MacBreak Weekly 451 (Transcripts)

Leo Laporte: It's time for MacBreak Weekly, Rene Ritchie is here, Alex Lindsay, and filling in for Andy Ihnatko, the great Don McAllister. Yes, we're waiting for our Apple Watches. We'll talk about what to expect when yours arrives this Friday, or maybe even whether yours arrives this Friday, and don't you try to return that Edition watch without special inspections. No shaving the gold off, Apple's going to be a little strict on that one. There's news too from other areas of the Apple universe, it's all coming up next on MacBreak Weekly.

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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.

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Leo:This is MacBreak Weekly episode 451, recorded Tuesday, April 21^st, 2015.

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Leo: MacBreak Weekly is brought to you by Trunk Club. Have the wardrobe you've always dreamed of handpicked by your own personal stylist. Go to TrunkClub.com/twit and join Trunk Club today for free. And by SmartThings. SmartThings lets you monitor, control and automate your home from wherever you are using your smartphone. Right now SmartThings is offering MacBreak Weekly listeners 10% off any home security or solution kit and get free shipping in the US, when you go to SmartThings.com/twit. And don't forget to use the offer code TWIT at check out. And by Lynda.com, the online learning platform with over 3,000 on demand video courses to help you strengthen your business, technology and creative skills. For a free 10 day trial, visit Lynda.com/macbreak, that's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash MacBreak. It's time for MacBreak Weekly, the show where we break, weekly, about Macs. Or something. I don't know, Andy Ihnatko not with us, he's in Yosemite where limited bandwidth is keeping him from the internet, he's at the Cocoa Conference, the Yosemite Cocoa Conference. But I love it, Don McAllister filling in on monitor number one. Great to see you.

Don McAllister: I can't fill in for Andy, no one can fill in for Andy. I'm just here as a guest, that's all. Thanks for inviting me.

Leo: Screencastsonline.com, of course. Don is coming to us from Liverpool.

Don: And we've deviated from our matching appearance since the last appearance, because your hair has grown rapidly.

Leo: (laughs)

Don: I can't believe it.

Leo: Do you find that depressing?

Don: It is a little bit. Must be sleeping in the grow bag or something.

Leo: I believe, somebody told me, I don't know if they were punking me or not but sometimes when you shave your head they said, it never grows back and I...

Don: But wow, yes. That's...

Leo: They scared me but it did grow back. And it's grown back, it's almost now to the normal length. In fact, I actually have on my to do list, make an appointment to get a haircut.

Don: Oh go on, rub it in. Rub it in.

Leo: (laughs) I'm sorry.

Rene Ritchie: For charity.

Leo: I'm sorry, good to see you though. Also with us today, Mr. Alex Lindsay, where are you calling us from?

Alex Lindsay: Coming in from Pittsburgh.

Leo: Pittsburgh, PA. He's in Jony Ive's white room.

Alex: (laughs)

Leo: Actually it's more of an ivory today.

Alex: Yeah a little ivory today, yes.

Leo: Yeah. And of course from Montreal, Canada and iMore.com, Rene Ritchie, great to see you.

Rene: (speaking in foreign language)

Leo: What?

Rene: (laughs) How are you Leo?

Leo: Wha...? Did my ears go out or did you speak to me in some sort of Star Wars language.

Rene: The language of your people.

Leo: Have you been watching Star Wars? Did you watch all six movies back to back?

Rene: All three movies? The un-molested versions? Yes.

Leo: Oh, ooh. Now we know where you stand. I never realized that... I think we talked about this last... no wait I wasn't here last week. By the way, thank you Andy for hosting, doing the hosting chores for me. So maybe we didn't talk about it, but... this whole thing about going back to the original and... it's fascinating to me.

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: But so you only accept the... episodes four through six as the canonical Star Wars.

Rene: Well the other ones are just different. I just classify them as something different. They have a different purpose they have different... they're different.

Leo: The Jar-jar era we call it.

Rene: Yes.

Leo: Of course that's the one that Alex Lindsay worked on, I just want to point that out.

Alex: It had amazing special effects, yeah. Amazing special effects.

Leo: Excellent specular highlights on Princess Amidala's starship.

Rene: The chrome ship is peerless.

Alex: Yes. That's all I need, the queen ship was beautiful, that's all I need. The rest of it, you know...

Leo: (laughs) Are you amazed Alex by the... the lengths to which these fans go to create the canonical versions? This is the video that he put up on YouTube.

Alex: I don't... you know, there's been... people re-edit and edit and there's been... there was the, there's been a couple different edits of some of the... of a variety of these, and I don't... actually I'm not that surprised. I mean, people make their own Star Wars movies.

Leo: Yeah, fan fiction. But the point here, and actually if you look at this video it's pretty well taken is that the Blu-ray which is what we're getting, I believe, in the digital versions, really the color correction was terrible,  I mean look at how the blue, the red magenta hues, the cast, and then the de... what is it called? The de-specialized edition?

Jason: Yeah that's what we're looking at right here is kind of a comparison to the special effects.

Leo: Which is an attempt to get back to the original theatrical 1977 release. And the guy is using so many interesting techniques, somebody told me he got a job out of this.

Alex: Right?

Leo: Because he's so good. He's doing rotoscoping. The Mos Eisley bar scene as they go into the bar there's a pathetic CGI animal.

Alex: The real question is how do you get back to... how do you get back to the fact that Han shot first?

Leo: That's what they're trying to do, so they're using the '77... there isn't a print. Lucas has kept the prints out of circulation, but there are...

Rene: They have laser disc right?

Leo: There's a laser disc, which I own! I didn't realize, look at the differences. There's some huge differences. So this is actually fun to watch, the de-specialized...

Rene: If you watch the Blu-ray versions, the original special effects hold up really well but the CGI they added looks terrible now, it looks like Doom from the 1980s.

Leo: Right, because it was done in the 1980... or was it the '90s?

Alex: Well it depends on the, which CGI... I think the space shots actually look fairly good.

Rene: Yes, the clean-ups look good but the animals look horrible.

Alex: Yeah, I mean I think that that was still kind of a... work in progress on some of those. Those were all done in the late '90s and I think that this was pre-hobbit, pre... you know a lot of those things. I think that the stuff that, what I noticed a lot, and of course the stuff that I didn't do, but I definitely saw a lot of it getting built was a lot of the space shots and I thought those, if you look at the dynamism of a lot of the moves and shots and everything else, it was much more impressive than the original. The original, the problem you really got into with just to get a little geeky for a second, the problem you get into with the original TIE Fighters and X-Wings was that those would be... three of those guys flying would be literally fourteen passes of film that they would go through to comp it together, to pull it all together. And every time you did that you would scratch it, so you only got one or two tries before you had to start over again and like literally re-shoot everything all over again and so you get to a point where the scratches are worse than the actual effect and so when we got back to digital it allowed you to do things over and over and over again, and so I think that a lot of those kinds of, the hard surface effects I think in the re-releases were, the stuff like the the ships I think are very impressive. I think that the characters, yeah, were still a little challenged because I think it was still a work in progress.

Leo: Have you seen the new robot though, right?

Rene: Yeah.

Alex: Oh yeah.

Rene: Based on...

Alex: When they said it was physical, when the trailer came out they said it was physical and I was like there is no way.

Leo: No way man!

Alex: What? What? You know? And I guess the one that was done actually for the movie was a bit more of a prop, you know, that was roto'd out and so it did... it wasn't what we have now seen a celebration which is kind of running on its own, it was still a bit of a prop that they had to fix up but...

Leo: They actually have a patent for BB-8 which I think is hysterical.

Alex: Yeah.

Leo: Sphero, we know Sphero because we saw them at Macworld, they make a really interesting thing... so I've talked to Father Robert who I believe is going to build this. For... and maybe we can enlist you, Alex, because he says he can build the mechanics of it easily, but it's the paint job he can't do so maybe we can enlist you.

Alex: I have the perfect people for that.

Leo: Yeah I figured you would.

Alex: Yeah, so...

Leo: Because it has to not only be painted but distressed.

Alex: No no no, what you want is to get guys that actually worked on the film, so... (laughs)

Leo: So what this... what this is, apparently, I'm told by Robert, I think with... looking at the patent they've figured out, the big ball, the bottom of BB-8 is independent, rolls, and like a Segway balances and is controlled and then it has within it...

Alex: Well it's a giant Sphero isn't it?

Leo: It's a giant Sphero.

Alex: Yeah.

Leo: And then within it, and Sphero was this cool thing... I think I have one, we have to find our Spheros, and then within it he believes, there's a rod, a magnetic rod that doesn't... this is what's interesting, that top part is completely independent, you could pull it off. It's not attached in any way.

Don: It must be levitating by magnets or something, yeah.

Leo: There's a magnetic rod in the bottom, larger ball that the magnets in the top part position, center themselves over. So when you control the bottom ball, you also control... you see that, independently, the position, the top piece. The top piece obviously has to also spin, I think that's controlled by the top piece.

Alex: It's magical.

Leo: It is... it's a really wonderful effect.

Alex: They're going to sell it as a toy. Like that... I don't know.

Leo: We live in wonderful times. Amazing.

Rene: Amazing.

Alex: All I can say is that I... I want that. And I think about everybody who's seen it is going to have to have... if it works at all, if it gets reviewed that it works at all, everyone's going to have to have one.

Leo: Well and so this is footage maybe you haven't seen from the Star Wars conference, recent footage, like a couple of days ago. Where it comes out, it says hi, it rolls around. R2-D2 is there, and it is, it's real. It's not fake.

Alex: That's cool.

Leo: So what I love about this is that J.J. Abrams who could easily have CGI'd this or puppetried this made it. That's... to me that's a good sign. I know people were worried about...

Don: It's like, a lot of the sets though, some of the images that have been released from the sets, they actually built the... built similar craft and it's, yeah... it's...

Alex: Well and that's been the case... I think that they might have gone a little overboard on some of the stuff with the other episodes but you know, there were some pretty big sets built for even the prequels.

Leo: Oh I know, yeah.

Alex: So you do want to create that scale, it's very hard to do that in CG when it gets too big, a lot of the times they're set extensions. But...

Leo: Yeah they do painted plates for the extra stuff. But they're shooting these at the Ealing Studios, there's a lot... there's a big giant sound stages.

Rene: Looks like a MagSafe head.

Leo: Yeah. It's a MagSafe head.

Alex: It's so awesome, that's all I've got to say.

Leo: By the way we can confirm that the new MagSafe adapter on the new Mac Powerbook 13 is much sturdier. The magnet is like... you have to work at it to get it off, so good news. Andy will be happy about that.

Rene: The magnets on some of the watch straps are incredibly strong.

Leo: You've been... you've been now to the Apple Store. You've seen, you've watched. I've seen videos and photos from you and Serenity trying them on and everything.

Rene: Yup.

Leo: Are you excited?

Rene: Yeah! I mean I've gone several times now, I went to the Palo Alto debut for the try-ons and they had a little...

Leo: I can't believe you came down... in fact I saw the picture, we talked about this, of you and Dalrymple talking to Tim just standing there like regular guys talking to Tim Cook.

Rene: I wasn't expecting that, I was talking to Jim and then Tim came in from the back of the store and then said “Hi Jim, hi Rene.” And then he started asking us what we ordered.

Leo: He knew you? He didn't have to be introduced?

Rene: I mean he has PR people so I don't know, like he's probably briefed. He might have a little microphone in his ear telling him.

Leo: To your left is Rene Ritchie, he's iMore.com.

Alex: (laughing)

Rene: Like he just taps out the person's name on his wrist.

Leo: To the right it's Mr. Yip. Jim Dalrymple, he's at the...

Rene: Jim is hard to miss though.

Leo: Yeah Jim is very distinct. Wow I mean that was pretty neat. That must have been really awesome.

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: Did you actually interview him at all or just kind of chat?

Rene: We just spoke for a few minutes and he was saying how much he loved using it for sports and athletics, the same kind of things he said before but he's very gracious and he comes off as incredibly passionate and sincere which is the same way it comes off on his talks.

Leo: Yeah, it's kind of neat... because, I mean he has his talking points but they... he... and I don't think he's an actor so that gives me some sense that he's genuine in his aprobation. Now...

Rene: And it wasn't just us, he went around and spoke to customers at the store as well. He took about half an hour.

Leo: Steve used to do that, that was his store, the Palo Alta store used to do that. Loved doing that. And I think Tim knows that and this is kind of, as much an homage to Steve as anything else. Steve would have loved to have been there for that I'm sure.

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: So I... I'm a little concerned. Friday, April 24^th, we're recording this on April 21^st, so Friday three days away, four days away. Usually by now I would have had a happy go lucky text message from Apple saying “Good news, your watch is on its way.” And I haven't.

Rene: Nail biter.

Leo: Has... you said Serenity has?

Rene: Serenity got, yeah a couple people, people in the US who ordered the aluminum ones who had April 24^th as their early shipment date have been getting... I don't know if they've gotten actual notifications but their status has changed on the online ordering system.

Leo: Okay mine is and I'm looking. Now, did everybody get April 24^th through May 8^th? That was the...

Don: Mhm.

Rene: If you ordered the aluminum.

Don: I think only those that ordered in the very very first few minutes of the ordering process. It rapidly changed to like four to six weeks almost.

Leo: Oh yeah, no but I ordered in the first few minutes. Okay, a little... 12:10 I think. What time is...

Rene: Yeah, 12:10 (laughs).

Leo: Yeah it's probably too late. But it says delivers 4/24 by 5/8 but it also says processing items. So... um.

Rene: I ordered a stainless steel, and I ordered at 12:01 and it said between mid-May and late May.

Leo: Wow, so I was lucky... well you know what, that's what it said on mine too on the 42mm but the 38mm, I'm going to get the little one. Lisa's got... it's actually Lisa's, she's going to let me use it until the bigger one comes a few weeks later.

Don: See mine's the 42 stainless steel with the Milanese loop, and that's...

Leo: Me too.

Don: That's still down for Friday til the week after.

Leo: They're drop-shipping from China as usual?

Rene: They're staging in the US I believe, I think if they moved a bunch of them to the US, I think Mac Rumors wrote about that, they had a source that said a bunch of them had been moved to the US to get ready for the shipping for Friday.

Leo: So the chatroom, I got a ship notification for my watch charger. It will arrive tomorrow. Kaylin says my card has been charged, the status has been changed. Tripod says I got a FedEx tracking number for Friday. Tripod, what does it say is the origination of that? Because usually it will say Shunjun, China. But so this might confirm that story that they are in fact staging from the US. And would reassure me because if they're staging it from the US they can reasonably...

