Tech Talk and Gadget Chat With Greg McPherson

Greetings everyone. Welcome to the Wednesday, July 30th, 2014 episode of Free Webinar Wednesdays. This is Eric Cook and I'm with WSI Internet Consulting where we work with businesses and organizations in helping them leverage the power of the internet as a strategic business tool. You can learn more about me and WSI online at www.poweredbywsi.com. With me this week, and we are back in a live show. I apologize for not being with you last week, but we are back this week obviously. And I have my good friend and Free Webinar Wednesday partner, Mr. Jeff Simpkins, with me. Jeff, say hello to everybody out there in Free Webinar Wednesday world.

Greetings everyone, this is Jeff Simpkins and I'm with Community Bank Consulting, Inc. You can learn more about me and Community Bank Consulting, Inc. online at www.communitybankconsulting.com. Excellent. Skipping promoting a product or service this week, Eric, because I know we always fill the hour when Gregg is our guest.

Absolutely. The only promo or announcement that I will make is for those of you that were able to sit in on the webinar last week. I know we shifted. I know it's Free Webinar Wednesdays, but we didn't have a live show on Wednesday, but we featured Ron Case over in my WSI world on a webinar about email marketing. The link has been changed and this link will actually take you to the recording. You can watch the session right on Vimeo. Ron did a bang-up job of 5 Steps to World-Class Email Marketing. He's one of the gurus with Constant Contact. We've had Constant Contact on the show before and they know email marketing probably better than anyone. It's definitely a webinar that I would encourage you to check out. So that's the only kind of promo plug I'll do. We'll cover our little housekeeping items, and then we'll jump in and we'll get Gregg rocking and rolling. But today's show and all shows are recorded. You can check them out at freewebinarwednesdays.com. Be sure to like the Facebook page because we provide notices and updates there. And if you have questions or comments during today's show, we love those, and we encourage you to send those along. Use your control panel up in the upper right-hand corner of your screen Type your questions in, and Jeff and I will keep an eye on those, and we'll toss them in when we have a spare moment. And I don't know if we'll have a lot of spare moments because we usually have tons of conversation with Greg, but we love to hear from the audience. So with that, it's my honor and privilege to welcome back to the show one of our probably most frequent visitors and guests, Mr. Greg McPherson. Greg, Welcome back to Free Webinar Wednesdays. It's great to have you with us, man.

Thanks, guys. It's always a pleasure to be here.

Excellent. So we've got Tech Talk and Gadget Chat. And Gregg always seems to be the individual that is dialed into kind of the new and cool things that are going on. We're all sporting MacBooks and the Apple OS, although I'm probably the only one of the two of us that's using the Android phone still. But I guess kind of lead things off, maybe give us an update, what's new in the world of Apple. And we had a little pre-chat about one of the software platforms that you're currently running, and maybe give everybody a heads up on what's going on in the Apple world.

Yeah, I'm actually running 2 new OSes. One has actually been available in a beta form, the new operating system Yosemite, which is the computer system, the Mac operating system. Previously to this, they had always kept this at a developer stage until they were ready for a full release. But with this release Yosemite, they've actually opened it up to the public. So you can actually go to their website And for free you can sign up to run the beta version of this operating system. It isn't too terribly different than Mavericks. It's what you would expect from a newer version of an operating system. It's a bit more robust. There are a few features that kind of help take the edges off some of the problems in the previous version, but nothing that's really notable or remarkable. I think the main concept in this version of the operating system is that they are trying to flatten the graphical user interface like they did with the earlier version of the mobile iOS. They're just taking away a lot of the textures, a lot of the 3-dimensional bubbles and stuff on all of the operating system, and they're making everything flat and consistent. And they are trying to make use of space so that you can have more productivity room as opposed to just maybe the eye candy of flashy borders around your open apps. So it's a very consistent looking operating system. It's very familiar to anybody that is using an iPhone. It's very mimicable of what you've seen there. The other thing that is probably noteworthy with regards to this release is that they are trying to, I think, move the Mac operating system and the iPhone operating system into something that is a little bit more consistent so that they work together easily. So the 2 biggest things that you will see with regards to this are, it used to be with the operating system Mavericks you were able to make iMessages You could text from your Mac, which is very convenient. Anybody that had an iPhone or a Mac, rather than pulling out your phone and texting, you could text them right from your toolbar. You just fire up the iMessage app and you are able to communicate with anybody that has an iPhone. Now they have been able to tie in actual texting to anyone else as well. So you are able to text somebody with an Android phone or what other device.

Yay!

Yeah, it's a big deal because Once you start texting people from the laptop, it's fast, it's easy. But the other thing that's very, very nice is that now you can also receive calls from your laptop. So your phone can be in your coat, your bag, you haven't pulled it out from getting home or going into the office. And you go ahead and you plug your headphones into your system, your system being your Mac, and all of a sudden in your top right corner you'll get a little beep and a little text will pop up and it will say, Eric Cook calling, and then you can hit take call and then it will actually take the call through your Mac system.

Or ignore.

