30: Full Frontal Thumb
13 Sep 2013iPhone 5c and 5s, SnappyCam, Touch ID, 64-bit in practice, M7 speculation, and white iPhones.
Episode Description:
- iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s.
- The possible Sherlocking of SnappyCam and the 5s' two-tone flash in practice.
- AnandTech's Touch ID hands-on video.
- Economics of iPhone cases.
- 64-bit in practice.
- Speculation on what the M7 does and its potential.
- White iOS devices.
- Apple secrecy.
- After-show: "non" vs. "hon" and the Micro-USB 3.0 connector.
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Transcript start
⏹️ ▶️ John I want to be a good connector designer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have anything to talk about tonight.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. I guess. I mean, there were new iPhones and stuff, but it’s really funny how unsurprising
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was. Even even the parts that we expected to be surprised by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we were wrong actually. So I guess therefore it was surprising in those ways
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I thought the camera stuff was mildly surprising. I hadn’t heard anything about that. No, obviously it’s to be expected
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that there will be better newer faster camera things. But I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know the magnitude of it all, and I don’t think anyone did. And it seems pretty compelling.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s because it wasn’t really camera hardware so much as
⏹️ ▶️ John was applying even more software to the camera problem. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John there is a point of diminishing returns with camera hardware and phones,
⏹️ ▶️ John because optically speaking, you only have so much room to work with there, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John if the computing power keeps going up and up, hey, let’s do something with that. That may be the
⏹️ ▶️ John better place to get benefit from it. And that seems like that’s what they did. And that’s why we wouldn’t have heard about that or thought about that,
⏹️ ▶️ John because you can’t leak. Well, I guess you could. But it’s not on the supply chain. Their software side is not
⏹️ ▶️ John in a supply chain all over the world.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there was a small hint in the WBDC slides for iOS 7’s announcement.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There was one of those million little bullet points that they put all over the place. one of them was 120 frames per
⏹️ ▶️ Marco second capture. And-
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh really? I didn’t recall
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was a little like 120 FPS like on one of those like in the upper right, I think. And I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think any hardware before the 5S could actually do that. So I think that was a slight give.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But otherwise, I mean, this, I think that whole camera stuff is awesome. I cannot wait to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use it. I mean, there was an app called, is it SnappyCam? Do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know what I’m talking about? I know what you’re talking about, but I’ve never used it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll put the link in the show notes. but I believe it’s called SnappyCam. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was a camera app that was written by some incredibly good programmers who basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wrote their own JPEG encoder and really tweaked the heck out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the CPU to get tons of performance so that they could capture, I believe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was 30 frames a second on the iPhone 5. And it was either 30 or 60.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They couldn’t reach 120 because the hardware couldn’t do it, but it was either 30 or 60. and so they could capture that. And then similar to what we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saw in yesterday’s iPhone announcement, you could scroll through and pick your favorite photo from that giant burst.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so that was pretty cool. So I’m actually really happy, they might not be,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I’m really happy to see that now be a regular feature and to have it be better integrated in the camera roll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too because now you can do things like pick the two or three shots out of that that you like and delete all of the other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones, which SnappyCam can only do in very limited ways because it doesn’t have full
⏹️ ▶️ Marco access to the camera roll is we don’t have those APIs, et cetera. So, yeah, I think it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m really looking forward to playing with that camera. That, to me, you know, the 5S is actually a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco substantial speed upgrade, so it looks. I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used one yet, but sure, it looks that way. But the two things I think that I’m most excited about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are fingerprint unlocking, because I’m, as we discussed last episode, I believe I’m one of those people who never sets a passcode on my phone, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just, I don’t want the constant day-to-day annoyance of that. And so now I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will do the fingerprint lock. And I’ll just put a couple of my fingers. I’ll put my wife’s finger,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s it. Then I’m done. Maybe Adams, if he’s lucky, maybe he’ll have to earn that. Maybe hops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco his nose. Otherwise, I think that works, but we’ll see. Maybe I’ll try
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that with my new iPhone 5S whenever I get one.
⏹️ ▶️ John So what is your annoyance thresholds for stopping using that feature? Like, what would make you stop
⏹️ ▶️ John using it? What percentage of it failing? Like, you try to do it and it doesn’t work. And you
⏹️ ▶️ John try again, and you try again. You’re like, 50% success rate? 90? When do you say, all right, forget this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say it would have to work probably at least 95% of the time within about a second.
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t read, I tried to read as much as I could of the coverage. But what I wanted to see, I guess probably Apple controlled
⏹️ ▶️ John this. If they had direct access to the hands-on area afterwards, do 50 trials.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do 100 trials. do as many trials as you can with success or failure, you know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John And get some kind of number about percentage-wise, instead of just trying and say, oh, it seemed to work pretty well. And you try it two
⏹️ ▶️ John times, you know what I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean? Yeah, maybe. I mean, like the ones we saw in the Anandtech video,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a few other people took videos, I think, but the one I watched was the Anandtech one, and it was really good. And they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put it through the whole process of registering the fingerprint, which looks like it worked really well. And then they unlocked it a few times,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it worked very quickly in all instances.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, the thing that they showed in the little movie or one of the ads or something, they showed the guy grabbing your
⏹️ ▶️ John phone like you do and kind of activating it. And one of the things he was using, the side
⏹️ ▶️ John of the corner of his thumb, like we all do when you grab the phone and go for the home button with your thumb, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And if that works that well, I found that impressive. Because if that really works that well, that means
⏹️ ▶️ John that… Or maybe did he have to train it on the corner of his thumb? You know what I mean? Because we don’t always…
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re going to go and let me give you the full frontal of my thumb or finger to test
⏹️ ▶️ John the feature, versus let me grab the thing out of my pocket, put my finger on it without looking and get a
⏹️ ▶️ John good read on it. I think that’s where using it in real life is going to be different
⏹️ ▶️ John than trying to put your finger on it in a demo area. But yeah, if it works like
⏹️ ▶️ John I saw it work in all the little demos all the time, and especially in Apple’s ad, that’ll be great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m looking forward to trying that and having that. You know, as they said in the keynote,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like most people don’t use a passcode and that’s kind of bad and it would be better if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco security could be reasonably secure, yet also very easy so that people would actually do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I think that’s gonna be cool. And I, I don’t know though, I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us talking this much about the iPhone 5S is almost like talking about as much about the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro. Like I feel like we’ve now left the mainstream.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Were we were the three of us ever the mainstream?
⏹️ ▶️ John But here’s the thing. Here’s the thing, though. Everything you see on the 5S will eventually be on the mainstream. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, you know, it’s a glimpse of it’s a glimpse of the future of the rest of the iOS line, even though it’s only on this
⏹️ ▶️ John one product now. Surely, unless it’s a gigantic flop, it will move on down the line
⏹️ ▶️ John until it’s everywhere and just becomes standard, just like, you know, a rear facing camera.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, can we go back a step to the camera? Marco, I’m curious to hear as a quasi-professional
⏹️ ▶️ Casey photographer at one point in your life, what do you think about the flash? I remember vividly years ago
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when the four of us, you, me, Aaron, and Tiff were somewhere and we were talking about how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wish I was a better photographer. You said, well, let me give you a tip. The number one best way to be a better photographer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is to never use the flash ever, ever, ever. I’ve stuck by that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anytime I could, it has made for much better pictures. I’m curious what your take is on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the two flash setup.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well it’s, that rule still holds true. If you can avoid using the flash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all, you should. The flash introduces two huge problems to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the entire scene. One of them is it messes up all the colors of everything, and the other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one is the direction of the light makes everything look really weird and unappealing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now the flash, the dual color flash, which is a really cool idea, only solves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of those problems. It only solves the color problem. And that is a big problem, certainly, but I think the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amount of light coming from straight on is a bigger problem that makes things look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worse than just having the wrong color light shown on them. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a very good idea for when you have to use the flash, and a lot of people just leave the flash on auto
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and use it whenever the phone thinks it should or needs to. And so it’s gonna help a lot of pictures
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out, but it’s not gonna make a non-flash picture, or it’s not gonna make a flash picture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look anywhere near as good as a non-flash picture. Now a lot of times, if you’re in such a dark place,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, you know, like if you’re like in a bar with your friends, there’s no light. And you’re gonna have to use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the flash. You know, you just don’t have a choice. If you want a picture at all, you’ll have to use the flash, and that’s it. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if your choice is picture or no picture at all, maybe take the picture with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the flash. Maybe. But, but it’s not, I certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t rely on that and it’s not going to, it’s not going to make me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to use the flash anymore than before. But when I have to use it, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is very rare, but when I have to use it, it’ll be a little bit better.
⏹️ ▶️ John So what do you think of the little ridges for the little Fresnel lenses on the flash?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I didn’t see that. What’s that about?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I didn’t see this either.
⏹️ ▶️ John on all the slides and if you look at Apple’s website they zoom right in on it so they must not be shying away from it
⏹️ ▶️ John but it is totally at odds with every other physical design feature of this iPhone and
⏹️ ▶️ John all past iPhones. Go to Apple’s iPhone 5s site and scroll down to the the part
⏹️ ▶️ John that shows you the flash.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m curious I wonder if that’s if that’s to spread the light more which would help
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s still you know the direction is oh yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John Someone says it’s pronounced Fresnel but I will have you know that I looked it up Nope,
⏹️ ▶️ John both pronunciations are valid according to Wikipedia, and as we know, Wikipedia never contains any errors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nope. Now is that, let’s see, I’m looking at my iPhone 5. Yeah, the 5 flash does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not look like that, at least from eye distance. I am not a macro lens,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think, yeah, I think you’re right, I think that is new.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that will help, because just having a little like white LED, you know, probably doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have a great spread pattern for the light and now they’re taking it more seriously like what can we do in this limited
⏹️ ▶️ John amount of space we can put a little lens on it so that’s pretty good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah I think that that could be good it’s again it’s one of those things that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it’s going to really meaningfully make you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to use the flash in a lot of cases where you couldn’t before and have the pictures look good I think this will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just make the pictures look a little bit better when you have to use the flash but this This
⏹️ ▶️ John is a key, I think this is a key feature because this gigantic vast majority
⏹️ ▶️ John of people who use phones do not follow Marco’s advice, don’t know about Marco’s advice, and will just always use whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the thing does automatically.
