working a Numenta, his thing always was that we’ll never be able to teach computers to understand humans. We can teach humans to do things in a way that is slightly more accessible to computers. Right now I’m willing to change the way that I speak a little bit, that my fear is that if we teach computers too well and you have Sky Box and you have Boston Dynamics then I’m just bringing the terminator round quicker. (Sara laughing and some cross talk between the panelists)

Andy: What about the green effect on humanity ? We sort of train ourselves to speak clearly and, make our intentions very, very obvious…..

Rene: Yes.

Andy: What do you want to do? I don’t know, ‘What do you want to do?’ ‘Mom, would you like to eat at a restaurant on Boyson street at 7.30pm on Thursday, without all of that chit-chat…without all that mousing around…..

Alex: This could actually be Skynet, because it’s sneaking up on us, you know, slowly forcing us to conform so that we can be subjugated.

Andy: It’s kind of trying to figure out how to do this for the best way. You can’t figure out how…….okay, so I’ll buy that. So long as I can make restaurant reservations over my phone that’s alright, it’s fine by me. (panelists laughing)

Sarah: Speaking of phones we’re getting to the point of the year where a lot of people would hold off on a replacement phone because we’re hoping for something more…..uuuuu, but Apple did just release a new commercial, which is all sort of geared at the parents of the world, where we aid to use third party apps when we’re parents, Chad do you want to roll that? (long pause)

Chad: Yes, I really want to do, roll that?

Andy: You really don’t know how much I want to roll that.

Advert: Sara talking over the ad: Well, you know I’m not a parent, but I know people who are, so I can understand how this is all, yes I mean it’s …….

Andy: Cute. All, I’m saying is that if I ask my parents even for my combined Christmas and birthday present for a 200 dollar thing, well a 500 dollar iPad, oh boy they’d still be screaming right now.

Rene: Parents aren’t going to let this happen.

Sarah: I do think that’s (a) it’s obviously geared towards people who are necessarily, yes they’re not techiesssss, that’s not like ooh that there it’s the cool new thing, it’s a….isn’t life complicated wouldn’t you like to be a better person, here have a better iPhone.

Andy: It’s been a while since……..shouldn’t really say shown off a commercial that showed of the hard ware and, the hard ware features. It’s really all about well here is what it’ll be like from day to day to have this wonderful Apple product in your life and, even to the extent that we’re going to show off a third peoples engineering and, products as opposed to our own.

Rene: Yes, that’s been the whole theme for this. It’s a more powerful campaign, it started off with the actual ad called, ‘More Powerful’ then they actually on called, ‘Strength’ which was the fitness tracker one and now they’ve announced the parenting one. And, they’re very, very interesting, they’re very human, they use very current music, a lot of visuals, a lot of apps, sometimes apps get bought by Google two days later. That’s the cost of doing this kind of business. And, this one I think is the most effective to me, I like this one a lot, and if you looked at the new Apple store sign that’s just started going around live today, they’re using very similar imagery there where they’re showing to Andy’s point not a phone in a hand, not a piece of hard ware, not a separate sort of device, but they’re showing it integrated into people’s lives. I think technology alone is not enough, we will always believe, that was always my favorite Apple app, that lasts many years, and I think they’re getting back to story telling and how these devices can be used, how they can make your life better. (cross talk)

Andy: Have they started house commercials in the new wave now. They’re sort of starting to move away from shunting.

Rene: The last one but I don’t know if this one is.

Andy: Yes, I can’t remember.

Alex: Yes and I think as a, as a father of two small kids I recognize a lot of the apps and uses there. So, I think there you definitely integrate that and it becomes very convenient a lot, as a parent you’re……..things are very chaotic, actually little kids running around and, being able to have things much more conveniently then you want to have a nice phone and then you have the iPhone you know(laughing) you know what ever phone you’re using. You don’t want to have a nice camera, you want to have the phone,……the one that you’re going to take the …….the one that they showed the night cam, …..you know reveals a lot about your kids. Mostly that you thought your daug…..your son was making all the trouble turns out that your daughter was smacking him alongside the bed. And, it is really an important for you to understand about your kids. (panelists laughing) So,…..anyway I did……it is a very compelling one that I think a lot of these ads that have been coming out lately showing contextually the rest of our lives have been pretty effective. I definitely recognize stuff that I’m doing that’s very related to that. I don’t know if I’m a good sample but I definitely recognize myself.

Rene: We did the opposite, I just put the video in the chat-room but we gave the iPod touch to my two little God children and then shot what they do with it. And, it’s everything from learning with you know with dual lingo to making iMovies to doing Face Time and, things like that, and it’s almost a reverse of this showing what parents can do to immerse in the lives of their kids. But, this technology is so easily access able now you can actually have kids do a ton of stuff on their own. (Showing a video) You can fast forward that. And, they are eight years old and five years old and the amount of stuff that they can actually get done……

(Sara interrupts)

Sara: Oh, these are your God Kids?

Rene: Yes.

Sarah: Ahhhhhh, they’re very cute.

Rene: With an iPhone…..it’s amazing to me since they’ve been using them pretty much since they could sit upright and, now whenever they go on vacation they collect photos, they make their own videos, every night they do their French and their Italian on their iPad…..on their iPod touch, because of they have they send these other messages or they do Face Time for their parents when they aren’t around. And, it’s incredibly enabling technology for them, but my littlest godson he can read and write a little bit right now, before he could he could iMessage back and forth, by using Siri. He thought it was his best friend he would just talk to it as thought they were normal robots.

Sarah: You know, speaking of the iPod touch, Apple has launched a 16 gig iPod touch which has a rear camera for 199 dollars, which replaces I believe was the 249 dollar non camera iPod touch. So, not only is it cheaper, but way better because it actually has a nice camera.

Andy: Has more…..

