MacBreak Weekly 435 (Transcript)
Leo Laporte: Time for MacBreak Weekly! Oh this is so much fun, Rene Ritchie is in the studio. Alex Lindsay is in the studio. Andy Inhatko is on a Skype call, because he forgot to buy
tickets, but we are on our last show of 2014, and there's even some Apple news.
We'll also talk a little bit about what to look forward to in 2015 including
home automation, a giant iPad and more. It's all coming up next on MacBreak Weekly.
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Leo: This is MacBreak Weekly episode 435, recorded December 30th, 2014.
Apple's Golden Ghetto
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It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show where we
cover your Macintosh and Apple needs, and it's so fun we've got both Alex
Lindsay and Rene Ritchie in studio, thank you for flying down Rene.
Rene Ritchie: Thank you so much for
having me.
Leo: Rene came down from
Montreal for just a couple of days, he came to our
host dinner last night, MacBreak Weekly today.
Tomorrow's New Year's Eve party, our 24 hours of 2015 and then you go home for
two days, and you come back to CES.
Rene: Yes.
Leo: Crazy.
Rene: It's a good way to start a
year.
Leo: Crazy. Well anyway we're
very grateful, thank you for being here. Thanks to Alex Lindsay who came all
the way from Pittsburgh, PA.
Alex Lindsay: Yes. Happy
to be here.
Leo: It's great to have you. And
unfortunately, Andy Inhatko is still home. Still trying to find a flight.
Andy Inhatko: Well you
know, I'm glad I brought my equipment because I was
able to set up this corner of the terminal at Logan Airport to be an
approximation of the studio, so I hope we get a good signal off my phone here.
This is going to cost me at least $90 in overage fees. But...
Leo: We missed you, Andy.
Alex: You know what's really cool
is there is this thing called the internet. And you can like order tickets.
Leo: Actually thanks to Skype it
really is like Andy's here. And are you going to participate in any way on New
Year's Eve tomorrow, are you...?
Andy: I have no specific plans
for New Year's Eve. I would love to, and again I've got the studio set up here,
in case my flight does not leave Logan in the next 36 hours. I would be more
than happy to be standing by. I have a lovely bottle of champagne that someone
was nice enough to send me. It's part of a beautiful
gift basket that I've been nibbling at for the past week and we will pop that
at the appropriate time, in the appropriate east coast time zone.
Leo: I shall inform the
authorities. It's going to be fun. We're doing it for UNICEF, a benefit for
UNICEF and if you go to inside.twit.tv, our blog, you'll see that people have
already started donating, we've raised several
thousand dollars before we even mentioned anything. So I think it's going to be
a lot of fun. We're trying to recreate, kind of in honor of you Andy, and
Merlin Man, the Jerry Lewis telethon. You guys always loved that. And we had a
lot of fun talking about it.
Alex: Are you going to sing?
Leo: (sings)You'll never walk alone. I have to learn that song.
Alex: You realize, Leo, that you should have started taking the Percocet at
least 3 days ago. So that it takes full effect by 1am.
(laughing)
Leo: I am really looking forward
to it, we did something a little different this year.
We started this last year because I thought well it would be fun to honor our
global audience and say Happy New Year in every time zone, there are 27 of
them. This year we've got 21 of the 27 time zones represented via somebody on
Skype calling us from that time zone. We'll start counting down with the very
first country to enter 2015 which will be 3:00 this morning, tomorrow morning.
I'm confused. When? 3:00 tomorrow morning, 3:00AM Pacific time. 6:00AM Eastern Time, that will be New
Zealand, and we have somebody. And we're going to just slowly walk down...
John's running to give me the time zones. Somebody, oh we're getting close now.
Who do we not have? We have 3... we have 4 time zones
missing. Five. More than that? Alright, but we're pretty good. You see all the yellow, that's people. Green is
people with really good connections. You know who's doing this is your people,
Pixel Corps.
Alex: Yeah, Anna is working
through the... yellow usually means yeah that we...
Leo: We'll start in Arrowtown, Otago, New Zealand
with Andrew Smith. He, the camera's a bit grainy because speeds are kind of
slow in Arrowtown. But he will be welcoming the new year at 3:00AM, 11:00 UTC, tomorrow. And
on through the day. That's going to be fun. And we'll go to... now I don't
see John, I thought we'd have one, we're missing a
time zone here. We don't have somebody for the Sandwich Islands, or Samoa, or
whatever it is. You're missing Jarvis Island at the bottom there, the 3:00AM.
Off-Screen: (indistinct)
Leo: Huh?
Off-Screen: (indistinct)
Leo: Oh these are people. These
are not the one...
Off-Screen: (indistinct)
Leo: One more line... yeah. Because I do want somebody at Jarvis Island. It's a bird
sanctuary, uninhabited. But it will be the last place on the globe to welcome
2015.
Alex: It would be really cool if
we had a web cam down there shooting the birds.
Leo: I think so.
Alex: In the middle of the night.
Leo: I think so.
Alex: While they're sleeping.
Leo: Anyway. It's going to be a
lot of fun, we're looking forward to it and a lot of people coming up, are any
of you... we have a big studio audience today, are any of you sticking around
for tomorrow's festivities? I hope. Please do, yeah. You can stay up from now til then. And then you can... yeah, sure. Sure. Well did
anything happen over the last few weeks since we've been here? We had a great
best of, thank you Jason Howell for cobbling that together.
Jason Howell: No problem, my pleasure.
Leo: A lot of fun seeing all the
stupid things I said, including me and was it Matthew Ingraham talking about
how Apple was done? That was before WWDC in June. That's my only excuse.
(laughing)
Leo: Apple is far from done
obviously. Apple is streaming The Interview, did anybody watch that?
Rene: No.
Alex: Oh they finally decided to?
Leo: It's on iTunes. So it's on
Google it's on iTunes, the theater in town is showing it.
Alex: It's made a lot of money.
Leo: Not as much as it might
have made.
Alex: Here's the thing that's
interesting. So it hasn't made as much maybe as it would have in the theaters,
but as a internet mostly
like a day and date release.
Leo: $15 million.
Alex: $15 million is the best
Sony's ever done, and I think that the irony of all this is this may be what
everyone looks back at as everyone thought wow maybe we could make some money
on the internet.
Rene: I don't think all those
people would have watched it if not for the surrounding circumstances. You can
translate those into ticket sales.
Alex: No, I don't think so.
Andy: It's enough for, I think I agree with what Alex is saying. They would,
they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into saying we're going to do a
high profile movie release backed up both by national advertising and it's
going to be available on streaming that very day, and this was not a bad result.
It might even encourage them to say well here's the movie, we don't have a
whole lot of confidence in it, let's do a second experiment in February or
March. I think back to there was a writer's strike in the early 80s that
created the reality TV boom. Because...
Leo: That's right.
Andy: Writers went on strike,
they had to fill air and so they said well... it's not going to get any ratings
but let's do this thing, we'll call it real people. It's just going to be
interviews with people all across the country and we'll have a host that just
sort of spontaneously say things and it got great ratings and it costs damn
near next to nothing and the network said we would never have put this on the
air if we had not been forced to, but now that we've been forced to and we
looked at the numbers back, let's do more of this. Continue to strike
everybody!
Leo: So the really interesting
article in the New York Times about this happened, this came out the day before
Christmas Eve, apparently the President actually intervened with Apple.
Alex: Oh really?
Rene: They tried and they said...
so Apple doesn't, they were on holiday. iTunes Connect
closes for two weeks.
Leo: Sorry, we're on vacation
Mr. President!
Rene: Well no, but the process
for iTunes is not the fastest in the world and when they're closed and they
basically just said we're not going to go there and start cranking the
computers for you, but the next available spot you'll get it. And so it got out
as fast as iTunes would normally...
Leo: Credit to the Alamo Drafthouse, which is an Austin theater chain.
Alex: That is a great cinema.
Leo: I love it, I didn't know there was 20 others. Including supposedly one is coming to San
Francisco, but they were the first to say you know what? We'll show it. And
then that kind of began the run on it. But Sony had planned to have it 3,000
theaters for Christmas Day, and instead just a few hundred. Plus remember,
Apple takes a third. I don't know what Google takes.
Alex: That's better, so the third
is better than theaters. Theaters usually split...
Leo: I thought that theaters
gave them the whole tickets...
Rene: I don't think Apple takes a
third for movies.
Leo: Oh, no?
Rene: For indies they do, but I think for studios they sometimes even lose money still.
Leo: Make a deal.
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: And so you said, so the
theater... I thought the theater deal was...
Alex: It's weighted.
Leo: Like ticket sales go to the
movie company and then the theater gets the popcorn. Which is
by the way, more lucrative.
Alex: Well yeah. I believe, and
I'm not positive of this, but I believe that what happens is it's weighted so
the first couple weeks the percentage is much more leaning towards the movie
company, and then it goes back to as it goes... and that's why you have, that's
why you're able to have these kind of second run theaters that run them, that
can do it for a lot less and make it profitable. I believe that's how it works, someone will probably correct me but...
Leo: Initially, so before you
jump on the bandwagon and blaming the theaters, exhibitors, the FBI had told
theaters, remember the hackers said we threaten 9/11 style violence if you show
The Interview. The FBI had initially told theaters, treat it like a bomb threat. Credible until proven otherwise.
Alex: Right.
Leo: You know and then Obama
says in public, I wish they'd called me. And I feel like what he would have
said would have been look, we know... we can assess this threat and there's no
chance that North Korea is...
Rene: Well, they lack the
capacity.
Leo: They lack the capacity to
do that.
Alex: Well and I think that a lot
of times there's things that he would want to say privately that he wouldn't
say in public.
Leo: So far no problems, except
that it's a crap movie.
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: But other than that...
Alex: All this over a...
Leo: You may get nauseous from
the movie.
Alex: All this over the wrong
movie most likely, but I still think the issue is that when you look at, it
still proves. I don't think we've seen very many movies that have sold $15
million worth of ticket... I don't know if any have sold on that kind of level.
And it's not so much that that makes it so you're not going to start seeing
$100 million films, but if you're an independent film maker or you're Sony
Classic Pictures, or some of these other ones looking at well, can I do a $2
million budget and you know, now it might be viable to do a $2 million budget
and get my money back.
Rene: That Veronica Mars movie.
Alex: And there was a huge
machine that occurred that used to exist around Blockbuster. Blockbuster and
all the other rentals, where you could make a... you could be guaranteed...
what you would do is you would get into
distribution deals and you'd get some foreign distribution, you'd get some
cable buys but the big thing was that you knew that just Blockbuster stocking
Blockbuster would make you enough money to pay for the film. It didn't even
matter if anyone bought it, just the rental would be enough. Netflix never
really replaced that revenue. And so a lot of that stuff just kind of went away.
If people start feeling like they can do a $2 million film can make a profit,
that whole... and now it's cheaper to make the film than it ever has been
because the hardware is less expensive, a lot of things that are more readily
available. At a $45 million film or a $100 million film, I don't think that it
necessarily adds up, but as art house $2 million, $3 million, $5 million. Blair Witch Project kind of stuff.
Andy: You're still left with the
same problem though, where if you want like... I use the word professional
actors not as a way of insulting anybody who doesn't get $500,000 minimum for a
movie, but like you're not going to get the Kevin Spacey, you're not going to
get an Allison Janney, you're not going to get like
these people who have like 20 or 30 years’ worth of credits behind them and can
really sell a role, when the entire budget is $2 million, unless they can...
Alex: But the whole machine that
occurred before didn't have those actors either. And there were a lot of them
that a tier one or two down, kind of the Rutger Hauer.
Rene: The Steven Seagals.
Alex: Well Rutger Hauer was like the king of a lot of these little
films. And, I'm a big fan of Rutger Hauer. We used to do Rutger Hauer fests at my house.
Leo: You must be. He was in
Blade Runner right?
Alex: He did Bladerunner,
he did all of these. He did these like... what was it. Some
angry swordsman.
Leo: Rutger Hauer?
Alex: Yeah it's really, cause it's really cheesy.
Rene: I mean, he's German Leo. I mean come on.
Alex: No there was something very
fun about drinking whiskey and Rutger Hauer. So anyways, so the...
Leo: Wait a minute I've got to
write that down. That's my new motto.
Rene: You had a point a long time
ago about...
Alex: You've seen movies... he's
been in... so he did bit parts in a lot of big films.
Leo: Many people don't know this
but he's made of gold. Solid gold.
Rene: He is.
Alex: I wouldn't be surprised...
Andy: That's the luminosity of
his talent, Leo.
Rene: You had an interesting
point a while ago...
Leo: I am Rutger Hauer!
