MacBreak Weekly 452 (Transcripts)
Leo Laporte: It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the first MacBreak Weekly of the post Apple Watch era. We'll talk about the Apple Watch, also
about Apple earnings, an order from MacCast. Adam
Christianson joins Rene and Andy and me, let's talk Mac next.
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Bandwidth for MacBreak Weekly is provided by CacheFly. That's C-A-C-H-E-F-L-Y dot com.
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Leo: This is MacBreak Weekly, episode 452. Recorded Tuesday, April 28th,
2015.
That Thwock Thing
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receive $10 at check out. It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show where we cover the latest Apple news. Look who's here, Adam
Christianson from MacCast.
Adam Christianson: Hey, how you doing?
Leo: Hey Adam.
Adam: Good to see you again, it's
been way too long.
Leo: I know, I can't believe it. Well I'm glad to get you
back.
Adam: Yeah thanks for having me.
Leo: Things going well?
Adam: Everything's going very
well, yeah.
Leo: Good. Well I'm sure that
they'll be a little bit of talk of something having to do with Apple today,
so...
Adam: There's a few things going on in the Apple world these days.
Leo: You should fit right in.
Adam: Yeah.
Leo: Also with us, Mr. Rene
Ritchie from iMore.com. Good to see you.
Rene Ritchie: Talk louder, Leo. I'm
listening on my watch.
Leo: Yeah. Hello? What? I can't
hear you! Andy Ihnatko from the
Chicago Sun Times.
Andy Ihnatko: Greetings,
I'm wearing a watch that needs to be charged roughly once every two years.
Leo: (laughs)
Rene: Beat that animal.
Leo: I can beat that, I've got
one of those solar charging watches. I got a watch that charges just from
walking around.
Rene: Mine charges on pure
awesome.
Leo: Before we get to the watch,
let's talk about results. Quarterly results were announced yesterday for the
quarter ending in march which is Apple's Q2. Right?
Rene: Mhm.
Leo: Think so.
Rene: Yup.
Leo: $13.6 billion profit. Not
shabby.
Rene: What's that between
friends, Leo?
Leo: Not shabby. It only looks
scant when compared to the previous quarter.
Andy: (laughs) So wait a minute, you mean that the fact that they had that incredible quarter
after releasing the two most exciting phones in the past three or four years,
that wasn't the indication that that was going to be quarters like that
forever? Oh man, cold compresses for the stock analysts.
Leo: For Q2 it is kind of a
quarter like that, I mean it is a massive increase, I think a 33% increase.
Rene: Their Q2 this time was
better than their holiday last year I think. I have to double check that...
Leo: Pretty remarkable. Gross margin, 40% that's up. They added... they increased
their dividend and they bought back more stock, but that's really more about
the shareholders than about Apple's results. What we care about is how Apple as
a company is doing. And I guess the answer would be pretty darn good.
Rene: I can't hear you through
all the money Leo.
Leo: (laughing) A lot of this because of China apparently. They sold 61.2
million iPhones in the quarter. That's a little off the torrid pace of Q4 which
was 75.5 million, but still not shabby.
Rene: Do you remember when we
were wondering if they'd ever hit 10 million in a year.
Leo: Not shabby. We're talking
135 million in six months. Unbelievable. And of course
a year ago, year to year is what you really compare quarter to quarter, and Q2
last year, 43.7 million iPhones, so a significant, like 50% increase. That's a
new March quarter record. Mac sales did well, I always
like Mac sales to do well because I kind of have a little bit of a thing for
the Macintosh. 4.5 million units sold, that's up from
4.1 a year ago. iPad down 23%. It's just failing
slowly, bit by bit.
Andy: It's not failing.
Leo: Only a million a week, come
on what kind of business is that?
Andy: Also I would say that
creatively, if there's one tablet that's really holding the vanguard of the
future of 21st century computing it is the iPad because both Apple
and Microsoft are taking steps back and creating tablet like devices that
nonetheless run desktop operating systems and have those sort of limitations
whereas Apple is really the only one that's really pushing it forward saying
that no, this is a legitimate computing device and we're going to continue to
make it. It might be like their version of like Google's internet base stations
hovering in the air in helium balloons. We don't care if there's no profit in
this, this is a good idea and we're going to continue to make it held aloft by
the money that we're making off of the iPhone.
Leo: Slight had an interesting interpretation, she said iPad sales were down due to
increasing Mac sales. I guess with the Macbook you
could say that maybe.
Rene: It's iPhone 6+ and it's the new ultralight Macs because it's hitting them on both
ends.
Andy: Yeah. Also on the Windows
side of it, we're seeing, now that Intel is finally shipping these really really good and powerful mobility chips, that can serve
desktop operating systems and also don't require a lot of heat, a lot of people
who might have been getting 9.7” iPads because it was the only way to get a
really good light travel computer now have a lot of other options that are a
lot less trouble if you're not interested in being part of the future of
computing. And then there's of course the pressure from larger sized phones
which are now pretty much stock and standard, so it's going to be interesting
to see if Apple is content with the iPad, if you look at the lines of the graph
for the Mac it's pretty flat, they're sort of bumping up and down. It goes up
and down but it's pretty much consistent since 2012 and there's no chance of
Apple ever canceling the Mac either, it's possible that they could be just
simply satisfied with... the iPad has found, is going to find its natural level
and its still going to be worth being part of our
product portfolio.
Rene: There's one other factor
we've been considering and that is if you look at the iPad Air 2 the processor
in there is ridiculous, I think it's one of the first time you could look and
say iOS is actually holding this device back. They're doing engineering and
chip design now that I think frankly shames Broadwell in many ways, especially when you include the delays that Intel had bringing Broadwell to market, and Apple's not slowing down. They're
not a company that goes “Oh the A7 is fine, we'll keep that in tablets for
three years.” No, they're telling these guys to run as fast as they can, so
when you see an A9 this year it's going to be even better and there are rumors
that Apple's doing iPad Pro and there might be
something happening with iOS on the iPad specifically to address this. But I
think that there is just too much, too many smart
people who actually like the iPad, working on it at Apple for it to stay a
marginal device for very long.
Leo: One of the, so somebody
asked them this at the quarterly call. And you listen to the call I know Rene,
so... but this was the response, and I don't know if it was Luca or Tim,
somebody said follow up on iPad, what will it take to
re-accelerate iPads, are you seeing...
Adam: It was Tim.
Leo: It was Tim answering this.
Number one we have to stop, and this is interesting, stop having the situations
where we sell through more than we sell in. What does that mean Rene?
Rene: They had more inventory
than they needed, I think they adjusted by a million units.
Leo: He said inventory
correction of over a million units, have we cannibalization? Yes. Clearly
seeing from iPhone on the other side from the Mac, as I've said before I've
never worried about that, it is what it is. Tim is very Zen. It will stabilize.
Not sure precisely when but I'm confident it will. IBM partnership is in its early
stages, in terms of bearing fruit here, that's the enterprise side of that and
that could really be a game changer.
Andy: That's another big deal. I
think the biggest indication that Apple has produced a long future for the iPad
is like Rene said, the iPad Air 2 is almost suspiciously overpowered for what
it does right now. And so you can really, it's not... you don't have to have a
wild imagination to think gee I wonder what iOS 9 is going to do, or I wonder
what suite of apps they're predicting or are already planning for that's going
to require this much processing power and this much application RAM.
Adam: Yeah. It's going to have a
very specific place in the mix and I think that's another thing that a lot of
people are kind of glossing over, right? It has its space, it's going to be in
a smaller level than an iPhone, it's above where they're selling units of Macs
and I think it's tapering out too because people are finding their sort of
place for it and their use case for it. Like myself I've noticed since getting
the larger screen iPhone, I am using iPad a little bit less and I may not
upgrade it every year but I'm going to continue to own an iPad and I think
there's a lot of people in that space where they have that iPad, it's the thing
that I grab when I'm going to sit down on the couch, when I'm going to relax.
It's the thing that I grab when I'm going to go to the coffee shop and I don't
want to drag my Macbook Pro along, so I don't think
it's going away but I think that it's just not going to be... you know, rolling
in this huge numbers like it did when it first was released, but it's still a
significant product in Apple's lineup and will continue to be for a long time.
Leo: Tim also said that the data
makes him feel better than the sales do. First time buyer
rates. That is, people buying their first iPad, 40% in the US but 70% in
China. China really is the bright spot for both the iPhone and the even the
iPad. He says those aren't numbers you'd get if the market was saturated. He
says “I don't think that the theory of saturation is correct. We also see usage
numbers off the charts.” In other words, people really are using it. Customer satisfaction at or near 100%. Those numbers along
with intent to buy everything looks fantastic, e-commerce numbers. I'm reading
the kind of... Mac Rumors sketchy little transcription here. “My belief is that
as the inventory plays out, as we make some continued investments in our
product pipeline that we're doing, we have planned for some time inventory
playing out, enterprise taking over.” The iPad is still an extremely good
business in the long term. “When it begins to grow again I won't predict, but I
do think it will.” Says Tim Cook. Maybe
with a 12” pressure sensitive iPad? Maybe that's...
Rene: Force touch.
Leo: Is the Mac... yeah force
touch. Is the Macbook the 12” that they were talking
about or is this something separate?
Rene: No they're separate.
Andy: Definitely something
separate.
Leo: Okay.
Andy: As I say, it's an interesting product to me because just like
Microsoft's Surface 3, not the Surface Pro 3 but the new Surface 3 it does
indicate that... it makes... when the iPad first came out I really did see that
this is finally we're breaking free of the idea of a keyboard connected to a
screen by a hinge, this really is the future of computing and it does seem that
both of these products is sort of a step back saying no we just want a super super ultralight notebook that's as an iPad with a battery
life like an iPad but people seem to want a desktop operating system. But
there's plenty of room for the iPad to continue to make new stuff, it's
interesting to think about what they would do with a 12” iPad, now that they
have this 12” Macbook that is so wonderful in so many
ways, if they're going for pro users they're going to have a little bit of...
it's going to be interesting to hear them tell the story of why someone wants
to have a 12” iOS device instead of a 12” Mac OS device.
Leo: OiVey says in the chatroom it's going to take an iOS, big iOS improvement update to
move iPad sales again. Others... what we've been saying, maybe a hardware
update. It's clear that the iPad as it stands is just going to chug along,
something's going to... if it's going to come back it's going to have to be
kicked by something.
Rene: It's still also its
acceleration curve, if you look at it it has still
sold more units in a shorter amount of time than the iPhone has and the iPhone
is a massively successful business.
Leo: It only looks small
compared to the iPhone.
Andy: Exactly.
Rene: Well and its acceleration
is insane. When you have an acceleration that fast, and I've used this analogy
before, there's a 100mph speed limit on a highway and you're in a Lamborghini
and you're in a Toyota, your acceleration is usually different but your top
speed is still the same, so the iPad got there very very quickly and now you're seeing the result of that quarter after quarter. It's
pretty much at top speed right now.
Leo: Of course China was big
because it was Chinese New Year which I don't know, but I gather is a big
buying... it's kind of like the equivalent of our Christmas in a way.
Adam: Yeah.
Rene: Red envelopes full of
money.
Leo: Yeah. So they set a record
for revenue in China, I didn't know this, there are
already 21 Apple stores in China on their way to 40 stores by next year. That's
kind of amazing. And the Chinese sales up 71% year over year so in China huge
quarter, primarily led by iPhone. Mac unit sales in China though up 31% as
well, that's kind of surprising. The Chinese I think said we aren't going to
buy any more Windows machines, maybe that means we're going to buy Macs.
Adam: Tim pointed out too, and I
didn't know this, I'm not that up on China but he also mentioned you know,
there is a large, growing middle class in China and that seems to be benefiting
Apple.
Leo: Right. And developers in
China are doing okay, Apple says they've paid $5
billion now to developers in China. For Chinese apps! So a really strong
quarter, you know this was a... it was clear when Apple launched their China
strategy you just started seeing slides about China and why Bo embraced China's
social networks at the social networks, it was clear Apple knew that this was
an important market, others do too it's a giant market. Relatively untapped,
and one way to respond to saturation in the west is to say “Well, we've got a
brand new market here with more than a billion customers.” And it's proven
true, not so much for PCs, little less for Android but absolutely for iOS and
Mac. Revenue, just phenomenal. If you look at the pie
chart, this is again from Mac Rumors...
