MacBreak Weekly 417 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It’s time for MacBreak Weekly, it’s that special time, just a week or two before big Apple announcement, while all we can do is sit here and, wonder  speculate. We’ll talk about two iPhones sizes, what will the screen resolution look like and, which camera phone is the best? It’s coming up next on MacBreak Weekly.

Advert: Netcasts you love. From people you trust. This is Twit. Bandwidth for MacBreak Weekly is provided CacheFly at C-A-C-H-E-F-L-Y(dot)com

Leo: This is MacBreak Weekly, episode four hundred seventeen, recorded August 26^th 2014

Lego Queen

MacBreak Weekly is brought to you by Lynda(dot)com. Lynda is an easy and, affordable way to help you learn, instantly. Stream thousands of courses created by experts on soft-ware, business soft-ware, web development, graphic design and, more.

For a free trial visit Lynda(dot)com(slash)macbreak……that’s l-y-n-d-a(dot)com(slash)macbreak, and by Harry’s for guys who want a great shave experience for a fraction of what you’re paying now go to Harry’s(dot)com. Get five dollars off your first purchase by entering a code MACBREAK, when you check-out.

And, by Legal Zoom, visit legalzoom(dot)com to save on you legal needs and, gain access to a network legal plan attorneys for guidance.  Legal Zoom, not a law firm, but it provides self-help services at your specific direction, visit legalzoom(dot)com and, use the offer code MBW to receive ten dollars off at checkout.

It’s time for MacBreak Weekly, the show where we cover the latest…….I don’t know why I begin with such a bang…….I should just go slow.

Alex Lindsay: Because it’s a lot of energy…….

Leo:…..I’ve got such a long way to go before September 9^th.

Alex: You got to……you got to be the

Andy Ihnatko:……you got to the warm up guy. You know ladies and, gentlemen…..and, throw t-shirts into the audience.

Leo: Boys and, girls get the T-shirt canon out, it’s time for MacBreak Weekly. That’s Andy Ihnatko from the Chicago SunTime…..hello……Andrew….

Andy: Hello Leo, lovely shirt today.

Leo: Thank-you. Lisa bought for me in Hawaii….it’s Tommy Bahama you can only get in the islands. Yeah, I know you’re a big fan of the black Tommy Bahama, ladies and, gentlemen it’s Alex Lindsay.

Alex: I have lots of different colors, but I don’t have that one.

Leo: You’re the one who took me to the Tommy Behama store in San Francisco at North and Center.

Alex: Because we were short, short…… four shorts…….

Leo:…..and we bought a bunch of black shirts.

Alex: Yes.

Leo: Thank-you (whispering)

Alex: The one the balloon is very nice because you changed the color in post…..look blue over the green screen and, then key it and, then change it.

Leo: So you moved to Pittsburgh?

Alex: I have over the weekend…..

Leo: Yeah over the weekend….(whistles)

Alex: Yeah, over the weekend, I went to Pittsburgh. The kids start school on Wednesday, so I had to get them there and, then I had to come back finish up the packing and, then go back again this weekend and, unless I got to Italy tomorrow. Next week so,…..next week…..

Leo: I always like that,….’unless I go to Italy tomorrow,’…….I might go to Italy tomorrow……..I feel like I should. I’d like either Italy or Montreal. (Alex agrees).That’s where Rene Ritchie is of imore(dot)com. Hi Rene…..

Rene Ritchie: Leo I woke up to a word that Burger King was buying Tim Horton and moving the whole shebang to Canada, I don’t know what to do with myself?

Leo: I’d call shenanigans, what was it too, it was a huge amount of money…..billions and, billions, it dwarfs the acquisition of Twitch by Amazon. It’s like eleven billion for a donut shop (cross talk).

Alex: …..it’s only worth so much and, I don’t like Tony Horton.

Leo: Oh, he loves Tony Horton …..he’s favorite hockey player. (cross talk about Tony Horton)

Alex: So the thing is Tony Horton and Tim Horton…… Tony Horton takes things and pushes it into your belly one way and Tim pushes it out……

Leo:……are really brothers…… 11(point)4 billion dollars…..it is a sacrilege something akin to Budweiser buying Mallsons?

Rene: It’s good for neither of our countries, Leo.

Leo: What’s weird is that they’re moving Burger King to Canada?

Rene: We already have a queen. We’re okay…..we’re good.

Leo: You’ve got a king and queen now. (laughing)

Andy: Look forward to seeing more people in drunken hockey fights wearing those paper-free crowns on (panelists laughing)……that’s a good visual. Free advertising. (cross talk)

Alex: Remember Scott Bourne gave us that gold card at Burger King.

Leo: Yeah…..

Alex: He worked at Burger King.

Leo: Unlimited Burger King, I guess it’s all over for Scott at Burger King. Doesn’t he have card that he could eat free forever?

Alex: Apparently, that was the story anyway.

Leo: I don’t buy that anyway. I don’t buy it.

Alex: I think it was just a good story.

Leo: So, apparently when it came across the wire, they said it was a tax inversion. What the hell is that? (cross talk)

Alex: Yep…..

Rene: Anytime they must have thought that Canadian was much cheaper.

Andy: It’s that language that they use in the real sci-fi horror movie to explain the thing they can’t explain that caused the giant monster to visit upon them. It was a tax inversion, we thought it was not possible in this dimension but, look at what’s happening right now.

Leo: I think that Carte Chenado was a tax inversion wasn’t it?

Rene: The story of my life, Yeah…… (cross talk)

Andy: In an attack Canadian beaches first. Canadian beaches pretending to be US beaches.

Leo: (reading) several inversion deals have developed this year along US based Abfee for Irish drug-maker Shire and, then they moved to Ireland right? The idea is that you move out of the US, because the taxes…… corporate taxes are so high……I think we’re pretty generous in our corporate tax structure.

Alex: …..no….

Leo: Did you say no?

Alex:…..no…..no it’s fine.

Rene: I think that like the Canadian civil taxes are re-donculus.

Alex: Yes, the United States has the highest corporate taxes in the world.

Leo: Really?

Alex: Yeah….. that’s why everyone’s doing this, that’s…..

Leo: There must be…..proof is in the pudding, right?

Rene: You should go to Saskatchewan instead of Pennsylvania Alex?

Alex: (Laughs) I don’t have any family in Saskatchewan, I’m not moving to Pennsylvania for tax inversion.

Leo: Isn’t Canada practically like a socialist nation with things like universal health-care; how could the taxes be lower in Canada?

Rene: You’d think…….that doesn’t makes sense to me.

Alex: I think it’s higher for individuals, though isn’t it?

Rene and Alex: Yeah.

Leo: Oh, I get it.

Alex: That makes Canada, that makes them uhmmmm, capitalist, communist country.

Alex: That makes us very cold in winter, very happy in summer.

Leo: I should point that Tim Horton’s…….I don’t know why we’re going on and on about this, it was owned by Wendy’s.

Alex: Theoretically, and I’ll argue here……use Macs.

Leo: There you go, that’s what we’re talking about.

Rene: They have an app.

Leo:…….and they were in Delaware, until 2009 and then they moved to Canada, shortly after the Conservative government. Thank-you Mr. Harper.

Rene: You were repatriated.

Leo:……., lowered the corporate tax rate. The new company will be based in Canada, it’ll be called Burger Horton’s. (panelists laughing)

Rene: There must be as lot of tax on burgers.

Andy: There are going to be a lot of people who are whimsically going to drop the last syllable off that. Hey Man! Want to get a burger hall……..(cross talk)

Alex: I think we should restart the show I think. It’s called the re-show.

Leo: I am so pissed off…….I’m waiting for the gosh……darned iPhone. Now my daughter’s broken her phone, my son has broken his phone when is Apple going to release that damn thing?

Chad: Can I give an example of how bad the news cycle has been, this week?

Leo: Yes.

Chad: Do you know The Verge?

Leo: I’ve heard of them.

Chad: Okay, normally on their front-page they have tiles that show how many kind of stories there are in the news.

Leo: Yeah……that kind of shows you the graphs of them,

Chad: There’s usually seven normally, today there’s three tiles, and on top of that the tiles are kind of funny that The Verge back to school guide, only fourteen, the rise and fall of virtual reality,

Leo:……there’s nothing to talk about there.

Chad:…..and there’s oculist rift that man helps with two D vision to see three D.

Leo: That sounds like a major news story.

Chad: That their video pane, so anything below is video, it’s not their headline carousel, sometimes there’s three stories on their carousel.

Leo: Wow, okay.

Andy: That’s going to change, at least they’re having some pity about the last week, before labor day.

Leo: Right.

Andy: I am going to get one beach day tomorrow because September’s going to be all travel for me and I’ve got it all marked off in my calendar. Okay, iPhone announcement, Motorola announcement, Samsung definite announcement, there’s a Dell……it’s like oh, man.

Leo: Well I thought I would never say but thank-goodness for the ice-bucket challenge, because that’s really given us stuff (Leo Laughing)

Alex: Endless,…….

Leo: Endless stuff to talk about. So, September 9^th we’re still on track.

Rene: Sounds like it.

Andy: Seems to be.

Leo: Looks like there’s two a 4(point)7 and, a 5(point)5……

Alex: A hundred and twenty eight gigabit…….

Leo:….. I am going to get the 4(point)7 for the kids and, a five and half for myself.

Rene: Daddy!

Alex: A hundred and, twenty eight gigabits…….

Leo: I don’t need a hundred and twenty eight gigabits, but the kids because they put all their music on. (Alex agrees). So the kids will need I think 64.

Alex: I bet they do.

Rene: Do they still have local music, Leo or do they stream now the kids…..bits now?

Leo: You know I’m surprised now……because Henry…….Henry has Spotify, Abbey can’t remember what she uses, but she puts music, well, I’ll give you an example her Mac Book Pro was four years old, so she went there, she goes off to school, last week, I buy her a new Mac Book Pro and, she says can you move my music over…….it’s several gigabytes of music. So, I guess she still has music on her, that’s the age gulf between a 20 year old and a 22 year old, right there…….generation gap!

She still has physical bits…. I’m sorry. physical bits…..

Rene: Back in my day…….

Leo: When she was little she used to burn CDs……I had you know a stack of burned CDs with handwritten stuff. (whispers)Not any more. That’s all on the hard-drive. So, time for the back to school guide here.

Andy: I understand here there’s a trapper……a trapper keeper has a built in calculator with square root mind you? (Leo oooooohing quite a lot)

I should also mention the hundred and twenty eight gig idea of a phone. I’m…..I’m…….. curious to see if Apple changes their online back-up, their iCloud back offerings because as it is they’re really not giving me enough storage you know just to back up my simple little phones as it is. And, that’s become a sort of annoying thing……I’m always having to dismiss this…….I know……I know……it hasn’t backed up for a while because……there’s not enough storage, fine……fine……fine.

I have to dig in, turn up those settings, so I actually increased to 128 gigs maximum, are they going to have.

They should really like have a……they should really be able to sell you a package that will just simply tell you……you press this button for 4.99 a month or for 2.99 a month, we will give enough storage so you can do complete back-up of this phone wirelessly and, not worry about it.

Alex: I don’t understand, I really don’t understand why Apple doesn’t give us the option into making as big as we want……at least up to one terabyte or two terabyte.

Rene: Two terabytes I think with iOS I’d say.

Leo: But, how would you put that much memory in the phone?

Alex:….no,….no…..no….I’ve got a bunch of devices, it’s backing up a whole bunch of different iPhones, and iPads and, like there’s a lot of different back-ups going on, so that’s the issue.

Rene: I posited to put it on iOS Beta and, then I switched and tested it all on the new stuff and, now I can no longer back-up stuff. I had just enough room previously, but now I don’t have room anymore because I’m using the iCloud Drive, but you can’t buy the new room yet…. so, I’m caught in this weird dimension.

Andy: Just don’t have anything really unique happen in your life for the next week and, a half……for two weeks that would require to be backed before you lose your phone, that’s all.

Rene: It’s camera roll stuff……… camera roll like…….I think it’s 32 gigabytes of camera roll that I don’t want to move like an animal, but I don’t want to lose anything and that’s  maybe (cross talk) the photo album or library……maybe I will eventually, but it’s not here yet.

Andy: Maybe……maybe…..maybe….. we’re losing a little something……..I had that problem myself too, there was that worked with my iPhone 5S, last week and, realized that I wanted to  capture……..get some….get some pictures on the camera and, put them on aperture etc, and that’s when I realized that wow, because Apple makes it so easy to transfer all of your stuff from one to another, every-time you move to new phone, I truly have photos that go back to 2011, 2012 and, I’m talking about thousands and thousands of photos, including absolutely the ones that I don’t need any more.

