This Week in Tech 475 (Transcripts)
Mike Elgan: It’s time
for TWIT, This Week in Tech. Leo is off
today, I’m Mike Elgan filling in. Chicago Sun Times tech journalist, MacBreak Weekly host, Andy Ihnatko is here, so is Kevin Tofel, senior writer for Gigga what, and we’ve also got Lee Hutchinson, senior reviews editor at Orjtoijal. We’ll
talk about the big Apple announcements of course. The Apple watch, the Apply
pay and the Apple iPhone, a great device with a flawed rollout. Plus, which is the very best smart phone of
the year? We’ll try to answer that
question. Facebook is under fire this
week for its spyware-like messenger app and also its real names policy. It’s all coming up right now on TWIT.
Netcast you love, from people you trust. This is TWIT. Bandwidth for This Week in Tech
is provided by CacheFly. Cachefly.com.
Mike: This is TWIT, This Week in Tech.
Episode #475, recorded September 14, 2014.
Apple is Touching Me
This Week
in Tech is brought to you by ScotteVest. Technology enabled clothing to carry all of your gadgets. Visit scottevest.com/twit now through
September 22, to save 40% off ten of their best sellers. That is scottevest.com/twit
and use the code TWIT14 at checkout. And by Citrix GoTo Meeting. A powerfully simple way to
meet with coworkers and clients from anywhere. Share the same screen and see each other face
to face with HD video conferencing. Even present from an iPad. Start your 30-day free trial of GoTo Meeting today. Visit GoTomeeting.com and click on the try it
free button and use promo code TWIT. And
by Shutterstock, with over 40 million high quality stock photos, illustrations,
vectors and video clips. Shutterstock
helps you take your creative projects to the next level. For 20% off image subscription packages on
new accounts go to shutterstock.com and use offer code TWIT914. And by Squarespace, the all
in one platform to make it fast and easy to make your own professional website
or online portfolio. For a free
two-week trial and 10% off, go to squarespace.com and use offer code TWIT. It’s time for TWIT, This Week in Tech, the
show where we find the most brilliant minds out there and we bring them in here
and have the technology conversation of the week. Joining me today is Andy Ihnatko,
the tech journalist for the Chicago Sun Times, host of MacBreak Weekly and internationally beloved industry figure. Welcome Andy.
Andy Ihnatko: Thanks Mike, thanks for mentioning my international belovedness. I’m too
proud to mention it myself.
Mike: Well you trademarked it so you must be
a little proud of it. Just kidding, you
didn’t actually trademark it.
Andy: I got a postcard from somebody in
Canada saying that they love me. So
technically it’s another country so I am internationally beloved. That will stand up in court.
Mike: You’ve been on a quest recently to find
a foldable blue tooth keyboard. I
remember those, remember back 10 years ago when they were all the rage. How’s that quest going?
Andy: It’s going pretty well. I have in inventory, two different folding
keyboards. One is a Matius keyboard that is still for sale but that is like an extended folding keyboard
that is about this big when it’s folded up. I also have a Verbatim one that is a little bit
smaller. The idea is to find one that is
as close in size to the iPhone 6+ as possible to try and see how much work you
can do with everything in your very ample coat pocket. I bought a couple of different ones that are
available on Amazon so they’ll be arriving soon. What we’ve all been hoping for is the one you
were talking about. The
one that Palm used to sell which is just an incredible and reassuringly nice
thing. It folds into the size of
a tiny paperback book, in a very nice metallic clank, clank, clank. Like a Transformer, you need a flat surface
for it but it’s a real nice notebook style keyboard. I’m shocked that with especially how popular
smartphones are and how good the software for it. Whoever has the intellectual property on it, I’m
amazed they have not done a blue tooth version of this. I’ve got $80 for it. I have $80 taped to my monitor waiting for
the person who makes the blue tooth version of this keyboard.
Mike: I couldn’t agree with you more. Of course we’re writers, have you ever
written or do you intend to write columns on a phone?
Andy: I’ve written a couple only when I’ve
been caught in a true emergency. Where
there is a news story and I got a text from my news editor saying, hey can you
get 800 words on this in the next couple of hours? That’s the reason why I normally travel with
an iPad. Often I travel with both an
iPad and an Apple wireless keyboard. Even if I’m just out of the office for 3 or 4 hours I’ll have this with
me. It’s really intriguing to me, to replace
that kit with a phone screen that’s big enough and a keyboard that is good
enough to actually allow me to put that in my pocket or a smaller pouch for it.. We’ll talk about
it for sure later but boy that iPhone 6+ that is really right within the pipeline. It’s a very Andy Ihnatko, we want you to
switch back to the iOS and iPhone even if we have to make a big phone to make
you do it. That’s how much we want you
back.
Mike: They care about you Andy and it’s very
clear with that phone. I totally agree
with you I love the big phone but we’ll talk about that in just a sec. Also with us today is Kevin Tofel the senior
writer for Gigaom who specialized in mobile and
wearing computing, that is one of the reasons he is here. He is also here because I love having him on
Tech News Today, he is one of my favorite guests. Welcome Kevin.
Kevin Tofel: Good to be here. I am not internationally beloved but
hopefully I’m locally beloved. I’ll
check that out after the show. Andy is
going to hate because I have one of the original stowaway portable blue tooth
keyboards that fold up. I have one in my
closet, along with all the other gadgets of yesteryear and its awesome. It’s a shame they don’t make
them anymore.
Mike: Kevin you wrote about one of the
craziest Android aps I’ve ever heard of called the Cosmos browser. Can you tell us about this wacky product?
Kevin: It is wacky, but its actually useful in certain areas where a data plan is too expensive or you live
in a region that doesn’t have a 2G or 3G network. What Cosmos Browser is, it’s basically a way
to get web access without any mobile broadband or without Wi-Fi. You use this browser, for Android, you send
the address or URL of a website as a SMS message in the app and on the back end
the URL is parched out and the content is taken and compressed and sent back to
you over SMS. You don’t see any CSS or
JavaScript just straight over the SMS networks so maybe there is not any charge
for you. It works when you don’t have
any data signal at all.
Mike: There was a Skype glitch that had a really cool hip-hop effect. That was cool, for the recorded version you
will enjoy that. Also with us is Lee
Hutchinson, senior reviews editor at Arstechnica. Lee also writes about manned space flight as
you can see from the background. Welcome
to you Lee. Lee is very quiet.
Lee Hutchinson: I’m muted
so you don’t hear my buckling Unicom keyboard that weighs eight pounds.
Mike: You’ve been at Arstechnica for two years now, they seem like a really interesting and unique
publication. What’s it like to work
there?
Lee: My wife has asked me about this before
because I am not by trade a journalist. I’m an IT guy who wrote on the side for a while. It was a really big career change. After being here for two years, it is the
greatest bunch of people I have ever had the honor of working with. The environment is really lively and
hilarious. It’s a great bunch of people
and a great job. Every day is a gift.
Mike: You guys write some really cool stuff
and you write some cool stuff personally. It’s really exciting to see that. Welcome to the fraternity of journalist. I’m sure you drink much more heavily now and have a pension for free
food. Welcome to the world of
journalism. One of the only professions
that is more lowly rated among public opinion than IT
people. Let’s jump in to it, this week
of course the big news is that Apple announced and a lot of my Android fan
friends have asked me enough of the apple stuff already. We do have to cover certain things but I want
to zero in on some of the unique things that have been under covered with the
Apple event starting with the watch. The
watch in general is a point of controversy with the Apple lover saying it’s the
greatest thing in the history of mankind. The apple hater saying it’s a
copycat, its overpriced and so on. All of that is true to a certain extent. I want to talk about a couple aspects of the
watch. The technology
in it and how it’s being implemented and what its prospects are for being a
popular culture shifting item. I
have the tendency to believe that it is. The two general areas of technology that I want to focus on is the pressure sensitive screen and the Taptic engine and how Apple is implementing it. Let’s just go around the horn, Andy you’ve played with it and you are
impressed with certain aspects of it but I’ve read since then that you’re on
the fence with it. You don’t have a
really good reading if it’s the greatest or an also ran thing that is also
overpriced. What is your feeling right
now about the Apple watch?
Andy: Right now I don’t think I have enough
information to have a real opinion yet. As a physical object I think it’s great. It’s the first smartwatch I’ve ever seen that if it were an analog watch
I would consider buying it as an analog watch. The stainless steel versions is a handsome
piece of jewelry. The problem was it was
a much different roll out than the iPhone and iPad was. You left with a clear picture of what Apple
intended for people to do with it. When
I left the Apple Watch event, I felt like they had shown me a complete picture
about the fitness features but I did not know what role they intended this to
play in people’s daily lives. The last
thing I expected to see was here’s a constellation of dozens of application
icons. So many you need to zoom in and
scroll to select an app. Do I want
dozens of applications on a wristwatch when I have a phone in my pocket? There are so many ways to interact with
it. You can tap on the screen, you can press and hold on the screen, swipe on the
screen. We have a scroll wheel too with
a button and a 2nd button over here for other purposes. Doesn’t that sound like a lot of controls for
a simple device? The difficulty is the
makers and consumers are all trying to figure out what the role of a computer
on your wrist is supposed to be. We’re
expecting it to be the difference between a tablet and a notebook or a phone
and a tablet and I don’t think Apple made it very clear to us whether or not it’s
supposed to be a device that we glance at as we glance at a watch to get a
specific piece of information and then go back to our lives, or whether we’re
meant to sit there like twiddling this thing and just looking at photos and
getting news and information, and navigating the universe, and checking out
planets. So it’s possible that Apple themselves are still working on the
software and they’re still working on what they think this is going to be. For
now, I just don’t have enough information to reach a conclusion, particularly
based on we had access to what looked to be finished hardware. But the watches
that were actually running interactive software were only on the wrists of
senior Apple executives and the demonstrators. And we were not allowed to touch
those any way shape or form. So I’m looking forward to the coming months where
maybe Apple will reveal more the sort of software they expect developers to
write for it. More importantly the sort of software that
developers will not write for it. And when I get my first chance to
really go hands-on with this and figure out what that experience is like.
Mike: So Kevin, let me give you my little
theory of the Apple watch. It’s essentially that they have a long list of
things wrong. It’s too big, it’s too ugly, it’s too
expensive. The interface stuff that Andy talked about is definitely a problem.
The scrolling around, all the millions of icons. There’s lots of problems with it and there are many aspects about the Apple watch that
are identical in function to any other sort of Android wear watch. Or any of
the non-Android wear watches out there. Even the Tisane
watches. My essential theory is that Apple is onto something that is really
tapping into the future of wearable technology in general. Andy, you’re a
wearable writer, you write a lot about the wearable space. And what that thing
is is that the tactics engine combined with sound
combined with the touch interface brings in to your experience a lot more of
your senses. So instead of like here’s some information going out and here’s
some information coming back in, it’s tactile. So for example, these facts are
under-reported in my opinion. When you sit there and use the scroll wheel,
there’s a specific vibration and sound that’s associated with that gesture
that’s exactly in sync with that gesture you feel on the bottom of the wrist.