Exactly. Send the guy to voicemail. But it's using the 3.0 Bluetooth. to take that phone call, and it's also using that 3.0 Bluetooth to allow you to text where normally you would have to go through the iMessage network. It's actually sending the information to your phone, and then your phone is actually texting it. So it's all seamless. You don't have to do anything.

Sure.

You simply turn on your phone, and both have the new operating systems on it, and they shake hands, and you're off and running.

Wow.

The other thing that, I don't know, it's in there and it's interesting but I don't know how practical it is but it's a nice feature. They've got something called a handoff. Let's say I'm on a plane someplace and I'm writing an email to Eric about whatever, business proposal, and I get halfway through, stick the phone in my pocket. Then whenever I get to where I'm going to be, café or whatever, and I open up my laptop, at the bottom left is this invisible email icon to the left of the toolbar. And when you tap that, it fires up and it takes off where you were at with your mobile app. So the email is there. And it's not using just the saved draft in your email. It will actually do this with everything. If you were browsing a particular item on a web browser and you stuck it in your phone, it would do it. If you were writing something in Pages or some sort of a different app, it will hand it off to your Mac and vice versa. So if you are working on your Mac, finishing something up, you pull up your phone, It's a little ghost icon at the bottom left of the lock screen. You hit that, it fires up the application, and you're able to finish it and fire it off. It sounds neat. I don't know. It hasn't been something that's particularly practical to me at this point, but it's not fully developed, so maybe it will be more robust in future versions.

Wow, that was quite a list.

Sorry, I kind of went off on a rant there.

That's all right, that's all right.

So I guess a couple of things that you had mentioned, because one of the things that I want to, and I think we need to try and do, is I know a lot of people are probably using the iPhone that are on Free Webinar Wednesdays, either that are listening live or watch the recording, but I suspect There's a lot of folks that are maybe still working in a PC environment either through work or they haven't switched over to a Mac personally. Yeah, and I agree too. I went over back to the PC side for a little bit and I did get one of the Windows 8 machines. I'll tell you, I don't hate it, but I'm glad to be back in my Mac just because I know a lot of shortcuts.

Mac's the best one.

You can save.

Yeah, I don't hate it. How's that? It doesn't totally—

You know, I don't hate him.

Well, at least you took my phone call when I called. Jeff was going to go ahead and hang up on me on his computer. But I think it's going in the right direction. And I do have to say, I like the touch interface of the screen and the tiles. I'd like to see maybe that come full circle on a Mac to be able to use it. And I'm still waiting for the killer device that is a laptop legitimately but can be used as a tablet. And I don't know if that'll ever officially come of age. Someday maybe. But you talked about a couple of things, and one that I want to go back to is the flat design, because I think when Apple came out and redesigned its phone and changed the icons. It went to flat design. But from a digital marketing and a web development perspective, we've seen that kind of design theme trickle into other websites as well. And I always wonder, is that just kind of the design du jour, or is there really some legitimacy here where the image sizes are smaller, they can be compressed, they're not taking up as much space. So it's more accommodating.

You know what? I actually got to think a fair amount about that. Yeah, I think it is. I don't think it's fashion. I do think it's here to stay, this flat design, and I'll explain why. And this has to do with computers, but it just happened to be Steve Jobs. He talked about one of the largest hurdles they had when they were developing computers. And this is in the late '70s. And it was the fact that no one knew how to type. That was a problem. And people weren't familiar with that process. And then it was a hurdle they had to overcome. And then he said it occurred to him that that problem was slowly resolving itself because those people were passing away. These older people that weren't able to do this, they were getting older and passing away, and the younger generation was becoming used to typewriters, and that kind of translated into the PC market. So whenever the operating system was designed for the Apple and the iPhone and so forth, I think that what they were trying to do is they were trying to create it with physical attributes that people were familiar with so people could say, Oh, okay, this is an app that's for writing because here's the pencil. And here's an app that's for my games because I see it's got a green felt on it. And oh, here's my calendar app because it looks like the calendar. It's got the leather bounding around it. And it's something that was familiar and comfortable with them. So I think it's gotten to where people are now familiar with using applications. And the world is leaving the PC platform And using this tablet and mobile device more and more. But now they don't need these training wheels and these shoehorns to help them understand what device or what application they need and how to use it. So now it's all about, at least for me and the people that I deal with most, it's about productivity. It's about use of space, screen space. And so forth. And so yeah, I think that for the most part, if you talk to most people, they would like to see more screen space, better efficiency use of that. They don't want the clutter. They don't want a bunch of different fonts. They want consistency across their screen as opposed to this potpourri of different fonts, different styles of icons, and so forth. So I think it's going to be I think it's going to be consistent, and it's going to be something that you see more and more of. And I don't think it's something that we're going to see veering back into— there's a name for it, and I try to say it, but I'm sure I chew it up. But it's like skeuomorphic. That's what it is whenever you're trying to create an app based on something that has a physical presence. Like you want your calendar application to look like a physical calendar that exists in the real world. So I think you are going to see less and less of that. And so far so good in my opinion.

Interesting. Jeff, what are your thoughts?