Sarah: Yes has more and a nice camera, colorful too and had dropped the price on the 32 and 64 gig iTouch models 249 and 199 respectively. It must be 229 then with this new model or 199 which is replacing the 22….anyway……

Andy: Yes.

Sarah: When, I first saw this they…….I mean really Apple……who’d even cares about the iTouch Pod any more, it’s kids, it’s perfect for kids, you don’t have to some sort complicated cellular plan and as you said Rene, it’s not stopping from using it to their full potential. (cross talk)

Rene: It’s kids, it’s developers…..

Andy: Sorry.

Alex: We as a production unit use the iPod….we have I don’t know, we have a lot of iPod touches because the cheapest thing that we can use that we can connect and basically put them under cameras to you know send feedback, count down clocks, and we don’t use, we never use more than eight megs on these things. They’re just……there’s a whole slew of them and they have all kinds of little tools that we use, and you’ll see little ones like kind of propped up, you know in a lot of little places for us to have real time feedback and really cheap and really convenient and I keep a bunch of them in a little bag and put them up when we’re in production, so as their little heads plays up as they are very, very effective. I think a lot of people use them in odd places, in addition to their kit. So, having them cheaper is great for us. (short pause)

Andy: Kind of weird how they announced it though. It’s not that, it’s not that it’s such, it’s not such a big update that it mandated its own even but I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t hold off for a couple of months until they could, until they could just slip it into an iTunes event in September, and do it that way.

Alex: I think that in a lot of ways, I think that in a lot of ways Apple has got very focused on what they really want to push at these events and, they want to shorten those events. I mean we can remember these three hour events that you know you would be sitting in the middle of the room, trying to figure out when you were going to get out of the room in the middle of the presentation, you know, and, so I think that they’re shortening these events and taking other steps that are improving things but they they’re not revolutionary. And, they only time that we want to talk about something is when, I mean, not revolutionary but, when we’re really moving our product line forward, we want to keep you focused on that and not give you the kitchen which is what something that we not too many years ago, we felt like we were getting every single they did these events.

Rene: And, there’s a pattern because they did the 128 gigabyte iPad, they did that refresh to the Mac Book Air, they did the iTunes youth thing, they did the iPod touch, and I think what’s happening is that they’re becoming just in time company as soon as they can put out that iPad at the price point at the margins they want they’ll put out that press release. As, soon as the iPod touch is viable they’ll do that. And, I don’t know if it portends anything about what we’ll see this September, because previously iPod touch has got very little attention over the last months and years, and it might have just been a press release then, but they have something more interesting to announce, at least this gets far out of the way and it doesn’t become part of the story this fall.

Sarah: Yes, going back to the iPhone to the upcoming iPhone, whatever it may be called number wise, expected to be larger, the latest stories are for 7 inch and 5.5 inch models depending on how big you like your phone. But, it’s kind of an interesting poll conducted by RVC Capital Markets, they said they phoned four thousand consumers asking what do you want our of a phone? Is it a bigger screen, what’s your number one thing? 33 per cents said, ‘no we want better battery life.’ Bigger screen was in second place with 23 per cent, followed by faster processor, and then 12 per cent wanted a ummm…… a better camera. I can’t say that the iPhone has the worst battery life in the world, although I did just lose my iPhone over the weekend at a party, and I couldn’t find it because the battery was dead, so when you think about it that way, sure I’d like twice the battery, I’d like it to charge faster. I think that would be like the unusual killer feature.

Alex: Do you use the iPhone charger or the iPad charger that comes with it?

Sarah: I use the iPhone charger.

Alex: if you use the iPad charger it charges twice as fast.

Andy: Also, if you have like a third party USB chargers they can also do quick charges. That’s the kind of……I have to copies of these exact same ones in both of my bags just to make sure that I can always top up or refill with.

Alex: See this one here, this is two amps on the top and one amp on the bottom so you know if something happens then I’ll be…..this is made by some Chinese company, this one happens to Power Gem, but there’s a whole bunch of names for it. You use that top one and it taps off your iPhone in about an hour from zero.

Sarah: Chad’s got one too.

Andy: Former pick of the week.

Alex: I got like six of them.

Sarah: Is that one a demo or have you and Alex already talked about it.

Chad: It was the pick of the week and I bought it on Amazon, yes.

Rene: We called each other this morning, Sara.

Chad: Yes, we actually …..if you look real closely…..let me see if I can get the usual……

Sarah: Let’s hope so.

Chad: He’s wearing the same shirt too, it’s the Eric love yes…..

Alex:(Chad pointing to Alex)….you guys what’re you wearing.

Chad: Yes, we just like, message each other in the morning.

Sarah: So, alright it sounds like I’m the one who has the least amount of good solutions for a battery life, but I guess that the idea for the poll is speaking to sure people might want a bigger screen, but it’s not actually the, the thing that everyone’s wanting, what they’re really want is just the more convenience of battery life.

Alex: Battery, battery, battery, battery and, phone……I mean camera. Camera and battery it’s all I hear about.

Sarah: I mean the cameras can obviously be improved, but it’s quite nice.

Alex: It’s a got a half-inch chip in there, I just want a big half inch chip you know with a……you know like a three times, you know,

Rene: With a Lumia 10/20 lens.

Andy: Yes, what I want is, what I want is a real Xenon Flash and, I’m hoping that some of the APIs that come out at iOS eight I don’t think that Apple will ever decide to make a phone thicker in order to accommodate hard ware for the camera. Or, anything cool like that. I’m hoping that technologies in iOS eight will let someone make a really nice camera slit for that’ll have things like graded Xenon Flash made to actually integrate with a custom app like great controls over exposure and stuff like that. But, but I did read the article about it, it did leave me wondering how people are wired up to respond to a poll like that or, a question like that, where I think that they’re mostly thinking about the phone that they have today, what disappoints them about it. If, you told them that, if, if you placed instead two different iPhones instead in front of them and gave them an option of a larger screen or a smaller screen, which one would they then take. That’s a more relevant way of going about it. And, the other thing about is that making it bigger does make more room for battery, which does enforce a larger and a more power hungry display.

