17: Can't Innovate Anymore
11 Jun 2013Special early WWDC-week episode: Reactions to the keynote, new Mac Pro, and iOS 7.
Episode Description:
Special early WWDC episode this week:
- Reactions to the keynote.
- New Mac Pro
- Initial iOS 7 design impressions.
Sponsored by:
- Backblaze: Easy, unlimited online backup for just $5 per month.
- Windows Azure Mobile Services: Build a cloud-connected iOS app faster and easier.
Transcript start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This episode is sponsored in part by Backblaze. Easy, unlimited online backup for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just $5 per month. Go to backblaze.com slash ATP to start your 15
⏹️ ▶️ Marco day free trial. Hey guys, sorry for the shaky audio for the first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco five minutes of this. We were recording onto a dying hard drive, and then five minutes later we fixed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. So hang in there, and it gets better. Back to the battle. Special thanks to Macroar for letting us record
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in their awesome podcast studio here in sunny, windy San Francisco. Yes.
⏹️ ▶️ John I sound the same. I don’t think I sound any sexier.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, could you sound any sexier, John? I mean, let’s be honest. I’m just going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out there. So stuff happened today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really the keynote had an incredible mood and energy to it that I think, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it started out first with Tim and you could tell that his energy was up. He was very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco positive. he was almost aggressive towards competitors and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is very lively, very energetic in general. And you could tell all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the presenters kind of, they went very quickly. Pace was very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast. It almost felt rushed
⏹️ ▶️ John Even before Tim came out, didn’t you think it was weird that they started with that video? Like I know they, I think they probably started with videos
⏹️ ▶️ John before, but that video opening made me think like something, because it wasn’t like about
⏹️ ▶️ John a specific product or anything like that. was about the philosophy of the company and little
⏹️ ▶️ John bouncing balls. You assumed it was previewing kind of the aesthetic theme of
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS 7, which it turned out it kind of sort of was. And then the guys came out and raced cars, and you were like, what?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, we have to talk about that. It seemed like when the car racing guys came out, I thought, OK,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is kind of early to be bringing out a third party demo. But maybe this is something cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe they bought this company, or they or integrating its technology somehow into iOS to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco provide some kind of cool AI stuff. And then it just turned out to be this kind of weird demo.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, it killed that energy that you were just talking about.
⏹️ ▶️ John It did. It killed that energy into the thing. And it’s kind of good that that was the beginning, but it was like, oh, this
⏹️ ▶️ John big, big intro movie, and then these car guys, you’re like, and then it started going again. And then after a while, you’re like, you’re thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John back, what was the deal with those guys with the car? Not that the cars weren’t cool, because it
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey did look like a cool thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John but tell me how that- Tell me how it was working. Tell me, tell me how that fit into the rest of the presentation. Really, why was that there
⏹️ ▶️ John it was not part of the theme is you were looking for maybe it’s some a nope no Hey, I theme no nothing like that. It was just they were just there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Very strange, but other than that I mean I thought especially really I think the star today
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was Craig feeder Federighi
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I really think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know he we you know everyone knew he had like that shaky presentation a few years ago And he’s gotten better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then and he is just rock-solid now, and he he had the best energy He had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great banter like when he went off script for a few words or a sentence here and there there. He was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John solid and awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ John The secret to going off. No, maybe those were all scripted and he planned the jokes ahead of time. But when you do it well,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re not supposed to know which parts you’re ad-libbing, which parts you’re not. Because you see the weaker presenters, like the guy earlier
⏹️ ▶️ John in an NDA session, I’ll tell you about the joke he did in the NDA session, like where he had a picture of his boss and he said, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not my boss. Like that one he had to rehearse, right? And you could
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco tell. Yeah, that was pretty clear.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could tell he had rehearsed it. The secret is making us not be able to tell. And yeah, with Craig’s
⏹️ ▶️ John presentation, when his hand was shaking on the mouse and he was having trouble doing the gestures of like two years ago or so. Two years
⏹️ ▶️ John ago. Even that presentation probably wasn’t that bad if you just watched him, but the fact they gave you the close-up of his
⏹️ ▶️ John hand, you realize, oh God, this guy is that nervous. And for all we know, he was that nervous this time too, but we couldn’t tell. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so now it’s like, you can’t even think back. Just shaking out of his mind. Now it’s hard to imagine that his hands, maybe they were
⏹️ ▶️ John shaking, but you could not tell. He was just smooth sailing and just punching, punch,
⏹️ ▶️ John punch, all the competitors just.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, not only all the competitors, but they were punching themselves. There were so many attacks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John on skeuomorphic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey design and linen and leather.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What was the joke about? We don’t need the stitching to hold it to the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of like when Microsoft would slam the previous version of Windows as crap. This new version of Windows
⏹️ ▶️ John is great. and usually you don’t see Apple do the Steve Jobs thing. We’re like, here’s
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS 6, and iOS 6 is great, and we love iOS 6, and then he tells you how great iOS 7 is, but here
⏹️ ▶️ John they were kind of like, here’s iOS 6, without saying so much, and it was, and it had
⏹️ ▶️ John leather, and it had green felt, and it was gross, and that’s weird for Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weird. Yeah, it seemed like they were listening to everything that we were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complaining about for all these years, they were listening to us, And, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, in most ways. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey we’ll get to the Mac Pro in a bit. At least the people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on stage did. Right, exactly, yeah, who knows, but, you know. I don’t know if it was a good day to be Scott Forstall or not, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nobody knows that really. But I think it was really a very surprisingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bold energy from the presenters and from what they showed us. You know, I think it’s clear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, especially like with Tim, Tim was really on fire about against Android.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep. And I think this was, you know, Tim obviously is the kind of guy, he’ll sit back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and wait until he has something really great to say, and he’s patient.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can tell, he’s a patient man. He will sit back and wait, let the press rake them through their coals for six
⏹️ ▶️ Marco months about how they’re not doing anything, and then come out and just have a keynote like this, which is just packed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco full of awesome stuff. Cool? Yeah. Are we back? We are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What the hell were you guys talking about? All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John right, so- Keep your eye on that. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I found it very interesting that Tim Cook, you know, he’s a southern guy,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is not a bad thing at all. He’s very deliberate when he talks. He’s very slow when he talks and not in a bad way,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just he wants to make sure he says what he wants to say. And so today, he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and every other presenter that we saw seemed very rushed. They were trying to get through things. Not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rushed, I’m nervous, just rushed. We have a lot to cover. And I took a few notes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with this barbaric pen and paper that I have. And that was the first I wrote down was that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh man Tim is in a hurry and if Tim is in a hurry We must be in for one heck of a show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I I feel like we got a heck of a show
⏹️ ▶️ John A part of it could have been timing if someone commented I remember who’s you with it like they came in almost exactly at two hours,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah and the
⏹️ ▶️ John other part of is I think that it’s like Hollywood action movie where there there’s not they’re not trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to rush through the content so much as they don’t want you to get Bored ever with the again with the exception of the cars
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And so they were like
⏹️ ▶️ John the second you you know, they didn’t dwell on something for too long And I think in a lot of Steve Jobs presentations, he would
⏹️ ▶️ John be enamored with some particular feature, whether it’s how Windows minimized the dock or
⏹️ ▶️ John some feature of an application. And at a certain point, Steve is more fascinated with it than the rest of the audience is.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And we’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ John okay, Steve, we get it. We know it’s cool. Go on to the next thing. And in this one, there was none of that. They would show you a feature, you’d be
⏹️ ▶️ John wowed by it, then move on to the next one. Just get moving. And contrast this to the
⏹️ ▶️ John one last year where he had that interlude section with the blind person navigating where he was
⏹️ ▶️ John the video itself was kind of slowly paced and he came on before it and talked with a lot of pauses and a lot of tempting of the
⏹️ ▶️ John hands and doing all that I don’t remember Steve Jobs it was very slow and deliberate where he wanted to have like a break
⏹️ ▶️ John now it’s like we don’t have time for breaks we got stuff to show we got competitors to punch in the face we got ourselves
⏹️ ▶️ John to punch in the face we need to go go go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah it was just non-stop with the exception of that weird car demo like the rest of it was just rock solid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was never a point where I was bored there was never a point I mean It was just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it was maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe Apple retail was a little boring in the beginning cuz we’re like come
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco count. That’s a everyone assumes. That’s the palate cleanser Yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Alright before we continue. Let’s talk about our first sponsor, and then we’ll get into the major topics of the day