Rene: I think it still says China because they've done that before and it still said country of origin on the shipment. Oh and if you paid with Apple Pay some people have gotten the Apple Pay and billing has gone through.

Leo: Oh I should check. How do you keep a moron in suspense? I'll tell you how. Right after this. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding! They're keeping me in suspense, so none of you, I just want to check, have gotten...

Rene: No.

Alex: Nope. July.

Leo: What's it going to be in the UK? Is it different in the UK?

Don: It... well, as far as I know no one in the UK has had a shipping notice as of yet, but on Twitter people have said, there's a rumor that possibly they go out tomorrow. Also had another guy on Twitter say that in Australia they get the shipping notices like the day before so there's still hope, but... it depends where they're coming from I suppose. If they're coming from China to the UK it's going to take ages, but if they have got some here hopefully they could actually ship them out in a couple of days.

Leo: Right.

Don: We'll soon find out.

Leo: (groans)

Rene: So the thing with the watch is we waited for one event, then we waited for the second event, then we waited for the try-ons, now we're waiting for the shipment and the delayed shipment and...

Leo: Beyonce got hers. In fact she got one that no one else has, this is a gold link band. Here she is in her private plane. She gets an exit row every time. And there's the... that's pretty.

Don: I wasn't taken with the gold, but with the gold strap I might be interested then, well I'm not interested but... if you know what I mean.

Leo: Well let me think how much that must have cost. Hey Don if you could reconnect I think we're getting a lot of noise out of your connection.

Don: Okay.

Leo: Wow.

Rene: Yeah that's one of the bands they haven't announced publicly yet. There was a few of them they've shown off now, I think a red one, a yellow one, a dark blue one, a gold one, that they are just not publicly available but they're giving out to...

Alex: And this is I think something you get from some of the watch designers and Angela Ahrendts and so on and so forth, kind of the classic fashion roll out which is that we're going to show you things that you can't even own right now, and of course you're going to want it and you're going to spend $30,000 on it or whatever. I mean this is... we've done some streams for fashion shows and you definitely see this kind of build up of the process, so it's very classic. More fashion industry than tech industry.

Leo: Tripod says that his went through Canada first. That's got to really annoy Rene.

Rene: You're welcome!

Leo: (laughs)
Rene: Well I ordered the black stainless steel and I knew going in that that one was not going to be available right away, but... it reminds me of that story when you look at Beyonce's watch, there's a story that everyone drinks the same Coke, from the janitor to the president of the United States. It's all the same Coke, it's just the glass that you drink it in that varies.

Leo: Right, the can.

Rene: These are all the same Apple Watch. Yeah these are all the same Apple Watches, it's just mine is going to be in aluminum or stainless steel, someone else's will be in a lot of gold.

Leo: Yeah. God it just... you know, I... and I even, I don't even... I feel bad wanting it and worrying about it. It's like, come on. There's so many more important things in the world than that. Let me make that bigger here. Hm. And come on Beyonce, really? Now I think... now the interesting thing, Beyonce of course and Jay-Z her husband are publicly announced supporters of Jay-Z's record... or not exactly a record label, streaming music service TIDAL, and I've got to think that Apple's sending out these really extra special ones to woo these artists over to Beats.

Alex: I don't know if it's wooing. I think they're looking directly at just influence. Seeing these great cool artists wearing the really high end watch, I don't think that they... I don't think that the marketing is connected to Beats, I think that they're just really... they want the cool kids to be wearing it.

Leo: By the way Beyonce is in fact not drinking the same can of Coke as you and me, she's drinking the same can of Canada Dry Ginger Ale.

Rene: Oh, good taste.

Leo: Just so you know.

Rene: Karl Lagerfeld had the gold watch with the gold linked bracelet as well and he was, there was a picture of it but it was still on the setup screen so it looked like he hadn't even paired it yet, but he was still wearing it.

Leo: Somebody come here and pair it for me, I don't know what to do.

Alex: Did you see the diamond encrusted one?

Leo: No.

Alex: There's one that they've already started talking about, I guess they're going to do as soon as it's released, it's the gold watch and then it's diamond encrusted all the way around and evidently I think the street price is $117,000.

Leo: (laughs)

Alex: Same watch, same glass. But...

Leo: I'm sticking with my good old republican cloth watch. The Moto 360. I'm going to be a man of the people.

Rene: The plebeians.

Leo: The plebeians. Although Android is... Google is clearly stung a little bit by the fact that the Apple Watch in its first weekend outsold all the Android Wear watches ever.

Alex: And I think that what's interesting about this is also at a price that was two or three times what they were selling it at. That's the real insult, is that you're really talking about something that was sold, that everyone's worked really hemmed and hawed, is it 200 is it 300 and Apple said no it'll be like 600 average.

Leo: Yeah.

Alex: That's what we can... and we can sell it all in a day what you sold in a year at three times the cost. It's quite a juggernaut.

Leo: Google has announced, we don't know, it's not clear, although some have said the current watches will be upgradeable others have said that's not true, that they're going to support wi-fi just as the Apple Watch does, they're going to take it one better though, as long as your watch is online and your phone is online, even if they're not in the same locale or the same network they will talk to one another.

Rene: Nice.

Leo: So that, now I don't know when that's coming but that's an interesting addition.

Rene: I have a Pebble and I've used the Moto and I've used one of the Samsungs and when you actually go and pick up an Apple Watch, the build quality is... they're not comparable. Like the other ones look nice when you just are looking at them, but the build quality of the Apple Watch, the materials, the finish, all the stuff that Apple's name is for. It's a huge difference.

Leo: Yes.

Don: I think the haptics thing as well, is that fairly unique for the Apple Watch? Because I've only actually used a Pebble and that sort of vibrates but I think the ceramic back with the sensors and taptic touch that they're going to have, I think that's going to be interesting to see how people actually either enjoy or dislike that particular aspect.

Leo: Yeah, it's going to be very interesting isn't it?

Don: Mhm.

Leo: Yeah, well I mean I want to try it. I'm, you know, I'm ready. I've got my iPhone all polished up. (laughs) I just want the tracking.

Rene: The camera, your watch, and pair it up.

Alex: And I do think that this is going to be good for Android. There's a lot that Android is going... even though they've been stung by this a little bit, I think that there's a lot of advantages because there are going to be a lot of people that don't want to spend $500 on a watch. And they're going to get excited and they're going to see the possibilities and of course there will be a bunch of Android developers that develop something very similar but you can do it for a lot less money.

Leo: Has to be really frustrating you know, I mean they do everything you can. For Samsung too. And Apple just waltzes in and says yeah we'll take it from here.

Don: Well the interesting thing though is they're going to gain critical mass very very quickly. And I really see the second phase of the Apple Watch being... you know, as early adopters get them and we start to use them and then the developers start to tweak the applications because people are using them in real life and then you know, third party manufacturers start to realize that there's this huge critical mass of Apple Watch users who have this physical interaction... I think the physical interaction is going to be the big thing that will finally sell it to the masses. When people start seeing people pay for things with the watch and when they see people start opening doors with their watch and you know, interacting with the car and stuff like that. I do think Apple will have the critical mass to actually sort of generate the parties to get more involved in and start to create a physical infrastructure that actually inter-works with the Apple Watch and at that point then it... I think it will really take off.

Leo: It's so funny.

Alex: I thought it was interesting that Microsoft I guess has made it available, PowerPoint is... you're now going to be able to advance slides on your watch.

Leo: There you go, that's what a watch is for. (laughing)

Alex: No but you can see a lot of guys that present, you present a lot and I present a lot of slides. I don't know if you present a lot of slides but I present a lot of slides. And I thought oh that would be really nice not to have something that I'm constantly... you know, one of these that I'm constantly setting down somewhere or trying to figure it out but just being able to tap my watch while I'm talking, I like that.

Leo: Do you think the Apple Watch will follow the same path that the iPod followed? Where you have the first edition and then you start doing colored editions, maybe there will be a swatch priced Apple Watch and that kind of thing?

Rene: You can just get the band with no watch but I don't know if Apple's really interested in that. Almost like the iPod shuffle version where there's no screen, but I don't know how much interest they have.

Leo: (laughs) What would that do?

Rene: The health and fitness stuff.

Leo: It would be a FitBit.

Rene: Yeah they could do the fitness tracking things the way that sort of the iPod shuffle did a very specific subsection of iPod functionality but I don't know what their interest level is in that because they've, since the iPod they've been more about making computers more personal, not necessarily just doing devices.

Leo: I was just going to say on this Instagram photo of Carl Lagerfeld's watch that is not set up, just cracks me up.

Don: Oh yeah.

Leo: It's just like well, you know... I don't know how to use this but I'm going to wear it.

Don: That's a true fashion statement then isn't it?

Leo: It is. I can afford a $50,000 watch that I don't know how to use.

Alex: He probably didn't use a watch before that. Of course they were probably all ornamentation form anyway.

Leo: Yeah. And then you mentioned Tim, here's the picture of Tim's...oops, sorry. Just got the... Tim's with the red crown.

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: That's kind of interesting. He's wearing it...

Rene: He probably just has a prototype.

Leo: He's wearing the white fluoroelastomer. Maybe the red crown is like the ones that they see that employees...

Don: Aren't they the ones that match the gold edition with the...

Leo: I think there is a red crown isn't there? Yeah. He's just wearing the wrong band.

Rene: Yeah. Well here's a stainless steel watch. He's an operations guy, he's very practical.

Leo: He doesn't have a gold one. You know, I think that that's the right message to send. Let's not... let's not.

Rene: Well it's like we talked about this before where it's like Jeff Williams who's the vice president of operations drives a ten year old Toyota or Honda or something. They have very different priorities.

Leo: The Apple Watch nano, I like that idea. The shuffle. (laughs)

Alex: Now, it's much cheaper and now with analog hands!

Leo: Yeah, an analog watch! Gruber has an interesting article on Daring Fireball, he talks about discovering, it's so funny, FaceRepo.com which is, and I've been using it for a long time which is the place where you can get custom watch faces for Android Wear, and there's some very cool ones although he mocks it. And writes an apologia for Apple and why Apple will never offer custom faces, one reason, good reason, because of the OLED screen on the watch you kind of want to choose faces that promote battery life. In other words with a lot of black. And he says there is a custom design in a sense because the Mickey face must have been designed in conjunction with Disney.

Rene: Licensed, yeah.

Leo: But he says the ten different faces which are almost not quite but almost infinitely customizable with what Apple calls complications are likely going to be that way. He says there is no way to set up a watch face that's ugly or doesn't look very Apple Watch-y and I have to say, one of the things about FaceRepo is you can get an ugly, a very ugly face for your Android Wear watch if you wish. He says I don't see this by design and I don't see that changing. He quotes Andy saying, in a tweet like what if Apple said “We don't trust you to choose well designed iPhone wallpaper.” and Gruber points out, we don't have to imagine that until iOS 4 in 2010 you couldn't choose the wallpaper on your iPhone.

Rene: That I think is the most apt part of that, because originally they just couldn't composite it properly. It was too much for the phone and the processors back then, and when they could properly composite the layers they let you do it and I think, there's a lot of arguments about the watch faces right now but there's a couple of things to remember, one there's no native apps yet and developers can't make watch faces without native apps. Trying to shoot a watch face as a series of PNG images over Bluetooth is not going to be successful for anyone, so until there's native code running on the phone, having a discussion about watch faces is just incredibly premature. But other than that they've already ditched the photos and the time lapse watch face because of power reasons, because any time you have a pixel lit up on OLED it uses power and a photo watch face lights up every pixel unlike the very line art style watch faces they're doing there. The culture thing is harder though because you know, Apple does allow custom keyboards now which a lot of us thought they might never do and there's a custom keyboard extension so maybe one day there will be a custom watch face extension. I don't know, I don't think there will be but it's always possible and it's hard to speak in absolutes, but going back to just the watch face thing, not having it on the first version of this shipping product, I think that's a given. It's just absolutely a given at this point.

Leo: You know who will get a watch sooner than later? Developers, Apple according to Mac Rumors, Apple has started sending out emails to iOS developers offering them a chance to purchase a 42mm sport, the blue band, with a guaranteed shipment of April 28^th, in order for them to start developing. So it's not guaranteed, they say random selection, quantities are limited. But if you're a developer look for that email, you have until Thursday to let them know that you want it.

Don: That must be US only because I don't think I've received an email.

Leo: Yeah that's... are you a developer?

Don: I'm registered as a developer yeah.

Leo: I guess I am too aren't I? Yeah.

Rene: Yeah I didn't get it either.

Leo: Yeah.

Don: Hm.

Leo: Maybe you have to actually really be a developer. (laughs) You have to have at least two apps in the app store to get this email, I don't know.

Rene: We have six I think and we didn't get one.

Leo: Oh, well... that sucks. Check your spam folder.

Don: Rene, Tim knows you by first name so you should be okay.

Leo: Gruber's laughing at the heavily skeuomorphic watch faces on FaceRepo, including this one of the Android... this is, you could have this on your Android Wear, Android robot urinating on a gold apple. I might download that right now, just to make people angry.

Rene: One of the things also is, because Apple takes editorial responsibility for their content, policing IP on this stuff, especially when you're a company that gets as much scrutiny as Apple is non-trivial.

Leo: Yeah and this is actually a big issue for Google because a lot of the watches are copyright and trademark violations. There's watch faces, there's Petit Philippe, there's a lot of brand names in FaceRepo and...

Rene: Things are often more nuanced than internet anger allows for.

Leo: Yes. Gosh darn you internet anger.

Don: Didn't Apple have to settle with the switch clock people when they...?

Leo: Well they, but they outraged... they outright stole that watch face from the Swiss Railway folks, that was just...

Rene: They paid for it and then they stopped using it immediately.

Leo: That was absolute just outright thievery. Lets see, a few people in the chatroom I'm noticing are saying they have received notifications, in fact some have gone in and checked just because we've been talking about it, Webmaster305 says “Yes, my Apple Watch order was updated. Preparing for shipment.” So check your Apple store page and see what's going on. 9To5 Mac, good news Alex, says keynote has been updated for a watch based remote.

Alex: Yep.

Leo: So not just PowerPoint. Good news.

Alex: Exactly. Oh yeah, as soon as you said it I was just thinking all the things that you do when you're presenting or doing a class or whatever...

