MacBreak Weekly 429 (Transcript)

Leo Laporte: It's time for MacBreak Weekly, just before the show began today Apple shipped a video and an SDK for Apple Watch developers. We're going to dive deep into what Apple Watch will bring us in just a few months next, on MacBreak Weekly.

Announcers: Netcasts you love, from people you trust. This is TWiT! Bandwidth for MacBreak Weekly is provided by CacheFly. That's C-A-C-H-E-F-L-Y dot com.

Leo: This is MacBreak Weekly episode 429, recorded November 18^th, 2014.

All the.1s

MacBreak Weekly is brought to you by Shutterstock.com. With over 43 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 your new account, go to Shutterstock.com and use the offer code MacBreak 1114. And by Gazelle. The fast and simple way to sell your used gadgets. Find out what your used iPhone, iPad, or other Apple product is worth at Gazelle.com. And by NatureBox. NatureBox ships great tasting snacks right to your door. Start snacking smart or with wholesome delicious treats like agave citrus granola oh man! To get your complimentary NatureBox sampler, visit NatureBox.com/twit. That's NatureBox.com/twit. It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show that covers Macintosh, Apple, $800 stock prices all that jazz. Andy Inhatko is here, the Chicago Sun Times scribbler.

Andy Inhatko: Hey dude.

Leo: Scribe, scribbler.

Andy: No no, I'm a member of the slow news movement. Like a Ken Burns documentary. It takes years to prepare, unfold over a series of weeks but by the time the iPhone 7 comes out, you will realize that the iPhone 6 which is no longer being sold is in fact very much worth your time.

Leo: (laughing) Also here Mr. Rene Ritchie from iMore.com. Oh, he's silent. Muted, muted.

Rene Ritchie: I apologize, I was watching the Watch kit video while I was waiting for the show to start.

Leo: Oh good, we gave you a little extra time to watch that and we'll talk about that in a second. Hi Rene. Actually have a lot of questions for Rene. Including 10.1 10.10.1.

Rene: Yeah and 8.1.1.

Leo: .1. Holy cow.

Rene: All the .1s Leo.

Leo: All the .1s. And from Washington, DC. Or is it Pittsburgh, PA I never know.

Alex Lindsay: Pittsburgh.

Leo: It's Pittsburgh, PA.

Alex: It's Pittsburgh.

Leo: That's because he's on 50% gray. Alex Lindsay of the Pixel Corps.

Alex: Where it's 14 degrees here but it feels like -1.

Leo: Ah!

Alex: I'm competing now with Rene on chilliness. I went out this morning, I had to take my kids to the bus and I went out and figured oh I'll just go out with my button up shirt on, you know no big deal. I think I almost died.

Leo: You know when it gets to a certain temperature, my temperature is 5 degrees. Your tongue starts to hurt. You've got to keep your mouth closed.

Alex: It's when my ears start ringing. It's like this thing that happens to my ears when it gets too cold.

Rene: When it's -40 here, Celsius, you go outside and your face just hurts and you can feel the liquid freezing in your head.

Leo: Okay you win!

Alex: Okay, okay fine.

Rene: Winnipeg wins but..

Andy: Rene I don't want to brag but here in New England we know enough to stay inside when the spine is frozen.

Leo: That's how manly the Quebecois are. They just go out, they don't care if their face hurts. -40, it doesn't matter whether it's Celsius or Fahrenheit.

Alex: I haven't experienced -40 because when it's -40 wherever I am I just stay in the building.

Leo: You and Andy are saying..

Andy: Guess what? I'm not getting my teeth cleaned today, you can charge me for the session.

Leo: Hey Sam Downy is here too. We'll talk, I'm glad you're back. We'll talk to Sam a little later in the show about.. is it National Epilepsy week, day, month, year? Month. Pick a time frame. Well there's lots to say but as we go to press, Andy will know what that means, as we go to press Apple has pushed out a Watch kit, SDK and video and Mr. Rene Ritchie has been listening as you see, watching the video, get your iPhone. This is at the developers site. Developer.apple.com/watchkit. Get your iPhone app ready for Apple Watch. This is good news, I mean we've, tell us Rene what we've had so far and what's new in this release.

Rene: So all we've had so far is the event. The Apple iWatch event where Tim Cook got up on stage and introduced the iWatch and Kevin Lynch gave us a basic idea of what it does and they promised us we'd be getting an SDK software development kit for developers around November, so now it's November and the watch kit SDK is out along with Xcode 6.2 and iOS 8.2 SDK. Because the Apple Watch right now is dependent on the iPhone so the way it's going to work it looks like is you deliver your app to the iPhone and that pushes interface to the Apple Watch and developers can make full interfaces which are full apps, they can make glances which are like widgets and they can make actionable notification, which is sort of like a little alert comes in and you can do something with it. That's pretty much exactly what they promised us that they would be delivering, there's a couple interesting things in there, like it looks like the two watch sizes are actually different resolutions. The 38 vs 42 mm, the 42mm actually has more pixels which plays into the sort of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+ having more pixels so they're not just blowing it up, it's not going to be more blurry or less sharp, it's just going to have a little bit more real estate for you.

Leo: Those larger sizes are available in all three models or no?

Rene: Yes. There's aluminum, stainless steel and gold and you can get 38 and 42mm in both.

Leo: So that's good, that means it is kind of like the 6 and 6+ of watches.

Rene: It sounds complicated at first but when you think about it you choose the size the same way you choose a 6 or a 6+ and you choose the finish whether you want aluminum, stainless steel or gold.

Leo: Or whether your wallet can afford which one.

Rene: Yes.

Leo: They start at $350 for aluminum so we know it's going to be a hefty price tag.

Rene: Gold is real gold so it's going to go up. But then you choose the strap the same way you pick a case for a phone. So the same way you pick a blue or a red or a black case.

Leo: Is that going to be included in the price?

Rene: I believe it will come with a strap, the more expensive straps will probably be more expensive, there will probably be a base strap that comes with the watch that you choose. Whether it's sport or the regular or the edition version. And this, if you watch the video, it sounds to me, there's no official confirmation but it sounds to me like it's Jake Baron's voice. He's the frameworks evangelist at Apple.

Leo: Because that's what this is. This is an SDK but they're really saying it's a framework. What is the difference?

Rene: Yeah it's the same as when the original.. so the SDK is just the collection of frameworks the developers can use to target the Apple Watch and the frameworks are a bunch of different classes and sample code and other things that developers can use to easily make apps. One of the strengths of iOS in general is the quality of what they call the coco touch framework. Similar to the coco frameworks on the Mac, and those are the things developers target, and then those frameworks go into a lot of heavy lifting for them. It means they don't have to write all the base code to do all the base functionality themselves. Apple's free created a bunch of it for them.

Leo: When I hear framework I think of ruby on rails which you know, you type a couple of commands and it would build a base application to which you would add your unique functionality. Is it the same here?

Rene: Sure, you like it as a framework. That lets you create the basic skeleton of an application on iOS. Like the navigation bar and the buttons and all those things and there's all sorts of framework, there's graphics, core graphics, metal is a framework that lets you target low NGPU stuff. So all of those things are just a collection of code and utilities and.. I'm not a developers so I can't explain it perfectly. But it abstracts your job as a developers and makes it much easier for you to target the things Apple wants you to target.

Leo: Yeah. This reminds me a little of the Android Wear architecture. I know when you have an Android Wear aware app on your smartphone, on your Android phone it will automatically propagate to your watch without any intervention on your part. And then I've seen at least one app, Evernote, where if you want Android Wear capability, there's a part you have to download that doesn't show up anywhere on the phone. Once you download and install it, now you have Evernote as a note taking app on Android Wear. So it sounds like a similar kind of system, I'm sure once you start using it it's very very different.

Rene: And if my understanding..

Leo: It says that here the UI is stored in the Watch app itself.

Rene: Yeah, it's my understanding that earlier this year Apple once again re-factored springboard which is the app launching mechanism and they broke it into something called frontboard and there's various other ones as well like preboard and sorry, there's several of them now. Not just one monolithic structure, and I believe frontboard might be what's running on the watch and that would basically handle all of the interface while the rest of the stuff stayed on the phone.

Leo: Yeah it says here in the architecture the UI is stored in Watch App. Plan your UI in advance. And then code updates UI from the iPhone.

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: Alright so.

Rene: Again, all the power is in your iPhone. The connectivity is in your iPhone. This is very much the shuttle craft to the spaceship.
Leo: And you have to watch, will it self-store enough code so that it draws the basic UI and then you fill it up from the iPhone.

Rene: That's what gives you the local performance, it lets the actual application move quickly on the phone.

Leo: Ah, of course. Of course.

Rene: And then sits there on the watch.

Leo: Well this is all on schedule. This is when they said they would push it out.

Rene: And I apologize if I'm not specific, they released it literally 15 minutes before the show started.

Leo: It just came out, yeah. And we'll learn more as time goes by yeah. I think what's kind of interesting is, and I'm not sure what the time frame is but if you release it in November, now developers have it, I guess they've done some early work without it knowing at least the outlines of it but now they've actually got it, they can start working and I would say development testing and release is at least a 3 or 4 month cycle. Yes?

Rene: Yeah, well the rumor has it that it will come out in spring which means March or April so they have quite a bit of time to get ready for it.

Leo: They've just the right amount, 4 months. Yeah. And so the release of this in November kind of confirms that. Rene: Yep.

Leo: Here's a look at some of the UI elements, if you show this Jason, this is kind of interesting. So you have switches, you have text controls, these are some of the controls you have a plus and minus slider. You have date, you can display images, that's cool. If you watch this video, you'll get a much clearer sense of what the watch could look like or what apps on the watch could look like.

Rene: It looks a lot like extensibility. I wouldn't be surprised if this was built off a lot of the same stuff that extensibility was built off of, like today view widgets become glances and the internet notifications are similar, they just project to the watch instead to the phone.

Leo: Right. Interesting! Alex, you think you'll be doing, I know you have a cadre of developers over there at Pixel Corps. Think you'll be doing any Apple Watch stuff?

Alex: Absolutely. We really look at wearables and whether it's, especially with the question engine stuff that we do with hazu I think that we're going to definitely look at that, there's ways to actually take questions and queue moderators, queue folks, I mean I think having something handheld makes a lot of sense. So as a way to integrate into some of our events I think that we're going to use it, we also see a lot of opportunities in ways to organize production crews and stuff like that. So from a production perspective I think there's a lot of opportunities in building stuff that is always on you, it's not conflicting with your phones, you're getting that information while you possibly might be on your phone as well so those are all things that we're really excited about.