Andy: That's Pac-Man.
Leo: What do you think the red
thing is? (laughs)
Andy: Yeah.
Rene: Money.
Leo: iPhone sales, that's the
red one. Mac sales the next biggest, that's blue, 10% so iPhone sales 69% of
revenue. Mac sales, nice 10% of revenue, I'm happy with that. Services 9%. iPad sales 9%.
Rene: It was that line from Tim
Cook where he said we're still generating money in excess of our ability to
spend it, which was...
Leo: Did he say that?
Rene: It was something to that, I
forget the exact words.
Leo: That's a nice feeling isn't
it?
Rene: More money than they needed
to operate the business.
Leo: Isn't that a good feeling?
Those cash reserves going up, up, up!
Rene: And they have this
beautiful new money bin.
Andy: Caltech has developed a
nanotechnology for creating a violin small enough to play the song, to make
people feel sorry for Tim Cook and his money problems.
Leo: Did he say anything about
the watch? Did they give numbers?
Rene: It's too early, because it
went on pre-order at the end of the quarter and they also said they're not
going to break it out for the foreseeable future so he... they tried, the
analyst tried almost every slight of tongue that they could to pry numbers out
of him but...
Leo: Right. Tim said “I'm
thrilled with it.” (laughs)
Rene: And he did say that the...
because they were asking why the margins were so low given the... like everyone
assumes the margins on the Apple Watch are going to be stratospheric but they
were actually projected to be quite low and Tim said that those reports you
see, I'm guessing he means iSupply on the internet,
very seldom get anything close to an accurate number about what it costs to
make Apple products.
Adam: Yeah he even game some
pretty conservative guidance about that and then he got questioned about that a
few times on the call. Why is this margin number so low? Didn't
really respond to it.
Leo: No. I think...
Rene: They don't use off the
shelf parts, like I supply XL's when you're using off the shelf parts but if
you look at the watch tear-downs, a lot of the stuff isn't very accurate, not
because they're not, they're making a mistake but because Apple is doing custom
work, they're doing custom chips, custom glass, they're building machines that
no one else has built before to make it and all of that sort of adds up.
Leo: A lot of upgrades, 20% of
the active bases upgraded to iPhone 6 or 6+, and I'm sure the watch will push
that as well because if you use anything less than an iPhone 5, older than an
iPhone 5 you've got to upgrade to use the watch. Anything
else to say about the results? Very successful, another... every quarter
it's a record quarter, another great quarter. Well done. Profitable. Selling like crazy. And even the iPad, which is down
23% still sold a million units a week.
Andy: Yeah.
Rene: Yeah.
Andy: I mean it's... the problem
with the iPhone is that it humiliates every other product, including Apple's
own products. And so it's easy to see, oh look at that poor little iPad line,
they only sold more than pretty much any other individual model of tablet out
there, but it... I think if there's something to look at is it's largely that
it's kind of a... it's a little bit of a zero sum game that if someone does not
have money to buy a new iPad it's probably because they're putting it someplace
else and it's interesting to start to speculate as to where people are moving
instead of moving back into tablets, or if it's just that all the people that
had a place in their heart, in their lives for tablets have already bought them
and Apple and others have yet to come up with a good reason to buy a new tablet
that will read Kindle books and watch videos better than the one they've had
for the past two and a half years.
Leo: In the chatroom somebody is
saying the... admittedly last quarter for Apple was the best quarterly results
of any company in history, this quarter aw, they were 6th. The 6th highest quarterly profit of any public company
in history.
Rene: Ever.
Leo: Aw. Ever.
Rene: But they still have number
one, so...
Leo: Yeah they got number one
and I bet you they have 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. I'm guessing.
Rene: Nothing like making
oligarchs in the oil industry cry.
Leo: It is, it's just incredible to watch this.
Andy: Are their shareholders
saying “Have you considered going into arms trading? There's a lot of money in
that and you're being eclipsed by arms dealers now.”
Leo: Yeah. It is just
remarkable, and of course one of the ways you keep this growth up is by coming
up with new stuff, not every product is going to be an iPhone. That is, that is
unique in history really, the success of the iPhone, I don't think you can
compare it to anything else. Maybe when they invented fire, the adoption rate
was higher, I don't know.
Rene: Maybe some non-legal
businesses, you could...
Leo: (laughs) Yeah, I think it
sells better than coke. Honestly.
Rene: Probably.
Leo: And it's probably got a
higher profit margin. Alright, Adam Christianson is here from MacCast, it's great to see you Adam, did you get an Apple
Watch?
Adam: I did, I got one.
Leo: Okay let's see what you
got, you got the sport with the blue band?
Adam: I got the 38mm blue, I got the bottom of the line.
Leo: Cheapest thing you could go
for.
Adam: It's nice. Which isn't cheap.
Leo: You know it's funny, display mate results are in for the screen, they say
you got the better screen. Better even than Beyonce.
Rene: Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh.
Adam: Well it looks nice, I will
tell you that.
Leo: Rene, you wearing, are you sporting the watch?
Rene: Yeah, I have a loaner
because mine's not going to arrive 'til May.
Leo: Milanese loop 42?
Rene: Yes sir.
Leo: Okay. I got stainless 38
Milanese loop. Andy let's see, wait a minute you don't
have an iWatch.
Andy: I do not, I have... I have
my mundane Swiss Railway watch.
Leo: Alright. Do you...
Andy: Style, design and elegance.
Leo: Do you feel qualified to
have an opinion or are you going to recuse yourself in this next segment?
Andy: I'm going to recuse myself
because I still have not read any reviews because I want to be...
Leo: Yes, smart.
Andy: I want to be clean when I
get my review hardware.
Leo: Well we'll put you in a
soundproof booth because coming up next, our reviews of the Apple Watch.
Andy: (laughs)
Leo: Stand by for reviews, but
first a word from our friends at ITProTV, first of
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five studios they're going to build! Five things at once. Alright, we're three out of four are wearing the watch, the fourth is sitting
in a soundproof booth so he won't be tainted by our opinions. I just got a new
Diana Damrau CD came in just today.
Leo: (singing)
Andy: I'll be listening to it
during the conversation.
Leo: (laughs) I'll say something
right up front, it is easily the best, now I've worn all the smart watches
including the weird Galaxy Gears and all the different watches, and of course
I'm a fan of Android Wear, I've been wearing it quite a bit. I'll say something
right up front, it looks, in terms of looks it's
great. I've asked a number of people, some people say “Yeah it still looks kinda geeky.” But I think it looks great, I like the
Milanese loop, but there are lots of different kinds of bands. And the other
thing, and display mate confirmed this today but I've been thinking this all
along, it is a great display. This is Apple's first OLED display. All the
Android Wear watches are LCD I believe, IPS LCD. There are some Samsung OLED
displays, I think many of the Samsung watches use OLED, but OLED has some real
advantages, first of all incredible contrast, the blacks are inky black, the
whites are white white white,
and that also saves power because only the lighter dots need to be powered, you
don't need a back light for the whole thing as you do an LCD, you can just
light the part of the screen that's being used, but it also gives you an
incredible looking high res display, it's over 300 dots per inch, I did not
know that, but they broke out the calipers at display mate and even the 38mm is
over 300 dots per inch, I think. Or close. Maybe 277, it's pretty good. So just
from cosmetics, you know, just looking on the outside, not at the software, but
just at the outside, I think it's a good looking watch, with a very nice
looking screen. Adam, what do you think?
Adam: Yeah, I agree with that a lot, I'm... was really actually
impressed, the fluoroelastomer band.
Leo: You like the rubber band.
Adam: Well how comfortable it is,
yeah. I wore a Pebble for the past, I think over a year. And so you know, I'm
moving from the Pebble to this and I've been very impressed just with the wearability of it, I want to ultimately get a band I just
didn't want to pay the Apple tax on some of the bands, I'd like to have a
leather...
Leo: You think there will be
third party bands? I guess it's a standard...
Adam: There's going to be a ton,
and there was some rumors that Apple was going to have
a certification program even, so... I'm looking forward and I want to get
something probably in leather. It would be nice to have a couple different
options, but my option doesn't allow for $150 classic buckle band. (laughs)
Leo: Those are beautiful though,
aren't they?
Adam: All the bands are very
nice, like I said, this... you know, it is technically I guess rubber, but
whatever the material is, doesn't feel like any other rubber strap that I've
ever worn on a sport watch or a swatch, I mean it's really soft and supple and
very very comfortable.
Leo: Why'd you get the 38?
Adam: I was going for the 42
and...
Leo: That's why I'm wearing the
38 too. (laughs) It's my wife's.
Adam: Well in my household, we do
some pass-down of technology, so my wife didn't want one day one but when I
asked her sort of last minute, do you think you'd ever want it? And then we
started talking about some of the features, she said “You know, I may.” So I
went with the 38 because she really didn't have any interest in the 42 and I
know I'll be upgrading whenever the next...
Leo: Same with me, same with me.
Adam: And I'll move up to the 42
then.
Leo: And I want to be able to
send Lisa my heartbeat and all that stuff.
Rene: Aw.
Adam: You know, that's another
one of those features that you know, I thought right out of the gate “Oh come
on, this is not going to be a thing.” But you know, it is, it's actually kind
of an interesting...
Leo: Have you been able to send
touches and heartbeats to people yet?
Adam: (laughs) Yeah, my brother.
Rene: (laughing)
Leo: Yeah, isn't that sweet.
Adam: I mean I like him a lot,
but in general...
Leo: I'm sending it to a
stranger, the only other person I know with an Apple Watch is some guy that
we've emailed, I didn't even know who it was at first.
See I'm sending a heartbeat right now.
Adam: It's a brilliant plan to
breed the next generation of Apple fans that will buy anything because the only
one you can send your heartbeat of love to are other people who bought an Apple
Watch at 30 seconds past midnight.
Leo: That's exactly right. In
fact, Lisa, I can't send her one yet. She's letting me wear her watch, she doesn't have one yet until I get mine which is in
a couple of weeks, so I'm sending heartbeats to strangers, drawing little
pictures. Look he's drawing me a picture now. (laughs)
Adam: Real quickly, I'm curious
Leo on the size. I had been wearing that Pebble which I think is about 50mm, I mean it's pretty big.
Leo: Same thing with the Android
Wear, it's much bigger.
Adam: Yeah, when I went to do my
try-on I got to try on both and I was pretty worried and disappointed because I
was like oh I think I really wanted the 42. But I think a lot of it too was
just having the two sort of side by side and having the comparison because now
after wearing this, I mean it feels fine, I think I still want the slightly
larger, just for me but it doesn't feel like a compromise. I was worried it was
going to feel like I had really compromised on the screen and I'm not feeling
that way after having worn it for a few days now.
Andy: Can I make one point, that
I actually had to take a picture of, when I bought this watch like five or six
years ago, I was waffling on this a lot because it is larger than any other watch
I've ever bought, I used to have like a Timex that was probably 38 or a little
bit smaller than that, and so this... even this seemed like it was going to be
an enormous watch but after about two or three days of wearing it I realized
that it wasn't a big watch it was just bigger than what I was used to. So if
you're... people who are trying to decide between 38 and 42 and they think that
gee I think the 42 is going to be a lot more readable but I'm kind of thrown
off by how big it is, consider the size of the watch you're wearing right now
or the fact that you don't wear a watch and that might help you to decide.
Leo: I want to thank Steven Hall
who has been sending me heartbeats and drawings and stuff so I can demo.
Andy: So Leo, of all the things
that people have been sketching to you, how many of
them are non-broadcastable?
Rene: Oh so many.
Andy: Do people just do pictures of kitty cats?
Leo: Um. It's not that big, you
really can't draw any genitalia.
Andy: Oh I bet people could try.
Rene: Oh yes you can.
Leo: Yes you can.
Rene: Oh so many, so many genitalias.
(all laughing)
Leo: Okay.
Andy: $5 donation to the World
Wildlife Fund every time somebody...
Leo: Okay, I'm going to give you
all a chance to yell at me now because I'm going to tell you what I think about
the guts, the insides. I mean it's beautiful and I'll acknowledge that, it's a
great screen. Having worn, and I'm curious to see what
you guys have to say, but having worn smartwatches now for over a year, I...
I'm a little disappointed, this doesn't seem groundbreaking. In fact, in some
ways, like the heartbeat and the drawings, that is not a selling point,
frankly. For me.