Leo: People actually would be... yeah.

Alex: It's going to be exciting. It stays with you. Now you just need mute and un-mute.

Leo: So the PowerPoint for iPhone is now Apple Watch, there are a number of updated apps coming all the time, what else have you guys seen updated to support the watch?

Rene: They showed off Twitterrific I think yesterday.

Leo: Nice, so tweets would go to the watch. Yeah.

Rene: And the twitter app has been updated.

Don: Yeah the Apple remote as well for your Apple TV. It's fantastic.

Leo: That's awesome. I lose mine every... yeah.

Don: All the time, and it's such a pain to take your phone out and get in the application. Although the app does work fine, but to have it just on your wrist all the time will be great.

Rene: Yeah, and that's built in.

Leo: And so if you have an Apple Watch and you have these apps on your iPhone, that's all you need to worry about once you pair the watch it will automatically update it to...

Rene: The Apple Watch companion app, the one that runs on your iPhone has a second tab that says “store” on it and come Friday that will be lit up and you'll see a bunch of apps in there and you'll be able to take the apps that are listed there and transfer their watch kit extension to your phone.

Leo: I don't open this app any more because it's just taunting me. Good morning! If you have an Apple Watch you can pair it with your iPhone here.

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: Don't taunt me like that.

Don: Did I read that there was a limit to the number of third party apps you could actually have on the watch?

Leo: Oh maybe. I mean there's limited memory right? I mean...

Rene: It's got 8GB and I think 2GB is reserved for music, half a gigabyte for images and the rest for the system and for apps.

Leo: By the way, if you want to watch the videos it looks like they're all done now, the how-to videos have been updated and are available not only of course at Apple.com but on the watch app itself on your iPhone, so you can watch all the videos they've made now. Let's see. Health and fitness, digital touch. Faces, messages oh they're not done. There's still some unfinished ones aren't there? Boy, come on Apple what's holding up? What's holding you up?

Rene: Jony has to approve each one Leo.

Leo: It's my guess that there are people we know who are working on these right now. In fact, I... more than a guess. And I'm not talking about you Alex Lindsay. (laughs)

Alex: (laughs)

Leo: So yeah they've been shooting these, I've been told they've been shooting these in a warehouse in the bay area for some time now. And, can you imagine? It must be that white room warehouse where they light everything up and the amount of... trouble doing something like that must be...

Rene: Probably see the heat pattern from orbit.

Leo: Yeah, so still to come, Apple Pay, activity and work out but they have added phone call, Siri, maps and music and I think as we sit here waiting for our text message... you got something to do, you can watch these videos. It's been... I've found it very helpful, to actually kind of look at the videos so I understand how it's all going to work.

Alex: I think the goal is that you're an expert in the watch by the time the watch arrives.

Leo: Right.

Alex: That's the key to the operation.

Leo: Right. Alright, have we exhausted the topic for today? Because you know next week all we're going to be doing is going “Ooh.” I'm hoping all we're going to be doing is “Ooh. Eee.” So you won't have one Rene.

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: So you won't be going “Ooh.” Alex you won't have one.

Alex: July.

Leo: Maybe you and I will have one Don, we just don't know yet.

Don: Yeah. Yeah, hopefully by this time next week even if it doesn't arrive on the 24^th that's still a couple of days after possibly, but fingers crossed.

Leo: We'll do a unboxing the minute mine gets here, it's shipping to the studio, and my hope was to be able to do that live on Before You Buy this Friday at 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern. 2100 UTC so watch BYB, if I get it we'll unbox it. Stainless steel, just like you. The stainless steel with the Milanese loop. We have good taste.

Don: Good taste, that's right. That's right. To be honest it was one of those last minute things though because I was going to go with the black sport and then like literally the day before because I was sort of, you know, undecided right way through and then twelve hours before ordering said no I'll go with the stainless steel and the Milanese loop. Sight unseen.

Leo: Speaking of Milanese, Milan design week. Milano. Italia, design week is going on and Jony Ive is there. (laughs) Hanging with Carl and the gang.

Rene: Giani.

Leo: Giani. Hey Giani, hey Giani Eve whattaya got for us? Beautiful sport band colors.

Rene: Bellissimo.

Leo: Bellissimo. A showcase at the Milan Salone Del Mobile Design Fair in Italia. Which by the way 9to5 Mac typos to Itlay, attended by Apple executives including Phil Schiller, Mark Newsome and of course Sir Jony Ive. And they showed off, are these new these bands or is it just...?

Rene: They're not publicly available or previously unannounced. I don't know what the right term is but yeah there's yellow and red and midnight blue.

Leo: Hm. And he and his Mark Newsome is wearing a black sport band. We don't have a black sport band. Newsome is of course a very famous designer, friend of Jony Ive's who joined Apple last year. Salone Del Mobile.

Rene: And his watches that he designed are very similar in the many ways to what the Apple Watch turned out to be.

Leo: Yeah. Isn't that interesting?

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: So he should get some credit. He's, they call him the strap man.

Rene: (laughs)

Leo: In Cupertino. This I guess is the best picture we have here of a rack of straps, looks like purple. Bright red, a nice bright red I like that.

Rene: I'm waiting for the Samuel L. Jackson Instagram with this purple Apple Watch.

Leo: Yeah he should have a purple one. You could take the red watch or the blue watch.

Don: The red strap mustn't be too far away because it will be a Product Red strap won't it?

Leo: Oh Product Red strap, I like it.

Don: Yeah. Yeah, so I would imagine we'll see that in the not too distant future.

Leo: And apparently people were squeeing over this, Apple's innovative new UK plug design.

Don: That's rather nice.

Leo: Actually that's pretty cool, so it's flat in your pocket. Because the UK plugs, they have big heavy prongs.

Don: They're quite bulky but they're extremely well designed for safety. If you notice on the prongs sticking out you've got insulation and the metal tips and then the earth is actually longer and... in a UK plug that actually opens a gate so that the live and the neutral can actually go in, so it's extremely well designed but it is very bulky. And I've seen another one, there's another travel plug which is similar to this but like a fold sort of twist and fold on which has been out, like a USB adapter with the UK prongs and that's the first charger from a big, presumably if it is the Apple charger, that's the first time I've seen that sort of design from a major manufacturer.

Leo: I like it.

Don: It's good.

Leo: I think I should change all plug receptacles to duplicate the UK plug.

Alex:  You know, as a consumer they drive me crazy because it's always like this huge thing that you have to carry around. The only one worse than the UK is South Africa because it's like giant, giant circular... but as a production person I love UK plugs, I wish everything was UK because when you're putting together all your gear and it's like “Clunk clunk, clunk clunk, clunk clunk” you know there's no way that's coming out.

Don: Well the real strength is... when I come over to the states I always find that those little American flimsy two pronged things, they just fall out the wall. You plug them in and then they... if you put some weight on it just sort of droops down or it drops out or it sparks...

Alex: Yeah that doesn't happen a lot in London does it?

Leo: They just fall out of the wall! (laughing)

Alex: If you took a UK plug and stuck it in you could rappel off of that out the window if you needed to. I mean it would be like...

Rene: It's a proper metric plug Alex.

Leo: In Canada you're just the same as us right?

Rene: Yeah, we have to be Leo otherwise we couldn't use anything.

Don: See at least the Europeans have the round pins and they're a little bit more stable.

Leo: Yeah I don't like those either, I like the UK plug.

Rene: Ours our meant to support a cable industry folks, what are your priorities here?

Leo: (laughing) By the way, this picture comes from famed, apparently, famed rugby player and captain turned cyclist Will Carling. I guess he's received his watch and he... unlike others, this guy he knows his stuff, he took a picture of the plug.

Rene: I think he was answering some questions on Twitter too.

Leo: Oh neat. That's pretty cool isn't it? I like this red... yeah. Although, according to those folks at... the snarky folks at 9to5 Mr. Carling is wearing his bottom band upside down.

Don: (laughing)

Rene: How dare he?

Leo: Mr. Carling, you're wearing... I can clearly see the medium large sizing mark. Hm. This is... so red, navy, light pink, new bands and purple is new too isn't it? I haven't seen the purple before.

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: Alright, I don't know. What else is there to say about the watch? Rene, you got any other juicy tidbits before we move on?

Rene: It just feels like they've been talking about it forever Leo, I just want it to arrive now so we can talk about it some more.

Leo: I know, I'm done. I have actually some more, we actually wanted to talk about the estimates on sales because they vary quite wildly and I'm curious what you guys think of those, before we do that though let's talk about my clothes, because you know what? It's not just Carl Lagerfeld, and Will Carling, and Beyonce that are snazzy, thanks to Trunk Club I'm getting more snazzy. Look guys, I know. We all hate to shop, except for gadgets and tools, but when it comes to clothes shopping it's the worst. That's why I was so happy about Trunk Club. Gals have had solutions like this for years but now Trunk Club, guys you can talk to your... a personal stylist, mine is Robin, you can't have her. I talked to Robin for I think about half an hour, it was fun, I was talking about my... and you know, it's like talking to a doctor, you can say yeah I'm kind of fat. And she doesn't mock me. Yeah a little chunky, a little thick around the middle, and we talked about sizes, styles. Said well I come from a preppy background. She said “We'll fix that.” And so forth, and then she goes online and posts a page just for you with some suggestions. And it's like hot or not. You go through them and you say “I'll never wear that, I'll wear that, I like that, no no.” Then, this is the best part, and by the way at this point you have payed zero, zip, zilch. Nothing. A box comes, a trunk. My first trunk was actually an even bigger trunk. This is a medium size trunk. And in it are beautiful clothes, now you still have paid nothing. Nothing for shipping, nothing for the clothes. You have ten days to go through the trunk, look at all the things, Robin picked out some... oh I love the cable knit sweaters she picked out, this is something probably would never have bought for myself but it's so beautiful, it's kind of a peacoat, updated peacoat style and I just... I'm really excited about this. Unstructured, it's soft. I'm learning all these words like that. Shirts, pants, neckties, pocket squares, even shoes. All in your size. Actually sent two of these peacoats because she wasn't sure about the sizing exactly. You keep what you want and you send the rest back. Ten days to decide, and then and only then do you get charged, and only for the stuff you kept. Ship it all back you still pay nothing. And another thing, there's no monthly subscription, no monthly fees. You just... whenever you want more clothes you call Robin, or whoever your stylist is and say it's time for another trunk, and she'll set it up for you. I love this. Trunk Club is a revelation, I've already had three trunks because I kind of fell in love with it. It's so much fun. Your own personal stylist, a real person who will pick based on your lifestyle, your preferences, whether it's bold, casual, business formal. She'll get you something you like. Shirts, shoes, slacks, jeans, belts, jackets. Really great brands. Once your trunk arrives you keep what you like, you return the rest free of charge. So it's free to join, shipping, returns, free. No minimum purchase, no subscription. It's really simple, you just pay for what you keep. I love this idea. If you're busy, or maybe you hate shopping like me, make it easy. Rely on your own personal stylist from Trunk Club. Go to TrunkClub.com/twit to get started. To meet your stylist, and get your first trunk of fabulous clothes for free. TrunkClub.com/twit. It's such a great idea.

Alex: Just think if Facebook did Trunk Club. It would be the Zuckerberg model where you just get a T-shirt and a sweatshirt every month. Like here's a new one.

Leo: Yeah. Guys it's time to get out of the hoodie and shower slippers and start wearing something nice. This is Trunk Club I'm wearing right now, it's beautiful.

Alex: You look marvelous.

Leo: Marvelous. I feel like it's just a new me. Thank you Trunk Club. So I've seen estimates ranging from a million watches in the first weekend to a high which comes from KGI of 2.3 million Apple Watch pre-orders. KGI, and I don't... now I want to vet this with you guys, it says 85% sport. Less than 1% edition. The run rate, two to three million per month. This is Ming-Chi Kuo who is, I think... he has...

Rene: Yeah I think he's the most reliable of the financial analysts but I think also the million number was just US and I think Ming-Chi Kuo is doing international but I'm not positive.

Leo: This is... I mean good lord.

Rene: It's a lot of watch, and the edition is really low because I guess Apple keeps giving them away.

Alex: (laughing)

Leo: Look at that price, $10,000 and up... 1%, I think if you got 1% you'd be happy, of 3 million?

Rene: There was a breakdown of how much money based on these estimates how much money Apple would make per collection and the edition I think was still second only to the sport just because it's such, it's so much money per watch sold.

Leo: So much markup, yeah. I thought that stainless steel, the middle one would sell better. I mean at this, it looks like it's around 14% or 15% of the total.

Alex: But it's a really expensive... when you think about it, I mean...

Leo: Yeah it's around six, seven hundred bucks right?

Rene: 600 to 1500.

Leo: The one that I got and Don got was 650. I don't know, what was in the UK? $650 US dollars.

Don: I can't remember now. I'll look it up.

Leo: Is there a big mark up? Because they often do that, they do that to Canadians and Europeans.

Rene: Well they add VAT, VAT is included in the price.

Don: Yeah we have that, yeah.

Leo: And the VAT's steep.

Don: 20%.

Leo: Golly.

Rene: 15.5% here.

Leo: Jiminy Christmas. But you guys get health care.

Rene: Ish.

Don: (laughs)

Leo: The run rate of two or three... now see this is a really interesting question because I really do think that you could make the case that yeah sure it's going to sell really well at first, huge pent up demand. The most avid Apple aficionados and there are certainly many of those, will buy right away. But I think it's also conceivable that the sales could drop. Maybe even precipitously in the subsequent months. As people get it and say well it's cool but not great or maybe not great at all, or...

Rene: I think it's insulated a little bit because Apple only counts the sale when it ships I believe and they won't be shipping until May, June, July. So that's several months to accrue sales.

Leo: Good point, good point.

Rene: So maybe.

Leo: No that's an excellent point.

Don: The problem is that we're not going to find out what...

Alex: I also think that it's going to...

Don: Sorry Alex.

Alex: All I was going to say is I think that the proof is obviously going to be in the actual quality of the products, so that is going to be the thing that... you can sell, I think Apple can sell 5 million, 6 million of these things just from people who are excited about the possibility and then after that it really depends on you know, whether it's actually a utility to peoples’ lives.

Leo: So this quarter will be great. It will be the next quarter that will be the test.

Alex: Right, and the good thing for them is they're going right into Christmas.

