MacBreak Weekly 455 (Transcripts)
Leo Laporte: It's time for MacBreak Weekly. Andy, Rene, and Jason Snell are here to talk about the latest Apple news. There's a new Macintosh, a new Macbook Pro too, we'll talk about the first update for the Apple Watch and a whole lot more. MacBreak Weekly is next.
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Announcers: Netcasts you love, from people you trust. This is TWiT! 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 455, recorded Tuesday, May 19th, 2015.
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Leo: MacBreak Weekly is brought to you by SmartThings. SmartThings lets you monitor, control and automate your home from wherever you are using your smartphone. Right now SmartThings is offering MacBreak Weekly listeners 10% off any home security or solution kits, and get free shipping in the US when you go to SmartThings.com/twit. And don't forget to use the offer code TWIT at check out. And by Lynda.com, the online learning platform with over 3,000 on demand video courses, to help you strengthen your business, technology and creative skills. For a free 10 day trial, visit Lynda.com/macbreak. That's Lynda.com/macbreak. And by ITProTV. A good IT pro is always learning, and ITProTV is the resource to keep your IT skills up to date. With engaging and informative video tutorials, for a free 7 day trial and 30% off the lifetime of your account, go to ITPro.TV/macbreak and use the offer code MACBREAK30 at check out. It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show where we cover the latest Apple news and there is Apple news this week. So let us say hello to our panelists as always. Andy Ihnatko from the Chicago Sun Times.
Andy Ihnatko: Hello.
Leo: Joins us via his pixelated studios in beautiful New England.
Andy: Beautiful downtown New England.
Leo: Beautiful downtown New England. From beautiful downtown Quebec, it's Rene Ritchie, iMore.com.
Rene Ritchie: Hi Leo.
Leo: Hello Rene. And Jason Snell came up, thank you for being here!
Jason Snell: I'm here! In person!
Leo: Let me see your shirt, what have you got?
Jason: It's a dragon.
Leo: I specialize in interpreting geek shirts.
Jason: This is the logo of my Dungeons and Dragons podcast actually.
Leo: I was going to say, doesn't...
Jason: So I'm promoting.
Leo: Yeah it doesn't really... a lot of times you can say... you can look at it and you say “Oh I get it, you're playing, you're doing a Star Wars meets...”
Jason: It's a dragon, yeah.
Leo: But this is not... it's not Game of Thrones or anything.
Jason: No, it's Total Party Kill.
Leo: Totally Party Kill. TPK.
Jason: Yeah.
Leo: Where would we find that fine show?
Jason: On theincomparable.com.
Leo: How many shows you got now?
Jason: Oh, who can count? I can't count that high. Like ten, something like that.
Leo: The most recent one, we were talking about it yesterday on iOS Today.
Jason: Oh the David Letterman...
Leo: Yeah. I still haven't listened to it, but...
Jason: Andy Ihnatko featured prominently in that one.
Leo: Yeah, I bet.
Andy: Indeed, yes.
Leo: I think we probably all, I don't know about you Rene, but I don't know do they have Letterman in Canada? Probably not.
Rene: Yes. Yeah, of course he's great.
Leo: They do?
Rene: Yeah absolutely. It's awesome.
Leo: Oh, you have electricity now?
Rene: We do! We generate it very... we have to stay warm Leo, so you're incentivized to run really fast on the treadmill that generates electricity.
Jason: A Letterman show in Canada's only about half an hour long because they cut out all the rude parts.
Leo: Yeah. He's a nice... nice cranky man.
Andy: It's because of the earlier harvest.
Leo: Lots of tributes this week. A couple of some really good articles in the New York Times about... you know what's interesting about Letterman is many of his staffers have been with him all 33 years.
Jason: Yeah they were showing some clips from The Morning Show from 1980, and it's like Biff Henderson and it's like the same people.
Leo: Mhm. He's been this...
Andy: Not only that but like, staff... a lot of staff writers, staff producers, staff editors. It's like one of the first friends I met on the internet was Richard Sheckman. He's a film coordinator on like the Late Night Show and he's still working there today. It's amazing. It's like a civil service job back when civil service jobs were secure.
Leo: Well and they're also of course very puzzled about what happens after Wednesday. The last show is tomorrow.
Jason: Yeah, although at least for the people who have been with him for 33 years, I mean they've all... they're all...
Leo: Are they retiring, probably?
Jason: They may all be retiring.
Leo: Yeah. Paul Shaffer, they had an interview in the Times with Paul Shaffer. And he said “I don't know.” He said it was nice to have something to do at 4:00 every afternoon.
Jason: If you're a musician, you've got to figure that's a pretty great gig, right?
Leo: No kidding.
Jason: I mean, you have some steady income and you're playing with a band, with the same members for all that time, and then you know, it's not like it's such a long grind that you don't have time to do other stuff too.
Andy: And you're also living in New York and you also get to play with pretty much the best musicians in the world that keep coming through, and you can still... you have time off that you can... it must be a pretty interesting gig. Because I was thinking about that yesterday, what is the difference between a musician that has a regular, an absolute rock steady job day after day versus somebody who they, their schedule is always completely their own. It's... I wonder how that affects their creativity and how that affects their performing.
Jason: Yeah Shaffer was saying just the other day when he was on as a guest that you know, that time we played with Bob Dylan, and that time we played with James Brown.
Leo: Yeah, amazing.
Andy: Yeah.
Jason: Just... that's amazing.
Leo: Last night Eddie Vedder did... Pearl Jam's Better Man as part of the farewell.
Andy: Backed entirely by just the band. I did a blog, actually, sometimes a blog post entertains yourself as much as anybody else. I did a blog post a year ago about like just how good the band is, and in doing so just... like I'm going to go to YouTube and start looking for musical performances and was reminded of time and time again, you can't lock them down into any one thing that the band does. Because they have to be able to do everything, and one of the most impressive ones of them all was that they had the opera singer Rene Fleming do a top 10 list where she is singing a different aria for each with new lyrics with each one, and it was backed by the band who had to sing, not just a rock and roll version of like Aida but just the for real version of... they had like the different instruments they needed for this sort of thing, no problem. Just learn ten different classical aria pieces? Nope, no problem. That's what we do, we are professionals.
Leo: It's making me feel old because one of the things they said in the article is that it was 22 years ago that Letterman moved from NBC to CBS. I went wait a minute, 22 years ago?
Jason: Seems like yesterday doesn't it?
Andy: Yeah.
Jason: All the people I talk to, I mean a lot of people tend to say there's the first half of his career at NBC and the second half at CBS. It's like, actually it's 2/3 at CBS, but we've all kind of compressed it down because all the people who are fans of him back then, we're all getting older too just like he is, and you lose sight of the fact that he's been doing it at CBS for 20 years.
Leo: Well anyway, listen to The Incomparable, I haven't listened yet but I want to very much hear that.
Jason: Thank you. It's a fun one. Good Ihnatko stuff in there.
Leo: I'm old enough, I remember Johnny's last shows.
Jason: We talked about that. Johnny Carson is hovering over this entire week, because he was such an influence on David Letterman, and defined what this job is that now David Letterman has also had for three decades.
Leo: Although Letterman in many ways copied his... the predecessors. Steve Allen...
Jason: He brought a lot of Steve Allen, and Andy talks about that specifically in The Incomparable, that he brought a lot of that stuff. He dusted it off, and brought it back out.
Leo: A lot of the snark. He brought the snark back to late night TV.
Andy: Part of the thing I always like to say though when that comes up is that yes, that's... Letterman and the producers and writers that helped to create the first Letterman show, they also acknowledge that, but nonetheless at the time the Steve Allen show... it's not on video, you have to be almost a historian to be exposed to that and you look at the fact that just like, I say this on the show, the... it's not as though the Mac was the very first computer to have a mouse or drop down menus or graphical user interface but when you take a look at the history of computing, all computers were one way, then the Mac came out and every computer after that was like the Mac, and so they weren't... everyone else wasn't trying to emulate the Xerox star, it was this computer that really put it in, framed it in a way that made everyone say “Oh, everything is different after now.”
Jason: Look at that guy bringing it back around.
Leo: Thank you for doing that. Hey, just out now, Watch OS 1.0.1.
Rene: Yup.
Leo: If you go to your Apple Watch app, go to general and then software update and I'm seeing it right here. it says only “This release includes performance improvements and bug fixes.” Do we know anything about this update?
Rene: Yeah, it's roughly analogous to iOS 8.3 in that it also gives you the diversity emoji and additional language support, but mostly it's performance enhancements for... a bevy of internal apps and a bunch of bug fixes.
Leo: It says improved performance for Siri. Measuring stand activity could be, because that was a joke.
Jason: Yeah.
Leo: You'd be standing for an hour and then at 50 minutes, 10 minutes before the hour it would say “Stand up!”
Andy: Yeah.
Leo: It's always 10 off isn't it?
Andy: It's like being at a Catholic mass.
Leo: Yeah. Kneel, stand, kneel.
Andy: Yeah.
Leo: Calculating calories for indoor cycling and rowing workouts, that has... some have complained that they're not very reliable.
Rene: I did mine yesterday and it was... I'm going to try and do it after the update because it was off quite a bit yesterday still.
Leo: Yeah. Distance and pace during outdoor walk and run workouts, accessibility, 3rd party apps, display support, as you mentioned, for the new emoji characters in addition to all language support for Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Thai, and Turkish. So there's... nobody knows of any reason not to do this, right? Should I do it right now?
Rene: I did mine immediately.
Jason: Your watch has to be on your charger.
Leo: What?
Andy: And it has to be more than...
Jason: 50%.
Andy: Even if it's on the charger it has to be more than 50% charged.
Rene: And you've got to be on wi-fi.
Jason: So don't do it now. Actually I'm not sure you have to be on wi-fi, you have to be connected. So your phone has to be close. I'm not sure.
Rene: I think it says your iPhone has to be on wi-fi.
Jason: Ah, alright.
Leo: That would make sense because, it's not going to use Bluetooth to copy this...
Jason: And it's downloading that...
Leo: It's a 51MB download.
Jason: Yeah. And then it takes a while.
Leo: Does it?
Jason: Yeah, it takes a while. The install for me took a surprisingly long...
Leo: Alright, well it hasn't yet told me get your watch... get me to a charger. My watch is fully charged, so.
Rene: Yeah I wonder if the charger thing... because it normally uses Bluetooth and only escalates to wi-fi if it has to, but I'm wondering if to get it faster their using wi-fi is full on and that's why they want you on the charger.
Leo: Right. That would make perfect sense. When you first set it up don't you have to put it on the charger or no?
No, that was the LG Urbane watch, never mind. I'm confusing my...
Jason: Your smartwatches. It's exciting though, I mean because the 1.0 is not just OS version that we've had as long as we've had the Apple Watch but it's also, you know, they had to put that on the first models that they were manufacturing.
Leo: Right. So it's pretty old.
Jason: Yeah. It's good that they finally have pushed out a 1.01 because I'm sure they've been collecting a lot of things that they wanted to push out there and they can finally get them out there.
Rene: That was behind the iPhone. Like, you would send the emoji on the iPhone and they wouldn't show up on the Apple Watch, including Jason's beloved live long and prosper.
Leo: Ah, will I get live long... can I be... can I use that?
Rene: It can display them but you can't enter them on iOS yet.
Leo: Oh, alright.
Rene: But you can display them. You can make a text shortcut which is what I did, that... yeah.
Leo: Have them. Jason just put live long and prosper in the chatroom and it shows up...
Jason: It's blank.
Leo: Like nothing. How do you do that?
Jason: I have it as a keyboard shortcut, I type “llap” and it turns it into live long and prosper.
Leo: I love it. Alright, well that's 5 minutes remaining, it went from 14 minutes to 7 minutes right away, so maybe it's not going to take that long. And it is, we should point out... it feels like the Apple Watch has been out for years. (laughs) We've been talking about it for years.
Andy: We've been talking about it for so long.
Leo: But it's only been three weeks. I mean this is a pretty prompt first...
Jason: Yeah, and when I say it's finally out there I just am envisioning people at Apple like “Oh, finally we get to...” because there were probably bugs in there that they knew about before it even shipped and they're like “Can we fix it?” and now they get to fix that stuff.
Leo: Right, right. How is availability going these days. Are people able to walk into stores yet?
Jason: No.
Andy: No.
Rene: What's funny is my black link bracelet finally shipped this week, and I know Mark Gurman, I think John Gruber's also just shipped. And my mom who ordered the pink sports bracelet which hadn't shipped either, it was said June and it just shipped miraculously yesterday as well, so it looks like even the ones that were taking the longest are now finally getting shoved out the door.
Leo: So they're now, there are really three levels of Apple fandom. There's the buying the watch, level one. But oh that doesn't get you there. I guess if you bought the $17,000 watch.
Jason: That's the outer circle.
Leo: That's the outer circle. The inner circle is... or the middle circle is people who bought the watch and several bands, and then the really, the true fan. Like John Gruber, has several Apple Watches. Just a few.
Jason: Well we're in the business, right? I've got two right now.
Leo: There is no justification.
Jason: No, no. I've got two right now because there was one I could get the day of.
Leo: Right. Which isn't the one you wanted!
Jason: No, and now I've got the one that I ordered so I will sell the other one.
Leo: So you're wearing a sport, a black sport.
Jason: This is the one I payed for, yeah. Well the other one I payed for too but it was from a friend and I'll now turn around and sell that one.
Leo: Oh so this is the new one.
Jason: This is the one I got, I got this last week and that was going to be my answer was I got this last week and the band that I ordered should be arriving today.
Leo: This is the one you wanted. Got it.