When you tap on the top of the screen, you feel your own tap on your skin. And
when you move things around, everything has a haptic element. With a combined
sound that goes with that. And so the end result is that this thing becomes
psychologically and emotionally part of your body, essentially. Instead of just
being a thing that shuttles information on and off, it becomes part of you and
you inevitably will have phantom vibration syndrome and that kind of stuff
later on. What do you think about that theory? Does that make sense to you or
does that just sound like fancy features they’re throwing in there that are
designed to be harder to do for their competitors?
Kevin: No, I think you’re on to something
there, Mike. And I think Apple is onto something, too. But I have to agree with
Andy in that they haven’t told the whole story. As much information came out of
the event, I actually only wrote one post out of the entire event. And it
revolved around, did Apple really give people a reason
to want this thing? And basically said, they’re trying
to redefine a market that isn’t yet defined. And that’s kind of new territory
for them. Now granted, the haptic feedback, it does look more advanced than
what we have on competing devices. I love the idea that as
you’re getting navigation directions, you don’t even have to glance at
your watch. You’ll feel the left tap or the right tap when it’s time to make
your left turn or right turn if you’re walking around for example. I think
that’s where some of the innovation lies, but I don’t think that we’ve yet seen
the full story on how that’s going to be applied. It comes down to what do
people want this thing for? What does Apple want people to use this thing for?
The haptics are interesting to me very much so. But
granted, we’ve had haptics in devices forever and
there’ve been some improvements on that. Some keyboards have haptics that are kind of; if you’re tapping on the left
side of the screen, you can kind of feel the haptic touch on the left side as
you’re touching and so on. But I’m not sure that the whole story’s been told
here. And if you notice, Apple did not call this a smart watch. Not one single
time. And what we’ve been talking about here is smart watches by and large,
wearable devices and so on. I don’t think Apple wants this to be classified as
a smart watch. I think, Mike, what they’re going after is that physical and
psychological experience that you were just mentioning. And they’re still
working out the bits and pieces and how to make that happen without calling
this a smart watch. Because let’s face it, a lot of the features like you said
are already available on Android wear and such. But are they compelling
features? Favoriting a photo on my iPhone so I can see it on my watch, why would I do
that when I have to have the phone with me? I would want to see it on
the bigger and better screen. That’s not a compelling reason to spend $350 or
more because that’s the starting price probably for the lowest-end, smallest
watch. So again, the haptics, the pressure
sensitivity, it sounds interesting. Apple’s good at hardware. I’m not even sure
about the whole touch versus tap and the pressure sensitivity. Because let’s
face it, your iPhone can detect a touch or a tap. If you tap and hold, it knows
you want to rearrange your home screen. There was a lot of marketing mumbo
jumbo around that, and I’m not completely sold on that being innovative yet. I
really need to see the product.
Mike: So, Lee, I think you’re an Android guy,
right? You’re not an iPhone user, are you?
Lee: I’m pretty agnostic actually. I’ve got
one of just about everything. My daily driver, the phone I actually own and pay
for is an iPhone, yea. But I bounce back and forth between iOS and Windows
Phone and Android pretty regularly.
Mike: In addition to this watch touching you,
Apple has an interesting concept, touching you all the time. They’re also going
to be touching your money with Apple Pay. And this is an interesting
implementation for the Apple watch. Because essentially how it works is you
authenticate the watch presumably with your fingerprint on the phone, and then
as long as the watch stays latched on your wrist, you’re good to pay for stuff.
As soon as you unlatch it, you lose the authentication and you can’t do it
anymore. Generally speaking, what did you think of Apple Pay not only as a
technology and the implementation of that technology, but as a competitor to
all the other methods for electronic and mobile payment?
Lee: Well you know it’s an interesting
question. The best answer I can give you is that even if something hasn’t
necessarily taken over the world by storm yet, don’t discount Apple. They seem
to have a way of taking technologies that are right on the edge and then
pushing them into mainstream. And having people adopt them. I’m not really sure
if it’s something I would necessarily use, the integrated watch pay. But at the
same time, I’m kind of old-fashioned. The idea of storing payment details in a
mobile device like that really kind of makes me nervous. Which
maybe means I’m outdated. But it’s not really something that I would
take advantage of very much. Credit cards are a well-established system.
Merchant agreements between the people who are accepting cards and the banks
and everything, the payment processors, MasterCard and Visa do a really great
job of protecting consumers. But Apple adding any mobile payment system into
that link is just another speed bump to overcome. We actually just published
today I believe, a really good overview of Apple Pay written by Megan Geiss. One of my guys, she’s a girl, but written by one of
my people. And she goes really in depth at how it works out. But I don’t know, the analogy that I read online was that, oh I’m going to
screw this up. It’s like Google pushes the frontiers and then Apple brings all
the settlers in after the frontiers have been pushed. And I think you’ll
probably see mobile payments looking at one of those things that are like that.
Google and other smart watch vendors have tread this territory before. And phones, too. But now I think we’re going to see it
taking off because Apple is going to push it mainstream. As they have done with
lots of things that a lot of folks didn’t know they needed, like tablets for
example.
Mike: And of course Apple is going to market
the heck out of it. We have a new Apple watch commercial. Let’s take a look at
that, Chad.
[Voices]:
The iPhone, the iPad, and now the iWatch. Apple Watch, the Apple watch. Damn, I
am never going to get used to that. The Apple watch stands for a pleasantly
plump little electronic watch. Android’s terrible,
come here! It does so many cool little thingies. You can share your heartbeat,
for some reason. You can try looking at pictures on a one-inch screen. You can
buy five in a row and watch them dance. You can thumb something down or up. You
can even set the date, just like a regular watch. Ooh, it’s got maps on it!
Kind of like the phone you already have. Can it tell time? Yes. Do you have to
charge it every night? Yes. Just like a regular watch. Sending emoji has never
been more complicated. You can draw and send pictures to your friends. We don’t
know how to turn off dick-pics though. It’s going to happen. That will be a
feature that will come in the iWatch 2. Apple watch 2; I’m never going to not
say that. Now you can watch YouTube videos right on your watch! Now you can
watch YouTube videos right on your watch. Hey shut up, man. It even comes with
Apple Pay so you can use your watch like a credit card. And trust us, Apple will keep your banking information very secure.
Just like all those nude pics. Now a lot…
Mike: So this might not be an official ad.
I’m not really sure about that.
Kevin: How can you tell? Really.
Lee: I will say that what the guy was saying
about the iWatch versus the Apple watch. Someone at ours is still saying
iWatch. Otherwise it’s like which watch are you talking about? Oh yea, it’s
iWatch.
Mike: Tim Cook did it too on some network TV
show. He said the iWatch. It’s a difficult one to break. And I think everyone’s
making the same mistake. It’s probably cool to see them retire the I thing. That was kind of trend years and years ago when
the iPod came out. People putting E and I in front of
everything. I think Apple Watch makes more sense. I’m guessing the next
phone will be called the Apple phone.
Lee: I did like that Tim Cook came out and
did the one more thing, thing. That was something that, I was happy when he did
it. That was a good callback. I liked that.
Mike: He stole that from Xiaomi.
Andy: Not only that but the entire event, I
was just, the absolute glee in his voice and his facial expressions, and in his
body language when he first started to talk about the iWatch. I saw this exact
sort of stuff on Steve Jobs’ face when he was introducing the iPhone. And it
immediately hits you that this guy’s been keeping the lid on a secret for a
year or two or three. And now he finally gets to tell everybody about this cool
thing that he and the rest of the team have been working on. And there is some
obvious pride there.
Lee: And Tim Cook in the past, I’m sure
you’ve watched his presentations that he has done. He, sometimes has, what’s
the best way to put this? He sometimes seems like he’s not the most
enthusiastic presenter. He often comes out and he looks like he’s maybe a
little nervous. Or like he’s going to puke on stage. Yea, you’re absolutely right, Andy. This time he came out, he was glee-full, he
was engaging. It was really good to see.
Kevin: It was clear that this was his way of
stepping out from under Steve’s shadow. This was the Tim Show, the first major
product release on his watch. No pun intended. You’re right, you guys could see the obvious pride. He was excited to show this off. And his
emotions I think here were higher than anything else I’ve seen him present so
far. It was actually nice to see for him.
Mike: Plus he got to touch Bono’s finger.
That was a highlight. He was so excited it gave me the feeling that they
weren’t going to tell him there was a big meltdown and they were essentially
showing the truck schedule for a lot of this announcement. And then later they
were giving the Mandarin or Japanese translations as part of this thing. The
entire launch has been plagued by problems. There have been three major
problems. One of them was the fiasco for the video, when they rolled out the
announcement. We covered it live. It was just a train wreck in terms of the
weird audio, the truck schedule, all that sort of stuff. And then when they did
preorders, they got everybody on the east coast up at 3:00 in the morning to
order this phone for some reason. And then there were glitches and they quickly
ran out even though lots of people had trouble ordering it. There were probably
shortages in the United States because they probably reserved millions of these
units for China. But then the Chinese government didn’t approve them for sale.
We still as far as I know don’t have a date for when the iPhones will be
available for sale in China. And this seems to be part of the ongoing
harassment by the Chinese government of American technology companies for a
long list of reasons. And gripes that they have, plus to protect Chinese
companies presumably. So how bad is this for Apple do you think? Are these
passing glitches that people will forget about? Or is this going to go down in
history as a flawed and glitch-filled launch?
Andy: I hope not because think about all the
work and all the thought that goes into developing two new phones and a brand
new platform. And then are we really going to dismiss that because the video
feed was not good and they couldn’t handle the initial on rush of orders? It’s
embarrassing certainly because Apple is certainly very known for; they’re the
company that says we make sure that the back of the fence is painted just as
well as the front of the fence. Because every step of the
work matters whether it’s visible by the consumer or not. This is
obviously embarrassing to them and I think it’s mostly fire power for people
who just really want to find nasty things to say about Apple. And so you can
talk about things you don’t like about the hardware and you can also say this
is legitimately embarrassing that they had not just a glitch, but such a
humiliating glitch. But maybe even AV club, they were talking about reviewing
this week’s project runway, in which one of the designers put a dress on the
runway that was inspired by color bars from a Samsung TV. And of course they
had to tie that into a joke about it’s a celebration of the Apple fiasco. The first half hour of the thing. That is bad PR and not
something that Apple likes. It’s embarrassing when you see so many people talk
about things that certainly matter but don’t matter as
much as anybody thinks it will. The last thing you need to say is at the end of
the day, how much money is Apple making? How much is the demand for their
products? If both of those are high, okay they’re willing to take the hit for a
couple of embarrassing glitches like that.
