171: WWDC Is Not Santa Claus
26 May 2016The rumored new MacBook Pro, Apple and services, and a hybrid Apple-Google world.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: ATP Shirts!
- Follow-up:
- App Store review times
- Force quitting apps on Android & iOS
- Rumored new MacBook Pro
- Apple Opening Siri & Developing Echo Rival
- Getting the best from both Apple and Google
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show: Casey's identity crisis
Sponsored by:
- Fracture: Photos printed in vivid color directly on glass. Use promo code ATP10 for 10% off your first order.
- FreshBooks: Online invoicing made easy.
- Hover: The best way to buy and manage domain names. Use coupon code EATFRESH for 10% off your first purchase.
Chapters
- T-shirts 🖼️
- T-shirts: Origin of “///ATP” 🖼️
- T-shirts: Origin of “Watches” 🖼️
- Follow-up: Same-day app review 🖼️
- Follow-up: Quitting Android apps 🖼️
- Sponsor: Fracture (code ATP10) 🖼️
- Rumored MacBook Pros 🖼️
- Sponsor: FreshBooks 🖼️
- Apple and AI services 🖼️
- Sponsor: Hover (code EATFRESH) 🖼️
- Best of Apple and Google 🖼️
- Ending theme 🖼️
- Post-show: Google Photos 🖼️
T-shirts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Egg salad is not delicious. Salt and mayonnaise are delicious. That’s what you’re tasting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Egg salad is not delicious.
⏹️ ▶️ John Egg salad is awesome! What are you talking about?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Egg salad’s good. Egg salad’s fine. But it’s not delici- I wouldn’t- I’m not gonna rave about it. That’s ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t say it’s delicious, but it’s quite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, exactly, yeah. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not delicious, see? I went through several containers of your actual chicken salad, which is good. It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John good chicken salad. But I also had egg salad to compare it with and when it came time, like you can
⏹️ ▶️ John tell, you know, like, if you feel like you don’t have a preference, you can go either way. way depends on what I’m in the mood for when I came time to pick. I was
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of leaning towards the egg salad a lot. It’s the yolks, man. That’s what does it. It’s the yolks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We should talk about t-shirts. All right. Yeah. So, it was late breaking news
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after we had recorded that we were able to get everything squared away between ourselves with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cotton Bureau, who have been excellent so far. So many thanks to Jay and team at Cotton Bureau.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have two shirts up for sale in case you haven’t heard or haven’t looked. One of them, which we kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of call watches, is inspired by Ricardo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Melo’s tweet. And then Jay designed it as pixel art. As
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone expected, John has thoughts about this pixel art. But it’s the three of us with our
⏹️ ▶️ Casey respective choices of wristwear. And then the other one is just kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of our logo shirt, which is a kind of combination of our automotive heritage and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our current, our automotive and current and Macintosh heritage,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for those of us who are around in the Six Colors days, which is basically just John. So they’ll be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up for sale until what, third of June, I believe. So as this episode is released,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably about another week. Don’t delay, don’t forget. I cannot tell you how many people have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said after the last round of shirts went up, oh yeah, I just never, I just never pulled the trigger
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on ordering it. I just forgot. And so can you make them again? No, we can’t. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pull the trigger as you’re thinking of it. Get yourselves a shirt if you want. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am really happy with this year’s shirts, especially since up until like a week and a half before they went
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up for sale, we had no freaking clue what to do for shirts. So I’m really happy with them and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you should buy one to support the show. So thanks everyone who has bought one and everyone who will buy one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, thank you. So far we haven’t repeated any shirts. So again, the same thing like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if we’re, maybe we’ll, this from this year on we’ll just repeat the same shirts over and over again. But so far we haven’t repeated
⏹️ ▶️ John any. So if you like one of these shirts, don’t assume I’ll just buy it next year because it might not be the next year or it might.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, same thing with Hypercritical shirts that I sold just once and I still get people tweeting me to this day. It’s like years
⏹️ ▶️ John later, like, Oh, I missed out buying those shirts. And make no mistake. These
⏹️ ▶️ John are expensive t-shirts, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco if you’re shipping them,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially if you’re shipping them far away. All podcast t-shirts are expensive. I know I have, I have literally
⏹️ ▶️ John boxes in the attic filled with podcast and website t-shirts.
⏹️ ▶️ John But they’re cool to have. And in the grand scheme of things, they’re actually pretty rare because who
⏹️ ▶️ John listens to weird tech nerd podcasts and then who buys a t-shirt for for a Tech Nerd podcast. Not a lot of people, so
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of a shame we didn’t make it for WRDC, but I think they’re fun shirts. And I had a question for you
⏹️ ▶️ John guys, I haven’t talked about this on Twitter.
T-shirts: Origin of “///ATP”
⏹️ ▶️ John We had no one I believe has spelled out The visual
⏹️ ▶️ John metaphor of the ATP logo shirt, and I’ve been hesitant to do so because I feel like explaining
⏹️ ▶️ John it Kind of makes it worse, but maybe I’m wrong Maybe people maybe people would be more excited about
⏹️ ▶️ John the shirt if they understood what we were going for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So would you like to explain?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s pretty obvious connection if you’re in the right mindset But if you’re not thinking that way it might not occur to you And of course if you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know anything about cars And you don’t care then like explaining to someone who doesn’t know anything about cars cars, it’s pointless because they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John care, right? Yeah. So I guess we’re not explaining it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then. No, feel free. Okay, well, since I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John am the only summarizer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, exactly. So since I’m the only current BMW owner, this is a play
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the BMW M symbol, which we’ll put a link to that in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Basically, BMW M is their motorsports group. And so Marcos M5, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’ve talked about ad nauseum on the show, and certainly was kind of the driving arc behind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey neutral. The way that logo looks is it’s three colors and there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a story behind them. I think one was Bavaria, one was Texaco, which had a deal
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with BMW at the time that M was created, and one was just like a purple to kind of blend the two.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Jay at Cotton Bureau, completely on his own accord, like with zero input
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from us, thought, oh, well, I can take the six colors from the original Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then do a kind of stylized ATP and kind of blend our automotive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey history coming out of neutral and get that like old school Mac flair going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and get kind of a mashup of the both.
⏹️ ▶️ John you keep saying Mac like those like those uh PC users who say uh do you like Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John computers? Is Mac making an iPod
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey now? In all capitals. Have you been to the Mac store?
⏹️ ▶️ John I heard Mac makes phones now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am sorry to To offend you, old man, what was the appropriate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John part of this?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the Apple logo! It’s the rainbow-striped Apple logo. It’s a logo they had for like the first, you know, 15 or whatever years
⏹️ ▶️ John of the company’s existence.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. I regret the error. Thank you. And God, I’m going to get so many emails.
⏹️ ▶️ John I saved you from the emails. Now they feel like it’s been addressed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My apologies for that. But anyway, the point being that it’s a combination of the original Apple logo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the BMW M logo are inspired
⏹️ ▶️ John not the original Apple logo. I’m saving you again. Oh my God.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Why the cheese?
⏹️ ▶️ John The original Apple logo was that pen and ink drawing of the guy under the tree.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Like a coat of arms. Some email. No, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a coat of arms. Anyway, yeah. Man, I’m off the good side.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple was selling t-shirts with the original Apple logo on them, along with the rainbow striped Apple logo
⏹️ ▶️ John and a bunch of icons and other stuff on their 40th anniversary. I tried to get some. I tried to have my
⏹️ ▶️ John minions in Cupertino buy them from the Apple store at Infinite Loop, but they were too late. They were sold out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Actually, if we have minions there, I need somebody to get me some pens for TIFF, but yeah, let me know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have minions. Maybe you have minions.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In any case, so please, if you have the means, buy a shirt. Also, John alluded or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey touched on this earlier, but we do understand, I know it doesn’t sound like we do, but we do understand that shipping
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is extremely expensive across the pond, and we are genuinely very sorry for that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hand on heart, we weighed that as a con when deciding how to do the t-shirts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this year. There are other t-shirt vendors that people use and that we have used
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that have overseas presses or printing or whatever you call it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We wanted to go a different route this year and try something different. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really, really appreciate anyone from Europe or Asia or really anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other than North America that has bought one of these shirts because I know shipping is just out of control
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I am sorry for that. But look at it this way, these shirts, I am super proud of them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and if it wasn’t for Jay at Cotton Bureau, they would not look anywhere near as good.
T-shirts: Origin of “Watches”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You should see the illustration Marco sent as a…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John You should save that as a
⏹️ ▶️ John great example of patent hands.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, really.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Just as an example of what we gave Jay with regard to the three hands
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John three wrists. It’s really bad. I mean, I wouldn’t…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would have done worse. I’m not trying to like throw stones. I would have done a much worse job, but that illustration,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with respect, Marco, was pretty fricking bad and Jay made it…
⏹️ ▶️ John Because the best part about it is that he meticulously drew, I’m assuming on the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro with the pencil, he meticulously drew his watch, because that’s what he cares about. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then the hands are just these misshapen mutant paddles. It’s like, hands, hands, whatever. I can’t draw!
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you spent so long on that watch, I could just see you zooming in and carefully drawing the hands, trying to draw
⏹️ ▶️ John your beautiful little Swiss whatever the hell watch it is, and then the hands are just a mess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco First of all, that is not an exact representation of any of my watches. And I didn’t take that long to draw. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John certainly took longer than you took to draw the quote unquote hands. Yeah, well, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So suffice to say, look in the show notes. You can see Marco’s original illustration to Jay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we never told him pixel art or anything. He just took that upon himself and did a just killer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey job with it. So again, just to bring this back around and try to redeem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself a summarizer in chief, we are very sorry about the shipping costs. We really, truly are. And we are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey super appreciative of anyone to buy shirts, but particularly those overseas, because I know it is a big ask. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we really thank you. And hopefully if we do shirts again next year, we’ll have some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different mechanism for doing this, but no guarantees. We’ll see how it goes.
Follow-up: Same-day app review
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving right along, we should probably do some follow-up. Klaes Jacobson,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m so sorry, had written in, I don’t know if this was via Twitter or an email,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but they said, after submitting an iOS app, a burst of 20 installs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from California occurs. This has happened recently,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but did not happen between October and February. So perhaps there’s some sort
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of automated testing going on when you submit to the App More than just like the checking for private
⏹️ ▶️ Casey APIs and things like that
⏹️ ▶️ John more recent or more rigorous or perhaps more timely Automated testing
⏹️ ▶️ John that that’s another theory It’s not in the follow-up here that I heard a lot is that a lot of people under the impression
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure if it’s founded or not that the delays in review like you you know in the olden
⏹️ ▶️ John days several months ago You’d submit an application and it’d take like a week or whatever to get through the
⏹️ ▶️ John review process And a lot of people think that’s because Apple intentionally doesn’t look at your
⏹️ ▶️ John application for a long time as a form of training to make you think
⏹️ ▶️ John Think twice before you submit don’t waste our time submitting your application If you’re not super duper sure that it’s ready
⏹️ ▶️ John to go up and to teach you that lesson no matter when you submit We’re just gonna sit on and do nothing even if we
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have anything else to do even if we have the capacity We’re just gonna intentionally ignore your app for a week just to teach
⏹️ ▶️ John you a lesson to say see it’s always gonna take at least a week so don’t submit in haste always you know
⏹️ ▶️ John make sure your eyes are dotted and your t’s are crossed that doesn’t sound like something
⏹️ ▶️ John that makes sense to me for apple as a business to do so maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John i don’t again i don’t know if these reports were based on inside information or testing or theories or whatever or it
⏹️ ▶️ John was just a feeling i get but that doesn’t strike me as uh something that reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe if there was something like that it would be like we don’t bother looking at your application for the first four hours
⏹️ ▶️ John to give you a chance to think better of it if you accidentally submit it, but I can’t imagine them sitting on it not doing anything
⏹️ ▶️ John for a week. So I’m still thinking that the decreased
⏹️ ▶️ John review times have to be the result of something that Apple is intentionally doing because they want the review times to be shorter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, there was so this this past week on the talk show, Renee Ritchie was the guest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with John Gruber and Renee, they were talking about this and you could kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of tell that Rene has information about this that he has heard. In the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Rene way, he basically suggests what the information is generally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what category it is, but doesn’t actually tell you anything that would get him or anybody else in trouble. But it basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds like there was a significant management change
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in AppReview. And this wasn’t Phil taking over the App Store. I mean, it might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have been related to that in some way, it wasn’t that change, but it was some other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco change that happened further down the line in AppReview that basically got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some people out of the way who would cause holdups. And that is apparently—and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seeing some policies—that is apparently what the result of this was if you read between the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very, very obvious lines that René drew on the talk show last week. So that, I think, is very interesting. Also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I agree with what you said, Jon. I don’t think they were ever like artificially delaying things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco necessarily to a week, because if they were, you would have never seen a review time less than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a week. And that wasn’t true. If you would look at the history on that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Shining Development site that was collecting all the stats from everybody, that still is collecting all the stats from everybody,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it fluctuated. And sometimes it would go down to like six days, five
⏹️ ▶️ Marco days, and then go back up. I think what instead was the case was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we know that Apple is very performance metric driven these days, especially in the middle management
⏹️ ▶️ Marco levels. So I think they had just defined the performance metric to be 90% or more, or 95% or whatever the percentage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is. We want X percent of apps to be reviewed within a week.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we consider that success. So that whenever they would start getting way above that, and that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number would start suffering, maybe they would add more staff, or maybe they would make changes to get that number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back down. But it seemed like they considered that good enough for all this time. And so a combination
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of maybe changing that opinion, maybe changing that metric, something lower as well as whatever this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this management change was that happened. That I think is very plausibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what what went on here to cause that review times to drop from a week to less than a day.
⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t have to be like a week specifically just the idea that there is there is excess capacity that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John could review your application but instead let’s either decrease staffing or send people home early
⏹️ ▶️ John or like like they’re intentionally like the delay is actually part of their policy with an intent
⏹️ ▶️ John that was that’s the theory that like Apple Apple always could do this but they were intentionally not doing it and
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s slightly different than they had a metric that meant people got to go home without staying for overtime as
⏹️ ▶️ John long as they hit X percent because I can imagine Apple being what it is they probably staff so that the
⏹️ ▶️ John people had to work really really hard to hit whatever the numbers were. They’re not overstaffing and then giving them a low goal
⏹️ ▶️ John and letting the people go home at 3 every day. That’s not the way it’s working.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. Also, the idea of automated app review or adding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco another automated step of app review before it gets to the humans. That, I think, has a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco merit. It’s not an easy problem to solve, but if you can have some kind of automation that basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just tries to push a bunch of buttons in an app… Apple has said on a number of occasions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the most common cause of app rejections is that the app crashes during review.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if they can automate a process where they just bring up an instance of the app and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like push some buttons and attempt to, in an automated way, basically guess how to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use the app and just like navigate to different screens, if they can cause a crash to happen during that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it never even has to get to a human. It can be rejected right then, go right back to the developer and say, all right, this failed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here. Try again. That could also result in a major time savings for the humans and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco therefore better throughput for the apps that get through that test.
Follow-up: Quitting Android apps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, Drew Hene wrote in, they said, among other things, it’s always been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty complicated to understand what exactly swiping an app out of Recents actually does under
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the hood. Was this with regard to Android,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John actually? On Android, because we were asking, I was
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking about the clear all button, like wouldn’t it be fun to clear all, just got rid of the pictures on your screen, but did nothing to the processes.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco We are now the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco premier Android podcast, by the way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sorry, Material. So, anyway, so they said it’s always been pretty complicated to understand what exactly swiping an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app out of the Recents actually does under the hood. One important distinction on Android is that the thing that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shows up in your Recents screen isn’t actually an app, it’s a task. And remember, on Android,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an app can have multiple tasks in Recents at the same time, like having multiple Google Docs open at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey once. When you swipe away an app, it finishes the task, which tells the app that the user is done with that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey workflow and it doesn’t need to worry about restoring that UI state. If the app is doing background work or has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other open tasks, its process would not be killed. If there’s no more open tasks or background
⏹️ ▶️ Casey jobs, swiping away an app will let the system know it is the option of killing the process, but it doesn’t guarantee that it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will. So the clear all button shouldn’t have a dramatic effect on system performance on Android, since it usually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey won’t mean that all app processes are killed, but it does have the downside of losing any user state from their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey open tasks. That’s very interesting to me, the way Android works, because I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know most of that. And it was also interesting to me how many people who seem to claim
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or seem to view themselves as, you know, nerds, nerds tweeted about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how, Oh yeah, I do that too. And I’m sorry, John. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I thought was quite funny. The only feedback that I saw that I thought was very interesting was people who said they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanted to clear it out. Not for like battery, not for memory or anything like that, but just because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t want that, that, that view, that drawer, if you will, to have a bunch of things in it, they just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanted it to be clean. So they didn’t have clutter there, which still to me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seems a little bit peculiar But makes a lot more sense than thinking. Oh, this is gonna save my battery
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or prevent something weird from happening
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they changed the iOS policy to be more like Android’s like an Android when you’re when you’re clearing these things It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John explicitly not killing your application Like if your application is running background jobs that lets them keep running, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John it just gives it the all it’s basically saying is when I relaunch that that don’t bring you back to
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly where I was, which is still kind of punitive because like you’re punishing people for like, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John like the visual clutter. So I want to get the rectangles away, right? And there is a punishment for that, which is next
⏹️ ▶️ John time you launch that application, it won’t remember where you left off is it will, you know, just bring it back to a fresh state or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John It would be nice if all these operating systems, I guess maybe either took this feature away entirely,
⏹️ ▶️ John in which case, like you just deal with the clutter or gave people a way to like like
⏹️ ▶️ John the new Android and like I don’t know if it’s hard coded to seven or if you can adjust it but only show a
⏹️ ▶️ John certain number so it never gets more cluttered than some small amount you know or just make
⏹️ ▶️ John it get rid of the pictures and do nothing else right and as Drew said there
⏹️ ▶️ John is still of course an Android a way to actually force quit to kill things it’s it’s more deeply buried but it’s there and as many people
⏹️ ▶️ John pointed out to us on iOS there is another way to force quit applications besides flicking them up you can also do
⏹️ ▶️ John the hold down the power button thing but instead of swiping to turn off the phone you hold down the home button or anyway
⏹️ ▶️ John there are lots of ways to force quit things but the flicking up of the squares half
⏹️ ▶️ John of it is the force quitting habit and the the voodoo and superstition about that
⏹️ ▶️ John and the other half is just people like things to be neat and tidy and both of those things have I feel like detrimental
⏹️ ▶️ John effects on the experience of using the phone probably I would say more detrimental than the
⏹️ ▶️ John mental distress caused by having lots of rectangles but I guess that’s up to each person to decide on their own.
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Rumored MacBook Pros
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you very much to Fracture for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So there’s been rumors about new MacBook Pros. They’re coming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco First of all, if you go back to the original article, I believe it clarifies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’s Q4 of Apple’s financial calendar that they are coming, which is July.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the rumor is that in quote Q4 of this year,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which everyone interprets to mean October through December, Apple will be releasing new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Pros that are substantially redesigned so that they’re going to be thinner, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be lighter, they’re going to have the new Skylake CPUs, and they’re going to have a few other interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changes that we will talk about in a second. So…
⏹️ ▶️ John Before you move on, how confident are you about this whole Q4 confusion? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John when I read this article, my overwhelming sense of sadness was like, Q4? Seriously? How
⏹️ ▶️ John long have we been waiting for the MacBook Pros to get updated? And now I have to wait until the end
⏹️ ▶️ John of the year, like the fall and winter time? And then you telling me, oh no, Q4 is not that,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the financial Q4, which is different, makes me feel better. But how sure are you about that? Because I have to know how to feel before
⏹️ ▶️ John you move on to what these
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco computers are going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m just repeating what other people said, so maybe I’m not so sure. I don’t know. Now I’m doubting everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, all I can say is that if you, people can’t get one of these things in their hands until the end
⏹️ ▶️ John of the year, that seems like, that seems bad. Like, I mean, you can blame Intel for
⏹️ ▶️ John a certain amount of the delay, but really? Like we can’t get new MacBook Pros until the
⏹️ ▶️ John end of 2016? If I had told you at the end of 2014 that there’s not going to be new MacBook Pros
⏹️ ▶️ John until the end of 2016? Yeah, I don’t like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, especially, I think it’s made worse because of the fact that there were such long delay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Intel’s CPUs here that they’re currently shipping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically three-year-old CPUs. The guts of the MacBook Pro that you buy today, there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was the one minor update in mid-2015, but it was a very minor update. It changed almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing about them. And so basically, you’re buying two- to three-year-old hardware today.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the curse of the Pro label, right? As soon as you put Pro on it, the CPU ages to be three
⏹️ ▶️ John years old in the market. I think that’s the new rule.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, which is, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, cosmetics aside, I mean, you know, we can talk about cosmetics in a minute, but like, just the fact that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple continues to sell really pretty ancient hardware by computing standards for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so long now, you know, we talked about it before, like, I know why some of these things are this way. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know that they generally wait until there’s like a substantial CPU update from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Intel and that those have been delayed in recent years, but that has to change
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I know they do care, but when they let the hardware age for this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long, still at the top of the line, it looks like they don’t care anymore about it. And again, I know they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do care, but this is how it looks to buyers. This is how it looks in the market. It looks like Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just ignoring the Mac and letting these things languish. And I don’t know if that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John true. It looks that way to nerds, to tech nerds. Other people don’t even know what the heck is in them. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, where it’s a tech nerd podcast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, people do. People do research. You know, you got to give people credit. do their research and when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people are looking to buy an Apple computer, they go online and they look and they find things like the MacRumors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Buying Guide that says like all this stuff is three years old. Like, like they, people do their research, they find stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John Anybody who finds the MacRumors Buying Guide is pretty far over into the computer nerd thing. Like, it’s a factor.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just saying like there is there is a whole other section of the population that never looks at that stuff. But in
⏹️ ▶️ John the grand scheme of things, even if they don’t know they are still, even if you don’t know or care about the age of of the CPU you are still
⏹️ ▶️ John affected by because it essentially affects the useful lifetime of your computer because it is a three year
⏹️ ▶️ John old CPU whether you know it or not. And so three years later, you’re using a six year old CPU whereas if Apple kept it
⏹️ ▶️ John up to date, you would have more life left in your laptop. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not as bad as spinning disk versus SSD where you’re, you know, you sort of prematurely age when you realize that everyone else
⏹️ ▶️ John has SSDs, but you know, maybe you could upgrade yours or whatever. CPUs don’t age your laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John as bad as other things, but it’s all cumulative. Basically, what we’re doing is here as people knowledgeable
⏹️ ▶️ John about, you know, the platform and the products is we’re judging the products. How good a product
⏹️ ▶️ John is this? And you can’t judge it to be a particularly stellar product if
⏹️ ▶️ John the innards are really old and out of date. And as you know, as time marches on and competitor products
⏹️ ▶️ John get better innards for usually less or the same money, you have to judge
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s products more harshly. And as people who other people might ask about computers who might say,
⏹️ ▶️ John now is not a good time to buy a MacBook Pro, because we think they’re going to be updated soon. But if we’ve been saying that
⏹️ ▶️ John for two years, at a certain point, we’re like, I don’t know if it’s bad advice or good advice, we’re trying to kind of predict
⏹️ ▶️ John the future of like, you know, should you buy this? Should you not? But once it’s a three year old CPU, even if
⏹️ ▶️ John new Mac Pro didn’t come out for another year, you can’t really in good conscience
⏹️ ▶️ John tell people, you should buy this computer because it’s a great product, you could say you should buy this computer, because it’s basically
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s your only choice if you want a Mac laptop, like, you know, the these are the laptops they sell and a whole bunch of them are better and
⏹️ ▶️ John compromised in a bunch of reasons. But if you need a laptop now, you got to get one. But I can honestly say that this is not actually
⏹️ ▶️ John a stellar product, unlike say, the 5k iMac, which came out of the gate and was, you know, good in
⏹️ ▶️ John all the ways we expected it to be good, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, yeah. I mean, like the 5k iMac has been fantastic. And that has like that is, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, it originally came out a year and a half ago. And then six months ago, they made the updated version. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a fantastic computer. It It has new up-to-date components. It was updated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one year after it came out with even newer, even more up-to-date components. Like that is a healthy release cycle.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know, with regard to the date, something to consider is, and we’re gonna get to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some interesting new hardware tidbits in a second, but what if one of those hardware tidbits
⏹️ ▶️ Casey requires a major release of OS X, and that doesn’t typically ship until
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the fall? So maybe it is the fall, because they need the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey software. And I know they’ll do like a point release ahead for a lot of things, but I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think today’s Apple is delaying hardware for software.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, absolutely they are.