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco was the OS 10 thing which John before I know we don’t want to spend too much time on that, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what do you think of the name?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I like the name. I thought the name was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John absolutely absurd. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t like that it’s plural, and I understand that it’s a place name, and I guess it’s talking about the waves
⏹️ ▶️ John that are there, but I don’t… name, whatever. The name is the name. I didn’t like a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of the cat names, too. I can think of lots of other interesting California place
⏹️ ▶️ John names, but I assume they’re not going to use any names that a non-Californian would recognize. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John expect OS X Sacramento, you know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Or Los Angeles
⏹️ ▶️ John or San Francisco or any of the cities that an East Coaster could name. It’s going to be places that we,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t think of the names of, but I do really like the big wave logo. I like the little skinny X,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though none of those aesthetics seem to be reflected in the OS itself.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it seems like they did dramatically change the iOS aesthetics, but the OS X aesthetics look pretty much the same.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco With the exception
⏹️ ▶️ John of the Maps app and the iBooks app, which have weird iOS 7 looking icons, and now
⏹️ ▶️ John they look out of place on the metal dock next to all the other stuff. So, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, are you going to continue to do reviews? Because everyone, as soon as this happened,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyone around us was asking, oh, are you still gonna do it because they’re not big cats anymore? Oh my goodness, is the world
⏹️ ▶️ Casey coming to an end? Is this gonna be the last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey one, maybe? What will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John the nerds do? Are you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna do the next 10? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. I was looking for an end to the cats as a place to put a cap on it, but now that the end has come, I start
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking that I like having done all the big cats. So now I feel like I
⏹️ ▶️ John can stop on Apore and say, well, I did all the big cat releases. And there is a little bit something about 10.10, even
⏹️ ▶️ John though this is technically the 10th release because we started from zero. When 10.10 comes,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. I have to stop eventually. I don’t know when that’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ John be, but it’s not going to be now. I’m going to review this one because the release date is what I wanted. They said the fall. I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John I will have time to do it. This does not look like it’s a big release. I think the review will be shorter. This
⏹️ ▶️ John does look kind of like a Snow Leopard release because aside from them enhancing a couple of applications in interesting ways
⏹️ ▶️ John and enhancing notifications and little things like that, a lot of the stuff they talked about was internal stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s good. I give that a thumbs up. But it also means I don’t think there’s, you know, how many screenshots do you have of
⏹️ ▶️ John memory compression? Probably not a lot, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, but how much time will John Syracuse spend writing up all these little internal foibles and bits and so
⏹️ ▶️ John It depends on how much information I can get about them because like there’s not going to be a section on their implementation
⏹️ ▶️ John of memory compression, right? And so, how do I extract information,
⏹️ ▶️ John super technical details about it, other than just simply explaining it to people who don’t know what it is in a reasonable way? That
⏹️ ▶️ John expands out somewhat, but I don’t know how much detail I can get into because anything that’s not a developer
⏹️ ▶️ John feature, they’re not going to spend time at WWDC explaining. The developer features I think they’re going to explain are how to make
⏹️ ▶️ John your app more memory, battery efficient and the
⏹️ ▶️ John app nap things, like things that interact with your application. They will probably spend a long time explaining how those things
⏹️ ▶️ John work and I’ll be able to expand on those. But some of the stuff that was in the keynote,
⏹️ ▶️ John all I’m going to hear about it is what was in the keynote and what’s in those PDFs, like they published a PDF of just
⏹️ ▶️ John technical details but not really. And that’s the last I’ll hear of those things, right? And then just the proof will be in the pudding. I’ll use the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and say, does it work like they say? Is it better? Whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you know at the last minute they’re going to apply a new theme and make you change your screenshots.
⏹️ ▶️ John That would be terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I should say that the three of us sat together in the keynote and I feel like there was a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey moment in which it was clear that they were about to announce the release date and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could feel all of the stress and anxiety and tension in the air
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from my friend John to my left because you were a little nervous,
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it was like that last year and the year before too. But the difference was coming in, I think both years coming
⏹️ ▶️ John in, I had thousands of words written already coming into WWDC because they had done the super secret preview
⏹️ ▶️ John and the hint that these developed. But this was like total radio silence. So that was kind of helpful in one respect. People were like, look, they can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John release it. We haven’t even seen it. What are they going to do? People have to have their apps work. But on the other hand, it could have been this was
⏹️ ▶️ John a really slim release and they figured everyone’s apps will still be compatible and it would be coming out in
⏹️ ▶️ John July 4th and then that would be screwed. But no, as I said, fall, I like fall.
⏹️ ▶️ John I encourage them to take as much time as they need.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so do we want to cover the new hardware?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, let’s do a keynote order. So next, I mean, MacBook Airs, I don’t think there’s that much to say. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we really want to talk about is the new R2-D2 Mac Pro trash can.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So gentlemen, thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs in the middle. What do we think? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John said on the last show that even if they don’t make a machine that suits my
⏹️ ▶️ John needs, If they feel like they’re fulfilling the spirit of the macro by doing something that
⏹️ ▶️ John has just massive performance, even if it has to be some crazy ass thing, like I said, with PCI
⏹️ ▶️ John Express SSDs and some crazy arrangement, they decided they could make something
⏹️ ▶️ John cooler or better by not having stuff inside it, fine. At least it will be daring
⏹️ ▶️ John and interesting. I think this fulfills that criteria. It is daring, it is interesting, they did crazy stuff with it,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they did crazy stuff because they felt it was better. And it seems like this machine is also focused on being
⏹️ ▶️ John much more powerful and capable than an iMac in some respects. In other respects, people point out,
⏹️ ▶️ John look, it may be that you could spec out an iMac with more internal storage in this thing. And that’s kind of depressing. Oh, that’s almost
⏹️ ▶️ John definite. But you will not be able to spec out an iMac with more GPU strength than this thing because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got those two gigantic, whatever, professional 3D GPUs in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John They made this machine for people who know what those GPUs are and who actually need them to do their work. Which
⏹️ ▶️ John again, does not help me and does not fulfill my criteria for the Mac Pro, but it is totally a daring
⏹️ ▶️ John new interesting bold design that they seem really committed to and excited about and had that cool video with
⏹️ ▶️ John the big booming bass and the Darth Vader look of the entire thing. I give that all thumbs
⏹️ ▶️ John up, but I am sad that they didn’t make a machine that suits my needs. It does not have internal
⏹️ ▶️ John drive bays, the GPUs do not look well suited for gaming, or at least the drivers won’t be I suspect.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s It’s going to be stupidly expensive and not have a lot of internal storage. And then, like this is the most un-Apple-like
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, and again, time has to tell because this is going to release in the fall. They’re expecting everybody to buy third-party monitors,
⏹️ ▶️ John third-party 4K monitors, which they mentioned in the keynote, and third-party external Thunderbolt enclosures
⏹️ ▶️ John for drives. Apple’s not even going to sell one of those. If Apple made one of those and it matched the machine,
⏹️ ▶️ John people would buy it, even if it was crazy expensive. And now, we’re kind of thrown to the wolves. Okay, well, here’s this little trash
⏹️ ▶️ John can, and you go out and figure out what you want to connect to it. Good luck.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought it was really wild and as someone who has no selfish interest in a Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it seemed to me like, and you touched on this, John, it seemed to me that they were fixing the problem of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what do professional video and audio, basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey media people. And 3D. And 3D, exactly right. You know, it’s not for you guys
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who just want an extraordinarily beefy Mac. It’s not for Marco who maybe just doesn’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have cables all over the place. for someone who is working at a studio, defined
⏹️ ▶️ Casey studio however you please, and it’s going to solve that problem, which I think it did fairly effectively.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, like the Pixar people, didn’t they announce that they were going to have, if you want to see how the Mac Pro performs?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, in the tomorrow lunch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John session. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John and Pixar is going to go and show how they can real-time render stuff with their, you know, because that’s-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not really going to give us that much information,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John honestly, not on the Mac Pro. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not, but they’re going to show off what dual professional quality GPUs can handle
⏹️ ▶️ John in there and they’re not they’re not gaming GPUs and as far as I can tell those are the only options is those crazy like that was always an
⏹️ ▶️ John option when you bought a Mac Pro that you could pick from the video cards was like you’d pick you know
⏹️ ▶️ John the crappy stock video card which sometimes didn’t even have active cooling it just had like a passive heat sink from those days and then you pick
⏹️ ▶️ John you know maybe one or two cards that are bigger than that and then there was always the option was like add $3,000 and it was like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey but and you would never want
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that unless you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John unless you’re gonna run Maya on it right and nobody would want those and they and actually their gaming performance was not that great
⏹️ ▶️ John because the drivers for those things in gaming would not be, you know, but professional 3D people needed them
⏹️ ▶️ John and we would never pick that one. But now it’s like you get it whether you want it or not. So I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John if I’m going to end up buying this machine because I want to play games on it. I don’t want to have to buy a gaming PC. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if it turns out that like the top of the top of the line Retina iMac or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John has better gaming performance, I’m going to have to end up with an iMac instead of that thing. God.