Leo: Yeah. I have to say now that I've used Android Wear for a little while I'm a little bit more come around on the idea of the utility of a watch. There are absolutely some things that having a little small second screen that's readily available is useful.

Alex: And I think the thing that you have to look at is how do you integrate your watch with your glass with your phone with your computer. That's really the.. (laughs)

Leo: Right. Well and as Rene pointed out, this isn't a way, this is a form of continuity and I wouldn't be surprised at all if the frameworks were related. It's clearly Apple's vision that you'll have multiple Apple devices, a watch, a phone, a tablet and a computer. And that they all will be able to hand off one to the other in a kind of seamless fashion.

Alex: And I think what's partially interesting is having them hand off to one another but what's also is very interesting is the idea of them actually working in unison. So you're getting different information on different pieces around whatever you're working on.

Leo: Yeah, what do you think Andy?

Andy: I'm trying to catch up, my head has been down on the screen.

Leo: Yeah we're all watching this video kind of as we talk.

Andy: I think that the most important step in the development of Apple Watch is still going to be Apple's launch day keynote where they say okay I know that we were being kind of speculative back in September but now we're shipping it and here is our complete vision of what using this watch is going to be. Here's our vision of what's going to be appropriate for a Watchware and what's not going to be appropriate for Watchware and I feel as though the first year there's going to be some growing pains, remember the first year of Mac OS, when developers had to figure out, who had been training themselves to do text interfaces had to sort of translate at the beginning these text interfaces to a drop-down menu and window structure and that really didn't work because they were still thinking in terms of text. They weren't thinking originally in terms of a graphical user interface. So I think that there's going to be growing pains for the first year as people start, stop writing scaled phone apps and start writing apps that are specifically and elegantly and gloriously targeted for a watch. This Android Wear watch has not been off my wrist..

Leo: You're still wearing that!

Andy: Yeah I've been wearing it every day for about two months now.

Leo: Yeah me too.

Andy: And it is really difficult for me to not have it. Especially on a travel day or on a really busy day. I think what Android Wear does really well is it doesn't try to use tasks that are more appropriate for a bigger screen, it just tries to help you keep your phone in your pocket and not have to take it out and unlock it for things that are really silly and trivial. As a two month old Android Wear user, it's a little bit alarming to see so many user interface elements and controls capable on an Apple Watch, on the other hand I'm aware that although I love this Moto 360 and I use it several times every single day, I'm almost never using an app on the watch, it really is there to control and interact with stuff that I've got on my phone. I'm intrigued by the idea of what Apple would present as a uniquely watch-based app. Because right now my imagination is a little bit limited because whenever, I really do just try to sit back and think about if I was a developer and I wanted to write something that was not just simply there to get notifications from a phone but to actually be an app that lives in a watch, what would I do, and anything I come up with I'm thinking no that's a situation in which the user would probably be much happier just taking out their phone, so I'm really keen to see what ideas other people are going to have.

Leo: You know, I think of it like this. You walk around Boston, you see on the telephone pole and then tear off the thing to get my number. I feel like this is like apartment for rent or cat lost and then you say take a thing, take a tab and then you take that with you. I feel like the watch is like the little tab, that there's a logical relationship. Watch apps shouldn't stand, I agree with you, shouldn't stand alone. You don't have enough real estate to do that.

Andy: Yeah that was the thing that concerned me about what they showed off in September, you're showing me how, look at how much time you're going to spend actually doing this on this tiny little target.

Leo: Yeah, I don't want to do that.

Andy: And that's like, they showed lots of features that.. okay but if I'm going to be sending a text message and attaching a photo to it, my phone is in my pocket. Unless I'm holding groceries I've got the ability to take the phone out of my pocket so I think that even Apple, I believe that even Apple is trying to navigate their way around this problem of how do we define a watch app that is unique and distinct from a phone app just as a phone app is unique and distinct from a desktop app.

Leo: Do you think that Apple will learn from Android Wear? Do you think they have things to learn from Android Wear?

Andy: I'm absolutely certain of it. I know there are folks inside Apple that are Android Wear users partly because they like it and partly because it's very informative. The things that you can learn again sitting in your sofa, leaning back and doing these gedanken experiments but then there are times where you really need to hold a real thing in your hand or have it on your wrist, and not in terms of oh that works let's copy that, but wearing this every single day and realizing here it was bugs the hell out of me with this watch, and we definitely don't want to make those mistakes again or here I've just downloaded 20 different apps for this Android Wear apps, there are four of them that I really like, there are eight of them that are really screwed up, let's not make those mistakes again too. Remember that during the expanded stuff that Apple was talking about when they launched the iPhone, one of the things they were talking about is that how we, inside Apple we carry around BlackBerrys every single day, we carry around Palms we carry around Windows Phone devices and a lot of what resulted in the elegance of the iPhone was a reaction to things they did not like about the phones that they were wearing and using every single day.

Leo: I was very skeptical, as you remember, about a watch until I wore this, started wearing this Moto 360 every day.

Andy: Yeah.

Leo: I'll tell you a couple of things I've learned, and anybody that wants to pitch in too on this. A couple of things I've learned, like you Andy these should be an extension of an app that's running on the phone. But also, it has to look good. You know, I had the Samsung Android Wear and it looks bad. And so a design, Apple's right, design is important but by the way this simple Moto 360 design is sufficient. I don't feel embarrassed to wear it.

Andy: This is not something I would have guessed had I not been wearing this in the flesh every single day. I think that this is just a brilliant, brilliant design. And part of it is there's almost no presence facing the user except for the screen. The bezel is tiny tiny tiny tiny. There's only one little control on the side here so that really, it's very iPhone like in that the only thing you're actually looking at is the interface that's digital. You're not looking at that physical stuff, and you're right that the making this round is also a brilliant idea. Not only because it really does echo the concept of a watch, but also like yourself I was wearing the early LG and when the early Samsung watches and not only are they big but they're square but those squares get caught up on sleeves and stuff like this whereas this you've got a really good chance of being able to actually put on a shirt without having to unbutton something first. So there was a..

Leo: Apple may have successfully squared the circle with this because while it is a square, it feels fairly soft and appealing.

Andy: Yeah and also the smaller size one is very very in line with what anybody would put on their wrist, so that's not a problem. I just have to though point out that right after the Apple Watch came out there's some, I don't know if this is a fanboy blog post but it was fanboy-ish saying that well here's why you make a watch, this is why you make a watch square and you don't make it round and they decided to take the screenshots that Apple provided of the Apple Watch interface and just trace a circle around it saying oh look how all the stuff that's cut off from the corners of that. See how silly it is to make a round digital watch like this and say yeah numb nuts, that's what happens when you take a phone and put it on top of a computer display and see how much gets cut off of that.

Leo: You see how terrible..!

Andy: You just made the case that you can't design things for phones, it's actually built very very well for that round display. If anything I think that it promotes a certain amounts of restraint in user interface design saying you only have a certain amount of real estate here and a certain amount of the user's attention. You can't squander it by saying you know what, I think I will, rather than think for a week on how to best implement this, we'll just put a volume control here and we'll put a little brightness control here and we'll put another thing there.

Leo: Yeah, in fact it's not merely Apple..

Andy: It's a fascinating time.

Leo: Not merely Apple that's going to learn from this but people who make apps are probably learning right now with Android Wear, and I think Apple, we've kind of always surmised this but Apple's going to benefit by being late to the game by having the benefit of this.

Rene: Yeah it's really a problem of motis operandi.

Leo: Right. Yeah Apple never is the first of anything.

Alex: Right.

Rene: Not the first smartphone, not the first tablet, not the first watch.

Leo: Yep.

Alex: And they almost always come in.. they are fashionably late. They don't come in super late behind everybody else but they kind of come in, and when they come in they make some key improvements looking at what everybody else was doing and they go okay well we're going to, you generally were going to cut a bunch of things out, we're going to make it more efficient. Or easier to use. Or we're going to integrate it more with the hardware and software, and that's usually kind of how they add their value to it.

Rene: I think what you said about Apple, Leo..

Leo: I'm all of the sudden excited about the Apple Watch.

Rene: I think what you said earlier was really apt and it really is about continuity and seamlessness and continuity and Apple didn't come out and say it at the event but I think everything that they said plays towards this being convenience. That as phones get bigger, you can leave that in your purse, you can leave it in your pocket. You'll have the watch, you don't have to worry about it being available to you all the time. Then as phones get bigger, tablets can get bigger too. You have a bigger tablet? Don't worry about it, you don't have to fish it out all the time, you have it on your watch. And I think this, as much as bigger phones will allow bigger tablets to be a thing, I think the bigger phones will let the watch be a thing. It's all going to.. hopefully it will all be a virtuous cycle.

Andy: That's the important thing.

Leo: Will this work with an iPad the same way it works with an iPhone? Do you have to have an iPhone for this?

Rene: We don't know yet.

Andy: My understanding is that it's going to require an iPhone. But that's a really good point, Rene. Partly because we don't realize that women have problems with larger phones, both it's difficult to manage them, it's difficult to find places to.. they don't have large enough pockets, they are also worried about holding on the subway or in a public place this really expensive thing that makes them a very flashy target, so a smaller watch actually lets them have this sort of functionality without having to deal with all the difficulty that a 6” or 5.5” screen brings with it.

Leo: And as Ryan S. points out in our chatroom, iOS developers are probably some of the best UI developers in the world. I would say absolutely are. I think they're probably thrilled to be getting this watch kit now and be getting to work, and I bet you some do stand alone watch apps, and maybe they'll be phenomenal because these developers are so good.

Andy: There is a..

Leo: And anybody who's developing, I have to think somebody like Marco Armett is just rubbing his hands with..

Rene: Lord Richter, the Icon Factory.

Leo: Yeah they're just going..

Rene: The list is going to go on and on.

Leo: In fact I bet you anything that they are not watching today, because they're looking at this video and they're head down in Xcode right now.

Andy: Yeah.

(all talking - indistinguishable)

Alex: Like every other Apple release this is going to be the, there's a first mover status that does generally translate into a lot of revenue because you're going to now have a whole bunch of people that buy their watch and they're going to want to buy a lot of things that are relatively cool that you can kind of do it, I don't know how many people are going to make a whole bunch of watch apps most likely, literally just other timepiece looks for a dollar.

