MacBreak Weekly 384 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the one with wolverines in the attic. We've got some great stuff for you. We'll talk about, believe it or not, new products from Apple released today. We'll also take a little preview of the new Google watch and how it might impact the Apple watch. And what does Healthbook have to do with iOS 8? It's all coming up next on MacBreak Weekly.

Netcasts you love, from people you trust. This is TWiT! Bandwidth for MacBreak Weekly is provided by Cachefly, at cachefly.com.

Leo: This is MacBreak Weekly episode #394 recorded March 18, 2014

Whatever You Do, Don't Unpack

Macbreak Weekly is brought to you by hover.com. Hover is the best way to buy and manage domain names. It's simple, honest, and easy to use. For 10% off your first purchase, visit hover.com/macbreak3 and enter the offer code: MACBREAK3. And by FreshBooks, the simple online accounting solution built for small business owners just like you who want to skip the headache of tax time. For a limited time, try FreshBooks free for 60 days. To get started visit getfreshbooks.com now and enter Macbreak Weekly in the 'how did you hear about us' section. And by Squarespace, the all in one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio. For a free 2 week trial and 10% off, go to squarespace.com and use the offer code: MACBREAK. It's time for Macbreak Weekly, the show that covers all of the Apple news, such as it is. Andy Ihnatko is here from the Chicago Sun Times. It's Sun Time.

Andy Ihnatko: Hey there, Leo. Coming live from the famous Bath Bay Main submarine races.

Leo: It's Wally Ballou, ladies and gentlemen.

Andy: We have a lot of false starts. Wally Ballou, here.

Leo: Also here, Rene Ritchie from IMore.com

Rene Ritchie: Hi Leo. I'm starting to thaw out finally.

Leo: Ah, has spring come to Montreal?

Rene: I don't know if it's spring. It's whatever comes before spring when it's still snow on the ground, but you aren't freezing when you go outside anymore.

Leo: Yeah.

Rene: Pre-spring cursor.

Leo: That's like all year around here.

Rene: Second winter.

Leo: And now ladies and gentlemen, I give you Alex Lindsay.

Alex Lindsay: Hey, how's it going?

Leo: He is in Rowanda. It's the giant head of Alex! And look the asteroids are coming in, he's rowing, this is a travel log. Hello everybody, how are you? Alex, are you at your- What do you call it?

Alex: I'm at the African Media Digital Academy.

Leo: AMDA.

Alex: AMDA. Exactly, I'm at AMDA. And I'm training all week so I'm here working with- I'm live streaming, and keying, which is why we had this all set up. Then we had a little trouble with Skype and then Hangouts, so now we're back to Skype.

Leo: Actually, it looks good. It looks really good now. Yeah. It's a beautiful African sunset. Oh, it was. Well I've brought you all here to discuss the latest hot news from Apple. But that would be a very short show, so maybe we can talk about something else. I don't know.

Andy: Well there's a couple of interesting things here.

Leo: There's some interesting things. I think the big one is the iOS 8 and the Healthbook leak. Did we credit Mark Gurman with this, where did this leak come from?

Rene: It's all Gurman all the time.

Leo: All Gurman, all the time. We love Mark, he writes for 9to5Mac. Rene, you probably know of the kind of source for this information. Is this a beta version of iOS 8 that he's looking at?

Rene: I don't know if beta is the right word. If Apple hosts a pattern, we'll get the beta at WWDC 2013 but it's better to think of iOS like a continuum. Where there's features-

Leo: Okay, wait a minute. Let's fix that.

Rene: 2014, sorry.

Leo: We are now in a new year.

Rene: It's so hard, Leo. So whenever Apple does a new version of iOS, there are features that are pushed down from the executives, like Phil Schiller, and there are features that are pulled up from the engineers. Everyone can put their stuff in a big pile and then Craig Federighi goes through, sorts them and puts them into what they have time and effort to put behind. They'll start working on that kind of thing, and if they get it ready in time for iOS 8, it goes into iOS 8 and if, for some reason it's not ready or politically is not something they want to do, then it's held off for the future.

Leo: Got it.

Rene: So for example, things like inter-app communication have started to get bundled in two years ago but they haven't surfaced yet. The app downloads that we got this year were being worked on previous to last year but they weren't put out until this year. So it's hard to always tell, and Mark does a really good job of saying that in the article, that this is what Apple is currently working on and this is what some developers there are working on. And if they get it finished there's probably a good likelihood we'll see it in iOS 8.

Leo: So, these screenshots - I mean, I don't think these are faked-

Rene: Those are their mockups, based on what they heard of the app.

Leo: Oh okay, this is really important. So this is not a screenshot.

Rene: Yeah, someone told him what it looks like and then... Sometimes in order to protect a source, or because it's low quality, or because there's very easy ways to indicate where it came from you get information and then you mock it up based on what you're told.

Leo: As detailed in the images throughout this article, which are complete recreations of screenshots, so they are screenshots recreated to hide the source I guess.

Rene: Yeah, or to get good quality versions.

Leo: Right, Healthbook's user inteface looks a lot like Passbook, but of course, with different information. So let's take a look at what - Now, I admit to kind of overextending what this all means, this doesn't mean that Apple is going to have a device that tracks hydration, oxygen, saturation, and blood sugar. Those things are hard to do.

Rene: Now.

Andy: And also, I think that- I'm sorry, go ahead Rene.

Rene: I was just going to say their hard to do now.

Andy: Yeah. But also the fact that they went for the Passbook model, realize that everything that we use in Passbook today, they're not features and sources that Apple actually creates, it's used as a way so that third-parties can put something in that nice little organizer. So I think that does point to Apple having a phone that does a few things, but relying on outside sources to create their own blood glucose meter, or their own blood pressure sensor, or their own hydration sensor as a way for them to simply contribute to this one central clearinghouse app.

Leo: That makes sense. And it's like Microsoft health database or Google's lamented health database, you have lots of fields but it doesn't mean that you're actually generating that information. There is one thing I find significant that I think and hope Apple is going to do, the very first card is an emergency card. I'd love to see how this is implemented, but there are third-party apps that you can store your emergency information in. I'm allergic to penicillin, for instance, or I'm on certain medications and it would be great if first responders would have a way to access an Apple Standard Emergency Card as soon as they see an iPhone, and say, ah... Click.

Andy: Particularly if it's on the lock screen. And also, this isn't something that couldn't be done on Android or Windows Phone but if you put it on an iPhone, first responders are familiar with iPhone, they know exactly how to unlock these things and it wouldn't be a mystery, whereas lock screen apps on Android devices probably would be.

Rene: And the one thing that's interesting is, they are using the Passbook model. When Passbook was introduced it was exactly what Andy said it was and it still is in many ways. But they had PassKit below it that kind of abstracted everything away, so that it would be very easy in the future to add mobile payments or to add contact based payments. I'm guessing it might be so, but if Healthbook has a HealthKit underlying it, then as Apple provides more first-party services or as the third-party services grow, it's very easy to start just adding those in to an interface that people have already gotten used to, through whatever first generation products it comes on.

Alex: Have we seen any of the other tracking software like the Nike- Sorry if you're listening to this... They're keying me in front of planets. Anyway, so have we seen any-

Leo: I like that, Alex in space!

Rene: It's like Ender's Game, but for Alex Lindsay.

Leo: Yeah.

Alex: Yeah, it's awesome. Has anyone else shown calories? Almost everybody else uses points, and my assumption was always because they couldn't-

Leo: Oh no, a lot of them have calories. MyFitnessPal has calories, a lot of them do calories. The issue is, how do you get that information in. With MyFitnessPal or Lose It!, you have to manually enter in that you had a piece of bacon and a cup of coffee or whatever, and that's a pain in the butt. This is great, and it could be very Passbook-like in the sense that it could actually be a limited utility because you don't have anything that measures your blood sugar, your respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, and your hydration. But what's interesting, as Mark Gurman points out, Apple has hired people in these areas. Which kind of implies that they maybe would start building some functionality in.

Rene: The really cool thing too, is when Apple put the M7 chip in, if you got a new fitness track or a new fitness tracking app, you didn't start day one with that. You could go back and pull everything the M7 chip had already tracked. So you'd have like a week's worth of data already in there, which is kind of a good way to encourage you. And if you switch devices you keep your data because that data is being kept track of in the M7 chip, or now in Healthbook, and that's something that Apple likes to do. They commoditize their compliments so that if you move from Nike to FitBit or to something else, your iPhone knows that information is still valuable to you.

Leo: So how much of this do you think Apple will do, how much do you think third-parties will do, and how much do you think will be available when this thing comes out... How much of this Blue Sky?

Alex: Well I think Apple is definitely going to take a couple of the high points, a couple of things that are really going to give people examples that get them excited. I think that's kind of typical for them, and then try to leave the rest of the harder stuff to the other folks. I don't think the fact that they hired professionals necessarily means Apple will develop it, I think that they would also want to have those people on site to look at the software being created and give a general breakdown of it, if and when, the quality of the software is in question. I think that also probably weighs into who they're hiring related to this thing.