Jason: So it seems like the products are flowing out a lot better now.
Rene: And for me and John and I think some others, we had the review unit the day before availability and then we were waiting for our ones that we actually payed for to arrive.
Leo: Ah. Okay, so you will not have multiple watches.
Rene: No. This one will go back and I'll have the one that I ordered.
Jason: Yeah one goes back to Apple and then you've got the keeper.
Andy: Yeah. I wonder what the aftermarket is going to be because there are a lot of people in that position where they ordered the first day because they're developers, they had to get it, and then when the things loosened up or they, some of these orders got overlapped and now they find themselves that they've got two watches and one of them is now returnable, and you may as well send one back right now, I kind of wonder what happens when you finally do manage to... when Apple gets a bunch of watches that have been worn and have been like sweated into and that sort of stuff, but now you've... how do they sanitize them so they can resell them?
Leo: They've got those machines with fire.
Andy: By the way I do have one now.
Leo: Hey! Andy, no more of that crappy Moto 360.
Rene: Woo hoo!
Jason: And me and Rene have confirmed that the live long and prosper emoji does display on the Apple Watch.
Leo: There it is, I see the tweet. Or the message.
Jason: Yeah he iMessaged me.
Andy: Does that mean that Rene no longer has to draw it?
Leo: He did a screen capture, that's very sophisticated. How do you do that again?
Jason: You push the two buttons simultaneously.
Leo: Oh.
Jason: On the right side there.
Leo: Oh it did, it flashed.
Jason: And then it syncs to your iPhone.
Leo: They call that the David Pogue button on the iPhone because when the first iPhone came out the prototype that Pogue had been reviewing for the New York Times had that feature, and then it shipped without it and Pogue said “What the hell? I need it.” And so they put it in.
Jason: Eventually. We took a lot of screenshots where you had to like jailbreak the phone, install an FTP server, tone that in...
Leo: Oh remember that?
Jason: Oh it was the worst.
Rene: Well Android screenshots took us... was incredibly painful for the first few years.
Leo: Oh really?
Rene: I think you'd run the SDK to get them.
Leo: And then you could do it on the screen.
Rene: Yeah, and it turns out that giving people the occasion to take screenshots means they take a lot of screenshots and advertise your product for you.
Andy: Well it also means, remember the first year of the iPhone where it was the only way to like save things to a place where you can find them again, and it was the only way to do a lot of multitasking. I was using it as my scrap book just so that... here is something I'm looking at on my phone that's important. Oh no, I'm sorry, I'm reminding myself, I'm reliving bad experiences where okay, I'm here, here is the address and the map of the place I want to go to and now I'm going to screenshot this because I know if I try to close the phone and open up again it will show me this for one half a second and then Safari will clear the screen, try to reload the page and then fail and now I won't know the address of the place I need to go to. So yes, the screenshot was incredibly important on the first iPhone.
Leo: There are a goodly number of Apple Watch on eBay, I don't know if it's... safe to buy there, and some of them are close to the actual price, here's a 38mm black sport for $375. That's not much more.
Jason: I think for some people, I don't think it's all speculators, I think some people bought a few different models wondering which one they'd get first or which one they'd like more and figuring that it was so constrained that it could sell them even if it's not for much of a markup.
Leo: Yeah a lot of these are sport models. In fact, so far all the ones I'm seeing are sport models, but I guess they're doing sorting by price.
Jason: Yeah.
Leo: So... and yeah you can get a lot higher. I mean there are people selling the one you just got for $600. That's more than you paid.
Jason: Yeah.
Leo: For the black sport, right?
Jason: Certainly.
Leo: Space gray pre-order, $500. There's hundreds of these on there.
Jason: I do think that this market is going to... I think you'll still be able to sell them for basically cost, but at some point they will be freely available. Right now people are trying to make an extra $100 or whatever because you can get it now from me, or you can get it in six weeks or eight weeks from Apple.
Leo: And again, it's only been three weeks. ilover is writing “I ordered it in the first 10 minutes and I'm just getting mine today.” Well, three weeks is not the end of the world.
Rene: It depends on the band too, like the modern buckle you can't get separately still, and the link bracelets took for a long time to ship compared to the other ones.
Leo: People I worry, I feel bad for people broke their watch. Because for you, you're not going to get a replacement for a while, right?
Jason: Yeah, well I wouldn't be surprised if they have some in stock. Some replacements in stock at the Apple stores so if you come in with one that's faulty or broken...
Leo: Faulty maybe.
Jason: They might be able to do a swap, I haven't heard those stories.
Rene: You have to incidents. If you get Apple Care Plus they will replace it for a fee twice, just due to accidental breakage or other kinds of damage.
Leo: Well the question is whether you'll get it right away, when will you get it, right?
Rene: Yeah and it might depend on the size and popularity.
Leo: Which one you're getting, yeah. So what is our general sense of which ones are available now... is there like...
Jason: The 38s are much more readily available than the 42s.
Leo: It's easier to get the small ones, yeah.
Andy: I was surprised, when I was looking at the ordering page a couple weeks ago, I was surprised that all colors have the same level of unavailability. I was thinking okay, is anybody not buying let's say the pink, the large one with the pink band. Nope. It still is as hard to get as anything else.
Leo: So we have a couple visiting today, I can see you have an Apple Watch. 42, right?
Jason: Stainless steel.
Leo: Nothing on your wrist though young lady, no Apple Watch?
Audience: We're working on her still.
Leo: Working on her. How is he going to send you his heart beat, if you doesn't have an Apple Watch?
Jason: Strong argument.
Leo: She's pulling up her iPad there, alright that's fair that's fair, you've spent enough money with Apple. One sport watch, I always check now with the audiences in the studio because I don't yet see a majority of Apple Watches. Even at MacBreak Weekly there's only two people right? With Apple Watches? Nobody else? Just the two? Out of five. So that's... that's 40%.
Jason: That's 40%.
Leo: 100% of the hosts now, thanks to Andy finally giving up on Android.
Jason: (laughing)
Andy: Thank you very much.
Jason: For MacBreak purposes.
Andy: The frightening thing for you Leo is that like, often... how quickly you flip sometimes. Like finally giving up on Android. Didn't a couple weeks ago didn't you say something like how Android is materially superior in every way.
Leo: It's objectively superior and I stand by that.
Jason: Well...
Leo: However, I have to say I'm getting used to the iPhone.
Rene: (laughing)
Leo: Well I have to, because the truth is... I have to say the Apple Watch as much as I like the Urbane which is the best Android Wear watch out there, it's so butt-ugly I just... nobody, my wife won't let me wear it.
Rene: It's the best watch this week, we can wait a bit and see.
Leo: But so I think it's still close but I do like, and you know what I'm actually starting to like is the fitness stuff. It's actually...
Rene: Oh it's great.
Leo: I notice I'm working out more, because I kind of like those silver button awards.
Rene: You feel bad right? Like if you don't.
Leo: I want the circles.
Andy: Yeah.
Rene: The one thing just before we switched, I saw a great comment from Neil Cybart who's the former sales site analyst who was talking about Apple and he said that even if 90% of iPhone users actively hate the Apple Watch, that's still 50 million people who could buy them.
Leo: Yeah, that's right.
Rene: So like the size of the market is a good indicator.
Leo: It's a good market.
Andy: But Apple tends to aim higher than... we know you hate it, but enough of you will not hate it that... it's interesting, I had a... so mine arrived on Thursday and I was using, I set it up on Friday, was wearing it like all day Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Monday, yesterday, I had one of those often travel days where into Amtrack to New York it had a product launch and then an interview with an executive and a whole bunch of this stuff. Plus seeing two friends and getting back on a train at 7:50 and so I'm packing, I'm setting up what I want to take on Sunday night and I'm thinking... I've had three days of experience with the Apple Watch, am I excited enough about it that I'm going to use it as my wearable on this trip tomorrow? And then that's when I took it off and I put my Android Wear watch back on because it's... it's interesting. I've had a lot of... I'm not going to review it until I've had it for about a month, but it's... I think it was, one thing that was significant is that I was taking notes on my observations as I go, and after trying to do it two or three or four times with the Apple Watch I found myself saying “Okay. I'm going to now just simply put my Android Wear watch on the other wrist because that lets me take a note in Evernote with one tap and then never do anything else, and it's too hard to do on the Apple Watch for me to do it in such a casual way. So it's interesting. The other piece of news is that like I thought that I could really test it by... I'll just tether my iPhone to my Android phone and do it that way. Then I realized that no, that's not a fair test so my nano-SIM is now inside my iPhone 6, I am officially switching back to iOS for an entire month because I want to... I don't want this to have like second class citizen status.
Leo: Right, that's what I'm doing too. That's what you've got to do.
Andy: It will also be sort of a reality check on my switching to Android to see if okay, I have never stopped using iOS, I never even stopped using the iPhone but it certainly stopped being like my primary phone. And now okay, we'll go back to this and re-align it for everything and see how different that is.
Rene: There was one thing that was super interesting for us was we had a big network wide meeting last week and I was there and Serenity was there and a few other people, and because we have Android sites and other sites, there was a ton of smartwatches there. We both had the Apple Watch, there was the Urbane, there was the Moto, and there was I think a Samsung watch but there was just a wide variety and Serenity Caldwell went and put them all on her arm.
Leo: (laughing)
Rene: And the 38...
Leo: Been there, done that.
Rene: Not even the 42, but the 38mm Apple Watch was the only one that looked even, even approach her scale.
Leo: Yeah.
Rene: So like some of us have the luxury of picking and choosing but I think still not everyone is well served by all...
Leo: Look how big that Urbane... I think the Urbane is 52mm, or 58. It's very very big.
Andy: Well also to just... that is absolutely true, needs to be acknowledged. It also needs to be acknowledged that not a whole lot of people will say $350 to $400 to $600-$700 for a watch that I don't know if I need, or if I can actually use. Uh, there's something to be said for $200 and $250 as well.
Leo: Anybody have an Apple Watch charger in the house? Because you're right, it's now paused. It says installation paused, to install the update Apple Watch must be connected to its charger and charged at least 50%, neener neener neener.
Jason: No, they don't want you to break your watch Leo.
Leo: I guess.
Andy: Leo you hated that so much that you said charger and I thought you said Jar Jar.
Leo: Jar Jar. Jar Jar the Apple Watch, Jar Jar! Me-sa needs-a charge-a watch-a! No, there's nothing in there. Actually yeah, bring me, maybe I could do it with one of my Qi chargers.
Rene: No...
Leo: It's one way right?
Rene: It's... yeah, so there's two components in the Apple Watch charger. It needs the Qi and it needs the magnet and if you don't have both things it won't charge.
Leo: Oh. I should try it with... hm...
Jason: So close.
Leo: Yeah, so close. (laughs)
Rene: We tried hacking it with the Verizon...
Leo: Do you have...? Oh, don't go to your car sir, it's okay, that's not necessary.
Jason: We've got a reference...
Leo: But if you decide you want to update your watch, and you go to do your charger to do that. At that point I will borrow it, but please, don't. No. I would be rude. (laughs) And mean. I'll just have to wait until I get home like every other person in the world.
Jason: Your patience will be rewarded.
Leo: Battery, by the way on the watch, we were all worried. None, no problems. Zero, none at all, right?
Jason: Looks to me like Apple did some serious work in the last six months after they announced it to beat some sort of internal metric for battery life because I've never... I've heard from some women who do a lot of fitness stuff that the... the 38 has some...
Leo: 38 is not... yeah.
Jason: Has some issues because its battery is smaller.
Leo: Lisa used her 38 up yesterday by 6pm because she works out five hours a day.
Jason: And the fitness stuff takes more battery.
Leo: It does, yeah.
Jason: You can turn off the heart rate metering but if you leave that on at full it will use the battery. But for me, I haven't had a problem, I feel like they actually kind of overshot. But I have heard that with the smaller watch and with a lot of fitness stuff you can run into trouble.
Leo: I think we did yesterday actually, but I'm always at 50% when I go to bed.
Jason: Yeah.
Leo: You know, it's fine.
Jason: They've been doing a good job for me anyway.
Leo: That's because I'm pretty sedentary.
Andy: Yeah. It works.
Leo: And I have no heart beat.
Rene: I burnt it down twice by just covering it, literally using it constantly for two days to do coverage but since I've been using it like a quasi-normal person it's always between 30 and 40 every night.
Andy: Yeah. I'm pretty impressed, I'm getting about the same battery life out of it that I'm getting out of the Moto 360 which is about at least count on it a full day, and usually a day and then into the next morning as well, which is more impressive because when you consider that it really does seem as though the Apple Watch is doing a lot more and there is a lot more depth to what it's doing, I don't know whether that trends and... well it also states that it, needs to be stated that the Moto 360 has a really bad processor for the sort of device that it is. But they really did get that absolutely correct.
Leo: And it had terrible battery life when it first came out but a couple of updates later it was great.
Andy: That's another thing I wanted to mention, any time you read or hear anybody say anything negative about Apple Watch, realize that the thing has been out for about three weeks and when the Moto 360... again I'm a big fan of the 360 as you've heard me say all the time, when it was released Android Wear had been out for several months already and even then it wasn't until one or two updates that it... they really got it going the way that I think that it needed to be done. And even given all of that, when I first started wearing it in September I really didn't like it the first day. I started to like it after a weekend and it took me a couple of weeks. When I'd gotten its settings dialed in the way I wanted to, when I've got the applications that I really wanted to use installed on it, and more importantly when I had started to figure out features that I can use and features that I can disable and not let distract me, that's when I really became a fan of it. So that's why any time you hear somebody try to pronounce something about Apple Watch after only a few days with it, definitely take it within the context of this is a brand new thing and maybe if this person gave it another few weeks their opinion might be different.