Kevin: Yea, I’m with you, Andy. I think
they’ll take their licks and come out the other side. And look at the ridicule
that we’d be heaping on any company in this position, right? If Google had a
product launch and this happened during Google’s live stream, everybody would
be flinging just as much poo at them. It’s embarrassing but it’s absolutely not
the end of the world. And I don’t think it reflects on any company’s ability to
execute their product. Scaling demand, video streaming demand at the tremendous
scale that a keynote like this gets watched, that has got to be very difficult.
I couldn’t do it.
Lee: It’s not going to hurt any sales at
all. It might be embarrassing but long story short, nobody’s going to remember
this in a month or two when they have their iPhones in hand. Mike, you brought
up a good point with the whole China government and no iPhones for sale there.
Last month there was something interesting that happened and I don’t know if
everybody caught this. The Chinese government, a specific area of it, told the
big three carriers over there, you guys are spending far too much on hardware
subsidies for the phones. And they basically said that you guys need to cut
down on the subsidies by $2B this year. This was actually just China Mobile
alone. And I’m wondering if Apple’s playing a little hardball here saying, whoa
the whole piece of the subsidy pie is going down and we need to make sure we
get our share. I just wonder if that’ playing into this at all.
Mike: Interesting. I wonder about that. That
is a good point and one final thing on the Apple announcement. We’re going to
talk a little about the quality of the iPhone, whether you should buy it or not
in just a sec. After we take a break in just a minute. But one final thing about the whole launch; was the integration of U2’s album
onto the phones, which now people are publishing instructions for how to get
rid of it, and the whole U2 on stage, and the touching the fingers, did this
seem kind of tone deaf as a presentation metric? And also as a roll-out for
this album? What do you guys think?
Lee: Well Apple paid top-dollar for the
right to distribute this album. I’ve heard figures up to $100M that Apple paid
in order to have exclusive access to the album. From a consumer perspective
though, I think more than anything else, people were a little creeped out with this demonstration that Apple can, and
they have the ability through the iTunes cloud service to reach out and touch
your library and put stuff into it. It’s obvious what happened, regular iTunes
users understand the technology; we’re tech journalists. We know how this works
but I mean for the average person it’s like how did this get in my library? How
could Apple do this?
Mike: Especially in the wake of the iCloud scandal
about the nude photos and so on. That was a little tone deaf on their part, I
thought.
Andy: Well they couldn’t have anticipated
that. And it’s also Apple has a different relationship with its consumers that
they really do consistently project this point of view that says look we don’t
care about what you do with our products. We’re not here to be involved in your
daily lives. We just want you to buy our products and use our services. I was a
little bit bummed by Amazon and Google’s music services. Because now my online
library, my cloud libraries are corrupted by songs I don’t like. That were just
simply given to me for free and I should be pleased. If you give me 50 songs
and I liked four of them, then I should be pleased that I got four free songs
that I like. Nonetheless, I’ve got this music that might come up on shuffle
play that I don’t like. But you sort of expect that from Google and Amazon. You
don’t expect that from Apple. Whether or not that was something they should not
have done, it really does change the relationship a little bit maybe in some
people’s minds.
Mike: We’re going to take a break. In a sec
we’re going to talk about which phone you can buy, the
best one that has come out or will come out this year. But first, I want to
tell you about Scotty Vest. You see this shirt right here? This is called a Scotty
Vest tech shirt. This shirt, kind of a jacket-like shirt. It can be worn as a shirt or a jacket. It has 13 pockets. It has zippered
seam-side pockets on the side, a bunch of pockets on the inside. Quick-dry fabric, perfect for travel. I like to say that
everybody who’s able to work for anywhere other than an office is a digital
nomad. We’re all digital nomads now because most of us can work in various
locations, at Starbucks, on traveling, on airplanes, in the car while waiting
for various trains and buses and whatever it is we do. So we need our clothing
to match that. Most of us wear jeans all the time. And there’s a little pocket
in your jeans that exists for a pocket watch. Once upon a time we used to build
our clothes to go with our gadgets and technology. We still need to do that; we
just have a lot more gadgets and a lot more technology. That’s what Scotty Vest
is really all about. I think it was last year maybe the year before that, my
wife and I were in Spain and we were watching the Las Fiyas Festival. This is a big festival where they burn almost the whole city to the
ground every year. They build these big effigies and they burn it down. And I
was taking videos and pictures with my iPhone. There was a huge crowd of people
and I had it on a stick. Then I wanted to use my other camera. I didn’t have a
place to put my phone; had a big special attachment on it so it was too big for
my pockets. I handed it to my wife and she put it in her purse. And somebody
came up behind her and pickpocketed my phone. It also had a wallet attachment
so all my credit cards were in there and everything was gone. This is one of
the best use-cases I’ve ever heard of for using a Scotty Vest shirt. If I would
have had this shirt at Las Fiyas, I would have simply
put my phone in one of the 13 pockets and I probably would still had that phone. I could have sold it to Gazelle and made a
bundle. Instead I had to replace it and that was a bummer. Interestingly Scotty
Vest has a pickpocket guarantee. If you get jacked while you’re wearing this
device and something’s stolen out of one of the pockets, they will give you up
to $1000 reimbursement for whatever is stolen. That’s how confident they are.
My wife and I lived for a couple of years as digital nomads. We lived in Kenya,
Greece, all over Europe and spent some time in Morocco and so on. And norms
vary in terms of how you use technology in public. For example in Greece I
learned it was really kind of an odd thing; if you walk around with ear buds, those signature white Apple ear buds, it’s kind of socially
unacceptable to walk around listening to podcasts. Which I
have to listen to podcasts all the time. And so a shirt like this
actually has, almost all Scotty Vest jackets and shirts have a way to hide your
ear buds. So the whole cable is inside the shirt and you can reach into the
collar and pull out the ear buds and listen to them. And they’re very difficult
to see. Place like London, you have those white ear buds, you’re just a target for pickpockets. Theft on the street is very high because
people can see from a mile away those white ear buds. So Scotty Vest is a
solution to that as well. And Chad is actually wearing another Scotty Vest
device called a Tropa-Former Jacket.
Chad: Yea,
I have the Tropa-Former Jacket and holy macro is it
awesome. Not only does it look super stylish, it has tons and tons of pockets
of course.
Mike: 22 pockets.
Chad: 22 pockets, as any Scotty Vest…
Kevin: The zipper matches your hair!
Chad: Isn’t it awesome?! I absolutely love
this thing and the pockets not only are there numerous, but they can hold
sometimes some kind of ridiculous items. I have my iPad inside of my jacket
here. This also has a really cool feature that if say it’s getting a little
warm but you still want a little protection, it also has a hood inside of this
collar here. I can actually pull off the sleeves if I want. They’re all
magnetically attached. And now I have a sleeveless vest instead of a jacket.
And then this is all just magnets. They’ll just snap right back on. It’s a really,
really cool jacket. I totally think the Tropa-Former
is the coolest thing I’ve ever had.
Mike: It’s a cool jacket. And of course, for
each passing year, the industry presents us with additional stuff to carry.
Andy was talking about a keyboard that he’s got to carry. He’s also now going
to carry a giant phone. With all these mobile devices, they don’t get really
good battery life. So you’re going to carry that Apple watch charger somewhere.
You’re going to need lots of pockets for the new world of wearable computing.
Of course if you have these pockets and you’re wearing these things, then all
your technology is wearable computing. Here’s the good news. Scotty Vest is
having a 40% off sale on 10 of their best-selling items. Fans of TWiT can get early access by visiting scottyvest.com/twit
to get great Scotty Vest products you can buy from 40% off. Including
the Tropa-Former jacket that Chad’s wearing, the tech
shirt that I’m wearing. As well as the pack jacket, Lucy cardigan, and
the hidden cargo pants 2.0. Not the 1.0 ones, the 2.0 ones. Make sure you use
the promo code TWIT14 at checkout. You only have until September 22nd to take advantage of this incredible discount. If you happen to be watching
this or listening to this, of course we record it and sometimes people listen
to them very late, and if you miss the sale if you miss the September 22
deadline, make sure you check them out anyway and use the code ANYWAY. Because Scott Jordan who is the guy who runs Scotty Vest said he
would put up other great deal for the TWiT army. And they feature different sale items daily for 20% off. So you go there every
day and they’ll have new items for 20% off. So that’s
scottyvest.com/twit and use the code TWIT14 at checkout. And we thank
Scotty Vest for their support of TWiT. Well
gentlemen, we have a conundrum on our hands. And that conundrum is what phone
to buy. We reviewers get to try all kinds of things. And swap them in and out.
And Leo of course buys every phone that he’s interested in. And most of us
can’t do that. We have to pick one phone; so a lot of TWiT fans are technology geeks, gadget fans, and we’re willing to spend more for a
better phone. And as I see it, and you guys correct me if I’m wrong please, but
it seems to me the top five phones now for this year are the new Moto X that’s
coming out pretty soon. Preorders go online September 16th we’re
hearing. The HTC One M8, the Samsung Galaxy S5 of course, the LG G3, and the
iPhone 6 Plus. Let’s just start with the five best. Are those the top five best
phones you can buy right now?
Lee: You left out Windows Phone, don’t
forget Windows Phone. I was going to say if you want to go that way you can do
the M8 Windows Phone version. Although I have a permanent
soft spot in my heart for the really colorful, really nice Lumias. In fact, I’m going to break ranks and say that my ideal phone right now for me
personally if I could get my hands on a Lumia Icon or a Lumia 930. That would
be kind of my perfect phone at this point. Which I know is weird because it’s
Windows Phone. But you know I really like it. What can I say?
Mike: Alright what do you think, Andy?
Andy: I would add the Lumia 1020 to that
list. Because it has something that no other phone has which
is that really absolutely pocket-camera quality camera on it. When I did
my big shootout a couple months ago about every single phone that I had in the
office at the time and every other phone that I could get back or loaned for
this shootout, really was the iPhone 5S and the Lumia 1020. And
for very different reasons. Because the iPhone 5S was the most
consistent; press this one button and get a nice picture. But the Lumia could
get photos that no other phone could get. And Windows Phone has been making a
lot of really good leaps. This was a banner year for it which this is sort of
like the iPhone 3GS year for Windows Phone. Where some
features that make it more practical and acceptable for more people are finally
here. Still a pity that the software library is
adequate and not exciting. Still a pity that getting acceptance and
support for it is not as good as anything you can get on Android or iOS. But I
pretty much agree with your lineup. The only one that I would not put on that
list is the HTC One because that camera is just a non-starter.
Mike: So you guys are both focusing in on the cameras which makes a lot of sense.
