catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

36: A Weird One

John Siracusa’s Mavericks review, Apple’s event, and the Mac and iPad updates.

Episode Description:
  • The John Siracusa Mavericks review is up!
  • Apple's event, the presenters' pacing and enthusiasm, Casey's bag of hearts, and yet another showing of the dots video.
  • The Retina MacBook Pro update.
  • The Mac Pro base price, CPU options, and speculation on SSD pricing.
  • The iPad Air, Retina iPad Mini, iPad 2 (LOL), and iPod Classic.
  • Apple's prod of free software.
  • John's high-level summary of Mavericks and recommendation on upgrading.
  • Listener homework: Read the review before next week's episode.

Sponsored by:

  • Squarespace: Everything you need to create an exceptional website. Use promo code ATP10 for 10% off.
  • Hover: High-quality, no-hassle domain registration. Use promo code ATP for 10% off.

MP3 Header

Transcribed using Whisper large_v2 (transcription) + WAV2VEC2_ASR_LARGE_LV60K_960H (alignment) + Pyannote (speaker diaritization).

Transcript start

⏹️ ▶️ John When a Skype call begins I’m against saying hello

⏹️ ▶️ John Because that makes it like a telephone, you know, we’re bringing all of the like the traditions of the crappy

⏹️ ▶️ John previous generation Communication system to the new one. I could pick up the phone

⏹️ ▶️ John to say hello, but Skype it should be like I am you don’t begin Every I am conversation with people that you

⏹️ ▶️ John know with like a greeting or something or a hello

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, if you’re an a**hole, you start an IM conversation with YT question mark.

⏹️ ▶️ John What does that stand for?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You there? You didn’t know that?

⏹️ ▶️ John No, if anyone did that to me, I would be like, what are you doing?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s terrible.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like people saying hello on Skype, but it’s worse. Here’s worse than YT. Your name with a question

⏹️ ▶️ John mark. That is the worst way to begin an IM conversation.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey disagree. It has to be YT.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John No, your name with

⏹️ ▶️ John a question mark is the worst. Trust me. I’ve had them all done to me except for YT, but I’ve had worse. See?

⏹️ ▶️ John because at YT it’s like, yes, it’s terrible, but it’s better than Casey.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like what? What is? Yes, you know who you are. I am Casey. Are you there?

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it’s almost the same as you there, but the Casey, it’s like Casey.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is this Casey?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, it’s like I am

⏹️ ▶️ John Casey. I’m expecting something from you and I can’t believe I’m not getting it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do we want to talk about the event or do we want to just dive straight into the review? Because I’m thinking, let’s just say, screw

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the event. Let’s talk about the review.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wait. Hold on. There’s a lot in the event though.

⏹️ ▶️ John I Think we should do the event because it’s more timely like the reviews not going anywhere and the the review is Part

⏹️ ▶️ John of the event because of one of the things I talked about in the event is Mavericks And so like I think we should do the event

⏹️ ▶️ John and I say this even though I’ve only seen half of the event But like I’m more or less know what happened.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I Think I think we can fit both. We we have a long show. Let’s just be honest. This is gonna be a long show

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk about the review. Do you want to cue the piano background music?

⏹️ ▶️ John Thought we were starting with the event we just agreed to

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey do both. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sorry. I said review. I meant event I’m tired too.

⏹️ ▶️ John You guys gotta get on your game here

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know I got to put

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John on my

⏹️ ▶️ John have an extra cup of coffee or whiskey or whatever it is you to have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have water. I’m pulling a John for God’s sakes. All I have is water. Maybe that’s the problem.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe you need a sprite

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you need the extra sugar.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey That’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. All right, let me try this all over again. So why don’t we talk about the event?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And now, Marco, you can cue the silly piano music. So what did you think, John, of the parts

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you saw?

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, my first question for you is, did either one of you or both of you see the whole event?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. We actually live streamed, or not live, we did a no spoilers policy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco between ourselves at the track that day, and yesterday I guess it was, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we didn’t check Twitter or anything. I didn’t even check my email.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco In fact, my phone vibrated in my pocket once. I didn’t even check to see the notification. I just didn’t care. Like, just, it can’t be anything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco important. And then in the car on the way back, we had already pre-subscribed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the Keynote podcast on our phones so that we wouldn’t even have to go to Apple’s website or find the feed.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We downloaded the recording of it from the Keynote feed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the way back, on the drive back to Richmond, so like on this five-hour drive, downloaded

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the video of it and watched it and streamed it over the car speakers.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. So I didn’t see the first two-thirds of the video at that point because I happened to be driving

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the time. And then Underscore didn’t see the iPad portion of the video because he was driving

⏹️ ▶️ Casey afterwards, but I did re-watch the whole thing this evening and finished your entire

⏹️ ▶️ Casey review and read the blog post about the review. So I did a lot of prep for the podcast

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s not supposed to have any prep.

⏹️ ▶️ John Wow. I just want to clarify for the listeners, by the way, when they say they were at the track, they weren’t betting on horses.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco In case, yeah, in case anyone suspected that that was the most likely explanation of that phrase from me and Casey.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, you know, the idle rich do go to the track, bet on the ponies.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so we all did see it in some capacity.

⏹️ ▶️ John All right, so I’m the only one who missed part of it. And the reason I missed most of it is because as soon as I said it was available today,

⏹️ ▶️ John I had to stop watching, stop listening and start doing the things I knew I needed to do.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Now, really quickly to interrupt, were you at home or at work when this was going on?

⏹️ ▶️ John I was at

⏹️ ▶️ Casey home. Okay. So you knew enough to plan for the inevitable possibility that you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey might have a busy afternoon.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, so were you like, was it one of those things where you were like, I may or may not work this afternoon? Or did you just say

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like two weeks or a week ago, I guess, Tuesday afternoon, I’m going to need that off because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff’s going to go crazy.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, it basically worked out to just be a late lunch because, uh, like ours actually

⏹️ ▶️ John held the review. They held it until the event was over, because that’s usually what Apple does in terms of like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John things don’t go on sale until the event is over, store doesn’t come back up, whatever. So that, so the review was ready to go

⏹️ ▶️ John within minutes of everything was ready to go within minutes of them announcing,

⏹️ ▶️ John uh, the price and that it was available today. And then it was just a matter of holding it until the event is over and then it goes up.

⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s really all it took of my day at that point. And then after work, it was just the deluge

⏹️ ▶️ John of a million emails, tweets, and everything else. And so it was

⏹️ ▶️ John a full day. But the actual publishing, I was well prepared. I had everything ready

⏹️ ▶️ John to go for everything that was announced. I was not surprised by anything. Everything worked as well as could be expected. Maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John in a show or two from now, we can go through the blow by blow of all the different moving parts and how it

⏹️ ▶️ John went better this year than last year. But I think that’s more of a meta topic.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, I don’t know if you want to get into this at this moment, but did you have any

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the pricing options already in the review or did you just have a big blank space?

⏹️ ▶️ John I had something ready to publish which said the price isn’t known. I mean, that’s what I pushed up to the iBook

⏹️ ▶️ John store with the version that was ready to go at any moment.

⏹️ ▶️ John You can say, yes, I can publish this right now. It basically didn’t have information about the price. It

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t assert that any price was the price, just that we don’t know what it is, but I I think it’s going to be this and blah, blah, blah.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that version had a graph of the price. And instead of the graph going down to 0 for 10.9,

⏹️ ▶️ John it was a light gray line going down to 0 with a question mark on it. But the graph still went to 0.

⏹️ ▶️ John That was my guess. But the text said, we don’t know. And so I had the free version all ready to go,

⏹️ ▶️ John free, paste, paste, paste, paste, paste. And then upload, and there it went.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I did a very good job of steering us to the review we didn’t want to talk about. about the event?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it was it was interesting that was it just me or did all the speakers seem

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit sloppier than usual?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I completely agree.

⏹️ ▶️ John A lot of people are saying that and I’m only up to Eddie Q at this point whose clothing was a little crazy

⏹️ ▶️ John but up to that point they seemed fine like not

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think they were off their game as much as everyone said I think it’s not that they were off because they always stumble over stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John it was that the atmosphere in the room, which is hard to tell when you’re not there. So we really talked to someone

⏹️ ▶️ John who was actually there. But the atmosphere in the room seemed like there wasn’t any like electricity

⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of excitement about anything. And the presenters weren’t able to muster enthusiasm about

⏹️ ▶️ John the announcements and the audience wasn’t feeding it back to them. So it was just kind of like going through the motions of announcing

⏹️ ▶️ John things quickly through slides or whatever. But it didn’t. It wasn’t. I don’t blame

⏹️ ▶️ John the people who presented. It’s just I mean maybe there was not anything that exciting like

⏹️ ▶️ John for example imagine If the Mac Pro had not been announced at WWDC It would have been a very

⏹️ ▶️ John different vibe in that room with the exact same announcements You know what? I mean, just because like nothing there was a surprise

⏹️ ▶️ John really to anybody, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like pretty much everything if everyone took their best guesses to what was going to be announced That was exactly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what was announced and not and really nothing more than that. It was like, all right, everyone’s best guesses

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, what do you think it is? And then it was just that

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and it really hurts you when you have parts of the event that you’ve told people about before. You’ve told

⏹️ ▶️ John people about Mavericks, we’re going to go through it again. You’ve told people about this Mac Pro, which is awesome and everything, we’re going to go through it again. And even

⏹️ ▶️ John the stuff like the new MacBook Pros, well, we already had a line of Haswell computers.

⏹️ ▶️ John So the Haswell excitement of, wow, look at this battery life, is already there. Like there was so little that

⏹️ ▶️ John it was new. And those ones where you’re going over stuff that everybody already knows that you yourself told them previously,

⏹️ ▶️ John that just kills the energy, I think, of the presentation. And thus far in watching,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think it was bad. It was just kind of like, meh. Like, the products they’re announcing, I’m looking at the products and going, this

⏹️ ▶️ John is a good product. And now I’m looking at the videos. This video of the Mac Pro is being made. This is a cool video. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John thumbs up all around. But having known so much before, and so much of it having been announced

⏹️ ▶️ John beforehand, really undercuts the excitement.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I think it was weird too that, like, you know, they spent so much time on the iOS 7,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, Goofy video about their design philosophy Okay, that’s nice, but we’ve seen that like twice

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or three times already because didn’t they use it at the iPhone event also?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you can’t keep going back to that video. It’s a nice video It’s a good video, but how many times can you use it right? It would be like

⏹️ ▶️ John showing the I mean the only way they kind of got away with that is they should think different a lot That kind of works

⏹️ ▶️ John because it was more abstract And this is more concrete and it seems more tied to ios 7 and

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s got the words that you read and everything And it’s just kind of like you can’t I hope they don’t show

⏹️ ▶️ John that again.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think they’ve driven it into the ground But, you know, also a lot of the time was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco videos and fairly boring demos. It seemed like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they did have a lot to announce, but the pacing seemed a little bit slow to me. And I know it’s always a little bit slow because it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mainly for the press and, you know, it’s Tim Cook talking. But still, like, the pacing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the whole thing seemed especially slow this time. And it seemed like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they were less prepared. Maybe they had rehearsed less than usual. And they were less comfortable.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re right that part of it was kind of a lack of excitement because they weren’t really announcing anything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco surprisingly dramatically new But part of it was also I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it almost seemed like they were a little more uptight maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because Like when they would when they would stumble over what was obviously a scripted line that was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco made to sound unscripted Rather than just rolling with the mistake they made they would like go back

