MacBreak Weekly 436 (Transcript)
Leo Laporte: It's time for MacBreak Weekly! We've got Rene Ritchie at CES but Andy Inhatko, Don McAllistar and Alex
Lindsay are here. We'll talk about the latest Mac news, including the rumor of
a Retina Macbook. The latest Intel chips and news
from CES, it's all coming up next on MacBreak Weekly.
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Leo: This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 436. Recorded January 6th, 2015
A Tuppence for Your
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running their businesses with ease. Try it free at FreshBooks.com/macbreak. It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show where we cover the latest Macintosh news and since everyone is
in Vegas we had to go to Liverpool. Don McAllistar is
here, screencasts online. Hey Don!
Don McAllistar: Hi, it's like looking at a
mirror image now, I've got the black shirt as well.
Leo: It's amazing.
Don: And the head, it's
fantastic.
Leo: I left my moustache
somewhere, but I'll get it.
Don: (laughing)
Leo: I actually like it with the
shades.
Don: It's good to be here.
Leo: Yeah. I did this, as you
know. And I just have to... probably have to explain it all week but I did this
honoring New Year's Eve show marathon, telethon to raise money for UNICEF and
so it was a very good cause, we ended up raising $75,000 between the cash
donations and the auction. So very good, very exciting. Very fun New Year's Eve. And every one of those hours,
all 24 of them is available on our website at
twit.tv/specials. Also here, and he did a fun mixology segment involving liquid
nitrogen, Alex Lindsay.
Alex Lindsay: You know, you're not really mixing until you're mixing with liquid nitrogen.
Leo: I think that's taking it to
the next level.
Alex: While Leo was shaving his
head, I was drinking.
Leo: (laughing) It should have
been the other way around, I wish it had been. You shave your head every year don't you?
Alex: I used to.
Leo: Or clip it anyway.
Alex: I used to clip it all the
time and I used to shave. When I married my wife it was, I bicked it every day.
Leo: That's the term, the
technical term. Bicking it. Although if you use a bick to shave your head you are asking for trouble.
Alex: A lot of nicks.
Leo: Harry's at least, I had a
trained professional with a straight razor.
Alex: Well Harry's didn't exist
back then.
Leo: Yeah, that's why.
Alex: But she persuaded me to
actually grow it out so there you go.
Leo: And you would just do that
every year and that would be your haircut.
Alex: I would do it every couple
days.
Leo: Oh you kept it shaved, oh
okay.
Alex: Then when I started
clipping it I would clip it and then every 3 months I would clip it again. Now
I just get it cut short.
Leo: I like short.
Alex: I do too.
Leo: I think short's easiest.
Alex: Hole in the front of my head now, you just see it.
Andy Inhatko: (laughing)
Leo: That's Andy Inhatko, from the Chicago Sun Times. Not at CES Andy huh?
You're not a CES fan?
Andy: No because I mean if you're
like Rene and you head a site like iMore where your
readers expect you to absolutely have news about everything then that's
important to be there. Otherwise, as I said on Twitter it's all like Bluetooth,
vaporware and Bluetooth shoelaces that's like for
everything and... I mean all week long it's been like emails, hey I got some
time available with such and such a person if you want to talk to him, I said
oh well actually I'm not in CES but is he going to be in the Cambridge office
in a few weeks? Sure, great let's talk to him then.
Leo: (laughing)
Andy: Alright then, that's good
because he'll be rested and he'll be fed and more alert, great. Absolutely.
Leo: You know the benefit of
course of a show like international CES is everybody's there, everything is
there. It's all in one spot but it's so hard to get around because everybody's
and everything's there...
Andy: I think it really is like
San Diego Comic Con where it's so big that you can't see the whole show so what
you have to treat it as, you have to decide that the show that you want to
attend is inside there somewhere, so if you decide that you want to go to the
HDTV consumer electronics show, you can definitely see the HDTV consumer
electronics show where now everybody's doing curved screens, not just Samsung.
Or it can go to the wearables CES and you can definitely do that. But you
really certainly can't cover the entire thing, not as a one person man.
Leo: So we should say Rene is
not here because he is at CES, next week we'll talk about what he saw at CES
but they took the same south stage. Remember this? This is the stage where we
used to have our booth and it is, he's doing it with
Mobile Nations, his company. GeekBeat.TV, Cali Lewis's company, Tom's Hardware
and so they're going to do pretty much, you know, I think the kind of thing
that we did. They've got the reporters, there's Serenity Caldwell, Cali Lewis.
I feel like Georgia Dow, he's a very lucky fella to be doing this so. There he
is in Vegas. We miss you, Rene. Have a great time and come back bearing
tchotchkes.
Andy: And whatever disgusting,
flu-like symptoms you have. Try to keep that within your lower third.
Leo: I'll confess a little fomo. Fear of missing out. I feel like it's all going on
down there, we have coverage. Rene is down there but also Father Robert Ballecer is covering it, we've got Dick DeBartolo, the Giz Wiz doing the kind of... he likes to do the weird gadgets
in the basement... and Scott Wilkinson our home theater geek will be there.
Andy: I think that CES has long
needed a liturgical perspective on things. So...
Leo: Yeah, I don't know. I was
trying to think of what's Robert's beat. It's whatever he wants to...
Don: I did it last year for the
first time, it was on my bucket list to do. I had
never done it before, so yeah.
Leo: I remember that.
Don: Well it was in new media
expo and it followed on last year so I stayed over for an extra couple of days
and it was good, but it was so overwhelming. There's so much stuff there. And I
did find that the things I wanted to see, a couple of the booths were like
invitation only and of course I didn't arrange anything in advance so some of
the things I wanted to see I couldn't actually see, but I think it's worth
doing at least once but it is very overwhelming. There's so much stuff down
there. And it's so much floor space to cover as well, it's unbelievable.
Leo: And so much stuff is never
released.
Don: Yeah.
Leo: It's hard because it's hard
to see an overarching story, although certainly TV is the big story. The other
thing is Apple's not there. In years past, I can think of several years, 2010
when they released the iPad, 2007 when they released
the iPhone, where everybody at CES is talking about Apple. And it's like Apple
was the big story even though they weren't there. They're not there again this
year. Microsoft's not there either by the way.
Andy: Yeah.
Leo: The Chinese TV company Hisense has taken over their booth for the last few years.
Andy: That's another reason why
it's no longer really important for even many tech journalists to go because
all these companies now, they would much rather have their own event where they
have all the attention and they can release something on their own schedule so,
it probably costs less money for me to travel to New York a couple of times and
San Francisco a couple of times than to spend a week in Las Vegas.
Alex: And I think for the larger
companies that are already well established it doesn't make as much sense, for
the little companies it's great, especially for some of the press events that
happen on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday nights it gives you a chance where you have a
little 10x10 booth and you're walking around kind of getting to see a bunch of
the stuff quickly. But even then I felt like even last year, other than a
handful of things I wasn't sure if I needed to be there.
Leo: Wearables will be big. And
again this is a case of wearables will be big until Apple's Apple Watch comes
out and everything and throw it all up in the air because it's all now going to
change.
Alex: We are actually seeing some
home...
Leo: Home automation is going to...
I think is interesting, yeah. I was hoping you know, Samsung had some announcements they updated the Smart Things hub. Belkin did
Nest.
Alex: Nest had some integration.
Leo: Yeah.
Andy: A lot of HomeKit announcements of companies who are willing to
announce that hey we're finally ready to announce HomeKit and we're ready to show off how integration is going to work.
Leo: Yeah.
Don: Lots of CarPlay announcements too, so that's good.
Leo: Yeah that's good too. So
there is some Apple stuff there.
Don: Yeah, mhm.
Leo: And then I guess in TVs it's quantum dots and curved screens and 4k. And that's all
you really need to know.
(laughter)
Leo: The rest of it's just noise. We will have a very complete report on TV
and home theater from Scott Wilkinson on Home Theater Geeks this week. He does
this every year, and I've done it a couple years with him. It's really fun, he
goes to all the major television booths and talks to Sony and Sharp and Samsung
and LG. I hope he'll talk to TCL and Hisense, the hot
in up and coming in Chinese companies as well.
Alex: Very thin.
Leo: Thin. You always say thin.
It's like an iPad, have there ever been a thicker iPad ever?
Alex: These started looking like
impossibly thin. Did you see the Sony? They said it's thinner than the iPhone.
Leo: Golly. Well here's a big
story from Mark Gurman, an exclusive on 9-5 Mac.
Apple's next major Mac revealed the radically new 12” Macbook Air, take this with a grain of salt, although Gurman is extraordinarily well connected, he says sources within Apple who have used
internal prototype versions of the upcoming computer provided in depth details.
These are artists renditions on the web page, and if you're watching video on
our video of the revamped Macbook Air. But here's some of the facts. No longer will they have full
sized USB ports, MagSafe connectors and SD card slots,
markedly thinner and lighter, with a higher resolution display. Sounds almost
like a Retina iPad with a keyboard. The 12” will be considerably smaller than
the current 13” version, slightly narrower than the 11” model, the new 12” is
approximately a quarter of an inch narrower than the 11” version which is nice,
I mean it's nice to get it smaller. But that doesn't change the aspect ratio of
the screen by the way. It's a quarter of an inch taller to accommodate the
slightly larger display. Bezels on display have been reduced, that's what
changes the outside. Besides the new look for the computer, this is Mark Gurman again 9-5 Mac, an exclusive story. The entire unibody has been revamped. From the keyboard to the
trackpad to the speakers, taking cues from the 12” PowerBook introduced more than a decade ago by Steve Jobs,
the new keyboard goes edge to edge. Look at... this is again an artist’s
rendering from 9-5 Mac but look at that. Edge to edge, the entire keyset subtly
redesigned so each key is noticeably closer together. Apple squeezed the keys
closer to get the computer as narrow as possible. Do you buy this Andy? You
sound skeptical.
Andy: This is just a rumor and
all Apple rumors that are made more than a week before we know that there's an
announcement I tend to think okay this is more fodder for an interesting
discussion about how sort of thing would work. So with that said, this sounds
like a turkey of a product.
Leo: (laughing) I want the USB
port at least.
Andy: It sounds like this is
something where there are going to be so many inconveniences. If it's not as
easy to type with as a real Mac there's going to be a lot of people... there
would be a lot of people asking, okay so if you're charging... I bet they're
going to be charging the same sort of price point for it, I can't imagine they're going to charge iPad like prices for something like
this. I think that the first question to ask is why would I buy this instead of, say a Chromebook for $500 less. Or why would I buy this
instead of... you're probably in the same price range as a very good Windows
notebook that will have more... that would have more ports than the device that
9-5 Mac is describing. If a... I'm already kind of disappointed of the things
of my 13” Macbook Pro. I'm disappointed with the
keyboard because it's just... it's okay to type with but it's no better than
any keyboard I would find on a computer that costs $1000 less. I would be quite
surprised if they decided to take a gamble on spacing of keys like that because
that's... especially for something as trivial as we just don't want to have
anything to the left and to the right of this keyboard. And also we know that
people are clamoring for... if we made this so that it was ½ inch wider or ¼
inch wider on either side, people would be looking at us and telling us that
we're nuts to make a computer that's ¼ wider on either side. So I'm not saying
I don't believe it, I'm saying I see a lot of things that if this were a
proposed design that someone was showing me saying we're thinking about going
in this direction I would say, okay if it's a $500 computer. Very
interesting. It gets less interesting by 20% with every $100 over $500
though.
Leo: Gurman points out that this is a prototype, may not be the released product. Apple
does change things sometimes. But look at the ports on this, according to the
specs he has, on the left side there's a headset port and 2 built in little
holes for microphones. On the right side, 1 port. No MagSafe adapter no USB, it's the new USB type C which is
everything. It is a USB port, it is a display port, a
Thunderbolt port and a power port. Obviously you can't use those all at the
same time, maybe you get a hub or something, a dock.
Andy: So basically I think Apple
is shifting its business plan to we're basically a company that sells dongles.
Leo: It is Apple-y. You have the
feeling if such a thing had existed in Steve's time, Mr. One-button-mouse he
would have liked the one port computer.
Alex: I'd be more understanding
if you could do touchscreen and take the keyboard off.
Leo: I'd love to see a
touchscreen on this.