But, some of the ……….all of the phones that I’ve been testing some of the ones with the best battery life are the ones with the bigger screen, simply because the circuitry for the actual phone stays the same, because there’s lots and lots, lots of room to pack in that battery because Nokia and other companies take advantage of that. So, I’m really…..(interrupted by Rene)

I just wanted say I’m…..that’s why I’m really looking forward to Apple, if Apple does come up with two different sized phone, I’m really interested to see, if Apple’s going to release information about whose buying what. Or, if it’s going to be one of the other, ‘well we’re……combined we sold over 14 million phones this year, this quarter without saying 5.1 has been outselling every other one out there. Or, yes we think that we did everything that we pretended to do by increasing the 5.5 inch iPhone we mean to update it next year.

Sarah: Well, that’s what they did with the 5C number, because it made for a wonderful quarter but, the 5C was not necessarily such a great seller, it was combined numbers.

Rene: You’ve got to work out the ASP and do the math’s work backwards and, magic to figure out which one sold where.

Sarah: I’m excited about a bigger phone. I’m……I……I understand the four inch iPhone face at this point seems like a little phone, I’m so used to it though, and I was used to the one that….that wasn’t stretched out.

Alex: I will say I have a bigger phone (Holding two phones in each hand) this is my Rwandan phone, one that I just use here and I don’t know what this is ……this is a Mac, and then this is the HTC that I like the camera on, and I like the short field thing that it does. But, I have to admit when I’m typing and when I have to type quickly I still want my iPhone. (laughing) Quite easy to get a hold of it. So, the screen real estate is real nice when I want to watch something on it. It’s something I don’t watch a lot on my phones so that’s why my iPad is for me and so, because I’m not watching a lot of stuff, I find that the smaller size actually works for me better. (short pause)

Rene: It seems to me that a lot of time these surveys are not in any context because, you know I want a bigger battery, well so do I but what price will you pay for that, will you take a phone that’s twice as thick like the Razor or the Macs Line. Some people will happily do that, some people want double the battery and a phone half the size which is not possible in the current laws of physics. And battery raises one of the biggest problems with very little advances. People are looking at Graphene, and looking at other options, but the battery not only does it take a lot of space but, it’s an insulator so you have to ramp down the processor speed faster so, it’s keeping the heat higher in the phone, so fix that and we have fantastic devices. There’s real indication that’s going to be fixed any time soon though. So, all these kind of things….I want a better camera, I want a bigger screen, you just have to start picking the ones that are really important to you and then realizing what the trade-off are. Like, I want a much bigger lens, optical table literation, what they want is IZ index and in your phone what you get has to be much thicker. If you’re willing to have that, there’s some phones that do that but, not everyone wants that trade-off.

Andy: I think it would be more interesting to approach people who’ve switched from the iPhone to something else, and then ask them did you buy one with the bigger screen or, did you buy one that’s pretty much the same size as the iPhone. So, it’s interesting to get this sort of data, but there really isn’t any kind of a smoking gun on what people really want. I think most people if they’re sticking with a certain platform they’re generally happy with it, they just want what they have right now to work a little bit better than it does.

Rene: In Volto is interesting from Google because Google IO talks about Tech Volto which was their attempt to make android. They make a lot of magic to make android batteries go longer and Apple doesn’t have those kind of code names but they have a lot of people working on every bit of battery life out of it, and that’s probably what we can look forward to for now. If it’s a bigger phone then we’ll have to pay a bigger penalty in terms of lighting up a bigger screen and, using more LED and, stuff. But, the battery technology will once again get better again at the same time.

Andy: Yes, there are lot of times I do thought experiments about it, and, if I did have ultimate power over Apple, and I also had the tyrannical seat at Apple and not the one that tries to get everybody going along, but people who fear me and duck and take the stairs, if they think that I’m going to be entering the elevator. I would love to tell the research group to……your mandate is…..you’re going to design a phone that’s not going to be a millimeter slimmer than a full three quarters of a centimeter. Whatever, the current thickness of the iPhone Five S is, add 50 per cent to that.

Now do whatever…….exploit that extra thickness however you want and let me see what you come up with because I have……I ……just have the feeling that if Apple lost this idea that a phone should be as skinny as possible, so that when you put them in the big fat ugly bumper…..rubber bumper case, you know, you can think that inside all this rubber it’s a very thin phone. I imagine they could do wonderful things with cameras, (Sara laughs) they could do wonderful things with battery they could even do wonderful things with CPU, wonderful things about making their phones weather proof, bit more dust resistant. I, often wonder exactly how expensive that super slim design is and, whether or not it’s a price still worth paying.

Sarah: If you’ve got a larger iPhone let’s just say that we’re starting to get almost into Fowler territory with the new iPhones that come out, does Apple care that it could cannibalize iPad sales? I’m thinking, No. (all panelists concur and say no)

Rene: They want to cann….they’ve never been shy about cannibalizing their own thing. That’s been one of their greatest strengths is that they have never tried to soak every penny out of everything they could, and they never tried to soak the iPod line up. They’re happy for the iPod touch to be cannibalized by the iPad mini and by the iPhone 5 C and the iPhone 5 S same with the iMac and the iPad. They just want to make sure there’s not another company that’s cannibalizing them. So, they can take existing market share and get people onto new devices, that’s fine. They can take it, as of right now Apple sells most of the premium phones in the world and the other premium phones are larger screen devices who can’t get an iOS on a device of their choice. By offering an iPad that’s of a bigger size, maybe they’ll lose a couple of iPad sales, but they have the chance of going after the people who are now buying Samsung or, or Nokia or HTC devices and I think to them that’s the price they’ll pay every day. You’ve got to work out the ASP and then do backwards math magic to figure out which units sold where.

