MacBreak Weekly 418 (Transcript)
Leo Laporte: It’s time for MacBreak Weekly, yes we’ve got a great panel here, Jason Snell,
along with Andy and, Rene to talk about what Apple’s going to do next week.
They’re all going to the event and, we’ll get a little preview of what they
expect to see next on MacBreak Weekly.
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Leo: This is MacBreak Weekly Episode Four Hundred Eighteen, recorded September 2nd 2014
Why
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It’s time for MacBreak Weekly, the show where we cover
all the Apple news and, far from weakly in fact today a very strong panel as we
practice the final week. This is always the toughest time of the Mac year…..the
week before the iPhone, reveals, Jason Snell has come up from his lair…… in
Merin…..(cross talk)
Jason Snell: Yes, (smiling)
Leo: Good to have you.
Jason: It’s great to be here, best week…..
Leo:…..executive
editor, managing editor…….
Jason:…..editorial
director…….I like……make up titles.
Leo: MPG, Mac World, PC-World…..
Jason: Yeah,
Leo: Tech Hive,
Jason:…..and,
Green Bod, but we don’t talk about the android side today because……because it’s
a side line.
Leo:……actually,
I didn’t realize that was yours, because there was a very good story in Green
Bod this week and, I wanted to make sure that I covered it here
obviously,……..but I didn’t realize it was yours so that’s good. (cross talk)
That’s makes it very credible and, very good story. But, I won’t talk about
that today because goodness gracious we’ve got an exciting week ahead. Mr. Andy
Ihnatko is all also here from the Chicago Sun Times.
Andy Intake: Greetings.
Leo: And, Rene Ritchie from……from a ……..
Rene Ritchie: (Raises his hand)
Andy: From Spanish Montreal.
Leo: Spanish Montreal (laughing)imore(dot)com……. good to have you all here. You’re
all going on Tuesday to the Flint Center, in Cupertino.
Jason: We’ll be there as we record this, exactly a week from now we’ll be sitting in
those seats.
Leo: We’re looking for a way to bring you live to our studios from there after the
event. Ummm…… and we will cover it…….I should say we will cover the event……I
was not invited as per usual, although if Gizmo got in, I don’t know what they
have against me. But we will,…….. Gizmodo got in, off all things, first time
since 2009.
Jason: Yes.
Andy: I kind of want to see how are they dressed, how are they……have they really
decided that we are really going to savor this. Just in case this is an evil
trick. Just in case there is like a big red letter on the stage.
Leo: Wouldn’t it be funny, if Tim Cook says,’Oh you…..
Andy: ……has a special chair……..
Leo:……come
here………,
Andy: Don’t bother looking at the seams that are underneath the floor, but you’ll
know this is for……
Leo: This led to credence to my belief that I am in fact not being punished but they
just forgot about me, because if I were being punished Gizmodo, goes off the
double super secret probation then I must be.
Jason: They have invited people who have never been invited before. I mean they have
the picked the venue so large now.
Leo: They just forgot. How big is the Flint Center 3500…..
Jason: I heard 2500, it is bit big……
Leo: Is it bigger than Mosconi West? No……
Jason: I don’t think so ….they’re the same size……
Leo: The same size I would guess.
Andy: A little bit smaller, if that number is exactly……
Leo: If it’s not for size. I have two theories about it……you know we will talk about
all of this, actually what we’re going to do about this is…..the first segment
has to be iCloud and, the (fappening). (Andy burst out laughing) To, use the
parlance of the kids. To, use the language of the street.
Rene: That was the worst of the Highlander movies.
Leo: We didn’t have you know……
Jason:…..stay
off that story……
Leo: That story broke yesterday, early, Sunday during Twit and, I declined to do it
because I felt like this is not something that I want to publicize, but by now
I think everybody knows about and, has gone in search of the pictures. And,
really the story in this for us is the technology story of iCloud security.
Now, we should say right up front that no-one really knows how these pictures
of……these naked pictures of celebrities were garnered.
Jason: Yeah.
Rene: Correct.
Leo: Jonathan Zdziarski who is the guy who did the very interesting speech at 2600
at Hope, for……. about the security of the iPhone and, flaws of the iPhone has
been looking into this. You know Jonathan, I think you trust Jonathan.
Jason: Yeah, he’s a sharp guy.
Leo: No-one is quite sure, if……now apparently the hackers who published these photos
on Four Chen and, there was again, and, again we don’t know the providence of
it but a post from him in a hacker forum which was republished, saying, ‘thanks
to all the people who helped me do this.’
Jason: Right.
Leo:…….and,
we’re not sure, first thoughts many have had is that there is a known, or was a
fixed back-door to find my iPhone that allowed a brute force remote attack.
Jason: They were rate limiting……… password or fail. You could sit there and, keep on
trying more and more passwords and, theoretically guessed the password after
millions of attempts.
Leo: If you were a……
Rene: If they knew your email address then you were a natural factor.
Leo:……if
you knew the email address and then you were natural factor than, any other
factor and you were a natural target, of course I think these actors are…..then
you might…..and this might then might post on the BBS, might kind of incrementing
them on that regard, because……..It would take more than one person, it would
take a fairly concerted effort to which……
Rene: It’s also possible that you could have a group of people who do this kind of
thing, they had a list of iCloud addresses and, they were waiting for an
exploit. And, when this exploit was published, it was a couple days earlier,
they picked the best targets that they had available and, went after them as
quickly as they could. Because even with no rate limit, it takes a while to do
dictionary attacks for email addresses. And, you can get a lot done, I mean
depending how simple their password is. But it’s quite possible again that
these people have been getting photographs for a long time through a variety of
methods and, they were well prepared to act on this flaw when it was
discovered.
Jason: I’ve seen some speculation, that this might have been a cache of data, somebody
had kept.
Leo: Over a period of time……
Jason:…..and,
then that leaked!
Leo: Right.
Andy: Possible one word-hacked! One person who had his…..who didn’t protect his stash
of naughtiness and they sort of grabbed this. The……the fact that so many that
reported that as genuine but some reported as fakes indicates there is a sort
of spread of providence of sources here. (cross talk)
Leo: Zdziarski earlier today said got a full file dump from at least one celebrity
leak, it is consistent with the theft of an iPhone back-up, presumably from
iCloud. Zdziarski, and, this the most important thing, we’re going to say this
thing right up front, Zdziarski says, and I think that we all agree if you have
already done so change your iCloud password, particularly if your celebrity.
Turn off second factor and this is a really important step for a lot of
people…..I don’t keep anything on Photo Stream, but delete any old iCloud
back-ups, because he now believes that it is not iCloud’s Photo Stream, but
iCloud back-ups that…….
Jason: If you think there’s a photo that you’re embarrassed by or couldn’t leak out,
if you delete it from your Photo Stream, it’s not necessarily gone it may be in
your iCloud back-up. (cross talk)
Rene: You should point out that you can turn off your camera roll back up when you go
through the iCloud list. And, it’s one of the best things to do because it
takes so much of your iCloud space anyway, so if you don’t need absolutely turn
that off.
Andy: And, also make sure that you go through your social media stuff…..Flickr when
go through it asks for do you want me to back up your stuff automatically, Drop
Box does the same thing and FaceBook. Go through everything that deals with
photos. Really when it comes to personal photos and we’re just not talking
about naughtiness, we’re talking about family photos, I don’t want the world to
see, the only time that gets backed up is over copper in my desk top and,
that’s how my level of trust is for this level of theft.
Leo: Yeah, I mean I do store pictures on Google and, FaceBook and on iCloud. I
turned off Photo Stream a long time ago, but mostly because I couldn’t seem to
control those pictures because I was getting my sons pictures with mine,
because we shared accounts. So what should……so I’m looking at my iPad, right
here, would you walk me through…….because this is the most important thing, by
the way is this by default or is this Photo Stream turned on?
Jason: I think so.
Leo: It is the default. So somebody was saying,’why would anybody upload these nudies,’
well (a) if it’s a backup and that’s not even been uploaded that has just been
backed and (b) it’s just default….right?
Jason: Yeah, I think so.
Leo: So can you help me Jason? Let’s get rid of this right now, we’re going to the
iCloud, this is going to be on an iPad, very same……very similar and, should I
do storage and, back-up?
Jason: Well, one thing you could do is go to photos and,……. turn off my Photo Stream.
Leo: And, disable this……..turning off Photo Stream will delete all photos from your
iPad that have been downloaded …….
Jason: Right……
Leo:…..will
it delete the photos on the photo stream on iCloud?
Jason: That’s a good question…..that depends on the…….
Rene:…..the
safety of other devices using it.
Leo: Yeah,………,that’s something important, you’re going to go to all your iOS devices
and, iPhone and Iphotos on the Macintosh and, disable that.
Jason: Right.
Leo: Now what are we going to do about the back-ups……..I have been storing back-ups
I have been storing back-ups…….
Rene: Go to manage storage
Leo:……manage
storage……..
Rene:……it
takes a while…….
Leo: This is going to take a long time and, I will be able to delete the back-ups,
the old back-ups.
Jason: Yeah, I think you can delete the photo back-ups……
Leo: You can turn off……..you can turn off, Leo backing up the camera roll and you
can delete…….because one of the things Zdziarski found when he looked at Kate
Uptons…..they had all the X information for Kate Upton and, it turned out he
believes, at least her boyfriend’s data that was compromised. But, there were
multiple iPhones registered, it could be that she had an old iPhone 3 GS backup
she was currently using a new iPhone and, maybe forgot about it. But there was
also multiple dates and, times maybe multiple devices involved, so it’s an
important for people to know how to do and, keep track of.
Andy: But, this kind of dark flip side of how easy some companies make it to
administrate and back up your hard-ware, you forget how to do it yourself and,
therefore you’re not aware of the risks of daily life with this device.
Jason: I don’t know syncing a photo is really convenient. I think, it’d be a shame if
the lesson we took from this is, ‘well turn off all photo syncing,’ I think……
Leo:…….no
I think it’s really useful……
Jason: But, I do think that you’ve got to be aware, especially, I’ve got a 12 year old
almost 13 year old daughter being aware that when you take a photo with your
iPhone unless you make some choices it’s going to sync it to the cloud.
Leo: Yeah…..right.
Jason: And, at that point you’re asking everybody to perform pretty serious security and,
have a hard to guess password. A good password, have two factor authentication
turned on, these are not things that regular people, busy people, people I
would imagine these stars in fact are really going to be comfortable with…..
Leo: They are now. (Lots of cross talk) probably because everybody in Hollywood is
going to be fairly big in people who help stars secure stuff.
Rene: It’s going to be like a body-guard, right?
Leo: Yeah…..yeah….
Rene: It’ll have the sign of a bodyguard.
Andy: That’s the difficulty I’m talking about, we…….if you don’t understand how your
car works, you might decide oh, well it’s no big deal, boy I ran out gas in the
middle of the road, now at least it means that I will know exactly what the
empty level is, if you know how cars work, okay you probably fried up a few
injectors and also your fuel pump that gets cooled from the gas and the tank
and, also might have got fried and that might be a thousand dollar repair like
four months down the road when these things start going away.
It’s……I think maybe we are doing……we and, Apple and,
everybody else are doing people a dis-service when we don’t expect to learn how
these things work. It just works automatically you don’t even to have to think
about setting or anything like that. There needs to be a certain basic level of
admin literacy for every device that you own. I don’t think that we should
discourage people from learning how to do that stuff, and I think this is…….in
a situation like this is not an opportunity to scare people into thinking never
back up anything else via Drop-box. But, it is an opportunity to say here is
how things work…..you want to know how things work on a star ship lieutenant
and, basically…..you know have that information so that they’re not compromised
like this.
Leo: I kind of disagree…..I feel like, it’s like a sh……the promise of computing is
so great it’s a shame that you have to become a security expert to use it.