Andy: No, I think that there’s so many of
these other features are so similar to each other. The screens are almost all
exactly the same as the other. Individual features from Android phone to Android
phone, the feature of Android is diversity so that if you really, really want
something to be weather-proof, great. You can choose between the Sony or the Samsung S5. If you really want something that has a
really good sensor array and is really forward-thinking, and gets good Android
updates, then you want to go for the Motorola. So on, and so on. For me, the
difference between the HTC and the rest, is any reason
I would have for getting the HTC, there is a better reason for getting a
competing phone. The camera becomes a deciding factor when you have so many
phones that might be so close to each other.
Mike: It seems to me though, Andy, that
essentially what you’re gaining is a better camera in some cases plus some of
the other features you mentioned. These are hardware features for the most
part. They are awesome and compelling features. But you are giving up on two
huge universes of apps. Is that really a trade-off you’d be willing to make?
Andy: Again we’re talking about a
constellation of great phones. If someone is asking me, hey can you recommend a phone? It’s probably going to be one of these five.
Probably not the HTC because I think there are other phones I could steer them
into. But if they’re telling me, no I’m not the sort of person who keeps
getting different games every single month or keeps trying to expand my
universe with different apps. My usage for a phone is pretty much within the
65-75% of the universe bandwidth of it. Maybe they could be more attracted to
the way the Windows Phone works. Which is a very attractive
user interface. I love their start screen. And if they tell me that
really this is the only camera they only use and they’re concerned about all
the times where they’ve gotten bad pictures. Bad once in a lifetime pictures from
their iPhone or from their previous Android phone, then I would sound them out
on well what if I told you there is only one camera that has all the features
that these other phone cameras do not have. You have to do some trade-offs in
terms of its functionality as an app-running device. But if that’s not a
problem for you, you should at least take a look at it. I would agree that I
would not recommend the 1020 or Windows Phone to the majority of people. I
would have to talk to them first to find out what they’re looking for and what
their expectations are.
Mike: Kevin Tofel, what’s it going to be? What would be your list
and do you think the new Moto X is likely to merit inclusion on this list?
Kevin: Absolutely the Moto X belongs on this
list. I have one in my hand right here. The Moto X as you said goes on sale on
September 16th. I was a big fan of last year’s Moto X and I think
that Motorola has addressed the glaring gaps, the few glaring gaps that the
original device had. Particularly in the camera. I’ll
agree with Andy, this is not going to compete with a Lumia pure-view camera by
any means. But for most people, I think it's going to be perfectly fine. This I
think is the Moto X that Motorola wanted to build last year. But really
couldn’t because of the hardware chip cycle. They couldn’t wait for Qualcomm to
get their act together and therefore they had to put that special chip together
with the processors and sensors and such. Much improved battery life is good.
So I was already a fan of the Moto X so I will probably be buying the current
Moto X. But as Lee said just before the show, he’s device and
platform-agnostic. I try to be the same way. I did order an iPhone 6, not a 6
Plus. And I also do own a Windows Phone 520, Lumia 520 which I’ll probably replace
with the 521. Just to keep track of what’s going on in the Windows Phone world.
Mike: Why did you order the 6 instead of the
6 Plus? Is it because you’re a runner and you like to carry it with you when
you’re running?
Kevin: That’s a big part of it, Mike. I
originally had the Galaxy Note 2 before that was cool. If
that ever was. And I used to carry that everywhere. I’ve been down the fablet road two years before most people are going down it.
I’ve used those phones. In fact the iPhone 6 Plus is very similarly sized to
the Galaxy Note 2 that I used to use. The thing is I have gotten more into
running with my phone. Most of the smart watches still require the phone. So
it’s not like I can wear a smart watch and go out and run and have a GPS route
tracked for me. Because I think only the Sony Smart watch 3 has GPS right now
for Android wear. So yea, I stuck with what I wanted. I wanted a larger iPhone
but I didn’t need a bigger 5.5 inch phone.
Lee: I want to ask a real quick question
about this too. So I went to the Moto event. I got to play with the Moto X
before I turned it over to Andrew Cunningham to do our full review on it.
Before our full review went up, we had commenters posting in the review thread
saying that they were disappointed that Motorola had made the X bigger this
time. It jumped up to the 5.2 inch screen and the resolution kicked up to
1080p. If you’ve got both of them, what do you think about the shift from not
quite as big screen to 5.2 inch screen? Is it really noticeable when you have
the first gen Moto X and the new one next to each other?
Andy: That’s definitely true. I hope that
we’re not going to totally abandon people for whom this is actually kind of a
perfect sized phone. Because it really is a very attractive
size. It’s just big enough I think. To let you really have the full
phone experience without making you have to buy a special shirt to carry it
around in. So I’m sorry that Motorola did not decide to keep that size in the
lineup. But I just wanted to quickly underscore what Kevin was saying. The lead
paragraph in my Moto X review is that finally I have a good default answer to
the question of what Android phone should I buy. Because like I said it is all
about choice. It really is about what are your priorities in hardware. Because you don’t have to settle for only three models of phone
from one manufacturer. There’s a whole big world out there. But the
chances are excellent, probably 80% that the Moto X is the best Android phone
for you. Unless you want one of these three features, which think about one of
these other three, but definitely don’t discount the Moto X because there are
so many advantages to it in so many ways.
Lee: And the price is right, too.
Andy: $99. I had to double check to make sure
I had gotten that note correctly. $199 surely, nope it’s $99. Alright then, even better.
Mike: Incredible. Let me ask you one last
thing and we’ll move on from these phones. Does the fact that we have wearable
devices now, many of us have Android wear and by this time next year, lots of
people are going to have wearable devices of all kinds. Does the existence of
wearable devices change your criteria for choosing a phone? Should it change
your criteria? For example, if you have a wearable device, does that mean it’s
better to have a larger phone because you can leave it in your pocket? And
women can leave them in your phone. And you can interact with notifications and
all that kind of stuff on your wearable device. And does it reduce the appeal
of something like the Moto X? I mean the Moto X is great because it essentially
functions like a wearable computer because you can interact with it and talk to
it and so on. Now you can talk to your watch with an Android phone that isn’t a
Moto X. So how does the existence of the wearable market now that it’s
completely mainstreamed I think by Apple, how does that change the calculation
to which phone you should buy? We’ll start with you, Kevin.
Kevin: You raise a great point, Mike. Because all day long as long as I’ve had this Moto X, it’s been on
my desk when I’m sitting at my desk. And I’m using it like a wearable.
I’m speaking to it all day. I’m not going to say the magic phrase because all
of our phones are going to go nuts right now. But yea, as opposed to my putting
a wearable in front of my face and saying the same thing, there’s a lot of
duplication here. The timing of the wearable devices and the smart watches is
coinciding with intelligent sensors and software that can take advantage of
always listening-functionality on our phones. So maybe there isn’t as much need
for that type of wearable device right now. The other thing that you didn’t
mention I think is a very key point; if you go with a smart watch, you’re
essentially starting to lock yourself into the ecosystem even more. Because the Apple watch will only work with iPhones. And the
Android wear watch, they’re not working with iOS. They’re only working with
Androids. Microsoft has rumored to be working on a watch that will work across
all platforms. But that’s right now not existing. So
there’s a whole other aspect to this.
Mike: Interesting. Well in a sec, we’re going
to hear from Facebook and see what they’re up to. There’s a lot of people complaining about Facebook again this week and we’ll see what
they’re up to. But first of all I want to tell you about GoToMeeting, one of
our sponsors today. GoToMeeting is a suite of applications from Citrix that
enables you to communicate very freely and with very high definition through
video and all kinds of other ways. It essentially reduces the need for you to
travel and spend a fortune. And go through the hassle of flying around just to
go to meetings. In any sort of business, strong communication and collaboration
are super important. And if you’re in sales or do anything that involves closing
deals, of course GoToMeeting can help you close those deals quicker, solve
problems better, and essentially connects you with clients, your customers, and
your business partners. And your co-workers in a way that’s super, super
efficient. With GoToMeeting, you can meet online as often as you like with
anyone anywhere in the world, and you can share screens, review documents,
presentations in real-time. And use the built-in HD video conferencing feature
to see each other face-to-face to engage and connect. I personally like
GoToMeeting meetings far better than in-person meetings. Because
you can sit there and look at the information. You don’t feel like
you’re being rude to people when you’re reviewing the documents over an
electronic connection. But when you want to make eye contact with people in
real-time, you can do that of course through the HD conferencing feature. And
best of all, it allows you to cut out the wasted time and travel. I personally
think that meetings gobble up so much value for all companies. Especially for
small companies when you don’t have a lot of time to flush down the toilet with
all this travel. So much better to have your meeting, have this great meeting,
everything’s recorded. And then you can move forward and stop wasting so much
time and money. And of course we use GoToMeeting here at TWiT.
It feels like we’re in the same room even though we may be miles apart. Some of
the people we interact with are on the other side of the world. So try
GoToMeeting free and see what it can do for you. If you go to gotomeeting.com
and just click the try it free for 30 days button and make sure you use the
promo code TWIT. That’s try it free for 30 days.
There’s a button there, use the promo code TWIT. That’s gotomeeting.com, promo
code TWIT. And we thank GoToMeeting for their support of TWiT.
Well Facebook is at it again. They’re being slammed in the press for their lack
of privacy, specifically a report on Motherboard said
they talked to a security researcher who examined the code for Facebook
Messenger. And he basically said the code looks more like spyware than like a
messaging application simply because it’s harvesting so much information there.
Lee, you cover security a lot and security-related things. What do you think
about this thing? Is this just Facebook being Facebook or is it something we
should all be concerned about?
Lee: There’s an old adage that I try to
always keep in mind when looking at applications like this. That is to never
describe something too malice that can better be described to stupidity. I
don’t honestly believe that there’s an international Facebook cabal that’s out
to steal everybody’s information. This type of application is typically
programmed on a deadline. The application developers do what they have to do in
order to meet their goals. And sometimes if less attention is paid to security
than is perhaps wise or prudent, it’s often because of deadlines or because the
developers simply don’t care. I don’t think that this is Facebook is out to
look at every point of the screen where you tap, they
want to know so they can record all of your tapping data. I don’t think it’s
anything like that. I think it’s the people who programmed the app didn’t give
it the appropriate amount of security auditing or simply didn’t care.
Mike: And they also put in some sort of funny
comments in the code. For example, they said do not use this feature or you
will be fired. That was kind of an interesting thing. And of course a lot of
this stuff is being dug up by multiple researchers. One example, for example
Lee, is they’re going after and recording or harvesting or capturing your Wi-Fi
identifier. I get the feeling that one of the reasons they’re collecting this
information is just in case later on they want to do some analysis on one thing
or another. They don’t want to close any doors; they’ve basically gotten you to
agree to do anything.