Andy: Before we move on, I just
want to clarify that I don't mean that you should have... only have movies that
have big name brand actors, I'm saying that we're going to recognize 10 years
later that most of the really, a lot of the meat of these movies is based on
having really talented people who aren't at a stage of their careers where they
don't need to support four ex-spouses and 8 ranches in Montana. It is going to
be who, what kind of a team can we assemble for 2 million bucks that are going to
enjoy this work, or take a cut for this two months they're going to be working
just to say that they worked on this really weird project.
Rene: There's an interesting
rumor going around that Jimmy Iovine is going to
negotiate exclusive deals for iTunes. And it would be interesting to see if,
because Alex has talked about this for years, whether Google Play, iTunes,
Amazon, started getting into these exclusive arrangements.
Leo: Like Netflix has.
Rene: Like Netflix has.
Leo: It's been very good for
Netflix.
Rene: Yeah, and then those
markets start to open up because you have serious money behind just the
streaming stuff.
Leo: That's bad for consumers
though, because then we have to have a bunch of different boxes just so we can...
like Apple, you have
to have an Apple TV really, right? I guess you could...
Alex: A lot of us have all of it.
I have Netflix on my Apple TV and I have Hulu and then I have...
Leo: I think a lot of us are
different than a lot of the rest of the world.
Rene: You get free Bono albums
Leo.
Leo: yes.
Alex: But if you only have an
Apple TV you have most of those services available to you at that point. You
know, whether it's Amazon or...
Leo: No, because you're Amazon.
No.
Andy: But it's not entirely. But
it's not entirely an Apple TV or Apple world, I just don't...
Leo: You don't get Google, you
don't get Amazon, you miss a lot of stuff.
Andy: I see a world in 10 years
from now where there are fewer, I see a world 10 years from now where there are
going to be fewer bands like U2, like Coldplay, like Foo Fighters, where they
really are based on having a huge album release and making a lot of sales that
way, I think there are going to be more bands starting with their first work at
age 12, 13, 14, self-distribution like, why do I need to talk to Jimmy Iovine? Why do I need to make a deal with him to release an
album to one outlet when I can have the entire internet?
Leo: And will that happen with
films too? I guess it is sort of with YouTube.
Andy: I think so too. We've seen
plenty of Jonathan Coultons in the music side, I think we're going to start seeing Jonathan Coultons in movies too. People who can, and we're seeing
them already in the form of easily consumed entertainment like game videos, but
we're going to have people who can make short videos, short movies at a budget
and with a realistic framework where so long as they keep making these
regularly and build up their fan base, they can't make $6 million per picture,
but they can make a couple $100 thousand every time they go up to bat, and they
go up to bat once every year. And I really think that's where it's going.
Leo: All of this is fabulous.
Andy: I've seen murmurs about
Jimmy Iovine. I just don't know how that really plays
into where the music industry is going.
Leo: He's the inner face of the
old school and that still needs to be supported and there probably will still
be blockbuster movies but some guy in his basement isn't going to make
Terminator 4, but at the same time I think there's going to be,as there is in music, this right of the independent,
and it's going to be great. It's good for everybody. And then people like you
Alex who have the skills, who have the equipment, you wouldn't make a major
motion picture, you might very well make a picture for YouTube.
Alex: I've been writing short
films that we're getting very close, as we slowly accumulated all the hardware
that we needed to do it.
Leo: Now's the time!
Alex: But my interest is oh I
might want to do feature films some day, but we have
like 10 or 12 of them right now that we're getting ready to record, but the
idea is that we're not interested. What we're interested in is a whole bunch of
money around the making of it. And the process rather than
just...
Leo: Also with crowd-sourcing
opportunities, Kickstarter and Patron. Everything becomes easier. And I think
this is what... you know, yes this tells Hollywood the old school there may be
some opportunities but really what's going on is what's happening on YouTube,
what's happening, what's happening on independent...
Alex: And there are things that
Apple and Netflix and others bring to the game. You know, there is a lot of
people will tell you...
Leo: Marketing. It's the same
thing with publishers, marketing.
Alex: Front page on iTunes is a
big deal. That sells a lot stuff. And Apple pressing
it, possibly running ads that there... that the next Taylor Swift is whatever.
Rene: And as hardware gets more
comparable, and this hardware is enough, the software becomes more important
again and you want almost like gaming consoles, you want exclusives to drive
eyeballs to your service and that helps you promote all the smaller brands and
bands and movies as well.
Alex: Yep.
Leo: Well, I think also of
interest, the fact that the EU has forced Apple to offer 14 day no questions asked
refunds for app store and iTunes downloads in the EU.
Alex: I think that's really
messy.
Leo: (laughing)
Rene: It's the way it's set up is... I mean they've done refunds before, you could always go to iTunes report a problem and
ask for a refund.
Leo: But you... and for... on
Android for a while you had a 24 hour window that you could return an app.
Windows Phone too. I don't know what's happened on Windows Phone, I think that
still exists but on Android they made it 15 minutes.
Rene: Yeah it gets smaller and
smaller, because developers complain.
Leo: The concern is with two
weeks, it's two hours?
Off-Screen: It recently went
back to 2 hours, yeah.
Leo: The concern of course is,
and 2 hours I don't think is a big deal but 14 days means you could download a
game, play the hell out of it, or download an album, play the hell out of it.
Alex: Download it and copy it.
Rene: Download an app and then
get your problem solved and then decide you don't want to pay for it. And it's
hard on developers too because that money gets basically ripped out of them as
well as it does Apple so...
Leo: I presume this is something
the EU forced them to do. UK, Germany, Italy, France and
other EU countries. And this is for iTunes app store and iBooks purchases.
Alex: I don't know, I keep on thinking the EU is committed to keeping their
countries as far behind as possible.
Leo: The EU it's very... and
we've talked about this a lot on TWiG because Jeff
Jarvis is crazy about EU regulation of Google. And probably
rightly so. But one way you could characterize it is, here in the States
we have this great distrust of government. But, and I don't know what it is in
Canada, but in the US distrust of government but a trust of corporations. Kind
of in both cases a little bit unwarranted. And in the EU it's the opposite. A
trust of big government but a major distrust of corporations, particularly US
corporations. And I think that's what this reflects is just as with the Google
stuff.
Alex: I just think we should see
how that works for them.
Leo: Google presumably, Jason,
would have to do this too in the EU, I would assume?
Alex: I think they have it
available. I believe that it said somewhere in the article that it's available,
they just don't promote it.
Leo: They do it for music
subscriptions.
Rene: The other thing, consumers
come first but you have to maintain the viability of your business and if any
app you can buy you can get a refund in two weeks, people will just the app,
play the games and refund them and there will be no money for people to make
the future games. It's short sighted.
Alex: And I think that the other
question is whether Apple decides to do, they obviously haven't here. And Apple
tends to just try to manage it. But you know, what if
you gave developers the ability to publish regionally. So a developer could
just say I don't want to publish in the EU store.
Leo: I wouldn't be surprised if
that's what happens.
Alex: That's what they should do is allow developers to decide well I don't really want to
serve the EU if they're going to keep on doing that. I mean obviously things
change pretty quickly in Spain.
Leo: If you buy a book, most
books you can read in two weeks. So really it's a library policy and it's free.
Rene: Yep.
Leo: And if I'm an author I
might resent that a little bit.
Rene: Some of the developers...
Leo: It may decrease the amount
of content available in the EU.
Rene: The great developers,
people like Will Shipley, people do like... if you write to them and state your
problem, they want to refund your money. They want to make you happy, they want
to do this, but they want a relationship with you at the same time.
Leo: I still think that Apple's
policy in the states is wrong too. There is no demo, there is no return, you have to beg. There should be a window of some kind where
even if it's just an accidental purchase you should be able to quickly...
Rene: Will Shipley on Twitter
this week, he put up a thing saying there was only 2 requests for that in the
Apple radar database and he asked people to go in and duplicate it because if
they don't see a demand they don't do it.
Alex: A lot of developers though...
Leo: Having movies of what the
game is going to look like is not the same as me downloading it and saying this
is terrible.
Alex: I think a lot of developers
have adjusted to that where they are giving you a light version or an in-app
purchase... or...
Leo: That's why you see free and
paid versions of...
Alex: That's the new demo.
Leo: But that just clutters the
place. I don't...
Alex: Well I think that too and I
think the in-app purchase makes a lot of sense. Like I'm going to let you play...
Rene: There was supposed to be
demos originally.
Leo: Really?
Rene: Yeah...
Leo: Why did they kill that?
Rene: Free would be free so you
could download... it wasn't that they killed it, it
was that they never allowed time-based demos. They didn't want people to get
confused about the functionality that you got. The original idea was that you
would get like a level to try out and then the in-app purchases would unlock additional
levels. But it turns out people don't pay to get rid of ads, people don't pay to get extra levels. They'll just play the first level then go
look for the next free game.
Leo: You could argue that
premium was discovered that way. That people said alright, well let me make a
free version. I mean we've had it for longer than the iTunes store but it
certainly came into its own with in-app purchases and free.
Rene: There's only two things we'll pay for. We'll pay to get our car back on the track faster,
or to have a better looking car than Alex has. Instant
gratification and ego gratification.
Leo: Have you played Trivia
Crack? It's the funniest thing. So this is a game my mom got me into and it's
really ugly. It has a paid version with no ads, and a non-paid
version but there's always in-app purchases and they call it Trivia Crack
because you want to play and you want to play and then if you lose a certain
number of games then you have to wait 45 minutes before you can play anymore,
or pay 99 cents. And then it becomes a day that you have to wait and so I just
feel like this is a really... this is like.
Alex: I think one of the best
solutions for it that I've seen is...
Leo: It's a fun game. Trivia
Crack, not track. Crack. Like the drug.
Off-Screen: I thought that
was your nickname for it. Like it's Trivia Track but we call it Trivia Crack.
Leo: No it's called Trivia
Crack. They make no bones about it my friends.
Alex: It's got a big pipe in the
front of it.
Leo: Don't start playing.
Alex: No the... I think one of
the best uses of this has been Field Runners where you pretty much play the
whole game, you don't really think much of it, but if you want more points to
buy the little extras, and you're not winning enough... and I have to admit
that every once in a while I just...
Leo: Do you do that in Field
Runners? You buy a little?
Alex: Yeah, it's horrible because
I have this whole...
Leo: But see I feel like this is
almost slimy because they're taking advantage of your own personal weakness.
Rene: Candy Crush man. All of the
games are a casino model now.
Alex: But I don't really have a
problem with it because I'm just playing it and...
Leo: It's just a buck.
Alex: Oh no it's more.
Leo: I spent $300 on Simpsons donuts. Do I have a problem? Yes.
Andy: I'm sorry I meant do you
have an ethical problem with it?
Leo: (laughing)
Andy: I still feel that there's
going to be some point at which Apple is going to have to every time that they
put that slide in the next keynote saying and we've handed over $8.1 billion to
developers there's the Greenpeace guys out front that are going to be shoved
aside by the people saying yeah, how many people who have an addictive
personality shoveled into that versus how many people who have the ability to
not buy donuts are paying for that.
Leo: Right.
Andy: I think that it's one
factor among many that... I believe that in the next couple of years there's
going to be a cleaning house of the app store. A lot of
policies that they were made perfect sense when they introduced it or things
that... we'll set it up this way and then make modifications as necessary. And that will work for a few years but there's so many
disgruntled developers about developers who don't have a real connection to...
don't feel a connection to their users. As you say the inability to get demo
versions going, the inability to easily get refunds for stuff and now this idea
where there really is a lopsided amount of revenue coming in from just people
who are in like... iOS Skinner boxes just tapping buttons and you get a pellet,
tap a button and you get a pellet, that they're going to have to do a lot of
cleaning house in order to make this continue to work for the next five years.
Leo: Couple of notes from our
chatroom, ScooterX says the 14 day period in the EU
is extended to a year if a business fails to properly inform consumers of the
return period. So you've got to be very clear, you've got two weeks to return
this. A year.
Andy: A year.
Leo: SjeffN6 who's in I think
Sweden, right? He says you're thinking like the motion picture association,
Leo. People are not thieves by default. And it is more expensive to not sell
apps in the EU than to offer refunds to a small percentage. I guess that's the
question is how many people will take advantage of this. Maybe you're right, maybe I shouldn't assume people would do that.
Alex: In my younger years I took
advantage of a lot of that stuff.
Leo: Yeah but I think... the
record industry says this too. Kids growing up today don't buy music, but I
think those are people who probably wouldn't be spending that money anyway. You
wouldn't have been spending that money anyway.
Rene: It doesn't translate to
physical media though. If I go to Best Buy, buy a Blu-ray of Guardians of the
Galaxy, bring it home, open it, watch it and then go take it back.
Leo: You could do that. People
don't do that.
Rene: Well it depends on... some
of them have policies like it can't be opened, there's
all sorts of different regulations.