⏹️ ▶️ John Except for new devices like the watch. I know you’re gonna say the watch, but for laptops, I’m saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if they have a weird screen above the keyboard that we’ll get to in a minute, like they’ll just work that into
⏹️ ▶️ John the old OS if they needed to ship them. Like they did that so many times where
⏹️ ▶️ John some boring old Mac is ready to ship, but they would like ship it with the new OS, but it’s not available
⏹️ ▶️ John with it, so they’ll end up shipping it, they usually do it with OS versions, like they’d end up shipping it with Leopard
⏹️ ▶️ John or something, when, not Leopard, with Tiger, even though Leopard was about to come out, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John people would get it, by the time they’d get it in the store, it would still have the old OS with it, and then you’d get it, and they would upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ John you for free or whatever, like I don’t think, especially with OS X, I don’t think that’s why they would be holding
⏹️ ▶️ John back this hardware to wait for the software, unless there’s some amazing new feature.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but here’s this scenario here, Alright, so the new laptop, suppose it has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Touch ID, like this report says, and everyone says there’s going to be Siri in new OS X. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suppose it has a Touch ID button or surface or circle or something, maybe the power button, who knows?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Somewhere there’s a Touch ID thing there, right? And then also somewhere on the keyboard in the in the Fn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco row, then we’ll get to in a minute in the Fn row, maybe there’s a Siri button. There is no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OS X version until the fall that will that that will support those things in all likelihood.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The OS 10 version that comes out in the fall, they can’t bring those things forward or they won’t bring those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things forward. They don’t feel like bringing those things forward to be through this earlier because the OS 10 version in the fall also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has stuff that integrates with the iOS version that’s coming in the fall and the iOS version is coming in the fall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is tied to the iPhone hardware schedule and the entire company is dictated by the iPhone hardware schedule. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John that seems plausible. I forgot about the touch ID thing, but the secure enclave is the other thing like assuming there’s a touch ID
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that’s probably a secure enclave thing and that’s yeah the screen I say
⏹️ ▶️ John no because the screen you can write a driver for in any OS but the touch ID and that security stuff yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John all right well that’s that’s crappy but that’s life
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so that’s right so we’ve we’ve bounced off the outer atmosphere of the changes here but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco we should probably talk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s gonna be really q4 probably It’s probably going to be like September, October. Okay. Fair enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, so there’s apparently going to be a replaced. F in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey row where all the F1, F2, F3, et cetera, keys are now little mini OLED displays.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not sure what to make about, I feel like there was a keyboard that like in the pre Kickstarter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey days, but it was a Kickstarter kind of project where there was a keyboard that they wanted, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the entire keyboard to have little mini displays on each key. in the theory was, which made a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of sense to me. It was the Optimus keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Was it? Okay. By the Art Lebedev studio.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, yes, that’s right. You’re absolutely right. Did that ever ship?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it was delayed for like years, I think. And it ended up being very expensive, but I think it did in fact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ship. And now, now there’s like, now like a bunch of keyboards now do the exact same thing since then.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. So the, the idea being that, you know, all of these different displays can be reprogrammed. So think of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sort of kind of having all the benefits of a keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on screen, like on a phone or tablet, but it’s still a physical keyboard, but you can reprogram
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what the keys show and potentially what they do. And so I can see maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have like, you know, on the current keyboards, the F what does this F8
⏹️ ▶️ Casey F8 key is play pause. Well, maybe it’s play pause in finder or by default,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but maybe in other apps, it does other things, and it shows you right on the key, like a little logo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or maybe even a logo in the words as to what it does. So I can see this being neat,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I also am not sure that this is something I really need, but I’m anxious
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to see what they’re gonna do with it. What do you guys think? I mean, Marco, you have tweeted about this and don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sound too enthusiastic, is that fair to say?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, so the initial reporting of this rumor had it as the F and key
⏹️ ▶️ Marco row would be, would disappear. Like the keys would no longer be there.
⏹️ ▶️ John It would just be one screen, one screen, not keys with screens on them, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly, yeah, that’s the initial rumor was that it would be one, like one long strip of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OLED screen and it would be touch sensitive. And so you would just like push it like it’s a skinny iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen basically. And so that, you know, if that ends up being, if this thing is real and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if that ends up being the way it’s done, I don’t like that very much, at least on principle. We’ll see, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, if they actually do something like that, we’ll see how it turns out. I could change my mind, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I… and there was a good discussion about that particular rumor on Clockwise this week, today, actually.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that, I think, like, not having physical buttons to push there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on this keyboard that you’re probably not looking at, like, yeah, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keys in the F-in-a-row are not that frequently pushed by most people. But for the people who do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frequently push them, and that, you know, the F-in-a-row includes some pretty important keys like escape, which is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your shortcut to cancel dialogue boxes, which is kind of frequently hit. Also frequently hit if you’re a Vim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco user, among other things, a lot of programmers use it for code completion. So like there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there are and as you said, like the media keys, the volume up and down the play, pause the mute,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anybody who uses the various like things that used to be called expose that are now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lumped into all these of things and I always use F11 for show desktop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Those things are very frequently hit by a good number of users I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so if you remove those as keys at all and it’s just this touch surface that you need to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty much would need to look at it to see what you’re hitting and you wouldn’t get that physical feedback of a key press
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to know that you did hit it correctly. That is… I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really hope we never get to that point because, you know, there’s a reason why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in all these… all the effort that we’ve put into making things thinner and lighter and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mechanically simpler and removing buttons, there’s a reason we still have keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buttons on computers. Even when you look at the MacBook One and you see we barely have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboard buttons, but we We still have keyboard buttons for a reason, and that is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you are not looking, when you’re typing blind, it is way easier and more accurate and faster and ergonomically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better to have key switches that move up and down that you can feel when you push. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the idea of replacing this strip with an OLED strip to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accomplish various goals, you know, the benefits here would be you could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put stuff under that part, because it would be thinner, it wouldn’t need any kind of travel under it, and presumably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the screen component could be very thin, thinner than a keyboard row could be, so you could shove more of the computer’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guts or battery under that area, so you save something there. It would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look cool, maybe, if it wouldn’t look tacky, so you’d gain something there. You could
⏹️ ▶️ John put banner ads on it. Oh, it’s not a Chromebook, never mind.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, there you go. Yeah, so you could see the reasons to do this, and I should point out also, and you can use it for status things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And PC laptops have had displays above the keyboard that show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco statuses of things for a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ John Also on the covers and on the back and on the sides, this
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco displays on every
⏹️ ▶️ John possible surface of PC laptops. There was a Windows feature they were touting like one or two or three years ago. They
⏹️ ▶️ John were like, the new Windows feature is like secondary screens on laptops and it’s OS supported and basically
⏹️ ▶️ John PC manufacturers, go ahead, figure out where it’s a good idea to put a screen and you just try to sell things like this
⏹️ ▶️ John and the ROS will support them and doesn’t seem like it really caught on that much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so anyway, like, Apple could do this that way, with replacing the FN key row entirely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a screen. I hope they don’t do it that way. And fortunately,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve heard from a certain tipster that that’s not how they’re going to do it. That the tipster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suggested that what he saw around was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not that version of it, but was instead, you still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had the physical buttons and the screen augmented the buttons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in some way. So that, I’m hoping that is correct, and that I wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mind. If Apple does this right, I think it’s gonna be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really hope they don’t get rid of the entire effing key row itself, because I really want those keys to be there, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t really care how they’re labeled.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve got an idea. You could sell an external keyboard like this and call it the Apple Extended Keyboard, and then finally
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple would sell a keyboard that is not a tiny little piece of crap with no inverted T arrow keys on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, don’t even get me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey started. Don’t even get me started, you are wrong, sir.
⏹️ ▶️ John Some chatroom credit, Windows Sideshow was what the great name.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s fantastic. Was the name to like the external, like
⏹️ ▶️ John the support for weird secondary displays on laptops. And Nathan in the chatroom pointed out that
⏹️ ▶️ John what I was trying to think of was OS 10 Lion. It came out with retina support 10.7.5
⏹️ ▶️ John because basically the fully retina supporting OS 10 8
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn’t out yet. Yeah, and the old the app store came to 10 610 10 6 8. Yeah, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Anyway, so that’s that’s the effing key row. I think we have that well covered unless you guys
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have other other comments on that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the idea of having a big like, you know, that that our tip says they’re not doing but just having
⏹️ ▶️ John a big flat screen like there’s the obvious reasons that’s bad and you went
⏹️ ▶️ John over them like that. You know, you feel for keys. You want to feel what the edges are. It’s a pain in the butt of just one big flat screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to think and we’ve joked about this so many times and talking about the MacBook keyboard and everything like well Why even
⏹️ ▶️ John have keys at all if there’s gonna be so little travel and part of the whole big sales pitch of the original iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John presentation was like oh look at all these phones They have all these buttons on them But you kind of have to pick the buttons when you make the phone and you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John change them after the fact well What if we made the whole screen of the phone the whole surface of the phone a screen? Then you know how to worry about what
⏹️ ▶️ John the buttons are because it’s all software we can change them all the time then everybody said Yeah all software But then how the hell can you feel the keys when
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re trying to type on the thing because it’s just a big flat screen We worked that out
⏹️ ▶️ John as a society. We now know how to type on flat screen phones.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a little bit different because the focal distance between looking at the keyboard and
⏹️ ▶️ John looking at the screen is a little bit better on a phone than it is on a laptop combination. Like you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of looking in the same place at the same distance as opposed to, you know, looking at the keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John Obviously touch typists are gonna say, oh, I don’t like this. I’m a touch typist. I don’t have to look at the keyboard. I wonder what percentage
⏹️ ▶️ John of the world population looks at the keyboard when they type, not on a phone, on like
⏹️ ▶️ John a regular laptop or desktop keyboard. Maybe it’s pretty high, maybe it’s not, I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you still have the same focal distance question. Anyway, there was the final thing that I can’t remember the source of this, maybe one of
⏹️ ▶️ John you will. Was it on iMore? Somebody did a survey of how
⏹️ ▶️ John fast can you touch type on an iPad keyboard, like on a totally glass keyboard?
⏹️ ▶️ John By age, they split it up by age. And the old people, of course, were horrendously bad at touch typing on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the younger you got, the bigger the bars get, up to the point where people were typing faster on the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad keyboard than I can type on a real keyboard. I’m a terrible typist, so that’s not a big judge. But they were into like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, over 60 words a minute. This was Cortex, by the way. Oh, was it Cortex? Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway. It makes me wonder about the future. Like, for now, we’re all glad
⏹️ ▶️ John if they do the separate buttons with little LED things in them, because it looks cool, we can feel the button edges. I know I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t look at the key of war when I hit the escape key and many other things like I’m not really a touch Type is I don’t type the right
⏹️ ▶️ John way, but in practice I can program without looking at the keyboard even though my fingers are doing
⏹️ ▶️ John Completely the incorrect thing down there But
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re gonna get old and retire and die and eventually I don’t think it’s too unrealistic
⏹️ ▶️ John to imagine that it’s possible not Guaranteed but possible that future future future Apple laptops
⏹️ ▶️ John laptops could either a not exist or be just have
⏹️ ▶️ John an entirely you know have an entire screen for the keyboard area because it would be thinner and it would be infinitely reconfigurable
⏹️ ▶️ John and people do get used to them and people can actually get fast with them and it makes me wonder about the future.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah I mean like I think my ideal setup here because I do recognize like the advantages
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of having like dynamic soft keys where you know maybe some of them the system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco defines as always having pretty much the same functions, things like, you know, volume controls,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then some of them, you know, are application defined, and applications can say, alright, well, when you have,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, Photoshop or Logic or whatever active, then you can map these buttons to these commands and actually show them on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there, and that, you know, that makes it easier to learn the keyboard shortcuts and more, these functions become more accessible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything. So, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John there is… You can also do the fuzzy targets, too, just like the, a phone keyboard does. That was another big selling point of the phone keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, oh, we know that the most likely in the English language, the next letter has a much higher percentage
⏹️ ▶️ John chance to be an R than an X. So even though you’re a little bit off of the key that
⏹️ ▶️ John you were trying to hit, will, you know, like the sort of fuzzy matching for where your fingers
⏹️ ▶️ John tap. And you may think, oh, I don’t need that when the keys are full size. But maybe you do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it would help. Like there are things you can do with a completely software controlled, completely flat
⏹️ ▶️ John glass keyboard that you can’t do with a physical one.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Well right. It might be good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But to me, I think the happy medium here would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you still have the physical buttons there. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, if you’re doing the entire keyboard, not just the F and ROW, if you’re doing the entire keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think your argument makes more sense. Even though I think I would hate that, but it would be so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much more powerful because you could do things like, well, the entire left half of this is going to be a jog wheel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead of keys. could do dynamic stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. The entire thing would be just it would just be like be you know just
⏹️ ▶️ John like typing on an iPad. It’s just one big flat piece of glass for the whole thing. Not a bunch of individual keys. Because it
⏹️ ▶️ John almost feels like a weird in-between state to have like the Optimus keyboard where it’s like we want the keys to
⏹️ ▶️ John be infinitely reconfigurable but they’ll have to always be the same size and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco position. Right, but I think in the context of a Mac and you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially like a Mac laptop where whatever keyboard they ship in a Mac laptop, you’re stuck
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with. You could put other keyboards on desks when you go park it on a desk,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but when you are out in the world, or when you’re using your laptop on the couch or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by itself with no additional hardware on a desk, whatever keyboard that has in it, you don’t have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco choice. So I think in the current context of how people use Macs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and PCs. I think it’s important to have a physical keyboard. And I think, looking at things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the MacBook One, where Apple goes to incredible lengths to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a really crappy physical keyboard, but it’s still better than typing on glass, I think Apple probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco agrees. I think that’s the sign Apple agrees. In the Mac landscape, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need physical keys. So if you’re going to have physical keys and you want this keystrip to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dynamic, it makes sense to also keep those as physical keys because the way people are going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be using that keyboard is still going to be based on feel for the most part and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re not really going to gain much you know if if you only have a thin strip on top
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the keyboard to customize in software you’re not really going to gain much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by by having that be a flat touch surface that you wouldn’t also have by having them be physical keys
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you and you also won’t there will be no cost to it then to the user like there will be no downside if they’re still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco physical keys and you’re gonna change the labels on them you know that then then there’s no complaint there’s no downside except
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cost and complexity but you know seems like Apple’s okay with that I think that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds fine I think that that would be that would be my happy medium is sure if you’re gonna do this at all make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it like the optimus keyboard put screen put some kind of screens on each key or put a big screen below all the keys
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and make them clear or something I don’t know but
⏹️ ▶️ John It’ll be a screen on each key. But like for the big flat glass thing, you can also get rid of the trackpad at
⏹️ ▶️ John that point too. It’s a simplification that may prove irresistible eventually.