Andy: If this was for instance a
keyboarded iPad design, that becomes fascinating. And
the idea of having let's say just one lightning
connector for everything, that also becomes really really interesting. It seems less interesting as a Macbook though.
Don: Everyone's waiting though
for the Macbook. The rest of the Macbook Air it seems as though everyone's salivating for. It seems a bit weird that
they would forego the standard Thunderbolt cable and just have the single port.
It sounds a little bit fishy to me.
Leo: This is a mid 2015 product, again this is exclusive to Mark Gurman on 9-5 Mac who is well connected, but this is... (whistles)
Andy: Well. But rumors are
rumors. And...
Leo: Something that's not a
rumor.
Andy: Even if this were like...
the specs were this looks exactly like the 11” Macbook Air with the same connectors and just a different aspect ratio and a different
screen. I have to say that even then I'd be saying I'm not going to buy any rumor
until... this far out. So it's possible that this is just something they built
just to figure out well what would this be like. You
need to dog food your own products on a wide scale before you even consider
rolling it out so... especially if they were doing something as radical as
changing the spacing of a keyboard. I don't doubt that a device just like this
exists inside Apple, I just don't know if it's being seriously fast-tracked as
one of the next Macbooks, that's all.
Leo: M5 in the chatroom makes a
good point. That the touchscreen on a Mac, you'd have to have
some modifications to the UI. For instance, the window buttons are so
small you probably couldn't tap those with your finger.
Andy: Yeah, they're useful... we
all have tried out things like the Chromebook Pixel and Windows devices that
have touchscreens on them and even if it's not... even if it's not optimized
for touch it's still quite useful. I was surprised after my first couple of
days with the Chromebook Pixel how quickly I kind of transitioned to every time
I scroll casually I would just sort of put my hand up and rest my hand next to
the screen and start doing this to scroll. I just don't think Apple is the sort
of company that would say well what the hell, let's do a touchscreen and it will
be useful for some things but not all things. I think Apple would say no, we're
not going to do a touchscreen desktop OS until we rejigger the entire operating
system to be multi-touch.
Alex: One way to preview that, if
you're curious is also, you can use the duet display. The new
little thing.
Leo: Yeah, you showed that last
week.
Alex: I showed that and you can
hook it up and it actually makes your iPad, you know basically is a
touchscreen.
Leo: It's almost 12”.
Alex: So you can get a sense of
what a touchscreen would be like. And I guess for me, I want to mark stuff up
and I just don't want to use my mouse and so I'm looking at something, I want
to be able to circle it, I don't need to have full control. I definitely
understand that Apple... I agree with Andy that Apple probably is going to wait
until they have a full solution for that but... I find it... I mean every time
I see a Windows Surface I have to admit I get closer and closer to like oh well...
maybe I'll get one of those. You know because it's getting to the point where
Apple is sometimes a little behind the curve because they're trying to make it
perfect and I think that I'm starting to get to the outside edge of my patience
because it's something that I would use all day every day.
Leo: Some of the chatroom
suggested that maybe this is making them... they are more of a kind of not a
full... more like an iPad, not quite a full service computer but an extremely
portable computer, and then maybe you would still want a Macbook Pro for the heavy duty mobile computing. But I don't think people have that
kind of money. I think if somebody's going to buy a laptop, they're going to
buy one and only one laptop.
Alex: I think you have to be
really committed to the cloud. I have an 11” that I carry around as well as my Macbook Pro and I just find that my...
Leo: It's not usable, it's too
small. Jason Snell Love says 11” so...
Andy: I just find it hard to
answer the question of what complaints do people who buy the 11” and the 13” Macbook Air have that will be solved by this design? I
certainly see an explanation for why 11” and 13” customers would want a Retina
screen because... especially with Yosemite it looks so much better and so much
more usable on a Retina display and that's certainly where Apple wants to take
all of their Macs. But I don't see... I just don't hear people saying if only
this were even narrower, if only this were even thinner. So it's...
Leo: Yeah but we didn't say it
about the iPad, they did that too.
Andy: Yeah but they can do...
Leo: Apple seems to fetishize
thinness.
Andy: They absolutely do that and
sometimes I think at the wrong cost, but the difference is that they could make
the iPad thinner without changing one iota of the experience of using this
device. The actual tactile experience of using like the actual software because
the screen is still there, the screen is still made out of hard glass, they
didn't make it like the texture of chicken feathers or anything like that.
Whereas if they were to make sacrifices like... it's so important I make this
the narrowest Macbook ever and the thinnest Macbook ever that we're going to make every single
keystroke feel like you're just sort of suggesting what letter you would like
the Mac to sort of maybe put into that window. If they were to sacrifice that
at all, then you're suddenly having a lot of people saying why am I spending
money on something that... if I'm buying this instead of an iPad because I need
to be able to type and do actual work on this, why am I spending this money to
buy a new device that makes it actually less comfortable to work with.
Leo: What if it's Apple's
Chromebook? What if it's cheap?
Alex: If it's relatively
inexpensive I think it's probably interesting.
Leo: Now he's working. Holy cow!
Andy: $500 is really interesting...
Leo: We have a problem with your
audio.
(knocks on microphone)
Leo: We got it? Okay.
Andy: Alright, see. I can't help
but say Leo if I were like a store manager and I saw you walk into the store, I
would assume you were with Dateline NBC and there was a camera hidden inside
those glasses.
Leo: I'll have a big clipboard
like this and say so tell me, how often do you sell this product, and to whom?
Alex: (laughing)
Leo: What would be a Chromebook
price for Apple? It's not going to be $250 which is the actual Chromebook
price.
Alex: $400.
Leo: $400? That would be an
amazing deal, right?
Alex: Yeah. 4
or 5 hundred dollars.
Leo: Would this then be
worthwhile? Okay, I get it. This is the inexpensive student computer.
Andy: I'm sorry, what was Don
about to say? Oh, sorry. If they were pricing this like an iPad then yeah this
would be an incredible device. If they were trying to tell customers that we
know there are a lot of people who are buying iPads and using it in ways that
iPads are not intended to be used, for this is why we are giving you this $599
entry level Macbook. And also a way to make the Mac
more affordable for the general population, that would be fantastic. That would
be worth whatever... a bunch of sacrifices in design, but... again I just have
a hard time imagining this right now.
Leo: Now one thing that's not
imaginary or rumor or fiction is the new Intel chips. And traditionally when
Intel comes out with new chips, Apple is really quite quickly ready to jump on
it. In this case Intel showed these new Broadwell processors with Dell computers, not Apple computers. So Dell has jumped on it.
A lot of people have been waiting for Broadwell, it's
actually delayed. It was supposed to be out I think September. 14 nanometers. That's... kind of unbelievably tiny. That's
down from 22 nanometers.
Alex: Impossibly thin.
Leo: 14... I don't know. You're
getting close to zero now. I don't know how low you can go.
Andy: Unfortunately electronics
just keep getting jammed up and it becomes too thick for the electrons to move
through now.
Leo: They are... CES Intel
talked about 14 new Broadwell series chips for both
laptop and desktop including thirteen 15 watt processors with basic Intel HD
Graphics, four 28 watt models with Iris graphics as the higher end Intel
graphics. i5 and i7, although this is 5th generation now, this is the new generation. And there are some mid-range i3
less expensive i3 variants, although Intel also announced new Adams lower end
Pentium and Celeron chips too so. There's a very wide range of pricing, all of
these so far are dual core, not quad core. And Iris Pro the highest end
motherboard graphic... on chip graphics set is not yet available until the
middle of the year. Oh middle of the year, hmm. This is a... is this a tick or
a tock? I think this is a tick. So small performance boost
but amazing processors reduction. The reason that's important, 14
nanometers is it means it uses less power, less heat. And it's so more
efficient. So not much faster Intel's saying 4% boost in
productivity oriented applications. According to CISMark. So it's a tiny boost in power. In performance. But an incredible boost I'm sure in energy
savings.
Andy: Yeah. It's interesting when
you have new chips that don't just make things faster but a lot... but enable a
whole new category of devices to come out. Microsoft is really trying to push
the idea of having 7” and 8” tablets that run actual Windows. Not just run
mobile apps, but if you actually just want to run real Microsoft Office, real
Photoshop on these things and that's certainly going to help both those things
out.
Leo: And here's an interesting
piece from the Intel press release. These machines will have fewer wires. Broadwell chips will support a variety of technologies that
eliminate the need for cables and ports, including Intel wireless gigabit
docking in the next generation of Intel's wireless display technology, which
can support 4k through these 5th generation processors.
Alex: And that might be more what
we're talking about, seeing with that with our 12”.
Leo: Yeah.
Alex: And I do think, someone
mentioned in the chatroom the sensitivity to USB, I think that USB has been
compromised security wise. Thunderbolt might be compromised as well, and so
connecting hardware to your computer may be something that we do less and less.
Leo: Yep. This is, you're talking about the security researcher who claims he
rewrote the firmware on a Macintosh through Thunderbolt. Wow.
Alex: It's concerning.
Leo: And says most Intel
Thunderbolt Macs are vulnerable. He was speaking at the Chaos Computer Congress
in Hamburg. It's a hack that rewrites the Mac's firmware using a Thunderbolt
device with a tack code in an option ROM. He calls this, because it's very
important these days to have a good name for your exploit if you want coverage, Thunderstrike.
Alex: We need like an echo there. Thunderstrike!
Leo: That's extremely bad news.
Alex: Especially because it
looked like Thunderbolt was going to be a little bit safer than USB which I
think is... on its way to being horribly compromised.
Leo: It has I think direct
memory access which is the real problem. It says you can access memory through
a cable you probably are in trouble. Once installed Thunderstrike firmware cannot be removed because it replaces the Apple key which means
further firmware updates will be denied unless signed by the attacker's private
key. The hacked firmware can also replicate by copying itself to option ROMs in
other Thunderbolt devices connected to the compromised Mac during a restart.
These devices continue to work just normally, so you don't know they've been
modified but of course does require physical access to
your Mac, you actually have to plug... but you know... this bad USB required
physical access to a USB port.
Alex: Right.
Leo: So there you go. Something to look forward to. Thunderstrike,
coming soon to a CPU near you. Andy Inhatko is here,
Rene Ritchie... from Liverpool... Rene Ritchie's not here... in his place... I
don't know why, that's automatic. In his place, Don McAllistar. From Liverpool,
England creator of screencasts online. Any cruises of late? You know
they're not going to do Mac Mania any more.
Don: Yeah, I know they did have
one lined up for the end of the year but yeah unfortunately that got pulled so
that's a shame, we'll have to do our own.
Leo: With the folding of
Macworld Magazine. Neil Bauman, Captain Neil we call him, of formerly Geek
Cruises, now Insight Cruises says he used to do these in conjunction with
Macworld Magazine and they'd give him a full page layout and everything and he
says, I can't pay for that ad any more. So he's just
says... he's doing Scientific American and Astronomy stuff. We should do our
own, shouldn't we? Let's talk.
Don: Yeah. Okay.
Leo: It's funny because it seems
like it's the same people, or at least like 50% of the same people each time.
Don: Yeah. We are going off to, we're going on a trip in March with some of the people
that we know from the cruise.
Leo: See.
Don: So we're... yeah.
Alex: I want to go, I haven't
gone yet.
Leo: Is this Wally's trip to
India?
Don: That's right.
Leo: You're doing that?
Don: I am indeed.
Leo: I want to do that.
Don: It's going to be a busy two
months because I've got to prepare all the stuff before we go, because I think
we're going to be away for about 3 and a half weeks. So it's going to be tough.
Andy: Leo, I don't mind. If you
do this cruise, if you keep your head shaved, you can do the whole Captain Stubing thing.
(laughing)
Leo: Where's Gopher? Gopher,
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By the way those prices that they quote you are locked in for 30 days when you
sell a device and that's nice. Gives you time to think. Gazelle.com we thank
them so much for making a great service and for supporting MacBreak Weekly. Did you all read Marco Arment's piece in...
Alex: Oh yes.
Leo: On Marco.org? Marco is of
course the creator of Instapaper, he was the first programmer at Tumblr. Made some money
when Tumblr got sold to Yahoo and has been just kind of, becoming kind of...
he's been thinking. He's become kind of the grand philosopher of the Mac world.
He's also still a developer, in fact is overcast podcast program is quite good. As you would expect from Marco, quite beautiful. But
he wrote a piece on his website, he's actually since said I kind of regret it.