He is taking a nap.

He is taking a nap. No, I'm not.

He put me on hold. He forwarded my question to voicemail.

It wouldn't be Free Webinar Wednesdays or interaction with you, Eric, if we couldn't pick on you.

Of course. I know you pick on the ones you love, so go right ahead.

Absolutely. I tell people if I stop picking on you, worry. Yep. All right, so now I'm excited about a lot of the things that you're describing. Hey, I would have felt like I got my money's worth with just the tip on being able to text anybody on an Android device or an Apple device from my MacBook. It's interesting, the voice, the ability to receive calls on your desktop device. I've got that with my RingCentral phone system. It's sort of like you talked about passing your work from the mobile device to your desktop device. It's something that— it was one of those things that I thought when I got the new phone system, I thought, wow, I'll use that all the time, and I don't. So I think with all of these things, there are things you get really excited about that you think, man, I'll use that. That'll make my life so much easier. And then when it comes to the real world, maybe you will, maybe you won't.

Absolutely. You never know.

One of the things you mentioned, yeah, you said the phone has to be nearby and it's connecting through Bluetooth. So it's really not the computer per se that's connecting to the cellular network and making the phone call or sending the messages. It's the computer connecting to the phone and using the phone as the conduit to get— because that's really where the connection to voice and text messages are.

Hmm, okay.

And I think that's interesting because I've been following a lot with the personal computing devices, I guess for lack of a better word, like the watches and the personal bands. You know, you've got Google Glass. Those are all kind of cool devices but also require to have a phone nearby because They are, I guess, maybe more of the receptors of the information but not the actual transmitters. And, you know, I'm suspecting that whether or not Apple actually does come out with a watch, but I know the buzz on the Android side is, you know, the new Moto 360 watch. This seems to be the watch that everybody wants to get. They're clamoring for it, waiting for it to be released. And from what I've seen, the people that have tried the Samsung or The Nokia, I think. Maybe it's a different one. But the 2 smartwatches that are out there now that integrate, they've actually found them to be pretty handy. But they relay information that your phone has. Not a lot of people are real comfortable talking to their wrist like a Secret Service agent quite yet. But discreetly checking text messages, if you're in a meeting, you're not having to whip your phone out all the time. And I'm almost seeing a couple of things. One is the phone is going to become even more of an important hub as the central device that we all have to rely on, because now our computer is going to rely on the phone for telephony and SMS. Our watches are going to rely on the phone for communication and interaction. You know, other devices are going to connect to that, and I'm just— I'm just wondering, throw that out there, if you guys have thought about that or other sorts of ways that the phone is kind of evolving. And are we going to get to the point where that's going to be one device that we're going to have, and it's just going to be a keyboard and a monitor that's going to connect to it? And are we really going to need to have computers down the road?

I will comment on that. I think a lot of people will find The feature of the phone connecting with the desktop device to be extremely valuable because I think most people take a different approach than I do. I think most people, or many people, use their cell phone and their cell phone number as their primary telephone number. I have made a conscious decision to use my work number, and that I've got connected to my cell phone and all sorts of other devices so that I don't have to give out my cell phone number to everybody. But I think the folks that their cell phone is the only number that they use, they will absolutely friggin' love the ability to connect over to their desktop and use a Bluetooth device and so forth.

For your one number, are you still using Google Voice as that central repository, or is that a feature that RingCentral has then taken over from Google Voice?

I don't use Google Voice really anymore. I use RingCentral for everything because I've got so much flexibility with my number. And Greg, you talk about the ability of the phone to connect to the computer with the Bluetooth. I've actually got that with my my Jabra headset. It will connect to my phone, my computer, and it's got a Bluetooth connection for my cell phone. And I would absolutely be in love with that feature if I were using my cell phone as my primary telephone when I was in the office.

Greg, go ahead. No, I was just gonna say, your thoughts on the the mobile device being the primary computing device for people.