Leo: That's one of the things that happened with the Android Wear is watch faces. There's a huge marketplace of watch faces now.
Andy: Yeah and I'd be surprised if Omega and Rolex and all did not simply, we know that people are going to be trying to copy our watch faces so we're going to beat them to it. We're going to charge just a dollar for them knowing that the people who can afford a dollar for a Rolex watch face are probably not in the market for a $6,000 watch. But it's good brand recognition, I don't know if I can bring it up while I'm talking but there is, interface design is a really cool thing too. Like you talk about the very few really good watch-based apps. This is a tip calculator, which I love because they decided to figure out a way to like input numbers in a really cool way.

Leo: Oh, you just move that slider around. That's neat.

Andy: There's just, you just roll this around and I can't do this backwards, but so you just move that around to..

Leo: It's more Fred Astaire than Ginger Rogers ladies and gentlemen.

Andy: So you just spin this around to set the dollar amount.

Leo: That's clever.

Andy: Then you tap this button to set what percentage of the bill you want for tips and it's just beautiful and it's elegant and it's the sort of thing where you actually have fun calculating a tip and splitting a bill five or six ways and this is not an interface that I would ever have thought of when we first saw that first video that Motorola posted with that little awkward like two people seated in chairs talking about this big round watch, I would never have figured out that wow that's actually a very pretty interface, but I am very surprised. So that's why I say that this is such an exciting time to be really into tech and to enjoy these things because we're seeing companies worth billions and billions of dollars and people who would have to scrape and save to afford a $350 watch all on the same page, not knowing exactly how this technology should work but everybody's trying to figure it out all together. This is such a cool time.

Leo: The only thing that makes me sad is I'm going to have to carry an iPhone and I've become really attached to my Android phone.

Andy: I know, I know it's like..

Rene: Carry more than one phone Leo.

Andy: People keep asking me, especially now that there's the iPhone 6 and 6+, now that they've added these improvements to iOS, are you switching back to iPhone, and like a few months ago I would have said “Oh, most likely yes.” but now it's like.. I like this so much that..

Leo: I know..

Andy: I'm going to wait to see what the Apple watch is like before I..

Leo: That's an interesting.. you're choosing your phone based on your watch!

Andy: Well no.

Leo: Clever! This is clever.

Andy: It's also a testament to how close iOS and Android L are in functionality.

Leo: I agree, yeah.

Andy: They're not the same operating system, they have different strengths and weaknesses. But on a point scale I think iOS 8 is an A- 93 and Android L so far my experience is A- 90 or 91. It's close enough that..

Leo: So close.

Andy: ..if there's one accessory you really really like you might stick with Android only because you like this one accessory that's not compatible with iOS. And the inverse would be true of the Apple watch if it works out really well then. I would easily leap from Android to iOS if I start testing out Apple Watch apps and oh my god, they're not satisfied with the Android Wear proposition of just making an extension of your phone, they really want to make this really good comprehensive destination apps that make sense for a watch. Okay. Goodbye. iPhone 7 thank you.

Leo: I am watching this watch kit video and I think this one thing that could be a differentiator, they're showing right now building a watch app and they're showing an American Airlines app, and if.. this is one example of, and what I think is really happening is this didn't.. okay, let me step back. This didn't happen in the PC world. People who chose a Mac I think we all did over Windows. It was not a question of A- 93 versus A- 91. It was a very big difference and in some cases you made some sacrifices because maybe the apps you wanted weren't available on the Macintosh. But there was a palpable difference. Now we're in a world where you choose the thing that matters to you the most. If it's camera you might choose an iPhone. You like one accessory versus the other. You might choose that one. And that's, and I think that's a very interesting world where now what you have to do as a buyer, as a user is think about well what matters most to me? This American Airlines app could be, if you're frequent flier, how well the watch handles travel boarding, getting a plane, being you know. Getting reminded to leave the bar now. Or have another drink. Those things could be the differentiator. We're in a world where tiny differences are going to make a big difference in your choice.

Rene: There's another one too I think though Leo. First, to Andy's other point. You guys, you don't need a day or a night watch now you just need a left and a right watch. A left and a right phone. One on each pocket, one on each side. You're fine.

Leo: I really don't want to carry two phones, but I may be.

Andy: They Harvey Dent system of mobile technology.

Rene: Yes! I think one of the issues here, this is what's interesting, is I think why you're seeing like continuity and why you're seeing Android everywhere and things like material design, that once they get you in they want to make sure the best experience is if you have everything across their system. So if you have a Mac and an iOS device and a watch, it's a better experience and you're more likely to get the other device in that family and if you have Android Wear and you have Android in the car and you have an Android TV you're more likely to get the next Android device.

Leo: Right.

Rene: I think that is, even though they're so close I think as you start getting more and more involved in each ecosystem the divide becomes bigger just for you personally.

Leo: Well now we're getting synchronous with this video because look what it says. Advanced Tips, use the Handoff API, just as supposed at the beginning before we'd seen this whole thing. This is really a part of continuity and it's exactly as you said, it's part of buying into an ecosystem that's across the board. 9 to 5 Mac is saying that, and maybe it will appear later in this video, that Apple is saying if you want a standalone watch app you're going to have to wait until later this year. The watch apps that ship initially will all have to be tethered to and come from an iPhone.

Rene: That's correct. They said that earlier though, they announced that previously.

Leo: Okay.

Rene: So that's what's coming next year, some people think in the spring, some people think it will be DC 2015.

Andy: Yeah, and Apple never has any problems. They never have any fear about waiting things out to ship something that they can do very well today and delay other features for another year even if competing products have those features. It will be interesting to see the difference between Android development where Google really does give developers free reign anything except for destroy the world and even then they're willing to let them set fire to a continent if they want to be naughty.

Leo: They really have to.

Andy: Right. But whereas yes I know you have this great idea for an app, yes I know that you've built this entire system up, we're telling you we're not going to let you do that for another year or maybe two, or maybe three. So it's going to be interesting to see how.. if people are in the store, I've got on one hand I've got this $250 Moto 360 Mark II, on this other hand I've got the $350 Apple Watch that doesn't do quite as much and isn't quite as mature and is one year behind in development. I wonder how people are going to react to that, but then again this might be an artificial competition anyway because if you have an Android phone, you have to get an Android Wear watch, if you have an iPhone you have to get an Apple Watch. This might be just the sort of stuff that provides fodder for podcast discussion but won't really effect consumers in any significant way.

Leo: One other thing that everybody will pay attention to is battery life. Rene, have they said anything about or do you know, is the Apple Watch going to protect itself against apps that will drain the battery?

Rene: Apple's gotten very good at that, or at least they've gotten good at battery shaming because you're not going to be running full borne apps on the watch until next year, they don't have to worry about third party apps hitting the battery yet, but they have said that you're going to have to charge it every night. And one thing just to Andy's point, it's hard to say that the Apple Watch hasn't been in development for as long as Android Wear because a lot of that is internal, Apple just doesn't release early stage products. And the difference is that the Google Wear watch is going to be hit by public QA. Thousands and thousands of people much earlier than the watch does, and that can make a difference in the maturity.

Andy: I'm sorry, I was referring most to third party development. There's going to be, especially you can actually see and use the American Airlines watch app on Moto 360, it's still hypothetical and just a demonstration on the Apple Watch, that's what I mean.

Leo: Gentlemen you did a great job, we watched the entire video. We didn't have any audio. But we watched the entire video while we were talking. 30 minutes. I have to say I am excited. There are lots of questions unanswered but I'm very excited. Let's talk about the .1s in just a second.

Rene: Leo we did forget to mention that Apple Pay is going to be on the Apple Watch too so if that's a big deal to you you're going to want Apple Watch.

Leo: Excellent point. Although I think I have to say now, after the smoke has cleared on Apple Pay we're starting to see numbers, for instance McDonald's saying 50% of its transactions now are Apple Pay, of tap to pay transactions, but that means 50% are Android, or credit card tap to pay.

Andy: Yeah.

Leo: And in both the Verizon carrier solution softcard and Google Wallet have both said they've seen increased usage since Apple Pay came out so I don't think there's.. I don't know what kind of differentiator Apple Pay on a watch will be.

Andy: Simple awareness of tap to pay is almost negligible. Now, I sort of expect that when I use tap to pay it will come with five minutes of me explaining how it works to whoever was waiting in line behind me. I had to tweet about my last experience saying that oh this poor poor woman, she didn't realize I have two hours of material on tap to pay. She just.. she probably just wanted 30 seconds of..

Leo: “What is that?”

Andy: ..does it work, is it safe and where else can you use it? And I'm saying well we have to go back to first, I have this thing called a Java ring. This was sort of a micro controller based ring sort of thing that was like.. “I just want to get a burger, go away I'm sorry I mentioned that!” Not an uncommon reaction.

Leo: (laughing) Whole Foods said in the first week 150,000 people used Apple Pay at Whole Foods. I think the awareness going up is good because you know, the stores. The retail, the clerks, the people will be much more prepared for you to use it. It will be less of a barrier to you saying “I'm going to tap my phone now, is that okay?” and I think the raising awareness is going to help everybody. So I think you're right, I think anybody who buys a phone is going to ask for tap to pay, I don't know if it's going to sell more watches. Maybe. Is it really that big of a difference between tapping your watch and tapping your phone? Hey I've been wrong on this all along so..

Rene: But it means you can go jogging without your phone.

Alex: Well and I think that, I was at a hotel as usual yesterday and I have to admit it was one of the ones that should be covering it, I just didn't know how to get my iPhone to really work with it. So I ended up using their key which was fine, but it would have been nice, I have to admit I would think that it was kind of cool, I don't know if I'd buy a watch because of this but, if I could just tap my watch against my hotel room..

Leo: I love that, I love that.

Alex: And theoretically be able to walk right through I mean when you think about even as we reduce friction, I was flying last night and the fact that I could have an electronic ticket for my United flight, I was able to go through TSA, I literally got to the front of the airport at 5:03 and was standing at the gate at 5:07 and that is a massive reduction in friction. And I think that you get used to that and for instance once you get used to something like TSA pre you won't even go into the other lines, you'll walk like six more sections down to go because you're not going to want to take all the stuff out, and I think people get used to a lot of it as we're going to see a huge reduction in friction over the next five years as we start to tie in the NFC and the watches and everything else where we look back on what we had to do before and I think it will seem kind of absurd.