Leo: Which... okay, I'm going to do a little poll here. Which watch face are you using Andy?
Andy: I don't like any of them. I'm just using... this is just...
Leo: (laughs) I hate them all.
Andy: I'm serious.
Rene: It's turned off Andy.
Andy: I don't hate them all, it's just like these are all like equally...
Leo: Press the crown, there you go. That's the one I'm using too.
Andy: They're all, to me, and I don't mean this necessarily as a complaint, they're all like just equally... okay, it is a watch face. Got it.
Leo: Yeah.
Andy: So for me it's just choose between analog and digital and that's about it.
Leo: I like utility in my complication... this is the new thing everybody talks about. I like utility and my complications are fitness, weather, and calendar. How about you Jason Snell?
Jason: Very nice. I am also using utility. But you're looking at a guy who's written, I've been writing a series of thousand word reviews of each individual watch face.
Leo: Oh lord.
Jason: So I like utility.
Leo: Mickey Mouse is just so...
Jason: I think that the watch is lacking...
Leo: That's the demo watch face.
Jason: I think it's lacking in digital faces, there's really only modular.
Rene: Yes.
Jason: And I think modular is not good enough on its own. It's got some advantages but I don't like it for other reasons. I don't like that the time is in the upper right corner, but utility is working for me. I only have one complication.
Leo: Do you use day/date on the utility?
Jason: Yeah I've got the day/date and I think I've got the fitness rings and that's it right now. I like it.
Leo: I like the sweep second hand as well. I have it red. What color is yours?
Jason: Yellow.
Leo: (laughs) Oh I'll have to try yellow.
Jason: It was red for a while, you should try yellow, it's interesting.
Leo: (laughs)
Jason: But it's... yeah, too many analog hands, not enough digital faces, you can make multiple presets basically of the same face with different complications.
Leo: You can save it, yeah.
Jason: So that's kind of nice, but yeah I agree with Andy. They're okay. And it feels like there needs to be more work here, either from Apple or from third parties if they open it up. But it's just... they're all fine, or at least, well... some of them are fine, some of them are weird. And the complications are nice but there's more that can be done there and including more digital faces, more ones that actually just show you the time as numbers.
Andy: I'm really looking forward to third party complications, that's going to be... that to me is going to open up... I do, it's... the... originally I would have thought that all the space in the corners is wasted space but once you have the ability to say “Look there is a certain thing a certain application does that is so important to me that even if all there is is there's a circle in the corner that is one of four colors telling me the situation about whether camera or whatever turned on and just the ability to do that, like just be alerted to something when I'm just checking the time would be such a huge thing.
Jason: Totally.
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: Rene which face are you using?
Rene: So right now you actually caught me at a weird stage because I'm trying all the different...
Leo: I like that one, I like that one.
Rene: I'm trying all the different ones over time.
Leo: Is that the jellyfish?
Rene: No, that's solar.
Leo: Oh well I like that one too. But I would never use it.
Andy: Eh.
Leo: It's pretty but it's like... I don't...
Andy: I'm done, all the fancy ones like that like including the... I demoed them and they're fine and then after eight minutes it's like okay, I think I've seen everything I would ever like to see about this.
Rene: So I have some rationale though. I'm not just doing this in a vacuum. I usually have modular on because it lets me have the activity, the battery, the calendar appointments and I had battery for a while before I really trusted it, now I've removed that.
Leo: Me too.
Rene: And I really like the complications. I like them so much I had to do this experiment this weekend where I took my Apple Watch off during the day for the first time since I got it and I left it off for a couple hours and I thought it would be the notifications that I'd miss and I'd have to go running back to my iPhone like it's 2014 or something. But then immediately I was glancing at my wrist and all I saw was wrist and I realized I had become so dependent on just quickly... like, quickly seeing what the temperature was, what the next calendar appointment was, what my activity level was... I was used to being able to just get to the stop watch, get to the timer, that not only did I really like that they were on my watch, but I really wanted them on my iPhone lock screen as well because then it would just turn on and I'd see them and there would be such a possibility there. So I basically have either utility or modular on when I'm working and then when I'm not working I purposefully put it on a very minimal watch face just so that I don't drive myself crazy staying up to date all the time.
Andy: Yeah, that's absolutely correct. This is going to be such a different device when developers... if and when developers get to really go nuts developing not just little apps for it but their own watch faces. One of the most useful watch faces I ever had on the 360 was during that month where it was just snowing every three days, we had that horrible horrible month in February. I switched to, my full time watch face was a watch face that has the time and a really detailed granulated daily weather map that was done by... I think it was done by weather underground, I could be wrong, but it wasn't that I would be checking the time all the time but that... excuse me, checking the weather all the time, but every now and then I glanced at the watch to see what time it is and see “Aw damn it, it's going to be snowing at 2pm. I better get to FedEx right now instead of later in the afternoon.” And so... Rene is absolutely right. Once you have the ability to say “This is what's important to me and my life right now.” Not only here's the face I want to look into each of the 40 or 50 times a day that I check the time, but also here is the information that I don't even want to have to do anything to get this information. This is how important it is. Boy it's going to be almost an entirely new device when that happens.
Rene: And to Jason's point, you can set up a couple so I have two versions of modular. One that has all the fitness stuff so I can just do timer, stopwatches, activity, and there's one that just has a lot of data stuff. Even if you're a business man, you could have stocks and you could have... time zones for your other offices, so there's a lot of variety and it's all running off something called nano time kit and Mark Gurman from 9to5 Mac was reporting that they were already considering the 3rd party complications because that framework, like most of Apple's frameworks can be extended. So it's going to be really interesting to see. He mentioned for example, you'd see a count of how many tweets you have. And I really like that from a security standpoint. I'm not a huge fan of lock screen notifications or widgets because they leak a lot of information. No one needs a pass code to see my messages, even to see who sent me messages or to pull down my widgets. But this, but just the amount of tweets, and you have to be either logged in or maintain skin contact to get the actual information, that's a huge privacy one as well for me.
Leo: I tried yellow, I just can't live with it. I'm back to red.
Jason: Alright, alright. You be your own special flower, that's fine.
Leo: (laughs) Okay. Everybody...
Andy: Don't hide your light under a bush Leo.
Leo: I know, I know. But you saw how... if it was doing it on the video, but you saw it, you save it and I wondered at first when I saw that plus sign at the end of the face I thought “Oh I can add other faces,” no. All you can do is save existing configurations as a separate face.
Rene: And if you delete one by accident you can get it back.
Leo: Oh you can?
Rene: Several people deleted some watch faces by accident.
Leo: Oh, interesting.
Jason: I deleted them on purpose because I didn't like them.
Leo: What happens when you...?
Jason: They just come back.
Leo: They just come back?
Rene: If you swipe up, Leo you get a delete.
Jason: You tap the plus and you can pick what face you want.
Leo: Oh, I get it.
Jason: So it comes pre-populated with all the faces but you can delete them and add them back.
Leo: Oh I get it. So if I want to delete the flower face, how do I delete it?
Jason: You slide it up I think?
Rene: Yeah hold it down for a second and then when it goes into edit mode slide it up.
Leo: Alright. Slide it up. Oh, little red trash can. Does it do poof? No.
Jason: No it just goes away.
Leo: This is nice.
Rene: You can use it to re-order...
Andy: No fun Apple.
Leo: Oh you can re-order them that way huh?
Rene: If you use watch faces a lot you can delete them and then add them back in the order you want to have them so you can go quickly between two that you really like.
Leo: I'll keep Mickey, and I'll keep utility. Maybe I'll keep modular in deference to Rene Ritchie.
Jason: You know, one of the funny things about the...
Leo: I will not keep this one. This is dopey.
Andy: (laughing)
Jason: It's good if you have vision problems.
Leo: It's for... yeah, people with vision problems obviously.
Jason: So one of the weird interim places that Apple is right now is they've gotten rid of the puff of smoke for various things including dragging things out of the dock, but on the Mac the sound effect is still there. So it doesn't poof any more but it makes the poof sound. What?
Leo: What?
Jason: Huh?
Leo: So now I have two modulars because I saved one. And so I can go...
Jason: Yeah.
Leo: And that's kind of handy.
Jason: They can be totally different.
Rene: (indistinguishable) between Mickey and modular.
Leo: Mickey modular?
Rene: Modular then Mickey then modular.
Leo: Right. But I could re-order them if I wish.
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: Yeah. Alright.
Andy: It's a big deal, I think personalization on this watch is going to be more important than on any other product Apple has ever done because you can't get more intimate... a device that you hold and you surround with your hands is pretty intimate, but a device that you wear on your body that you always have constant skin contact with... nothing is more personal. And I think there's nothing... and also tax into the tradition...
Leo: Then my girlfriend, yes.
Andy: It's like nothing is going to be... people are going to want to really appreciate the ability to make this really emphatically my watch that not only aesthetically but also it's really suited for this one thing that I'm doing right now today. I mean I would love to just sit with a couple of taps switch it from trying to get to the... trying to get onto my flight mode from my house, to I am now home... I don't have to leave for another two weeks mode.
Leo: You're right to, by the way Andy, at least try it for a month because I find that a lot of these customizations don't start occurring to you until you've used it for a while and then you maybe change how you use glances and things like that.
Andy: Exactly and there's one thing that I really wish Apple changes, is the ability to... all the different ways you can respond to a notification, there should be one extra button that says “Never accept notifications from this app ever again.” Because right now you can... if there's... Flickr was one of the first apps that like every time someone follows my stream on Flickr I would get a notification on the watch.
Leo: Yeah, no thank you.
Andy: It's like that's very easy to say “Yeah, no. Never put that on my watch ever again.” And it kind of surprised me that I had to actually go to the phone and dig into settings in order to make that happen when really the point of annoyance is the best time and place to deal with that.
Leo: Would... did you notice with the 1.01 Rene, any other... any like speed? Was it speedier? Did you notice how is Siri better? Have you noticed anything yet?
Rene: Yeah it's the very... what's the right word, amorphous performance enhancements. So everything is supposed to be a little bit cleaner. It's going to take me a couple of days though because when you joggle the bits it's hard to tell exactly what's changed until you've been using it like the way you used the original version.
Leo: Right, right. Alright, let's take a break, enough watch oh one more thing I'll just mention... go ahead.
Jason: Oh, I wanted to say, I said there were no digital faces. There are five digital faces, I just have a hard time putting the ones that have pictures or animations or things in the same category as modular and the extra large because those are... those are about the time and the others I feel like the time is sort of secondary, I would like to see more things with complication options and the digital time, and we don't have a lot of those. We really only have the one.
Leo: I don't really like digital time. Isn't that strange that with a watch I actually want a pie face?
Jason: A lot of people talk about that. That oh it's silly to have analog hands on a digital watch.
Leo: No.
Jason: Although one of the first watches I ever had was an LCD that did analog hands.
Leo: Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Jason: And I thought it was cool, and I kind of like being able to look at my wrist and say “Oh it's about a quarter to one.” Instead of saying it is 12:43 exactly. Because who cares?
Leo: That's what the generation, you kids don't appreciate, because we had to learn... we had... in kindergarten and first grade they had like wooden clocks with movable hands so you can learn the big hand little hand, all of that stuff. It was a lot of work to learn it. But what it does give you is some sort of relative sense of passing time as opposed to with a digital it's always exactly this minute. When you're looking at a pie face you kind of know... oh it's almost, we're moving up onto this hour or... I don't know, I do think that there's something to be said for that. The other thing I was going to mention yesterday on iOS today we talked about calibrating the watch, so last night Lisa and I took a walk and recorded it in the workout app. So we could get the GPS and steps, was it you Rene that told me to do this? Somebody told me to do this. Now we'll see if it's more accurate. Although I guess there are some accuracy issues because that's one of the things this update addresses.
Jason: Right. But that is a smart idea, to use your... if you know the steps you take, and you know the distance you traveled, you can make some really smart guesses about what your stride length is. And if you don't have the GPS, some other time like you leave the phone at home but bring the watch...
Leo: It will do a better job.
Jason: It has an idea of how long you travel.
Leo: Yeah we took like a two mile walk, and it knows... except for I rode the Segway for a little bit which I think is going to very much confuse it as a stride. My god you must be wearing seven league boots! But most of it you could see how many steps... it knows how many steps you take, and then it know how far you went and it can...
Jason: It can figure it out.
Leo: I think to a great degree, much more so than a Jawbone or any other device can tell exactly what your stride is.
Rene: They recommend two to three times to take your iPhone two to three times when you start working out.
Andy: I've got to say one thing though. I do like the fitness stuff, I also... as a side thing, I also like the fact that when I set up the Microsoft band it set a step goal that was ambitious and a calorie goal that was ambitious, when I set up the watch and I said... okay, how old are you? There you go. How much do you weigh? Okay, how about if we try to do 400 steps today.
Leo: Me too! Me too!
Andy: I'm like... yay!
Leo: Yay! Thank you watch, I love you watch!
Andy: Yeah it's like...
Leo: You understand me.
Andy: You understand that it's going to take some time to change my lifestyle. But the thing that I really need to disable is the stand up thing, because it's like... I am writing, writing, writing. I get a tap saying “It's time to stand up!” No it isn't, it's time for me to finish this sentence, watch. Stop annoying me with this sort of stuff.
Leo: Hey I just discovered something kind of cool. See, it's like... it does take a while. All devices take a while to learn. That's why I like to review phones for many weeks, but boy there's a lot of stuff hidden here. So I have the stopwatch, I just added the stopwatch complication, when you force touch the stopwatch you can change from analog to digital to graph to hybrid. You can actually change what the stopwatch looks like.