Maybe the next really step for Apple to do is not to make sure that all this stuff gets backed up and, restored to every single phone you use. But to make it very, very easy to triage the phones…….the pictures that you have and, kind of guess, I think that we’re backing ever-thing……we’re backing up Andy’s phone completely to iCloud. I’m guessing that we don’t need to have all that, thousands and thousands of these photos, kind of trying to figure out which one hundred and, thirty which one hundred and, forty is actually going to be interested in and, keeps looking at, and if he asks for the others we will make it very easy to very transparently put those back on the phone, because now I really do have to weed in and, make sure I’m not deleting stuff that has been backed at least twice elsewhere. And, also making sure that I have got things organized for the albums which are still the biggest pain in the butt imaginable.

Rene: Yeah, I’m sort of doing that I mean Apple’s is going into airline storage because of iCloud storage library. It basically means that the photos you accessed most recently, your most favorite or that you look at the most or taken the most

Recently…..sorry……will get stored on your device, and it’ll have certain amount that’s stored on the device. Photos that are a lot older or that you haven’t looked at in a long time or that they think you don’t care as much about will be kept on Apple’s servers, you know you’ll have the option only downloading device specific sizes for those photos to save even more space because I think universally, photos are taking up tons and tons of space on iOS devices.

Andy: Not only that but photos are taking up, I’m guessing at 40 per cent of people’s idea of why they have this phone and, what they use it for. I don’t think it’s any accident that Apple’s doing a complete floor to ceiling revamp how their entire attitude towards photos cross-platform, because they already know that this is the device that shoots photos, you know, is used to share photos with people and in an analogue way of saying, ’Hey Ben (showing his phone) did you see this?’

Alex:……statistically (stumbling over the word and, then Leo interrupts)

Leo: You said it twice (cross talk) so don’t go back.

Alex: I….. it is the number one use for your phone.

Leo: Statistically?

Alex: Photos……

Leo: Really?

Alex: Yeah, yeah they……pulled all of that…….you know search all of Google on a couple of different polls have, shown that the number one thing people do with their phone is take a picture, you know with their smart phone.

Leo: I agree…..that’s probably……

Alex: That’s the number one thing I would definitely do probably  than talking……

Leo: My thing is staring at Twitter,……..

Rene: What’s funny is that they have battery shaping to make on iOS 8 to make, so you can see what apps use the most battery. But, it’s not well explained yet. For example you can see phone-low signal, maps, because it’s a low signal that’s wrapping up the radio and, to try and, get it, that’s understandable, but if it says tweet bar or twitter fake then it’s using excessive power. Then it might be because you never put twitter away, because it’s been wasteful of energy, because it’d be nice if they made that apparent, because Paul Dodd from tweetbod who apparently makes that is already prepping himself for a deluge of tech support when that goes live, because it’s featured up there so much.

Leo: Are you sure statistically you can’t……I mean I’m sure it’s in the top five? What about text messaging, phone-calls (Leo Laughing)email,…….all social networks.

Alex: It’s not measuring actually what people are doing, it’s asking what do you do with your phone? (Leo …..ahhhh)

Number one answer taking pictures, because the family……

Leo:…..some people make phones calls and, text what you do with your phone and, not……that’s obvious.

Alex: The family feud version of this is photos is number one answer.

Leo: Number one photos…….number one survey says…….(interrupted by Rene)

Rene: Well I heard from Apple that they want to make photos sort of like the part of the eco-ORS experience, they believe that they’re important to everybody for that issue to be taken care of at a system level. You should never have to worry about it and, that’s why they’re also bringing photos to Mac. And, they’re not abandoning aperture photos, yet those are still going to be in the Mac Store to be pulled after photos for Mac launches. And, they’ll ways to migrate everything you edit and, your captions and all that kind of stuff from aperture from photos. But, once that’s launched, they really want to be totally seamless from iOS device to MAC and, photos will just be taken care off.

Leo: Steve C and, Mike Yarn in our chat room point out Snap Chat would be considered photos that certainly a big social. Instagram is photos and, that’s a big social. Is the iPhone still the best camera out there, don’t some of the Nokia phones have……

Alex: Well, for photos I think that’s all……

Andy: My opinion is that it is a dead heat between the Nokia Pure View Camera and, the iPhone Five S. Because their just two……really……really good for two different things. The iPhone Five S still has the best, you see this button push and, it’ll take a really good picture, and that’s it. That’s the best solution of any phone that’s out there. The Nokia with the Pure View, the 10/20…….I still have thought about buying it because it’s such a good thing to have in my pocket, has the advantage……it’s the only phone that’s a real phone that breaks through the limitations of phone photography. There’s…..with the Five S there’s……it’s…… still in the binary state of either it’s capable of taking a picture of the situation or, is not capable of taking of the picture in that situation. Like in low light…..like in this is one of the Achilles heels of the iPhones I think because it goes into this weird separate mode, where it just boosts up the power to the sensor, and introduces all kind of noise, take a decent photo, but very muddy and, not very clear.

Whereas, the Nokia has an optical stabilization, which has something, that the iPhone needs to have. You can also have……it also has all kinds of flash, it has more detailed sensor, that it uses an actual zoom. Yes, okay, now it’s a digital zoom, okay…..it’s the kind of thing where you can create a 8 by 10 print that you  digitally zoomed that didn’t look like it’s the native resolution. All, these other things you can definitely come away with any scenario with a beautiful picture of your kid running around the room not blurred out of like in hell in darkened room where it’s not completely full of noise where you didn’t have to get within three inches of the person in order to get their picture. So, that’s why I think it shares that stage with the Nokia.

Leo: I remember in most cases blowing these pictures up to big sizes so good enough is good enough.

Alex: Although, I think the issue you that you get into is definitely for Instagram and, everything else it does, doesn’t make any difference, I do consider when my kids are graduating or something or competing in something getting on real camera, but, if my lens was a little bit better, it might be…..

Leo:…..we’re close……

Alex: Yeah………..I mean if…..if it was just……no…...

Leo: It’s fine, yeah

Alex: Yeah…..it’s fine.

Andy: But, that is something worth considering, you have this phone in your pocket and, that’s going to be the camera that you’re going to take so many great pictures of your kids growing up and, almost your life with. You would much rather…..when I review the HTC One and, it has that four megapixel……but bigger pixels for better pictures sort of camera. That’s what I ding it for maybe there’s going to be a time ten years from now when you wish you did not have this crummy, instagram resolution copy of this picture and it’s the same reason why I ding Apple for not refusing or saying (in a funny accent) we could do video in this version of the iPhone, but it’ll only 15 per frame second video, that’s not good enough, we’re are serving you by saying no.’ Which is what we do very well. And, I’m sure that twenty years from now, people are not going to write a thank-you letter to Apple saying you know I don’t have any video of my now twenty-four years old first steps, I was there and, I had the phone there and, I thank-you. I realize now that if I had 15 frames per second video for this once in a life-time moment, I would be ashamed to show it to anybody so thank-you for not putting that feature in. So that’s why I think that you shouldn’t settle for a camera phone that has poor performance you might get bitten in the butt 120 years from now. You should really think about that sort of stuff.

Leo: I’m doing an experiment, right now on my children much like FaceBook experimented on a few months ago telling us….both of them have broken their iPhones (Alex agrees) so they are both, they are both currently using them because I’m not going to buy them new iPhones now…….that’d be crazy talk.

Alex: Yes……….

Leo:…..although you can get a pretty good deal on Walmart, never mind we’ll talk about that, but I gave them both Moto Xs, because I had two MotoXs and, I’m not using them anymore……uhhhh we’ll see because, you know the one thing Henry wanted, he wanted the new iPhone because he wanted the slow-mo…… right and the Moto X camera by the way is like crap. (panelists laughing) crap! So, if they say to me oh yeah….so far nobody has……..the pictures are terrible. I don’t think if they even notice because they snatch as they’re instagraming. Maybe in five they’ll be mad at me…….

Rene: When you go selfie…………..it’s fine.

Leo: When I look back at old pictures, I’ve taken with my first digital camera and, they don’t look good either and they worth three or four megapixels, but I have them.

Alex: Great.

Leo:……and, their okay, remember I mean……

Alex:……I mean well that’s alright, one of the most important things about this all of this is the fact that everything is so well documented now. I mean I use my camera half the time just to remember something like someone hands me a business card, I immediately set it down and, take a picture of it. I don’t care about paper.

Leo: It’s good enough to do that.

Alex: Yes, it’s good enough to do that, well the things is that if……for me I’m constantly frustrated with is low life performance is number one thing. I really like to have the HTC the MA. If I’m taking pictures at parties I’ve always have that with me I like the little soft like appeal. I mean I adjust that, I mean when I’m posting it’s just like……… and I know that if I don’t take it with that camera it’s going to be real pain to get that effect back and, I really like that effect and, so that kind of stuff is worth it.

Leo: It’s an opportunity for Apple to really upgrade the camera and, the iPhone 6 and, just really knock us all on our asses.

Alex: I’d be very surprised if they do anything other than incremental. I think it’s an opportunity for Android makers to really like, I mean really HTC may not have hit it all the way in park but continue to really do outrageous things, I mean they got me to go and buy an Android phone that has a camera that did something more than did others then…….just whatever any other camera did.

Rene: Apple has been hiring Lumia engineers, so right now Nokia Lumia do great capture level photography, Apple does great on device processing level photography and, Google does great server side photo-processing with auto awesome things and, no-one’s crossed over those boundaries yet. But, Apple has been hiring those Lumia engineers, there are rumors that they’re actually increase the ZX so the camera comes out a little bit from the casing, which they have been reticent to do. But, you know what cameras want depth and, Apple wants to make better phones and, that’s do things have constant attention. (cross talk) It’s going to be interesting to see what they’re going to pull this time.

Andy: Apple’s go to solution is always to……what we normally can get this type of image you would get to have the lens bump out a little bit. You would have optical stabilizations mechanically stabilized optical stabilizing lenses. We’re coming up with ways so that we can actually……our solution is to put even better processor and an even better code into the phone so that it’s, quote, ’not necessary’ and, sometimes it works and, sometimes it doesn’t but as we’ve been discussing so many people they really don’t think in terms of taking a picture that’s so good that it can be a Christmas card photo or taken a picture that’s so good that 20 years later you will have absolutely no regrets that you shot it with a phone instead of going back into your bedroom, grabbing your camera out of the closet, but to take the picture with that instead.

So, where is the motivation for them to really push for moments like that. That’s why the Lumia 10/20 is such an impressive camera because nobody was asking for 40 mega pixels sensor, no-one was asking for on camera flash, no-one was asking for the simple thing where you can suddenly get access to every single manual control on……on……. the flight deck.

And, yet they said, ’no we want to take the greatest pictures that you would ever take with the camera,’ I swear when I go through my Flickr feeds, sometimes I have to remind myself that no that was not taken with my 500 dollars Micro Force camera, this was taken with the Nokia…..with the damn phone as I like to say.

Leo: So, Apple must be very carefully………balancing the need for a thinner phone and the need for a better camera. I guess focusing on soft-ware……

Rene: The desire for a thinner phone. (cross talk)

Alex: I’d say there’s a desire for a thinner phone. I’d say mine is never free, it always has a battery on it.

Leo: I don’t really think about that, you’re right. The phone bits are so thin there isn’t…….

Alex: The phone fits so well into my battery pack…..(cross talk)

Rene: That’s what they mean. The thinnest means it translates into weight, and for them lighter is better, that’s why anyone who picked up the iPhone Five said it feels so light that it’s not real and thinness is the side effect of how they feel.

Leo: I think that it’s wrong too….we’ve got a Shao Min here, this has got to be the big phone in China. The company that Hugo Baro left Google to go run. Now look at this…..the Shao Min, first of all, this is the company that’s copying Apple right, they even say one more thing in their presentation and, everything. This is the me four not the me two (Panelist laughing) so it feels very light and, I thought it felt kind of cheesy because of that. By the way that’s because of my MA, your MA’d (Alex) is a heavy phone.

Alex: Yes.

Leo: I don’t think heavy’s bad especially as it has a better battery life.

Alex: You would feel like Scotty’s best feels….when you put it in the front he went (Alex bending to his left)…….hurt my back.

Andy: There has to be a happy medium though, between a phone that is so thin and, light, lasts ten seconds on battery and, takes two pixel photos, and something that is thick enough to stop an assassin’s bullet if you keep it in your chest pocket. It’s …..it’s…..it’s like Alex was saying that’s…….that’s…… a good metaphor the family feud quiz, I don’t think there would be any people in that quiz who’d say well…… if the question were what do you want your next iPhone to have as a feature, oh no this is too thin, this is too heavy, this is probably not a complaint that’s going to register on the board.

Alex: Yeah.