Leo: As I said, everybody's got their little thing that they're saying right now. If it just did this.. you've got a sale.

Andy: If you can solve a daily or even better yet, an hourly problem for somebody they won't care that it smells of olives. They will buy that phone and they will use it.

Alex: And I think that one of the things is also separating some of the things away. Like I wouldn't mind having notifications on my watch, I turn off almost all of my notifications on my phone because I'm in the middle of stuff all the time and I keep on getting interrupted. And so like I'm in the middle of a call or in the middle of something else and  I don't want any notifications to turn on while I'm doing that, whereas I might be more open to that so being able to split some of these things to different things, I don't necessarily want it going on all the devices, I want it to say I want this on this device and this on this device and I think that that is something that I think people will slowly kind of nurture and mature.

Leo: We're talking Apple, MacBreak Weekly. Andy Inhatko, Rene Ritchie, Alex Lindsay and we will talk about the .1s in just a second but first a word from Shutterstock.com. At Shutterstock you're going to find the perfect image or video for your next creative project, whether it's a website, a publication an advertisement. A lot of film makers use Shutterstock for stock video, if you click the footage tab at the top of the Shutterstock page you'll see an amazing collection, over a million, I'm sorry, now over two million. They're always adding more stuff. Two million royalty-free stock videos. Last time I checked there were something like 40 million photos and illustrations at Shutterstock.com. I mean these guys.. and every week they add another quarter million to 300,000 illustrations. Look at that, wouldn't that be great? The next time you're making Interstellar you could just save yourself a lot of time and money and just use some Shutterstock footage. There you go!

Alex: And one of the things, even with some of the stills, one of the tricks that I've used actually in a couple films is taking a skyline. So Bangkok skyline and you literally take the image that you get from stock photo and you actually map it onto some basic 3D models and push your camera through and you feel like you did a big helicopter shot for the price of one image and literally it takes you an hour or two to kind of set it up and it's a great way so you take one of those and you put some boxes where all those buildings are, push into it, and as a viewer, especially if you're only going to see it for a couple of seconds, you totally sell the shot that would have cost you $30,000 to go shoot in a helicopter.

Leo: It's just so mind boggling. Shutterstock of course if, when they've got 43 million high quality photos, you might say “Well how am I going to find the one I want?” Well let me tell you the search at Shutterstock is better than I've ever seen anywhere. You could search and drill down not just subject but by color, by palette, by file type. It's not just nouns, it's adjectives. Gender, emotion. You can say how many people are in it, if there's people or not. If it's an editorial image or an artistic image. They have a like box gallery you can use for free by the way, all you have to do is create a free Shutterstock account, you don't need to give them a credit card for the account and then you can save images to a like box gallery, access them any time, share them with other team members too! Which is awesome! If you've seen their iPad app, oh man it's gorgeous. Won a Webby award, and it's good for inspiration. Shutterstock is international too, they are in more than a dozen countries, they have multilingual customer service and yes full time customer support throughout the week. I want you to try it right now, sign up for that free account, start using Shutterstock for brainstorming, for inspiration, to planning your next project. Save your favorite images to the like box and once you decide to purchase, they have an amazing deal for you. Use the offer code MacBreak1114 and new accounts will receive 20% off image subscription packages. 20% off with the offer code MacBreak1114, that's on new accounts on the subscription packages. What a great deal. We love Shutterstock. We use them. And I know you'll love it too. Shutterstock.com, don't forget that offer code when you decide to buy a subscription. MacBreak1114. So. Should I..

Rene: We've got some real time follow up.

Leo: Real time follow up. Ladies and gentlemen from Rene Ritchie!

Rene: The watch resolutions are 272x340 for the 38mm and 312x390 for the 42mm.

Leo: What's the DPI, can we calculate that?

Rene: Probably, I don't have PCalc in front of me.

Leo: DPI calculator, there's a great DPI calculator on the web, let me enter this all in here. So on the high resolution you said what?

Rene: So the 38mm is 272x340.

Leo: By 340.. now.. uh oh. It's in inches. Um. Hm. I'm going to have to now do.. how many milometers?

Rene: 38mm in inches.

Leo: Convert 38mm to inches.

Rene: 1.5 inches.

Leo: Alright it's 1.49606 according to the Google.

Andy: According to Google Watch.

Leo: Alright let's get that in here. Your watch? You did that on your watch?

Andy: Yeah I use this for like trivia questions all the time.

Leo: That's excellent. That's 291ppi!

Rene: Not bad.

Leo: That's excellent! Not bad, that's Retina baby!

Rene: Yep.

Andy: Depends on how long your arms are.

Rene: (laughs)

Leo: You know what, my new Kindle Voyage, the one we were singing its praises, 300ppi. So 291, I'll take it.

Rene: Better than the iPad Air, the iPad Air is 264.

Leo: And what's the other resolution?

Rene: 312x390.

Leo: And that is.. that's on the little one?

Rene: That's the 42mm.

Leo: Oh crap, now I have to do this. Okay convert 42.. that's 1.6.. let's copy that. You see, talk about real time updates. Alright, and let's see what that is. That's over 300ppi. So we're hovering around 300 dots per inch on both of these displays. That's good.

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: That's plenty. That's a lot better, isn't it Andy, than the Android Wear stuff? I think so.

Andy: Yeah, if you look close enough on these watches, you can see..

Leo: You can see it for sure.

Andy: ..the dots. Not so much that you would be taken seriously as someone who is.. it's like if your complaint is hey if I look really really closely I can see the dots. It doesn't affect the clarity of the thing. But that really depends on what kind of apps that Apple and Apple developers choose to build for it. If they build apps that really do take advantage of that display, I mean having been there in the room and having been able to see those watches, yeah I mean. It's as good as any iPhone screen, and it really is impressive. But I would rather take a drop in resolution to a drop in functionality if that turns out to be the case. So it's nice, but it's not definitive. It's also good to ask the question of what will that do to the battery life of the device?

Leo: Right, that's a lot of pixels.

Andy: Right now, the 360 is semi notorious for not having a really good battery or not having a really good energy efficient CPU and I easily get two days’ worth of use out of it.

Leo: Yeah. But you have to be thoughtful. For instance, and this is something people aren't yet ready to do, or ready to think about, but if you put a moving second hand on your watch, it kills the battery faster than if there is no second hand. Because it's a screen and it has to update it!

Andy: Yeah. And do you want to keep the screen lit all the time? Or do you just want it to light up when you turn your wrist? That sort of stuff. So it is going to be highly subjective, also it's going to depend on if you have like terrible connectivity with your phone and with the internet for whatever reason, there's so many factors that Apple's going.. that I believe Apple's going to be on top of in a way that Motorola was not at the launch of their own watch.

Leo: One hopes.

Jason: I'm finding 205ppi for the Moto 360.

Leo: Well that's not bad, that's not bad.

Andy: Yeah that's fine. Even Apple doesn't play the battle of the numbers. They basically say well what do we do of the resolution of that screen, what do we do with the clock cycles of this CPU?

Leo: You know, it has to be good enough so that when you put the Rolex watch face on it, it actually looks like a Rolex, that's all.

Rene: They haven't said you can make custom watch faces yet. We'll have to find out about that.

Leo: Oh yeah they may not. You can on Android Wear.

Andy: And see that's the sort of stuff I'm talking about in terms of having more development time where Google is going to be releasing the next version of the Android Wear operating system and one of them is going to be to make it really really easy to design custom watch face apps. Motorola released an update to this specific piece of hardware last month, or excuse me a couple of weeks ago that simply says we won't let you simply design anything willy nilly but we'll let you put whatever.. this did not ship with a squirrel watch face. This is a photo that I actually put on there. And you can change the watch hands and stuff like that.

Rene: It should actually do that.

Andy: And that's.. there's so many questions that we're still trying to answer on what people like about this and one of the things that I think is going to be significant is the idea that.. like I think one of the things that Motorola got very much right, there is nothing to this hardware except for just the thinnest bezel possible to highlight the screen. And so.. I wish that it had swappable bands as easily as the Apple Watch does but if it made as easy to swap out watch faces to my liking on a whim as it is to switch out watch bands on the Apple Watch well that's not a bad trad off either. So I wonder what people are going to like about customizing these things and whether they're going to .. the idea that they're putting the same watch on to go to a family wedding as they wore just for a weekend with friends but they feel as though you know what, I shouldn't have the squirrel watch face on for the wedding, I should put on the Rolex watch face. Just to make sure my parents know that I've made it.

Leo: Well and Apple with a snap on and off band, it really does foster that. I mean I think you could be very happy with the steel watch. I hope I could be very happy with the steel watch and a couple of good bands. One for daily use, one for weddings.

Andy: I've got to tell you..

Leo: In my case it's not weddings, it's funerals but you know, same idea.

Andy: I am terrified of what the pricing is going to be on these other two. They said the minimum buy in is going to be $350 and that's acceptable especially for an Apple product but I am terrified when they show off.. what's it going to cost to have the stainless steel version of it and I'm prepared to just say it may as well be $10 million for  the gold one because you're marketing to people that..

Leo: Out of my league baby.

Andy: It's like.. okay. Let's get good and liquored up for that show. We know they're going to announce the price to us some time during when we record. Like okay, I got Guinnesses in me. I'm ready.

Rene: You have people like my friend Kevin Mitchell who gets more excited the higher he thinks the price is going to be. At 10 grand he's interested, at 20 grand he's really interested.

Leo: Oh he's one of those guys. He's a watch guy.

Andy: Let me put it this way, I am contacting my relatives to find out.. how much did grandma and grandpa pay for their first house? Because I feel like I'm going to need that dollar figure when I write my commentary on how much the gold one costs.

Leo: That's your limit. You know I've spent, a couple of cases, a lot of money for watches. Not Rolex money but pretty hefty sum. Painful sum. And I know they were a rip off. It was a rip off. It's jewelry, it's status.. it doesn't.. you know.

Rene: Yeah it's jewelry.

Leo: And I guess that softened me up but.. like you Andy I'm a little worried.

Andy: Let me tell you the story of a young teenage boy who was a goat herder in the hills of the Italian Alps. Who came here with only a dream and $28 in his pocket. Amazed that he could provide a home for himself and his small family, and imagine me meeting this young boy..