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and re-say what they were supposed to say the first time, like they would just retry the failed line.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mm-hmm, I thought the same thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was kind of awkward, it felt very stiff to me.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like I said, I’ll have to keep watching because I’m only up to EQ at this point. Although, one thing that I noticed about it was that,

⏹️ ▶️ John you say it went slow, I felt a lot of the demos, especially the software demos that I had seen, like up to the point

⏹️ ▶️ John of Garage Band, seemed rushed. And in the way that, because if you’re used to

⏹️ ▶️ John the Steve Jobs era, he would have done the same presentation, but he would have picked like either

⏹️ ▶️ John one application or like a couple features of two applications and just spent

⏹️ ▶️ John what seems like way too long if you were looking at the stopwatch. Remember when Steve Jobs would get obsessed with like, I mean, imagine he had

⏹️ ▶️ John picked like the slow motion feature in iMovie or the drums or something. He would do these in-depth demos

⏹️ ▶️ John of some obscure feature that like tickles his fancy and he would be there. But the thing is, if you look at the

⏹️ ▶️ John clock, like he’s going to sit there and play with the slow motion feature for five minutes, are you kidding me? But he

⏹️ ▶️ John was so obviously so jazzed about this feature that he was showing. It was almost like watching a kid who was

⏹️ ▶️ John like really excited about, oh yeah, I gotta show you my toy, like, check this thing out. And that enthusiasm,

⏹️ ▶️ John as corny as it might be, like, you could connect with it. And he would go in depth about

⏹️ ▶️ John one obscure feature. And this would seem like, oh, we’ve got these things, and look at this, and this does this, and this does that. Even the

⏹️ ▶️ John one they tried to go in depth for, look, you can use drummers and go like this, isn’t that cool? But when And he says, isn’t that cool? Steve Jobs

⏹️ ▶️ John would be closing his eyes and getting into it and going like Marco does with fish, I imagine.

⏹️ ▶️ John And with his fancy headphones on. And he would really get into it. And you may

⏹️ ▶️ John not be into it, but you could say you were convinced that Steve Jobs was really into whatever it was.

⏹️ ▶️ John Even if it’s like, look at the wood on these amp cases and this UI.

⏹️ ▶️ John That was missing because these people were just like, go through the features, show them one after

⏹️ ▶️ John the other, maybe go a little bit in depth with this. but none of them, again, thus far up Dead EQ, have been able to convince me that

⏹️ ▶️ John they are obsessively in love with any aspect of these programs.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I thought the Q demo was rough. It was something

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that was supposed to be cutesy and funny, but was neither cutesy nor funny. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with his album cover, whatever it was, or band poster,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I recall

⏹️ ▶️ Casey specifically what it was. Oftentimes Apple will do something that, Yeah, it’s lame, but it’s kind of adorably

⏹️ ▶️ Casey lame. Whereas this was just straight up lame in my opinion. And I thought it was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey awkward. I think Eddie was trying too hard to be funny. And I don’t blame him

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for that, but I don’t know. Like where Craig can be the nerd and generally speaking

⏹️ ▶️ Casey be funny, with the exception of, what was the line? I actually wrote it down. We want to go door to door with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bag of hearts.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Huh?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey What? That was early on when he was talking about how nerds will make everyone happy by writing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey code. But generally speaking, I think Craig does a very good job with the cutesy funny and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the kind of lame funny. And I don’t think Eddie does well with that at all. And I thought his demo

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was very rough.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you can only do so much with the material you have. I mean, like think about a WWDC. Like we

⏹️ ▶️ John were, this is the first time we’re seeing iOS 7 and it was a mixture of like shock and

⏹️ ▶️ John discomfort because it was like, remember when we first saw iOS 7 up there with those crazy icons and like the video was cool

⏹️ ▶️ John and they show us these screens that we’ve never seen before. And we show us these icons and no one knows what to think. The whole room is going nuts. And the

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro, same type of thing. Like, what the hell is this? It’s a circle and they show it next to the Mac Pro. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John being knocked, being knocked, coming, being hit from the side in an unexpected direction and

⏹️ ▶️ John being knocked off kilter, even when it’s in a bad way, when people are like, oh God, what the hell’s up with this iOS 7 thing?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, that makes for a memorable, interesting experience. And they didn’t have

⏹️ ▶️ John any of that here. So all you’re left with is, I mean, like, say you got a really good shuck and jibe guy to

⏹️ ▶️ John do a more polished delivery on these same products, I don’t think it would have come off any better. And this I think

⏹️ ▶️ John the things they announced are good. It’s just that none of them knocked us on our ear

⏹️ ▶️ John like a couple of the past announcements have.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let’s talk about the things they announced. But first, let’s talk about our first sponsor this week. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hover. Hover is high quality, no hassle, domain name registration.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can use promo code ATP for 10% off any order at Hover. If you’re buying an old name,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new name, putting an add-on on it, anything, use promo code ATP for 10% off.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Hover takes all the hassle and friction out of owning and managing domain names. They offer smart,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy to use, and powerful domain name management tools. Hover believes that everyone should be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to take control of their online identity, something I’ve actually written about quite a lot, with their own domain name.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Hover makes it very easy to do so. They’re part of 2COWS. 2COWS has been around since 1994,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’re one of the largest domain registrars in the world. Hover offers.net, co, com, tv,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco country codes, many more domain names. They recently added a whole bunch of new TLDs like IO

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’re constantly adding more so you can get. just about anything. Hover does not believe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in heavy handed upselling or aggressive cross selling. They didn’t tell me to say this but come on, we

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all know the alternatives in the domain name registrar world. Some of us just bought

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a highly punctuated web host And yeah, we know the alternative here. And believe me,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hover’s a breath of fresh air. Anyway, they don’t believe in hiding functionality or requiring extra payment

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for things that should be included with domain name management, such as Whois privacy, subdomains, and URL

⏹️ ▶️ Marco forwarding. They also offer Hover email, which makes it easy and affordable to create a memorable email

⏹️ ▶️ Marco address and eschew. See, that’s brave right there. Put the word eschew in an ad read, which I can barely even pronounce.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Isn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey eschew?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it? I should not be the authority on such things. But I think that’s the case.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, you can do that for the impersonal free webmail email address that you get. Instead, you can get your own

⏹️ ▶️ Marco domain and have your own Hover email right there with your own domain name at the end of it. They also recently added Google

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apps for Business, which you can add to any Hover domain, new or old. They also offer excellent

⏹️ ▶️ Marco online help and support. They even have this awesome policy, no hold, no wait, and no transfer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco telephone support. See, they wrote phone, but I said telephone because I wanted it to sound better

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it really is pretty cool. You can call their 866 number Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Eastern, and you’ll be speaking to a live person who is empowered and eager to help right then.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No hold, no wait, and no transfer. So go to hover.com slash ATP

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for their high-quality, no-hassle domain name registration. Use promo code ATP for 10% off.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot to Hover for sponsoring our show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So really quick real-time follow-up. I’m told via the chat that it wasn’t a bag of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hearts, which is what I could swear I heard on two different occasions, but bag of parts, which doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really make the joke any better to me, but apparently I completely misheard that. And also the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey chat room says it is issue, which is, you know, one victory for me in a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey long line of defeat when it comes to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John the English

⏹️ ▶️ Casey language. So I’m going to hold on to that for a while. Anyway, you were going to start walking through what

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they talked about.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. I’ve worked on a bunch of notes on everything. We’ll see what’s actually interesting enough to get to.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do want to save a lot of time for John. Um, biggest thing, so the Retina MacBook Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco update was the first thing they did, right? And, what’s, it’s not that interesting, what’s very interesting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about it, well, what’s kind of interesting about it is the price drops all around. The, the Retinas all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco saw a price drop of I think $200 for the entry prices, which is really great. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cause I don’t think, have they, actually let me double check, did they update the non-pros at all yet? Or probably not,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? Yeah, it looks like they still offer just the 13, the 15 is gone. They

⏹️ ▶️ Marco offer just the 13 inch non-Retina one for only $100 less and it looks like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s using an old CPU. So yeah. So they still have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, it’s probably on its way out or they’re going to keep it around for one more cycle. Anyway, so $200 less on all the Retinas is really great

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because this is really showing like they’re serious about the Retinas replacing the other ones. The other ones are not going to be around

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for much time.

⏹️ ▶️ John I wonder if they even cut their margins at all. It could be that their margins had gotten large

⏹️ ▶️ John on those, and they had the headroom to cut the price without hurting their margins. Because they’ve

⏹️ ▶️ John been pulling parts out of these things. SSDs are expensive and everything, but

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re smaller and simpler than hard drives, and they probably get good deals on flash at this point. And just pulling out the

⏹️ ▶️ John optical drive is one part. You don’t have to pay for it all and all the stuff. And getting rid of buses that were there previously,

⏹️ ▶️ John the peripherals used to be connected to, those buses were just there dangling, and they can get rid of those. Like, what’s inside

⏹️ ▶️ John these things is getting smaller, and more stuff moving onto the CPU package with the Haswell and everything. I wonder

⏹️ ▶️ John if the margins are, you know, if these price drops are just maintaining the margins of like

⏹️ ▶️ John two generations ago, and they just, you know, figured, well, these aren’t,

⏹️ ▶️ John we can get, we can sell more of these if we just maintain our current margins. Like, and the best

⏹️ ▶️ John example that we’ll get to later is like comparing Contrast with the iPad 2, Which they did not do that with

⏹️ ▶️ John but yeah, but the price drops. I mean, that’s the way it’s supposed to work

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s really good though that means more people getting into retina screens And that also means that you like because the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco screens of these are exactly the same as they were already But I think this means that There that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco retina screens are getting cheaper basically and that’s really good for the rest of the line getting retina screens Which we will also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco talk about later

⏹️ ▶️ John for gigabytes RAM though standard on a couple of these models. It’s no good Yeah, that’s a little weak.

⏹️ ▶️ John Especially with integrated graphics, despite the Maverick’s changes to integrated graphics.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, there’s that, there’s also the compressed RAM, which I actually should ask you how well that works in practice. I haven’t actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco read your review yet, sorry, I haven’t had time. But I’m going to read it tomorrow. Don’t tell anybody.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do like that they finally have a no discrete GPU option on the 15, like we talked about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the past. What’s interesting though, is that it doesn’t appear to make any price difference

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatsoever. If you actually configure that they have two parts they’re like a low end and a high end line

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to start with and you can configure the low end with all the options that the high end has except the GPU

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and If you if you configure it to match on the other specs It’s the exact same price Regardless

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of whether it has the discrete GPU or not Which I think is kind of funny

⏹️ ▶️ John and the 13 doesn’t get discreet at all so if you look at the look at the chart, it’s like Integrated

⏹️ ▶️ John integrated integrated integrated and only at the very right hand side of the tech specs They say oh and by the way you can get a discrete

⏹️ ▶️ John So the way it’s presented is kind of like the MacBook Pro only uses integrated graphics Except

⏹️ ▶️ John for if you get the super duper high-end you can opt for the apparently no cost discrete

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right exactly and but although the 13 never had it but but yeah, that’s a very good

⏹️ ▶️ John I know but like there’s no there’s no reason they couldn’t also have a high-end 13 You know for people who want that form factor,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know witness the the retina mini Which is kind of like this is the high-end different form

⏹️ ▶️ John factor in iPads. At various times they’ve done that, where each line you can crank up to

⏹️ ▶️ John the highest level, but they’ve chosen not to. So, it’s kind of like towards

⏹️ ▶️ John the end of life when the 17 was the only one that got the super-duper stuff, like they would just shove

⏹️ ▶️ John the most powerful things into the 17, like, well, you want the most powerful thing, you gotta get this big boat.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, moving on, what do you think about the, what I believe was next, or at least the next most

⏹️ ▶️ Marco important thing is, what do you think about the iPad Air?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, hold on. You’re skipping a lot of stuff here. So what about the Mac Pro? Is there anything interesting you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanted to add to that?