Sarah: I’m excited about a bigger phone. I understand that the 4inch iPhone phase at this point seems like a little phone. I’m so used to it though and I was used to the one that wasn’t stretched out.

Alex: And I will say I have a bigger phone, a bigger Android. This is my Rwandan phone that I use here and this is...I don’t know what this is a max? And then this is the HTC that I like the camera on. I like the short of the feel thing. But I’m typing when I want to type quickly I still want my iPhone. I just find it natural to get a hold of, you know? So the screen real-estate is nice when I’m watching something I just don’t watch a lot on my phones so that’s what I use my iPads for me and so because I’m not watching a lot of stuff I find that the smaller size actually works for me better.

Rene: You see the thing for me is that a lot of times these surveys are not put into any context because “I want a bigger battery,” so do I but what price will you pay for that? Will you take a phone that’s twice as thick? Will you take the RAZR max line and some people happily will do that. Some people want: double the battery life and a phone half the size which is not possible in current laws of physics and the battery remains one of the biggest problems. There are just very little advances. People are looking at Graphing and they’re looking at other options. But the battery not only does it take a lot of space but it’s an insulator so you have to ramp down the processor speed faster because it’s keeping the heat higher in the phone. If they could fix that, we’d have fantastic devices. There’s very little indication that that’s going to be fixed anytime soon though. So I think all these kinds of things are wonderful: “I want a better camera,” “I want a bigger screen.” You just have to start picking the ones that are really important to you and then realizing what the trade-offs are. Like I want a much bigger lens with optical image stabilization, well the 1Z index. So now your phone has to be thicker and if you’re willing to have that, there’s some phones that so that. But not everybody wants that trade-off.

Andy: I think it’d be more interesting if you approached people who have switched from the iPhone to something else and then ask them: “Did you buy a bigger screen or did you buy one that’s pretty much the same size as the iPhone?” So it’s interesting to get this sort of data but there really isn’t any sort of smoking gun on what people really want. I think most people if they’re sticking with a certain platform, they’re generally happy with it. They just what they have right now to work a little bit better than it does.

Rene: And Volto is interesting, from Google I/O. He talked about project Volto which was their attempt to make Android batteries go longer and Apple doesn’t have those kind of code names but they have a lot of people working on getting every bit of battery life out of it and probably what we’re going to look for, for now. If the bigger phone, we’ll have to pay a bigger penalty in terms of lighting up a bigger screen and using more LED and stuff like that but the battery technology will once again get better at the same time.

Andy: Yeah, there are a lot of times where I do experiments about it. If I did have ultimate power over Apple and I also had the tyrannical seed of power at Apple not the one that tries to get everybody going along with the people who fear me and will take the stairs if they think that I’m going to be entering the elevator. I would love to tell the research group to design a phone that is not going to be even less slimmer than a full ¾ of a centimetre. Or whatever the current difference of the iPhone 5S is, add 50% to that. Now, do whatever to exploit that extra thickness however you want and let me see what you come up with. Because I just have a feeling that if Apple lost this idea that phones should be as skinny as possible so that when you put them in the big fat ugly bumper rubber case, you know you can think that “well, inside all this rubber it’s a very thin phone.” Imagine they could wonderful things with camera, they could do wonderful things with battery, they could even do wonderful things with CPU, they could do wonderful things about making their phone weather-proof and a little more dust-resistant. I often wonder how expensive that super slim design is and whether or not that price is still worth paying.

Sarah: If you’ve got a larger iPhone, let’s just say we’re almost entering phablet territory when the new iPhones’ come out. Does Apple care that it could cannibalize iPad sales? I think no.

Rene: They have never been shy about cannibalizing. One of their greatest strengths is they’ve never tried to soak every bit of penny out of everything they could but they could try to soak up their iPod line-up. They’re happy for the iPod touch to get cannibalized by the iPad mini and by the iPhone 5C and the 5S. Same with the Mac and the iPad. They just want to make sure it’s not another company cannibalizing them. So if they can take and existing market share and get people onto new devices, that’s fine, and take it away. So right now, Apple sells most of the premium phones in the world. If the other premium phones have large screen devices? If people can’t get iOS on the device size of their choice (check 59:43) by offering the iPad as a bigger size, maybe they’ll lose a couple iPad sales. But they have a chance of going for the sales of people who are now buying Samsung or Nokia or any HTC devices. And I think to them, that’s a price they’ll pay every day.

Alex: That could be something to keep an eye on though. As we’re trying to guess if a lot of things we always known and some sooner of Apple have been changing as it evolves into the 2014-2015 company. One of the classical observations has always been that Apple wants a very, very thin price list. They don’t want people to come in and have any doubts about what it is that they’ve come to get. Whereas HP and Samsung, they’ll make a million different devices without a whole lot of clarity between why they should get a 13.5inch Notebook vs. The 14.2inch Notebook that has the Celeron processor but has the Celeron-A processor, all this sort of stuff. They have absolutely no qualms about cannibalizing their own sales but usually it’s because they’ve decided that this product is going to be dead anyway. It’s going to be irrelevant in 2 or 3 years and they’d much rather have you replace this irrelevant device with a new, more relevant Apple device. So, although we are speaking of a larger in-a-smaller phone as though they’re announced products. Of course they’re not. They’re just rumors. They’re very good rumors. Of course they’re just rumors at this point. It would interesting to watch this and see that Apple is now saying that “we will give you a larger phone, a much larger phone that’s still slightly smaller than a tablet and then we’ll also give you a tablet that’s larger than the phone and then this tablet will also be slightly smaller than the other tablet above it. And by the way, please don’t listen to rumors that we’re creating another tablet that’s slightly larger than the larger tablet.” So it’s not something that I’m used to seeing and if I had resistance a few months ago to the idea of Apple coming out with two larger screen phones it is because of that old-style thinking that Apple would not give you a choice between let’s say, a 5.5inch and a 4.8 inch phone unless they had a really good explanation for what the difference between those two are going to be, now I’m not quite so sure.