(laughter)
Leo: Apple has lost the
functional high ground. I suppose before I read this piece from January 4th,
I should read the piece he wrote the next day. What it's like to be way too
popular for a day. He says people misquoted him, his words were everywhere
chopped up and twisted by sensational opportunists, to fuel the tired Apple is doomed narrative with my name on it.
Andy: Marco, welcome to the club.
I wrote a little piece about Android last year that...
Leo: We've all been there. But
Marco, I'll tell you why it's important, and same
thing with you Andy. Marco is so firmly associated with the Apple name, in
summary what he wrote was I think not completely wrong which is that Apple has
become more of a marketing driven company and because of that, software quality
has suffered. He says hardware is just as good as ever, but the software
quality suffered particularly because he believes marketing has demanded every
year new OSX. Every year new iOS. And they just having
a major a new release every year is clearly impossible
for the engineering to keep up with while maintaining quality. They're doing
too much with unrealistic deadlines and he blames marketing. I fear that
Apple's leadership doesn't realize quite how badly and deeply their software
flaws have damaged their reputation. Because if they realized
it, they'd make serious changes that don't appear to be happening. Instead the opposite appears to be happening. The pace of rapid updates on
multiple product lines seems to be expanding and accelerating. Comments.
Alex: I don't necessarily
completely disagree. I feel like the last truly stable version of OSX was
10.8.6. I think that it's been maverick was almost unusable in my opinion from
a production perspective and somebody's better. But we just host so many
problems and we continue to see problems with it, and I just feel like there's
an enormous number of features added which is fine but I would love to see
Apple not release a new operating system for, other than just incremental
upgrades to fix everything, for a couple of years. I think a couple of years
would be great to kind of solve a lot of these issues rather than... I don't
need any new features in OSX. I think that's the problem. I don't really... all
the stuff they're adding is great, I'm really glad that they're doing that but
I don't... what I really need is for my computer to work every time I open it.
Leo: Interesting, there's been a
number of comments on this article here. Here's one from a former Apple
engineer. Apple changed its software design technology. So with Bertrand they
would move in giant monolithic releases, sometimes... what is the name for
this? It's like building a house. You put all these pieces in and you hope at
the end you get a stable house. He said every group would just dump in whatever
they had ready and the whole thing would get released with nightly builds. He
said with Snow Leopard in particular I remember 3 dozen releases in a row where Xcode was unusable due to objective C garbage
collection issues. Random stuff he didn't expect like core graphics would have
showstopper issues, and then we'd report it and it would get fixed by next week
but this resulted in extremely late releases that had a ton of bugs that we
piled patches onto as time went on. Under Craig Federighi,
and this was part of the reorganization Tim Cook did last year, Federighi moved the organization into a sprint system. And
this is very... in most modern software development is now, instead of they call this old style the waterfall system. Where everything
cascades until you have a final product. The sprint system you'd work on new
features for two weeks, spend a week fixing bugs and then you'd do this...
repeat... repeat, repeat. He said after 10 or 12 or 16 of these cycles we'd
deem it ready and ship it out. But he does say that time frame is a lot shorter
than it used to be. Tiger and Leopard had a good 2 years to mature and get
patches while their delayed successors missed target dates. They felt stable because
they were just old. Sort of like Debbie in stable. I'm going to channel Rene
Ritchie here who would say right now at this point well yeah but let's not
forget system 7. System 9, I mean... it's... Apple's always had... software's
buggy. Microsoft's having the same problems right now with Windows 8.
Andy: Yeah and there have been a
lot of showstoppers. Remember the bug, I forget what
it was... 8 or 9... no 9.1 or something where under
the right circumstances you could lose your entire hard drive and that was on
like a shipping consumer release version of the OS. I mean Apple has always had
certain... has always had certain wax and wane periods. I think that the most
significant change that I can see is that people are starting to appreciate
that Apple is just a tech company. That they are not... Zeus did not storm the
ground and then fully formed out of his forehead plopped the Apple Cupertino
campus and everything they do is holy and correct, that they are a company with
a lot of moving parts, that they can sometimes those parts mesh very very nicely and the machine works perfectly, sometimes they
don't mesh well and sometimes things get out of the campus that aren't really
fully formed. Just like pretty much every other tech company. If there's a
difference over the past 5 years, it's that there are now so many pieces to the
company now that maybe 5 years ago and maybe this was incorrect for me to say,
but I used to recommend, my default recommendation when people would ask me
what should I, what kind of computer should I buy, what kind of phone should I
buy? My default recommendation would be a Mac because I thought that
universally this is... unless you have a good reason to get a Windows machine,
then you're probably going to have a better time with a Mac because it's easier
to use, it's more reliable. In that time however, competitors have created
hardware and software that isn't quite as good but it's good enough that it can
be... the decision can be influenced by other factors, and now there are enough
problems that tend to pop up with iOS and Mac OS releases that it's not
unreliable but it's not going to be the same I bet this person is going to have
a really good experience if they upgrade right now. Certainly I've stopped
recommending... my goalpost for how long should you wait after a major OS
release until you actually install it, it's gone from a couple of weeks to now
a couple of months. And to write, even today I only recently updated my most
important Mac to Yosemite and I still have a couple of Macs in the house that I
haven't upgraded yet because I don't think the Yosemite features are so
important that I need to have it on every single Mac, and I like the stability
of my old computers on 10.8 and 10.9.
Leo: Red Sweater Software Daniel Jalkut who I really respect, used to work at Apple,
really good developer for Apple, has a great blog posting, Bitsplitting.org
where he talks about this and he says “I've indulged these doubts about Apple
since shortly after I was hired in 1996.” And he does a long litany of problems, he said “I didn't start blogging in earnest until
2005. But here's some highlights to remind you that things have never been fine with Apple.” And he has year by year, key chain and accessibility, we need a hero, which is Apple's script implementation
all work and no play, there were a bunch of blog posts going back year after
year. So it isn't anything new and yet I have to say looking at these
commentators, even people like John Gruber who have very consistently been
Apple cheerleaders are agreeing that Apple might be losing momentum. Gruber
says “Apple squandered a lot of trust with their users. It's not that Apple has
lost the it just works crown to a competitor, but
rather they've seeded a perception that Apple's stuff doesn't work either.” And
I have to say, it just works is not a good motto for Apple at this point.
Alex: And I don't, I look at it
just like Andy was talking about, I stay away from upgrades. When you have
users that are going oh I don't know if I really want to upgrade that, that's a
problem. When we're excited oh those are great features but whatever features
you're putting in are not worth me upgrading and we barely upgraded any
machines to Mavericks ever. You know like we...
Don: I think this should...
Leo: Go ahead Don.
Don: Sorry Alex. I think this
year it's been a double whammy for them because not only have they introduced
new versions of Yosemite and iOS, but they've got the integration piece as well
which they never had before so they must really be so stretched. And I know
when I was looking at the beater, when the first beaters came out with the
extensibility it didn't really work and I thought well they've got a few months
to get it together and I'm sure by the time they release it will work, and come
release day it still didn't work 100% you know, and even now... and I was at
the time, I remember thinking to myself if they don't get this right there will
be a hell of a hew and cry because people will be
very upset about it. But it's been released, it doesn't quite work as we
thought would or at least the functionally it works as it should but the
reliability isn't there all the time. And I'm quite surprised at the lack of
uproar there has been to be honest since the release. Air Play works between
iOS and Mac, you know 60% of the time perhaps. And
it's... you know and I sort of keep waiting for them to bring out an update
that will fix everything, I'm still sort of waiting for that. I mean I was
badly bitten by iOS 8. I got the 6+, went on holiday and was it the 802 or the
801 release that knocked down cellular? I was without the phone for like a week
because that release actually killed my phone for the week and while I was on
holiday I couldn't download and restore it. So that was quite a painful process
and it sort of makes you think... that should never really have happened.
Leo: Is it time to call for a
moratorium on new features? That's what Adam Engst at TidBITS says. For the time being OSX, iOS are
effectively feature complete, the one thing we've repeatedly heard from users
is a cry for stability. We'd like to see OS 10, 10.11 and iOS 9 be Snow Leopard
updates that remove cruffed cleanup problems and
polish existing features so we have a stable base going forward. Does that seem
reasonable at this point?
(all talking)
Leo: Go ahead Don.
Don: Well they did that with
Snow Leopard didn't they? I mean that's exactly what they did. They had Leopard
and then it was quite a surprise at the time because they brought Snow Leopard
out and said look there's a couple of new features, but we're taking the time
to actually stabilize things and fix a few things under the hood.
Leo: Take a breath. Yeah.
Don: Yeah. And sure no one...
Andy: I remember my briefing on
it and it was 45 minutes and the entire thing was just here's what we changed
in this infrastructure and here's how we changed this system, and you're not
going to see much that's user facing but here's everything... here's a little
tweak we did that fixes something and here's everything we had to do to make
that work, and I think that... I don't know if Apple should feature lock Mac OS
for the time being, I do think that maybe it's time to get rid of their Mac OS
we have to have an update out the door every single year and we have to have
things to show off at WWDC. They might... I think it might behoove them,
especially at the scale at which Apple is operating, to move to more of a more
like a Google sort of developer keynote thing where... or an Adobe thing where
they will say, here's something we're working on in our labs, and we're
considering the best way to put this into the operating system or where it
makes sense do it, or if this is just an interesting idea for us to play with
on our own, and it might take a year or two or three for it to actually show up
in a release of Photoshop or Android but at least they're showing that they're
moving things forward and also they're training people not to think that we're
going to show you something in July and we're going to ship it come hell or
high water in September. Because among other things, I don't know if they're
losing any sort of battles with users at this point but I can't recall a time
when Mac and iOS developer have been this dispirited about their relationship
with Apple. They really are feeling quite beaten up about it.
Leo: Wow!
Andy: And over the past 4, 5, 6
months the number of times I've had conversations with developers who said they
don't believe that they're going to be developing for Apple products sometime
in the next 2-5 years, where they feel as though they're going to be pushed out
of business by limitations Apple is putting on them or whether they simply say
I've got skills that can be applied to a lot of different places and it's just
not as much fun and interesting to write for iOS and Mac OS as it was just 3 or
4 or 5 years ago. That's incredibly... even when Apple was doomed there was a
certain you know what, we're going to go down with this ship but we're going to
play our violins as best we can until the icy waters claim our lives and now
it's like... yeah you know it's a good ship and the next port is going to be
really interesting but I think we're good here, let's just get the helicopter
and let's just go.
Leo: (laughing) Kind of
completely tangential. Did you see that when CNN was formed, when Ted Turner
created CNN, that he created a doomsday video?
Alex: I don't think I saw that.
Andy: Yeah. The news story, and
this came from someone who worked at CNN and had access to the entire library
and you know that often times they will pre-write stories and put them in like
the CMS and put them...
Leo: Yeah, obituaries and stuff
yeah.
Andy: When Bob Hope dies, here's
the package to run. There is actually like a package that is labeled non
ironically that this is to be played at the end of the world and we have to get
authorization that yes the world is actually ending to play it and it's a video
of like a marine band in a very pastoral place just playing Nearer My God to
Thee.
Leo: This is the last thing you
would see.
Andy: At standard definition
because that's when this package was put together.
Leo: And then the slug is HFR,
hold for release until the end of the world. And I guess it would be... it's
like if you see those science fiction movies, you know the alien race is about...
you've got 3 minutes left. You plunk this tape in and you go kiss your wife. (laughing)
(all talking)
Andy: ...while the angels of
death with their flaming swords are reaving the souls
of the unworthy, let's gather around the TV and... this is some public domain music.
Leo: There is something both
funny and kind of chilling that this exists. They will play this for Apple. No,
it's not time to give up on Apple, although if there were credible competition
Apple might be in more trouble. I have to admit that I switched from iOS to Android
partly because of the kind of slow... it's ironic because on the one hand you
want the latest and neatest features but on the other hand you want them to
work. And I kind of gave up on iOS 8 and went to Android because there was
solid competition. But I don't think there's any competition in desktop
computing. I'm not going to Windows 8 or 10.
Alex: Well and I think that Apple
can make these corrections right now. I think that they have the time, there's
no reason for them... I know they have an internal clock but they're going to
lose market share if they took a year off and just worked on stability.
Leo: This is the time.
Alex: This is the time to do
that.