Leo: It's pretty easy to push a
button that says I want my money back. Delete this app, I want my money back.
Or delete this book. I don't know, we'll see.
Rene: If 99% of people start
returning apps...
Alex: I think a lot of the reason
people don't return stuff... I mean there's stuff that I won't return which I should
legitimately return.
Leo: All the time I should
return stuff.
Alex: I can't get around, oh I gotta find the box or Amazon is going to charge me.
Leo: I have a lot of stuff I
wish I could return.
Rene: And it will be interesting
to see how this is implemented, is it still going to be the report a problem
button that's sort of buried and you'll have to go digging for it and Google
had to do it or is it going to be a big giant red button on every app purchase?
Leo: Right. Apple dominated
Christmas 2014 in activations, in app sales, very very good holiday season for Apple. 51% of device activations were Apple. 17% Samsung. Oddly 5.8% Windows Phone,
Nokia. This is according to Flurry.
Alex: Well do we know that all of
Nokia is Windows?
Leo: It is.
Alex: Yep, yep all the Windows
Phones.
Leo: There are a couple of Androids, there is a weird Android thing. But I don't think
that's significant.
Rene: So good thing they didn't
fire Tim Cook at the beginning of the year.
(laughter)
Leo: I didn't say they should
have fired Tim Cook.
Rene: Haunted
empire indeed.
Leo: And app downloads were also
big. App installs, average daily app installs, December 1st through
the 21st, 1 a day.
Alex: I think that's just a
reference.
Leo: That's the reference.
Alex: I don't think it was... was
it reference or was it...?
Leo: That's the unit. So it was
150% more on Christmas Day. But that makes sense, you get a new iPhone or new
iPad you're going to install a bunch of apps. Flurry tracked 2 and a half times
the number of app installs on Christmas Day. Compared to an
average day in the first three weeks of December. You're right, that's
just a reference number.
Andy: Also gift cards are being
activated too so.
Leo: Yeah. And I should point
out that Samsung is the big one here, but there are probably other Android
devices. Well there's LG and Sony. Obviously it all adds up to less than half
since Apple has 51%. Distribution of new devices by form
factor.
Alex: I thought this was really
interesting to look at how...
Leo: Good, because I can't...
explain this chart.
Alex: Okay so your tan area is
your larger phones, the red area is smaller phones...
Leo: Shrinking...
Alex: Which is
gone.
Leo: So the top bar is 2014,
then 2013 then 2012. So you could see the shrinking small phones from 7% to
less than 2%.
Alex: Right. The dark blue on
left is full size tablets.
Leo: Like iPads.
Alex: Light blue is like an iPad
Mini. The green is Phablet.
Leo: Giant phones. From 3% to 13%.
Rene: iPhone 6+.
Alex: Yeah. But it's just amazing
how the large phones, and I find that my usage is the
same. I mean, I finally after complaining after saying I was not going to do it
I finally settled into the 6+.
Leo: You did. And I ask
everybody this, do you find yourself using the iPad
less?
Alex: Oh yeah.
Rene: I find myself using the
iPad Mini not at all, but I use the larger iPad which I wasn't using at all.
Alex: Finally I put mini like a
complete waste of time.
Leo: This would support the
rumor that there would be an iPad Pro coming out this year, right? The 12 inch.
Alex: I would be much more likely
to have an iPad... especially if they slowly merge the OS's so where I'm really
just getting an OS you know that has... what I really want is a larger iPad
with a keyboard and like a clicker ball keyboard onto it. People make those
already.
Leo: Oh you want a Surface Pro
3.
Alex: Exactly except for the Mac.
Leo: It has a kickstand. Oh I
wish I had one.
Alex: I don't need the kickstand.
But I have to admit I look at the surface and that is exactly what I want
except I want OSX. I don't want to deal with Windows.
Andy: Yeah. Apple has to do so
much to the iPad, the 9.7 just to make it continue to be relevant. Because now there's... I actually like found myself writing
thousands of thousands of words just to work out my own thoughts about it. And
seeing under what circumstances would I continue to recommend a 9.7” iPad to
somebody, and it's not that I can't think of situations which that would
happen, but now it's like... you walk through that decision tree and again you
imagine yourself having that talk with somebody at the Christmas Eve party and
they know that you're the tech person so oh I want to buy one of this, which
one should I get and I keep landing on squares that say well it sounds as
though you really do want an iPad Mini or it sounds like you'd be happier with
an iPhone 6 or gee did you know that for just a few hundred dollars more or a
couple hundred dollars more you can get an iPad Air, 11” that will do really
everything that you want this iPad to do and way way more and it will be much more useful, it's so hard for me to find the square
that says oh yes, the 9.7” iPad is absolutely the right one for you, and a lot
of the reasons why aren't because it should be 12” instead of 9.7, or that it
should have a detachable keyboard, it's stuff like it should be easy to run two
apps side by side. It should be easy to switch between two apps. Because the
way to get a value out of that $500 minimum device is to offload some of your
creative stuff and your productivity stuff off of whatever notebook you're
using right now and it's such a pain in the butt, it really does require a
bunch of commitment to really ultralight tablet computing because otherwise as
soon as you put a relatively lightweight 13” notebook into the picture, that
9.7” iPad tends to stay home a lot more than it might have otherwise.
Alex: And I think again that it's
that, I think that a larger one with a merged OS is the thing. I don't really
want...
Andy: I don't think that works at
all.
Rene: Let's just say that coming
this spring there is an iOS that runs side by side apps and lets you drag and
drop things between apps, that's probably the beginning of what you want Andy
but not the end.
Andy: One of the things I like
about Surface Pro is that I'm surprised that modern apps, they're Microsoft
Windows 8 multitouch apps, I'm surprised there isn't
a much bigger and better library than there is, but really all I want is the
ability to have one window that has, if all I have is one Windows 8 window, a
pane, and then simply a column next to it that simply has my Twitter client or
simply has like something I can do, keep an eye on, a movie or keep an eye on
my inbox, that will do me, and so if all I had the ability to do was take the
iPhone articulation of an app and have the iPad articulation of a different app
side by side on the same screen, suddenly my 13” Macbook stays home a lot more than it would without this update.
Rene: We saw this, the code is in there for iOS 8. They'll do 1/3 app, 2/3 apps, ½ apps. So we'll
be happy.
Alex: And I think the number one
reason I go to my iPad, and now it's really with my... with the iPhone 6+ I
think that it's become more of an issue for me is that number one reason I go
to an iPad is because there's apps that only run on iPad, even though the
resolution on my phone is plenty to support it. So the thing is it really
frustrates me that I have to go to an iPad app because it's only sold on...
like there's certain sketching programs and all this other stuff, or some of the
sound programs that I use that say oh they're only iPad. I can run them, I could run them on my phone if they just didn't
define it as an iPad app.
Rene: I think that's changing
though, because I believe there's a rumor that you'll be able to target like
iPhone 6+ exclusively and make those big screen apps smaller.
Alex: I don't even know if I
would use the iPad at all after that. It's literally like the handful of apps that I can't use over you know?
Andy: I'd love to know the
thinking behind that because to me it's just insane that at launch you can't
design something and target an iPhone 6+ specifically. It's like saying yes we
put this amazing 10 kajillion horsepower engine in
one of the most beautiful cars we've ever made but we also basically hardwired
in this sail on the back of it that you cannot detach. It's like, why did you
give me the power of a big screen without letting developers really make use of
it yet?
Rene: Yeah, I don't think... I
don't know if we'll be able to target iPhone 6 and 6+ but maybe we'll be able
to target just iPhone 6+ if you want a big screen app.
Andy: Yeah. It's not like there's
100 different iPhones out there, it's a small enough sample size that if a
developer really wants to create an experience for each of the... let's see...
3, 4 iPhone sizes right now they should be able to do that.
Alex: I mean I'd be happy if the
OS just defined the iPhone 6+ as an iPad.
Andy: Hmm. I think that's a
monkey paw wish where I would want it but then when my wish is granted I'd be
sorry I made that wish. I think that it's an interstitial size that needs its
own interface but when you see a big app that's been scaled for that, take
advantage of that, boy does it fly. I really do appreciate the differences
between like the Google Docs app and pages and other text editors where you can
see that although it wasn't targeting this size, when you see one that it's
just a harmonious balance of the interface and the editing area, that's when I
look up thinking I was just going to test out this little keyboard for about 20
minutes but I've actually written now for 3 hours because I really just was
able to get into the zone because it was such a nicely paired system of
keyboard and hardware and software.
Rene: Man I love that split view
controller on iPhone 6+ in landscape mode.
Leo: Really?
Rene: Yep.
Leo: You use that?
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: (snorts)
Rene: I use it and it's like...
Leo I have an iPhone, so I'm using my iPhone and all of the sudden I turn it
and I have an iPad. Turn it back and I have a phone again.
Leo: And how many apps are now
taking advantage of...
Rene: Nowhere nearly enough, all
the Apple system apps but...
Leo: I think that's kind of the
issue yeah. But will they? Why aren't they?
Andy: A lot of iOS stuff is very
slow.
Leo: Yeah.
Andy: I've been talking to
developers about this and there isn't a specific reason for this and developers
are never hesitant to complain when they're unhappy about something, it's just
that for whatever reason making an app not just compatible with iOS 8 but a
celebration of iOS 8 is just not a high priority for them for some reason.
Leo: No. It's fragmentation, isn't it? Isn't that the word that Apple used about Android?
Rene: It's not fragmentation, a
lot of them will complain that it's become incredibly hard for them to repay
that development cost, people won't pay for new
designs. They consider them entitled to them.
Leo: Have not enough people
bought 6+ to make it worthwhile?
Rene: Well last year iOS 7 was a
huge thing and Tweetbot came out with an update to
make it look like iOS 7 and they charged for it, and people said we're not
paying for that. And they said well user experience is the most important
feature. This is the biggest update we've ever done, it's completely... they
said no no, it's just a new skin, I shouldn't have to
pay for that.
Andy: I think a lot of people are
unaware of the time spent in updating an app is money spent, and that's one of
the reasons why there was so much bad blood about the switch to iCloud which
was kind of forced. Excuse me, another addition ago because this was kind of
forced on people saying that hey if you want to continue to have your app in
the app store you're going to have to support iCloud. And now all of this time
and money was diverted away from the new features they wanted to put into their
apps and was diverted into making iCloud syncing work and was just held
together with spit and old twigs. A lot of them felt like I just wasted 8
months of development time on a feature that now I can't even use any more
because it just doesn't work.
Leo: Yeah.
Andy: And so that's why a lot of
people might be a little bit gun shy to Rene's point.
To say that we can either continue to make our app work really great or we can
invest a lot of time and money into supporting features that people are not
really demanding yet and there are a lot of developers out there that are
creatively intrigued by every new opportunity that Apple builds but most of
those developers are not the people who are like, I've got a payroll. I've got
to pay 3 people and I've got to support an office space and I have to figure
out if I'm going to have my people spend 3 months working on something, it has
to be something that users are absolutely going to relate to and pay for.
Leo: Will we see a 12” iPad?
Rene: I think so.
Leo: Yeah.
Andy: I think so, yeah.
Rene: The 2GB of RAM and the 8x
chipset...
Leo: That makes a big difference
doesn't it?
Rene: ...is a big clue as to what
Apple's got planned for the iPad.
Leo: We're going to take a break, we were talking at the dinner last night about
Apple's long term strategy and some two interesting hires that might tell us
something about that. Rene Ritchie has some insight, but let's take a break and talk about our sponsor for this show today. PersonalCapital.com.
Alex: That's something I don't
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Rene: Thank goodness.
(laughter)
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very happy. PersonalCapital.com. So we're talking at
the dinner. I hope this is not out of school to mention this.
Rene: I won't name them publicly
if they don't want to, but in general I think there's some interesting trends.
Leo: So what's going on?
Rene: If you look at Apple in
general this year and the things that were super public, like Kevin Lynch
coming out and demonstrating Watch OS, Watch OS doesn't look like iOS 7. They
spent all this time making iOS 7 look a certain way and then making Yosemite
look a certain way and yet Watch OS is something new, it's got a new system
font, it's got a new way of doing things.
Leo: Right.
Rene: It's got icons that look
almost like Yahoo from the 80s. It's really interesting, it's a new design
language and you add to that things like the A8X
processor, it's got not only a custom chipset but a custom graphics chip now
too. 8 cores on there, 2GB of RAM. It looks to me like
when you look at the kind of people that they're hiring and the kind of
projects that they're doing that there is a very large movement moving all this
mobile technology forward. Extensibility, it's been around a year already and
not only does it allow us to do in or out communication but it's a foundation
for projecting information back and forth between iOS and the watch. Handoff is
moving things back and forth and I think when we look at that, to Alex's point
earlier, I don't think there will ever be a point where iOS and OSX are merged,
because Apple really truly believes that these are separating operating
systems, but I believe that there will be a point where it won't matter. Where
the device will understand our context and present us capabilities based on
where we are. And the watch is a great point, if you have your arm out, if I'm
just sitting here with Alex and I get a notification, it just taps my wrist.