I agree with a lot of what you guys have said, except with a bit of a degree of change in it. I think that at least from Apple's point of view, and I could be wrong, and honestly if I am wrong, I think Apple will kind of be in trouble to some degree. I don't think that they're going to repackage and say, okay, hey everybody, here's our iWatch. look at it. It's everything that everybody else has been doing, but we're doing it better. I honestly feel like it's going to be a game changer, and I think it's going to have features that are tying things in that we're not even talking about or considering right now. If I'm wrong, I honestly think that's going to be a blow to Apple, and I'm their biggest fan. People have been watching and waiting for this device for some time. And I think that you guys are right. I don't think it's going to be, I'm going to— oh, hey, I just got a text, or I'm going to read this email real quick on my watch, or my watch just vibrated. It's my reminder that I've got to go pick up my dry cleaning. I don't think it's going to be anything like that. Will those things be ancillary possibilities that the watch could do? Absolutely, but I feel like, you know, and I know that this is true because the footprint has already been set, but yet, you know, they haven't really put all the pieces together. I feel like you're going to walk in with this watch. I feel like your lights are going to come in, you know, on as you walk in the hallway. They're going to go off. They're going to go into the living room. They're going to, you know, they're going to turn on. I feel like you're going to be able to walk over to your TV set and you're going to be able to You know, make the physical motion of you're pulling a knob out, the TV's going to pull on, and you're just doing it in the air. I feel like the TV is going to come on, you're going to swipe your hand to the left, and you're going to be able to, you know, move through channels like you're flipping pages in the air with a book. And I mean, I'm just giving generic examples. I don't know that that's exactly what this watch is going to do from jump, but I think that that is going to be what you're going to see with the second, third generation of this watch. It is not going to be a watch. It's not going to be a health monitor. I think it's going to be all of these things encompassed. And I don't know if you guys can remember, you know, prior to the iPhone, I was a Mac user, loyalist, you know, I love my computer. And I remember people saying, well, you know, what about this phone? And I said, you know, it's going to be interesting, but I got a RAZR and I love it. And honestly, I'm not a big BlackBerry fan. I don't need a computer. I don't need, you know, an i— I don't need email. I just want a phone that's light. And it is dependable. It has good reception. I have a very specific use for my phone, and that is to communicate with people. That was it. That is all I wanted. Then they roll out this demo in California, and they show this iPhone. And my mind was absolutely blown. It had a screen. You could do calendaring. It synced with your computer. I mean, there were features on there that I just never dreamed would be possible. You could add contacts on your computer and it would go to your phone. And all this stuff was just seamless. And I became a believer and I bought the first generation iPhone and I've pretty much had every generation since, more or less. I feel like this next device is going to have to be something like that. It's going to have to turn a key in a lot of locks for this to be successful. If it's just an amped-up version of Nike's athletic band or—

Fitbit.

Some of these other athletic bands and it can do some of these other things, okay, that's interesting still, but I feel like it's going to be a disappointment. I feel like Apple will take it on the chin with investors, and I think it will be a major disappointment. I do know for a fact, if you go and you research Apple, some of the stuff that they talked about in their last meeting was home automation. And it was just really just touched on, and they just moved right along with it. They said, hey developers, here's some kits for you guys to play with. They just kind of threw it out there and they kept moving. Well, you don't need home automation for your phone. You don't need it really for your computer. You can do things from there. But I really feel like that's just one piece of the things to come, and I feel like this watch is going to be be a part of that. If not, again, it will be interesting to see how much it has adapted. Here is a reverse example of what Jobs said about people not using a keyboard. I don't know a ton of people who wear watches anymore. I used to, and I still do. I like it. It is more of a fashion thing. I just like the vintage. You look down, you have a physical thing, and there is your watch. I like that, but I think 70% of everyone else grabs their phone and pulls it out and says, yeah, it's 4:30. They've got their calendaring, they've got their alarms. So for the general public to overcome that hurdle of strapping something to their wrist, something that's going to cost $500, $600 probably, that's a very, very upscale watch. I think that's going to be a— It's going to be a barrier. It's going to have to be something special. It's not going to be just something that's already in the market, but they've done a better job with it. So again, I know there's people that run that wear watches, and I know that there are watches out there, but to me, this is going to have to be a very, very special device to make people adopt it in the kind of numbers that they're going to need to for this to be a game changer.

I'm smiling as I hear you say these things, and I agree with probably 99 or better percent of what you said. One of the things that made me smile is, like you, I wear a watch when I go out because I don't care for jewelry. I don't really like rings and things like that, but I do like the way a nice watch looks. The funny thing is, uh, The brand watch that I wear is a self-winding watch, which I rarely remember to put in the winding device. So when I put it on, I don't wear it every day, so it will have stopped. It will not have the right time on it. And in reality—

It's right twice a day.

It's right twice a day. In reality, I like it as jewelry and I've reached an age where I have to make a choice when I wear contact lenses. If I wear contact lenses, that means I can see from a distance— see at a distance without reading glasses. But if I want to read, I need reading glasses. And the funny part is I got to put on the reading glasses to read the calendar on the watch. So it doesn't really matter to me if it's right or not.

And again, it's a perfect point. It's just an item that's kind of been obsolete. With every generation, it becomes a little bit more obsolete. Again, I like the watch I have. I like the way it looks. It's fashionable. I just got another watch, actually for my birthday, that I like even more. I do like watches, but again, it's more of a fashion thing. I can certainly pull out my phone and glance at it. Watches are more sentimental to me. Somebody gives it to you and it's just something that— that's not about technology. That's something completely different.

Yeah, right.

Long story short, I just feel like this is going to have to— there's going to have to be a feature that none of us are talking about right now with this watch. I don't think the first generation will necessarily have it. I don't. If you look back on that first iPhone, it was pretty bleak. It was game-changing then, but there were no apps.

I don't know if you guys remember that, but there were no applications.