Don: I think the thing as well
with the problems that we've having with iOS extensions and the interoperability
between devices, it's frustrating but it's not sort of... it's not so bad that
it makes you want to throw the machine out the window. I mean, I'm fairly happy
with Yosemite, it's fairly stable for me... there's nothing to have any
problems with everything around it, it's fine. It's
just the interoperability that doesn't seem to quite work properly. I just sort
of think... oh well they'll fix it in a release
sooner or later, and it's a frustration more than you know, a really serious
problem that I think I have between my devices. It should work as advertised.
It doesn't completely, but hopefully they will fix it. But I think it's just a
frustration, and to be honest probably a lot of people don't really understand
still that that interoperability exists so they've sort of got a bit of a pass
on it until more people know about it, sort of normal people, non techie people.
Leo: It does seem to be if I
scan the complaints, it's usually people like Alex who are power users who are
pushing the hardware to its limits and developers who have had to struggle with
iCloud.
Alex: I think it's also people
who kind of... princess in a pea. It's little things
like my rotate doesn't work very well...
Leo: It's a little pea.
Alex: I'm just saying that there
are some people that you're... I think my parents don't notice a lot of things
not working when they're using their iPad but I think they just think that's
the way the computer works rather than really when I turn this I really expect
it to rotate exactly when I turn it, or I expect you know... there's lots of
little weird bugs that seem to be going on in iOS 8 that I think just a lot of
people may not be noticing either.
Andy: But see that's a tipoff of
a potential problem because if ordinary people are saying oh well who cares if
rotate doesn't work immediately, and if there's this big feature in which I'm
supposed to be able to share a photo between my desktop and my phone and it
just works, and it doesn't work 40% of the time well that's how computers work.
We didn't... that used to be a selling point of Apple saying well yes, that's
how computers work but this is better than a computer, this is a Macintosh.
Alex: Right.
Andy: And so if... this is why I
come back to the idea of... the perception of Apple as a more ordinary company
than they might have been perceived as 5 years ago. On
another subject...
Leo: Either way, maybe that's
true that we just thought... we expect too much of Apple. They are just a
company.
Andy: Again yeah, I mean the only
thing about all this, there's been a lot of... a bunch of different articles, Michael Sye has a really good post on his blog that shows nothing but shows excerpts of
articles like this that people with Marco's credibility have been writing over
the past year, year and a half pointing out that this is not a brand new thing,
this is a recurrent thing. But if we are... the only part of these commentaries
that I've been really disagreeing with is saying oh well it's Craig Federighi, you know when Craig Federighi came on... or when... or some other person.
Leo: Or Scott Forstall. But wait a minute, he's gone.
Andy: When this other person came
on board, when control of the user experience went to Johnny Ives' group, well
that's when things went south. It's not the result of one person making a
change that suddenly upset this perfectly balanced machine, again this is
always a very big complicated machine with a lot of intermeshing parts that
sometimes are going to work correctly, sometimes are not going to work
correctly. And I'm not talking about the parts of the operating system, I'm
talking about the parts of the institution that create the
operating system and that's real stuff.
Leo: Also I said this yesterday
on iPad Today, part of the reason we notice these
little things now is because the big things have worked so well. You remember
the days when computers crashed all the time? Right?
Andy: The big feature of OSX was
that if it crashed it didn't take all of... it would only take down one app and
not the entire platform, and we were happy. We were so thrilled! It didn't
matter to us that it doesn't have printing features yet.
Alex: I just remember when you
wanted to play Marathon and you had to restart your machine with shift down to
have all these sanctions off except for like one so that you can....
Leo: I think we're... part of
this comes from the fact that computing has become so good and so stable that
now the little things are more irritating because we expect... look at the
iPad. I don't think my iPad has ever crashed. Programs for it close sometimes,
but I think that iPad, I probably have never... you never reboot your iPad.
It's rock solid and so these little things like slow rotation yeah they're
annoying, but they probably have always had things like that, we just didn't
notice them because we were blue screening all the time. Beach
balling all the time.
Alex: We didn't have rotation,
rotation was a CRT and it was... and it was really heavy you know?
Andy: There's a reason why I
started like when I wanted to teach myself the ukulele and that's because I've
made the conscious decision that gee I'm spending a lot of time waiting for my
machine to reboot after it crashed, if I had something like knitting needles or
like a model kit of an airplane or a musical instrument I don't know how to
play to simply pick up and work on during those 3 and a half minute breaks I'm
having every hour, I could actually have a skill at the end of the year. And
that's no longer really the truth.
Leo: Yeah it's true... both of
iOS OSX and frankly Windows... software is better now than it was. And so the
little things are more annoying than they were, and Apple puts itself square in
the bullseye by saying it just works. I mean this has
been their credo, this is what their promise has been and that is a hard thing
to do.
Alex: And I think they would do
better, I mean I just keep on coming back to it, I think they would do better
to take some time off and get back to that rather than continuing to build on
top of this you know? And just really take a step back and as users are ready...
Leo: I think that's what Marco
is saying too. He says I was needlessly sensationalistic. I'm not saying
Apple's doomed by any means. I'm just saying now's the time to take a step back
and really focus.
Andy: I think reading his follow
up piece, it's very familiar because when I wrote those pieces about my
switching ... the 3 parter about my switching to
Android and there's another piece that is maybe going to get some attention in
the next two or three weeks where you really have to choose your words
extremely carefully, you cannot be the slightest bit casual and sometimes you
have to even be as blunt to say I am specifically not saying this, I am only
saying this because there are people who are out there who just want to see ammunition
for... we just want more ammunition for whatever argument that they want to
make. Either pro Apple or anti Apple. And if they
suddenly see oh well look at this person who's always loved Apple stuff and now
even he says that Apple sucks, no he's not saying Apple sucks. And he's even
saying... I'm not saying it's completely unreliable. You see, I've been right
all along! Shut up, you're not saying the things that I said, you're saying the things you want me to have said. So yeah I mean, I like that follow up piece from Marco because it was just
so familiar in my head. I did not take that caution when I wrote those Android
pieces which is why I was able to say y'all are crazy, I can point to every
time... even the people who are like Apple fans saying oh well here are the
fallacies in Andy's argument saying, no I didn't say that at all, no that's
exactly... here I can site you the page and the paragraph and the line in which
I said explicitly not that. But it's really really hard when you know that I am... I need to light a match in a room is filled
with dynamite and if I light that carelessly bad things that I don't intend to
happen are going to happen.
Leo: Yeah. Apple is a company
that is never above criticism or suggestions, we want
them to be better.
Alex: It's all constructive
criticism.
Leo: Yeah, I don't use iOS any
more, but I do use OSX.
Andy: Your developers and your
users and the rest of your friends have created this place of love and safety,
we're just going to go around the room and talk about how your recent decisions
have gotten us all concerned.
Leo: I've written this letter
and I'm just going to read it now...
Andy: We're going to take you to
campus... there's a van outside that can take you to campus number 3 with a new
management team, you're free to board that van or not but for the mean time I
wish that you'd just simply sit and let those of us who love you talk about
this.
Leo: Well and I think it's also
probably the days of loving a computer company or worse a consumer electronic
company are gone. Come on, as you said. It's just a company.
Andy: Yeah. I mean it's... people
have love for a logo, you should not love the logo you should love the things that a piece of
technology can do for your life. Including freeing up more
time to spend on things that are unrelated to technology. As I keep
modifying the quote that Dave Simm had in an issue of Cerebus the Aardvark saying Apple doesn't love you,
Apple only wants your money.
Leo: Right.
Andy: And they also want to
create... I think they're genuinely... they're the one company where I'm sure
that they actually also want to create great products and they also feel as
though they have a mandate to improve peoples lives
by creating great products but in the end it's like they really just... they're
really grateful you're buying your products, they're really grateful that
you're really likely, you had such a good time with their current product that
you might buy their next product no matter what it is, but the act of love is
when they see the money come from you to them and so please keep that in mind.
That's the proper relationship. It's like, you can pet your dog, you can go play with your dog but there are things you should not do
with your dog because that's not the nature of the relationship you have with
your dog.
Leo: Yeah. Yeah. And I should
correct myself, I do use iOS because I use... I love my iPad and I still think
there's no tablet as good as the iPad that's pretty obvious. It's the iPhone I
think has been superceded in my heart.
Andy: Can I say that this is
maybe this is a topic for general discussion, I find myself... I gave iOS 7 a chance, I've given iOS 8 a chance, iOS 7.1 a chance. I still
just don't like this graphical redesign. I just can't get any love for it at
all. And...
Leo: Really? I guess I've just
gotten used to it. I hated it at first, I really did
hate it at first.
Andy: See that was true with
Yosemite where I started to dislike it a lot less once I put it on my main
machine and I started using it every single day and I came to realize that a
lot of my objections were just it's different as opposed to it's poorly designed or you don't like the design, with iOS though.... boy. I'm now
sort of at the point where one way or another I have to choose what my next
phone will be, be it an iPhone 6 or a Nexus 6 or another Android phone and I
have to say that my dislike of the flattened out redesign is a strong point in
favor making my next phone an Android phone. I just don't like it at all.
Leo: Yeah, yeah.
Don: I've grown to like it. I
think I didn't like it initially but I quite... find it quite more sort of more
modern now and I'm quite used to it, in fact done on the iPad, the last
remaining app that I've been using which hasn't had the makeover was Tweetbot and it just got to the point where I couldn't
stand looking at Tweetbot any more because it just looked so old.
Leo: It does look old doesn't
it?
Don: Yeah, you know. And they
seem to have abandoned it.
Andy: Go back to the jazz age
grandpa.
Don: I've gone to the official
Twitter climb now, I'm giving that a try and it fits with the overall aesthetic
and I quite like it.
Leo: That's pretty funny. But
yeah, let's face it, design is a matter of fashion and style, it's not...
there's no good design. I mean there's... white ties aren't inherently ugly,
burnt orange isn't inherently ugly. Or is it?
Alex: Oh, it is.
Leo: (laughing)
Alex: The white
ties, that's subjective but... yeah, burnt orange... that's objective.
Andy: Rhoda Morgenstern's
apartment was a fine fine piece of interior design.
Leo: I love Rhoda's. (laughing) Let's take a... I think we all deserve a snack
right about now.
Alex: Oh these are so good.
Leo: This is hard work.
Alex: Oh my
gosh.
Leo: So that's why we've got our
Nature Box, it's here.
Andy: Dried pineapple rings,
dried pineapple rings, dried pineapple rings...
Leo: You love them too. The big island pineapple.
Alex: I haven't had the big
island pineapple.
Leo: You haven't had these?
Alex: No, I've had a lot of them.
Leo: Every time we do a Nature
Box ad you get to choose a snack.
Alex: Oh, okay. Well I'm going to
try these ones.
Leo: Nature Box brings you great
tasting snacks right to your door, they are more than
just great tasting snacks. They are much healthier than the average vending
machine snack you see on every...
Alex: Handful of ingredients.
Leo: Nutrition is improved. Yeah
they're not manufactured stuff. They're made from... like that. What's in
there? Pineapple. That's it.
Andy: I was shocked, I thought
that okay clearly they've like marinated it in something, no it's just pineapple that's been dried.
Leo: Pure flavor.
Andy: They've candied it? No.
Added sugar? No. It's just pineapple.
Alex: They perfected the idea
that they would serve food as... food.
Leo: Yeah, it's a novel idea but
it's a great idea. Nature Box, it's not just pineapple. They have hundreds of
delicious snacks. What have I got here? Whole wheat raspberry... I'm sorry,
blueberry figgie bars. Love those. The
coffee kettle popcorn, the Italian bistro pretzels. So they have sweet,
they have savory, they have spicy. Toasted sesame sticks,
that's what I'm having.
Alex: The record was the coffee
kettle popcorn lasted... Lisa said come down and grab some of these and try them out and I took that up there, it lasted less than 3
minutes.
Leo: So good.
Alex: A bunch of people like oh
this is really good.