⏹️ ▶️ John And don’t care. And yeah, they’re taking a picture of their friends in dark rooms. And if this can make their pictures look better,
⏹️ ▶️ John that is, it’s like the fingerprint thing. Like, it’s such a huge win for all the people who never used any security
⏹️ ▶️ John at all. Maybe if the team that does Chrome security was considering this feature, they’d say,
⏹️ ▶️ John fingerprint is not as good as a passcode. Therefore, we shouldn’t include it because it gives a false sense of security.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we should probably also go through the handful of things that we know are going to be true about this fingerprint thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and why it doesn’t matter. You will be able to spoof it. Jailbreakers
⏹️ ▶️ John will get the little fingerprint signature things out of that chip somehow. And none of that
⏹️ ▶️ John matters because it’s not. And passcodes are also more secure.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not four-digit passcodes, obviously, but a big long one or a password would be more secure. But I think none of that matters
⏹️ ▶️ John because this is not an attempt to heighten the maximum possible security of the iPhone. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is an attempt to heighten the average security of iPhones in use. And I think if it works, it will definitely do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, yeah, definitely.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, what I’m curious to see is, is it possible to have the fingerprint
⏹️ ▶️ Casey scanning in addition to a passcode to have arguably two-factor security, which in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey big corporate jobs can make or break your ability to use services
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you want to use. So for example, a lot of VPNs that you need to get on for a corporate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey environment, they might require an RSID
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in addition to a password or something along those lines. And I wonder if there will be a way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you can have the fingerprint in addition to some sort of passcode. Thus, you have two-factor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey security, and thus, you can do all these things you want to do on your corporate network.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they didn’t mention that. And I’m guessing the reason they didn’t mention that is even, I mean, obviously it is possible. But even
⏹️ ▶️ John if you can enable that feature in the OS, like the pitch for the fingerprint thing is get all those people
⏹️ ▶️ John who aren’t using a passcode to use something. The pitch is not, let’s double up security. Because that
⏹️ ▶️ John would be the worst way to advertise the fingerprint thing, would be to pitch it as a heightening of maximum
⏹️ ▶️ John possible security. Because even though with the two-factor maybe would help with that, I think it’s so
⏹️ ▶️ John important to pitch this as a casual convenience for people
⏹️ ▶️ John who don’t want to enter code. And I’m one of those people. I have never had a passcode in any of my iOS devices. In fact, when
⏹️ ▶️ John I connected one of my iOS devices in the past to my works VPN,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the VPN or the Exchange server or something in the stack there required that I put a passcode on my thing, I immediately
⏹️ ▶️ John disconnected from it and said, well, never doing that again.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Exactly. I’m never
⏹️ ▶️ John going to enter a passcode. But I will try this fingerprint thing if it works, if I ever get a device that has a fingerprint scanner
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, that’s a good point. Do you think this is going to filter down into the iPod Touch and the iPad?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like 10 years or something. The iPad will get it. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John see why they would leave it out of the iPad. It’s so much bigger. The top end iPad will surely have the A7.
⏹️ ▶️ John The only reason not to would be some crazy segmentation.
⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t even make sense to me. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be on the top end iPads. The iPod Touch, of course, Apple doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John care about that. This is an S year, and an S year is the iPad Touch gets screwed. So
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll wait till next year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am curious to see what happens with the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this fall. Because it seems like most of the time the iPhone is Apple’s big thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the year. And it’s the event that most people watch. It’s the one that breaks all the live streaming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or live blogging things. It’s the highest profile event they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have of the year. But they started with it this year. And there’s still a whole lot of products to announce
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are very likely to be coming out in the next few months. I wonder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how quickly we’re all going to forget about how unsurprising this was once we see the other product
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’m still processing the whole event. I watched the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey video and I have some thoughts on that that we should get to at some point. But I’m a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey disappointed, and this has been said a lot, that so much was known. I am very enthusiastic about the camera.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m very enthusiastic that the thumbprint scanner seems to work as great as it does.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Obviously we’ll all find out whenever we get them. I’m super disappointed that there’s not going to be pre-orders
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the 5S because it is our year in the List household to get a new phone and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very excited. But I have an actual J-O-B job so I can’t just blow off
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work on a Friday and wait in line for hours and hours, not that I’d probably want to anyway. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now I’ve got to just suffer the unbelievable tragedy of not having my
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s probably a good bet that the 5S will be supply constrained.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, which means we won’t have them for a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ John It might not be that long, but they’re going to sell out, not because it’s wildly
⏹️ ▶️ John popular, though it may be, but merely because this is the first device ever to have the A7 in it and presumably that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and Gruber wrote about this in his post about the event, and I think that’s spot-on, which is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco splitting up the phone line like this and making the old iPhone, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least the old iPhone core, making that the new mainstream model, allows them to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do things like — remember all the rumors they were having trouble with in-cell touch and getting good yields
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that? like retina iPads and stuff like that, like all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big, bold, forward-looking supply decisions or component decisions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that can severely limit yields, limit supply, and make that a big problem, they can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now start doing that because the highest-end device is no longer the mainstream device. That’s true of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPads and iPhones now. I think that’s actually a good move.
⏹️ ▶️ John Presumably they’re getting, uh, making, I don’t know if they’re making more money, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John if the most popular phone turns out to be the 5C, uh, they’ve been making that
⏹️ ▶️ John phone for a while now and their costs of manufacture must be down even if they hadn’t gone
⏹️ ▶️ John to plastic, which they also did. Of course, they also lowered the price as well, but I wonder, I wonder if
⏹️ ▶️ John the smile on Tim Cook’s face was an expression of the fact that
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re going to sell a ton of 5Cs that actually might have higher
⏹️ ▶️ John profit margins for us than the original five did, which would be an amazing thing where
⏹️ ▶️ John they sell the same phone a year later, and they drive down the cost of manufacture so much that actually gives
⏹️ ▶️ John you bigger profit margins than your previous top-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone. Oh, yeah, and they need that. Wall Street’s been picking on them a lot recently, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of it is just temporary and unfounded. But it’s also pretty obvious that their margins are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going down slowly over time because these markets are getting more competitive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially price-wise, especially in tablets. Their margins are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting smaller and smaller. The iPad used to be able to sell these things for $600 or $700
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the mass market, and now they’re selling the $300 iPad mini.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Who knows what’s going to happen there this fall? I think they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need something like the 5C. Honestly, I think it’s a brilliant move, it’s a brilliant product,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s a brilliant launch to do this. I bet you’re right. I bet their margin is substantially better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it. They’re also now selling first-party cases again. You cannot discount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how significant that is. Let’s say they make $200 or $300. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know what the profit margin is usually on an iPhone. It’s something like that, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If they’re also selling you a $40 case to like 60 or 50% of the people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who buy the phone, which I think is probably fair, that’s really good. I mean, they made a killing off the bumpers for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone 4 and 4S. I think they’re going to make a killing on these cases too. And that’s just so
⏹️ ▶️ John They probably still make more money from the Made for iPhone certification
⏹️ ▶️ John program, because they get a cut of every single other case manufacturer’s profit. So the cumulative
⏹️ ▶️ John total of their license fees or the Made for iPhone product seal or whatever thing they have going there
⏹️ ▶️ John still is going to dwarf their own things. But they’re probably like, hey, if we can make a product with 90% margins,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if it’s only 90% of $40 or $70, let’s do that because it can’t hurt. The other thing on the 5C margins
⏹️ ▶️ John is if you think back to the earning calls, before the iPad mini came out, they
⏹️ ▶️ John said our margins are going to be decreasing, blah, blah, blah. And then the mini
⏹️ ▶️ John came out and it made sense. It’s like, OK, that’s why your margins are decreasing, because you’re going to sell a ton of these minis, and they cost
⏹️ ▶️ John less money. And you don’t make as much money on each one of those as you were making on the previous iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ John so there you go. But then don’t recall a similar warning about margins,
⏹️ ▶️ John or at least not one to such a degree, before the 5C announcement. And I think it’s because they
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like they can maintain. They’re probably going to go down a little bit, but it’s not going to be
⏹️ ▶️ John as dramatic a drop as it was when they released the iPad mini.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think you’re right about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I certainly did not put two and two together, but you make a very good point. It certainly seems to me that the 5C
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a play to continue to make a tremendous amount of money from people who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe, if the 5C didn’t exist, what would they be buying? Just a regular iPhone 5
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and probably doing so begrudgingly because it’s not new and shiny. I have two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thumbs up for the 5C in principle from a business perspective. I don’t personally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see why I would want one, because it’s older tech. And there’s a few things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the 5S that I still think we should talk about that are also very interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But from a business perspective, it seems like a killer deal.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we were talking last show, I think, about how are you going to differentiate the two? We were talking about a 5C
⏹️ ▶️ John Envy, like, boy, the 5C looks really cool, and it feels nice in your hand,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it comes in colors. what can they do to the boring old little black, gray,
⏹️ ▶️ John white, monolith iPhone 5-looking thing to make it an object of desire
⏹️ ▶️ John for anyone? Gold. For, yeah, besides gold. Although that probably
⏹️ ▶️ John is a factor there. And we got the answer. And the answer was the fingerprint thing, which we knew. And
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s second part is emphasizing plain old-fashioned
⏹️ ▶️ John computing power. Like, that was their pitch to people. It’s got a fingerprint thing, and it’s twice as fast.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the combination of those two, they hope, is enough to securely grab all the people who got to have
⏹️ ▶️ John the latest, greatest thing and to make us forget about the colorful, more comfortable, nicely curved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, Stephen Hackett in the chat said, I talked to several semi-nerds who said they were thinking about, quote, upgrading
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the 5C from the 5. That’s the power of colors and marketing. And I think that’s dead on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, totally. I mean, you cannot underestimate the importance of things like color and appearance and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco newness for something like this. For most products, really, but especially for something like this where people are kind of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, there’s a fast upgrade cycle relative to most electronic products, and it’s very much a personal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco item. It’s always with you. People always try to personalize it with cases and stuff like that. And so to have something,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, visibly very new and different, especially something that’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco visually different from what came before it, I think that’s really valuable. And a A lot of people are going to want that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even who already have iPhone 5s.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’ve been on the bandwagon for a long time of like Apple needs to make a new,
⏹️ ▶️ John to upgrade the phone line to be more than just one phone, make a new varied thing. And it’s like, why
⏹️ ▶️ John would they make a new one? Why wouldn’t they just keep selling the old one? They’ve got all the parts. They know how to make the old one just fine. And I’ve always
⏹️ ▶️ John said, I think you can make a better phone if you start not from scratch,
⏹️ ▶️ John but make a purpose-built phone that you know you’re going to sell for less money. And
⏹️ ▶️ John people are, well, what could they do? Why don’t they just keep selling it? Well, well, you know, Apple has shown what they could do. What can you do?