⏹️ ▶️ John If the customer base eventually gets to the point where they feel like we can sell this product and not too many people will complain
⏹️ ▶️ John except for the really old people. I just want an extended keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John that too much to ask? Is that just not a thing anymore that Apple doesn’t really, it’s like they want their keyboards to be super small
⏹️ ▶️ John because they’re all used on submarines or whatever? I don’t know what the use case is for constantly making the keyboard, not
⏹️ ▶️ John just thinner, fine, whatever, I don’t really care that much about that, but narrower, like am I using it in coach
⏹️ ▶️ John class on United? I don’t know why, why does it have to be so, I’ve got this big desk here. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John take off the numeric keypad, fine, but give me an inverted T, I use those keys when I type
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, a quick comment on the thinness of keyboards here, just for a second. Articles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are saying that this new MacBook Pro has a thinner keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is like the MacBook One keyboard. This would normally freak me out, except the tipster has said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many times in the chat that yes, it is that general type of keyboard, however,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is much closer to the new standalone Magic Keyboard than the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook One’s total crap keyboard. I’ve tried the Magic Keyboard in the store. I know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey, you love yours, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I cannot say enough good things about it. With the exception, I agree, I would prefer the inverted T, but I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey learned to move on from it.
⏹️ ▶️ John page down, home and end. Don’t you miss those guys? And being in a normal place where you can find them really easily?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nope. Really honestly don’t. What year is this? Seriously.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t use page up and page down? No.
⏹️ ▶️ John on my keyboard. I never use them. You swipe on your silly little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mice? When I used Windows, I used home and end all the time, but now I use command left, command right, and that’s, you
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. No, home and end doing what they’re supposed to do, not what they do on Windows. Am I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco getting the same sense of what they do on
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows? Go to the beginning of the line. That’s not home. What world is that home? Home is the
⏹️ ▶️ John top end is the bottom
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s command up and command down easy peasy. So the point is so yeah, I love the magic keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is my favorite keyboard that I’ve ever used and I have tried just about any of the popular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey keyboards or Close variants thereof and I grew up on the IBM What was it the IBM
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M or something like that the the ridiculous
⏹️ ▶️ John buckling Springs you love them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and so I mean I’m not a keyboard snob and I don’t really typically care
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for really loud clicky keyboards however, I Love the magic keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more than anything and the only flaw I see in it is I do agree with you that I wish I Had the inverted T. So I love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m totally with you on that but overall like the magic keyboard. I think is fine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I I have no problem with that So if the tipster is right that the new MacBook Pro keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is much closer to that than to the MacBook one keyboard That’s fine however
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would just generally like to say like I there were a few people on Twitter who were kind of saying worrying things to me Earlier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about how think keyboards you keep getting thinner It is great to have laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are thin and light but in general what matters more is the light not the thin
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and keyboards weigh almost nothing no matter how thick they are like the keyboard component
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a laptop is mostly empty space and the key travel is all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco empty space of course because the keys have to move up and down all matter is mostly empty space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John thanks John and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m so happy you you
⏹️ ▶️ John added I was on the kick of like trying to just
⏹️ ▶️ John email from people the new the new level of well actually Well actually
⏹️ ▶️ John all matter is mostly anyway gone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, so anyway, so yeah keyboards are Extremely lightweight
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re talking about making laptops thinner and lighter Again lighter matters more than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thinner and if it gets to the point where you start sacrificing The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usability of the keyboard if you have to ship a crappy keyboard in order to make the laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up, you know, appealing visually to make it thinner from the side, which is an angle which nobody ever looks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at it. I think that’s a bad choice. I think Apple went too far with that, but… It’s also
⏹️ ▶️ John harder to pick up, by the way, as they get thinner. It gets harder to… Eventually, it’s like… I know they
⏹️ ▶️ John cup the edges and they make it, but like at a certain point, if you keep getting thinner and thinner, you don’t have enough edge left to even
⏹️ ▶️ John cup. And if like you put it down, it’s like trying to pick a coin off a very smooth table. It’s hard to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. It also makes it harder to open the lid. But anyway, and that’s weight too. Anyway, So like my point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, I think if you are optimizing your laptop for thinness, I think you’re optimizing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it for the wrong thing. You should let thinness follow from battery removals,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which will result in more efficient CPUs, more efficient components, things like that, and things like getting rid of the optical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drive and making other components thinner. But I don’t think you should ever be at a point where you are making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the keyboard hard to use or less ergonomically friendly or otherwise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco horrible for the sake of shaving like another millimeter off the case thickness because if the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop is still very light and is just like a millimeter thicker to accommodate better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco key switches that’s fine like that’s an acceptable trade-off for a laptop because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you want laptops to be light but you don’t need them to be paper thin and if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you just like it we’re not talking about a big difference here we’re not talking about like going back to the old powerbook g4
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thickness to have a decent keyboard you don’t need that you can look at today you can look at the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air and you can look at the MacBook Pro today and you know presumably what’s about to be in a few months
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can make a great laptop with a great keyboard that’s very very thin
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think the MacBook one took it too far and and it sounds like with with these newer MacBook Pros
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if all the rumors are right if tipsters right I think we’ll be okay again I think we will have reached
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a good balance here so I’m looking forward to seeing how that that turns out, I hope Apple does it right. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in general, I’ve been very critical to MacBook One, even though people love it, that’s fine,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you love it, good for you, I’m happy for you. In general, I expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new MacBook Pro to be awesome, both 13 and 15, based
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on both what we’ve heard, what’s been reported, and just based on, Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the things that really matter, things like the iPhone, Apple is really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have a fantastic track record. You know, Apple has never made a bad iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And similarly, I don’t think Apple has ever made a bad MacBook Pro. There have been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few that have been slightly imperfect, but for the most part, the MacBook Pro, they just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nail it. It has such a good history, such a good track record.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it has to, because the MacBook Pro is like the workhorse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the entire industry. Like, pretty much every web developer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most, you know, almost every Apple developer, tons of people inside Apple, tons of journalists, tons of people, tons of students,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, the MacBook Pro is such the workhorse of so many people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can’t screw, like, they like, legally, like, they can’t, they just can’t screw it up, like, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they know that. Apple, I think, would not take lightly major changes to the MacBook Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And their track record on it is so good that I am confident that this is going to be awesome. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, you know, even though I’m skeptical of many of the things that Apple does these days,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I definitely give them the benefit of the doubt that whatever we hear about this new MacBook Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that might sound a little bit weird, it’s probably gonna be awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree. I’m really looking forward to this. To me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like I would just be thrilled if the next MacBook Pro had a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey keyboard as close to the Magic Keyboard as possible, And also an SD card slot that didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trip my damn SD card read switch.
⏹️ ▶️ John SD card slot? No, no, you get USB 3 ports, USB-C,
⏹️ ▶️ John Type-C connectors, and that’s all, and you’ll like it, mister.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Probably right, and I was being silly about the SD card thing, but anyway, I think an improved keyboard would be great, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think the current keyboards are bad, I just freaking love the Magic Keyboard. But I agree with you, Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that they have a great track record, and I can’t see them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey releasing a dud. And even though some of these rumors are making me scratch my head a little bit, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really amped to see these and also miserable because I’m not getting a new Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from work for another two years, I think, and I’m certainly not buying one for home. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m still looking for a retina air. I know the 13 will be so thin that it’ll almost be
⏹️ ▶️ John air like. But now that the air has been freed up, you know, the 5K iMac used to have the air
⏹️ ▶️ John connected to a Thunderbolt display. and now just the air is like rattling around the house and my daughter is smearing her yogurt covered
⏹️ ▶️ John fingers on it and I’m routinely cleaning it. Anyway, 13 inch air is such a great form factor
⏹️ ▶️ John for a laptop, it’s such a good machine. The screen is crap, but everything else about it, this
⏹️ ▶️ John is like a 2011 model, right? That screen is not good, but everything else about it is just so nice. And because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a 2011 model, it’s like a five year old computer, it looks great. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John now hopefully maybe these 13s will get down to the point where it’s getting close to that because the airs haven’t been updated And
⏹️ ▶️ John he said that the pros, the workhorse is the workhorse of like, you know, professional people or people who need some sort of computing
⏹️ ▶️ John power to do their job. But the errors were the sort of computing
⏹️ ▶️ John for the, the, the, the lap, the Apple laptop for the rest of us where you’re not going to be compiling
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. You just want to like browse the web and write papers for school or whatever. It’s, it was such a great student
⏹️ ▶️ John computer was such a great computer for people who don’t have particularly demanding needs. It’s a real, a real high point. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John when we look back on the great Macs, the 13-inch Air, that design, that gen,
⏹️ ▶️ John if not the particular innards, but like when they redesigned the case and everything, that was a great computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so like the Pros, the first Retina ones were pretty impressive, and now they’re gonna go super
⏹️ ▶️ John thin and just have the USB-C ports on the side and just shave off all those things. These have the potential to be
⏹️ ▶️ John really great, long-lasting computers to remember. The Touch ID and the
⏹️ ▶️ John weird, you know, screen keys and stuff also has the potential to have them go wrong until they
⏹️ ▶️ John sort that out. But like you said, like they’re surely they’ve had enough time to work out these kinks and
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the type of thing they could have been working on for a long time. So I have some confidence that
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re going to be good as well. Although I have to admit, when I saw you, Marco tweeting about the
⏹️ ▶️ John thin keyboard thing, I thought you were talking about their external desktop keyboards that also
⏹️ ▶️ John keep getting thinner for even, as I said, even more mysterious reasons, not just like, like you know I talked about the width
⏹️ ▶️ John before with the United Airlines but they’re also getting like thinner as in lower to the desk they’re just they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John just wasting away so they’re just gonna give you a bunch of keycaps and you’ll throw them on your desk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no I mean like in Apple’s defense I mean one of the reasons I don’t use their desktop keyboards is that the ergonomics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are horrible on them and I I need something with better ergonomics to prevent RSI
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems in their defense though the worst thing about ergonomics of most desktop keyboards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is when the back is higher than the front, you know, the forward tilt. That’s terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for ergonomics. And by the way, anybody listening, if you have the feet flipped up on the back so that your keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is tilted even more, for God’s sake, flip those feet down. Put something under the front to make it level. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a reason why, if you look at natural keyboards now, like the Microsoft Sculpt and everything, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a reason why they come with this big riser on the front that lifts the front up so it’s actually tilting away from you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And everyone thinks it looks weird, it does the first time you see it, but way better for ergonomics. There’s a reason for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. Anyway, you know, if Apple makes their keyboards thinner, it actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reduces the tilt inherently. And so it slightly improves the ergonomics.
