MacBreak Weekly 411 (Transcripts)

Leo Laporte: It’s time for MacBreak Weekly, the rumor round up once again, that sapphire screen that Marques Brownlee showed us – is it real, is it a portent of things to come. Where, is the 5.5 inch iPhone and, why the iWatch may not be available till next year. It’s all coming out next. It’s Rene Ritchie, Andy Ihnatko it’s all coming up next. Yes, I’m back…….MacBreak Weekly is next.

Advert: Netcasts you love, from people you trust. This is Twit! Bandwidth for MacBreak Weekly is provided by CacheFly at C-A-C-H-E-F-L-Y (DOT)Com.

Leo: This is MacBreak Weekly episode 411 recorded July 15^th 2014

Will it Bend?

MacBreak Weekly is brought to by Personal Capital. With Personal Capital you’ll finally have all your financial life in one place and get a clear view of everything you own. Best of all it’s free. To sign up go to:  PersonalCapital(dot)com(slash)macbreak, and, by SquareSpace, the all in one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or your online portfolio. For a free two week trial and ten per cent off go to squarespace(dot)com, and use the offer code MACBREAK.

It’s time for MacBreak Weekly, the show that covers your Macintosh needs and, wants and, desires, hopes and, fears.

Andy Ihnatko’s here he’s in charge of hopes and, fears from the Chicago Sun Times.

Andy Ihnatko: I’m really confident this is going to be a great show. But, nonetheless I’m staying away from the windows, which I have taped and boarded up because we might get some rain later.

Leo: Hopes and fears, ladies and gentlemen together in one human, it’s marvelous.

Andy:  Did I pick up what you say. Yes, I’d say it’s not bad at all.

Leo: Yes. It’s beautiful. Rene Ritchie is in charge of desire from imore(dot)com and, needs and wants.

Rene Ritchie: I’m covetous, Leo I want all the things……I don’t necessarily need them but I want them.

Leo: Hey, I missed you guys, was Mike Elgin, Mike filled in last week, yes?

Rene: Yes and Sara the week before.

Leo: Yes, and Sara the week before. You know I wasn’t planning to be gone last week. I would have warned you, but we came to the end of our week in Hawaii and Lisa and I looked at each other and go (whispers) three weeks…..So we called them and said hey is it okay if we don’t come back right now.

Rene: You can’t make us comeback. (Laughing)

Andy: You see that’s that’s not a weird thing, when you’re in Hawaii, if you’re in like a rubber plant in Ohio, you’d say you know what there’s something else going on here. He’s cooking methys.

Leo: Hav-hee (Hawaii) is a lovely place, to get a little native, in fact I almost came on the show with a coconut bra and a grass skirt. Then, I decided I didn’t want to scar people for life I know there are children watching.

Rene: You could do it afterwards.

Andy: You could for the after 11 show.

Leo: We did get off at one point……(Leo waving his hands as in Hawaii native dance) we did have music every night, you know just a small little group…..I got off at one point.

Andy: You’re still wearing the Kahlua underwear though right.

Leo: Oh yes, once you go Kahlua you never go back.

Andy: There’s some really nice grain……….. out there.

Leo: Hey, something happened while I was gone. I was kind of aghast, shocked, blown away and I’m talking about the video. I first saw Marques Brownlee’s video of the sapphire,……imported sapphire screen of the iPhone 6, the 4.7 inch screen and, then he mentioned Sonny Dixon, that he got it from Sonny Dixon, and then I saw Sonny and some of the others had posted videos in China. And, I think……this is the…….. this surprised me. Typically, you’ll get these anonymous posts from Chinese sources, but for somebody of Marquez’s stature to come forward and say I have, what I believe to be the iPhone 6 bezel in sapphire and, he cut it with a knife, and he bent it and all that stuff, is he ever going to get invited to an Apple event again? (panelists laughing)

Andy: Maybe not but I think that of those 1.2 million video viewers…….I’m reminded of the photo that was posted of Leonardo Di Caprio like the day after he was stopped from the Oscar Nominations and it shows him on a yacht with like with 12 bikini models and I’m thinking, yes he is obviously broken up about that. Similarly,  you know when you get that kind of attention and, probably that kind of ad revenue and also credit for breaking a really, really cool story…….

Leo: No kidding…..

Andy: I think he’s okay with not getting the free coffee and Danish from Apple for the foreseeable future.

Leo: Five million almost views Andy, in five days. Not bad, but the things I found, the thing in fact I immediately wanted… ……….almost called Rene and said, (whispers),’is it possible?’

Andy: When you think…….

Leo: Is this real? It would be awfully hard to fake whatever that is now and, by the way no-one knows if it is sapphire. I don’t know if there’s a way to tell I guess. A mass spectrometer which marks…….(cross talk)

Rene: Yes. It would be my favorite headline if the experts if they thought it might be sapphire if they were looking at the video.

Leo: And; do the experts have an opinion?

Rene: It’s possible that it’s sapphire, yes with the video(laughing) but they would need a mass spectrometer.

Leo: We know that Apple has a sapphire plant at full speed somewhere in Southern California…….no……central California, but……of  course they use sapphire on the finger print reader and, maybe I have heard some say on the lens.

Rene: On the lens too, yes.

Leo: And we’ve sapphire too on watches but we have not seen is sapphire that big.

Rene: Yes, that’s their production capacity too.

Leo: And sapphire would be scratch free. The features that he showed off this would be typically sapphire, right.

Rene: And, thing I mean is that SonnyDixon, he got iPhone S parts, he might have even got iPhone 5 parts. He is pretty good, they all come out of China, like you said before he has been very good actually finding people who have and getting them to send them him and, now he is sending them to other people.

Leo: Now Gorilla glass three which others are using is similar is it not?

Andy: It’s hard to know what the practical difference is going to be. I don’t think the Gorilla glass can stand up to the sort of abuse that he seems to be giving the glass right now. But, it’s we’re talking about this a little bit, and I’m not……I think Apple would have to really convince people that here is why this is going to be even more scratch proof than Gorilla glass which is pretty damn scratch proof. I’ve got Gorilla glass on three different phones and, I carry them unshielded in my pocket and, there’s barely a nick on any of them.

So, I’m wondering though if it’s less because of being more scratch resistant and, more because this allows them to manufacture this phone in a brand new way. I did notice that the edges of the front bezel are really nicely rounded over.

Leo: Yes.

Andy: They’re not rounded to be fitted onto something else. It looks like that is supposed to be the leading surface of the phone and, maybe it’s possible they went with this material is because it’s easier to do that.

Leo: Both of you guys have experience of vetting rumors like this. We, should say that rumors that come out of Cupertino are rare and often wrong. Maybe  because Apple is so good at keeping the lid on its own employees, but that the supply chain in China is much harder to keep a lid on.

Rene: Yes.

Leo:……so as you point it’s not that unusual to see parts come out of China.

Andy: This really is about the time when you expect some parts to leak out.

Leo: hmmmmm

Andy:…..if this had come out four or five months ago you’d be ……yes…..right…..maybe? But, two or three months before you’re expecting a new iPhone release, it just seems more credible than it would otherwise.

Leo: And, Rene this would be hard thing to fake I would imagine?

Rene: I mean……you never put anything past practical jokers, but it would be hard to fake. There’s very little incentive for faking it. I mean Marques can get videos views for a lot of things.

Leo: I mean…..to say Marques did…..it would be Sonny Dixon……yes…..

Rene: Sonny Dixon……yes……you’re only as good as your reputation with this kind of thing.

Leo: Yes.

Rene: If you’re doing it consistently then you’ve got a good reputation, if you try and pass one over people you don’t. The thing that I thought was interesting too was that whether sapphire is better or not it would be hard to tell that the same video with this panel and a five S panel side by side. (Panelists looking at YouTube video)

Leo: Yes.

Rene:…….see what the actual differences are. It’s the same with 64 bits…..it doesn’t mean much to people but you put it into a box and suddenly another phone doesn’t have it.

So you’re at the store and Apple phone says sapphire glass, does that one have it? No, okay I’m getting the sapphire phone.

Leo: Who doesn’t…….I mean my kids have spidered every one of their iPhones screens, who hasn’t seen this happen a million times, I mean if………….there’s a promise that if your iPhone screen or any phone screen, I mean is more robust and durable that is…….that is a genuine benefit……that is not merely, oh here’s a check box on it.

Rene: My iPhone Five has been scratched twice now actually on the front of the screen.

Leo: But, now don’t they have to attach this glass?

Andy: Yes, that was what I was going to say…..Whether this actually means that you’re going to crack your actual screen less likely than before that remains to be seen. If all it does is make the front look very pretty and this doesn’t reduce…..increase the cost of the phone then that’s a win. Also, the other is a win, like you were saying a minute ago the part of selling an iPhone that part of making it seems like it’s 50 per cent magic, and if you say we have this magical new material on the front that says absolutely nobody else has and, one of the reasons why no one else has it is because no one else can figure out how to make the phone but of course we did.

So, remember………how to reduce military grade wind shield glass for the front end and, the back which now make it the most durable and wonderful and it took only about two weeks to realize,……. Oh now I have two panes of glass that can shatter if I drop it accidentally instead of just one, so really cool, really cool really interesting but let’s get a couple of hundred…..couple of millions of these into people’s hands to see what this cover, whatever it is does for the phone.

Leo: I don’t know how meaningful it is, because……… but here’s the…….a Chinese with probably a similar part and they show the same kind of robustness until they put it under the tires of what they said was 1.6 ton vehicle, and then in fact……let me see if I can get to that part here……here it is…..

Rene: You’ve got to love this whole industry, yes……torturing parts…….

Leo: And they skipped……. Moved  on to do exactly the same thing…….actually that looks like the video from Marques Brownlee, so I don’t know…….(interrupted by Rene)

Rene: It’s hard to afford…..

Leo: So, I have in my hands for what it’s worth…..this is a Samsung Galaxy S3 ummmmm front cover, let’s just take this off…….I want to get five million views. And, I have a hard sharp knife…..(hitting the front screen with a knife)…..not a scratch. It’s pretty hard to use a sharp knife.

Rene: Also, the panel by itself is thin and it will bend, when it is on the ……

Leo: (bends the screen and it snaps) ooooh it’s flexible……I think I’m bleeding.