Sarah: Alright, good explanation. Does anybody have ideas on which one they would choose if again we had, let’s say we have a 4.7 and a 5.3inch iPhone and you’re probably not going to get both of them.

Andy: I’m upset because I haven’t reviewed both of them. The one that I would buy would, I think it would have to be the larger one. Chiefly because I don’t spend a lot of time talking on this phone and because I’m a big, beefy he-man I have these big pockets and I have no problem like, putting this pop tart sized phone into a pocket somewhere and I often find myself stumbling between wanting to have an iPad with me and not caring. Because so many times I’m doing so much reading and so much research and maybe a little bit of work but not enough to justify taking a big screen device with me. So I would be all over a 5.5inch device. I laughed at the larger-sized Lumia phone when it first came in but boy. You have that around for a couple of weeks and you start to realize what a nice little form factor it is to say nothing of the idea of what Apple could do with a larger device with a larger camera in it. The only really major sacrifice in switching Android for me has been losing that great iPhone camera. So if they’re able to say that “Oh by the way we put a larger sensor in here and now we have room for a flash in here and we have this larger view screen that lets you almost see lets you see a preview of a 4 by 6inch print as you’re taking the picture.” Oh boy would that be nifty.

Sarah: Alex you’ve already got a bit of a phone collection with you, what do you think about size?

Alex: You know, I think I won’t know until I actually play with them. I know that for me, again, for instance between the HTC and the iPhone I still find the smaller version, smaller. The problem is I’m not really using the screen that often for its size, you know. I’m using it to get information out and so I think that that’s the issue for me I’m just not, I mean I’d be a typical use case I just don’t watch a lot of videos on it. I don’t look at a lot of things. I don’t really care how big the screen is. I do like the fact that the phone is smaller. If I thought that the screen size would give me more battery life, I’d be tempted to get a bigger one. My iPhone, if I don’t charge it, it would be dead by noon typically.

Rene: A lot of my thoughts on this are based on the assumption that the phones will be identical and it’s just going to be a matter of choosing a size, like with the iPad mini retina and the iPad Air today. But it’s quite possible that because the 5.5inch iPhone is bigger maybe to Andy’s point, they could a better camera to it or it could have similarly better battery life or it could have some other feature that the smaller iPhone is missing. I don’t know how they’re going to stage the feature so the features will I’m sure; play a factor in that decision and maybe a lot of people’s decisions.

Andy: What if the 5.5 is the smallest iOS device that can run two applications, side by side?

Rene: Ben Behrens made the point that the big phones right now do not sell very well in North America. The Galaxy Notes sell at dismally in North America. But they sell incredibly well in emerging markets. But those emerging markets want really cheap phones. So, If it’s an iPhone 6C that’s the bigger phone because that’s the market it’s going to sell in, I’d go for the 4.7 because that would be the premium device. So it really depends on how they lay this stuff out.

Sarah: It’s also not so much what you’re used to. I mean back in the day when I had a blackberry pearl It was like, it was awesome because it could go into even sort of a tight jean pocket and wouldn’t really hinder me at all. You know the iPhone 5S is perfectly fine for me. I don’t sit there looking at it thinking “I wish this was bigger.” But yeah, I think if there was a little bit more screen real-estate id use an app like Flipboard a lot more often on my iPhone which i find not really very fun at all. On my iPad, I think it’s delightful so there is an issue of screen real-estate.

Alex: Its funny cause I use Flipboard 99% of the time on my iPhone and specifically/usually because I’m standing in some line. So the thing is having one hand on it. I find that the iPad version is too big. I can kind of get through the same information quickly so it definitely is going to be an interesting; Apple giving people choice is definitely going to be an interesting model.

Andy: I think it would be a shame if they took the standard sized iPhone screens off the market because like Sarah said, it would be nice to have a phone that is manageable and pocketable for a wide range of pocket. I make fun of my tactical cargo pants where I can literally put a 9.7inch iPad in my back pocket if I have to, and I have. But really there’re people that do need something a lot more manageable than is easier to one-hand anything else. I mean the fact that I’m excited to have a 5.5 inch screen on my car a dash board and being able to hit more targets with my finger a lot and more accurately and be able to see data with just a glance as opposed to having to go in like this which is what I have to do when I have the iPhone 5 there, doesn’t mean that works for everybody. So, it’s going to be interesting to see what kind of bets Apple chooses to cover with screen size.