Lee: Absolutely. Remember also that Google
and Apple are capturing the same type of data. Google especially uses your
Wi-Fi access point and Gia location in order to help
better find where you are in Maps. I mean all these things; you also have to
look at with this particular app, they’ve got access to some of the non-public
APIs according to the Motherboard report. Because Facebook
has such tight integration with the iOS core. So they’re given a little
more access than random Joe Developer would be. It’s really difficult,
obviously as journalists we don’t-some of us do I suppose-most of us don’t have
the inside knowledge on the design flow process behind apps like this. What
exactly is Facebook trying to achieve by segregating this stuff out. There’s
what we can theorize they want to achieve. But what exactly is the goal here?
It’s hard to say. But again I don’t think that any of this, clearly some of
these things are problematic. I’m not personally a Facebook user. I have
facebook.com black-holed in my local DNS. I don’t have an account and don’t use
it. I don’t like them.
Mike: Lee Hutchinson, you are wise.
Lee: I know. Well thank you. I don’t think
this is a purposefully malicious act that is out to snore up all your credit card data and have Facebook steal your personal information.
Mike: Andy Ihnatko,
how concerned should people be about Facebook’s alleged privacy violations? And
the messenger stuff in particular? Is this a concern?
Andy: Yea, I think that anytime you talk
about Facebook and privacy you should be concerned. It’s part of your responsibility as a Facebook user to really curate all your settings
carefully and make sure that Facebook is working the way you want it to. They
just have a deplorable track record here. And I agree, it’s kind of baroque to
imagine red rogue people in an accolades inside of
Facebook circling around a pool trying to figure out what brand of shampoo that
you’re personally using. And being upset that they don’t know what brand of
shampoo that you’re use. There is such a thing as corporate culture. There is
such a thing as there is a message that is sent to every single employee
through the behavior of the rest of the company; is privacy of user data
important? Well, not really. It can be sacrificed for the greater good. And we
believe sometimes the greater good includes the greater good of the users of
Facebook. That’s why we make sure that if someone sends you and invite to
something and you click well, maybe I’ll go, then we want to post that on your
wall so that all of your friends know that you might be attending the roller
derby in Framingham in two weeks’ time. Even though you just thought you were
telling a friend of yours who is on your roller derby team that you’re going to
try to make it this time. So you really do need to curate this stuff carefully.
In terms of when bugs like this happen, again it’s most likely an honest
mistake. But I also would have to think that a company that takes privacy more
seriously would already have safeguards in place to say, hey look, if we’re
taking a look at this kind of data, we have to make sure we get signoffs on
this, this, and this. We’re going to add so much to our QA process for this
feature to make sure it is not possible to compromise people’s data this way.
If you don’t take that stuff terribly seriously, you’re definitely going to
make sure the program isn’t going to do anything it’s not supposed to do. But
you’re not going to put up those five barricades against bad things happening.
So if you’re going to ask me should I be concerned about privacy with Facebook,
the answer to that is always yes.
Mike: Well you know it’s interesting that I
have the feeling that Facebook likes to say that they care about privacy. And I
believe that they believe that they safeguard privacy. But they also harvest
all kinds of personal data for all kinds of reasons. Mostly
to improve, to generally improve the app. But I think the key point with
Facebook is they’ve discovered somewhere along the line, users don’t care.
There are a few vocal people in the press who complain about privacy violations
and who are really paying attention to this stuff. But they have 1.3, 1.4
billion users, and the vast majority, I’d say better than 98%-I’m making these
numbers up-they just don’t care at all. They just trust Facebook or they
believe that they don’t have privacy information. They may not be thinking
about a malicious person might be able to put two and two together and figure
stuff out or whatever. But they’ve learned that people don’t care. Kevin Tofel, let me ask you this, if people don’t care and
Facebook is in fact right about that, isn’t it okay for them to just harvest
all the information in sight if the end is to improve the product? Isn’t that a
laudable goal?
Kevin: Well, you know they’re a business. And
they’re in business to make money. And they’re going to do that by capturing
this data. Would I say that this is alright? No, I wouldn’t. But I think you
hit the nail on the head because most people these days, I mean we’ve been
using smartphones now for how many years; we’ve been downloading app after app,
after app. We’re becoming numb to the permissions of what these things can do
because it’s just part of our life now. Just download the app and go. And we’re
putting a lot of trust in all of these companies. Should we? Obviously that’s a
personal choice. I would have to side with Andy and say we do need to be very
cautious with a company such as Facebook or whoever it is, be it Google, be it Microsoft. Be it Apple. I think Facebook has an
obligation to be forth-coming with what they’re doing with data and when they
make changes. But part of the problem as you’re eluding to, Mike, is people either don’t care or don’t want to invest the time to care.
Lee: I think a lot of people have a reactive
mindset to privacy. We’ve been trained to that. You look at these corporations
that are putting out large invasive applications that you depend on for huge
chunks of your life like Facebook. And you trust that they’re going to do the
right thing. And what your definition of the right thing is and what Facebook’s
definition of what the right thing is might be different. It’s certainly easy
for Facebook to say trust us, because Facebook speaking of them as a big model
entity, they understand what they’re doing. And they know that whatever they’re
doing is ethical by their standards, so why wouldn’t you want to trust us?
We’re going to have this app, and we’re doing the right thing. We’re Facebook,
trust us! People are often very passive about their response to security
issues. And they wait until there are compromises or issues to adjust their
privacy settings for example. I think this is just one more thing.
Mike: Andy, you had a comment?
Andy: Yea, I just want to say on the subject
of people don’t care. It’s okay for that to be a
factor when people are informed and they understand the situation. And they’ve
decided they don’t care. But if they don’t understand it, then the fact that
this car company has put the gas tank this close to the bumper; means that if
there is even a minor rear end collision there is a good chance that the fuel will
splash into the passenger compartment and a very survivable accident will turn
into a four way fatality. Then if they decide that I’m still okay with the
styling of not having regulations about the gas tank or buying this car no
matter what, that’s silly but okay you can allow them to do that. I think it’s
our responsibility to make sure they know what the hazards are. Again, I’m not
telling everybody to not use Facebook. I did a video a couple weeks ago where I
decided to say nice things about each of the five major consumer-facing
companies. The thing I had to say that was nice about Facebook, the fact is that it connect everybody. The fact that you’re a great uncle and
you get to find out things about your nieces and nephew’s life that they want
you to know about without having to call every single day. That is a good thing
that Facebook does. I’m not saying that anybody would be foolish to trust
Facebook with their transactions. All I’m saying is that they have to be aware
that this is what the company does. And this is what the philosophy of the
company does and this is the history of the company. And the company and
private information, they’re not evil but the idea of protecting your personal
information and making sure that you’re not exposing things to the company or
the world that you would not like to be exposed; that’s not a very high
priority. So know about that and then take a look at the pictures of your
niece’s high school graduation party. But definitely know what you’re getting
into. The price of not caring is knowing what you’re
not caring about.
Mike: That’s a great point. I get the feeling
that Facebook is similar to Google in the sense that they’re two kinds of
companies. There are companies like Apple which have this behind the scenes, they
form this grand vision and it’s very clear to them what that vision is. Then
they plow forward toward that vision. Then there are companies like Facebook
and Google that throw spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. And I
think that Facebook and Google in both cases, part of their model is to build a
better user. And a better user is one that can tolerate more invasions of
privacy to a certain extent. So they both tend to push push push and see the pushing as sort of a blazing into
new territories in terms of getting people to accept different things in
privacy standpoint. As part of their survival strategy;
because you have to reinvent yourself all the time if you’re in technology. And this is how these companies do it. In the case of Facebook, I have an
ongoing thing that I do on Google Plus with my posts where every time they
issue another apology, I do a big post about it. And list all their past
apologies. They apologize ten, fifteen times a year for major things that
really upset people. And that seems to be the policy: try anything, if
everybody freaks out, apologize and back track a little, then keep pushing
forward. And that’s their governing philosophy and it works for them. They’re
very successful and increasingly they’re successfully financially, especially
in mobile advertising. There’s another aspect to Facebook’s criticism that’s in
the news this week. A website called QueerTee, it’s a
network of gay and transgender people and also people who are in drag, and who
have drag personas that they want to put on Facebook as their name. They have
been apparently singled out by Facebook, according to this article. And they
have been ordered to pony up their identification, their passports and so on to
prove who they really are in order to crack down their real names. You guys
remember the real names controversy a few years ago because both Google Plus
and Facebook were requiring real names. And Google recently back tracked on
that and said, we don’t care what your real name is anymore. We’re not going to
force you to have real names. But according to this article, Facebook is
sticking with the real names thing. And of course this is an attempt to use
Facebook for identity which is great for selling people things and so on. What
do you guys think about this? Lee, let’s start with you; why is Facebook
insisting on real names if in fact these reports are true?
Lee: Can you guys hear me okay? I had a
little video glitch a moment ago.
Mike: Yea, you sound great.
Lee: Great, you know the internet has traditionally
separated people’s real life identity from the identity that they have the
option of portraying online. And I think when a company decides that they want
to step in and police anonymity or they want to come in and use their position
as the provider of a network in this case Facebook, to make sure everybody is
behaving correctly and tying their online identity to their real life identity,
I think it’s a massive invasion of privacy and a terrible mistake. I think that
this is a huge overstep. It doesn’t do anything to stop abuse. I think we
clearly saw that with Google’s real name policy and the tying of names with G+
and all of that craziness that was supposed to fix YouTube comments and make
life better. And it just didn’t. Blizzard with battle net has in the past tried
to do a real name thing that flopped terribly. And this is just another
terrible idea. I don’t think that forcing people to identify online with their
real name serves anybody’s interest at all except potentially advertisers who are
building profiles. This is a terrible idea. It’s an invasion of privacy and it
runs the risk of exposing the classic examples, victims of domestic violence or
crimes that still want to communicate with others online but hide their
identities. I’m absolutely opposed to it and I think it’s terrible.
Mike: What do you think, Andy? Do you think
there is any real benefit to insisting on real names?
Andy: Not really. There’s conceptually a
benefit. We all understand, we all imagine how much
better the internet would be if everybody that says something had to put their
own representation behind it. But this is why it’s so great to have technology
that evolves. I think five years ago, we would not have considered the idea
that there are people who need to have anonymity. There are people who need protection; who would not participate if they had to expose their true
selves to the world. And that’s certainly their prerogative. As a society we
have to ask ourselves do we want to exclude those people in the broader goal of
a more rational and more polite internet. Or do we simply say, okay we did not
think about that so let’s figure out a way to make sure these people can be
safe and be happy and not feel as though they’re excluded from this world wide
conversation. This worldwide community; and find a different way to making the
internet a more polite place. I think that if Facebook wants to stick to the
idea of real identity, good luck with that. I think they’re definitely wrong;
they’re very ignorant. They were not wrong to think that was a good idea to
begin with but now that we know the ramifications of real identity for so many
people, you really have to accept that someone else’s world is different that
the world that I myself live in.