(cross talk)
Andy:……it’s
literacy not security it’s literacy…..
Jason: The defaults need to be very specific……I mean Apple doesn’t like to talk about
security, it doesn’t want to you think about security, I think this is a good
example of how Apple needs to crank up what it considers the default level of
security on this device is and, you know something like this…….
Leo: That’s who’s going to take the blame whether or not they deserve is Apple.
Jason:……well
that is alright if it’s their fault. If that is how this got out that is their
fault. I see people in the chat-room talking about, ’I’m never going to use
this service again, every photo syncing service has the exact same issue……your
photos are on a server somewhere and, if somebody knows the password they can
see them, so I feel like you know all of these companies are really reluctant
to move to two factor authentication because it’s a huge support issue. It’s a
huge communication issue but at the same time it’s way more secure than what we
have now. And, so at some point they’re going to have to…..going to have to
bite the bullet because this is too painful.
Rene: There’s another problem to consider and, that is…….I mean it’s a huge interface
challenge……security it’s incredibly hard to present that in an understandable
way to people but, you know things like iCloud exist because people weren’t
backing up and, when people didn’t back up they lost things, and that is also a
huge problem. So you have to juggle these two contentious issues which is
keeping people’s data safe and, also making sure that data isn’t used against
them. For instance I use PhotoStream, I back up my camera roll, its’ 98 per
cent iOS 8 screen shots right now, but I have no problem, backing anything u up
to any service, I consider it fine. Some people will have a problem and, they
will have pools and they have like Dave Whiskas, the designer behind Vesper,
and he had the idea that just like you have private browsing mode on Safari,
you should have private camera mode on the camera app. There’s a very easy to
see switch, you hit it, it’s in private mode in photos……
Leo:……there
you go……
Rene: The photos are never backed up they’re temporary, they delete themselves after
a short period of time and, then you can use it safely, visibly, understandably
and, not have to worry about the complexities of the back-up.
Leo: I should point out that Google Plus does not upload by default, nor does
FaceBook upload by default. This is an…..they ask you and they give you…..
Rene: They ask you…….
Leo:……give
you the opportunity, this is an Apple default that perhaps shouldn’t be a
default. But……I…..I am always recommending that people turn these one and I use
FaceBook, Google and, Apple and, Dropbox, Upload and One Drive and let them all
take copies of my pictures. But, I guess the really bottom line is that you
should be careful that anything on the Internet could at any point become
public, so when you put something on the Internet you should consider whether
you’re willing to have that become public.
And, I agree that Apple and, others should make it
easier to do……. I mean look people are going to take compromising pictures on
their smart phones that’s what it’s for…….
Rene: (laughing) but there is an issue that…..
Leo: But……and, I don’t want to stop people from doing that.
Jason: Well maybe there’s a new market in secure photo apps that don’t save to a
camera roll, and you know……….?
Leo: Camera Plus does that right? Your Camera Plus will save it to the tone unique
storage, that is not backed up……well it’s not backed up…….
Jason: But it’s encrypted……
Leo: But anything that’s backed up by Apple back up…..
Jason: But if it’s encrypted before it’s backed up then you’re secret your password.
Rene: These aren’t new issues like a long time ago Paparazzi hit upon beaches and,
took photos and sold them to tabloids and, they pushed them on every cashier
line…..
Leo: Right…..right………
Rene: I used to do self-defense and, personal protection and you have to explain to
people why it is your absolute right to wear anything you want and, go anywhere
you want, but this is a savage world and, you have to precautions…..
Leo:….be
aware……wait t a minute……what did you used to do?
Rene: Personal protection and self-defense.
Leo: What,…….you were like a body guard ?
Rene: No I taught people, it was much before I got into gadgets.
Leo: Wait a minute……I need to know more about this……hold on…..
Jason: He’s a published author on many books on…..
Leo: What do you do Karate……what do you do a Ninja….
Rene: I used to…….most recently I do Brazilian jujitsu, but that’s……I do a lot of
different things, the idea was that most of the things had nothing to do…….
Leo: No-body told me……
Rene: You see with martial arts any expert would tell you that it has 10 per cent to
do with self-defense almost entirely behavior prevention, role playing model in
and, understanding how the world is in making sure that you minimize your
target and in cyber security is the same thing. What is the threat assessment
for this and, how do I make sure that I am not…….if I am a visible target how
do I protect myself and how do I make sure that I’m not a visible target.
Leo: That’s a wake up call for everybody for sure. We’ve always said that it’s your
behavior that’s really not having any…….oh people say, ‘Oh I have an anti-virus
I’m safe, I got body guard I know
Jujitsu I’m safe,…..no
Rene: No, what’s cleared this is this is a crime these people had committed a
crime…….
Leo: It’s horrible……
Rene:……celebrity
nude pictures…….it’s not a big deal…..no…..
Leo: No this is a horrible crime.
Rene: Credit card detail can be stolen, personal data, this was the data that was
stolen from these people and, distributed without their permission this is an
absolute crime, it doesn’t matter what the content was or not.
Leo: No, we don’t…..we don’t in anyway contest that or condone in any way at all.
This is a hack…..yeah…..
Andy: I can see that we can attest more to that given the nature of quote data
unquote that was being disseminated that’s the violation of some-one’s person
that’s terrible.
Leo: I think the good news is that a lot of …….I think almost everybody agrees and,
there has been a general rejection of those photos and, passing them around. I
think that is the good news. This was so agredigous, was so…..it wasn’t just one
or two picture it was so grudgidious there was so much of it, even Four
Channels taken it down or not? You really can’t expect much from……redditch
did…..
Jason: Redditch did……
Leo: Redditch immediately did…..Imager which was holding a lot of these images,
those sites are being shut down as they’re discovered.
Rene: But, it’s people who rally about the importance of privacy and, security are
also taking delight in the violation of the privacy and security of others. A
point should not be lost to them.
Leo: Actually, besides Jonathan Zdziarski, Swift on my security has been my go to,
which is actually a really good twitter account by somebody pretending to be
Taylor Swift it’s a………. I think you could say a woman in security, because her
advice is really good. And, she wrote a really excellent piece on her
tumblr…..let me see if I can find that……on what I would do as Taylor Swift,……..what
I would do if my phone had been
compromised like this. And, if you just read it, the first thing she says is
that everybody should have a Faraday bag ready at all times to stick your phone
in. And because you don’t want to hear this waxing poetic, Swift on
security…..but it’s actually great…..if my iPhone got hacked what she
recommends is fairly interesting. Some of it requires you being a very rich
famous celebrity….what she wants you to do is put in a Faraday bag, but then as
the phone then increases in power to communicate with radio towers a 100 per
cent, you don’t want it to go off because there’s important forensic
information in there so you have a battery in there in your Faraday bag, plus
you have a window on your Faraday bag that’ll help you as you’re flying to
Apple or Microsoft in Redmond as your office, as you’re on your way in your
private jet you want to be able to go through all your accounts and, see what
was compromised and changed those passwords immediately.
She says luckily I don’t use android which I wouldn’t
trust to take time lapse video of a flower that I was planning on watching.
Rene: It’s good to point out too that this is something that is not just a cloud
storage, I mean people have….literally had their physical phones stolen.
Leo: That’s right.
Rene: People have had, people with positions of trust, people who have worked in
hotels, technicians who have set up their devices, people who ran their social
media for them, had access to their accounts, there are multiple vectors to get
into people. But it’s not as simple as that to get into the accounts.(cross
talk)
Leo: This could be telling……..according to Zdziarski this is the iCloud back-up of
their device.
Jason: The core about what this is about is where complicated technology collides with
the expectation of the ease of use on these devices and that everybody is using
now. And, all the ……..when we talk about Apple making things by default and, by
doing the back-ups they’re trying to make life easier. And the more complicated
you make it in some cases the more secure you make it. But they don’t
want…….this is the battle……they don’t want to make too complicated they don’t
want people to feel like they’re back in the day of installing anti-virus
soft-ware on their pc. But this can be the result of that and it’s fascinating
to watch and I don’t know what the solutions is?
Matt Ronan wrote a great article on wire about the
death of the password a while back, and how security is really not very secure
on the Internet and we want to use it because it is so darn convenient and
computer companies want to make it easier to use, but the easier you make it and
sometimes the less secure it is, and that’s what we’re running up against you
know. Jennifer Lawrence doesn’t want to have a 15 character password that she
has to input for every time she wants to use her phone…….
Leo:……but
that puts the burden on Apple though?
Jason: Yeah.
Leo: By the way Apple posted this on September 2nd at 2.30 PM Eastern
time:
Jason: …….about nine minutes ago.
Leo: (reading)’We wanted to provide an update of the theft of certain celebrities.
When we learned of the theft we were outraged and immediately mobilized Apple’s
engineers to discover the source. Our, customers privacy and security are of
the utmost importance to us. After more than forty hours of investigation we
have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very
targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions. A practice
that has become all too common on the internet, none of the cases we have
investigated has resulted from any breach from any Apple’s system including
iCloud or Find My iPhone.’
Now breach is different from the brute force of it.
Jason: So, it’s possible that brute force……(cross talk)
Leo:……,fixed
for the brute force, so that seems to me that they……., of course that fix was
pro-active before they knew what it was and they said, well let’s fix this
anyway.’
We continue to work with law enforcement to help
identify the criminals involved to protect against this type of attack, we
advise all users to always use a strong
password and enabled two step verification.
Jason: For people who don’t know what two step is, the idea here is that whenever I
want to edit anything involving my Apple ID, I get a text message that is sent
either to my phone or my wife’s phone, and it’s got a code and if I don’t enter
in that code nothing can happen. So, even if you knew my password and Apple ID,
you would also need to have one of those phones in your hands all at once, in
order to do it and yes that could happen but it is a much less likely scenario
because basically at that point you would have to basically rob somebody and
make them put in their passwords and things like that. And……and it they don’t
have my phone……
Leo: Phone as well, right?
Jason: Absolutely, so there is ……the factor is a little complex to start and it’s kind
of a pain because now every time I want to log into Apple’s site or Google I
have all these two factor codes that I have to enter. But, it means that
somebody who guesses my password, even if they guess my password which is a
hard password to guess they can’t get in because they don’t know my code
because they don’t have my phone.
Leo: This explains why Snap-Chat is so popular because there’s the perception and
not the reality.
Jason: Perception that it will go away.
Leo:…….that
it disappears.
Rene: It’s what iMessage does on iOS 8 as well.
Leo: Mark Cuban, has released something called Cyber Dust, it does the same thing. I
think there’s going to be a market for this kind of thing amongst celebrities.
Jason: Yeah……(cross talk)
Rene: People in the chat-room are worried……I’m apologizing for Apple. I just want to
be clear a hack of my iPhone would be bad for Apple but would be the best
possible outcome for me because that will be closed down and I don’t have to
worry about it.
Leo: Yes, it would be closed down, right?
Rene: Absolutely, what I’m trying to warn people about what Leo mentioned in that
statement is that this is not so simple as a hack. A hack is very bad for them,
good for us they can close it. This is people who are continually trying to
find ways to go for your password, go for your email address, go for security
questions. Security questions are a horrible idea….. I don’t like the companies
that use them, I fill them with pseudo random blobs and accord them in one
password.
Leo: I agree. (cross talk) and the fact that Apple mentions security questions, I
think is telling……..remember Paris Hilton got hacked……her iPhone got hacked……in
fact, if there have been a number of iPhone hacks due to these security
questions, these are not in fact I don’t think security questions should be
allowed.
Rene: I agree.
Leo: In fact they’re a convenience for the company because people forget pass words.
Rene: Guessable passwords.
Leo: Guessable passwords.