Leo: And really, let's admit it. Spending a lot of money on a watch is absolutely the worst kind of conspicuous consumption. Because a $5 is exactly as good as a $50,000 watch.

Rene: That's like saying a Toyota is as good as Lamborghini Leo.

Leo: No it's not! Time is time. It doesn't tell the time faster, it doesn't tell the time better. In fact, probably it's less accurate than the $5 watch.

Alex: And I think it's going to be hard to tell the side between the aluminum and the stainless steel and the gold.. I mean. There are reasons that you buy different watches I mean..

Leo: The only reason you buy the gold is to show you have so much money you don't care.

Alex: No you're right. The gold one is ostentatious. I couldn't be seen in that.

Andy: I'm sorry, I was just thinking about the buying decision between do I want the stainless steel watch, or do I want the aluminum watch and four months’ worth of heating oil this winter. Hm.

Leo: Yeah.

Alex: Well my thing is that I want to know when I get the rubberized G-shock watch. Like that's what I want, is a rubberized one.

Andy: That will be perfect. The single most brilliant of this will be to buy the gold watch but also to like kick start like a rubber G-shock carrying case for it so it looks like you've got a Walmart off brand.

Alex: That will only work on the gold one. This is just for the gold one.

Rene: A life proof case.

Leo: Apparently our friend Kevin Rose, who is a watch hound, has created a new watch app called Watchville. An app that aggregates news from top wrist watch blogs and offers an atomic clock tool to help you set your timepiece and its moon phases. And look who already has it. (laughs)

Andy: That's just a bad marketing decision. Because the people who are using their phones to get their time anyway aren't going to be buying watches, are they? I'm sorry this is the worst pitch we've had on shark tanking in 100 episodes.

Leo: You use it to set your watch.
Andy: I'm out. No that's the punch line to the joke. After you spend 10 minutes explaining how this $8,000 watch, what the different gears and dials and different movements are “What time is it?” Uh, it's 12:10.

Leo: Actually Kevin tells an interesting story. He says when his father passed away, which wasn't so long ago, that was just a few years ago. He says I wasn't a watch guy until my dad died, and he handed me down a Rolex. And he said it was pretty much all he could afford so he spent a lot of time and care on it. That is one big difference. A high quality watch, and we've mentioned this before, is an heirloom. Not a high quality Apple Watch.

Andy: I have my grandfather's watch as a matter of fact, that was my dad's watch so..

Leo: Yeah.

Andy: I'm sorry, I've been meaning to say. If you can afford a really expensive watch and you can enjoy a really expensive watch, I absolutely am not judging you. I will have some fun at the expense of the most.. what might be the most expensive thing Apple has ever sold and it doesn't even have a USB port on it, but I will not dis somebody for having a love.. I have friends who have really really nice watches and you could tell that this was not something that they bought just because they saw it in an ad in a cigar magazine and they wanted to look like the guy in the magazine ad, they have an actual love of this sort of stuff. So I'm not in any way denigrating that.

Leo: I have to think, I make a little judgment in my mind when I see..

Andy: All he wanted was a plot of land. Maybe he could grow some tomatoes in the back, raise his two children and teach them to be good Americans.

Leo: I'm torn between disregard and intense jealousy.

Andy: Oh there's jealousy too.

Leo: (laughing) I want that Rolex but at the same time, I can't.. it's just. Having something.. a $50,000 thing on your wrist it's like what??

Andy: Yeah, and these are.. again, I have friends with these nice watches and they've let me wear them for a day.. when I bought this watch and I was trying to figure out if I really wanted to have.. this was a big watch compared to what I was wearing before.. and so here I've got a watch exactly that same size, why don't you wear that for a day? And it really is just a beautiful.. the weight of it, you really do appreciate that this is a really nicely made mechanical object, it is like love of cars, it really is like love of sculpture. There's just an appreciation of it that goes beyond its immediate function.

Leo: Well and it is an heirloom, I mean you can hand down a lovely type timepiece.

Andy: And you can get it fixed, and 30 years from now you can get it fixed. That was my dad's birthday present one year where he broke it and it was in a drawer for about four or five or six or seven, eight years. And I had my mom sneak it out and I took it to two or three watch makers who rebuilt it and it was working fine again. I'm not sure if, I'm hoping there will be people, the 2081 version of Ben Heck will have a watch repair shop who will say I think I can make this smaller.

Leo: Yeah. Will the Apple Watch hold its value?

Andy: Nah.

Alex: No it will be the same as any electronic.

Andy: Over decades, no. It will have resale value in the same way that old iPads are brilliant because you can get at least half of your money back from whenever you decide to upgrade, so they'll definitely be that but in terms of I spent x thousands of dollars for this gold watch, there will be some point, unless Apple has designed it specifically so that you can replace the innards and upgrade the electronics for like five or ten years, there will be a point at which there's a company that you mail this gold Apple Watch to and they will give you a fair market value for the gold that's inside that watch..

Leo: So sad.

Andy: ..send you back your peeled off screen protector that you paid 80 cents for.

Leo: We will have, I tell you what, when we do get to that day when we're going to announce the prices and availability on the Apple Watch we will have Rich Siegel join us from Bare Bones software, creator of BBEdit, who is in fact a watch hound.

Andy: We should also, we should also have Dave Naney who does a super duper because he's also a watch collector and he has.. you go to his house and you see like it's sort of like Willy Wonka's dresser top because there are these machines that do nothing but tumble these self-winding watches.

Leo: (laughing)

Andy: And even the automatic watch winders are really well designed or really well made, and they're..

Leo: Oh lord.

Andy: My respect for people who have an appreciation for fine watches comes from my friendship with both of these men.

Leo: I don't know how much disposable income I'd have to have before I'd get into that. But I think it would be a significant amount.

Rene: (cutting in and out – unintelligible)

Leo: First thing I'm going to do is going to buy Rene a good Skype connection. Actually we're now on Hangouts and it's still not working.

Andy: Now I think that new oil pipeline between Canada and the United States..

Leo: Oh there you go.

Andy: On the way up there we can just shove some internet in there.

Leo: Put some bits in there because it will be empty going back.

Andy: Exactly, why waste it? They've got to maintain the pressure somehow. If we fill it up with electrons..

Leo: I really, I have to really be careful because I could just feel myself sucked into the watch vortex.

Andy: Yeah I know, because.. the saving grace is that I will be wearing one of these things for the day.. this is really nice, maybe I would like it. And then well how much is that? Eek! Maybe not. It's like if it were a $500 watch then I wouldn't have a problem, if it's a $2,000 watch that's easy, no. I don't want to double the value of my car by being inside it with this watch. That's all I'm saying.

Leo: (laughs)

Alex: But I do think it's going to really interesting when you look at whether it's this... this is the beginning of these watches, of course what's going to happen is we're going to end up with a lot of much less expensive Android watches that are doing many things, and it's interesting to think about watch manufacturers, I mean look at the watch I have now, the citizen, and I look at it and I go oh this is so cute but..

Leo: But I love that watch.

Alex: I'm only going to wear it for another year. Like as soon as it's released I'm putting the Apple Watch on. I've had the same watch, or the same style of watch for probably over a decade. And I keep on looking at it like I really really thought you were great. You know, it's not like you were a bad girlfriend but..

Andy: Alex, that's exactly it. Because I love this watch, I still do. But it doesn't do the cool stuff that this does that really makes my life easier. This is why I have not put this away, it's like maybe like I should tell myself that maybe I will wear this on the weekends, or maybe at least the weekends I'm not traveling.

Alex: I know! I feel like I'm going to keep my citizen around just so that when I decide I'm going to go off the grid for a weekend or a day or whatever, I'm going to take the watch off, I'm going to put the citizen on and it's like me telling myself that it's still spending some time again with the old girlfriend you know. Just say, it wasn't you, it wasn't you. It was just that she was just..  you know.

Andy: You walk past your middle school playground and if no one's looking you just want to jump on the springy horse. Just to relive the old thrills. And then you jump off.

Alex: Exactly! I'm leaving the phone behind.. I'm going to put the watch down and I'm just going to hang out on the beach. Someday I'll do that. I haven't done that in a long time, but some day. I can dream.

Andy: And the cats in the cradle in the silver spoon.

Leo: I know what's going to happen, I'm going to buy this expensive watch and as I walk out the door I'm having a heart attack and Henry's going to inherit it like instantly.

Rene: (laughing)

Leo: So how would you like to maybe get some money to buy that next watch? I've got an idea for you, Gazelle.com. Start selling your gadgets now and maybe by the time the Apple Watch comes out, you'll have enough money. What's great about Gazelle.com is you can go there right now and get a 30 day quote. A quote that's good for the next 30 days. If you think you might want to do it, do it. That way you'll have the quote, there's no commitment. I can guarantee you no device is going up in value, we're talking about iPhones, iPads, cell phones from BlackBerry and Samsung. All the manufacturers, LG, HTC, Motorola, Nokia, we're talking tablets from Amazon, Asus, Google, Microsoft, Samsung as well as Apple. Great prices. And they make it very easy. So you get the quote, 30 days gives you enough time to get the new device transfer the data over, wipe the old device. Then say okay I'm ready to sell it, and they'll send you a box with prepaid shipping, you don't pay any shipping in this, pile all those gadgets in, they turn it around fast, if you forget to wipe the data.. what? $410 for an iPhone 6 well there you go. I'm not selling my iPhone, that would be an Oh Henry story. He sold his iPhone 6 to buy an Apple Watch, and he couldn't use it. You need your iPhone, okay? I'm just saying. You can get a check, a Paypal credit if you're in a hurry, or if you are an Amazon buyer you do a lot of Amazon shopping as I do, get the Amazon gift card, they’ll bump the value an extra 5%. Go to Gazelle(dot)com get an offer for your iPhone or iPad and, lock into today’s price for thirty days, even broken iPhones and, iPads. Gazelle(dot)com, they’ve paid out nearly 170 million dollars to over a million customers, and, and…… it’s easy and, we’ve certainly visit it a lot. In fact, I think, maybe I have been saving up for my Apple Watch, but instead of saving cash I just save old cell phones, and I’m going to cash them in on Gazelle(dot)com. But do it now because it is not going to get more valueable. Gazelle(dot)com

Alright should we……right we’ve got two upgrades, we’ve got Yosemite OS 10, 10.10.1 and, we’ve got iOS 8.1.1. Let’s start with Yosemite, biggest problem on Yosemite has been Wi-fi. I have not experienced that, but there seemed to be widespread Wi-fi issues, and even now though 10.1.1 just came 10.10.1 just came out people are already saying Oh, it doesn’t necessarily fix the Wi-fi. What’re you hearing Rene?