Mike: It seems discriminatory in the sense that, say I want to call myself Kevin Tofel on Facebook…
Kevin: You don’t want to do that, trust me.
Mike: I want to bask in the glory of being
Kevin Tofel. But they have no way to challenge that.
They wouldn’t challenge it. I would just be allowed to use somebody else’s name
or a made up name that sounds like a reasonable name. There are people all over
the world; somebody that speak a relatively obscure
language, somebody is from Swazi-land or something; how does Facebook know if a
certain name is really fake or sounds legit from all these different languages,
and so on. For example, this case revolves around a person who I believe
identifies themselves as male and the name is Sister Roma. So that’s a case
where Facebook would single that out and say, wait a minute, that doesn’t sound
like a real name. So there are certain types of names, maybe OMG-Chad for
example. When the real name’s policy hit back three years ago, OMG-Chad is the
name Chad, you wanted to use on Google Plus. And they said that doesn’t sound
like a real name.
Chad: Absolutely. It was the worst. And because Google Plus was forcing you to integrate with YouTube. So the only way I could get my YouTube name was to create a page and I had
spent all this time creating my normal account; my Chad Johnson account. But I
couldn’t integrate that with YouTube because of the forced integration. Yea,
that was definitely a huge issue for me. And it didn’t even have these LGPT
concepts around it. It’s a pretty poor thing to tell someone they don’t have a
right to self-determination. This is who I am and this is how I want the world
to refer to me as; and to say, nope, we’re not going to let you choose your
name. That’s poor behavior. That’s terrible.
Mike: The other side of this is something
that has to be mentioned now. Viola Blue really went after Google Plus with the
real names thing because there’s specifically for transgender and gay people
who basically were being outted against their will by
Google when they had the real names policy. But the other side of the coin is
when you have real names, if they could really do real names, people who want
to speak up in public and still be able to smack down trolls and block them permanently, real names are a more powerful way to do that.
So there’s a benefit to people who want to be public and who want to be free
from trolls because right now since Google dropped the real names policy,
trolls are popping up all the time to harass people with racist and misogynistic
comments. And when they’re blocked, they just create a new identity and come in
as a different person. It happens all the time; so that’s the other side of
this. I think I agree with all of you; that the larger benefit is toward
allowing people to use the names they want to use. And of course in Chad’s
case, they fixed Google Plus. But it’s too late for Chad. You’ve got way too
many followers now to really go back and change it, right?
Chad: To be
honest, it kind of killed Google Plus for me. I basically don’t use Google Plus
anymore because I have a public face which is OMG-Chad, which is associated
with my YouTube account. Then I have my Chad Johnson account which is the one I
actually use and it’s connected with all the things on my phone. The page isn’t
really connected to things on my phone. They lost a user, and a pretty prevalent one because I was enjoying Google Plus up to that point.
Mike: Well we miss you. I know you’re on a
little bit. But not as much as you might have been.
Chad: Mostly auto-post YouTube videos.
Mike: It is an odd thing. I’m expecting an
apology any second now from Facebook and something of a revision of their
policy. But I think they’re still going to have something of a real names
policy. Facebook can just do no wrong. No matter how many times they come and hit
people with unpopular policies like that, they’re still huge. You got to go
there because everyone you know there is on Facebook. They have what I call a
monopoly and everybody’s on Facebook because everybody’s on Facebook. So I
don’t think people really care that much about the service itself, that’s just
where people are. So they’ll continue to dominate, I’m sure. In just a sec,
we’re going to talk about something that’s dear to OMG-Chad’s life, which is
the potential purchase, which will probably be announced tomorrow, by Microsoft
of Mind Craft and the company that makes it. But first I want to tell you about
another one of our sponsors which is Shutter Stock. I’ve been blogging for many
years; I’ve been blogging since before blogs existed. And if you want to blog
now days, you have to be super visual; you can’t just throw text-based blog
posts because nobody will want to read them. We live in a visual world. Well
sometimes we blog things that are very abstract. So how do you come up with a
visual element for something very abstract? An idea, like privacy, how do you
illustrate that with a compelling image? Well you do it with Shutter Stock.
Shutter Stock is an amazing service, of course they have other things besides
pictures, but for pictures and blogging this is an amazing service. They have
of course video clips and other types of content, vectors, illustrations, you
name it. They’ve got all kinds of content. And 275,000 new images every single
week so it’s always being refreshed for new stuff. What I love the most about
Shutter Stock I think is the search engine. So sometimes you want to go in
there and you want something very particular. You want to look for somebody who
is using a computer, who looks sad and they’re wearing orange. You know, you can
go really specific on that stuff and find images on Shutter Stock, no matter
what it is you’re looking for. And you don’t just want to grab a picture from
the internet. Obviously somebody took that picture, and the photographer owns
the copyright on that. And you’re just asking for trouble; and you’re also
asking to have your reputation tarnished by the theft of images. You don’t want
to do that. There’s no need to do that. A standard subscription on Shutter
Stock gives you 25 images a day. I think that’s the one we have here at TWiT. So when we do blogging on TWiT,
we can go there and grab 25 images; you probably won’t use 25 a day if you’re a
blogger. But it’s nice to have all those options. You can download the image in
any size and you pay only one steady price. They have sophisticated tools. You
can search by color, palate type, gender, even emotion. You can go in there and
say I want somebody that’s happy who’s doing X, Y, Z. And they’ll show you
hundreds of pictures for exactly what you’re looking for. And they have
sharable like boxes. If you collaborate on your blog or projects with somebody
else, you can share your like boxes and say what do you think of these five images. They have an award-winning iPad app. I like to use
Shutter Stock on my iPad because it looks so beautiful and it’s fun to flick
through that very nicely. And if you speak another language other than English,
they have multi-lingual customer service which is fantastic. If you want to try
it with no credit card, just start an account and begin using Shutter Stock.
And start to imagine what your next project could be like. And to save favorite
images to a like box to review later; once you decide to purchase, be sure to
use the offer code TWIT914. And new accounts will receive 20% off their already
low prices for image subscription packages. We thank Shutter Stock for their
support of this show. And again, I get so much out of Shutter Stock; I go in
there a lot and post some very visual things on Google Plus. And what I’ve
discovered, I’ve discovered a little blogging trick. Here’s one of my blogging
tricks for Google Plus: Google Plus and the internet in general and other
social networks have a very radically international audience. Sometimes we tech
people talk about some pretty obscure concepts. And they tend to be lost on
people who don’t speak English as their first language. However if you don’t
get the international community behind your project, you’re never going to go
to the What’s Hot list. You’re never going to make it to the top of viral
voting. But if you use a really compelling image, a lot of people will up vote
just because they love the image. And that will get you your post in front of a
lot more people because it will be essentially up voted. That’s a little trick
I’ve used on Google Plus and I’ve gotten to the top of the What’s Hot list many
times. With a little nudge from a really awesome photo. Well, OMG-Chad, man what do you think about Microsoft buying Mojang?
Chad: I think it’s definitely possible. So
this was a rumor that hit the Wall Street Journal last week. And they
originally said that it would be $2B, was what Microsoft was offering to buy Mojang. Mojang is the company
that makes Mind Craft, which is of course if you talk to any boy who is from
the ages of 7-12, he will absolutely know what Mind
Craft is.
Lee: Not just 12, I’m 36 and I’ve been
running a private Mind Craft server for three years.
Chad: Absolutely. The mindshare that this
game has is unbelievable. There’s a lot of different rumors on why this an interesting acquisition for Microsoft. Some people
say that they want to make sure that they can lock down this game so that it’s
on Xbox, so that it’s on Windows Phone. That sort of thing. Or maybe just the intellectual property of Mind Craft is so powerful.
Mike: Do you think the Mind Craft community
is freaking out over possibly being part of the Microsoft umbrella?
Chad: Absolutely. Something that’s not as
well-covered but is definitely an issue in the circles I hang around in, is
Mind Craft is also a huge platform for making videos on YouTube. Making internet entertainment. Somehow Mind Craft was there
at the exact right time and has the exact right features to be creative enough
where you can create entertaining content on it almost endlessly. So there’s a lot of online entertainers and YouTubers who have grown up with this video game of Mind Craft. And they’re very
sensitive to any large company coming in and saying well now you can’t monetize
videos. And Mojang has been very lenient on all the
creators making as much money as they want. In contrast, a company like
Nintendo has basically taken money from those creators by saying well if this
has Nintendo intellectual property in it, we’re going
to take an amount of the ads that are placed on the YouTube videos that you
create. And that incredibly frustrates creators but Mojang on the other hand has been completely easy about it. But if a sale to Microsoft
happens, that might not be the case. And people are really shaking in their
boots. There’s channels that are solely devoted to
Mind Craft videos. And they’re very scared about what this could potentially
mean for their careers basically.
Mike: Now Lee, you’re obviously a big fan. Do
you think Markus Notch Persson is a big sellout for
considering this?
Lee: Poor Notch. I’ve been involved in Mind
Craft as a player and a private server admin for a long time. Since the end of 2010. And beating up on Notch is kind of
like the oldest Mind Craft activity that you can possibly do. It doesn’t matter
what the poor guy does. He gets stick from the community for having made a
tremendous amount of money. He gets stick from the community for having screwed
the game up. Over and over again. It seemed like for a
while in late 2010 or early 2011, that every addition to the game he was
releasing updates very frequently, and every edition would break something. And
there would be image macros immediately after the new Mind Craft release.
Here’s what Notch has screwed up this time. The guy has come into a tremendous
amount of money over the past few years. And he’s done a really good job, in my
opinion of being responsible with the millions and millions of dollars that
have come his way from programming this game. He gives huge amounts of money to
charities. He’s given a tremendous amount of money back to his employees. He’s
a great guy. But dealing with a very rapid, very active fan community for any
game, I think is very difficult. And Notch has gotten more than his share of
hoop thrown at him for his success. And in this of course, everybody says, oh my gosh, he’s selling out. Notch is selling out! I don’t
think Notch has been really involved with the day to day activities. I know he
hasn’t’ been involved with the day to day Mind Craft activities for a long
time. I don’t know how active he is with steering the course of the game. He
stands to make a tremendous amount of money from this sale, if this sale
happens. But my impression is that he was so soured on just the sheer amount of
hate he gets, that this is if anything kind of a relief to him. That he can
sort of cash out and not have to get beat up from 15 different
directions no matter what he decides to do.
Mike: Yea I think that just the consensus out
there is that this will be announced tomorrow, Monday. And the reason Microsoft
wants to do this is to bolster their mobile platform, their mobile gaming
platform. I don’t know if you guys agree with this, but I just hope they won’t
wreck it. I hope they keep it cross-platform, across all platforms. Yea, put it on Windows Phone. Of course it’s on Xbox and so
on already. This is an important game I think because this is a game that
really excites really young people. And it provides an alternative to Grand
Theft Auto and some of these other things. Instead of your 9-year old out there
beating up prostitutes and mowing people down with old Cadillacs on Grand Theft Auto, they’re building stuff. And they’re getting the thrill of
creating things and having a social network around something very constructive.