Rene: And there's the Motorola Rokr theory too. Dave Wiskus did a good job of elaborating on this recently and pointed out how Apple likes to let other people make the mistakes first. So if they do the Rokr, they can better figure out the iPhone. If they do CarPlay, they can better figure out an Apple implementation. And if they do Healthbook, they can see the data relating to a whole bunch of people and see how they use the app, collect all of that data so that when they start adding Apple services to it, it's based on more than just what they're guessing.

Andy: Also it's possible that they don't want any part of medical device construction. Blood sugar monitoring is literally a life or death piece of data and if Apple can simply say, tell you what we're going to give you, manufacturer, the opportunity to make billions of dollars on this device while we quietly duck billions of dollars of liability in case the actual sensor screws up.

Leo: Here is the original screen shots from Wibo. Mark Gurman says, credit to Michael Steeber from 9to5 for making it look better than Apple's actual screen shots. These are supposedly the original screenshots, these are the much more lovely, fake screenshots, created at 9to5Mac. Oh, I see they just reversed the order. Because I was going to say the Emergency Card- Actually they messed with the order of all of the things, so we can't deduce anything from the order. Does Apple have the hardware capability to interface with devices that would give you this information? For instance if you're diabetic, you probably have some sort of pin prick device. I know there are iPhone apps, there's even hardware that goes with the iPhone.

Andy: Presumably, this is all bluetooth LE so, easy-peasy.

Leo: Easy-peasy. Okay. The only thing that comes to mind is, geez it'd be a shame if the only people who have the health benefits of all this are Apple iPhone owners. Actually, that's a good selling strategy. If you're an Apple customer, you'd live longer.

Rene: We've got to imagine all of the manufacturers will do their versions of it fairly quickly.

Leo: Yeah, the Samsung S5 has a lot of - And actually, some of the earlier phones like the S4 and the Note 3 have a lot of these features and they have an S Health app that helps track this stuff.

Andy: That would be a nice thing. Again, there's no reason to assume this doesn't all work with bluetooth LE. And I feel as though if Apple were to make this into a serious feature and just simply put it out there in hopes that something happens with that, it would certainly cause a lot of these companies to begin making affordable censors and wearable tracking devices, which would make it a lot easier for people to afford these devices. And just as we tend to see with iOS development, they will make an app for iOS first and after about a year they will start to make the Android version of it. So that will lead to that sort of egalitarian access to pretty much everybody who has any kind of a device. You're right because a feature like this - In terms of wanting to change the world- It's great if you're helping people who own iPhones, it's awesome if you're helping everybody who has any kind of a device.

Leo: Right. Wahoo makes devices that I've used, bluetooth LE devices that talk to the iPhone. Like, a scale. And they make bicycle computers and stuff that would go right into your phone.

Rene: And we've seen with devices like Sonos, they stopped making their controller because it was much easier for them just to let Apple handle the display and the interface and all of those things. And these companies might find it really compelling to be able to put their UI on an iPhone, then have to build their own UI on every device they make.

Andy: Yeah, all you have to do now is make a band and all I have to do is focus on that one component, the sensor, not only makes makes that consumer device a lot easier for them to manufacture, but it also makes it easier for them to democratize the sensor itself. So, people who do one thing well, will do it exceptionally well. Instead of making this half-hearted attempt that's kind of an O.K. solve for it, but the sensor is kind of wonky. Or the sensor is perfect but there is no way that someone's going to use this 2-3 times a day, that sort of stuff.

Leo: It makes sense that Apple would also meet with the FDA  and say, this is what we're going to do, this is what we're not going to do. We're not going to be, for instance, measuring blood glucose level but we will give devices a way to interface to the phone and store that information. Doctor Mom in the chat race has an interesting issue - There is a higher responsibility for Apple due to things like HIPA, regulations about privacy. Once they start putting information like that in the phone, there is a legal obligation to protect that information.  Although as we learned, in fact if you didn't listen to Steve Gibson last week on Security Now- I think he's going to continue that this week - He's been parsing through the Apple security document that we talked about a couple of weeks ago, and he has been extraordinarily impressed with the lengths Apple has gone to and the effectiveness with which they have achieved security on iOS. He says it really is very, very high quality. So maybe it is prepared for this kind of thing.

Rene: There are people there that care really deeply about that kind of stuff. They treat it as if it's their data, and they want the phone to work for them. I mean their incentive lies base- Their business model is better aligned for it and they're individually incentivized to make it highly secure.

Andy: And also I think this is, just from what we were talking about when the iPhone 5s first came out, we were talking about all the different features that are enabled by the A7 processor. I mean, it's a long, long list. And how we can add to that, it allows Apple to do products like this where they have a legal responsibility to keep data secure and safe. These are things that are a lot easier to do with the A7, than they would be with any other chip.

Leo: Schpider is pointing us to a program in the app store from DigiDoc, it's called Pulse Oximeter, and will measure heart rate as well as, oxygen use. So I don't know how well it works, but certainly some of the ground work is done. IOS 7.0.5 breaks the accuracy but we're working on a fix they say.

Rene: It's like what Andy said about the responsibility thing, if you remember back the original iPhone didn't allow turn-by-turn navigation because Apple didn't want any responsibility for you driving your car into a lake. Then they allowed third-party ones, and then fast forward all the way to iOS 6 and there was an Apple turn-by-turn. It took many, many years to get there but they had a fairly easy plan to see in place for all of that.

Leo: Yeah. By the way, this uses the camera to measure your heart rate. You put your finger over the camera. I kind of think iWatch, for instance, might have a better tool for that kind of thing. Okay.

Andy: Every time I'm writing about this, and I find myself about to type the word 'watch' in regards to Apple, I find myself more and more wanting to hedge my bets and saying, 'an Apple wearable device.'

Leo: Interesting.

Andy: I'm not almost completely away from the idea that Apple is going to make something that is recognizably a wrist watch.

Leo: Right, it might tell you the time, but that might be the least of the functions.

Andy: Right. Nothing like the Motorola device that is going to be shown off tomorrow, that has already had a couple of images teased. Which it looks really nice, but now I'm not sure if Apple wants to go in the direction of something with a color screen and with what is recognizably a real computer display on it.

Alex: Well yeah, but I think something that gives you the time and basically gives you what notifications are... It's very hard to take myself seriously when I'm in a wheat field, that's all I have to say. But I think that something that did give you those notifications, so you wouldn't need to take your phone out of your pocket, and gave you your time as well as, a couple of little bits and pieces would be a great add-on for most iPhone users.

Leo: Motorola has announced the Moto 360. This is based on another announcement that came from Google today of Androidware- This makes a lot of sense from Google's point of view, that they would do the infrastructure, just as Android has become infrastructure for phones, they would do a version of Android that is for wearables. This is the Moto 360, which I have to think has been in the works long before the announcement of the Motorola sale to Lenovo- Which has not gone through yet, they're still a Google company.-  Moto 360, as you say Andy, keeps you on time and up to date - It's a watch- Without taking you out of the moment or distracting you, telling you what you need to know before you need it, through subtle alerts and notifications. With a twist of the wrist you can see who's emailing, or calling, or what time your next meeting is. So this very much, is a notification watch and you can say, "Okay Google," and talk to the watch, just as you can with your Moto X phone. And I have to say, this looks like a nice watch.

Andy: Yeah, it's a round screen, a round display, they're clearly trying to make it as easy as possible for someone to wear this thing and not be calling attention to the fact that they've got something unusual around their wrist. Again, I've met the end of my testing of the Pebble Steel and it's certainly within the bandwidth of what you'd expect a watch to look like, but people still expect to see a round disc on your wrist.

Leo: And this does not seem to have any health uses at all, it's really more like the Pebble, where it's notifications... Does it have a microphone, which would allow you to talk to the phone?

Andy: Well it certainly has a motion sensor.

Leo: Yeah, well that's an easy thing to build in. If that image on the Motorola blog is what it's going to look like, I like how attractive it is, I think it's a nice looking watch. It looks like a wristwatch. I hope it's not a rubber band, I wish they wouldn't do that. Oh look, they're making it with a MakerBot. This is really going to slow down production.

Alex: It turns out all of the watches are actually printed.

Andy: See, that's kind of sad because we hear the stories about the stuff that Johnny Ive has in his office, you know these amazing car-

Leo: Yeah, MakerBots. At Motorola, we use off-the-shelf technology. See, if it really looks like that which, I guess it is... I mean, I know it's rendered but that's pretty nice looking. It's a leather band, alright.

Andy: I'm also really keen to see what people will do with the idea of a round user interface. It's not necessarily a revolutionary idea, or the human computer interface has been waiting for something as simple and effective as this, but everybody has always been designing interfaces for squares where there are corners in them. So, I'm interested to see what happens when they have to work with that kind of canvas, and also what kind of mechanical interface they put onto it.

Leo: I prefer this. I have to say what I like is, it has three dials so for travelers this is great. Is this the Google Wear or is this the Moto 360 video?

Andy: This is the Google Wear video.

Leo:  And these are imaginary prototypes and they take great pains to make them all look very different.

Andy: Well if you look, it looks like they're showing off the LG and the Moto Wear.

Leo: Is there a Wear in it?

Andy: Yeah. So before-

Leo: Here's what I find fascinating, if you look at my screen, this is the Moto Wear image from the Moto Wear video and it is an analog clock. My daughter cannot tell time with an analog clock, she's 22. She's in Mexico right now and I asked what time it was there and she said, "I don't know, I can't read analog watch faces."