Adam: No.
Leo: I think it's a little
busier than ought to be, there's a lot of... manipulation and fiddling to get
it to do things. I just feel like it's not a breakthrough in the sense that
it's in a particular regard better than Android Wear or the watches that have
been out there. I think the screen is better than the Android Wear screens,
it's nice to be able to take and make phone calls, but it's not something
probably I will do a lot of. I just... I don't find it particularly impressive.
It's not bad, if you want a smartwatch it's a good choice among all the
smartwatches, but I think most people will not find this of great utility. And
I think a lot of people just... I mean don't feel bad in other words I guess is
what I'm saying, if you didn't get one or you don't want one or you can't
afford one, because I don't feel that you're missing a lot of functionality. Agreed?
Disagreed? Go ahead, Adam fight me. Beat me up on this.
Adam: I think it has a lot more
functionality than my Pebble did. I have not worn an Android Wear so I can't
really compare to that sort of thing.
Leo: Let me say this, no watch
that works with Apple is going to do as well as this because Apple just locks
everything down and so only Apple really has access to all the features of the
phone.
Adam: Yeah.
Leo: Android Wear with Android,
I think gives you as much functionality, almost as much in some cases not. You
can't send the heartbeat.
Adam: Yeah. And I think some of
it too though is early stage and functionality, I definitely feel like there's
some bugs, there's some things that Apple will be able to tweak maybe in
software in the UI, I'm not super happy with how I can navigate through
glances.
Leo: Look at this. This is
insane, come on, this is...
Adam: You have way more apps
installed. I think that's another thing is I think paring down the number of
apps that you're interacting with to really those ones that are essential that
really helps a lot so I think...
Leo: Yeah.
Adam: Some of it is tailoring the
watch to what you need it to do.
Leo: Right. I've certainly done
that with glances because you can have so many glances that... the problem with
glances is they're individual pages and you have to find what you're... there's
no quick way to go to a glance that you want, you have to swipe through them.
Adam: Yeah, I hope they can tweak
that, I mean you can go into the settings and you can move them or you can kind
of change the order around and prioritize them so maybe the ones you access
most frequently are closer to one end or the other end. But yeah, I've found
that a little bit tricky to navigate. But I mean these are things that can
really be overcome, as far as like the day to day utility and functionality of
it, I'm finding as days go on its slowly integrating its way into more and more
parts of my day.
Leo: Okay. Okay. I think for
somebody who works out, there's some real advantages
to it. Let me see if I can manage to navigate to the work out... (laughs)
Adam: I was going to say that the
workout stuff for me has been... I was using the misfit app on my Pebble which
was really great.
Leo: This is really nice.
Adam: Yeah, but again this is a
lot nicer and tracking those, I'm not so sure about the awards that they give out, I haven't quite figured those out.
Leo: Yeah they're weird little
3D...
Adam: Those images are so
strange, yeah. The first one I got looked like a target, but there was no
words, there was no congratulations it was just like spinning... I guess metal,
I don't know.
Leo: Yeah. It's a... yeah.
Adam: A little funky, but...
Leo: So here's an outdoor
cycle... oh, somebody's tapping me. This is another issue... also do you find it
slow to launch things? Like I spent a lot of time watching
it.
Adam: That's the other thing,
they still need to tweak the software a little bit, I've had some hang-ups and
some crashes, most specifically with some of the Siri functionality where it
will just sort of go dead for several seconds.
Leo: I actually had to reset the
watch because it stopped doing my heart rate for three days.
Adam: But again this is all early
stage stuff, I mean... for version one it's really really good, I don't want to focus too much on the negatives because I'm pretty
positive about it so far.
Leo: I do. (laughs)
Well and the main reason is, I think that I want to make sure people don't feel
any fomo or need to rush out and get one.
Andy: Yeah. And the thing that
I've been saying is that I don't think it's going to... I think it's going to
take us all about a month or a month and a half to really come up with long
standing opinions on Apple Watch because developers have not figured out how to
write apps yet for it yet and now that they see it in the flesh they know how
to adapt their apps to make it more relevant, people have never... most of the
people who are buying this have never smartwatch before so they're not used to
how to integrate that into your lives.
Leo: Right.
Andy: There are a lot of things
that really... so a lot of first impressions are going to be valid as first
impressions but maybe if you'll circle back to those people in a month and ask
them the same questions again they'll have very different answers. I think that
estimation of Apple Watch is going to go up a little bit as people, as users
and developers figure this out.
Leo: I agree with you, I agree
with you. There's a lot of... but all we're really saying is there's a lot of
room for improvement.
Andy: Yeah I mean, this is... I do think of, I predicted
and I think I'm being demonstrated as being correct that this is an early
believer device right now, and that's not meant as an insult. There are people
who were... wanted to be the first people to have electric cars because they
knew that the first generation was not going to be as good as the second or
third generation but they believe in and support this product, this idea so
wholeheartedly that they are eager to be one of these first people to kind of figure
out how well these things work and so people who are really excited about a
wearable are going to be very very happy about it
despite any failings that they might see in it, people who are buying it
because they feel as though this is a simple consumer transaction for $350 are
going to get a finalized, finished, polished product that's as good as, half as
good as, or... completely as good as it's ever going to be, they might be
disappointed, and I don't want people to be tainted by the reactions of those
folks.
Adam: Andy's point about
developers is really good too because that was something I wanted to mention
also, I mean on the software side of things developers have had to grow out
apps and build stuff really sight unseen. And some of the apps are really really great, some of them... you just go “Yeah this really
needs to be kind of rethought and redone.” But they didn't have anything to go
off of, so I don't necessarily fault them for that, it's going to take some
time to figure out what's appropriate, what works well, what doesn't work well
in this new kind of device for them. So that's another thing that's only going
to get better over time I think. Out of the gate, they've done a great job,
long term I think it's going to get even better.
Leo: Alright Rene, you've been
nice and quiet. He's gone! Did he fall over? (laughs)
Jason: No he, sorry. He had to
step away real quick, he had a call that just came in. He'll be back.
Leo: Okay, we'll get Rene... I
thought Rene was very quiet.
Adam: I wondered what was going
on.
Andy: This is the level of
tension that everybody who ordered within the first five minutes has. Any knock
on the door could be a UPS person with an early delivery, they will not let that person walk away.
Leo: Some watches have been delivered
early, by the way. Cali Lewis aka Luria Petrucci was
on yesterday on Triangulation if you want to watch that if you're a fan, and
she did not expect hers until June and she got it. So some are coming early,
but Apple has not said... and we did speculate last week that if Apple had a
marvelous you know, sale... sell through, that they would say something. They
have in the past. “We sold a million this weekend!” They've said nothing. So we
don't really know, we don't know how many have been delivered, there has been
speculation that it's only maybe a third of the total ordered, we don't know,
no one knows. You know, I'm going to... I'll tell you where my disappointment
lies, and it's not really disappointment, it's not kind of anything I didn't
expect, but you know, me being an Apple fan, I know people doubt that but it's
true, I love Apple stuff, I've bought everything ever. I own it all. Including the 20th anniversary Macintosh which is
sitting over there unused. But as a fan, I've seen Apple do this before.
They did it with the iPod, they did it with the iPhone, they did it with the iPad. Where they took an existing category and tweaked it in
such a way that it made it work. It was like “Oh. Wow. They've sprinkled their
fairy dust on it and now I'm really into this category.” And I was hoping,
hopeful but not... you know, not confident, that they would do something
similar. And to date anyway, they haven't. I'll tell you the one thing they've
done that is remarkable. And that is the double tap on the home, or the friends button to launch Apple Pay. And there, right there
with the double tap is my credit card, I can swipe through them and I can tap
it to the touch to pay, in fact I'm going to use to... after this show because
apparently yesterday our Petaluma market just added this Apple Pay capability.
So I'm really thinking that might be a killer app, where you just go “Yeah, I
got it.”
Andy: Yeah. Well it's certainly
going to convince people who have not signed up for Apple Pay to sign up for it
because I'm sure that they're accidentally triggering this because by hour two
in, what happens if I triple press and hold, let's see what happens. But you
have a really good point there, that... what I think was one of the... an
article in, was it Wired or The New Yorker? In which Jony Ive or one of the other head designers was talking
about the difference between how Apple built this watch versus how they built
the iPhone. They said that the iPhone was built... was designed based on
everything that we hated about the phones that were in all of our pockets. And
they built... hate made them quite powerful and allowed them to build something
that was quite spectacular but then they said, that's not their... that's my
comment, not theirs, but then they said that with the watch it was exactly the
opposite, we built this watch based on everything that we love about the
wristwatches that we wear all the time, and we tried to translate that into a
tech device. So it's... to my mind it's kind of interesting to see... are they
best motivated by looking at something they hate and trying to fix it, or are
they best motivated by saying “Here's everything that we really really like, now let's sort of translate that into our own
aesthetic and our own ethos.
Leo: Somebody's saying “Well
maybe in time...” Proteus says “It's only in hindsight that we'll see the Apple
got it right thing.” I disagree, I think the iPhone
you immediately got what a breakthrough that was. The iPad
same thing. The iPod the same thing. Now, it
may be... I think one of the things that could make this a breakthrough product
is the ecosystem. And Apple has mixed... I have to say, has mixed results, I'm
still waiting for iBeacons to be everywhere, they
have mixed results in getting, in making ecosystem plays, but if they could
expand the ecosystem so that this watch becomes hideously useful at the
airport, at the grocery store, at you know... at the gym. That could make a
huge difference, and that's something that will only happen in time.
Adam: Well and that's developers,
right? I mean that's them getting to that point where hopefully at WWDC this
year we see the Apple Watch API'd to write native
apps and once that starts opening up so we're at a starting point and they're
doing a lot of amazing things but like I said earlier, the potential is only
even bigger.
Andy: Yeah it's going to be so
hard because remember that as radical as the iPod was, as radical as the iPhone
was, even as radical as the iPad was, we had had disc-mans and portable music
players and we had had phones in our pockets at that point and we had had even
e-book readers and computers that we carry around with us, I don't think Apple
has ever been in this position where you have never worn a smartwatch in your
entire life, so we are going to have to start with convincing you of why you
would want to wear a gadget on your wrist and why it would be specifically this
gadget, why you would give up your grandfather's retirement watch, why you
would give up this other... or the bare wrist you decided you prefer to having
a watch on your wrist and put this on your wrist instead, so I think all of
that has to be factored in when we think about how successful Apple is going to
be when... the first time that we get real good numbers on how well it's selling
after the first initial burst of excitement, it's not a failure if it's a slow
build because you... it's hard to overestimate the challenge that Apple faces
in educating people about this product.
Leo: Now Rene Ritchie is back,
by the way. Thank you Rene. You've... you missed the
whole discussion.
Rene: I apologize.
Andy: Did your watch arrive? Did
your watch arrive? Did your watch arrive?
Leo: (laughing)
Rene: Mid May! Mid May!
Leo: Mid May for my 42 as well.
What do you think on the 38 versus 42? I mean there is a significant
difference, not just in size but in screen resolution and in battery.
Rene: They're not... I mean
neither of these are tiny nor large watches. Like a lot of people will consider
a large watch around 46mm, and a small watch maybe 36 even, 34mm. So Apple's
kind of gotten two options in the middle, and yes there is battery life
advantage and screen size and touch target advantage if you go bigger, but
there is also a loss of profile, some people like the smaller profile, the
lighter profile, if you're jogging, if you wear it underneath tight sleeves. So
there's a lot of factors, and I like that they're both sort of in the middle
now because you can just choose, if it looks way too big on your wrist you go a
little bit smaller, if you go a little bit smaller, if it looks a little bit
too small, it becomes more of a matter of personal taste unless you're at the
extreme of like giant Schwarzenegger or small elf sort of wrists.
Leo: You didn't hear probably my
take on this which was A: It's nice to wear something
on your wrist that is designed by two of the best designers in the world, Jony Ive and Mark Newsome.
Rene: The hardware is... the
industrial design is... I think it's the best thing Apple has ever made and
that's saying a lot.
Leo: It is gorgeous, and pulling
off the band is easy, I like the band choices. Some say it still looks geeky, I
think it looks really nice. This is a watch I am happy to wear. Having said that, I felt that it isn't a breakthrough in the way
that Apple has made a breakthrough in other cases with the iPhone, iPad and
iPod. It's much... it's not significantly different than other
smartwatches I've worn.