⏹️ ▶️ John They can still be totally level. Like I have a really old, like translucent plastic Apple USB keyboard I saw in the
⏹️ ▶️ John attic when I was cleaning stuff up. Those were pretty much perfectly flat as well, although they did have stupid feet in the back. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can make a keyboard that is level. It just doesn’t have to be level and also the thickness of three credit cards because
⏹️ ▶️ John again, I fear that they’re going to get to the point where they’re starting to sacrifice travel on the desktop models. It’s like what
⏹️ ▶️ John what space are you saving the airspace above my desk you want to save two millimeters of airspace please
⏹️ ▶️ John width wise and height wise don’t go nuts with the thing and I understand the part sharing with the laptops like that’s why I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it will it could it could literally be the same exact part I haven’t seen the magic keyboard I can’t tell if it’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ John a laptop worthy part but anyway I understand the the economies of scale going on here
⏹️ ▶️ John I I just think that the desktop keyboards and also the little edges around it. People are like, sometimes it’s hard to pick up my keyboard if I want to move it because
⏹️ ▶️ John how the hell do you pick it up because the keycaps go right to the edge. It’s a little bit extreme. It’s a little bit, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John getting into the realm of form over function where like, what do I have to do with the keyboard? I want to
⏹️ ▶️ John type on it. Sometimes you have to move it around. I don’t really care if it looks like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I do care if it looks like a beautiful piece of art, but when that look starts to compromise
⏹️ ▶️ John the basic things I do with my keyboard, including occasionally picking them up or moving them around. It’s silly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is today’s Apple. The desktop keyboards, I mean, if there’s ever a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that they make that that form of a function wins, it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the desktop input peripherals because the function part doesn’t really matter. Anybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who cares about the ergonomics or the size or the layout of the key switches or the thickness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of their desktop keyboard, they’re just going to use a different keyboard and this is like exactly the kind of area
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where Johnny Ives gonna come in and be like all right well this needs to look even thinner and even sleeker so that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks great in all of our press shots and so the iMac looks great and and they look great in the stores and the boxes can be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smaller and all this stuff like that this is exactly the kind of area where Apple would absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go nuts and and sacrifice functionality for form and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the cost of that isn’t so big it’s way worse than the laptops where as I said you’re kind of stuck
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the keyboard that’s in a laptop. So that I think is the bigger area we have to watch out for.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I do feel like, even though I just got done praising Apple for how awesome they’re probably going to be with this, I do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel like that I’m kind of always on edge, trying to defend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and hold on to things on Apple products that work well or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are ergonomically friendly. Because I feel like I’m always battling Johnny Ive on like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, you please stop making things worse or harder to use or more slippery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or you know with the Apple TV remote where you can’t even tell which way is up and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your present things are on. Like please, like please Johnny, stop, stay away from my things. You’re sanding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off all the things that make them usable. Like and I am a little bit worried about that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that angle of Apple kind of taking over more than it should. And that I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long-term, both present and into the near future, I think that is a major concern that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many of us should have about Apple. That real-world usability and ergonomics seem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be a very low priority and an ever-shrinking one that they’re happy to borrow from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make gains in thinness and appearance.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or they’ve just forgotten how to do it. But like the keyboard I have, the Apple Extended Aluminum Keyboard, I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John bought many of these. I’ve gone through a couple of them actually breaking the keys, which maybe doesn’t speak to the reliability
⏹️ ▶️ John of the keyboard, considering I’ve used the Apple Extended 2 for years and the only way I broke it is because I dropped my pocket knife off
⏹️ ▶️ John of a shelf onto it and snapped off one of the function keys. But I like the
⏹️ ▶️ John apple extended aluminum keyboard in every aspect except for the fact that the stupid top row of function
⏹️ ▶️ John keys is too close to the number keys and is not full size. But every other aspect
⏹️ ▶️ John of it, I like I like that it’s thin and small and doesn’t have any excess room. It doesn’t have any excess
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of trimming and stuff around that it could be a little bit flatter because it does tilt up a little bit but it is
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the a reasonable interpretation of the minimalist flat thing I like the fact that the keys have
⏹️ ▶️ John low effort because that helps my RSI and I can’t type on a keyboard so like if
⏹️ ▶️ John you if given the choice if you can have any keyboard in the world with your new Mac this is still the one that I would pick because it’s still
⏹️ ▶️ John basically my favorite keyboard out of all the ones that I’ve tried you know and I can’t use my
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple extended to anymore but they went a little bit farther like the next keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John is like well the other one had a little bit of a rim around the edge so you could pick it up. Can we shave that off?” And the answer
⏹️ ▶️ John is yes we can. And can we put it directly down to the ground instead of having a lip where you can get your fingers underneath it? Well we can do that
⏹️ ▶️ John too. And can you take off all those useful keys that people use sometimes? Yep, they can do that too. And now I’m sad.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you can still buy this one by the way. Like you can still buy the extended keyboard with your new computer. It’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like you feel like you’re getting the last generation thing. You can buy this shiny new keyboard that Casey has and he loves
⏹️ ▶️ John so much with these cool key switches that I like too. I tried them in the Apple I think they’re great too. Or
⏹️ ▶️ John you can get this old keyboard that silly people use with the extra keys on them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I one of the things I love about this keyboard is that it is so darn flat. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wouldn’t say I ever was seeking out a keyboard that’s flat, but now that it’s in front
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of me, I like that it’s so flat because I feel like it works better
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me ergonomically. Now, maybe that’s wrong. Maybe I’m crazy, but it feels good to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And and I like that if I decide to take my iPad on a trip for example
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t want to take my full-on 15-inch work computer I can just throw this keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my bag and it’s like it’s not even there. It’s thin it’s light and it’s my favorite keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have ever used so I know I talk about it constantly, but I cannot say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough good things about this keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a great portable keyboard, but you know, I’m not buying it for portable and buying it It’s like this is the one that’s gonna be attached
⏹️ ▶️ John to it And by the way, I like when they’re attached with the wire, because again, I have a place for the wire to go, and I don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ John to deal with Bluetooth, and I don’t need to deal with batteries, because it’s never gonna go anywhere. It’s always gonna be plugged into my computer. It’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, and the flatness, again, is not an innovation of this particular keyboard, because like I said,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s been flat keyboards from Apple and others forever and ever and ever without any feet, without anything, and they’re just
⏹️ ▶️ John nice and level. It’s the tucking in of the edges, and the bringing of the edges straight down to
⏹️ ▶️ John the table, and the trimming off of the keys, the not having a space between the numbers
⏹️ ▶️ John and the function keys because that would make the keyboard ever so slightly bigger. It’s like, yeah, all right, if you’re making
⏹️ ▶️ John a portable keyboard, I see that trade-off. You want it to fit in your backpack every every millimeter counts. If it’s gonna be on my desk,
⏹️ ▶️ John every millimeter does not count in the same way and it just strikes me as a bad trade-off.
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Apple and AI services
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you had written a post, Marco, about whether or not Apple’s kind of allowing themselves to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get left behind on this whole intelligent assistant thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can’t we just talk about the MacBook Pro some more instead?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I think we’ve beaten that to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco death at this point.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I don’t necessarily need to get into the article too much, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought it was reasonable. And then, curiously, a day or two later,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s an article on The Information about Apple’s opening
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up Siri and it’s developing an Echo rival. Interesting. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, this could be a coincidence. It could be a controlled leaking response. I have no idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s probably a coincidence, if I, you know, being realistic here. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, so I mean, I don’t want to go too far into it. of my article was, this is another one of these situations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where I write something critical about Apple on my blog and it just goes everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This time, I don’t feel bad about it. With the whole functional high ground
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing, I mainly felt bad about it because, A, I did not expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that at all. I had never seen that kind of response before, so it was more of a shock. B,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bigger reason is that I just didn’t write it very well. I didn’t do a very good job of writing it, and so I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was kind of embarrassed that a lot of people, including people at Apple, saw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this and it wasn’t very good work. So that’s why I kind of had a hard time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back then with the high ground thing. But this time I wrote this piece
⏹️ ▶️ Marco knowing that there was a chance that it might spread, although I didn’t expect the spread of God
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all, but knowing there was a chance it might spread. And I wrote it very carefully,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much more carefully than the high ground thing. And I think what came out, I stand by it. The only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that I regretted was I had originally titled it Avoiding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Blackberry’s Fate. That kind of implied that if Apple doesn’t make this big shift, they will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco definitely fail the way Blackberry did exactly. And that was not my point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I was trying to make, so I retitled it about a day in to something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more closer to what I actually meant. The rest of it, I totally stand by, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t regret it at all, and so I feel pretty good about it. And it did spread way further than I thought, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many of the crappy rewrites of it have been crappy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Business Insider did what they always do, and that’s fine. I sent their visitors to the fish meat stick video.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And, you know, all the sensational news sites and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the crappy TV people and all the other crappy sites, they’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do what they’re gonna do. And all I need is to be comfortable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco myself in standing by what I wrote, in knowing myself that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did good work, that I wrote it, that I expressed myself properly in the way I wanted to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco explain myself. You will not get that reference at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m happy with what I wrote. And so what I wrote basically, which I realized now I forgot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to say at the beginning of this giant rant, sorry. See, I don’t stand by this giant rant now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But so what I wrote was basically, I think, you know, Google
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Amazon and Facebook and, as many people pointed out, which I didn’t, Microsoft,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re all making these huge developments in AI-like big data
⏹️ ▶️ Marco services. So things like, you know, obviously in the old days things like search and maps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and directory stuff and then now in recent times these like kind of like assistant these virtual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assistants chatbot things like Siri and Cortana and Google Now and stuff like that and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the Amazon Echo and the Google Home Weeble thing and whatever you know whatever Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Apple and Facebook and everybody else are gonna come up with next if the industry shifts to prioritize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the functionality of these virtual assistants of this kind of big data
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AI problem as like the primary thing people care about or the primary functionality people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want, Apple is not in a good place for that. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made the BlackBerry analogy because when the iPhone came out, BlackBerry was on top
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the world and they were doing really well. The reason BlackBerry was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so screwed is because when Apple came out, they changed the game completely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to raise everyone’s expectations of what phones could and should do in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco areas that RIM, they could not catch up at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that point if they wanted to because Apple had moved the goalposts into this area where, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now to be competitive you need to have a desktop class operating system, this incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complex manufacturing pipeline to make these incredibly precise, high-quality devices,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this massive store ecosystem with all these credit cards on file, and all these developer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tools and the ecosystem of computers surrounding them and all this crazy stuff that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPhone was, all the stuff that enabled the iPhone with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assets that Apple had been building up for a decade before that. No matter what BlackBerry did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at that point, because they weren’t building that kind of assets for a decade, they were not going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to catch up. The writing was on the wall as soon as Steve showed the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in early 2007, before it even blew up with the App Store a year later. The writing was on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wall for BlackBerry because the gap was too wide. They would not be able to catch up to what the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had now redefined smartphones to be. You look now and you see these services.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple started out this whole thing with Siri. And yes, I know Google was doing voice stuff before that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, thank you. But Apple kind of started the virtual assistant revolution with Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in 2011. It has progressed. It has gotten better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It has gotten more advanced. It has added more languages around the world, which is not an easy thing to do. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ultimately, Siri still feels like a first-generation version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this product, while the competitors are all moving past that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in certain attributes. So you look at the Amazon Echo, and the Echo only supports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically US English and only is useful to people in the US for most of its functionality.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the functionality it does for those US English speakers, it does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that stuff better and more reliably and faster than Siri does most of the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You look at Google is going to be way better at international support, way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better at different languages, and Google’s also doing a lot of this stuff better, faster,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more reliably now with their Google Now stuff and all the other Android things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t understand. You know it’s hard to look at this and to see,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, if we all start using these virtual assistants as our primary interfaces, like in two years or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever, is Apple really gonna catch up to what Google is doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and what they will have in two years? I don’t think so. Because Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not good at big data problems. You know, number one example
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this is the App Store search. You could argue, okay, well maybe that’s like one department that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has these technical burdens or whatever else. Fine, maybe that’s true. Okay, what about Siri, where it really matters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot? Siri, again, it’s kind of a Gen 1 product in a Gen 2 world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. And so it is possible, we’ve heard lots of rumblings, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple has made some key acquisitions and investments
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the last year or two, and that this WBDC, they’re going to come out with something major, and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s gonna be amazing, and that might be true, but just as I said earlier, that Apple has an amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco track record of MacBook Pro updates. Apple has a really terrible track record
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of big data AI problem updates. You hear, oh, we’ve improved Siri, we’ve now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco added these capabilities, or now it’s better, or now you can do this, and yet, somehow it’s still unreliable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and inconsistent, and sometimes not that smart. Apple has the opposite problem here of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any hype that’s about what Apple might do at WWDC to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of a sudden show us that they’re an amazing AI and big data company. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believe that for a second. I would love to be proven wrong. I really hope I’m proven wrong because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would so much rather have Apple do well at this stuff than have to switch all my garbage to Android.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I don’t have a lot of confidence in Apple doing this stuff because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their track record just is not very strong.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So there was an interesting article that I saw today, and I’m assuming it was posted today, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was yesterday, on Pixel Envy, and it was titled, Meet Vocal IQ. Vocal
⏹️ ▶️ Casey IQ is a small Cambridge-based startup launched in 2011 that specializes in natural speak recognition and conversational
⏹️ ▶️ Casey interactions. From a Times article, this is Times UK,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey published in June, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, this is a quote from one of their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey employees. One of our key projects is to develop a car that can talk to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you like a Knight Rider. Awesome. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these people got acquired by Apple in October. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so there was a quote by someone who’s been following this. If Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey utilizes just a small subset of the technology developed by Vocal IQ, we will see a far more advanced Siri. However, I’m quite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey certain that the amazing work of Tom Gruber will also be utilized. Additionally, the amazing technology from Emolient,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Perception, and a number of other unannounced and future Apple acquisitions will also become a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey big part of Apple’s AI future. So Perception apparently was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually Perceptio, which was a photo classification startup,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which reminds me a lot of Google Photos, which I’ve also been talking about constantly lately because it is amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you put all this together in this article, which is very short, ends with So, who’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excited for WWDC? And I just think it’s interesting. You know, they’ve been making a lot of acquisitions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that are right in this wheelhouse, and we don’t know what they’ve been up to, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hopefully there’s something there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope that’s right. I mean, again, like, I really hope I’m wrong on this. I really hope Apple just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suddenly comes out and is really good at this stuff. Unfortunately, I don’t think it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco works that way. I don’t think this is the kind of thing you can do quickly. One thing that’s worth investigating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, yeah, they’ve made acquisitions like this and like the Siri people. Why do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these people not stick around? Is there something about Apple’s culture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or their organizational structure or the departments that these people are hired to work in?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Why don’t they stick around? Why does Apple need to go buying people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in order to get this kind of talent in the company? Is this a problem? And are there other ways to fix this? Other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems need to be solved first. I don’t know. I don’t know enough about how they work internally to really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have good insight into this, but what I can see is from the outside, and again, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, every time anybody criticizes any or has some kind of fear about Apple or tries to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, or is pessimistic about Apple in the springtime, everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always says, oh, just wait. Oh, just wait. You’re going to see. This is so stupid for you to be thinking about this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, because just wait until WBDC. Well, you know what? WWDC is not like Santa Claus. It’s not magic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re not going to solve every problem that everybody wants them to solve in one keynote and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not realistic. People say that I am naive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for thinking Apple’s not working on this stuff. I think thinking Apple’s going to magically solve everything in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two weeks is naive. I think we can look at what Apple services are today
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and what they have been. kind of things like Siri, things like search and relevancy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and predictive inputs, things like proactive on the phones and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We see what Apple News, Apple Music, even the recommendations, we see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s current capabilities and we know their past capabilities in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big data AI based web services. We see that they can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it, they can manage to have a service out there and it can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work most of the time and be up most of the time and be fast most of the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that’s like what was good enough five years ago, ten years ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And now the companies who were really good at this stuff, like Google,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have moved to a different level of sophistication and performance and consistency.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we haven’t seen Apple match that level. It took them a pretty long time to get to the last level.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So again, look at their track record and I don’t think it’s unreasonable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be concerned about this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey David Schaub made a good point in the chat. Startup people, like from all these acquisitions,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey often aren’t compatible with big companies or perhaps moving to the Cupertino
⏹️ ▶️ Casey area. So maybe you’re happy in Boston like this Vocal IQ company was. You get It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bought up by Apple, you’re expected to move. And sometimes people just like the chase
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a startup. Sometimes they just don’t like being always on vacation in California. And it could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be that it has nothing to do with Apple at all, and it’s just the kind of mindset
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or geographical situation from these companies that are being bought. Or it could be that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey their new corporate overlords are killing them, and they just can’t handle it anymore. I don’t know. What
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do you think, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John On an upcoming episode of another podcast on another network. I had a long discussion
⏹️ ▶️ John about Apple not talking about you know agents
⏹️ ▶️ John or services or things like the the Google home thing or the
⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon echo or Siri or Cortana or any of that stuff but about the
⏹️ ▶️ John more mundane aspects of cloud computing that it seems that Apple still has yet to master
⏹️ ▶️ John and in particular the simple idea of that you have an Apple ID
⏹️ ▶️ John that you were signed into the Apple ID in various applications on your phone and that it lets you do things like
⏹️ ▶️ John see your past purchases make new purchases download your music for you
⏹️ ▶️ John know Apple Music or iTunes match see your photos all
⏹️ ▶️ John those things and the utter mess the that
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole identity and login system is both on the web on your Mac but especially
⏹️ ▶️ John on your phone with the series of dialogues popping up and you entering your password and having no idea why you’re being
⏹️ ▶️ John prompted and why you’re being prompted again that is not just like level one
⏹️ ▶️ John or 1.0 or whatever that’s like level zero many many years
⏹️ ▶️ John ago that Apple still hasn’t gotten right so
⏹️ ▶️ John I continue to think of you know I’ve been being this Trump for ages about Apple and services
⏹️ ▶️ John that just sort of having something that looks on the outside just like everyone else’s service like yay we’ve done it
⏹️ ▶️ John we have a service we’re a services company you have to keep evolving the basic
⏹️ ▶️ John parts of your system sort of in the same way that you know in the beginning Google was a search
⏹️ ▶️ John box that you type terms into eventually there was something to sign into I forget what the first Google thing to sign
⏹️ ▶️ John into it was maybe it was Gmail, maybe it was something else. Eventually there was the concept of a Google account that
⏹️ ▶️ John was unifying all the various Google things together. And the way Google authentication
⏹️ ▶️ John works and the way it’s consistent, uh, referencing some, uh, tweets that Craig Hockenberry had been doing recently about the whole,
⏹️ ▶️ John how many different ways can you log in with your Apple ID just on websites alone and his speculation
⏹️ ▶️ John that each of those talks to a different backend and that they’re all sort of diverse and it’s just, it’s just such
⏹️ ▶️ John a big mess compared to how Google’s authentication and login
⏹️ ▶️ John system has evolved over the years to get sort of more sturdy, more
⏹️ ▶️ John centralized, more comforting, more reassuring, more reliable, more predictable.