Rene: So, every-time there’s an update it will cause Wi-fi problems for some people. I have come to realize that this is just the truth of the universe, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. But, for people who have this specific bug with Yosemite where it will change the network or drop the network it does fix that bug. There might be other bugs that people have and other issues that they have but the main issue is fixed with Yosemite with 10.10.1.

Leo: And what was…… what would Evan Cassis fix…….?

Rene: You would disable the administrator for Wi-fi works.

Leo: And, if you enable the administrator page that’s it? Or do we have to…..

Rene: It just fixes that, as far as I know on any system that we had trouble with that will fix that.

Leo: All right, there’s an article on iMore, explains how to do it, it’s not hard.

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: But, I don’t know how to do it, so or I would show you.

Rene: Also fixes for me at this end that really annoying error of quitting multiple versions of your computer up, say you would have Bonjour would put multiple versions of your computer up, so mac book pro would have 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 to 100 sometimes I think that Rich Segal twitted that he had 2073 Apple TVs at one point. I don’t know if the Apple TV version is fixed but the version for Macs is definitely fixed.

Leo: Wait a minute, say that again, he had what?

Rene: It was 200……2073 bathroom Apple TVs listed on…….

Leo: (Laughing)……he actually counted ‘em?

Rene: Well no, it puts the number in brackets next to them, he was just adding them. Instead of replacing it he was adding to the list.

Leo: He seems to have a problem? (Cross Talk)

Rene: He says not a lot of people have these problems. (laughing)

Andy: But, let’s not forget the fact the Rich Segal has an Apple TV in his bathroom. (cross talk)

Leo: That’s boss, okay.

Andy: All over the world listeners are saying, ‘honey maybe we should get an Apple TV for our bathroom?’

Leo: (Laughing) So let me ask a question about this Wi-fi thing because I have many macs, I have not seen it? Do we know why some people have this problem and, some don’t?

Rene: No, but it happens every update, I have never had a Wi-fi issue, but there are people that have it almost consistently.

Leo: It seems so weird.

Rene: Yeah. It seems like there’s so many millions of devices that, some two or three percent which is a lot of people.

Leo: You would think that this would somehow be reduce able?

Rene: That’s why I think that it happens every time. It’s some sort of edge case.

Leo: Why is it that Apple seems to have that trouble with Wi-fi than any other company though? Is that not true?

Andy: I was having the same problem with OS 8 on an awful lot of my devices, that weren’t being reproduced on iOS 6 or 7 or my android or my other devices. And like this couple of months ago when we were talking about the quote, ‘bending problem,’ on the iPhone 6. If we hear a dozen well publicised cases then these are just random things, once you put up a million of these peoples’ hands things are going to happen, even if it’s two or three per cent of these people. Enough of these people are now having these problems and this is a serious issue too. It’s only okay if you’re part of the 97 per cent, everybody wins a bad lottery at some point in life.

Alex: Well, I don’t think if it’s any worse on the Mac side, I think that sometimes there’s so many problems on the PC that you just don’t notice.

Andy: Anything with networking I’m willing to be so forgiving, not that I am not enjoying having Wi-fi, but I can’t really say… with the Mac Safe Connector I can say,’ Okay did you even try plugging this in, sitting with this MacBook on the sofa’? I will be that arrogant when it comes to the Mac Safe Two Connector, when it comes to networking it’s like there are so many variables, you cannot test for all of them. The only thing you can do at some is think that, ‘okay I’ve been diligent as possible in making this work, and then the last step is to release and, then find out who’s getting failures.

Leo: Alex you’ve always said don’t download the new operating system, don’t download the first update to the new operating system. Wait and, download it all when they update the update.

Alex: And, yeah and, that’s what we’re doing………so we still have kind of computers who are in the last three versions. We’re still not taking some of the versions on the current machines. The current versions on the machines are 1086, and this is because my Cisco camera stopped working on Skype and Hangouts on Mavericks and Yosemite. And, so we still have a couple of machines that are on the older one, and we have the ones on Mavericks that we’re working with and then we’re moving some to Yosemite. I think we’re going to move everything to Yosemite that is in Mavericks. We’re going to keep out 1086 computers I reckon, because there’s still a couple pieces of hard-ware that don’t work on Mavericks and, Yosemite, and so there’s a handful of machines that can do that, because otherwise we’re just about ready, because Mavericks is just as…….crap.

Leo: Really, it’s that bad.

Alex: Well, from an audio-visual perspective, the whole had never really worked which is why we had tested it here, there and not. But Yosemite is an improvement over Mavericks. Mavericks, we pretty much skip you know other than on a handful of computers. I really feel like……this yearly update thing is really not a good idea for Apple, I get that it’s free and, everything else but I feel like we’re packing a bunch of features in, but I feel not going back and cleaning everything up.

Leo: Don’t they do that though? Don’t they  alternate stability releases with new feature releases? Not anymore?

Alex: No.

Rene: A, lot of people think  they need a Snow Leopard moment?

Leo: They need a Snow Leopard. I thought this would be our Snow Leopard moment?

Alex: It’s not. Well, they added a lot of things, I mean they added a lot of things to Yosemite and, I think there’s a little bit of one up-man-ship going on there. I think they should stop and I would be quite happy for them to stay in Yosemite for the next two or three years, just to work on stability, you know….

Leo: I think…….

Alex: You know we’re just going to keep on doing……..I don’t think they need to add anything. I don’t need my operating system to change that much. I just need for it to get better and, you know 1086 in my opinion was the last fully stable you know operating system.

Rene: But, you know Charlsford Lee hard sold Snow Leopard to Apple, he had to campaign to get that done and, he did…….

Leo: Yeah, let’s tread water for a bit and, really make sure that this is rock solid and really make it an update that is solid. You know Microsoft kind of does that. You know Windows 7 was a response to Vista, and I don’t know and Windows 8 is kind of like a big change.

Rene: Windows 9, no bugs. Windows 9 will have zero bugs.

Leo: Ten, is going to be ten, they can skip the 9.

Rene: Sorry, yeah……

Leo: That’s why 9 no bugs……I’m sorry,……… I get it. So our advice to people using Yosemite is upgrade or not?

Rene: Yeah, yes this is Alex’s…… the bug fix of the bug fix.

Alex: Exactly.

Leo: And, it could screw you up with Wi-fi?

Rene: If you have a problem, it’ll most likely fix it. I haven’t heard of that many new problems, just the old problems.

Leo: Yes, if you don’t have a problem, it’s not going to give you a problem.

Rene: There is a catch every time, there’s a catch every time Leo. It involves taking your life in your hands, any time with any of the updates.

Leo: Put out a disclaimer. We make no promises. But, it seems worth it.

Rene:. (cross talk) .1.1 is a really good update, if you’ve been waiting in an iOS 8 this one, if you have an iPad this will give you back half a gig or…….

Leo: Oh that’s awesome.

Rene: Greater capacity on it or, it’s performance is great, it’s better for the 4S, it’s better for the iPad too. It’s better for all of the general feel, it feels very polished, very stable. There’s this old joke that you get the release and, then you get the hurry up, patch up this broken release and, then you get the fix release and, this really like this fix release.

Leo: So, get a one, one as well.

Rene: Yes.

Leo: Okay, there’s our advice. Do the upgrade in both cases, because both of these are fixes to the update.

Rene: And, it’s not the panic fix, because you always get the panic fix within a week or two out. You know there’s no time to do the proper……

Alex: And, that is where people like me go……..that was funny you upgraded immediately. (Panelists laughing ha, ha, ha, ha) yes exactly.

Leo: You installed  0.8.1…….ha, ha, ha…..ha,

Alex: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Leo: Ha, ha….so all right good, right. So, everybody should do your updates, and they’ve already preceded 8.2.

Rene: The SDK, I don’t know if the beta is out yet. I’m not sure if the SDK is out, because 8.2 is going to enable the watch so that’s not going to be coming out till Spring of next year.

Leo: Okay we’re going to be 8.1 for a while.

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: Settle in folks, interesting article, actually it wasn’t an article, it was a post about memory efficiency on Quora Glyn Williams answered a question which a lot of people have is how come the iPhones’ gigabyte of ram is touted to compete with tow or sometimes in some cases three gigabytes of ram on android phones’?

Rene: It’s Java.

Leo: It’s Java, well it’s not even Java, its’ the garbage collections. Now I know and understand how garbage collections works and I’m not sure I agree or disagree with it. He offers some graphs generated….……..to show because of the garbage collection, you want double or more of the foot-print in android because of the way it handles memory than you do iOS. I think this is one thing, whether you’re a sophisticated programmer and, understand the differences or not, it’s observable that both iOS and, Windows phones operate well with much less ram than android does and, I even tell people with android get three gigs if you can. It’ll make a big difference.

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: It is ironic, though because Apple is pushing for 64 gig processors. As far as I’m concerned the only value of 64 gig processors is more ram.

Rene: They gave them the secure pipeline that let them do Touch Id and, Apple Pay though. That was part of the deal for the 64 gig processors.

Leo: That was more secure kernel.

Rene: Yeah, that was a more secure enclave yeah, if you’re in your element.

Leo: And, if……did you have to go to 64 gigs to do that.

Rene: The ARM VA had a lot of stuff……and again I don’t know of all the details of the (cross talk)

Leo:….., it was about the ARM platform.

Rene: It was about the ARM detail all the way, absolutely. People thought that it was a nice side effect as most folks will tweet.

Leo: I’m sure the android officianados will have something to say about this post, but it kind of makes sense.

Rene: It really happened this way though.

Leo: What did you say Rene?

Rene: I think Apple tried various clutch projector C for a very short time, then very quickly got rid of it in favor of the auto C arc.

Leo: Right, it’s system is enumeration, right, so it increments and, then decrements. Garbage collection has to sweep through it along it, okay! Go ahead, Andy I’m sorry.

Andy: No, I was just going to say with 64 bit I……..the more I think about it, the more I look at things that are internal to these devices and, to iOS and, the more I talk to people I think that Apple’s really lining up planes on the runaway for something really big for iPad 2015.