Rene: The Jim Dauber had a good metric, he did a post on loop where he said that he doesn't really care about sales numbers, about customer sat numbers, he just wants to know how many people are are still wearing them a week later, a month later, three months later, six months later.

Leo: Right. And that you can verify just by looking.

Rene: Mhm.

Leo: Will I be wearing mine in September, will you be wearing yours in September? I far prefer Android as I've made very clear, I'm sorry, to as from a phone point of view, but will the watch be enough to keep me on iOS? I mean I like iOS perfectly well, it's not like I loath iOS. But I will miss some features of Android, I admit. Hey I saw an interesting thing and I didn't know this, maybe Alex you knew it. The way Android's designed there is a roughly guaranteed 10 millisecond audio latency. And maybe much more in Android, and that's one of the reasons you see so few music performance apps on Android tablets. You wouldn't... this is from superpowered.com, they call it Android's 10 millisecond problem. And I had not heard of this before, but it does explain something. They say it's like dragging the beat, like in Whiplash. Not my tempo. So if you were trying to perform in a band with iOS devices and you were using Android you'd be off about half a beat. Does that make sense.

Alex: I haven't heard that, but I can definitely see that that would be an issue. But 10 milliseconds is a very very small amount of time, so I mean a frame of video is 30 milliseconds so this is a third of a frame, but in music it would definitely, if you were trying to use it in performance.

Leo: You couldn't use it in live performance.

Alex: That would be a huge issue, yup.

Leo: And the latency might be even greater, that's kind of your base.

Alex: To be honest I'd be surprised, I would think that even the iPhone would have 10 milliseconds of delay, so I'm kind of surprised that it's truly 0 latency.

Leo: According to Superpowered most Android apps have more than 100 milliseconds of audio output latency and the round trip is 200 milliseconds or a fifth of a second.

Alex: Yup.

Leo: That would be, a fifth of a second would be enough.

Jason: That would be significant in terms of musicianship and playing music.

Alex: And that's really like what you would expect from a telephone call or go to meeting or anything like that. Those are about a 200, if you're even in the same room as someone you're talking to on the phone you get kind of a sense of how long that round trip is and that stays pretty constant across most devices.

Leo: It's one of the reasons why it's difficult to do these duets over the internet, when you have Tony Bennet in one studio and Lady Gaga across the country in another, it's hard to do that. But they have solved that. They've got, I think ISDN and other techniques have gotten latency down to 10 to 20 milliseconds.

Alex: Optical fiber.

Leo: Optical fiber, yeah.

Alex: Yeah optical fiber is the way to do it and even then you're still losing, I think it's typically... well what they'll tell you is about 5 milliseconds per hundred miles. I think there's ways to get it down to about 2 milliseconds per hundred miles but still, that's about the kind of latency you're going to see. So it is still challenging but we've done some stuff even over hangouts that have been across, actually Canada. Not the United States, but...

Leo: Well that's a lot more across in Canada than there is in the US.

Alex: Right, but what we didn't do we kind of talked the folks we were working with out of was trying to actually harmonize. That's really where things become like... so what you can do is send and receive so have someone do something and have them give a hand off and the other people pick it up, that you can do with a lot of latency but the actual keeping things in harmony or keeping things to the beat is almost impossible virtually.

Rene: The one thing that I heard consistently from developers was that a lot of people underestimate the cocoa touch frameworks. For example Apple has core audio and they have accelerate which has a lot of the math that a lot of music apps use and they get all of that for free so it really cuts down the amount of development work. And I don't want to name any names but there are some apps that just don't exist on Android because they just can't put in the effort to rebuild all that stuff from scratch, and the ones that do it took them literally a year, year and a half, two years to rebuild that to a level that it matched what they got on iOS basically for free.

Leo: Yeah. I've heard that many times from developers. Also animation much easier on iOS.

Rene: Yup.

Leo: The tools and libraries you're provided with are much easier to use.

Rene: Although material design fixes a lot of the...

Leo: Are you guys iOS developers is that why you're nodding? Yeah. (laughs) Got a couple of people in the studio nodding going “Mhm, mhm.” So you see, we're objective here. We cover it all. If there's something good, something bad, we'll talk about it. And my issue is just much more at a higher level of UI.  But I think if I don't take my iPhone out of the pocket, if I like the UI on the watch, that may solve it all right?

Don: It's interesting that a couple of people aren't Apple aficianados that I've spoken to who are interested in the watch are interested for that very reason. That they want to, they have jobs where they can't easily take the phone out, and they would like access to the phone's features from the watch so they can just sort of glance at it and check things. And I was quite surprised really because it was two people that I thought probably it wasn't even on their radar, but they look for it yeah.

Leo: You know what I'm really interested in, they sent me a few so just kind of out of the blue a thing called Sky Bell. Which is a doorbell, and I actually installed it at home. It has a camera on it, and it's wi-fi enabled so one of the problems we had is, our doorbell is so funky. People ring the bell and I don't hear it, we're busy, we're in the other room. So this will ring the... when you ring the doorbell it rings all my devices, Android and iOS are all going off. And then you can press a button and talk back to the person at the door and see a picture, even if you're here. If I'm at work. But apparently they're going to have an Apple Watch interface for the iOS version, which means I'll finally be able to answer the door from my watch. Won't that be interesting.

Alex: Very Dick Tracy.

Rene: Every kid's dream.

Leo: (laughing) Isn't that a cool idea?

Don: Would be nice if they built a camera in it as well so you can see.

Leo: There is a camera! They can't see me but I can see them, yeah. It's pretty amazing. It's $200 and it's a little wonky but it, because somebody called the radio show and said I can't get it working so I guess they heard that and they sent me some and I installed it and it works great. I can turn on the camera right now actually, and see what's going on out my front door.

Rene: The angry mailman.

Leo: Yeah. “Hey!” Well that's the funny thing because FedEx and the mailman do ring the front door bell and so I do get like a ding-dong.

Rene: I know you're in there Laporte!

Leo: I know you're in there! Let's see if I can see what's going on out front of my house. Nothing. Nothing right now. But there it is, and I can say. Hey, whatcha doing? Hey, get away from there! (laughs)

Rene: Poor cat.

Leo: Poor cat, isn't that funny? That's the actual live picture from my front door. So that's kind of cool. And I love the idea that I can do that on my watch. Would I...? The watch can't do like a live video feed though...

Rene: Yeah they showed it at the event using... I forget the name of the app.

Leo: Oh the garage door.

Rene: Yeah the garage door.

Leo: Isn't that neat.

Rene: It's not live video, only as far as I know, the native apps. Like if you use the phone, there's a remote shutter for the phone where you can see through the viewfinder of your iPhone and then take pictures remotely with the watch, that's real time video. What I think the third party watch kit extensions are doing is throwing, again, throwing PNG files at as high a frame rate as they can.

Leo: Oh that's interesting. So low frame rate but at least you see something. Yeah I don't know what the frame rate is, nobody's moving.

Rene: Which could be scary if it looks like a zombie coming at you.

Leo: Well and I can take a picture of it if there's a zombie. I think we're really entering an interesting era of connectivity with this internet of things stuff. Anyway this is called Sky Bell it's a couple hundred bucks, I'll do a full review at some point on Before You Buy. We... did you talk last week about the memo? The Ahrendts memo saying we're not going to put watches in the stores so forget about it.

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: That seems sensible, because there's so many skews on this, it's kind of an unusual product for Apple.

Rene: Well I think if they had just an enormous supply and they had a really good idea of what the demand curve would be for each separate model it would be easier for them to stock it, but this seems like the best of a constrained... supply constrained situation.

Leo: And then at some point, she says until June or... at some point you're exactly right, they'll have enough supply, and they'll have data points to know. It's like McDonald's, how many Big Macs you going to make, how many regulars you going to make? You just, you know after a while.

Rene: Well apparently there was some concern that people would line up and they would be spending like 6 to 8 hours in line and they'd get there and they'd say “I want the stainless steel Milanese.”

Leo: Don't have it.

Rene: “Sorry all we have is the pink sport left.” And then people were buying stuff they weren't happy with and...

Leo: That happened to me with the iPhone 6, I got the equivalent of the pink sport iPhone 6.

Rene: (laughing)

Don: The other problem as well is if people turn up to the store to buy these things, because it is a very personal thing and if people have it in their mind right, I'm going to buy the 42mm Milanese and they go in and they try it on and go actually no, can I try on another because I don't like this. So you end up with people going through the entire range of straps and watches to actually buy it there. So I think they've tackled it probably as best they could to do the pre-orders online and go in for an appointment. I know people have actually gone in, tried it on and actually changed their mind and re-ordered it at that point.

Rene: My mom did. My mom switched to the bigger one.

Leo: Yeah I'm afraid the little one's going to be too little for me. So how many skews are there? In aluminum there is just one, right? Not bands.

Rene: Each strap is considered a separate skew because you buy them as a paired unit.

Leo: Okay. But let's... let's not, okay that's bad. So let's take the straps off, in the aluminum there's 38 and 42. In the stainless there's four because it's 38 and 42 for silver and black, right?

Rene: Yeah same in aluminum because there's silver and there's also space gray.

Leo: So there's twelve skews then because there's four in each... so there's twelve different kinds of watches and then a lot of different kinds of bands. So I could see how keeping that all stocked up would be difficult.

Rene: My mom did her try-on last week and she was really impressed with the accessibility of the straps because she's older now and she says she has a lot of trouble with some jewelry putting the straps on and off.

Leo: Yes.

Rene: And she found a lot of the Apple bands really, as soon as they told her how to use it really easy and really accessible for her.

Leo: Which one did she like for accessibility?

Rene: She liked, especially the loops, and I've made a joke that the loops are essentially the Lululemon pants of...

Leo: That's why I bought them.

Rene: Yeah absolutely. But even the bracelets she had an easy time because the modern buckle, it looks like a buckle but it's actually magnetic, it's two parts that magnetically adhere together and that makes it really easy to put together.

Leo: Ah, okay. Apple has talked about the technology and functionality behind Apple's heart rate monitor, this is in a new support page at support.apple.com, it's HT204666, hmm. The mark of the watch.  Your heart rate, what it means and where on Apple Watch you'll find it. It describes how it measures it, there's four little... sensors on the back. We've probably all seen those. So it uses infrared light to measure your heart rate every ten minutes. So it's not continuous. If the infrared system isn't providing an adequate reading it switches to green LEDs. In addition, the heart rate sensor's designed to compensate for low signal levels by increasing both brightness and sampling rate. So you can see how it's going to be hard to say what your battery life is if you have thick skin, it might be worse battery life.

Rene: I think also when you're doing the workout app it takes much more frequent readouts so it can give you more accurate...

Leo: The technique is something called photoplethysmography.

Alex: Say that ten times.

Leo: Photoplethysmography. Blood is red, it reflects red light and absorbs green light. So the green LEDs paired with light sensitive photo diodes, that's the other two dots, will detect the blood flowing through your wrist at any given moment. So as your heart beats, blood flows, the green light absorption goes up, and then it goes down, up, down right. So by measuring the difference it can actually count your heartbeats by flashing the LED lights hundreds of times per second. It calculates the number of times the heartbeats each minute, your heart rate. The fit is important, of course. If your Apple Watch doesn't stay in place or sensors aren't reading your heart rate, tighten the band a bit. It needs to be snug but comfortable. In other words it needs to make contact with your skin I think there. A lot of people wear wrist watches a little loose so they kind of wobble. You may not like that.

Rene: But for a sport activity you're going to want to tighten it anyway.

Leo: Yeah, right.

Rene: Otherwise it might annoy you. I think I..

Leo: But I like the idea that measuring it throughout the day, not just when I'm working out, but throughout the day, I love that idea. Wish you could do blood pressure throughout the day. Many factors can affect the performance of the heart rate sensors, skin per-fusion is one. A fancy way of describing how much blood flows through your skin. Apparently skin per-fusion varies considerably from person to person, and environment. If you're in the cold the per-fusion maybe too low for the heart rate sensor to get a reading. So it's only going to work for you, Rene, in the summer.

Rene:  Like a vampire, the blood retreats from the surface levels of our skin.

Leo: Motions and other factor. Rhythmic movements, like running or cycling, give better results compared to irregular movements like tennis or boxing. Okay, so when I box I won't wear my Apple Watch, that seems like a good plan.

Rene: You just have to box regularly.

Leo: Boom boom, boom boom.

Rene: Round 3!

Dan: See, I'm a bit worried with the fitness tracking for me because during the working day, I actually use my treadmill. So I have a treadmill desk. And I've always found with the Up band, with all the other fitness bands I've tried, because if I wear it on my wrist it doesn't actually reflect the number of steps, because I'm actually typing at the same time. So I'm hoping it's going to work slightly better but I'm not 100% sure it's going to be completely accurate.

Leo: Apparently it is better at, Rene you were saying this, better at, you know, a lot of the pedometers out there really are walking and running, and that's it.

Rene: Yes, and if you watch the video again from ABC where they took them into the lab, you see that they did extensive modeling on the fitness equipment and there's rowing machines and stationary bikes and treadmills and all of those things. And they're using every sensor that they have, not just the stair climber or the step counter to try and model what you're actually doing.

Leo: That's what it says here, it says “Heart rate is just one of the many factors the Apple Watch uses to measure your activity and exercise, depending on your work out, it selects the most appropriate inputs for that activity. When you're running indoors it actually uses the accelerometer, when you're cycling outdoors it uses the GPS on your iPhone”. Of course the watch doesn't have GPS, so you'd have to have your iPhone for it to measure that.

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: And even when you're not in a dedicated workout, it tracks how much you move each day. That's that neat little thing, the half moon thing. So Apple Watch can give you information and motivation and improve your fitness and health. For that very reason alone, I'm very interested in it. I love the idea that I could see, oh you've spent a lot of time sitting, get up. I like that!

Rene: Yep, and it will also measure and, it's trying to encourage you, so it doesn't want you to fail so it'll adjust downwards if you're having a bad week and adjust upwards again if you're having a good week.  And it looks motivationally very sound.

Leo: It also, and I didn't know this, I didn't see this before, it will work with Bluetooth chest straps. So many of us use like the Polar Watch or the Polar chest straps so it will support this as well.

Alex: I think that, I do think that at some point, I mean this is really the beginning of this, but I think we're going to see a more tight integration between exercise equipment and a variety of other things with things like the watch. I think the watch is going to, I'm surprised we didn't see it as much with the phones, but I think that, I think the watch is just perfect to be able to, I mean I think eventually you're going to watch up to your lat pull-down, and it's going to know what you did last time, how many reps, and it's going to tell you what weight to put it on, and all of that is going to be going back and forth between the machine and the watch.