Andy: While we are on that subject there is the problem of guess able email accounts
that are attached to your phones. So, that’s why it probably good practice from
this point forward to you have a separate account that is just used for syncing
and not your name first name last name anything attached to you it is a one
password of a blob of……
Leo: That’s a good idea……
Jason: Make a Gmail account that isn’t your name, and that’s Matt Mahon found that out
in his wired source and, he got hacked and, his phone was remote wiped, lost
his pictures of his children, and it was horrifying and one of the reasons a
lot of sites were doing password resets and, it showed the email address it was
going to and, they would hack that email address. That has changed and now
you’ll get like one character and, then the last character (dot)com, but still
Andy is exactly right, set up a Gmail that is your safe haven, that nobody
knows that’s some random un-guess-able Gmail account and, have things go there.
Leo: So let me re-cap very quickly, don’t use your real name as your login, as your
Apple ID……
Jason:……as
your retrieveable address a t least.
Leo:…..in
fact you should create a Gmail account that is a random string or something
only you would know…….not your dog’s name, not your street address, not your
zip code but something only you would know.
When you use security questions and, they do…..many
sites do still require you to accept security questions which is a massive flaw
don’t answer the question with the real answer, who is your favorite singer…..a
band in high school, don’t answer the Beatles, answer something that you would
use as a random name that you would generate with something like last pass and
you save it in last pass because obviously you’re never going to recover that,
that’s really going to help and finally turn on two step verification. I think
that if you do all of the above, then it would have to be flaw in Apple’s
system!
Jason: We’ve seen hacks come from the inside where there’s compromised internal
security. But, in this case it seems that that’s not what happened, this is
about bad external security, individual people with guess able security
questions or guess able pass words.
Leo: A little blame goes to Apple for allowing these kind of less secure solutions.
Jason: Yes, yes although that’s true, but I think for everybody these guys are all
watching each other too. Google and, Apple and, Microsoft and, FaceBook I mean
they’re all and, Amazon, they’re looking at each other with these things
because…..
Rene: It’s their problem…….
Jason: In fact MacHonan’s hack was across multiple websites.
Leo: It was a social engineering hack, it was……
Jason: You’re right….but…….but……but….
Leo:….
It wasn’t technology……
Jason: It was one of those cases where Apple had a better security patch through
Amazon, so they went through Amazon.
Leo: Right……right, and then…….but then used the information garnered from Amazon……….
Jason:……,
to reset the Apple account.
Leo:…….well,
Apple had a vulnerability as well. (Jason agrees) I think the good news is in
a…….I think Zdziarski and, others have banged on Apple enough to make sure that
Apple’s security policies and, Steve Gibson will talk about this later on
Security Now and, has in the past are very strong. Probably the strongest of
all smart phones out there…….
Andy: Yeah I would agree……
Leo: But you’re going to have to do some stuff to, and, I agree there are some
things that Apple can do, for instance having a private photo button, that says
this isn’t going to get uploaded anywhere is a great idea and, furthermore encrypted
or something is a great idea. I don’t think……what I don’ think you can’t do
and, shouldn’t do is to say, ‘well user you’ve got to stop taking pictures,
you’ve got to stop putting pictures on the Internet’, users are going to do
that and,…….
Rene: There’s nothing wrong with that.
Leo:………,and
it’s your right……
Rene: There’s a lot of blame going one Leo, if you buy a car and, some-one steals it,
even if the locks aren’t great on the car, someone still stole it. If you were
never born you would never feel pain and, you would never die. So, you cannot
go backwards to say you never took a photo and never be stolen…….that’s
ridiculous.
Andy: Right…..also the upside of these back-ups far outweigh anything else, if
you…….if……if my iPhone got remote wiped I would be very pleased that Drop Box
still has copies of my photos, so there’s always going to be need to…….., not
that we’re turning this into a philosophy of life but the thing is part of life
and, so as you……second Star Trek movie reference…….I need my pain, my pain is
useful to me, my pain is valuable. And, so the risk of having things backed up
off site is usually not as big as the actual danger of losing that video of
your baby’s first step and, that sort of thing.
Rene: And, the thing is that if you’re a celebrity, just like I have a house I have
to put a lock on that door. If I was a celebrity I would have to take even more
security procedures and it’s not fair and, it’s horrible but it’s the realities
of the world that we live in and, eventually it’s going to be digital is the
same as the real world. You’ll have to take even more security precautions,
just because there are more people targeting you.
Leo: And, to re-iterate Jonathan Zdziarski has been doing a lot very good work
on…….in public on his Twitter….he says he has spoken to the FBI about things
he’s posted on Twitter as well as more information that he has that he has not
posted publicly.
(reading………) just got off the phone with an FBI
investigator and conveyed my findings, he believes and I think there’s strong
evidence that he’s correct that this was not a hack into iCloud exactly it was
or into Photo Stream but it was in fact that somebody was able to get the
back-ups from these people’s phones and, by the way in his most recent post
according to Apple PhotoStream doesn’t contain videos, there were videos in
this file and, so videos must have come from backup.
Rene: Some people have said that once you get the password and, the user name you can
get the encryption keys and, you can go straight to AWS and azure where the
actual back-ups are stored and, pull them off.
Leo: Yeah.
Rene: I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but that’s one of the theories.
Leo: And, incidentally this person will be caught. I’m……given the information that
Zdziarski has already posted about who this person is……..this person will be
caught. I don’t think this person is going to get away from these person or
persons are likely persons are going to get away with it.
Andy: It does seem like a really positive change in the climate, I think of a time
this time last year and the year before, it’s seems as though there’s a
leak…….excuse me an unexplained, unintentional, un desired release of photos
because of a boyfriend, or even someone who got into people’s phones and more
like a blip in the celebrity news and, this year we’re saying this is
completely unacceptable this year……..not only is it wrong for that person to
have done but is also morally wrong to even want to look at even an edited
version of that photo on a podcast or entertainment site. And, that’s why all
these sites are that unusually……..have been running thinking that we are the
……..we’re the celebrity mavericks, we are going to report on anything even
Perez Hilton took down all the pictures that he had posted…….
Leo: Right on…..yeah…..
Andy:……..and,
put on a big apology saying it’s absolutely the wrong thing to do(Leo agreeing
all the time) I did fast because that’s how we post things, but over and over
again I was wrong and I should not have done that, I apologize for having done
that. If there are other things that come out of this, there is a certain
increase in genteel behavior or, even ethical behavior that’s a really big
positive.
Leo: And, will put this in shin ups but Zdziarski is on twitter at Jzdziarski, and
certainly worth following as well, Swift on security Zdziarski re-tweeted
Swift’s post on……yesterday…..’computer security dirty little secret’quote’how
much of it was a hacking that people hear about is just brain dead and color by
numbers stuff,’ and that’s the other side of it. This is not a brilliant hack
by any means. This really reflects more persistence and,…….and……
Rene:……and
having a target and going……
Leo: Having a target in his evil mind and,
Andy: And, that’s the most dangerous thing of all. We rarely see these security
breaches where everybody’s data is at stake. But, we rarely see a situation
where we, really, really want your data, specifically that…….. that person got
thrown away at the door. It really depends…….it really depends on how hard
you’re willing to work to get the result you want and, a lot of people are
willing to work a hundred times harder than you would imagine that they would
be willing to work at it.
Leo: Any way thank-you Jonathan Zdziarski, thank-you Taylor Swift on security……
Rene: There was a good point that Steve Gibson raised on Twitter, he was responding
to some people who were asking the question, he was talking about there are a
lot of hacks out there and some people have made a big deal about the timing of
this. Immediately, after the story broke a lot of organizations put in iCloud
hacking in the headlines at a speed with which I could not believe that they
had done it on any thinking about it whatsoever. But, it could be an iCloud
hack, it could be……then maybe it couldn’t be……..but it couldn’t be proven right
but they didn’t think before they did it……they put in the headlines because
that is how you get clicks and, Apple has a big reveal coming up and, we’re
going to talk about it later. But, part of that follows mobile payments and
people are going to conflate these issues(Leo agrees)…..people are going
to…….my mother already contacted me and interested in the chain of how this
information spreads, asking questions about what’s going to happen about
payments. And, it doesn’t matter that targets and, other resellers have been
involved in massive breaches last year…….doesn’t matter whether this was a
specific hack on a specific user account and, not an iCloud hack in general.
People are going to see those headlines, those headlines that were great to
clicks for about 24 hours on websites and, it is going to scare them and make
them reticent for technology that could help them the same way that iCloud
back-ups help people most of the time. Or, the way that touch ID helps people
most of the time. And, I think that’s another victim in this……not Apple. Apple
doesn’t matter, whether it’s Microsoft or whether it’s anybody but we are so
quick to give people that sort of fear of technology I think. I think we should
stop and think about it sometimes!
Leo: And, I love RICOD…….actually I don’t I ‘m being sarcastic whose tweet is Apple
says it was hacked in targeted accounts! Apple says specifically it was not
hacked.
Jason: Yeah, right…..it was the users that were hacked>
Leo: But, that was the big point, unfortunately this is hugely damaging for Apple I
think,……I think the take-away on this and the timing couldn’t be worse and the
take away is going to be like normal people……your mom Rene are going to have it
burned into their brain,’Oh you can’t trust this thing.’
Rene: You can trust your Visa card and let it drop and let people see……..(cross talk)
it hurts Apple and I heard these things about Apple at the…….speaking last
month……..(Leo agrees)
Andy: We’re still in the process of updating what we believe what Apple would not do
in a situation because it is a completely different Apple over past couple of
years. And, so it could be interesting to see next week if they mention this
obliquely……or if the totally re-write whatever section of the script that’s
going to be talking about iCloud and security. Or, whether they simply do what
Tim Cook did about Maps in this case simply say they’re not 100 per cent
responsible for it. And, simply saying here is what happened, here’s how we’re
working with them and here’s why your data is going to be safe and, by the
way…….by the way we’re going to take a look behind the curtains and show you
exactly how hard we work to make that your data and you trust in us…….we will
not compromise anybody else.
Leo: I think that Steve Jobs would not have mentioned this. I think Tim Cook will. I
think he needs to directly…….
Jason: Wouldn’t surprise if some of these features that we see in iOS 8 are things
like the auto-expiring photos. I think they’re going to have to at least give a
nod to, isn’t this nice to aspire to……
Leo: I would step up in front of the stage and, say,’ I want to talk about this, I
want to apologize and we’re doing everything we can.’ He needs to apologize, I
agree……you and I all know he doesn’t…….but I think he needs to the regular
people say………
Jason: I think he should extoll the virtues of…..of they seem to be saying use tow
factor (Leo agrees)make…….maybe one of the things they’ll be able to say
something like, ‘we’re recommending for all users of iOS 8 if they turn on this
thing and we’re going to make it easier for you to do this and explain (cross
talk)
Leo:……and,
explain what we’re going to do.
Jason: Two factor would help a lot.
Leo: Here’s how we’re going to take care of this. He can’t say,’Hey, it’s their
fault, we gave them lots of tools to prevent this, no….’
Jason: Yeah…….
Leo: He has to follow the sword and, even though everybody knows and everybody in
the end side knows it’s not their fault and, say, ‘look we’re sorry that was
even possible and, here’s what we’re going to do and we’re going forward to
make sure that it never happens again.’ I think he has to do that. (cross talk)
Rene: I think they’ll probably have to show everybody…….
Leo: Right.
Andy: I think one of the signature differences of the new Apple, at least the kind
that gets……..chooses to present through their media events is a heightened
sense of empathy to people who are outside of Apple. So, this why……I think when
they’re white-boarding and, how they’re going to respond to this…….part of this
is how does an outsider look at this problem whether they are correct or
incorrect……how do they perceive this……
Leo: Exactly………
Andy:……,
and we have to acknowledge that there is cloud information and, it’s natural
for people to come to those conclusions, yes…….