Leo: This has a customized Chinese Android, I just took a picture, oh….. by the way the screen on this is really nice. It’s fantastic Jason says. (cross talk)the picture’s not great, partly because I’m kind of (showing a picture of ALEX) that’s…… it’s the same camera as in the One Plus, everybody’s has the same sensors now. In fact everybody……Apple still using the Sony sensors the same kind of set up, I think the color on that is very good, don’t you think Alex?

Alex: Yeah.

Leo: It’s a little blurry, either you moved or I moved but……..

Alex: ……..it’s all blurry……

Leo: It’s satisfying…….

Alex: It’s okay, I wouldn’t use it anywhere though, that’s the problem for me if it’s a little blurry that’s the end of it.

Leo: Let’s do another one, maybe……it could just be me.

Rene: We’re going to use it to remember Alex’s is on set.

Leo: (taking another picture) Okay hold very still, stop moving, this is like pretend we’re in the is in the 1880s (Rene interrupts)

Rene: Are you hyper lapsing Leo?

Leo:…..and I’m taking, you can’t smile……yeah that’s much better. That’s scary, that’s scary Alex…….now you see…… the details very good on that. I’m going to use that (panelists laughing)

Andy: That looks exactly like those 19^th century pictures where the person is so irked to have to sit still that they……that’s only the expression…..exactly………

Leo: Edward Moybridge here, I think that looks quite good. The colors……now there’s a couple of things that, Apple does really well, one is color right Adobe is excellent……

Andy: Tone mapping and, white balance are fantastic on every iPhone for the past two or three years. That’s something like my..…..my daily camera is the Nexus Five I like it a lot, the camera is good but it’s not great, sort of thing where I have spent a few minutes in aperture fixing……not fixing but improving and, those three minutes amount to what I get when I simply tap that one button on an iPhone.

Leo: Yeah, well okay there’s one area now we are seeing Mac Rumors is publishing pictures of the iPhone this is the 4(point)7 inch version finally assembled. And, we’re going back to the, I think that these accurate, Rene Ritchie, you’re my rumor vetter.

Rene: They…….they historically they’ve been accurate.

Leo: Feld Volk?

Rene: You never know what Apple’s doing as a prototype run or as a test manufacturing run, what they change before final production, but historically these have been accurate.

Leo: Yeah, it’s back to the kind of rounded edges,……..

Alex: (Whispering) It’s well defined……..

Leo: ……than the earlier phones…….

Alex:……..they are more defined.

Rene: That’s what we heard when i0S 7 came out. I heard that they were going to be making rounder, because you start to have bezel gestures……

Leo: Right.

Rene:…….coming out of the side and, it feels more comfortable, when it’s round again.

Leo: This is good……this is also from Mac Rumors, size comparison, if they do in fact a 4(point)7 and, a 5(point)5 compare the Five S all the way on the left of the iPad Air all the way on the right. I like that five and half inch that’s a feeling good to me.

Andy: Yeah………..

Leo: John Gruber used Pythagorean theorem, and………

Rene: I’m sure he did it, yeah……. I’m sure he did it as a regular expression.

Leo: I’m just corrupted. Well in fact Gruber’s speculation is kind of not being borne out by iOS 8, you know midden…..

Rene: It’s hard to say, because numbers don’t mean what people……..like numbers are easy to misunderstand, very similar to in statistics. And, also Dave Whiskas who’s John Gruber’s partner on Vesper he did a screen shot of Vesper using their dimensions, that Gruber put out if you actually want to see what it looked like in its spare timeline.

Leo:uhhhh…….

Rene: But, a lot of people talk about resolutions a lot, people talk about density but for Apple, neither…….those things are sort by-products, what they care most about is tap-target size because that’s how people use their devices. So, for example when they were making the iPad mini, they had to hit 7(point)9 size, about size…….and they only question is whether they could shrink the display down, the current iPad interface down was…….were the tap size target was big enough. It wasn’t whether the resolution was this, the pixel count was that, it was could human……human beings reliably and, consistently hit the buttons on that phone.

And, when they bring this up, it’s not going to be a matter of like there will be technical things, like there will be 3X, there will be densities, there will be super retina, all of these technical terms, but at the end of the day Apple’s going to make sure a 4(point)7 inch phone and, a 5(point)5 inch phone, you can easily hit the same 44 point button that you can hit on an iPhone today. Everything else is going to be a by-product of that.

Andy: And, if that happens, it’s……. a lot of developers are going to have to guess as to how that’s going to feel. That’s not until they get a device in hand when they can actually put this code. How those devices are going to realize what mistakes they’ve made and, how they need to re-engineer this for this other screen size. I would think that it’s conceivable that you can have a true universal app, and you really have to finely tune the interface for every screen that you anticipate that you’re going to have to hit.

Leo: So, Gruber speculated, doing the math’s……now this he says…..I have no information, that I have spent the last month trying to figure out the pixel counts for the displays……..he finally comes to the conclusion, that if you do that even in the multiple of existing displays, developers are going to hate you less. So, he predicts the 4(point)7 inch will be 13(point)34 by seven fifty, that’s double (Alex agree) and 326 pixels per inch which is nice, anything over 300 is I think….

Alex: Well we……the print resolution used to be that.

Leo: I guess you’re right…..

Alex: But, even when we thought about like……yeah……

Leo: So you can’t see the dots in the normal screen……yeah…..he said for the five inch and, actually I really like this 22/08 by 12/42 much more than 1080p and, 461 pixels per inch he says that’s three times…….(cross talk)

Alex: Just put that down the fact that actually happened, that is higher than an art magazine thing.

Leo: It’s beautiful.

Rene: His numbers are based on the 4(point)7 inch he’s keeping the AD 2 X size of the current iPhone and, increasing the pixel count. There’s two competing sort of preferences, here, some people want to it to be bigger, if you’re hard of sight, you want the text to be bigger, you want the graphics to be bigger, you won’t want to have the space to see the same stuff, only bigger scale. And, other people want more pixels, they want to be able to fit more stuff on the screen, keeping it the same size. You know in a world of dynamic texts an adaptive lay-out maybe you’ll be able to eventually choose. Right now you have got to pick one of those things, so for the 4(point)7 inch he’s saying that it is going to stay 2X. So, it’s going to stay the same resolution 326 inch pixels per inch. They’re just going to add pixels to it, much like they added the pixels to make the iPhone four inches instead of 3(point)5, and then for the 5(point)5, instead of just adding pixels they’re also going to add 3X, which means one point on the original iPhone back in 2007 is now divided up into three points so a grid of nine pixels, and that’ll mean that it’s going to stay sharper when you get to those bigger sizes. But, everything will also get bigger, almost like on an iPad Air it’s bigger than the iPAD mini. 3X is a little bit more problematic for developers though because 2X everything landed on the pixel grid….one became two. Now, if one becomes three or three becomes one, things start to fall off that grid and, that’s when things like alias happens, you don’t get the clean edges anymore. So, there’s a little bit of an anx in the designer community already.

Leo: So, wouldn’t it be better not to have 3X, but have 4X, double, double.

Rene: It would but that’s such an obscene amount of pixels……(Panelists laughing)

Alex: When you think about the pixels it’s not just the design of all of those, it’s also the display of those and, the GPU required, whatever they’re going to call it. It’s firing into the screen, I mean that’s one of the reasons that I really felt like the retina didn’t perform as well as when it first came out, because the processing behind it didn’t keep up with what they do with the pixels.

Rene: Retina tax.

Alex: Right.

Leo: And, then there’s iOS 8, evidence that’s coming from Mark Gurman from 9 to 5 Mac in the new X Code Beta 6 and, in the P list in iOS 8, that there is an iPhone with a resolution 4/14 by 7/36 and, there is a……,I don’t know, he’s guessing or estimating…….I don’t know……… I can’t parse this, would you help me please?

Rene:……between Gruber and, Gurman on twitter if anybody wants to go……

Leo:…..back and, forth…….

Rene: Yeah, because it is hard, because points and, pixels, you know points are constant, you know one point on the screen is a constant thing, how many pixels that point is made out of can change. In the original iPhone it was one pixel per point, now there’s four two in each directions and, you know we’re using Gruber’s math article and Gurman’s of course earlier reports, they’ll be three so nine by nine making up each of those things. So, what those numbers mean is that you know 700 is the total size of the screen, is that the number of points?

Is, that some half ratio for an iPad app, for a half screen iPad app. It’s really hard to tell just based on X Code, there’s just so many possibilities that those numbers can plug into.

Leo: I do have to say they use a website called, ‘is this retina’, is this retina(dot)com, which is kind of fun to play with, with all these possibilities and, what it would look like, what the pixels per inch would be, etc, etc, etc.

So if want to……you can see what the existing resolutions are and, then play with it a little bit so this would be a 5S would be eleven. If it was retina, if you were more than eleven inches away it’s 325 pixels per inch.

Rene: It’s function of distance that’s why iPad Air is under 300 pixels per inch, but it’s still quote retina un quote still retina, further away.

Leo: Right……iPad Mini with retina display 324, this is kind of a useful calculator, if you want to play with this a little bit.

Andy: But now we’re getting into the same sort of story Mark used to get into when we used to talk about CPU clocks speed being……okay I know this number is better than that number.

Leo: It’s malarkey.

Andy: Unless, you’re betting on which number was going to be bigger when both phones are released, what happens when you actually look at this thing, what kind of visual impact does it create. And, I’ve……I’ve got tablets in my office that have just insane levels of details that then I think, ’wow this is really nice, really great’ and, then I’ll get out like my iPad Air which quote the inferior screen resolution and, I realize no I wasn’t reacting to the detail, I was reacting to the fact that the screen brightness was a lot higher on this one or, the way that this video was tuned. So, it’s an interesting debate but it’s the sort of thing that Apple divorced itself from years ago I think.

Rene: It’ll get to the point where the resolution is just high enough that no human can discern pixels and, they’ll be able to do that on the Mac and, that is render whatever size is easy for designers and, then scale it down to whatever size fits the device.

Leo: That’s what you want, right? (cross talk)

Andy: But, the key is that you want to make sure that you scale high enough, so that it can be detected by analysts. (panelists laughing)

Leo: But, that’s what you want don’t you,  you want high DPI?

Rene: Yeah…..

Leo:…..and, then,

Rene:……these are all fine.

Alex: I think we’re getting to a point where anything over 300 DPI is great. I mean, it’s what you’ve been looking at magazines for a long time. I don’t know, it’s a hard time believing in these scales getting any higher than that. It’s usually 400 or 500 and, this gets into that whole…….

Leo: You’re MA’d at 425……

Alex: I mean it’s the pattern……. it doesn’t……at that point you……..

Rene: The Android devices are using conventional, because they’re using 1080p or they’re using 2K and, it’s easier if everyone buys the same panel size.

Leo: Right.

Rene: So if they’re going to make that, then any manufacturer can get and there will be different technologies but at least they’re standard. Apple, has not so far in iOS devices really stuck to any standard resolution, so they can make anything they want.

Leo: But, you did see……..I’m sure you did the Android fragmentation graph, I think that was generated by EL vit signal, and of course the fragmentation of different Android devices, but this is the various Android screen sizes. (Leo showing a website with Android screen sizes). But you’re making a good point. That is deceptive, because, if they’re 1080p, doesn’t matter what the screen size is. The resolution is illusionist, right………

Rene:……and, they’re whole system is so different, anyway with fragment. It’s not the same kind of design practice at all.

Leo: Fragmentation is to Android pheron certainty to as compatibility used to be for Macintosh pheron circuit doubt. If, you want to make a BSR argument that would scare somebody off, you know there’s a lot of reasons to not getting Android, but fragmentations is not one of them.

Rene: It’s the opposite side of flexibility, if you want to have a bunch of different devices, then the price of that is a little bit of extra work for the developers. If, you only want one device, then, you can have everything nice and, consistent. You know some people want more than one device.

Leo: The only thing about using the word fragmentation, you could show the same graphic and, say Android choice, and they would say wow look at all the choices, I have. So yeah it’s fragmentation and, augmentation, it’s awesome memorabilia.

Andy: But that has always been the defining difference between Android and, iOS, it’s, someone whose very, very…….. smart and thinks a lot about this and will make a lot of the decisions for you and, that’s great, or you can basically have about 12 to 8 team different rational options and, pick the one that you like, which also has its effects, so.

Leo: So, as always on a non-news day we’ve ended up spending 45 minutes, talking about nothing……(Leo Laughing) but again we’re not done. There’s more about nothing, coming up in just a minute……

Alex: We’re going to speak more and, more about less,……less….. until we’re talking completely about nothing.

Leo: I love it…….when we’re about to……just days away from an Apple announcement.

Andy: But we haven’t even started talking about Lena Donna’s Emmy dress. When are we talking about that?

Leo: Was she wearing a tutu? A goo tube was that a tutu……tutu….