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s interesting that when we were walking out of the keynote, and we said, what do you think of the price of the

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro? And Marco and I both said $2,999. And then we changed our minds up and down

⏹️ ▶️ John over various months or whatever, but it turns out the first slide Apple plug up but the price next to that thing was $2999.

⏹️ ▶️ John So kudos to first to our you know our instincts there

⏹️ ▶️ John and so I’m the pricing is what I think what we expected I think they I think they could

⏹️ ▶️ John have gone lower if they really wanted to but they didn’t want to and I’m glad that there’s a two in front

⏹️ ▶️ John of the number even if no one’s ever gonna buy that particular model I just hope I have the the built order flexibility

⏹️ ▶️ John to mix and match to a greater degree because like they showed a little canned configs and it’s like okay

⏹️ ▶️ John well can I get like the second fastest low number of core CPU but with

⏹️ ▶️ John the big honkin GPU but with the you know the medium-sized SSD or whatever

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the answer to all those is well I don’t know about the SSD but the answer to the CPU and GPU from their tech specs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pigs that you can mix and match any combination of those

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I mean that’s what I’m assuming and and I was wondering again what

⏹️ ▶️ John what it’s gonna cost to upgrade the standard 256 gig SSD to the top-end terabyte

⏹️ ▶️ John one and dreading what it might be and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you look though the the new MacBook Pro the retina MacBook Pro has a 1 terabyte SSD option

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for either 500 or 800 depending on whether it’s the high end or the low end

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what rich Siegel pointed out to me today. He’s like, I know what the price is gonna be I said, how do you know and he showed me the choices

⏹️ ▶️ John to upgrade from 256 to 512 or 1 terabyte for both the iMac and The MacBook Pro and the prices were always $800 for the 1 terabyte

⏹️ ▶️ John and $800 1 terabyte But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is 500 on the high-end retina MacBook Pro. So so I’m guessing it could be either could be 500

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or 800 Either way 5800 is a little bit pushy 500 for a 1 terabyte SSD is pretty good But it’s not that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they always do that for

⏹️ ▶️ John you. It’s not 500 for 1 terabyte SSD. It’s 500 for an additional 768 Gigabytes,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know what? I mean like they always do that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s true But but from Apple first party fully supported and integrated into this crazy case where you can’t put

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your own in that’s pretty good

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well now stop stop right there. What did you just say Marco?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This crazy case where you can’t put your own in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? I don’t think that’s true

⏹️ ▶️ John The RAM is user serviceable. They said in the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey video. Is

⏹️ ▶️ John that what it is? Yeah, they were saying that the memory is you I mean SSDs are user serviceable to the question is where

⏹️ ▶️ John are you gonna find whatever weird? PCIe form factor connector thingy that

⏹️ ▶️ John goes in there like probably other world computing will sell them in a year or so But it’s not gonna be a bargain

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right because the SSDs are in a slot,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? That’s exactly what I was driving.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the question is like what’s because like I mean remember when the retina MacBook Pro came out it took it took OWC

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like six months or something to be able to To to find something that and make something that could fit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that So it you know it might I think John’s right it might be a while

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, they do that neat thing though where they give you like a little Cheapie aluminum external case for you to the one you

⏹️ ▶️ John take out so you don’t have to just throw it in the garbage You can stick it in this little case and have a tiny little bus powered SSD

⏹️ ▶️ John third party opportunity But yes since they didn’t announce retina displays. Maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John I will take that extra money And you know throw it into a bigger SSD

⏹️ ▶️ John when I buy a Mac Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s all it’s nice that they went standard 12 gigs on the RAM The Mac Pro for so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco far the Mac Pro has until this point had 3 gigs standard which is embarrassing

⏹️ ▶️ John Well the 12 gigs is embarrassing too I feel like 16 is that the nice round number we all wanted and they give you 12

⏹️ ▶️ John just to make you feel inferior like I guess I have to grade to 16.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What’s the configuration to get 12 gigs in the DIMMs? 3

⏹️ ▶️ John 4s Maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s so weird, but there’s four slots, and it’s quad channel.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well I’ve got it I’ve got a thing with triple channel memory on my desk and it’s got four

⏹️ ▶️ John DIMM slots on it who knows with Apple in there I don’t know. I don’t know what this configuration.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of weird, and we don’t know RAM pricing either And we also we don’t know CPU pricing either and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I obviously I have a lot to say about the CPUs Probably more than anybody cares, so I’m not gonna do it all here.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m gonna make a blog post, but the the short version is the Base CPU

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the four core 3.7 That is an e5 1620. It’s a $300 CPU. It is not a high-end CPU

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It does not turbo very easily and very far

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It it’s probably a pretty crappy CPU.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s 3 7 so what do you think it’s gonna turbo to I mean it’s already It’s already pressing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well I looked all these up. It turbos to 3.9, but only with only one core active. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you read Intel’s weird turbo numbers where it’s like number slash number slash numbers, it’s three zeros

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a two. So it’s like it does not, it hardly turbos at all. But if you look,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of these CPU options, so I looked up, you know, you can figure out by elimination exactly which models these are so you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can look up other stats. And so it’s basically the whole E5 16x line. It’s the 1620, 5080, and then the 2697

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the high end, the 12-core.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And these all turbo to roughly the same 3.9 GHz, and if you look at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how they ramp up, they all have pretty much the same range, because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they all have the same TDP. They didn’t go high enough to have the W chips.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco For a while, the last few Xeon families have had these special models ending in W for workstations,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they’ve used more power and run faster. And like the current 2010 Mac Pro that I have,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 3.336 core is one of those chips. They can’t use those. I guess they can’t cool

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the extra heat, so they’re not using them. That would have been nice. I wish they were. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 12 core high-end one, the part from Intel costs $2,600. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m guessing that’s going to be like a $5,000 option on the Mac Pro. And what’s funny is that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it hardly turbos at all. So that’s not likely to be a very fast chip for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost anything except extremely parallelizable tasks. The best option

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is probably going to be the 8-core, but what’s sad is that the 8-core they picked, the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco E5-1680 V2, it’s a $1,700 chip. So that might be like a $2,500 to $3,000 option.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco For $300 more from Intel, there’s a better one that uses the same power, it’s the 2667,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same power same heat higher speeds all around

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I don’t know why they’re not offering that I’m kind of sad about that but otherwise

⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall these are reasonable options

⏹️ ▶️ John the same cache sizes on those two

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah exactly the same I believe 25 megs on both

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I might go for the cheapy CPU and trade that again trade that

⏹️ ▶️ John money for SSD because I don’t have much that CPU bound and like if I I can put more

⏹️ ▶️ John money into the GPU if that ends up being better for gaming. I think a game that’s CPU-bound

⏹️ ▶️ John on the quote, unquote, low-end Xeon, it’s probably going to be fine. People are running

⏹️ ▶️ John i5s and i7s in most of the gaming world. So I think the Xeon, even the crappy Xeon, will hold its own.

⏹️ ▶️ John Is there a four core or something that starts at 3.9 and turbos faster? Or am I imagining?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think so. I don’t have the full chart in front of me now, but I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure that the highest

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Xeon speed is at 3.7. that is the base CPU. But it’s like you’re stuck at 3.7. Like you don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get anything higher than that. There is the six core in the middle. Six core is only, Intel’s price is only just under 600.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Apple might offer that for an extra, you know, thousand. And that is gonna

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be substantially faster, but not by a massive, like huge jump.

⏹️ ▶️ John Wasn’t that the prices they actually gave? It was, you know, $3,000 for the four core and $4,000 for the six core, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I forgot.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they did tell us. and they it’s a thousand dollar more yeah okay yeah so the cpu is 600 bucks rather so the cpu

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a 300 upgrade they’re charging a thousand for it so that’s uh although that also has a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that also has higher end gpus in that configuration

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah yeah exactly that’s what i’m saying like mix it mix and match you could probably if they let us mix and match you know

⏹️ ▶️ John you can make a machine that’s the way we want it to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah so we’ll have to see when the configurator goes up what you know how these prices actually are i’m actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thinking though so as you mentioned a second ago they They didn’t launch retina displays, like external desktop-sized

⏹️ ▶️ Marco retina displays. I’m actually thinking I might skip this generation because there’s a new Xeon generation

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Intel’s roadmap coming out in one year. It’s the Haswell EP line or whatever it is.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s scheduled to come out in third quarter of 2014. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not likely to be a massive upgrade. It’s likely to be another 8 to 10 percent, maybe, of performance.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s the same process size and everything, so it’s not going to be a huge jump. But they’re probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to update the Mac Pros in a year, or roughly a year. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe I might wait for that one. Maybe they’ll have Retina’s then. Maybe people will have worked out the version 1

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bugs with this weird new architecture. You know, who knows?

⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t wait that long. I’ve been waiting so long already. I gotta get this. I mean, it’s like when the

⏹️ ▶️ John dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 came out. Like, I had a front side bus that was like 133MHz at

⏹️ ▶️ John that point. I was like, hell yes, I’m getting this machine.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m getting,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, so I just can’t wait anymore. And so, I mean, what I have to wait for, obviously, is monitors. So I’ll

⏹️ ▶️ John be using this fancy new Mac Pro with my ancient 23-inch non-LED backlight,

⏹️ ▶️ John but matte Apple Cinema Display.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or online portfolio. For a free trial and 10% off, go to squarespace.com

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and use offer code ATP10 for the month of 10. Squarespace is always improving their platform

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with new features, new designs, and even better support. They have beautiful designs for you to start with,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all the style options you need to create a unique website for you or your business. It’s incredibly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy to use, but if you need any help, they have an amazing support team of over 70 full-time employees

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in New York City. They work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They’ve won numerous awards,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s great. Squarespace starts at just $8 a month, and that includes a free domain name if you sign up for a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whole year. design comes with responsive mobile design. So your mobile theme matches your

⏹️ ▶️ Marco full size theme, you got SEO friendly markup, they handle all that for you. Your site can be crawled

⏹️ ▶️ Marco by Google and Yahoo and Bing and all the other search engines. And it’s fantastic. They

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even have this whole commerce platform, where you can create if you want to, you can create a whole online store

⏹️ ▶️ Marco physical goods, digital goods, donations, express checkouts, carts,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco coupons, everything you can imagine to have a complete online store comes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with at no additional cost to every Squarespace account. So you can sell anything you want integrated

⏹️ ▶️ Marco into the rest of your site. The store looks like your site. Your cart looks like your site. Everything’s integrated and it’s powered

⏹️ ▶️ Marco by our wonderful friends at Stripe. So everyone trusts their credit card stuff and they have very great low credit card rates.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Go to squarespace.com to learn more. Squarespace takes care of hosting so you don’t have to.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can start a free trial today with no credit card required and start building your website. When

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you decide to sign up, use coupon code ATP10, you’ll get 10% off your entire order and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can show your support for our show. Thank you very much to Squarespace for supporting ATP.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re everything you need to create an exceptional website.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, do you want to do the iPad stuff and then we’ll mosey our way back into Mavericks?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, let’s do that. Honestly, I don’t think there’s that much to say about the iPad. I think the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad Air is interesting.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a terrible name.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is a horrible name. I mean, I think we can all agree on that. But it’s interesting that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re pushing really hard to get everyone talking about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new full-sized iPad again. That is the new product for this fall. The Retina

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mini is great, and it’s probably going to be the one we all buy, but what Apple wants us to think about, obviously

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from this presentation, Apple wants us to think about the big one again. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco skeptically, it’s probably just because it has way bigger margins. a much higher priced product that has mostly the same hardware

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the small one now. So I think you can look at that and you can say,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is obviously just them trying to boost the attention back to their more profitable product.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it was interesting. I saw some of the hands-on reports from some of the reporters who were there at the event say that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it really is surprisingly small. The low weight is really nice.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And a lot of them say it’s like, you know, it’s actually now very competitive with the Mini and they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco might even prefer it. And so I think that’s really interesting that, you know, Apple might have actually succeeded

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in getting everyone to buy the big one again. Probably not. I’m guessing the Mini will still remain

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the most popular one, but I think it’s possible.