Sarah: Yeah absolutely. Alright let’s take a moment to thank our second sponsor that is gazelle, for this episode of MacBreak Weekly. We’re talking about: new iPhones, they’re coming. We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen but we can safely say before long, we’re going to have a whole new range of devices. And that might mean, you’re trusty little: whatever you have right now is just not working for you anymore and you’ve got some options. You can sort of throw it in the junk drawer, you can, well that’s pretty much your only option right? Because how many phones do you need? Or you could try and get some money back for that gadget. Not just an iPhone but you know, a used iPhone, an iPad, other smart-phone with gazelle. Gazelle was in the business of buying your used gadget from you and giving you a really good chunk of change in return. What you can do is actually go to gazelle.com and let gazelle know “alright, these are the devices they have. “Maybe it’s one, maybe its five just let gazelle know “alright this is the condition it’s in, here is what my carrier was. So on and so forth.” Even if you kind of broke an iPhone, they will buy those back so don’t worry if it’s not in the best condition possible but you know be honest about how you’re going to send it to them. And then gazelle says “alright if that’s all fine and good, here’s what we are going to give you “and that price is locked in for 30 days which is nice cause it gives you time to get your new device, set it up, wipe your data, whatever you need to do. By the way Gazelle will wipe your data for free for whatever reason that’s not something you can do or have time for. Now the benefits of gazelle is that you get paid in cash. The payment is fast. Within just a few days of gazelle receiving your item or items and again there’s that risk free feeling because those offers are locked in for 30 days so you’ve got time to get what you need in order once you’ve figured out what you’re going to get from Gazelle. The company has paid over 100 million dollars to 700,000 customers. It’s easy, the shipping is free, the process is fast. You can check out an iPhone 5 or a 4^th gen Apple iPad or an iPad mini or a Samsung Galaxy S3, all sorts of stuff. Gazelle will buy back from you. So what is your iPhone or other gadget worth, do you know? You should take a moment and just go to gazelle.com and find out what you’ll get back and of course you could put that towards your new gadget. What you actually really want. Get your money and then you could upgrade, upgrade your life. Do it now because again, those gadgets will lose value the longer you wait. They’re not getting more valuable, they’re getting less valuable. Gazelle.com and thank so much to gazelle for sponsoring this episode of MacBreak weekly. Okay, do we get into our tips of the week? And if so, is there some sort of like a picking order with tips? Who goes first? Do I choose? Do you all just talk at once and figure out who’s loudest?

Alex: You can choose. Just throw it out there.

Sarah: Okay well let’s go right to left. Rene? What is your pick of the week?

Rene: My pick of the week is Slack. I used to use Campfire with everyone at iMore to just be our virtual office and to just keep us communicating during the day but Campfire; it’s just not getting the attention it once got. The writing on the wall was pretty clear; it’s not going to continue that much longer I think anyway. So we have a choice of looking at Mchat, looking at slack and we ended up going with slack because it has a lot of great features. It provides the same sort of little virtual office rooms as something like campfire, something like Hipchat. You can do direct messages as well, you can embed images but it’s got a lot of really great integration so for example we use Trello for a lot of our planning and you can integrate Trello into this so when cards are moved or updated or otherwise you know, change their information. It pops right into the stream inside of Slack. And you can do that with twitter feeds, you can do that with just tons and tons of things. It also is very well organized and it’s kind of cute. It’s kind of friendly-looking and they have mobile apps and the best thing is those mobile apps really work. Anyone who has ever used Skype on mobile knows that it’s not a given that a mobile app for communication is going to work anything close to effectively. But so far I’ve been using slack for a week maybe two weeks now and just been tremendous. We’ve moved over with almost no hassle we were up and running and within a couple of hours we had 30 maybe 50 people transitioned and we’ve just been using it since. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t open Campfire in, you know, since that day and I keep forgetting to open Skype now because I just find no real need for it. So If you’re looking for this kind of thing, if you’re running a virtual office or you have a club or a group or anything that would benefit from virtual communication in this style I think Slack is a great choice.

Sarah: Alex, your tip of the week?

Alex: So I’m always playing with photos and photo editing and one of the ones that I’ve really started to play with that I really like a lot and just another one that I’m playing with. Have you played with Litely at all?

Sarah: No

Alex: So it’s Litely (spells it out) and you take your photos and of course it’s got a couple filters here you can change and shop for other pre-sets of course, it’s how they make their money. But even the ones they have here, what I really like about it is you find one there and you can just simply drag looking at the photo, you can adjust the affect, you can open up everything from exposure, sharpen to vibrant and kind of play with what effect is going to work. It’s one of many other apps you can do this with but right now it’s the one that I’m really enjoying it’s just that it’s a fun little app as far as I’m cutting things and very, I don’t know. For me, I feel like I get this kind of interesting mix of control and fluidity that I haven’t really seen with the other apps where it just feels very, where it feels like I’m doing things very quickly. I think it’s free so there’s not a lot of commitment there. Of course the way they make their money is you can shop for pre-sets, other looks that you might want which are also not very expensive and they are very cool so there’s a lot of other things that you can add to it and you’ll end up spending a whole six dollars I think on a slug of pre-sets that you can play with. But again, there’s something about the speed and the control mixed together. There are a lot of apps that give you one or the other more effectively but I think this is a very nice mix of the two of them and definitely worth trying for nothing. And that is Litely.

Sarah: This is nice, I just loaded a picture of me and my friend’s new baby that was taken last night and at first glance it kind of reminds me of viesco cam but it does seem a little more intuitive. Yeah, maybe not quite so fully featured but yeah, we’ve got exposure here, we’ve got sharpening tools, vibrants which is all the rage these days and yeah this real nice. These are just some pre-sets here, in fact it really reminds me of viesco cam in a way just less to buy right off the top. Andy do you, are you familiar with Litely?

Andy: I haven’t used Litely but I’m familiar with viesco cam but if you’re saying that it reminds you of that, that’s a pretty good compliment.

Sarah: Yeah, yeah. I think the design maybe more than anything else but yeah you’ve got, if you go into the shopping area, we’re on the starter here which gives you nine pre-sets but then yeah you can go a little nuts. Origins, Venice this just seems to be the kind-of-trend now is the photo apps will say “well we’ll just give you a few cause we know not everybody goes crazy for filters.” But if you do then this free app then becomes a 2 dollar app which is fine with me you know. Maybe I want all those black and white.

Andy: In iOS8 those will be available to you in other apps now as well.

Sarah: Which is great!

Alex: I do have to remind myself thought that just because I’m a hobbyist photographer doesn’t mean that people share the way I interact with photos. And I think most people are just like you Sarah where they do all their image editing on their phones themselves and then they just shoot it out from the phone directly and so if I’m hoping for aperture light controls where I can say actually “I like that green but I remember the green being not quite so yellowish I think it was a little more bluish. I want to adjust that green. I think most people well, look through a menu of pre-set filters and say Oh that looks nice, great, lets post that one.