There was no App Store. If you wanted to go use an app, the only thing that you could do was an application that was based on their WebKit. So in other words, it wasn't even an independent self-sufficient app. It was actually something that was running on the web hosted someplace, and operated under basically their WebKit browser software. So it's interesting to see how these things evolve because Jobs was very reluctant to open that up. He wanted to be in control of the app. He wanted to have consistency in it. And then finally other people prevailed and said, we've got to open this up to the developers or what are we even doing here? And of course, That is what the iPhone is now, just the personality of all these millions of apps that can do things that— I mean, who would have ever thought that you could take your phone out, fire up an app, and put your finger on your camera, and your light turns on, and it can take your pulse with extreme precision? I mean, it's just amazing to see what kind of apps have been designed and how people are using them. And I mean, it's changed— I know it's changed everybody's lives that's probably listening in and talking, scanning apps with your phone and documents and so forth. So this phone, it's like I said, I really feel like it's going to have to have something that, like I said, the home automation, the health aspect, the— I feel like it's going to have to throw an umbrella over a lot of different activities for people to really feel like, yeah, this is something that I want and need.

There have been a couple comments in the question box that I want to handle real quickly. One person asked what RingCentral is. RingCentral is just a web-based phone service. Eric, what's the one you use?

Ooma.

Yeah, so there are tons of them. Yep, a little bit different than Skype, but it's a voice over IP phone service. With RingCentral, it's a business-class service, so you get the ability to transfer and do simultaneous ringing and do phone trees and all sorts of things like that.

Yep, pulling up RingCentral on your screen right now, and I'll fire up Ooma here.

Okay. As well. And, uh, Bob, thanks for the suggestion of bifocal contacts. At this point, I have not gone that route because I love— I don't know, I just really love being able to see very well at the distance. Next time I go to the, uh, optometrist, I might get a trial pair.

You stole my thunder. I had a really creative way of kind of asking you that bifocal contact question, and Throwing a little jab back your way, Mr. Simpson. So I'll have to look for another, another opportunity. Although I did notice you, you did mention that you do not like to wear jewelry other than watches. I'm assuming that you're excluding that nose ring that you have as jewelry. Do you constitute that as something different?

So you've opened up a door that I can't, can't go all the way through. I'm just going to say, if you only knew all the jewelry I had. Henry said that he uses RingCentral as his mobile office, and it's amazingly easy. I agree, Henry. I've been using RingCentral for about a year now. It's a little more expensive than some of the other options, Eric. I think you still probably get Google Voice for free. I know you use Android. It integrates really well with the Android. But for all the features, I really like RingCentral.

Yeah, and if you ever call Jeff, he's got this very nice Australian guy that answers the phone to inform you that calls may be recorded for quality assurance purposes. And just sounds like a really good guy, so kudos for getting that international recording on there.

Well, the funny thing is I actually use my Mac, so that is a computer-generated voice. Greg, a couple things you've commented on that I want to kind of circle back and, and discuss. You've talked about home automation and things like that. I think it was you in one of your last sessions with us, you know, we talked about how Apple is often thought of as being so innovative and a leader, and I think it was you that made the point, and maybe not so much. Yeah, they tend to take other people's ideas and go with it. I think in the area of home automation, that is absolutely what's going to happen with Apple. Google, last time you were on, I think we talked about the fact that Google had just bought Nest at that point.

Yep, and they just bought Dropcam. Those were 2 things that I said were must-own items.

Correct. It will be interesting to see what direction Apple goes in following Google's lead on that.

With Google, everything is advertising. Search is advertising. That's what it's all about, collecting data and so forth. I know that when Nest was acquired, they actually filed some sort of a patent or something about being able to transmit advertising on these types of devices. They've got a little screen on them. I don't know. I love Google. They do a lot of things very well. I really do. But that being said, I do worry about how they are going to implement some of this home automation stuff. I do feel like, and maybe it's just because I drink the Kool-Aid, I feel like Apple is worried— or worried might be strong. I do feel like Apple considers the consumer more than maybe a lot of corporations do, privacy and so forth. I feel like they go to a lot of lengths to try to ensure that security is there, whether it's with the military encryption level on instant messaging and so forth. They go to considerable lengths to make sure that people's interests are protected. In other words, this is one of my favorite things about Apple. When people say, why Android versus OS? And I won't go off on this big kick, but I love the fact that they keep everything in their sandbox. A lot of people don't. A lot of people feel like, no, I wish it was opened up and that they didn't govern it as hard as they did. But here's a good example of that. Let's say you're in an app. and it's requesting your GPS location, you get a little popup on your phone that says, hey, app XYZ wants to know where you're at. Is this okay? You hit yes, and your app takes it from there. What a lot of people don't know is Apple oversees all of that. In other words, whenever that request is made, that does not come from the application to you. It goes from the developer To Apple, to Apple, to you, to you, to Apple, back to the developer. That's the only way that authorization is permitted. It's because Apple wants to make sure that they've got the green light to allow that private information out there. There's a lot of things like that behind the scenes that people I don't think are fully aware of. People just assume that Android is the same. Now I don't know whether that instance that I just gave is the same on an Android device or not, but I do know that when people do talk about Android, there are certainly leaks on certain issues with the phones because we read about it here and there about just privacy concerns and so forth. Again, the reason why is because Android devices— and again, I have no problem. If you love your Android phone, I think that's great. I think you should stay to it. But the reason why you're never going to be able to get your arms fully around it is because the Android operating system is on multiple platforms, multiple hardware devices, and it's always going to have multiple developers, and it's always going to operate a little bit different on every device because it's going to be a different hardware setup and so forth. Some hardware might be more efficient than others. So those applications are always going to work a little bit differently on each device just based on what that is. Apple doesn't do that. Apple hardware, software, all of it is all consistent so that you have a uniform experience. Privacy, so far from what I see with Apple, I really feel like they give that very strong consideration. And if they have anything that they feel is questionable, I feel like they always side on the side of the consumer and safety. And they'll pull an app and they'll say, you know what, until we have more time to consider and revisit this, we're not going to put it out there and make it available to people. So on the automation thing, I feel like, I really do, I feel like you're going to see this watch. I feel like you're going to see a TV. On the watch, you know, one of the things that it's like Eric said earlier, you know, maybe you're going to be able to buy a computer at some point that's really nothing more than a shell. Maybe, you know, your watch has all the device on it so that when you pick up your computer, it uses NFC or near-field communication to transfer, you know, any data that you want from your wrist to the computer. So in other words, The computer— this is an old term— is really nothing more than a dumb terminal from like the '70s. It doesn't do anything.