Rene: My feelings are complicated
and I think that's a good thing, so when the iPhone came out a lot of people really
liked it but I had a Treo and I was like “Uh, no MMS, no apps...” We're sort of
more educated now, this is maybe analogous to the original iPhone where it does
somethings very nice but doesn't do everything or some things it doesn't do as
well and maybe some other products do other things better but is there a work
flow or is there something about it that makes it extremely valuable? I'd argue
the original iPhone and iPad, that little... photo zoom demo
probably did as much to sell it as any of the core technologies because it made
for a great video, just watching Steve Jobs or watching your friends do
it. And I've been using the watch for I don't know, almost a week now. In some
ways it's way better than I thought it was going to
be, and I thought it was going to be pretty good. I had used a Pebble, I had
used Android Wear for a short amount of time, and the things that it let me do, my core value for this was convenience. If it could
just... the same way my iPhone lets me not have to go back to my Mac all the
time, if my Apple Watch could let me not go back to my iPhone all the time,
especially when I'm in cars or in planes and trying to pull it out or at a
store. That to me would be a huge win, and I had the benefit of flying back
with it on Sunday and I literally, I woke up, Tripit had a notification on my watch saying my plane was on time, I went across to
the coffee shop, I bought my coffee with my watch, I sat there, I kept track of
the flight, I got up, I called an Uber instead of pulling my phone out of my
pocket every two minutes I just watched the Uber arrive on the watch, drove
there, checked notifications, most of the time I can't tell who's texting me on
my phone and some of them are really important, so I pull it out no matter who
it is and on this I could just look and see whether it was really something
important and my phone could stay in my pocket most of the time, and I got to
the airport and my boarding pass was on my Apple Watch so I have bags I'm
carrying, I don't have to hold the phone in one hand, I can just turn the Apple
Watch and they do this nice thing for Starbucks and for Air Canada and a lot of
apps where when the bar code comes up everything else fades to black and it
just makes the bar code as visible as possible so it scans super easily and on
the flight I usually pull my iPhone out because I get impatient and I check out
how long it is and when I'm landing and this again, I just turn my wrist and
the information was right there. So in convenience alone, for me it was a huge
win. And yes some of the apps aren't well considered, and if you try to use it
like an iPhone and tap around it's hard to find apps, I just say “Hey Siri, Tripit. Hey Siri, Uber.” Sorry for
everyone whose phones and...
Leo: By the way that is the way
to launch stuff, we were talking about that crazy grid and it was a revelation,
Megan Morrone yesterday iPad today said “Can't you
just ask Siri to launch stuff?” and when you do that works well. Have you
experiences that Siri actually works better on the watch than it does on the
phone? It seems to be.
Rene: There is several reasons
why that is, and there was a presentation that Apple did a couple of days ago
that you can find on the web about the new architectures that they're using,
but there's a lot of really good new Siri technology, see Leo if you add me on
your watch I'll send you Batman heads.
Leo: That would be cool. Not,
not... I will add you on my watch, I actually tried to and I don't have your
phone number so...
Rene: I just, I DM'd it to you.
Leo: Thank you. (laughs)
Rene: So, I've been sending the
sketches, I have a lot of friends with Apple, because some people were
saying... I was saying I want more friends because my sister and my mom got it,
all my coworkers at iMore got it, my two best friends
got it, I have a couple other media pals who have
them.
Leo: Yeah. That will make a
difference, when others have it. Right?
Rene: Yeah, and we send sketches,
I mean Ally Kazmucha, one of our editors is playing
Tic-tac-toe and it's not just a challenge game, it's a memory game because
you've got to remember every move every time.
Leo: Right, it doesn't preserve
it.
Rene: Yeah so there's a lot of
good stuff, some of the stuff, like some of the bad stuff is again, some of the
fitness stuff, it tells me to stand when I'm already
standing. It's, I'm not sure how to adjust for... and Ally's finding this too,
how to adjust for resistance when you're doing some of the training, and there
are rough edges but there's nothing like putting your product on a million peoples
wrists and getting a lot of feedback. And saying the iPhone from 2007 or the
iPad from 2010 today, they weren't really revolutionary, we kind of look back
in hindsight, I think that's something you can only judge with time and space.
Leo: But they were revolutionary
at the time, I mean multitouch with a smartphone with
a big screen, which was the first iPhone was... you'd look at it, and you'd go
“Yes, they got it. Brilliant.”
Rene: Well some people, some
people “Oh it's just a big iPad.” or “Oh it's just... my Treo or my Blackberry
does more than that, it's a toy.”
Leo: Yeah, I never felt that
way. I guess the real question is does this jump start the smartwatch category?
Rene: I mean however many
millions in sales in 3,500 apps it's going to do a lot to put it in... people who didn't really even think about it before, and I
think Andy said this before, I think it really benefits Android Wear and Pebble
and everybody too because the awareness is so high. I like the choices Apple
made, like Apple is brand new to OLED and iOS 7 is a white white interface and they went dark, material design is a white white interface, they stayed white white and I'm hoping
they go dark too, because I think there's a lot of things that we're going to
have to do in the beginning to really maximize the potential of wrist software,
and I feel like with both Apple and Google working on it, we'll get to that
solution faster for everybody.
Leo: Yeah.
Andy: Yeah, and I agree because
what people don't understand is that just... if all a smartwatch does is take
notifications off of your phone and put them on your wrist, that in itself is a
huge chunk of the win of having a smartwatch, and there's not a whole lot that
Apple Watch does in terms of the software in terms of things it puts on the
screen that Android Wear doesn't do, and there's the... even the new version of
Pebble isn't quite as ambitious as even Android Wear but it's still a lot of
that functionality so it's very very possible for
someone to have a friend who has an Apple Watch and see how well that works but
then hey unfortunately either A: I don't have $400 to spend on a watch or I
don't have an iPhone, they could then take the look at an Android Wear watch
and look at a Pebble and realize they're going to get much, if not most of that
on whatever device they use. So this really, they are doing wonderful education
and PR, for anybody who wants to create a wearable device.
Leo: Tips for people who haven't
gotten theirs yet but are about to. I know you on iMore, you've done a great
bunch of articles, including things like “How does the heart rate sensor work
on a tattooed forearm?”
Rene: That was Serenity this
morning, last week she had access, she had high availability tattoos to do a
lot of testing on.
Leo: (laughs) Did she test it on
her roller derby team?
Rene: Well I mean it's a thing,
we saw it coming up on Twitter and Reddit today,
where people who had tattoos because Apple is using both a green LED and an
infrared sensor to measure heart rate and the infrared is the passive one and
the green LED is the active one and it will switch depending on how much
trouble it has. But if you have a tattoo on that exact spot and especially if
it's really dark or it's really... or it's a color that readily absorbs that
light then you're going to get inaccurate readings and you have to either
change your wrist or maybe heart rate's not that important to you. We try to
give people a lot of information if we can.
Leo: Yeah. I'm going to add you
to... let me ask you this, because some of my... like Lisa is not showing up as
an iPhone user. How do you... do you... how do you make sure that you're going
to be able to, if your friend has an Apple Watch send them heartbeats and
drawings?
Rene: It's the iMessage system so if you have... in your contacts if you
have her iMessage activated phone number or iCloud
address or whatever address she uses for iCloud in there then it should just
work.
Leo: Okay. So I'm... I just
added Rene Ritchie by phone number. But I also had your email address so that
should be sufficient, right?
Rene: Yes.
Leo: Okay.
Rene: And I will send you, I'm
working on Darth Vader heads, they're not as good as the Batman heads yet.
Leo: Well let me just... let me
just... see, I've made you a friend, because you have a lot of room for
friends. It adds your favorites right away, but then you have room to add a few
more, so I have a few more positions. So yes, I can see I can send you
something. So I'm just going to send you that. Which is a
poor Batman.
Rene: It's the Finder icon.
Leo: Huh? The Finder, that's
what I did, I sent you the Finder icon.
Adam: Quick tip on the drawing
thing because this didn't, wasn't readily apparent to me at first, you don't
have to rush, like I felt like “Oh I'm going to draw something and it's going
to start sending before I even finish it.” It has a pretty good sense of when
you've stopped interacting with the screen so you can take a little time and
you know, spend a little time on your drawing, you don't have to rush it
through or if you need to re-go over a line to make it thicker or something
like that, so that was a little helpful.
Leo: Take your time, okay.
Rene: And if you make a mistake,
tap your color picker, because that will stop your picture from sending.
Leo: That's kind of a cool thing too, you can change the color that you send.
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: It should.
Adam: Can't do multiple colors
yet though unfortunately, right?
Andy: It just occurred to me that
another reason why I would very much like to be Susan Kare's friend, I bet she does the most awesome Apple Watch
sketches.
Leo: She'd be very good at this.
Now I'm going to tell you one thing, I'm a lefty, so everything I draw I'm
drawing with my right hand. Which means you're getting terrible drawings from
me, now I realize, oh I know now why I don't find any usefulness for this. Now
you can wear this on your right wrist, you have to flip it upside down, but
there's a setting to say which wrist you're going to watch it, use it on.
Adam: And you can reorient the
screen I think, I work with Jeff Gimm over at the Mac
Observer and when he went in for his fitting they pointed out, you know you
probably want the digital crown pointed out towards your wrist, because his
first thing when he tried it on was to flip it around which meant the digital
crown was on the... you know, you had to reach across the face of the watch.
Leo: It's confusing, right.
Adam: Well and you don't want to
reach across the face of a watch and obscure it when you're using the digital
crown, so...
Leo: Right.
Adam: They thought of these
things, which is nice.
Leo: Thank you Rene for the
Batman sketch.
Rene: You're welcome.
Leo: And I apologize for the
very poor sketches. So what you're saying is the best way to do this would be
put it, because I can't draw with my right hand, so I should wear it on my
right wrist, and you're saying just leave it the way... like, don't re-orient
it?
Adam: Put the digital crown
towards your wrist so you're not... towards your fingers, right, the digital
crown should be pointing towards your finger.
Leo: So turn it around in other
words.
Adam: Yeah, you've got it.
Leo: This is just moving the
wrist over, but I can also, if I wish, tell it I'm wearing it on my right
wrist, which would mean then I can flip it upside down.
Adam: And it will flip the screen
around so that it's oriented correctly.
Leo: So you think that's how I
should do it?
Rene: You can independently set
orientation and the side that the digital crown is on, it's got settings for both.
Leo: Oh it's independent okay.
Adam: That's totally preference
Leo, but the point was if you put the digital crown towards your sleeve, when
you take your hand you're going to be reaching to operate the digital crown,
you're going to be reaching across...
Leo: Across it, so that's not
good.
Adam: But that way the digital
crown is on the bottom and the buttons on the top. So it becomes preference
really at that point.
Leo: And then some people have
asked “Can I wear it” and I think you can, as some people do on the inside of
the wrist, that works fine too. Yes?
Rene: Yup.
Adam: Yeah.
Leo: Alright, so I'm going to
try it... now I realize that... I was just going to wear it like normal people do on my left arm, but I realize now that will impede my
drawing ability. So I'm... and now, a lot... and this is another thing. You now
have a reason for this crap icon on iOS 8. Which is that a
lot of what you do needs to be done on the phone.
Adam: Yeah. Another tip that I'll
comment on that wasn't obvious to me at first, you mentioned Apple Pay earlier,
which I absolutely love, I've done Apple Pay on my watch, I used it day one at
a Walgreen's and it was, it went really quick, it worked really really well. The UI for that's a little bit confusing
because when you first go in to look Passbook and Apple Pay, at the top it says
“Mirror my phone,” and I thought that meant like all my cards that were already
on my phone were going to be in there, right? You still have to add them from
the watch interface.
Leo: That was kind of a pain in
the butt, all the cards have to be added.
Adam: Re-added or...
Leo: What's weird is you're
still adding them on the phone.
Adam: Right.
Leo: But somebody said “Oh it's
because the secure store on the iPhone can't communicate with the secure store
on the watch, you need to have a separate secure store.” Yet... I'm still entering the cards on the phone and sending them to the watch...
so... I'm confused. But that is something you should be aware of, you're going to use Apple Pay you need to completely set
it up anew with all the cards on your watch separately. And that is nice to
know that they have the same lock rules on the watch. At first I thought “Oh
I'm not going to lock the watch.” And they said “Dude if you don't lock the
watch you can't use Apple Pay because you'll be letting your credit cards go,
so they make you lock the watch. It unlocks, you have various settings but
you... it will unlock when you use TouchID on your
phone, then you don't have to worry about entering a 4-digit code on the watch
which is nice.