Andy: Oh damn (Leo examines finger with blood)

Leo: Well, there you go.

Andy: Would somebody please sweep those glass shards off the table.

Leo: Is that glass?

Andy: Yes, well it’s pointy….is that blood?

Leo: ..……wow……okay don’t do this at home. I can’t drink my water or my coffee now.(cross talk) And, I hope that the people in the front row, that their eyesight is okay?

And, meanwhile let’s get another shot of the blood because I do want those five million views. (Leo holding his finger that was bleeding slightly) Yes, that’s real blood folks. (Leo puts bleeding finger in mouth)

Rene: Go for his audience.

Andy: Now, let’s be really careful here and look at that stuff that you peeled off at the top. Did any of them say don’t try to break it with your bare-hands, if it doesn’t then we have got a lawsuit.

Rene: Samsung money Leo, Samsung money.

Leo: (putting away crushed screen) I didn’t really expect that. Can you give me a……

Andy: One thought Leo that was not something that I thought to do instinctively myself. (Panelists laughing)

Leo: I take it that it’s art.

Andy: We suffer for our art.

Rene: We have the power of millions of smart phone brains, key board strokes and …….

Leo: So, we can say this much that it’s better than the Galaxy S3 front cover.

Rene: Yes.

Leo: Ladies and gentlemen I have proven it.

Andy: You still, you still can’t drive your rental truck over it, Really, why screw with us Apple, if you’re saying you can’t run a rental over it.

Leo: I don’t know if it’s glass, shards of……… or is it just plastic?

Rene: If people were watching it would be a super cut between Leo and Marques Brownlee. (Leo laughing)

Leo: Let’s take a break.

Andy: Yes, let’s do that.

Leo: No, no before we do that, other iPhone rumors, Ming Chi Kuo - good or bad I can’t remember, is Ming Chi…..

Rene: He is 50/50.

Leo: …..50/50 says and this is convenient, remember that five and half inch iPhone we got….and, by the way one thing we do know…..if this part is real as…..everybody has said and it seems likely….this sapphire part…..whether it’s sapphire or not……I don’t know but it does seem like it’s a real part. If that’s the case that’s 4.7 inches so that does confirm that is a 4.7 inch iPhone.

Ming Chi Kuo who’s among other analysts has said that there will be a 4.7 and there’ll be five and half inch iPhone this week said,’yaaaa maybe not the five half inch, they have trouble making that work’.

Rene: I don’t know every year, every year…..

Leo: Every year…..

Rene: The iPhone was delayed. What’s funny is I was going through my IRSS video and it did not say the honest headline which is,’the analyst adjusts his forecast for when Apple’s going to ship.’ It said…..iPhone 5.5 inch delayed. Delayed from his previous guess.

Andy: Yes, let’s get rid of that exactly. (cross talk)…..that way you get two from the rumor.

Leo: Yes, so that is exactly right, he said, no Apple never said, he said, you know what we need here is a dust buster(Leo still clearing up the glass from his desk)

A dust buster (Laughing).

Rene: What you need is a Dyson.

Leo: I need a Dyson….. We do have a Dyson. Jesus, that thing hurt. It was like stabbing me…..it looked like…….

Andy: It looked like it hurt, Leo.

Leo: It looked like…..

Andy: It looked like several jagged pieces of material sprayed all over the place.

Leo: I nearly blinded myself.

Andy: I was going to say like safety goggles.

Leo: Next time Burke remind me to wear all……you know what all the safety goggles are at home so that we could safely fire our mini canon.

Andy: There’s a reason why Dust Busters has this ongoing relationship with that Almena Balm range.

Leo: We got to do this…..give…..we’ve got to do this…….I can’t sit here in the shards. (sounds of vacuuming on the desk) I ain’t got time to bleed my friends. Thank-you…(crew sweeping up the glass shards)

Andy: Look at the positive here……..if Apple really does have like a sapphire cover that’s more resistant to scratching and breakage. I will bet you 18 dollars right now that Apple uses this video in the roll up video.

Leo: (laughing) I want to be the Adrian Kingsley Hughes of the iPhone 6 that’s all. I want to be Mr. Toxic Health too.

Andy: We don’t want to test our competitors screen covers but some of you in the media decided to do it on your own and…..well let’s see what happens.

Leo: Hey, Burke was that a genuine Samsung replacement part? We don’t know.

Chad: He screamed, ‘yes,’ from the kitchen.

Leo:  He said, ‘yes,’………so he had for know how we’re showing how to fix tons stuff so we had some replacement parts, so that’s a genuine Samsung. All right. Don’t try this at home. (Leo chortling with laughter and shaking his hand)

Rene: That’s cappuccino monkey glass.

Leo: I’m actually disappointed I was actually looking for a four or five and half inch, but I really didn’t expect five and half inch that just seems so un-Apple to make that leap from four inches all the way to five and half inches.

Rene: If you look at the continuity between phones and tablets though, they’ll have something at four inches, something at you know…..close to five inches, something close to six inches, something close to seven, something close to nine and then maybe twelve.

Leo: May be you think eventually?

Rene: Yes.

Leo: So, there will be at some point of five and half or six inch or something. I’m going to bet a tablet or a phone?

Andy: I don’t know there’s so much really great experimentation happening with Samsung, with HTC and others. And, it seems as though every time they come up with a new form factor they find a market for it somewhere. So, I too am a little bit skeptical about a 5.5 inch iPhone only because it seems because that’s big enough that Apple’s going to start to say well we have a larger iPhone, it’s called the iPad mini, it runs on the soft-ware in pairs because of this new iOS8 features. It can use the exact same…….it can receive phone calls from your iPhone why would you want something else. But, who knows……I’m…..I’m…..I’, right now on the big review board I’ve got three different devices that I’m kind of contemplating whether they’re worth writing about.

But, every time…..I see these different……I’ve got the Galaxy Tab 5 which is a little bit smaller than the iPad mini, but not that much, but it is still a very compelling size…..(interrupted by Leo)

Leo:…….is it five inches?

Andy: I don’t know the exact screen size, imagine……..imagine that something about the same length as the iPad mini only has a…..wide screen…… wide screen form factor.

Leo: Yes.

Andy: Which is nice because it’s still……. makes it just slim enough to make it pocket-able and, yet given that this device has the ability to run side by side apps and, also the abilities to watch movies in that form factor. It’s a very compelling size so I don’t…..I was……trying…..as these rumors of a 5.5 inch iPhone have been getting attraction, I have been wondering……gee if I had been presented with that choice of between4.7 or 5.5 inch iPhone, which one would I go for? And, I honestly don’t know which one I would go for.

Leo: Rumors are……well Ming Chi Kuo says might not be till later this year or early next year, I think at this point we’re just going to stop listening to Ming Chi Qou.

Rene: Winter is coming.

Andy: You read through these things with a certain amount of expectation, those expectations are absolutely made and like okay he’s doing basically what we’re doing right now which is having a conversation about what might happen. Only, whereas we’re obviously three people having a conversation, he’s saying, ‘I’m am an analyst…..I’ve, ……I’ve looked inside my crystal ball and, well I think that…’.

No, you just thought, of the many possibilities in the infinite world that exists just to adjunct to our own reality, there is a reality in which Apple is planning on 5.5 inch iPhone and, they they’re going to ship it around Mobile World Congress around during the fall and, you nod and say yes I suppose so, if there an infinite number of universes just join one of them indeed could have dinosaurs all for men and, they’re all using  5.5 inch iPhones in February and not in September.

Leo: I have to say……this is a 4.7 inch phone the Moto X and Motorola made a big deal like this is the perfect size because you can still do the one handed operation and, it does……. I have to say that it fits in the hand better than a 5 inch but it gives more screen role than the iPhone. When you....... you put that next to the 5S, it really doesn’t look much bigger……at least it doesn’t……it’s not going to appear……and all the stores will go …….wow it’s a lot bigger five and half inch, they would.

Rene: I mean one of the things just for Ming Chi Kuo……..he is one of the more reliable analysts, his timing is often suspect but this is one of the reasons why Apple doesn’t pre-announce something. They never said, ‘we’re going to have a 5.5 inch phone this fall, because even if they’re working very hard enough on the 5.5 inch they’ve not made one before so they have no idea how hard it is going to be, what the yield rates are going to be, what the cost structure is going to be. They could be shooting for it the fall, or it could slip till Spring, but that……they keep all that inside, all the sausage making inside because they just want to be able to announce a product, and that’s very different than other companies.

And, so you can look at the parts companies, and Tim Cook has said this it’s hard to get data from one metric but you can look at it and, say oh….these screens are coming, I mean but you have idea when Apple’s going to launch forth, because they may not know yet until they do I mean it’s just idle speculation.

Leo: Yes, okay…. so everybody keep that in mind. Could I also point Irene’s in the chat room, if they really do have the sapphire cover I’m definitely buying the next iPhone because I’ve already cracked my screen. This does not mean your screen won’t crack it just,……… it won’t scratch maybe there’s still glass underneath.

Andy: Not much of your iPhone is bendy in the way that screen cover is bendy if you keep it in mind.

Leo: So, this would be very easy to ……….just want to point that out. Bottom line we don’t know anything, but we’ll find out.

Rene: That’s interesting though because I heard a rumor when iO7 was introduced that the next iPhone would have smoother edges because all the bezel gestures include an iOS7, made you move your hand over that area more and, they thought the sharper edge was not as nice. So, it would be nice if something like that would come through.

Leo: This has the same thing as bezel edges and, of course you’re talking about gestures that made Microsoft Windows 8 famous, because gestures no-one else has used at this day in iOS8, the idea that you will swipe your finger not, from on the screen, but from the edge of the screen and, it would give you and would be a special gesture and Windows 8 brings in the charms menu or swipes to the next screen. And, a lot of people find that very annoying. (Cross talk)

Rene: Now iOS7 has the universal back gesture, it’s the button as well so if you want the button, you can use that.

Leo: Right.

Rene:…….it’s like a keyboard shortcut, if you’re very adept at using gestures to navigate, you can go much faster just by swiping through things.