⏹️ ▶️ John You can stop using aluminum. You can use plastic. It’s cheaper, right? You can make the battery a little bit bigger. You can put it in a nicer
⏹️ ▶️ John camera. You can give it colors to differentiate it. And you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re right technology-wise that the slightly bigger batteries probably don’t make that much of a difference. And no one’s going to notice that the front camera
⏹️ ▶️ John is a little bit better or anything. But everyone will notice the lower price, which, you know, the plastic helped derive. And everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John will notice the different shape and color. And it’s such a dramatically different
⏹️ ▶️ John product sales, marketing, and performance-wise, like market performance-wise, than
⏹️ ▶️ John the 5, even though it is like 99.9% just a plain old iPhone 5. And this is what I was talking about.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the fact that, of course, they can sell it for $100 less for the bottom-end model. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m glad to see they went through with it. I still think there’s more diversification possible, but like one step at a time. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is a good step in the right direction. Definitely.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you want to tell us about something awesome I’d like to get nerdy about the A7 for a few minutes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Absolutely. Do you mean the Audi or the Apple CPU?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Either, but I was referring to the Apple CPU.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, so during the event, they talked a lot about the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a seven, which is Apple’s new system on a chip. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believe it’s pronounced sock.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco No, anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So they talked a lot about how it’s 64-bit, and I’d like to explore that a little bit. And they also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talked about how it’s a different instruction set. And I believe during the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey keynote, they also talked about there being more registers, which is what’s really interesting to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco me. Yeah, twice as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let me start with the 64-bit piece. So it’s been a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey long time since I’ve taken computer hardware courses and things of that nature. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m trying to grasp why that’s a big deal today. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, I’m guessing that it’s important for multimedia applications, such
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as moving data for images around and things of that nature. But if you take the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very shallow view, if you’re not addressing more than 4 gigs of memory, why does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this matter? And I’m kind of looking to you, John, to fill us all in.
⏹️ ▶️ John The reaction to this, I was kind of disappointed in the nerd reaction to this, because as far as I can tell, and I did watch the video plus all
⏹️ ▶️ John the live vlogs, Apple never said that the A7 is twice as
⏹️ ▶️ John fast as the A6 because it’s 64-bit. And every single thing I
⏹️ ▶️ John saw from nerds was like, 64-bit doesn’t make it faster. 64-bit is not twice as fast. Of course
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not. They never said it was. Who’s saying it was? Everyone just set up that straw man and just beat it to death
⏹️ ▶️ John over the course of the whole day. And I know regular people are confused, and they think 64 is twice as big as 32 or whatever, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, we’re all nerds here. We know 64-bit doesn’t make it twice as fast. Like, I mean, if anyone was alive during the Nintendo 64
⏹️ ▶️ John era, you learned that when you were eight years old, or however old you were when the N64 came out.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that was disappointing, because I don’t think it was bashing on anything that Apple said.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple said it was 64-bit, Apple said it was twice as fast, but I don’t think they drew any sort of line, dotted or
⏹️ ▶️ John otherwise between those two things. So that’s issue one. And by the way,
⏹️ ▶️ John the reason people, for people who don’t know the tech details, the reason that people were beating up on that straw man is because
⏹️ ▶️ John all other things being equal, 64-bit CPUs are slower than 32-bit because all your pointers
⏹️ ▶️ John are 64-bit. And if all other things are equal, that means your instruction and data caches are the same size. And now
⏹️ ▶️ John they may be the same size, but now you’ve got to store 64-bit pointers instead of 32. So now you have more cache pressure. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not memory bandwidth for getting instructions and from, like, things get bigger in
⏹️ ▶️ John 64-bit, and unless you increase everything else, which of course regular 64-bit chips usually do, but again, all other
⏹️ ▶️ John things being exactly equal, 64-bit is actually slower than 32. Now when you make a real 64-bit chip, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John they know that you have more data to move around, and they make the caches bigger, and they make the buses wider, and they,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, tweak things and do all this stuff. So in the end, it can end up being a wash,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you’re not getting twice as much performance out of it unless other things are different. And the reason there might be some misinformation
⏹️ ▶️ John floating around about this is that in real live CPU architectures, there have been cases
⏹️ ▶️ John where 64-bit gives you a boost that has nothing to do with 64-bit directly. So for example,
⏹️ ▶️ John x86, the 32-bit instruction set on Intel’s chips, is ancient and crappy and disgusting.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when AMD created a 64-bit extension of that instruction set, it says, now it’s our
⏹️ ▶️ John chance to get rid of some of the crappy stuff, and let’s make instructions that are nicer. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so 64-bit Intel chips that use the x86-64 instruction set from AMD got a 15% speed
⏹️ ▶️ John boost, not because they were 64-bit, but merely because the 64-bit instruction set can do less
⏹️ ▶️ John stupid-ass backward things. And so you’d
⏹️ ▶️ John want to use the 64-bit instruction set, because you got access to more registers, because the old x86, the IA-32 architecture, was register starved by
⏹️ ▶️ John modern standards. And they made instructions that
⏹️ ▶️ John could execute faster on the way modern chips are designed, everything like that. So 64-bit Intel chips
⏹️ ▶️ John were faster than 32-bit ones, but not because they were 64-bit, merely
⏹️ ▶️ John because the 64-bit transition gave the designers a chance to sort of update their thinking.
⏹️ ▶️ John That could be the case in the ARM architecture as well. Maybe they get a couple percentage speed
⏹️ ▶️ John boost of saying, OK, well, a lot of these ARM things were made back in the day when we were designing really tiny chips,
⏹️ ▶️ John and smartphones were just to glimmer in our eye, now is our chance with this transition from the 32-bit
⏹️ ▶️ John to 64-bit to revisit some of those assumptions and maybe make an instruction set that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John more tailored to modern hardware capabilities. And maybe we’ll get
⏹️ ▶️ John a couple of percent here and there speed boost from that. That’s still not where you’re getting your double performance from. And that,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think, is the place where people are still scratching their heads. It’s like, OK, well, anyone
⏹️ ▶️ John in the know, like Ann and Tech or whatever, says, OK, Apple says twice as fast.