There's no loud buzz, there's no loud noise so he doesn't know about it. Then I
tilt my wrist slightly and I get a ShortLook notification, little bit of information. I'm bringing it closer to me I get the
whole notification. All of this works with Handoff, so if I see a small
interaction it's not, it's too hard to do on a watch,
that same thing. It's not just cloud sync. Because in a cloud sync I'd have to launch the app, launch the document. It would be in the same
status but it wouldn't be in the same place. This will just have that app there
waiting at the exact same place that I was before, and it'll let me move back
and forth. If I plug a keyboard in suddenly it'll go oh now I have a keyboard.
And it'll understand, and I think that's where Apple is maybe too slowly for
some, but I think when you look at all the clues we saw this year, that's where
they're heading in 15 into 16.
Leo: It makes sense, because the
one thing it really does is it makes you want to use all Apple products.
Rene: Absolutely.
Leo: I get left out in the cold.
I could buy an Apple Watch but now I have to use my iPhone, and if I really
want Handoff I'm going to have to use my laptop and my Apple laptop and my iPad
and suddenly I'm all Apple.
Rene: And they reward that by
making the experience as incredibly seamless and compelling for you.
Alex: And I think they're taking
advantage of what used to be a disadvantage for Apple. Remember, back in the
old days when Apple because they owned everything, it was like they were trying
to develop everything, but now they're what I think Steve Jobs started and what
Apple's doing now is when we own the entire ecosystem it works better, because
we have control of the hardware, the hardware matches the software, the
software matches... and I think the one thing Apple's gotten good at that they
weren't good at a long time ago, and when I say long time ago... 5 to 8 years
ago. Is that the teams are actually talking to each other a little more. I
think the re-organization that was done come out...
Leo: And that was Tim Cook's
goal obviously.
Alex: Sometimes I felt like I
knew more about what was happening.
Rene: The guy who runs continuity
extensibility for Yosemite also ran it for iOS so there was more separation of
operating systems, it was one guy running a feature.
Alex: A lot of times you'd feel
like you were talking to guys at Apple, at a convention or whatever and you'd
feel like one team is working on one thing, another team is working on a
completely different thing and they're integrated but they're not talking to
each other at all. Now I think that integration is starting to show up all over
the place.
Andy: Yeah. There's another tweet
to this in that not only does it help to convince people to have all Apple
stuff, but it also convinces them to have every single Mac and every single iOS
device running the exact same latest version of the software. Because if you've
got that one last iMac or you got one last iMac or the one last Macbook that's running 10.9 or 10.8 or god forbid 10.7,
that's going to tell you that well why can't I access photos on this iMac? I
used to be able to share it before? Well that's because everything else is
running Yosemite except for your one iMac that runs 10.7. Oh well how do I
upgrade that? Well you've got an old iMac that doesn't run 10.10 but have you
seen our new Retina iMac? And I'm curious to see how this plays out because
it's great if you walk into the store with your American Express black card and
you buy all new stuff, but that's not necessarily the world that everybody
works in. This is a story that I'm sure is going to fall on familiar ears now
that we're recording after everyone is back from their Christmas business to
like aunts and parents and sisters and brothers, that you spend a certain
amount of time in somebody's rec-room, taking a look at why is my Mac not working.
And the first, the first thing you check is okay, let's do a system version.
Okay. You're running OS 10.5. Here's why some things are slowing down and
here's why some things aren't working. And then you try to explain why they
might want to upgrade, and then you're running into the brick wall of yes but
everything outside of seeing a beach ball cursor every now and then, this is
working fine. What problems am I going to encounter
once I start running something that's from this presidential administration. So
it's going to be... Apple has always had the wonderful benediction of we plan
everything out, we have everything working together extremely well, a lot of
that however is conditional upon you always having everything up to date, and
in the past two or three years having modern software. I'm just saying that it
would be interesting to at some point discuss, there is a wall I think has
dropped down that wasn't there before in the Mac line in particular, where if
you have a Mac made before then, you're kind of left behind. If you have a Mac
made after then, you're perfectly fine. It might be 2008, it might be 2009, but
it's something that I'm navigating in my office right now too, because I've
still got an older Macbook that's kind of my bedroom Macbook that is useful for a whole bunch of stuff, it still
works fine, it's got maybe a little green line of longevity on the left side of
the LCD but otherwise it works fine. I've not updated it past 10.8 not because
I've refused to but because it's never occurred to me to do so, and now I'm
facing that okay I guess I have to upgrade this to 10.10 and let's hope that
everything works fine.
Rene: I think Bluetooth LE was
one of the big dividing lines for Apple though because they made so... all the
new stuff is so dependent on it, that older Macs that don't have it really were
technologically cut off.
Leo: Has NFC changed things too?
Andy: A lot of the power
management, a lot of the networking stuff.
Leo: Does NFC change things too?
Rene: The way they're using it
right now...
Andy: I would say so.
Rene: The way they're using it
right now is just Apple Pay but in the future... you know, it took me a year to
make an API for TouchID so maybe a year from now.
Leo: You know I look at my Sony
camera which has... I can move pictures off of it onto a smartphone using NFC.
And I couldn't do that with the iPhone until the 6 came out.
Rene: So if you look at what
they're doing with the Apple Watch and especially CarPlay,
even Apple TV is they've totally decoupled interface from device now. Like the
iPhone 6+, iPhone 6 work because iOS is no longer bound to a pixel grid. That
interface just scales to fit the phone, it scales to fit the watch, it scales to fit the car. Why can't we have camera play?
Leo: Wouldn't that be great?
Rene: So I get a Canon camera and
my iPhone knows it. And that's their philosophy because...
Leo: Will they do that though?
That's not an Apple product.
Rene: Unlike Samsung, Apple's
never going to manufacture the range of equipment that a Samsung or an LG makes
and they're not going to license an operating system the way Google or... so
the only thing they can do is take over interfaces. And I think they've shown
with the Apple... it doesn't matter whose TV I have, I just stick an Apple TV
on there and hit play. It doesn't matter what car I have as long as it supports CarPlay. That Q and S system just gets totally
overtaken by Apple. And in the future if my camera can do that, my appliances
can do that, Apple gets to offer yeah all this stuff
works, works better with Apple. Manufacturers have an advantage.
Alex: And I think that a lot of
the manufacturers see their interface, the two things that I think they see
there are, their secret sauce for these cameras.
Because a lot of these cameras are commoditized, they are very similar. They
see their interface and the way that they manage the raw data as kind of their
secret sauce. Because they're all... a lot of them are using the same chips, a
lot of them are using the same features. I think it's a mistake. I think that a
lot of us would love to be able to... and we've seen a little bit of Sony
experimenting with it by just having a lens that attaches to your camera, I mean it attaches to your phone. But it's still,
you know. There's a lot of us that would love to be able to run whether it's
our video camera or our still camera, being able to have a graphic interface to
change the settings and so on and so forth I think would be very compelling. I
think it's a hard press to get these Japanese firms to give up that control,
but I think that if they did the first one that does it, wins. There's a lot of us. There's a lot
of iPhone users. There's a lot of iPhone users that
would be like I'm buying that camera.
Leo: I have to think a lot of
pro photographers are using Apple gear. So if Canon or Nikon goes along with it...
Rene: And look at the car... I
have a Toyota that was before it got integration. I said can I just upgrade the
sound system and they said no you've got to buy a new car. But once I have CarPlay, every time my phone is updated, every time iOS is
updated it's updated. And the same thing could be true of all these other
appliances.
Leo: Do you think it's likely?
Alex: I think that eventually
someone's going to do it. I think it's more likely when we look at video
cameras I think we're more likely to see someone like red or black magic or AJA
provide that kind of interface than we're going to see Sony or Panasonic or
Canon.
Leo: And you'll never see
Samsung because their goal is to make the entire line as well.
Rene: Touchwiz everywhere.
Leo: Go ahead Andy, I'm sorry.
Andy: I was just going to say
that I think I'm very very cheered by CarPlay because if there's a limitation that Apple has not
proven they don't have, it's that they're great at making things that work with
other things as long as they make all of the things. However what if you don't
want to buy an Apple compatible camera? What if you don't want to buy an Apple
compatible printer, what if you want this tablet that is not made by Apple to work
with this Apple computer? Then you start to run into problems and butt heads.
So if Apple were to start to not just make this a way to reach the phone into
the car, but a philosophical way of saying we are never opposed to people
buying whatever hardware that they want, we just want them to have a safe and a
very very consistent experience. If they are
philosophically are starting to say that we want to start to make the transport
technologies that will let us interface between anything we have to anything
you have, that would be one of the most... one of the best culture shifts. The
second best, number one being people talking to each other inside the company,
but the second best cultural shift would be for them to start to have an
embrace and extend some sort of technology.
Leo: I wonder if there's an
example... the only one I can think of is printers. Apple for a while made its
own printers, the Image Writer and the Laser Writer but stopped and they
created Air Print which seems to be well supported by the printer
manufacturers.
Rene: Yeah, all that stuff.
Alex: Don't they have like health
care HomeKit?
Rene: HomeKit,
yeah. Big example.
Leo: Well you can say that, but
have nothing... is yet doing... working with it.
Alex: Well CES is a week away.
Leo: Okay, you think. Ah, that's
interesting.
Alex: I think where we start, I think that where we're starting to see this is CES.
Leo: Because there's been pass
book, and now there's HealthKit and HomeKit. You can make it, but will they come right?
Rene: As much as we make fun of
Apple for being too controlling, whenever things don't work it's usually the
parts that Apple doesn't control. Like it took CarPlay was being worked on for five years before they could even announce it because
car companies are so slow, and the manufacturers now are a big holdup for HomeKit because they're actually making physical objects
that they have to...
Leo: Will we see stuff at CES?
Alex: I think so.
Rene: I think so too.
Leo: There's always been a big
home automation pavilion and it's always been very disappointing because
nothing talks to anything else and Samsung's bought smart things and they're
promising to put this into their appliances this year.
Alex: I think one of the things
that a lot of these manufacturers have to weigh is that home automation is too
important for Apple to leave it, I think it's too important for Apple to if it
doesn't work, if HomeKit doesn't work I think Apple
moves into manufacturing home devices and I think that...
Leo: Just because. Google's already
acquired an estimate, Google's making a big play in
this.
Alex: So I think Apple, I bet you
somewhere in the back rooms when they're talking and it's basically like you're
going to develop this or you're going to develop it, we'd be happy for you to
develop it, it's something we don't want to deal with. But if you don't we're
going to just... you know because if Apple built a nest like device, I'd buy
it. And if Apple bought...
Leo: Well it's ironic because
it's Tony Fidel who built the nest.
Rene: It's amazing how careful
they're being though, because there's no home dot app. There's a health dot
app, so you have an Apple front end to all to all the HealthKit stuff.
Leo: Where is HomeKit?
Rene: So you basically, when you
make a HomeKit compatible accessory, your app has to
be able to enable and set up HomeKit for everything.
Leo: Ah. And why hasn't Hue done
that, why hasn't Belkin done that? Why haven't all these companies...?
Rene: A lot of these apparently
are going to roll it out but the interface is strange because Siri it looks
like is going to be the easiest, most common interface for...
Leo: I love that.
Rene: Siri, goodnight and it
turns off everything. Siri, my country home, please make it warmer, I'm on my
way.
Leo: Right.
Rene: All those sort of things
look like they're coming.
Leo: And then you say I'm
turning heat up to 120 degrees, enjoy.
(laughing)
Andy: ...is close to failure. 100% failure in 23 hours.
Leo: We replace the unit.
Alex: And there is the problem,
when we first installed my nest it kind of went crazy.
Rene: (laughing)
Alex: It would turn the heat up
really high and then really low...
Leo: Apple wouldn't accept that,
right? Apple would say this is not okay.
Alex: Yeah. There was a certain
level of expert... well also letting people install their own.
Rene: We saw with CarPlay though I mean some of them had wonderful
multi-touch screens, other like Ferrari had horrible little...
Leo: Is there incentive for
Apple to do this after all? Aren't they making money, printing money right now
with their existing solutions? Do they really need...?
Rene: They've never been happy
with now though. Apple's one of the few companies where like... you like at
Apple as a contrast, Apple never mistook their products for their business.