Andy: Hm.
Leo: Did you know that Jason Snell?
Jason: I did not know that.
Leo: I got you!
Jason: That's a good tip, good tip. I tipped you yesterday, you tip me today. We're sharing.
Leo: I think the good tip is force touch everything.
Rene: Yes.
Jason: All the things!
Rene: Leo, this is why my Apple Watch review is 20,000 words.
Leo: Yeah, there's... really. Wow there's a lot to say, alright. Hey, Jeff Needles? Do you have a watch charger here?
Jason: Oh you mean force touch in the stopwatch app.
Leo: Once you're into the stopwatch app.
Jason: Yeah, I did know that.
Leo: Oh crap.
Jason: Sorry. Ha ha!
Leo: No, not in the app. I didn't have to do it from the app, I did it from the watch face. So when I... you know, because I have a stopwatch on my watch face, then you force touch that...
Jason: Well yeah, but you're in the app at that point.
Leo: Oh crap.
Jason: By touching the complication, you moved to the app.
Leo: Oh shut up.
Rene: It's like a fast app launch.
Jason: I tipped you again Leo.
Leo: Oh shut up. Can you... could you, can you say Hey Schlomo, launch stopwatch?
Rene: Yeah.
Jason: Or open stopwatch.
Leo: Can you say start stopwatch? Would it like start it?
Jason: I don't think so.
Leo: No, Schlomo's not that smart. And you know why we use Schlomo.
Jason: I prefer ahoy timepiece.
Leo: Ahoy timepiece. Hey hey timepiece! Let's take a... let's take a little tiny break. Yeah, you can tell the difference between a force touch and a long press because it vibrates. It gives you a little hint. Like “Ah, stop touching me!”
Andy: The last quick comment that I really, I'm still trying to suss out what a force touch means. What should I expect to happen when I force touch something.
Leo: You can't.
Andy: I don't think I've figured that out yet. But again, I am only four days old with this so I don't expect to have figured things out yet.
Rene: Leo it does start a stopwatch if you ask it, I just tried it.
Leo: Oh, oh! Okay, but I can't try it on the air because then everybody's watches will start timing.
Rene: Well it's for science.
Leo: It's for science? Okay let me do it. Okay. Hey Siri. Hey Siri.
Rene: That's a second problem.
Leo: That's another problem, maybe they've fixed that.
Andy: Yeah.
Leo: So you double tap right? No no.
Rene: Oh, hold it down.
Andy: I really wish... I really wish Siri were easy to open.
Leo: Start stopwatch. Forget it. It says “I'm not sure what you said, Leo.” Start stopwatch.
Andy: Well it's noisy here in that studio with nobody talking.
Leo: Okay, start stopwatch? No it didn't, it just launches it.
Jason: It just opens the stopwatch.
Leo: Look at that. I love that one. Look at these... with the three dials, I feel like a pilot. Look at that. Ooh, things are going fast. It looks like my utility meter when all the...
Andy: (laughing)
Leo: All the chips are on. Zzz. Our show today brought to you by SmartThings, actually this would be a really good use for SmartThings. If your power bill is going through the roof, SmartThings will help you keep it under control. SmartThings is the ultimate way to automate your home, I know we've all kind of dabbled in home automation. It used to be very expensive to get started and of course most companies were using proprietary systems, so you had different user experiences, different apps, SmartThings changes all that. The SmartThings hub, controls so many things, in fact if you go to SmartThings.com/twit you can look at the products and you'll see all the different things you can control with the SmartThings hub. Lights, locks, security, and all through a single app, and that's the beauty of it. You don't have fifteen apps for fifteen different devices. You've got one iOS, Android or Windows Phone app. And because it's an open platform, SmartThings works just as well with its own sensors as it does with dropcam and Schlage Locks and Honeywell Thermostats and your Phillips Hue lights, Rene and I are Hue lights fans. SmartThings won the 2015 Editor's Choice Award at CES this year. You could turn your lights on and off from your phone. Well power, let's save power. They have a SmartThings plug. So you can say “Hey let's power down for a bit and save some money.” Security? You bet. Instant alerts if there's unexpected entry or movement. Set a camera to take a series of photos when unwanted motion or entry is detected. Water detection too. And there's no required monthly fee, the kit... you know, maybe one of the devices does but not for SmartThings. Kits start at just $189, SmartThings is an... what is that? I've not seen that one. The Smarter Home Security Kit.
Jason Howell: Yeah, it doesn't say.
Leo: Is that like a light?
Jason Howell: It looks like it's probably an alarm of some sort.
Leo: Yeah that's the alarm with the light blinking...
Jason Howell: That's probably the alarm.
Leo: I gotta put that on the refrigerator. In case somebody sneaks into the refrigerator at night. SmartThings.com/twit, we've got a chance to save 10% off any home security or solution kit, and you get free shipping in the US. SmartThings.com/twit. Don't forge the offer code, TWIT. Save save save at SmartThings. We're talking Macintosh, and actually there is Macintosh news! It's so rare, I should really lead with that. Apple didn't make a big deal, a big splash, did they? Did they even put out a press release?
Jason: They did put a press release out.
Rene: Yes.
Andy: Mhm.
Leo: Alright. New iMac. The 5k iMac has been updated and there are now...
Jason: Yeah, it's not really updated. They sort of did a de-specced version for $300 less.
Leo: Down-dated.
Jason: So now it starts at $1999 instead of $2299.
Leo: Yeah.
Rene: It's 2k for 5k Jason.
Jason: Yeah. So it's... it's good, I mean starting at $1999 is good, it will get people more interested in the product, and then they will probably, I would recommend that most people who are thinking about getting the 5k iMac not get the low end because it's the non-fusion drive spinning disc model that's $1999 and...
Leo: Right.
Jason: I have a hard time recommending to anybody that they... if you really need to spend $200 or $300 less then I guess you need to do it, but even just having the fusion drive to speed things up, the storage speed of a spinning disc is just a major speed concern.
Leo: So for $300 you still get an i5, for $300 less.
Jason: It's a little slower.
Leo: Little bit. 3.3GHz versus 3.5. With turbo boost to 3.7 versus 3.9. You still get 8 gigs of RAM. The biggest difference is hard drive versus fusion drive, not more capacity, it's only a Terabyte fusion drive. It's not one of those monster ones. And you get...
Rene: They reduced the price of the other one too which is nice.
Leo: And you get the R9M290 Radeon versus the R9M290X. Is that a big difference?
Jason: We don't...
Leo: What's the X?
Jason: I did a search, and the 290X comes up and the 290 doesn't, so I'm really wondering what happens when you lose the X.
Leo: Uh. Uh...
Rene: You lose the X Jason.
Leo: $300 seems like a fairly hefty difference for... the difference really between a hard drive and a fusion drive.
Rene: It was more, it was $500 until they dropped the price of the higher end one.
Leo: Okay, so there's... it does seem like a hefty difference. So the $2299 is down from $2499. Or $2599. 24, that's what we bought. The fusion drive, is your experience, guys, the fusion drive makes a big difference? It's better than an old slow spinning drive right?
Rene: I went all SSD so I can't...
Leo: Yeah. Me too.
Jason: Yeah.
Andy: Yeah. It would be a great solution if SSD prices had not fallen quite so low. It makes more sense for me at least to have at least a 256 or a 512 gig SSD as a boot drive and then just have a reasonably spiffy external drive for like iTunes storage and all that other sort of stuff.
Leo: So you can upgrade all of that obviously. You can go up to 32 gigs of RAM and by the way you should choose the RAM now right? Because there's no slots. There are slots.
Jason: You can self install now, that's the only thing you can self install in the new iMac is RAM.
Leo: Alright.
Jason: I would go SSD, but if you really just need more storage, it is more expensive to do that. Fusion drive is not a bad compromise if you're really price sensitive, but I would spend $200 to go to fusion drive rather than just have the old spinning disc because it will at least beat some of the pain.
Leo: Yeah, so you can go to a terabyte fusion drive for $200 or a 256 gig SSD for $200. Are these PCI-E? These... probably they are, right?
Jason: Think so.
Leo: It's basically just like a laptop inside a monitor.
Rene: Mhm.
Jason: Yup.
Leo: So your advice... doesn't seem like it's worth the extra $300, but then... I bought the top of the line of course when I bought it.
Jason: Yeah me too.
Rene: It's more future proof.
Leo: I bought it for Lisa because I don't use it, I still have that Mac Pro which I deeply regret. I could have had... I could have had a 5k. But, well I do have three monitors so that's nice. I can't do that with the iMac.
Rene: It's crazy Leo that it really is 2k for a 5k and you get the Mac for free, I mean compared to 5k pricing across the board.
Leo: Yeah because I got an expensive 4k monitor that I use as a monitor. So yeah. Hm. So that's one change, and then what else? They...
Jason: 15 inch Macbook Pro is the big one.
Leo: They've updated the Macbook Pro 15 to include force touch. Force touch. What else is new?
Rene: Faster solid state storage and a better discrete graphics option at the top of the chain.
Leo: You got the Radeon R9M370X.
Rene: Yeah. The big disappointment for me...
Leo: And more battery life they said too. Nine hours now.
Rene: But the biggest disappointment with both of these is that Intel still hasn't managed to ship Broadwell in any meaningful way so both of these are still Haswell computers.
Leo: Ohh.
Rene: Because Broadwell simply did not get their quad core chips out the door, and the Macbook was delayed by Intel and now these computers, I guess Apple decided it wasn't worth delaying them any more so they put them out with Haswell and Broadwell is not a huge difference, but it is a die shrink, Sky Lake is going to be the architecture change, but still there is benefits to having Broadwell and it's... I understand 14 nanometers is really really hard, but it just feels like Broadwell is taking forever.
Leo: It is such a small processor. 14 nanometers.
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: So if you want a 15 obviously this... they still offer the old ones. Don't they? No, they don't. This is it. So if you want a 15 this is what you'll be getting
Rene: And the 13 inches are Broadwell, if that's really important to you.
Leo: I did get the 13, so I have a Broadwell in the new 13.
Rene: Mhm. Which is a new Iris graphics as well so it depends how much all that stuff is important to you.
Jason: And another notable thing here is 4k monitor support, and this is something, I wrote about this today and I got a whole bunch of people... it is a confusing subject, so... what Macbook Pros from 2013, late 2013 on can support 4k displays at 60 frames per second, 60Hz.
Leo: Which is what you want, you don't want 30.
Jason: Right, you don't want 30.
Leo: You really don't like 30.
Jason: And the new Macbook will do that, but only at 30Hz. This display will do not just the 4k which previous Macbook Pros could do, but it will do essentially it's like a 4 and a half K. It's not a full 5k display, but it can drive a larger monitor, it can drive one of these larger kind of ultra-wide 4k monitors.
Leo: Do you have to get the top of the line 15?
Jason: You need the discrete graphics to do it.
Leo: So the Radeon... oh that's pretty nice. So if you're... if you're a Pro user, you want the 15 for mobility but at home you can drive a fairly decent monitor...
Jason: You can drive a... yeah. An even bigger monitor than the previous generation could, basically.
Andy: It's good for future stuff.
Leo: Yeah.
Jason: Yeah.
Andy: I mean it sucks when you have to... there's something you need a year and a half after you buy something and you realize that “I'm going to have to buy a brand new computer because this one thing I need but it can't be supported by this one thing I have.”
Leo: Yeah.
Jason: So if Apple did come out with a 4k Thunderbolt display or something like that, theoretically, I'm not sure whether they will or not, but they would have a pretty decent well of Macbook Pros that could drive it.
Leo: Why haven't they come out with a 4k display?
Rene: We're still waiting for, I mean like Broadwell has been delayed.
Leo: So weird.
Rene: It's all chipset support, Broadwell was delayed, Sky Lake is what you need for 5k which is where Apple pegged themselves instead of 4k and that's going to require Sky Lake and I believe Thunderbolt 3 which I believe is being shown off at... Comex? What's the show in Taiwan tomorrow?
Leo: Computex.
Rene: Computex, yeah it's going to be shown off tomorrow.
Leo: Ah.
Rene: And Sky Lake because it's not die shrink, it's architecture, it should come out fairly quickly after Broadwell finally gets the process sorted out unless Intel decides to delay it so they can make more money off of Broadwell which seems to be an unknown right now.
Leo: I'm sure Ryan Shrout and Patrick Norton will be covering that in detail on This Week in Computer Hardware. Ryan usually goes to Computex so... if you're into chips and what's going on with Broadwell and all of that...
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: What is it, Sky Lake?
Rene: Sky Lake is after Broadwell, yeah.
Leo: This is the show to watch. We've moved it by the way. To Thursdays at 12:30 Pacific, 3:30 Eastern, so don't forget.
Rene: Good timing this week.
Leo: Yeah. Yeah, and I don't know, but usually Ryan goes to Computex, he's a big Computex fan. That's really, if you're a chip-head, that is the show to go to. PCs and so forth. Speaking of monitors, I guess... the app... okay, so there was going to be an Apple television set according to the Wall Street Journal.
Rene: Which we've known about for five years.
Leo: But Apple shelved it over a year ago, but I... you know, Carl Icahn, you know, says you should do it. So I think they should do it. Who the hell is Carl Icahn, and why do we care?
Rene: Apple is such a simple company, they enter into products... like they investigate anything. If a blogger or investor has thought of something Apple should explore, chances are Apple has been exploring it for a while now.
Leo: Icahn is the activist investor who got Apple to do a buy-back, and to issue a... I think it was, dividends are kind of because of Icahn as well. But I don't think that he's going to really convince them to change their product line.