⏹️ ▶️ John If we take them at their word, there has to be some explanation of that. Higher clock speed, a
⏹️ ▶️ John larger amount of instructions per clock, extracting more instruction parallelism with bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John windows, more rename registers. All the typical things that
⏹️ ▶️ John you do with any CPU, making the pipeline longer and cranking up, we don’t know what they did because Apple didn’t tell
⏹️ ▶️ John us. All they said was, all they did was show us a chart. So once the CPU guys get their hands on this thing, they will tell us,
⏹️ ▶️ John is it actually twice as fast? Under what conditions? And how did they do it? And the answer of how they did it is not going to be,
⏹️ ▶️ John they made it 64-bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, and some of the things you said, I think are absolutely true in this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey case, specifically by moving to a new version of the ARM architecture. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey based on a little bit of reading I did before the show, accidental, it seems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as though they’ve moved to ARMv8. And I found a blog post that has a couple of great links, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I put in the chat a moment ago. And it talks about some of the changes that were made. Now I think the speed increase
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me probably comes from more registers, but we can talk about that in a second. But some of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things they did were they made all of the instructions exactly 32 bits, and so instructions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are always the exact same size. They added a crud load of registers, like I said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they did change the instruction set just like you said, John, in order to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey simplify it and get rid of some of the cruft that they didn’t want anymore. So if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the A7 really is using ARMv8, then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that could explain a lot of these differences. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John the thing that-
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not going to give you double performance, though. Adding double the amount of registers is not going to double your performance. Sure. And
⏹️ ▶️ John none of those things you listed are going to double. If you’re going to get a doubling, it has to be more execution
⏹️ ▶️ John units, bigger execution window, higher clock speed, maybe longer pipeline
⏹️ ▶️ John to get that. You don’t get double performance from those things. You get percentage increases. You
⏹️ ▶️ John have to do something fundamental, like how many instructions are dispatched per clock? How
⏹️ ▶️ John high is the clock speed? Like those type of things. That’s where you get your doubling from. And again, all
⏹️ ▶️ John we have to go on is Apple’s claim of doubling. There may be specific benchmarks in which
⏹️ ▶️ John it really does double. But we need to get this into the hands of someone who’s going to do real benchmarks and say, OK, what is the
⏹️ ▶️ John actual increase? Is it double in SIMD stuff because the SIMD instruction set in 32-bit was crappy and now
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s way, way better? That’s easy to get a double win there if you just say, You know, the new SIMD instruction set
⏹️ ▶️ John is way better than it was before. We have twice as many SIMD registers, and we can address them as 64
⏹️ ▶️ John bits in addition to 128 bits. And so now we can easy doubling on this particular benchmark. But
⏹️ ▶️ John do you get doubling across the board? Probably not. So we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I agree. And I think the thing that’s interesting to me about the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey significantly increased, I guess, doubling of the amount of registers is that if you’re not familiar, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, So registers are little bits of memory that are basically on the CPU for all intents and purposes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oftentimes literally. And so if you need to store something somewhere, the quickest and easiest place to store that is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in these registers. And then eventually you can move it off into other memory elsewhere. And so having a lot more of these registers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey makes things, like you said, a lot quicker. Now how much is a lot? Maybe it’s 1%. Maybe it’s 10%. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would tend to agree it’s probably not 200%. I’m curious to see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what’s going to be made of that. And I’m curious to see, just like you said, what is this really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all about deep down inside?
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you find out if it’s really double the number of code addressable registers,
⏹️ ▶️ John or if they’re talking about rename registers?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought it was double the number of registers. They went like TP4 in the chat,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and this sounds right. 14 to 31 with a hardwired stack pointer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and one other special register that I’m forgetting.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I looked at that thing. I don’t know anything about the previous ARM instruction set. And just looking at the slides,
⏹️ ▶️ John assume that you do. But it was like, oh, now the program counter isn’t in a register. I guess it used to be. Oh, now the stack pointer
⏹️ ▶️ John isn’t in a register. A, stack pointer, and B, yeah, OK, that’s good. And a dedicated zero register.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, yeah. All sorts of things that give me a vague, indirect picture
⏹️ ▶️ John of what the old ARM instruction set in 32-bit used to be like compared to the new one. I’ve heard reports
⏹️ ▶️ John of people on Twitter that the 64-bit instruction set for ARM looks a lot like MIPS,
⏹️ ▶️ John which was a very sort of classical risk type thing. Again, the old instructions, the
⏹️ ▶️ John same size, executing in predictable number of clock cycles, and the whole nine yards. Versus
⏹️ ▶️ John ARM, which looks kind of weird, but those power sipping features where
⏹️ ▶️ John things could be small and variable size and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so we’ll see what Anandtech says when they dissect it whenever they get their hands on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And another easy way, by the way, before we leave this topic, to get speed boosts. is just add a bunch more L1 and L2 cache.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a cheap way to. Well, it’s not cheap. Well, you know what I mean. But to
⏹️ ▶️ John win benchmarks, if it couldn’t fit an L1, it couldn’t fit an L2 cache before, but now it can,
⏹️ ▶️ John suddenly you get a double speed up. It’s like, hey, we’re twice as fast, provided you use something that fits in cache.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so any other extraordinarily nerdy bits?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s worth looking at a lot of these things. The CPU is one thing. We saw last year when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the A6 debuted and it used Apple’s new Swift architecture. We saw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the beginnings of it there. I think we’re seeing Apple do more and more specialized things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe not necessarily primarily, but certainly secondarily for the purpose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of making it harder to copy or match what they’re doing. If you look at a lot of these things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS 7 is a total redesign. We talked about this back when it was announced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and how a lot of that is going to be, not impossible to copy, but harder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for certain hardware, for certain designs, for certain setups. You look at things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the crazy camera stuff. The camera stuff you can copy because that’s just like an app and Samsung
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can bundle their own camera app and do that. But to do something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the fingerprint unlock of not just the phone, but to use fingerprints
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to read or to authenticate you to the store to buy things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s going to be one thing like you need a lot of integration down the line to make that happen. And I don’t know if Android’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to pull that off. Windows Phone could.
⏹️ ▶️ John The cloners can do the crappy clone of that. Here’s here’s the crappy clone of fingerprint unlocking the store. They make you enter your
⏹️ ▶️ John password and then they store it off inside somewhere and then they recognize your fingerprint and then they get the password
⏹️ ▶️ John out of the little file. Like you can do a terrible copy of all these things. And you say, who would make a terrible copy of Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John thing? Hmm. I don’t think they’re above, like, you know, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John doing it the right way, yes, is difficult to copy. But I’m not sure that he’s doing these things to be difficult to copy. And one instance
⏹️ ▶️ John when you were saying, like, with the OS, it reminds me that some of
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s features in iOS 7 are actually difficult for iOS developers to copy. I’m thinking in particular of, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John the little transparent things that fuzz out the background that slide up over. Those are actually very easy
⏹️ ▶️ John to copy. The interface. It depends on the context. I’ve seen a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ John in the NDA forums discussing this very issue and saying, we’d like to be able to have a way to do
⏹️ ▶️ John that kind of filtering that you do in iOS 7, and then Apple people saying, there’s not yet a public API
⏹️ ▶️ John for that. And then them fighting with each other about why there’s not yet a public API for all the things they want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do. Although you can rip the layer off a toolbar and done.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you can do some things. But they’re like, basically, you’ll see an Apple app that will do something. you’d say, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d like to do that same thing in my app. And you’ll find out that there’s a public API that does something close to that, but not quite.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s no public API to do exactly what they do. And then you complain. And it’s not because Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John is obstinate. It’s because, technically speaking, Apple is barely able to do what
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re able to do. And they can’t do it in a way that works in a general purpose API. They can only do it
⏹️ ▶️ John the crazy cheating way that they have to do it. It’s true of anything that Apple does. A lot of times, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John gets the APIs first. I think even core text and boring things like that. Apple gets them first.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re in Apple’s apps first. You don’t get them. They’re private APIs. And in the Mac days, it’s like, well, you could figure it out
⏹️ ▶️ John and use them anyway, but at your own risk. But in iOS, it’s like, no, you don’t get them at all, until
⏹️ ▶️ John or unless Apple decides we can make a general purpose API from this that we’re going to support forever. And if they never
⏹️ ▶️ John can, you never get the API. But in the meantime, only Apple apps get it, or the OS gets it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want to do our second sponsor this week.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m gonna go with Squarespace.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So I realized there’s another bit of nerdery we should probably talk about, which is the M7. Wait,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did I miss a BMW announcement?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly. I don’t remember who it was now, that Apple’s come out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the M7 and BMW’s come out with the i8. So things are totally backwards now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we should talk about this M7, which is, I’m going to wrongly call
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it a coprocessor, but it’s kind of like a second chip that sits there and apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey deals with the accelerometer, and I believe the GPS, and a bunch of other motion-related
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things. And the implication, but not statement to my knowledge, was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it will also log a lot of these events so that the A7
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t have to power on and handle them and deal with them. And then it can potentially fish all these log
⏹️ ▶️ Casey entries off to some app, like a Fitbit app or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it seems like a very interesting play in order to enable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some really interesting, more biometric data on the phone. And somebody, might have been one of you guys,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pointed out, I wonder if this M7 is going to end up in some other kind of device
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eventually, like maybe a watch or something like that. Do you guys have any thoughts on this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s the obvious move for the M7. And also, by the way, for the A7. I mean, the
⏹️ ▶️ John buzz about both of these things is other devices that they could appear in. M7, obviously, if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John makes something wearable, yeah, you’ll be seeing that chip again,
⏹️ ▶️ John or the marketing label for that chip anyway. And the A7, a 64-bit ARM chip.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everyone is always like, well, we’re going to put an ARM in the MacBook Air and get 50 hours of battery life
⏹️ ▶️ John out of it or some crazy thing. Well, the Airs are already up to a ridiculous amount of battery life with Intel chips in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m not entirely convinced that there’s any need in particular to bring the ARM to
⏹️ ▶️ John the Air, because I think Intel is coming from the other direction, and they haven’t yet met in the middle. The
⏹️ ▶️ John A7 isn’t as fast as current MacBook Air CPUs, and the current MacBook Air CPUs are nowhere as power
⏹️ ▶️ John efficient as the A7, but they’re converging on a middle point. And wherever they hit each other,
⏹️ ▶️ John look at where that point is and decide, is this a viable, you know, can we make a viable Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John with this amount of processing power? Because if you can’t, then there’s no point in enduring
⏹️ ▶️ John the pain and fat binaries of trying to make an ARM-based Mac. But the M7
⏹️ ▶️ John in some other device that you wear seems like a slam dunk.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we should also point out that it enables, they say it enables things like knowing the difference between
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you driving and walking. And I’m not really clear why we didn’t already know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that by way of the GPS or something power hungry like that. And maybe it’s just that it doesn’t need something power hungry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to figure this out. But that presumably will lead to some interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use cases that I can’t fathom. But I think the example I saw was that Apple said, when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you are getting direction somewhere, let’s say you’re driving into a metropolitan area
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you park your car, but you’re not quite where you need to be, then Maps will automatically switch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from driving directions to walking directions once it sees that you’ve slowed down to the point of walking. So things like that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco are pretty cool. Although
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re at a red light, that would kind of suck. Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I can tell whether you’re in the car, maybe with the vibrations of the butt massaging.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It doesn’t vibrate.