⏹️ ▶️ John I still think the Mini was popular because it was cheap first and small second.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s very possible. And so on that note, so the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mini was updated, there’s now a Retina Mini at $400, and the old

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mini sticks around for $30 less at $300, which is, I think that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly what we predicted last time, but close enough. Anyway, what I like a lot about the Retina

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mini is that it has the A7. So the Retina Mini and the iPad Air both have the exact same CPU,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the A7, and they basically They have all the same internal hardware, except the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad Air has the bigger screen. So you’re literally just, I think you’re, isn’t that right? I think you’re just paying an extra $100

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just for the bigger screen. Is that right?

⏹️ ▶️ John And the bigger battery that goes, that’s behind it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, that’s true. So, and do we know Retina Mini battery life numbers yet? I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously what Apple tells us, but do we know real world numbers yet?

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think so.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m curious to see, you know, when the full size one went Retina, they had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to put a massive battery in it and it produced a lot more heat. I’m curious to know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the Retina iPad or the Retina Mini rather will have that same problem.

⏹️ ▶️ John So here’s one unambiguously as far as I’m concerned bad thing about the iPad Air and probably the

⏹️ ▶️ John only, well, the only two, only one of two bad things about the iPad Air from my perspective. One I talked about

⏹️ ▶️ John last show that the, you know, making the frame thinner but I’ll have to try that to see how that works out in practice. But two,

⏹️ ▶️ John it lost the beautiful original smart cover with the metal hinge instead it’s got that

⏹️ ▶️ John flappy twisty iPad mini smart cover with the hinge that does not align

⏹️ ▶️ John and drives me insane

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah but the metal one scratches the laptop next to it in the bag

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t just leave your things rattling around in your bag what are you doing you put your iPhone in your pocket with your keys come

⏹️ ▶️ John on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no but you but you could put a smart covered iPad next to the the flat side of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a laptop in a skinny laptop pocket.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, I would much rather have a hinge that works properly than a hinge that is

⏹️ ▶️ John padded so that it doesn’t damage other items when they’re jostling around. I do not like that hinge.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s upsetting to me because that smart cover is one of my favorite things about the iPad 3 that I use.

⏹️ ▶️ John It works so nicely, it’s so pleasing in practice to flap it shut and open. Other than

⏹️ ▶️ John the stupid finger grease streaks that it leaves on the screen because of the bendy thing but you know I do

⏹️ ▶️ John use the little bendy triangle thing when I prop it up disappointing and that big the big case that

⏹️ ▶️ John they put around it looking at the picture that looks the same kind of the same as design as existing big case and those

⏹️ ▶️ John big cases are terrible too

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen one of those like obviously I’ve seen the regular one without but it was just the front but I’ve never seen the full back case

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I’ve seen them in the Apple Store I’ve never seen a real person happen but they are not they have sharp edges and they’re not attractive

⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t feel good in your hands yuck

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well Remember the iPad one case that was a disaster like everyone got it anyway because that thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John was like

⏹️ ▶️ John straps and flanges and seams yeah, it was very bad

⏹️ ▶️ John and So no no touch ID in any of these things even though they have the a7

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that that was really that’s a weird decision You know you have to wonder why they did that obviously Like I was thinking maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they put touch ID just in the big one to make more people want to buy the big one But they didn’t put it in either of them

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah And when I see that they didn’t even put it in the big one but not putting in the mini makes sense if you’re just trying to keep the price

⏹️ ▶️ John down and stuff like that, even though it has, especially since it has day seven, but you’re spending so much money in that mini,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? But for the big one, they have a 128 gigabyte model for crying out loud. Why not put it on the big,

⏹️ ▶️ John super fancy one? And it makes me think they don’t have enough of those little fingerprint sensors at this point. That’s what it makes

⏹️ ▶️ John me think.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Very possible.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because this is the, there’s one and only product in the entire world that has that, and they’re gonna sell a bajillion of them, and that product

⏹️ ▶️ John is still supply constrained. And of course, none of us know why it’s supply constrained. Still, I’m seeing things of like, hey, I was at the mall

⏹️ ▶️ John at the Apple store, had a sign out front that said no more iPhone 5s today come back tomorrow like it’s still happening

⏹️ ▶️ John now and so it’s not like they you know they’re making bazillions of them like there

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s it’s not like they can’t make any of them but we have no idea which part it is that’s making

⏹️ ▶️ John it so they can’t so that those signs still are going up at Apple stores you know weeks after launch and

⏹️ ▶️ John it could it be the part that has never been in an Apple product before it could be you know because it’s certainly not the screen

⏹️ ▶️ John which is more or less the same and the case is just a bunch of aluminum and the a7 well that’s already going in the minis and the iPads.

⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m thinking, you know, fingerprint sensor.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, are either of you going to get either of the new iPads? And if so, which one?

⏹️ ▶️ John After the, uh, I, I didn’t watch the event and I don’t think my wife did either, but she knew of the things and she came

⏹️ ▶️ John to me and said, I want a new mini. She wants the retina one. So I don’t think she’s getting one, but that

⏹️ ▶️ John clearly, clearly that sale, she just got a five S and got the fancy 64 gig one over so she

⏹️ ▶️ John can wait. You know, I would love to have the new iPad, but again,

⏹️ ▶️ John I will wait. Like this is my strategy for buying things that she does not adhere to. It just wait for the product

⏹️ ▶️ John that you want. Like I went, the first iPad I got was the iPad three because it was the first retina one. Cause I knew

⏹️ ▶️ John retina ones were coming and I was willing to wait. And I’ve been so happy with my iPad three that in ways that I wouldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John have been, because my wife got the iPad two. It’s like, I’m like, Nope, I don’t want an iPad. Do you don’t want to get one too? You can get one. Nope.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to get one. I’m waiting for retina and I did. And I’ve been very happy. And so I would say wait,

⏹️ ▶️ John like Marco was entertaining doing with the Mac Pro. If it’s not the product you want, don’t just buy it just because

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s there. Wait. If you can possibly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wait. Your thing with not getting the first iPad Mini, I went the opposite direction on that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and got the first iPad Mini, and I think it ruined the iPad for me for a year. Because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I ended up, I hated the iPad Mini’s screen, but I loved

⏹️ ▶️ Marco its size. and so it made the iPad 3 feel heavy and big and outdated,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I hated using it because the screen sucked. So I ended up just, I’ve barely used an iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all for the last year. Like I have used it more for Verizon tethering than any other purpose.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so now with looking at these, I’m wondering, do I get the Retina Mini or even

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPad Air? Because I actually kind of like playing games on the bigger screen. I just don’t like carrying that giant old thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the iPad 3 was. But I think I’m actually going to have to go to a store and feel them both in person before I decide.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because maybe I just don’t have a place for an iPad in my life right now, and I shouldn’t get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco any of them, but maybe I should get the Retina Mini that combines everything that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I like from both sides.

⏹️ ▶️ John I kept hearing that story when the Mini first came out of all my nerdy friends going, oh, I totally, I just used the Mini

⏹️ ▶️ John now, everything else is crap or whatever. And then my wife got a Mini and I’m like, is that going to happen to me? Am I going to use her Mini and be

⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, I can’t use the big one? I very quickly found out I like the larger iPad. I

⏹️ ▶️ John use it, when I would, when I used to sit down and read things on my computer, I always go and just

⏹️ ▶️ John lay down on the couch or on the bed or something and I read it on my iPad. Like my iPad is my

⏹️ ▶️ John preferred device for reading long things now. My big Redmi iPad, not the small

⏹️ ▶️ John one. You know, and I don’t know why I love the big one so much. I mean, I don’t, it’s not like I’m doing anything with that big screen.

⏹️ ▶️ John I just, I guess I just like it because it’s bigger. It looks plenty sharper and there’s more stuff And it’s not some tiny

⏹️ ▶️ John little thing that I’m pinching. It’s more like sitting with a magazine on your lap than sitting with a big

⏹️ ▶️ John deck of oversized playing cards in your lap.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s why I think maybe the Air might do better than we expect. I mean, because it really does.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It still has the exact same size screen as the former big iPad, but with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a substantially lighter case and substantially smaller. So I’m really curious to see how that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is in practice.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, to answer my own question, so I currently have a iPad 3 that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is Wi-Fi only that we bought and then work gave me a while back or lent me

⏹️ ▶️ Casey long-term lent me a while back and iPad mini also Wi-Fi only

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I don’t think I’m going to get any of the new ones ask me

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that or remind me of this in like a month but um if I were to get one I think I would

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I would get a iPad mini, I would get one that’s LTE,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and given the news today that T-Mobile had that they have really really really competitive

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pricing on LTE service for iPads, I would really consider getting a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey T-Mobile one. I’m not sure that I would, but I’d really really think about it. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey again I’m not sure I’m gonna do anything above.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco One thing that kind of ruined kind of ruined stuff for me a little bit is that I got that awesome

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Logitech keyboard case for the iPad 3 and I used it on a couple of plane

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rides and it’s like an iPad propped up on a keyboard case is a really fantastic

⏹️ ▶️ Marco plane tray table computing device. It’s even better I think than the 11 inch MacBook Air which is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco normally the king of that category. It’s really really good and the battery life is insane. You can watch videos,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can type on Twitter and stuff like that if the plane has Wi-Fi so that was a lot of fun. Then I got the Mini

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and of course the keyboard case doesn’t fit it. If I get the Air, the keyboard case still won’t fit it, but I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking at future keyboard cases, I think having the extra

⏹️ ▶️ Marco length of the iPad Air, or the height in portrait, like having that dimension

⏹️ ▶️ Marco still be much bigger than the Mini, would probably make for a much more usable keyboard case.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if you’re a keyboard case kind of person, the Air is probably going to be the better pick.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alright, anything else from the event before we meander our way to Mavericks?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to lol.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is up with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that?

⏹️ ▶️ John What is that? What must the margins be on that by now?