Some companies believed, like Windows, that's our company. We're going to put
everything behind it and we'll riot it into the ground. Apple's like yeah we
make iPods now, but that's just an instance of personal computing. That's going
to go down. We have to have the next one ready. So you see with like the
iPhones replaced the iPod, the iPad is replacing it somewhat. They have the
Apple Watch coming on. They're always, they're really concerned about
obsoleting themselves and that's a good... they don't maximize profits on any
one product, but as a company they stay reliable longer.
Leo: Right.
(all talking - indistinguishable)
Leo: Well they don't move fast
enough for you and me.
Alex: I mean I think that for
instance the HomeKit thing, I think we'll see what
happens at CES but for a lot of people to jump onto it I think it makes sense
but I do think that if we don't see a lot of people jumping onto the HomeKit in CES, I think that Apple should just...
Rene: New Apple TV has HomeKit hub.
Alex: Basically, because a lot of
Apple...
Leo: I feel like that the
problem is that Apple makes proprietary solutions, and so if even they're only
at best half of the market, and it's the US they're half the market. That's not
100% of the market and so it's more concerning and certainly for me, I don't
want to have to use an iPhone to take advantage of all this stuff, but I would.
Alex: But there's an enormous...
Leo: They want me to, but I
don't want to. So if I'm another company, if I'm... I don't know, I won't say
Samsung. But if I'm Frigid Air, I don't even know if they exist anymore, but if
I'm another company, am I going to choose a thing that's going to lock me into
a great ecosystem admittedly, but only half of my potential market.
Rene: You're not locked in,
that's the brilliance with CarPlay, is that it's
running mostly Q and X you could do it with Android...
Leo: So it works without an
iPhone.
Rene: So it works with any...
they just want, Apple wants people to say the best experience will be if you
have an iPhone. If you don't have an iPhone, you'll log in, you'll use the Q and X system like anybody else.
Leo: If I'm Ford I would even be
reluctant to do that.
Rene: They can put an Android in
the car as well, the thing is it's a completely
modular system. As long as you have the base unit. It's the same with a television.
Leo: I don't think you're going
to see a third party company in most cases say the best experience is with
Apple.
Rene: Well Apple wants to say
that.
Leo: I know Apple wants to say
that.
Rene: Like your television. You
can buy any television you want, put an Apple TV on it and Apple will say look
at this amazing experience you get with Air Play, Samsung doesn't care what
Apple is saying, they're making their own box.
Alex: And we can all complain but
the thing is that the other, the choice that you have here when Apple starts...
when Apple builds it. Is it may not be perfect, but like there's a lot of
things I complain about with Apple TV. The interface drives me a little crazy,
until I got a Vizio 4k TV at Walmart for the house
and the interface... you're just like oh my gosh the
Apple TV is...
(all talking – indistinguishable)
Rene: Panasonic has ads, they
play ads!
Leo: They have ads! It's
frustrating.
Andy: Okay but you compare that
now to the Roku 3 and what's your experience like.
Alex: I haven't used the Roku 3
yet.
Andy: Yeah, see.
Leo: I love the Roku 3, except
it crashes once in a while. Like a lot.
Andy: For me I see a mysterious
reboot maybe once a month, maybe a couple times a month. But the difference is
that like my Apple TV is 100% reliable, 100% stable because I don't turn it on
and I don't use it.
Leo: (laughing)
Andy: Because I also have a Roku
here. And so there's... it's an interesting kind of dynamic that Apple puts
into play like Apple is going to make the Apple Watch, it's probably going to
be like almost all major Apple products, at least 90% there, say 85% there at
launch but everything that's in it at launch is going to work perfectly.
Meanwhile Android Wear, the first range of watches not really great but boy
they only took a couple of months to get their act together with one firmware
update and then now an update to the entire operating system so they're not
afraid to iterate and maybe even screw up in public. And so Apple does not want
to do a really big update to the Apple TV until they have a lot of other pieces
in place. It's obvious that there's, with all the hires they've been doing and
with also just how fallow the Apple TV has been laying for the past couple of
years, there's going to be a huge update in 2015 but meanwhile nobody wants to...
nobody should really want to use it. All it delivers right now is Air Play and
meanwhile if Roku is so much better in every way.
Leo: Even Chromecast which is
$35 offers some very interesting choices.
Alex: My problem is that when I
can't find the controller I have two little kids, and when I can't find the
controller I always know I can just pull my iPhone out and start running Apple
TV and that's the number one reason I use it.
Leo: I lose my Apple remote
every day.
Rene: (laughing)
Leo: Every freaking day.
Fortunately most of my remotes work with it. They think they're Apple remotes.
Alex: That for me, being able to
open up my phone and still be able to get back to my TV because right now with
my TV usually I only have to worry about turning it on. Once it's on then I
just run it with my phone.
Rene: Could you imagine Apple TV
as a HomeKit hub where it's doing all of the...
because HomeKit supposedly works remotely, like you
could be in Rwanda and control your whole house and stuff. That just means you
have to have something always on in your house to relay all those.
Leo: Somebody will lick this...
Andy: To me the most sensible
thing to always have on is the computer.
Leo: I agree. Somebody will lick
this whole home automation thing. Apple has an opportunity but if I have to
have an iPhone and a Mac to make it work... and it won't work with my nest or
my drop cam...
Alex: But still I think those,
the drop cam and the nest are still tiny little...
they've scratched the surface of their market.
Leo: Or my Samsung refrigerator
which works with my smart things.
Andy: And the other thing that I
point out is the nest thermostat is about 3 to 4 times more expensive than
whatever you're going to get at Home Depot and when you talk about people who
have the money to spend something like $200 per thermostat, you are talking
about someone who also probably has an iPhone and probably also has a Macbook too. What we're discussing might be kind of irrelevant
to Apple. Apple has the people who are willing to spend money for that kind of
gear.
Leo: That would make me sad
though.
Rene: It's a different kind of
customer though, Leo. Apple's never chased huge amounts of customers. They are
happy with their subset of customers. And when you have other
companies, like Google wants everyone to be able to use their stuff. And
Apple wants to be able to make things for people who just want to buy something
and put it down.
Leo: Again, good for Apple. Not
necessarily good for consumers or third parties.
Rene: We can choose the companies
that suit our needs.
Alex: Go ahead Andy.
Andy: Whenever I hear that, I
always feel the need, correctly or incorrectly, to interject and say that there
are people who can't afford to buy the things that Apple is making.
Leo: Or choose not to.
Andy: Well choose not to is a different story. But I'm saying that there are people
that they can admire a Macbook from a distance, they
can admire a $350 Apple Watch from a distance, they could admire a $500 iPad
from a distance, but then it's like... well let's go look at my wallet, well
I've got $300. What can I do for $300, well you can buy this watch for $200, you can buy this Kindle for $70. I think that Apple should
be praised for a lot of things, that has to be tempered however with the
knowledge that there is a whole economic class of people for whom an Apple
product is only going to be an aspirational thing and that these people should still have the benefit of
being able to save money on their electric bill. They should still be able to
let their kids have a reading device; as opposed to having one that has to be
shared amongst the entire household. I'm just saying there is a big, big ball
of data here and that no one part of it is more interesting than the rest of
it.
Leo: There is a risk to Apple. I acknowledge that this is a
great business model except Apple shouldn't want to become a Golden Ghetto.
Where yeah, we have a very lucrative portion of the market and we are happy
there. But it is a ghetto, it is a silo, it is a gated community and Apple has
kind of pursued that all along.
Andy: I think that is just what happened. I don't think they
pursued it.
Alex: Well I think that they I mean when I look at my
service, we do a lot of live streaming. We do not serve; there is really small projects we just do not serve them. Like I
can't do that, I don't have the systems. In the same way I think that Apple
can't, just can't do that and do what they want to do. They can't concentrate
on that many things; we try to we think about it and we just go back to what we
were doing. I think that there is a lot of people out
there who are very comfortable. When you talk about the MacPro
Leo: This comes back to the discussion of for instance this
Sony camera and whether it would have some sort of card play; camera play
interface to an Apple device. And if I'm Sony I'm probably not going to do that
because it locks me into this limited market.
Alex: What Sony would do is build an STK or some kind of
interface. Here is, whether you are on Android or iPhone you can interface with you phone. These are the instructions sets that you
can make calls per phone.
Leo: As a consumer I would love that.
Rene: Sony camera would detect if you have an Apple device
and offer you camera play; it would detect if you have an Android device and
offer you Android on the camera.
Leo: It kind of does already, that is what this NFC thing
does. Then you put Sony's app play memories on your iPhone or you Android
phone.
Alex: And that is the closest.
Leo: It is a Sony system
Alex: What I am saying is that what you really want from
these phones is that you want to have a way to call certain things.
Rene: I want my stuff to be everywhere because I don't want
to have to program everything twice.
Leo: Yeah, that is what I'm asking for.
Rene: If the car has car play, I can walk into it with my
phone. I don't have to have my stuff. I don't have to worry about setting up
something else.
Leo: I do love that. That is the future that is what the cloud
brings you.
Rene: Absolutely, but not just the cloud because Sync
understands the car's state of data but not the car's state of my activity.
That is one thing that car play and hand off is doing. It is translating our
activity but also our state of data.
Leo: But cloud has given us that state of expectation.
Rene: Yes.
Leo: That I can go anywhere with anything and still have my
stuff. I think you are right, this is the next logical
piece of that.
Rene: Thorsen Hines was laughed
out of the building for saying that mobile is going to be an end point. He was
absolutely right.
Leo: He was right, you think of it more as an accessory.
It's not.
Alex: I spend more time on my phone then on my computer.
Leo: Everybody does that.
Rene: With the exclusivity though. I think in Apple's vision
they believed that they only have the capacity to make a few products. If they
try to do anything else they will ultimately fail or make a bad product. But,
they are happy to let the technology that they make sort of be expressed by
other companies in other areas. So you will always have the Xiaomi's and the
companies that say look how many MacBook Air like laptops you can get now. Much
more expensively from a wide range of
Leo: Apparently not from Xiaomi. According to 9 to 5 Mac or CultaoMac, I'm sorry. Luke Dormehl says despite the blogosphere going crazy over this from gizmokina.com. This is
not Xiaomi making a complete rip-off of a MacBook Air. Xiaomi says no that is
not what it is.
Rene: There are probably people who want everybody to
believe that; and that is not the best thing
Leo: They did it with the phones didn’t they?
Rene: Absolutely.
Leo: They shamelessly copied the iPhone; why not copy the
Mac Air?
Rene: Is shame a good thing to have?
Leo: Right, not in this case. Here is the difference, it
can't run OS 10
Rene: No, that is the same thing as the surface commercials,
which is funny. They stopped marketing the surface against the iPad and started
marketing it against the MacBook. Which is funny because they
said: look we have a USB port which, the MacBook has.
Leo: That is right the MacBook has a USB port.
Rene: But it doesn't have, you cannot compare that with the
OS 10 or Windows. I don't like the competition adds anymore because they are
not just anymore
Leo: They are not head to head
Rene: Yeah
Leo: It is not head to head. So, who cares if Xiaomi
duplicates the hardware of MacBook Air it doesn't have OS 10. Who cares? In
fact, let's face it, every single Windows manufacture has made a MacBook Air
clone. That's what the Ultra Book is.
Rene: Which is why I think the Surface has, sorry go ahead
Andy.
Andy: I'm sorry go ahead.
Rene: No, we are all in the studio so I think you are
getting left out.
Leo: Poor Andy he is stuck out there on the East Coast in a
little box.
Andy: I still have the remainders of my Christmas Eve/
Christmas Day cold, so perhaps its better that way.
Leo: Oh, it's better that way.
Andy: I'm like John Travolta where they wheel the TV into
the school room
Leo: Bubble boy, I think it is Bubble Boy
Andy: You have a kindly face. Keep your pledge dollars
coming in to help little boys like me. I often have,
not just thoughts of the technology itself but of the attitudes about Apple;
the attitudes about these products and I don't think that Ultra Books were really
a copy of the MacBook Air. It is a merely a directions those kind things were
naturally heading and I cringe a little bit when I hear. I was going to see
these because it was a half formed thought. I'm just saying that I often cringe
when I feel as though we are putting a sticker, a gold star on Apple's forehead
or a gold star on someone else's forehead. When really they are just companies
that are trying to make successful products that they can make a lot of money
off of and that will make their customers very, very happy. And if Surface is
being compared to the MacBook Air incorrectly and I think that is kind of an
incorrect comparison, I agree with you Rene. Chiefly because it is like
comparing an iPad to a MacBook Air; the iPad is not going to compare favorably
to that, the MacBook Air is not going to compare favorably to that. They are
such distinct objects. Unfortunately I'm at the end of my test cycle on my
Surface 3; I'm going to have to send it back to Microsoft soon. I'm glad that
I've had some deep soaked time with it because what I appreciate most about it
is that so long as you don't want to have it standing in your lap; if you are
in the situation where you tend carry a computer to a coffee shop and put a
computer on a table boy that Surface is a much more comfortable thing to work
with than either of the MacBook Airs that I have tried out. In many ways it is
even more comfortable to use than my MacBook Pro.