I said, "Well, where's the big hand?"

"12."

"Where's the little hand?"

"20."

"Oh, well it's 12:20," I said.

"Ooh, that's how that works!"

I mean, literally! They never studied it, she didn't need to. So, this is very retro to have a clock with hands.

Rene: Using an abacus, Leo.

Leo: Yes... I'm sorry daddy, I don't know what the abacus is. It really surprised me, it wasn't that they didn't teach it, they probably did. But I don't think she bothered learning it, she didn't need to.

Andy: Is that a class that they teach at UNLV for like the basketball students or something along those lines? Telling the time...

Leo: Now, she can tie her own shoes so I'm happy about that. But by the way, I'm not being completely facetious because that is also a skill that is being lost in the age of velcro sneaker attachments.

Alex: I don't really buy shoes with laces anymore.

Leo: Yeah, who ties shoelaces? And she definitely doesn't know how to dial a phone.

Andy: We're simple folk-

Leo: Call your father Evey.

Andy: We just switched from buckles to laces in about 1928 and we're not ready for another huge change like that. That also brings up another problem that I think Tim Cook actually mentioned a couple of weeks ago, which is that there are people who have just broken the habit of wearing a watch on their wrist and they aren't naturally looking to replace the time piece on their wrist with another timepiece that does other things. To them, you're making the pitch that wow, why would I have to wear this thing on my wrist every single day- I have to remember to put this on every day, why?

Leo: They might actually smart because the people who wear watches probably do want an analog watch.

Andy: And they're willing to sell it like $250-$300 for it so...

Leo: Now these are images from Motorola, which imply that the face is not physical. These are Google Now cards, so this must be like Alex's green screen. Oh, I like that band.

Rene: When they made the Google Now interface, like the Siri cards, they were already imagining different screen sizes and different implementations. I think that's a reason why the card interface in general is so popular now.

Leo: Yeah, see there's the card interface. But that's round, so- Wow, look at that! I like that, did you see what she just did? She showed her watch to the woman at the airplane terminal, and just got on board. That'll work. I've got a QR code right here. I've tried that once. With all of the traveling you do Alex, have you ever done the passbook thing where you have the QR code?

Alex: Oh yeah, I do it all of the time actually.

Leo: How does the TSA react to that?

Alex: You actually get through the TSA faster when you have a QR code because when you have the paper one, they have certain things to circle and check off, but when you have a phone, they just go, click. Okay you can go on.

Leo: There's nothing they can do, they can't do anything.

Alex: They're like, well just give me your ID and it's as if they're even exasperated like, I don't even want to talk to you. Just get out of here. But the one thing I always look at is my battery when I walk into the airport. So if I've got it on Passbook and my battery is at 8% or 10%, I can go get a paper ticket because there's nothing worse than getting through all of the stuff then you get to the gate and your phone dies. Then you don't have a ticket.

Leo: I had that problem, I couldn't pull it up.

Alex: I've done it twice, it's very embarrassing.

Leo: Very embarrassing.

Andy: When I use that, no matter where it is, I always screenshot that page because I know I can get to my camera roll, I don't necessarily know it'll pull up.

Alex: I do too, exactly. The United app is actually really good at just being able to get it immediately, so it's actually easier than Passbook. I used to use Passbook all of the time, but now I fly United most of the time and so I just use their app.

Leo: Alex just glitched, am I in the Matrix?

Alex: No, I just got out of the middle of my little webcam. See, watch...

Leo: I love it, he glitched.

Alex: See, it was catching focus.

Leo: I feel like I took the red pill.

Rene: There's an agent-

Andy: Or like Robin Williams in that Woody Allen movie.

Leo: Alright, let's take a break. You know, everybody has got the story right now but Apple is putting it off. Do you think it'll be this summer? There are rumors about phones this summer, or when will we see this mythical watch emerge?

Alex: I think the WWDC is going to be pretty exciting, myself.

Leo: You think that's what- That's June, right?

Alex: Yeah, I mean it seems like the time to do it. It seems like what you'd want to do is show everybody what they can develop for. I think especially if you want developers to be working on it, give them some time to dig in.

Andy: I think Apple's under zero pressure whatsoever to ship this year. I wouldn't be surprised if they show something from this year, especially just the developers but Apple is feeling absolutely no pressure to get this out the door. And like Rene said, they like the idea of other people rushing things to market so they can see not only how well these other approaches work in the real world, but also how consumers are being reached by this - What messages are working and what messages aren't working. I don't think they're under any pressure whatsoever.

Leo: Tim Cook did say new categories this year though?

Alex: Yeah, that's correct.

Rene: You got an iPad 4 back Leo, how much do you want from him?

Alex: There's your category. There's you category.

Leo: I feel like there's pressure building with what Samsung is doing, now Motorola, LG...

Alex: I think the real problem is Apple is not making any real money and they don't have any money in the bank, so I think the real problem for them is that there's a lot of pressure for them to figure out how to make rent.

Leo: Focus.

Alex: You know there's two kinds of people; People who are on payroll, and people who are trying to make payroll. And right now you know, Apple is trying to make payroll.

Leo: Alex and I are trying to make payroll.

Alex: The terror... Terror every two weeks.

Leo: Here's a little something I learned: You can't use a MakerBot to make payroll. I found that out.

Alex: It just prints too thick. That's the problem, it's bills are too thick.

Leo: I told my employees that this week we're giving them casino chips and they didn't buy it.

Rene: TWiT chips, we're paying you in TWiT chips.

Alex: No one wants to work for Granola, either.

Andy: Although we're paying you in TWiT coin, it's even better.

Leo: We're working on it in the basement right now.

Alex: Leo and I actually have a whole section in the basement committed to BitCoin. We're just planning to just-

Leo: Yeah, that's our retirement plan. And it works as a fabulous heating system. You get your money in DOJ coin. Alex Lindsay in Rowanda, on the fruited plains of Rowanda, as we speak.

Alex: Yeah, the virtual planes of Rowanda.

Leo: It's beautiful. I didn't know that Rowanda was the wheat basket to the world, that's fascinating.

Alex: According to Chad.

Andy: Greetings from Alex Lindsay's Windows XP desktop.

Alex: Wouldn't it be great if everybody just did green screen like this and then Chad would have- Oh, no wait...

Leo: We should do this, I think you're right. I think we need to send green screens to all our remote hosts and then Andy, instead of having a giant Boston clock over his shoulder, he could be in the clock.

Alex: Exactly.

Andy: I'll be hanging off of it like Harold Lloyd, I'll also need to invoice you for a straw hat and a pair of round glasses.

Leo: Harold Lloyd knew where the big hand was, I could tell you that right now. Our show today brought to you by hover.com. I want you to visit hover.com/macbreak3 to buy from the best domain register out there. It's the one I use, all of my domains are registered at hover.com. Hover makes it easy, if you have - As I do, a lot-  A great idea, and you want to get that domain name... It's so funny to watch Dick DeBartolo, he has hundreds of domain names! But Hover makes it very simple, straightforward, you don't have to go through a hundred clicks to buy it. They know you want, for instance, privacy on your domain name so WhoIs Privacy is always included with domains registered with Hover, at no extra charge. They offer the stock domain names; the .com's, the .net's, the .org's. And by the way, .net, again a little plug for .net. It's a great choice if you can't get the .com. I have leolaporte.net, not .com. They also do .tv, .pro, mopybizio, country codes like ca, Asia, the US, and the UK. Right now they're having a sale. Lower prices for .me, .co, and .info domains, Hover is great. They also offer Google Apps. Maybe you use Google Docs sometimes. If you are a business, you can use Google Apps at your domain. So for instance, mail.twit.com is our corporate mail address. So that's Google Apps for business and it's really great, but you want to have a domain name that reflects your business. Register at hover.com, and then you can use Google Apps for you business for as little as $6 per user. And the support comes, not from Google, but directly from Hover, which is great. Gmail of course, Calendar, Drive, Docs, the whole package. It can be added to a new domain or if you've already got one for your business, it can be added to your existing domain. They do all of the hosting for you, they make it easy. And there's a 30 day trial to see if Google Apps for business is for you. Hover.com, no upselling, no charging for something that should just be there like subdomains, URL, forwarding. They include everything you need with your domain, no more and no less. They don't do hosting, they give you a smart control panel that lets you manage your domain easily, choose the host you want. No hold, no weight, no transfer phone support at hover.com. You will speak to a live person when you call during their hours, who is at power and eager to help. Also, great online help at helpathover.com. So hover.com/macbreak3 will get you 10% off your first purchase, so stock up on some domain names today at hover.com/macbreak3. Your watching Macbreak Weekly, and I was wrong, there's actually a lot of Apple news. Today Apple put on sale an 8 gigabyte version of the iPhone 5c. Is this finally the low cost iPhone 5c we've been waiting for Rene Ritchie?

Rene: No, the pricing on it was unclear to me this morning, it was on a couple of British carriers. Apple put out a press release with the iPad 4 return, but they didn't put out one for the iPhone 5c as far as I've seen yet. So, I don't know what pricing will turn out to be, but even for $100 less, 8 gigabytes is so anemic on iOS 7.