Eric and I, coming from banking, are both very familiar with dumb terminals. Yeah.

It's like the resurgence of the skinny leather tie.

We refer to dumb terminals now as anchors. Believe me, I still go into banks where I see dumb terminals sitting around.

Well, yeah, exactly. I really, you know, and again, am I saying next year? No. But to me, in my mind, that's what the quote-unquote smartwatch is going to be. You're going to have, you know, you have flash drives now that have gigs of storage. You're going to have more than enough space to have that on your watch. You're going to have NFC to where you pick up, you know, just a quote-unquote dumb terminal. It's got enough of an operating system on it that it can sniff out, go, okay, This is Greg McPherson. And I open it up and there's my desktop. There's my wallpaper. I mean, you could pick this thing up like a magazine at the doctor's office and work. And then when you get done with it, lay it back down and it severs the connection and the next person comes in could do it. And I know that seems like I'm getting all Minority Report, like this isn't going to happen for some time. Well, who would have thought that these iPads, these things lay around now like, you know, they're just, yeah, I've got 2 iPads. My kids have got an iPad Mini and I've got a 3rd generation and it's just, they're everywhere. And I feel like that that's what this watch is going to be. And I don't know that it's going to be a year from now, but 5 years from now, I think that's going to be the beginning of something completely different, a whole different type of—

industry.

And by the way, this next version of the watch, or the phone that's coming out, the iPhone 6, I do feel like, and I could be wrong on this, but I do feel like that's going to have NFC on it, which is the near-field communication. And I feel like, if you don't know what that is, essentially it's a more robust Bluetooth option. It's also used in payment systems like at the grocery store where you wave your phone and It will charge the groceries to your phone and so forth. But I really feel like— it's always interesting to see what horses Apple chooses to ride. Bluetooth, they went with that, but yet they didn't do anything with Blu-ray. They always pick. They used Flash for a while, then they abandoned it. They abandoned the floppy disk and the 3.5-inch. They write things as far as they can go, and then they kind of jettison them. This near-field communication, I've always been a little shocked that they haven't done more with it, but I'm sure they have their reasons. I would really be hopeful that they incorporate that in this next version of the phone, but we'll see.

That would certainly eliminate one of the Android picks on iPhone. When the new iPhone came out, it didn't include NFC, and there were several Android devices that had it. You see the Samsung and a couple of the Motorola phones in their commercials actually specifically mentioning what's happening. It's kind of funny to see that. It would at least take a little bit of the air out of the sail of an Apple pick on Google, pick on them.

It's funny, when you go in the AT&T store, they— I don't even remember which brand it is, but They promote a payment system that uses NFC, and you get all excited about it. They're like, okay, well, if you're going to use it on an Apple device, you have to buy this add-on. Well, who the hell wants to do that?

Plug it into the jack and—

yeah.

Right.

It's funny, you specifically mentioned Minority Report, and I had that down in my notes when you were talking about the watch and being able to walk in and have it recognize you. And one of the other features that you alluded to, I think I think the last time we were on was, was it iBeacon or Beacon, if I'm not mistaken?

Yeah, so anybody who's doing anything right now, if they have any interest in marketing, go out and I'm not gonna waste your time with this today, go Google that iBeacon, go Google the success rate of iBeacon. There's a couple different marketers that are using it right now and they're saying that the sales and the use of that product is is, you know, making their products explode like 250%.

Yeah, for folks that didn't catch what the heck an iBeacon is, you want to give just a CliffsNotes version of what that does?