⏹️ ▶️ John these are not features of the M7, obviously. These are like APIs that Apple, you know, core motion APIs that Apple’s going to expose.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you said, Casey, all the chip is doing is being really
⏹️ ▶️ John low power and writing a bunch of information out to someplace that when this whole system comes back up,
⏹️ ▶️ John they can read and interpret. And the thing that’s reading and interpreting them is code that Apple writes that then provide APIs
⏹️ ▶️ John to figure this stuff out. The M7 itself is just not. The impressive thing
⏹️ ▶️ John is that it exists, not the implementation of it, because it’s probably, you know, hey, this tiny chip
⏹️ ▶️ John has, I don’t even No, it’s a separate chip. Apple presents it as such. But for all we know, it could be on the same package somewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sits there and does one job, and does it well, and doesn’t have to involve the CPU. And its whole job is
⏹️ ▶️ John to be there and write stuff down. So when the CPU wakes up, it can say, oh, I don’t know what
⏹️ ▶️ John was happening because I was asleep. But that guy over there knows. Let me get the list of everything that happened. And let me run a whole bunch of software
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple wrote to grind over that data to figure out, OK, driving, doing this, or whatever. And of course, if everything’s turned
⏹️ ▶️ John on at the same time, then they’re working in concert. So the key feature is you walk around with your phone in your pocket
⏹️ ▶️ John and you grab your phone, take it out, open your fitness tracker, and it immediately wakes up, reads
⏹️ ▶️ John all the historical data, and tells you how many steps you’ve taken.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and it’s also maybe doing a lot of that in a hardware or in very, very lightweight software.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because so far what we’ve had, even with the very first iPhone, we had the accelerometer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the data you get from it is raw. It’s just like the current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco motion acceleration being put on the phone in three axes, X, Y, Z. That’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then when they added the gyroscope, then you could get things like the current phone alignment or attitude, they call it, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is the angle in space the phone currently is. And then the compass doesn’t work. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have you ever had a compass that worked? I haven’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John You have to move it into figure eight pattern. I’m not sure if you know that. It never works.
⏹️ ▶️ John an elaborate troll by someone inside Apple to see if
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco they can make people
⏹️ ▶️ John take their phones and wave them around.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, totally. So, like, you know, so before, even… and Apple has improved the API. I believe iOS 5
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was it, added Core Motion? Might even have been 6. But, you know, they improved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the API to make this a little bit easier, but you still had to, like, deal with raw data for the most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part in software, you know, in the full, you know, user space code that you were writing. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so if they can move, if they moved some of that down, which it sounds like the M7, regardless of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what its hardware implementation is, it’s something that parses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all that raw data for you in some kind of extremely low power state. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rather than saying, here’s all of the data from 60 hertz
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the last six hours, here’s this tremendous array of floats that you have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deal with and figure out yourself, they can shrink that down with some kind of heuristics that are hopefully very lightweight
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to say, if you want to know how many steps the user took, just register for number of steps,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tell us when to start and when to stop, and we’ll give you what was there in the middle.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If that’s really what it does, that’s a massive, not only time saver for developers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but if they do it right, if they’ve implemented this in low-level hardware that’s very low power,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or it sounds like that was the idea, then this is a whole new class of possibilities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that before would have just been not only way too power hungry, but you wouldn’t be able to do them unless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you were using GPS constantly because you wouldn’t be able to run in the background that long.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s kind of analogous to FS events in Mac OS X
⏹️ ▶️ John you have something that’s trying to keep track of everything that happens to the file system, but there’s just too much data. So it massively compresses
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff, it coalesces several events and periods of time, and it summarizes, and then it jams it all
⏹️ ▶️ John into a log. So yeah, this little thing has to be doing, if only for compression purposes, some interpretation
⏹️ ▶️ John of the data, because you can’t store that. If you recorded data for
⏹️ ▶️ John an hour’s worth of walking, and if it really was at 60 hertz, that’s just too much data to be putting somewhere. So I have
⏹️ ▶️ John to imagine that it’s doing some sort of coalescing and compressing and summarization and interpretation,
⏹️ ▶️ John or even just like lowering the sample rate. Because seriously, your sample rate It doesn’t need to be 60 hertz to tell when
⏹️ ▶️ John people are walking. And then anything up the chain could further massage the data.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I think it’s probably like a storage issue in terms of who decides to summarize data? Who does
⏹️ ▶️ John the motion smoothing? Who does the interpretation? And they must be doing something
⏹️ ▶️ John down there in the M7, because otherwise it would just be filling up this giant buffer full of stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, it’s funny you bring up coalescing. I was thinking, and I was going to say a minute ago, that this is almost like the year of coalescing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Apple. Because we had the timer coalescing in OS X Mavericks, and now we have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this motion coalescing. And I know Federico is going to be very happy about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In any case, anything else on either of the bits of hardware?
⏹️ ▶️ John The 5C case we were talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey last week. Oh, yes. Yes.
⏹️ ▶️ John If they make this, no, not that. Well, I mean, first, before we get to the thing with the holes in it, the
⏹️ ▶️ John plastic back of it, it being curved and more comfortable we also from the pictures but we can’t see in the pictures is
⏹️ ▶️ John what kind of material is that and I mentioned last time that if they made it out of a material that’s more grippy
⏹️ ▶️ John and less slippery than you know the glass back or the metal thing then maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John you wouldn’t even need a case on it and you know again because they’re coming in different colors who’s gonna buy a colorful phone and slap a
⏹️ ▶️ John case on it completely covering the cover part of the color part rather so Apple’s answer
⏹️ ▶️ John was we’re gonna make it out of a super hard super glossy material so forget about being remote it being
⏹️ ▶️ John remotely squishy. And we’re going to sell our own case made of silicone, my old favorite case
⏹️ ▶️ John material, because it is squishy. And they’re going to solve the problem of, OK, why am I going to
⏹️ ▶️ John put a case over my colored phone by just punching a whole bunch of holes in it. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John so ridiculous. Which, when I first saw that holes, my first reaction was,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I guess that’s one solution to making the case color continue to matter.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I also wondered, are they doing that for heat reasons or something? because it just seems like, I mean, it doesn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John make sense they’d be doing it for heat reasons over only half of the phone or something. But who the hell? Otherwise, they can’t be
⏹️ ▶️ John doing it for heat reasons because there’s going to be cases without holes in them. So it’s got to be able to deal with that anyway. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it is definitely odd. And I love the fact in all of Apple’s videos when they showed this case with the holes in it,
⏹️ ▶️ John no FCC information and no iPhone text was on the back of the phones. It’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s real convenient for your ads. But the real phones have that text there. And it looks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey awkward. No, that’s not true. One of the videos definitely had it because I backed it. I was watching. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to say it might have been the keynote. I was watching it on my TV. And I thought to myself, oh, look, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t have the H-O-N or whatever it is that shows through. And I actually backed it up, got off my butt,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey walked up to the TV because my eyes are terrible. And sure enough, it was there. And I’m pretty sure this was
⏹️ ▶️ John They had some videos with the text not there, very clearly,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco because they were super
⏹️ ▶️ John zoomed in, which is a total cheat and not something I would expect from Apple, because they’re supposed to design,
⏹️ ▶️ John like they idealize things, sure, like you have 3D renders or whatever the heck they’re doing or, you know, completely massage
⏹️ ▶️ John to look real, but it shouldn’t be like erasing stuff. You shouldn’t erase the word iPhone because it actually is
⏹️ ▶️ John in the back of the phone and you shouldn’t erase the FCC things because they actually are there. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a shame and that’s strange and I don’t, like I haven’t felt any of these things
⏹️ ▶️ John in my hand but I’m kind of disappointed that it’s not squishy but on the other hand, I found from my TPU
⏹️ ▶️ John case, which is very shiny and very, very smooth. It’s not textured like
⏹️ ▶️ John silicone would be. It’s not fuzzy or anything like that. It’s still surprisingly grippy because you get a big contact
⏹️ ▶️ John patch. It’s kind of like slicks on a race car. You actually do get a big contact patch. And as long as that contact patch is not
⏹️ ▶️ John wet, like slicks in the rain, which are bad, then you actually do get some
⏹️ ▶️ John grippiness. But in terms of resting on the curved arm of a sofa with that shiny back
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, that’s not so great. So I’m kind of disappointed that they didn’t go with any kind of squishy back, but I
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of understand it as well, because if I thought about it for more than a couple of minutes, I would have said, how can they make
⏹️ ▶️ John the back of a phone squishy? It would have to have a complete rigid
⏹️ ▶️ John inner skeletal structure over which they stretch the squishy stuff. And instead, they didn’t do that. They have the antenna,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is rigid, but it’s only around the edge. And the whole back, its rigidity comes from the fact that they’re using
⏹️ ▶️ John the super hard plastic.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and the case, to go back a step, the case, I cannot believe that Apple did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. And if this were any other manufacturer that had done that, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey internet would have blown up 10 times worse than it did about how stupid they are. They don’t pay attention to detail.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is ridiculous. This is why Apple is so much better than everyone else. And yet here it is, Apple letting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I just can’t believe it. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John no, it’s French. It’s N-O-N. to win, to the top of the age of chopped off.