Leo: I think the opportunities here are great, but we've seen that before with Apple, and critical mass is critical.  Getting enough people using it so that makers of equipment will say “Oh we should support the Watch.”

Rene: Yeah, I don't know this for sure, but there was a rumor that there was only going to be like maybe 100 or 200 apps available at launch. The ones that Apple had spent a lot of time with the developers on. But given how they've been doing everything, and all the stuff that we've been seeingm it looks like there's going to be thousands of apps available. And not everyone is going to want all of those apps, of course, but there's a higher likely-hood that you are going to find those one or two or three apps that really make a huge deal to you. And I think that sort of critical mass is part of this because we saw what the App Store and iPhone 3g, when that happened all the sudden it was Super Monkey Ball for one person, it was a Facebook phone for somebody else, a Twitter phone for somebody else. It really did change how you wanted to, how sticky that phone became.

Leo: Apple's learned a little bit from Jawbone, which had to recall some of it's bands because of nickel. Nickel sensitivity, I was not sensitized to this issue, but it's a significant issue, and it means a lot of people cannot wear anything on their skin that has a significant nickel. Apple has been very careful about that. They have a whole page dedicated to that as well on the support page. Thousands of material composition tests, more than a thousand prototypes worn for trial studies, hundreds of toxicological assessments, consultations with board certified dermatologists. So if you have allergies or sensitivities, it does say, the Apple Watch space gray Apple Watch Sports stainless steel portions of some watch bands, and the magnets in the watch and bands do contain nickel, but they all fall beneath the strict nickel restrictions set by the European REACh regulation. So you will have some nickel exposure, but the possibility of nickel related reactions is very low. And then methacrylates, the Apple Watch case, the Milanese Loop, the Modern Buckle, and the Leather Loop contain trace amounts of methacrylates from adhesives. Band aids have them, some people have sensitivities. They do warn people these parts are not in direct contact with your skin but it is a potential cause of discomfort. They also say, don't wear your watch too tight. And also, care and cleaning. Do not put your watch in the wash, but you could clean it with a cloth that comes with it, a lint free cloth comes with it, just as it does with the laptops.

Rene: Just not an orange one.

Leo: Apple Watch is water resistant. You may dampen the cloth with clean water. They're not saying Windex, so don't maybe. Apple Watch is splash and water resistant, not waterproof. You can wear and use it during exercise, in the rain, and while washing hands. Do not submerge it. The rating for those who are curious, IPX7, and if you're wearing a leather band, it's probably not a good idea to get that wet. I love leather bands, but you know, just from my own sweat they get kind of funky pretty quick. So that's why I got the Milanese loop.

Rene: Yep. Nice choice.

Leo: And the magnet, that means it fits exactly right, no matter what size you are.

Rene: It's the stretch pants of watch bands, Leo.

Leo: It is! It's the lululemon baby! I got yoga pants on my wrist.

Rene: Yes. Oh they should use that slogan.

Leo: It's yoga pants, for your wrist.  Ahhhh.

Rene: Ahhh, your wrists are just happy.

Leo: Alright, I have now, I believe, depleted all Apple Watch stories, you agree guys?

Don: Ehhh. There was one I was today, I saw another story today about the returns for the addition.

Leo: Returns!?

Don: Yeah, they're going to have a really strict policy and they're going to, if you take an addition back to the Apple store to return it, they are going to examine it with microscopes, they are going to weigh it to make sure none of the gold has been extracted from inside the case. So that, you know.

Leo: Wow!

Don: So that was the only other thing I heard.

Leo: That's because there are some really bad people out there who will take the watch, shave some gold off of it, and bring it back.

Don: Do that ten times, do that one hundred times..

Leo: That's messed up! More likely, I think much more likely, the people who would borrow basically it so they can wear it at an event, a soiree, and I think that's what Beyonce did, and then bring it back. Pretty sure Beyonce did that. No, I'm just kidding. All right, we haven't, CR One says wait a minute guys you can't stop, we haven't talked about the box it comes in yet.

Don: Oh no!

Leo: Ahhhh! So I again, I'm hoping that we'll have something to un-box on Friday. I hope Apple, I mean I can't say it lives up to its promise because they said all they promised was April 30th through May 8th.

Rene: Fingers crossed, Leo.

Leo: I have really got my fingers and toes crossed. It's so sad, it's a pathetic statement about me and our society, three days after it comes I'll be saying “What's next?”

Don: Yep, true.

Leo: Now what? What else am I waiting for?

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Leo: I think this is interesting, you know, Samsung has been sourcing the chips for the iPhone and iPad now for some time. We've heard rumors that Apple's been looking at another foundry. In fact, according to Apple Insider, has made a sudden last minute decision to source 30% of the next generation A9 chips from this second foundry. TSMC, 30% of the..

Rene: That's the one that made the A8.

Leo: Oh, they did make the A8!

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: So, do I have Samsung chips in my phone or..

Rene: Right now, if you have an iPhone 6 you have TMSC chips.

Leo: Oh interesting!

Rene: But there was some reports, because Samsung has limited capacity like any fab, they don't have an abundance on capacity that because they're busy fabing all of the Exynos chip stats, that they might, Apple might need to-

Leo: Right.

Rene:  -hedge another second supplier for (unintelligible) for screens and everything-

Leo: Yeah, their Galaxy edge uses Exynos not, they've always used, in their Galaxy phones, Exynos, in Europe and Asia, but the US always has had Qualcom chips. For the first time ever the Edge has an Exynos chip globally.

Rene: Although still has the Qualcom based band for-

Leo: Has to.

Rene: Especially for Verizon, for better quality.

Leo: Yeah, for Verizon for CVMA.

Rene: And that wonderful little sticker that they're forced to put on the Verizon version.

Leo: Oh really?!

Rene: There's a power by Qual, it's like an Intel Inside sticker for Qualcom on the bottom of Verizon version.

Leo: Aye, aye, aye. Jason you've got the S6 normal, I have the Edge.

Jason: Yeah, I'm loving it. It's a pretty fantastic phone.

Leo: Now we should say Jason's the enemy. He works for All about Android.

Jason: THE enemy, come on! Come on!

Rene: Frenimy at best.

Leo: Frenimy.

Rene: Adversary.

Leo: Friendly adversary.

Rene: So the question I have, and maybe Jason, I was using one for two days earlier last week, and I turned it sideways and none of the ports are aligned, and I can't un-see that. Like the SIM card thing is not aligned with the buttons, the mic hole is not aligned with the micro USB port.

Leo: Oh you're just weird.

Rene: I, like I look at these things, how hard is that to do? Just do that for me please.

Leo: Wait a minute, you want.. Look, are they aligned? So you're saying, because here on this beautiful Apple iPhone everything is rigidly aligned but you're saying on...

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: Huh. Now that you've told me this I probably won't be able to un-see it.

Jason: Okay, so that's the iPhone, they're all in line.

Leo: They're all in a straight line, same thing here.

Jason: Yeah I mean I guess so, but I've never noticed it before.

Leo: Now I'm not going to be able to un-see it!! Oh, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! Not a reason to reject the phone, but you make an excellent point.

Rene: No, but I'd like them to do it.

Jason: The infrared sensor is above, yeah.

Leo: That's exactly what it is, Apple is like obsessive, like OCD obsessive about stuff. And...

Jason: Yeah, I guess I didn't look at the alignment of the different points, Rene, thanks.

Leo: Well now we have to look. Thank you Rene.

Rene: When the Galaxy S7 is perfectly aligned they can thank MacBreak Weekly.

Leo: That is pretty funny. Um..

Jason: Finally, finally, I use an Android phone and I'm amazed by the camera.

Leo: It's the first really good Android camera.

Jason: It's taken five years for the Android devices for me to finally be super impressed by a camera.

Leo: Excellent review at Menon Tech, very thorough review by Menon Tech and he did say that he still considers the iPhone camera marginally better, probably because it's only 8 megapixels. He does point out on the Edge when you have a 16 megapixel camera with a sensor that size, that means the pixels on the sensor are about a micron, which is pretty darn small.

Rene: They chop them up really small because of megapixels.

Leo: Yeah. And so, you know, maybe he's a little over, like you, a little over involved in the stats, but-

Rene: Well, so for me, a camera on a phone should just be like, most people most of the time will pull it out of their pocket and with absolutely no adjustment just take a photograph and that is a good memory for them.

Leo: And the Edge does that. I mean the S6 does that.

Rene: Yeah, but that's measly criteria.

Leo: I use a highly subjective criterion for pictures that I call pleasingness.

Rene: Yes!

Leo: Because I, admittedly, sometimes a picture that's not perfectly accurate is more pleasing than a picture that is perfectly accurate. In fact often.

Rene: And some people like warmer, some people like cooler, it's very personal sometimes.

Leo: Yeah, and I've always thought the iPhone, particularly the iPhone 6, and 6 plus even more so, had a very high pleasingness factor. You just looked at the image and you liked them, you said “Yeah, that's what I saw, that's how it felt.

Rene: Alex thinks we're animals right now. He thinks we're absolute animals right now.

Leo: Who does?

Rene: Alex.

Leo: You animal, you!

Alex: No, I shoot 95% of my photos with my iPhone.

Leo: Yeah.

Alex: I really take my SLR out, DSLR out very rarely. I take it out for very specific things, and a couple times a year I capture things with my kids that I won't want in that format, but really the thing that I shoot almost exclusively is my iPhone. It's the thing that's in my pocket, my DSLR and even Micro four-thirds, I tried to go to that. There is so little room in my case, you know my bags when I travel, that anything more than about that size is a problem for me and so I've gotten quite used to it, I've gotten quite good at taking those photos, but that and my 360 beta, or whatever, are pretty much the only cameras that I have most of the time.

Leo: It's amazing now, and in fact I think in many ways your smart phone's primary function is your camera. At least for me.

Alex: People use it, statistically, it is the primary function of your camera is, I mean of your phone is the camera, and I think that one of the things that, you know, the integration, like my kids love the fact that my Apple TV is connected to my photo stream. So I'm just like constantly taking photos, and they love that they come home and see wherever I was. They just, things just appearing all the time of whatever I'm doing and they stay connected and that's actually a piece of what I like about it. I think with the DSLRs I have to figure where to put it, and do all this other stuff. This it's just online, it's on my computer, it's on everything I need it to be on.

Leo: Yeah. What were you going to say Don?

Don: I was going to say exactly the same thing that the photos are great, the images are fine, but the convenience of, the connectivity they have, and also Geo location, I mean if you think back a couple of years, how hard it was to actually do Geo location and put that information on your photos and with that it's just done.

Leo: When we were in China, I was carrying with me, John and I went to China on one of the geek cruises, and I was carrying a GPS dongle with me and it was just crazy and then you'd get home and you'd use a tool, I think it was from Houdah-

Don: HoudahGeo.

Leo: Yeah, HoudahGeo would take the KML file from the GPS Dongle and match it because you had to have the time right and then it would match them, and then they were Geo Located. And now it's just pfft eh.

Don: I've noticed with photos, because I've started to use a little mirror-less camera as well, which is great for traveling. It's nice images but you know, there's no Geo location on them with the new photos, you can't actually get that information in Photos you have to use something like HoudahGeo to actually put the DGL location information on it, it's such a pain.

Leo: A pain in the butt!

Alex: Well and I think, I love the iPhoto map, or the Photo Map. Where the fact, I have to admit sometimes I fall a little behind, I didn't realize I could just search by location until just a couple of weeks ago and I was just like, oh my gosh-

Leo: Do we have, does the new Photos do that? Or is..

Alex: Yep.

Leo: Okay good.

Alex: And so you can sit there and go, I just wanna show you the pictures from Rwanda, or if I'm just looking for pictures from my house and I just go to those. And that map is this great map of, for me, it's this great memory trip of all these different places that I've traveled, and I love the fact that everything's getting tagged and everything else, except when I post it and I worry about-

Leo: We're all using, we've all replaced, if you've updated iOS 283 and you've updated Yosemite to 10103, bye bye iPhoto hello Photos. We've been talking a lot about that, but now it's real for everybody. Um, what do we think?

Rene: I mean I love it, I love it, especially with iCloud photo library because it really does deliver on that near line storage promise where all my frequently accessed favorites and recent photos are available on every single one of my devices, my less frequently and un-favorite photos are just stored up in the Cloud and I can get them with the tap of a iCloud button and it means that I don't have to worry, my entire library's available everywhere. I do download, I have one Mac, my iMac downloads everything and backs it up to Time Machine just in case Apple servers ever explode, but it's working great for me, I've been using it for two or three months now and we put up I think 50 help articles, 3 guides, and a bunch of reviews and it's just been really good so far.

Leo: People have been complaining that the iCloud photo library sync never completes. Of course-

Rene: It takes a while, especially with a big library.

Alex: It does take a while.

Leo: Yeah, um, and do you recommend when you, now obviously when you're on the phone you're going to have optimized the iPhone storage, because then it downloads, it doesn't download the full originals of everything, it does some very smart stuff so that you don't fill up your iPhone with photos but you get access to all of your photos. Do you recommend that on a Mac as well?

Rene: With the small SSD drive absolutely. Like a Mac Book Air or one of the new Mac Books, yeah. Because those will fill up really quick. They do a really good job of stopping before you get completely full on your drive, but with the optimized storage, often times you don't need, especially all the raw information all available all the time so it will just leave that in the Cloud until you want it.  And if you want to make sure that certain photos are highly available, just open them before you go out, or favorite them, or do something that prompts the system. Think of it like a fusion drive, whatever you do more frequently is going to end up right there on the computer for you.

Leo: How, okay, so by the way there's somebody in the chat room saying, no Photos doesn't do Maps. It isn't obvious, you know in the new Photo's you have photos shared, albums and projects tabs. But if you're in the Photos tab you will see that they are Geo located, and if you click the Geo location of any given group, it will launch a map, and that map you can move around and see where other photos are and so forth.

Don: Yeah, I mean I've been playing a lot with Photos this week because it's actually the topic of this week’s show so-

Leo: Oh good!

Don: -I'm very, very intimated with it and I like it! There's some of the advanced tiles that aren't there in aperture, and I don't think that the majority of the people are going to miss them. If you're really heavily into photography and you like using the brushes etc. it's going to be difficult for you.