And so I think that if Microsoft does purchase this, and again it looks like
they will, I just hope that they don’t mess it up. I hope they invest in it and
really get it spread out there. This is a great thing.
Lee: There are lots of areas that the fan
community thinks that Mojang has sort of fallen down
in its development responsibly. You’re right that it’s a tremendously
egalitarian game. The server platform runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. The game
itself runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, consoles. It runs on just about everything.
Chad: Raspberry Pie.
Lee: Yea, exactly. And it doesn’t have even
still years and years after they said they were going to do it, it doesn’t have
a functional plug-in and modding system. You got to
do your stuff to add mods to it. There’s a lot of
things that would enhance the community’s involvement in it that it doesn’t yet
have. And the promise that a big company like Microsoft coming in and owning
the IP, the hope is that they would come in and rather than closing it off and
saying that Mind Craft is an Xbox One exclusive from now on; the hope is that
they would come in and bolster the development resources, add the plug-in
system, and help do the things that the game needs that hasn’t been done in the
game for so long. That would be the optimistic thing; whether that’s actually
going to happen or not, I don’t know. I sincerely hope they do not come in and
change the platform that the game’s available on. That would kill one of the
most valuable aspects of the game. As it is, you go in and you pay your money
and it doesn’t matter what you’re running. Everybody can come in and play the
same game in the same shared world. And build stuff, and dig holes and mine,
and everything. It’s great. It would be a shame if it gets closed.
Chad: There’s one last little kind of funny
bit of information that came up on the sub-Reddit on
Mind Craft. Two years ago, Notch tweeted his price
that he would sell out for. His price two years ago was $2B. My price is $2B,
give me $2B and I’ll endorse your crap is what he said on Twitter. It was an
omen two years ago.
Mike: So that’s apparently what Microsoft
must be paying him. They’ve got it. They’ve got many many billions to spend on this stuff. And it sounds to me that it would be a good
move on Microsoft. And if they keep it and support it, Lee in the way that you
say, that would be a great thing for everybody. And I hope that they do that.
We’ll see. We’re going to find out what the deal is tomorrow and see if he gets
his $2B. The U.S. government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day way back
in 2008 if they didn’t hand over user data to the NSA. We’re just learning
about this because this stuff was sort of ripped out of the hands of the
government. And now we’re getting all of these heavily redacted documents,
formerly redacted documents. And we’re learning all kinds of nasty stuff. Roughly 1500 pages worth of secret and ultimately unsuccessful
legal battle to resist the government’s demands. Essentially what
happened is the government came to Yahoo and said we want all this data. Hand
over all this data and we know there are going to be some American citizens
that are going to be affected. But you know what, we are the government, we are
the court and you have to hand it over. And you can’t tell anyone that you’re
doing it. And Yahoo said, that sounds unconstitutional. I think that doesn’t
sound right. And they said well unconstitutional or not, you got to pay us
$250,000 a day for everyday that you don’t comply. And also they implied that
they would make their life miserable in other ways if they don’t comply. Yahoo
ultimately complied and Microsoft complied. And eventually everybody complied
and it led to the prism thing and all the NSA revelations that have been
surfaced by Edward Snowden. Andy Ihnatko, this is
another case where we’re kind of looking at the ugly details. This was during
the Bush administration. I think both he Bush and Obama administrations are at
fault for this. What do you think about this? I mean, I know you’re not a
constitutional scholar and so on. But does this sound like something that the
government ought to be able to do? Just go to Yahoo and say hand over all the
data.
Andy: I have to circle back to what I was
saying earlier about the Apple Watch. There’s so much I don’t know about this
situation. But that doesn’t get in the way of my revoltion that the government can do stuff like this. Bravo to Google for having to
really be absolutely thrown against the wall with their forearm against their
neck before handing over data like that. I really have to say that as an
individual, what I’m most bothered by is the lack of oversight. I think that as
adults for generations we get used to the idea that the government is going to
do things we don’t understand, but which are actually are very much in our
interest. And not only us but the rest of the country. The rule has always been
that if the government isn’t telling me personally about this, if I don’t know
personally what the FBI is doing, the FBI has to talk to another agency. And
they have to be transparent to another agency who will be secret but at least
they’re not completely in control and answerable to nobody. What is concerned
me the most is the fact that not only do you have to hand over this data but
you also can’t tell anybody that you’re handing over this data. You also have
no idea who does the NSA have to tell about what they’re doing. Do they have to
explain to any other agency that as severe as this action is, it is actually
getting results? Here is the report that we’re required to file on an annual
basis about the results of what we’re doing. The difficulty is that whether you
believe that there is malice involved or not, the primary responsibility of any
government agency is to get funding for next year and not be eliminated. And
that’s one of the most concerning things of all, whether it is something as big
as this program at the NSA. Or something as simple as the need to keep making
sure that telegraph wires can support Morse code at a certain BOD rate. After a
certain need has surpassed, there is a division at this agency whose job it is
to make sure they get funding for next year. And they will do whatever they
have to do to say no, we’re absolutely essential. There is almost no agency who
has ever said, actually what we’re doing is completely redundant. We don’t need
to exist; here is our $11B budget back to you, and our 300 people are going to
find something else to do with our time. Because we are a colossal
and government-supported waste of time. That’s what my concern is, that
there is never going to be a situation where the NSA says we don’t need this
information anymore. There are better ways for us to achieve our goal of
keeping the United States’ citizens safe that do not involve all this sort of
stuff. So if they get the budget to keep harvesting data, there is going to be
a way for them to keep that budget of harvesting data. Whether
it’s necessary or not. And the thing that happens to be most destructive
is when 10 years go by and no one even stops to consider anymore if it’s a good
idea to keep harvesting this data. The reason why someone is hired to go to
this little pump house station on the water table and make sure this little
valve is turned 10 degrees, there was a good reason to do that 50 years ago.
Now that pump house station doesn’t exist anymore but this person is still
required to go to that station and look for a valve that isn’t there anymore or
else there’s going to be a problem. That’s the difficulty of all this sort of
stuff. So yes, I’m immensely disappointed and saddened that this is the
situation that we’re in in 2014. Where I think a lot of us find ourselves
wondering here is something that we could say that is a joke, or we’re just
interested in this piece of information that we want to search for on the internet.
But if we do that, would we attract the attention of an agency and 5-10 years
from now we get turned down for clearance. Or we get turned down for this or
that. And the fact is that we saw a news report on a wacky video that
terrorists are putting up to try and recruit. And so we’ve searched YouTube for
that video but that put our name on a certain list that got connected to
another list, that was related to another piece of information based on
somebody else’s theory, that somebody who drinks a lot of Diet Pepsi who has
been to these three cities in the past four months, is probably connected
between that and another activity. That’s the sort of environment they’re
creating and that’s what makes me very sad.
Mike: You’re speaking of course of big data.
That’s how big data works essentially. Somebody in the chat room said that the
NSA is an American terrorist group. I don’t believe that at all.
Andy: No, that’s overkill.
Mike: I think it’s vastly overkill. I think
they’re really good intentions and I’d like to compare the NSA to local police
departments. Imagine how much better the police department could prevent crime,
crack down on crime and catch suspects if they could walk into anybody’s house
without a warrant. If they didn’t have to read Miranda rights to people; if
they could sort of push the envelope of torture. If they didn’t have to testify
in court; all these safeguards exist not because we expect policemen to be bad
and so on. We have a social balance between our desire to solve crimes and to
put away the bad guys. And also our freedoms, there’s a balance between those
things I think we all understand naturally. Which exists in
the Constitution very strongly and clearly. And yet here’s a case where
there doesn’t seem to be a counter-balancing force. It’s like oh we can harvest
all this information so let’s do it. And who’s there saying, wait a minute,
there’s another side to this?
Andy: That’s an excellent and important
point. I’ve talked to lots of law enforcement officers about this topic going
back 10 years. And they have a point that I absolutely respect; they have a
mandate to preserve the public safety. And this has been a consistent thing
from different agencies, different levels of law enforcement. They said that we
really took this job for a very important reason. We’re here to protect the
public’s safety. And we are limited by the laws that the public decides to put
upon us. Once there is a law telling us we can’t do anything, we are not
interested in circumventing that law because we are good people and this is the
job we are going to do. If you don’t tell us we have to get a warrant to attach
a GPS tracker to somebody’s car, and we feel as though this is a very bad
person and we can stop them from doing these things by putting a GPS tracker on
their car, we’re not going to ask if that’s something that we’re entitled to do
or not. We’re going to ask is it legal or not. And they feel as though, and
again this has been consistent, if we are allowed to do this by the law and we
do not do this, and this is a way we can keep people safe, we are doing
something wrong by not doing that. Because again, they look to the law to tell
them what they can and what they cannot do. If there’s a defect in regulation
and restriction, that’s a defect that needs to be corrected. That’s what
prevents good members of law enforcement from doing things that we… sorry I
need to back track on my use of multiple negatives. They want to do good things, they don’t want to do anything that people don’t
approve of. And their queue as to what people do or do not approve of their
behavior is what they’re legally allowed to do. If we don’t tell law
enforcement no we don’t approve of you doing this, then they’re going to keep on doing things that they think is in our best
interest. If that makes sense.
Mike: Absolutely. It does. Kevin Tofel, do you have any comments on this? Lee of course is
not using Facebook so he doesn’t care. You probably do so your information is
I’m sure in some database somewhere in Washington or Utah or wherever they keep
this stuff.
Kevin: I’m sure they’re listening right now. I
am going to stop using Facebook and I will no longer drink Diet Pepsi. You
know, I can’t disagree with anything Andy just said. I do think these
government organizations are trying to do the best they can at their mandate
and their job. And it comes down to what’s scary to me is that we still don’t
know everything that we don’t know about this if that makes any sense.
Mike: Especially if you’re, what was his
name, former secretary of defense; the known unknowns. Rumsfeld. Go ahead Donald Rumsfeld.
Kevin: I hate to use that line but it’s true.
How many years has this been going on and we’re still finding out such details
like this. The Yahoo thing happened in 2008. It’s scary, I totally agree with
the whole balance. Security versus privacy. Until we
really know what all of these groups are doing, I don’t know that we can put
any blocks in place or legal hurdles. Because it seems like we have to come up
with defining every situation. No, you cannot do this specific thing to us to
look at our backgrounds and so on and so forth. And the internet is always
changing. So to have all these definitions when the internet is changing all
the time, it’s very challenging and it’s very scary. I don’t know what kind of
world my kids are going to be seeing in 5-10 years. Are they going to be afraid
to send an email to their friends and say one word that they shouldn’t say
because they may show up on a list? It’s very discouraging and disappointing
right now.