⏹️ ▶️ John Whereas Apple’s has gone in the opposite direction. It started off as small and humble and has become fragmented,
⏹️ ▶️ John confusing, and broken a lot of the time and inexplicable. And like we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John just talking about logging in. We’re not talking about understand my natural language query that I’m speaking
⏹️ ▶️ John into my phone, which seems like it’s a harder problem. But if you neglect the fundamentals, if you don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John but Margot was talking about like the, why are these people not staying in the company as top of this compound past shows as well,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, it could be that a serial entrepreneurs and want to move on to other things. But Apple’s an organization has
⏹️ ▶️ John never seemed to value the type of infrastructure work that is necessary to be a world class
⏹️ ▶️ John services organization that you, you can have every project to do everything on its own, you have to sort of build
⏹️ ▶️ John up a common core infrastructure like it has like again, this is a repeat of shows from many years ago, but like, like
⏹️ ▶️ John it has on the OS side, they had a core OS, they developed it, they use it as the underpinning for their new
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac operating system, it eventually ended up being the underpinning for their phone operating system, also for their watch operating system,
⏹️ ▶️ John also for their h 264 HDMI adapter cable for, you know, whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t have iOS in it, I forget. Anyway, like core technologies, Cocoa, Objective C, their compiler
⏹️ ▶️ John infrastructure, their their development tools, Like, on the client side in the non service world,
⏹️ ▶️ John they understand that it’s stupid for every product to have its own little thing. Unify share where possible,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, it just makes more sense. And then on the service side, they haven’t quite gotten that down
⏹️ ▶️ John to the most basic thing you could possibly do with a service, which is like login, and have an application that knows that you’re logged
⏹️ ▶️ John in, that doesn’t ask you to log in repeatedly for no reason, it doesn’t lose your login credentials doesn’t get confused that you don’t have bad weather
⏹️ ▶️ John iCloud days, where things just don’t seem to be working. Like I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know how many more people get sick of hearing it about this and me listing off all the technologies that Google has had and developed
⏹️ ▶️ John over the years that are not for a specific project that are so that anybody at Google can
⏹️ ▶️ John make a scalable, worldwide, reliable, redundant, performant network service
⏹️ ▶️ John on top of these things that they build and this whole section of the company at Google. All they do is make that infrastructure
⏹️ ▶️ John better and better and revise and replace this one with a better version than that. And that and just it it’s a rising tide lifts
⏹️ ▶️ John all boats and Apple is just like you’re chucked out into sea with life preserver and sent to fend for yourself.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even the whole the Siri people touting like they’re moving to the Apache, was it Mezos or something or whatever? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, if the impression that team is like, solving a problem for themselves, like, why is there not an apple wide
⏹️ ▶️ John solution to anybody who wants to write a service like this? That is infrastructure for the whole company? Why is the product
⏹️ ▶️ John team doing it? I don’t know. It’s just it seems to me they just don’t get it. And that, to me explains partly
⏹️ ▶️ John why people who aren’t serial entrepreneurs, but just merely want to work in a company that values that type of work would definitely go
⏹️ ▶️ John to work for Google or even Amazon or Facebook before they would go for Apple because those companies are so much more focused
⏹️ ▶️ John on valuing those server side and operations and data center things. Whereas Apple’s like we
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of try to do it in house and we kind of farm stuff out to Azure and Amazon, but we’re not really good at that stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John We mostly make cool devices. And that’s, that’s just not going to cut it long term, regardless of whether AI is awesome
⏹️ ▶️ John or anything. I think it’s not cutting it today. And it’s just not going to cut it even for basic stuff like photos, which
⏹️ ▶️ John even if you set aside all the cool stuff that Casey loves about Google Photos, just the basics of doing photos
⏹️ ▶️ John right and having them in the cloud and everything, took them so long to even get like sort of a passable level of having
⏹️ ▶️ John things working and so many different tries. And I guess, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John CloudKit is an attempt to do that type of infrastructure, but it’s like, they’re just taking too long and they’re moving
⏹️ ▶️ John too slowly and everyone else is too far ahead of them. Again, repeats of stuff I said last week, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s on my mind a lot because I use a lot of Apple products and every time I think about, is that I’m starting
⏹️ ▶️ John to think about are there aspects of my life that I use Apple with that I would be better off using someone
⏹️ ▶️ John else with? Down to things like Google Photos with Casey talking about that. But you know, all the way up to,
⏹️ ▶️ John should I stop trying to use Siri and should I use Google Now? Like I’m not gonna go out and get an Android phone at this point, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean I already use Gmail for my mail. I would never use Apple’s mail system for my mail for a variety of reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, Apple’s losing on a lot of these fronts.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, Google Photos, and I think I may have briefly mentioned this last episode, it’s really rocked my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey world in an uncomfortable way because it really makes me wonder, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am I missing out on just giving Google everything about everything and having
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that kind of intelligent assistant thing for me?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be looking at Android?
⏹️ ▶️ John You should use the Gmail web interface because it knows when your flights are coming and And it puts a little thing there and you can unsubscribe
⏹️ ▶️ John to lists from like little buttons on your like it’s it does smart things with your email and gives you little buttons without even
⏹️ ▶️ John having to go into them to and it can put things on your calendar based on what’s in there and that may sound
⏹️ ▶️ John annoying and everything but it’s it’s actually really convenient.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Google Photos has shown me like if you’re willing to give Google in this case all of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your pictures it’s stunning how much intelligence they can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey provide you based on that. You know, if I want to search for a picture
⏹️ ▶️ Casey taken on a patio in 2012, I probably could search for that and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it would probably find it pretty quickly. It’s unbelievable the things that can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put together just from the metadata in my pictures. And so it’s not hard to extrapolate. Well, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s able to get all this from my pictures, what could it do with my email and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe with searches and things? And so on the one side, every ounce of me is like, no, that’s a terrible idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You don’t want Google looking at all those things. And then the opposite side of me thinks,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, it is pretty damn convenient. Is it really that big a deal? I mean, they already have my email. Why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not take the rest? So it’s, it’s very weird what Google photos has done because it’s really made me start
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thinking about, is it worth trading some of that privacy and some of that data to get something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is actually useful out of it.
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Best of Apple and Google
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot to her for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was going to say one other thing that came up last week. Again, I feel like I mentioned this to
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco and Slack. I just feel that the crushing invisibility of podcasts because I feel like we had
⏹️ ▶️ John this discussion on last week’s ATP and nobody knew or cared like it has to be written down somewhere that people
⏹️ ▶️ John can link to before anyone cares about it. But anyway, something else that was discussed last week that I also
⏹️ ▶️ John saw written down in places was I remember was reminiscing about the old days when
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple and Google were friends and when Apple introduced the iPhone, it was like we made this amazing hardware and this amazing
⏹️ ▶️ John OS on this device that’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before, and it’s powered by these Google services.
⏹️ ▶️ John And what a great partnership, isn’t that? Isn’t that great? We make the OS and the hardware, Apple, Google does the services
⏹️ ▶️ John and together you have the best of all possible worlds because we are the best at making hardware. We are the best at making native
⏹️ ▶️ John client side applications. Google is the best at maps. They’re the best at online services. They’re the best at search.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we’re so integrated that we have, you know, our Maps application is essentially Google’s map application.
⏹️ ▶️ John Google provides the data. We wrote the application. It’s a marriage made in heaven. And they got divorced and we were all sad.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I don’t know if that’s what we’re moving towards, if like if Apple can never figure this stuff out
⏹️ ▶️ John and if Google continues to not be able to make the money and inroads that
⏹️ ▶️ John it wants to from Android and instead the money from Android ends up going to other people like could we end up
⏹️ ▶️ John years and years down the road where they come back to the table and say you know what we should have never broken up
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve learned that it’s really hard to make money selling hardware especially when you give away the OS for kind of free and
⏹️ ▶️ John in China they make Android phones without using any of the Google services and we kind of let this whole thing get away from
⏹️ ▶️ John us and Apple’s like we tried to make services but it’s really hard and we’re not good at it so why don’t we just do
⏹️ ▶️ John what we’re each good at and together we can make a great phone platform where Siri
⏹️ ▶️ John will be powered by Google now and I message will be replaced with a decent service that doesn’t send messages out of
⏹️ ▶️ John order and has actual new features in it But it’ll be end-to-end encrypted and you know I
⏹️ ▶️ John want the best of both worlds and for a brief time it seemed like that’s what we were gonna get until Both
⏹️ ▶️ John Android and Apple decided they were both gonna do everything that the other person does only better and thus far
⏹️ ▶️ John Their their strengths remain the same Google is getting better at hardware Apple’s getting better at
⏹️ ▶️ John services but if you were to lay them down again, you would say, who’s the best at making hardware and operating systems and all that stuff?
⏹️ ▶️ John Still Apple. Who’s the best at making services? Still Google. So I don’t know what the long-term solution is, but as a customer,
⏹️ ▶️ John and not someone who really cares about either one of those two companies ruling the entire world, it
⏹️ ▶️ John would be nice if we could turn back the clock on that relationship.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the good thing is, I feel like, if you look at the situation on the Mac, ignoring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS for a second, look at the Mac, And on the Mac, you have pretty much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you want. You have tons of people who use Macs, running Mac OS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco X, with all Apple stuff under it, maybe even use iCloud for certain things, but who use Chrome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as their browser, who use Gmail for their mail, maybe have Google Photos, whatever, uploader, however that works, installed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco On the Mac, you have that world of choice, where you can totally be bought into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Google ecosystem and still be using a Mac with Mac OS as your computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have all the Google stuff running there if you want it.