Andy: Bravo for anybody who wears something different. Sometimes you see a dress and, you wonder if it’s intentionally provocative? Looks like you know what, not only do I not care about what people write about me, I’m going to give…..I ‘m going to throw meat to the wolves. I’m going to tell you how…….I’m going to show how cool I am by not caring about it.

Leo: I think next week we should make two tutus day and, we’ll all wear it.

Andy: We should make it a tutu party….tutu…..tutu

Leo: You should say par tutu……

Rene: You should save the challenges just for tutus. That would be great.

Leo: The show today brought to you by Lynda(dot)com L-Y-N-D-A-(dot)c-o-m.

You know about Lynda, the best way, the most affordable way to learn, stream thousands, by the way beautifully produced, high quality videos, created by experts who are also expert teachers, thousands of courses in soft-ware, web development, graphic design, things like business skills. They work directly with the people who’re in the field using this stuff, and, the companies that produce it via timely training often, on the same day, new versions, all releases hit the market.

So, for instance they now have course on iWork’s for iPad essential training, for iOS app development extension training, Monday productivity pointers, the Yosemite classes will be out instantaneously when Yosemite hits. They’ve got classes on the new office apps from Microsoft from the…….on the iPad, and…..and it’s not just these great videos produced at the highest quality, not home-made You Tube stuff, but really good stuff. They are then broken into bite sized pieces, you can learn what you when you want, at your own pace. You can go from beginning to end or just go right into because they’ve got searchable transcripts, and playlists. So you can right to the part you want, certificates on completion of course which you can publish to your LinkedIn profile……very handy if you’re looking for work.

Whether, you’re a beginner or advanced, Lynda(dot)com is of course is for everyone, plus apps for iPhone, iPads and, Android which help you learn on the go. Twenty five bucks a month that’s all you pay, you get unlimited access to over a hundred thousand video tutorials.

There’s also a premium plan and with the annual plan that means that you can download courses to your iPhone, iPad or Android so you can watch them on plane or whenever you’re offline. Premium plan members also get project files and, practice along video instructor.

I want you to try it Lynda(dot)com, for whatever soft-ware, for whatever tasks you have in business. There you go…..us it this is green screen techniques for video and, photography. Richard Harrington and, Ava Shapiro, learn the green screen for soft-ware, any soft-ware, any hard-ware.

Alex: It really is the best folks! I mean Richard and Ava are friends of mine…..

Leo:……, you know them…….

Alex:……and, they are the kind of guys that I talk to when I want to pick some-one’s brain when I’m figuring something. So it’s really……you’re not getting someone with training, you’re getting the guys that do the best training.

Leo: Yeah……learn Photoshop from Burt Monroy, learn photography from Derek Storey, or Ben Long, I mean you’re learning from the best.

We have a special offer for you, I said that it was 25 bucks a month, but you can have a whole week for free, if you go to Lynda(dot)com(slash)macbreak, that’s L-Y-N-D-A-(dot)com(slash)macbreak, I want you to try it, because I know there will come a time when you say, ‘I have to know how to use Excel tomorrow.’ I have to be able……..I have to be able to sign with this site today.

Alex: And, it’s not a if you have to know everything about it. It’s that you……I need to figure this out and, you search through Lynda and, it’s broken up into little pieces……so I’m just watch this for five minutes on how I use this new tool in Photoshop that I haven’t seen before, or you know that’s the……

Leo: Some of the……this by the way focusing on how this could work for you something that’s good because you’re interested in learning, like I always……I don’t have any reason to use to use typography, but I’m fascinated by it. So, learning typography from a professional typographer, it’s just awesome. You know they have great classes in that kind of thing, so maybe you just want to, you know learn more about color, using color in your designs, they have classes on that. So just have to be, to get better on Photoshop and deep color techniques on Photoshop techniques……….. It’s great. I love him, pixel playground with Burt Monroy and, I am going on and ……on……I’m sorry……I am going on and on Lynda….L-Y-N-D-A (dot)com(slash)macbreak. Should I run over to Walmart and, get a Five C for Henry for 97 cents.

Alex: Holy Smoke!

Leo: Holy moley and iPhone Five S 79……..

Rene: It’s the contract that comes up with it, it’s not the upgrade price.

Andy: (In Chinese accent) Iphone for a change from a dollar.

Leo: There’s always a catch. Actually, that raises the issue that will the new iPhone be more expensive, some are saying you may see it be you know 900 bucks!

Rene: The theory is that the iPad Air is a hundred bucks more expensive than the iPad mini, so that’s Apple has two sizes of iPhones and, the one that’s bigger could theoretically be some numbers may be a hundred dollars more than the one that’s smaller.

Alex: I think a loaded iPhone 5 now is all right.

Leo: It’s a thousand bucks.

Alex: It’s a thousand dollars…..

Leo: Yeah…… so you could go there.

Alex: Yeah, I ‘ve been there.

Rene: I mean like, people get upset because Apple charges a 100 bucks for difference in storage which is ludicrous because storage shouldn’t cost that much. When, Apple realizes that there are only certain things people will actually pay more money for and, screen size is something they have been trying on the iPad, now so it’s a bigger screen……that’s worth more money to you okay, great.

So, they have one that they sell at lower margins and, one they sell at higher margins and, hopefully in the middle is actually what everybody buys, which is a typical marketing thing.

Alex: But, one thing that you often see is Apple buyers all the time do buy the more expensive ones when you look at the trajectory of what get’s sold out, maybe they should think less of them, but usually it’s hard to find…..I find that it’s hard to find the top of the line ones. They seem to go very quickly, at least in the early days.

Andy: I don’t know if that might apply, I don’t know if you can remember we’re talking about one model that has just different capacity options, different options like that. Most…..I think that most people that buy phones aren’t quite so locked into the idea of getting an iPhone or into the idea of getting a premium phone. I really do think there are people who do come in expecting to spend 199 dollars on a two year contract phone and, then buying which ever one straight, which ever one strikes their fancy the best. They seem to have covered all the basis that they want…….so I do……I think that’s the whole reason why they came out with the iPhone Five C to begin with, then they can. There’s more room to play at the lower end than the higher end at this point, but I think that if they came out with a larger screen phone and, they charged a hundred bucks extra for it I think they would definitely get it. Because, they…..they wouldn’t be selling it as jumbo sized phone, which is the only way that Samsung can sell the Galaxy Note. They would sell it as something between a phone and, an iPad and, they would find no shortage of people who want that.

We’ve been horny for a larger screen phone like since 2012 at least. There’s a lot of pent up anxiety and there’s a lot of people who are going to like, ‘son I’m taking your manis jar full of long-care tip money, I’ll get back to you in a couple of months, daddy needs 5(point)5 inches phone.’

Leo: All right, how about this, Bloomberg now, just now reporting that Apple’s preparing a 12(point)9 inch iPad for early 2015.

Rene: They’ve been working on that for a while. There’s some thinking, I know that this is going on in Apple, but there is some thinking that right now people have four inch iPhone and that the iPad mini is really popular. When the iPhone Four goes to 4(point)7 and, 5(point)5 inches, what’ll that do to the iPad mini, because that phone now is really close to the iPad mini size, so will that cannibalize the iPad mini a little bit, or will it push people back towards the iPad Air, because they now have something that’s larger, so they can travel with. Maybe travelling with the iPad won’t be as a big a deal with any more than maybe having one at home. What would be more important and, what if they have 13 inch iPad at home, is that even better.

So, before you went from two small devices, now there’s a possibility that we’ll go to two larger devices.

Alex: I think that they give up the religiousness about no key board, I mean someone can build a key board, but I think that Apple really ought to think about……I want have something as a business traveller, I really want  something that’s operational, you know if I’m going to get something that’s that big.

Leo: Does the Surface Pro…….

Alex: I mean I look at the……

Leo: three attract you?

Alex: It does……I look at those ads and, I look at Photoshop…… like get Photoshop on a surface…..I…..Photoshop ad has been very effective with me thinking not that I want a surface yet, but that I really want Apple to build something that’s really a computer that I can touch, you know and having a mixture of those things, you know. I think that would be very compelling and, I’m hoping a bigger one means kind of bringing that together.

Andy: I agree a hundred percent, because I really feel as though I need something between the i,……something more than an iPad something less than a Mac Book.

And, if Apple were to create a third…..given all the things we’re seeing about iOS8 about, how that was going to solve a lot of the problems,  people like me who can use a full sized iPad as a business travel computer……I don’t need to have nine over-lapping Windows, but it would be nice to have two things side by side. One, in a small tile, one, in a larger tile. It’s be nice if  things……..apps work together a little bit more harmoniously. If they had a 13 inch screen that not only would accommodate that kind of stuff, with its extra real estate, but also of they simply said, ‘we’re not going to create something as vulgar as an attached keyboard like you see on the surface but, we’ll put mounting points inside this so that…..so as to make it really, really easy to make really, really cool integrated, keyboards that make it look like a super, super slick notebook. The only question in my mind is which……I think that they would have to delete something from the Mac Book Airline to avoid again that……Samsung in their product line. They just simply spray a hose into the market place, and say, ‘pick up off the floor the device that you want and, then come here and pick…..and, pay me for it. It is always, ‘we’ve decided which three we want to sell, pick one of these three.’

Alex: Well, I think that in some ways a 12(point)9 could be that where we really see this merger, that the two Oss at some point you know, aware where there are we can really run some of those things. I mean for me……my eleven inch the way I use my eleven inch I look at it and, I think this could be an iPad. if I just felt like I could do what I do with that eleven inch, you know on a plane, mostly.

Leo: This is the…….I actually point out that Microsoft does not compare the surface to an iPad. They compare it to……

Rene:……not any more.

Leo: (pulls out an advert) yeah because of the cost…….mostly because of the price. The……you’re talking 1200, 1300 bucks for a surface pro with a keyboard.

Rene: I mean they tried and they were totally unsuccessful in marketing it against the iPad, so they’re now trying the Mac Book Air in. That’s the only concern I have that Apple………Microsoft has not been able to prove that enough people want this as a product category. Maybe Apple could, but some far either they didn’t do it  right or it doesn’t exist and I’m not sure which one it is yet.

Leo: Yeah…..(cross talk) go ahead to Andy…..

Andy:…..or they just feel like they have customers that really want something the same as the last thing they had and not so much……..I don’t think Windows users are nearly as adventurous as those Mac people. And, they’re not willing to deal with a phone that doesn’t cut and paste for a year, no matter how good, how clearly  the first iPhone was.

Alex: Well, I think for Microsoft, their market is we always have to remember is so big that all they have to do is retention you know and they make it really……really……

Andy: Through-out the world literally……..

Leo: No, figuratively…….(cross talk)

Andy:…..in their role of……..in their role of serving the business needs of those people who need to keep the gears of the industry greased and, turning.

Alex: Right.

Leo: Did you see Steve Ballmer after he left Microsoft, did a marathon of the Good Wife, he watched the hundred episodes of the Good Wife for two weeks.

Alex: What……why would he do that……..

Leo: He was really depressed.

Alex: I don’t understand.

Leo: A hundred episodes…….

Alex: Homeland, I understand, 24 I understand, the Good Wife I don’t.

Andy: Think about the first day you had when you were like 18 or 19 or 20 or 21 your first day when I’m not in school, not in college for the first time since I was four years old I could do whatever I want with this one day……did…..you…..did…you say I’m going to seize this day by the horn, and be productive and it was like……

Leo: Right…..

Andy:……no I’m going to enjoy the fact that I can sit all day and do this all day(rubbing his fingers together) with my hands doing this. For the first time this could be number one on my agenda, so…..Good for him after being a CEO……one of the most abused CEO’s for the past 20 years, he can now say, ‘I just want to sit on the sofa and have peace and, watch a marginal series, simply because I don’t have to solve anyone’s problem or be anybody’s whipping boy.’

Rene: I don’t have Ballmer to kick around anymore.

Leo: I don’t want to have to mention Ballmer in this story, but I would have to think that Ballmer was involved. And, a 100 hours in two weeks, 50 hours a week……

Alex: I’d take a full time job……

Leo:……more of a challenge……8 hours at Pixelcorp……8 hours a day…..

Rene: I’d watch all the Dr. Who’s that I can.

Leo: How many Dr. Who’s did you watch?

Rene: The Modern Era, I watched the Seven Seasons Wedding upto the episode last week. A lot of Dr. Who……I speak a little bit British now. Sorry…..so sorry.

Leo: I have a lot of catching up to do…..I……when I get fired from this job I will watch……

Rene: Were you fired…… will you fire yourself?

Leo: I will fire myself, which I’m about to do by the way, I’m just fed up with myself. Battery problems with iPhones……there is a replacement program if you’re having them. I do remember that some iPhones used to……

Alex: Maybe we want to own a company that actually has problems with their iPhones dying, very quickly.