Rene: We’ll see Apple as part of a presentation, you know this has happened in a
bunch of companies have been affected by this and, including Apple………. and
here’s how Apple is going to look at that……..
Leo: It’s so…….look it’s technically correct to say that this has happened to others,
it’s not our fault all of those things. I think that it’s so important that the
kind of semiotics, this a the sub text
of this is we’ll apologize to be honest with you and, say no more.
Andy: I think they should apologize, the thing about it is that sometimes there’s a
point to it and, sometimes you’re just putting on a hair-shirt, you’re willing
for people to see how much you’re willing to suffer to show how serious you
think this is. I think there is good opportunity for Apple to as Rene said, ‘I
don’t think it’s on line to say this is a problem that affects all kinds of different platforms, but not in a
defensive way of saying,’hey look it’s not us, it’s just the way things work……’
Leo:……yes…..don’t
be defensive at all……..
Andy: A way of them saying if you have an Android or if you have a Windows phone
device the advice we’re about to give you applies to you as well, so please pay
attention,’
Leo: Yeah……we can do that and that’s a good one. We have always been highly committed
just keeping your data secure, which no company does as much and still it’s not
enough, we’re going to do even better.
Jason: That’s not an apology……but it’s a commitment. This is a problem and, then……in
typical Apple you say, ‘we’re going to set about it and, solve it, and then
we’ll see what happens.’
Leo:……,,
And, then if Apple stock price is anything to go judge it by it’s gone up. So,
it hasn’t hurt Apple.
Jason: Headlines: ‘Celebrities enjoy Apple products’ (laughter in studio)
Andy: I was thinking about how the old Apple would say, ‘we’ve made sharing photos in
the world as easy as possible,’
Jason: Look at all our famous clientele…….
Leo: Yeah…….look at how easy it is. You know what’s funny is that Swift made this
point on security I wouldn’t use an android phone, but none of this came from
android. In this case fragmentation might be an advantage. Right?
Rene: Well, the other thing is that no-one is immune to bugs and, no-one is immune to
social engineering and designer systems to prevent those things. (Leo agrees), because……..
otherwise people who need them wouldn’t be able to look at it.
Jason: Well, Apple is a leader in the high-end space and, so……..
Leo: Which celebrity doesn’t have an iPhone………
Jason:…..exactly…..the
ones who are……..paid endorsers for other phones probably…….
Leo:……and
they go back stage and, tweet from their iPhones……..,
Jason: Yeah……..so if you’re going to talk about frigidity of course it’s going to be
the iPhone.
Leo: So the take-away once again, Apple made a statement during this conversation in
which they explained that they were taking this very seriously, they’re working
very hard, they don’t believe that the system’s iCloud or My iPhone were
hacked, that there is a vulnerability that we should worry about. However,
everybody should have this take-away so that when you have stuff of the
internet it’s potentially vulnerable.
So, (a) don’t put anything on the internet that you
don’t want anybody to see.
(b) Secure your stuff by using good strong passwords, don’t
use security questions, at least don’t use them and answer them properly, I’d
always make up answers, non-guessable answers, because that’s always a problem
with celebrities because there’s always so much in public. Taylor Swift……not
Taylor Swift……..
Rene: Wikipedia page right?
Leo: Right. Paris Hilton got hacked because she used her dog’s…….we think she used
her dog’s name in one of the security questions.
Rene: If you want to share private photos, use something that is ephemeral and
encrypted, you know an app that’s not familiar.
Leo: Not Snap Chat.
Rene: No, there are secure apps though.
Leo: You know it’s funny and I probably shouldn’t say this……I think there are apps
for couples I use with my couple my significant other and, perhaps because
they’re not high profile those probably have not been hacked yet. That’s a real
cause for security as well. There’s concern as well. And, finally you know pay
attention because your behavior is important in all of this.
Rene: The internet isn’t public but the………just like the real world if you’re going to
go somewhere, where you don’t want people to see you go there, you take certain
precautions, you’re going to use something on the internet you don’t want
anybody to know about it, you take certain precautions.
Leo: Yeah……all right we’re going to take break, we do have a lot to talk about and
an Apple reveal is just around the corner and, these cats are going there. Me,
I’ll be staying back, we’ll talk about our coverage and, what we’re going to do
just for you and, what we expect to see and, in Flint in Cupertino.
Andy: Think of it this way, Leo, you’re Ripley in the drop shit, while we’re the
marines that have to go out and deal with this.
Leo: Yeah, I’m more like Michael Collins watching all Aldernens Armstrong make
history while I rotate around the moon. All right.
Andy: He was the one that almost definitely coming back, so there are advantages to
each seat in that space……
Leo: I’d have preferred to have put my life on the line and, go to an Apple event,
but okay……
Rene: But, you could sit and yell it’s a trap, Leo?
Leo: Our show today brought to you by some really great folk today, that we love an
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Andy: They wear cappies, not fezzes sounds like they’re right……
Leo: You know they have a Roku app, like we do and people…..it such a good solution
for people and I have talked to so many people who have used and have gotten
their certs just really fabulous. All right week from today, here’s what we’re
going to do, the invitations went out, when did the invitations…..was it a
paper invitation……
Jason: Oh no just an email (cross talk)
Leo: I wonder if they cut out…….
Andy: Actually, it’s one of the prettiest ones they’ve sent out. It actually made me
think gee, they actually gave me a copy of this on art stock I might actually
put that in my office because it is very quiet and interesting.
Leo: It’s also one of the more……
Andy:……cryptic……
Leo:……yeah,
cryptic……..invitations.
Andy: Wish we could say more,
Leo:….wish
we could say more doesn’t really give you anything……the only speculation I’ve
heard is that maybe there’s something new with Siri, I don’t think that’s
really what they’re saying here. They know perfectly well everybody knows
what’s coming…..it is…….but it is beautiful I think. And, boy I would have
loved to have gotten one because I would go. I mean I just want you to know
Apple I would go, even though somebody has to stay here and, anchor, it could
be some-body else. But, what we’re going to do…..it’s 10 am, for the first time
in a longtime, it’s back in Cupertino, this is where they did the original Mac
review, remember Steve Jobs in the bow tie pulling the Mac out of the
case……..were you at that…..
Jason: I was not I was in the 8th grade then, but the iMac……
Leo: I had no idea that you were not old enough to actually have been there.
Jason: The original iMac review was also at the center in Cupertino. (cross talk)
Leo: But that’s since 1998, so it’s been quite a while…..16 years since they have
done it there. Why Flint center? Speculation…….(cross talk)
Rene: It’s a big size and there’ll be a lot of people there.
Jason: Yeah, people like to do that Apple criminology thing and, it’s fun isn’t it?
But, in reality a lot of venues are really hard to book, they’ve got other
things going on like they love doing big events at Mosconi West, but, if
there’s a trade show booked there some-times those shows are booked years in
advance……lately they might want to book a theater…..
Leo: Lately, they have been using a theater which is 350…….
Jason: They have been frustrated by the size of it, but Town Hall on the upper campus
is very small presumably……the Apple campus too that they’re building will have
some sort of thunder dome that’ll they’ll be able to use instead. But, in the
meantime the Flint Center, they’ve also used the theater in down town San Jose,
the California Theater for a couple of events. I think it was available, I
think talking to Apple people at WWDC and other events that they do in San
Francisco, I think they’re all down in Cupertino, so it’s an extra bar of
difficulty when you have to come up…….everybody has to drive up to San
Francisco, multiple times to set up to do the rehearsal to do all of that. So,
it’s some combination of availability and convenience I think and size is bonus
too they can invite people who they usually have to turn away.
Leo: The size is still not big enough……by the way for Leo Laporte….no……the
size……(laughter in studio)
Andy: This speaks a man in pain, listen everybody……..
Leo: The size is still not big enough for the demo area and, I presume that is what
this big white box is, that they have been building for several weeks outside
of the Flint Center is……I would think a demo area right.
Jason: Yeah…..
Andy: That’s going to be an interesting problem getting 2500 people through the
hand-on they’re going to get……..,particularly when you see Jason and, I both
have been and Rene I’m sure have been at Samsung scale events, where you have
2000/2500 members of the press and, bloggers and each one of them wants to try
and, do a five minute exclusive You Tube video, with the full review of it and,
so there’s like a line of people holding around every single demo unit, and so
I’m really curious how they’re going to manage that, so they’re going to
basically say you’re in group A, group B, group C and……
Jason: Andy you’ve made me flash back to that Samsung event we went to with Radio City Music Hall, we just
decided to stand on the side for a while and let the media horde descend and,
we would get back to it later……
Leo: It was horrible…….
Jason:…….but
this does like the demo area, and, I saw my good buddy Dan Moran, from Mac
World mentioned the day they launched the iPod hi-fi which was kind of a flop.
That…..
Leo:……that
was at Apple’s………
Jason: They had kind of like a dorm…….like a built up dorm room and, you look at this
big box and, you wonder if there’s something about the home-kit stuff, or
there’s something else…….or there’s a demo area where they need to show the
whole area off to build this big thing in…..
Leo: The box is as tall as the Flint Center which means there could be two stories
in there, I don’t see them building a 20 foot hall ceiling for no reason.
Andy: Plus, they might need areas to give them private briefing to……
Leo: Ahhhhh…….upstairs…….
Andy:……,
as opposed to pulling people to another building……
Leo:…..right……
Andy: So this is the floor map of this is going to be as fun to speculate about as
anything…..piece of hard-ware that is actually released.
Leo: So, here’s what we’re going to do……I am stuck here, so I’ll be here at ten am,
do we know yet if they’re streaming it? They streamed the last few events…..do
we know yet if there’ll be a video stream yet……
Rene: You don’t know…….
Leo: You don’t know until the time comes……..
Jason: Two hours before hand.
Leo: So, no matter we will do it. In fact, if they don’t stream in a way is better
for us because then we can give you synopsis and, you…….., otherwise you can go
and watch for yourself. But Mike Elgin will be with me and, Sara Lane and I and
we will do the coverage. I expect this is going to be long one, maybe 10 until
noon.
Jason: Yeah, usually……(cross talk)
Andy:……especially
given that we’re not expecting them to simply say, hey look we have made a
flatter, hey look we’ve got this new Touch ID system. Well…..I think they’re
all expecting……even if they don’t introduce a new product which all of us think
they will…….this is……..we’re going to have to explain our thinking behind why
we did this the way we did that.
And, if they do come up with a wearable, they’re going
to have to spend…..they’re going to have do the whole Citizen Kane on us from
the beginning, the middle and end. They’re going to have to start off with
somebody whispering rose-bud, finding every single step they took in order to
do it. Because Apple likes to make their message really, really clear, not here
are the features of what we made but, here are the choices that we made
alongside it. Remember that the iPad……iPad unveil was as much about net books
and, why they were unsuitable for Apple as much as much as it was for this
particular piece of hard-ware.
Leo: Man, I just got the invitation in my mail box, this is so exciting……..
Jason: You are welcome, Leo.
Leo: Oh, it’s a forward from Jason Snell. I guess that doesn’t count, do you? (cross
talk)
Jason: Yes send an email to the RSVP address and, see what happens.
Andy: When you get time some later on in the studio, when you’re all alone and it’s
dim……could you sing that song from Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol where he is all
alone in the school and, (singing a song)for each hand that was made for the
world why don’t my finger’s fit!
Jason: I was thinking the Incredible Hulk sad piano music, but…….you know what-ever.
(panelists laughing so much)
Leo: Here I am sitting with three people who’re all going.
Jason: But, somebody has to anchor the cover…….
Leo:…..yeah….right……that’s
what I say to myself in my private time…..’somebody has to be here….’