⏹️ ▶️ John will the world come to? No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a nightmare. I think, I mean, the new machine, it’s really interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They did, they had this goal, I think, of making something bold and new,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and obviously the typical Apple modern values of making it smaller. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in order to accomplish that, what we have is a machine that has reduced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco choice, and does not cover many of the edge cases of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs that the previous Mac Pros covered. And I have to wonder, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, so they made this thing really small, but, you know, I didn’t really need it to be small, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like Mac Pro customers weren’t really complaining that often that things were big. I mean, when you have to move them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it kind of sucked to have the handles cut into your hands because they weighed like 60 pounds, but, you know, for the most part,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it wasn’t that big of an issue. And you’re right, now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone’s gonna get these GPUs. So everyone’s gonna have to pay for these GPUs. Now, standalone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco workstation-class GPUs used to be about $1,000 or $1,200 each as options. Now we have two of them and that’s the only option.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So who knows what we’re gonna be paying for this machine. They also, there’s no more internal drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bays. There’s internal PCI Express SSDs that looks like there’s room for two modules. They look like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re probably custom modules. And so we probably won’t be able to easily upgrade them, at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not for a while. And Apple’s gonna charge a bazillion dollars for them. Exactly. Like they always do. Exactly, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks, like the demo unit they have with the lid off upstairs, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a spot for a second slot on the motherboard, but the connector isn’t even soldered on there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s like, this was an option when they screened the board but they didn’t even put the connector on there if it wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco configured with that. And who knows how it will ship, but it’s looking like it might be,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you have to buy it with two cards if you want that much storage. And so, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s what it’s because of the kind of module they’re using that’s going to limit the amount of storage. I’m guessing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the maximum might be one terabyte or nine sixty gigs when it ships. If it’s two four eighty modules,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe they’ll be able to crank it up and get two seven sixty eights and have it be one point five
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terabytes. Either way, it’s going to cost a fortune for that storage. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s no hard drive options, there’s no two and a half inch bay, and there’s no PCI slots,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is gonna anger video people, because they’re gonna have to buy new capture hardware and all the PCI hardware that
⏹️ ▶️ John The thing is they emphasize like, oh, and it’s so quiet, and we got this fan and everything. You have to hook
⏹️ ▶️ John up external drives to it, and Apple doesn’t make a super quiet, black, sleek
⏹️ ▶️ John Thunderbolt. So now I have to take this beautiful, let’s say this thing is beautiful and quiet and sleek, and I sit it on my
⏹️ ▶️ John desk. Now I have to just buy some random third party Thunderbolt drive enclosure
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s gonna have its own fans and its own stupid noise. Well, so much for the quietness. It’s not like you can, how long is the maximum Thunderbolt
⏹️ ▶️ John cable? It’s not like I can put them in a closet. It’s not, I guess I could have a sand or
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco something. I think network drives are gonna become more popular.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not, it doesn’t provide the, even for people who wanna do video editing stuff, are they gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John value the quietness and size? Because it’s immediately compromised by the way they have to use it, unless they’re all using
⏹️ ▶️ John sands for everything, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know. Well, I’m actually I think a big production houses. They usually do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John well Then why
⏹️ ▶️ John have six thunderbolt ports in the back of it
⏹️ ▶️ John guess for six monitors Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, I bet monitors are actually a big reason why but I think and also one big problem with video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is that there’s no longer a dual socket model? This appears to be single socket only there They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are gonna use the Z on e5 with the Ivy Bridge EP coming out. I mean this yeah the Ivy Bridge EP coming out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this fall It is going to max out at 12 cores, but that’s only because Intel’s making a 12-core
⏹️ ▶️ Marco E5 this fall. If they were continuing with their old way of doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things, you could have gotten 24 cores. I mean, there’s, like, you know, they moved to single socket,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which allowed them to make the whole thing much smaller, much lower power needs, much lower thermal needs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But video editors are going to really, I think, not react well to this machine, for both the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lack of card slots and for the only single socket option. option and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those are the people who are buying Mac Pros, like all the really high profit dual socket models that start at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like $5,000 today. They’re the ones who buy all those high profit machines and they’re the ones who,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the iMac will not work for them and it will never work for them because they actually need as much CPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco performance as they can get to do their jobs well and to be economical.
⏹️ ▶️ John think there’s like a bet on the future of like they assume more and more stuff is going to be moving to the GPU
⏹️ ▶️ John counting on people to rewrite their applications to to use more OpenCL and to farm stuff off because it’s going to have
⏹️ ▶️ John so much more performance on those GPUs than it will have on that one CPU. Like, it’s just a question of tapping
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Because if you think about it, like, very little you can do with that Mac Pro is going
⏹️ ▶️ John to tap those two GPUs, except for running a huge number of monitors and running like Maya or something that takes advantage
⏹️ ▶️ John of them or something that always use Workstate. And everything else is just those GPUs just sleeping there.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Right, like if I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get one of these things, it’s gonna be such a waste of those GPUs because it’s gonna be showing text editors most of the time
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing is like, you know, you always want, we want everything, right? So it’s a desktop class
⏹️ ▶️ John machine. It’s not a Mac mini. So thumbs up there. And it’s not an iMac, doesn’t have integrated screen. So thumbs up there.
⏹️ ▶️ John And a lot of it we love. We love the Xeons, the ECC RAM, and it would make your text editing better because
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re pulling stuff off a really, presumably a super fast PCI express attached SSD. And so things will
⏹️ ▶️ John open really fast. Like it’s got all those good qualities and then two grand worth of GPU that you don’t want that
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t get rid of.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And we don’t know. The pricing of this is going to be very interesting, because we don’t know how much we’re going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco charged for those GPUs.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not going to be the same cost as putting two big NVIDIA cards in there. It’s not going to be $4,000 worth
⏹️ ▶️ John of GPUs. The question is, how much can they shave off by soldering these things to the boards, having only one Xeon?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by having this be the only option for every Mac Pro buyer, they have to have some volume advantage. Maybe they got a nice deal from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AMD on the GPUs. I mean, who knows? But that’s a big question
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mark, I think, is the pricing and how much we’re paying for those GPUs. And it looks like they’re not upgradable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have some kind of weird custom way to attach to the main CPU motherboard, but it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look like this is gonna be upgradable in any way except RAM and maybe those disk modules.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everything in it is weird and custom. Even the RAM seems to fold out on these little gills on the side of the thing, with
⏹️ ▶️ John that little plastic latch opens up and then the RAM modules flap. It’s totally weird and custom. It looks kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I mean, someone posted a picture of the 20th anniversary Mac subwoofer. But the 20th anniversary Mac was also similarly
⏹️ ▶️ John custom. And as are all the Macs, if you look at all the Airs or the MacBook Pros, nothing inside them is standard.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everything is made specifically for that model to fit exactly, and that’s true of the Mac Mini. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the only computer left that it wasn’t true of was the Mac Pro, because it’s like, oh, that video card that’s in there? That wasn’t made
⏹️ ▶️ John custom, I mean, it was in terms of manufacturing, but it’s a regular standard PCI Express card,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And you could take that card out, and it will physically fit inside a PC. It probably won’t work, because
⏹️ ▶️ John you’d have to flash the thing, but it’s made to a standard that was not made by Apple. and this thing is a standard
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and the DIMMs are about it. Everything
⏹️ ▶️ John else is some crazy board that, you know, there’s no standard SATA connector, and there’s no 2.5-inch base, 3.5-inch.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no optical drive base. You know, there’s nothing about it that’s standard. And so now it fits
⏹️ ▶️ John with the rest of Apple’s product line, because this is their vision of how to build computers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, nothing on the inside is standard, but there’s, what, four Thunderbolt ports? Six. Four or six Thunderbolt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ports. There’s like four or six USB ports. So I think the interesting thing about it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that there’s nothing that’s inside that’s standard with the exception of the RAM, but almost every connection to the outside world
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John standard. Yeah, no
⏹️ ▶️ John more ADC port or any other
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey weird exotic things.