Leo: (reading) a very small percentage of units may suddenly experience shorter battery-life or need to be charged more frequently……like every hour. But the good news is there is a support website you can go to, you can…..the iPhone battery replacement site, you can go and, enter your serial number and, see if this is essentially a re-call. You know when, trade press is very nice to Apple, because they could have that big headline. ‘Apple re-calls iPhone 5 for battery problem.’

Alex: These re-calls are almost always…….not always……..but almost always a small percentage. You know it’s still tri-millions of people.

Leo: It’s a whole lot. It’s iPhone 5 sold between September 2012 and January 2013, just for one quarter. And, there is a limited serial number range so you have to go and get your serial number and enter it in and, see if you qualify. But, if you…….you know it’s worth doing it. I’ve been noticing……..how bad is it, bad battery life?

Alex: I know that I’m complaining about mine all the time so, till some one sees my appliance…..

Leo: Yeah, but that’s normal……

Alex: ……that I complain about my battery, yes. I feel that this iPhone……it’s a five

Right?

Leo: It’s a five……

Alex: That’s what I have and, I feel like this is the worst battery ever in a phone.

Leo: With like what……how soon do you charge?

Alex: I’m just constantly plugging it in.

Leo:……then I think you should go there.

Alex: I just don’t know it’s……..some days it’ll go ironic…..ironically…….interestingly enough, different……in different locations I  find, it would be very…..very…..different so. In Pennsylvania where I just moved to……

Leo: That’s the last thing……

Alex:……it’s lasting a lot longer than it does in San Francisco or,

Leo: It has to do with…..(cross talk)

Alex:…..radio hunting……

Leo:…..do you have it with you?

Alex:……. checking it right now.

Leo:……let’s enter it in here.

Rene: I was in New York last week, my battery drained in front of my eyes, just because roaming is so terrible there.

Leo: I’ll do it for you…..you go to the settings, general and, you’ll see the about section, and then you’ll find your serial number in there. Let’s just do that right now. (cross talk)

Andy: I’m sorry Alex…..(panelists talking over each other)…..

Leo:……you don’t want to say that loud.

Alex: I’m paranoid……..(cross talk about numbers)

Rene: If you turn off Facebook Auto and Refresh  and a  bunch of other Facebook stuff you might get double the battery life.

Leo: I always turn off……in fact I have not started to turn off leading Facebook from my mobile devices and just say I’m going to do it on the desk top because it is new……..notoriously hard on the battery…… and that’s why……,’sorry you’re not eligible, our records show your battery’s already been replaced or it’s not one of the iPhones…….’

Alex: I do use Facebook so……

Leo: Take it off……

Alex:…..but I like it.

Leo:…..but don’t do it on your phone, do it on the desk top.

Alex:…..I like it on the phone…..I don’t want use Facebook on my desk top.

Rene: I have the auto-refresh stuff and, then it’ll still update when you go to the app…..

Leo: Right……

Rene: But it will always be churning in the back-ground.

Alex: I turned off the auto-refresher on Facebook and, the…..when they first released the Facebook app, I was like this is stupid, ‘why would you ever use it on this little phone,’ and now I never go on Facebook on the desk top.

Leo: You have a problem, you should stop.

Alex: I don’t go that often…..I just……that’s when I look at Facebook.

Leo: What are you looking for?

Alex: I am just looking at stupid things, mostly.

Leo: That’s right.

Alex: Mostly, at ice-bucket challenges……that’s when I need to relax (laughing)look at Facebook there will be some stupid video……..

Rene: I looked at it for a challenge for an iPhone last week, felt bad about myself but I did it.

Leo: You did it for an iPhone.

Rene: So Samsung set up that commercial where they showed Galaxy S 5 doing the ice-bucket challenge and, challenging the iPhone and, it offended me as a product marketer, because it wasn’t very creative, but it also..…..in this ice bucket challenge, this is a waterproof phone the way that any normal phone can survive. I mean if they had thrown it in a bucket of ice-water that would have been fine, game over, but they kind of poured ice-water on the top, all the ports were visible and, nothing else and, I looked at it, I said, ’fairly sure that an iPhone would be perfectly fine doing  that and I wanted to see if it would be and, turns out it was.’ Perfectly, fine.

Leo: It chills, I’ve had such bad experiences with………..Remember I’m the one that put an iPhone in a glass of water.

Alex: How did that work?

Leo: Not well………then I brought it because it stopped working, right I was testing liqui power, you remember this. Liqui Power was that thing that they process your phone and they magically restore it.

Alex:……and, it didn’t survive.

Leo: But, then I brought it to the iPhone repair and, he said, ’I’ve never seen anything like this.’ He replaced all the components. He said, ’look at your SIM tray there’s even burn on short circuiting on your SIM tray. I mean this……nothing could get it back and, then I brought it to the Apple store and, the guys said, ‘I saw what you did.’ (panelists laughing) I saw what you did. (cross talk) Two hundred bucks to replace it, that was nice of him, he didn’t have to do that, that was the genius, being nice to me. Let’s take a break, come back with more, we’ve got a…..(showing the iPhone experiment) there you go. Ice bucket challenge, is that you Rene…….

Rene: Yeah, that’s my iPhone.

Andy: Of all the iPhones which iPhone did you nominate, Rene?

Leo: Oh, you even Siri’s it in response.

Rene: Yeah……I challenged…….I kind of regret that……I challenged the Samsung design team and, they said they have one.

Leo: Oh…….

Andy: Oh, snack……..

Leo: What…..snacks…….snap……

Andy: Is it snap……I’m sorry…….I was trying to adopt the vernacular of the……(lost in cross talk)on if I didn’t smack my little back side.

Leo: (putting shaving foam on face) Oh, gauntlet thrown……

Rene: Leo, your face looks marvelous.

Leo: You might think I’m applying a very lovely face-cream, to myself here, but in fact……

Andy: In fact it’s Kenny Rodgers act. (Leo  laughing) this is what Las Vegas brings to you…….the Kenny Rodgers experience.

Leo: This is the…..(opening box) by god I hope there’s a razor in this. Oh, this is the Harry’s shave cream, which is like……oh it’s so good……

Rene:  It's magnificent.

Leo:  You use it?

Rene:  Yeah, they sent me one, and it's all natural, smells great, and the unboxing experience is positively Apple-esk.

Leo:  It's Apple-esk.  

Alex:  How are you using it? 

Leo:  What do you mean?

Rene:  I shave once in a while Alex.

Alex:  Okay, alright.

Leo:  Everybody has to shave some part of their body.

Alex:  Right.

Leo:  This has natural Marula, which I don't know what that is but apparently people do, and coconut oils.  Marula is like a nut, I think.  Then, oh, it smells so good.  Then watch, the proof is in the pudding.  I'm not even using any water.  I did not prepare my beard in any way for this shave.

Alex:  He's not even cutting himself.  That's very dangerous.

Leo:  I have been using Harry's razors and blades for 6 or 7 months, and I have never cut myself even once.

Andy:  How about that build quality?   Look at that handle.

Leo:  Look at that handle.  You know what?  Part of the secret to Harry's is, the guys who started Harry's; Jeff, who started Warby Parker, he did a lot of research before he did the startup.  He said, "What makes a great razor blade?"  He actually found out that there are only 2 factories in the world both of them in same small town in Germany that can make a razor blade this perfect.  Most razor blade companies, by the way, do not want you to have great razor blades.  They want you to keep buying more, right?  So they actually bought the company.  They bought the factory.

Alex:  We made so much money with Warby Parker that we decided to buy all of the razors.

Leo: No, I think they took investment money.  The idea was, just like Warby Parker, they wanted to use the internet to disenfranchise the established monopolies.  If you look at Gillette, I was the other day at the drug store; you can't actually buy it, you have to get a clerk to come over and unlock it because the blades were so damn expensive.  I spent $60 on Gillette blades because I wanted to do a head to head comparison.  And I did; I shaved one half of my face with the Gillette and one half with the Harry's.  It was an amazing difference.  You wouldn't think there would be a difference.  Look at that, I have just shaved entirely without water just using that great Harry's Shave Cream, and it's soft.

Andy:  Like a hovercraft for your face.

Leo:  It is like a hovercraft...I like it.  Go to harrys.com.  The way they do it is every other month you get a delivery.  So I get 4 tubes of the shave cream every other month and 8 blades.  Once a week I change my blade.  It's perfect, it's just fabulous.  You can get the Winston Kit, which is the one that I'm using.  It's got the nice metal handle, and of course I had it monogrammed "Leo".  Heather Homan got one for her dad, my phone screener on the radio show, and because it already has an "H" for Harry's on it, she said I'm going to leave it at that because of Homan.  So if your name begins with an H you don't need to get the monogram.  Just a little pro tip, it's got an "H" on it already.  "H'", see?  Harry's.  Harrys.com, you can get this and you can get $5 off of your first order if you use promo code MACBREAK.  Actually, the videos of the factory are so cool where they are making the blades.  They make other stuff there, too.  They also have the Truman Kit.  That's actually the one that Steve Gibson wanted because for some reason he just liked that orange handle or something.  I don't remember why.  It's not because he was cheap, but it is less expensive.  Get the kit for $15.  It gets you set up with 2 blades, a razor, and of course a tube of Harry's Shave Cream.  Then set up your regular deliveries.  You are going to love it.  Harrys.com, use the offer code MACBREAK to save on your first order, $5 off.  Oh, this is Sarah's.  Sorry Sarah.  I just shaved with her kit.  I should have read the inscription before I did that.  Thank you Harry's for your support of MacBreak.  I just shaved.  No water. 

Alex:  On air.

Rene:  It's long enough for Leo.

Leo: Go ahead, feel that.  No, it's alright.  You were in Pittsburg for the earthquake?  You didn't feel the earthquake in Montreal?

Alex:  I missed it.  I missed it.

Rene:  No, I saw your tweet about it.  That's where I found out about it.

Leo:  I tweeted it.  In fact, that was the interesting thing.  It woke us up, those of us in the Bay area.  It was fairly strong only about 30 miles from us here in Napa.  I leapt from the bed and shouted, "Earthquake!"

Rene:  As one does.

Leo:  As one might.

Alex:  As one does in California.  We are trained.  It's actually a class when you come to California.  We show you how to jump out of your bed and how to say earthquake.

Leo:  I felt kind of dopey afterwards, but that's what I did.  Then I get back in bed, and then this is me for the next 4 hours because you can't go back to sleep after a big earthquake.  

Alex:  Right.

Leo:  Just looking at the Twitter and it went crazy.

Alex:  I got a lot of text messages, "Are you okay?", and I'm just fine, I'm standing over a lake in Pennsylvania. 

Leo:  It didn't affect us here in the Brick House.  I just wanted to pass along that everyone is fine.  None of our employees had any trouble.

Alex:  Nothing fell.

Leo:  Many of our friends who were vintners had a lot of problems in Napa.  A lot of wine was lost.  But I love this; I have mixed feeling about this.  Jawbone published a graph of their users and you will see the red line is Modesto / Santa Cruz; they barely woke up.  The blue line is the folks in Napa / Sonoma, where we are, Vallejo and Berkeley.  74% of them woke up immediately.  Then it's a little lower number.  But, you know, my takeaway from this is, wait a minute, they are aggregating my sleep data at Jawbone?  These are Jawbone UP wearers.

Alex:  Oh, right.

Leo:  So apparently, just a little tip, they are aggregating your data. 

Alex:  I'm sure it's anonymous.  That's what everyone always says.

Andy:  I was curious about Dropcam users who had their cameras set to automatically record every time there is a tech movement.  So I was wondering what type of traffic they were getting between those cameras and the servers at that time.

Leo:  Oh, I bet.  Well, I have the video.  Do you want to see our video?  Where was it?   I have it, John sent me a link.  It's not very dramatic; I will be honest with you.

Alex:  It looks like a big truck drove by.

Leo:  Yeah.  In fact you have to look really hard to see anything happening.  You got it?   There it is thank you Chad.  Get ready.  Oh, the excitement is beginning.  That's it, right there.  See the disco ball?  Slight tremor.

Andy:  But, you know that's enough.

Leo:  We have a puzzle though.  This is the mystery.  Watch this one.  This makes it look like it's really bad because the camera is just sitting there.  Oh my god, earthquake!  Ohhhhh!

Alex:  Red alert!  Klingons are firing on the starboard bow!

Leo:  But you could see the little lamb on the camera going a little like that.  So, even though it was a strong earthquake, 6.0, and we weren't very far from it, it wasn't bad.

Rene:  We are glad you are all safe and sound.

Leo:  We are all safe and sound.  Maybe you want to consider if you are wearing a Jawbone UP. This is the mystery one by the way, this is my office and watch, a light comes on and goes off.  Watch, the light comes on the minute it started shaking and then the minute it stops shaking about 20 seconds later, the light goes off.