Leo: Get Lightroom, Just get Lightroom.

Don: Yeah, if you want to do that, get Lightroom. But again my take on Photos is it is still is a version 1 product. As Rene says, the iCloud photo library just is the answer to all my prayers of work flow, because I've been in such a mess before with having the iPad and iPhone. You know you'd edit something on one device and then that edited version would remain on there, and it was a complete mess. But with iCloud Photo library things do sync eventually when you give it time if you've got a big library, and it's such a delight to edit something on your iPad and literally within seconds it's on your Mac or it's on your iPhone as well, the edited version. Plus it's non-destructive so you can, if you want to revert, you can reverse as well. But I think that it's a version 1 product. They're going down the same route that they did with final cut, they're going down the same route they did with pages and numbers in that they've basically started again from scratch in that they've built the architecture underneath and they've produced this first version, they haven't opened any of the APIs yet so that there's no plug ins on the Mac etc. but I'm sure that's to comb, and I'm sure that we'll see lots of these more advanced features in Aperture that we had reappear in Photos for those people that want to use it but as a version 1 product it's probably more than suitable for, you know, over 80% of people who like to play with Photos.

Leo: I hadn't yet installed it, turned it on, because I had just updated this laptop to 10103, and it's so cool because as soon as you turn on iCloud Photo library all these images from way back when are now available to me. I mean here's pictures from our visit to London in the Fall in October.

Rene: And you get a ton of space back on your device and a lot of people were running out of space. The thing to Dons point is, there's no photo extensions for OS 10 yet those are only iOS, but it's not hard to imagine that's next on the list for OS 10. There's a new version of Lightroom that's available today, and there are a lot of features for photographers. But for somebody that want's to manage all of their stuff and not have to worry about it, the feature said it's complete-ish. There's not everything here but there's a lot that you can do.

Leo: Yeah, it's not all completely discover-able like that Maps thing, it takes a little time to move around within it. It also does video which is nice. Yeah, I think this is a good middle ground, and the iCloud Photo library, have you heard of syncing issues or is it just that people have so many images it just takes a while?

Rene: There are some, yeah.

Don: I had a problem today, and someone asked me, because I put out a thing on Twit asking people what would they like me to cover, and someone mentioned syncing, and people are finding they are having gaps in the cache, you know, so that when you see the thumbnails there are like sort of spaces sometimes that don't completely fill in.

Leo: It's a little image with a cloud in it but no image itself. I see a few of these.

Don: Yeah, sometimes if you drill down, normally you'll see it at the top level you'll see blanks.

Leo: Yeah.

Don: But normally when you drill down to that level if you give it a few minutes it normally, and now that looks like that's actually an error. That's probably a video that's not supported.

Leo: Okay, I've seen quite a few of these however. So yeah there's some, but I just started syncing when we started talking about it so I'm pretty impressed at the range of stuff that's already been downloaded.

Rene: One of the, one of the really cool things is that there's Photo Kit which developers can plug into, so for example, Google updated Snap Seed last week, and I love Snap Seed, and they used Photo kits so that fits right into the non-destructive editing pipeline, so anything you do with Snap Seed now gets preserved in photos and you can go back and undo it and if more apps are doing that then it becomes really sort of exciting because you just don't have plug ins but you have plug ins that are non-destructive that sync that do all that as well.

Leo: I'd love that. Yeah.

Don: Yeah the other thing the people are a little bit concerned about is having to pay for the cloud storage because obviously if you are using a free 5 gig account it's not going to sort of hold a lot of photos. So they've got tiers that you can boost the storage, but you know, if you don't want that they have given you a sort of get out as well in that you can have multiple photos libraries because it's only the one library on your Mac that will actually synchronize with the iCloud Photo library, so you can assign one library to sync, and then have other libraries for archive or if its just stuff you don't want to sync between your devices you can hold that in separate  libraries as well.

Leo: Oh, that's nice!

Don: Yeah, so you can do, it's a bit difficult to move photos from one library to another at the moment.

Leo: Okay.

Don: But you can keep them in separate libraries and then just switch, use the old trick, hold down the alt or option key when you load photos and that will allow you to select the library you want to.

Leo: That's very good to know! So if you're going to import stuff that you don't want to put on iCloud for instance you could do that, hold down the Alt key when you launch Photos and say “Create a new one”, and you'll have now-

Don: Or if you've got a huge actual library like I did, my actual library contained hundreds of 4k video clips, which you know are huge in size. I'm going to use them to edit and make a smaller movie so I didn't really want all of those clips to be uploaded so I basically before I migrated my actual library just exported all of those 4k clips into a separate partition, deleted them from the actual library and then just migrated my actual library and it was a lot smaller by the time I'd done that, you know. So there are ways where you can massage and manipulate what actually does get uploaded to iCloud Photo.

Leo: Jason Snow writes an article, a couple of weeks ago, in sixcolors.com  about an experience that was a little odd. Now he has 20,000 photos in a family photo collection, and it started upload, he says “later that day I discovered something, the next day my internet connection seemed to die or at least became sporadically inert. Traffic would sometimes skirt through but after long days, long delays it was weird and intermittent, and I was really sad (as I would be as well). Later that day I discovered something though, even though iPhotos wasn't open, a background task was uploading my photo library to iCloud, all 20,000 photos. This process was using all available bandwidth, it was not what we call “nice”. Saturating my outbound internet connection, which means your downloads will also be throttled. If you're trying out Photos, and wondering why your internet is suddenly slow, now you know you can pause for one day, that's a button right there in the settings for iCloud Photo library. Are you aware of this Rene? Have you seen this?

Rene: Yeah, there was a big debate about whether it was uploading in the background or not, and Jason was showing screen shots of network activity to prove that it really was, and again like it (unintelligible)

Leo: Hmm, even if Photos is closed?

Rene: Yeah, um, you have to pause it.

Don: It's an agent.

Rene: Yeah, it's a demon or an agent, I forget the technical term.

Leo: (Sigh)

Don: The thing is though, that button says alert says “Pause for a day”, you can actually just pause it and it turns into a resume button. So if you just want to pause it for a couple of hours you can press that then, if you're working during the day just press that and then leave it on overnight and just press “Resume” and it will just continue.

Leo: I presume once it's done it'll be done, but that's bad programming. It should be, you know when you have Backblaze or Carbonite our sponsor, people like that-

Rene: Even iTunes.

Leo: -they'll be careful about using your upstream.

Don: Or give you the option to toggle it or to, a slider to change the amount of bandwidth it uses.

Leo: To get it done, you get 'er done. Yeah.

Don: Yeah.

Alex: And you need to be very careful if you're, if you accidentally have a Mifi that it accidentally connects to it.

Leo: (Whistles) If you had a bandwidth cap, you should be aware of this.

Alex: No, you want a bandwidth cap, what you don't want is to have a limit where then you're paying $10 a gig after that. Just in case you're wondering, it adds up over time.

Leo:Yeah. This is actually a problem a lot of programs have. It's something new with this Cloud storage thing. But it's good to be aware of.

Don: It still amazes me that, I mean Apple have always suffered with a bad press on cloud and web, and justly so, you know in the early days with a Mobile Me etc. But they really do have seem to got their act together now, when you consider the amount of data they're pushing down or pulling up, when you look at the music, look at the movies or the iTunes,  look at all the apps for the Mac and for the iOS, and now the iCloud Photo library. You know the sheer volume of traffic they must be handling now is open to the public not just a beat it. So anyone can now upload 200 gigs of data, I mean that's where I'm pushing up at the minute, I've converted my actual library and it's only about 250 gigs. I only started it about two days ago and I've been switching it off during the day while I work and just leaving it running, and about half-way, about a third of the way through but it's getting up there, you know, slowly but surely.

Leo: And there's no way to say, don't put this album on the cloud, you just have to open a new, create a new library?

Don:  Yeah because everything in the library, it's called your System Photo library, that's the one that actually syncs with iCloud photo library.

Rene: It's meant to be sort of set it and forget it. It's made so you can take the humans out of photo management they want to do it all intelligently for you.

Leo: Which is great if what it does is what you want it to do.

Rene: Yes.

Leo: But as you get more sophisticated, maybe it isn't. It's like Time Machine and a lot of other..

Rene: Yeah, exactly like that.

Leo: Yeah, Apple always airs on the side of, it's just magic, but sometimes magic can be black magic for those who have other needs.

Rene: Well and sometimes they add as time goes on, like now they've added to Time Machine you can prevent it from backing up certain folders, and I wouldn't be surprised if that stuff slowly begins to appear in Photos over time.

Leo: And I think they presumed correctly, in most cases, that if you're that sophisticated you just disable it and do your own thing. You'll know what to do.

Rene: You'll use the Lightroom.

Leo: Yeah, you'll use Light or whatever. Yeah exactly. So this is for people who don't know better, and will be in 99% of the cases just happy. The problem is I wish they would document a little better so we, the more sophisticated users can say “Oh, I don't want that, I prefer not to have that”. On the other hand I'm loving the fact that even though I'm using this machine for the first time with Yosemite 10103 I'm, I've got all of my pictures on here. That's nice. Without clogging my hard drive.

Rene: Yeah. It's even more amazing on your phone, you just pull out your phone with a picture from 2007 you want to show your grandparents all the sudden is right there.

Leo: That's great, yeah.

Rene: Yep.

Leo: Do we know what the algorithms are for how much how many originals to put on there, how many thumbnails. You know.

Rene: They explained it, and I'm going to forget, I'm not going to get it right, but basically they see how much storage space you have left and if you have optimized storage on, what it will do is upload the originals and replace them with sizes that are optimized for the screen of the device that you are using. And then any photo you have taken recently, that you've opened recently, or that you've favorited will get priority for cashing locally. Anything that's old or you haven't looked at in a long time will be prioritized for cloud storage. So, it is basically a near lying algorithm.

Leo: That's a real, I think that's a really good way to do it.

Rene: Yep.

Leo: Very nice. Alright lets see what else is going on in the world of-

Rene: We skipped over Apple bought the camera company LinX.

Leo: Yeah, what is that for, what are they going to do with that? Is it Lynx?

Rene: L-i-n-X.

Leo: L-i, it's an imaging company from Israel. What does LinX do?

Rene: LinX, I mean it's just marketing hype, but they say they want to make iPhone cameras as good as DSLR cameras and they're using a bunch of 3D imaging technology to sort of super sample and get depth information and other information to try to boost the quality of small camera technology.

Leo: They have multiple sensors, in some cases as many as four sensors, in a single camera.

Alex: And this is very similar, I mean this is a similar technology to Lytro, a similar technology to what HTC has done with the M8, M9. So the idea with a little bit of parallax you can get a lot of information about how far things are away and then you can start selectively grabbing things and creating shortcuts. There are all kinds of things you can do with these lenses, I mean that is the simplest of the things you can do once you're gathering that information. And I do think that this is going to be the future. Right now we're seeing a handful of cameras with this but I wouldn't be surprised if most cameras have this in ten years, some version of this.

Leo: This is the press release from LinX before they got bought. Apple bought, they only paid Twenty million, it's cheap.

Alex: Early on, get em early.

Leo: Yeah.

Rene: Tom Gruber had a rumor, I think, let’s take six months ago, that Apple's doing this with their cameras. A well-played John.

Leo: Yeah, or well leaked Apple. One or the other. It would make sense, the press release from last year in LinX says “The image quality of mobile cameras has reached a dead end.” I think you're seeing this with the Edge where you're putting 16 megapixels in but they're sub-micron pixels. “Device makers are striving to differentiate using imaging capabilities, but the pixel size race has ended and the next generation cameras do not revealed any dramatic improvements. LinX camera,” it really is about software right now. This is a hardware innovation that might make a big difference. “LinX cameras revolutionize mobile photography and broaden the usability span and user experience allowing us to leave our SLRs at home. It uses the extra lenses to extract depth information, so you could do 3D image reconstruction. You could, of course you know, with depth sensitivity you can do multiple variable focus as the Lytro does.” Apple's smart, this look, Apple needs to, there ascendancy has for a long time been, on the iPhone, has been partially powered by the strength of their camera, there's just nothing as good. And you've gotta stay ahead because they're starting to catch up now.

Rene: Neil Cybart had a great article on Above Avalon yesterday about the importance of the camera, because it is one of the features people will upgrade early for, if you can prove the camera's substantially better, than maybe 10% more people will upgrade  that year and that translates into a lot of money.

Leo: It's gotta be the 7 right, not the 6s.

Alex: Yes.

Rene: It's hard to tell, the 6S will have the same body, but you know they can do a lot with the camera even within the same body.

Alex: I would be really surprised to see anything before 2016, you know with..

Leo: Because you're stuck, rarely, well we don't know because Apple, I mean, they can do whatever they want, but the last few generations the second iteration of a new design has not modified the body right? So you still would have this sized camera hole. Or could you make it a bigger, a milli-bigger app hole and then change the mother board significantly? Would that be an S?

Rene: They have so much money, Leo.

Leo: I know, they can do anything they want.

Don: I mean they could make the bump a little bigger couldn't they, b ecause they've already sourced the educators with having the prominence on the outside so they could actually stick that up a millimeter or two.

Leo: The S6 has quite a bump actually.

Rene: The 5S had Touch ID, I mean they added Touch ID, which is a hardware feature.

Leo: You're right, that's a new device. Okay, alright.

Alex: I think though the issue is I think they're probably in the landing phase of manufacturing already. I mean if they're-

Leo: Oh my, can you believe it?

Alex: The next version, of course in the Fall they're going to know they need, I know they're down to the millions of what they need but, and they probably have ten or fifteen million that need to be produced minimum. I think that there's a huge surge in the 6 and 6S, I mean sorry, the 6 and the 6 plus. I'm not sure the surge will be quite the same, you know, for the 6S because there was a lot of pent up demand.

Leo: Kudos to Apple buying up thirty-six thousand acres of forest in partnership with the Conservation Fund. Apple does use a little bit of paper, and the land which is in Maine and in North Carolina. It's land roughly twice the size of Manhattan. Forty five million, part of a forty five million acre private forest in the US that is in danger of being lost to development so Apple acquired these and will harvest pulp from these forests for its virgin paper needs. Probably for the boxes. I'm sure those are made from virgin paper. But, you know, done properly wood is a renewable resource, and instead of clear cutting this forest and putting housing complexes up, the trees will stay, they'll harvest them. If you think about it, when you sell hundreds of millions of devices every year, each in its own perfectly crafted square box, you got a lot of non-recycled fiber. They said about 1/3 of the paper packaging of the iOS devices is non recycled fiber.