⏹️ ▶️ John French people saying, no, Apple, you can’t do that. Realistically speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ John though, it’s a judgment call of saying, Apple knows that no one except for super nerds are
⏹️ ▶️ John not going to notice this. But all the super nerds rightfully flipped out about it and will continue to flip
⏹️ ▶️ John out about it. And I don’t think the super nerds would buy that case. Because even ignore for now
⏹️ ▶️ John the terrible cutting off of the words. I think it’s just ugly anyway, with the little circles over half
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco of the size. I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to say, do you think anybody, do you think even one person who is currently complaining about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Han slash Nan, do you think even one of them was actually planning on buying one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John of these? Right,
⏹️ ▶️ John like if that wasn’t there, like well I would buy that ugly case if it wasn’t for how it cut off the letters, but I don’t, I don’t, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco won’t even be buying the 5C. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John well I don’t know, like the 5C I’ve seen, I think people who have held it to say it feels
⏹️ ▶️ John impressive and that you know, if you like the color, a lot of people, especially who customize
⏹️ ▶️ John their phone, you can make an interesting phone, like the yellow one. The great thing about the 5C is
⏹️ ▶️ John they all have black faces, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John think that’s right. I’m pretty sure they all have black faces. So it’s an interesting combination
⏹️ ▶️ John of, like, you can have a black and yellow phone if you’re a Georgia Tech fan or something. I only know
⏹️ ▶️ John those colors because my wife went there. But whatever your school colors are. And the cases with the holes in them, though
⏹️ ▶️ John I find it ugly, the color combinations do give you a lot of options to sort of accessorize. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is sort of giving the people what they want. They want, you know, sometimes they want cases with
⏹️ ▶️ John rhinestones on them. They can still get that in the aftermarket. But Apple is giving many more options than just black
⏹️ ▶️ John and white. And I think it’s going to be a net win for them, except for the lint collection
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Because I think even normal people will notice after a while the amount of lint that’s going to collect in those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can confirm, yes, they are indeed all black face plates in the 5C, which is weird because they offer a white back color.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John But even if it is. I like that
⏹️ ▶️ John one. the white backplate with with the black front I think that’s a cool combination
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m thinking this this is the first time that I’ve been tempted to get the white phone not the 5c but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John because of ios 7
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no no the other the real the white one’s still there
⏹️ ▶️ John silver back quite yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah yeah this has been the first time I’ve attempted to get that because wait are we talking about I’m just gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cut that out and pretend like you didn’t see it. You know, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS 7 is so white and light and like I’m finding as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m designing my own app and as I’m seeing what Apple has done with their apps, the default
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before was everything was just dark, black, you know, textured, like it was like you were sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, in a bar. Everything’s black and leather and everything like that well weird bar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll stop there but it’s you know imagine by the way John
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this picture on on the 5c site the top of the end is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clearly not fully cut off and it looks like Han anyway you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS 7 I think white is in style now it’s before it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know we people would joke that it was like like, you know, for women or something else probably horribly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco insensitive. But it’s just the style now. Most of the iPods ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sold, or the original ones at least, those were all white. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there are eras where this is going to be in fashion and this is one of them. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having everything be white, like my whole app design is white based, because iOS 7 is white based,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it looks really good, like it’s kind of refreshing, it makes it look newer, it makes it look nice and modern.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And to put all that on a phone with a black faceplate, I think kind of weakens it or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t take advantage of the new style.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I think you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John have to see it in action to make that. I mean, you’re seeing it in action, but I haven’t yet because I fully plan to
⏹️ ▶️ John put a black background, as I always have on all my iOS devices, on iOS 7.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, I did that. I did that for my first few, probably my first month using it. I had a solid black
⏹️ ▶️ Marco background and I turned off the parallax and everything, just a solid black background. I did that, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was okay and it worked for a while, but then when I was picking colors and an icon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for my app, I decided, let me put the phone in a more stock configuration so I could see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how most people are likely to see the app on the home screen. And so I switched over to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a stone, graphite-looking wallpaper. It’s like a stone texture.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There was that, and I was like, you know, I’ll live with that light for a while. And now I like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it light. Now I feel like going back to all black would be kind of retro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a bad way. Like just like kind of going backwards in time, like going back and using a Sega Saturn.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I have never wanted a white iPhone. I do not understand the appeal. But if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what makes you happy, then feel free. And I should I should add the last time I said I just didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey understand the appeal of something, it was a BMW. And we all saw how that ended up. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t forget Apple products before that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple products before that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco So yeah, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure I’m doomed to be to drive a 911 with my white iPhone sometime in the future.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But regardless, I don’t know. I don’t I never understood the white iPhone thing personally. John, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you had an iPhone, what would you have?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, like, no, I’ve always liked how the white ones look as devices,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially being an old school Apple guy. I really love the people who like found a tiny rainbow
⏹️ ▶️ John colored Apple sticker and stuck it on the back of their white iPhone because back in the days of the snow white
⏹️ ▶️ John design language of the you know the Mac SE 30 my favorite old Mac and a 2CI
⏹️ ▶️ John and all those things where there was like Apple platinum with slats and everything if you had envisioned
⏹️ ▶️ John a futuristic Apple phone it would be platinum or white and have a
⏹️ ▶️ John rainbow colored Apple logo on it so I think those things look great except for as I mentioned on past show the
⏹️ ▶️ John fact that okay it’s not a piece of art it’s actually a device with a screen that you have to use and the white on that screen is never going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be or not never but certainly with current LCD technologies is not as white as
⏹️ ▶️ John actual real live white reflective surface that’s next to it so in
⏹️ ▶️ John any kind of bright light I think a white iOS device makes the screen look worse and that’s why I always go
⏹️ ▶️ John for black faceplate like that’s that’s why I think the 5C is so great because they all have black faceplates
⏹️ ▶️ John even the one with the white background so you can get and really the 5C colors do not appeal to me Except for
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe the yellow if I was really into something yellow like a sports team or something
⏹️ ▶️ John But the white one is the only one that could be considered neutral, but it still has a black face so thumbs
⏹️ ▶️ John up so fashion wise Although although I do like most of the white devices, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I do like the silver back on that thing Pragmatically I think I’d still prefer a black face to make
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen look better in more conditions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say too I have a white iPad mini because after buying the iPhone 5 and it’s like very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dark black color last year, I learned after having it and getting it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the black isn’t that good. It’s too dark. I’ve said that before on this show. I’m not going to go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into it again, but the iPhone 5’s black was just too dark and I don’t think it looks good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So when the iPad mini took the exact same design options basically, I said, no way I’m getting that again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll get the white. And I like it. It looks really nice. crappy Apple cover with it and it looks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good. It’s a nice pairing. And I think certainly on future iPads I’ll do that. You know the issue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you raised John, I have it out here with me right now. The issue you raised about the white of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco faceplate not matching the color or the brightness of the white
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the screen, that’s a very real issue. Right now I’m sitting in a room painted red
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at night lit by a warm temperature LED bulb. So the light in the room is very yellowish. And the faceplate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very clearly looks Yellowish like a you know warm tint and the screen of course
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is relatively neutral and so the screen is a very like you know Bright cool more you know closer to 5,000
⏹️ ▶️ Marco K kind of white so there is that imbalance right now But it doesn’t look bad Doesn’t look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great if you like look at it and pay attention to it most of the time you don’t pay attention to it
⏹️ ▶️ John I was thinking more in terms of brightness where as you get it like at nighttime sure looks fine Cuz then the white face becomes
⏹️ ▶️ John basically a black face because the source of light is the screen but out in bright sunlight Yeah, they all look crappy out in black sunlight for white
⏹️ ▶️ John one bright sunlight but white ones look crappier because it makes it look like, boy, can’t the screen, the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John really can’t keep up. Like you don’t realize how dim current LCDs are until you actually bring them out to direct sunlight, which is why people
⏹️ ▶️ John love, you know, reflective screens like the Kindle, right? Once you get out into sunlight, that backlight is just totally overpowered.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you thought, boy, this thing was so bright, it was blinding me when I was inside my house or laying in my bed or whatever at night.
⏹️ ▶️ John But once you go out into bright sunlight, it is totally overpowered. And, you know, that type of
⏹️ ▶️ John underpowered backlight in the face of bright light of any kind, indoors or outdoors
⏹️ ▶️ John really benefits from having from being next to black. It needs all the help it can get because colors look bright. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John white will look brighter when it’s next to a dark color. So it’s an optical illusion saying, like, I will make my screen look
⏹️ ▶️ John brighter to you because it’s next to a black thing. When you put it next to a white thing, it’s the worst possible condition.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s it’s highlighting all the weaknesses of the screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I agree that it’s a real issue, but I disagree how much it’s actually noticeable in practice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, you’re not John Syracuse. That’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ John It also depends on when you use your thing most. If you use it mostly indoors or use it mostly in dim conditions,
⏹️ ▶️ John then it doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t bother a lot of people. But for me, it bothers me because I feel like it’s just, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know, it also distracts me visually. My eyes would be drawn more to the outside. I just want a black
⏹️ ▶️ John frame. It’s like getting a TV. I want a black frame around my TV as well. You don’t want a white
⏹️ ▶️ John or a shiny frame or anything that’s going to draw your eye around the TV because the screen is supposed to be the star, not the other thing. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the only way I would go with a white face is when we finally get to screen technology. There really is, like, they could match
⏹️ ▶️ John it so that the white is exactly the same. Some sort of combination of reflective and emissive screen
⏹️ ▶️ John in some distant future that really does look the same. Then fine, get the whole thing white.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Anything else on hardware? I’d like to talk about the actual presentation, the keynote,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey briefly. But anything else on the hardware?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So I feel like Tim did not do a particularly good job.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey He stumbled a lot and seemed really nervous, which is weird because usually he’s extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not nervous and he’s very deliberate, which is something I wish I was a little better with.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey He’ll oftentimes leave long pauses if he’s thinking something through or perhaps trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remember the next line. I don’t know how scripted these things are. And he’s always very deliberate.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I felt like this time he didn’t feel that way. He felt like it seemed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as though he felt like he was out of his element. And conversely, Craig Federighi, who we’ve said for a while now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has actually turned into one heck of a great presenter, he, as he did in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey WWDC this year, he absolutely killed it again. And I was very confused
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by Tim’s apparent confusion. I don’t know. Did you guys notice that as well? Am I the only one?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, he did call it, he called, did he call Keynote a spreadsheet or Pages a spreadsheet?