⏹️ ▶️ John In fact, very few ports at all. I wonder if those audio ports are the fake little
⏹️ ▶️ John optical. The back of my Mac Pro has actual dedicated optical ports in addition to
⏹️ ▶️ John the- Yeah, you have like little split-off ports. Yeah, right. And all that stuff, I wonder
⏹️ ▶️ John how much they’ve sacrificed there. I wonder how much people care. The other thing about it is the power supply. We’re debating whether,
⏹️ ▶️ John is the power supply internal or is there a brick?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does appear to have a regular, you know, the three-pronged NUMA or NEMA, whatever it is, the plug, the standard plug.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It does appear to have the same, roughly the same type.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s almost certainly internal. And I was thinking of it from audio perspective, like, because
⏹️ ▶️ John the Power Mac G5 had terrible, like, you’d get, there’s electronic noise inside the thing that would show up
⏹️ ▶️ John on your audio. And I still get it sometimes, like, you know, because the analog audio, I was thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John well if I use optical audio out maybe that would be isolated like it was just a big box of electrical Noise and this
⏹️ ▶️ John one you would presume would solve those problems
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Just well also it would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would be a significant heat issue if they had a brick They would have to have a fan in it because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you know these the highest TDP for this for the series of Xeons They’re using for the 12 cores.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like a hundred and thirty watts for the CPU alone
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah I wonder about I wonder about the whole thing in terms of power because those GPUs are not cool like
⏹️ ▶️ John one of those would would require a big active cooler on each of those cards, plus gigantic
⏹️ ▶️ John fan on the CPU, I guess they get away with not having hard drives in there, probably saves a lot on heat.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The thermal design does look really nice. And I do like, for noise reasons, I do like how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fan appears to be the only moving part. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think my two big questions on it, which I guess we’ll learn closer to launch, My two big questions are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entry price and retina displays. Because all that GPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power, maybe the reason why they beefed up the GPUs like crazy for everyone who buys
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this thing. Maybe the reason why is that they expect to actually ship a retina desktop display sometime
⏹️ ▶️ Marco during the lifetime of when people are gonna own this thing. And whether it’s at launch, that’s pushing it I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think. But maybe next year they release a retina desktop display that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John this. Do you
⏹️ ▶️ John think they’ve decided that the users they’re targeting with this already have displays or don’t want Apple displays
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway? That seems crazy to me. Maybe someone in the industry knows, oh, we never buy the Apple displays. We always have our specially
⏹️ ▶️ John calibrated whatever display. It seems like leaving money on the table. If you’re going to sell someone this really expensive computer and they
⏹️ ▶️ John can figure to at least have an option for like, oh, and pick the Apple super expensive 4K display, even if it’s not better than third
⏹️ ▶️ John party, because you’re going to make money on it. If you make it nice and it matches the display, people will buy it, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe we’ll see at the launch event. Maybe they have a new displays for people to buy, maybe they don’t. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the hard drive’s annoying me because it’s like, you’re gonna buy this Mac Pro for a bazillion grand and now you do not have,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t do a Time Machine backup because, oh, you gotta buy Thunderbolt disk for that. Now you’re just like an
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, you need a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Goodness, no. Yeah, Time Machine is one of the reasons why I so appreciate all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my internal drive bays because it’s like, I hate, as Keith said, I hate the clutter of a desk covered in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard drive enclosures and all those extra cables and power bricks that come
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John with them. You have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to turn their hard drives on because they’re not bus powered. Right, and all that crap. I hate all that stuff. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, these days we are seeing a lot of moves towards network storage and time capsules.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m sure they want you to buy that instead. Historically, they have not worked nearly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as well as local disks for Time
⏹️ ▶️ John No, even just the firewall attached to this. Internal SATA has been the most reliable way to do Time
⏹️ ▶️ John Machine or SuperDuper or anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No problems. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John quieter and it runs cooler. Disks spin down when they’re not in use. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John power. It’s just, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So I think this will be interesting. I think I’m probably going to end up buying one just because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really want that CPU power and that will help me a lot. But it is a little disappointing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that like what the compromises that they made that don’t necessarily seem like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re achieving goals that any of us are really asking for.
⏹️ ▶️ John well, it’s Apple’s goal. Go ahead,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Casey. And so that’s the thing is that it seems to me like Apple took their vision of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what, excuse me, what a media person would want, what a studio would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want, and they said, oh, they’re going to want an enormous amount of graphic power and a pretty fast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey CPU and that’s all they should need. When, as you guys were talking about, in reality, that might
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not really match up with what a studio would actually want to buy. So it’s as though Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey invented this phantom persona that they wanted to build this thing for, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s certainly not you guys who want a gazillion internal drives and the ability to add and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remove things easily. And it may not even be for the studios, because they’re going to want their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey own video cards, they’re going to want more internal storage, etc., etc. You think they had
⏹️ ▶️ John to have been in touch with some…
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey One would think.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they didn’t have a video. Like, sometimes they have a video of, like, you know, the people who they built this thing for,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, sometimes they do it with software or whatever, like, oh, this new version of whatever is amazing, and I love… This new version of Aperture
⏹️ ▶️ John changes the way I… and they show all the photographers who presumably they had some kind of early feedback with.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like they must have had not a Phantom persona, but like a real,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I mean, it’s like- Maybe Pixar.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, maybe Pixar, maybe that’s why they’re doing the lunch session, say, oh, Pixar loves these now, they can run Maya really well
⏹️ ▶️ John and it doesn’t take up a lot of room and they just, you know. But like, I think there is a Phantom customer, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I wonder like why that’s decided to focus on. And this machine though, it seems like the philosophy that it adheres to
⏹️ ▶️ John is the one that Apple has for all of its hardware. custom parts, as small and as quiet as possible, as simple as
⏹️ ▶️ John possible, no standard anything. We are not a PC manufacturer. We don’t make
⏹️ ▶️ John a box that you can slap a bunch of stuff into. Because slowly all of Apple’s computers stopped being that
⏹️ ▶️ John until there was almost nothing in them that was like standard or standard opening or card slots or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even like the hard drives, we can replace those with our own, not really custom, but sort of custom,
⏹️ ▶️ John little, instead of SATA, 2.5 inch SATA drives, we can use these little, what is it, the M-SATA
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the sticks. And then, but it’s not, it’s like, I think Anantek had,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he was analyzing, like trying to figure out what it was, and he said there was like this M2, it was like MicroSATA 2,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that it didn’t appear to be that, and it looks like it’s just a custom connector, custom modules,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco custom everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, so like
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s how they decide, that’s how you make computers from now on.
⏹️ ▶️ John In the same way that the MacBook Air is made, it was the precursor, now all their computers or like that all the way down to the Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is just a philosophy that I don’t think they consulted on other people. Hey you guys, do you think we should make the battery sealed in on all
⏹️ ▶️ John our laptops? Do you think we should get rid of 2.5 inch SSDs and replace them with this little stick thing?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like they just decided this is the way computers should be built, this is the way Apple computers are going to be built.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then also, oh by the way, what would you guys like? Okay, we’ll build you one of those using our philosophy of
⏹️ ▶️ John all custom parts and crazy stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and certainly I think this is going to bring Apple more profit because now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we can still probably put in third party RAM, but now we can’t put in third
⏹️ ▶️ Marco party drives anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John But in the machine we’ll just reject
⏹️ ▶️ John third party RAM. It’ll be,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you’ll try to put it in, but it will
⏹️ ▶️ John spit it out the side and grind it up in the central fan and it will come out in chunks. I’m sorry, I only
⏹️ ▶️ John accept Apple approved RAM.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac Pro Shredder. Yeah. All right, let’s talk about our second sponsor and then we’ll move on to iOS 7. Good,
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty complex pretty quickly. With Windows Azure Mobile Services, adding push
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⏹️ ▶️ John iOS 7 gives you many new reasons where you might want to send push notifications to your
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey application. Actually, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a perfect segue, John. That’s very true. So what do we think about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iOS 7? I got to tell you, I haven’t. So Marco put it on his night, I mean, his
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not normal phone, and his old 4S. And we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all played with it for, I don’t know, maybe between all of us, some total of five minutes. So we haven’t had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a chance to really process and think about it. Since I’m talking, I’ll start with my own
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thoughts. My first thought is I don’t know what to think. I feel like I need to chew on it a little while because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is bold, it is absolutely bold. And the other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing I will say is the first thought that I had and I think all of us had the moment we saw the home
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screen is, holy crap, those icons have gotta go. They’re just rough.