Alex: It is not worth it.

Leo: How much free room do you have on 8 gigabytes?

Rene: You have free room but 4 or 5 gigs is going to quickly. I just find it painful. I mean, if you don't do anything with your phone-

Alex: You put one movie on it, and it doesn't have any memory to install anything.

Leo: In England, it's about $100 cheaper. It's 60 pounds cheaper.

Rene: Our Android site, Androidcentral put up a quick post saying, these are all way better Android phones you could buy for less money.

Leo: Yeah, so why do it?

Rene: It's hard to argue with them. The most rational explanation I've heard is they want to end of life the iPhone- IPhone 4 is still on sale in China and in India, the iPhone 4s is still on sale in almost every market. That has the old 3.5" display, the old 30 pin doc connector and it has 8 gigabytes of memory already. So if you were thinking about getting the zero dollar phone eventually on contract, this might be a sign that they're going to get rid of those phones faster. And as they start to prepare for iOS 8 this September, get the iPhone 5c down to where that can be the zero dollar phone.

Leo: Does it matter? Does Apple even care?

Rene: I mean they care to have an entry-level phone, it's a slot that they're going to want to fill year after year. I don't know how much they-

Alex: I think they also want to get rid of that 30 pin connector. I think we all want to get rid of that 30 pin connector.

Leo: And to that end, there is a new iPad.

Rene: A new old iPad.

Leo: A new old iPad. This is the iPad 4, which is- Somebody has to explain this to me, I can't.

Rene: Late 2012 generation...

Leo: Why? Please Apple, can you give them numbers? For crying out loud. I guess now we know why they don't, right? So they were selling the iPad 2, they discontinued that. That was the kind of really low price 30 pin connector for iPad, mostly for education. And one of the things we thought is that the reason they continued to sell that is that a lot of schools and other people had vested money in 30 pin connector things, like big charging racks all with 30 pin connectors. But now they've got a lightning iPad 4, is that right?

Rene: Yeah, a display lightning, 16 gigabytes, same price.

Leo: $399.

Rene: Yeah, or $529 with LTE.

Leo: So forget the iPad 2, that's gone. If you're going to get a cheap iPad, get the iPad the fourth generation. Whatever the hell it is.

Rene: It's a much better machine, not only does it have the retina display, it has an A6X chip set, not the old A5 chip set.

Leo: Right, it's fast enough to handle a retina display, unlike the 3rd generation iPad.

Rene: Yes, it's just big and beefy, unlike the iPad Air.

Alex: And it's got a lightning connector.

Leo: So the only real difference is it's not Air sized, it's the old size, and now Apple sells nothing with a 30 pin connector, is that right?

Rene: The iPhone 4s is still for sale.

Leo: Dammit.

Rene: And the iPhone 4 in India and China.

Alex: Yeah, but I think we can expect to get rid of that. It's so funny, the 30 pin seemed fine before the lightning bolt cable came out, and I still have an iPad 3, I haven't figured out what I wanted to get, and it's the only thing left in my collection. I have these two 30 pin cables that travel around with me and every time I click it in, I'm like, I can't believe we ever did this.

Leo: So just to be very clear, there's no 2 3 4, we're just saying that because for some reason, we think we need to say that. There are 4 models of iPads, there's the iPad with retina display that's the cheesiest one, the least expensive one.

Rene: The iPad mini is the least expensive one.

Leo: Oh crap, they still sell that?

Rene: And that's the only non-retina display iOS device left.

Leo: Okay, so the least expensive is the $299 iPad mini. The next one up is the iPad retina display, that's $399. And then, there's the iPad Air that's $499 and also, $399 is the iPad mini with retina display. There's 4 iPads.

Rene: The retina display mini and the iPad 4 are now identical prices for 16 gigabytes.

Leo: Yeah, so there you go. And they're all lightning. But to be fair, Apple does sell an adapter that makes lightning work with the 30 bit connector, right?

Rene: Yeah. It's like animal husbandry, but it exists.

Leo: There's a button 'compare iPads' there you go. Go there and compare. Store.apple.com/ipad/compare and it makes it clear as mud.

Rene: We put up two articles today going through the differences between all of them and then which features you get with each one, and which one you should buy.

Leo: At least they all have unique names now.

Andy: Do we know how this new/old iPad registers itself with iTunes? Because one of the things people found when they're digging into 7.1, it references to new iPads that had not yet been registered. So if that takes up one of those two slots...

Rene: I think it's still 3,5 but I'll double check.

Leo: Alright. Well, I guess there's enough lightning adapters now in the ecoverse. They've saturated the system.

Andy: It's interesting though, you really see this much real clutter in the Apple lineup. So right now Apple is telling people, we have two different kinds of 9.7" iPad. One is a little bit less expensive than the other, but not so expensive that it'll push a lot of people into the bi-column, we now have two iPad mini's that are identical except one is retina, one is non retina. The non-retina one looks terrible but it's less expensive than the other one, but still not so expensive that if you are in any mood for saving money, it's going to again, shift you into the bi-column. It'll be a big deal to buy this one instead of the Nexus 7 or Kindle Fire tablet. I'm confused by this and I'm interested to see what kind of a house cleaning Apple has in store for the end of the year that would explain why they would want to have this many similar looking models of devices in the lineup at the same time.

Leo: I guess the other thing that's important to note is that the iPad with retina display and the iPad mini, the low priced ones are only 16 gigs, there are no larger models at all.

Rene: It's interesting because previously you could choose between large or small, retina or non-retina and that was our little matrix. Now it's large or small, but the large ones are now both retina, so now it's heavy or light. But the small ones are basically the same size, but they're retina or non-retina.

Andy: I wonder if this means that they're at least worried about Samsung or other companies making the larger sized tablets because that's one place in which people who are very sensitive to price are going to basically say I know iOS is better but I know the iPad is better, and I like the idea of being able to scuba dive under water with a tablet, but I think I'd rather have my $200 in my pocket and go for this other device.

Leo: Well now we understand all.

Rene: We Applsplained it.

Leo: We Applsplained it. And then the iPad 2 is gone, right?

Rene: Yes, finally! Spring 2011 to Spring 2014.

Leo: That's a long run.

Andy: I did hear someone say - Now that it's dead, I'll pass this along. I didn't want to talk about it earlier because it sounded more like an interesting rumor than anything else, that there was some sort of contract Apple had in which they were required to fulfill orders for this thing on demand if the contractee wanted them. And that's why they decided okay we'll keep this on the price list. Because it was a real mutt. Apart from being able to keep the schools that have those rack chargers and rack distribution carts ready, that was a big mutt in the iPad line.

Leo: Yeah, weird mutt. But now we still have mutts. The 4 and 4s are mutts, but those mutts will be detached soon. Apple has turned on a new form of support. Paid chat support, if your Apple device is out of warranty and you don't have Apple care, you can pay $20 and chat, perhaps with a real person. It is a real person, they're training the Apple care folks in how to use chat. In the early parts, apparently the first Air 2, paying for it was not working too well. They call it the Here to Help program for the Apple Care employees. Teaching them how to care about the user. My experience with Apple Care, I don't have a lot of experience but when I've talked to them, they seem to care actually. Which is not always the case on those important calls. So I guess it's working, they're acting well. Has anybody used this chat support?

Rene: Not yet.

Andy: Never.

Leo: Here To Help will consist of three day training sessions, Apple says it will transform Apple Care by sharpening our focus on our customer's experience, while continuing to provide fantastic product support. Apple is where superlatives go to die.

Rene: Industry leading.

Leo: Yeah, they just love their superlatives.

Rene: We ignited our customer-

Alex: Super special.

Leo: Fantastic.

Andy: We're so excited about this, we really think it's the best customer support we've ever been provided in this class by a company scaling to this array in the US market.

Rene: No one else could.

Leo: Over chat. So you used to be able to get free technical or diagnostic support by just calling Apple Care, right. And so now they're going to say, well you're out of warranty but for $20 you can chat with us. Is it $20 for one issue or do you get a month of $20? No, it's $20 per incident.

Rene: Per incident, yeah.

Leo: By the way, that underscores how much it costs to do support, it's not cheap. And I would guess chat support is cheaper... I notice a lot of people moving to chat support, why is that? Is it because it's better for us, the user?

Alex: Well a lot of them, they're actually managing more than one person. So a lot of times what happens is they're actually talking to you, and there's two or three others that they're talking to. And they're answering your question, then the other question so while you're responding they're paying attention to another question.

Leo: Comcast for instance, they really don't want you to talk to a human but they'll let you chat. I also think it's because these people's English may not be perfect and they may have strong accents that could be hard to understand, and chat is cheaper than a phone system. So I'm just noticing a lot of people moving to chat for support. I don't like it.

Rene: $60 will get you a Facetime call.

Leo: I don't like it because it's too much typing.

Alex: It also lets them log data more efficiently.

Leo: Right, they have a record. Yeah. Is there somebody on the roof, what is that noise coming from?

Andy: Wolverines. Send someone up there with a broom.

Leo: Dammit, every time we get rid of them and then they move back in. I think they're nesting. Nesting wolverines are nothing to mess with.