⏹️ ▶️ John I guess the LCD still kind of costs a little bit of money, but it must be like 70% margins. It’s crazy to

⏹️ ▶️ John me. And the thing is, they must know that they

⏹️ ▶️ John can get away with that. It must be selling and those people must want something

⏹️ ▶️ John big and they want something cheap and they’re willing to pay $400 for it. I guess, and it’s just,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a bad kid computer, because my daughter and my son play with our iPad 2, and they play games on it, and they do things or whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ John but I would never buy one for $400. If anyone, for people out there, you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John nerds, you’re listening to a nerdy podcast, help your family not get the iPad 2. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John I know it didn’t work out for us. Marco couldn’t stop his mom from getting the free iPad, iPhone 4. Sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t do it, but just tell people. Like, give them the extra $100 to get one of the

⏹️ ▶️ John good iPads. know, just donated them just because it was the iPad to a five.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, yeah, what’s funny is that it’s the exact same hardware as the original iPad mini, which is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now still for sale for 30 bucks less. So the original iPad mini is all the exact same hardware,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco same screen resolution, just smaller dimensions, smaller physical screen, and all the same

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff for $100 less. And so the the iPad four

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the iPad two rather God, so old. I mean, Think about it, that came out in early 2011. That is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost three years old. Not only are they still selling it new, but they didn’t even drop the price.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t understand that. It just doesn’t make…

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the theories I’ve heard, which I think are plausible, is that schools are buying a ton of them, and that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anybody who still needs a dock port… Somebody in the chat room said a few minutes ago, sorry, I forgot who, that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of people have custom hardware that uses the dock port that they integrated with iPads for some part of their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco business. So that kind of makes sense.

⏹️ ▶️ John But schools don’t pay $3.99, they get the education price, which is lower.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, well but, think about it also. If they made, let’s say they dropped the price to $100, then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would be the exact same price as the iPad Mini. So it’s like, you have two things with the exact same hardware,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco except one’s bigger, and at the exact same price, that would be kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John weird.

⏹️ ▶️ John Drop it $50, drop it $70, and that’s it, you’d have to take $100 off of it, although they could at this point, but come

⏹️ ▶️ John on. And I think it’s, like, you’re an iOS developer, does it feel good to keep selling, I guess you got to deal

⏹️ ▶️ John with the mini anyway, but it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s the thing like there’s two there’s two device like even if they Drop the iPad to it a lineup We as developers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would still have to support the a5 forever because they’re still today selling the iPhone 4s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the and the iPad mini The original one which both use that CPU

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, just think of what it’s it fast forward three years and you’re gonna be in the same situation with 64-bit You’re gonna be like

⏹️ ▶️ John oh, there’s just one non 64-bit CPU left some crappy device still has like an a6 in it

⏹️ ▶️ John We have to keep supporting that and it’s annoying us. Why can’t Apple go all 64-bit? Well, that’s coming up.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the next moaning about the crappy old computer But this we’re still in this is the

⏹️ ▶️ John early era of moaning where you just keep some slow device around for too long Like the 3gs before it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s interesting to dig us to in the chat pointed this out That so the iPad mini original

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the iPad 2 or the same hardware one’s bigger 100 bucks more The retina mini

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the new iPad air are also the same hardware ones bigger also 100 bucks more So they have that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco exact same gap with both product families.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there’s plenty I mean when you if you go into an Apple store like the like this the script or the spiel or whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John they have to Say which device do you like do you like big do you like small do you have a lot of money? Do you have a little you know like?

⏹️ ▶️ John There are it’s a good It’s a good spread to get everybody to get everybody something that they want at a price

⏹️ ▶️ John They can kind of feel okay with while still having that you know kind of smooth

⏹️ ▶️ John Little ramp that they get their wedge in where you like you like you decide on the machine you want and you end up getting the little

⏹️ ▶️ John bump and you end up, oh, and that bump is $100 more. And you’re like, sure, why not? Apple stores and Apple’s products and

⏹️ ▶️ John pricing are great at herding you towards the thing that you think you want and then making you pay $50 to $100

⏹️ ▶️ John more than you thought you were going to pay for it and then leaving the store happy. That’s the magic of the Apple store. Even

⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s just the case, you’re like, oh, and of course you’ll want a case. Yes, of course. And you don’t even blink at that $40 case,

⏹️ ▶️ John which you were just hemming and hawing over a $50 difference between model A and model B. But

⏹️ ▶️ John the case, like, oh, free money, $40. Yeah, sure, throw it in. AppleCare Plus, throw it on. I don’t know how well they

⏹️ ▶️ John do with that. But cases, people are like, oh, I got to have a case. Give me the pink one. Here’s 40 bucks.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, goodness. Yeah, the iPad 2 is weird. And was it last show or the show before where I thought

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was being all bright and pointing out that we were darn near done with dock devices? And clearly,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was just way wrong with that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Nope. They’re going to add a dock port to the non-written iPad Mini. Just to give it to

⏹️ ▶️ John the family. And this is our big mouth bass family. for people with old

⏹️ ▶️ Marco peripherals. They just must be selling a ton of those iPad 2s. I mean, they must be selling

⏹️ ▶️ Marco way more than we can possibly imagine.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, now we’re gonna have to, every time

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s any kind of event where iPads can be talked about at all, it’s like iPad 2 Death Watch.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like the iPad Classic, everyone just waits for that one. It’s like, you know, still for sale.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is it still for sale? I didn’t look after it yesterday.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad Classic? Yeah, I think so. At this point, like, I mean, I was one of them. I predicted for years

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every single iPod event. Oh, the iPod Classic is going to die right at tomorrow’s event or whatever. And every time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it goes by and it’s still around. It’s not mentioned, it’s just still quietly around for sale.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think now, the surprising thing would be if they do kill it. Now it just seems like this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco undead zombie product that just cannot possibly die.

⏹️ ▶️ John Isn’t it only available in one color or one or two colors? They don’t even bother, it’s just like, this is

⏹️ ▶️ John it. Just the iPod Classic. are no options. Take it or leave

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, no, actually, wait a minute. There’s two. There’s a silver and a dark gray.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Well, there you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco go. They’re probably calling black. But yeah, they actually have both. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re both on the same capacity, same price, 250 bucks, 160 gigs, which I think has been that way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like three or four years.

⏹️ ▶️ John And compared to and I heard this, I’m back to work today of all shows, they’re talking about the tech stuff and keynotes.

⏹️ ▶️ John Someone they this is third hand now because they saw they saw someone on the web link to something that said

⏹️ ▶️ John the number of possible skews of one of the devices might have even been

⏹️ ▶️ John the iPhone was like 40 or something in terms of carrier storage size

⏹️ ▶️ John color combinations. You end up with 40 skews for the iPhone.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, when you think about it like that is by far Apple’s most popular and most profitable product so they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can afford to satisfy every possible need with

⏹️ ▶️ John it. I know but like it’s similar. Maybe they were even talking about the iPad is similar because they do offer the two colors with the iPads

⏹️ ▶️ John and you can get them with the cellular and without and with Wi-Fi and in different sizes so that it multiplies

⏹️ ▶️ John out pretty fast. We all like this sort of, it’s like build to order but not really because nothing is build to order.

⏹️ ▶️ John They just have to make all sorts of different varieties and you just pick the one you want. Well, I want the white

⏹️ ▶️ John Verizon 32 gig mini retina.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a lot.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say also now that we’re on the subject, people are going to ask, if you’re going to buy an iPad, I would evaluate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your own needs. However, I always highly encourage people to get a cellular model.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it makes a big difference in how you can use it. Personally, I got the Verizon one. It’s up

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to you which one you get. Just because for me, having an iPad work in my house on cellular is not necessary,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but having it work everywhere else is awesome. Then I have Verizon on the iPad and AT&T on the phone,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I have tethering available on both. So whenever I go on a trip, I can just pick the one that is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco better reception wherever I am, usually it’s the Verizon one, and use that to tether my laptop and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s awesome. So, I do recommend getting a cellular one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I get 32 gig capacity on iPads. I don’t get 64. I get 32 just because that’s the way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I use it. It’s up to you how you use it. But definitely I would recommend cellular.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would agree with that. I’ve only ever had Wi-Fi iPads and especially the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey last two which I acquired roughly the same time, which was the iPad 3

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the Mini, I’ve really regretted not having a cellular one and I think up until

⏹️ ▶️ Casey today I would have said I would absolutely get the Verizon one just like you to offset the AT&T phone that I have.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That being said, like I alluded to earlier, T-Mobile announced some really interesting cellular pricing.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m going to butcher the details, but it was something along the lines of you get 200 megs free every month and then it was pretty

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cheap to add in, I think it was day or week passes at reasonable capacities.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was not ridiculous.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, that’s really good for travel.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. But the only problem is if I’m reading things right, I believe it’s only on their 4G network,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is basically in metropolitan areas and that’s it. So it is a pretty big trade-off. It’s much cheaper,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it may not be as available, especially in the case of something like Verizon. But I would definitely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey look into that and just like Marco said, evaluate your own needs. But if it were me, I would probably get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a 32 gig iPad mini Retina, either T-Mobile or Verizon.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. If your iPad never leaves your house, then Wi-Fi only is probably fine. But if you bring it with you either

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every day on your commute or if you bring it on trips more than zero times a year,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco having the LTE one is great because not only can you tether all your other stuff with it if you want to,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the battery life when you’re just tethering is awesome. You can use it pretty much all day.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It just changes the way you use it. It’s just like a phone. When you always know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’s always online, rather than having to go on your phone, turn tethering

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on, have your iPad connect to your phone through tethering. Whenever you add those steps, it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reduces the likelihood that you’re going to pull it out and check it and use it for something.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco For me, I’ve always found that I will use the iPad more when it has the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco radio than when it doesn’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, the only thing I would say though is I am not sure if T-Mobile does tethering with these plans. They very

⏹️ ▶️ Casey well may. I just – I really don’t know. That would dramatically change my enthusiasm for T-Mobile

⏹️ ▶️ Casey because half the reason I would want a cellular iPad is in order to tether

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just like you were saying.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do you want to move on to the Mavericks stuff?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’d like to briefly start by making an observation and then I will

⏹️ ▶️ Casey leave the floor to especially John.

⏹️ ▶️ John What do you leave in the floor to me? You guys gotta ask me questions. I just wrote this entire review. I’m not gonna read the review on the air, you know.

⏹️ ▶️ John Wait, you’re not? No, I’m not.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We have about 15 more minutes, 20 more minutes. You can fit it in there, right? I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John think so.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are you gonna do an audiobook release?

⏹️ ▶️ John No, I’m not. I mean, you can make Mac OS X read you webpages, you know. Like, it’s part of the OS.

⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t need me to do that for you.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but it’s not the same. It has to be, you know, remember when we did the Audible read? It has to be in the author’s voice to really have maximum

⏹️ ▶️ Marco effect.

⏹️ ▶️ John If I read something that I wrote, It just makes me, it just reminds me how bad the writing is. I’m like, oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John it just doesn’t, no. It takes, it’s a certain skill to read, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John to read the written word is different than just speaking or giving a speech or anything like that. It’s very different.

⏹️ ▶️ John And yeah, not, not in my skillset.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s funny you say that though, Marco, because earlier as I was reading the review, I thought to myself, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wonder if we could take like recordings of the, what is it, naturally speaking

⏹️ ▶️ Casey software that you use, whatever it is, the dictation software you use, and piece together the review just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the recordings that you made in the process of writing the review?