⏹️ ▶️ John Actually, the first thought I had when I saw this, when they finally revealed what it looks like, and even in that little demo video
⏹️ ▶️ John with the dots that was in the beginning is, So,
⏹️ ▶️ John we complain about giving credit like, oh, you’re not the first person to make something with a touch screen, but we give credit to Apple because they
⏹️ ▶️ John made the first one that didn’t suck or whatever. Or, you know, Apple kind of was making a phone that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John all a screen. Like, oh, Nokia had a phone that was all a screen beforehand. Those earlier ones don’t count. It’s like, whoever
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of, I mean, right or wrong, whoever popularized it, whoever was famous enough and did the thing, they
⏹️ ▶️ John get the credit because no one knew about it when it was just on the Nokia phone, but then when Apple did it, touchscreen
⏹️ ▶️ John phones are everywhere, or the GUI arranges other things. And in this case, I really feel like this
⏹️ ▶️ John visual style, which is the first thing that hits you in the face with this, seeing the home screen, seeing all that stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Credit to this visual style, planting the flag in this, goes to Microsoft with Metro. They
⏹️ ▶️ John were not the first person to come up with this style. They were responding to like the things in the air about the design community, but they
⏹️ ▶️ John put that flag in the ground. And I remember talking about it on a Hypercritical where we were talking about,
⏹️ ▶️ John after I just watched that Windows Metro video for Windows 8 for like an hour and a half and then look back
⏹️ ▶️ John at my iOS device and it looked old and creaky and clunky. And so this does
⏹️ ▶️ John not look exactly like Metro. It isn’t a ripoff of Metro, but Microsoft is the one who planted the flag of this
⏹️ ▶️ John is the new visual style. And if you stare at this long enough, even if you hate it and think it’s ugly, when you look
⏹️ ▶️ John back at your other thing, your other thing looks crappy. And I think iOS 7 is following that trend
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of Microsoft planted the flag and Apple followed. And it will probably, ugly icons aside,
⏹️ ▶️ John will probably have the same effect where if you stare at it for a long period of time as you’re developing your app, when you go back to your iOS 6
⏹️ ▶️ John and you look at it, you’re gonna be like, ugh, it’s gonna be like pinstripes. No matter how much you
⏹️ ▶️ John hate the ugliness of iOS 7, I think that effect is going to be there. And that is, it’s startling to me.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like as Gruber said in his post, this is a polarizing thing, but I feel like there’s going to be a ratcheting
⏹️ ▶️ John effect where we won’t be able to go back.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s, I would even say it looks almost like it’s been heavily influenced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by both Windows Phone and Android in a lot of its graphical treatments and styles.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I think the new toolbar icons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey in Safari… Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the action button, which is like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco the box with the arrow coming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out. Yeah, like almost everywhere that we’ve seen a toolbar icon that wasn’t just text, that is actually an icon drawn, they look very Android-y
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey designs and in their style.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yeah, they’re like all thin, abstract lines. it really does look like Android. And you’re right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the rest of the system looks a lot like Windows. And not like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, not to the point where you’d confuse them, but you could tell, like, this is obviously a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John heavy influence.
⏹️ ▶️ John In the same way that you can say that Android does not look like iOS, but you’re gonna say, but face it, Android is the way it is
⏹️ ▶️ John because iOS came along and made an OS where you only interact with it. But if you look at Android before iOS and after, and
⏹️ ▶️ John no one’s gonna say, oh, Android ripped off the look and feel of iOS, because it doesn’t. It looks totally different. But you’re gonna say Android
⏹️ ▶️ John looks the way it does because iOS exists. And I’m gonna say both iOS 7 and Android
⏹️ ▶️ John share the influence, I think, at this point of Windows 8 Metro, which may not have been a successful product, but
⏹️ ▶️ John was the first highest profile, boldest iteration of that design philosophy, which again,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think Microsoft necessarily invented, but it doesn’t matter, just like Apple didn’t invent the GUI or the touchscreen phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is, I mean, we should really, it really is remarkable to point out that Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has set a new design trend.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well. I mean, I’m hesitant to say set, like they are the standard bearer for it.
⏹️ ▶️ John there first, they planted it, and they were the big company that put it out there. And it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John other people would say, when they saw Window Metro, oh, that looks exactly like what I’ve been doing. Hundreds of little people probably all said that, but they
⏹️ ▶️ John are in Microsoft, and that’s just how the business works. And it’s startling not just that
⏹️ ▶️ John it was Microsoft, but that Apple is now reacting to it. With the Redmond Start Your Photocopier, not that I’m saying they shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John react to it, because fashion and design trends, that’s how it works. But this is one that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John is not the standard bearer for. just not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, and the thing that I thought was most surprising was during Tim’s part of the keynote early on,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it was his beloved customer sat, which I hate that. But when he was talking about customer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey satisfaction numbers and the way he was talking about Android, it felt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like he knew that Android had a lot of users, but he just didn’t believe in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey his heart that they were an actual competitor. And the way he was talking, even though
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was very briefly, the way he talked about Microsoft was that they were the ones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Apple should be worried about. I mean, this is all based on my interpretation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not like he came out and said it, but I got this feeling that Microsoft was the actual competitor and it was just hammered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey home by the way IOS 7 looks because it is not a rip of Metro, but it’s absolutely –
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re right. It’s a very heavily influenced by Metro. Matthew
⏹️ ▶️ John Feeney Like that’s the direction everyone is going in and Apple was not out there first
⏹️ ▶️ John to saying, come on, everybody follow me. And it’s a weird because usually the person who’s out there first with the design direction
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, hey, everybody likes to make touchscreen phones is also the leader in the market and Microsoft is not the leader in the
⏹️ ▶️ John or really anything else like these days. But they were definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John the leader in that vision. I mean, I wonder,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is like alt history stuff, say forestall is not there and there’s no forestall rise to power.
⏹️ ▶️ John Does Johnny Ive beat Windows Metro to the punch with a software interface that looks like
⏹️ ▶️ John this, and the only reason he didn’t was because the combination of Forrestal and Jobs were so, they loved
⏹️ ▶️ John so much leather and 3D effects and thick things and texture. And like, there’s a story
⏹️ ▶️ John of Steve Jobs, someone showed their app to Steve Jobs in the elevator at Apple, some Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John employee showed it to him, and Steve looked at it a few seconds and said, this background needs more texture, and gave it back to him. You remember that story? Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. Like, those guys just love texture, and maybe that was a diversion. I think it was a fruitful diversion.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like the look of the old OS, but I gotta say, it starts to look pinstripey.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like even in the demo when they said, here’s how you can test your app to make sure the metrics still work in iOS 6 or 7, they switched it back to 6
⏹️ ▶️ John mode and everyone went, ooh.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, it looked really old.
⏹️ ▶️ John And this is not an audience that’s like gaga for iOS 7. Like we’re not all, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John gorgeous. We’re saying iOS 7 looks weird, but it’s the contrast. It’s like being dipped into hot
⏹️ ▶️ John water and then cold water. You’re like, I didn’t like either one, but this feels cold now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think what’s worth pointing out though is that, You know, while iOS 7 does appear, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by looking at one static screen, it does appear very metro-y in a lot of ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Where they really departed from both what Android and what Windows is doing, are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing, is in the depth. And it was very important that nobody from Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco said flat at any point. The word flat was never used to describe this design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it is not, you know, it’s not Textured and not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using gradients very much, but if you know very much like like Lauren Britter’s letterpress
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is a depth to the interface and they use depth very clearly and they use shadows and they use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Translucency which I’m a little iffy on it looks a little bit Windows Vista II But you know they use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they make heavy use of layering and then the parallax stuff and the transitions are all different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is very much like iOS before 7 had all these textures and gradients and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the way things would move, like the way view controllers would push onto the stack. It was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flat. It was all, yeah, you were just moving around flat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John planes. There wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John a big separation. If you imagine them as a bunch of cards on the desk, cards were all touching each other. Exactly. Like they would
⏹️ ▶️ John slide past each other and in front of and behind, but there was never like, oh, this card is a centimeter floating above
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly, and that’s how Windows Metro feels. They do a little bit with the text,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, like the text being kind of partially off screen, you scroll it in, like they do a little bit with that, but for the most part,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it still feels like you’re moving around flat panes. And iOS 7, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, we haven’t had time to play with it much yet, but the way it looks in the videos and stuff, it looks like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has this great sense of depth and layers to it that you don’t really see in the other
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re trying to sell that, but that is a, I mean, this is, let’s talk about iOS 7 overall, that is a difficult transition
⏹️ ▶️ John to go from everyone who’s got their apps that look like the way they do now, and Apple says, here’s a new direction.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when they show their own apps, like sure, they can make a mail match that, and they can make a Safari match that or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. But if you look at Safari and compare it to the old versions of Safari, and if you were to say, okay, well, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John how much Safari had to change to match into the aesthetic and functional and conceptual
⏹️ ▶️ John model. Now take your app and how it looks, you have to change as much as Safari changed, and that’s a lot, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a little. It’s not like, oh, just
⏹️ ▶️ John your toolbar work. Because Safari is just wildly different in terms of how the toolbars work and how,
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s practically a new app in terms of the UI. None of the UI is shared. The web rendering is shared
⏹️ ▶️ John and improved, but that’s a lot of work to be able to fit into this new world. So it might be kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s apps fit into this new world, and then you launch someone else’s app, and it looks a little different, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the conceptual physics model of how it works is the same. You’re sliding things in and out. I guess you have the new animations
⏹️ ▶️ John on the sheets that come up and stuff like that, but you’re not going to be getting any… I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John the picker has its little… I don’t know. It might be weird to use this on day
⏹️ ▶️ John one and see all the built-in apps looking this way and
⏹️ ▶️ John all of the third-party apps looking like iOS 6 with a fresh coat of paint.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, and the thing, there were two things that struck me about it. The first was, the way I would describe iOS 6 is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how would you make something look 3D when you only have two dimensions to play with? And you would have,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I don’t know the design-y terms to describe it, but that’s kind of how it felt, was let’s take something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s flat and let’s pretend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that it’s not. But shading on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. Right. And iOS 7 is, obviously the screen is still flat, but iOS 7 is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now we are putting some actual depth into the interface and it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a fake anymore. It’s real. And what are we going to do about that? And so that I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me was the most striking difference. And then in terms of what you were saying about the apps, the funny thing about it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as time went on with iOS 6 or iOS visual interface Gen 1,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone got more and more aware of from standard UI kit elements.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so for example, you know, my little app that I have in the app store, it looks extraordinarily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dated now because I never really bothered with, with appearance proxies or anything like that. I never did custom
⏹️ ▶️ Casey UI elements. And so now at this very moment, or at least up until today, it looked very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey old, but I ran, I downloaded the new Xcode and ran it in, excuse me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the new Xcode, and it actually looked just fine. So the advantage of staying with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey standard UI kit elements is I blended reasonably well right off the bat. And I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not saying that that’s going to be true for everyone. It’s funny to me that all these people who went really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wild with really, really custom user interfaces because they kind of had to in order to stand out, now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’re going to kind of have to pay the price, in certain cases. Some developers
⏹️ ▶️ John could smell where the wind was blowing, like our friend underscore David Smith, whose weather app, who I
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t remember the name of. Check
⏹️ ▶️ John weather. Like, he brought up a control and he was testing it on iOS 7, and I said, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John is that the new like OS player control? Actually, this wasn’t the weather app, it was some other app that he makes, he has too many of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco no, that’s a… I believe it was feed wrangler.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And he said, that’s a UI that I drew. And I’m like, well, that looks like iOS 7 already. And Twitterific is another great
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco of another app that sort of,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, and the weather app itself, like they are the Yahoo weather app for that matter.