⏹️ ▶️ John They had Siri to OS X though, we’re not gonna be able to replace it with Google now. Like that’s the strategy tax type of thing where like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, well if you want a voice assistant that helps you on your Mac, you only get to choose the Apple one. The only, it’s almost like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s an accident of history. Well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not true though, because on the Mac, you have like the system ability for, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s nothing stopping Google from running their own demon in the background that’s listening on the microphone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for its own commands. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John on iOS, that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not possible, you know, in the software environment.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s gonna be OS level integration, though, that Siri’s gonna be favored with, and I guess you could say, like, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac, all is fair if you get admin access, and you could bypass the system integrity protection,
⏹️ ▶️ John and hack the Finder, and get your things into the Docker, like, whatever, like, Apple always still has
⏹️ ▶️ John an advantage, even for things like Spotlight, and stuff like that, like Google tried, didn’t Google have, like, a Spotlight competitor that was trying
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco use the public
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff like that? it’s really hard, you know, and that’s what I’m saying, like, it’s almost an accident of history that the web browsers
⏹️ ▶️ John can because web browsers to plain old application. And so there’s no real barrier to entry there, even, you know, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John since Apple still has a way for you to pick where your default browser is on a Mac, unlike iOS. But as you get more and more integrated
⏹️ ▶️ John into sort of system components, it becomes harder for any third party, no matter how good they are to compete with
⏹️ ▶️ John the built in one, not only because it’s built in, but also because like, there are deep hooks that
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t get at, or you can only get at doing nasty hacks that you have to maintain. And so In practice, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John really hard, no matter how bad Spotlight is, and no matter how good Google’s thing could have been, it’s been really hard
⏹️ ▶️ John for them to make a better Spotlight. And I imagine Siri will be similar. It will be harder for them to
⏹️ ▶️ John integrate their voice. And then on iOS, forget it. You don’t have a choice of so many things. You can’t change the default to anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s just frustrating.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think on the Mac, I think the gap there between what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have possible now and the world you imagine as the ideal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world here, that gap is pretty small. I think we’re almost there. We’re pretty much there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, where if Google wants to make all their stuff for Mac OS X and integrate their own alternatives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in as many ways as they possibly can, there are lots of ways to do that right now. And that’s pretty much possible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. And in many ways, it’s already done. Things like Chrome and Gmail and stuff like that. That’s pretty much done. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m worried about though. I’m worried about it actually getting worse That’s the next topic that we probably won’t have time to get to in this show But the next
⏹️ ▶️ John topic maybe we’ll get to next week is about Chromebooks outselling Macs in school The problem is the Google
⏹️ ▶️ John because you know Apple Google both want to do everything that everybody does Google’s like we should Sell laptops and we should
⏹️ ▶️ John have you know, like it’s like well, we don’t have a desktop OS. What should we do? Well, can we make a Chrome
⏹️ ▶️ John OS or can we put Android on Chromebooks like we have an OS It’s not really a desktop OS, but maybe like
⏹️ ▶️ John that everyone wants to be in everything It’s almost kind of like but only by the good graces of Google the Google
⏹️ ▶️ John is so nice to you know Not that they’re doing it, you know, how the goodness of their heart they want our information in our eyeball
⏹️ ▶️ John You know everything else whatever but they make their applications for iOS and for the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is not making FaceTime for Android, you know, I guess it’s not an open standard that ever,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know It kept going back to that Well, but like Apple keeps itself to its stuff to its own platform when it’s feasible.
⏹️ ▶️ John Where is Google? it’s more important to get its thing everywhere. So we are blessed with these
⏹️ ▶️ John gifts from Google, but like, oh, I can use you know, there’s a there’s a native, quote, unquote, native Gmail
⏹️ ▶️ John application for iOS. And there’s Google Now. And there’s Google Maps for iOS, even though Apple took the mapping
⏹️ ▶️ John thing back into their own native thing. And I worry that someday, like the Cold War will get even colder,
⏹️ ▶️ John and Google will start behaving even more like Apple and will be even more solid. And then the Mac will be
⏹️ ▶️ John like this, even the things we enjoy now will be pulled away for me. And I feel like with system integrity protection and
⏹️ ▶️ John other things, it’s getting farther and farther away from the world where anybody could compete with built in Apple stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John All you can really compete with is Apple applications.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I feel like you know, Google and Apple are both under different leadership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than where they were when this feud really was at its hottest. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I think you can look at both companies now and see that they’re they’re very pragmatic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a lot of their decisions. And I don’t think you’re ever going to see some kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grand reunification where Tim Cook comes out and is like, Oh, now we’ve partnered with Google to replace… You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never going to see that. But I think what you will see is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple yielding certain ground to enable people to do that kind of thing if they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to. So I’m not saying they’re going to suddenly have everything this fall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where like, Oh, you can set your default mail to be Gmail, you can set your default browser to be a Chromebook. I expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we probably will get to that type of thing slowly over time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the market kind of directs Apple to do that. There’s enough demand now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple now offers their own versions of all these different services. Google is offering their versions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all these different OSs and hardware and stuff. So you’re right, there’s a lot of duplication here. And that’s great because the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who really love Google can go buy a Chromebook or whatever and an Android phone and get all their Google
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff. The people who really love Apple can go buy Apple hardware, run Apple software, run all Apple services.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Most people are somewhere in the middle. Most people love some stuff from multiple companies and aren’t purists
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of either company or any company. So the more that both companies do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to address that giant middle where most of the customers are,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the more they both really benefit. And both companies’ leadership are smart enough to know that. And they’re also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, realizing, in the same way when Steve came back and gave that big speech with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bill Gates on the big screen and said, for Apple to win, Microsoft doesn’t have to lose,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or vice versa, whatever that quote was. I think Tim Cook knows that even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco though it’s pretty clear that he obviously thinks a lot of what Google does is distasteful,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and he’s right, and Google obviously thinks a lot of what Apple does is arrogant and technically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inferior, and they’re right. But the reality is, I think, both companies know that Google knows that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a services company, it has to be everywhere. It has to be where the people are. And a lot of the people are on Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff. And Apple knows that a lot of its customers who buy its devices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really want to use some of Google’s stuff on them. So they’re both going to address that. They’re not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to let that demand go totally unanswered in the name of spite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over a 10-year-old battle that neither company’s CEO was really part
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, but the thing, the things that’s motivating, seems to be motivating Apple now to, to
⏹️ ▶️ John bestow its gifts onto other platforms is the things that are services, like Apple Music. This is
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Music for Android, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah. Am I not imagining that right? Yes, there
⏹️ ▶️ John is. So, because Apple Music is a service, once, for products that are like services,
⏹️ ▶️ John you end up using the Google rationale. Well, it’s a service, and the most important thing is that we have a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John customers, so it has to be everywhere, right? Same thing that motivated iTunes for Windows. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, when you’re in the service mindset for your service products, the calculus
⏹️ ▶️ John is different and you end up putting it everywhere. But the other calculus, when it is
⏹️ ▶️ John like, this is the reason someone would buy a Mac, or this is the reason someone would buy a phone when you use FaceTime
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, when it’s more linked to hardware, software, proprietary platforms where it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a service, where your main goal isn’t to get everyone in the world using it, you want people to buy iPhones, you want people
⏹️ ▶️ John to buy Macs when it’s like your hardware business, then the opposite motivation comes in. So Apple is getting
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit of the services motivation, saying, if we have services products, we need to have them more than just
⏹️ ▶️ John on our platforms, if you want a large customer base. And again, Google, because they want to do everything Apple does, is starting
⏹️ ▶️ John to make hardware products. And I wonder if they say, well, normally, there are our culture and our motivation to be
⏹️ ▶️ John everything we do is Google’s get as many users as possible, because their data is the most important thing to us. And we can sell based on them
⏹️ ▶️ John and blah, But when we do these hardware products, if we actually want to,
⏹️ ▶️ John if we can overcome our own company culture and motivate these hardware products, like to say, you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to make a great product that people want to buy, and we want to sell a lot of them, you have to think in a different mindset. Thus
⏹️ ▶️ John far, Google has not been able to get into that mindset, which is why most of their hardware has not sold like hotcakes, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And thus far, mostly Apple’s not been able to get into the right mindset to be really successful at services either.
⏹️ ▶️ John So as Apple learns, if Google continues to learn to it will mean that they will start doing some of the things
⏹️ ▶️ John that I don’t like about Apple not sharing their stuff. So I’m not sure the net sharing between them will be better. I think the
⏹️ ▶️ John only thing that is going to make the net sharing between them improve is for the power
⏹️ ▶️ John balance to shift kind of the same way that the net sharing between Apple and Microsoft really started
⏹️ ▶️ John to move once the parents power balance shifted once once Apple was almost going out of business. Microsoft was like, Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, I remember them. All right, we’ll make office for you. 150 million dollars will sell our shares
⏹️ ▶️ John too early and regret it. I think someone did the math of what
⏹️ ▶️ John that would be worth if they had kept it. Anyway, if the power bounces way off something that you
⏹️ ▶️ John can come to the table or right where it’s like the cold war where you know everyone wants to show strength
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone wants to do anything and it’s not a particularly comfortable time but yeah you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John right in the meantime I will continue to use Chrome and Safari and the Gmail and the web interface.
⏹️ ▶️ John What else do I use from Google? Google Drive, Google Docs, we’re using it right now for
⏹️ ▶️ John the show notes that Marco’s not looking at.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco The Google search engine,
⏹️ ▶️ John Google Maps. Yeah, Google search engine, obviously. It’s a mix, but on iOS, definitely, it’s much harder
⏹️ ▶️ John to achieve that mix, and I worry about the mix. And I look forward, what I’m saying is I look forward to the time that this balance shifts in some
⏹️ ▶️ John way, and the companies can go back, can get out from this sort of megalomaniacal
⏹️ ▶️ John mindset that the old Microsoft mindset that not only can we
⏹️ ▶️ John do everything because we are the mighty insert company name, we should do everything and we’re going to be awesome
⏹️ ▶️ John at it. And that’s a bad attitude for any company, Google, Apple or anything. And it mostly leads to bad
⏹️ ▶️ John things. But the iPhone is a rising tide that lifts a hell of a lot of boats. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so far, Apple is not feeling the sting from that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Fracture, FreshBooks, and Hover. We will see you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean to begin, Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John let him, Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. And you
⏹️ ▶️ John can find the show notes at ATP.FM And
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T. Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Marco S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to.
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check podcast so
Post-show: Google Photos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Man I feel like Casey I feel like I have to like save you in some way from like tripping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and falling into Android like in the same way like we were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a about two years ago you started talking about. Not wanting a BMW
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but instead of wanting one of those like weird sporty new Cadillacs it’s like all straight lines
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I’m like, you look at that and you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I was like, just no, I have to save you. Back away from this cliff. I’m like, I’m like holding the back of your shirt. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, I’m not going to let you go over this cliff. Like you are not doing, trust me, you will thank me later. You’re not doing this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right. I feel like this might be that moment for tripping and falling into the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Google pit of insanity here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know you’re being silly, but only a little bit. I’m,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not actually looking to buy an Android phone or anything, but it is striking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me how me, I guess I could say forced,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I don’t have to be a Google photos user, but you know, picture life is, is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a dumpster fire and ever and ever picks is dead. And so, and I don’t particularly care
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Flickr, just me. You may love it. That’s fine. But I backed into Google
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Photos and then I started to just really love what it was providing. And it’s really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey made me, like I said earlier, kind of question, am I holding on to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple being the best thing ever because it’s just what I’m used to? And I don’t think so. And I think that if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I were to go Android, it would be death by a thousand very, very deep and very wide paper cuts.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But nevertheless, it’s made me think. And then there was that great episode of Connected this week where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Federico got himself an Android phone and had positive things to say. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey his experience is probably what mine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would be in that, you know, there’s a lot here to like, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not enough to sway me. But man, it’s stunned me how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much I’ve just like subconsciously been thinking, man, this is really convenient
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having them and all I’ve given them is photos. Now, granted, it’s tied to my ID that probably has everything I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever done on the internet ever, but all I’ve knowingly given them is my photos and the stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they can put together is just stunning.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, like, I think like what you’re doing now, which is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using Apple hardware and OS’s, but using selectively the Google things that you like best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on them, that is generally like the best combo for most people I think.
⏹️ ▶️ John agree. Even with photos though don’t you feel the pain of iOS integration? Like one of the main reasons I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sticking with Apple Photos is well part of it is I’m actually hoping they’re gonna get on the ball and start
⏹️ ▶️ John integrating some of these features like the rumors say but the other thing is like it’s integrated with your phone and the native photos application
⏹️ ▶️ John has this stuff and I don’t maybe I think there’s a bigger barrier than there really is to like what if I just
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t use the Apple Photos application? Does the photo picker always show you only Apple photos
⏹️ ▶️ John from the thing or did…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes. The way, I think the problem is my mental model, for better or worse, is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the pictures that are on my phone in like the stock photos app,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey those are the pictures that were generated on that phone or have been beamed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to that phone via airdrop or Wi-Fi from the big camera or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John like that. But it’s not all your photos.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Correct. And to me, something else outside of the stock photos app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is all of my photos. And it was picture life and now it’s Google Photos. Now I’m not saying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s right. I’m not saying that that’s how you would treat it, but that’s the way I like to treat it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John do you have shares? I guess you have with extensions. Don’t you have a share sheet? Like say you say you want to tweet something and you want
⏹️ ▶️ John to tweet and it’s a picture from like three years ago that’s in you. That’s in your all my photos collection. When you tap the little
⏹️ ▶️ John camera icon in your Twitter application of choice, does it bring up a photo picker? Do you have the
⏹️ ▶️ John option to picking from your Google Photos or do you only get to pick from the phone things?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think only the phone things. But my workflow, let me see. Yeah, so on TweetBot, I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only choose from library. But my workflow would have been, if I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were to do something like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Google Photos, download it onto my phone, and then take it from there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, I mean, I want it to work both ways. Like I said, it’s either a real or perceived barrier to
⏹️ ▶️ John like, the fact that Apple’s photos are integrated into iOS in the most convenient
⏹️ ▶️ John possible way, and all third party things are slightly less convenient, or they have to think about
⏹️ ▶️ John more or whatever. And that’s another area where eventually, like Marcos said, it could be that, you know, the sort of the detente
⏹️ ▶️ John comes in, and they start allowing you to pick, hey, what do you use for your photos, and it just has
⏹️ ▶️ John to be conformant to this particular, you know, interface or API or whatever. And then when
⏹️ ▶️ John you say pick photos, we won’t just show you your collection of quote unquote, Apple photos, same thing with context,
⏹️ ▶️ John same thing with everything else. Although context is different, because Apple actually gives you access to the underlying data from any applications so you can
⏹️ ▶️ John use different calendars and stuff. Anyway, what I’m saying is I’m sticking with the Apple apps in a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of cases, not because I think they’re the best, because I would like to try Google Photos, but I know that I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John try Google Photos without having a split brain situation where now I have two collections of photos to manage and I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John going to do that. So I just have the one collection, and maybe I would
⏹️ ▶️ John upload them as a redundant backup if I’m… I think I’m still paying for a terabyte of Google storage for
⏹️ ▶️ John various reasons. But, but yeah, it’s a barrier. It’s a barrier to me trying
⏹️ ▶️ John what is almost certainly a product that I would enjoy more than what I’m using. And also I have to say, a lack of
⏹️ ▶️ John a really cool native application like photos is a barrier. The photos drives me up a wall. But there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John equivalent to that for Google Photos, as far as I’m aware.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, slow down. Well, what are you looking for? Because there’s absolutely a native app, but it may not do the sorts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of things that you want it
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, like, like, like the photos application, like with all the adjustments and all the like it’s not it’s not that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John fancy but it’s a native application rather than a weird web interface and it has all sorts of uh you know
⏹️ ▶️ John and printing you know booklets and doing all the stuff that like iPhoto used to and that photos
⏹️ ▶️ John still sort of does.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah so it does a lot but not all of that so it is native and I’m sure knowing that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey given that it’s Google I’m sure there’s web views that I’m just not realizing but it doesn’t feel like they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey web views it feels honest goodness native um you can do some modifications.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But here again, that’s not something I typically do on my phone, even in the photos app. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that that’s not an itch I need to scratch.