Leo: Burke’s apologizing for giving me the amazing shattering screen. That’s not your fault……..Look he wrote a little post it note, ‘Sorry.’ You never told me to try to break it…….he did bring me a knife. FCC rules might change, thanks to a couple of friendly senators. Nab Fisher of Nebraska, J Rockefeller of West Virginia they introduced allows the E Label act which allows companies, up to now……the FCC……when you get the FCC approval on your device, is required that you etch it into the device, which why the iPhone has that ugly FCC CE thing etched into it. Maybe with this new rules the iPhone will not have that although I have to point out that the FCC has its own etching but there is also the European approval process and there is that etching, includes the European process, probably Canadian too. (Leo reading something) on the iPhone back, so. You can’t see that can you.

Chad: No, not on your screen.

Leo: I was going to show you but it doesn’t matter. It’s not…..it’s not important, it’s not important. The CE is Europe, right? Here it is?

Rene: Looking for a CRTC, but I see none. Nothing.

Leo: No, CRTC? But I do see an X over the garbage can that means don’t throw your phone out. Good advice.

Andy: You do wonder to how……..to what degree does this drive Apple bananas, and to what degree they are willing to fight to see if there’s any way that we you cannot let us put all that crap on our phones.

Leo: Yes. Well apparently the senators are…..encourage…..it saves money too of course. Senators say allow them to pass the savings on to consumers, I wouldn’t hold out hope on that but…….

Rene: All that energy saved from that laser we can pocket.

Leo:…..(laughing), here’s an extra penny, don’t spend it all in one place. Alright now we’re going to talk a little bit about PersonalCapital(dot)com. I really love the idea of Personal Capital, I’m not going to mention since this is a Mac show the fact that Personal Capital immediately made an android wear app so that you could see how your investments are doing on your watch. That’s just a nice additional feature. Personal Capital, the idea is to help you manage your money and, you…..you put all your data into the Personal Capital website and, then you get a great dash board that shows you what your investments are, your net

worth is, where the market is going, but even more than that it really helps you to make you’re investing properly for a freer financial future.

This is something when you’re younger you don’t think about. I know I didn’t.

But, let me tell you it makes a big difference, if you start young, to pay attention to all of this stuff. All the apps are free, all the apps are secure including the android wear app, so that’s really cool to see that on your wrist. They have a mutual fee fund calculator so you can find out if you’re over paying for your mutual fees on 401k, fee analyzer, if you’re over paying for advice. You know I think there’s two problems that happen when people as they start to think ahead and, by the way most people don’t do it till they’re in their 40s and 50s, that was me. If you’re in 20s and 30s now is a good time to do this.

Either, they go somewhere where you get a personal financial adviser and, then kind pay them it’s not much they’re recommending stuff and they get commission on it something like it……that’s kind of creepy or you try to do it as I did, because I’m geek….I went online, and it’s kind of bewildering and I’m not getting the right advice and all your accounts are spread out. Personal Capital really solves this. I started using it about a year ago, Bill Harris came in here to try and negotiate…..about a year…..no…..it’s almost two years, and I just love it. All of your information in one place, go to personalcapital(dot)com(slash)macbreak. It is free, they do…..they do……if you want their financial advisers, these are certified financial advisers, planners they’re not on commission, they will tell you what your spending too much on. They will help you get a better idea of what you’re invested in when spending money. It’s really great, you only use it once, just to get an idea of where you stand. It’s great personalcapital(dot)com and I love it that they were so quick off the mark, and did an android wear app. So now when I get alerts when my 401k investments are tanking or going up or whatever. It’s like a personalized stock market widgets, personalcapital(dot)com(slash)macbreak, that’s free as well.

Moving right along, Apple has speaking of the FCC have submitted for approval to the FCC a dedicated iBeacon device, they…..they…..FCC makes these filings  public so when Apple or any company submits FC for approval then everybody knows something is up.

The hard-ware is like a rounded hub like device for the USB port dedicated on off switch, there are other companies that make iBeacons or not. But this is of course as we learned, I think thanks to you Rene the iBeacon is built into any late model Mac, iPad or iPhone. But this would be, you could put this in a store environment, you could put this in a museum. Tell me…… Explain to me what this device does, why you would want this, why this is in addition to what is being done already?

Rene: So, it’s interesting it’s all for indoor, sort indoor navigation and for proximity based things. So, for example if you have an iBeacon in the Twit studios, think of it almost like an FC, walk past it, it can trigger things on your phone, it can trigger interactions, you can label them so if you have a chain of restaurants they…..it gets a little bit complicated but they have a large ID and a small ID. The large ID……in this chain of restaurants……this is Starbucks…….sorry…..

Leo: Interesting.

Rene:…..as you get closer to it for example within 20 feet it can give you a notification when it thinks about you’re information, when you’re ten feet it can push content to you, here’s a bunch of stuff when you’re near me. It raises a lot of possibilities like guiding people through national parks if they have any accessibility issues, or helping you find products in a store, or even just the home automation if you come in and text your iBeacon does a bunch of things – increase your lights, turn on your television, close your garage doors all those sort of things. So if you think about it, it’s sort of like a network of location beacons that can then trigger actions on your device becomes very interesting.

Leo: I think of it like a bad girlfriend who tells me what I can do when I’m near her.

Rene: No because it doesn’t have any incentives, it’s set alone. (cross talk)

Andy: It’s nice because it’s not like other technical stores, it can’t actually capture your ID or things like that…….

Leo:…..ahhhh……doesn’t have any incentives

Andy:……it’s only just saying here’s your location…..

Leo:….it broadcasts but it doesn’t receive.

Andy: Right exactly, that’s why these things can last months and months and months and still run on battery.

Leo: That’s cool…..so…….

Andy:…..unless they add more smarts to it, the basis iBeacon idea you have a low power device that just says……the receiving device can get a very, very good fix on its location, exact location based on this but it’s not there to collect information from your device.

Leo: Excellent, I get it now. Now we will solve privacy issues that allows people to have with iBeacon as Chad in the chat room says I’m turning my Bluetooth off. First just turning Bluetooth off disable iBeacon.

Rene: There’s an independent control in iBeacon control in iOS and you can go in and just turn it off and I never want to be bothered by this. It uses Bluetooth LE, Blue tooth energy and yes turning Bluetooth off will also stop it. I don’t believe it does anything with Wi-Fi so you’re safe you don’t need to deny yourself Bluetooth just to stop iBeacon.

Leo: Just turn off iBeacon and….

Rene: Yes.

Andy: And, it should also be said that let’s say you have Starbucks app on your phone, the Starbucks can find that beacon and then and the Starbucks app that transmits to Starbucks home central….oh it’s Andy Ihnatko of this one…..

Leo: That’s possible.

Andy:……but the device itself is going to be basic.

Leo: That makes sense, so Starbucks beacon…..you come in the store, the beacon sees you your Starbucks app sees where it is, but it could do this with or without the iBeacon,….yes….

Rene: It’s got to do with GPS, but GPS in the car is a much more powerful device than iBeacon does.

Leo: Mark Gurman of 9 to 5 Mac said this could also have applications for home automation, this could be part of the home kit. (short pause)

Rene: Would you just be experimenting with them now. A bunch of developers have just bought them, I know David Barnard put them up in his local coffee shop and it’s a huge experimentation period right now. This is supposed to be one of those technologies where Apple has a couple of ideas you could use it for. But, because the frame work is there people want to discover a lot of other amazing other opportunities.

Andy: Yes, there has been one developer that I have been in touch with who just wrote for his own personal use an app that he’s a got a little coin powered iBeacon just inside his luggage and, so he doesn’t really have to get up from the chair at the baggage point terminal till his little app says, ‘oh by the way your iB…….your piece of luggage is actually on the carousel because it’s now about only 20 feet away. So, it’ll be….

Rene: Try it with them…..(cross talk)

Andy: What happens when this goes from something to almost no-where that people who know how to use the Mac have access to them, these things are now everywhere and now there are signals all over the place. It’s kind of like when you think about there’s no need right now for regulations on how to use quadrocopters, but every best buy has them and they cost 90 dollars and, people who are just jerks who don’t care about privacy or who don’t care about crashing a Berling bladed copter into the middle of the beach, start messing around with that’s when you start to wonder, okay is this a university of a good idea or is this good idea for me to have and nobody else.

Leo: So, the Patent and Trade-Mark office has refused Apple’s request to register Touch ID as a trademark. They base their refusal on the likelihood of confusion, there’s a company called Chronos which also has a touch ID…..also….

Rene: That’s still on the iPhone right?

Leo: Yes, yes I mean Apple has a couple routes that they can go and try to buy the other guy. What did they do with CISCO?

Rene: They gave them money.

Leo: Give them a check…….buy them off.

Andy: Wrote them a check…..yes.

Leo: Or you could change the name I guess if you really wanted a trade-mark. According to the Patent and Trade-Mark office, quote: In the identifications of good applicants must use the common commercial generic names for the goods, be as complete and specific as possible and avoid the use of indefinite words and phrases, like accessories, components, devices, equipment, materials, parts of products. Such words must be followed by namely……

Andy: Yes. When you’re asking for a trade-mark you have to get the trade-mark on the phone. You can’t simply I own iPhone for cupcakes.

Leo: Ahhhh…..I got it.

Andy: Rather, it’s okay if you say I own iTouch for cupcakes, you can’t say I own it for any products that I’m going to sell to a retail audience. Trade-marks only protect one specific product for one specific kind of use. Then if you have plans that go beyond that one thing you have to say specifically what you have in my phone. And, that another area in which the Trade-Mark office said no.

Leo: They’ve got to stop using interns on these Trade-Mark applications Apple.

Rene: Well, the want to avoid confusion right, so if you touch ID the pants then for some-one else for the phone fine…..

Leo: Right.

Rene: ……but if some-one else is using the phone ID for a computer line device then you want to use then they think it’s confusing.

Leo: When we trade-marked Twit for instance, we trademarked it in the area of Broadcast, news and entertainment shows and something like that. And Twitter which we thought would have kind of a conflict and we talked with them….our lawyers and their lawyers Twitter has its trade-mark in whatever it was internet, social media and so it was decided that we don’t conflict.

Rene: We co-exist.

Leo: We co-exist, although we’re separate there’s no confusion, separate areas. Although, everybody apparently doesn’t pay attention to that because whenever I say I work….I own a company called Twit, everybody always oh Twitter! And, I go I wish-no.