Rene: They enter product categories where they believe they can make a significant difference by offering what they call great products at great margins.
Leo: Yeah.
Rene: That's the trifecta for them, if they can... if they know what the problem is, they figure they can solve it in an interesting way, they're going to make a great product and male a lot of money doing it, they'll do that and television has to qualify for those things in order to be a product they launch.
Leo: This paragraph... Daisuke Wakabayashi who is very good at the Wall Street Journal on Apple coverage writes this paragraph, which echoes what we've said all along. “Apple considered an Apple branded television set in addition to an ultra-high definition display, they considered adding sensor equipped cameras so viewers could make video calls through the set. Ultimately though, Apple executives didn't consider any of those features compelling enough to enter the highly competitive television market. Apple typically likes to enter a new product area with innovative technology and easier to use software.” And that's exactly what we've been saying all along. Unless they can really lick it...
Andy: Yeah. I just could never figure out why Apple would... what Apple could do that would make a standalone TV set a smart thing, given that they... they can already make a really nicely made little tiny box that is more within their wheelhouse that is so fewer variables when they can control almost every aspect of the manufacturing where they wouldn't have to depend on getting panels from elsewhere. And people don't even care really about TV sets, they care about the interface to TV sets, so I just could never understand... I could never figure out what Apple would do by making an entire TV that would be better than simply doing a much better Apple TV.
Leo: This all kinds of makes sense now because Jobs passed away almost three years ago, right? 2012? 2013? And so if this Wall Street Journal report is accurate, they still... Apple was still actively investigating the idea of a television set. And it might be that Steve at the time was, because he said we don't... we don't understand that TV interface sucks and we think we've licked it, and that was the line that, in Walter Isaacson's biography that got everybody thinking Apple was working on a TV.
Jason: Yeah, although I mean there are also a lot of rumors that this new Apple TV that we might finally actually see at WWDC this year has been sitting for a couple of years.
Rene: Yup.
Leo: October 5th, 2011. Almost four years ago now. Wow has it been a long time.
Jason: So the Apple TV stuff has been out there and they've been waiting maybe what they cracked was a bunch of partnership deals and then Hollywood said “Nope.”
Leo: Nope, not going to do it.
Rene: That's the problem with it being in Eddie Cue's orb again, because it's constrained by content and not constrained by hardware which the iPhone, iPad and other devices are.
Leo: Yeah. Well but they dealt with that with the smartphone right? That was one of the issues about releasing a smartphone is you have to get the carriers.
Jason: Yeah but they only needed to get one carrier.
Leo: One, right.
Jason: And it's very difficult to launch something and say “We have ABC and ESPN but nothing else because we could only make a deal with Disney because we know those guys.” They need to have a broader set of options if they're going to launch. And I think they've decided, reading the tea leaves it seems they've decided they're going to launch the platform and they're going to figure out the content as they go because you know, it is silly that this stuff has theoretically been sitting in the lab for a couple of years.
Leo: Icahn said...
Andy: It's worked out really well for Sling so far, in that they had a very very small collection of channels when they started their service, but every couple months they seem to add one or two more and with every one or two more you add, you're getting one step closer to hitting that one channel that somebody needs. For me, if Sling or Apple got access to Turner Classic Movies, that means that I spend an entire Saturday afternoon in quiet contemplation with a beverage in my hand, you know, wondering why should... let me walk through the decision about why I'm still subscribing to cable if I can get all the TV shows I want via Hulu and the one cable channel that I don't think I can live without is also available to me as subscription.
Rene: The biggest trouble with a television is you make a television set to control input zero, because you want to be the first interface on that device. But if you can't offer compelling content then people are going to have to go to the cable box on two or the Xbox on three or the Roku box on four anyway, so any advantage you had about being input zero is just gone and then without that it becomes a commodity play and you're competing against Vizio with no clear advantage. So when you look at it like the... the Apple TV I think has been around as long as the Apple Watch and they made a conscious decision to go ahead with the Apple Watch because that hit all the criteria they wanted for a new product category and they said year after year this is interesting, it's in the labs but we're not going to release it because it doesn't meat those criteria. And now maybe they're going to go ahead with Titan and not... and still not the TV, but it's because again, the criteria for a television just... they aren't met, and Apple really, that... a thousand no's for every yes is really true, they don't believe like they have to own everything or be in every space.
Leo: It's hysterical that Carl Icahn writes an open letter to Tim Cook yesterday in which he says “I believe you will be entering two new markets. TV next year and electric car in 2020.”
Rene: He's so impatient. Does it feel like they waited longer after the iPhone to beg for something else and now it's like immediately.
Leo: It's like he's informing Tim Cook of what Apple's going to do. I think Tim knows, I hate to tell you Carl.
Rene: Did you see his response, Leo?
Leo: What did Tim Cook say?
Rene: It wasn't Tim Cook but apparently something got to Icahn and Icahn said “Well I'll trust Tim Cook to know what's better for his business.”
Leo: He says in the letter “Well I'll be the first to admit, you are knowledgeable in these areas.” (laughing)
Andy: (laughing) Very manfully conceded.
Leo: Thank you, very strange. You feel like there's something else going on, but I don't know what it is. So the Apple TV we think, will they announce next month at WWDC the new Apple TV?
Rene: Yeah.
Jason: Yeah.
Leo: And they'll announce a store, an app store?
Jason: Well. Yeah, maybe. This is an interesting discussion I saw some people having today, which is... it's easy to jump to conclusions and say “Oh, well there will be games on the Apple TV and it will be a console.
I would not be surprised if the app support that they're talking about unveiling at WWDC is like for creating rich content experiences for your TV networks to develop for your Apple TV. I think it's a lot further on to say that we're going to be just letting you make games and stuff, that might happen but.
Rene: I think games are really likely. I think we'll probably have a lot of happy games come WWDC.
Andy: I think games are likely, but I also think that Jason is spot on, that one of the advantages that, for instance, the ROKU box has, that no deal had to be put into place for the FX network to create a channel for the ROKU box. All they had to do was simply write this little very simple streaming app to make it work.
Leo: Or even, frankly, the iPhone.
Andy: Yeah, exactly. And so long as Apple still has like app store level control over saying, yeah you've submitted an app for your brand new porn channel, we're not going to let you have that on our device, banned, or excuse me, rejected. So long as they have that ability, and so long as they can still say “Look we can give you”, as long as they can still take 30% of subscription fees, that's a lot of upside for Apple.
Rene: Right now there's an STK that Apple has to hand it off to a content provider that they have an agreement with and then they make these very thin web based, not web based, but the UIs all web based.
Andy: Yeah, it's surprising how simple these, I'm sorry, I'm very familiar on ROKU, I'm not at all familiar on what it would be like on Apple TV but, I was shocked at how quick it was. You could even like essentially download a container, spend about an hour changing things around, an hour testing it, and you could submit. As is evidence by the fact if you look for unlisted channels on ROKU so long as you know the URL to something and so long as you type in an authorization code when you use the website of this other channel it will let you install channels that have not been certified by ROKU. It's not available in the official directory and you see some of the most bizarre stuff. It's like “I'm Dave and I have a collection of training videos on industrial food preparation from the 1950's, so here's Dave's food industrial preparation channel on ROKU”, because it's that simple to build these things.
Leo: Yeah.
Rene: It's not that different on the Apple TV, but the new one, the one that Mark Gurman was talking about, which I think the TV kit. If you imagine a modern Apple TV, that has a modern A-series processor and things like metal on it-
Leo: That's the problem, right? It's the processor!
Rene: -then you have.. Well yeah, so the processor right now is a single core A-5 from 2012 which is worse than, it's half an iPad 2, but when they bring this to market with a current generation Apple A series processor and metal. Andy and I talked previously about how over powered the iPad Air 2 is when you imagine that power in a console box, and I don't know how far Apple will push it because it changes the price just how much, you know, how far they push the hardware in there. But that can run some pretty impressive games, and when you start coding those games, it starts to make the living room much more interesting for Apple.
Leo: Yeah. We're going to take a break and we'll come back with the Steve Jobs movie, and the panels thoughts.
Jason: Are we going to act it out?
Leo: Yeah.
Rene: It's not Ashton Kutcher, don't worry.
Andy: “What would compel a father to give up his only child?!” Nailed it!
Leo: Nailed it!
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Leo: Alright, it's really not a trailer, it's a teaser not a trailer, because you can't really tell from this what the hell's going on.
Rene: Yep. And it is teasing us.
Leo: So, by the way we should do a little set up, Aaron Sorkin is writing it, Danny Boyle is directing it. We already know that the premise of this according to Sorkin is, three of Steve's great product launches. Now I don't know if, I presume they're going to flash back from those. Sorkin loves the flash back.
Jason: I assume that but..
Leo: But who knows? In fact the teaser just shows Jobs on stage. This they shot at the Flint Center, I remember. And there's little, you hear a little dialog. You're going to hear Seth Rogen as Wozniak in here. Let me play it for you. (Trailer playing) That's bizarre, by the way. That's a very Sorkin kind of thing to say. “The two most significant events of the twentieth century, the allies win the war and this.” What do they mean by “this”?
Rene: It doesn't even say what “this” is.
Leo: The iPod release?
Andy: iPod Hi-Fi.
Leo: Yeah, iPod. I mean really, seriously.
Jason: I bet it was the Beatles coming to iTunes.
Leo: Allies win the war-
Jason: And the Beatles coming to iTunes, that's totally what it is.
Leo: Oh my... (Trailer playing)
Rene: It's gotta be.
Leo: The, never mind, never mind.
Andy: If that's one of the launches, the Beatles coming to iTunes is one of the launches, that's gonna be totally worth it just to see like Steve Jobs act like a hand flapping fan boy. “Oh my ..., oh my ..., oh my ..., it's Paul McCartney, you're one of the Beatles! Oh my..., oh my...!
Leo: I figure it's-
Andy: Selfie?! I know you don't know what a selfie is, we're developing this thing that can take this thing called a selfie, and I want to take one with you right now.
Leo: -It's gotta have the iPhone. Because that's the-
Rene: Nope, no iPhone, it stops at the iMac I believe. I think it's the iPod, it's NeXT maybe, it's two of the early ones. I think the last one is the iMac. So iPod, iMac, and another...
Jason: Or no the, or..
Leo: No, because he says Twentieth Century. Twentieth Century it would have to be NeXT, or the Apple II, I mean.
Jason: No, the Mac.
Leo: The Mac it could be, the iMac.
Rene: Yeah.
Jason: The original..
Leo: Or the original Mac, 1984.
Jason: Yeah.
Leo: Alright. That's depressing! Who cares? Okay, if I were going to pick three, going backwards. Ipad, iPhone, iPod.
Rene: All of the movies stopped before the iPhone, and it's appalling.
Jason: It's ridiculous. It should be the Mac, the iPod and the iPhone.
Leo: Well maybe the Mac, iPhone and iPad, how about that?
Andy: I would say that-
Leo: I'll raise your iPhone, go ahead-
Andy: I would say that definitely has to be, if it's my choices and I want to, as a viewer and someone who's been reading about the history of Steve Jobs and hearing about him from other people, if there are three product launches then I'd want to see fact based, historical story telling that would explain to me and to other people who Steve Jobs was and what he stood for. NeXT Cube definitely, not an argument. We would have to have, I want to say iPhone, but I don't think you could do the iPhone and the iPad, and I'd want to see the iPad because that was his last major launch, and for the first one I think it would have to be the first Mac. It might be..
Leo: Yeah. The first Mac at Flint Center, you're right.
Rene: The official list is the Macintosh, the NeXT and then the iMac. So it's '84, '88 and '98.
Andy: Because we're talking about three very different versions of Steve Jobs. We're talking about the young guy who hasn't been very, very worldly in terms of running a technology business. We've got the guy who said “Guess what, you've been chafing at the bit being a Vice President, guess what, you get to be CEO. Whatever you say happens, now let’s see what happens.” And I wouldn't have chosen the iMac because, iMac is good because now you're seeing the person, the Steve , I'm fascinated by this version of Steve Jobs that seems as though he's been educated by the experience of running NeXT, but I would like to see iOS because I think that's more of an expression of “I'm now captaining a successful company. I've got all the horses running exactly the way I want. Here's what the NeXT Cube would be like if I knew then what I know now.”
Leo: Is it possible this is a trilogy? If it were a trilogy it would make sense. There are probably really three distinct Steve Jobs. There's the young, brash kind of wild man of the early years. There's the Steve Jobs in the desert, the next Steve Jobs. Then there's this-
Andy: There's the hurt Steve Jobs.
Leo: The hurt Steve Jobs.
Andy: I define that as the hurt Steve Jobs.
Leo: Yeah, and then there's Steve Jobs that comes back to Apple, was a very, very different version from those two. So maybe it's a trilogy!
Jason: Unfortunately most of these movies show the first one or the first and second one and then they sort of say, “And then he came back, and you know what happens next”!
Rene: They'll put it on the screen, “Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007”.
Jason: I feel you could push it to the launch of the iPhone, and certainly to the iPod and say, this is the thing. And I think the Ashton Kutcher movie starts with the launch of the iPod, and then flashes back. And I do feel like they're just missing a little bit more, but it may just be that nobody really knows those stories of how that stuff has been created enough to dramatize them. But I think going to the launch of the iMac is stopping a little bit short.
Andy: Yeah.
Leo: I think really, Steve Jobs legacy starts with his return to Apple. Although you could make the case that releasing the Apple II jump started the personal computer revolution.
Jason: Sure!
Leo: I'm surprised you like the NeXT, Andy. You think that's a must, huh?