Rene: Or if you're Steve Gibson
you have a massive password that's unique just to your Apple Watch.
Leo: (laughing) But... and there also is the erase watch if somebody gets it
wrong ten times feature, which I think that's a good thing to do too.
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: So... you're right, this is
pretty impressive. So you can put it on left wrist, right wrist, digital crown
on left side, digital crown on right side, so it really is... I mean, kudos to them on that.
Adam: I'll tell you one thing
that is, I really didn't like, and I don't know if either of you have tried
this. Sort of re-organizing your app icons on the app screen, I do not get what
that game is all about.
Leo: (groans)
Rene: Some people are really into
that, like one of my coworkers, Ally, she has all of hers in a very thin
vertical line, so all she has to do is scroll up and down with the crown.
Leo: Oh that's a good idea.
Adam: But getting it to do
that...
Leo: That must have taken her a
day to do that.
Adam: Yeah because they move
around weird, if you get one next to another one it pushes it down to... it's
like this game.
Rene: There's this thread on Reddit with these great patterns, like ninja star patterns
and all sorts of amazing things.
Leo: So you mean I could like...
oh.
Adam: Yeah I arranged mine by
color so I have bands of color for my icons.
Leo: That's pretty, that's a
nice idea. Put all the green ones together...
Adam: But doing it was like
impossible. Takes hours.
Leo: Yeah because this just
popped up. It's like a new game.
Adam: You've got to kind of put
it at the end of the line, it seemed to work best for me but I don't know.
It's... not easy.
Leo: This is a game, we'll just make a game out of it.
Andy: (laughing)
Leo: Now the other thing that
happens... now...
Andy: I love that how this watch
is simplifying your life and leaving you more free to enjoy the world around
you.
Leo: Look! Isn't that a great
interface? We were skeptical about this interface the moment we saw it, when
they first showed it I thought “Is that really how I'm going to be...” but
fortunately Siri does work, unless you're in a very noisy environment and you
can say “Hey what's your name...”
Adam: Yeah see there you go, the
green one keeps popping up on you right?
Leo: Yeah, yeah but it's a fun
game.
Adam: (laughing)
Leo: It's something to do in
your spare time.
Rene: It's also, I mean this is also a safety valve. You're really meant to react to your
notifications and to use Siri to launch applications, but there are going to be
some people who want to use it the way... like an iPhone, the way some people
use Terminal and OS 10 or use an iPhone like a Mac.
Leo: Don't, that's crazy.
Adam: Don't.
Leo: Don't.
Adam: You'll drive yourself nuts.
Rene: Yes.
Leo: Although, I like this idea of color bars on my
(unintelligible)
Rene: I also, I told it not to install apps on my Apple
Watch, and I'll do it on a case by case basis.
Leo: Okay, that's what I want to talk about.
Andy: Yes, that's really important, I think.
Leo: So when you first set it up, it automatically takes
every app that's on your phone and if it has an Apple Watch..
Rene: It asks you.
Adam: It asks you. Yes, say no.
Leo: So it will if you say yes,
which I said, immediately install every app that's on your phone that has a
Watch interface, on the Watch. That's not what you want, you want a one by one.
Rene: And it's important to remember, these aren't really
apps, these are Watch Kit extensions, and you can think of them almost like web
apps. When you launch them at first they'll take a while, then they'll cache to
the device and they'll be faster if you use them frequently.
Leo: That's right, they can be very slow the first time
you launch them.
Adam: Yeah, but you really want to pare down, you really
want to like figure out “what do I want to know about on here”, and the same
goes with Notifications, say you gotta figure out
your notifications, your glances, and you know, I would say the best advice is,
start with as few as you think you need-
Leo: Add them.
Adam: -and then add them.
Leo: And how do you add them? So, do they, do every, they
all show up here, right?
Adam: Just scroll down.
Rene: Yep.
Adam: Yep, they're just in a long list and you just..
Leo: So you can decide, for instance, I didn't want to use
Twitter because my friend, Rene Ritchie, said Twitterrific is so much better on the Watch, but..
Rene: It makes more sense to me, because Twitter shows what
they want you to see, where Twitterrific kinda shows me what I want to see.
Leo: But, you have the choice. You can not only show it on
the Watch, and that's that grid, but you can decide if you want to see it in
glances. And in many cases I don't think you want it in glances, because
glances can get unusable.
Rene: I haven't used it. I use glances for like the
settings app, the heartbeat, like things that I really..
Leo: That are really pared down.
Rene: Yeah.
Adam: Right.
Leo: Pare down your glances because otherwise..
Rene: That I don't want to interact with it.
Leo: I do like this, so I have the Audible app running on
the phone, I was listening to my book. It auto, now where's my button?
Adam: Yeah, see I messed you up now because I made you flip
it over from the top. That's why I said, you have to decide what you like, you
know, if you want the crown on the bottom and the
button on the top, or the other way around.
Leo: No, I'm going to get used to this. As a lefty I've
always worn my watches as normal people do on my left wrist because you want to
wind it and stuff. But now I realize for drawing that is untenable so I think
I'm going to have to get used to wearing a watch on my right wrist. But this is
nice, so it controls whatever audio was playing back on your phone.
Rene: Yep, pod casts, audio books,
music and everything.
Leo: And that's great, so it didn't need an Audible app
for me to be able to control my Audible, and if I press play, it comes on on the phone. Now you can also have it, in some cases,
playback on the Watch, right? Do you have to decide which, Audible does not
because it doesn't have an app.
Adam: You can sync up to 2 gigabytes of your music and
library.
Leo: But music can play back from the little teeny speaker
there.
Adam: And the way you do that is you pick a play list, so
you set up a play list, and then you choose that as the one you want to sync.
Leo: So you'd have a play list in your music app.
Adam: Yeah, and I believe that you select it from the
Watch, from the music settings in the Watch app, I believe. I haven't done it
yet.
Leo: I haven't either, it has 6 gigs, it has a decent amount of storage.
Adam: Yeah, so it's in the music app, in the Watch app you
choose which play list you'd like to sync and then how..
Leo: Okay. Show in glances, that's good because that gives me the capability not just with music but whatever is
playing, to control it on the watch. Synced play list, so now I can say, oh let
me play back my gym music, that's a logical thing. As if I have gym music, and
then play list limit, you can even set the amount of storage you want, it can't
be any more that two, or you can say how many songs,
up to 250.
Adam: And then you'll need Bluetooth headphones, you won't
actually hear it.
Leo: Oh, it doesn't come out of the little speaker?
Adam: I don't know.
Leo: Not that that would be very good but..
Adam: That I don't know, I don't think so.
Leo: You know, when you look at stuff like this, it's
clear that they've been spending a lot, this is a lot of work, a lot of time a
lot of thought and a lot of beta testing because in a many ways this is very
nice and elegant. And I do give kudos for that.
Rene: One of the really cool things is when you first get
it, if you want to take it out for running by itself, they suggest you use the
iPhone with it for a couple of days because it'll match the GPS information to
what the Watches modeling is showing, and just make sure to adjust it for your
stride, your activity level, and then the accuracy will be even better when you
take the watch out by itself.
Leo: Oh! Clever!
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: This is good, we're getting
some good tips for those of you who are waiting for your Watch to arrive. Are
you guys, we have four people in the studio audience,
all getting watches? Yes, yes, next year...smart, and never. We've got two, go
ahead Rene.
Rene: I wonder if next year we will have a case only
option, for people who already have all of the straps that they want, or the
bands that they want, they'll be able to just get the case. That would be
awesome.
Leo: So, I did not scratch, somebody's saying Leo's
scratched screen. It looked like a scratch, but it was just a smudge. So as far
as I can tell the screen is not scratched. Now we have seen people break the sport
watch screen, this is, the steel and the edition have a sapphire. DisplayMate said some interesting things though, you know they test these displays. They said, you're getting the best screen,
Adam, on your sport watch because that screen is using the same glass that they
use on the iPhone which is better looking, gives you richer blacks and so
forth, and better in bright light as well, than the sapphire. Sapphire reduces-
Adam: That's interesting.
Leo: -uh, the screen, uh..
Adam: I always thought the transparency of sapphire was-
Leo: Yeah, I thought so too.
Adam: clearer, right.
Leo: I have to say, this is very legible. Look how, that
is really easy to see.
Adam: Yeah an amazing display.
Rene: We got Greg Koenig from Luma Labs to do a whole thing on Apples material design for us, and he was
explaining, and I didn't know that, that there are tradeoffs in everything,
like sapphire is more scratch resistant but it doesn't bend as much as the ion
exchange glass does on the iPhone. So everyone who thinks there's just one
great answer to materials then everyone would just be using those materials.
There really are tradeoffs and all different.
Leo: Yeah, there's no perfect, yeah.
Rene: And he was amazed how-
Leo: Well it also saves you money I presume, making it
with glass and not sapphire.
Rene: He was amazed at how well the aluminum held up. He
went to a lot of retail stores and checked and he was amazed after ten days of
try-ons the aluminum casing had held up.
Leo: Some people are saying they are getting scratches in
their stainless steel, that doesn't seem, well..
Rene: It's like any stainless steel. I've had stainless
steel watches before, and the bands will scratch but any watch maker or anyone
who knows how to take care of it will..
Leo: Will buff it out.
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: I have to say I've never had a watch that didn't knick after a while, that's just what happens. So which
face do you fellows like? I was just showing the really cool astronomy face,
but the problem with something like this is you don't get as many
complications, those little informational windows. So you can't see, for
instance. But I do love this, I mean, this is just a
show off display. There's the moon and I can actually go see the dark side of
the moon and verify that Adam Curry is wrong, there is
no secret US military base in the back there. And lets press this again. Is anybody using Micky?
Rene: I do on weekends! I'm using
Leo: On weekends!
Rene: Because it told me that MacBreak weekly is on next.
Leo: That's my weekend watch face. Ah, you use the ugly
info face.
Rene: I use it for work because when I'm actually working
it has so much information density and then immediately when my day ends I switch
to like one of the cool butterfly or Micky Mouse
watch faces.
Adam: Is that the modular one?
Rene: Yes.
Adam: Yes, that's the one I use as well.
Leo: The modular, really? For text?
Adam: And for the same reason, it's the most information
sort of on one screen.
Leo: Um, yeah, it's pretty cool. Uh,
yeah.
Adam: Well, I don't know if I would say it's cool. I did
color match it to my band, which was nice that you can do that.
Leo: Utility is a good looking watch face. It does give me
a lot of information, battery life. I'm using UTC, I have my calendar. You tap
your calendar, you'll get it. All of these are somewhat customizable in some
degree by pressing ...
Rene: I'm doing a different one every day just so I can try
them all.
Leo: It's fun you know! I've,
this is nice because you can take this utility and you can simplify the face or
you can complexify the face, depending on how you're,
given that they are not allowing custom faces they've done a pretty nice job I
think.
Adam: Well, and I predict that WDC or sometime soon at some
point there may be a watch face API that developers can start to...
Leo: Grueber makes a good case
for this, that because of the OLED in battery life, you don't want to just wily nilly random, and besides Steve would hate it if
somebody put an ugly face on this watch.
Rene: I want a Superman face so badly.
Andy: I was having some discussions with that with some
people on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, because on Android it actually took
Google until October before they released the APIs for developers to create
their own watch faces, and to me that was one of the most brilliant things that
happened to Android Wear because, not only was it developers creating new watch
faces, but also developers creating Android apps to let users create their own
watch faces, and you can do pretty much anything and now there's watch Facerepo or two where you can see every single user created
watch face that somebody decided to share. One of my favorite ones is just, it
says the time and underneath it has the text “No, this isn't a bleeping Apple
Watch”. And so this lets some discussions about people saying, would Apple
allow somebody to put an ugly face on the watch, and that's an interesting
thing. I think the technical problems of creating a watch face kit are bigger
than whatever aesthetic concerns they might have, but it's an interesting
thing, because if you can imagine one company saying “No, we want approval on
watch face design, because we don't want, here's a crap emoji and flies buzzing
around it to tell you what time it is, we don't want that on our watch, we put
so much time and effort into this. But none the less, that's one of the things
you do to a smart watch that makes it really yours. It's the same thing with
the Pebble watch, people just love their kitty watch face, or Star Trek LCARS
watch face, it's something that takes this thing that millions of people have
and it makes it uniquely yours. And I think that's something that really
creates intimacy and a connection to the product, so I can't wait for that to
happen for Apple Watch.