Leo: If only it had OS 10
Andy: Yeah, I'm saying that if Apple decided to make a kick
stand screen, with a touch screen, that ran Mac OS 10 that would be my next Mac
no question about it. Because, every complaint that I have about my MacBook Pro
in front of me right now is related to ways they cheeped out and cut corners to
make this notebook profile work for them and make the size and the weight work
for them. Whereas if you have a detached screen and you have an Apple wireless
keyboard; which kicks the butt of every keyboard on every MacBook that is
available right now, the ability to move the screen wherever you wanted to.
That is an interesting idea and I'm glad that there are companies that are
prosecuting it. I'm sorry to be babbling, it is a half formed idea. It is just
that it think that we need to move; the thing that is sort of bothering me over
this past year or so is that we have to say that Apple is winning in some way.
Or that we have to say if you are on the other side of the conversation that
Apple's numbers are not as significant compared to this. I just feel that this
is a wonderful, wonderful world full of all different kinds of great technology
that helps people in ways that can understand and in ways that we will never
appreciate. We should be happy for everybody that has something that works
great for them and that they have that in front of them.
Leo: Yes indeed, right on.
Rene: As Andy says that, Samsung beats Apple to 12 inch fan
less laptop.
Leo: Samsung beats Apple to 12 inch fan less laptop running
Windows
Rene: Yep
Leo: Which is again; remember you said that OS 10 Apple
would start, were they going to open source it first?
Alex: That is what I thought they should do.
Leo: And then sell it for Windows machines.
Alex: What I thought they should do, is next generation OS.
I still think that in the next two years there will not be two OS'. So you get
that new merged one and you take the old one and you just open source it and
just wipe everything out.
Leo: Wouldn't that be nice.
Alex: Because then it would cease to be the current OS, and
they can say you know we are not supporting it.
Rene: You’re not cannibalizing your new stuff?
Alex: You're really not and the way that Apple moves forward
because I think that the new OS will not; I really do think that two of them.
As you look at the different icons coming in and piecing together I just feel
like if you look at the long term projectory, you see
two OS' that are pointed at an angle towards each other that eventually you see
more things from the Mac that are on the IOS, you see more stuff from the IOS
on the Mac. I think that they are slowly being merged together. It is not like
Apple has never said that they are never going to do something and then do it.
Rene: I think that the quibble is that will they merge
something or will something new that has the capacity for both take its place.
Alex: I think that it is going to be something new, but I
think that what it's going to do is
Rene: It will fill both needs.
Alex: It is going to
be a slope. It is not going to be like suddenly they come out with something
that is radically different. It is going to be we say this coming and then one
of these developer conferences this year, next year, or the year after they are
going to go we are really close together we just thought we would do one that
works on everything.
Rene: It is one of those wonderful arguments like in 500
years will there still be IOS and OS 10. No, okay then well in 100 years, well
then in 50 years, well in 10 years.
Alex: How about in 3?
Rene: Eventually that has to be right, right? Eventually we
won't have these things anymore.
Alex: We only need one operating system; it doesn't make
sense to keep both of them.
Andy: I disagree, I do think that Apple's breakthrough
technology over the next two or three years is not going to be a new operating
system but simply getting a way for IOS and Mac OS to integrate and whatever it
is that Apple watch is wearing to integrate and provide one seamless
experience. Because that is something that everybody is going to appreciate. It
is going to be hard to teach somebody, to teach a Mac user: here is why your
Mac now looks so much like IOS; and it is going to be so hard to teach and IOS
user: here is why we added and Apple menu to the middle of the top of the
screen. I think that it is really going to be about, let's continue to sell
everything that we sell but let's basically continue our focus on making one
product that is known as the Apple product.
Alex: I just think that by the time you get to where they
are merged you are not going to have to teach anybody anything because there
are so many similarities between the two OS' that by the time the merge it they
will almost be the same but we will see.
Andy: Maybe
Leo: We started this conversation with the idea that Apple
is moving into kind of a new world with perhaps more, is it more mobile focus?
What is it exactly that these higher are moving them towards?
Rene: I think it is interesting. Again extensibility shows
us a lot. It is a world where things are more modular, where things are
projected, where previously with my iPhone and with IOS in general; everything
I had to go hunt for it, I feel Android was the same for a long time too. Yes,
they had widgets on the home screen, but I had to leave my app go to the home
screen; I had to leave my app go to the home screen find another app. You
always had to go chasing after what you wanted and then you have to find your
way back.
Leo: Right.
Rene: And now we are getting this generation of apps where
data is being pushed into other apps, being pushed into the system. So I can be
in one app, pull down a shade; get all the widgets I want, I can pull up
extensions that give me the functionality right where I am. So the interface is
being changed for being pull to push. As you do that there is all these
security implications that come with it; there is all these OS structure things
that come with it because eventually, and Andy's point as a user I don't care
where this things are. I don't care what this is running, what that is running
I just want my stuff and I want it in front of me when and where I want it and
that I think is a capability we are starting to see here. I think everything we
have seen this year is Apple creating decoupled computing and push interface
and then Alex can have whatever he wants on whatever device he wants to.
Leo: I like it. I wonder if I could ever have Apple pushed
into my Windows Surface Pro tablet. Then Andy gets the best of everybody's
world.
Rene: Then Microsoft says this is just a screen that you can
project onto.
Leo: You know I think Microsoft is moving in that
direction, I hate to say it but I have a feeling that is not so farfetched.
Rene: All it is, is remote viewers; they have packaged
remote viewers for a super secure method and now they are showing that not only
does that go into your device in other apps but also other things like a watch;
so why not.
Andy: There are so many great reasons for having a Mac Mini
on your network and one of them is to just be a Mac OS application server for
all of your tablets, all of your laptops, all of your everything because having
a Surface Pro 3 running remote access into a Mac mini that is part of a slice
of heaven.
Leo: There is kind of an example of that here in the
studio, we use that Black Magic router because we have so many cameras and
inputs, it allows 72 inputs and then you can program it for 144 outputs and
what does it run on. It runs on a Mac Mini and that Mac Mini is on our Wi-Fi
network and I can control that from this laptop, from that laptop, from that
iPad, Jason has an iPad that allows him to do all of the switching and all of
that is talking back to the Mac Mini which is talking back to the big switcher.
It is incredibly flexible and functional. There it is. It is awesome, I can do
the same thing in my office; I can do the same thing right here with the right
software.
Alex: And when you have something like we do that with the Maracci system where all of our systems will plug in. You
can do that with any of our hardware anywhere
Leo: You can control them all.
Alex: I can run the switcher here in D.C. from here on my
iPad
Leo: In a way that is kind of home automation isn't it that
is the beginning of home automation.
Andy: That is the whole thing, I have exactly one HD cable
box with DVR in my entire house and because I've got it hooked up to a Sling box,
anytime I want to watch it at any HD screen I just simply activate the Sling
Player app on my phone and switch over to the FIOS remote app, Wi-Fi remote so
I am actually having a full functioning remote with one app while streaming via
another app and be able to see it anywhere I want in the entire world. It is
like I think what an interesting factor in the next few years is that people
are losing sort of obedience and fealty to whatever logo they have actually
parked in front of. They really are believers that I have Evernote; Evernote
simply projects itself on whatever screen I have handy to me and it works just
as well on a Chrome book as it does on my $4,000 gaming laptop.
Leo: And that is why I brought up the cloud because the
cloud has introduced that concept to us. You know on the other hand, we wanted
to have Crestron controlled window shades and stuff, and that doesn't talk. If
that all talked to some central thing then Jason could sit there and lower the
lights, rotate the bed, and close the shades. We would be ready; make it a
little love machine.
Rene: We would be at Jason's mercy. Jason let us out.
Leo: Oooo, the look of love is in
your eyes.
Rene: Imagine if you could have Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro
just detect that you have iPhone or iPads with push control surfaces to them,
there are sorts of things that you can do with this handoff technology.
Leo: All these little theiftums and Crestron doesn't want to do that. What is going to
have to happen is somebody is going to have to have enough market share that they can say look. It could be Google at this
point, it could be Apple, it could even be Samsung.
Rene: Hopefully all of them.
Leo: It would be wonderful if it were all of them.
Alex: But I still think that, exactly what Andy was talking
about; I can go to Sling box and I can go to my DVR and that is great for us
because we all do that.
Leo: Right
Alex: The hard part is how do my parents do that and I think that, that integration is still something that is
still geeky.
Leo: I agree, I agree.
Alex: And I think that in the problem with
Leo: If it becomes an Apple TV and it just talks to
everything.
Alex: And I think that still, I think that this market is
too big for Apple to ignore. So if manufactures don't go down that path, I
think you see Apple starting to add automation. Like here is one bit to that
and they are trying to show them that you can go down that path but they are
also I think that, that is a you go down this path we will go down this path.
Leo: When you look, are you going to CES this year?
Alex: I am not.
Leo: You are Rene.
Rene: Yes.
Leo: And Andy you are going to stay at home because you
haven't bought your tickets yet.
Andy: Well only because I did have this idea that I would
talk to friends of mine at New York Times, at other places where we are all
just like staying home this year. I'm thinking that we should find some
beautiful resort.
Leo: All CES
Andy: Get a cabana and if we are just going to be watching
this through a glass screen anyway, we may as well be on a nice beach while
doing it. And you know what, maybe we will set two hours of the day aside if
people, if product reps want to come, executives what to come visit us; we will
have the drinks cart, we will have the beach, we will look at your new home
automation thing so long as you're out of here in 20 minutes. We are back to
contemplating the service.
Leo: I think this entire studio, Trinidad and Tobago maybe
this is the opportunity maybe for next year.
Andy: For tax purposes
Leo: For tax purposes
Alex: What I have been thinking of doing for CES is sending
someone with a live.
Leo: Remote Alex
Alex: Just send someone and then I will ask the questions in
their ear. It's like okay I'll ask them this.
Rene: Telepresence Alex.
Alex: Yeah, telepresence Alex
Leo: We do have Scott Wilkinson going down he will cover
TVs. We have Father Robert who will cover anything that he feels like is an
interesting thing. Dick DeBartillo our gadget guy
will be down there. So we will have people down there and I will make sure
Father Robert goes over to home automation and I hope you will too. Because I
and then we will cross our fingers that maybe the solution is this year.
Although I have been going for 10 years praying the solution would be this year
and it hasn't yet.
Alex: And I don't think the solution will be this year
either, I think it will be next year.
Leo: There is always next year.
Rene: They have looked at TVs every year for 3 years right.
Leo: Right
Alex: But now forecast.
Rene: It took 3 years of CES though
Alex: It did but it is now $850 at Wal-Mart.
Rene: Just to review, Serenity Caldwell did an awesome
article yesterday. She spent holiday with her family and she is trying to
introduce them to home automation. She got them the hue light bulbs and the Sonos and she is setting it up for her mom and dad. She
wrote a thing about how to introduce your family to all of the stuff that you
can do now in the home.
Leo: How did that work for her?
Rene: I think it is still a work in progress. She has got
the patience of a saint.
Andy: There is sort of an exchange of like humoring going on
during all of the family visits where 2 days after Christmas the adult kids are
back in their own homes, the parents have their home back to themselves, the
adult kids are now changing the hair back to the way it was before their
parents fixed it, and now the parents are like okay let's get this TV back to
how I like it; I don't care that it is supposed to be optimized this way, I
don't care if I have the wrong aspect ratio damn it this is the way I like to
watch the NFL.
Leo: Man I am so
jealous that you snagged Serenity Caldwell; she has become such a great part of
iMore.com.
Rene: She is terrific.
Leo: And you guys did a round table and review; she is the
host of that, the pick came out this morning and your favorite thing from 2014.
She liked the WWDC 14 Keynote, I agree that was a great keynote and you said
extensibility. We have talked about that today. Worst thing in 2014, Peter
Cowen says anything colored in gold.
Rene: That is just a Peter Cowen comment; it is probably
directed to anyone that wears Bruins hats honestly.
Leo: iPad 3 mini, Ali says; Serenity says the return of the
App Store review madness. Yeah I have to agree and of course the bugs; we
talked about the bugs.
Rene: No iTunes this year that was the other thing that was
a big surprise because they integrated.
Leo: I was sure we are going to get new iTunes.
Rene: So I'm wondering if integrating Beats is something
that pushed that forward. There was no hand off for media; it would be great to
hand off media. Like I have iTunes on my Mac; I start walking away and it just
takes over on my iPhone.