Andy: I think so because, if you're looking at a story with an arc in which we are not going to be telling the entire story with one launch, we're gonna choose three. I think that NeXT is important because theres, I do believe that the experience of running NeXT was incredibly influential because it was his first real chance to say, “If all of the decisions come through me, if nothing happens but I will it to happen, here's what happens”. And there were, I still keep in my library the product brochure for the original NeXT Cube, and it's still a fascinating object because it describes what every computer would have built in, in about three or four years, after the launch of this NeXT Cube. But nonetheless it's been well documented that he made a lot of, what to an outsider would think are very, very silly decisions that had nothing to do with launching a successful product and had more to do with things like design, woo woo, and here's how I want to express this thought as opposed to creating something that my customer's gonna really, really like and then when you fast forward to comparing even the iMac to this, the iMac was as freaky in it's way as the NeXT Cube, however it was a practical computer that was not only going to make that emotional connection, that emotional appeal to people, but once they bought the thing they were going to find themselves owning a very, very cool, very, very capable, very very useful piece of hardware. They'll have to buy a external floppy drive to make it work but, who cares, it's such a beautiful thing. I just think they're three different expressions of what, if this is a story about Steve Jobs and not about Apple, these are two very different things, I think that this is the best expression of, here's who he was, here's the Steve Jobs that was capable of doing the launch of the first Mac. Here's the Steve Jobs that created or had a hand in the NeXT Cube, and here's the Steve Jobs later. Three very, very different people.
Rene: It's a good arc, if nothing else. A very clear linear narrative and a good journey to show like the heights of the Mac, and then arguably the lows of NeXT, and then the heights again when he started to take off.
Leo: Alright, let's watch this silly thing.
Andy: Prometheus was better than you thought it was, Leo, okay?!
Leo: Alright, let me rewind one more time. I've got to hear this part. I don't understand this first sentence at all. At 9:41. (Trailer playing) That's, by the way, Seth Rogen as Woz. “You can't write code, you're not an engineer”, I don't think, I doubt very much was ever said anything like that. “What do you do.” He knows exactly what Steve did, and was grateful! (Trailer playing) By the way, I know that's a person, but it's a person not commonly talked about. This is Kate Winslet's role as Joanna Hoffman, is that who she's playing? Early Mac team member who really is a foot note at best, but I guess Sorkin wanted a woman in it, I don't know.
Andy: “Nobody sees the world the same way you do”, can we argue about that thought? (Unintelligible)
Leo: And I have to say, Fassbender, I just... Jeff Daniels plays John Sculley, by the way. Fassbender to me, well, I don't know.
Rene: Magneto.
Andy: He was great in Band of Brothers, I also liked him in Prometheus.
Leo: He's a great actor, I'm not knocking him.
Andy: People have been saying, “That doesn't sound like Steve Jobs”, to me you don't really, the purpose of being an actor is to not look and sound exactly like the person. The point is to convince you that, to accept that. Same reason why it's not an argument that, in the new Fantastic Four movie, Johnny Storm the human torch, is played by an African-American, and is an African-American character. He will convince you of such. What I liked about those clips is that I really feel he got the cadence, he got the music of the way that he spoke, and his public speeches down, so.
Leo: Yeah, I mean Ashton Kutcher looked like Steve Jobs, but was a terrible actor. So if you give em the choice.
Andy: I'm not even sure how much I'd blame, there's so much blame to go around for that movie including the fast forward, he tearfully got kicked out of Apple and then fast forward to a jillion years later when Apple's begging Steve Jobs to come back. Oh, there was this thing called NeXT between those two that, you know.
Leo: Yeah. Choosing an actor for their looks is not important. But it is important that they embody the person, I mean that they feel like the person. Somebody is saying “What is this going on with the reducing screen?” Is it reducing everything to the aspect ratio of the iPhone, is that's what's going on? Vertical video?
Rene: It's fitting it into an “I” for Apple.
Leo: Oh, it's fitting it into the “I”.
Andy: Oh, at some point I think you need to just..
Leo: It's because they don't have any footage, is what it is.
Rene: See, and then it turns into the “I”, and then..
Andy: Oh, the flashing cursor.
Jason: Oh, you're right, the flashing cursor.
Leo: It's just a teaser, it's not a, yeah. But they did..
Andy: It's so hard to judge on a few random lines without any context.
Leo: Yeah.
Rene: There were a bunch of journalists in the stands that were showing flash bulbs during this.
Leo: Yeah, there's no..
Jason: Flash bulbs!
Andy: Look at em, look at em go!
Leo: What is that?!
Andy: Okay, okay, but is it, I was looking at that too because I was assuming it was one of the iOS releases and I'm thinking “Well, if this was the iMac release this is a room full of people who are just like, people with their own personal pocket cameras and they have automatic like Xenon flashes. They're film cameras. So if it didn't happen in the room that way it's okay to stage it so that people have old timey flashes as opposed to of glow of white, glow of white, glow of white.
Leo: If you, first of all, this is the Flint Center. If you look at what, that's a Mac obviously.
Andy: That looks like an iMac.
Leo: Except that Jobs is wearing jeans and a turtle neck, and of course quite famously at the Mac launch was wearing a bow tie.
Jason: That's the iMac launch, which was also at the Flint Center. Which he was recognizably...
Leo: Yeah, okay. So this would be the iMac launch.
Rene: Where's the Prooder in here now?
Jason: Back and to the left.
Leo: But did they have flash bulbs?
Andy: Are those New Balance 903s or 905s because they're very similar but one has an American Flag on the heel and one does not.
Leo: I'm completely willing to tear this film from limb to limb, I don't have a problem with that.
Andy: That was going through my mind as well as I'm watching this that I might be, well, people like us might be the worst people to ask review this movie-
Leo: Oh, we are!
Andy: -in some cases we were there, in all cases we were intimately connected to the event either through by devouring all of the details that was happening or knowing people who were materially involved in it. So we are the people that are going to say “The paneling on the floor was from the back stage to the front stage, not stage left to stage right.”
Jason: I said Teak!
Andy: Fail!
Leo: Yeah.
Jason: Also, the iMac launch happened when Apple was at its low point, and they were desperately trying to get people to show up to the event, and it was definitely not a blackened auditorium with flash bulbs and people. I mean it is pretty funny.
Leo: Jason, go up here, go right here. Because you can see Blue, Bondi Blue iMac backstage. So we do know this is in fact the iMac.
Jason: It's just kind of funny that, well what's happening here, and you're absolutely right, we are the wrong people to look at this. But what's happening here is compression, dramatic compression. It's taking, because we know what happens after this point to Jobs and Apple, we're taking all of the excitement from WWDC Keynote, or an iPhone launch, or something like that, and we're rolling it back into this moment. So this is the dramatic license of saying, “This event wasn't like this, but it lead to all of those events that were like this”, and you know yes, it's not accurate, but that's what they're trying to portray.
Leo: This was Steve's first product after he came back to Apple. This is an Apple that was very much struggling.
Jason: Maybe somebody pulled the fire alarm and that's what's going off in that shot.
Leo: Sure weird. Meanwhile Pitch Perfect 2 comes out on Friday, I just want to point out. I'm very excited.
Jason: It came out last week!
Leo: Oh that was last week! Oh my gosh.
Jason: It's already out.
Leo: That's too good of movie!
Jason: Should we break down the Ant-man trailer now? Are we doing trailers on this show now?
Leo: No, no! Stop, stop, stop!
Rene: When Thomas the tank engine hits Yellow Jacket it's the best.
Andy: Let's all take a second to reflect upon how grateful we should be for this movie and what it means to us. It means that now we can, when we need to write a column on a Tuesday or Thursday we can write about “Here's what the movie doesn't discuss”.
Leo: Yeah, you've got thirty thousand-
Andy: On a Thursday when you're hard up for ideas.
Leo: -thirty thousand words, no sweat.
Rene: Fassbender, Kutcher, Fassbender, Kutcher.
Leo: Coherent Navigation, what is that? Apple just bought it.
Rene: A GPS company that was trying to make GPS more accurate down to centimeters instead of feet.
Leo: Oh okay. It's not indoors.
Rene: I think it has a wide range of applications but often they just surface one to make (unintelligible).
Leo: Commercial navigation service is based on partnerships with companies like Boeing and Iridium, the satellite network operator. According to the LinkedIn page of Paul Lego, the companies former chief executive, it was founded in 2008. High precision navigation systems. Technology far stronger than many consumer grade GPS systems. They'd also worked on autonomous navigation and robotics projects.
Rene: I think they coalesce a bunch of lower level satellite data as well to make it more accurate.
Leo: Mmmm. Okay. It just may be also that they're acquiring the minds, the great, brilliant minds behind it.
Rene: It's a ten person team and I believe some of them, if not after the sale than before the sale, there was a lot of migration towards Apple already. So it does sound almost like that. And for Apple's part all they would say again is “Apple acquires companies from time to time, we don't discuss plans”.
Leo: Yeah, that's the usual.
Rene: Which is as good of a confirmation as you can get.
Leo: So, remember when that Green Peace every year used to be ragging on Apple. Now Green Peace says “Apples green! They're the greenest company every, the most eco-friendly tech company in the world. But Netflix and YouTube, those guys is bad news!”
Rene: Please print our press release, please print..
Andy: That's funny, I think a few years ago they knew that they could get a lot of press by saying that Apple, specifically Apple sucks. Now they know that they can get people to read Twitter if they say “Oh Apple's great”!
Leo: It's just, well whatever, you know. Look I'm all for keeping the planet greener, keeping.., making, because it ain't. But you, it makes you cynical when you start to see this stuff. It's like, oh yea well, you know, Netflix is hot right now. Apparently by watching Netflix you're ruining the eco-system. Apple gets 100% on it's clean energy index, Google only 46%.
Jason: Well, it is an interesting story that, from the day that Green Peace did that, and yes they picked Apple specifically. Not because any of it's competitors were any better-
Leo: Right.
Jason: -but because Apple was high profile. But it's interesting, I would almost say text book, depending on what class you're taking anyway, that Apple immediately said “Okay, tell us what you think we should be doing?”.
Leo: Right. That's the way to handle it.
Jason: And now, there's a slide in every presentation about the hardware and it's checklist of toxic elements and whether it's recyclable, and whether they've invested in solar and they've done it. It's funny that this is like the caper is Green Peace saying “Okay, they've changed! Now onto the next target”.
Leo: Right.
Rene: So are they saying Google powers search off of coal? Is that what?
Leo: Yes, in fact both Google and Apple have moved very aggressively to make their network operations centers as green as they can either buying carbon credits or in some cases using actual solar power to power them.
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: Apple, speaking of lightning, is now making a lightning dock for your iPhone.
Rene: Yep.
Andy: That's really surprising isn't it
Leo: Why did it take them so long? The thirty pin dock is great because-
Rene: Life's great mysteries, Leo.
Leo: -I can put my iPhone in there and it, and um, it would hold it. The problem is nobody licenses lightning, so you were kind of out of luck if you wanted a lightning dock.
Jason: There's lightning stuff out there!
Leo: Are there?!
Jason: Oh yeah, definitely.
Andy: (Unintelligible) plus docks that capture your existing cable.
Leo: Is this the best lightning dock Apple has ever made?
Jason: It is the best, and worst.
Leo: It's the best, it's the worst, it's the averagest.
Andy: We'd like to show you a video explaining why we chose that angle.
Rene: Is it just for iPhones?
Leo: My issue is, if you put the phone or-
Jason: Just iPhones.
Leo: -well its, notice it doesn't have a slot.
Rene: That's what I was wondering, there's no side, so I wonder if I could totally abuse the structural integrity of that kind of factor.
Leo: But don't, I feel like it would break it off if you put an iPad on it, right? I think even an iPhone 6 would break it off. It doesn't seem like a very good structurally good idea.
Rene: 5, 5S, 6, 6+.
Leo: Yeah, yeah.
Andy: It's also interesting because I'm certainly wondering how committed Apple's going to be to USB-C, and if we're going to see that as the one connector you're gonna, the only thing you are going to need for your iPad, for your iPhone, for your laptop. So it's interesting that they are debuting a brand new dock connector that clearly they didn't think it was a high priority or else they would tried to get this out earlier. I mean like three years ago.
Leo: How long has lightning been out there?
Andy: Yeah, I mean. So it's interesting.
Leo: So, this has a lightning connector in the back. So you plug it in. It has an analog audio port so you could put your headphones on it I guess.
Jason: Or, like, attached to a speaker.
Leo: Yeah.
Jason: And you pop it in and play your music.
Rene: Lightning can do more than USB-C. I mean they're similar in many ways but lightning still has all of the intelligent switching and can carry, I believe, more different types of signals that Apple wants. I mean it used to take a 30 pin dock connector and they had to rearrange that thing. They would go in and disconnect all of the linear audio and try to reconnect fire-wire and it would always be structurally different inside and the diagrams became more nightmarish as time went on. So lightning was really designed to be future proof so that if there was some new sort of sago they had to carry they would never have to re-factor the hardware, just change the kind of signal that was passing through it and I don't think USB-C does all of that and the standardization makes it a better choice I think for the MacBook but the flexibility makes it a better choice for them.
Jason: Well, for the mobile still..
Andy: It's, that's absolutely true. The thing is though, what can they attach to that dock connector for a phone that people are actually going to clamor to use that would benefit them better than having one standard connector that they can transfer between multiple devices including their Android devices, including their Windows devices. I mean, I had to remind myself while I was on a trip that the iPhone 6 and the 6+ has a lightning connector, but you can plug in the camera kit but it doesn't do nothing. Why aren't they doing things like enabling the camera connection kit letting me slurp photos directly from my camera directly onto the device? It's interesting. You'll go broke trying to predict what Apple has planned or is been investigating but hasn't been able to announce yet. So who knows what they intend to do with Lightning in the future, but for now I can only think about three or four different things that people would ever like to plug into their phone and USB-C is more adequate for all of them.