Andy: That’s exactly the situation about……think about now you can’t launch a service or a company without having to make up a brand new name for it. Because every single English word that could be a domain name is now already be a domain name…..who ever has weatherapp(dot)com that’s it for everybody, so. (cross talk)

Leo: Cronus’ s trade mark…..touch ID is actually a fingerprint recognition device so, I think Apple’s kind of out of luck here. They either going to buy or pay .

Cronus some money……..that’s the patent that the Apple store will change.

Andy: Yes, they’re going to write a check…..they got money there they’re going to write a check. (cross talk)

Leo: If you noticed lately that the music on hold when you call the Apple store has got better……..

Rene: Every day Leo. (Laughing)

Leo: Chad, music sound so much better, you can thank a redittor, he posted on redit…..I once sent Tim Cook an email about the quality of music on hold with Apple….that was super low quality. Therefore an upbeat rock song sounded like pure distortion, really aggravated me because I was on hold for twenty plus minutes for something so simple to set up a genius appointment, much to my surprise a lady from Cupertino, called me the next day saying she’d received a concerning email from Tim, about ugly distortion music on hold and Tim had tested this himself and agreed he assured me that the whole music would be tested to make sure that it sounded pleasant on all types of phones and connections.

Rene: It’s why they bought Beats, Leo, we finally figured out the reason.

Leo: Finally……

Andy: God, I love Apple……I don’t mean that sarcastically or ironically. I mean this is the company where someone can think that that’s a bad thing, contact the CEO of the company, the CEO will actually put himself on hold and say, ‘Yes, damn it, that sound awful, lets fixed this,’ and it gets fixed. I love Apple.( Andy whispers this)

Leo: Isn’t that great, Cook says he reads every email he gets……hundreds a day and obviously like most CEOs……big public companies they have the office of the executive or the office of the chairman that responds to these. You know he’s got people, I’m sure he doesn’t read them all alone at night. He’s got people sitting there next to him…..(Leo Laughing Rene Interrupts)

Rene:…the royalty Tim Cook reason………

Leo: Fix that. But, yes I think it’s great that they pay attention to that.

Andy: Especially, if you’re on hold, you’re probably not there on hold to tell Apple how happy you’re with the product. It’s because you’ve got a problem that needs to be solved. If you have to listen to, ‘Having my baby,’ over and over again at like you know crackly clicker…….. quality that’s not going to make you happy when you finally talk to a person.

Leo: You did hear Veronica Belmont and Ryan Block’s conversation with Comcast? Comcast, apparently has apologized……….but, I don’t know…

Rene: I think they apologized because it was Ryan, sadly…..if it was Joe Schally having a go they would have just got the screen job.

Leo: So, Comcast…..what happened is that Ryan and Veronica are moving and, they wanted to switch to a provider called Astound……..what’re we looking at. Here, I have it here, can you hear my audio……..and, so they called  Comcast……. Now I should mention before we play this. This is ten minutes in, they were talking……they were transferred of course as you will be when you try to cancel Comcast to a customer …..rep….. retention expert and the customer retention expert immediately said why are you switching and, Ryan said, ‘We told them several times, but he wouldn’t stop asking……..

Rene: Apparently, Veronica was on for ten minutes before Ryan………

Leo: Ryan said, ‘What’s going on,?’ and picked up and started recording it.

Excerpt from recording: Ryan: Okay we would like to disconnect, we would like to disconnect please.

Customer Service: Okay so you think you don’t want the ……..(bad echo) Ryan……..help me understand why you don’t  want…… I will understand

Ryan: Why don’t you disconnect us?

CS: Do you think you would mind if I had a conversation with you about allowing this…….I mean keeping your service? I am trying to find out why you’re looking to cancel the service?

Ryan: I don’t understand, is this for like ……to me (cross talk)

CS: You can contact us from the Comcast store and we can connect your service there. (cross talk) Then you can kill two birds with one stone……you’ve got to return the…..card…

Ryan: We’re just going to mail the …….card in and so if you can just please cancel our service.

Leo: This goes one for many, many, minutes,

CS: I mean you have been with us since 2005, nine years……..(bad sound)

Rene: It’s not that the guy did not want to cancel, he doesn’t want it to be that they cancelled under his phone call.

Leo: Is that what it was? I read it up there have been lots of conversations about this. Comcast is embarrassed as they ought to be. Some people have said this is probably a third party company that was trained by some agency, not by Comcast, to never give up. Because the guy it takes him another ten minutes to convince the guy I really want to cancel.

Rene: It’s probably not the training though, there’s a couple of people on the phone……on  Twitter who did retention……they said their paycheck is affected by the amount…..if you can put down a reason like why their leaving, if their reason is their moving then it’s not your fault. But if they just think that you lost a customer, they just won’t get paid properly here.

Leo: Let’s put that up again and check I want to read Comcast’s statement.

Leo reading the statement: ‘We are very embarrassed by the way our employees……

Leo: So, we now know is a Comcast representative,’ spoke with Mr. Block and Miss Belmont and are contacting them and personally apologize,’ by the way I have received calls from the Comcast executive office, you never want to ever get that call. They’re worse than, Arty Fufkin (Rene Laughing), they’re horrible, any way let me read some more, put it up again, ‘the way in which our representative communicated with them is unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives. We are investigating the situation and we will take quick action. While the overwhelming majority of our employees work very hard to do the right thing every day, we are using this unfortunate experience to reinforce how important it is to always treat our customers with the utmost respect.’

However, I have to say that as soon as they posted this, I saw many, many, people saying, ‘OH yes’ ‘Oh yes’ I have had this happen and not just with Comcast.

Rene: It’s not a lie though they don’t train people to talk that way. But, if your job is you got to stop these people from cancelling their accounts, otherwise you don’t get paid, your natural reaction is going to be to do anything you can to stop them from cancelling on your call.

Leo: I guess you’re right…..yes. That’s kind of what he said, ‘bring it to the store and cancel.’

Rene: Yes.

Leo: (Laughing)

Rene: Because then he doesn’t have to mark you as lost. If he marks you as lost then in some of these places you lose your incentives.

Leo: It’s kind of how this whole thing is structured.

Rene: There was this great…….I forget what it was……, there was this great story how a company, how a company decided they wanted to prioritize on all the right things about customer service. They didn’t want to make their customers wait and they didn’t want to…….they guaranteed that you wouldn’t be transferred around and, they guaranteed all these things. And, what ended up happening on the implementation side people refused to transfer you because it was a bad mark on their record and they would hang up on you if it went on too long, and they couldn’t have a phone call that went on too long,

Leo:  Oh Wow,

Rene: So, the goal you set as a company, you actually have to understand……(Leo and Rene talking over each other)

Leo: The unintended consequences……

Rene: If you goal shouldn’t be too have a short conversation, rather than transfer him, it should be to make the customer happy. Then the end result is a right one, but arbitrary decisions like you can’t lose as many customers, then you have this result.

Leo: Brian Roberts the CEO of Comcast has said, ‘We want to be just like Apple.’

(laughing) Okay Brian you’ve got a little work to do.

I can’t imagine that ever, I don’ think anybody has ever told a story like that when dealing with Apple.

Rene: You’re probably not paid on refusing returning your computers.

Leo: So, that’s the first thing you do exactly.

Andy: There’s occasionally……our trolls has occasionally got emails who have had a really bad experience with……at a Genius Bar. Mostly, I have sent this exact same Mac Book back again time and time again over the last five months with the exact same problems, those are definitely out flyers and, as not to defend Comcast but that was exactly the right way to respond to that. I am glad that companies are least getting a little bit more savvy about what they’re no longer allowed to do, in response to bad press like this. You simply say that this was completely wrong, we are really embarrassed about this, we are going to reach our representative to personally to solve this and we are going to use to help train our people better.

And then there you can leave the conversation open-ended. You know we’re all old enough to remember, those wizened days seven or eight years, you get a call from some-one saying, ‘we’re going to ask you to take down that post because we have lawyers and we believe that …….you will not only have to pay our damages but also pay our lawyer fees.’

And, no that the Barbara Streisand effect is a well-known part of the problem.

Leo: Comcast, you know to be fair, they were the first to use Twitter to respond, I remember the Comcast carries the account for Frank Alyson and, so there are certainly people within Comcast that are trying to make it a better company, but I think you’ve got to make the rules support what you’re trying to do. (Leo laughing)

Boy, when I listened to that I think Jenny Gardena posted on Boing, Boing, she said, ‘a trigger alert this will cause PTSD, if you cause this.’ And, I didn’t play the whole thing, you don’t……I don’t know how Ryan kept his cool, because the guy got worse and worse and more and more, and more demanding, it was really terrible. Really terrible.

Rene: I like Ryan response on Twitter too where he said,’ Please don’t fire this guy, please fix your system.’

Leo: Yes, not the guy’s fault, I’m sure he is, you know…… trying to keep his job or get his bonus or whatever.

Andy: I do feel a bit sorry for him too. That’s a terrible job to have. Just like I don’t like being called by telemarketers but you feel a little bit sorry for the person who has to be in that little cubicle for eleven hours a day trying to make a quota, trying to sell photo-copier toner to people who don’t even own a photo-copier. And, all they have is this list that just tells them call this person.

Leo: Yes, it’s the worst job in the world ever. Some-body in the chat room said that it is true that Apple care representatives are paid, or maybe bonuses by the customer satisfaction surveys. That’s a better way to do it. Ask the customer after the experience,’ how was your experience?’ now Ryan’s not going to give them a positive customer satisfaction response. That’s how you do it.

Even if people are no longer a customer you want them to go away feeling good about your company.

Andy: Absolutely, when I had to cancel my Five service with Verizon. I called them , clearly the person I talked to cancelled my service within five minutes. She absolutely did walk me through what was the………is there a problem that we can solve for you, I said……. No I’m just using my phone…..Okay that’s fine, so….. you’re already paid till the end of the month, we will give you a partial refund for what you did use, we will also keep your account semi-active for six months, so if you want to re-engage in the next six months, you can reconnect, is there anything else I can do for you. I was literally like pausing for like,’ is she actually….. doing exactly what I said, she could be the most helpful person that she could be right now. (Lots of laughter and cross talk)

Leo: You really don’t expect this.

Andy: if Verizon had got me to pay an extra two months for this service, because I was honestly not looking forward to the phone call and I was expecting to be handed off to three different people, before they would actually do it. (Andy really laughing) And I almost had the script in my hand, ‘no I see…..there’s nothing you can do or say that will make me continue this service…….oh thank-you, thank-you Debbie……Debbie was it.