Andy: Maybe it's like Clerks, maybe you've got people playing roller hockey up there during their lunch break. If they aren't, the should be because that looked like a lot of fun.

Leo: No, and the roof is very safe because we have like knee high fences to keep them from falling over. So that works.

Rene: Knee high to a wolverine, Leo? Or knee high to  a person?

Leo: Ah, no the wolverines are completely safe. I did not read Sir Johnny Ives interview with the Sunday Times. I admit, I am remiss. I should have read that but I know you did and we'll talk about that in just a moment. You're watching Macbreak Weekly, now with wolverines. So that's pretty good- No extra charge.

Rene: Great Canadian wolverines.

Leo: Really, really are they Canadian wolverines? Why can't we buy US wolverines? My God.

Andy: Thank you, Obama.

Leo: I blame him, suddenly we're using overseas wolverines. Our show today brought to you by FreshBooks, also Canadian I might add. But actually they're nice, so that's what's nice about Candadians.

Rene: So is Hover.

Leo: I like FreshBooks, but in fact, it was Amber McCarther who introduced me to FreshBooks many moons ago, ten years ago. I was going to Canada once a month to do the Call For Help show and I was complaining to her I said, I have to invoice Rogers and they want an invoice in Canadian dollars, I've got to make the conversion. And I hate doing invoices, I think I was using Microsoft Word or Excel or something. And she said, oh well you have to try FreshBooks, it's a new start-up and it's fantastic. These guys are great, in fact, I think something like 5 million people now, use FreshBooks. Not just for invoicing, but for all their cloud accounting, which is awesome. Tax time is coming and I know you're looking at that as a cliff you're about to fall off. If you've been using FreshBooks, everything is easy, you don't have to hunt for receipts, you don't have to dig through invoices, everything is online and tax time is a breeze. And of course you get paid faster with your invoices because they're professional looking and they have a 'pay me now' button right in there. You can capture and track expenses now with FreshBooks and even get real-time business reports with just a couple of clicks. FreshBooks mobile apps for the phone and the tablet make it easy to do time and hours on the road. I think the sooner you start using FreshBooks, the sooner you can start focusing on the work you love. Focus on the work, not the paperwork. So for a limited time, I want you to try FreshBooks we've got a special two month trial now, 60 days. Getfreshbooks.com, you get the two month trial, which would make tax time a lot easier. In fact, you still probably have time to get your stuff in order. All I ask is, you see the 'how did you hear about us' section, just say it was Macbreak Weekly. Getfreshbooks.com, make sure you tell them you heard about it on Macbreak Weekly. Two month free, just in time for taxes. Johnny Ive, we can't get an interview with him, even Leandra Kahney couldn't get an interview with him. But if you're British apparently, no problem. The Sunday Times interviewed Mr. Ive, did anybody read that?

Rene: I read it.

Alex: Yeah.

Rene: The answers were incredibly similar to the answers he gave in previous interviews. I don't know the right word for it, but it wasn't very illuminating or very new.

Andy: Yeah I mean, I don't know what the ground rules were for this, I don't know how much time the interviewer got with him but a lot of it was, I just feel like the first thing I do is I think about what this product is supposed to do and only then do I think about what it should look like and I never stop thinking about how I can improve these products, a lot of job interview questions. Like if you want to get the job say, what's my biggest fault? I guess that would be that I never stop thinking about how I can improve the work that I've done. So it wasn't a bad interview or an interview without value, but it kind of was a very surface interview. Stuff that either you had already heard from him before or stuff that you could easily imagine him saying. There weren't a whole lot of insights there.

Leo: Carefully controlled, I'm sure by PR and all of that.

Andy: Yeah, it really made me think- If I was disappointed at all, it only made me think that I hope that Apple is at least internally allowing people to do interviews and then just lock them away for X number of years. Because I think there is going to be a time when people are going to want to know exactly how these phones were made, what was the point of view of the people who were designing this, why was this choice made and not that choice. Not even from an engineering point of view, but from a cultural point of view, they'll want these answers. And future people who are studying engineering are going to want these answers, so the fact that Apple, especially senior Apple executives, they're so tight lipped and they don't really give interviews, I think they're denying future students an opportunity to learn a lot about how one of the most important companies out there made some of the most transformative products of our time.

Leo: Michael Scott, right? My biggest fault is that I care too much about people. One of the things I thought was interesting is that the design team is only 15 people, it seems small to me.

Rene: And a lot of them have been there for a long time.

Leo: Yeah. The majority of work happens in his office.

Andy: Right, with CNC machines right there so they can have an idea, they can bat it out, and then put it on the table, huddle around it and prod it.

Leo: I like this quote, and the reason I didn't read it is because I didn't want to pay for a subscription to the Sunday Times just to read that one interview.

Rene: I think it's on time.com.

Leo: Oh really? Okay good, because they wanted money on the Sunday Times site. So what I did is I read all of the other people who quoted it. This is the quote from Johnny Ives, "So much has been written about Steve Jobs and I don't recognize my friend in much of it. Yes, he had a surgically precise opinion," I think that's very nicely put. "Yes, it could sting. Yes, he constantly questioned, is this good enough, is this right? But he was so clever. His ideas were bold and magnificent, they could suck the air from the room. And when the ideas didn't come, he decided to believe we would eventually make something great, and oh, the joy of getting there." Is that hagiography or do you think that's genuine?

Andy: I think that's genuine. It's consistent and continues to be applied year after year. You're calling my attention to the fact that the one thing in this interview I think I had not known before is that quote where Ive recalls travelling with Jobs, "We get to the hotel where we were going, we check in, I go up to my room but I would leave my bags by the door, I wouldn't unpack and I'd go sit on the bed to wait for the inevitable call from Steve, 'Hey Johnny this hotel sucks, let's go.'"

Leo: That sounds true.

Andy: That sounds like the Steve that we all know and loved.

Rene: He tells a longer version of that story in the video that Apple put up for the Steve Jobs memorial and he says it in his own words and it's really touching and is well worth watching.

Leo: I love that. We all know somebody like that.

Alex: And you know the hotels that they're referring to are like the Mandarin you know, like really, really nice hotels.

Leo: That's what I wonder, where is he going to go?

Alex: It's like the Four Seasons, this is horrible. I can't believe that they didn't have golden crested towels.

Leo: The hot water knob is on the left but then what do you do?

Andy: The room has a waterfall but it's not a great waterfall.

Leo: Yeah, it's designed for- What human would want that? But I wonder what do you do then, go to another hotel afterwards, and then another, and another?

Rene: Stay in the jet, Leo.

Alex: It's a square sink, I can't believe it's got square corners.

Leo: There's too much furniture in this room.

Alex: With all of the lights on it's 100 foot candles too dark, I'm out of here.

Leo: I don't like the gradient of the wall. We could go on and on with this.

Andy: There was a time at Steve's we were having this argument and Steve said, hey I understand that Wal Mart will just let you park right there in their parking lot overnight, let's just have the jet land there.

Leo: They did ask him about the iWatch and he said basically nice try, obviously I'm not going to talk about that. But he did say this, and I thought it was interesting... He apparently does read the rumors because he likened the rumors about the iWatch to a game of chess. Which tells me that he's reading the rumors, he must be- As anybody at Apple would be- Intrigued by what people think.

Rene: I'm just glad he didn't say Game of Thrones, Leo.

Leo: Anyway.

Andy: The Game of Thrones has too much detail on it, you don't need that many swords on a chair.

Leo: Who would make a chair out of swords. So I'm glad I didn't spend the money, you say Time Magazine has it?

Andy: Yeah it has the whole thing.

Leo: Is the Times of London related to Time Magazine or is it just a coincidence?

Andy: I think Times just bought it.

Leo: Oh they bought it. Clever. Would you say that Johnny Ive's comments about Apple were mere puffery? A California judge, Edward Chen in San Jose has turned down a request for a class action lawsuit against Apple by a music teacher. The music teacher bought an iMac and half of the computers 27" screen went dim after 18 months, the teacher sued and asked it to be made into a class action for other iMac users who had similar problems and the judge threw it out with faint praise he said, "Apple's claims about the Mac's big beautiful displays and long productive life do not amount to false advertising, they're mere puffery." So you win some and you lose some. Chen did say, Apple may have known about the defect but it was not obliged to disclose the fault to customers if it fell outside of the warranty period and did not create a safety issue. And finally he said because it was 18 months in, and the warranty is 12 months, you just don't have any standing at all.

Rene: Apple Care.

Andy: Yeah, I had a conversation with someone on Twitter about this sort of thing where they're pointing me to a posting someone made because their iPhone battery just- After, one of them was like four or five months out of warranty and took it to the genius bar and they said, okay we'll swap out  a new battery, it'll cost you $80 for the part, we won't charge for labor. And this person on Twitter was upset because they thought Apple should give better service than that and I had to point out that well it's a 12 month warranty, and was out of warranty, they replaced the part. Because they could take it in some place and have it fixed for free while only paying for the part itself. Apple has such a great reputation mostly earned, that it's hard to understand that they are not a magic company and they are a company in the business of selling consumer electronics to people for money, and as a result, it's not as though they're going to say, hey I know your phone is 9 years old and you ran over it with a truck but we'll give you a free one because we're fabulous. That's not how it works, that's one of the rare liabilities that Apple has for having produced so much great service in the past, so many great long-lasting products in the past and also, creating products that people have such a close emotional connection to. They feel as though they aren't just buying a phone from whoever, they're buying a phone from a company that I believe in and they only did exactly what they promised they'd do when the phone was sold, it's horrible.