Adam: Yeah, Apple likes that too.
Leo: Which one do you use, a
jellyfish, flowers or a butterfly Rene?
Rene: I like them all. I, like I said, I'm trying to do a
different one every day so I get a sense of it.
Leo: I wish you could have a completely random choice, that would be cool.
Rene: Just to Andy's point, there were back in March, there
were two additional ah, not back in March, before March there were two
additional faces. There was Time Laps, which had like photographs of Big Ben
moving slowly through time and there was a custom photo one, where you could
pick a photo from the photo library and they didn't hold up well, lighting up
that many pixels in OLED didn't give them the battery performance they
preferred.
Leo: Notice how much black there is. I mean that's the key
on OLED, anything that's black that's not lit up is not using juice.
Adam: Yeah, well again I mean this could be a version 2
this could be when they figure it out. I think the ultimate deciding factor for
Apple is going to be 30% of every watch face sale. And you know once people can
get faces, even at a buck apiece, you're going to be downloading hundreds of
them.
Rene: And you can't buy watch apps right now, you can only
use, they're only extensions so they come for free with the app.
Leo: What is your experience with battery at this point?
Mine gets through the day no problem.
Rene: Roaming on AT&T is hard, but that's hard on my
iPhone too. Once I got home everything was really, really good.
Leo: Did it impact your battery life too?
Rene: It's hard to tell. Basically it's using Bluetooth LE
as much as it can, it'll only escalate to Wifi if the
amount of data is significant and it needs rays to sleep or if there's some
problem with Bluetooth. So it's going to use Bluetooth LE, Bluetooth LE is
incredibly power efficient but it's still a radio and if you've never had
Bluetooth on, and now suddenly you have it on and it's communicating, it's
going to be using more power. How much you use your watch, and how much you use
apps, and how much you use hand offs, the Apple watch can hand off Siri and it
can hand off all sorts of things that even iPhones and things can't do. So,
it's going to be entirely up to your usage but it should be analogist to any
other Bluetooth device that you're using for the same amount of time.
Adam: Mine has been good so far, except one day, and it was
a day I did a 30 minute workout, and something odd happened. When I finished
that work out I went to take off the watch, and the green LEDs were stuck on
for some reason, and I had to reboot the watch before, I even had to shut it
down I think. Reboot didn't even do it. So I don't know if something happened
with the sensors there that kinda threw them off.
They got stuck and that drained the battery extra, and then also I had one sort
of app that was doing a lot of notifications, I was getting a lot of
notifications so I disabled that, and since then it's been great. I can get
very much to the end of the day with 30, 40% battery life.
Andy: That track for instance with my experience with the
Moto 360. Hated it after the first day, I liked it after the first weekend, and
after two weeks, after everything had been dialed in the way that I liked it
and I learned how to use it I, that's when I started okay, this is good, going
to keep this.
Leo: Yeah, I had the same experience too. It took a little
while to appreciate the value. This does, lets see, so battery life acceptable. Charging fast. Charges in like an hour, hour and a half fully from zero to sixty.
Rene: Just went and bought all of the cables. They have
the, in Canada it's one meter and two meters, I'm
guessing that's three and six feet in the US.
Leo: Yes, yeah.
Rene: And you get the nice, I have it here, you get the
nice steel version when you buy them at retail, the stainless steel.
Leo: By the ways those cables will charge your Moto 360 so
that's another benefit.
Rene: Yep.
Leo: Apparently Apple is using something that is
compatible with Chi charging.
Andy: So they must be using Chi. Has anybody tried, I would
suggest you try this, go on Amazon and buy one of those $10 little like Chi charging pads to see if it works.
Leo: I have not been able to do it in the other direction, I have tons of Chi chargers everywhere.
Andy: Okay, it doesn't work?
Leo: Well, it's tough because positioning, as you know
with Chi, is tricky. You have to match the induction engine on the device to
the inducer on the charger. That's the nice thing about the way they've done
with the Watch, because the magnet it just goes thwack, and it's perfect every
time. I have yet to, even with moving this around, find a place that I can
charge the watch. It does go in the other direction though.
Andy: That's weird, because I have the, I'd have it here
but I just came back from a trip so it's in my travel bag. I do have like a
little silver dollar sized pad that I travel with to charge the watch with. And
it does, it's easy to hit the target. Also, you can buy these pads that
actually have three coils in them, so that no matter where you put it, it's
close to some place. I'm curious to see if Apple has made this a Apple only charging stand party because I really do like.
I've used smart watches where there's some sort of magnetic connector and it's fine, there's nothing bad about it, but there's
something about, I took my watch off and I simply dropped it on the nightstand,
and that's all I had to do with it that makes it kind of cooler.
Leo: This is pretty easy, you just go thwack, it's a very satisfying thwack. What else, anything else we
want to tell people before they get their watches?
Rene: The downside with the inductive charges with an
iPhone I have a Mophie power station I can just plug
it in, put it in my pocket, walk around. The inductive stuff never stays in one
place long enough so I stick it on, put it in my pocket, and walk around it
never really gets dislodged and it doesn't charge and I get sad.
Andy: I bet somebody's going to make the altoids hack where it has like an induction charger inside
it and plus its like a shape of foam insert that
keeps it held in the right place, you simply close it, plug it into your
battery pack, and it will work. I should make that for the Moto 360! Andy
you're brilliant, I'm going to do that right now.
Leo: Somebody said somebody should get a 3D printer and
make a holder for the thwack thing, and then you could thwack it into a like
easel or something.
Rene: Nice.
Andy: Yep. I've already seen a whole bunch of people on Kickstarter, and even with their own, we've got the oiled
walnut desk stand, and the beautiful nightstand holder, that will let you use
it as a timepiece while you're trying to fall asleep and you're being
distracted by notifications.
Leo: Steven's trying to draw something on my wrist now, I don't know what the heck that is. Oh, you missed it.
How do you replay?
Rene: You can't, it's a femoral like snapshot, it's gone forever.
Adam: Yep.
Leo: What?! Oh man! By the way, try force touch, because
even in notifications force touch has, it's like kind of right click, always
try for instance this clears all of my notifications.
Andy: Yeah, that's a good tip as well.
Rene: I want that on the iPhone.
Leo: Force touch, yes I do to. They still don't have a
clear all, huh?
Rene: No.
Leo: Uh, drives me crazy. This is nice too. The first
glance gives you a chance to ping your iPhone if you lose it it'll make little
sounds in your iPhone, I like that. And of course you have controls for
airplane, sleep, and mute.
Adam: The mute one's very important too if you're going to
go into a movie or something.
Leo: Well that's what I was going to ask you, what do you
think of Taptic now, now that we've had some, to me
it's like this is an example of how Apple has been so good at marketing.
Describing, “It's not just vibration, it's a Taptic.”
It's just vibration kids.
Rene: As someone who gets embarrassed when his phone, like
if I'm talking to somebody, especially somebody in a social situation, and my
pocket is vibrating I find it very embarrassing. So I don't care what they call
it, as long as I can feel it but nobody else can hear it, I'm really in favor
of it.
Adam: It's great with the Maps app, when coupled with the
Maps app. I've been doing some driving and having the taps for upcoming left and
right is pretty great...
Leo: And we should make this clear, I thought it was going
to be like the left side of the watch would tap.
Adam: No, no, no.
Leo: It's like, it's different patterns.
Rene: Yes.
Adam: Yeah, yeah.
Leo: It's really just a vibration, come on, admit it.
Rene: It's not noisy though. It's, like to me again, it's
not the vibration, it's the whether other people hear it or not that's
important.
Leo: You're right, but that's because it's not sitting on
a table it's resting on your cushy little arm.
Rene: Well it won't Taptic if
it's on a table.
Leo: Alright.
Adam: To me it has more of a thunk,
what I call a thunk to it, you know. It's more like
uh-
Leo: There's an attack.
Adam: Yeah it's not just quite like a, because I have my
Pebble buzzes, and it buzzes and it's pretty jolting. This is much more subtle. Takes some getting used to as well. You might at first
I noticed I would miss certain taps because it can be that subtle, that you
sort of adapt to it, and I would say it's different than a
vibrate.
Leo: Okay.
Adam: For me, I don't know.
Leo: Yeah, I have not had it muted so I also get a
piercing little yelp when it vibrates.
Rene: I turned that off three seconds into it.
Adam: Yeah the sounds can get yeah, annoying if you don't
mute them.
Leo: It's a little piercing. But you hear it! And it
works, it works that way.
Rene: And Serenity turned of the
twist your wrist to turn off the screen because she found from the theater she
gestured a lot, and she was getting a lot of false positives.
Leo: Yeah, a number of people complained that this is not
the ideal movie watch. The only way to dim it is to cover it with your hand,
and then it goes silent. Apparently it will at random moments light up the
movie theater.
Rene: If you put it at “Do not disturb” for movies it's
recommended.
Andy: I bet that they're going to take a page from Android
Wear, because that was one of the first editions they made, and they got one of
the exact same complaints, and now there is, if you swipe down, they call it in
theater mode and it works, but you actually have to actually push the clicky button to light up the screen.
Leo: So how does Serenity light up the screen, she pushes
the button every time?
Rene: Yes, well she taps the screen.
Leo: Or taps it.
Rene: Yeah
Leo: I bet she gets better battery life that way too.
Rene: Yes, that's another advantage. All that is really
good, but not letting up a screen is better than letting up a screen.
Leo: Yeah, I'm going to have to try that.
Adam: Yeah, it doesn't take that much extra effort to tap
the screen I've found, so I'm going to move to that as well just for battery
life.
Leo: It's more positive too, and I've had the same problem
with Android where at first, and Andy I think you were
the one that told me, I was doing it really hard and that was confusing it.
It's just a little bit like this. Apple Watch seems to be better at doing that.
Andy: It's interesting how you find, if you're enjoying the
experience of using a product, you find yourself learning new skills and new
muscle memory. And when I have the Moto on, yes I can activate it by turning
it, but now when I raise my wrist, if I have my other hand free, I just non-thinkingly tap the screen so it's instantly available, and
when I get the information I put my hand over it to sleep it immediately. Just
like snapping a pocket watch closed. It's not that I have to do it but it's
just like, well why wouldn't I? It's just the habit that I got into and it's
not inconvenient in the least. So, as I said before, it's going to be very
interesting to talk to people after they've been wearing it for a month, and
they realize that they have adapted to the Watch, the Watch has adapted to
them, and it's probably going to be a much better experience for them then it
was on the first weekend.
Leo: I do recommend Imores 28,
Serenity wrote this, Apple Watch tips and tricks. You should know if you want
more, there's lots of good ones in here. I have yet to
use power reserve mode. Haven't had to, it's gone all the way.
Adam: I hid it that one day. The one thing you need to know
about power reserve is when it's on that it will not do the raise to wake
thing, you have to tap the button.
Rene: And then you have to reboot it to get out of it.
Andy: (English accent)Important tip is don't exercise, because if you don't exercise then you will have plenty
of battery life all day long.
Leo: I also love it, and I did not know this, thank you
Serenity. You can do a screen shot much like you do on the iPhone by pressing
both buttons at the same time. Uh, has anybody, there you go. Has anybody sent
you any of those creepy 3D emojis yet?
Rene: Yes, quite a lot. Though, when I first saw those it,
just screamed Yahoo from the 90's to me, and boy those guys liked tongues a
lot.
Leo: Yeah! But you like it huh?
Rene: No, I mean, I'm still not a huge fan of them like I
think the hands move too little, and the faces move too much, but you know,
it's gen what? Because there is a thing if Apple does exactly the same thing
every year we say they're boring and not innovating, if they do new things we
say they're doing silly things. You need to experiment, and some of it I'm not
going to like, and I'm okay with that. To Andy's point earlier, you know like
when you love somebody everything about them you find is desirable, when you
hate someone you dislike it, so if you have a good experience you find the next
one delightful or informed. If you have a bad one you get more and more
frustrated. So I'm trying to keep this balanced opinion where I'm just noting,
I don't like that, do like this, without letting it sort of emotionally affect
me too much.