Leo: Thank-you, very much. (Laughing)

Andy: May was it. You too have a nice day too. Thank-you very much.

Leo: Thank-you. Hey, good news, if you watched Apple’s presentation at WWDC over their new Swift programming language and like me and many others were intrigued, and thought gee……… this would be interesting to play with. You can now for free, you don’t have to have the 99 dollar developer account, yes if you go to developer(dot)apple(dot)com(slash)swift(slash)blog. There’s a new blog they just started, they talk about Code 6 Beta 3 and let you know it’s free as long as you’re a registered developer. That means you don’t have to pay, you just have to register.

So, that is……. that is great I’m sure that’s part of the plan for Swift frankly.  Clearly, Swift is the kind of thing schools and other would like to use, because it seems like a good teaching language.

Rene: An official Apple Blog Leo, you would never think you’d see that day.

Leo: Really, they don’t do that do they?

Rene: No.

Leo: Very Microsoft of them.

Rene: (nodding yes)

Andy: I wonder also……, I wonder also if part of the goal is to also to get new developer who don’t want to spend the 99 dollars……who are established developers either in the Web or whatever, don’t necessarily want to spend 99 dollars to experiment with a brand new language, but have heard enough about it, it’s for free……sure enough I’ll give it  a try.

Leo: Yes, yes I agree. That’s not the way to do it.

Andy: Like Rene says, oh…….. there are……..there are……. Apple employees that we know who have official but not quite official blogs where their bosses know that they’re doing it. They just can’t acknowledge that there is this Apple employee who is doing something benefits Apple, but the fact that you’ve got this Apple designed blog that is another thing that I didn’t think that I would see this time last year.

Leo: That is a good news – that is a Tim Cook-ism. We call it Cook era. By the way it would be free anyway if you have a Mac,……..once it comes out……. once it comes out in Beta. You know, you  can download Code Five right now and use it. So, that……this is the pre-release…..version of it and it will be free if you register as a developer.

Rene: And they’re making changes. Chris Latina is active on the Apple board, where it is either, if you are a developer forum on Apple and Latina’s in there and he’s answering questions. People are submitting bugs and they made substantial changes in Beta three and how Swift and the syntax itself. And, they said they would do that and it’s nice to see they’re actually doing that at a fair clip.

Andy: And, that’s another thing that allows them to dog food this brand new language on a much wider scale.

Leo: Apple had also promised a public beta for Yosemite, that didn’t happen whilst I was in Hawaii did it?

Rene: Not yet.

Leo: Okay. Something happened, and that was that big load thing, I thought oh! Good I got Yosemite, instead…… which 10 (point)9(point)4 I guess or is it 5?

Rene: In the iTunes Leo, in the iTunes Leo extras on the Apple TV, my long nightmare is over.

Leo: Tell me about that because I haven’t looked since I came back. What happened?

Rene: So Apple had iTunes extra long time ago, they were actually on the original Apple TV and then when Apple TV became and iOS device we lost them. They sort of kind of got kind of dark for a while. Last week Apple announced a whole new kind of iTunes extra and, they released a new version of the iTunes for the desktop. They……..so Apple TV updates they can change things on the web. So, Apple TV was updated but it wasn’t enabled so they enabled iTunes extras for the Apple TV and, they said the iTunes extra would be coming to iOS 8 this fall.

What that means is that companies can do DVDs extra and Blue ray extras for movies on the Apple TV, on iTunes and on iOS.

If you got to Avengers right now for example, you’ll see there’s a gag reel, there’s bonus features, some movies have commentaries and they’re doing it. It’s always been a Wifkip that does all this stuff, making it dynamic so movie companies can add more content over time if they want to as well. So, it’s pretty clever, the one drawback is that not all the movies that have the old iTunes had the extras have the new ones. So, if you look on the desk top you’ll see the iTunes extras or bracket originals. If that movie has been updated they’ll let you keep the original version. But the new ones are much better because you can stream whereas previously you had to download like four gigs of extras now they all just stream.

And, they’re in HD which is great too.

Leo: I really miss DVD extras, I think particularly the director commentary. I thinks DVDs extra was the best thing ever. I know you do a movie podcast, don’t you where you own commentary. (asking Rene)

Rene: Yes, I actually like to hear what the director was thinking……editors absolutely.

Leo: I bought the Blue ray edition of The Godfather trilogy solely because Coppala does the first narration of the first Godfather.

Rene: He ran some of the workshops to see some of the stuff that they built.

Leo: I love that stuff…….yes. It’s the commentaries though that I really like. If……if you’re a fan of a film to hear why something is……or Princess Coppala says yes the actor ad libbed leave the gun take the cannoli line he tells them the whole story behind that scene and yes he said that, we said that’s good keep that in.

Andy: The Coppala commentaries are particularly interesting because if you buy the entire set, and I got it home I…..I bought the DVD set for the commentaries like you said and actually I think over one day just decided to watch the entire trilogy.

Leo: Yes.

Andy: …….and so you really do see the……you know that Coppola recorded these sort of all at once, not as though he recorded one in 1970, the other 1972 and the other one in 1990 whatever.

But you can see as he’s watching this movie he’s reliving the part of his life he had to experience while he made that movie, because he’s tone during GodFather Part One is,’ Hello I was the young buck and, you know we’re all experimental and I didn’t care about being fired because I knew this was the right way to do things.’ (Andy speaking in strange voice)

And, then during The God Father Part Two he’s reliving that I was the God of this studio I can do……..

Leo: Right.

Andy:……… no wrong, they gave me everything that I asked for. GodFather Part Three (Andy changes voice) ‘well, it was a different era, and we, and we had the third shooting that day. And with no options, I mean…..(Leo Laughing) I mean I asked for it one more time but this the third time.’

Leo: It’s really funny. Yes, he talks about having a re-shoot, they didn’t want Marlon Brando in The Godfather because he was young, he wasn’t the old man.

And they had to re-shoot the very famous scene in the olive oil factory upstairs. Boy, I just…… you know this is all stuff you don’t know when you see the movie for the first time----it’s wonderful. So, (cross talk) is that the sort of thing that we’re going to see in iTunes extra, they’re going to bring those things back?

Rene: If they make them it’s up to the studios, studios make them available. Some of them have directories commentaries some don’t, some just have bonus features some have feature ads. Some of them (cross talk)

Leo: Seems like there’s not a lot of director’s commentaries anymore unfortunately.

Rene: No, it’s sad but like the Marvel Movies have ten minute mini movies on all of them so you can watch all those special episodes so it depends on what you would prefer when it comes to the extras.

Andy: I think that studios can screw things up because they really do expect you to come in for free and, do this, and at best they promise is we’ll send you copy of the DVD when it comes out but they never do. So, I think the word has kind of come out that if you want me on your commentary track you have to pay me for it.

Leo: Oh the studios won’t do that……no?

Andy: Yes.

Leo: That sucks!

Rene: Unless you’re Peter Jackson you’re filming it all anyway.

Leo: Yes, yes Peter’s smart…….he does the behind the scenes and everything as he’s going. He knows where the money is……that way they can eighteen versions of the Hobbit DVD, that way. It seems like they have. I bought it already. Oh, but you would want this one because it’s got this.

Rene: The Star Trek ones are the same thing, because whenever you had a question why did HHJ do that, it would switch to somebody else for that part of the commentary.

Leo: (Laughing uproariously) Really, is that true.

Rene: Yes, there would be more people like five people on the commentary.

Leo: JJ’s not saying it.

Rene: No, he would like do the big door act…….’I did this scene so carefully and, one of the crazy things would happened…..and you didn’t hear a word from him.

Leo: How funny. Apple is bringing in a new chip supplier, of course as many people know Apple’s chips are for the iPhone and iPad, I gather are all still made by Samsung still, yes.

Rene: hmmmm, the story came out…..

Leo: According to  the Wall Street Journal the Taiwan semi-conductor manufacturer or TSMC is now starting to make chips for the iPhones and the iPads.

Rene: I mean it’s interesting in that it’s happened last year and the year before and, I think on a couple of occasions, once I Fix It and Chip Works tore it…… it still turned out to be a Samsung part. (cross talk)

Again, this is almost like reading tea leaves, it’s really hard to tell what Apple’s doing based on one supplier’s report.

Leo: They made a deal last year to make chips, according to the Journal some analysts are skeptical that Taiwanese chip maker---- the world’s biggest contract ship maker by revenue could deliver Apple’s complicated designs. It’s probably good if you’re……..you know I don’t think it has to do with lawsuits…..I just think….it’s one app with more than one supplier for anything, I think and the scale that Apple has to make these things…….in demands, you know that you have a variety in place, just as soon as you can get them.

Rene: Right. There was a great Samsung commercial last week that was making fun of the quality of Apple’s LCD display……..

Leo: Right.

Rene: But my favorite part is that I went and looked at who made those displays and, 62 per cent were made by Samsung.

Leo: (Groaning) No….oooo, no…..ooo.

Rene: Yes.

Leo: I was thinking of the Wall Hugger’s ad, have you seen that one?

Rene: Yes, they did that one and then they did that one to show how great it is to have side by side apps with the crying baby, and then they did one about Olet versus LCD.

Leo: They’re never going to sell me…..although Apple’s doing side by side apps, you’re never going to sell me on the split screens on the little things but I have to say that this does highlight, problems (showing an ad) and by the way…..all phones……

Rene: Yes.

Leo: You go to the airport…..they’re all plugged in (Leo Laughing).

Rene: People love their iPhones so much, Leo, they won’t give them up even if they don’t charge.

Leo: Well, you know one of the advantages of Samsung has is remove able batteries. It’s not that they have a better battery life, but they have removable batteries and….they don’t really mention that for an additional fifty bucks you can buy an additional battery.

Rene: They do at the very end…..they do but none of these iPhone guys have a mophy juice pack…….

Leo: I don’t know……there’s lots of ways…….

Andy: Although that does point out that it’s nice to see someone trying to make leverage out of these user facing features that would………

Leo: Yes…..

Andy: We talk about subtle things and new operating system, but if you have a new feature of the operating system that will extend your battery life by 25 per cent, and now makers of android phones can now say---this phone one day….one day plus nine hours of battery life……

Leo: Yes….