Rene: Expectational debt.

Leo: Stuff does break and after the warranty is over, that's the reason the warranty is not infinite.

Andy: And to be honest, I would be very bummed too if I bought a brand new phone and it required a major service after only by the year and a half. I would expect at least two years and I'm really expecting three out of any major consumer electronics.

Leo: Well imagine a $2200 iMac with a 27" screen you can't use after a year and a half. That would piss me off, but the repair charge is $500 they replace it for $500....

Andy: Right and if this were such a big issue, guys like us would have been on shows talking about this for about every single week for like 18 months since that product came out. Clearly every now and then, you get a machine that doesn't really work that great.

Leo: Right, Apple has dropped its 30 day return policy on iPhones, it's now only 2 weeks, 14 days. I guess it did March 13th. So return it faster, I guess.

Rene: I guess that depends on local ordinances too because some places have consumer protection laws.

Leo: Sure. Carriers typically only give you 2 weeks.

Rene: Yeah, break it faster.

Leo: The deal was kind of, you buy the phone and go, I don't like it too much. You got two weeks to take it back to AT&T but Apple would say you can have a whole month to bring it back to us.

Alex: I can't even find the box after the second day. That's my problem.

Leo: I generally am so confident about Apple products that I have to admit that I don't save the box. And I can't say that for a lot of devices, but for Apple products.

Andy: That's such a cool way to design a box.

Rene: Well I keep my box.

Leo: Well I tear it open like this – rip! Apple wants Samsung to pay forty dollars a device for the five software apps. The judge in the court in the Apple Samsung lawsuit said that Samsung had infringed upon forty dollars per phone or tablet. That is a good deal, the phone number, the tapping feature, if you tap the phone number it dials it even in an email. Even the unified search, data synchronization, slide to unlock and auto-complete. Those are the five patents that Apple asserts and won in court that Samsung stole- forty dollars a unit.

Alex: So does that mean that Samsung has to pay that to be able to continue to use them, is that the argument?

Leo: Yes they want, yes Florian Muller writes in Fast Patent that is kind of an unheard of amount eight dollars per patent, per unit.

Alex; You know you need to get the Brave Heart thing on You Tube where William Wallace rides out and talks to the English noble. That is pretty much what Apple was saying.

Leo: What I am thinking about is that if it is eight dollars a patent and the number of patents in a modern day smart phone are roughly 125,000.

Rene: You still ask for the movie.

Leo: Eight dollars a patent that is about a million dollars a device in royalties.

Rene: It is funny that Johnny Ivan talked about this in the interview when asked about what do you feel about other companies copying and he was non-pulsed about it. He as like it is so hard to figure out these problems, so much sweat and toil and some-one comes along as uses all your answers.

Andy: Yes but we have had this conversation before and I mean if we can set aside Samsung’s first couple of phones, you could get a pretty good road map of how the ideas originate with Apple and developed those and put into their own devices and but apparently that does not count though.

Rene: No you can lend your stuff but you cannot borrow any.

Andy: Exactly that is what it is like. It is like we simply saw the friction point in someone else’s design and we fixed you are welcome.

Leo: Florian Miller was so incensed, he actually publishes the transcripts from this. He says this is purely punitive on Apple’s part trying to punish Samsung because there was not any other way to punish them. Well we will see; the judge has final say in this Lucy Co- Judge Co.

Andy: Are we taking bets on exactly when this thing will be completely settled, and I am not talking like us having a talk about it, I am talking about whenever or whatever Samsung did they have admitted that they have done it and however much Apple thinks that they should pay and the Judge agrees the Apple should be paid and then Samsung wrote the check and it is done with. It is like for heaven’s sake, yes forty dollars per app……let us keep it at that.

Alex: I mean it is cheaper to hold it in court than to pay it.

Leo: Right.

Alex: I mean for Samsung it does not make sense to shuttle at this point. They have got nothing to lose other than go through the whole court thing.

Leo: Isn’t it strange that we did not know about the whole Apple TV update from last week. We talked about it last week and how it allows us to rearrange icons, and you know that it has the jiggle, jiggle, jiggle thing. But according to Danny Fireball Apple has also enabled air play devices over Bluetooth update 6.1 on the Apple TV. So you do not need, I guess it means that you do not need Bonjour to air play anymore. Apple TV can search for connectable devices over Bluetooth by not only passing Bonjour but I guess walk-by wi-fi. I guess they are not going send a signal to wifi via Bluetooth. I mean they are not going to send the signal over Bluetooth, negotiate and then send it over wifi I am sure.

Rene: I think that is how Bluetooth works in general.

Leo: Ah Of course but is Bluetooth 4.0 in the app?

Rene: In Apple TV?

Leo: Is it in the older ones?

Rene: No I believe it is in the current one that is why it is hard to set up.

Leo: Right, very nice. You have a nice review Rene of imore.com on IOS7.1. It has been out for a couple of weeks now, any, or is it just a week, it seems like how time has flown by.

Rene: Yes it is through GoldMaster and they put it out live.

Leo: We had just got it when we did the show live last week, gosh that is hard to believe, it feels like I have been using IOS 7.1 for years now. I like the usability improvements to say.

Rene: Stability is far more solid with the springs fixed.

Leo: No springs, no springs to fix never!

Rene: It is solid, I made the point in the review to say that some people will say that this IOS 7 as it was meant to be but it is really more than that Apple having spent six more months and the lesson they learnt launching to get the way they want is to get to where they want it to be. It is much more solid, more refined and it is much more consistent and they used to put the XOne updates faster, and they used to come out three months later with wifi touches and it took them six months to get this out and there is not a ton of new features so it kind of highlights once again how massive some of the changes were for above and below the hood for IOS 7.

Leo: The new phone app, people have noticed, not only looks different, but has some nice new features, that is good. You get a picture on the lock screen, right, is that new?

Rene: Yes well the button placements styling is new and you do not get the full screen picture, anymore (Presenters talking over each other)

Leo: Yes you get the dots now.

Rene: They are for more privacy in mixed company.

Leo: Yes. Battery life; some people complain it has reduced their battery life. Have you seen that or heard that or is that just an isolated few?

Rene: Yes that it absolutely true, that actually happens every time IOS is updated and you will get it. We run a poll every time and every time some people say it is better or most of the time other people say it is the same, and that it much worse. The thing that contributes to the most is the update process, because when you are updating a million, ten million and a hundred million devices, some of those are not going to be great, some them are going to be raw. Some of them are going to be badly restored, and all those things can just turn away, they are going to have raw processors and just waste your battery life. But if you take a new device, or take a device and set it up as new on IOS 7.1 you will have as good if not like new battery life.

Leo: It is like taking crusts from previous installs with you. I have seen some people suggest that resetting all the setting is one way to fix that. You actually have that on imore.com a trouble-shooter on how to fix your iPhone and iPad life problems on 7.1. You say test the battery life on standby first.

Rene: That was especially on IOS 7 in general, if you waited and you had like an iPhone 4 or something and you waited to go to  IOS 7 till 7.1 there is so many new features that you are going to be playing with them all the time. And we actually tested it for some people because they were using it so much and that their screen was on all the time that their battery drained much faster. And you know it was a new phone syndrome. So it is really important to actually put it down and watch whether the battery drains or not when sitting there, because  with real battery problems you will put the phone down with 80 percent it will be hot, and they will pick up again a few minutes later when it is on 70 or 60 percent.

Leo: That is key, being hot is often a sympton too when I feel a phone that is not doing anything hot, then I know there is a runaway somewhere or something.

Rene: It is the radio or the processors.

Leo: So you say that right.

Alex Lindsay: You also want to say that you want to look at where you are. I spend a lot of time in a lot of different places, and if you have a inner location or a city that has either a lot of congestion or a lot of bad cell service your phone is going to burn up a lot faster. It is constantly looking for towers, constantly trying to negotiate and that will really tie up your battery quickly. I noticed having spent a lot of time in different cities that I know that certain cities actually blame on my battery life. In Rwanda it is a good example, it is constantly changing things around and moving things around and I have to keep charged up more often than I would at home.

Rene: If the phone can power down faster a lot then the battery life will last much longer.

Leo: But you do mention that it is a bad idea to power cycle and if that does not fix it then it is to reset the data, not erase data but reset the settings. If that does not work then a clean install will.

Alex; It is really good to power cycle every once in a while anyway. I have got into the habit of power cycling every day or two and just to make sure that I have no idea what is running in the background sometimes to find out and sometimes it is easier just to turn it off and on every once in a while. I find that there was something back there, that was burning up for time some reason.