You know what the only reason I would like to go
Apple……when it was Steve, of course you really wanted to go….that’s the best
scene……(panelists agree)best ticket in town…….to see Steve Jobs I did see Steve
Jobs, never forget it……introduced the iPad…….never forget that…….was the last
time I was invited to an Apple event. Tim Cook is not as dynamic and, as
not…..ddd…….but I do feel that this is going to be a very…….am I wrong……is this
going to be a big one…….this is a big one (Panelists agree)
Andy: Not for that but they also……but if they also choose to release this date the
iOS 8 early and say it’s going to be released in 10 days and this is their big
opportunity to say here is everything we put into iOS 8, just as the stuff that
they showed off at WWDC, it would be making a really huge and very important
keynote. But if they have other features they held back because they didn’t
know if they were putting into the final release or not, that will be huge as
well.
This really is…….I’ve said this so many times before,
but I am still excited about it…….iOS 8 is the most important thing to happen
to the iPhone since the first day of its release.
Leo: John Gruber joked that he’s said that it was a joke but as it turns out it may
not have been a joke that the iWatch will also be announced in September,
something no-body thought would happen. But then John Patchkowski of Ricod
confirms it and, Patchkowski is usually pretty good, he doesn’t say unless he
feels really confident that it’s true.
But, we should warn you just because they talk about it
doesn’t me (a) that they’ll show it-but there’s some questions whether they’ll
show something and,
(b) everybody agrees is that it won’t be available this
year, right? Is that right?
Jason: In classic Gruber he responds to John Patchkowski’s reference to his first joke
with the new joke about mobile payments.
Leo: Can we put jokes in air quotes?
Jason: Yeah.
Leo: I’m working on a new joke rights……Gruber, about NFC and a new secure place
where you could store your credit cards so you could pay for things in brick
and mortar retail stores just by taking out your iPhone……but only if it is one
of the new iPhones (Leo whispers)but no-body seems to like my sense of humor!
(Panelists laughing). Now we do see that Apple has apparently been talking to
American Express, Visa and, other charge cards about exactly that.
Jason: And, they’re have been NFC rumors about this for a little while now……
Leo: You would have to have NFC, wouldn’t you?
Jason: You’ve got to have something that’s readable and, programmable so that it can
interface with other iOS devices.
Andy: Given that the POS terminals roll wider using an FC……
Leo: Right……..
Andy:……you
can’t arm-twist an entire world into saying that. I also saw one of those
interesting things that sort of distracts your thinking for a good hour after
someone suggested a couple of weeks before the keynote,’Oh,……if this back plate
is an actual iPhone 6 back plate maybe why the Apple Logo is now a cut out
because that is where the NFC transponder is, to give people……not only make it
transparent for NFC, but also to say this thing right here…..here is where you
line up for the NFC, target.
Leo: Apparently, Jim Dalrymple, had a one line for I don’t know……I can repeat a one
liner in response to that I am trying to……..by the way I just want to say Apple
okay, you don’t have to invite me at this event, but I’m going to be in London,
at the end of the month, if I could go to the Placido Domingo concert at the
Round House, the last day of the iTunes festival, that would make for it. I’m
just saying…….(panelists laughing) I’m just saying……I can’t find Dalrymple’s oh
it was more like a tweet. All right what does he say?
Jason: Yap or no?
Andy: As an aside, all these commentators that talk about joking, I think that’s like
that move in chess where you move your piece but you’re keeping your finger on
it and, say okay I haven’t really moved it. (panelists laughing)
Jason: This has been Gruber’s stick and, it’s actually pretty darn funny. It’s just
that he drops in fast, and he has done three or four times, he drops in a fact
and, doesn’t say anything like my sources and, telling me a little bird told
me. He’s like,’Oh that’s going to be really funny when they unveil that thing
in September,’ and then he just moves on and, I’m like did he just say what I
thought he said.
Leo: (heavy voice) It was a joke.
Jason: In fact at this point, Gruber mostly disclaims when he’s speculating, because
he knows people believe that he’s got access to all the secret, he’ll usually
say, ’look I’m just speculating here,’. Like when he did his big post about
Math’s, about the size of the iPhone screen, how it might work, he said, ‘look
I just did this myself,
Leo: I liked that post…….(cross talk)
Jason: ……that was John nerding out and, that was a lot of fun.
Leo: In fact I agree in theorem, we haven’t seen any reason to disagree with it. So
here’s Dalrymple’s tweet which I can’t read, but, ‘holy poop people, hang on to
your hats this is going to be a wild ride,’ and it was posted August 28th just four days and I think probably what happened is that Dalrymple got his
sources to tell him what they’re going to see……
Rene: The excitement level before WWDC was palpable and, it is…….if it possible it is
even more palpable now, which is usually a good indication.
Leo: Is this……..so it’s going to be on the order of an iPad announcement or an
iPhone…….it’s going to be a new product right? That’s a new category, we know
that…..
Jason: Yes……you’re going to get all of the…….I mean the iPhone announcement in general
is the biggest announcement Apple will make in any year……it is their biggest
product by far, it’s their most important product and it’s world wide appeal
when you look at the stance from MacWorld’s perspective, it’s by far the event
with the most interest in any given year from Apple. And, when you throw in the
potential for this new product where Apple is using all the attention always
devoted to the iPhone, to launch this new product which is really smart…….
Leo: Right……
Jason:…..if
that happens it’ll be even bigger, it’s already just with the iPhone and iOS,
it’s going to be the biggest Apple event of the year and, if they throw in this
wearable on top of it ……it will be the biggest event since the iPad launch.
Leo: Yeah.
Andy: WWDC is excitement for us……the iPhone is the fall announcement is that level of
excitement for regular civilians whom you can’t explain to why extensions are
such a big deal for this operating but you see that, here is the new phone this
is bigger it coated with a miracle device and, when you flip you can now
communicate with other devices that I couldn’t communicate with before and look
shiny, shiny and, exactly 1.8 millimeters thinner, how do we do it…..Elphin
magic.
Jason: Hey, guys in regular life does anybody ever ask you anything about except when
the new iPhone coming out, that’s the one that I hear. I don’t hear what about
the new iPad, what about the new Mac, what about the new version of OS 10
…….no…….it’s what’s the new iPhone, what’s the new iPhone that is what they
want to know.
Andy: I get a lot of questions about Mac books, I will probably even say that I get
more questions about Mac Books than I do about iPhones……(cross talk)
Jason: What is wrong with your friends then?
Andy: Well, because my friends and my family are thinking about spending about a
thousand dollars or 1500 dollars on a device that doesn’t have a regular
release date.
Jason: I ask for advice.
Andy: With the iPhone, none of the people I know are even in
the market for a new phone until their contract is up.
Jason: See I get asked for advice like that and that’s fine.
But it’s like standard conversation fare. Everybody’s just talking about the iPhone
and that’s different I think than being asked for specific advice. I hear it
all the time, it’s amazing.
Leo: So let’s talk about what we think we know about
Tuesday. Obviously we’ll all find out. But if I’m going to make the bingo card,
I need to know what you expect to hear. People stopped doing that. I want to
see a bingo card again. You know where you put a check mark next to the boxes.
Seems pretty clear, two new iPhones. A 4.7 inch and a 5.5 inch possibly with
the 2x3x resolution, John Gruber calculated. The rumor is though, only the 4.7
will be available this month. Probably what, 10 days after the announcements.
Andy: They’ve done that in the past where they’ve had
esoteric, higher end model that’s ended up trailing the main model. And it
wouldn’t surprise me.
Leo: That will kill me because I want the 5.5.
Andy: They did that with the iPad last year.
Leo: They did that with the iPad last year?
Andy: Gruber’s math is interesting. Slight tangent but this
is MacBreak Weekly. The retina MacBook Pro did something that previous Macs had
never done. It has a virtual screen resolution.
Leo: High DPI, I love that.
Andy: It basically paints a picture in its video card that
is larger than the actual resolution of the screen then it scales it down. And
anybody who’s used a computer over the years will think, oh my God, scaling
down pictures on a laptop; that’s going to look terrible. But at retina DPI,
you can’t tell. You literally can’t tell.
Leo: Plus, if it’s a multiple. It’s not 1.8 times, but two
times. The scaling can be done much better, right?
Andy: Right, and if you’ve got some pixels that are a little
fuzzy, they’re so small that it essentially becomes…
Leo: I have a 4K display on my Mac Pro. And I use high DPI,
I have a 1080. I’ve never seen anything so crisp. It’s gorgeous!
Andy: IPhone users have been living in a world where it’s a
1:1 pixel-to-dot ratio.
Leo: They’ve not done the high DPI.
Andy: So if you’ve got a screen that’s got a resolution of
X, then what the video card does is draw every pixel. And what the speculation
that John Gruber did, and some people that are very familiar with pixel by
pixel, like the icon factory and Craig Hockenberry have talked about is, this
possibility that they’re going to take the same approach with iOS devices. At
least in part. Have it be larger, and then just scale it down to fit the
screen. At some point the screen is so high-res, that you’ll never tell the
difference.
Leo: What’s the impact on battery life and CPU when you do that?
Andy: It does have an impact but these will be bigger
phones. Maybe they’re shooting for battery life that’s similar, I hope they’re
not, but similar to the existing iPhone.
Leo: That’s typically what they do, isn’t it? The battery
life is a constant as they increase the gigahertz.
Justin: It’s gone down a couple times but they bring it
back up when they did the S version.
Leo: Right.
Andy: And the other thing that bears mentioning is that I
think part of the whole redesign of iOS 7 was to create user-interface elements
that aren’t as intensive as drop shadows and gloss that have to be
recalculated. Or bitmaps that don’t work. They created a user interface that if
they did have to interrelate and scale up and down, it will still look great
because there’s nothing but precision in that interface.
Leo: Sapphire on both? Some people say sapphire only on the
big one.
Andy: I don’t know.
Jason: Nobody really knows. They know they’ve got a big
factory in Mesa, Arizona. I drove past it once on the way to the Phoenix
Airport. I was like, hey Apply factory! I think eventually yea, they’re going
to coat everything in sapphire. Whether the whole screen gets it now or whether
it’s stuck on the touch ID and stuff is a question.
Leo: It is currently on the touch ID and the camera lens.
Jason: Right. And I wonder about that Apple logo on the back.
If it’s truly a cut-out with NFC, if they might make it scratch resistant.
Andy: I continue to be unconvinced that sapphire is going to
be as big a deal as other people are making it out to be because when those
rumors started flowing around, I started talking to people I know who were in
the glass industry. Not people who make specifically phone screen covers, but
people who are engineers who work in that industry. And they are telling me
that sapphire will be more scratch resistant but will it be hard for them, from
their perspective, to produce a cover that will be marketably better than
whatever is in the Gorilla Glass product.
Leo: I think Apple clearly wants to control every bit of
the chain it can. They ultimately want to make their own chips as well.
Andy: It’s nice to have something that other phone companies
do not have. Just like originally they were the only ones who were doing
solid-state memory storage for all their music players. They were the only
company that had that much memory in storage.
Leo: Most recently, 64-bit, right? One of the only 64-bit
mobile platforms.
Jason: What are the new frontiers left in smartphones?
Because they’re all pretty good and pretty fast. It’s things like impact
resistance and better battery life. And glare is something I’ve heard some
rumors about that Apple may actually be trying to work on glare. The iPad is
hard to see in bright light. When I went on my beach vacation this summer, everybody
had Kindles. I have a Kindle and it’s amazing but you go to the beach, people
have Kindles.
Leo: And you guys have the Kindle tablet, but the E-Ink.
Jason: The E-ink because there’s no glare problem there. A
lot of material science I think is the next generation that we’re going to see
from phone makers and tablet makers. Whether the sapphire will be the solution
or not, I don’t know. It’s interesting that Apple thinks it’s a solution
because they have this factory spinning up to build this stuff.
Andy: That’s another good point, Jason. When I hear rumors
about curved screens, the things that get overlooked is that if you have a flat
screen you can tilt it so that the glare is eliminated. When you have a curved
screen, there is always going to be a tangent somewhere on that curve where
you’re going to get nothing but glare. So that’s why I don’t know about curved
glass.