Leo: Adding coffee to anything
makes it better but kettle corn particularly tasty. Grab some orange Apple
fruit chews instead of going to that candy machine in the kitchen or the
parmesan garlic pop pops. Or jalapeno cashews. They've
got zero artificial flavors, colors, sweeteners, zero grams trans fats. No high fructose corn syrup, you'll even find snacks with no added sugar,
gluten free snacks, vegan snacks. You tell them what
you want. Right now for $2 we have a great little Nature Box sampler, that's
actually what we're eating now. This is the 5 snack sampler. For a couple of
bucks shipping, that's all. And you get a sense of what... how delicious Nature
Box can be. So start your trial today, get a complimentary sample box at
NatureBox.com/twit. And then sign up for the monthly delivery at home or at
work, kids love them by the way. And I just want to point out, resealable so I just opened that, that's a resealable bag. So you don't have to feel like you have to
eat all of the pineapple rings.
Alex: Oh, really?
Leo: Actually these sesame seeds.
Alex: But eating them all remains an option.
Leo: It is always an option. Oh that is so good; what is it
about sesame that is so good?
Alex: It is magical.
Leo: It’s a magical seed; gosh I love sesame.
Alex: In case you are wondering Andy these are really good
Leo: So mean.
Andy: I’m not joking, that package came and I got to admit I
ate the thing that looked like fig newtons first because
they looked like fig newtons.
Leo: That is really good.
Andy: Because I have never particularly had; like oh boy
pineapple. So I swear to God, I read that label twice. Well they used natural
sugar; they used natural no. It is just.
Alex: It is just delicious.
Andy: They just didn’t screw it up; that is all they did.
Alex: I just love the ingredients; dried pineapple.
Andy: Apple should take that same lesson; it is just
pineapple in the Pineapple Rings. Just keep it simple and don’t screw it up,
you will make people very happy.
Leo: Naturebox.com/twit make yourself happy; make your mouth happy. Alright, are you ready for another Quad
copter tour of the Apple campus in 4k video? This is the January update. Should
I go to, let me see, should we go to 4k? I don’t know what it is going to look
like. I mean this isn’t a 4k screen.
Alex: Give it a shot.
Leo: People at home are watching it in 720P anyway; alright
I’ll try.
Andy: Look at the clarity in that.
Leo: Oh my God, actually it does look pretty good. Here we
go. What are you look at? Get rid of that. Here we go,
this is the Circle campus, the Infinity campus, it is
well underway.
Alex: What you can do when you have ten billion dollars to
spend.
Leo: Nice, nice no bugs here; there is going to be a
parking garage underneath. You know the landscaping will make this look
beautiful of course. I love the music it is kind of James Bondi.
Alex: When I worked at Sky Walker Ranch almost all of the,
you’ve been there right?
Leo: Yeah.
Alex: Yeah, almost all of the parking was under the
building.
Leo: Smart, that is a sylvan environment. You are kind of
in the woods. So are we look back to one infinite loop, is that what we are
seeing? Or is he just showing off now with his Quad copter? It is a little
smoggy in San Jose I got to tell ya; look at the 4k
it is super crisp.
Andy: There is another article somewhere about how they
agreed to preserve a historic barn that is on the HP campus.
Leo: Yeah can you believe that, crazy.
Andy: According to the article they took it apart board by
board, numbered every board, numbered every fastener, and are rebuilding it
near the athletic fields on the new campus so that it will now be a working
tool shed. With pride, saying for the first time in years it will be a working
barn once again. Holding the fertilizer, the manganese, Howell Spec will occasionally
sleep there.
Leo: Okay, get ready Don. How old is that historic barn? It
is like 80 years old.
Alex: This is America, we are late bloomers.
Leo: We don’t have anything old. What would historic be in
Liverpool?
Don: Entire housing estates are older than that.
Leo: And they definitely are not historic.
Don: I went past, my brother just moved and I went past a
house it had 1719 up on the door.
Leo: That one is getting on a little.
Andy: You guys park your cars on top of the final resting
places of 600 year old kings. Do we dig up King Richard the Third or just go.
Leo: This is a car park you know.
Andy: We have plenty of kings and plenty of churches, we can
deal with this.
Leo: So there it is; I think we are still a couple of years
off.
Andy: Are you going to take a tour?
Leo: I want to.
Don: It is going to be the new theater isn’t it.
Leo: Yeah, that is where they are going to have the events
from now on. If I have any sadness about being somehow, off of the list; I’m
not going to use the b-word, banned word, but if somehow off of the list I
won’t get to visit this. Thank you MyithZ or whoever
that is for doing this.
Andy: You can visit the campus, just visit thrift stores until you acquire an entire Domino’s uniform, get a
pizza box with a ray of Go Pro cameras, a fake mustache.
Leo: Candy Gram.
Andy: Especially now with your shaved head, your signature
locks are gone.
Alex: They won’t recognize you.
Leo: You know I feel really bad; I realized that I had to
update my passport.
Alex: I saw that.
Leo: Because it is going to expire and I’m going on a trip
in June. So I have to get it now because I’m going on a trip in a few months.
Andy: Oh boy.
Leo: It takes a few months to do this.
Alex: You don’t have to do it in a few months, you can do it in a couple of days.
Leo: You can for a lot of money and I thought well, I had
the application all ready and I went in to get my picture taken and I realized
oh my God; I have no hair. So my passport picture is going to look like this.
Do you think I’ll be able to get. Don you have experience getting into the US.
Don: I’m sure you will be fine, I’m sure you will be fine
yeah.
Leo: I don’t know they are going to look at me and say.
Alex: It is going to be a conversation point.
Leo: I’m just going to go like this. See the part below my
hair; that looks normal that looks like me. You would think that they know
enough to say well.
Alex: All you have to do is, if they.
Leo: By they,
I mean the United States custom officials.
Alex: If they give you a hard time all you have to do is look at them and say hey, I survived.
Leo: Yeah, that is.
Alex: And then give them one of those wicked eye.
Leo: It is shameful, it is shameful but I was going to say
chemo. I shouldn’t do that.
Alex: I wouldn’t say that; I would just say hey I survived.
Leo: Don’t do that.
Andy: I don’t know if I would even.
Leo: That is a keno hora.
Andy: That might be the sort of thing where, I don’t know
who portions karma.
Leo: Right, right.
Andy: It is like the lint in the return hose in your dryer.
You don’t have to clean it out every single time but if you don’t then suddenly
it builds up and you have a fire.
Leo: I do have permission, Drew Olanoff and by the way we love you Drew great guy; his cancer has recurred. But, he was
the guy who did the blame Drew’s cancer campaign on Twitter and I asked him can
I tell the security officials: blame Drew’s cancer? He said you can; so I have
permission.
Alex: Blame somebody else’s cancer.
Leo: I’ll just say I lost a bet that is probably a better
one.
Alex: You could say that it is for the kids.
Leo: I don’t want to go on a long thing saying we raised
money for Unicef.
Andy: What if you just go with head lice? My kids got head
lice and it was the only way to be sure. That will get you sympathy and as a
lie that is not the sort of thing that will make anybody upset.
Leo: I’ll tell the truth
Alex: Or you could say I was sleeping, my kids shaved and
edge and I had to even it out.
Leo: Oh how about this chewing gum, chewing gum.
Alex: Wax.
Leo: Wax.
Don: People do decide to have their hair like that as a
fashion statement.
Leo: I know.
Don: It Is no big deal, you are
going to be fine.
Leo: The problem is in June I will have hair, God willing,
have hair again.
Alex: June is not going to be the problem, it is going to be next June. This June you are only going to have
a little longer than this.
Leo: A passport is good for 10 years that is how long they
last. I think you can go get another picture taken.
Alex: And get another passport.
Leo: Have it updated.
Alex: And get another passport.
Leo: I don’t know
why I digress; I have a digression problem but also we have a news problem
because is there anything in CES that you guys want to talk about? There really
is not a lot to talk about; we have done most of the Apple news. I mean, I
could mention this ridiculous class action law suit.
Alex: Okay yeah, my only thing about the class action law
suit; we are talking of course about the IOS and iPhone 6.
Leo: They are suing over the fact that IOS 8 takes about a
quarter of the storage on an iPhone and so Apple is getting sued. Like if you
buy any technology product there isn’t stuff on the thing; I mean look at
Surface.
Andy: Didn’t Apple also go through something like this a
number of years ago with somebody saying your 15 inch laptop is only 14.8
inches in diagonal.
Leo: Right.
Alex: I bout a house and there is all of these walls taking
up this space, that is all I’m saying.
Leo: The plaintiff says Apple is using sharp business
tactics.
Andy: Sharp?
Leo: Sharp.
Alex: I hope.
Andy: That is one tech company word you want to emulate:
sharp.
Leo: Using these.
Andy: Basically the technique of.
Leo: I need to do this is the Martin Short, sweaty lawyer
voice. Using these sharp business tactics the defendant, Apple, gives less
storage capacity than advertised. Only to sell that capacity at a desperate
moment e.g. when a consumer is trying to record, take photos of a child or grandchild’s
recital, basketball game, or wedding. a
Alex: What?
Leo: I guess the implication is that they don’t give you
enough storage but you can buy some iCloud storage but only when you really
need it. It is Cuneo, Gilbert, & LaDuca they are
a Washington based law firm. That is who makes money on these things by the
way. I have been the recipient of many a class action award, I got one for Pop
Chips.
Alex: For how much, 10 cents?
Leo: Yeah, it is like you get a free bag of Pop Chips.
Alex: And they make millions.
Leo: Because Pop Chips got sued, class action sued because
they said it was a healthy natural snack; it is potato chips come on, everybody
knows what potato chips are. They lost and so we each got a free bag of chips
big deal and what did the lawyers get.
Alex: Millions.
Leo: Probably 50 million dollars. So this is another one of
those I’m sure. We feel this is what Cuneo, Gilbert, & LaDuca says: we feel there is a substantial number of applications that have been searching for claims and will be perusing claims vigorously. No
I do have to admit the 16 gig iPhone, they shouldn’t even sell that.
Alex: That is the one side of that, they really should start at a 32.
Leo: I think really the answer to this is simply putting on
the box, and they probably should do this; 16 gigs and what is it free.
Andy: If they just said some 16 gigs the operating system is
taken up by some but not all.
Leo: 16 gigs, 12 free.
Andy: Then they are promising 12 gigs free which they can’t
do. If they want to simply remind people that this is the amount of storage and
that not all storage is available to the user at any given time that is good
enough.
Don: Asterisk.
Alex: That is all they need is an Asterisk.
Leo: It’s an Asterisk.
Andy: This is going to be the same reason why now you can’t
have a funny commercial without saying please do not try to hop a pogo stick on
to the surface of the sun or any hot surface because you will burn and die.
Don: But it is not just Apple though is it, which is
strange. Every phone that you get comes with an operating system, every device.
Leo: More than half of the 8 gig Samsung Galaxy S4 was
taken up by OS.
Andy: Apple is so much better than other makers, as a matter
of fact Motorola even makes a point of saying that; here is how much fewer
blown apps we have on our platform than any other maker outside of Apple. It’s
sad.
Leo: Here is some good news Apple is now selling SIM free
unlock iPhone 6 and 6 plus in the Apple store online and retail. So you have to
get a carrier say you go with T-Mobile but that is unlocked.
Alex: Right.
Leo: And there is a T-Mobile SIM in there would you take it
out.
Alex: Right.
Leo: So I’m not sure what we have gained.
Alex: Yeah I don’t understand what is different about it.
Other than you just say none of the above.
Leo: There is no SIM.
Alex: They can just say I don’t wanna.
Leo: They do this every year. When we went and got it we
got in line in September for the iPhone 6.
Alex: It wasn’t an option.
Leo: You had to go with one of the 4 major US carriers was
the only option. I got T-Mobile; you got with T-Mobile. You just took the SIM
out and put whatever you wanted in.
Don: They have always had those in the UK.
Leo: I think they have to.
Don: Ever since the iPhone launched. Well I think that I
have always bought a SIM free version and just keep popping the same SIM in
staying with the same carrier.
Alex: You have T-Mobile, do you not?
Leo: Me, for my iPhone I actually have Verizon.
Alex: Sorry the only time I get excited about T-Mobile is
when I have the international plan and it is like you have free data in Turkey.
Leo: That is awesome.
Alex: I’m like this is amazing and then I come home and I’m
like I can’t get any reception.
Leo: Oh no, T-Mobile in Petaluma; I was getting 20 megs down and 15 megs up with T-Mobile because no one else
is using it.
Alex: But you get into the city or D.C. or.
Leo: But there are a lot of places that you go.