Leo: I would make the argument that they would better with more ram, because Safari has to refresh it’s tabs all the time.

Rene: The iPad Air 2 has to as well, Leo that’s preparing for something.

Leo: Yeah, three gigabytes.

Andy: But that does point out to……there’s so many differences between iOs and, android that go to such smart engineering behind the scenes that Apple’s done, garbage collection’s is one of them, but battery conservation is another. It’s like I’ve spent so much time evaluating android tablets and, android phones I’ll have……I’ll have charged up the iPhone 5 S so that I can compare it to the iPhone 6 and, then I’ll just like use it for a couple of days and, then I’ll put it in a drawer and then I need oh shall I get that picture off the iPhone 5 S and try only try to  find the charger and I haven’t used it for like three weeks and it’s still like at 92 per cent, where as an android phone can barely stay alive with two days of inactivity. It’s just amazing, when you write the book on why iOS is that half  letter grade maybe better than android, a lot of it is that they’ve just done such smart things to keep the power on to keep the water clean, and to keep the earth from moving underneath people’s feet.

Rene: I haven’t charged my iPhone 6 plus since yesterday morning and it’s still at 33 per cent. (Cross talk)

Leo: Williams also says that it is not germain, but also says that there’s garbage collection that is inefficient with memory usage, it requires more power. So, android phones are using more power to do the garbage collections than iPhones have to.

Rene: I don’t think I saw that they had a CES, but I think it was android they had it running in CAR and they were running it in GingerBread still but the guy had to tell you that it could only be in stand by mode for seven days and then it would drain the car battery. Then you would have to power it on again…….(sound distortion)

Leo: Right.

Andy: I just downloaded and installed (Andy holding up a mobile phone) an android elm and, one of the new features is battery saving and, it’s like battery shocking because you’re telling me that at a full charger at one pm it is going to be dead one and half hours from now. Do you think battery life of five hours is acceptable, Mr Battery Manager? And, oohhh, they’re really excited we’ll get you additional 90 minutes to your battery life.

Will you just look at what the iPhone is doing? Why can’t you be more like the iPhone? Making me carry a battery charger if I am going to be leaving the house for more than eight hours.

Leo: Or, you could a Note Four and just carry an extra battery in the slot. Why is it that I haven’t noticed is iPhone 6 and 6 plus much better battery life?(cross talk)

Alex: Well, the 6 plus, I’m going to be giving it up soon, but the one thing I cannot believe how long the battery life is.

Leo: So you don’t need a morphie any more?

Alex: No, I don’t know, if you put a morphie on it, it would no longer be 6 plus it would be a truck.

Andy: I think most people would have a morphie or a battery extender. Not to get a whole weekend of life out of, to make sure no matter what they’ll get a full day and, my goodness you have to basically crack open an iPhone 6 plus and, short the battery terminals not to get a full day’s use out of it. You are really talking in general use like days. So much so that like there are days when I have to keep a note of when was the last time this was charged, to make sure I appreciate how good this battery is, with the furthest to supersized phone like android where the big plus of having that extra size and having the extra battery in there you almost get almost a full day and a half probably, or may be two days if you don’t use it that much. Rest with the iPhone plus, it really is just you’ve…….it’s only bad in that you might break yourself of the habit of automatically putting it in the charger every single night. Because of you forget a night, it’s no problem you still have another full day, forget that the second you’ll probably have enough to get you to the office where you’ll be able to plug in.

I assume with android you’re like, thank-god for this crappy battery life because I’ll never ever go to bed without plugging this into the charger before I fall asleep.

Rene: I did Singleton with the iPad without the charger. I had my morphie station do all that; I took it everywhere with me. I never had to take it out and, it was almost a religious experience.

Leo: Well, the iPhone 6 seems to be outselling iPhone 6 plus.

Andy: They had enough electricity for one night, and yet the screen for the iPhone 6 plus burned for seven nights.

Leo: For two thousand years we’re going to be telling this story to sayer.

The iPhone 6 outsold the iPhone 6 plus by three to one, now Apple’s not saying this. This is a report from consumer intelligence research partners…credible? We don’t clearly know how the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus have relatively been?

Rene: Leger of T-Mobile says it was fifty-fifty, everyone one else said three to one, probably not far off.

Leo: Yeah. That merely means that Apple fans don’t want to make that big jump from a four inch phone to a five and half inch phone. That’s a big jump.

Rene: It’s also availability we don’t know how many 6 pluses are selling. I know of people who are still waiting from launch date have still not got their phone through carriers.

Alex: I know a lot of people went to buy a 6 plus and, ended up buying a 6 because they wanted to walk away with a phone, and the 6 plus wasn’t available. And, again looking back now I’m going to probably go back to the 6 plus, the 6 makes more sense though.

Leo: It’s so elegant. It could change if you start seeing a lot of apps take advantage of extra real estate on the 6 plus. But right now everything’s just big.

Alex: I feel like I need to get another phone or a whole set of…I want a whole new wardrobe because the 6 plus doesn’t fit many of my pockets.

Rene: Tactical plans Alex.

Alex: I was going to send Scott an email about me designing my own shirt so it fits the 6 plus, it’s got the whole thing and…

Andy: Again here I say 511technical(dot) com get the pro-pants. I was on stage at the mac tech conference last week, I needed to have my hands free so did I put my iPad air two?

Leo: Where?

Andy: In, the back pocket of my pants. It fit easily, and when I…

Leo: Who would have thought of that? Get your picks ready ladies and gentlemen because we are about to go to our picks, but first it’s snack time, and Andy I’m just going to tempt you,

Alex: So, Lisa sent some of these to our office to 205 to have a couple of them and, now we’re like little rats, now we come down and grab them, here and there.

Leo: Oh, now I know where our nature box is going. Those are really good. I was like well we’ll see how this turns out, and they are so addicting.

Leo: What is in the big pineapple rings Andy asks that makes them so delicious. As with everything with nature box, nutritionist approved, minimum ingredients, no high fructose, corn syrup, no transfat, no artificial colors or flavors. In fact if you look at the ingredients list on big island pineapple ring-what’s inside is pineapples. What is it that they do to these Andy? They’re so good.

Andy: Is pineapple the trade name of some artificial sweetener or something?

Leo: What it is you start with the best pineapple, and you don’t dry them fast, you dry them slowly, you don’t use sulphides, you just make delicious…. mmmmmmm (eating).

Alex: And, then you look at the ingredients and, it’s all that you can burn out.

Leo: Yeah, (talking with mouthful) they’re famous for their shortened ingredients list. All right here’s the deal, I said eating pineapple, go to naturebox (dot) com (slash) twit. What is this, snacks delivered monthly to your door (still eating) you can get the surprise snack, or you can pick a special snack, or and by the way this is what you’re going to get in the free trial right now and, this changes sometimes-the sea salt sun crunch, the cranberry medley, the coconut cashews, those coconut cashews I love those and then the jalapeno snack and then a surprise snack. Mmmmmm These are so good. So try it right now you only pay two dollars for the shipment, I think it’s at naturebox (dot) com (slash) twit and then you can get these delivered monthly to your doors, and you will love them. Great for the kids, for the whole family and, much better than going to that candy bar machine in the middle of the day when you need just a little something. What’s nice is that these are reseal-able bags so you can have a single pineapple ring, zip the bag up so it stays nice and fresh for the next time, naturebox (dot) com (slash) twit. I shouldn’t have to beg, just do it then that way maybe pixel corp will come over to your house next time.

Rene: They’re in Canada too now, Leo.

Leo: Are they?

Rene: Yeah! They’re so good I brought some to a party, they lasted a week or the week before. Everyone was used to getting those old green, orange stuff that has been on the convenient store shelves for years. I put this out and you could actually see the heavenly light in their eyes light up when they put them in their mouths.

Leo: (Singing) NatureBox, strawberry, Greek yoghurt pretzels, mango, orange fruit chews…

Andy: I had some Cris Niches and, Leo you were talking about the packages, it was almost as if you said about an unused portion, now you can seal that back in.

Leo: I am always very good, I will take one blueberry nom, nom and, I’ll save the rest for later.

Alex: I try and then I’ll go ohhhhh I could do with one more.

Andy: You see I finished those pineapple slices before I finished my leftover Halloween candy.

Leo: I know.

Andy: I was…

Leo: Those are truly remarkable I have to agree.

Andy: Pretty good.

Leo: Their amazing. Let’s get to our picks of the week. Why don’t I…why don’t you take it off Mr Andy Ihnatko?

Andy: My choice is this really cool game called space age, that is going to activate cram cane 200 in the future of video podcasting here. It’s of value to people of a certain age (cross talk)

Leo: Leave it…. it’s upside down for you but…

Andy: I wanted to put it right side up but it went up the other way, but now it’s working fine. Yeah, it’ll be very, very familiar to people who like grew up playing the Sierra online games because it’s basically eight bit, you move your guy around a place, but I can’t remember if there was ever another game played if there was…I did not play it for the first ten minutes, because I was listening to the music. Let me just…I don’t know…

Leo: I do hear it… it sounds good.

Andy: And, that’s not even like the main triumphant theme…theme…theme song of it. It’s such beautiful music, it’s that actually written by Cable Sasser, when we’re talking about apps with great user interfaces, so he’s a developer, so he now also is a really good, really nice composer, actually let me see if I can get it into iTunes, but I’ll tap to continue so that you can see some of what this actually does. So, you’re actually like just walking people through a terrain, it tells a story that’s many, many chapters long. It’s exactly the sort of game that I like. I don’t like these fast twitch muscle sorts of things. I don’t like having to spend weeks and, weeks learning how to use a digital sword and, then mastering this new tool that I cannot use nowhere else, except for inside this one game. It’s just pleasant, you can pause it, you can pick it up from elsewhere and, it’s just such a pleasant experience from start to finish.

Another cool thing about it I will say in passing in part of it set up options, is that you can actually set it up so that if you have a certain red color blindness or green blindness it will let you change just the colors of the displays so that you can actually use the displays a lot better. So, I think…what is it about five bucks, unfortunately I am trying to find out, it’s like, I remember it’s not one of those apps…(interrupted by Leo) it’s 3.99 there you go. Thank god it’s not free, thank god it’s not 99 cents, they’re actually charging an actual amount of money that is realistic for the amount of the work that they’ve done in this thing and, the only thing stopping from buying the sound track is just that I don’t want to spoil, I don’t want to spoil the ending of the story, because there are spoilers inside the track. This is like the sound track to star wars episode one, all over again. So, high recommendation, I am only in chapter two but every time, all the time I have spent here is really good fun time. I don’t feel stupid for playing it either. When, I am asked if I want to play a game, I just don’t want to feel stupid playing this game that’s all.