Leo: I’ve used the curved LG Flex… big deal.
Jason: The curve on the display isn’t as important as what
you do… any technology is only as good as how well it’s implemented. You can
curve the glass so that at the edge of the non-display portion, it’s smoother
for when you do your persistent back gestures. But you don’t want the curve on
the display where, As Andy said, the photons blast right back into your
eyeballs.
Leo: Other rumors, better speaker. That would be welcomed.
The speakers have not been much improved. In fact, now you have HTC with
excellent front-facing speakers.
Andy: You don’t appreciate how bad the speakers are on any
other phone. Or how useful it is to have good speakers on a phone until you use
the HTC One and you realize oh, I’m actually not even bothering connecting this
to my Bluetooth speakers that connect for listening to podcasts on my desktop.
It’s actually perfectly fine.
Leo: Who else was going to do front-facing speakers? I saw
another company.
Jason: Well they had the HTC Aria 2, the original Windows
phone launches, they had those massive speakers on the top of it.
Leo: Will they have stereo speakers?
Jason: I don’t know if this year, but eventually the Beats
brand becomes the audio brand.
Leo: That really sent HTC to the top, didn’t it?
Jason: Again it’s implementation, it’s not idea.
Andy: It might be more about processing than about putting
in different speakers though.
Leo: Will they talk about Beats at all?
Jason: Will there be Beats headphones in the iPhone box?
Andy: It’s a good question. I think there’s probably going
to be another event this fall where I suspect they’ll talk about Beats more.
Leo: Will you see Dre on stage? Jimmy Iovine?
Andy: If they do that, then that’s a more
entertainment-themed event and it’s for the holidays and it has the iPad announcement.
That would be the time for those guys, I think.
Leo: I think we got to put Dre in FaceTime jail and say
let’s not make a call to Dre anymore.
Jason: I wonder if they’d even do that at a club or do it at
a music festival, rather than doing a regular Apple keynote style event.
There’s so much content they have to put into that, that’s about a lot more
than here’s a new button you have in iTunes. I wonder if they’re also going to
want to manage the brand by saying this is not a tech company that now has a
music thing. This is now a music culture that Apple is now part of.
Leo: We’re going to take a break but when we come back I
want to talk more about wearables. A really good article about Apple’s PR
machine by Mark Ehrman and 9-5 Mac. I thought that was excellent. A few other
things on our agenda. Of course our picks of the week too, coming up. Rene
Ritchie is here from imore.com. Soon to be here, here. When are you coming
down?
Rene Ritchie: I’m coming down on Sunday.
Leo: Alright. Look forward to that. Andy Ihnatko is also
here. Soon to be here, here. And the thin white duke is behind you because?
Andy: Because whatever the cool deficit I have, it’s like
playing on the same team as Shaq and teaming up to do 120 points. That’s about
the coolness we’re basically at the top.
Leo: He has excellent rebound numbers.
Andy: He’s a killer in the paint. Especially when the paint
is on his face in the shape of a lightning bolt. Ziggy Stardust.
Leo: Ziggy play guitar! That is one of my all-time
favorites. And of course Jason Snell of the incomparable…
Jason: I’m here, here.
Leo: Your podcast empire is growing all the time. If you go
to theincomperable.com. And of course, he has a day job at IDG. I don’t know
what he does there. Oh, editor in chief of MacWorld. Yea, minor thing. How long
have you been at MacWorld?
Jason: 17 years.
Leo: So you started as a cub reporter?
Jason: I started as if Davis at MacUser, and when they sold
that off to IDG…
Leo: That’s when we met, I think.
Jason: Yea, and then I was at MacWorld and we did tech TV
there.
Leo: You used to come over and do little bits and things.
Jason: That’s 17 years now, editor in chief for about 8 or 9
in there.
Andy: Jason and I became friends because Jason was the only
person I knew who knew HTML markup. And I was writing code to set up a blog.
And I was like, Jason! I tried to center it but it won’t center!
Jason: Back in the MacUser days, it was me, Chris Breen, and
Andy. We were the ones who are left alive.
Leo: My goal has always…
Andy: We’re like the surviving members of the Who!
Leo: Yea, always a new drummer. They self-destruct. No,
it’s always been my goal with all the shows to have the most authoritative
voices in a sector. And I don’t think you can get more authoritative than Rene
Ritchie, Andy Ihnatko, and Jason Snell. That makes me pretty happy. We think,
we’re not sure yet, but we think we’ll be able to get a camera and some sort of
streaming magical system down to Cupertino. So what I anticipate happening,
you’re two and a half hours away plus there’s going to be a demo. So there’s no
way in time you’re going to get back in time for a MacBreak Weekly. I’m sorry
to say that next week’s MacBreak Weekly will be the B-team. But, the second
unit. I don’t even know who it’s going to be. It’s whoever wasn’t invited to
this event. Me. But, I hope we’ll be able to get you after the demo. Or even in
the demo room depending on what kind of permissions we can get. I would love to
get a stream of whatever they’re showing on there. At least we’ll get your thoughts
afterwards. Whether it’s one of you, two of you, or all three of you, I would
love to do that. And if you see Woz, you can pull him over. We like him too.
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Jason: Or is that Moe’s Tavern Moe from the Simpsons?
Leo: Oh maybe it is. Verified.fm, verified photos, verified
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Jason: They do?
Leo: Verified.social. Got to get that! I’m going to create
a social network just like that. Everybody’s verified.
Rene: We’re there at the beginning fellas.
Leo: How hard could that be?
Andy: On the tree…
Leo: Like Twitter, but you can’t be on it unless you send
me a picture of you and your driver’s license and today’s newspaper. Wouldn’t
that be, and then you would… I don’t know why nobody’s done this. Google kind
of sort of. You can’t do it with Google. It has to be some place out there.
Verified holdings, verified associates, verified ventures.
Rene: Verified plumbing.
Jason: You should make it more difficult as there are more
users. So the first 1000 users only hold up one newspaper. Then after 10,000
users, they have to hold up two newspapers. Once you get to a million, you
basically have to cover a wall with news print.
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Jason: Only $90, Leo. You’ve only spent $90.
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Andy: Are you like me? When you get a list of all the domain
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but none you followed through on?
Leo: That I’ve never used, yep. I have an account, I’m
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for a minute while I buy…?
Rene: Pull over to the side of the show.
Leo: I just want to buy these domain names, you don’t mind
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Leo: Alright, done. Let’s talk about; should we talk more
about wearables? First of all, we’re not saying iWatch anymore, we’re saying
wearable, right?
Andy: Sure.
Leo: Why? Is that because the hat’s going to be real? Smart
hats? I give you a lot of credit, Jason.
Jason: Smart hats! I think people are still wondering about
this activity tracking stuff. And with the health kit stuff in iOS 8 and Tim
Cook talking about how interested he was in the Nike Fuel band.
Leo: Right, well he’s on Nike’s board.
Jason: I think people are starting to feel like the story
can’t just be, hey it’s a watch with notifications on it. It needs to have some
other story.
Leo: Yea, I’ve got that. That’s my Android Wear watch or
your Pebble watch which you’re still wearing.
Jason: I’m still wearing it.
Leo: It’s really looking retro now.
Jason: Yea, sure.
Leo: It’s going to have some retro appeal.
Jason: Can’t wait to replace it.
Leo: I want a fashion watch and I note this by the way, the
Moto 360, LG’s new R which looks beautiful.
Andy: You don’t want that, Leo.
Leo: I don’t?
Andy: No, because the minute you start rendering texts on
that thing, you don’t have space anymore. They can’t make it circular text.
You’re going to have a couple character space on the median line of that. How
do you flow an article or something?
Leo: Well I don’t read articles on my watch.
Andy: Well no, but that dooms it to a watch.
Leo: Okay.
Rene: There’s a Motorola event in Chicago on Thursday that
I’ll be attending. So I expect that I will have one on that day to finally take
a look at. And I have to say there’s been so much negative stuff written about
it at this point. Mostly speculation about why a certain person doesn’t think
it’s a good idea. It almost seems like that sickly dog at the pound; I wanted
to see why I shouldn’t adopt this one because if you’re being abused this much,
maybe you just need some love? I don’t know. I’ve warned the big chunky square
ones, and I’m kind of hard to get used to the big chunky square one. The small
chunky square ones like the ones from Pebble, those are fine. So I’m curious to
see how well they can use that round screen.
Leo: I feel like if Apple does this, first of all we’ve
seen that it may cost as much as $400 as Rank speculation. I bet even Apple
doesn’t know what it’s going to cost.
Andy: That sounds like subterfuge to me.
Leo: Subterfuge?
Andy: There’s two elements to that. One is that when the
rumors for the iPad came out, the rumor was $1000. But the other thing is
Apple’s wearables run Pixo and can’t connect to the internet. They’re called
iPods and they have various forms of clips for those. And Apple needs something
that will take over for that dying device that is of iCloud and iOS time at
that age. And this is where all the wearables; it’s not impossible within a
couple of years we’ll have a display list wearable that looks like a band.
We’ll have one that has a square display on it, we’ll have one that’s a
higher-end, we’ll have one that’s incredibly fashionable. So we’ll have all the
price points from $50 to $200 to $400 to maybe like a MacPro inspirational
wearable device. A family makes more sense for these products.
Rene: Way further down the road. I keep moving my thoughts
back to the idea of really good fitness band whose big selling point is that
it’s exceptionally well-integrated to everything the phone does. On my own
personal Andy Ihnatko talks about Apple Wearables bingo card, the one that you
get for free is I don’t see Apple making a wearable that you can sell to a
woman as easily as you could to a man. And to me, at this point in 2014 or
2015, it means forget about the display, forget about battery life, just make
something that has a big bundle of sensors. If all it did was fitness tracking
and also proximity to other Apple devices and cool things that can be done in
Yosemite or iOS 8. To take advantage of the fact that it knows you’re standing
in front of this Apple TV at this juncture, that could be worth $50 or $100 of
anyone’s money.
Andy: I love the idea, Rene, when I mentioned subterfuge
earlier, I really did mean that iPad rumor of 1000, which I kind of think was a
leak made so that Apple could come up with a price that would blow people away.
And when I see these stories about the watch being $400 or $450, I get that
same vibe. That’s a price that’s put out there so that when they come in under
it, people will be surprised by it. And you mentioned the iPod; this may not
happen. I thought the perfect name for the iPad was the iBook because they had
retired that name. And I still have this feeling of what will you call this
wearable. And I keep thinking maybe iPod is the name for it.
Leo: Oh.
Rene: Or maybe just call it Apple Wear, like Android Wear.
Leo: Well you have Android Wear.
Andy: I think they want to get something non-techy about it.
But one comment on that price point, that rumored $1000 price point of the
iPad, at the time, I was saying that if you believe that, you’re a dope. That’s
way too much; they can’t sell it for that much. A few months ago, we were
talking about rumors that the first wearable that Apple does is going to be a
very elegant design watch that will cost $1000. And I dismissed that as being
absolutely ridiculous. So I don’t think that anybody sitting here an
expectation of that ridiculous a price point. We absolutely don’t know. We have
no idea.
Leo: $400 is what Samsung charges for some of their
watches. I don’t think $400 is…
Andy: Well it depends on what it does for you, right?
Rene: The value that it gives you for that money.
Leo: Well it’s really clear, and I’m very curious if Apple
can change this, is that any watch is a luxury. It’s not a must-have item. It’s
an extra, an accessory you might want like a better pair of headphones. It’s
not something that everybody needs. Can Apple change that? Should Apple change
that?
Rene: Well I think that’s behind some of the wearables talk
about not a watch, but a wearable, is the fitness stuff is really interesting.