⏹️ ▶️ John app, not the not the iOS app.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I’m sorry. Yeah, on the on the desktop. You’re absolutely right. It’s all web.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought you were talking about iOS.
⏹️ ▶️ John what we’re doing with the photos, we’re going to 5k Mac and you load photos. And that’s how I sort through them to pick out the photos.
⏹️ ▶️ John calendar and arranging things. And And I guess also PhotoStream, and this is sort of a family inertia in that
⏹️ ▶️ John we finally got everyone set up on PhotoStream, so now when we post a picture, everyone can see it, and it’s so much better
⏹️ ▶️ John than every other system we’ve tried previously to get pictures of like grandkids to grandparents. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is the best system, because we just do a thing, and then a thing pops up, and then they see the thing, and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so much easier than sending them URLs or knowing when they need to go there or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And again, if we just got them onto the Google system, they could do the same thing, but it’s like, well, everyone’s already set up with their iOS devices.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like it’s platform inertia and lock-in, keeping you away from superior applications. Things are working sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John as designed for Apple, but I’m a little bit bitter about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I think the problem is, or I shouldn’t say problem, but the difference between you and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I is a couple of things. One, I view the file system on my,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually it’s sitting on the Synology, but effectively on the iMac. I view the file system as the canonical representation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of my photos. I don’t use photos app on the desktop. I actually really don’t like it very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much at all. Um, uh, and so to me, Google photos is just a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey portable search tool and view into that repository.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that works really well for me. And I, and I’ve always treated my,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my one true repository as segregated. Like I was saying earlier from the, from the phone,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that just works really well for me. Additionally, you do a lot more stuff with your photos
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than I tend to. I’ll share them on social media. I have a shared album for pictures
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we like of Declan that we’ve shared with friends and family like you guys. But I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do a whole lot of heavy photo editing. I think it was Marco or somebody taught me how to do a white balance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey correction for when I take pictures at night. That’s like a big new advancement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t teach you. I just said, you should look into this. It makes a big difference and it’s not that hard. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Well, okay. Maybe that’s why. taking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco decent photos or photos with decent cameras, like in 2006, 2007, I look back at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all those photos and they’re all orange because I didn’t know how to do white balance.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I eventually learned white balance. I’m like, oh, that makes a huge difference. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t know that for a very long time. So I was basically trying to jump you up the queue of learning how to do photo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey be like, here, let me say it in three years. Just look at white balance.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. It absolutely did. But I bring that up to say that that’s about as heavy an edit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as I usually get. We don’t do the yearly calendar thing. We probably should, and I’m jealous of your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yearly calendars or like the underscores were showing us, we were up there this past weekend, they do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yearly like photo books. And we should do that. But I was asking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Dave and Lauren, how long does that take you? And they said, about a week, week and a half
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every single year. And I don’t know how they find the time for it. I wish I had it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I guess they make the time for it. But I don’t use photos
⏹️ ▶️ Casey heavily. I find that for me, photos are just, I want to have them to help
⏹️ ▶️ Casey jog my memory. I want to be able to get to a relatively arbitrary photo very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quickly. So, oh, that restaurant we went to when we were on our trip to Paris, I’d like a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey picture of that. Well, I can just type in Paris in Google Photos. And maybe you can do this in regular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey photos too. In fact, I think you can. But I could type in Paris in Google Photos
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh only if it’s geo tagged and only if you actually happen to be in Paris like these are all Like
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple wants to catch up and if they’re actually, you know, if all these rumors are true They should show hey the next version of photos knows
⏹️ ▶️ John what the hell’s in your picture and can do something and then it’s just a competition Of who does it better spoiler alert? It’s gonna be Google But
⏹️ ▶️ John at least just having that feature is better than not having it at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? So here’s a great example. So So earlier today, I forget why, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanted to see if I had a picture of the Rotunda at UVA. So UVA
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the University of Virginia. It’s where Aaron went to school. It’s about an hour west of where we live. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey their most famous building is a building called the Rotunda, which is modeled
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after the Pantheon or Parthenon. I always get it wrong. I’m so sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Please don’t email
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco me. The Pentagon. Yeah, the Pentagon, totally.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s modeled after one of those. this old Greek-looking structure with the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey columns and all that. Well, anyway, so I did a search for Rotunda, and I have not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey knowingly tagged these pictures in any way. It doesn’t… Oh, never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mind. It does say pretty Rotunda on this picture. Just kidding. But this is a terrible example.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the file name in this case did tag it, and my bad. But I have seen other situations,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just let’s pretend that’s not the case. I’ve I’ve seen other situations when I haven’t given
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Google any information about the photo, but it has figured out,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, this is the Rotunda. Well, as an example, so the pictures of the Pantheon Parthenon,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I always get it wrong, we were there in Italy, I believe. God, Federico’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to be so mad. Anyway, point is we were at the inspiration for the Rotunda, and I just did a search in Google Photos for Rotunda,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and one of the things that comes up are pictures of this old, old, old ancient building,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which looks just like the UVA rotunda. So Google has said, presumably, Hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what does the UVA rotunda look like? Oh, this looks like that. Let’s bubble these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up as well. And you could take this either way, right? You could either say, well, this is a, this is a false positive, or you could take
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that as, well, this is an ancillary picture that you may have wanted. So I’m going to give it to you anyway. And just that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey machine learning, which we heard a thousand times during Google IO, it really does freaking work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And in the fact that I can just search the word rotunda and get not only pictures that we’ve taken
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in front of the rotunda, but pictures we’ve taken in front of this, uh, this, uh, other building, I just find that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be amazing. And it makes it so, so convenient
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rather than having to think to myself, all right, when were we in Paris or when were we in Rome
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or what have you? Ah, that was 2012. Shoot. What month was it? I think it was July.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, it was August. All right. Now I got to go through every picture in August to figure out where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was that or when it was that we went to Rome. And now I got to search through, okay, which day was it in this week that we were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there? And now granted, another approach could be what I suspect you do, John, which is to catalog
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and tag and do a lot of this stuff by hand. But I don’t have the patience for it. And so I love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Google Photos can just figure it out for me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s why I don’t want to do all that work. I would like a reliable way to do it. Like I remember when Picasa came out with
⏹️ ▶️ John face detection, like, oh, that’s awesome. at all, they don’t have it in Apple’s photo as I wish they did. And then Apple came out with the
⏹️ ▶️ John feature. I’m like, yeah, finally you’ve caught up. And then what face detection brought was a fan
⏹️ ▶️ John spinning CPU grinding feature to iPhoto that nevertheless failed to accomplish
⏹️ ▶️ John the task that I wanted it for, which is basically find me all the pictures of a particular person because
⏹️ ▶️ John you had to train it and it would miss a bunch. And bottom line is my manual tagging of who’s in what picture
⏹️ ▶️ John was better and faster and did not destroy my computer during the process. So it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John you brought the feature, but your implementation is bad enough that manual tagging still wins. Whereas with
⏹️ ▶️ John the Google thing, there’s no way I’m gonna tag everything. Like, you know, I’m not gonna tag
⏹️ ▶️ John all the hugs and all like the nighttime things and put geotags on my, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John pictures that don’t have tags because they’re from cameras that don’t have a GPS. I’m not gonna do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John If Google can do it, it’s not as if it’s competing with a better manual tagging alternative. It’s competing with, there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John way in hell you could do this manually. And so you’re not comparing it to essentially, you know, 99%
⏹️ ▶️ John accuracy, you’re comparing it to nothing. You got nothing. Now, when I’m looking for pictures, like, you know, where is
⏹️ ▶️ John that picture of my television so I could see, like, what arrangement of AV equipment
⏹️ ▶️ John I had three years ago? I just have to scroll. I just have to scroll with my eyeballs and, like, look
⏹️ ▶️ John at the date and say, like, oh, this is around last year, and let me just sort of scroll through the pictures and look for something that
⏹️ ▶️ John looks like a TV, and sometimes you miss it. If I could just type TV, And you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John TV 2013, Google Photos would do it. Photos on the Mac will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I just typed television 2013 and I’m looking at pictures I took of our TV
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John other things. Of
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, like face recognition, I fully expect Apple to add this feature to
⏹️ ▶️ John photos. I just hope they do better this time than last time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and the tough thing is how does photos get better at figuring out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what’s in the photo, because it can’t really aggregate what it learns over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gajillions of photos. It can just do a best guess based on what’s been programmed into the photos.
⏹️ ▶️ John There has to be a server-side component.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John There has to be. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then at that point, how are they any better than Google? And if you put on your tinfoil
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John hat and say-
⏹️ ▶️ John Not better, I don’t consider it bad. Apple’s got all my photos anyway. Where do you think they’re all stored?
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re on Apple servers. I assume they’re not even encrypted. They’re just like, I’m signing
⏹️ ▶️ John up to say, here Apple, take all my photos and store them on your cloud infrastructure. Now Apple, you have all my photos and
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m trusting you won’t do anything nefarious with them. Right, that’s it, that’s the deal. So that’s not a hangup for me at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re like, oh, I don’t wanna give my photos to Google. No, I’ll gladly give them to Google. The reasons I don’t are for everything I just said,
⏹️ ▶️ John like iOS integration and sharing photos with family and all that other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so like, here’s a great example. So I typed in Declan Liss and I’ve told Google,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, it discovered that there is someone who looks like this in a lot of pictures, and I told
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Google, okay, that’s Declan. And so I typed in Declan List, comma, beach, comma, 2015.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it came up with our beach trip from last year, but it interestingly also came up with a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shot of Declan sitting at a pumpkin patch where the ground was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey indistinguishable from sand at a glance. So it has looked at this picture
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and said, hmm, that looks to me to be a beach, that looks to me like that’s Declan in there, and it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is one of the results that came back. And here again, like I said earlier, you could treat that as a false positive, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it’s great because it shows that there is some amount of like reasoning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going into tagging that picture as being at the beach. I know it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good stuff. So it makes you wonder, you know, hey, would it be cool if it just searched my email and said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hey, you know, you better leave now for that flight that’s coming up? And to be fair, what is, I forget what they call
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, but Apple’s doing that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John now as well. Yeah, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, you know, like when I get in the car on the way home, it’ll say, it sees,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the phone will see that I’ve connected to a car Bluetooth, and it’ll say, well, about this time he tends
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be heading to my home address, and it’ll tell me, yeah, it’ll be about eight minutes to get you home.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s awesome. And that’s the same sort of thing that I’m thinking about when I say, oh, extrapolating Google Photos
⏹️ ▶️ Casey advantages out, you know, what could that get me? And that sort of thing, oh, I see you’re in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey car, I know what you’re probably going to do. It’ll probably take you about 10 minutes.” That is awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it doesn’t have to be Google, and it doesn’t have to be server-side in every single case.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I can see how in a lot of cases, like photos, there are many advantages of it being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey server-side from a company that does this sort of machine learning all the time. Leonard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Muellner Every time I get into my car, Proactiv tells me how long it takes to get to the chicken salad deli.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it actually knows me pretty well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Is it really?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, I would argue it’s probably working as designed.
⏹️ ▶️ John It tells me the work one, though, I think. I feel like it tells me at times when it should know that I’m not going to work. I don’t know how it should know. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it’s a national holiday. Maybe it’s Christmas. Oh, you get in the car. It’s, you know, x number of minutes to work.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, come on, it’s Christmas. I’m not going to work.