Leo: Every time we say the chat room sends me emails with
people saying what is wrong with iTunes, I love it. It is so broken; so out of
date.
Rene: iTunes should be on the cloud. Yeah the out of date
thing is tough because it was built before all of the modern frameworks
existed. You would think that with iWork on the cloud, having iTunes on the
cloud would solve so many problems.
Leo: They would have to do what they did with iWork though
I suspect; which is start over.
Rene: Modern web technologies.
Leo: People are still bitching about the fact that iWork
lost so many features.
Rene: Yeah so Apple is not afraid to do minor
re-compatibility at that price but, supporting the PC specifically is no longer
as important as it used to be because the cloud can do a lot of that stuff for
us; iCloud Sync
all of these things.
Alex: I have to admit that we have tried to go to keynote
because I wanted to stop using, not keynote
Rene: Numbers
Alex: Numbers on the web, you know their web version.
Rene: Yep
Alex: Like we would upload a file and it was
Leo: Not useable
Alex: Not a useable experience because,
there are parts about Google spread sheet that make us absolutely
insane.
Rene: Yes.
Alex: And you get used to building, whether it is Excel or
Google. You start building spread sheets in Excel or you build them, I am not
talking about heavy calculations for your financial. I am talking about
organizing budgets; you know budgets for events or whatever. It is so much
faster than Numbers; it is not even worth like if you just do it in Numbers and
you use the web interface, there are so many features that are not even there.
It is literally like cutting 4 of your fingers off.
Rene: I talked about this with John Gruber during Fireball,
sorry the talk show this week. That Apple is a very strange organization; iWork
is all done by Eddie Que's organization, it is not
done by Craig Federighi or Ian, the software people.
So is the iTunes app, so are all of these things; they have their own
marketing. There is a lot of different organization in Apple that still haven't
been sort of mushed together and I think that one of their ways of getting
iTunes into the future is maybe breaking down those walls as well.
Leo: Just fire everybody in the iTunes group
Andy: Meanwhile it is like what we were talking about with
the Apple TV; meanwhile this thing just gets sicker and sicker and sicker and
people get less and less interested in using it and they start looking at more
alternatives. I just, I really wish that Apple could grasp the idea that you
have to really keep, you even need to cultivate the plans that you will be
ripping out in 3 years anyway. Because if you just rip them out to begin with;
you just have this big bare patch that looks ugly.
Rene: They like do the Swift thing; you don't hear about it
for 5 years and now all of a sudden it is at WWDC.
Andy: Well no one was looking for, no one was relaying on
the Swift thing that they hadn't actually released yet. People rely on iTunes
to manage their devices. It is so bad that it is like I know I have the ability
to.
Leo: Why doesn't a third party write into iTunes? Why is it
that
Rene: It is like the old argument like email clients, Apple
used to be terrible but there is no money for anyone else to make one and
Double Twist tried. There are people but not enough that think it is a viable
business.
Alex: You look at Google Maps, which is far superior to
Apple maps, but still 60% of iPhone users are using Apple Maps because when you
click on the link it takes you to Apple Maps.
Leo: One other story and then we will get to our picks of
the week and that was Apple last week pushing its first ever automated security
update. You all got it whether you said yes to an update or not, it didn't ask
it just did and actually this was a good one. This was a fairly severe flaw
they fixed.
Rene: When they take too long to fix stuff they start
manually pushing out updates.
Leo: The good news is this update didn't seem to break
anything.
Alex: Next thing you know they are going to be sending us
albums over iTunes.
Leo: So it went out I guess last Monday; it fixed a
critical vulnerability in OS 10 in the network time protocoler in NTP. They didn't say exactly what it was fixing but it was in response from
a security bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security in Carnegie
Mellon. So you figure that it is fairly serious. We know that NTP has for
instance, has been used by bad guys to amplify DDoS attacks, I don't know if it is related to that but it is a
vulnerability and it is fixed. So does everybody automatically have it,
there is no way out of it you just get it? I know that I got a little note on
Monday that said you have been updated, no reboot and that was a good thing it
didn't need a reboot.
Rene: Yeah no, as far as I know. There might be a way to go
in and disable those things in the future. For years people have been saying
Apple is not responsive enough to security. It takes them too long to put out
patches.
Leo: This one they had to put out apparently.
Rene: They did it quickly.
Leo: It was a zero day.
Alex: And I think that if we look at what happened to Sony
and look at what happened to all of these other things; I think that being able
to react quickly to security breaches are going to be more and more important.
By the way
Leo: This capability was added to years ago.
Alex: Right, did we cover the fact that at Sony they said
that everything is shut down except for the Macs and the iPhones. They said the
Macs and the iPhones were fine.
Leo: They are still working because I guess the hacks were
against Windows machines.
Alex: Yeah.
Leo: Actually we are going to talk about that in about 20
minutes because Steve Gibson is in studio. He is down for the New Year’s Eve
party as well and Security Now is coming up as well. Steve is going to review
the year in security; what a year it has been!
Rene: Ended with a bang!
Leo: And he will answer the question: so was it North
Korea? Time now, no hints; time now for our picks of the week and I guess we
will go left to right how about that. Who's left?
Rene: Army left.
Leo: My left or your left let's do stage left Andy Ihnatko.
Andy: Okay
Leo: Or is he stage right? He is stage right.
Andy: I'm stage right but that is okay you have to have a
theatrical background in order to understand.
Leo: I don't understand this upstage is where, downstage is
where. I don’t under, left.
Andy: Just as long as you don't mention the name of the
Scotch play it should be okay
Leo: My note is Snaggle Puss:
exit stage left. So stage right Andy Ihnatko, see
Serenity would have known that.
Andy: Mine is a cheap, at the intersection of cheap, useful,
and tiny. This is the miraculous Hootoo travel
Leo: Hootoo
Andy: Hootoo Tripmate wireless travel pocket router which cost all of
Leo: That is so small!
Andy: And it cost all of 17 damn dollars
Leo: What?
Andy: On Amazon and elsewhere; it is a fully capable 8211
all the way up to N router but it is also packed with all kinds of really cool
features. Starting with FormFactor, it is powered by
micro USB so you don't have to pack another travel brick. You probably already
have a brick that will power this; also if you want to have a truly mobile
router that is okay, you can also power it from whatever anchor or whatever
battery pack that you have for a phone extender. It will do customary things
like plug in an Ethernet port and now it is an access point but you can also
use it to bridge one wireless network to the other; it also has a USB port
built into it so if you wanted to
Alex: I just want to back up there; so you said bridge one
wireless network to another. So you can receive and broadcast a Wi-Fi signal.
Andy: Um I have to double check but I just got this 2 days ago and I am running it through all different
kinds of phases, but yes last night I had it plugged into I had it connected to
my home wireless network and then I had other devices connected to this. So
apparently yes, it must have multiple radios.
Alex: That is cool
Andy: That is something that I absolutely did use yesterday
so I know that is true. It also has USB so that if you plug in a storage device
you can turn this into a server it works, not necessarily with NAZ, it works
with Samba. It will go through configurations to set it up as a home media
server. So if you have a drive that is full of MP4 video files, you can stream
those video files to basically anything that can connect to this. It has a
really good, sophisticated web 12.0 based web administration tool. It is just
one of those things where you buy this, you put this in your travel pack, and
if you are traveling with you MacBook Air and you thought that this place was
going to have Wi-Fi but you can't get Wi-Fi in that part of the hotel. That is
okay you are not screwed, you can basically put a Wi-Fi based station inside
your room.
Alex: The reason I was so excited about the whole it can
bridge wireless networks is because in a hotel you can defeat all of the
multiple devices. So you would link this to the hotel and then all of your devices link to that.
Andy: Absolutely, that should work again I definitely tested
that last night and that worked fine. The fun part is that you go to the Amazon
page where there is a whole bunch of
Leo: What are these different; there is the 1, 2, 3, and 4
of Hootoo
Andy: I believe this is the 02 that I have here.
Leo: Okay
Alex: 04 is amazing!
Andy: It is the HT-TM02 if you go to, they also have TM03
and TM04 on the
Alex: TM04 will take USB sticks
Andy: This one should too.
Alex: Does it?
Andy: It has the USB port thing
Leo: And the beauty part is that all of the packets are
routed right through Beijing so think of it as a cloud back up.
Andy: I didn't run a trace route on the packets but for
17.99 you have to expect a certain amount of espionage; at this price point I
think you will agree
Leo: 17.99
Andy: It is well worth, 955 customer reviews at four and
half stars out of five. There is a lot of active discussion about different
ways that people are using this and people are using it for adHoc wireless gaming. One of the things that I wish my Chrome cast could do is I
wish I could just plug this into my TV in my hotel room and now just use that
as a wireless point. With this one you just simply use this as your
intermediary between whatever device you are Chrome
casting from to the Chromecast device
Leo: It doesn't have and Ethernet jack; oh it does.
Alex: Yeah it does
Leo: Holly shamoly, holly samolians
Andy: So if you don't have the latest Chromecast software, I
think the latest Chrome cast actually can do an adHoc I have to double check whether that works or not. I just love these ideas where
it is not the first travel router that you have. I used to travel with and Air
Port
Leo: An Air Port Express.
Andy: base station with me but it comes down to, why wouldn't I want to travel with that. Well because it is too
big; well this is not too big. Well because I don’t want to spend $100 on
something that I may or may not need; well this is only $17. Well I don't
necessarily, necessarily need to have Ethernet to Wi-Fi transmodification;
well that is cool because this will do other things too like the ability to
move files and videos from whatever you've got onto your iPad because it has
and IOS app it has an Android app and so long as any of these apps are on these
devices it can connect to whatever this is connected to via USB. So it seems
like a really good thing just simply buy it, toss it in whatever bag has your
bag of wires and stuff that you take with you when you go on a trip. It will come
in handy, I still a couple of different conferences that I have been to where
because, this is back in my Air Port stream days, where someone has complained:
I have to file 3 stories and my room is the only one without Wi-Fi and I only
have a MacBook Air and I have to go to the Apple store and buy a cable now
because I didn't bring the dongle with me. That’s fine I have Wi-Fi in my room,
why don't I just lend you my Air Port and it is like lifesaver, lifesaver,
lifesaver. So this can get you out of a jam really, really quickly.
Leo: So it looks like the difference in models is how much
extra battery it has for charging phones. Otherwise
Alex: So the 4, the 04 has 2 USB connections, 2 USB inputs,
6,000
Leo: USB charger
Alex: It will charge your other mobile devices, and it plugs
into the wall.
Leo: Oh this doesn't plug into the wall, it charges by USB. Got it.
Andy: It is the $18 one and
Leo: You pay a lot more for that
Andy: that is why it is this big as opposed to a power AC
brick.
Leo: They do have some caveats for instance, it will not
bridge iPhone hotspot for instance, you can't use it
as a bridge. But boy that is really good 17.99
Andy: I have to admit that I bought it on a complete
flutter.
Leo: It does seem like a whim
Andy: It seems interesting and if it turns out as a piece of
crap that doesn't work as advertised I'm only out 18 bucks. But, I have been
spending the last day or two saying oh it does that oh wow that works great
too. I didn't think the administration panel was going to be that nice. I would
not run a full network on this for in my office but again as something that you
keep inside your shaving kit and you just always have it with you when you
travel it's pretty nifty.
Leo: Hootoo Tripmate,
you can get it on Amazon or just search for h o o t o o
Andy: Also on New Egg
Leo: Newegg as well. Mr. Alex Lindsey what do you have for
us.
Alex: It is Christmas so I picked 2.
Leo: Picked 2 why not.
Alex: They are both on the iPad. The first one came out
right when our show, two weeks ago I think so I didn't talk about it, I was
excited about it. Have you seen or played at all in duet display?
Leo: No, I've heard about it. This lets your iPad be a
second display.
Alex: Another monitor let me see if I can get it.
Leo: Can you do it? How fast is it? So you run the software
on you iPad and you plug it in via USB to your computer.
Alex: So you take your lightning bolt
Leo: Lightning bolt?
Alex: Your lightening connector and connect it up to your,
Leo: Alex Lindsey is now plugging a USB cable.
Alex: Upside down.
Leo: into his MacBook Pro, the other end of the cable is
going
Andy: Steve Jobs said this is the wireless age where we
don't use wires any more.
Alex: And that is the whole thing; like that is a cute
thought but the delay on all of these wireless ones has never really been
acceptable.
Andy: Also if you have copper why not take advantage of it
and eliminate the problem
Leo: Crash the TriCaster.
Andy: Now I am the only channel available
Leo: You are, we are going to be
staring at Andy while you do this display
Andy: Now I can reveal the reason why I don't want to be in
pendulum on this particular day.
Leo: As soon as you plugged in the duet the TriCaster said well that is it I give up. So you are able
to run a second screen. Oh look at that it is true. Show the camera because
they can't see over your shoulder.