⏹️ ▶️ John You could not, because I interleave typing and speaking, which you really shouldn’t do and is inefficient, but that’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John the way I work. And it’s just nonsense. Just fragments of sentences, burst it out, and

⏹️ ▶️ John then I go back and edit things and put in two sentences by hand and then speak some more. It is not

⏹️ ▶️ John a pretty process.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. All right, well, now you guys are giving me a taste of my own medicine. I wanted to make a quick observation before we got to that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was one of the recent, I think it was a WWDC, either this year

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or in 2012, and I didn’t have the chance to go look it up and figure out exactly what one it was, but I remember

⏹️ ▶️ Casey leaving that event, whatever the event was, and thinking to myself, my goodness, half of this event

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a big screw you to Google. It might have been the one where they introduced Apple Maps, which as it turns out wasn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as much of a screw you as we thought, but whatever event it was, there was one event where I left thinking,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my goodness, that was just a big screw you to Google. After this event,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had a similar feeling, but it was for Microsoft because it during the event,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple killed. Well, you could argue that Apple killed paid OS upgrades

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or really paying for your OS in any particular capacity. They killed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey office to some degree by by making the I work suite free.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they killed Office 365 and kind of Google Docs by

⏹️ ▶️ Casey having the iWork on iCloud beta or whatever it’s called. Now granted, when I say killed,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey none of these things, Office and Google Docs, aren’t going away, but I thought it was really,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really interesting that a lot of this was both an implied and in some cases explicit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey screw you to Microsoft. And the explicit case I’m thinking of most obviously is when they had the picture of Windows 8

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or Windows 8.1 or whatever it was, the picture of the box for that. And they said,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is what the other guys are doing, and we don’t believe in that, so we’re going to make it free. They

⏹️ ▶️ Marco blew it up. They blew up the box. Because in all the new keynote stuff, they at least kept that transition.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, right, exactly. And so I don’t know if there’s much else to say about that, and I’m curious

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you guys have any thoughts. But I just thought it was interesting that they’re going after Microsoft with this, because that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a direction I didn’t really expect.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they’re going after the old Microsoft with that, There was an article in Wired about this

⏹️ ▶️ John too that quoted me because someone sent me an email asking for a take on this and I sent them a paragraph.

⏹️ ▶️ John In the middle of the OS X stuff, I don’t know why I did it, but I did it mostly because I knew exactly what I wanted to say on this topic.

⏹️ ▶️ John The article was, Apple just killed the market for paid OS’s or whatever, some similarly sensational headline.

⏹️ ▶️ John I sent back a paragraph that said, this is what’s happening. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John because of vertical integration. If you make the hardware and the software, you can decide where you want to take your profit

⏹️ ▶️ John and sure like the lazy way to do it was been like okay, we’ll get we’ll get most of our problem hardware. Let’s

⏹️ ▶️ John make a little problem software to but that’s a dumb move because if you can just shift that profit

⏹️ ▶️ John over just take that little bit you’re getting from software and put it into hardware and make your software free

⏹️ ▶️ John free is a magical price point. There are so many like papers and books that you can read about the experiments that show the magic

⏹️ ▶️ John of free, you know, one one cent difference going from one cent to two cent does almost nothing

⏹️ ▶️ John but are going from two cents down to one cent does almost But going from one cent down to zero cent, unbelievable

⏹️ ▶️ John results. Like, free is magic. And so why in the world would you get, like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John 2% of your profit from software and 98 from hardware when your results getting 100% of your profit from

⏹️ ▶️ John hardware and zero from software are just phenomenal. And so, if you make both of those things, you have

⏹️ ▶️ John that option. And you can do the reverse, I suppose, as well. But it’s really hard to give people free hardware, especially when you’re talking about big, heavy

⏹️ ▶️ John things made of metal and silicon chips and stuff. Like, they’re more expensive. So if you have to make a choice,

⏹️ ▶️ John where are you going to put your profit? really, really hard to put all your profit into software and give people free hardware, although

⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon is almost kind of doing that. They’re trying to give everyone free everything. But anyway, but on the Apple side, the choice

⏹️ ▶️ John is clear. It’s always been the big money’s in the hardware and the software is cheap. And now Apple is finally realizing,

⏹️ ▶️ John look, we make the whole thing. We can shove all the profit into the hardware and give the software away for free.

⏹️ ▶️ John And Microsoft couldn’t do that before because they didn’t make the hardware. And so now the new Microsoft is we want to

⏹️ ▶️ John do that. We want to be vertically We want to make the hardware and the software. And once Microsoft does that, they

⏹️ ▶️ John will finally have the freedom to shift the profit wherever they want. And I think they’re going to end up in the same place because

⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t give people free Surface Pro 2s or whatever they’re selling now. Those cost money to make, they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John physical goods, you got to ship them, people have to buy them and build them. But you can make the software free. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I think Microsoft, it’s not like, you know, Microsoft knows where they’re going. They’re saying, oh, we’re going to make our own hardware. We’re going to buy Nokia.

⏹️ ▶️ John We’re going to make our own stuff. We’re making our own Xbox or whatever. OS upgrades for the

⏹️ ▶️ John Xbox are not $29 or $100 or whatever. They’re free. You just get the new, you update your software.

⏹️ ▶️ John So everyone’s going in that direction. Everyone’s becoming vertically integrated.

⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple can take its swipes now. But I think Microsoft is, considering the recent Microsoft moves,

⏹️ ▶️ John they are well on their way to becoming that kind of company already. And Apple just gets to get some final digs in

⏹️ ▶️ John before everyone arrives at the same spot.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sure, sure.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think developers are going to read into this free stuff a lot more than the market will. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would also say, you know, with regard to these things like, you know, quote, killing these other companies.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I would say like my favorite weapon in Worms, the old—I was a big fan of Worms,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 2D versions, back before they went 3D and ruined the whole thing. But my favorite

⏹️ ▶️ Marco weapon in Worms is always the prod, because it’s just like you walk up to somebody and just like poke them off a cliff or something.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like, you know, you expend the slightest effort possible and cause them, you know, catastrophe to happen.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I would say like you know Apple prodded Microsoft and Google

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with these things. I don’t think they really are killing anybody. I don’t think it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that big of a deal to the industry. What it really is, is you know these Apple products

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are appliances. At least Apple wants you to think of them that way. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple wants you to just buy the Apple product and just always have the latest version. That’s something that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Google cannot offer on all their stuff on Android and everything. Google can’t offer it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they don’t really control enough of the ecosystem. Microsoft can’t offer it because it kind of bites their business

⏹️ ▶️ Marco model in the butt. But the fact is, no one with Android phones really ever upgrades anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if they can. And even PC users don’t usually upgrade their OS. Usually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they get the new OS by buying a new PC. So, they’re not really attacking

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these business models as much as it might seem. It would also like, you know, the iWork

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the browser stuff and the collaboration features, that would have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco been really fantastic if Google Docs didn’t exist. But now it’s like Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really trying to play catch up with Google Docs. And to date, they’ve done a very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad job of it. We’ll see how this is. I don’t have high expectations because their reputation in this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco department is very, very bad.

⏹️ ▶️ John to think about his feeling coming out of the Apple Maps presentation.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s the same type of thing. Hey, wait, well, remember that?

⏹️ ▶️ John You know, we don’t have much faith in that. And in terms of being able to control everyone’s versions of stuff, everyone’s got

⏹️ ▶️ John a little foot in that camp. Like, Google’s got its Chromebooks. And the Chromebook, the whole big deal is, like, you always have

⏹️ ▶️ John the most recent version of everything. And Google Chrome, which they offer for lots of different platforms, same type of deal, where

⏹️ ▶️ John Google Chrome is notorious or, you know, I don’t know if you’d know it’s called notorious. I actually like this. I’m just like, look,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s going to update itself. You’re going to have the latest version. If you connect to the internet, you’re going to have the latest version of Chrome,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? And Chrome OS is like an entire machine that’s like that. You have no choice. You will have the latest version of everything,

⏹️ ▶️ John no options. You’re just going to have it. Android, they can’t do that with because of carrier crap. And that’s kind of

⏹️ ▶️ John the whole thing they’re doing. And similarly for Microsoft with Xbox, I mean, I think you have the option not to upgrade.

⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s like, they’re not charging you. And they will strongly encourage you, oh, hey, the new Xbox is out. I mean, I don’t know if they

⏹️ ▶️ John go so far as to say you can’t connect to live after a certain point if you haven’t upgraded to the latest Xbox. Microsoft console

⏹️ ▶️ John owners would know better than I. Everyone who has control of any hardware platform wants to do that

⏹️ ▶️ John thing where it’s just where they want to keep everyone up to date. It’s just that Apple is like, they’re already there. They’ve been camped

⏹️ ▶️ John out in that zone for just decades. And it’s like, we have the hardware, we have the software. And

⏹️ ▶️ John they were like, they’re fighting with one hand tied behind their back trying to charge $29 for all those 10 upgrades.

⏹️ ▶️ John It was like, why, why are we doing that? We’re just, we’re just punishing ourselves. And maybe it took iOS to

⏹️ ▶️ John convince them like, oh yeah, we can just make it free and add $29 the margins of our Macs.

⏹️ ▶️ John Problem solved.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So John, switching gears for a minute, well probably for the rest of the show, what do you, do you think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mavericks, do you think everyone should install it, well not everyone, have you installed it on your

⏹️ ▶️ Marco main computers? Like are you using it full time on your main and work computers?

⏹️ ▶️ John In the review, which you haven’t read, I said at one point that like every new version of OS X I’ve been

⏹️ ▶️ John upgrading to sooner and sooner, like after, you know, usually after publishing my review and I said maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John by the time you read this I’ll be all my whole house will be all on Mavericks. Unfortunately, like a week before Mavericks

⏹️ ▶️ John was released, my work switched VPN products from one that used to work with the OS 10

⏹️ ▶️ John built in VPN to one that required a terrible third party product. And now I’m stuck until

⏹️ ▶️ John the VPN software because I kind of need it until the VPN software is supported in Mavericks and God knows how long that will

⏹️ ▶️ John be. So unfortunately, I was not able to execute my plan to get everybody up to Mavericks and to get my name up to Mavericks.

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s it’s pretty darn safe like you know again I say in the review please people backup

⏹️ ▶️ John your stuff like do a real backup confirm that it’s okay maybe do two backups just in case because

⏹️ ▶️ John if you screw it up then your backup is the only one place your stuff is you know do backups right and

⏹️ ▶️ John do a couple Google searches if you know you have high-risk software that tends to break in OS upgrades say you’re running PGP

⏹️ ▶️ John hold this encryption which you shouldn’t be because you just should just be using the OS 10s built-in encryption see

⏹️ ▶️ John if that’s compatible. If you’re running some crazy extension or a kernel extension or a driver, like go to

⏹️ ▶️ John the manufacturer’s website, send an email to the support thing, say, Hey, it’s like it takes an extra

⏹️ ▶️ John week or so to get all these answers, but you’ll be much happier when you do. It’s not like you just wait some magical period of time

⏹️ ▶️ John to upgrade, but you know, check your software. If you’re just only running box stock, Apple stuff and

⏹️ ▶️ John things from the Mac App Store, yeah, upgrade today again, back up, but you’ll be fine. But yeah, this, it seems

⏹️ ▶️ John really low risk in terms of compatibility, right down to the that it doesn’t even eliminate any hardware compatibility.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, if you can run Mountain Lion, you can run this. So it’s pretty safe.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know that a handful of my co-workers have already upgraded. And granted, all

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of my co-workers are kind of nerds, but some of them are not the kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey nerds that I necessarily would have expected to upgrade an OS so quickly. Not to say they wouldn’t do it,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but just to do it so quickly. And I haven’t heard any negative feedback from any of them, but I only just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey got back to work today. I have not done it on either of my machines yet. I will

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at some point once I get some double sure backups going,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey especially since we just went on this trip. I want to make sure that I kind of get through the processing of all those files and make

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure those are all squared away and in more places than just the Synology. And then

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will probably upgrade like over the weekend or something.