Sure, it's simply just a monitoring device that is, you know, submersible. It's not something that, you know, comes around, but, you know, it can be used in a lot of different protocols, but let's say that you went into the Louvre in Paris and you walk up to a painting, your phone could pop up and say, okay, this is the Mona Lisa painted this year by this artist and so forth. And you could, you know, go ahead and read through the information, and it's all information that's hosted right there on a system within the museum and so forth. That's one application. So it's Making a more robust experience for that type of thing. Another experience is that you're walking down the street and you walk by a Starbucks. And you've allowed for this type of surveillance because you can't turn it off. And Starbucks has these in their stores, which they don't. I'm talking theoretically. And when you go in, it says, okay, this guy comes in. 5 times a week and he's only been here 3 times this week, you walk by the door and it pops up a little ad on your phone and says, hey, this coffee is on us. Come on back and see us. And it's just an automated ad. And it's like, oh wow, okay, well great. And then you go back into Starbucks and it lets them hone criteria to be able to specifically market to Jeff, to Greg, and so forth. So again, that is going to be like laser-specific marketing. It's not going to be about 20 to 30-something and education and income to whatever. It's going to be able to create this database of experiences and say, you know, Greg used to come into Best Buy all the time. He hasn't been here in a year. And then, you know, do something to try to lure you back to that store or vendor. That's going to be, you know, That's going to be the new frontier of advertising. So as far as this iBeacon goes, it's going to be basically the ability to hoist information on whatever media device you have in your pocket, whether it's an iPhone or a pad or whatever. Another thing that I think is kind of neat, and it's a little bit— I don't know if morbid is the right word, but let's say you're walking through a cemetery and someone that you love has passed away. They had some sort of near-field communication device in a new tombstone, and your phone pops up, and you're able to see videos of happier times and go through photos. I mean, that is going to be—

Hey, get off my grave! I'm sleeping down here.

Seriously, I think that that's going to be the future. Whether it's 10 years or 20.

Well, there's some version of what you described as part of Passport because when you go near a Starbucks, you already have— if you've got this activated in Passbook, I'm sorry, you've got this activated in Passbook, your Starbucks card pops up and that kind of stuff. Yep.

No, and that's kind of what we were talking earlier about innovation. They've put these little footprints in there.

It's there.

They're testing it. But again, I think that they'll eventually— and again, this iBeacon is something that's being rolled out, and it's available in all the new devices right now. That's going to be beefed up with steroids, and it's going to become a platform for them to generate more revenue. There's absolutely no doubt.

Very cool.

We've got about 8 minutes left. I want to make sure we spend a little bit of time talking about the iPhone 6 because I know there is a good bit of information out there now and some of the features that— there have been leaks that we are aware of some of the features that are going to be part of that. So Eric, did you have anything?

No, I was just going to say the future, like the iPhone, what sort of timeline is something like that going in? The only other item I had it up for a little bit, and you can come back to the Moto 360. Which, you know, when you think about smartwatches, this is the one that everybody has been hammering for. Granted, it's an Android-based device. Sometime summer of '14, we're kind of there now, so sooner than later. But yeah, I'd like to hear more about the 6 and if this is something that's going to be speculatively released in the fall or when this is going to come around.

So.

Let's finish with that.

I think the iPhone 6, I think they're going to rename it. I think it's going to be something like the iPhone Air. I think they're going to go with a new naming SKU for that. The reason being is, and again, this is all just speculation, rumor-based, but I really feel like this is kind of the nuts and bolts of it. The iPhone 5S right now is a 4-inch phone. From pretty good sources, this next phone is going to be 2 sizes that are available. It will be a 4.7-inch, so 0.7 larger than the last phone. And then there is going to be a 5.5-inch version of the phone which is the one that a lot of people want something comparable to something like Samsung offers for the Android device. So I don't know. I would have to have that in my hand and hold it and think about it. To me that feels like a little bit big for something that I would want. But I know a lot of people love that screen space. Okay. I think that a lot of those people that are critical of the iPhone are going to finally have that option. The biggest issues with this phone that are hopeful is supposedly they are going to have the sapphire display. What that is essentially is it's a screen that is pretty much impervious to any kind of scratches. You can take sandpaper to it. You can do anything with it and it will not damage or scratch. I don't know that it's going to have that. There's rumors on both that they will have it and that they won't. Some rumors are that the 5-inch will have it, that the other one will not, but that is going to be happening sometime in the future. Otherwise, I said it's rumored that the NFC would be on there. I hope that that is the case. I think that it will be, but honestly, I thought it would be in the last version as well. And of course, it's going to have a thinner chassis. As everybody would expect, smaller, centered, and so forth. The only other thing that is going to make it a little bit different is the operating system. And I've already talked about what that's going to offer. They're going to open it up for alternative keyboards and so forth. So where if you don't like Apple's keyboard, you can download a different type of keyboard and use the swipe keyboard and so forth. And then one last bit, this isn't really the iPhone, but it does tie into the whole Apple package is they do have something called Family Sharing now. So the reason that's slick is, I don't know if you guys have ever run into this, but of course I've got a bunch of people in my family and I buy stuff on my account, they buy stuff on their account, and of course it's always a big mess because I go ahead and pay $5 for an app and then they can't get it unless they buy it themselves. And it's just this big cluster mess unless everybody buys it independently. Now Apple has opened it up so you can go on and create a family sharing plan and all those individuals are under one umbrella. So if I buy music and apps and so forth and all those IDs are all tied in together, they are able to download it now and not have to pay for it. That's pretty cool. That's very slick. It's something that is long overdue in my mind. But the other thing that's nice is if you are a parent and your son has his own account and is younger, and he wants to go ahead and buy on his phone. You've given him a $10 credit to buy whatever. And he wants to buy a new song by whoever. Rather than— it goes back to what I said about the monitoring. You have the ability to have it instead of him just being able to go straight to Apple and say, I want to download this song. When he wants to purchase that, it will actually go to Apple and then go to the parent and then say, your son wants to download Pearl Jam. And then you can say yes, and then it goes to Apple, and then it's allowed to download. So the family sharing thing there, that's a pretty neat feature that could be convenient for a lot of people that do have Apple accounts and kind of want to combine all of those group purchases.