The sensors and integrating it, seeing how you sleep…
Leo: Will it still have notifications and all that stuff
too?
Rene: I don’t know. That’s why everybody’s sort of
fascinated to see what Apple’s going to do. There’s a whole menu of things that
Apple can choose from. But which ones do they think are the ones that are going
to work? And maybe the case is that nobody has done the fitness wearable up
until now and Apple’s presence is; they will have cracked it. But it is hard to
see something that is just a watch with notifications or just a fitness band as
being this category-defining big new direction for Apple. There’s something
missing from the story.
Andy: That’s what I was saying earlier, and I wasn’t trying
to be mean about the round wearables; but those are primarily watches because
you still have to render the screen. You’re basically cutting off pixels and
you’re limiting what it can do as a computing device. And Apple maybe will make
one, one day. But we don’t have a lot of round digital displays in the
computing world and that’s probably for a reason.
Leo: So what will it look like?
Andy: Well we also didn’t have a lot of multi-touch displays
up until a certain point. Then there was a reason for them to exist.
Rene: Well that’s it; it has to have a reason. And right now
the reason is aesthetic because it looks really great when you put it into
watch mode. But to Jason’s point, and we had a really good panel at MacWorld
that Jason hosted, is the Apple TV is not a leg product for Apple. It is not a
main product; it’s a product that makes the ecosystem better. An iWatch, and I think
it was Ben Behrend who did the math, an iWatch is going to be very hard to move
the needle for Apple. Because you can’t sell enough of them at a high enough
margin to significantly impact something as big as an iPhone class business.
But what you can do is make a product that makes owning an iPhone better that
makes being involved in Apple’s ecosystem better. And that’s a family of
products, and that can include off the top of my head, logging which is where
you have health kit, controlling which is where you have home kit,
authentication which is where you have pass kit or whatever they call the new
mobile payment stuff. And things like notifications. I’ve heard about the other
three; I haven’t heard about notifications much. Which is interesting to me,
because that’s mostly what I heard about when they came to Android Wear.
Andy: Of all the wearables that I’ve used and that will
include Google Glass, it seems there are two things that I value in them. One
is sensor data, but the other is the ability to keep my phone in my pocket
unless I absolutely need it. So once they crack the problem of having a decent
screen, I find that what I love about the Pebble is not all the apps that I may
or may not install on it; but the simple fact that when I feel a buzzing in my
side pocket, I can simply go like this and that’s all I have to do because I
can keep my phone in my pocket. Even if it is maybe underwhelming, whatever
wearable they do at the very beginning, and I agree, I don’t think I have any
idea what they’re really going to be doing; if all it does is triumphantly
launch an entirely new product line, that will be enough for Apple. Just like
the original iPod led to the iPhone. And then the iPhone led to the iPad. Even
though looking back, the iPod was just a much more stylish and more useful
version of something that already existed as a digital music player. I’m
underselling the iPod, I know. The point is, if all this does is kick off a new
brand, call it again Apple Wear or Apple Strap, or whatever they want to call
it, if all it does is establish this brand; here is something that’s affordable
right now, or something that the really hip people with lots of money will want
to buy, but the rest of you come back in a year because we’re going to keep
building and building. This is not an Apple high-fi, where we’re going to have
to field snarky questions: still happy you threw out all your stereo equipment?
Leo: Is there a precedent for that though, Andy? I think in
every respect, the iPhone got better but we didn’t know it was going to get
better. It seemed like it was great from day one. IPad, same thing, iPod, same
thing. Is there a precedent for coming out with something that is okay, but
we’re going to make it great next year?
Andy: The original iPhone didn’t sell that well. And the
original iPad didn’t sell that well. It was as they went to future generations.
The iPhone 3GS was twice as fast but much lower priced. And the iPad 2 was the
one that hit mainstream. I started seeing my high school teachers lining up.
Leo: So that is a precedent then?
Andy: Yea, Apple knows what they’re going to do. Apple works
three to four years ahead. So they’re building this. The same thing when they
built the iPhone; if you go back and look at the project experience Purple
Prototypes that Johnny and I built, they look like what had took Apple till the
iPhone 4 to get to. The iPad Air to get to.
Leo: They know their road map. They know where they’re
going.
Andy: But it takes a while.
Leo: Well, I don’t want to spend a lot of time speculating
because it’s only a week away. And I think we’ll know a lot more next week.
Andy: I think we will. We may know all the things.
Rene: Some more fodder for the rumor mill, I think.
Andy: This is our last chance to speculate. Next week all of
our imaginations will be worth nothing.
Leo: Yea, well Jimmy Kimmel had a little scoop the other
night on the larger iPad. I thought I’d show you the video so you’d know what
to expect. Can you pull that up? Do you have any ability? The new iPad; it’s kind
of like the Surface table. Thank you, Jimmy.
Rene: Wacky prop comedy, just make it…
Leo: I like prop comedy. Bring me back Carrot Top and
Gallagher. And you know what it works. It actually has a camera that is working
there.
Andy: Carl Malden’s Kleenex box. Rene, were you going to
mention the Fox News newsroom that’s got the giant tablets that are larger than
humans?
Leo: Those are Surfaces.
Rene: Although they’re normal sized at Clayton Morris. I
don’t know how that works.
Leo: I was watching Dead Mouse yesterday on the iTunes
festival, which by the way, Apple deserves a lot of credit. Audio/video stream,
remarkable. I was watching it on a high-def. TV, listening to it on a very good
surround sound system and it sounded great. And apparently, this Mouse fellow
uses a Microsoft pixel-perfect display as one of his touch screen. So Apple get
in on that because I’m sure he’d like to be using an Apple product. As all
celebrities do.
Jason: You hear a lot of artists say they love Apple stuff.
When I hear about this iPad Pro rumor, that’s what I start to think of. People
like artists who really want to use and try very hard despite the fact that the
digitizers are way better on some Android tablets and Microsoft tablets; they
want to use the iPad. And if Apple, maybe that’s the product that really speaks
to them.
Leo: Here’s a big story speaking of many years in the
business when you were a cub reporter at MacUser magazine. A 14-year old named
Anand Lal Shimpi started Anandtech, started blogging about the tech industry in
the intervening 17 years he has become without a doubt, one of the most
interesting intelligent and accurate reviewers of products. Nobody tests things
like Anand. Anand announced shockingly that he was retiring from tech
journalism on his blog. But he didn’t say was where he was going: Apply. What
will Anand do at Apple? By the way, I’m embarrassed because I immediately sent
him a note saying Anand, if you’d like to be on TWiT from now on, you can. Then
I found out he was going to Apple. Are you going to work for Apple?
Jason: I have nothing to report. Although it reminds me a
little bit of when Michael Gartenberg, the analyst who is an off-quoted; he
wrote a column for us in Computer World. He got hired by Apple.
Leo: Going over to the dark side.
Jason: Although he was an analyst, so he was always on the
side of good.
Leo: And Anand, I think Anand has always liked Apple
products. Been pretty positive about Apple products.
Jason: Yea, he’s been invited to the last few Apple events.
He’s taken their…
Leo: He’s a big shot!
Jason: Yes, and he’s taken their chip stuff really seriously.
He’s really broken down what Apple’s done with the A-processor line.
Leo: So what do you think he’ll do? I think a smart thing
for Apple to do is have somebody independent-minded like Anand, before these
products ship, do the reviews. Say look here’s what’s wrong with this; here’s
what a reviewer is going to say about this. Wouldn’t that be useful to have,
somebody like that? I think he’s an Apple fellow.
Jason: Samsung has done that for a while. Samsung and HTC
both hired bloggers for a while to sort of be internal reviewers. And also to
keep the eye on the competition, to see what Apple is; he’s just a really smart
guy. I look at this and think good to have a smart guy like him on your team.
And find a way to use him. That’s how I felt about Gartenberg, was the same
thing. Wow, he’s really smart. And now he’s playing for Apple. And Apple gets
all of his information and none of the rest of us get to hear it. They’re taking
it all for themselves.
Rene: Previously the Mac reported on it at the same time
that Anand’s mobile editor, Brian Klug had gone there several months earlier.
Leo: Oh I didn’t know that. Brian’s great too. Brian’s
reviews of the iPhone were stunning.
Rene: Incredibly intelligent.
Jason: There was an amazing message board post that somebody
linked to that was from a few months ago that basically said, I think these
guys are going to leave Anandtech and it was like a prediction. And they
totally called it just by reading the tea leaves. And it’s fascinating.
Anandtech will continue and I think Anand feels it will continue to do well.
But they’ve taken these two incredible talents and brought them on the inside.
So, who’s next? Maybe that’s why they haven’t invited you, Leo. Because they’re
planning the job interview.
Leo: How much would it take for Apple to hire me away?
Andy: Leo, you know you’ve been saying time and time again,
how sad you are that you haven’t been invited. Are you throwing a double bluff
at us so that we don’t know you’ve actually been taking meetings and they’re
measuring you for the golf shirt?
Leo: You’ll know when I take the stage next to Tim Cook and
Phil Schiller next Thursday. I think it’s smart to hire; in fact I think they
should hire people who are actively criticizing responsibly and with
thoughtfulness, what they’re doing.
Jason: Well Anand is that perfect person for that. He was
always extremely objective. He’s so knowledgeable especially about the
processor stuff. Well I keep saying they should hire John Siracusa. But John
Siracusa doesn’t want to move to California anyway.
Leo: He’s a freelancer though, right?
Jason: Yea, he’s got a day job. He’s a web programmer and
then he does the podcast and his OS 10 reviews for R’s in his spare time.
Leo: Those OS 10 reviews are like Anand’s reviews of
hardware, are definitive. Anyway, I’m thrilled for Anand. I love the guy. We
started interviewing him when he was in his teens on the screensavers. And I
just think he’s such a great guy and I’m glad for him. But I think it’s a loss
to us, as readers.
Jason: It reminds me in the baseball world when Money Ball
took off and Sabre Metrics took off. There were all these great writers who
wrote for sites like Baseball Perspectus. And most of those people got hired by
baseball teams. And even Bill James, father of Sabre Metrics, he got hired by
the Boston Red Socks. Most of these people work secretly, trying to get a
business advantage. And good for them; those are good jobs and I’m sure they
pay way better than Baseball Perspectus did.
Leo: I would read Bill James nonstop.
Jason: And I feel like that’s sort of happening here.
Something like Anand going behind the curtain. It’s like, great for him and
great for Apple. It’s a loss for us because we don’t get his blogs.
Rene: Jason always seemed to… I went from product marketing
at a company to working in basically media. But then there are a lot of people
that go from media to PR and back and forth. They’re basically inverse skills.
Leo: You went from body guard to media. So I think that’s,
I don’t know why that…
Rene: I taught, I never practiced. I went from product
marketing to media.
Leo: Are you like a super duper black belt in jujitsu?
Rene: No.
Leo: So the next time I see you, you’re not going to kick
my ass, are you?
Rene: No, I’m a peaceful guy.
Andy: Better watch your step
Leo: I am going to watch my step, Andy. There’s so much we
can talk about. But you know what, we’re going to reconvene next week and have
even more. So this might be a good time to move on.
Rene: Have actual phones.
Leo: I want the 5.5. I don’t want the 4.7. And they’re
going to break my heart because they’re going to say the 5.5 is available in
December or something. And I’m going to be stuck using this Android crap. We
will cover, just so people know, tomorrow a Samsung event to release a Note 4,
is 6am our time. But I think I’m going to come in and I’ll wear my jammies and
slippers, and stuff. We’ll do that.
Andy: It’ll be like the New Year’s thing all over again.
Leo: Tom, you making a note of that, 6am? Okay. And then
the 4th is the Moto X announcement. I’m a fan of the Moto X. I
thought that was the best phone of the year in many respects. So I will be very
interested what they’ve done to update that. They certainly need to improve the
camera and the screen.