Andy: I think that on both my desk - top and also my mobile devices it is a good idea to restart them once or twice week. There are these tiny little gas leaks that will never ever really show themselves until there is enough critical gas to cause the explosion and sometimes takes weeks for that to happen. But also that if I haven’t done a full factory resetting to the device every once in a while then probably go ahead and do that. Usually if I have a big deadline I would really like to have an excuse that not to have to work for an entire afternoon. I mean I will take that opportunity to say that I am not to simply going to upgrade to 7.1, and wipe the device and start all over again. It was not just what Rene was talking about crust building up in the system, it is like human crust building up because l how many times do you download a free game and then forget about it. Now it is still there, you download some apps and they are still there. It is only when you start up with the bog standard list of icons then you only add the icons back when you have realized that you need my app or I need my day planner, oh I need my contact manager, oh I need this game and two weeks later you realize that you only needed eight of those 93 apps that you had installed before.

Leo: Here is some good news not only will Apple iPhone users be more healthy than Android users, they will get better entertainment in United Flights. United has an inflight movie service that is starting next month they say exclusively for Apple iDevices. If you have an Android phone then you are going to have to watch a seat back like everyone else. It goes through the United app so you have to make sure that you want to install the United app on your iPhone or iPad and I guess it is going to use the wifi to download content to your device whilst you are in the air and you can watch it on your device.

Alex: One thing that I think they are doing on the content over there is that they are probably not sending you all the way down to the grounds. So they are catching all of the movies that you may want to watch so you are accessing the wifi but you are not accessing the antennas. So is going to be easier for them to serve, and I think that it is not  that you will not actually be watching the screen in front of you. A lot of the internal flights do not have screens on it. I think that this because partially we do not want to install all those screens so obviously there will be an Android version at some point but it is easier to do the iPad. They probably do a lot of research on how many people are using their app. Besides a certain percentage of them are more from IOS made the calculated decision to release that one first.

Andy: Plus if you can get somebody to install the United app that we were not installing it before that alone is a huge, huge win because now you have got entry into the device that you can turn everywhere.

Leo: Ohhhhhhhh I agree with that.

Andy: I like United but whenever I fly United I tend to notice not only a certain lack of seat back videos but you know even a no smoking sign that has been covered over once or twice, it is not really a new fleet. ( Presenters talking over each other) And the ashtray in the arm rest.

Leo: That always amazes me and you know that is an old plane, the ashtray in the seat rest. Not only an old plane but one that has not been decorated in several decades.

Andy: I can see the branded logo some place.

Rene: You should have paid 20 bucks for the seat upgrade price.

Leo: Right, let us take a break and when we come back our picks of the week. Our show today brought to you buy our friends at SquareSpace.com. They are making the web a better place one website at a time. If you have kind of heard us talk about SquareSpace, we love it so much you cannot bring the Square Space site down. In fact it has now become a running joke that when we send people to a website that has been shut down we say that they should have used Square Space. But there are a lot of other reasons to use Square Space because it is not just hosting it is also the best soft-ware, really wonderful soft-ware, allowing you to create a site whether it is a blog or a portfolio for an artist or a photographer or maybe you want to sell something or maybe you want to do a donation site.

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Let us get our picks of the week and we will start things of with you Mr Alex Lindsay Mr Green Screens.

Alex: I do not think that Green Screens get proper credit for this Green Screen key that has been pulled to this camera that I am using. I am not using the big camera that I was using a bi camera and I had to go and grab this one and I kind of could not tell anyone about this camera because it is a secret one.

Leo: It is a secret one.

Alex: That we have here so this is the camera that I am using right now. I cannot take it off and show it to you. It is the Disco Precision HD Camera, and this is a….it is pretty nifty. It has got a 50mm FOB I do not have a 920 with me but we have been using a lot of the 920s and the 930s for a long time and probably nearly have 100 of them for some reason or another somewhere. Anyway we started using this one and it is not cheap and even those ones over there are the real price 320 dollars. But the real thing is that it is a real web-cam and it has got a larger chip and it definitely is a much higher quality video in our opinion. It does not that good when chatting because it keeps keying every time.

Leo: Well actually the keyword works really well. Alex is calling us from Africa Ladies and Gentlemen, he is not next door.

Alex: Right exactly. One of the things that we had a complaint about is, it has really having the wide angle 929-930 especially. 930 is great for crowds, you know like three or four people sit in front of the camera. If you are a single person trying to sit in front of the camera in our opinion in our new opinion yard and we test almost every webcam that comes out.

Leo: This is why we love having Alex right next door, because we have been recommending the Logitech for so long and this is a whole…..(Presenters talking over each other)

Alex: And we still love the Logitech and it still ………

Leo: It is just as expensive……….

Alex: The other issue that you get into is that if you have an office there is a lot less office that you have to have to clean up because it is half the field of view and a lot less information behind you as well and that makes it a lot easier for you as well. Anyway it is pretty nifty so that is my recommendation.

Leo: It is the Cisco Telepresence camera.

Alex: It is a Tandberg camera.

Leo: Oh it is a Tandberg that is a good name.

Alex: It came with them when Cisco bought them.

Leo: Cisco Telepresence Precision HD thing camera.

Alex: There you go.

Leo: It does have a model number, but if I tell you that you are not going to care. It is too long.

Alex: All you do is search for Cisco Precision HD and you will find it.

Leo: Rene Ritchie we know that you have one mega review. The whole panel read it but I did not. Last week we made reference to a new book about Apple, it was The Haunted Empire.

Rene: Yes we should tell you a lot about the slant to the book.

Leo: By a former Wall Street Journal journalist, it made it very clear that Steve Jobs was haunting Apple, and now you and Andy both said no.

Andy: It just turned out to be just the old man over the amusement park trying to scare off the buyer for the new……..(Presenters talking over each other) Pulled of the Steve Jobs mask and that is what turned it on.

Leo: Do not get this book.

Rene: I have a ton respect for him as far as reporters go. She had an amazing career, she covered the hell out of Apple for many years but this is not a book, this is a weird series of anecdotes mixed with unsubstantiated opinions that do not sort link together. It is very odd.

Leo: What is your recommendation. You did dis-recommend that.

Rene: Do not spend your time reading that. Spend your time watching the Veronica Mars movie.

Leo: Really!

Rene: I like this for many reasons. I was a fan of Veronica Mars, I like the television series and the movie was pretty much what I expected it to be. But I love the  idea of this movie as some-one that likes to watch TV shows like FireFly get cancelled, Like Angels get cancelled, why Veronica Mars get cancelled. The idea that a creator could go to Kick Starter and fund a movie and that movie could go out into movie theaters and hit iTunes, the same day it hit movie theaters it is not you know six months later or a year later but the same day it was in movie theaters and I think it was 6 or 7.99 to rent and 24.99 to buy. If you wanted to you could go and enjoy it with your pop-corn and a ten dollar beverage on a giant screen. And if you did not want to then you could pay a little bit more money and enjoy it your home theater, and that model has an incredible amount of appeal to me. So on the one hand I am happy that Cristan Bell, Rob Thomas the whole cast of characters are back to have yet another adventure but

hoping that a lot more creative types bring their creative type projects to this type of model because it means that we are no longer subject to the vagaries and whims of mainstream broadcast networks which allow really weird shows to continue and favorites to die for.

Leo: Warner Brothers got into a lot of trouble when they first released it to the Kick Starter fans because did an ultra-violet version for the Kick Starter fans.

Rene: Ultra-violet is an industry technology and that should tell you a lot about the industry that tries to make technology. If you sign up for an ultra-violet account then you have to sign up for ultra-violet provider. A lot of people live tweeted it trying to do it and if they had trouble doing it then I can only imagine our civilian friends and relatives trying. But also it was hard to do for people who use the Apple eco system you could get them on IOS apps but they did not enable AirPlay and Air Play bearings because you could get in tune with your Apple TV because there is no ultra-violet apps in the Apple TV who is just a really cloodgie experience. I backed it on Kick Starter, I bought a ticket to the Premier and I bought the add on items. But most people get it the way they originally paid for.

Leo: Well as Rob himself said it does not seem fair that if you pay for a copy of the movie that you have to go through Kick Starter than people who decide to buy it today.

Rene: And Warner Brothers owns a part of ultra-violet and I am not surprised that they went with that.

Leo: Warner Brothers did offer to refund Kick Starter backers for the price of a film. So I have never seen, I love Cristian Bell, I think that she is fabulous, but I never saw the TV show but would I have enjoyed the movie?

Rene: It is Buffy without the vampires. If you enjoy that really strong female lead character, very smart dialogue, very witty, it is a typical murder mystery sort of a structure but it has got a lot of young, but I would call them teen acts in the original shows when she was in her 20s when she was in Law School. Young person anxed!

Leo: Apparently the successful opening theatrically was little slow but they made 2 million dollars at the box office and Rob Thomas is already talking about a sequel. They feel like it is a success. It did not cost more than 20,000 to make but it is not over yet.

Rene: When they got the Kick Starter backing I like this model, l like Josh Wearner somebody else who is very passionate film maker who made this. (Presenters talking over one another)

Leo: Yes, yes, Mr Andy Ihnatko, your pick of the week.

Andy: I got two quick picks of the week. Rene decided to go into the performing arts with one  and I have also decided to mention Diana Damarau’s Forever.

Leo: Are you married to her or is she your secret girlfriend?