Leo: All right, 3.99 and do you tap to make the man movement around, how does that work.

Andy: Yeah, it is very much like Sierra online game, you have to move people around the landscape, you encounter other people, you encounter new mysteries, but again in chapter two you see you’re going to be called upon to solve as you make your way through the game. It’s sort of game that’s right up my alley. I play games to have a calming influence, like the calming effect I don’t play games to say……tt…ttttt.tt, okay back to work now…….ttt…..tttt mission accomplished.

Leo: Thank-you Andy. Ladies and, gentlemen we move to Mr Rene Ritchie from imore(dot)com for his picks of the day.

Rene: I’m first going to second Andy’s Space Age is terrific Matt Comi and, Neven Mrzan never did a design out of panic. I did this is a beta but if you want a better time just get that game don’t even think twice about it. Utterly fantastic, because I was actually do space station but Andy got to it first before me. But, I was in luck because another great app launched before the show and, it’s called Vellum, and it’s an e-book production app. You know ibooks author is great but it’s ibooks only, it’s iPad and mac only. What Vellum does is it wants to take all the heavy lifting out of making books that are cross platform so for the ibooks and the amazon kindle. And, Trinity Cauldwell who previously did all the books for Macworld and is now doing a bunch of books for iMore, she took a look at it and she just loved it and, I can’t think of higher recommendation for an ebook app than that. It’s for the mac now it’s free to try and if you generate books you have to pay them something, but it’s one of those things that is more than worthwhile if you’re going to make a lot of books. It’s apparently up for a licences it’s 50 per cent off for now and I think you can get an unlimited licences; it’s a 150 dollars which is a steal. If you’ve ever had the chance to watch Serenity Singleton where she explained the excruciating process of making cross platform books, that is money so well spent. Because this got her almost all the way there almost immediately, so if you’re into making e-books then and you want to have them on iBooks and, you want to have them on kindle I can’t recommend this more than enough. The new version is just terrific.

Leo: Mr Alex Lindsay, your pick of the week.

Alex: So, for the tip on this one I want to thank Aaron Coe who I think actually sent a couple of us the link and, I bid, this is my next tip and I don’t have it sitting in front of me, I didn’t put it in my bag but I had been playing with it for the last couple of days is the shoulder pod.  The shoulder pod…this is a very solid mount for your iPhone and, it does work with an iPhone 6 plus which I tested. (Showing You Tube Video) what it does is it gives a quarter twenty mount if you can put it on tripod, it kind of like a little handle which at first I thought was really silly, until I started playing with it and if you want to hold your phone and have kind of one handed operation with our thumb to start recording and start taking photos it actually works really well. But really one of the great things about it is…

Leo: (Laughing) it’s on a slider.

Alex: It’s kind of like a slider, but the thing is it finally gives you a really solid, I mean there’s a really a lot of little mounts that I play with, that I have. I think nearly every one of the mounts out there, ones that cost more and less everything else, but the problem is finding one that is really solid, that you feel like is really going to, you know you can attach your phone and really attach to your rig or test wherever you want to put it on has been very difficult from my perspective. I have attached this one for one of my big tests this week hopefully will be to put, that onto a Ronan, which is kind of this steady cam kind of system. But, the main thing is that half of this is really solid, it grabs onto your phone, and it’s really stable, that it’s really going to stay on exactly where you had it when you put it onto your tripod. I think, this is the first one that I found that I am really comfortable with it, it doesn’t like squeeze it in a weird way or, anything else. I mean there are some cases that you can put around it but I didn’t think that I really would want to use the cases because they’re a lot of other things that I do with my phone. So, having just a mount that I can screw onto no matter what case it has on it was something that I thought was very advantageous, so anyway I’m pretty happy with it, relatively compared to some of these other cases at 35 dollars. It’s a pretty good deal.

Leo: Yeah, it’s only 120^th of an Alex.

Alex: Yeah. And, a lot them that I’ve got have been a lot more than that and not been as functional.

Leo: Holder pod S1 and it’s not just for iPhones, it’s got adjustable grips.

Alex: You could really put……I tried it with my MA and of course with iPhone 6 S and of course it’s fine with 5 so all of those ranges work fine with it.

Leo: Slider not included.

Alex: Yeah that’s more than 35 dollars I kept saying.

Andy: Alex, is there a fancy schmancy style nickel name for that track?

Alex: For the slider?

Andy: Yeah.

Alex: It’s called a slider actually. You can get a mechanical slider, you can get……

Leo: It’s a white castle slider, it’s different.

Alex: Exactly, if you tried to treat it like a  white castle slider you’ll end up in a hospital, but you know it’s like……

Leo: Of course you should use a white castle slider with a slow moving camera across a plain surface. (Cross talk)

Andy: I was hoping it was kind of being called here as binge in rat trap push focus.

Leo: Well I think it’s cool we should probably get one. Oh John says we should get one. How much are they just out of curiosity?

Alex: It really ranges you can get one for a couple of hundred dollars for a manual and then you can get automatic ones that are more expensive. One of the ones that we’re looking at getting soon for the round table show that we do, is the red rocks micro mix that one that……..it’s kind of motorised and it kind of goes back and, forth really slowly.

Leo: Because then you just switch to it and there is some movement, but it’s not really……..They had that at the iTunes festival, that’s exactly they were using, they had a long track in the ceiling and, the……and the camera went back and forth just all the time and then they just switched to it every once in a while. And, it’s for moving very slowly but perceptively so you get that nice look.

Alex: And, so they have one which is on a curved track so you do it with a person a subject staying focused the whole time, so it doesn’t change.

Leo: So, it would go around me at the whole time.

Alex: Absolutely.

Leo: How much is that one?

Alex: I was trying…….

Leo: Let’s get a red rock slider, I want one. I want one, it’s called one man crew, the world’s only motorised parabolic motion. Is that it?

Alex: 1500 dollars.

Leo: I want get an iWatch let’s get that instead. Make it so…..Janet B is going to order this one right now will just put it on the table here. Actually, for my pick of the week I’m going to introduce Sam Downey, come on up here Sam real quickly. Sam comes every year here for National Epilepsy Awareness Month, actually the big day was November 7^th, and you went again to the Disney Land Resort right.

Sam: I did that’s right.

Leo: How many people showed up for that?

Sam: For this one we had 4,000 people.

Leo: And, that’s more than you had last year. And, it turned Disney Land purple, that was the idea, because purple is the official color of the epilepsy award, you could find out more by the way if you were to go to epilepsyawarenessday(dot)org. And, Sam you do this every year, that’s so great.

Sam: Last year was the tester year.

Leo: Oh so this is the second year.

Sam: This year we also had an expo which was really fantastic where you can meets lots of non-profit charities and when you think about epilepsy it affects more people than breast cancer in the world, and also more people than parkinson’s and, dementia combined. And when you look at those figures it’s immense, so I’m a tech guy as well but I also have epilepsy myself so that’s kind of why I’m behind it.

And, it’s a really good thing, when epilepsy affects families doing an event at Disney Land is really fantastic because it brings families together.

Leo: Sam, it’s really great to see you, when you were here last week we didn’t get time to talk, I tried to finish the show on time so that we could say hi. If people want to find out more and if they want to support epilepsy awareness, should they just go to epilepsyawarenessday(dot)com, is that the best place.

Sam: Yeah, certainly, we are also on the website that sponsors, when you go to the page there you’ll get all the non-profits, so if you want to donate to any epilepsy charities that’s the best place to go at the moment.

Leo: Excellent. Sam it’s great to see you. Thank-you for the purple bear, I took the other one home so you can keep that one. I really appreciate you, a voice for epilepsyawareness Sam Downey, he’s on twitter @samdowney……..and you’re a podcaster too in the UK.

Sam: In the UK, I work for the BBC as well, so I work for the tech program called click and that’s broadcast on BBC world service. There some features on tech startups in San Francisco.

Leo: There are a few I hear. Sam Downey, that’s my pick….epilepsyawarenessday(dot)org, hey I want to thank you Andy Ihantko for being here today from the Chicago Sun Times, always great to have you always appreciate you, yeah really appreciate your insight and your openness to the idea that there might be something outside the Apple world.

Andy: Also, Leo you’re now talking to a guy who’s just now eating, who’s not enthusiastic about eating fruit.

Leo: And, you loved the pineapple.

Andy: All due to alien experiences.

Leo: We want to thank Mr Alex Lindsay for joining us from his studio from Pittsburg. I like the 50 percent grey behind you, I think that is a nice neutral color behind you.

Alex: Yeah, it’s a good start, being me it’ll keep on changing, but this is where it’s at right now.

Leo: Awesome, and of course Rene Ritchie iMore(dot)com great to have you on the show today. We’re going to solve this, we’re going to fix this issue. Who is your ISP, is it parduece?

Rene: Videotron.

Leo: Oh, that’s right you’re Montreal. It might be that the isp is inspecting the packets and, it’s saying we have a phone service ourselves, maybe we shouldn’t be using one of the other guys.

Rene: Call them in rage at a later date.

Leo: Are you doing deep packet inspection Videotron? Rogers did.

Andy: Have you ever tried running it through a VPN to see what would happen?

Rene: I try VPN most of the time, but I don’t use it for these.

Leo: We could try that, they would be able to look at the packets and even they might not……a VPN is slower so it’s not ideal for streaming video in my mind. It might actually work better, that will be kind of giveaway.

Rene: I do other hangouts for an hour and half and it doesn’t affect them. I’m not sure what……

Leo: That’s so strange.

Rene: Maybe it’s one of those peering agreements that was done wrong in the mid-west somewhere.

Leo: Or, it’s time of day thing.

Unknown Voice: I think it’s got to be a time of the day thing, for the last three  weeks it happened at the exact same time.

Leo: Anyway great that you hung in through that, thanks to Jason Howell for working with you behind in the scenes as we talked, yeah he made it work better.

Rene: He’s a miracle worker.

Leo: Thank-you Rene for joining us, we do Macbreak weekly every Tuesday!