⏹️ ▶️ John They reacted to the same, I mean, Microsoft is, because Microsoft came out with Metro,
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that same, the direction the wind is blowing is that way. So if you did a custom UI and you did it in
⏹️ ▶️ John this theme, your app will not necessarily look out of place, at least in a static screenshot in iOS 7.
⏹️ ▶️ John And those people have got to be like, wow, this is great. I don’t have that much work to do. Whereas the guys with super duper
⏹️ ▶️ John 3D rounded custom buttons that are trying to look like the OS buttons in iOS 6, but not really,
⏹️ ▶️ John they have a lot of work to do because you cannot put one of those buttons on a screen, on an iOS 7 screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John sticks out like a sore thumb.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s what there’s really gonna be. I mean this I think by far is going to be the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS release that has developers needing to do the most work and And and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know you’re right that you know I think there’s there’s gonna be the two extremes of developers who use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco UI kit controls mostly unmodified will be pretty much fine with almost no changes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and People who make their entire interface custom They’re gonna be fine too.
⏹️ ▶️ John if the look they chose matches iOS 7.
⏹️ ▶️ John If they’ve made it entirely custom and everything has grass growing on it, well then they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco kinda screwed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I worry a little bit about Tweetbot. Like how, like that style, that might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not fit in well with the new, with iOS’s new style. Like the whole style of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, like those richly colored and gradiented apps that have all the, you know, like all custom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John stuff. But that is kinda
⏹️ ▶️ John custom too. Like what if you just left it like that? And then you go out of this OS and then you’re into Tweetbot, like doesn’t your app
⏹️ ▶️ John more distinctive as like a heavy, I mean, well, you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know. I guess we’ll have to see. The
⏹️ ▶️ John other choice is redesign your whole fricking app,
⏹️ ▶️ John single button in control.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think you’re right, like Twitterific is a good example of like how they lucked out big time. I mean, you know, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saw where the style was going also, but it was very clear, like Twitterific, when it came out, looked totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco radical, and now it’s looking like, oh, that’s gonna fit in very well. But I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s the developers who are in the middle who are going to have probably the most work to do,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which I’ve always been in this camp, especially with Instapaper. With the magazine, I did a lot of custom stuff, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Instapaper, I was always in the camp of use UI kit stuff and then modify it slightly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or modify it to do things that it can’t do. So you fake this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shape, or you fake this pixel. If that’s been your approach, I think there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna be a lot of work
⏹️ ▶️ John What about the iPad version of Instapaper? That looks like it had weird custom stuff on the side, isn’t it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The iPad version will actually be okay because the iPad version was almost entirely custom.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think Instapaper for iPhone is gonna have some issues. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fortunately, it’s not my problem anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John Tip to Guy English if you’re listening.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. No, I think… And the magazine should be fine too. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think what you’re really gonna have to consider and what we’re gonna see, this is going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an uncomfortable transition this fall when this comes out for developers, for users, because so much is different.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think apps that use mostly the old stuff, even if you can get them to not look broken,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they will start feeling old and dated. Like, one of the biggest changes is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way that like view controllers have this new depth and they kind of push over. They’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost adopted the basement interface metaphor as like the way those things move
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and are spatially arranged, they’ve kind of adopted that for view controllers now, like for the navigation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pushes and stuff. I think if your app uses the old style stuff where you have full
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen view controller and then you’re gonna push down to another level and everything slides off screen, new thing slides on,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re doing that a lot, I think it’s gonna start to feel old. Even if it looks okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s gonna feel like an antiquated design. And there’s so much new stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with parallax, with physics and just new styles, new paradigms. So much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new stuff that I feel like you’re gonna have to significantly rethink
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your app in a lot of cases to make it feel modern and at home in iOS 7.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I would really, I’d be shocked if anybody could really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pull it off very well without dropping support for iOS 6 and before.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think the biggest visual trend aside from all the stuff that’s obvious, like looking at the pictures is,
⏹️ ▶️ John this was a big trend back in the earlier iOS days and developers of their own accord have been abandoning it. But back
⏹️ ▶️ John in the old days, every single freaking app had a top bar and a toolbar thing on the bottom. I forget what the names of those are,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco now- Navigation bar and the toolbar.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, and now they’re like, people started to give them up. First they gave up the bottom one and tried to do everything with the top one. And then they
⏹️ ▶️ John tried to like have the top one so you could hide it. And Apple’s apps and iOS 7, it’s like everything is full screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Your controls, if they’re there at all, have to be minimal and maybe make them disappear when people aren’t using them. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just like your app fills the entire screen from top to bottom, including even the status bar, which is now translucent,
⏹️ ▶️ John and your app is drawing underneath that. I mean, there’s not so much you can do, because the status bar is gonna have stuff in it. It’s not like you can draw there, but
⏹️ ▶️ John that is a totally different philosophy. And it’s kind of weird that the screen got taller, and they said,
⏹️ ▶️ John also ditch those stupid bars on top and the bottom.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Like, you just get everything out of there. Even more room for
⏹️ ▶️ John the content. And that’s part of the thing that looks old about it, is when you see, it’s like a hat and a belt.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s got a utility belt on the bottom, and it’s got this headband or hat on the top, And then it makes the
⏹️ ▶️ John already small window and through those two things, you can see your app hiding behind it. And those are like
⏹️ ▶️ John the button controls. And now it’s like, maybe some wispy words in a small font at the top, and maybe nothing on the
⏹️ ▶️ John bottom. And then everything disappears when you scroll. And if you tap, the words come back and you can
⏹️ ▶️ John tap them. That is like, you will have to change your application. And that’s why,
⏹️ ▶️ John like you said, you can’t just say, okay, well, I’ll just do conditionals and say, if you’re on iOS 6, draw
⏹️ ▶️ John crazy ass toolbars. if you’re not, you’re making two apps at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that point. Right, you can’t change your entire interface or like fundamental parts of its navigation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for just iOS 7 and keep all of it. I mean, that’s just ridiculous. I don’t know, and I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is obviously the beginning of a new paradigm in a lot of ways. And I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think Apple got everything right. And you know, like we said earlier, I think the icons are pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rough. I One of my one of my friends described the icons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as they look like somebody’s first illustrator project and That I think is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty apt I Shocked at how bad they are
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing is that they’re bold. They’re not because I can imagine Icon designs that
⏹️ ▶️ John fit exactly with this aesthetic that do not look as ugly like Desaturate the colors like
⏹️ ▶️ John they could think of the super desaturated like OS 10 things when they took all the color out of the sidebar or icons or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John do a super desaturated, subtle version where all this is just beautiful, simple, flat line art.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m saying flat to mean like they have not shaded stuff to make it look like it’s puffy. Like everything is, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know what I mean? Like it’s supposed to be like ink drawing printed on paper. Just don’t use like bright
⏹️ ▶️ John pink and bright purple and like don’t use such saturated colors. And it would still fit with the
⏹️ ▶️ John aesthetics theme because the aesthetics theme is like, oh, the buttons don’t have borders around them. They’re just words.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the words have a color to let you know that they’re active. Like, that theme is not in itself
⏹️ ▶️ John ugly and is nice, but the icons are just like, I’m pink and purple and
⏹️ ▶️ John yellow pointy thing on my spinny dial and I’m Safari and newsstand, look at me, I got Fisher Price books
⏹️ ▶️ John on my, and God, Game Center, with like, they got rid of the stupid green felt, but now it’s like, just
⏹️ ▶️ John giant blobs of jello. It feels like a Barney show or just like a preschool.