⏹️ ▶️ John He called something a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco spreadsheet. Yeah, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A spreadsheet. Well, I mean, Schiller called Firewire, Ports, Thunderbolt, or vice
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I know. like that’s that’s thought like people must speak we have all people know no better than anyone I the
⏹️ ▶️ John vibe I got from him was that he seemed like giddy and happy like
⏹️ ▶️ John that he was excited that these products were going to be released and did that affect his performance he maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John he was you know he didn’t care he’s just happy boy I can’t wait to these things you know
⏹️ ▶️ John he seemed he seemed very smiley to me like he was really happy about these products really happy that they’re gonna be out there
⏹️ ▶️ John and he wasn’t like the serious deliberate Tim cook that we’d seen before
⏹️ ▶️ John explaining like you know how only Apple could do this and how what Apple’s philosophy is or whatever but I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John was okay like you know he’s more of an MC in these things anyway and you know
⏹️ ▶️ John Schiller was Schiller and Federico did his thing perfectly well so I don’t mind
⏹️ ▶️ John his his stumbling and and missteps or whatever because I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it was not I didn’t get the nervous vibe from I didn’t get the I’m really nervous
⏹️ ▶️ John because I’m worried about what we’re going to announce. I’m excited about these products, and maybe I’ll trip over myself in the excitement.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And what do you think, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, honestly, I skipped most of Tim’s sections when I was watching the video. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just because Tim doesn’t really say a lot that’s new or interesting, especially the beginning half. I skipped over that entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. I just went right to the product introduction, because I was watching the live blogs. I knew roughly what he said and what he was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking about, and that was all I really needed from this event. So I can’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comment on that, except that I always, like, when you’re watching the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keynote videos on your computer, if you open it up in QuickTime, you can actually, you get like a 2x control, you get like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little speed control that you can adjust, and I always put Tim on like 2 or 3x because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he just speaks so slowly, I have to get through it in a reasonable amount of time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I really can’t judge for sure in this case, because I skipped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of what he said, and the parts I didn’t skip I played very quickly because I was bored.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Usually I liked him a little bit more. I just think in this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keynote there wasn’t a whole lot for him to say that was very interesting. I don’t think it’s necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco his fault. I just think there wasn’t a whole lot for him to say. There wasn’t a whole lot for any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them to say, really. Here’s some new iPhones. They’re really good in some ways and really unsurprising
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and boring in others. And it’s almost all exactly what you all expect.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’ve all already seen these things on rumor sites. Here you go.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There wasn’t a whole lot of room in this event to really get that interesting by
⏹️ ▶️ John And they didn’t drag it out. Like, it was a pretty tidy presentation. It was pretty much right on the hour. So I think it was
⏹️ ▶️ John fine. Like, there was no showmanship required for this. They weren’t revealing
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS 7 for the first time. Like, there’s a time and a place for that type of thing. And this was just more of let it go
⏹️ ▶️ John out the door. Although, I mean, Steve Jobs would have been flipping out about
⏹️ ▶️ John how much was known about these things ahead of time. But it seems like the current crew is like, yeah, supply chain’s
⏹️ ▶️ John going to leak. It’s going to happen. What can we do? I can’t tell if people
⏹️ ▶️ John are still seething back there or if it was all like Jobs’ secrecy personality that, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like Tim said, oh, we’re doubling down on secrecy. And people make fun of that. It’s like, well, good job, because we knew everything
⏹️ ▶️ John about these phones, basically. But I’m assuming what he meant was like
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever new product category thing that they release, I’m assuming we won’t have complete video
⏹️ ▶️ John of people playing with that ahead of time. And in fact, we don’t even know what they’re doing. Are they making a TV set
⏹️ ▶️ John or are they not? Are they making a watch? Are they making a nose ring? We don’t know. Like that type of secrecy,
⏹️ ▶️ John so far, assuming any of those things have any reality behind them, so far Apple really has doubled
⏹️ ▶️ John down on secrecy because we have no idea what they’re doing in TV that we haven’t already seen. And we have no idea if they’re making
⏹️ ▶️ John a watch. It’s just a bunch of rumors. Now, as we get closer, we’ll see if they really hold. But I’m not ready to say that his doubling
⏹️ ▶️ John down secrecy thing was a total failure, because I think that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John could still potentially have secrets that it’s kept 100%. Nothing from those things.
⏹️ ▶️ John We just have speculation and rumors. We have no blurry pictures. We have no
⏹️ ▶️ John videos of people playing with cases or anything like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, we don’t even know what they’re doing. You’re right. even when the iPad was about to come
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out, everyone had pretty good rumors saying, Apple is doing a tablet specifically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, it is a tablet, it will run iOS, and it will come out roughly around this time. And those all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ended up being correct. To have, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are indeed very close to launching a new category, which we don’t really know, but if they’re really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco close to launching a new product category, yeah, you’re right, they’ve done a heck of a job keeping it secret. And there’s also a massive number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of important product details that we know are coming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco soon. One of the biggest is whether the iPad mini will have a Retina version this fall. That’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco major product detail, and we don’t know the answer to that yet. Everyone’s all over the place with the predictions and the rumors and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the BS analysts and all these things. So there’s that, there’s whether there’s gonna be Retina displays,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Retina iMacs, what the heck’s happening to the MacBook Pro line, when those are gonna be updated and what they will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have in them. the Mac Pro release, when it’s actually going to happen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John what it would cost.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the Mac Pro itself, they totally
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco kept that one under wraps. We didn’t even
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey know if they
⏹️ ▶️ John were gonna discontinue the computer line. Nobody had spy shots of a black garbage can. Exactly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that’s why I feel like, the phone is always an exception, and the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit. It’s an exception because they just have to make so many of these things. And for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them to say, you can buy this next week, they had to have been producing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them for a while already, and they had to have been testing and producing parts for a while before that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, and they’re making these things in such ridiculous quantities, so many suppliers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are involved. That’s why that always, that’s why the phones always leak and a little bit of the iPads too. That’s why they always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leak in advance now because they’re just making so many of them, too many people are involved and they can’t control them all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The other products, the Macs in particular, just don’t sell anywhere near those kind of volumes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so it’s easier for them to keep those things secret. and certainly a new product category probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco falls under that same protection.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, depending on what it is, I suppose. If it’s something that’s as universally desired as an iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then they’re gonna need to make a gazillion of those too. Although I guess it’s a harder thing to bet on before you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even announced it to anyone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and maybe the very first version won’t be that successful. I mean, the very first iPad was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not a massive blockbuster hit. It sold more than anyone thought, but it didn’t sell as much as the iPhone. It still doesn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, the iPhone is the best example. Like, the very first version of the iPhone was
⏹️ ▶️ John not selling that many. It was a slow ramp up. So whatever thing they come out with, this watch or television,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll have time to ramp up manufacturing. And as someone in the chat room said, the easy way to do it is what they
⏹️ ▶️ John did with the iPhone, which is like, you know, secrecy behind the iPhone. No one had any idea what it was going to look like, but we all know they
⏹️ ▶️ John were making a phone. Just announce it six months before it ships, like they did with the Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John like they did with the iPhone. I don’t remember if it was six months or whatever it was. You haven’t started ramping manufacturing
⏹️ ▶️ John yet, and there aren’t a million of these things shipping around the world and you have a big lead time They did it with the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John and because you know the FCC You know clearing clearing the FCC in the u.s. Was require
⏹️ ▶️ John pictures of the device and everything like that so it’s gonna be spoiled anyway So they had to pre announce it which is fine and the Mac Pro they
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty announced it because they’d already made it wait God knows how long and we were gonna flip out and so they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like alright here you go We’re actually making one you can’t have it now, but don’t worry It’s not dead and
⏹️ ▶️ John that was they needed to do that messaging wise and for new category product
⏹️ ▶️ John If there’s some sort of FCC stuff, maybe they have to pre-announce that too, but I don’t know if there is going to
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what the requirements are for Fitness trackery things that you wear and or for television
⏹️ ▶️ John sets I don’t think you have to isn’t that don’t think either one of those things is probably going to have its own
⏹️ ▶️ John LTE 3G whatever connection so they’re probably okay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, you want to wrap it up?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s fine, unless you wanted to do some late follow-up, which we can always save for the next show.
⏹️ ▶️ John Follow-up comes at the front of the show, Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s why it was late follow-up, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t just put a modifier and a word and change it. No, that works.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, we should end the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, thanks a lot to our two sponsors this week, MailRoute and Squarespace, and we’ll see you next week.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, tech podcasts so long.