Sarah: Well Andy, what is your pick of the week?

Andy: Mine is a really cool iPhone app called Rookies that lets you as you might have guessed, lets you design baseball cards. There are a lot of apps that are kind of like this and even apps in this sort of category where it’s an Oh you get to make postcards and bumper stickers and you say oh great does it look like a baseball card? No basically we take your picture and we add a rounded boarder to it and put a, quote “Team name in Times New Roman.” No, that doesn’t look like a baseball card. But they actually have like a dozen different card designs that will remind you of what baseball cards are supposed to look like. We’ve got Tim Cook here, we’ve got Craig Fredrigy. I got these in the same style. You can do front and back. If you want to do statistics you can do that. Here’s another format, if you want to do horizontal format. There 2, 4, team baseball cards. And you can edit all this stuff it really looks like a well-designed thing and here’s the really cool thing about it, it’s a free app. There are no in-app purchases you know. Like it doesn’t cost you 2 dollars to get the other version of what you like. The way they make their money is that you can then order these printed up as real wax packaged baseball cards where everything but the gum they say, will be printed on the same sort of cardboard. It will be wrapped in wax packaging and we’ll ship to you as these real kind of baseball cards I think that’s why they put so much work in the design of these things. So even as a free download and something that you can just simply spit these out in to new images as your camera roll you can then do whatever you want with repurpose, definitely worth a download and I’m pretty sure that at some point in life you’ll say okay, I want to see that as a real baseball card. And then, maybe I’ll do something clever for Christmas like have Christmas baseball cards all sent to people. You never know.

Rene: It’s terrific. How much does it cost?

Andy: I don’t even know. I was so excited about making baseball cards I basically went through every single photo in my library on my iPhone. So you look and you go Oh, we’ll so a squirrel baseball team of baseball cards. I don’t think its prohibited though, I mean it’s not crazy stupid.

Andy: I know that this not very imaginative but I could totally see, doing this for a little league team. So if you’re a parent you’d be the star of the show you know I’m just saying. And you know all the parents will chip in for this if you made the little pack for the little league team. I know when I was a kid on little league, I know that would’ve been, that would’ve been pretty awesome. I mean how exciting is it for a kid to have a real-life baseball card. I’m not sure if kids are going to obviously buy this card. To have cards added to their pack.

Alex: How much are they per card?

Andy: I’m trying to figure out right now.

Alex: Hurry up, we’re impatient.

Andy: I know I’m sorry, I did do my work.

Sarah: It’s okay, I’m just organizing my photography apps.

Andy: Twenty custom cards is $12.99 with shipping its $15.99 and that will be one pack of twenty. If you’re used to like, a lot of your friends you’re like ill just buy them a cd, say of that’s a cd’s worth and they can put that in the car.

Rene: family baseball cards.

Alex: I’m doing this. I’m so doing this.

Sarah: Good Idea.

Andy: I also like that you read the history of the product on the site, they really did want to include like, stale gum in every pack too but the FDA would not let them do that. One piece of advice though I kept looking back at the iTunes store to find this. If you do a search for Rookies and rookies baseball cards, you’ll find everything but this app so my tip is to go to rookiesapp.com and they’ll take you right to the product page and the download link.

Sarah: I need to know why, if you have the exact name if the app and often you even add the developer name or company name in to the search field; you still have to go to the company’s website and then click the app store.

Alex: Which is hard!

Rene: I know. Because Apple is not Google.

Sarah: Well, can they be?

Andy: I have an alternative theory. Tim has been CEO for like 5 or 6 years, but he’s still not quite done firing people yet. I don’t want to be mean but this is the sort of thing where. You ever have these sort of problems with the computer where you find yourself talking to the computer cause you’re out of options, just like: “I’m giving you the name of the app.” What else could it do but like, manually look through every single thing and say here is a picture of what I want.

Alex: It’s like would you like lamb chops and chicken? No steak, does that mean fish? Uhm steak, you know.

Rene: You’re turning into a bill Crosby. You’re like, give me that. No I want exactly that. Just give me that.

Sarah: I feel like I got an iTunes melting point when I was trying to find the Yo. App which I assume we’ve talked about on MacBreak already as the dumbest app ever been made and I couldn’t find it because in the App Store, it’s “Yo.” With punctuation. So it took me a million years and I had to go find it from some article.

Alex: I’m trying to find the app, not the battleship.

Sarah: Right?

Alex: I shouldn’t feel a sense of achievement once I actually find something in the app store.

Sarah: Exactly, exactly. Well alright I know Alex had Litely which looks to be a very promising photography app but I don’t exactly have a specific tip but I thought well, since we’re on the photography train and since I have queued photos at the ready of my friends baby, I would just let you guys know, this I just kind of like my default. If I want to make my photos look better and it’s already a pretty good photo, the process that I go through. And I got like 45 photography apps. I’m all about photography apps so I just sort of collect them. However, I do feel like what has worked well for me is a combination of opening the photo on Snapseed. Now Snapseed is a Google product. It used to be independent. Let’s go ahead and open this picture of my friends little new son, Milo. We’ll go ahead and say okay we’ll use it you know. It’s a cute picture right? Now, Snapseed does a lot of stuff but what I find in general, that a combination of a little automatic which adds a bit of contrast so I go ahead and say let’s process this. Then tuning image which then I take to the ambiance now of course with snap seeds, the UI can be a little off putting to people at first but once you get the hang of it, I mean there’s features of every level here. There’s, we’ve got brightness and ambiance and contrast and saturation but ambiance specifically is like adding just a little HDR light. So if I go ahead and say: alright lets go ahead and bring the ambiance up to, let’s go to about 40 on this guy and of course I can see my before and after here. Oh, yeah it’s kind of hard to see on some of these cameras but I guarantee you it makes his skin tone a little bit nicer. Go ahead and say yes then at this point I save it to my photo library. This is why I spend too much time on my iPhone. I need a better hobby. Then what I do is that I open it up in viesco cam because it has already been saved and updated a pretty good amount. Go ahead and open that here. Then I go on down to my pre-sets cause I bought them all, then I move down to I think its G right? These are my portrait section? Yeah so G1 and G2 these are viesco cam pre-sets that I have paid for. I go ahead and say Alright lets go and so this is like if there’s no filter at all. Let’s just kind of clean this up, let’s just kind of sort of make this a little more authorial and angelic. Pretty happy with that guy.