Alex: And I think Apple gets pinched a lot on environmental impact of what they're doing, so I think this is probably just a beginning, this is a small step in the process of them taking more control over their supply chain, and it feels like they're almost getting to a point where they could, I mean they have the cash to do it if they wanted to, build almost a vertical market where they're literally pulling, I mean completely vertical, where they're literally pulling the content out of the ground in this trees is the beginning of this, but it could be rare earth metals, all kinds of other things where they're actually owning a big chunk of that and managing it the way they want to manage it, and then having it, you know, own it all the way to the end.

Leo: Maybe they'll start making the boxes out of wood. What do they need paper for, make em out of wood. You've got the wood.

Alex: Oooo. There you go.

Leo: Apples got wood, now thirty-six thousand acres of wood. I like wooden boxes! We got, our Heil mics came in wooden boxes for a long time.

Rene: Yeah.

Leo: You're making something of that kind of quality I would, does the addition come in a fine, it comes in a-

Rene: It's got a very fancy box.

Leo: Yeah, is it cardboard?

Rene: I don't know, I didn't ask what it was made out of but it looks very fancy.

Leo: Yeah, fancy box. Well anyway, there is a precedent for this remember Henry Ford when he build the Rouge factory which still runs in Deer Born Michigan, the whole idea was that you put box cars of trees and ingots of iron on one end and a car comes out the other end, because they have forges and they have mills and they have everything you need in the Rouge factory, which is a massive factory.

Alex: And if you look at, I mean, what's now the span of it we think of them as coffee makers, but Krups really owned everything from, they were Krups arms, and they owned everything from the mining organizations that pulled it out of the ground all the way to the finished guns that they outfitted.

Leo: If you're big enough, it's the way to do it. Alright, let's wrap up with a few things. We did mention the LA Unified School Districts purchase of a large number of iPads, one for each student in the district. They issued a 30 year bond to pay for it, which seemed on the face of it bad fiscal policy. The program was an incredible flop. They're being investigated because the no longer, but at the time, Superintendent there had ties to Apple and Pearson, which is the publishing company that made the curriculum to go on these iPads. They bought the curriculum sight unseen. There's complaints now that it never worked and Apple is now saying that, I mean, LA Unified School District is now saying we want our money back, we want our money back.

Alex: I think this is a real clear, when you think about Pearson and you think about putting in the content onto iPads, this is a classic case of a new wine in old wine skins. I mean the issue with it is it is a, you know they have this old technology being books, and I get that they try to spruce it up with making a couple of things interactive, but really for this kind of thing to work for most of these school systems, like to really build your entire curriculum around it, it's going to require complete rethinking of the education process. And I don't think most public schools are ready for that.

Leo: 1.3 billion dollars in iPads, it failed almost immediately. It was rolled out in Fall 2013, devices didn't work, teachers weren't well trained, they often would put the devices aside. I think the motivation was good, which is there are a lot of poor kids in our district who do not have access to technology, and we want to make sure that they have access to technology whether an iPad is exactly the right thing, um..

Alex: Well I think underlying, I think the teachers didn't jump on it, the teachers didn't take much advantage of it. I think there were a lot of other problems. But if you look at like the Baltimore School District actually put Smart Boards in every single classroom that they had and almost, all but like one or two of the teachers just used it as a black board, they just didn't understand it, didn't..

Leo: Right.

Alex: You know there wasn't enough training, enough for them to see why they should do more work to figure that out.

Leo: Well it's really as much Pearson's problem as it is Apples, but the school district said “We're not paying for any more iPads, thank you very much, and we'd like our money back”. It feels like they probably aren't going to have much success with that approach.

Rene: Going around snatching iPads from kids hands.

Leo: Give me that iPad!

Rene: Bah humbug.

Leo: YouTube app has disappeared from older Apple TV and iOS devices. Wasn't it replaced by a newer, better app? YouTube is apparently changing its data API, and many of these older apps just won't function, if you have an old second generation or earlier Apple TV, the YouTube channel just pffft pffft, will be gone. iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, iOS 7 or later is required for YouTube to work, so that's not an Apple thing, that's a Google thing. They've changed the API. Although Apple I guess is responsible for the YouTube app on the Apple TV at least.

Rene: It's a channel partnership, so like if it's the same as Bloomberg, then they get a kit that lets them develop the app that then gets put on the..

Leo: Ahh, I see.

Don: On the  the other devices that you can still get to YouTube through Mobile Safari, it's just the Apple TV that's the one that's convenient.

Leo: Right, browser works. But there's no browser on the Apple TV. 10.10.4 seed developers get ready, woohoo!

Rene: Yep, and 8.4.

Leo: Woohoo! What did 8.3 do, what did I get when I, I got it last week, what did I get?

Rene: So, 8.2 was all the watch stuff, 8.3 takes all the stuff that Apples iOS engineers have been working on and mixes that with the watch stuff and basically is the next version of iOS. The other one was the same as iOS 8.1, but with all the watch stuff now you're getting the next version of iOS that combines the watch stuff into it. And you've also got the emoji, like the diversified emoji with all the flags and extra things like that. And then iOS 8.4 has been seeded, and according to some websites who've published pictures of it there's a new music app.

Leo: Ahh, that would be the Beats.

Rene: There's no Beats yet, but it's a redesigned music app so far.

Leo: Oh!

Rene: Which could be the front end for something.

Leo: But it, well. Front end for something we don't even know what they're going to call. You did mention briefly, we should probably mention Lightroom 6 came out today from Adobe. Have you played with it Alex, do you know anything about it?

Alex: I have not. I'll ask more from my sister. I'm going to play with it, I'm still figuring out what I'm going to do. Post that for sure. So I'm definitely looking at it. My sister uses Lightroom heavily, so I'm going to let her give me some guidance.

Leo: Yeah. As do I.

Don: I was lately introduced to facial recognition and some new HDR features and also some stitching of panoramic shots, including stitching of raw photos and panoramas as well.

Leo:  Yeah. Also fully 64 bit in all versions if you're a Creative Cloud subscriber, as I am, which is by the way one of the best deals out there, $10 per month gives you Photo Shop and Lightroom and automatically updates to the next version every time. You should be getting that or getting a notice to get that. Face recognition I don't care so much about. Speed improvements. New tools and brushes. I guess the faces is kind of like Apple faces which is in Photos and iPhoto and Aperture. High dynamic range tool. I've been using external tool called Photomatix to do HDR, I guess I should try Lightroom now. So, if you have Lightroom, I'd upgrade! It'd probably be a paid upgrade for Lightroom 5 users on the stand-alone version. We'll take a break, come back. Gentleman, prepare your picks!

Our show today brought to you by Lynda.com. A hearty congratulations to Lynda and the team. They just sold Lynda.com for a billion bucks to LinkedIn. That's great news for those of us who use Lynda, because that means now they're going to even get better and better. New workshops, new classes. Three thousand on-demand video courses already on the site. If you are a problem solver, if you just like you know you wanna make your brain bigger, you love learning, we all love learning! I think humans in their natural states are learning machines. Lynda.com is a great thing. You can learn how to create an app, how to build a responsive website. You better too by the way, Google is now penalizing you if you're not. Master Excel, sharpen your coding skills. L-y-n-d-a.com has everything you need to feed that curious mind of yours. We talk about photography a lot. The foundations of photography in the photography 101 series are great. Lisa's taking those right now. Ben Long's teaching one of them. Oh I love, there's Ben right there. He is just not only a sweet guy, a great photographer and a great teacher and this is what, every single course on Lynda.com is by a working professional but who is a great teacher and then they give this, they have their beautiful studios, they shoot them marvelously. You get text transcripts so you can jump right to a particular part, and then once you get the basics out of the way, and this is Ben teaching Macro Photography which is awfully cool. You cover composition, exposure, all of the basics. Then you can get the advanced tutorials on shooting landscapes, street photography, travel, time lapses, macro photography. Something for all experience levels. Go right now to Lynda.com/MacBreak and sign up for your 10 day free trial. You get ten days the run of the place, and all the new courses will be yours. For Bert Monroy's amazing photo shop courses, they're so good! It's just the greatest stuff ever. Lightroom, Photo Shop, Photography, Web Design, Programming, it's all there! And you've got it all to yourself free for 10 days. All you have to do is go to l-y-n-d-a.com/MacBreak. Thank you so much for doing such a great product. Congratulate them on their new, I'm just so happy for Lynda. Fifteen years for all that, it's a start up, fifteen year old start up. I love that, I just love it. Lynda.com, well done Lynda.

Leo: Time for Picks of the Week! Let's start with Rene Ritchie!

Rene: So we're going to be inundated with Apple Watch apps starting Friday, and I wanted to get in ahead of the crowd. Twitterrific is the granddaddy of Twitter apps.  It's where a lot of the iconography we know, like the bird came from Twitterrific, Tweet came from Twitterrific. It symbolizes so much of what we now consider to be Twitter and they were there in jailbreak, they were there the first day of the App Store, first day of the iPad App Store. I'm convinced if an Apple TV STK comes out they would already be working on Twitterrific for that so it's hard to be surprised that they have Twitterrific already ready to go for the Apple Watch. They put up a little teaser blog site about it and as is to be expected from the Icon Factory it looks gorgeous. You can have the little mascot Ollie right there on your wrist. And it's, for me one of the biggest things about the Apple Watch is going to be Notification triage, I have very few notifications on, very, almost none of them can actually make my phone sound at all and I do DMs on Twitter, I don't do very much else but being able to just quickly glance at something and see a short look and bring it closer and see a long look and know if it's important enough I need to stop and take care of it is going to be really important. And there is the Twitter app, but more and more often it feels like Twitters interests aren't my interests and sort of the decisions they're making with interface and features aren't the decisions I want from Twitter, but Twitterrific has always been just exactly what I wanted, a classic Twitter client. And you can get the update now, it won't work until you get your Apple Watch of course, but it's already baked in and it's going to be ready to go. They're terrific.

Leo: Love the Icon Factory they do such great stuff. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. I can't wait. And I can use Siri to send a tweet using that right?

Rene: It'll probably use the build it Twitter functionality of iOS, it won't go. But you won't need it to cause all you're doing is sending a tweet. It's going to be a system function at that point.

Leo: I can't wait, Twitterrific! I use Tweetbot.

Rene: I do too on the iPhone because it reminds me of Tweety which is how my brain works when it comes to Twitter.

Leo: Me too! Tweety, the original.

Rene: But Tweetie was bought by Twitter, Warren Brichter made it and they basically destroyed it and made the new Twitter app and Tweetbot just reminds me of that. But I've always used Twitterrific on the iPad because they have a combined time line so it's a very enjoyable reading experience.

Leo: Ahh. Yeah that would do it. So Twitterrific for the iPad, Tweetbot for the iPhone and we'll see for the iWatch, the Apple Watch, which is the best. I presume-

Rene: There's no Tweetbot for the Apple Watch yet.

Leo: -not yet but I presume everybody's gotta be working on that right? It can't be too hard to do, or is it?

Rene: So the notifications are almost for free. Basically any notification you currently have now will work on the watch. You can add some fine grain controls I believe if you want to. Then you can also make a glance, which is like a widget, and you can also make a watch kit extension which gives you interactivity, and that's what Twitterrific has done. Tweetbot and the other clients would have to make those glances and widgets as well.

Leo: I'd imagine everybody's got to be doing it right.

Rene: Some people want to wait, they want to see it. They want to take their time and see what, because the hardest thing so far has been figuring out what makes sense. Ben Bajarin said this, you have hours on the computer, you have minutes on the phone, and you have seconds on the Watch because people just don't want to leave their wrist up for a long period of time. So figuring out what the most important functionality is and giving that takes a little bit of thought and I know of several really good developers who want to wait and have a watch for a week or a month before they figure out what they want to do with it.

Leo: Mr. Don McCallister, screencastsonline, your recommendation.

Don: Right, well I've gotten with a gadget this time rather than an application and it's something that came in really handy on a holiday recently. And it's this, this is the, you need to see this on video. It's the Feiyutech Hand Held Gimbal for your GoPro. And it basically just stabilizes your GoPro and turns it into a steady cam so that you can be walking along and there's no footsteps, nothing bounces up and down, you can actually do smooth pans. I was riding on the back of an elephant and it produces fantastically stable footage...

Leo: Wait a minute, wait a minute, slow down. “I was riding on the back of an elephant”, you don't just skim by that there.

Don: Well we did the India trip with the geek friends.

Leo: Ahh, fun!

Don: One of the things was an Indian safari, and of course you're bouncing up and down, but with this on it's just absolutely fantastic. It's a-

Leo: And it's just a stick, it's not huge. Yeah.

Don: -it's tiny and it's very portable, very light-weight but you can no matter what motion you go you can actually stabilize it and it actually has three different modes as well, so you can actually, if I just hold down the button it actually stays in perfect location in 3D space.

Leo: Isn't that cool!

Don: But it's just really a great gadget. Now this is the G3, they've actually come out with a G4 since, which has got these wiser heading and you can actually charge your GoPro from the batteries built into the hand set. But when it wasn't any be last week, there's actually more coming out now, you can actually get these for smart phones so there's a couple now. I don't think they're on the market yet but I did see a couple of prototypes of these similar things that you just put an Android or an iPhone onto it and it turns your iPhone into a steady cam. It's a great design.

Leo: I bought a crazy, crazy Gimbal, the Nebula 4000 for my Sony A7 camera, so my SLR.

Don: Oh right, yeah.

Leo: But it's a pain in the butt to use because you have to balance everything carefully before you can use it. When we were out shooting our show open for the new screen savers launching May 2nd for some of these same networks, we did, we had Greg Freedman our shooter had a beautiful, professional kind of steady cam Gimbal system. This is a very popular system now. But he also, he would spend, he had a special person to balance the gimbal, do you have to balance your gimbal?

Don: Not this particular one because it is actually designed for the GoPro. If I switch it off it sort of just goes limp when I switch it off, and then you just switch it on. So basically it goes into a rucksack,  if I wanted to use it I just pull it out of my rucksack-

Leo: That's nice.

Don: -there's a button on the bottom you just press the button-

Leo: That's nice.

Don: -and in a few seconds it snaps into action, and you're ready to go.

Leo: And it's a lot less money than my Nebula 4000. I gotta tell ya.