Andy……according to our independent tests, same tests as the iPhone 6 when it comes gets exactly half a day of a battery life. That’s……to people …….to someone who walks into the store prepared to walk out after thinking about their choice on it for only 20 minutes that’s something that’s very tangible as a feature.

Leo: It’s…..it tells you the number one the complaint I hear most often……

Andy: And that’s……Google didn’t talk a lot about new features of the new operating system coming out…..the new version of Android coming out this fall. But, that was the one they really didn’t highlight, because they said that they were totally revamping the way these devices can deal with power consumption.

So, if that actually, so if that actually pays off that’s going to be something to deal with next year. (Cross Talk)

Leo: Somebody points out that airport is in Heathrow because Unites States is required or requested that TSA and other officials at airports when people are coming into Unites States ask them to turn on their devices to prove that their not bombs.

Apparently, US has intelligence that some terrorists are starting to build bombs that look like laptops and phones. And, so they’re demanding that you be able to turn on your devices as a word of warning….. if you’re coming into Unites States from Europe and other places. Make sure you’ve got your phone charged up so you can turn it on. May be that’s what they’re all doing.

Rene: Go for the full battery life.

Leo: Or, the risk is that they’ll confiscate it. By the way if you can’t turn it off don’t take it.

Rene: You have an hour to charge it front of them and, if you can’t they’ll…….

Leo: Really, you have an hour to charge it?

Rene: I think, it’s an hour, you can’t leave it. You can’t go and swap it for another device, you have to go plug it in and sit there, and charge it and then show them.

Leo: Come back when you can turn it on. You have one hour.

Andy: Some airports are even saying don’t even come back, because we’re not going to let you go to another part of the terminal and set it off. If they, if they, they think this could be a bomb, they think well……I am not going through with  the screening, so I may as well detonate it right here.

Leo: Oh My God.

Andy: I’m interested to see what happens the first time that somebody with money is asked to hand over their 1800 dollar computer with vital company secrets to it, and, they simply say here is the computer, the phone works and I’m going to use that to call my lawyer right now. How is that?

Leo: I don’t know, if he…….

Rene:……..a) terminate badge…here you go.

Leo: I don’t know.

Rene: They have very different laws for…..(panelist all laughing and smiling)

Leo: Is it true of the laws of somebody coming in from Canada, Renee?

Rene: No, I frequently………..I forget the country……I think it was Turkey, there was the small list of the countries so far, although I haven’t checked recently.

Leo: Okay.

Andy: I think it’s on departures and arrival too I think.

Rene: Yes.

Leo: Yes, it’s on departure……..so, I know Heathrow is one, that is……I think it’s requested, I don’t think the US can require it, being a request.

I don’t know if this is going to impact on iPhone sales in China, but the China State television says that iPhones location tracking is a national security concern.

Rene: Did you see Apple’s reply to that?

Leo: Yes, ‘we’re deeply committed to protecting the privacy of all our customers’, Apple says.

Rene: It all in the pages.

Leo: This all has to do with back and forth of the NSA, so forth…….don’t forget the Unites States last year declared that phones from ZTE and Wawa shouldn’t be purchased by United States companies because of the chance industrial espionage. Those companies are partially owned by the Chinese military.

I guess if were you know a foreign national I might be reluctant to buy US gear……I kind of understand the concern,………..

Rene: Kind of Zhen Jen.

Leo: So, Apple fairly lengthy statement saying we’ve never worked with any government agency in any country to create a back door for any our products and services. We have never allowed access to our servers, we never will and it’s something we feel very strongly about.

Rene: Unlike other companies we don’t make our money selling of your information.

Leo: Do they say that?

Rene: In the first or second paragraph.

Leo: Yes……a little snipe at FaceBook and Google there. Well, that’ll shot across…..well why not……

Rene: It’s a differentiator…..

Leo: It’s a…..this…..is I predicated that this would actually become more and more of differentiator Apple is smart to purport this notion of privacy.

Andy: Yes, but you’ll see that a lot of these letters are being signed by pretty much by everybody who’s a player of that, that punch level in the industry. It’s Google as a company that gets all the fire…..about……about….about….this is the company that profits by selling information.

Really, what people should be talking about is phone carriers, who are making……they’ll comply with law enforcement requests for user data, but they charge for each one of those requests and, the numbers on that are…..the first you find out how much money they’re making on these requests……you….you also think about how much it actually cost for them to fulfill this request and, how much profit they’re making on each one of these. And, you’re starting to think that there may be an incentive for them to make this is a very, very easy procedure and a very, very friendly procedure for law enforcement to engage in.

So, it’s not all about Google selling your information to people.

Leo: Right…..a couple of quickies. iWatch rumors, Ming Chi Qou, again, say…… says that iWatch will enter mass production in November. Apple did hire two former Nike fuel band engineers.

Rene: Yes, and the Tag Huerer guy.

Leo: Really.

Rene: Marketing guy.

Leo: Marketing guy---- Tag Huerer, Tag Huerer, however you pronounce that is a very high end beautiful watch, interestingly marketed, marketed as jewelry really to high end buyers.

Andy: Yes, I got a really interesting email…..I talked about iWatch rumors…ooooh….last week or the week before on my podcast and got a really nice email from a listener who suggested that perhaps the point of this wearable is not to create technology but literally to create a….fashion……. fashion object. If it has a technology packed into it that’s sauce for the goose.

Which is not to say that Apple’s just going to make an analogue watch, but what if…if….it made me think might be the stumbling block with a lot of this thing could be that I think that Apple imagining this as a package of features and then trying to figure out a way to design into something that people would wear.

Maybe they…..maybe not for this specific thing, given all of the hires that they’ve been doing in luxury retail and style brand retail is……..

Leo: Yes, yes…

Andy……their thought is 50/50. This is going to be…..we want to design a really great watch, we want to sprinkle some Apple technology pixie dust on it, but really we want to do…..this is going to be a style brand as much as it’s going to be a technology brand.

Leo: I think that’s smart because I mean at this point this is the android wear….(Leo showing watch) this is the LG version and there’s a Samsung version and a Motorola version.

These are not fashion forward (laughing) things, I mean there’s the thickness required for the electronics in battery anyway, so Apple’s going to have to solve that.

Andy: But you know one of the weird things is that that looks humungous the first time I saw but now usually when I see it usually in geek podcasts where the hosts are wearing these things, never once have I seen this in the wild.

Leo: Yes, not in the wild.

Andy: But the more I see this on peoples wrists the more, it’s not necessarily looking normal, but like it’s looking in the bandwidth of what you could expect people to actually wear.(Cross Talk)

Andy: (Holding up wrist showing a watch) This actually looked huge for when I was shopping for this watch.

Leo: It says diminutive……looks diminutive on your wrist (laughing)

Andy: I don’t know……I don’t….it’s not necessarily tiny but the one that I was using before, that was a really small like……oh…… Timex with a dial that was maybe about 20 per cent smaller than this. And, of course it didn’t take very long, one of the reasons why I almost didn’t buy is my god this is huge, I’m going to wear this on my wrist, like its huge 2 cam, after about a week it seemed perfectly normal.

Leo: Chad had a really good theory. We’re talking about these yesterday and he pointed out that Google did something uncharacteristically with android wear. The specs on these are all identical. (Leo showing watch on wrist) Google very tightly controls even down to the amount of ram, the processor, the UI there’s no touch wiz interface or added interface on top of it.

And Chad had a really interesting theory which I kind of think he’s right on about-that Google wanted all the hard-ware to be identical to set manufacturers to differentiate over design.

So you don’t……. won’t buy an android wear watch based on capabilities because they’re all the same. You’ll buy an android wear watch because you like how it looks. And, that just might under screw you as you just said Andy. Apple too is thinking these are always going to be luxury items they’re not going to be have a must-have.

It’s a nice thing to have, but it’s not…….I do like getting the alerts on my wrist so on and so forth you can talk to this and send texts.

Rene: Samsung, LG and Motorola are hiring fashion executives at the same rate Apple is.

Leo: No well that’s right…….that’s right.

Rene: I hope you realize that.

Leo: That’s right, I mean I would…..you know what if they had a Tag Huerer quality, beautiful device that as you said has a little technology in it……I might be interested in that.

And, that’s the market they’re aiming at because it’s most…it’s athletes will buy devices to measure athletic performance, and then it’s…….it’s the people with some discretionary income who might want to buy a nice piece of jewelry that has some capabilities.

Andy: I wonder, what if Apple decided to off with an analogue watch. It is going to be a true mechanical analogue and we’re going to put some extra features in it but we’re going to design an analogue watch….(Interrupted by Leo)

Leo: Would that……

Andy: How that would come out in theory.

Leo: The reason is analogue smart watch.

Andy: Yes but I can’t come up with a name, it just has a terrible video Leo with holding a coffee cup with the watch and being active with the watch, swim with the watch and I swear to god I’m a crazy person, I’m alone in my office watching this and after 30 seconds I am like…..but what does it do…..but what does it do, at a minute and half(Leo laughing) you’re going to have admit it (Andy shouting) tell me what this thing does besides tell the time.

Leo: It’s called Cogito……Cogito

Rene: Here goes some…(meaning of the name)

Leo: Here goes some….(Leo looking at website) it’s a analogue watch that has some smart features. There’s no reason you couldn’t do that, frankly…..here’s the video you were talking about. There’s no reason why you couldn’t do that I mean I have an analogue watch face on my android, where as I happen to like how that looks and the notifications still pop up in the box and everything.

I think a lot of people use Pebbles and what does is the theory…..you’re right.

He’s very happy on the roof with his girlfriend but………

Rene: Zilt connections.

Andy: Ohhhh you’re wearing a big stupid watch but I love you anyway.

Leo: It’s Emily’s birthday, so he’s rolling over thank-you watch. It’s got remote music control actually…….boy Emily’s going to have a good birthday I think. Oh wow (Leo watching ad) notice this is a very affluent company.

Rene: It’s an aspirational brand Leo.

Leo: Yes it’s aspirational. So, so far we can tell what people’s birthdays and we can start and stop the music if we have that special Cogito brand. This is the player……ohhhh pillow fight. You know what that signifies (Leo laughing heartily) You know I don’t know how many videos that have gone into slow motions and ended in a pillow fight. But, I always find them wonderful.