Alex: Almost everywhere that I travel. I don’t know anywhere
else where it is really good aside from Petaluma? I don’t like T-Mobile, I’m getting ready to get rid of it.
Leo: They are all bad; Verizon got bad, it was really good
here for a while and now it has gotten really slow.
Alex: Yeah.
Leo: They are all bad. So there you go, if you want a
subsidized.
Alex: Don’t give into demand.
Leo: Unlocked iPhone, without any SIM in it you can now get
it at Apple.
Don: So to make you jealous, my particular deal is great,
it is called Three and they have a thing called feel
at home and basically they have, I think, 12 or 13 different countries that
they have arrangements with whereby it works as if you were at home. So I can
now come across to the US and there are no extra charges and it is basically
the same deal.
Leo: See with T-Mobile you get the 2G that is the problem
and he is getting the full 4G.
Alex: I think that I have at least 3G.
Leo: No, I know the plan it is 2G; you may feel like you
are getting 3G.
Alex: It was really good.
Leo: You do get; T-Mobile does give you unlimited data but
at 2G speeds in Europe unless you arrange for better.
Alex: I was in.
Leo: But I like Three. You know even though they have
stopped selling the unlimited data plan card; you used be able to go to the UK
and get a SIM for Three and it was unlimited data for like 30 lbs.
Don: Right, right I’m not sure if you can do that anymore.
Leo: Yeah I think they stopped that one. Someone told me
they did because that is the one that I was telling everyone to get.
Alex: They suddenly realized that once Leo started talking
about it they stopped making money.
Leo: It’s probably my fault.
Alex: Like all of these geeks came over here and actually
started using this.
Leo: You got the Leo deal? Nope. So Volkswagen is going to
get Car Play and Android Auto; I think this is good. I would hate to buy a car
that I can only use an iPhone with. Even if I were using an iPhone, I would
like to know 5 years from now I can use something else. Car
Play and Android Auto in Volkswagens this year.
Alex: When was the last time that you kept a car for more
than 5 years?
Leo: Oh no, no my Lexis is.
Alex: You still have the Lexis.
Leo: It is a 2001 Lexis.
Alex: Okay.
Leo: And it has 250,000 miles on it; Abby drives it now.
Alex: Okay.
Leo: Abby drives it now, I did replace it. The Mustang we
still have, that is 5 years old. I’m not that kind of guy actually I am; now
that I lease cars. Every month I have a new car. I’m like Steve Jobs; I don’t
want a license plate. I don’t want a license plate. I am joking. Although I
should mention I think we are going to sell the Mustang and it has the twit.tv
license plate on it. I don’t want it, Lisa says I’m
not doing it. Should we sell the Mustang to a TWiT fan including the twit.tv license plate?
Alex: I think that would be good.
Leo: I’m not donating it to charity though; I want the
money.
Alex: I spent a lot of good money on that.
Leo: Here is a picture from the Verge at CES of, is this Apple Car Play running? I can’t even tell.
Andy: It looks like Android.
Leo: I see a glimpse.
Andy: Yeah see that is an HTC One.
Leo: I get it so there is the phone and here is the car version
of the phone. Let’s see if they have another picture, nope. So
Apple’s Car Play and Google’s Android’s Auto both available on the Volkswagen
MIB 2-electronics. They will come to the US in 2015; it also supports
Mirror Link which is Sony technology. Why not? Basically all you are doing is
configuring the screen to show the display of the mobile device. Parrot is
going to offer aftermarket in dash systems that can take any car and give it.
Alex: I need that for my car; my car is too old.
Leo: You need a big hole in the front.
Alex: I’m ready to take a saw out there and get rid of the
German engineering and.
Leo: The RNB6; oh and it has a dash cam in it too. I’m not
sure what you are going to do with that.
Alex: A dash cam.
Leo: Built-in to the parrot.
Alex: So you can look down and wreck and people can see you
scream while you are rolling. Oh forward.
Leo: There it is; there is the dash cam. So you would mount
this underneath your mirror. NAV, hands free telephone operation, voice
controls, diagnostics, and the dash cam should fit into any relatively recent
car. And Car Play and Android Auto is included. There
is Car Play, no price or availability yet. This is another CES thing where you
get your hopes up, you get all excited.
Alex: When people start announcing stuff, I’m like okay you
had to have thought about the price. I know you want people to think about the
features but let’s move on I really don’t care.
Andy: They probably don’t have a distribution deal yet so it
is going to depend on who they partner with.
Leo: Yeah I feel that is one of the problems with CES if you
go to these events; first of all you can tell that this at one of the show
stoppers, one of those mini events. Which means that Parrot
spent a minimum of 15,000 dollars to be in a hotel ballroom.
Alex: Is it that much spots run at conferences?
Leo: Oh no it is at least 10 to 15, I think that it more to
get into this ballroom with only 150 people or however many.
Alex: The press.
Leo: And the press; the press go there because they get
free food and now every company knows that these companies will be over covered
because it comes before CES opens, nobody has anything to do, they have roast
beef, there is a chocolate fountain, they are in a good mood, and so they are
going to take a picture of anything they can talk about.
Alex: In case you are wondering, the roast beef is actually
quite good.
Leo: The roast beef is very good.
Alex: Very good.
Andy: A good source of free protein.
Leo: I feel like this stuff gets way over covered only because
it is easy; this is like the laziest kind of journalism.
Andy: You have to justify your presence there so.
Leo: Right.
Andy: You’re not there to not cover things; iMore, the Verge, and all the other sites they are like
want you to know every time somebody refreshes the page they are reading about
something brand new.
Leo: They have that obligation.
Andy: It is a really hungry machine.
Leo: ScotterX in our chat room
says Pepcom which was last night was 9 to 12
thousand; I over stated the cost a little.
Alex: Put that in perspective a booth.
Leo: But look here is this gizmo.
Alex: A 10 x 10 , a
booth in actual CES where you are going to get a lot less foot traffic for
people to write about you is you know 3 or 4 times that. So it is actually a
really good deal on the business aspect.
Leo: Oh no, I’m not blaming the companies at all of course
they are going to want to do that, this is strategically brilliant, for 9 or 10
thousand dollars.
Alex: I would do a conference, if I did a conference I would
want them all to be the 10x10 booths, you know just keep everyone on kind of
the same even keel and let people actually go through it and not have it be
this circus that.
Leo: No word if Apple will allow this, we knew it would
happen; a company named TapSense has announced a
platform to bring contextual advertising to your Apple watch. Oh Share Joy,
woo-hoo.
Alex: Is that Share Joy?
Leo: Apple may not have a choice on this right.
Alex: The only thing I have to say is that all of this stuff
is inherently, I mean it is not all inherently bad it is just that what happens
a lot of times the people who are giving out those coupons really aren’t
thinking about making it a great experience for the user. They are like how
much do they have to give up. I used to do a mailing list in the early 90s with
actual post cards for sales. That I built this huge mailing
list for Sony, when I was working for Sony, and I was the only one who had this
list. I had it in a data base and everything else that I built in hyper
card but I could put it all together. People would be looking forward to
getting those postcards because they were great deal. But I pushed really hard
you know it has to be 30% off, it has to be this, or it has to be a whole bunch
of things and people loved getting them. I think a lot of times when we get
these stupid ads.
Leo: There is another thing going on, I have a lot more
space in my mailbox and on my desktop for postcards and junk mail, then I do on
a postage size wrist watch and if you take over the entire face of the watch
with an add, you are not going to win a fan. I’m not going to be a fan of that;
don’t you think that is a little rude?
Alex: But what if I’m walking to Starbucks and I get in
front of Starbucks and it is like hey you get a free coffee. I would be like oh
that is very nice.
Leo: I just want to see the time; I don’t want an ad on my
wrist watch.
Alex: You can have a free Eggnog latte.
Leo: So far I don’t think I have ever seen an ad on Android
Ware. I think I would be perturbed if I did.
Don: I think it would be nice to turn it on to try it but
then to have the option to opt out. If it just got too intrusive just switch it
off or be able to put certain filters on. As Alex said there are certain ads
that can be quite useful especially if they are location aware as well; it
might be interesting it might be useful you know only if it gives us the
ability to opt out.
Leo: Doctor Mom in the chat room says generally people who
spend 2,000 dollars on a wrist watch aren’t worried about saving a nickel at
Starbucks.
Alex: You would be surprised.
Leo: Actually that is not true. The cheapest suns of guns
I’ve met are rich people; how do you think they got rich? Every nickel adds up.
Alex: We definitely are not rich but my wife made me take
the car back and put gas in it; we rented a car and I’m like I’m not going
back. It is 2 gallons I’ll just pay the fine. No, no, no I had to go back.
Leo: It because they charge you like 10 dollars a gallon.
Alex: It is 7 dollars a gallon to calculate the Delta was 8
dollars, I’m just complaining. Anyway the point is that it doesn’t matter how
much.
Leo: That is why I stopped bending over to pick up anything
less than a quarter. I’ve done the calculations and it is not worth it.
Alex: Here is the thing, being a country boy I will pull a
quarter out of horse manure before I will pick up a quarter in San Francisco
that is all I’m saying.
Leo: Oh yick.
Alex: It is just gross, San Francisco if you have ever lived
there you see what goes on in the streets.
Leo: I’ve seen what goes on in those streets.
Alex: I will not pick up that quarter, my son always reaches
down to pick up the quarters and I’m like do not touch
that.
Leo: Why do you think they call it Liverpool, I just want
to say. No I’m sorry Don, We actually found out before the show that they call
it Liverpool because there is a bird; the liver bird.
Don: The liver bird it is a cormorant so that is on the
shield, the moto of the city.
Leo: Alright so it’s Livapool.
Don: We call it Liverpool but it is the liver bird, I don’t
know how that works.
Leo: Do you think in years gone by it was Liva pool?
Don: It could have been all sorts of things, the accents
and the dialects have changed considerably since then; and there was a pool, we
are a port, there was a pool.
Leo: There was a pool of water once, and what did it get
filled in with?
Alex: I don’t want to know.
Leo: And don’t pick up a quarter if it is in the pool of
water that is all I can say; or a tuppens or whatever
it is that you guys use.
Don: It has been a while.
Leo: I loved tuppens.
Don: That is what Mary Poppins used.
Leo: Tuppens, you guys don’t have tuppens anymore?
Don: 2 P’s
Leo: Do you guys have schillings?
Don: No.
Leo: Awe man you had the best money in the world and you
probably have dollars and cents now right.
Don: No, no, no there are still pounds, schillings, and
pens.
Leo: Oh there are.
Don: Oh no, that is what we say, we actually don’t have
schillings.
Leo: No schillings just pounds and pens.
Don: 5P.
Leo: 5P.
Don: 5P and 10P.
Leo: Well tuppens was 2P.
Don: Yeah.
Leo: But you don’t have tuppens coin.
Don: We don’t call it tuppens anymore; we don’t feed many birds.
Leo: Can I ask if I came and said hey governor do you have
a quid?
Don: That would be alright.
Leo: You know quid is still a word.
Don: Well quid is not actual currency it is actually slang
for a pound.
Leo: It is a pound right?
Andy: While we are on the subject, are your chimney sweeps
very dancy and swinging or do they just do the job?
Leo: And is it really good to touch them?
Don: There is very few around actually. I remember we did
get a chimney sweep once when I was a kid, but that was the only time I have
seen one; that was quite a while ago but I’m sure they have.
Andy: Your accent is rather realistic, I’ve been let down.
Alex: How did we get here, that is the question?
Leo: I’m so sorry.
Don: I don’t know.
Leo: We are done. Don McAllister ScreenCast online, it is a great place to go if you want to learn how to use. You have
expanded beyond the Macintosh haven’t you?
Don: Oh yeah for quite a while now; I do two shows a week
now: a Mac show and also an IOS one as well.
Leo: No Windows show.
Don: No Windows show, I’ve been asked to do them but it is
not the same sort of community I don’t think. I’m not sure enough people would
be interested.
Leo: I think you are right
Don: It is a different sort of vibe.
Leo: Even today, that is one of the real assets, is not IOS
10 or OS 8 or the hardware it is the people. There is something about Mac users
Don: Yeah, yeah.
Leo: We are the crazy ones.
Don: People are enthusiastic to learn about how to make the
most of it, which is.
Alex: Am I the only one that feels like you can walk up to a
person with a Mac in an airport and start talking to them?