There was actually a lawsuit that Apple settled. Kind of funny. What was happening was parents would put in their password to allow kids to download something, And because the kid could then turn around and download something immediately after the first download stopped without the password, someone initiated a class-action suit that Apple actually settled. So it's actually very cool hearing that they are offering this Family Share thing.

Yeah, it's very slick.

Cool. 2 final observations on this page. Of course, we've got to bring Google back into it. One is if you've ever wondered what remarketing targeting is. We're seeing it firsthand. I visited Dropcam, and guess what advertisements are showing up with MacRumors? Dropcam. So good job, Google, for thinking it knows what I want. And lastly, even though this is a MacRumors page, you can see they're providing us the ability to +1 it on Google. So as much as we try to fight it, Google does have its fingers into pretty much everything. I'm curious to see, I don't know if I'll eventually make the switch to an iPhone. I still like the Android platform, but you never know. It depends. I'm not as opposed to it, and I certainly love my other Mac devices.

I've actually decided I am going to go with the iPhone 6, and unless something significant happens to cause me to change my mind, I'm going to try the larger screen. I actually went to a phone retailer the other day and tried slipping the larger screen, because the devices I've heard will be thinner. I tried slipping them into my pocket because I don't use a cover on a phone, and I was pleased at how comfortable it felt. It didn't feel bulky in my pocket.

One last quick question for you, Greg. Yeah, one last quick question for you. Rob asks, would you install Yosemite in a work or a home environment or wait until official release? He's just worried about it breaking. I don't know whether it is or isn't the case that you're having some difficulties getting on the webinar itself, but what are your thoughts? I will tell you this.

I feel like it's very stable. That being said, if this is your livelihood at stake, and if you were to run into a glitch that it would really make you pull your hair out, then I would absolutely say no, wait for the stable release, the final version. But I mean, I use it. It's my primary operating system. It's on the MacBook Air that I carry everywhere. I've not ran into any issues at all on that Mac version of Yosemite. And honestly, I don't even think Apple would put it out if they didn't feel like it was stable because they wouldn't want to that publicity. It's slick, it looks good, it works well, but again, I would never tell anyone, yeah, just go ahead and do it, you won't regret it. It is a beta, and the reason it's a beta is there's still things that need to be worked out.

If you use GoToMeeting on a regular basis, you probably don't want to do it.

You never want to be caught off guard, but I will tell you this. I've been running it. It's only become available to the public for I think maybe the last 2 weeks. And I've been running the earlier versions of it which would have been less unstable. I've been running it for the last maybe 2 months and I've had no issues. I've had no crashing. All my applications work. I haven't really ran into anything that would make me be overly cautious. But again, that being said, if it's your business computer and you can't, you know, can't chance it, and I would certainly err on the side of caution.

Cool.

We're kind of laughing because Greg had some trouble getting onto the webinar, and I'm noticing, of course, Citrix and GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, they don't play well with much, but I'm noticing you're not even listed as an attendee on the webinar, so there must be some sort of conflict there.

You mean me?

He came in incognito. I just called him incognito.

I called him. Oh yeah, I've used various versions and I've never had any problem. And, uh, I don't know, I, you know, everything looked like it was loading up. And, uh, I think I tried to join prior to the, you know, the platform being set up on your end. And anyway, we were kind of cutting it close on time, so I just called in. I'm sure I probably could have got it ironed out.

Cool. Well, as usual, great stuff, Gregg. Thanks for spending the hour with us, and certainly some good food for thought. I don't know as if— although now that you've kind of resurrected my interest in Dropcam, that may end up having to go back on my birthday/Christmas list. And so usually we joke when Gregg shows up, that means Jeff and I end up spending money. So—

I have a Dropcam and I love it. And I will admit, when I learned that Google owned them, I was like, am I less comfortable with this now?

Yeah, I agree.

I agree.

Yeah, cool.

Well, good. We'll get this recording dumped down from our friends at GoToWebinar and up on the site so you can check it out and go back through some of the stuff. And again, thanks for joining us. We'll see everybody next Wednesday and every Wednesday at 1 PM Eastern time here at freewebinarwednesdays.com. Until then, have a great week and we'll see you online. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.