Andy:  You do have a motion detecting light?

Leo:  No.  We still have no idea what happened.  Burke has a theory, that I find farfetched, that the light switch that's attached, we think it is the soft light right above me that I use for my key light, that the light switch on that must have been right...

Alex:  That it was lose or something?

Leo:  But that makes no sense.  First of all, we never leave it there because it's a fader it would have to be right there.  Secondly, why does it go on, I would understand why it would go on right when it shakes because it shakes into position, but why does it go off when it stops shaking?

Rene:  The ghost was scared, so it goes away.

Andy:  Perhaps there is a staffer or intern who is being underpaid who cannot afford to live in the Petaluma area.  He sleeps under your desk unbeknownst to you.  He heard the tremor, flipped on the light, and realized it was okay so he flipped the light back off and went to sleep.

Leo:  That's what I think.  And then somebody else, actually Burke, thinks that it could be ball lightening. 

Andy:  Ball lightening is better.

Alex:  I think that it's aliens.

Rene:  Yeah, invasion.

Leo:  That's our theory.  Hey, good news.  This is a California story, but I think that it applies to everyone because as California goes so goes the nation.

Alex:  Yeah, this is going to roll across the nation.

Leo:  The governor signed the Kill Switch Bill, so that by July 2015 all smart phones have to have kill switches.  The idea is this would be an anti-theft technology that would make it less desirable to steal smartphones.  Apparently that has become a big business, especially in the big cities of California.  

Alex:  There was a huge drop after Apple put the kill switch in.  I don't know what the percentage was.

Leo: IPhones already have kill switches.

Alex:  They already have them.

Leo:  Well, you have to turn them on.  You have to turn on Find My iPhone, right?  It's not on by default.

Alex:  Right, but there was already a big drop.

Leo:  Right.  And the fact that they do it in California is germane because nobody is just going to make a smartphone for California.  So if you are making a smartphone you are going to say, "Well, if I'm going to sell it in California I have to do this."

Rene:  It's like California admissions standards on cars.

Alex:  It's kind of like vaccination where if most people are doing it, it takes the fun out of stealing it because your percentage on succeeding is much lower.

Leo:  It's chiefly Samsung and Microsoft.  I think the current version of Android has an Android Device Manager that has that capability.  

Andy:  Yeah, and also a tracking system that a lot of people don't actually know is there.  Not only can it tell you where you iPhone is, it can also tell you where your iPhone has been for the longest time.  Actually, as long as Apple gets on board and Samsung gets on board; that's almost every phone in America. 

Leo:  So it's good I think.  The story was that the original bill was killed in the California legislature due to opposition from the cell carriers.  I'm not sure why they would care.

Alex:   Because they are making money on you replacing them.

Leo:  That can't be really.  They couldn't be that crass and greedy, could they?  Verizon, that crass and greedy, really?

Rene:  They are more worried that some burden will fall on them.

Leo:  I think that they are more worried about liability.

Alex:  Yeah, exactly.  Liability or if they have to change their infrastructure in any way to keep that function working.  They are certainly going to be responsible for sending out the pulse of death to kill the phone.

Leo:  So basically, because Android has it and iPhone has it, I presume that you will see in July that it will be as part of the setup, would you like to turn this on?  It already is on the iPhone, right?  It already says turn on the Find My Phone.

Alex:  And you should turn it on.

Leo:  You should.

Rene:  That reminds me, going back to the Jawbone thing from a minute ago.  I was looking at Health in IOS8 in HealthKit, and the privacy settings in there.  They are actually really cool; they go beyond the normal privacy settings.  They have whole privacy sheaths for them.  So basically, it's not like you will enable or disallow an app or accessory to use Health, but you have granular control.  You can say that this app can use steps but it can't use sleep.  You can say that it can write to HealthKit but it can't read from it.  If you say that it can't read from it then it won't even disclose that you did that.  The example they use is that, for example, if you have diabetes you could deny access to your blood sugar levels, but it's not going to report back to the app that could come from your health insurer that you denied that access.  You can manage all of that at any point and time.  It looks really well thought out.

Leo:  Rene has an excellent very detailed article that he published yesterday in iMore "Health in IOS 8:  Explained".  I highly recommend it if you want to know what to expect.  They story is that of course we knew that they had met with the FDA, we are not sure to talk about what.  Now they are meeting with big insurers like Humana and United Health.  This is from 9to5Mac.  It feels like Apple is pushing to have HealthKit to be more than a repository of stuff from other people.  For instance, to make health recommendations you have to get FDA approval.  If you want to interoperate with the patient data you have to get approval from the big insurance companies and the medical companies.  

Alex:  And you have to remember that the market for above 55 that when you are talking about insurance and everything else is massive.  So having something that is focused on providing healthcare advice or its interoperability with physicians could be just a massive growth without really trying because nobody else is competing.  Everybody else is building for geeks who are quite healthy; I don't know about healthy, but younger and statistically better off in that respect.  I don't think that the current tech watches are attracting the plus 55 crowd.

Leo:  John Paczkowski, of course has said that it will be October when apple will announce the iWatch, but he said that early this summer and I don't think anybody has said anything one way or the other since.  What do your sources say Rene?

Rene:  I think that it's still, I mean, there was that thing where Gruber said September, but he said that he was joking.  I haven't heard anything different than October either.  I don't know if that's the launch or if it's just the announcement because Apple sometimes, especially for new products, gives people more time between the announcement and the launch.

Leo:  So iPhone in a couple of weeks and availability, I think that it's safe to say, will be constrained as it always is when there is a massive resign with the iPhone 5, with the tick of the tock.  But also, apparently these in cell screens that are need to make it much thinner are tricksy to make.  A lot of people are reporting that Apple is having supply constraints.  Would you say are we going to be lining up for this?

Alex:  I don't know if I'm going to line up.  I will probably line up.  I might line up.  The good news is that I buy them every other year, so this is much more exciting for me.  

Leo:  Lines are great.  But I hope that you would be able to, but Apple has done it both ways, but I hope that you would be able to preorder it online and have it shipped to you.

Alex:  Yeah.

Andy:  I've got to say that as someone who has been carrying an Android phone for the last two years, I'm really excited about the new one.  If I like what I see I'm certainly planning on buying one.  This was everything that I was complaining about a couple of years ago.

Leo: And the keyboard. And the third party keyboard is becoming the big difference for me. And I think now with extensions, there won’t be much that Android can do that the iPhone cant.

Alex: There is so much you can do with extensions. Every time I think about that me …

Leo: I hope developers do that.

Rene: They’re working on it.

Leo: They’re working on it, I’m sure. Yeah.

Andy: Also, just for me. I’m selfish when it comes to photo features and just the ability to finally have apps that can take absolutely fine grain control of the camera hardware now, is such a big deal for me. Because that’s the reason why there are options on even Android phones for taking pictures that are unavailable to the iPhone where it’s a great one tap button but either it takes a good picture or it does not take a good picture. If it does not take a good picture, put it back in your pocket because it is not capable of taking a good picture in this situation.

Leo: Speaking of one tap buttons, model S owners can now start their car with an iPhone. If you have a Tesla. What could possibly go wrong? Now we have a new kind of butt- dial the butt-ignition.

Rene: Well, you could control the Tesla in various ways with the original app, they just added the starter.

Leo: Why is your car running? Oh, I must have butt-ignited it.

Andy: It’s not like my old car where it’s got a starter motor that has to crank, crank, crank and the crank case oil that needs to warm up. Really, why do you need to start your car remotely unless it’s to gloat to other people, hey look what I can do with my car, with my app.

Alex: Well, if you’re in Boston, I mean, there are good reasons- in Montreal, there are good reasons to start your car a couple of minutes before you get there.

Leo: Electric car, no because….

Alex: Oh it will. Turn the heater on.

Leo: Well, but that’s the thing. That’s what kills the battery in electric cars. You don’t a heater. If you have an electric car in Boston, you’re nuts. You’re just driving around… freezing.

Chad: But while it’s plugged in you don’t want to walk out there. It’s still plugged into the wall.

Leo: Oh, it’s still plugged in. that’s what that meant? Chad is going like this. Okay, you’re right.

Andy: I mean the difference between starting the car and simply turning on the heater. I mean, it is a great app, but I have a friend who has a Tesla and a really lovely dog. And sometimes the dog will have lunch or something and the dog will stay in the car. And unbeknownst to passersby, the car, the air conditioner is on, he’s monitoring the temperature from 20 feet away and I’ve always thought that for a gift for him I should make this really nice placard that says “hi, this is a Tesla, please before you smash the window to “rescue my dog”, please put your hand on the glass to feel how cold it is.”

Leo: Actually that’s a very good point. If it’s already plugged in, that is the time to heat up the car. Because you don’t want to do it while you’re on battery. So now you get the car nice and warm, toasty warm…

Alex: While you’re making your coffee. Which you started the coffee maker with your iPhone, and then you walk over and you, just like, turn everything on and you walk down and it’s great.

Leo: I wonder why the car even has an off switch. Why don’t you just let it sleep? Hibernate.

Rene: That’s funny. I have an auto starter on my car and I use it every winter and I would not give it up for the world. But I went to CES and I was looking at- and this is before Android and the car and they were showing off an Android powered car and it was an Android 2.something and they said look, we have a couple different modes. Now you can keep it on, but that’ll drain your battery. You can put it to sleep but after 8 days that’ll drain your battery. So we automatically switch it off. When you start it for the first time it takes about 10 minutes to boot. Maybe it was 5 minutes, I don’t remember. But there was a litany of things there that made me realize that sleep, when it comes to cars, is not….. As it seemed.

Alex: I’m just waiting for the one that will come down from the parking garage and pick me up in the valet section.

Andy: Alex and Rene can start talking about how this Facebook app is draining the battery of Alex’s phone, and now there’s like Facebook in the car, how would you like to come back after 8 hours of working to find out that Facebook basically killed your car battery.

Alex: Sorry honey, I couldn’t come home because of Facebook. I’m stuck in the city. Dang auto update.

Leo: Yosemite OS 10, Yosemite Public Beta 2 pushed a couple of days ago. And it feels like it’s ready. Yes, Rene, you agree?

Rene: I mean, they have until October, I’m guessing they have until October. So there’s still stuff, I mean, stuff that may not hit consumers, but things like provisioning and other stuff that they still have to sort out so…

Leo: Don’t you want to push it out when iOS 8 comes out? Because of continuity and handoff and all that?

Rene: I mean, maybe, they didn’t do that for Mavrics and there were things you had to wait for. There is usually a Mac and iPad event later in October. Maybe they could, I don’t know. I tend to think I would rather have it good than fast.

Leo: Oh, yeah. I agree with you on that. But I just feel like the timing would be good to release it with iOS 8.

Rene: Yeah, I agree. Especially for continuity.

Leo: If it’s ready. It feels pretty stable, I have to say.

Andy: It almost feels like they really have to be able to demonstrate that one feature at least. So it wouldn’t be the chimes of doom if they didn’t, but what a shame if one of the coolest things to do with iOS 8 is something they have to say, come back in January, It will probably be ready.

Leo: Yeah. It’s been running on my production machine and I’m loving it. I haven’t had any problems. There are a couple of apps maybe, that aren’t compatible, but very few. I haven’t had any serious issues at all.

Rene: The new auto signing is out now, so hopefully people update to that because a couple apps, you try to run them and it says this app has been changed.

Leo: What do we do for that? Do we have to download something or turn a switch on or what?

Rene: The developers have- you can still do the right click thing and give it manual override permission. But the developers have to update to support the new type of… because basically it’s like gatekeeper. Gatekeeper lets you run apps that are still sign by developers but not in the app store and they changed the way Gatekeeper works.

Andy: Let me pose a question to the panel of people who are running iOS 8 on a daily basis. I’m nearly at the point where I feel as though I’m going to- now that we’re close to what might be a launch date for iOS 8, I feel like I need to start using this every single day so I know what- so I can not only think about it and talk about it but I can also write about it. Is it safe enough for daily use now?

Rene: Yes. I would have said up until now, up until the latest beta I would have said no, please don’t. But if you’re a reviewer or developer, not a normal person because voids your Apple care and you should never do that. But for a developer or a reviewer I think yeah, its safe now.

Andy: After a complete back up … everything on this phone is subject to be deleted permanently. Yeah.

Leo: It’s just for some reason I don’t mind doing Yosemite beta, but I’m really reluctant to do iOS 8 beta. I don’t know why.

Andy: I don’t know why the iOS betas are 10x more painful than desktop betas.

Alex: When iOS doesn’t work, it really doesn’t work.

Andy: Yeah. It’s like a smell that pervades the entire house. And there might be one dead skunk that’s causing it, but that doesn’t change the fact that this house is now incompatible until you deal with the skunk.