⏹️ ▶️ John I found the felt and like the parlor game thing insulting. I find this insulting too. Like they just do not, they still do
⏹️ ▶️ John not understand how gamers would like to see themselves or how they identify. And maybe, again, maybe they
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t care because they’re not making something for
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s not attractive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, and going back a sec, just to finish that thought, like I think they are starting this whole new paradigm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they didn’t get everything right. I think a lot of this stuff, like, you know, a lot of things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now are more gesture-based and therefore are harder to discover. A lot of things that, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our buttons or our things that cause things to happen don’t look like buttons anymore. And it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s all these changes that, you know, some of them I think we can agree,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like John Gruber wrote a pretty good post last night about how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the training wheels are no longer necessary. That people know how to work touchscreen devices now and you don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything to look like a button and things like that. And I think that’s true, but I think Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might have gone a little bit too far in either direction. I think time will tell whether they have to course
⏹️ ▶️ Marco correct a little bit or not. But ultimately, I think whatever Apple and developers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do with this this year, we’re going to have to revise significantly next year. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once we see this thing in action, once the whole world is using this new paradigm and these new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco standards, then we can start making changes and seeing how it works in real use.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think it’s going to be a really uncomfortable transition period while we all figure this out. I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exciting. I think Apple has a lot of revision they need to do with the styling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it, but I think it’s exciting overall. I like the animations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Basically, to clarify what I like, I hate the icons, and I hate some of the text and layout decisions they’ve made,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I love the 3D stuff. I love the depth. I love the animations. That stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John rocks for me. The best example of the training wheels thing, I think, is the lock screen, because everyone knows how to slide
⏹️ ▶️ John to unlock by now, and it still says slide to unlock, and it still has an animation that goes from left to right, but it
⏹️ ▶️ John no longer looks like a little inset plastic thing that you drag along a little track cut into the
⏹️ ▶️ John top of your phone. They no longer need that. But I think on the other hand, one of the things that we all
⏹️ ▶️ John know, you know the little … what is it, the rectangle icon with the arrow leaping out of it to the right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco The share. The share
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Or the fact that the gear menu is settings. Nerds know what those things are, but I’ve seen plenty of regular
⏹️ ▶️ John people using iOS devices and they don’t know how to share a photo, despite the fact that seven
⏹️ ▶️ John apps that they’ve used and shown in all seven that little square with the arrow leaping out of it is probably like how you share
⏹️ ▶️ John something. The word share is more of
⏹️ ▶️ John an affordance for them than that stupid little icon. Again, despite the fact that icons used everywhere, you think like you would pick
⏹️ ▶️ John up the pattern like, oh, when I want to share something from the app, I hit that little rectangle. Now that it actually says share and
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that it’s blue everywhere shows you can tap it, I think that actually is a trade-off in the other direction.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they made an emphasis of that, like we’re using words instead of icons, because sometimes icons can be inscrutable and even though
⏹️ ▶️ John nerds pick up the patterns really quickly, regular people don’t. So it’s interesting that they’re like not hand-holding
⏹️ ▶️ John you on it because once you learn swiped open, no one forgets that. It’s like that’s it. You know
⏹️ ▶️ John it, you do it a bazillion times, it’s burned into your memory. It only happens in one place, the context is clear.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe people aren’t learning gear settings or share is that little rectangle thing and it’s better to have the words on
⏹️ ▶️ John them. So I think they’re trying to react to a population that is learning how to use smartphones but at the
⏹️ ▶️ John same time recognizing the things that people are failing to accomplish with smartphones because of these stupid and screw-able little
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Marc Thiessen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. Yeah. And to go back to what you were saying, Marco, about the animations, the animation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to go between an app and the home screen, it’s hard to describe, but I love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. I think it’s really well done. I think it looks great. The new multitasking setup,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like something’s just a little off about it, perhaps that the little screenshot of whatever app you’re looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John at needs to be a little bigger or something. Marc Thiessen It doesn’t feel right.
⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t feel… I think even Palm OS felt better, which is a very similar metaphor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I’m not sure what specifically doesn’t feel right. I am totally thumbs up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the premise of it. I think it’s a lot better than what we’ve got with the little multitasking tray in iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 6. But it didn’t feel right, but I’m totally behind the principle of it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just those little affordances, just that animation to the home screen and the multitasking gesture,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the multitasking view, that alone makes me clamor for putting this on my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey carry phone, which I’m not going to do because I did that with iOS 5 and I hated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco myself for By the way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve seen a few of our friends have put this on their carry phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John And we’ve seen the reboot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would not recommend installing the iOS 7 beta on your carry phone. It looks, I didn’t do it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thank God, but it looks like it’s pretty unstable and not ready at all. Put it on the night phone only.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s interesting too that the iPad beta is not out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that they didn’t show anything on iPads yet. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they like flashed up a static screenshot, I think. That was probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fake. I mean like you know we the what ever since the iPad has existed since 2010 and since
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS 3.2 It’s always it’s always had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a crazy mix of like just blown up iPhone UI and and its own custom stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and generally iPad apps that used stock UI kit stuff Looked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way worse than iPhone apps that use stock UI kit stuff, and and I wonder if they’re gonna take this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco opportunity well if they’re either gonna take this opportunity to to make the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version more distinct from the iPhone version, or if they went into this design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to make just one design that looked better on both, rather than have a phone design that just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blows up kind of to iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it seems weird, like going back to Safari, do you want an iPad screen, like
⏹️ ▶️ John for the controls of Safari just to like disappear as soon as you start scrolling? Because space is not as much of a
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you have that extra space, so is the solution, oh well on an iPad, the toolbar doesn’t do
⏹️ ▶️ John that shrinking thing. Or is that an opportunity to find out something better you can do with it? I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know. I think that’s why the iPad always feels like the red-headed stepchild. It’s like, eh, it kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John gets a phone UI stretch or a custom thing or whatever, but it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Or maybe now it doesn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sometimes I don’t feel like, shouldn’t they decide to do something like
⏹️ ▶️ John make the standard UI on the iPad tailored to the iPad and
⏹️ ▶️ John make it so you could make an app with all standard UI on an iPad that both looks different from the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John version and is better in ways to take advantage of the larger screen, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I guess we’ll have to see what happens when they show us the iPad version, because we haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John seen any of it. And
⏹️ ▶️ John again, we’re all assuming it’s like time pressure, like, you know, we have to have these things ready for the keynote,
⏹️ ▶️ John what can we do? Oh, how about we just take all resources off the iPad version until after the keynote? Fine,
⏹️ ▶️ John the way there’d be the deadline, and it’s fine, like, whatever, it’s not due until fall. But if you have an iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John app, And now you’re just kind of like twiddling your thumbs going, all right, well, I’m going to have to do something.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So there’s a lot of other things iOS 7 related to talk about. But in terms of the visual stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are we saying yes, no, or maybe? I think I’m saying, to back you guys up, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like it-ish. I think it’s jarring. But what John said, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey earlier, where you look at your current iOS 6 device and you go, oh.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I think there’s going to need to be some tweaks, but certainly it’s looking a lot more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey modern. It’s looking a lot more fresh. And so I think I’m behind the changes, but I definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to put it on a device and play with it for a while.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was time for a change.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the bottom line. Whatever it is, it was time for a change, and this is a change.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Right. I mean, people
⏹️ ▶️ John have already complained that like, oh, I think Jeff Atwood said, you know, oh, I’ve seen the future, and it’s just more icons
⏹️ ▶️ John on a background. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Shockingly, Jeff Atwood didn’t like something that Apple did.