Mike: Absolutely. Well in just a sec, we’re
going to come back and talk about the death of MacWorld,
a print publication about technology. But first I want to tell you about our
sponsor, Square Space. I can’t remember if I started using Square Space because
I heard Leo do an ad on this show. I think it may have been the case a few
years ago. But I’ve been using Square Space for a long time. My whole family
uses it. In fact, Chad if you could throw up kevnaudia.com. This is my son’s website. He’s getting married next month in a little less than
a month. You know they have a wedding website. It’s so easy to do. He put this
together. I think he told me it took him an hour and a half to put together the
entire site. He manages it a little bit here and there, adding pictures and
changing things here and there. There are multiple pages on this site which is
super easy to do with Square Space by the way. Including the
ability for them to do their wedding registry which he put together himself
very quickly. Look how cute she was when she was a little girl. That’s
his wife to be, Naudia. Square Space is the place to
do something like this. You can take money, sell things, all this stuff, which
of course you do with a wedding registry. The way it works is you start with
one of 25 beautiful templates. This is world-class design that they have. Once
you have selected your design and the one you like best, you can modify, add
pages, take things out, tweak it, change the size and color of the font, and
change how everything looks. You can modify it to your heart’s content. And of
course if you’re a software developer, you can really modify. And if you’re
not, you can go in there very easily with easy to use tools. Anytime you want
to swap out one template for another you can do that and all your content stays
in one place. Super easy to use. I like to use Square
Space just for fun. It’s like a video game for me to a certain extent. Go in
there and see what kind of website you can create. Sometimes I see some
beautiful website outs there and I want to see what that would look like as a
blog or some other kind of website. Really fun to do. And if you need support, it’s available 24/7 via chat or email. Tech support is
fantastic. Truth is I’ve only used it once and they gave me a really good
answer right away. That was really refreshing that they didn’t just throw me in
a knowledge base somewhere. It’s also inexpensive. Square Space starts at just
$8/month and that includes a free domain name if you
sing up for a year. And of course they’re famously mobile-ready. If you use one
of these giant phones we’re talking about or even if you have small phone, you can
manage your website from that phone using the Square Space metric app, which is
great. Whether it’s a blog or a non-blog website. And
of course your audience when they go to your website if they’re using the phone
it’s going to look perfect when they look at it on a phone. Because
Square Space automatically recreates the page on the fly for mobile devices
whether it’s tablet, phone, or whatever. Really great
stuff. So start a free two-week trial without a credit card required and
start building your website. When you decide to sign up for Square Space, make
sure you use the offer code TWIT. And that will give you 10% off the already
low price. And that will show your support for This Week in Tech. And we thank
Square Space for their support of TWiT. And remember
a better web awaits, and it starts with your new
Square Space website. Well gentlemen, MacWorld is no
longer. At least the print edition. Is this the end of
an era? What do you think?
Andy: Definitely. There has been one constant
through-line through the Mac community that has remained consistent over the
past 30 years. And that has been MacWorld magazine. Because we forget that MacWorld started
off with actually getting pictures of getting the first Macs on the cover the
day that the new Macs were really introduced with Mr. Jobs on the cover as well
during his nice suit and tie phase. There were other magazines that came
along, most notably MacUser and MacUser became a force as well. I wrote two columns a month for them for many years.
And then those two magazines merged so basically they because the caretakers
for two sets of legacies. And as other magazines came and went, other magazines
that were around thriving when MacWorld was still
brand new, they fell by the waysides and MacWorld was
the only magazine that was still in print that managed to maintain its mandate
and identity. And a staff of people that have worked
together for so many years that they really were like a really good infield of
a championship baseball team. So it’s sad to see the magazine, the logo and the
site are going to continue. It’s very sad that so many of the staff are going, because you can put that logo on pretty much
everything. But these people and the way they worked together under the company
leadership of Jason Snell; that was just a unique thing that was like the Blues
Brother band. They had a sound that could turn goat pee into gasoline. And now
these people are split up. A lot of them have already found new gigs. They’re
certainly going to do as good work as they’ve ever done for these new
organizations. I-More has been picking up some really great staff over the last
few months. So I’m not worried about these people individually because again
they’re incredibly talented. There’s people who are not already striving for
their services, are foolish. Chris Breen did a very nice article that basically
went through and said here’s all the people who have lost their jobs or have
left in the last three or four months. And talking very nicely and positively
and accurately about all the work they’ve done. But it’s too bad, I guess the bottom line from my stammering here is that there are very free
publications that have authority based on their totality. Where there are a lot
of Mac sites where they’re nice sites. But it’s really about what one or two
people have to say. And the investigative reporting and reviews of that person
or what this person has to say. There are very few places left where you can
really say that the name of this publication means that if MacWorld has reviewed the new MacPro, I know they’ve done it
with a certain amount of seriousness and integrity and thought for creating
value for users. They’re not going to let slip somebody who had a really active
Twitter feed. And they asked him, what if we send you a MacPro for a month and then write something about it. And then it winds up being 2000
words, 1000 words about how much Windows sucks and how much, oh boy, I can’t
get my Android phone to work with it and I don’t have an Android phone because
they’re losers. I’m just very sorry to see a resource like that go away.
Mike: Yea, absolutely. The hay day of print
technology, computer magazines was in the 90’s and in the 90’s, I edited one of
them called Windows Magazine. And it was a crazy time because the internet
hadn’t really come up to replace the information. And yet PCs and technology
were very new to a lot of people. So people turned to a lot of physical print
magazines in huge numbers. We used to publish bigger than 400-page issues. We
had an editorial staff; just the editorial staff, not sales or anybody else,
was more than 60 people. And PC-Mag was of course the larger publication in
that space. They had a staff of 122 people in the late 90’s and they did 500,
600-page issues. And they were twice-monthly. So it’s hard to remember that.
Lee: My entire tech-life in the early to mid-90’s was defined by editions of PC Magazine. That was
like always the highlight of the month. Oh, my parents are going to drive me to
the mall and I’m can buy the latest PC Magazine and it’s going to be so cool.
Mike: Exactly, and now you can just search
for information and get it. So it’s kind of the end of an era. I think the IDG
deserves a lot of credit for keeping it around for as long as they did. They
recently closed the print version of Computer World. I think that was in the
last year. I write for the digital edition. But of course the internet is so
compelling, you can post, promote on social networks, you can have live links,
you can do all these things that you can’t do in print. So it makes a lot of
sense that print goes away and I hope whatever they do with the brand honors
the legacy of MacWorld. I think we can all agree that
it is the end of an era. Any thoughts on this, Kevin Tofel?
Kevin: It’s just sad to see for all the
reasons you guys have mentioned. I grew up the same way. Going
to the book store to go get the latest Computer Magazine. I remember
when I was still in middle school getting Computer Shopper which was the
ginormous thing. You’d look through and you know I bought my Commodore 64
through there for crying out loud way back when. It’s just sad to see; I guess
you could say it’s one of those things that I guess you expect to see happen
over time. The internet has disrupted everything quite honestly. With the rise
of tablets, people buying digital editions of these magazines. That’s putting
pressure on all these print publications as such. But you still don’t want to
see it for certain brands. And this is just one of those brands; it just kind
of tears at your heart.
Lee: Are you guys particularly gulled by the
fact that this staff cut took place the day after the entire staff went and
killed themselves covering, doing bang-up coverage on this gigantic Apple event
that happened? Maybe it’s not unexpected. I’ve worked at enough companies that
the bottom line is the bottom line. But man that just stinks.
Andy: I’ll just say that it wouldn’t have
been too bad if the Beatles had never been able to get on that rooftop and play
together in public one last time. I hope they don’t feel abused but I’m glad
they were able to go out with one last emphatic concert that shows here is what
this band can do. And here is how badly we’re going to miss them.
Lee: That’s a great way to put it, Andy.
Mike: Although they should have known this
was happening. That would have been a better way to do it. They also could have
networked at the event, looking for other jobs. Well, if you missed any TWiT shows this week, you blew it! And I think, Chad, do we
have a list of the things you missed this week if you missed the TWiT shows?
[Voices]:
Previously on TWiT. Triangulation: Doctor Drew is an
actual doctor. He doesn’t just play one on TV. You still practice? Yea, I do.
In fact I’m doing some practicing right now while we’re on the air. TWiT live specials: Apple Pay is easy. It’s secure. And
it’s private. That’s a lot more secure than chicken systems. This is perhaps
more important from Apple’s point of view from anywhere else. MacBreak Weekly: Andy is in Cupertino, eyes bulging for the
Apple Watch. The resolution on the screen is fantastic. You really have to
strain your eyes to see any pixels whatsoever. Giz Whiz: Do you remember seeing your first transistor radio? I remember saying to
my friend, Ben. That kite thing, I say you need a bigger key. Marketing
Mavericks: Malaysia Airlines which just went through two major air disasters
ran a campaign that was the ultimate bucket list. I think this was such an
incredible failure. TWiT, all your favorite podcasts from the 80’s, 90’s, and today. The only view live from the Flint Center is our own camera.
Mike: Unbelievable.
Lee: I was wondering who was up on the parking
garage. I saw those cameras at the event, I didn’t
know who it was. Now I know.
Mike: It was Batman and we sent him there
with a camera. That was the week gone by. Coming up this week, Google has a big
press event in India. It looks like it’s going to be a big Android One launch.
Android One is their phone platform for emerging markets. Also, tomorrow
Monday, the games beat event kicks off in San Francisco. They’ll last for a
couple of days. And Adobe reports earnings on Tuesday. Tune into Tech News
Today and Tech News Tonight for all of our coverage there. And that is This
Week in Tech, TWiT. I want to thank Andy Ihnatko from the Chicago Sun Times for coming in today and
sharing his brilliant insights and his unique humor. Thank you so much, Andy Ihnatko.
Andy: Thanks, Mike.
Mike: Alright, really appreciate it. And also, Kevin Tofel, senior writer at GigaOm. Thank you for coming on the show. Kevin,
what did you think? This was your first time on the show.
Kevin: It’s a bit of a marathon compared to the
other shows. But well worth it.
Mike: On Tech News Today, we bring in for a
single story that you wrote. We grill you like we’re interrogating you and then
we send you packing. This show is much more of a different conversation. But I
thank you for coming on to TWiT today.
Kevin: Thanks, Mike.
Mike: And Lee Hutchison, also a first-timer
on TWiT, I believe. Thank you so much for coming on
and sharing your insights. Thank you, guys. It’s always fun talking to y’all.
This is a little change of pace, but quite fun. And I hope to have you all on
Tech News Today sometime very soon. And again, I want to thank Andy, Kevin, and
Lee. And thanks to all of you for showing up today. And thank you to all of you
for tuning in, and so I get to say the magic word: another TWiT is in the can! Golf clap!