Leo: Totally.
Alex: You have your iPhone open or something and you start
chatting with them.
Andy: Is your airport working? Because I can’t access to any
base stations ever since I upgraded.
Alex: Yep.
Andy: Did you read that article from two days ago?
Alex: And we all have, that is the crazy part.
Leo: We are the misfits.
Alex: Right.
Leo: We are the rebels.
Andy: There is a time when we have to acknowledge that every
single TV star we see on TV is using an Apple product; that we see them everywhere.
Leo: We are a minority, a tiny little sliver of rebels.
Andy: We are like those pathetic people in politics who own
like 80% of all the power and the second like say how about you make that
Christmas tree 70 foot instead of 80 foot, and were like oh my God we are being
attacked! Our rights, our rights we are beleaguered people
Leo: We are not fond of rules.
Andy: We just don’t want to acknowledge that a company that
we give our money to is one of the most successful tech companies in the entire
world.
Leo: There is no respect for the status quo.
Andy: There is no tomorrow! Apple is literally.
Leo: Keep your halfpennies, tuppens,
and quids.
Andy: There is a corner stone in every single box that they
ship. They could do that for 10 years and they could still last for 10 years
after that.
Leo: You can quote us, disagree with us, glorify us, or
vilify us, but you can’t ignore us.
Andy: Don’t call us successful, we hate that.
Alex: And we like to listen to alternative rock like Taylor
Swift.
Leo: Yeah, and U2.
Alex: And U2.
Leo: God I love U2. Some day you guys are going to discover
U2 and it is going to change your life; a young band right out of Ireland I
think.
Alex: We are old enough that we can still remember when it
was alternative.
Leo: They were hip many, many moons ago. Let’s take a
break. Your picks my friends coming up Don McAllister, Alex Lindsey, Mr. Andrew Ihnatko, Rene as we mentioned is stuck, poor guy, at
CES where there are no Apple products; although wait a minute there are a ton
of Apple accessories. It is like iPod accessories, iPhone accessories hell
there, I mean there is a whole pavilion just dedicated to that.
Alex: There is a whole section, in the north hall usually.
Leo: Huge, huge. Our show today brought to you by FreshBooks. If you are one of the crazy ones, one of the
artists, one of the creators, one of the special people who have your own
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actually there is no offer code I think though they will ask you where did you hear about us. You could say Amber or Leo, I would
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30 days free; such a revelation when I heard about FreshBooks and you can bill in other currencies like tuppens, ha’penny.
Alex: Really.
Leo: Is there a ha’penny?
Don: Nope.
Leo: That would be worthless.
Don: Yeah I don’t think we even have a halfpenny.
Leo: A halfpenny would be worthless.
Andy: How about grouts, do you still have grouts?
Leo: Grouts?
Don: That is Scottish.
Leo: Grout is like an oat cluster.
Andy: I only know about that because of lack auter.
Don: Alrighty.
Andy: I will give you this grout in exchange for.
Leo: How about crowns, do you have crowns anymore?
Don: No, they used to be actual coins but did go into slang
about half a crown.
Leo: What is a crown, is it more
than a pound? Is it a ginny, what the hell is a ginny?
Don: Ginny used to be one pound and a shilling I think; a ginny, I think.
Leo: What, you have a designation for a pound and a
shilling; it’s a ginny?
Don: Not in my lifetime anyway.
Leo: Well I know but I’m stuck in Oliver Twist land and you
read Sherlock homes and they are like here is a ginny;
oh the guy gets so excited. What is a farthing?
Don: A farthing is umm, no I don’t know about a farthing.
That might have even been a quarter of a penny.
Leo: A farthing.
Andy: Is there like a cartoon thought balloon above Don’s
head that is like oh my God Americans are all idiots.
Leo: They are so stupid.
Alex: Why is he asking me these things?
Andy: We have politics, we have culture, we have industry,
we technology.
Leo: What the hell is a ginny?
Andy: Next thing they are going to ask us if we have
elevators. What do they call shoes over there? Do they call them shoes or do
they call them something else?
Leo: Santa Clause, does he leave candy in the shoe by the
fire place is that how that works? Alright I’m sorry Don, I hate to do this to you.
Don: It’s alright.
Leo: A farthing is a quarter of a penny.
Don: Possibly.
Leo: That is what the chat room tells me.
Don: We don’t have them anymore anyway. Ah right, there you
go.
Leo: A quarter of a penny, so you have a ha’penny and a farthing. That tells you how old these
novels that I’m reading are because that is considered worth something. Why do
you use the letter D to symbol a penny?
Don: Yeah.
Alex: You are looking at me like I know, I don’t know what you are talking about.
Leo: I am just having fun with Don, I love Don. Don and
Barbara are great, we went to China together. Had so much fun going down
remember that river we went down.
Don: Oh, Guilin.
Leo: Guilin.
Don: Yeah with the rafting and.
Leo: And the guy with the cormorant would do the fishing,
maybe those were livers. They do the fishing, they swallow the fish but they
have the necks tied so the fish don’t go all the way down. This is the weirdest
thing, we saw this. There is a raft in the river as we are going by and this is
not for tourist, the people still do this; the guy has a basket, he is on a
raft, he’s got these birds, and he has a big long stick the bird goes out they
catch fish and they try to swallow them but they won’t go down because their
necks are wired. The guy takes the stick grabs the bird, brings him back,
shakes his head till the fish comes out in the basket, and then puts it back in
the water; the stupid bird does it again, and again, and again this is how they
fish.
Alex: That is what I call putting some birds to work.
Leo: Remember that Don?
Andy: I remember what it was like to work.
Don: Yeah, they did take the wires off and feed them though.
Leo: At the end, they get a little fish at the end. No but
they had been doing it for probably millennia that way.
Don: That is right, and they had rapids that the raft went.
Leo: It was so fun.
Don: It was good.
Leo: The waterfalls, oh God it was fun. I will never forget
and Henry my son who was there with us.
Don: That is right.
Leo: As you will remember.
Don: Attracting all the Asian girls.
Leo: All the young girls.
Don: Yes.
Leo: So when we were in Beijing the girls come in from the
country side and they are all wide eyed, as we were in the big city, and they
see Henry who is tall, good looking, blond, and very athletic. The girls were
posing with him for pictures.
Andy: He was an exotic foreigner; it’s an American.
Leo: Piece.
Andy: I want to be an exotic foreigner.
Leo: Then they asked him how much is a farthing
in your land? Andy Ihnatko your pick of the week.
Andy: My pick is one of my favorite apps in the entire
world, it is by Indio it is called iDraw and it is
available for both the Mac and the iPad. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been having to do some design stuff and what I love about iDraw is it is like having Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or
any of these things only it doesn’t assume that you have spent the past year
and a half of your life learning how to use Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. It
is a Vector illustration graphics program but if you want to do things that are
just simple I want to bang out a sign to put on my door for Christmas visitors
or I just want to design a mockup of a book cover or I want to, I’m doing a
presentation and I need to create an illustration of a simple idea. You can
knock these things out in about 5 minutes in iDraw where Photoshop excuse me where Illustrator, will be saying now what kind of
paper stock will you be printing these on and are you going to be using CMK
RGB. It is like I just want to draw a car with a horse in it; that is all I
need right now.
Leo: This is really cool.
Andy: Yeah, one of the signature things about it is that I
have never, ever gotten the hang of Bézier curves. I’ve been using this ever since 4.0. I just
don’t instinctively grab the handles at the right place to make the curve go
where I want to go. In iDraw you simply draw the line
that you want to happen then it will simply just connect the dots in a very
reliable fashion and then you just simply move whatever control points as a
result in a non-Béziery way and you just simply match that to whatever you want that to be. I know illustrator
also has a draw line that it will sort of trace that line too but it is never as
simple as it is in iDraw. Like I said it will get you
97% of the way that you would get with illustrator but illustrator is for
professional graphic artist who can bill 3 days on an illustration; iDraw is for people who just want an illustration or again
a sign, or a label, or anything. They don’t want to spend $500 to get it; they
don’t want to spend 3 days and they just want this thing to be done. It is $25
for the desktop version it is $9 for the, is it $9.
Leo: Yeah $9.
Andy: $9 for the IOS version, complete file compatibility,
it supports layers, it supports everything, and like I said it is almost a no
brainer it is not a lot of money to spend to have on your MacBook that will
solve most of the graphic problems that you might have.
Leo: This is funny because this is one of the earliest
programs on the Mac was MacDraw.
Andy: Yeah and I was, boy I was such a ninja with MacDraw; I
mean I would draw posters with it.
Leo: It was also Vecter right.
Andy: It was Vecter and that’s the
thing that I like about it; MacDraw had thing were you just draw a rigid
outline of the shape that you want then tell it to smooth that out, and then
you can modify it to whatever shape you want it. Whereas Bézier was like: now start
your control point. Now pull, oh no you pulled too far; now you’ve looped the
thing. Now delete the control.
Leo: Every time.
Andy: Exactly it is like how about if I just vaguely tell
you what I want, you show me what you think I said, and then you let me change
it to what I really meant; that is easy as pie. MacDraw was fun to draw in;
again for the youth group meetings at the Boston Bears Society, I used to make
like big, big posters, I used to do t-shirt designs in MacDraw and we are not
talking about like jagged little squares and rounded rectangles. We are talking
about oh wow this beautiful illustration you must be an expert. I’m an expert
but not at the things that the experts use unfortunately.
Leo: Mr. Don McAllister, Screen Cast online, what do you
have for us today?
Don: Well I got two quick ones. The first one is a piece of
software called, I’m sure we’ve mentioned it before, SwitchResX.
It is a great application; I use it pretty much every day because I am
constantly changing my screen resolutions to do varied screen casts and things.
It is a great utility that allows to switch your monitor to
any of its supported resolutions quickly or create custom resolutions.
This is especially useful now as people are getting more and more of the high
DPI monitors; you can actually go into SwithResX and
get a whole host of 20 or 30 different resolution that monitor will support.
You can create your own custom ones as well. The reason that I mention this as
well is that I recently got a 4K monitor and the MacPro it wasn’t fully supported and the developer actually went onto the floor and
there was quite a few of us that were complaining that we couldn’t get the
proper resolutions. The guy spent a day creating a special configuration file
that enabled the monitor to work; but the thing is that he did it independently, he didn’t need SwithResX to use it which I thought was a really nice gesture for him. So
just a bit of karma back to him.
Leo: That is when I found this too, when I got the 4K
display and I need it. I wanted to see what dot for dot looked like and Apple
won’t let you do that.
Don: That’s right, that’s right.
Leo: And when you see it, it’s like oh I guess I won’t be
using that.
Don: Well I’ve been using it for years because I record in
standard resolution.
Leo: Oh you need to yeah.
Don: Yeah 1280 x 720 or I’m currently doing 1080P ones now,
and some of the monitors originally didn’t support that so I had to use an
application like SwitchResX to flip the monitor into
those resolutions.
Leo: It’s free right?
Don: No, no I think it is about 14 euros something like
that.
Leo: Okay 14 euros cool.
Don: So that is that one; the other one is a little piece
of hardware. I don’t really like to take my laptop traveling until they get the
12 inch, you know, retina MacBook Air when that comes out. Anyway I take my
iPad and I’ve been using the standard SD card connector kit to connect my SD
card to my iPad and back up my photos to the iPad which is fine the problem is
though, if you use the iCloud photo library the next time that you sync all of
those photos will be synchronized with you iCloud photo library. Which is not really what I want because I have 4K videos and stuff
like that, that I really don’t want to sync. So what I’ve got is this
little device here, which is my passport wireless hard disk which actually has
an SD card slot. Basically in the field you have a 2 tera bite drive, you pop your SD card in and it backs it up to the hard drive either
automatically or using the buttons on the top via a client that you’ve got on
you iPhone or iPad and it is just an easy way of saving your SD information. So
if you have a go pro or dslr and you want to back it
up, you can just do it straight to the drive.
Leo: Perfect.
Don: Yeah, smashing it works really well.
Leo: I love that.
Don: And it is wireless as well so if you want to take your
movies with you, you can stream your movies from the hard drive as well you can
back up anything to it. It works really well, it has a USB 3 connect on the
end; you can plug it into your Mac when you get back and just treat it as a
normal drive then.
Leo: You know what I really want to get Alex? Is one of those Atamos, what are they called recorder.