Rene: That color white in that adapter took three years of engineering (unintelligible).
Andy: It's not just gold-plated, it's part of our own special formula.
Leo: I just want you to give Apple some credit. They could easily charge $79 for this, they're only charging $39. They're leaving money on the table so you've got to give them some credit.
Andy: Yeah.
Leo: By the way, syncs and charges. Okay! Both!
Andy: They're figuring, “We're already charging $50 for a watch band, you probably don't have enough money left for a $79 dock.
Rene: I was making fun of the watch bands and then Vince Nguyen from Slash Gear was showing off some of the Paneria and other bands, and he was putting on his Apple watch with third party lugs and none of them were under $300 or $400 so I vastly underestimated the expense of watch bands in this market.
Leo: No, no, no, you misunderstand, it's not the expense, it's the margins.
Rene: Okay.
Andy: Fancy shmancy watch bands, I mean-
Leo: Margins, it's all about the margins.
Andy: The Moto 360. I was showing, my last morning wearing a Moto 360 was this morning, and I had breakfast with a friend, and I was showing him the, “Here's what this beep beep “Magical Horween leather” watch band that you get with Moto 360, but here's what it looks like after 9 months of daily wear, and it looks beautiful and it's supple and it looks like a very prestigious sort of luxury sort of experience, and it's the watch band you get for free! Just sayin!
Leo: Yup.
Jason: Fine Corinthian leather.
Leo: I didn't know the word “Horween” until Apple came along, I just want to say. Now I look for Horween everywhere.
Jason: I only wear Corinthian leather, I'm sorry. Corinthian leather. Ricardo Montalban.
Leo: Fine Corinthian leather. I just learned the other the cord of it is made from horse butt. So, just, you know. I'm not a leather expert obviously. Apparently President Obama, for the first time ever, actually has his own Twitter account. There was a President account.
Jason: A White House account.
Leo: A White House account.
Jason: And now they've got POTUS.
Rene: So wait, there was a White House account and a Barak Obama account, neither of which was his, but the one called POTUS is his even though it's not his name, it's his office.
Leo: Yeah, which is really weird because what is he gonna take it with him? He should take back the Barak Obama one and give POTUS to the Oval Office and say, whoever is in charge.
Jason: I think that's what will happen.
Rene: Did you see Bill Clinton's tweet, Leo?
Leo: Who's?
Rene: Bill Clinton, he asked if the POTUS account will transfer to the new owner. And then he said, “Asking for a friend”. And then Barak Obama responded. He said yes, the account goes with the house.
Andy: Social media rock star!
Jason: Yeah, the account comes with the house.
Andy: (Unintelligible) the $50 burrito gift card for Most Valuable Player in the office.
Leo: That is a most excellent tweet from Bill Clinton, I'm asking for a friend.
Rene: Obama replied, the account goes with the house, and did Clinton have any ideas on who should be a good FLOTUS?
Leo: Wow! Oh that's funny! That's funny! He wants the FLOTUS account!
Rene: Yep.
Andy: FLOTUS, is he going to be a FLOTUS?
Leo: What are you going to call..
Rene: First Gentleman.
Leo: First Gentleman. It's already been decided? The Canadian knows and I don't.
Rene: It was a West Wing joke at some point I think.
Leo: First Gentleman.
Jason: And there was a woman Prime Minister in Canada briefly.
Leo: FGOTUS?
Rene: Yeah, Kim Campbell.
Jason: So you guys know already.
Leo: FGOTUS is not a good, that sounds like a skin disease!
Andy: Dude, First Dude.
Leo: First Dude. FDOTUS?
Rene: Yep.
Leo: Apparently President Obama still uses a secure Blackberry so in fact he could not tweet from his phone. So the White House won't say if it's Twitter compatible. According to Buzz Feed, he tweeted with Twitter for iPhone. So he probably borrowed somebody's iPhone.
Rene: They have a government iPhone for that department. The department of Obama tweeting has it's own iPhone for that.
Jason: Yeah, it probably has a sticker on the back that says @POTUS. It's the @POTUS phone, that's all it does.
Leo: @POTUS phone, it's all it can do.
Andy: It's probably like one of those development iPhones you hear about where it's actually, inside Apple, it's actually bolted down to a plate of acrylic that's about three feet by four feet with bolts holding it in so you can't take it out of the office and you can't “Oh, I'm sorry, I must have switched phones with you accidentally Obama”.
Leo: It sounds like being President's a good job but it really sucks, he cannot, for instance, have a phone with a, he told Jimmy Kimmel, “I can't have a phone with a recorder in it”. Which means no camera.
Andy: Well, it was, but the difference is, if you're President you never have to touch a phone ever.
Leo: You don't really need, yeah.
Andy: You don't really have to touch a computer, ever either.
Rene: He has a phone that when he says “I'm ready” the engines on Airforce One start.
Leo: I wonder if Smart Things has an interface to Airforce One? That would be good! Start the jet.
Andy: Someone was writing a really thoughtful essay, I read it about six or seven months ago, about how being the President, especially for two terms changes you and disconnects you from everyday reality. He said “Just think about it this way. For the past six years the President has never had pocket change in his pants, he has never waited in traffic for even five seconds because everything is held for him, and he says...
Rene: Wait until he sees NFC payments. I mean it's a whole new world out there.
Leo: It's gonna be tough when a year from now President Obama leaves office and has to start carrying change again.
Rene: There's a strange thing that happens to Apple employees when they leave Apple, some of them don't know how to buy phones because they've always just been provided to them and having to deal with AT&T to them just is, they have no idea how normal people have ever survived like this.
Andy: There's sort of a halfway house program. You live in San Jose, not in Cupertino.
Leo: Uhhh, let's take a break and we'll come back with your final thoughts and your Pick of the Week. How about that? I mean there's a couple of things we could mention, that there is a Safari address spoofing bug. It's not, I don't think, hugely significant. But it is in iOS and OS 10 using a Java, fairly simple Javascript, a bad guy could take you to one site but report that you're at another site in the address bar and that would be bad. But I don't know if it would fool the certificate system so, if you're giving people important information check the certificate, that seems like that would be a good idea, at least until Apple fixes this.
Our show today brought to you by IT Pro TV. My friends Tim and Don, and I do consider them friends because they've come out here a lot. We've kinda, were there at the beginning. They've been IT trainers for a long time and they came out to an NAB talk I did about three years ago and they said “You know, we should get a tri-caster, we should get some cameras, we should get a studio and do what Leo's doing but for IT professionals or for people who are looking to get their certifications. So they created IT Pro TV. And of course, as always, the pupil has exceeded the master. They have two studios, on their way to five! They're doing now 50 hours of new programming a week streamed live and available on demand worldwide. Roku, Chromecast, Computer to mobile device. They cover everything. A+, IT with Apple and Windows, OS 10 Windows and Linux desktop support. CCNA, Security Plus MCSA. They've got the new Ethical hacker, Hacking forensics investigator and Cryptography courses taught by Sean Phillip-Oriyano, that was great. This is live right now? Wow. They really do, they really built a beautiful set and they do a lot of great stuff. Sean, who teaches those courses is the guy who wrote the book on Ethical Hacking. Now they've added a search function to this site which lets you search all courses and videos for specific topics and quick answers. They've always divided the courses up into kind of the chapters and the questions in the test and, by the way, you also get the Measure Up practice exams with your subscription. That's worth $79 by itself. The virtual machine, Sandbox Lab so you can start a Windows server and clients on any machine even if you're on a Chromebook, because any HTML5 browser works. The Members Area now highlights recent course additions and allows you to resume episodes where you left off, remembers where you were. Look at that! CompTIA, Microsoft, Cicsco, ISC2. The great list of Apple courses they have. And you only pay by the month or by the year. It's very affordable. Updated daily, new features monthly. There's a no hassle cancellation policy because they're geeks and they know. We're not trying to trick you, we're trying to give you something of real value. They also have corporate and group pricing. And you know, since IT Pro TV started now they've got clients including Harvard, MIT, UCSD, Stanford. So here's the deal. We've got a deal. Of course we've got a deal! Itprot.tv/macbreak. Normally $57 a month or $507 for the entire year. You're going to get a free 7 day trial when you visit and if you use the offer code macbreak30, macbreak30, you're going to get 30% off your subscription forever. Less than $40 a month, $399 for the entire year. Macbreak30. All this week they're recording, in fact I think we were just watching it, new Cloud and Net + courses. That's Don Pezet and Daniel Lowry, I guess we saw Daniel there. Their live stream is always available for free, which is awesome, with a basic account, the free basic account. So from 9 am to 4 pm eastern every weekday you can watch them teach these courses free. That will give you a great idea of what kinds of stuff you're going to get and of course once you sign up you get every course they've ever done. Next week Intro to Security and more Net + courses. Itpro.tv/macbreak, don't forget the offer code Macbreak30! And they've done so well. I'm just, I feel like that's one of our great success stories. When they started with us they were just starting out and they have grown like Topsy.
Leo: Alright, time for Picks of the Week. Why don't we start with our in studio guest, Mr. Jason Snell.
Jason: This is hot off the presses, hot from the App Store. PCalc, the calculator app for your iPhone is now at version 3.4 which features, do do dooo!
Leo: Watch support! Are you going to do a calculation?
Jason: A calculator.
Leo: Oh look at that, that is awesome!
Jason: I don't know if I can show that.
Leo: Yeah. Do I have PCalc on here? No, I don't.
Jason: But it's a calculator, and it works, and James Thompson who developed it waited until he got the physical watch hardware because he was not convinced that it would work and he worked on it for a while to get it to work.
Leo: Must be hard to do right? Because you don't get, like..
Jason: It's, there's not a lot of space on there. But he figured out a way to do it so if you want quick calculations on your Apple watch, PCalc, not only being a great calculator app for the iPhone but now it has a Watch app that comes with it, so that's a pretty cool thing.
Leo: That actually is, I think that is pretty useful.
Jason: Yeah, it's an app that actually does something. It doesn't do a lot but it does basic calculations and it has a tip calculator and it's kind of cool that you can even do this on the Apple watch with the 1.0 version of the app interface. So I like that fact that he waited until he had an Apple watch, because he was really, I actually got to visit him in Scotland a few weeks ago, and he was not convinced that it would work on the watch. He just didn't believe it would be a good experience, and I like the fact that he took the time, found a way to make it work, and now has a version of his app that runs on the Watch.
Leo: So, PCalc, it's the best calculator from TLA systems. I see they have the light version which also offers Watch app so if you wanted to see... But I bought it, it's great. He was the guy who had trouble with the notifications.
Jason: He is that guy.
Leo: Yeah, yeah. Does now uh...
Jason: Yeah, you can do calculator in the today view and-
Leo: Thank you.
Jason: -On the Mac and on the iOS now.
Leo: This is, you know what, if you had a Casio calculator watch you'll feel right at home.
Jason: You will, you really will.
Leo: I hope you saved your stylus.
Jason: And you can send your results to the app on your phone or pull the answer off of your phone and stuff like that too.
Leo: Oh, well that's cool, that's cool.
Jason: And this was going to be Rene's pick, so thank you Rene for letting me steal it, I snaked it from him.
Leo: Rene! Did he steal your tip?!
Rene: No, Jason does this way better than I do so.
Leo: Well, you know what, while you were talking Jason, I did install it. How long does it take for an app, once you put it on the phone, to go over to your watch? Is it instant?
Rene: It's a few seconds.
Jason: Instant-ish.
Andy: I actually installed PCalc myself, like just at the start of the show maybe, and it took maybe 20-30 seconds to arrive. You see, at worst you see the sort of generic...
Leo: Open PCalc. Oh, it hasn't installed yet I guess. Maybe because of the space?
Rene: Check your phone, it should say “installing” on your phone and then “Installed” once it's on there.
Leo: In the watch app or?
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: Please stand by!
Andy: It's probably there already, by the time you're done (unintelligible).
Leo: Yeah, and it's busy now installing an update, which it's not going to install until I get off.
Andy: Oh, yeah, okay. That's why.
Rene: Did you use the Watch app to transfer it over, Leo?
Leo: Huh, what?!
Rene: Do you use the Apple watch app to transfer it over?
Leo: No, what?! What are you talking about?! What are you talking about?! Apple watch app to transfer it over! Doesn't it just do it automatically?
Rene: You've got to enable the Watch extension. It might depend on your setting.
Leo: Oh yeah, yeah, I automatically download apps, I have that switch flipped.
Rene: Okay, alright.
Leo: When this is on an you have apps on your iPhone that also work with the Apple Watch, these apps will automatically blah, blah, blah. Yeah, there it is. Oh, I can have it on glances!
Jason: Yeah, the glance isn't that interesting. It sort of just tells you what your answers were on your phone and on your watch.
Leo: Once.
Jason: Because you, yeah, you can't do buttons from the glance if you're a third party developer.
Rene: Those of us with no short term memory appreciate it.
Leo: Oh, I keep pressing the wrong buttons.
Jason: Look for the 42.
Leo: Launch PCalc. I said PCalc fast so it wouldn't put a space in there. Hey it did it! It just wasn't ready yet.
Jason: Do, do, dooo! It's a calculator!
Leo: Oh look at that!
Jason: You can do some calculating now!
Leo: I wish that were my watch face!
Jason: Do some math!
Andy: I was just gonna say, I want that as a watch face.
Leo: 1-2.