Adam: Something that impressed me about the emojis, and I'm not a big-
Leo: There you go, Jason, I'm showing the emojis here really quick.
Adam: -and I'm not a big fan of them myself, is I was
impressed that when you send them to someone who doesn't have a watch or a
phone they are still animated, at least on iMessage side, I haven't seen it what happens on the..
Rene: Yeah, they're animated gifts so they work everywhere.
Leo: Yeah.
Adam: Yeah.
Leo: Not as well, they're not as creepy.
Rene: They're creepy everywhere, Leo.
Leo: They're pretty creepy. It's uncanny valley creepy is what it is.
Rene: They're just, I mean, so it's funny because people
were saying Apple was too flat, but now here you have button borders in a lot
of places again, you have 3D rendered textures and, you know, Apple's not using
one design language, and when you look at what Microsoft is doing with modern
or metro whatever they're calling it now, and Google with material, they're
really trying to have a consistent experience across screens, and Apple is
trying to do something different on every screen, and again I like that we have
both options.
Leo: What's interesting is that you can pick like an in
between state for an emoji. Like that's like, uh.
Adam: They kinda, yeah.
Leo: It's kinda weird.
Rene: So many tongues!
Andy: Can we at least like, note that is this what people
want to be doing, spending minutes staring at their wrist to figure out which
of these hundred million emojis to select. It is
funny, you shouldn't laugh at people who are enjoying the experience but..
Rene: My mom is going to do it always.
Andy: Yikes.
Leo: Yeah. But you really can't send nuance, you see,
there's some real nuance in the emoji.
Adam: This is the feature for that person in the office
that always had that horrible signature with like, yeah.
Leo: Put me in your joke mailing list please, I beg of
you.
Andy: So, basically you're saying this emoji feature is
what the email forwards were in 1993.
Leo: Yep.
Andy: Yep.
Leo: Yep.
Andy: Yep. I think so.
Leo: Just breaking news coming in. Twitter stock trading
has been halted as Twitter drops dramatically, I'm not
sure what's going on, are they doing results? They must be. But stock trading
halted just moments ago on Twitter.
Audience member: I think possibly the earnings were leaked before.
Leo: Aha!
Rene: Oh yeah.
Audience member: So, yeah.
Rene: I'm not getting your feed by the way.
Leo: Twitter plunges after early learnings leak report.
Andy: The duke brothers are trying to corner the frozen
concentrator orange juice market.
Rene: Leo, I'm not getting your laptop.
Leo: Okay, yeah I'm not sure what that is, but that's
alright there's nothing to see here. Move along, move along. So yeah, the early
leak from the Twitter investor relations sight, well maybe no leak, no hack,
it's just been prematurely released, but um, big drop in quarter one revenue
$436 million non gap EPS $.07 a share. Okay, so there
you go, just giving you some breaking news. I suppose we should have some other
Mac news, Apple news, let's see, we've got the quarterly results, we've got the
watch. 100% of Apples US facilities now powered from renewable energy, nice.
Although it's not clear whether that's because they're buying credits, or
they're actually using renewable energy.
Rene: I believe they're buying credits.
Leo: I think it almost always that's the case. I do root
for people displaymate.com. Did you hear that piercing bell? I guess not. It's
not that loud. You probably got something from, oh no it's time for me to go. Time for some Security Now.
Rene: Stand up Leo.
Leo: That's the other thing, it's every hour it's a little
bit, but you can turn that off.
Rene: I just got one and I am standing up, so that's the
kind of stuff that I think (unintelligible)
Leo: I think that that's not bad, I wanna be more healthy and anything that can help me do that.
And I've discovered the Jawbone app and the Nike Fuel band did help me,
encourage me to take that extra step, you know as your close and so forth.
Rene: I want game center integration so that you and I can
compete over standing up.
Leo: Rene has stood up for 32% more often than you have.
Let's take a break, we'll do our picks of the week.
You might be surprised by Andy's, I'm just going to
say that.
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Leo: Andrew Ihnatko, your pick
of the week my friend.
Andy: Well, I knew you stinkers would all have Apple
Watches and I would not, and so I wanted to talk about wearables a little bit,
and I've finally gotten a chance to try out Microsoft Band. And so, it's a
very, very interesting product for a lot of good reasons. I've been wearing it
since the weekend, and there's something that really didn't occur to me about
the strength of the design until I started wearing it, until I started seeing
other people wearing it. The thing is, that this presents itself as a fitness
band, and really I think, in terms of its design, it
really is designed to be a fitness band with extra features on it as opposed to
a smart watch. And the value of that is that you can walk around and people are
used to seeing a black rubberish band on your wrist.
That leaves this wrist free that you can actually wear whatever you want. You
can still wear your grandfathers watch, you can still
wear the stylish watch that you absolutely love, you can still wear whatever
else you have on this wrist but you still get what are some of the marquis
features of a smart watch, that is fitness tracking and notifications from your
phone. Works with iOS, works with Android, it has a couple of extra features if
you're wearing it with a Windows phone device, but for our purposes it works
fine with iOS. It will communicate iOS notifications just fine. It also
communicates with a fitness and health app that Microsoft has for iOS, that will track a really nice array of information. Not
only heart rate, but also the oxygen saturation levels, temperature, it will
also do UV index, and it also has GPS built right into it. And to what Rene said
about using, calibrating the pedometer on your Apple Watch, this does the exact
same thing. It has GPS built in, obviously using GPS will drain the battery, so
what they do say is that if you, when you do your first walks or runs, if you
leave the GPS on for the first couple of days that you do that, it will learn
what the length of your stride is, it will then, you can turn the GPS off. It
will not track your location but it will calibrate your stride and will give
you more accurate distances, but if you do keep the GPS turned on while you
bike, walk or run, it will of course record a bread crumb trail of your exact
route that you can then like download to your computer and then overlay on a
map and figure out stuff like that. I like it in that it works in a way that
the Fitbit that I tried for about a month didn't, because all the Fitbit did
was say you've got one dot, two dot, three dot, four dot, five dot. This will
give you that same wealth of information that you get from a Moto 360, or to a
lesser extent, the less information than you get from an Apple watch, but still
valuable, actual numbers to show you how well you're progressing towards your
progress. It will also, after it's been able to look at your level of fitness
and activity for a couple of weeks, then it can actually say okay, I want to
tailor a workout for you. So, you can actually follow the instructions that
it's giving you on this band to get to a positive workout that keeps your heart
level up and gives you actual valuable ongoing results, and it is less of a,
it's less of a commitment than having a real, for real, this is the one watch
that I'm allowed to wear, because if I wear more than one watch on both wrists
I'll look like even more of a dork than I do with a fitness band on one wrist,
and a wrist watch on the other one. Couple of disadvantages,
among them, that this doesn't automatically light up when you turn it, so you
actually have to push a clicky button to get it to
light up. Also the user interface is horizontal, so it's not like you
can do like this, and then you have to go like this to read it. So you have to
sort of learn how to read it in a vertical orientation, and also it gets a full
two days of battery life on a single charge, but they make the magic happen by
putting part of the battery inside the band. So obviously it's chunkier than a
fitness band, and also it's not quite as comfortable to wear as a watch or as a
fitness band. It's not uncomfortable but it's definitely a presence on your
wrist that you don't feel otherwise, but as a device that you wear 24 hours a
day it'll also do a thing like sleep tracking. It's very cool, I've had apps
before that check your sleep but not the kind that will say, oh by the way you
actually, good morning, are you up now? Good, you slept for an actual 5.2
hours, and just like any other number for fitness, wow you know what, if I work hard I bet I could break that record and sleep for
7 hours tomorrow night. You know what, I'm going to do
what it takes to make sure that I break my record of 10 hours.
Leo: I'm sorry, I'm just moving because my watch told me
to, keep going Andy.
Rene: Do the Tin Cup dance.
Andy: Don't let your Apple Watch get inside your head man!
That's exactly what Apple wants!
Leo: Does the Microsoft watch do that?!
Andy: But it's, as I said, it's, I like that fact that
there are now four major platforms, each with four different perspectives. This
one being that look, if you wear a watch on this wrist you've got another free
wrist that you can use for fitness and notifications. This is a good way to do
that. It's platform agnostic and it costs $200. This
is very much a 1.0, I don't think Microsoft built
enough of them to anticipate a high demand, because that's how they've managed
to sell out of them so quickly, so they were hard to find after their initial
launch in October or November.
Leo: They have new batches coming from time to time right?
Andy: Exactly. That's not because everybody wants one, it's
because they have not been building very many of these. But again if you're
resistance to wearing a smart watch is that, but I like the watch that I have
right now and I don't want to commit to all this new software and all this sort
of stuff, this will give you at least 50-60% of what is really cool about having
a smart watch without having to again give up your really classy watch that you
really, really like. I love this watch, it took me
like 2 or 3 months to find. I'm looking for my first nice, as in, didn't buy it
in a plastic case for $50 watch. And I miss it when I don't get to wear it all
the time so I do actually, a couple, a day, a day a week or maybe two days a
week, I'll put this on simply because I enjoy it as much as I do my smart
watch, but this lets me have the best of both worlds. So I'm not saying this is
the perfect device, it is a 1.0, but it is worth looking at if you suspect you
can benefit from having a health track or and you want it to do a little bit
more than simply annoy you and buzz on your wrist when it thinks you're being
too much of a sit down person.
Leo: Great pick! Paul Thurrott loves his too! Yeah, it's actually kind of almost a surprise that actually
Microsoft did something that's really unique in its space.
Andy: You know what, I don't know, it's one of those times you think I don't know who they hired or fired 4-5
years ago but they started to figure out things that were, that allow them to
do some cool stuff from time to time.
Leo: Yeah! Mr. Adam Christanson of the Mac Cast, MacCast.com, what have you got for us?
Adam: Yep, I'm going to pick an oldie but a goodie today. But I think it's become irrelevant, or..irrelevant..relevant in this day and age with our thinner and thinner notebooks. So something I've
used for years is a product from, is a couple of products from Radtech. There are these sleeves and this is the purple
one, but you can get it in a bunch of different colors. Red,
blue, gray, black. It's a microfiber screen protector. This one's the, what they call, the screen saver.
Leo: Don't I get one of these every time I buy a new
MacBook?
Adam: Well, if you buy the same MacBook, like, here's one
thing I wanted to comment on them. So I kept buying the 15 inch form factor,
and it didn't really change much in thickness, so I had the same set for
probably 8 years before it started to finally break down. So they lasted very
long, but yeah you might need to get them each time.
Leo: They're not expensive.
Adam: What it does is, you know
you type on your keyboard right? You're going to leave dirt and oils behind.
Now that laptops are so thin, you put any force on the outside of that it's
going to gently press down on the screen, maybe go into the keys, and then you
get that sort of key pattern, oily key pattern on your screen. So, the screen
saver protects from that and then they also have what's called the sleeve which
goes over the outside, and I like that one because it protects the outer case
of my MacBook. It's a nice form fitting sleeve, and then I can slide it in
there. I don't have to worry about it when I'm sliding it into my bag. I
actually put my iPad right next to my laptop in that main compartment, because
I've got a cover on it I know they're not going to scratch each other up.
They're really durable, they're really well made. You might see the price and
go, oh that's expensive, but I guarantee you once you have these things you're
going to love them and what's great about the little one on the keyboard too,
is you can use it as a nice microfiber cloth to clean the screen and stuff like
that. So they're always there, they're always handy, you always have them with
you. I love this product, and like I said, I've used them for years, and now
that laptops are getting thinner and thinner, they're becoming even more
important I think.
Leo: I'm thinking for the MacBook this will be a must
have.
Adam: Yeah, so, love them and it's a great product and
they've been around in the Mac community for years, Radtech.
Leo: About 15 bucks for this screen saver. Thank you Adam. You've been around for, how long has MacCast been around for?
Adam: 10 years!
Leo: Yeah!
Adam: In the 11th year.
Leo: One of the original shows, you started in 2004 then?
Adam: December 13th of 2004 was the first episode.
Leo: Wow, so one of the oldest Macintosh pod casts, and
still one of the best.
Adam: I think so, thank you!
Leo: MacCast.com,
we love it. Mr. Rene Ritchie, do you have a pick for us?
Rene: I do, I have a couple actually, and they're very
similar. One of the things I like most about the Apple Watch is remote control.