Jason: There’s a great line in the chat room. Rene is
secretly wolverine. He’s the best he is at what he does. But what he does is
extremely nice.
Rene: I think my Connie English claim will bring before I
could.
Leo: Connie English? No!
Andy: That’s a fake name.
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MACBREAK if you decide to buy. Time for our tips of the week. Let’s start with
Andy Ihnatko.
Andy: My pick this week is a really cool iOS photo filter
app called Tangled FX. Where it will take the original source file and it does
one thing only. It basically redoes it as swirls of either threads or paint
brushes. And as bored as you might be with the idea of another, look it makes
it look like paintbrush, you have not seen how good this thing is.
Leo: You sent us the link. This is the original. And who is
that?
Andy: That was a Doctor Who cos-player from Boston Comic-con
a couple weeks ago.
Leo: I should’ve known from the brocaded vest. And then you
have turned him into Vincent Van Gogh I think.
Andy: Yea, zoom in too because that’s the detail in that.
That’s not even the high resolution version of that picture. It got every
single one of those strands of hair. It was also smart enough to realize that
the circles in the eyes should not be swirled into comprehension. Obviously
some pictures work better than others. This is not something, not something
like a photo processing tool where you improve every photo with it. But
sometimes you encounter a photo where it really does something really great
with it. Or as I often say when I come across these different oil paintings or
trans-modifiers, sometimes you get a picture that’s a little bit blurry. So you
can’t use it. Or the phone went to super high ISO so it looks very grainy and
you can’t use it. But if you apply a filter like this to it, it obliterates all
that stuff that made it unusable and turns it into something interesting and
worthy of sharing.
Leo: Tangled FX.
Andy: $2.
Leo: Not Tangled, storybook deluxe from Disney. That’s
another Tangled.
Andy: Although with all that hair, it would probably do a
very good job on that frame too.
Leo: $2, and yea there’s an iPad version as well as an
iPhone version. So it’s not just the Van Gogh effect.
Andy: There are about a dozen of them. And each one of them;
now the interface is a little bit not iOS optimized. But that’s kind of a good
thing because you can sort of do a reveal and get access to every slider that
the algorithm approaches. So if you think, gee that would be nice but there
isn’t enough detail there or they lost some of the color, you can just say give
me more detail, give me more color.
Leo: Add this to Hyper Labs and it’s another reason why…
you know I’ve been using the Android for a long time because I like the bigger
screen. I want a bigger screen. And I hate the iPhone keyboard. It’s unusable
in my opinion. It’s just ergonomically brain dead. They’re going to fix both of
those things. And then if I have a 5.5 inch; and these apps, I don’t know if
I’ll ever go back to Android.
Andy: As I was using this yesterday, someone on Twitter was
nice enough to suggest this to me. So I was playing with it yesterday. And I
have to say the only thing I totally miss about the iPhone is access to apps
like these. Because these really weird but exceptionally well-done apps are not
available for Android. The marketplace on Android is great, no matter what you
need. Most of the stuff you want is there, too. The weird people who come up
with this is, their first choice is never Android.
Leo: And even Instagram who did hyper laps; we can’t do it
on Android until they have the gyroscope function. Which they will in L, but
they don’t have right now.
Andy: Like I said at WWDC, if Apple does come up with that
really big screen iPhone and they deliver an iOS 8, I am running out of reasons
to keep using it.
Leo: Thank you, Andrew Ihnatko. Mr. Jason Snell, how about
you? Do you have something for us?
Jason: Yea, a little while ago a company, a startup created
an interesting iOS and it’s now on Android. Mailbox called Mailbox. And they
were purchased by DropBox. It’s mostly for Gmail although it works for other
services. Anyway, there’s a Mac beta now. Since this is MacBreak Weekly, I
thought I’d mention the fact that they now have a beta. You have to sign up for
it. Or if you have a friend who has it, you can get what they call a beta coin.
But you can request a beta coin and within, I got one within a week.
Leo: I’ve been using it on iOS, so I should be able to get
it.
Jason: And with syncs,
if you’re using it on iOS, it will sync up and now you can use it on your Mac.
And it goes back and forth. And the trick with Mailbox is it allows you to
triage your mail very quickly. If you’re like me, you use your inbox as sort of
a to-do list and one of the nice things about Mailbox is it lets you say, I do
need to deal with this but not right now. And set a timer and basically say
tell me about this tomorrow, or next week, whenever. Then it goes out of your
inbox but it’s still there waiting to come back in your face at a more
appropriate time. So you can get down to zero but still have things on your
to-do list if you work like that. And that’s how I work with my inbox.
Leo: This is quite a breakthrough. This app, like Delicious
Library, spawned a whole bunch of ideas of how to damask data.
Jason: Yea, it’s a different way of handling mail, and
triaging mail. And it doesn’t work for everybody. But it really works pretty
well for me, so I’m using Mailbox for Mac right now. And we’ll see how it goes
but I really like the idea that with just a few swipes you can delete a
message, you can mark it as read, or you can set it to come back at a later
time. Then it comes back later to remind you.
Leo: Mailbox, iOS now, beta for OS 10. And if you have an
iOS version, you get a token and get it.
Jason: Exactly. It’s mailboxapp.com.
Leo: Love it. Mr. Rene Ritchie, your pick of the week.
Rene: I have a few picks and it’s going to depend exactly on
what you want to use on your own personal taste. One of the things we like to
do when there is a security problem is give people as much help as we can and
making your stuff more secure. So we put up a list of secure, ephemeral, photo
apps. So if you do want to share personal photos, you can do it with an app
whose only purpose is to keep those apps secure. So I’m just going to pull it
up. Because I lost the window of course. You have several things to choose from
here. I apologize for the delay. You have Snapchat, which a lot of people use.
It might not be as secure as possible but there’s a large likelihood that the
person that you know of is using that. There’s also Suture, there’s Avocado,
Bonfire, Confide, there’s CyberDust, which we mentioned earlier. So you have
your choice; you can go and look at them and see this one does encryption, this
one deletes it immediately. This one makes it hard to screenshot it or capture
it. There’s a whole list along with the pros and cons for each one and sort of
what each one does well and what each one does badly. If you do want to do this,
and again it’s a perfectly normal thing, you can do it with something that’s
designed to protect your privacy from the beginning.
Leo: Nice. Private photo sharing at imore.com. The list is
there. We do know that Snapchat saves those on a server.
Rene: Yea, the advantage of Snapchat, for a mainstream
person, someone who’s not a celebrity, and a lot of people who you know might
already be using it.
Leo: Avocado is one of the couple apps that I mentioned
that you pair with another person and share your data just with them. Your
significant other; and that’s of course where all my dirty pictures are.
There’s this Mark Cuban’s CyberDust; good article. Did you mention Couple?
That’s another one like Avocado.
Rene: We didn’t. I’ll take a look at it.
Leo: God, I hope they don’t get hacked. Not that anyone
wants nude pictures of me.
Andy: Leo, maybe that’s what would turn around the Apple
situation for you. Say, I didn’t know he had that kind of abs, alright. I want
to meet this dashing young sailor.
Leo: They do it all the time. I mentioned the iTunes
festival. It just started yesterday with an amazing performance by Dead Mouse
at the Round House in London. Thirty days of performances; Beck is performing
right now. And you can watch it on of course your iOS device. But if you have
an Apple TV, I highly recommend tuning in the iTunes festival on your Apple TV.
I was just really enjoying it at home yesterday. Blasting Dead Mouse. There’s
Beck performing right now, or about to perform. He hasn’t taken the stage yet.
I’m blown away by what Apple is able to do. Not only the camera work, but the
quality of the stream. And the quality of the audio. This is state of the art
video streaming. I don’t think anybody does it better than Apple.
Rene: I actually think that one of the reasons they now
live-stream their events is the expertise they built up by doing the iTunes
festival.
Leo: itunesfestival.com, but the best way in my opinion is
to fire up your Apple TV. They’ve added an icon on the Apple TV. As you can
see, Beck has yet to take the stage. So if you’d like to tune out and start
watching, go ahead. Be my guest.
Andy: It’s like the Us festival, only it’s revenue-positive.
Leo: Yea, poor Steve Wozniak lost much of his fortune in
that. The other pick I have, because of Labor Day and the United States the
other day, we didn’t do iPad Today. And I would’ve mentioned Bio Shock. The
original Bio Shock is now available, ported to the iPad for $15. I thought it
would load, because usually my apps will load automatically, it’s not yet
loading. It’s taking such a massive application so I can’t show you. But for
those of you who have played Bio Shock, which in my opinion is one of the great
games, this is the first in the trilogy. Not the most recent, but the first;
they’re under water in rapture. It was a great game. You know I have some
qualms about recommending first-person shooters on the iPad. It uses the
standard first-person shooter iPad technique where the left side is the
movement and the right side is the point of view. And you tap things to fire,
and I just find first-person shooters in general not to be well-suited to the
iPad. But they have done a great job converting it. The artwork is excellent;
the story is incredible. If you’re willing to spend $15, it was $60 originally.
So you’re saving some money. That’s Bio Shock.
Jason: If you want more premium games, support premium games.
Leo: I still have to say, I prefer games that are designed
for touch. I just think they work better. Things like Fruit Ninja, just such natural
games on the iPad. Dots, because they use swipes, they use touch. The
first-person shooter ports generally leave me wanting. However, this is an
excellent port. They’ve got the full game on there.
Jason: Classic.
Leo: Yea, one of the best games of all times.
Andy: Best Twitch games I prefer to have mechanical buttons
underneath my hands.
Leo: You know they make some third-party joysticks that
would probably work fine on these, I guess. I don’t know.
Jason: Wait till you get your new Apple TV.
Leo: It needs a controller. I’ve been playing Diablo 3 on a
console. That game is better on a console. I played it on my Apple when it came
out. But the console controller is great. Thank you, my friends! You rock. We
will see you Tuesday for what promises to be the most exciting Apple event in
five years, four or five years.
Andy: Big day.
Leo: You will all be there. I will be here anchoring our
coverage. It begins 10am Pacific, that is 1pm Eastern time, 1700 UCT. With the
Apple stream and our commentary, I know it will be me, Mike Elgin, and Sarah
Lane. We’ll see if we can find anybody else who wasn’t invited and invite them.
Andy: The island of unloved hosts.
Leo: And I hope we’ll have streaming video at least a
little bit, worst case we’ll do FaceTime with Andy and Rene down there at the
event. After you get to touch whatever it is Apple is sticking out.
Rene: Show Title.
Jason: Don’t take a picture of that on iCloud.
Rene: It’s so close.
Leo: And Jason Snell, we love having you. You come up
anytime, theincomperable.com, the site for his podcasts which are truly
incomparable. We really enjoy him. And of course macworld.com and techhive.com.
And greenpot.com. And pcworld.com.
Jason: And snell.zone.
Leo: Snell.zone, did you get it?
Jason: I got it.
Leo: You’re in the Snell Zone! Stay tuned, there’s more.
You can make a zombo.com out of the Snell Zone.
Andy: You need a Fox News sort of anthem.
Jason: I’m working on it.
Leo: A man, a machine, a Snell.
Jason: Colbert Report.
Leo: Thank you everyone for being here. We do MacBreak
Weekly at 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern time, 1800 UTC on twit.tv. Live Tuesdays,
and we like it if you hear it live because we can chat with you in the chat
room and all that. But if you can’t make it live, we do make on-demand video
available and audio, too. At twit.tv/mbw. Also youtube.com/macbreakweekly. And
wherever podcasts are aggregated and distributed over the internet. Places like
iTunes and the podcast app. And places like Stitcher. So please, and of course
our great third-party apps, many really nice apps developed by fans on all the
major platforms including Roku. Just search for TWiT. Thanks for joining us.
Now get back to work because break time is over!