Alex: Uh huh.
Leo: The Shogun because my Sony A7S will record, I think
for 224K out of the camera but it won’t record it in the camera. So you have to
attach a thing. I don’t suppose yours would do that Don.
Don: Um no, I got the Panasonic GH4 which works for that.
Leo: Oh.
Alex: I guess you say we are bordering on too close to NAB.
Leo: Oh, let’s wait.
Alex: When the second half of the year.
Leo: I think we actually are thinking of going to NAB
again; that was fun for us and it isn’t over covered like CES which mainly is
over covered.
Don: I’m going this year, I’m going.
Leo: Are you?
Don: I’m going, yep.
Leo: Awesome.
Don: U meter expo is working in conjunction with NAB now, it is actually inbedded with
NAB so with u meter expo I’ll be there.
Leo: It should be.
Don: Yeah, yeah it’s a big deal for them because it is the
national system of broadcaster and now the podcasters community, podcast
conference, is now in with NAB it is exciting.
Leo: As it should be. Is that in March?
Alex: It is in April.
Leo: It’s in April.
Don: April.
Leo: We will have to plan for that. Thank you very much for
your picks Don and for being here.
Don: Any time.
Leo: Mr. Alex Lindsey, your pick of the week.
Alex: I brought 2 the first one is, so I just did this whole
thing with my kids; my kids have 2 of my old iPads and I synced them all. So I
am a little into the educational stuff because I had to make sure that both had
the same thing for their flight and exactly the same pages so that they didn’t
get lost. Another one that I added, last week I talked a little bit about Light
Bot which is incredible watching my daughter play it is even cool, she is 5.
Leo: I’m still playing it.
Alex: Oh my Gosh.
Leo: I love it.
Alex: There is some really, my son said I can’t figure this
one out; he handed it to me and it took me a little while. You had to not only
do a sub routine but you had to do it very efficiently.
Leo: Yeah they teach you to program, it’s good.
Alex: It didn’t let you do lazy programing. So another one that I got into that I got for my kids that I am
enjoying too, is called Playground. Have you seen Playground?
Leo: No.
Alex: So Playground lets you build bridges and so you have
these little bridges here and you build them and it runs a little truck across
them. You are trying to do it with in a certain budget, over different terrain,
and it is.
Leo: Is it Virtual City Playground?
Alex: Well it is Bridge Constructor Playground.
Leo: Bridge Constructor, I bet you this is the same company
and they do other ones because this is build a city of
your dreams. Let’s see, its Bridge Constructor huh.
Alex: Yeah this is called Playground, it is made by ClockStone I think; yeah ClockStone, ClockStone.
Leo: Aright, I shall search for it.
Alex: Let’s see if we can find.
Leo: Of course let’s see, nope. Loading results, don’t you
love the search on the App Store.
Alex: You may be able to search for Bridge Constructor as
well.
Leo: We don’t have an over the shoulder view, that is the
only reason I wanted to; I don’t think it is set up.
Alex: Anyway it is.
Leo: There it is by Headup Games;
is that it?
Alex: Yeah that’s it.
Leo: Yeah that is it.
Alex: So you see here you can build all of these little
suspension bridges and everything else and it is just again if you are looking
for stuff; I just enjoy playing it but my kids will just sit there and spend
hours trying to figure this thing out.
Leo: iPhone or iPad too.
Alex: Again it starts easy and then gets.
Leo: I like stuff that starts easy.
Alex: And then it gets complex. You can win it but then you
find out you spent too much money on it, and you keep on going back so you keep
on trying to become more efficient. It is like trying to get 3 stars on Angry
Birds; it takes a while to get it working. So anyway it is a cool little game;
it is great for kids and adults.
Leo: Here is a fun thing that the App Store search does; I
searched for Bridge Constructor Playground, it says not found. Maybe you mean
Bridge Constructors Playground; I click that, it says nope don’t have that
either. You mean Bridge Constructors Playground, maybe that is it oh no I was
just messing with you says iTunes. They are screwing around
Alex: My other pick was crowd sourced, I went on twitter and
was I was going through looking for new things to mix with and I found Mixlr and this is Mixlr.com and what they do, they let you
stream live audio and I have been really trying to find the right thing. We
used Nice Cast for a long time.
Leo: Yeah I’ve used that.
Alex: That was attached to your computer but this is a
service that does it. I’ve really been looking for the right one for this
because there are a lot of conversations that we are, a lot of times we are
doing video casting using hangouts or something like that because we want to
record the audio and broadcast it but what people really want to do is just
listen to it on your website.
Leo: So do they do the back end?
Alex: They do the back end from what I, I literally just
started pulling this stuff down; I just want to look at it, I want to think.
Leo: This looks really neat.
Alex: I want to thank DRC online is the one who posted this.
Leo: And you can record and then you will have a podcast
too and put it on Sound Cloud or drop box or Mix Cloud.
Alex: Yep, Mix Cloud. So I think that it is a cool little
one doer app. I think that there are a lot of things that don’t necessarily
need to be video streamed. I haven’t really found a great solution for this, so
this is definitely one that I am going to be testing. Again DRC online posted
it on my twitter feed and I thought I would let everybody know.
Leo: There is also Spreaker.
Alex: Spreaker.
Leo: You are not familiar with Spreaker?
Alex: I’m not familiar with Spreeker.
Leo: Not the greatest name but the idea is similar, which is you can create your own live thing and it also creates
podcast out of it which it will store on Sound Cloud. I’ve used Spreaker a little bit just playing with it, but this looks
good too. I’m going to try both of these because I’m figuring someday I will
retire. I won’t have the beautiful studio, all of the staff; it will just be
me, a boy and his computer.
Alex: Well yeah, I think that sometimes you look at this and
there are a lot of time when I don’t want to video
cast; that I would have done an audio cast of.
Leo: Yeah.
Alex: Like I’m not well lit, I don’t want to be on camera.
Leo: I just want to turn it on sometimes.
Alex: Yep, yep exactly, this will work from mobile and from
your computer.
Leo: So I’m going to channel Rene Ritchie, when we had our
host dinner; that was a lot of fun, although the worst food ever. Andy you did
not miss a thing.
Alex: Except for the good conversation.
Leo: The conversation was fabulous.
Andy: I’m glad I opted for the cash equivalent.
Leo: Yeah, which was about $3.50; a
couple of tuppens and a farthing.
Andy: That is a Marie Callender’s chicken pot pie that is tasty.
Leo: We would have been better off with Marie Callenders; we thought it would be fun, we will go to the
Wash show house which is like Petaluma landmark it used to be the old stage
coach stop in the 1850s and we thought oh this will be fun. Apparently the
mashed peas and carrots were from the 1850s but don’t worry we are going to
save them and use them again next year. It was just horrible however it was so
great, I put some pictures up on flicker, to see all of these different hosts
in person and Rene Ritchie was there. One of the things that he showed me was,
and this would be his pick if he were here, Crossy Roads. Have you guys seen Crossy Roads yet?
Alex: Yep, is this the frogger.
Leo: It is frogger meets minecraft; it is like an 8 bit frogger.
It is not so hard.
Andy: It is like frogger meets qbert.
Leo: Yeah you are hopping like; oh look how fast. Oh I got
squished by the cab; the idea is that you are just crossing the road basically.
It is free there are in-app purchases that are mostly just characters. I think
you can just play free for a long time; the idea is to collect coins, it is
like frogger, qbert all
kind of the same, it also has a little bit of flappy bird in there.
Alex: Right, right, right.
Leo: Right and then you get a free gift.
Alex: Crossy road.
Leo: What is the free gift? Is it coins? Yeah we got some
coins, that’s good because I like the free gifts then because then, I don’t
want a notification, now I can win a prize and spend those coins, pull the
leaver, and get a new character. Give me the horse, give me the horse, give me the horse. Poopy pigeon okay so now I will be
hopping with that pigeon. It is very addictive in a lot of ways.
Alex: It is frogger.
Leo: It’s frogger, 8 bit frogger, it is the same game, oh he is making sounds I’m getting rid of him.
Andy: This is what the future would have been like in 1983
where they couldn’t envision a game like Assassin’s Creed but they could
imagine frogger only it is in 3D.
Leo: Yeah exactly, now I have killed my poopy pigeon which
I don’t really mind. So I’m going to go with the horsey, the winged horse. It
is exactly, see how 3D that is. Whoa I don’t know what is going on here.
Alex: That is a lot of blood.
Leo: Stuff is coming out of his nose.
Don: It is a dragon.
Leo: It is a fire breathing dragon. Can I run across, whoa;
whoa, whoa let’s get that coin now. Hey I’m doing good,
don’t distract me here; I know we are trying to do a show but I’m doing good.
Oh truck got me, now see I have to buy the dragon that
is how they get you.
Alex: Did you see how cool that was.
Leo: You got attached to it; wouldn’t you like to breathe
fire.
Alex: One dollar.
Leo: Crossy Roads its free but it is a little addictive I should warn you. Hey
so great to see you again. Don McAllister thank you for being
here. What would you like to plug?
Don: ScreenCast online of course,
just go across to screencast.com are my tutorials or visit the news stand and
have a look at ScreenCast Online Monthly, my monthly
magazine.
Leo: Love that and that is in the news stand on IOS.
Don: It is, it is, it is free to members or people can just
subscribe to the magazine separately in new stand if they want to; and you can
always find the previous months of tutorials with articles from David Sparks
and lots of other different people.
Leo: You do great stuff, you work so hard at all of this
and I’m really glad that it is going well for you it is so great.
Don: Yeah it is good, it is good. It is 9 years now.
Leo: I know you and I, we are kind
of like, we have been around for ages. It will be 10 years in April for TWiT and knock on wood, people
still seem to like it. Is that nice?
Don: Definitely knock on wood. Yeah, yeah no it is good.
Leo: You can work at home, have a life.
Don: Still working hard, still working too hard.
Leo: It is hard work.
Don: It is but it is enjoyable you know you are working for
yourself as well so it is good.
Leo: Isn’t that nice, yeah. Alex Lindsey.
Don: And I also say it supports my gadget addiction as
well.
Leo: Well that’s the thing that is exactly why I got into
this in 1978 or 79 because it was so expensive to buy floppy disc drives that I
said I’m going to have to write to support my habit and it never stopped.
Alex: That is how I got into music.
Leo: Yeah.
Alex: Yeah, I worked at a radio station just so I could get
CDs.
Leo: So you could get your records and cocaine.
Alex: Wait a minute where is the cocaine. Awe I missed the
cocaine part all I got were the records.
Leo: Come on you were a music director; you know the album
would come and you would open it up and oh look there is something in here.
What did you spill something.
Alex: Mine usually came with whiskey.
Leo: Whiskey.
Alex: That is why I left the music industry because I was pickling
my liver.
Leo: Liver candy. Alex Lindsay what do you have to plug?
Alex: Just follow me on twitter Alex Lindsay it is all one
word that is usually the best place to find me.
Leo: Nice.
Alex: We’ve got some fun stuff, I think we’re threatening
now to twim; I think what we are going to bring back.
Leo: This week in media was great. Is Daisy going to do it
again?
Alex: No, I’m going to do it.
Leo: You’re going to do it.
Alex: Yep so the.
Leo: We love this week in media.
Alex: Yeah so I think we are going to bring it back again.
So follow me and I will let you know, we are going to build it around
interactive question and answer type of things so it should be fun.
Leo: I love it. Mr. Andy Ihnatko he is at the Chicago Sun Times, an ink stained wrench but he is still one of
us.
Andy: Traditional, analog, classic hand tooled, artisanal,
journalistic processes.
Leo: He believes in slow journalism, the old fashion kind.
Andy: The stuff that I write, if you are replacing the linoleum
in your kitchen you can use underneath the linoleum; try to do it with an iPad
and you will end up with very crunchy and expensive floor.
Leo: Great to have you, all three of you thank you so much
for being here. Rene will be back next week with tails of CES. We do this show
every Tuesday 11 am pacific, 2 pm eastern time, 1900 utc on live.twit.tv. If you can’t watch live on
demand audio video is always available after the fact at the website in this
case twit.tv/mbw, or on you know the podcast apps of
all different kinds, and there are even dedicated TWiT apps thanks to our dedicated third party developers. We appreciate that guys. Thanks for joining us now back to work because
you know what break time is over!