Don: I can well imagine (unintelligible).

Leo: $250 bucks US for that.

Don: Right, okay, a bit more expensive here in the UK.

Alex: I actually bought exactly the same one.

Leo: So you like that one.

Alex: And so I very much approve of it. It is an amazing little bit. I shot a shot of my kids running across the back of our yard and I'm running full tilt behind them with that GoPro, and it's just like we're floating, it's like I'm floating behind them. It was quite amazing. There's no vibration, it was quite an experience for me to experiment with (unintelligible).

Leo: I want one for my smart phone because it would double as a selfie stick, right?

Don: Yeah, yeah it would.

Leo: Did you say they made one, or they're going to make one.

Don: No there are some 3d, and not the same company, there are a couple of different Japanese and Chinese companies, NAB, but there are some with just a smart phone holder. I do think you have to balance it to set it up.

Leo: Yeah.

Alex: But this particular one (unintelligible)

Leo: Look at this Nebula 4000, the thing, it takes me an hour. I want to recommend it but I have to get good at balancing the dang thing. It's crazy! Crazy! And it's also like 800 bucks. Crazy. So what do you do Alex? I mean you guys probably have a really steady cam.

Alex: We have a couple different things, so we have a Steady Cam, and my brother, Joe, is now a Steady Cam operator.

Leo: Is this the same technology, Gimbal technology, or is it different?

Alex: No, no, no. So Steady Cam doesn't have any of the Gimbal stuff but you can add them together. So, for instance, I have a Ronin. It's probably what your DP was using for the thing. So it's a Ronin, it’s got two handles, you can put a red or a big camera in the center. And so what that is, a lot of this, all of this Gimbal technology really came from drones because all the drones they're building, all these Gimbal systems for the cameras and then they realized,you know it would be really good if we just held onto these, you know, and so-

Leo: Well that's in fact who makes the Ronin and its DJI.

Alex: Yeah, so I have a ronin with a red camera that I used. Then I have the little one for the GoPro. Those are great for getting the smooth shots. You don't have, you have some control, but you don't have the artistic control that you would have with the Steady Cam which is a much more manual process. It's balancing the camera, but it's really like how it turns and everything else. It steadies it but you really have control. So if you're doing a really, like a film level control shot, one of these does not in my opinion replace a good Steady Cam operator, but most of us are bad Steady Cam operators and so as a result this is really good for that, up to about 80%  of what you would use a Steady Cam for these will do that. Once you get over that you really need someone who's got years of experience. What you have past, I mean we did our first shows, we bought the Steady Cam turbo lesson and we're shooting with it. And this would have been better. You know like this would have been a better solution for us for the kind of shots we were doing. So if you wanna have that artistic control, you need to have a lot of experience or higher someone with a lot of experience. If you want just steady shots of your kids, if you want steady shots for your short film, walking behind people, those are all things that are great. You can again also add these together. Some people are adding these gimbals to the Steady Cam so you have some of the control. And then there is Ultra some of a entirely different feel. So, there's a lot of interesting creative things you can do, because these are so stabilized, you can literally have one person hand the rig to another person. So you could be following someone, they get into a car, you hand the rig to a person in the car and it follows along with them, all in one single shot.

Leo: None of what you did is what Greg did. He has this thing which goes, straps onto his waist and has a string, can you see my screen. That comes over the top and holds the Ronin.

Alex: Oh nice. Well in a lot of ways that's a stress reliever. I use it for that.

Leo: Right, it's just, because that's a long time he's got to hold that thing so this helps him hold it.

Alex: Exactly, a lot of those kinds of rigs do give it a little bit more, a little more control. But it also, those things, these rigs get really heavy. I know that my brothers can get up to 70 or 80 pounds of gear.

Leo: Oh yeah, we used a Steady Cam up in Canada for the lab with Leo, as you know. And the operator, man that  guy was wearing it for four hours at a time and man that must have been just exhausting.

Alex: It's a process. And they really have to pace themselves where they're shooting, and then you set it down for a minute or you throw it over your back. But you'll see that the good ones will get very good at how they manage their time because most of them can only go 15 or 20 minutes at that very outer edge, and really only creatively for the first 5 or 10 minutes.

Leo: Exhausting. Yeah. But this is kinda cool. I like the Ronin, it's pretty amazing. I didn't realize DJI made them.

Alex: Yeah, well again, they're taking the technology that was working for their drones and just apply it to something else.

Leo: Right, of course the drone technology is basically specialization of the Segway technology. So it was kind of appropriate that we use the Ronin camera to shoot the screen savers open in which we are riding Segways. By the way, we decided to buy two of these Alex, so the next time you're around I wanna get you on a Segway.

Alex: Oh yeah, I so want a...

Leo: Craig's shooting this, when we come down, you'll see it most when we come down Lombard Street, the crookedest street in the world. He's standing there with the Ronin on, and he's using the Cannon Cinema cameras, those great cameras.

Alex: CC300 probably.

Leo: Yeah, yeah. Really, really. Here we go. Yeah, C3, he's on that and it's pretty amazing, pretty amazing. You're going to be part of this, right Alex, you have to come back. Wouldn't be the screen savers without you.

Alex: Yes. I can't wait. So awesome.

Leo: You can ride my Segway. May 2nd we're doing them Saturday afternoon 3 pm pacific, 6 pm eastern time. And that's the new Screen Savers with many of the old Screen Savers, part of it. In fact our first show will feature Patrick Norton as my co-host. So, Alex, what do you got for us?

Alex: So, I have a long time pick skill member and a friend and just a really talented teacher, Tony Farley, he put out a book. And I just love, every once in a while I see a good I, you know, someone's  starting to use iBooks, and expanding on it, and so on and so forth. And so he has a book called Arduino, Programming, Circuits, and Physics.

Leo: Love it!

Alex: And so basically if you want to learn how to you know, start working with an Arduino, it really starts with plug the, plug the USB in and really how to get started in pushing programs to the Arduino circuits. And then, what's interesting about it is it's not just the how-to, you know like, for instance, he gets into voltage and there's an LEDs, and he gets into voltage and there's animations and they're talking about-

Leo: Is this it? Tony Farley?

Alex: Yeah, that's it.

Leo: Awesome.

Alex: And, he's got 3D rendering he did, and/or some of his students. He teaches at San Andrea High School and just a really, really talented educator, and it's 99 cents! I can't believe it's 99 cents! For video and then he's already said at the beginning that he's going to keep on upgrading it. So it's kind of like this living book that he's going to keep on adding, and that's the great thing about iBooks, in a way set up is he can just update it. And he said he's going to update it for free and just keep on kinda jumping into it, but there's a lot of, the stuff's very clear. There's little step by steps you'll see some of those being like 1,2,3 with little examples. There's videos in it. It's an amazing value for 99 cents. And really just a great book either way. I have a couple of Arduino books so I've been playing with it and this is one of the clearest ones that I've seen.

Leo: Would this be appropriate for home use?

Alex: Oh yeah. It's designed for both teachers because there's workbooks and there's little things at the end that you can go through to make sure you understand it, but you could definitely use this if you want to get started with working with Arduino.  So...

Leo: And if you had a kid that is so inclined, what a great way to do some hands-on stuff.

Alex: Well and I've been kind of hacking around with it and what I actually want to do is do it with my kids and so we kinda go through each one of these very systematically and talk about the stuff so they can get their head around it. And of course playing with the Little Bits and the Mind Storms, but I think it's time to start really playing with something more serious. And so, so anyways I think it's a great little book and it's definitely worth supporting him and also getting to, you know, getting started with Arduino. If it's something that you've been trying to figure out how you're going to get started it's 55 bucks for the Ultimate Collection on Amazon. So if you want to learn  how to do this it costs nothing and then you get this book for 99 cents and start wiring away. You can be the geek you always wanted to be.

Leo: Physicsibook.com is Tony Farley's site. And they'll give you a link so you can buy this. It's on the iBooks store only 99 cents. Tony Farley Arduino, Programming, Circuits and Physics at physicsibook.com.

Alex: And he's got other books up there too.

Leo: Yeah, yeah.

Alex: He's a prolific iBook developer.

Leo: Yeah. Yeah and it's all about physics and stuff which is, hey, who doesn't love that?

Alex: Exactly.

Leo: I should put this up on an iPad to show you, this is a game that I, I don't know how I found it, but now that I've found it I can't stop playing it. It's called Hook. And it's a puzzle game, a iPhone or iPad. And it starts out very simple, if you played Black, remember how much we loved Black? This is like, let me turn it up. It says wear headphones, it's really, it's you know, the sounds not that important. It's one of those games there's no explanation at all you just kind of learn by doing. And it's at first very simple. You're solving puzzles, there are certain rules you will learn, and as you solve it, but it gets deeper and deeper and deeper. The idea's to clear the screen by pressing the buttons, and if stuff is intertwined, for example, if I press this button it won't be able to withdraw the line because this one's in the way and it'll say nope, gotta start over. Which by the way, if you've done a lot of clearing, and in the later levels you will have, starting over is a punishment. It's a, oop wrong button, wrong button, gotta press this button and that button. This looks really easy doesn't it? Get to level 40 and tell me how easy it is. It won't take you long to get to level 40, this is just basically tutorial levels. It is, I think it's a buck. It's not expensive and it's totally addictive. I showed Lisa last night and she literally went to 40 or 42, stayed up way late. It's one of those game you play, you say I'm going to stay up late and solve this one.・ It's a lot of fun. Hooked!  You know, everyone should have a little, there you go. How much is it? .99. Everybody should have a little puzzle game. It's got a good sound track. You could almost do this on an iWatch. Ladies and gentlemen that concludes this edition of MacBreak Weekly. Thank you Don McCallister, great to see you my friend!

Don: No, thanks for having me on!

Leo: Sorry I missed you in Vegas, maaan!

Don: No, never mind, never mind, next time!

Leo: Well you're the big traveler, you were riding an elephant in India. Last time I saw you, we were on the Great Wall of China. Are you going anywhere cool soon?

Don: Um, there's an event that's actually just been published promoted today, just a Mac sort of gathering really. A thing called, what's it called, it's like a Mac festival, what's it, Mac Stock.

Leo: Mac Stock, I like the name!

Don: It's like Woodstock but Mac Stock, it's in Chicago. It's just a day’s conference and like a barbecue thing afterwards, but it's a lot of people that used to go to Mac World are going to that so, if you're going to that in June, and then to Canada in September, going for a holiday to Canada.

Leo: Oooo, come visit us!

Don: Uh, in Canada?

Leo: We're close to Canada! Just hang a left at Vancouver, you'll get there!

Don: I'm close to Vancouver. Okay!

Leo: Mac Stock is actually in Woodstock, but not Woodstock New York, Woodstock Illinois.

Don: Ahh, right.

Leo: And Allison Sheridan's writing about it too, it's Mac Stockconferenceandexpo.com, and it's in June.

Don: Yeah, I think it was put together because Mac World had finished and..

Leo: Yeah, we need some..

Don: there's really a bit social group of people who really haven't got anywhere to hang out anymore so I think this has been put on to gather all of this small community of really fervent Mac people too, and you should go along and hang out. So it's, so there are going to be a lot of Mac pod casters there. There will be some sessions and  I think there will be some food as well, but uh, yeah! Should be good!

Leo: Sounds fun! And of course everybody should got to screencastonline.com and that's where you're going to see Don's working hard on his new Photos screen casts.

Don: Yeah, so it's going to be a two part. I'll be covering the set-up this week and then looking at the app next week and also the iOS side of things as well because they are still do the Mac and iOS stuff as well. So, it's all there, it's all there.

Leo: Nice! It's the place to be, screencastsonline.com. Don's on Twitter @donmccallister. Rene Ritchie imore.com and you've got a whole bunch of articles on Photos too and I have to say I highly recommend because there's some hidden stuff in Photos and it's not obvious.

Rene: And we're adding stuff all the time, I think we added two more yesterday.

Leo: Yeah, good! Imore.com and of course you know that he does some great pod casts there as well. Likely the bug pod casts so if you go to imore you'll find it all there. It's great to see you again, Rene, thank you.

Rene: And you might have a ton of Apple Watch stuff landing on Friday, spoilers.

Leo: You might, you might! You've got a key word for Apple Watch. You already have a lot of stuff. Who's going to be your Apple Watch point person on this, Serenity?

Rene: Um, most often Serenity and Ally. We're a small team of four people so we all of-

Leo: The whole team?!

Rene: Yeah, we're four people, so we kinda all just do everything. Peter does most of the Mac stuff, Serenity is going to do a little bit more Watch stuff, Ally does the how-to stuff but it overlaps so much.

Leo: I had no idea it was such a small team, you guys crank out so much great stuff!

Rene: There's a news room, we don't have to do news. News is taken care of by our network. But we do all the feature content.

Leo: Ahhh, I get it, I get it. And then there's team imore right here. And don't forget Georgia. Team Imore. Rene, Serenity, Ally, Peter and Georgia. I like it.

Rene: We're all still smiling there because the Watch hasn't landed yet.

Leo: The writing, let the writing begin. Thank you so much, great to see you again. And to Alex Lindsay, pixelcorps.com, @alexl-i-n-d-s-a-y on the Twitter.

Alex: And we've got Final Cut, the virtual user group's coming back a week from Friday. So um, I'm sorry, no yeah, a week from Friday. It takes me a little bit of time to get my feet around what date I'm in.

Leo: Good, good.

Alex: But, May 1st, and I'll announce more information on Twitter. But, I'll be bringing all of the usual suspects and talking about the new Final Cut in great detail so it should be a lot of fun.

Leo: Fantastic! Folks, we do MacBreak Weekly every Tuesday 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern time. 1800UTC and we'd love it if you'd watch live. Because you can talk in the chat room, and it's a great way for us to feel like we're, you know, involved. You can also visit live. We do ask you email us if you plan to be in our studio. We loved having you. Just email tickets@twit.tv so we can put out a chair for you. And of course if you can't be here live or watch live you can always get on-demand audio and video after the fact. That's twit.tv/mbw for MacBreak Weekly. Twit.tv/mbw or search iTunes or your favorite pod cast client, or on mobile, we're everywhere on mobile, and that's also, I know for most people the easiest way to do it. We have great apps too, thanks to our third party developers. Just search for Twit in your mobile store. T-w-i-t. Thanks gentleman, thank you all for being here. Now you, you get back to work because you know what, break time is over!