Andy: She is my favorite soprano. There is a lot of opera music that I did not get in because there were performers that had this really obnoxious style that to me was not very humanistic and there was not a lot of acting or performance in it. Then the first time I hear performance I went like Okay let us see what else she has recorded. This is a great CD. One third is recital pieces and the other two-thirds are like Broadway and movie musical tracks which is often off putting for an opera singer, because as kid my parents had Placido Domingo’s harp album which was like (Andy singing in a deep voice).

Leo: Yes I do not want that.

Andy: So when she sings these songs, it is more like she adapts her style to make it suitable, or exactly perfect for this sort of stuff. It has been available in the UK since October and ofcourse so I special ordered it in the fall. It is available in the US in the iTunes store and now is a CD on Amazon as of last week. Good, good stuff and if you are not into opera but if you like good vocalist you will really enjoy that. But the more conventional thing is that I have become nuts for DumbKeys Card ware wraps. You have seen cases that are designed to form fit, they are laptop leaves for an iPad or an iPhone case, camera bag or something that is a form fitting with a latch. What these wraps are is that it is just a simple rectangle of fabric that is VELCRO infinity.

Leo: Is that your cod-piece? What is that?

Andy: Also it is like a diaper. So basically the deal is that you can create a case for anything you want. For instance I have got my new camera in here. Now I can simply unwrap this and there it is and if I simply wanted to carry this around in my shoulder and not get it scratched and knocked into things. I have got something that fits it perfectly, and does not take up too much space and I still have this square of wrap that I can use pretty much for anything else that I am travelling with so it is adaptable. So if I fly out with this wrapped around my camera but then I need to re-pack something that I was going to carry in my side bag that needs to packed in my side bag I can use that to wrap something else. And they are really, really versatile and I bought one for believe it or not just for a camera lense and then wound up buying every size that they had and by accident finding for now that my favorite 13 inch laptop sleeve which is this thing right here. All it is a 19 inch version of that wrap and you simply roll that up and now you have got a plain simple envelope that fits it perfectly. I have been absolutely stymied doing this. It sounds OCD but ever since I got this 13 inch notebook I have been absolutely stymied trying to find a sleeve that will actually fit it. I do not want a sleeve that almost fits it, I do not want sleeve that is too big for it so you can get it inside there, I want something that will fit it perfectly so that I stick my 13 inch lap top bag so I do not have to fold that notebook in half so that the sleeve actually fits into it. Because I can adjust the fit perfectly, it does not matter that I have a USB drive plugged into one of the ports, and it works just great and they are dirt cheap. They are like 10,to 15 to 70 dollars each. And like I said I bought a bunch of them because now when I pack for a trip basically anything that needs a little bit of padding now is wrapped in one of these. I have got a different color for everything, they are cheap and they are highly, highly adaptable.

Leo: In the film industry they are called the C48s, did you know that? Diapers for your iPhone.

Alex: I give that a second because I have a lot of those.

Leo: Do you use those too? Alright.

Alex; Same thing with Andy I bought one and then I bought a lot of them. Like this is amazing, because I was literally going to have people start making them, because I have all this amazing cameras and I have not shared them with the company because I am still testing them because I want to make sure that I like them, but I have a bunch of them now. And what is great about them is that they are durable, they do exactly what the Neo Pro bags did, except that one of them can fit into a bunch of different sizes and going with exactly what Andy was saying they are absolutely great wraps, if you are thinking about them for lenses or for me all my little hard-ware components that I am trying to fit into a 15/10.

Leo: I think that Johnny would dig these. I want a perfectly fitted case for your device, made for it. It had to be this way.

Rene: It would inevitable.

Andy: His team would do a version of it, but it would be Velcro and no sound when you pull it apart.

Leo: I am silent. I have too many picks and I was hoping that one of you would mention Microsoft’s One Note now available for free on the Macintosh. They have had web versions for some time now. I guess that for some people who use One Note now at the business or at the office they will really like it. It is a note taking application with a full screen on it with the Microsoft ribboned tool bar which a lot of Mac users hate. If they charged 20 bucks for this I would not recommend it. But the fact that it is free and some of you may actually be using One Note to share and in fact we use it on the show to share notes from Windows Weekly because they are all Windows users. The fact it is free on the apps store makes it worth-while. Oh and Microsoft stock going up today on the rumor that Microsoft is imminently going to release Office for the iPad.

Andy: They have a big media event next week I think, first event…….(inaudible)

Leo: Ever note for the iPad and the iPhone have been out for some time. So One Note is kind of like Ever Note. It is at least cross platform if you are big Office user. This is worth at least something that is worth downloading and taking a look at. The only thing is that I will do quick mention because I am going to do a review on Before You Buy in a little bit. I have been looking for now that I have ridiculously expensive MACPRO Thunderbolt 2 peripherals, particularly a Thunderbolt 2 hard-drive because the internal drive has only got 500 gigs on the internal drive on the Mac and I have pretty much filled it up and I do not have enough room for the operating system and the apps and the data. So I need a fast external drive The C have been promising this big disk for some time. They have been making this for a while and this is a Thunderbolt 2, native Thunderbolt 2 enclosure for dual SSDs that can be raised to zero grade one which of course cuts the capacity in half or Jbod just a big old disk mode or just a bunch of disks sometimes. But this is terabyte and very expensive 1299 but so fast. I have got to tell you so fast that Mac Book SSD with a 1299 retina in front of me and it is like half the speed of Thunderbolt one. When you are using this on a Mac Pro it is fast enough to do a 4k video, editing and adjusting and playback. So it is very, very fast. That is who this is for. Of course if you own a Mac Pro money does not matter and it is beautiful, I mean what do you say it is like 2 decks of cards. It is surprisingly small I really like it.

Andy: It is like an e-cigarette.

Leo: Yes and I am faking right now. It is the little big disk a full review coming up on that on Before You Buy in just a little bit. Couple of tips for you. It is very, very, very fast. Thank-you Andy Ihnatko Chicago Sun Times we love and we love your clock.

Andy: I love you too the clock has no opinion being an inanimate object but it has a style and elegance that befits its presence on Twit.

Leo: I have been loving your elegant picks of the week.

Andy: I have got three picks of the week worth a lot for this camera. I am very happy.

Leo: Yes, very nice and we love the images, see we get the benefits of it. We can see all those nice pictures. Where is the best place to follow your pictures, Google

Plus.

Andy: Flickrr really that is where I like to photo blog, though they are doing a big site redesign and I like posting a photo and then having like a few paragraphs of the photo. And so I am doing a redesign of my blog and I might take that stuff to my blog but Flickrr is my public back-up of photos I really like. Right.

Leo: It is Andy if you want to follow him there. There is a lot of Water Logue stuff. I am really enjoying that.

Andy: My interview is coming tomorrow. I wrote the review but it turned into a bigger essay on the app and other things and then ooh let us see what will work with this and then let us see what will work with this and then I realised that did he mean for me to publish this a week from yesterday.

Leo: Yes he did. He cannot stop WaterLoguing.

Andy: I am not saying that this is a bad thing but we agree to publishing this a week ago.

Leo: I have been playing with us and I just love this. I am going to do something with these images because they are just gorgeous.

Alex: One thing it does is it takes images that were not that good as photos and makes them out into something that is good. I am using that every day. I mean everytime we are online where is that other photo that I want to WaterLogue and now I have got a video one now. So it is fantastic.

Leo: These are amazing images. Yes Andy I am really enjoying them. He is a watercolorist I can just see you in your beret with your easel.

Andy: This is something that I put into the essay that like how cheesed off would local artists be if printed of hundreds of these and took them to the local coffee shop and sole them for like 75 dollars. How fast would they sell compared to those who said I studied for like 8 years to do that one that has been there for like a year and half. You could have put a photo app on a squirrel.

Leo: Ge clait my friend just keep that in mind my friend. Rene Ritchie of imore.com great to have you as always.

Rene: I will be in the of the studio next week Leo.

Leo: Yes you will coming out of MacWorld probably next week, yes. When is MacWorld, it is soon.

Rene: I think that it is next Wednesday, next Thursday.

Leo: So that is great we will have Rene in the studio and I think that Alex will be in London next week.

Alex: I will be in London.

Andy: Will you be in London or will you be in Lundun?

Leo: He will be walking across Abbey Road barefoot and that should be very nice.

Rene: Make sure that his feet are clean.

Alex: I saw somebody do an Abbey Road photo in Petluma in the Macnaer Mystic Theater and I am like this is not London. It is a great place I think.

Leo: Buy a ticket and go and see it, the out-takes and other images from that photo session. It is really interesting to see them walking the other way, what like Paul has shoes on it, what…………

Andy: You can Paul fixing Ringo’s collar on it. Isn’t that a great show, doesn’t it freak you out that we admit it. It is like seeing the video of Mona Lisa like pulling some hair out of her eyes, and wait a minute you are not supposed to move. You are a moment in time.

Leo: Some things should not be messed with. Let me see the BeatlesBible.com, yes there they are kind of walking the other way. I just love that. That is the original, they are going the wrong way.

Andy: There is nothing necessarily wrong with it but your brain says no I even refuse to look at that.

Leo: And this is the one that you are talking about which I really, really love Paul fixing Ringo’s tie and the little old lady goes: “ Hi darlings what are you guys doing?”

Andy: I just got changed just ten seconds ago, gees.

Leo: Thank-you everybody. Ladies and Gentlemen we submit this for your approval.