Andy: And I want skew-morphism, and I want it to look LCD.
Leo: Oh, and these are the operators. Times, 1-2-2, 1.2. Oh it's got a backspace and everything!
Jason: So if you've wanted a calculator since you were 14, on your wrist, there it is.
Leo: Look at that! Now they're going to not let watches into the exam room! Thank you Jason Snell. PCalc.
Andy: You still can impress boys or girls with it if you're trying to be popular. It's not a watch, it's a calculator.
Leo: Andy Ihnatko, what do you got for us?
Andy: I'm wearing my Pick of the Week, which is a very weird one, but I think that a part of our audience is going to be very, very happy to hear about this. I bought this jacket on Ebay a few weeks ago. I'm a big fan of like, what I call cheater jackets. Where you need to sort of look a little bit more dressed up than if you're just wearing a work shirt or something, but you still don't, either you'd be overdressed in a suit or you don't want to be have to walk around the city all day in like an actual like structured jacket. I like these cheater jackets that are almost built like a shirt but they're tailored like a sport coat. And so, this one is called the Orvis Zambezi i Safari coat.
Leo: I like Orvis stuff actually.
Andy: Exactly, it's really well made. It's vintage, it's maybe about 5 or 6 years old. They don't make these anymore. I got this one on Ebay for $50 but, why is it a Pick of the Week, Andy, you ask. Because of a feature I was not aware of until I actually bought it. Now, realize this is now, you think that-
Leo: You look like you're going birding!
Andy: -I look like I'm just a man about town, aren't I? Oh yes, but no, no, no, I am a slick, sophisticated journalist who has-
Leo: Ooooooo!
Andy: -his iPad Mini with him!
Leo: Look at that! I'm buying one, I want one!
Andy: This pocket is the perfect size for an iPad Mini!
Leo: And it predates it!
Andy: It's not like you can just jam it in there, I'm saying it's tailor made for an iPad Mini! And it has extra pockets too so, hey what's this? Why, I think it's my Blue-tooth folding iPad keyboard!
Leo: You are such a nerd! Nerd!
Andy: I am a nerd in a really cool jacket who does not have to carry a bag with him all the time. I mean there are other jackets that are like tech jackets that are like, hey we've got a million pockets and you never have to check carry on baggage, but it has enough, it's just a nice coincidence that it's nicely kidded out for somebody who travels with technology and walking down the street in it, unlike some of these other like, tech oriented jackets, it just looks like a normal blazer. It doesn't look like “Hey, who's that guy who clearly has a 13 inch iPad Air in the small of his back and about ten miles of cables going around his neck. So the only other note I'm going, Orvis made this coat for a number of years, they don't make it anymore. On the off chance that they change the design from year to year and maybe the fun pocket isn't the right size, there's a tag inside the collar that says 70534, on this jacket. So that's the, if you can see pictures on Ebay and you see that number on the inside of the tag, you're probably on the right track. Even if it's the wrong one it's still a very nice jacket! It's also machine washable, you can like, crumple it up and stick it into a bag. I gave, and it's nice, one of my trips to New York was for the ASUS product launch for the new Zen Phone and I was interviewing like the CEO of the company for like forty-five minutes and I feel like I got away with it very nicely. You'd look like an idiot if you were in a suit but you wanted to look like “Hi, I appreciate that your time is valuable and you're giving me some of it so, hey look I actually decided to button the, at least, not the top button of my shirt, but at least the second so you can't see the logo on my Podcast t-shirt.
Leo: I actually really like that, I'm sad they don't make it.
Andy: As a matter of fact I was getting some compliments about it later on in the day when I was hanging out with friends, like, where did you get that jacket?!
Leo: It fits your personality. It really does.
Andy: Well, I got it online. It's nice and casual. The last note is obviously my physique doesn't look like I would fit into a large of anything, but this is a large, and it is absolutely the perfect size. So if you see one, that you want to get like the extra-large, maybe you want to get one size smaller, I don't know. Because it's not designed to be a really tailored, structured jacket so it looks like it's kind of roomy. But yeah, paid $50 or $60 for it and it's clearly after three weeks is one of the favorite things I've got in my closet.
Leo: Oh, you didn't tell me it has leather patches on the elbows!
Andy: It's got leather patches baby! Also it has a secret feature where like, you can button it. Let's say you get caught and it's a little bit too cold, you can turn up this collar and then this thing on the side, it's not just decorative, you can actually unbutton that and then make it into a clerical collar that will keep, like the top of your thing turned into a stalker jacket.
Leo: Like a neighbor jacket, yeah.
Andy: Or like Luke Skywalker in Besbin Cloud City. I like to say.
Leo: I want this!
Andy: It's the truuuuth!
Leo: So they don't sell it but you can maybe find it on Ebay. I'm looking on Etsy to see if Etsy has any and..
Andy: It's actually, like, if you go on Ebay, like I came up with about a half dozen listings, and they keep coming.
Leo: Oh!
Andy: I've got like an Ebay search for like a travel jacket, because I like these kinds of jackets and I seem them coming up all of the time.
Leo: Okay. And what was the, I got the number, but what is the name of it?
Andy: It's called Orvis Zambezi, Z-a-m-b-e-z-i, Safari Coat. Although if you do just search for Orvis jacket, you'll recognize it.
Leo: Here it is. Here it is on Ebay, size XL. And you said you have the, wait a minute. It's in the weird Luke Skywalker mode!
Andy: Exactly, where it looks like, you know, a flasher is not really concerned with covering up. That's not the most attractive deployment of that jacket, but when you're...
Leo: Is this the same one?
Andy: It looks like the same model.
Leo: It doesn't have the leather little tablets that you have on your collars.
Andy: Oh, it does. No look, doesn't it?
Leo: Does it?
Andy: Or maybe it's there, but remember that this collar, like, detaches. I'm sorry, there it is. It's actually buttoned on so maybe just whoever it is took that off and just lost it. Or no, there it is in another picture.
Leo: See, there it is. I see it. Yeah! It is really, I want it! And if you get it used then it really, it feels like you've had it for a long time.
Andy: Exactly. Mine is in good shape and it doesn't look like it's shiny and brand new.
Leo: Right, it's nice. You don't want it to.
Andy: It's one of the nicest things I've bought. I heard someone talking about this in some sort of a mens wear forum because I was doing some more researches on it before this and they said “Yeah, too bad it's only available in old man color”. I'm like, hey man! It's tan, it's twill, it's classic!
Leo: Old man color! What the hell! Alright, Rene Ritchie! You're going to have to top the Orvis Zambezi travel jacket!
Rene: No chance, absolutely no chance. So I initially was looking at PCalc for the Apple watch and I was looking at the new Audible app which has car play support. Sort of two sides of really interesting coin because these are established apps and you can use them on your iPhone but they are also going other places. You can use PCalc on your Watch, you can use a variety of things that come together on your Watch, and now for example, Audible on CarPlay or Overcast on CarPlay. You can use those on your car as well and its, and I think we've spoken about this before, but it's really fascinating to me that what happened with web technologies where originally you had a web browser but then he just started having little bits of HTTP or Internet functionality sort of everywhere in the system, and in apps, that's now happening with apps as well and with the UI kit especially on Apple where the logic of the app is sitting on your phone but the interface can be on your watch, or it can be in your car, or it can be on the Apple Television and it's sort of unbundled all of these features before you download this big honking app and you just use it as that app. But now all of these different features are in different places, so I can listen to Audible on CarPlay, I can share something that I'm listening to on Audible maybe through Pinterest. All of these things that used to be one giant hole are now just available everywhere that I am, and that to me is super exciting. It's changing the way that I use a ton of applications because I don't have to go and find them anymore. They're just wherever I am. So the Audible app, it's a really good update for a variety of reasons but the fact that Audible is now, if you have a CarPlay car, it's just going to be one of those icons on your dashboard. I used to commute an hour and a half each way to work, and Audible and Twit shows were my constant companion. And the ability to have it not to have to use Siri or even look down to my phone, in Montreal now it's illegal to use your phone not only while driving, but even while stopped at a red light or pulled off to the side of the road. All of that will get you a ticket. So the ability for that functionality to move to a nice legal place, like the dashboard, to me is awesome, and I really like the sort of potential where all of these things get lined up and where it's going to go. And I think things like Audible for CarPlay is an example of that.
Leo: Does anybody have CarPlay yet?
Rene: There are some units that are available, and Ferrari just pulled out the unit.
Leo: Third party head replacement.
Jason: There are some, yeah.
Leo: But not, no car yet.
Rene: The auto industry is glacial, and the update cycle makes the iPad update cycle look brisk.
Leo: Yeah, if they're beating Audible's app, um, if Audible's beating them that's, that tells you something because Audible doesn't update this a lot but boy, looks like a lot of new features in this new version 2.5.
Rene: Yeah.
Leo: I really want Chromecast or some way to throw it to my Sonos.
Rene: It's really easy to add so I'm, it's interesting, like Sonos doesn't support Apple Play, and it's a lot of people who hasn't supported Chromecast, even though everyone who has implemented it says it's super easy to implement it so I think it's just incumbent on us just to complain about it.
Leo: I wish they would. Please Audible, we love you but, I just want to be able to throw it to my Sonos so I can listen. I can throw it to my stereo, but I can't throw it to my uh, oh well. Cool! I don't have anything, I'm just gonna let you all own this because I am busy buying a Zambezi Twill cotton canvas jacket.
Jason: Is it in “Old man color”?
Leo: It's the only color it comes in!
Andy: Yep, unfortunately.
Leo: That's the one isn't it Andy? That's it, I can tell.
Andy: Looks like it.
Leo: It's got the tabs, it's got everything.
Andy: It costs you, they were selling it for $200 when they had it on the site.
Leo: Yeah, it's $99 and uh...
Rene: All you need is a pith helmet, Leo.
Leo: I have a pith helmet!
Rene: Awesome!
Leo: And I, yes, I'm ready!
Andy: And Leo, I don't want to ruin your home relationship, but while I was looking for that listing to like include as the URL I found out that they actually make matching Zambezi pants that also have like leather patches over the pockets and stuff.
Leo: Oh ho ho! Yeah, I know that if I wear this anywhere Lisa will disown me entirely. Pith helmet, hmm, I like that. Andy Ihnatko is at the Chicago Sun Times. Not only is he a natty dresser, he's a hell of a good writer and you can read his stuff there and of course on his website CWOB.com and @Ihnatko. I-h-n-a-t-k-o. Andrew, thank you so much for being here. Jason Snell made the trek up the river to join us, we appreciate it.
Jason: Brought my kayak.
Leo: You could almost kayak here.
Jason: Probably could, yeah.
Leo: That would be cool.
Jason: I'd be tired man, and boy are my arms tired.
Leo: Always great to have you. He is working! Your arms are tired, you've been working awfully hard lately at the-
Jason: Sixcolors.com
Leo: Sixcolors.com, and The Incomparable, and jeez Luis, great stuff.
Jason: Thank you!
Leo: I'm going to listen to The Letterman tonight.
Jason: Get you in the mood.
Leo: Get me in the mood. I've been TiVoing the last few, Actually I have been TiVoing Letterman for a long time, I wish I had a closet full of Letterman VHS tapes.
Jason: I'll tell you, they're all on YouTube.
Leo: Are they?!
Jason: There are lots of, yeah.
Andy: I've been capturing every one of them for the last month or two off of my DVR using that fire wire capture app that I picked about a year ago, and it's like, I'm going to need to go through the transition program, I can't go cold turkey. I'm going to have to like, every night at 11:30 I stop my work as usual, take a break, watch an old show. I'll pretend it's a rerun week, I'll pretend it's the Indianapolis 500 where it's going to be ten nights in which he's gone, and then it's just going to be really hard.
Leo: That's what makes me sad, you know, these should be on Netflix. The old Tonight Shows should be on Netflix. But they don't do that, I guess they feel like it's too topical or something. It's not worth..
Rene: Let us make that choice.
Leo: Huh?
Andy: Exactly. Let us make that choice. It's not making any money for anybody while it's never being shown to anyone so.
Leo: Right, right. Well maybe from your mouth to, uh.
Rene: Sometimes it's music licensing like they can't show, especially variety performances, because they don't have the rights to show the music again.
Leo: Yeah, that's probably what it is, isn't it. The voice of reason as always, that's Mr. Rene Ritchie from imore.com. You can be he's not wearing Orvis fishing pants.
Rene: I don't know! Snow pants!
Leo: Snow pants! It's warming up there, I hope.
Rene: No, yeah. What is it now? It's 20 something degrees today.
Leo: Oh nice! That's Centigrade, not Fahrenheit.
Rene: Yes, that's Her Majesty's measurements.
Leo: Thank you for being here! He also does a bunch of great Podcasts. You know they're on an upswing now, Podcasts.
Jason: I've hear that! They're hot!
Rene: I've heard!
Leo: Seems like everybody's doing it. Everybody's doing..
Rene: It's because you're doing it, Leo.
Jason: You're a pioneer. Aren't you in the Podcast Hall of Fame now?
Leo: Oh yeah, when did that happen? Or it's happening?
Jason: Or it's happening maybe.
Leo: Yeah. Uh. Hey thanks for being here! We love doing this show and I hope you will make an effort to be here live because it's fun to see you in the chat room, and or in the studio. You can email tickets@twit.tv if you'd like to join us for any of our shows. The studio is always open. Uh, but you can also join the chat room without emailing. Just visit irc.twit.tv every Tuesday 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern, 1800UTC. If you can't be here live, on demand audio and video always available after the fact at twit.tv/mbw or wherever our net casts are aggregated. Thanks for joining us now get back to work because, you know what, break time is over! Over!