Andy: How could a baby be more angelic than that?

Sarah: Well, with a filter Andy. With a filter. And then you go ahead and save this on to the camera roll to which at that point I send it to Instagram and hope I get as many likes as possible.

Rene: iOS8 is going to save you so much time.

Sarah: I hope so because this is extremely time consuming. I mean that is literally the process I go through with pretty much all pictures and then I decide if I want to take it to some other app beyond that point. But that’s time consuming. I’ve gotten pretty good at it at this point but that is, it’s one of those photo layering options that I feel like, gives me a better result that any one photo app can do on its own. Then again, I haven’t played too much with Litely so it would be nice to have sort of like a one touch option or an if-this-then-that for my process.

Andy: Automaton for photos.

Sarah: Exactly, that would be fun too. Well is there anything that we have not discussed on this episode of MacBreak Weekly that you guys were hoping I would bring up? That we need to discuss before we sign off? Now is the time.

Rene: Your amazing hosting skills, Sarah.

Sarah: Oh yeah. Mhm, yeah.

Alex: You did so well.

Sarah: Well thank you. I like the topics so I’m glad that I didn’t totally crash and burn on this MacBreak Weekly but thanks everybody for being here of course Andy Onatko. Andy do you have, besides watching USA beat Belgium in just a few minutes in the world cup, do you have anything super exciting before you all meet again for MacBreak Weekly next week?

Andy: A couple of really long columns that have been a couple of weeks in progress so my follow up to Believe It Or Not, WWBC’s keynote, the news is coming up also the wrap up of Google I/O is coming up as always the first reaction when you stop watching the live feed. And then there is like, okay let’s talk to this guy let’s talk to this lady lets go out of this message board and make sure that I understand things I actually think I understand and also, let’s get news from people who have been to all these different sessions and as usual, as excited you are about keynote it’s like: oh, they actually showed off an even better things in the little sessions. So I’ve got a lot of editing ahead of me but go to suntimes.com you’ll be able to get that stuff. And go to notco.com and check out my bloggy stuff and my photo stuff.

Sarah: Excellent, Alex Lindsay is coming to us live from Rwanda where he and the Puxico team are doing a lot of work. Alex, how long are you going to be there?

Alex: I am here till Saturday night. Oh I got dark all of a sudden, hold on. Skype really stinks anyway so I’m here until Saturday night although I may post a video if it’s not too gory. We are going to eat a goat. Not alive but it will start alive and then it will end up on the table on Saturday. I told them I’m getting the goat but I want to like film the whole process because I was like, did the goat start alive and they said all goats start alive and I was like well that’s true. So I’m going to film the process and decide how much of it I’m going to let everyone see because some of it does look gory but it will start with a goat and then end up with dinner. That might be 30 seconds long without a lot to it. But next week I get back. Next week I’ve got a couple of event, I’m just kind of travelling around. But also I’d like to get peoples feedback. We just did our first final cut virtual user group last week I believe, last week or the week before. And you can find it on; if you follow me on twitter you can find it there. I am going to make it darker again because you know Skype stinks. We’re not going to talk about that. So FC bug so final cut virtual user group dash one. If you go to bitlyFCVUG-1 and its on YouTube as well in the Pixacore site but you can see the entire result of our question engine system. It’s there as well if you go to the actual URL and you can find it on my twitter feed: @alexlindsay. We kind of are experimenting with this idea of this discussion between experts where people can ask questions in real-time. And these experts, some of the best final cut users in my opinion in the world. I just sat there and kind of ran the conversation and asked stupid questions. So if you clicked on one of those questions on the side it will take you right to that question. So if you want to see what discussion was happening there you can kind of go through all those questions and all those questions were questions that came in from people who were viewing it so the idea was to kind of create a new format for the user groups and it’s not perfect and you know we’re in the midst of creating something new and training guys and doing it so we’d love to get your feedback on it. So definitely take a look at it and let us know what you think.

Sarah: Excellent. Rene Richie celebrating Canada Day as well as prolifically contributing to not only the show but everything apple for iMore and beyond. What’s new? Over the next week what can we expect from you Rene?

Rene: I’m doing a series called iOS8 Explained. How to take everything and just put it in layman’s terms and there’s a lot of stuff announced so if you go it imore.com/iOS-8 you’ll see all of that. What I’m really excited about though is we have the final episode of our Nganatra trilogy on the debug podcast tomorrow. He was director of iOS apps at Apple. Last week we covered the purple project all the way to the launch of the original iPhone and that last part we talked about decisions made from the iPhone to the iPad like why there was no mms, why there was no cut and paste, how they scaled apps to go to the iPad size. So if like me you consider the advent of the iPhone as one of the biggest cultural events in the last decade at least in technology then this is a guy who was at those tables, making the decisions and I find that endlessly fascinating.

Sarah: Yeah that’s unbelievable. Good gets and thanks to all of you for joining us. Andy Ihnatko, Alex Lindsay and Rene Ritchie thanks so much for being with me. Leo Laporte will be back in the big chair for episode 410, until then, get back to work because break time is over!