I already have the hue apps so I can turn on and off these lights behind me,
and we've been doing that for a while, but there's some really great iOS apps,
like djay for iPhone which I've picked before, but
right now it's free because they just launched their Watch extension. So you
can load up your iPhone with all the music you want to DJ, and then sit there,
and they have one of the best interactivity models I've seen on the Apple Watch
so far where you can press a button and it'll start to intelligently tell when
to switch between songs, and when to do cuts, and all these different things
and it works really well. So if you're a, even if you’re not, like I don't know
much about music, I'm not a DJ, I'm sure DJs really love this, but just if I
have friends over and I'm sitting there cooking and I want to quickly change
something I can press a button on my watch. I don't have to go and pull my
phone out, again, it's all that convenience factor.
And Pacemaker is the same. It lets you cue up a bunch of music on your Apple
watch, on your iPhone, and then, with really bright, intelligent, interactive
controls on your Apple Watch it lets you just do this sort of, it makes you
look good in front of your friends, Leo, like you have better music sense and
savvy, and DJ abilities, than you actually have. And every app that makes us
look good we kind of feel a little bit happy about. So again, these to me show
that with really, really smart developers, you can do really a lot of really
cool things with the Apple Watch.
Leo: Do you think you'll ever really use djay on your watch?
Rene: I use it because it, like if you have a music app it
looks alright, but if you have double turn tables on your iPhone or iPad, and
you're sitting there just nodding your head like you know what you're doing and
pressing a button, and it makes an awesome switch, that's free points for you
Leo, I mean it makes you look good!
Leo: I guess so! You've gotta wear your headphones half on, your Beats headphones half on half off.
Rene: You just put them on, and you just move your head
like this, and your other wrist is free, you can tap it, and everyone thinks
you're a master mixer. He's controlling our audio experience from the kitchen
while making croissants, the man's a miracle worker!
Leo: Djay is amazing on the
iPad, and you probably already have it, so you might as well put it on your
watch.
Rene: And if you don't it's free right now!
Leo: It's free! All of this stuff is because they haven't
figured out how to charge.
Rene: Well, but the iPhone app, which is usually several
bucks, is free right now too.
Leo: Oh, is it free, too?
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: Oh nice!
Rene: So if you haven't got it yet and you're looking for a
really..
Leo: Oh, I should probably get it.
Rene: Yeah. And it's a cool way just to display music on
your iPhone, you know, forget everything else.
Leo: Yeah.
Rene: Because they take the actual, for skewmorphic fans, they take the actual voice print and put it over the album so that you
can see the grooves like you would a traditional record, which you know
(unintelligible)
Leo: Oh, come on, knock it off! Cool!
Rene: Dude, the algorithm guys have serious game.
Leo: I'm going to download that right now. I've been
laughing at it because it seems like such a silly thing to have a Watch
interface to a DJ turntable.
Rene: Well, part of the new update they did, I forget the
name, I think it's Phillip or Pioneer, whatever the big turntable system almost
every DJ use they actually opened up and let them integrate with it, so for
professional DJs, they can now use their iPhone, their iPad to control like
hard core equipment. And you have the glance on your Apple Watch if you do need
to reach for that beverage, or talk to that person at the booth, and you want
to just tap a button quickly and cover yourself, you're all set!
Leo: I love it. I want to thank one of our viewers
yesterday, we were doing iPad Today, and one of our
viewers said how come you guys never pick Sky Force 2014 for as your app cap?
So I immediately downloaded to iPad or iPhone and wow, this is a great, fun,
top down scroller. If you ever played Zaxxon, you'll recognize kind of the style of this. But the
graphics are great, it's loading, and this is the first time I've loaded it on
the iPhone, I play it on the iPad. Great music, great fun, a
very exciting game. In app purchases $1.99 to remove
ads, although I haven't seen many ads. It really is a lot of fun and boy
the graphics are great. This is Sky Force, two words, 2014 from Infinite Dreams, it's the 10th anniversary edition. You may remember, I guess
it must have been arcade versions of this game, right? I know, I know, now
watch, we're going to fly through the environment. I don't know if you saw it,
but Mario is somewhere on an island, and we've got to rescue him and of course
shoot incoming airplanes as we're going and gather stuff, power ups.
Andy: Don't worry Leo, none of
those crew members had families.
Leo: Yeah, right, exactly, exactly. What are you, what are
you? Come on!
Andy: I'm just saying-
Leo: Come on!
Andy: -the projection of power for foreign policy is
sometimes comes at too great of cost, Leo. Of what cost to our national
character is this fun game, Leo?
Leo: Oh, no bits were harmed in the making of this game,
come on! It's fun.
Andy: I understand they were all Hitler clones, we're good.
Leo: They're all Hitler clones, exactly.
Rene: Now the time comes!
Leo: Ah, there's the boss.
Andy: There aren't innocent Hitler clones either.
Leo: Watch out for the boss, he's tough, tough, tough.
Anyway, this is a fun game. It's, I always look for games that are native to
the Touch interface, and this is actually a really good one for that, because
all you have really to do is hold your finger on the screen and go around. I
showed you kind of a, whoops, whoa, there's a laser! Oh no! Sky Force 2014.
Ladies and gentleman, that concludes this edition of MacBreak Weekly, the first in the Apple Watch era. You know
I mentioned this in our before you buy review, I remember, you know the day
before the eve of the iPad coming out, the eve of the iPhone coming out,
thinking, after tomorrow every thing's different. I don't know if you can say
the same for the Apple Watch but.
Andy: We were so naive the last couple years.
Leo: Now...
Rene: So young, so innocent.
Leo: So young, so innocent. Again, a great thanks to Adam
Christianson for pioneering the Mac pod cast and continuing MacCast for ten years. You were at Nik, what do you do these days?
Adam: I am self-employed. I'm a pod caster, I do a little bit of web development.
Leo: What?! That's crazy talk!
Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Work for myself. I'm solo, you know, no big network or anything like that, but we get by.
Leo: I have to say, did you work on Snapseed,
was that one of your things when you were in Nik?
Adam: Well, I was their web developer, so I did all of
their e comm and stuff like that.
Leo: Ah, got it, got it.
Adam: Um, one thing I'm proud of though, I went and looked
at their shopping cart that they're using to sell this next stuff over at
Google.
Leo: It's still yours?
Adam: I think. It still has the same look, I don't know if
the code-
Leo: Oh, that would be awesome!
Adam: is all the same.
Leo: Your code is running on the Google servers now. Wow!
Adam: I'm just proud that they didn't change it, so.
Leo: Well, I'm just, Snapseed they did just recently update and it's absolutely the go-to now photo editing
app. I thought Aviary was going to give them a little trouble, but boy I love
the new Snapseed.
Adam: Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about the new UI, but
it's still adaptive.
Leo: Well, it is different, but boy is it powerful. Uh,
thank you Adam!
Adam: Thank you!
Leo: Everybody should go to MacCast.com, subscribe today.
Rene Ritchie at imore.com, if you want to know about the Watch, he's got the
guys and gals on it! The most articles per pound of any Apple blog. Imore.com. And of course-
Rene: We don't drink you under the table, Leo, we just
write articles.
Leo: -you just write us under the table, and pod casting
too, a lot of great pod casts. If you go to Imore you'll find them in the pod cast section.
Rene: Debug is back this week with Horace Dediu as the guest, because he used to be a developer.
Leo: I love Horace! Oh is he awesome! Very
smart guy. Good! We'll make sure to listen. Andy Ihnatko,
he's not wearing an Apple Watch, but some day!
Andy: I'm not counting down to the man!
Leo: Of course you can catch all of his work at the
Chicago Suns Times. Did you order one, or are you just kind of waiting, or what
is the deal?
Andy: No, because I'm confident that when my turn comes
they'll send me a review unit, and the fact that I was away at a conference and
thinking that, Okay, so I'm going to have to like, not go to this party, and
stand by to get in there, not in the first five minutes, but in the first
thirty seconds, to spend $350 that I could be spending on like airfare to
another conference, and at the end of the day it was like, Okay, I'll, also I'm
going through a philosophical thing these days where it's like, how valuable is
it for me to have to have a review out in the first three days versus, I will
value the thirty days I will be able to spend with it and whatever I'll be able
to write about it after those thirty days. Which is not to say, which is not
saying that I'm not incredibly jealous of the fellas at Grueber and people who have them earlier, it's fine, it's
fine.
Leo: Yeah, I just feel like, come on, this is the Chicago
Sun Times here! This is one of the hosts of MacBreak Weekly, this is not, I just don't understand Apple's review policy, I really don't.
Andy: It's not an entitlement, I don't, I'm pretty sure
this is just because there's an audience out there that I have that they're
already reaching out elsewhere. With that entitlement I'll get it whenever it's
my turn to get it, that's fine.
Leo: Yeah, apparently. Makes me mad.
Andy: Oh gee, it shouldn't. It doesn't make me mad, why
should it make you mad.
Leo: Because I'm in the same boat, that's why. Actually,
I'll never get a review unit, that's the boat I'm in. I'm in the boat behind
your boat.
Andy: Well, you've got hand-tied bow tie money man, you get..
Leo: I'm on a balsa wood raft, 400 feet behind you!
Rene: Bow ties are cool!
Leo: Mhm, I tie em myself with my own two little hands.
Rene: Leo's a Time Lord.
Andy: Very nice!
Leo: I decided I want to look more like Dr. Who. Who
doesn't, after all? Thank you gentleman.
Andy: Sensible people want to look like Dr. Who, non-sensible people do not want to look like the
Doctor.
Leo: I am now de-grappling with which wrist I should wear
this on, thanks Rene! And by the way-
Rene: Who said that, that wasn't me!
Adam: That was me!
Leo: Oh, thanks Adam!
Adam: Don't heap that on Rene.
Leo: Oh, and by the way Rene, if I turn off the... Now I
don't even know how to even get out of this. What am I doing, where am I? Help
me, help me Obi One!
Rene: Are you stuck in the game?
Leo: No. If I turn off Activate on wrist, no, what do I
want to turn off? Wrist detection? It sounds like
that's a negative. It says when this is on Apple Watch will automatically show
you the time and latest alerts when you raise your wrist, right? I wanted to
turn that off but, if you're using a pass code, wrist detection locks your
watch when you're not wearing it so your information stays secure. If I turn
this off, does my information become insecure?
Rene: I haven't tried that, I'll do that, I'll give that a shot. I don't think so because Trinity has
been using it and she's quite security..
Leo: But, that's the setting we're supposed to turn off.
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: Okay. Ahhh, see and then it
says-
Adam: I'm not touching that one, if your credit card gets
charged-
Leo: No, see your Apple Pay cards will be removed!
Rene: Oh, so maybe that's the wrong one, I'll double check-
Leo: Boy that's really the wrong one!
Rene: -I'll find the, yeah, because she's still using Apple
Pay.
Leo: Then there's activate on wrist rays but you don't get
to turn it off, you only get to choose what you see.
Rene: Yeah, I'll find the right article for you.
Leo: Oh, it's in an article. Well I should just probably
read the Apple Watch FAQ.
Rene: Yeah, just read imore.com.
Leo: Yeah, Imore.com, I've heard of that. Thank you
everybody for being here. We do MacBreak weekly every
Tuesday at 11 AM Pacific, 2 PM Eastern time, 1800UTC on live.twit.tv. Love it
if you're in the chat room at irc.twit.tv during this show because, as you can
see, we pay attention, we listen, and it's valuable information for us. By the
way, chat room tells me Andy, that you'll get better battery life if you turn
your Microsoft band facing wrist side, facing in.
Andy: So, it only picks up every third heartbeat.
Leo: I don't know.
Andy: Yeah, I've only had this for, I've not mastered the tips and tricks of this yet. I've also had someone tell
me it's easier to read if you have the screen on the inside and it's also
harder for people to see your notifications if you've got it on the inside too.
So I'll definitely move it around. Thank you very much for that tip.
Leo: See, chat room, see we do
listen, we do! If you can't be here live though, don't worry, we have on demand
audio and video after the fact always at twit.tv/mbw,
as we do for all shows, and you can subscribe on iTunes or the pod cast tap on
your iPhone and iPad, or Overcast, or whatever you use because we're everywhere
you are including those great twit apps which we don't take credit for, our great
third party developers in the community have made those on every platform
including Roku. Thanks for joining us, we'll see you later! Now, get back to
work because you know what, break time is over!