Alex: There’s nothing worse than having someone call for something important and you can’t get the thing to work. You’re going “open, open, open, open.”

Rene: I had a beta, not this one, but I had a beta previously and it wouldn’t let the phone work as a phone. Phone calls would just not come in. and normal people shouldn’t have to worry about that.

Leo: iTunes 12, I’m a little disappointed. When you get the public preview for Yosemite you’ll get iTunes 12. Build 97. They really want to get rid of that gutter on the left. The one that shows my music, and my playlists and all that stuff. They really don’t want that there anymore.

Rene: If you hide it, the bloats not there anymore Leo. If you hide it the bloats not there anymore.

Leo: The good news is that I hardly ever use iTunes.

Alex: It’s funny how it’s come to that. Because it was something that all of us used all the time. And now I open it up every once in a while. It usually opens up by accident when I plug my iPhone in. that’s when I see it.

Andy: iTunes has become like a corded phone in my life. There are times when I have to seek one out and use it. But otherwise it’s totally irrelevant and now when I actually have to use it I almost have to retrain myself because it’s been so long that I’ve kind of forgotten.

Leo: I’ve been buying hi-def. music. Because I’m getting the Phono player in a couple of months and I want to have a lot of hi-def. tracks. And iTunes will not play the higher def. stuff. 24bit. I think it’s really… yeah some of the stuff it won’t play. I could download Apple Lossless. Where I buy Hi-def. tracks does offer Apple Lossless but I buy Flack for, just kind of, I don’t know why. But I just converted to a high bit rate MP3 and then I’ve got it. But I treat the original like a precious item.  Because it is. I wish iTunes would support that.

Rene: I got to hear a conversation between Chris Letio who does the kpo stuff and Don Melton who did all the Safari stuff, about audio. Because they’re both huge audio codacs. Nerds. And they were saying that the lossless to them is way more important than the 24bit because most humans can’t tell the difference. But the lossless, especially with certain instruments, especially classical music, you can really tell the difference.

Leo: Yeah. So here, for instance, is a 96 kilahertz, 24bit, which is plenty, by the way. Version of Dillon’s Blood on the Tracks. You can get in AIFF which is completely uncompressed. And that’s going to be a little big, big. Apple lossless flack or wave, which they say several times, we don’t recommend.

Rene: So cute.

Leo: So cute. Apple lossless and flack are probably identical right? They’re just kind of using lossless compression like lepple ziv to … I’m sure that they’re easy to transcode. I don’t know why. I just buy flack. It’s just kind of like to me that’s going to be the permanent standard.

Rene: It’s a safety- I mean, it’s in archival form.

Leo: Yeah, exactly.

Rene: Anything that’s not proprietary.

Leo: Yeah, exactly. Its, these are kind of expensive. Like this is $18.

Alex: It’s just like a CD.

Leo: It’s like buying a CD.

Alex: But you don’t have to deal with all that plastic.

Leo: But I buy the classics, right? Miles Davis Kind of Blue and stuff like that.

Andy: Is that another generational problem? Because I can sort of deal with the fact that an eBook costs almost as much as a printed book. I can deal with the fact that an electronically published comic costs as much as a comic. But the generations under us can say “you didn’t have to manufacture this, you didn’t have to ship this, you didn’t have to inventory this, all you had to do was move some files from A to B and why are you charging me $3.99 for this comic that costs me the same amount of money at the corner store?”

Rene: It’s not that that bothers me, what bothers me is that it’s the same price for less rights. Like I can’t lend it to somebody, I can’t do all these different things. I can’t resell it, there’s no second sale rights. That’s the part that I shouldn’t pay as much because I’m not getting as much. Is my only complaint.

Leo: But you are, you’re getting more bits for your dollar.

Rene: I had all the bits in analog. And I could lend it to Andy. I could lend my entire collection to Andy if I wanted.

Andy: I feel like that’s a tradeoff because I can actually have now, I bought this comic for $3.99 but I can now make 6 copies of it for all my devices and not have to walk into another room to get the one copy that I have. And I instantly felt I have to amend what I said. Because it’s not just bits. The costs is more than just printing the cost, more than just shipping the inventory, the cost is the talent that has to be paid for all these books and the editorial that has to be put into it. But still, I wonder – this is the last opportunity that publishers have to have an audience that does not find it absolutely galling that a $19 set of bits is going to have to- that they chose that price because that’s how much a full CD should cost.

Leo: So should I pay $4 more for the 192 Kilohertz…

Alex: I say once you’re going down that path, I mean, that’s what I would do.

Leo: But this is recorded in what, the 60s.

Alex: You’re going to hear all the tape hiss, all the compressions, it’ll be great.

Andy: You should be able to ask okay, was the singer still an active smoker while he recorded this?

Leo: So if I download Apple lossless, Anthony is saying, I will be able to play it in iTunes. So there you go. And I found a program that converts batch converting so…

Rene: It would be nice if Apple supported the flac and supported web RT and stuff like that.

Leo: There’s an app, VOX, it’s a player that plays back all these files. And it’s a decent little player. Reminds me a lot of, what was the app that Apple bought to make iTunes in the original sound jam? It’s a lot like sound jam.

Alex: The good thing though is once you start buying these, like the phono player, you need to think about the entire infrastructure that goes with it. You know, like what are you going to play with it and what headphones you’re going to use. Have you picked your headphones for that?

Leo: I have some pretty good headphones. Not too worried about that. It has analog out, I’m going to put that into my stereo. So that’s going to be my hi-def. - because I can’t figure out how to get these tracks onto the stereo. It’s the last inch. Alright, let’s take a break. When we come back, your picks of the week. Prepare them now. Our show brought to you by Legalzoom.com. Not a law firm, no, no, no. much, much, better. Legalzoom does the legal work you need to do that you can do yourself. Your self-help stuff. They walk you through it step by step self- help services at your direction. Without the big cost of a law firm. You’re starting a business? Its starts at $149 plus filing fees to do an LLC or chapter S or chapter C corporation. Now go to- just call a law firm. Go to the white pages. Hey how much would it cost for a chapter s? Thousands of dollars. More than ten times more. Twenty, thirty times more.

Alex: I’m planning on using legalzoom for a corporation this week.

Leo: See? What it does is it empowers you not only to do the stuff you probably should do, like your trademark and your LLC, but also kind of encourages you to start businesses. Maybe start multiple businesses. Sometimes the nice thing about an LLC is you can spin off little businesses, you can do a lot more.

Alex: And what I’m doing is pretty simple. It’s like a simple thing. I just need to build a corporation, I just need to- and I don’t really know how to do it and file all the stuff. And here I can just get it done.

Leo: Last will and testament. You know August is national make a will month. And I think this is a good cause here. A lot of parents, we just say well, I’m going to be fine, I don’t want to- it takes too much time, it’s too much trouble, it’s too expensive to make a will. I’m not going to die, I’ll be fine. But you know what, if anything happens to you, the courts decide what happens. Not only to your property but to your kids. You don’t want that. You should, for $69 you can make a last will and testament. Legal document personalized for your state and your needs. Advanced provisions to safeguard your family and peace of mind backed by their $50,000 guarantee. At legalzoom.com. Make a will if you haven’t done it. Trademark your blog name. Start your business. There’s so much you could do at legalzoom.com. I say this because I’m joking around. But actually I think it’s pretty serious. The pet protection agreement. $39.

Alex: What’s the pet protection agreement?

Leo: It’s a simple agreement that allows you to name a pet guardian to take care of your pets, give you the legal ability to leave funds to care for your pets. $39, and it give you some peace of mind. You don’t ever think about this, but what happens to Ozzy when I kick the bucket? Legalzoom was created by top attorneys to provide self-help services at your specific direction. They’re not a law firm. Legal help is furnished, though, if you need it, through vetted independent attorneys that legalzoom… legal plan is a great thing as well. Make your will. Its national make a will month. Get special pricing on wills and living trusts by entering the offer code MBW in the referral box and check out. You’ll get a discount, ten bucks off at legalzoom.com. Offer code MBW. Alex Lyndsay I bet you have a fabulous pick of the week.

Alex: I have a very useful one. In the same thing as we were talking about the iPhone batteries, we were really looking at what is wrong with some of our computers. And we plug them in and unplug them and we’re like what is the actual health of our… and there is ways you can do this in a geeky way, but one that we kind of started to install on some of the machines is one called battery health. It’s just a Mac program and it’s this great little thing. And I click on it, it goes up into your menu, and I click on it and I can see what my current max is, my original max, my health, my battery is starting to wane. 82%. I know exactly how many cycles that it’s been charged, when it was created, and again, these are things that you can hack out, but it is a free app. and it’s really, really easy and it just shows you everything you need to know about your battery. And for many of us who are travelling it’s nice to know where you’re going to start making decisions. Like at 82% I’m starting to think that maybe ill- we had someone else who has one and we tested and it was like 64%, so we’re going to get a new battery for that computer. But it also tells you if you’re going to unplug it, you’re going to have 7 hours of internet browsing…

Leo: Is it pretty accurate?

Alex: Yeah, it’s pretty accurate.

Leo: More so than the Apple, generic, this is how much time is left?

Alex: Yeah. And it’s a nicer set up and it’s more convenient and the generic one- I mean, it’s free. It’s not like I’m paying $3, $4 or $5 for it. So anyway, I think it’s worth having on your computer.

Leo: Very nice. Battery Health from FipLab Limited. That’s cool. My battery is at 98%, it’s very healthy. Actually, it’s interesting…

Alex: How is yours so healthy? Ours is the same age too. Mine is 2.2, yours is 2.2, we got them within a month of each other. Oh, you know why? Because you have 135 cycles and I have 570 cycles.

Leo: I keep mine plugged in. see.

Alex: I travel a lot.

Leo: So originally this was 8460 milliamp hours, it’s down to 7901 which is 93%. But that’s partly because I’m 35 cycles in 2 years, see. I’ve kept it plugged in. that’s useful, I like it. Rene Ritchie, what do you have for us?

Rene: So we just had the birthday for my eldest godson, he just turned 9. And he asked for some hue lights. Because like me, they have the hue light system at his house but his parents weren’t first eager to have him control their lights, and also, they restrict how much time he can spend using his iPod touch. He gets to use it for just a few minutes each day and most of that is for schoolwork and things like that.

Leo: What? What are they, responsible?

Rene: Yeah. I mean, they don’t let him watch TV either. They’re raising that kid. And so what they did is they got him the hue tab. Which came out a little while ago, but it’s basically a remote control for your hue lights. It’s designed so that if someone is busy with their phone or tablet or if you’ve run out of batteries, you can still control the lights in your house. And it’s a big circle, it looks like a big button and it has 3 small buttons on it. And what you can do is set up different themes or something for all of those buttons. So one could be off, one could be pure white light, one could be red, one could be blue. You can set that up using your phone, or your tablet, whatever you normally use to control your hues. And then when you hit this, it’s really neat. When you hit this it changes the scene. There’s no batteries, it’s powered by kinetic energy. So you don’t have to worry about charging it or plugging it in or putting new batteries in it.

Leo: A remote control for your light color.

Rene: For him, they set it up so that he has this in his room and he can hit the button to change the lights between all the different presets. And when he does have time with his iPod touch, he can change the presets to make them different and add some variety to it. But it means that he can still have really cool lighting in his room that he can control without having constant access to a computer.

Leo: I just got the Hue Lux bulbs, which are white bulbs.

Rene: How do you like them?

Leo: Well, they’re white. I don’t understand. Wouldn’t you want the color?

Rene: I want the color. So I have I think, 15 of these. And I’m getting- I have them behind me. Like all the light behind me is hue.

Leo: I only have 9.

Rene: They’re great. Like I said, you can watch star wars while the lights are set to Tauten sunrise, it’s just great.

Leo: Did you see the Netflix hack?

Rene: I did not.

Leo: So Netflix has a yearly hack day, and this was one of the hacks. It was to hack the hue to match the Netflix movie that you’re watching.

Rene: That’s awesome.

Leo: Can you see my screen? Is that what’s going on? There you go, okay. So as you’re watching a movie, the lights will match the background of the movie. Now, unfortunately this is not available unless you work in Netflix. Aww.

Alex: So I’ve been thinking about this because I’ve been thinking about whether this was an “if this then that” type of thing that you could do.

Leo: The problem is you need to get the data from Netflix of what color. There was a TV where they did this.

Andy: That would drive you insane after 3.5 hours is the problem.

Leo: There was a TV that did this. They had lights in the back, I can’t remember who made it. And the idea was, you’re focused on the screen, but it’s as if the room is kind of part of the movie a little bit.

Rene: They had that Xbox thing too, right.

Leo: The Aluma Room. Yeah.