⏹️ ▶️ John The other reason to worry about upgrades is not that things aren’t going to work, But you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, features are added and changed. And so that’s why, you know, maybe reading a review and knowing

⏹️ ▶️ John what you’re in for. Because say you really liked the old way that full screen worked, because you’re a crazy

⏹️ ▶️ John person. The new way that it worked is different. And so you upgrade and go, oh, no, I missed

⏹️ ▶️ John the, I mean, one of the people’s complaints that I didn’t actually talk about in the review is like, they changed the way the power button works on laptops.

⏹️ ▶️ John Or instead of bringing up a little dialogue where you can sleep and do all that stuff, just hitting it sleeps, but you have to hold

⏹️ ▶️ John it down to get a dialogue. And that seems like a small thing, but that’s a change.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s not like your computer doesn’t work anymore, but people will upgrade. And that’s the thing that they’ll say. I upgraded to Maverick, and it

⏹️ ▶️ John ruined my computer. Now I have to hold down the key to get the dialog box to come up. And you accidentally hit it because it’s near the delete key

⏹️ ▶️ John on my laptop. It puts my Mac to sleep. And they have to wait a week to find out some way to disable that with some

⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard shortcut. Stuff like that is, in the real world, what people decide to condemn

⏹️ ▶️ John or praise a release for. And they’ll be praising it again if they hated the old full screen mode, or they liked the new one,

⏹️ ▶️ John if they have multi monitors, they like having the menu bar in both places, like stuff like that is what people end up,

⏹️ ▶️ John uh, becoming attached to it. Whereas what I’m thinking of is like, Oh, is it gonna, you know, hose your computer

⏹️ ▶️ John and not let you get your work done and stuff like that. And that’s a more of a software compatibility thing. But yeah, reader view, you

⏹️ ▶️ John can see the features. Some features are different than they are in mountain line. Not better, not worse. It’s up to you to decide, but they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John different. Find out what those are and see if you like them. But I think one of the reasons people are

⏹️ ▶️ John upgrading is because like you go to any computer with Mountain Lion, you launch the app store and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John like, Hey, did you know Mavericks is out? Press this button, get it now. You know, and that’s the whole point. It’s free.

⏹️ ▶️ John No purchase. Just it’s going to be shoved in your face the same way IOS 7 was on IOS devices,

⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s that’s all part of the plan.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, to go back just very briefly about features. One of the things that I’ve been kind

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of dreading about Mavericks since I was sitting in the WWDC keynote is that when

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my work computer, particularly, I like to have three different spaces and one of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey them is like personal email and in web browsing The middle one is work email and I am and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey things of that nature And the third one is whatever the actual work I’m doing is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I treat each of these three spaces That as one contiguous

⏹️ ▶️ Casey unit across two monitors So maybe I’ll have work email on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the onboard LCD and I’ll have work I am on a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey external LCD, but that space, space number two, I treat as one contiguous

⏹️ ▶️ Casey unit, just spanning two monitors. I know that the way that Mavericks treats the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey spaces and mission control and all that is that they are now two independent

⏹️ ▶️ Casey monitors with two independent situations going on. I’ve been dreading that,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey although if I recall correctly, you said in the review, there is a way by which you can turn that off if I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really get desperate. But that’s a great example of something where I already know that this might

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not be something I like, but I theoretically have a backup plan just in case.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and the point is, what are you going to do? You’re not going to stay, especially if you’re going to end up upgrading it

⏹️ ▶️ John eventually, or you’re going to get a new Mac with this. You might as well just get used to it sooner rather than later.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Absolutely.

⏹️ ▶️ John Get started on figuring out what you need to do to tweak this particular version to your liking, instead

⏹️ ▶️ John of just saying, I’m gonna hold the same reason all these people are in snow leopard still that they mentioned in the keynote and that I also mentioned

⏹️ ▶️ John in my review like people love snow leopard because it’s the last good version right because that’s just the one they love

⏹️ ▶️ John and You just you have to move on eventually

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and that’s why I figure I’ll install over the weekend, but it’s nice It’s nice a knowing what

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m probably not going to like about it But it’s also nice knowing after having read

⏹️ ▶️ Casey your review that there is a backup plan available Also, I’m very surprised

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I have the self-control not to update immediately, if for no other reason than for the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey easy access to emoji with whatever keystroke it is, which Stephen Hackett also

⏹️ ▶️ Casey gently pointed out in his Mavericks review. **MARK

⏹️ ▶️ Marco HANSON** You don’t need easier access to emoji. MARK HANSON I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey think you have a problem. **MARK

⏹️ ▶️ John HANSON** I put that in my review too, Casey. I thought you read it. CASEY WHITELAW

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no, no. in your review as well, but I got a snarky call out in Hackett’s review.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, yeah. I mean, we’re late in the show for me to be going through

⏹️ ▶️ John my review point by point, and we can do more of that next show,

⏹️ ▶️ John but to sum up the… I didn’t want

⏹️ ▶️ John to go too meta on this, but I’ll go a little bit meta, and then we’ll get into more details on future shows.

⏹️ ▶️ John But when I’m writing these things I’m always looking for some kind of message or theme

⏹️ ▶️ John for the OS and Apple provides some of that with whatever they decide to be pushing and you know however

⏹️ ▶️ John they try to wrap up in a bow the features that happen to make it into this release and this one obviously energy saving is a big thing

⏹️ ▶️ John but what I’m more looking for is like historically speaking what kind of release is this and

⏹️ ▶️ John I would say it’s a weird one like that’s the theme of this review that goes throughout the thing

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s weird stuff in this like, it’s odd. It’s, you would call it like a transitional because there have

⏹️ ▶️ John been transitional releases, but it’s like a transition between what and what a transition between

⏹️ ▶️ John the weird line mountain lion forestall iOS jealousy,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, no clear vision world, and then like, not on your way to an iOS

⏹️ ▶️ John seven things. It doesn’t seem like it is. I mean, maybe that’s out there in the future, but it’s not clear. But It’s like, OK, away

⏹️ ▶️ John from where we were, but not towards anywhere in particular.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s weird. Aesthetically and spiritually, if you want to think of it that way, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John kind of a little bit lost and confused. But just not to say that there’s so many parts of it that are just better.

⏹️ ▶️ John The tech part just gets better. It gets more efficient. Things use less

⏹️ ▶️ John memory. Things get faster. And bugs are removed. And subsystems improve. and

⏹️ ▶️ John everything that you expect to be better, but it’s not setting off in some bold new direction.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of like, I don’t know. It’s an odd bird.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s kind of like the beginning of something new, but it doesn’t know what that is, because we stop the cats. We start

⏹️ ▶️ John with the place names. And it’s kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of like, what is it, the baby cows, or baby

⏹️ ▶️ John deer, or whatever. and they get up and stand up for the first time on their big, long legs, and they’re kind of tottering. That’s kind of

⏹️ ▶️ John like what Mavericks is. But at the same time, it has that vibe of, well, there’s that, and there’s also,

⏹️ ▶️ John well, they didn’t go try to rip the entire house down and do something new like they did in iOS 7. So there is a comfort

⏹️ ▶️ John of familiarity there. So that theme, I hope people who read the review,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s hard because at a certain point, I’m pasting hex dumps of XADR output

⏹️ ▶️ John into the thing. And you’re like, I’ve lost the plot now. know what’s going on with this review. But I hope

⏹️ ▶️ John that theme runs throughout the review. And I do try to

⏹️ ▶️ John add another layer on top of that, which is, you know, stupid snarky comments and yes, tons and tons of pop

⏹️ ▶️ John culture references. And I feel like if you don’t understand any of the pop culture references that I put in there, and

⏹️ ▶️ John no one but me like is going to get them all because they’re all from my personal history. I feel like

⏹️ ▶️ John you should still get the theme that I’m driving at, like you shouldn’t have to know have watched the same movies and TV shows

⏹️ ▶️ John and read the same books as I have to get what I’m getting at. It should be there in the text, but for everybody else, there

⏹️ ▶️ John is the subtext laid on top of it, and I hope that people who get those few little references and find little Easter eggs

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, that adds something to it, but I never want that to be the only thing. And the things I’m adding to

⏹️ ▶️ John it, I hope, is building on that theme, not just like, oh, and by the way, here’s a

⏹️ ▶️ John funny thing from a TV show that’s totally unrelated to the theme of this review. I’ve tried to make the references related to the

⏹️ ▶️ John theme of the review, including the big one pop culture theme that runs throughout the entire thing that

⏹️ ▶️ John tries to tie it in. And part of the reason I do that is, you know, because it amuses me and entertains me to write that way.

⏹️ ▶️ John But the other thing is, I don’t know what I’m going to do for a review until I basically

⏹️ ▶️ John have the intro and like the last line or the last paragraph in my head for the review.

⏹️ ▶️ John And then it’s just a matter of, okay, we’ll just fill in the 20k words in the middle and you’re fine. Like, that’s, that’s my

⏹️ ▶️ John process. Like I need to know what that opening is like. In the opening, the intro is taking

⏹️ ▶️ John me the longest to write out of any of these things. I think I spend more time in the intro than I do on the next 50% of the review.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the intro and then the conclusion. In the past years I’ve been doing two conclusions. One, the boring conclusion,

⏹️ ▶️ John which is the recommendation section where I try to tell you, should you buy it, what are the factors involved, what do I

⏹️ ▶️ John think of it. And then there’s the touchy-feely conclusion, which is what I end with because that’s what I think about. So if you

⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t read the review or haven’t finished it, which I don’t blame you because as long or never intended to finish it, I would encourage

⏹️ ▶️ John you to give it maybe another try with what I just said in mind. Hopefully it’ll give you some sort of guide

⏹️ ▶️ John through the experience. You can come out the other side and we will talk more about

⏹️ ▶️ John the individual features of Mavericks in future shows. And I want to answer one question from the chat room because someone was asking, and

⏹️ ▶️ John many people have been asking this on Twitter, that’s a whole other meta meta theme of like people asking me questions about

⏹️ ▶️ John their view and that whole feedback process, especially in the age of Twitter. Why isn’t the book available in the Mexican

⏹️ ▶️ John iBook store? What? Yeah. So I put it up on iBooks,

⏹️ ▶️ John and you can select what countries you want it to be available in. I selected all of the available

⏹️ ▶️ John countries, but some of them show up with little red lights because it says, you know, you do not have a contract to sell

⏹️ ▶️ John in this country. You contact blah, blah, blah, whatever. It’s Condé Nast. Condé Nast is the merchant

⏹️ ▶️ John account. Condé Nast is the parent company of Ars Technica. I don’t know if it’s just that

⏹️ ▶️ John particular company or whatever, but this book is for the iBook is for sale everywhere that I

⏹️ ▶️ John was able to put it up for sale. I don’t control whatever the deals are that kindness has with these individual countries. So it’s not in New

⏹️ ▶️ John Zealand, it’s not in Mexico, it’s not in all sorts of countries, but it is in 32 countries. If you can’t get it through

⏹️ ▶️ John the iBook store, but you still want the iBook version, you can subscribe to our premiere and get the exact same file

⏹️ ▶️ John and also the Kindle version and a PDF version and a single page web page version without ads and all this other

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. We’ll put the link in the show notes to my blog post about it, explaining all this stuff. So it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not a choice on my part. There’s nothing I can do about it. But you can. There is another way to get for the exact same price the thing that you

⏹️ ▶️ John want to get. I think that’s probably it for this week, although I’m sure people

⏹️ ▶️ John wanted to hear more about Mavericks. But by next week, both of you will have read it and will become prepared with

⏹️ ▶️ John questions for me about various things. Because I’m not just going to go through it a section at a time and say, on this page,

⏹️ ▶️ John I talked about this. Like, that’s not going to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen. That’s fine. Is there a format or version of the article that you recommend the most.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John If somebody-

⏹️ ▶️ John You didn’t even read my meta blog post. He’s just totally-

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, that’s the after dark for the review. I have to save it until after I’ve read the review.