Andy: This one……this wasn’t the video that I saw I saw like two weeks ago, it was really….…..you’ve…..you’ve seen …….don’t you have all these memories of all these different tech roll out videos……

Leo: Yes.

Andy: There’s a hand flagged arrow sticking out of the sand and the time lapse video of the shadow getting longer and shorter and then rose petals falling off in slow motion and you’re like is this a brand of soup. (Cross talk)

Leo: Who’re we kidding?

Rene: Is it an opener…..trying to get it. Strap that up to your wrist like a passport and you’re done.

Leo: What was…….what was that ad Chad we once showed, the ultimate technology ad……….remember that……

Chad……gosh…….great. Yes, yes….(Leo Laughing).

‘We have many people who work here……..

Leo:………yes, yes……

Chad:……..inspiration, quality they’re all words that signify you want to hear.

Leo: Speaking to that Jean Louis Gassett, in his most recent…….I love his Monday note……this isn’t really Apple specific……. But I guess it is Apple’s arch rival used to be Microsoft talks about Satya Nadella’s letters. Very lengthy letters to the Microsoft employees and mentions exactly that ‘Microsoft’s new CEO needs an editor, as I puzzled over the public email that Microsoft’s CEO sent to his troops, I noted that the three one hundred plotting words missed clarity, ease and more importantly specifics. And, you know he said…… Satya’s a smart guy. Gassett said he wrote this email because there are going to be lay-offs, he didn’t want to say there are going to be lay-offs, but he did want to be able to point back to the email to say see I told you there are going to be lay-offs. So, he couched in very soft…….he said in the letter you really shouldn’t say things like bad news. (Leo Laughing) We’re changing the company completely and, some of you are going to lose your jobs.

Rene: Including Windows Phone and tablet maybe.

Leo: Yes, devices maybe gone. Very interesting.

Rene: It’d be a weird world.

Leo: The world is changing and, that is why it is tough to be a technology company and why it’s so impressive what Apple has done. Their stock price now is almost to a 100.

Rene: I don’t want to living in a world where Apple and Google are the only making phones and tablets.

Leo: I agree with you on that. Apple is……(go ahead to Andy)

Andy: Especially, as I thought that Apple had some interesting ideas and, now they seem to be rolling back from the idea of having a tablet that will be doing double duty for you. They’re now basically saying that okay anything that kind of looks like a lap top is just going to be a laptop and, if it looks like a tablet then it’s just going to be a tablet.

Sorry about that everybody, hope you enjoy the thousand dollar computer that you’ve already bought. (Leo Laughing)

Leo: Apple’s been crowned the greenest tech company according to Green Peace. Remember Green Peace was against Apple for a while.

Rene: Well, Apple was a big highlight that they could put in the headlines for a while.

Leo: Yes, they’re still putting it in the headlines but, it’s the good stuff, like Apple is the greenest tech company and, in fact 100 per cent green energy in their server farms, which is pretty impressive. Apple’s stores in the US, 145 stores are now using 100 per cent renewable energy now that carbon foot print from Apple down three per cent. It’s a little too late for Miami beach but what the hell! At least they’re making some progress, only 33 million 830,000 metric greenhouse gas emissions in 2013.

Andy: But, putting this aside this’s not necessarily something they have to do it.

Leo: No, they don’t have to do it. If everybody did, it would be good.

Andy: Even, when Green Peace was on their back about their record, it was a good record but Apple was able to……... Green Peace decide to send some people to WWDC we photographed Terence Irons and no-one’s going to care about that. So, it’s good to see Apple and other companies of this size say, ‘lets’ do this.’

Rene: They’ve got VP environment now.

Leo: Ah good, I always like to end on a happy note before we get to our picks of the week. And, this happy note comes from Oklahoma where farmer Kevin Whitney was standing over a grain elevator, bent down, his iPhone fell into a pit of two hundred and eight thousand pounds of wheat, never to be seen again.

Whitney told the local TV station, ‘I thought that I’d never see that phone again,’ nine months later he’s got the phone back, it ended up in Japan, the phone…… actually the grain was wheat sorghum, the phone was shipped down to the Arkansas river Mississippi Louisiana, from there was put on a cargo ship sent to Japan where a mill worker found it. The iPhone powered up fine, the mill worker placed a call to Whitney said, ‘I have your phone.’ He got his phone back.

Rene: Like a Lassie movie.

Leo: Happy, happy!

Andy: Actually, it’s like one of those old Timex commercials. Every time they got a letter from a customer, ‘well I was mixing concrete and it fell of my wrist it fell in there and I thought I’d never see it again but the end of the work day I was cleaning out the hopper and, there was my Timex still ticking.’ (Andy said all that in a funny voice).

Rene and Leo: It keeps on ticking.

Andy: Is there a silo indicator inside the phone that would get Apple to deny the morality service?

Leo: It turned blue…..it’s been dipped in sorghum. Actually, you know what…….he shouldn’t be bending over those grain silos, you could fall in them, if you fell into them, you would be in trouble.

Rene: You could be a in Japan.

Leo: You could be a stiff in Japan.

Andy: At least……..I have experienced…..even in his part of it he is saying  I knew that thing was gone I was not going to reach down in there to see if I could get it back.

Leo: No, he knew. Smart man……my iPhone dives after it…….no……no. Bad idea.

Andy: Dropped that ladle in the deep fat fryer……let that ladle go sir.

Leo: Alf Watt…….what a great name W.A.T.T.  a great name for the guy who created the ice tumbler and is former Apple Wi-Fi engineer. His name is Alf Watt.

Andy: Watt.

Leo: Watt and he was on the Mac Observer Mac e Gab number 509 and had a few great tips, thanks Dave Hamilton for posting these to help your Wi-Fi work better use the same SSID for all radios on the same network. Be they 2.4 giga-hertz or five giga-hertz. I’m not sure why but that’s what he says, deal with congestion by adding more access points using less power. So kind of break it up.

Is there a way to turn down the power? Yes, there is. You can turn down the power apparently……..the transmit power and by turning it down…….I use five gigahertz almost exclusively at home because my Sonus is on 2.4 and I have so many things on 2.4 I just use the five gigahertz.

Some good questions in Dave Hamilton’s article in the Mac Observer. Chad, we’re going to take a break, when we come back we’re going to start with Andrew Ihnatko and Rene Ritchie will have their picks of the week as will I. But first a word from Squarespace(dot)com. If you’re creating your first web site or maybe you want to move from a bad hosting environment, can I recommend a better website at squarespace(dot)com. Hosting plus soft-ware tightly linked to give you the best experience and, more importantly your viewers, your visitors the best experience. Squarespace sites use the latest state of the art technology, you don’t have to know CSS or Java Script or HTML because they got the best developers doing a great job. If you by the way want to be a developer, they have a great developer platform as well which makes it very nice. But, you don’t have everything is drag and drop point and click. You start with 25 designer templates, each of them have built in things like mobile responsive design, they’ll look great no matter what size screen. They all have ecommerce built in, you can turn it on very easily, like every site can sell one item at least. You can do donations for non-profit things like that. Of course if you get the ecommerce solution it’s unlimited services or products, or digital products. Plus, I’ve got to tell you, the ecommerce solution really makes it easy. They’ve got real time carrier shipping built in. label printing via ship station integrated accounting from zero, all built in. just really sweet. When you register for a year at squarspace.com they’ll set you up with a custom domain name for free. And it all starts as low as $8 a month, including that domain name. When you sign up for a year. Their metric app for the iPhone and iPad lets you check site stats like page views, social media follows. They’ve got a blog app. Makes it easy to post and monitor comments on the go. And the hosting is included and of course the great 24/7 customer support right from the SquareSpace offices. Knowledgeable people who will answer the phone or answer the email or do your live chat. 24/7. The redesigned customer help site has got some great self-help stuff in there too. I want you to try Square Space for free. You don’t need a credit card. Two weeks free. Just go to SquareSpace.com, click that get started button. If you decide to sign up, we do invite you to use the offer code MACBREAK to get 10% off your brand new Square Space site. Square Space really is the best place to start your new website. Or move your website. They have importers that make it very easy to do that as well. We really, really love them and recommend them. Squarespace.com. Andy Ihnatko, by the way, good news. Was it you who recommended The Martian- have you read The Martian on Audible yet?

Andy: No.

Leo: Wasn’t you. Maybe- it was somebody who recommended The Martian, we’ve been talking about it like crazy. It’s such a good book.

Rene: It’s been recommended a lot.

Leo: Maybe Brian.

Rene: It was Brushwood who just started, yeah.

Leo: Yesterday I was really thrilled to hear Andy Weir, the author on Marketing Mavericks, and Tanya has arranged to have Andy join us for a triangulation. So the author of the Martian will be on triangulation coming up in the next couple of weeks. So that is an Audible pick. What do you have for us Andy?

Andy: Two quickies. Sometimes you want to talk about an article you’ve seen on the web that you don’t approve of, don’t like, you think this person is a troll or he or she is spreading misinformation to get page views or whatever. Whatever reason you want to talk about this and you want to link to it so people can see it but you don’t want this person to get more Google rankings because of this- because every time someone links to it, that increases their visibility on Google and makes that article more profitable. Someone created this really nice services called donotlink.com. That is a URL shortener that will take that original webpage/URL and turn it into a different kind of URL that will absolutely be invisible to Google page rankings. So you can write your 800 word blog post about this thing, link to it and let people read it without- secure in the fact that you’re not going to be helping this person make money off of their ads by doing it. So I think you should use it judiciously, I would not use it on articles that you simply disagree with, because I would only use if for people who you don’t- that it will make you slightly sick to your stomach to think that you are helping this person popularize their site. But it’s a nice solution for that. The other one is Coretex Camera, which is not a very, very new app. It’s been out for a couple of years but particularly being outside trying to take pictures in the absolute darkness reminds you that one of the few things that the IPhone does not do well is it doesn’t do well in low light. Because other cameras have lots of solutions for that. All the iPhone can do is crank up the ISO and it introduces lots and lots and lots of noise. What Coretex Camera does is it actually takes a long sequence of images and averages them all out. So that because ISO noise is random noise, anything that is not the same frame to frame must just be noise and not actual image detail. So over the course of 3-10 seconds you basically just keep this thing running, hold it as well as you can. And the result will be a low light image that is almost devoid of any noise whatsoever. It’s not for every shooting situation but as with most iPhone camera apps, it’s a good thing to have right there in your tool belt, waiting for that time when you take a picture, it looks like crap. You definitely want to come away from the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona with a good picture. And you realize, “oh wait a minute, I have an app that’s specifically good for low noise pictures in low light. Glad I already bought that and installed it.” Its $2.99, not a whole lot of money.