⏹️ ▶️ John We have the more important issue in the tail end here. Mark, did you see the two links I put in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let’s see. Are we talking about the Han versus Nan? Yes. See, there’s enough of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco H shaft, I guess. There’s enough of that. I don’t know. What’s
⏹️ ▶️ John typographical term? The yellow and green one shows more
⏹️ ▶️ John of the stem of the H than there is a stem on the N. But the white one
⏹️ ▶️ John shows pretty much equal amounts of stem above the H and the N. And as we know, this case is
⏹️ ▶️ John not like a precision aligned. That amount of motion can clearly be
⏹️ ▶️ John from just shifting the case around a little bit. So I still say NON, because the amount of extra
⏹️ ▶️ John stem that you’re going to get above the N is so minuscule and may actually be non-existent. So
⏹️ ▶️ John NON is my take and the white one supports my theory. They’re super zoomed in
⏹️ ▶️ John Probably artificially rendered yellow and green one does show a tiny bit
⏹️ ▶️ John more stem on that H
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, I don’t know. I I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Take a Photoshop
⏹️ ▶️ John and draw a horizontal line across the NON and the white one You’ll see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say the white one is a shadow like that’s shadow covering that part and then We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John Well now you have to buy one with that case It’s silicone so
⏹️ ▶️ John it stretches so you can just move your thumb and say see now it’s covering it now it’s not now it’s covering
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the real-time follow-up at Marco. I think you’re thinking of a sender
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, okay. I know d senders are the things that break the baseline But yeah, all right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway shaft is better you want to talk about this this USB 3.0 micro connector
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually have one of these things
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I have one too. It’s on my bus powered one terabyte drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have I have a card reader that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know why is this a thing right now? We’ve known about
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I don’t know It’s people who don’t either don’t buy a lot of accessories or don’t keep up with the
⏹️ ▶️ John umpteen different USB connectors think this is a New thing like the story was this will be coming to your Android
⏹️ ▶️ John phone which may or may not be true and whatever and maybe it’s more embarrassing because it’s such a
⏹️ ▶️ John relatively large connector for a phone But it’s got one thing over regular,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the regular whatever it is, type B, I think, the flat rectangular one, is that at least it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John externally asymmetrical. At least we can give it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. But, I mean, for mine, like, because it’s on a card reader, I actually use it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frequently, and it is really hard to insert or remove that cable. And I don’t know if it’s just mine, and like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe the socket on my card reader isn’t that well made, but it’s really kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a good to plug that in. and like I always think I’m breaking it it’s it’s that bad
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah these are no lightning connects the lightning lightning connector is genius both because it can be plugged in either way and
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no wrong way and also because it inverts the normal relationship of connectors which is a bent piece of
⏹️ ▶️ John metal like into like a not a tube but like you know a hollow cylinder and then change the
⏹️ ▶️ John shape of that so it’s got this flimsy metal wall surrounding this internal thing where the pins are
⏹️ ▶️ John where lightning says no we’re going to make a solid metal flange and put our contacts on
⏹️ ▶️ John top of it. And anything with the flimsy metal wall, especially as you shrink it down, it just becomes ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because lots of micro USB connectors are externally asymmetrical, but just barely. Like, you have to squint at
⏹️ ▶️ John it to get the little trapezoid on your, you know, some of them are just microscopic. Like, the one, my new camera
⏹️ ▶️ John has whatever the super teeny tiny USB thing is, and it’s trapezoid shaped,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you can’t barely feel it with your fingers, and you have to really squint to see it and you have to make sure
⏹️ ▶️ John you put it in the right way and then you’re shoving a little, you know, ring of metal
⏹️ ▶️ John into another ring of flimsy metal. It’s much more satisfying to stick the solid metal
⏹️ ▶️ John lightning connector to something. So Apple’s connector is way better here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I agree that the USB micro connector is, even the 2.0 one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is awful. I mean, it’s every time because it’s on almost every camera these days. And it’s on every Kindle, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a lot of devices now, and yeah, I always have to look very carefully to see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what direction it goes in, and I get it wrong half the time. It’s almost, or even more, I would say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s almost as hard to plug in as a VGA cable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I always got VGA cables backwards. Even I would look, and then I would not quite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see it right, and still try to plug it in backwards.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, VGA never bothered me, but DVI to this day, I always get backwards, every single time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you gotta look for the cross
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well if it’s not an i-cable and you have like the dash but you know even then it’s I still mess that up too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco although nothing I mean USB regular USB a cables those mess me up like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John because they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I’ve said on past shows like if it’s your job to design a connector there are very few axes
⏹️ ▶️ John on which you can excel and you would think it’s like I want to be a good connector designer like what do you
⏹️ ▶️ John even have to think about except these exact very issues there’s not an entire world of possibilities. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John reliability, there’s filling the spec, and there’s, I got to plug it in and unplug it all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t make that a pain in the butt. Like, that’s what your job is. You’re a connector designer.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know how these people sleep at night. Like, I sure did a good job designing
⏹️ ▶️ John that connector, didn’t I? How? How are you measuring yourself? How are you deciding that you did a good job? I hope
⏹️ ▶️ John they suffer their entire lives just getting their connections wrong and fumbling with their cameras and not being able
⏹️ ▶️ John to like then they must say boy I suck at my job
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m sure that’s what they’re all going through I keep in mind Apple has two massive luxuries that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most connect your designers don’t which well I don’t know how big this field is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they have two huge luxuries they don’t have to worry that much about cost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they can completely break backwards compatibility and it’s kind and there you know a third
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess it’s like they’re kind of a dictatorship in that They don’t have to work on some committee
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and please 16 different companies who are all Trying to make the same connectors as you for the next 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years And you know do a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of stuff like they’re they can just say they can just decree. This is what’s best We’re going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do it. We don’t care what you think and we don’t care what it costs you and And that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah cost has to be the biggest one, but I still think at this point You should still throw in
⏹️ ▶️ John the criteria of oh and by the way it should be impossible to put in the wrong way
⏹️ ▶️ John and very clear which way it’s supposed to go. And you should like your job is to make that also
⏹️ ▶️ John make it cheap. Like yes, make it reliable, make it a good connection to use and also make it cheap. And I don’t think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John outside the realm of possibility. Granted, maybe you can’t make something as you know, beautiful and precious as the lightning
⏹️ ▶️ John connector, but surely we can do better than these crazy USB things like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, even if you just I mean, like the cost things like oh, we can’t have it be reversible,
⏹️ ▶️ John because that makes it so much more expensive for the devices, because now they have to handle it
⏹️ ▶️ John being both ways. I think we can overcome that. I think the universe of ethernet cables, being able to detect
⏹️ ▶️ John whether it’s a crossover cable or not, like we crossed that hurdle. Now we don’t have to deal with cross. Even
⏹️ ▶️ John the super cheap crappy PCs have that. So it’s possible. It can be done. It just
⏹️ ▶️ John takes just a little tiny bit of effort. We can make USB connectors that are impossible to put in the wrong way
⏹️ ▶️ John without breaking the bank. Like they’re being Pennywise pound foolish.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, how’s the review? Or any update?
⏹️ ▶️ John I was so excited today. Through Twitter, someone directed me to the dev forums, which gave me a solution
⏹️ ▶️ John to getting offline dictation working. You
⏹️ ▶️ John there to get that working? I didn’t have to. I was directed there by some helpful person on Twitter. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you wouldn’t think, like, OK, I’ve got DP7, but this feature doesn’t work. Let me search the dev forums,
⏹️ ▶️ John see if there’s a way I can make it work. And sure enough, there was.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m assuming it was a bad updater or something. But it just involved making a symlink to a framework or something. Because it’s some XPC
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. And the XPC thing couldn’t find the thing that it was executing. So you just make a symlink, and then it works suddenly. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I was happy to see that this is some sort of packaging and installer
⏹️ ▶️ John problem, and not a technical problem. The code was there. The code actually does work. It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John that the operating system couldn’t find it, because it wasn’t in the right place.
⏹️ ▶️ John It does. And I used it, and I wrote up that little section, which was like three paragraphs. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s like, yeah. So it’s being edited? It’s done being edited?
⏹️ ▶️ John They finished editing what they had, but of course, they haven’t edited my three paragraphs on dictation. And
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re still running tests, battery tests. Like I would like to get tests on the GM and put those in the review and
⏹️ ▶️ John not say, OK, well, on DP7. Although I don’t think things have been varying that
⏹️ ▶️ John much between these builds, so if we can’t get the GM version, it won’t be the end of the world to
⏹️ ▶️ John run tests against. I think the numbers that we get on whatever the second to last build are, we’re probably gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be pretty accurate. But yeah, I would like a ship date and a GM. That’s what I would
⏹️ ▶️ John be like iOS 7 where it’s eight days from now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it sounds like you’re kinda ready for that, though. I mean, as much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John as you’re probably
⏹️ ▶️ John going to be. No, I gotta send these things to, it’s the iBook store. I don’t know where the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco turnaround is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, yeah. I have to assume I’m gonna be rejected first So there’s a one turnaround time where you send it in they reject it for some crazy reason
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re lucky the second time It’ll go this is it be the first time. I’m sending any books to the iBook store, so I
⏹️ ▶️ John Assume that I will be rejected the first time I Should have looked at my notes during
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing cuz I wrote stuff in them if we have to mention the storage shift
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh the lack of a storage shift.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, come on man, but anyway I just need storage shift. Seriously, how much does
⏹️ ▶️ John an additional 16 gigs of flash cost these days? Not $100. Well, that’s their
⏹️ ▶️ John margins. I know. But even Apple shifts eventually. Like eventually they stop shipping
⏹️ ▶️ John standard Macs coming with 2 gigs of RAM and they change to 4. That happens. It has to happen eventually.
⏹️ ▶️ John What is this going to be 10 years from now? It’s like, well, it comes in 16, 32, and 64. No.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think we have to put this rant in the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll do a better one next week. I’ll still be pissed