⏹️ ▶️ John They didn’t change that part of it, but the design language of the OS,
⏹️ ▶️ John and even the fundamental features like multitasking and stuff, this is a change. A change was
⏹️ ▶️ John due, and I really do feel like we won’t be able to look back at the old stuff. Maybe it won’t look pinstripes awful, although I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that blue they used for the top bar will look pinstripes awful. I think it almost already does at that point.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we have plenty of chances to refine this, because they’ve refined the current
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS look that’s changed drastically from 1.0, but it was clearly an evolution of a single beast. And this is the first
⏹️ ▶️ John iteration of whatever this thing is. So six more versions from this, this thing could look very different, but still
⏹️ ▶️ John be a direct descendant of iOS 7. So I’m excited to see a new stage in evolution,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if this is kind of the awkward half-form embryonic version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it. Yeah, I like the foundation they’ve laid out here, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I like the direction they’re heading. I don’t like a lot of the individual little choices they’ve made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here, but that’s going to change over time. That’s going to be refined, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ll see. And we should also, before we run too much out of time, we should really talk a little bit about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the technical changes with… I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the two big things going into it that were on most people’s wish lists were, at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most geeks wish list, were better multitasking and better inter-app communication
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support or at least some kind of like contractor intense like system. And we got one of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we didn’t get the other one. And I think that’s probably worth talking about. I mean, so we didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get the Android like intense or the Windows like contract systems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where an app can say, I know how to share photos. Who can take a photo?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or I want to share a URL or I can open URL so whenever anyone else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has a URL to share, show my app as something they can send it to. Things like that. We didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get anything like that as far as we know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or changing the default apps, leveraging a system
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like that. Correct. Right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. Being able to say I’m going to use Chrome as my default browser or whatever. Yeah, we didn’t get that either. So that’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big thing, a huge feature or a huge category of features that we just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco simply did not get. But we did get substantially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco improved multitasking. That is going to be major for, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all apps, you know, a lot of apps have worked just fine in the current method of multitasking.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But having those periodic background wake-ups and being able to wake up on push notifications for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all apps, not just new stand-ups once a day, you know, like for now it’s for all apps and you can set that, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco polling intervals and that it’ll try to poll when the phone’s woken up, when the person checks the time or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s really cool, and that’s gonna make things like, you know, news apps and Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps and, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, so many things, it’s gonna make just awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ John It will make your phone feel faster.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Exactly. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John when you launch an app, the stuff will already be there, and it won’t be a launch app, watch a spinner,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco watch a spinner, watch a spinner.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, wait for everything to load. Wait, load the new updates, like, hopefully they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be there. And presumably, I hope Apple has done that also with their own apps, with things like iCloud updates. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always hated how you launch Calendar or whatever and all your stuff pops in a few seconds later.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John If you’re lucky.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, yeah, because it wasn’t, even though you edited these things three hours ago on your desktop,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John app never checked.
⏹️ ▶️ John It never had a chance to run.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly, and even Apple stuff was bad about that before. So maybe, I hope they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco taken this opportunity to fix their own stuff in that way too. I mean, it looks like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a pretty solid feature update. You know, they have a lot of text and font improvements
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it looks like a pretty great update for APIs and for developers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And what I liked about the multitasking stuff is that, I mean, we couldn’t talk about the particulars even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if we knew them, but we don’t know them anyhow. But it seemed like one of the things I was really worried
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about was if they took the Android approach of every app can install a daemon that can live and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey run forever. And obviously, that’s not Apple style. But we weren’t entirely sure if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they were going to just be marginally less restrictive. And there’s an argument that that’s what they did, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s certainly less restrictive enough that it should make a really notable positive difference, and yet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also restrictive enough that I don’t think our batteries will last half as long
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because things start downloading in the background.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the key feature is apps that you don’t use eventually fade away. And that is the thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John kills your stupid phone if you have like, if it’s a free for all and you download some stupid app and you forget about it, and then you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John understand why your battery is dying and you blame it on the app you downloaded today, but really was the app you downloaded three days ago that keeps
⏹️ ▶️ John running in the background and doing something like, those apps will just no longer be given a chance to run in the
⏹️ ▶️ John background by iOS, because it will say, look, the user does not run you, you never get a chance to run in the background.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wonder if it will actually turn off your push notifications. That would be interesting. That’s interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, because people could work around that. I’m trying to think of, if you are malicious and you are an annoying thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and you just want to load your ads or something, could you make an app that constantly receives push notifications and constantly wipes up and drains
⏹️ ▶️ John see. of gets back to the OS X Mavericks feature where you can rate applications
⏹️ ▶️ John by how much energy they’re using. They still have not brought that to iOS. Your process viewer, where you find
⏹️ ▶️ John your Android has that, here’s what used your battery power, but on OS X they feel okay about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe they’ll bring it to iOS soon. Maybe it’ll be in the shipping version, who knows?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think overall, though, this is a solid update, and the OS X update looks pretty good, too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m very happy with what they announced. We didn’t get everything we wanted, but we got a lot of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey It was not boring. No, not boring at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Definitely not. No, not boring. And I mean, I really think that they came out swinging. I know we’ve said that a few times now, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the air in the room, whether or not it came across in the video, was that Apple was fired
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up. They were, I don’t know if angry is the right word, but they were ready to fight back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’ve been sitting around, working on things quietly, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now they’re ready to say to the world, hey, screw you, we never left. It’s not that we’re back, we never
⏹️ ▶️ John left. And we didn’t even mention iRadio, which is like, and we got one of those too,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We just bolted on a complete Pandora clone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, for less money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, built into everything. That looks like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey gonna be awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Between Marco and I, we counted probably five or 10 or 15 different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apps or companies that had some serious thinking to do after
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco the keynote.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco impressive. And you know what’s great about this? Just overall, this is gonna make everyone start talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple a lot more than they have been. You know, like Apple has lost so much of the attention and the interest of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the press and of reviewers and of nerds, because everyone else has been doing all these crazy things and Apple’s been kind of resting on its laurels,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apparently, to the public. But now they come out with all this crazy new stuff and now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, they’re back in the discussion. And we have a lot of work to do and we have a lot to see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s – I’m very excited about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John It would be great if it was a one-two punch and the next iPhone was the iPhone 6 with a new physical design. I’m not predicting
⏹️ ▶️ John that, but boy, that would
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco be – That’s a – That would really, like –
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What if they come out with like a bigger screen version this fall?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like I mean they’re they’re setting up because you know, that’s usually their big thing these days It’s like oh a new iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John is out This was not there was no new iPhone here But they did all this stuff and they didn’t even do the new iPhones
⏹️ ▶️ John like the new iPhone you know, we all just assume it’s gonna be the five form factor, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John imagine you could Imagine a device that that matches up with iOS 7, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah And that’s kind of the the idea they’re going for. I mean they talked talked briefly but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sternly about collaboration being a really important part of iOS 7 and that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the design of the device should inform the design of the software. And so you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey make a very good point that it very well could happen. And I think the thing that made me laugh the most was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when Schiller – it was Schiller, right, that was doing the Mac Pro bit, and he said – what
⏹️ ▶️ John Can’t innovate anymore my ass.
⏹️ ▶️ John and then they put the camera on Steve Wozniak in the audience and I think he might have written an article once that said
⏹️ ▶️ John or been an interview once it said Apple’s in innovating and I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey throw walls under the bus. I think you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John Google that before and I think that’s why they put the camera on him as soon as he said can’t innovate anymore my ass and whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John you think of that Mac Pro and maybe people think oh it’s not innovating. That is not a regular computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John not like we made a box and put CPUs in it and RAM and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and regardless of whether we’re gonna complain about its lack of hard drives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or slots that is innovative, that’s for sure. Yeah. All right, I think we should wrap it up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is a… We still have so much more to talk about for these things, but we… I guess we’ll have more to talk about next week once
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we are packed full of stuff that we can’t talk about from the end yet. Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But this is great. I’m really looking forward to all this stuff. Thanks a lot to our sponsors. Backblaze. Go to backblaze.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash ATP for awesome unlimited online backup and Windows Azure mobile services Go to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Windows Azure comm slash iOS to learn more about that and thanks again to our podcast studio host
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Jason Snell and Macworld For letting us use this awesome studio Thanks a lot Jason and Macworld
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this helped us out a great deal and all you listeners should thank them, too Because now we can actually get the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show out this week and And not leave you all hanging so thanks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot guys, and we’ll talk to you next week
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over they didn’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean to begin cuz it was accidental Accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John any research Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him cuz it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John It was accidental And you can find
⏹️ ▶️ John the show notes at atp.fm And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John into Twitter, you can follow them At
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse, it’s accidental I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have a sign off.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’m going to open
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the door so you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t die any more than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ve already. You want to say hi in an after dark something or?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Hi everybody. Yeah. All
⏹️ ▶️ John right. Oh actually that mic’s off.