Alex: I think it can be done though. I think it can be done outside of Netflix. We’ll work on it.  I think I can do it with Conduit. Because I think what you do is take the output that’s going to the computer and you send it into the conduit and then we blur it so we get the overall hue. And then you sample that and send that out over if then that”.

Leo: It’s simple.

Rene: Like Tony Stark saying its simple, right.

Leo: The key is to get the color. It would only work if you’re watching on a computer, not on a TV.

Alex: No, no, because what you do is you take the output and you send it to the TV and the computer. So then you send it to both of them but you do the processing on the- but you have to get something that will defeat the copyright. Which they have hardware that will solve that problem.

Leo: Chatroom says “that would be fun for about a minute.”

Alex: Just think of an action film and the whole room is going …..

Leo: Well that’s the example Netflix gave. Like you’re Tom Cruise, you’re on a boat, its sunset. So the room is that color and then you dive into the water and suddenly its dark blue because you’re in the water.

Alex: I think that would be a lot of fun.

Andy: But that’s the problem. You’re not in the water, you’re in a living room that has lamps and things and unopened Amazon.com boxes and they’re blue.

Leo: I see that Andy Ihnatko has his Burger King hat at the ready, with the Canadian flag on it. That’s nice Andy. What is your pick?

Andy: Actually I have one pick and one selfish pick. You know how you go onto iTunes or Amazon mp3 because you want to buy Gene Wilder singing Pure Imagination from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And of course, the only track off of the soundtrack you cannot buy individually is the one track that everybody wants. So once I ran into this and I tweeted that if Apple and Amazon were good sports about this, or really honest, instead of saying album only, they would actually just have an image of a middle finger. Because that’s how you feel when that happens. And of course a few short months later Jack Amaradus tweeted and said okay, that sounded like a good idea so I actually wrote that as a Chrome extension. So if you install this Chrome extension, any webpage that has “album only” in text will be replaced by a graphic of a middle finger being extended. To make you feel just as unloved by the commercial music industry as you actually are. I love this because this is exactly the sort of thing that would win Mac Hack if they were still doing Mac Hack.

Leo: Not at Apple I don’t think. Oh, that’s hysterical.

Andy: But I also wanted to- I’m doing a little experiment. I hate doing YouTube videos because I don’t know how to do them very well and I get too obsessed with editing them and I need to add this effect here and I need to get this shot right here. And I realized that well, you know, you haven’t really done a real video since the Kindle 1 got released. Perhaps you should try it again just to make sure you really do hate it, as opposed to you just are not doing it because you are afraid to learn how to do this. So I issued myself a challenge to do videos Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for an entire month. The first one was posted yesterday. The next one, I shot the video for it this morning and I’ll have to edit it tonight. I’m only promising 12 of these. And the other thing I’m promising is that I call it the very least I can do because I’m telling myself that even if I do the very least I can possibly do to say that I posted a video when I said I would, that counts. So the idea is not to at the end of 12 to learn how to do video as well as TWiT does video, but to figure out a way to, even if it involves talking like this into my phone and talking for only two minutes and then posting it straight from my phone, being comfortable and happy with video. Or saying goodbye to this form of communication forever. So…

Leo: What will the content be of the very least you can do?

Andy: It’s a different topic every time. It’s going to be mostly tech stuff. The one I recorded this morning is just all about “in broad strokes, here’s how to pick your next camera”.  Going through the different types of cameras that there are. Not specific models, but here’s why maybe if you are happy with your phone you should aim above your phone. Or if you think that you should be spending 2500 dollars on a Cannon 5D Mark 3, maybe that’s overkill for what you want. Just stuff like that. I start every one of these ideally to have an idea of what I want to say and then as you saw a little bit there, instead of editing in, I should have said this or I forgot to say that, I will just put a little caption up here to fill in what I should have said. The idea is to make it as painless as possible so I will actually be able to do 12 of these without saying “oh, man, do I really have 12 hours to paint the room green and make a little animated elf that hops on my shoulder? I don’t want to that.”

Alex: But before the end I’m going to invite Andy down to Pittsburg, which is a short flight down. And then maybe we’ll do one down there.

Leo: You’re a vlogger.

Andy: Yeah. The first video explains all my thoughts on this. But to make it very, very quick, I feel as though there are – what I love about the modern landscape is that there are people that are not terribly interested in sitting down and reading 1000-2000 words on a webpage. Which is how I like to express myself when I share my point of view. There are people who like to simply watch a 5 minute video or 10 minute video or even a 2 minute video. And I feel as though I’m leaving those people on the curb if they are interested in what I have to say. They don’t get to see that sort of stuff. So as a banker or a business person you don’t like to leave money on the table and if you’re in the business of communicating with people, you don’t like to leave a part of the audience on the table. Especially if the only reason why you’re not doing it is because eh, I don’t want to do video. So…

Leo: I feel like I should be doing this too.

Rene: You should do video Leo.

Leo: Oh yeah I do.

Andy: I can get you a list of hardware I recommend. Oh, wait, no. you’re actually in a working production TV studio.

Leo: That’s actually what stops me from doing anything more personal.

Alex: Yeah, I think I have a problem with, I start doing it and…

Rene: Get one of those self cam handles and you can walk around.

Leo: I do, I have a stick that you can put your phone on and you can walk around.

Andy: I will say that I don’t intend to make this a personal video blog. It’s mostly going to be tech stuff, I do have a broad outline of what I want to do with these 12 shows, and one of them is that I want to shoot video of me trying to take pictures of squirrels with a test camera that I’m working on right now. Because I think that would make me look really dumb. But people would enjoy seeing it. But it’s not going to be me with lighting and a cigarette going and saying “this is Paris. It seems as though dawn is coming a lot colder earlier these days… now that the … has blown out all of the ….”

Leo: Can you make it black and white? I want that. So Instagram introduced a new free app today, called Hyperlapse. It’s actually pretty cool. It is iOS only, they say we can’t really do it on Android because they’d have to modify how the accelerometer works. The idea is that it allows you to do time lapses but it will automatically smooth the video. Here’s their example of video on their Instagram blog. And I think it’s really cool if you look at the before and after. They’ve really got quite an interesting technology. Microsoft showed something like this a few weeks ago from the Microsoft lab. And everybody said that’s neat, must take a lot of processing power. Well, no. you can do it on an iPhone. It’ll be even better on the new iPhone I imagine. With the new processor.

Rene: Microsoft made a research paper, Instagram made an app.

Leo: Yeah, isn’t that funny. Oh, we can do that. So I made a hyperlapse. I recorded this show, and it took, by the way, I should point out. Rendering took some time. So let me to go share this. It’s a little bit obscure. I guess I’ve put it in my camera. In my gallery. I guess, I don’t know. Let’s see. Yeah, there it is. So this is my hyperlapse. And true to form, I’ve recorded it sideways. Just to irk all of you. Because I’m of the opinion that the new…

It wouldn’t look so bad, can you just flip your iPad the long way? There you go. It was intentional.

Leo: It was on purpose. This doesn’t really show it off because the thing wasn’t moving. The real power is walking down the road. But you can do a time-lapse. Very easily. It is only iOS and yes, you should record vertically. Dang it.

Alex: You’re really pushing that now.

Andy: If it was good enough for 2001 space odysseys computers…

Leo: That’s right.

Andy: Who are you to judge anybody?

Leo: That’s right.

Andy: I suppose Stanly Cooperick was wrong about that. And he’s just one of the smartest people who ever held a camera.

Leo: So let’s do a new hyperlapse. Here ill just jiggle it a lot okay. There isn’t much light here, find a brighter spot. This is studio lighting Hyperlapse. What the hell you want? I’m moving around. I will do a walk through the studio and I will post it after the show, how about that. And so here’s my hyperlapse, I can slow it down. I can speed it up. Let’s go all the way. Whoa. Okay, now if I check the checkbox it’s going to render it. Now watch, the new improved hyperlapse. I don’t know how to get to it. That’s my problem here. The app leaves a little bit to be desired frankly. I don’t know, do I have to go to the library?

Alex: It’s for the kids.

Leo: So here is the slowed down- that sucks. Okay, that’s Hyperlapse.

Rene: We all broke the laws of time and space.

Leo: It’s worth the price.

Alex: What I think is interesting is that there’s a Hyperlapse by somebody else. And then there’s a Hyperlapse by Instagram.

Leo: There are many Hyperlapses, get the Hyperlapse by Instagram. It’s just a name collision. A popular thing on the app store I find. Ladies and gentlemen we have come to the end of this fine program. I think you my friends for joining us. Rene Ritchie from iMore.com and don’t forget the Debug podcast at iMore.com/debug. Must listen to. You have a number of other podcasts, you really do.

Rene: I actually reduced the amount.

Leo: Oh, good.

Rene: So we merged the TV show and review into one show called Review, and we merged Zen and Tech and Vector into one show called Vector. And made it a panel show. So now it’s me, George Odell, Guy English and Dave Wiscus talking about stuff every week.

Leo: Excellent. Did you redesign iMore? It looks like you did.

Rene: So we used to do big redesigns but it took so long we’re now doing it step by step. So we’ve got a new header up there. And if you go into one of the articles we’ve got a new comment system as well. So there will be other stuff coming, but it’s easier to deploy small bits at a time. We discovered.

Leo: Yes. And cheaper.

Rene: Well, it keeps your sanity. You pay less price in terms of sanity this way.

Leo: Yeah. We’re doing a redesign on TWiT which won’t debut until early next year. But we’re doing something kind of different with it. We’re doing a headless design. Which will allow us in the future to modify the site much more easily. So we’re doing a back end… and it has an API. The thinking being that we can have the website call the API but also apps call the API. And that with simple changes in druple, when we publish a show, it could be propagated into all the different forms.

Rene: That’s what we do and I works really well.

Leo: Do you do that?

Rene: Yeah so we have an API that comes out and goes to our app as well as to the druple front end. Yeah.

Leo: And then the front end will be something like No JS or something more modern than Druple. So we can keep it. And the thing is the web changes like every 4 months. Like courts just did their 4^th redesign in like 2 years. And it’s because the standards are moving targets. And so I think this is probably the better way to do it.

Rene: And you don’t want to keep up because nobody knows how to use your site. It’s always good to be something that people are familiar with.

Leo: Mister Alex Lyndsay, fresh from Pittsburg. Perhaps going to Italy, we don’t know. Maybe tomorrow.

Alex: Yeah. And by the way, September 10^th, we didn’t plan this, but September 10^th is going to be the next final cut pro user group, our virtual user group. So we’ll put that up by next week so people can sign up. But we’re going to do it in the afternoon so 1pm. As opposed to our previous 6pm. And that is mostly because we had a lot of complaints from Europe. So if you’re in Europe and you go, and we see a big stat that a lot of people are watching from Europe, we’ll keep it in the afternoon. If 4 of you watch from Europe after complaining, then we’ll go back to 6pm. So I’m throwing down the gauntlet. September 10^th, 1pm.

Leo: And where should people go to find out?

Alex: We’ll post it, just follow me on twitter. But otherwise it’s on YouTube. It’ll be on the YouTube channel. That’s the best way, Pixel Corp YouTube channel. Subscribe to that and you’ll see it pop up. It’s going to be streaming live there. And then also we’ll have it on Hazu. We’ll be doing the question and answer stuff that we’re doing the big upgrade on right now.

Leo: Yes. We didn’t use it today because its –

Alex: Trying not to distract Andy because there are a lot of big upgrades that we’re doing right now so I’m just trying to keep him from having to worry about anything until we finish the big push.

Leo: That’s Andy Ihnatko over there, he’s form the Chicago Sun Times.

Andy: Hello.

Leo: With his little Lego family behind him. Is that the Village people?

Andy: The Village people?? Hello, that’s Lego Queen Man.

Leo: Queen, I see. Freddy Mercury, and the gang.

Andy: That’s fine. We are not expecting seeing them in Lego form, so you are to be forgiven. I think that the face figure on that one is a Lego Luke Skywalker, but it still works.

Leo: He does seem to be wearing a trundle of some kind.

Alex: Are those the original arms?

Andy: I think this whole thing is CG.

Leo: Lego Queen. Now I’ve seen everything. We do MacBreak Weekly 11am pacific, 2pm eastern time, 1800 UTC, every Tuesday. I hope you’ll tune in live and join us. As many in the chatroom have. Including Tally. Who sent us his video from Hyperlapse. He says he shot it during lunch hour. Of a traffic light in Decater. Here you go. How exciting is that. Thank you Tally. If you can’t watch live, and see what you miss if you don’t watch live. Traffic hour in Decater. You can also get on demand audio and video. We put that up on the website. Twit.tv/mbw and also wherever you can find finer net casts, including iTunes of course. And our fine apps. All created by 3^rd party developers who do such a nice job for us. Thank you. I’m Leo Laporte, now back to work because break time is over!