Man: It's not on.
Leo: What is not on?
Rene: Alex's rear shot
Leo: Yeah that is why he needs to turn it around and show
that camera there you go.
Alex: That is my monitor
Leo: So that is his desktop display but your desktop has
gone dark. So do you have to set up mirroring?
Alex: Yeah I don't know why it did that. It didn't do that
before, I think is because I didn't run the app I just plugged it in.
Leo: So you run an app on the desktop as well as on the
iPad.
Alex: I literally just plugged this thing in and it worked,
the thing is that a lot of times for us we want to have this. I love the idea
of this mirrored, I mean not mirrored but sent over so that I can interact.
This gives you a sense of what you are doing.
Leo: Is that an Air 2, Air 1?
Rene: Air 1
Leo: Air 1
Alex: Air 1 yeah.
Leo: So it is suggested that you have a faster iPad
Alex: It works
Leo: Well you will get obviously more responsiveness.
Alex: More responsive but I have found that when I am
clicking on it I don't feel that there is a lot of delay.
Leo: It is very odd to see an OS 10 desktop on your iPad I
must say.
Alex: It is pretty awesome.
Leo: I must say
Alex: So anyway, duet display is
Leo: How much?
Alex: It is like 15 bucks I want to say or something like
that. Again it is a separate monitor that is in your bag. If you want another
monitor for display or whatever; we are going to use it for things like
Teleprompters and stuff like that because there is a
lot of teleprompters that work with iPads.
Leo: Second display.
Alex: I never wanted to use the wireless because I didn't
trust it. So now I can hook one up into one the super portable Teleprompters.
The second one is called LightBot, have you guys seen LightBot at all?
Leo: No
Alex: Okay so this is for kids and
Leo: You said that Malcolm loves this.
Alex: Malachi has gotten through most of the levels and he
is 7!
Leo: And he is learning programming at the age of 7?
Alex: So what it does, all you have to do is turn the light
bulbs on. See now P1 is a sub routine, so it says to a little thing down below
and go back and do. So he is learning how to do sub routines, he is learning
how to think about instruction sets, and it gets more and more complex. What I
was amazed by was watching a 7 year old go from the really easy stuff to
building all of the very, very complex moves and he is thinking it out and he
is also think well I'm going to test that. So the whole test process.
Leo: This looks like I would like it, I might learn programming.
Alex: So look at this there are conditionals that are built
into it so the thing is that
Leo: So there are two versions one for 4-6; 4-8 and one for
9 and up
Alex: I got him both.
Leo: Which one does he like?
Alex: He is using the 9 and up.
Leo: Of course he is, he is above
average.
Alex: He jumps back and forth between the two of them but,
the 9 and up.
Leo: I want this; I want the 9 and up.
Alex: It is a really, really fun app and you are sitting
there just playing around with it. When you think about teaching kids how to
program, I think this is something they can be doing when they are 7 or 8 years
old. Maybe they don't start typing any code until they are 10; which is when I
started typing code. If I had done this before I had started, it is all of that
flow charting for all of the old folks.
Leo: Yeah
Alex: For when you had to build flow charts to think about
how you are going to build a program; this teaches you that thought process of
building flowcharts and making decisions in a much more interactive and fun way
to do it.
Leo: It is on the app store, so it is on the desktop, can
you get it for the iPhone as well?
Alex: I don't know.
Leo: Or iPad
Alex: I can do it on my iPad I didn't even know it was on
the desktop
Leo: It is 4.99 on the desktop.
Andy: Now is this to teach kids about the app store
approvals progress; or do they want us to grow up with
hope.
Alex: That is going to be in the new LightBot Pro.
Andy: In 2-8 weeks you will find out whether or not your
solution works.
Alex: A lot of times we are trying to figure out, is it
really worth it. As a parent you want to give your children a game that they
are actually going to play. I have installed a lot of apps that I think oh that
will be very educational and then they don't touch it.
Leo: Right.
Alex: But watching him over a couple of hours just cruise
through this and get really excited about doing that. I think is pretty
exciting when it comes to that. So if
you have a younger member of the family.
Leo: I think for grownups.
Alex: Even for grownups, it is a great way to start thinking
about programming.
Leo: I bought it, I'm playing it. 60 puzzles, 20 stars, you
can learn: procedures, overloading you mean it has object oriented programming
too, loops, conditionals, challenge levels. Wow, I like it.
Alex: I was amazed at how educational this is because I was
like I don't know how complicated this is going to get, it is just a couple of
instructions. When you start getting the conditionals, when you start having
the procedures which are really subroutines it is pretty exciting.
Leo: I am LightBot when you are
done reading instructions good luck. Pass, go, move forward; I have to get 3 of
those 1, 2, 3, and then get the light now play.
Andy: Walk towards the light little robot.
Leo: I can do it.
Andy: Walk towards the light
Rene: It is like Hour of Code.
Leo: Yeah, there are other programs like this Tinker is
another one. There is some really neat stuff out there I think this is
fabulous. I am going to walk 2, 3 steps, then turn on a light, then another
step. See it is not that hard.
Rene: You aced it Leo.
Leo: Wait a minute I didn't get it.
Alex: You didn't get it there is another light.
Leo: I left out a light, there we go .
Alex: VisiCalc
Andy: VisiCalc.
Leo: This is fun. Alright LightBot,
it is available on almost every platform; it is available on the Android and
Windows phone as well.
Andy: It is just not possible that someone has not built
Minecraft using this platform.
Leo: Your turn Mr. Rene Ritchie.
Rene: I have two, the first one is ProCreate;
which was a wonderful, still is a wonderful iPad drawing app. People who use
the paper app, which is great for sketching things but if you really want to do
art; Procreate is fantastic and they released Procreate Pocket now for the
iPhone as well. So you have a larger screened iPhones, this is an example of
what we are talking about. Now the canvas in your hands is so much bigger so
they have put all of the terrific tools salvage interactive and incredibly
interactive development house; they have put all of that into the iPhone 6+.
It's just fantastic. Yes, if it would digitize with the stylis that would be super nice Apple, at some point. But even with just finger
painting on it or using the multi touch stylis it is
a terrific app. You can draw illustration quality work on there really, really
great. The second one I feel a little dirty for recommending but I was at the TWiT party last night and nobody had heard of it. So I
showed it to everybody.
Leo: Oh I love this game.
Rene: It is a game called Crossy Road; the title is like Flappy Bird, the game play is like Frogger.
You have a tremendous amount of characters. You start of as I think it is a
duck, you can get frogs, you can get dark lords, you can get unicorns. There
are in app purchases but the developer is totally not optimized for it.
Leo: It is Frogger.
Rene: It is Frogger
Leo: 8 bit Frogger
Rene: 8 bit Frogger that is sort
of parallaxed scrolled.
Leo: Lego Frogger
Rene: It is gorgeously done; you can in app purchase more
characters if you want but if you are willing to wait 5 minutes they will give
you so many characters that you never really have to buy anything.
Leo: Frogger was a brilliant
game.
Andy: It was transformative!
Leo: Yeah and I think that it is time to bring Frogger back in a Minecraft game.
Rene: If you are looking for just a time waister over the holidays,
Leo: Oh Slap
Rene: it is one of those things. It is sort of like Flappy…
Leo: Oh, trains!
Rene: where you start to get a little ways and then you get
hit by a truck and then you have to start again. So it is rage of mouth
advertising; people get so upset with it they tell their friends about it and
then everyone wants to try it to see how far they can get because there is no
way they can't possibly be as bad as their friend. Then they are and they
complain about it to more people and more people.
Alex: For some reason as I am watching this I am thinking
what someone should make is a really graphic Frogger.
Leo: It is graphic enough!
Alex: I bet you that would be really awesome.
Rene: You can get it in the App Store and it is the latest
game to hate on IOS.
Leo: And rightly so me thinks. It
is called Crossy Road.
Andy: Help the teen industries, another hate generating
Leo: There can be but one.
Andy: Continue to try to cross the road.
Leo: If you are watching live, you may want to take
advantage of a great deal for today only on Amazon; which is that SanDisk,
Amazon is offering, someone is offering 70% off SanDisk SD cards and micro SD
cards. So camera folk might want to take advantage of this. I bought a couple
of 128 gig ones. They have up to U10, they don't have the 40 mega bits, I don’t see the 95 mega bits the super duper fast cards; but there are few that need those.
Alex: I remember when we started looking at the SD XC spec
and going there is no way they can put 64 mega bits on that little card.
Leo: Then they got 128 gigabytes on a micro SD
Rene: On a micro
Andy: I think that the most significant move is that now
there is enough capacity on each one of these cards that I am terrified, it is
more than I am willing to lose on a single card reader.
Leo: That is right, that is right.
Andy: And so that is why I seem to have topped out on camera
cards at 32 gigs because I would much rather swap out than lose 2 weeks' worth of
pictures.
Leo: So up to 70% of SanDisc memory cards on Amazon today and I think that is worthwhile. My other
recommendation is something that Jason Cleanthus told
me about, our newest producer F & Dunn. You know Decal Girl, she makes
decals for your laptops and Jason took some of our wallpaper art and turned it
into decals for your laptop. This one is my favorite, Lisa and Jason both;
Jason why don't you bring your laptop over here. You can get it for any size
this is $25 and it is from Decal Girl and I think the TWiT logo is if you search under custom decals for the TWiT circuit. Go ahead bring it around here, twit-circuit; it really is nice they
have matte, this is matte, and they also have high gloss finish. It is $25 for
the MacBook Pro 15 but you can get it for other sizes as well. Thank you Jason
for making that available and I got these as stocking stuffers for my kids and
Lisa has one on hers. I think I will probably put this one on for the New
Year's celebration. They are on that 3M material that is really easy to use you
just pull it right off.
Rene: They look great.
Leo: Doesn't that look nice
Andy: This part of the show is always so expensive for me
Leo: I know I bought the Hoo Too,
I bought the game,
Alex: I've already bought them all
Leo: I bought them all; I bought them all. Thank you folks
we have completed the last show of 2014 and for those of you, many of you in
the chat room were saying are they live?
Rene: No we are all dead.
Alex: Are they really that are they live.
Rene: Zombie MacBreak
Leo: Is this real life.
Andy: This is just fantasy.
Leo: This is just fantasy.
Andy: Caught on a landslide, a break from reality. Open your
eyes look up in the skies and see.
Leo: We will be here tomorrow as you all know for a very
special event we are going to do a 24 hour broadcast. As we did last year, the
24 hours of 2015, welcoming the New Year. Starting all the way from New Zealand
going all the way to Samoa; 27 time zones, 24 hours. It begins at 1100 UTC that is 6 AM eastern, 3
AM Pacific on New Year's Eve and we will continue for 24 hours after that. I
know you probably have plans for New Year's Eve but if you can come early and
stay as long as you would like. I can't promise you that every fabulous thing
that happens, and there are many fabulous things that a planned which I don't
know about because they haven't told me; but I can't promise that we will make
them all available for download so try to watch as much as you can and it all
benefits Unicef. We have already raised more than
$2,000 for Unicef from
people who just discovered the listings.
Rene: That is great
Leo: We have Fez's, we have lots of things that we are
going to be selling and giving away.
Rene: Fezzes are cool
Leo: Yeah, thanks to Fezorama for
providing those.
Alex: I'm going to be there.
Leo: Yep
Rene: Me too
Leo: Yep a lot of our host will, and Steve as well
Alex: We cleared our schedule
Andy: I will be there remotely
Leo: Have they contacted you Andy, have the producers
reached out?
Andy: I have not checked my email since the show started but
again I will be here for whatever times you want me to be here.
Leo: It is going to be a lot of fun. We will be back with
your MacBreak Weekly next Tuesday and every Tuesday
in 2015; 11 AM pacific, 2 PM eastern, that would be 1900 UTC. If you want to be
live in studio, as these good people so many of them are; you should just email
tickets@twit.tv and we will put a chair out for you. If you are early you will
get a good chair otherwise
Rene: You get the bad one.
Andy: The rickety chair
Rene: The naughty chair
Leo: They are not so comfortable; we call them the iron
chairs
Andy: I picked up on that right away and I appreciate that
reference.
Leo: You two, you are like peas in a pod there. What else
should I say? If you can't be here live in some form or fashion all of our
shows, I can't promise New Year's Eve is going to be done this way; but all of
our shows are put out on demand after the fact; twit.tv/mbw for MacBreak Weekly or on iTunes or where ever you
get your podcast, the podcast app and of course the great third party twit apps
that our wonderful developers have made on all platforms including IOS. Thanks
for being here, I'd say get back to work but surely none of you are working on
December 30th
Alex: Go out and party.
Leo: Go out and party because break time is over!