⏹️ ▶️ John You can read that before. Is there spoilers? It’s the same as the one last year. I just copied and pasted the same damn

⏹️ ▶️ John blog post from

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco last year.

⏹️ ▶️ John Which I admit in the thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my plan was to read the web version on the iPad so that I can follow all the links. Just in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Safari.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s my personal favorite. I say, first of all, I spent all this time and pain getting these damn retina

⏹️ ▶️ John screenshots Because I don’t have a Retina Mac. And believe me, this is not a fun experience, trying to go into high DPI mode and

⏹️ ▶️ John cram these gigantic windows onto your non-Retina screen and try to arrange them so you can get everything right.

⏹️ ▶️ John And then it’s my wife’s computer, too. She’s constantly chasing me to get off of her computer because she’s the only one with a 27-inch screen,

⏹️ ▶️ John which can fit a reasonable-sized window in in high DPI mode. So all those Retina images,

⏹️ ▶️ John if you have access to a Retina device, I highly recommend reading it on a Retina device. I like doing long reading

⏹️ ▶️ John on my Retina iPad. So I think that is the best experiences. So if you want to say,

⏹️ ▶️ John what is the top level experience for me, it’s subscribe to R’s Premiere, go to the article

⏹️ ▶️ John on your iPad, on your Retina iPad, and view it on a single page with no ads, and just scroll

⏹️ ▶️ John through it and read it in one sitting. Second after that, I would say is read the web version broken up into pages, because

⏹️ ▶️ John then you can remember you were on page seven or something and not have to worry about retaining your position in this giant long scrolling

⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Yeah, that was my plan. Again, do it on a Retina Mac or something like that.

⏹️ ▶️ John I really think the web version is the best version. I say this every year, which doesn’t make any sense, because

⏹️ ▶️ John reading the web version is like, the e-book versions cost money. The web version is free. The free web version

⏹️ ▶️ John is the best one, I think, as I explain. At length, with copy and paste of text from last year’s post explaining the same

⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Maybe next year I’ll be able to just link back to it and say, read what I wrote last year. That all applies this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco year. Well, the right answer is to buy the Kindle version and buy the iBooks version, but still read it on the web

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on an iPad.

⏹️ ▶️ John Some people do that, and I thank them for it. And yeah, like, you know, and some people just like to have the e-book. Like, the e-books exist

⏹️ ▶️ John because people wanted them, not because I thought it was a great idea. I didn’t think anyone, why would anyone pay for an e-book that’s something they

⏹️ ▶️ John can get for free? But people want to read the way they want to read. So you want it? We will provide it. Go nuts.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey In Marco’s defense, I was going to ask you that question, even though I knew the answer, just because I felt like it might be worthwhile

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have it stated on the show that the canonical version is the Ars Technica

⏹️ ▶️ Casey web version.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco On a retina device, preferably a full-size iPad.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and that makes the text look nicer, too. I mean, you know, the only the only part

⏹️ ▶️ John partly objectionable experience to reading on the web is I do use a lot of links in my writing and

⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s good and I like that some people don’t. That’s why I think you should read it in you know, Safari on an iPad because you can

⏹️ ▶️ John visit the links without like leaving to another application or whatever and nicely go back and forth and retain you know state of

⏹️ ▶️ John where you were and everything. But the links color the link colors are as users for both the non visited and visited

⏹️ ▶️ John links make it so lots of links in a paragraph. I’ll get up a little bit like they’re not subtle. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John like orange and blue.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Did you say ug?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, I’d get up And they do and I don’t but I don’t pick the colors for the site

⏹️ ▶️ John design and the colors are not There you know most people who write for ours do not use the density of links

⏹️ ▶️ John that I do And if you’re scared by the first page, we’re like every other word looks like it’s a link

⏹️ ▶️ John They do thin out later. And my big thing with linking is I Think they’re super important and

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want anyone to read a sentence and not know what I’m talking about Like if they read over something and like they read some word and they

⏹️ ▶️ John make some offhanded mention of core animation And they have no idea what core animation is I don’t want to just leave them there hanging

⏹️ ▶️ John and although I think they’re gonna Google core animation I want to link them back directly to the section where I describe what core animation

⏹️ ▶️ John is in detail two years ago or whatever That’s why I put the links there You know what core animation is and you’re sick of mousing

⏹️ ▶️ John over the stupid links to see where they go or whatever and eventually you Stop ignore them. That’s fine But I want to bring everybody along

⏹️ ▶️ John So you shouldn’t need to follow the link to understand it if you know what core animation is don’t follow the link that’s linked to core animation, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John And some of them are snarky and some of them is adding information in the sentence, but they should never be necessary. You should be able to remove every single

⏹️ ▶️ John link from this review and it still makes sense if you have all the background knowledge that you need to have. But I’m not gonna go

⏹️ ▶️ John into detail of explaining, you know, what, you know, what virtual memory is or something. If I talk about virtual

⏹️ ▶️ John memory, I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna link it to like the Wikipedia, lots of Wikipedia page links. It’s mostly like,

⏹️ ▶️ John what is this? I don’t want you to stop in the middle of a sentence and say, I don’t know what that noun or proper noun is,

⏹️ ▶️ John or I don’t understand this concept or this three-letter acronym and I know you’re not going to go Google it but if you

⏹️ ▶️ John can just click a link and I’ll take you directly to it precisely the pace to will explain exactly what that thing is then you can resume

⏹️ ▶️ John reading

⏹️ ▶️ Casey no I agree with you I like the links

⏹️ ▶️ John so so I’m saying like if I pick the link color for Ars Technica I would pick a link color that blends

⏹️ ▶️ John more nicely with the writing but I don’t pick it so that’s the only one downside to

⏹️ ▶️ John reading it yeah the web version versus one of the ebooks because ebooks do use like

⏹️ ▶️ John depending on how your because readers can figure do use nicer link colors.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anything else?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let’s wrap it up. Thanks a lot to our two sponsors this week, Squarespace and Hover.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we will see you next week with tons of questions for John, because I will probably have done my homework.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was

⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, oh it was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental. And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM

⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at

⏹️ ▶️ John C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-E-R

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental, they didn’t mean

⏹️ ▶️ John to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Would that be the first time you’ve ever done your homework?

⏹️ ▶️ John You can do lots of homework. I don’t have to prepare and you guys do.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Finally, you’ve been preparing for the last like, you know, five months or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, by next week I will have forgotten everything.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco So I’ll

⏹️ ▶️ John have to frequently consult. It’s like after you take the test, when all the knowledge leaves your head.

⏹️ ▶️ John Thank God I never need all that again.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let’s blame the listeners. say that we’re giving them time to read it and prepare their own

⏹️ ▶️ Marco questions into our feedback form rather than, I didn’t do my homework because I was out all day.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think a lot of people are like, oh, I don’t want to read the review, it’s too long and boring, I just want to hear like an audio summary

⏹️ ▶️ John of it. But that’s, you know, it’s better if you read it. And then it’s like the incomparable, it’s better if you watch the movie or TV

⏹️ ▶️ John show, read the book and then listen to the incomparable talking about you don’t want to do the reverse. So if you’re still listening,

⏹️ ▶️ John go out there and read the review, and come back next week. Plenty of time to read it. It’s not that long.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, I think I did my meta review last year I think it took it only took me like an hour and 40 minutes or something like that It wasn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it you know, it doesn’t take like hours and hours and hours to read this thing. It’s not that ridiculous

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean it does if you don’t know what I’m talking about Like if you don’t know all the background that’s all those links are in there for if you read

⏹️ ▶️ John it And

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John like, what the hell are they talking about? Forrestal what I don’t know who these people are Well click

⏹️ ▶️ John the link and you’ll find the story about you know, like you just keep going back and I’ll be who was Fought for us all why

⏹️ ▶️ John did he leave? What was the hub about about that like we all some everyone’s reading that kind of has a vague idea of what that’s about To

⏹️ ▶️ John for context, but if you don’t there’s links you can if you do that you could be there for a long time It’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like getting lost in a Wikipedia maze Where you just keep going back and back until you’re on the page for philosophy

⏹️ ▶️ John inevitably and you’re like, oh You see that with the like, you know the number of links it takes

⏹️ ▶️ John to from any Wikipedia page to end up in the philosophy Page

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco me.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, that’s where they all dead end. I think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey now you want to titles

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We have a ton of amazing ones.

⏹️ ▶️ John What was the one that Marco picked last week? Like, he was totally not going to pick it on the air, but then I saw the episode.

⏹️ ▶️ John Sea level executives. Yeah, could you not resist that or what?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was just so… your joke was so bad, and it was just like… There weren’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco any other that were really awesome, and that one ended up being really awesome, because… I think

⏹️ ▶️ John you just wanted to put in my explanation in the after show.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, actually, I decided to put that in before I decided to name it that. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was just, it was so funny because you thought it was so funny.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And your enthusiasm for it made it funnier.

⏹️ ▶️ John It actually is funny. That’s the secret. So, here’s the thing about it. The thing about

⏹️ ▶️ John it is that actual, like the letter C hyphen level looks awful. It’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John terrible. It’s one of those terrible business phrases like sun setting or, you know, the C level executives is just

⏹️ ▶️ John terrible in all the ways that made up jargon is terrible. But when you change it to C-level, it’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ John oh yeah, now we’re onto something. Who doesn’t love the C? C-level executives. It sounds interesting and classy

⏹️ ▶️ John and pure, and it is not like C-level, you know.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, are you really f***ing trying to sell this joke

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John still?

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not really a joke. I’m just saying it’s a much nicer phrase than C-level. The joke is, like, if you want to find it

⏹️ ▶️ John in there, is like how awful C-level is with the letter C as compared to the S-E-A.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco But

⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, you know, Marco came around on his own. level executives.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Crickets. Did you hear the after show from last week? I know you don’t usually listen to the posted one, John, but…

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t listen to the posted one. I listen to every single posted episode. What are you talking about?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I thought you

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t…

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I listen

⏹️ ▶️ John to every podcast I’m on. Always. The posted version. Every single one.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh. I didn’t know. I did

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John not realize. If you

⏹️ ▶️ John had been a faithful Hypercritic listener, you would know that, but you know, whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I… Oh, now you’re just playing dirty. I was a very

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John faithful…

⏹️ ▶️ John You didn’t hear that one offhanded comment I made in the umpteen hours of I’ve heard

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey of Ohio over the course of two years. Thank you, sir. Apology

⏹️ ▶️ Casey accepted.

⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, no, I do. I always listen to it because like, you know, it’s not…

⏹️ ▶️ John so you can hear how terrible I am and say, oh, I’ll try not to do that again. And then I do it again next week. but if you repeat

⏹️ ▶️ John that over two years, you do it less.