Leo: No camera phone has, kind of the bulb setting, or a long exposure setting right? You couldn’t do that because…

Andy: Well, Nokia, the Lumia 1020 is, as always, the champ of pretty much everything. It does have long bulb setting so you can get star trails from it. It also has-

Leo: You need a tripod or something, obviously it needs to be still.

Andy: Yeah, and it also has the- I just love this phone so much because if you like to take good pictures it really is- and if you know how to take good pictures it’s the one that’s going to help you out the most. It does have a manual bulb setting if you want to use it. It also has an optically stabilized lens, which means that you won’t necessarily have to put it on a tripod to get those long exposures at low ISOs. And all the manual controls, today already built in. so if you want to override whatever automatic settings, say “no, no, no, ISO 200, do whatever you have to do to keep that ISO where it is.” It’s just another opportunity to say how excited I am about the new photo APIs in IOS 8. I can’t wait to see what happens when users and developers have access to every single camera setting that the hardware is capable of. We’re going to see a new renaissance in IPhone photography.

Leo: Presumably the next generation of Coretex Camera could do a long exposure, for instance. A single long exposure.

Andy: Yeah. It’s not just what Apple can do with this, it’s that- every time I see one of these favorite apps of mine I see that- I really see where developers are hitting their head, banging their heads against the wall. Things that would be so simple if they could simply allow- if they could simply select a shutter speed. But they can’t, so they have to do a work around. The things they can do for artificial deep focus, which they could do very easily but they can’t do because they don’t have access to it. That’s why a lot of the really interesting photo apps are available for Android and not for IOS. Not for- it’s kind of interesting that the IPhone has a much better camera system than almost all Android phones on the market, but some apps can do a lot more wizardry sort of things than any developer can do on IOS right now. But that’ll change soon enough.

Leo: This is pretty amazing. Coretex Camera. $2.99, from Whimsical Productions on the app store. Mr. Rene Ritche, your pick of the week?

Rene: I’m going to go from photography to music. I know very little about music, whatever the opposite of talent is, is what I have in music. But there is this amazing Mac app called Capo, it’s been around for a long time. And it’s just gone to IOS. It launched last Thursday. It’s Capo Touch for IOS. It’s done by Chris Leshio who’s a fine Canadian developer. Really brilliant guy. Got started writing graphic drivers for EOS when he was in high school. So that gives you an example of where his head is at. And it basically, if you’re an aspiring musician, if you are someone who is a working musician and might get the call to replace a guitarist, for example, whose been injured or not available, or you need to change your set on the way to a show, Capo just ingests music. It goes to your iTunes library and it pulls it in, and then it just completely takes it apart for you. It shows you what the chords are, it shows you every bit about it. It’s what makes learning songs by ear for string instruments- guitars and string instruments- incredibly easy. It’s also great if you’re a musician and you write by ear. You just write a song and then later, whether it’s for legal reasons, it’ll help you write it all down. So you don’t have to go there and laboriously figure it out. It is, I’ve rarely seen Apple engineers as blown away by apps as I’ve seen them blown away by Capo.

Leo: This can literally turn something in your ITunes library into a tab, for instance. Tablature for guitar. It’s the kind of thing people like Keith Richards would sit and listen to a song over and over and over and over. Trying to get it, how do they play that? In fact it was Keith Richards who did a weird tuning and nobody could ever figure out how he played it, because his tuning was weird. This does it all automatically. That is cool.

Rene: It’s super smart. You can slow it down to make it easier for you to listen along and play along with. And it keeps the same pitch. So you don’t lose any of that. You can change a chord and it’ll automatically do all that for you. There is so many layers of cleverness built into this. I was amazed that he managed to squeeze it all into an iPhone or iPad app. And the great thing is you can carry it with you. You can literally use this on a bus going to a gig. It’s amazing.

Leo: Wow. Burke says it’s a music decompiler.

Rene: It really is. And his company is called Super Mega Ultra Groovy. Which is awesome.

Leo: Supermegaultragroovy.com and you can get it on the app store, both app stores. The desktop and now the IOS app store.

Rene: I believe it’s on sale for half off right now if you want to grab it.

Andy: $4.99, normally $9.99. I know because I just bought it.

Leo: Ha. That’s awesome.

Andy: Even just as a $4.99 to watch a magic trick, I think that’s worth $4.99 to watch it work.

Leo: Yeah. I agree. Here’s one that’s free for a couple of days, Chad found this one. We’ve always talked about “Is the iPad for content consumption or can you actually create?” there are certainly things you can create with the iPad, you can take pictures, edit, post them. Video, edit, post it. You can write with the iPad. One of the things the iPad was never any good at, that a desktop computer was good at, was programming. Computer programming. Well, somebody has put Python on the iPad. IPython. Including all the SyPy libraries. So if you’re a scientist who uses the Python programming language to analyze data, this has NumPy, SyPy, SimPy, Pandis, MatPlotLib, built in. you can access it right through a Python interpreter on the iPad. That’s the first time I’ve seen anything like this. And did you find this Chad? Because this is very cool.

Chad: Yeah, this is a, one of the bigger posts on Reddit, so yeah. That’s how I discovered it.

Leo: Like Capo. Kind of like what? You can do that? And it’s free for the next three days. So if you are somebody who is interested in Python- Python is a great language for beginners, it’s used by scientists, NASA uses it, Google of course does a lot of stuff in Python. Scientists particularly love Python because of the very powerful science libraries and they’re built into Computable. It’s called Computable. It is available for free for the next three days. I think- maybe not the next three days. Because it came out July 10^th and this is the 13^th, this might be the last day you can get it for free. I don’t know. It’s still free, let’s put it that way.

Rene: Act now.

Leo: Act quickly. It looks like they have pretty good documentation built in and everything. This could be a super duper scientific calculator or more. Depending on how you use Python. If you’re a Python-ista. Computable from Karl Traunmueller. I shall be downloading it immediately. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes this edition of IPad today.  Thank you so much Rene Ritchie from Imore.com. Anything you want to plug? You always have such great podcasts there.

Rene: If you’re interested in Swift, we managed to get Don Melton, Brent Simmons and Natalia Berdis, who gave a fantastic talk at WWC on a round table with Guy English and myself, on Swift, and that’s going to be up tomorrow.

Leo: That’s exciting. That’ll be part of the debug podcast or…?

Rene: Yes.

Leo: Okay. So imore.com/debug and it will be tomorrow. Yeah it’s the next one, coming soon.

Rene: Yeah, they’re very clever.

Leo: If you are a developer and you like the inside guts of what’s going on in Macintosh, this is a great podcast to listen to.

Rene: Thank you.

Leo: Yeah. I can’t wait. That’ll be good. Imore.com/debug. Imore.com for those articles. And congratulations, I saw that you just crossed 30 million unique for the mobile nation’s websites as a whole.

Rene: Yeah, it’s humbling, it’s amazing. I thank all those readers.

Leo: 30 million unique a month. For Imore Mobile, Android Central, Crackberry, WP Central and Connectly. Mobile nation sites. Well done. Do you get a bonus for that?

Rene: No. I get to work harder and try to get to 40.

Leo: Great to have you, thank you so much Rene Ritchie. Andy Ihnatko is at the Chicago Sun Times. Did you take that super moon picture? No.

Andy: Yes I did.

Leo: You did! Tell us how!

Andy: Yep. Olympus OMD EM1 on a tripod with a cheap as hell Panasonic Micro 4/3 zoom lens. I looked really, really hard for my old Nikon zoom lens but the 2x adaptor with the Micro 4/3 adapter, could not find it inside the house. But the fun thing about shooting the moon is that it doesn’t take very- it’s not like I’m going to shoot airplanes at the air show and hope I get what I get. It’s like, nope, there’s the moon. It’s going to be there in the sky all night. Put it on the tripod, take one exposure, or bracket it 7 times and then, okay, is that in focus? Yes. Does one of these look good? Yes. Alright then. Let’s go back inside.

Leo: That’s hard to do and you did it beautifully. That’s a gorgeous picture.

Andy: It’s a good subject.

Leo: Nice. I know, the chatroom is going crazy because I called it the wrong name. It’s MacBreak Weekly. What did I say? IPad weekly? Well I was doing an IPad app and I was thinking I should have-

Rene: It’s a compliment Leo.

Chad: All of our shows are good. But I wanted to thank Anthony, because he already has our video up on YouTube.

Leo: So here’s, this is Marcus, trying to break.

Chad: This is us, earlier in the show. But I want to show you what he did. Remember this, earlier on in the show? Anyway, I wanted to thank Anthony for getting that out so fast.

Leo: Anthony Nielson, our brilliant editor. Boy that was fast. That was not an aftermarket screen, that was an official Samsung Galaxy S3 replacement part.

Rene: Now can we watch ourselves watch ourselves?

Chad: Let me put that on YouTube real fast.

Leo: I am wearing a Band-Aid now. Thank you. For providing the first aid.

Rene: Purple Heart right there Leo.

Leo: Yeah, I got wounded in the production of this podcast. We can no longer say that no hosts were injured in the making of MacBreak Weekly. Ladies and gentlemen we do MacBreak Weekly at 11am pacific, 2pm eastern, 1800 UTC every Tuesday. Right here in the brick house studios. You’re more than welcome to join us live in studio. We love that. Just email tickets@twit.tv and we’ll put a seat out for you. Thank you all for being here. You can also watch live at twit.tv or live.twit.tv. But if you can’t make it, don’t worry. On demand audio and video always available after the fact everywhere finer podcasts are aggregated. Including of course our great apps. Thanks to our 3^rd party developers on IOS, Android, even Windows phone. Roku, Samsung, many, many places. I think we have a page. What was the name of that page again? That you can see all the different ways you can watch?

Chad: Twit.tv/apps

Leo: Apps. Twit.tv/apps. Thanks for being here, we’ll see you next week. Now get back to work because you know what? Break time is over!