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we'll explain it to you when you're older this is on the verge thank you thank you sir welcome to on the verge brought to you by samsung i'm your host joshua topolsky and you are a human being and that's okay I'm not going to judge you we have a really big exciting show today we have an interview with the US national security editor of The Guardian Spencer Ackerman we're going to talk about prism with him khoi vinh is going to be talking to us about iOS 7 he is of course the former design director of the New York Times oh he's got a lot to say about design and apples design challenges Nilay Patel who I know you love did a wonderful piece on prism and what it means for you and your loved ones and our intrepid reporter Nathan siker took to the streets of New York City to ask people if they actually care about their privacy and things like prism also this week Kanye West said that he was the new steve jobs which is extremely important to know so obviously a lot going on a lot to talk about let's talk about this week's biggest tech story the big story is of course if you've been following technology apple's WWDC worldwide developers conference which they hold every year in San Francisco it's a big deal for them they had a bunch of announcements this year including new MacBook Airs iTunes radio a new OS 10 called Mavericks which is a beach which sounds lovely I've never been to a beach but I would very much like to visit one at some point and they also announced this new Mac Pro which looks nothing like any other computer on the market or that has ever existed pretty much I think it kind of looks like a bronc AF 20 coffee maker but you're going to have to draw your own conclusions on this of course the biggest story from dub dub DC is iOS 7 the new version of Apple's wildly popular mobile operating system and a lot of people have been pretty critical of it people like me I wrote an angry editorial about the design of iOS 7 which i think is somewhat lacking and there have been a lot of designers who've come out of the woodwork to talk about their issues with the new design of the oh s Jason Santa Maria for instance he tweeted multitasking tabs control center airdrop in general interactions are looking fantastic in iOS 7 but wow the ugly stick Tom Cote said iOS 7 will probably be really awesome when they do the visual design and khoi vinh who were going to be speaking to very shortly said if iOS 7 is revenge unforced all four stalls revenge may be that it's kind of not that great which is a disgusting nasty sick burn all over the good people of Apple my advice would be to get some aloe and just rub it all over your body because you've been burned very badly anyhow but I will say this the the event was very much a typical apple Big Apple event though some of the language they used and some of their tone seemed to be a little more humble and a little more reserved when talking about their products take a look at this we are incredibly incredibly incredibly incredibly proud the results are really incredible threat of incredible incredible credible incredible incredible just incredible incredible incredible it's really incredible incredible incredible incredible credible credible and this is incredible but but maybe not surprising really powerful powerful power how our tags beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful document gorgeous it's just gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful just beautiful beautiful documents the data is just gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous it's just gorgeous and as you can see it's a beautiful Pages document perfectly smooth incredibly fast super fast super fast super glassy super smooth super clean and super nice super cool it's just epic I'm going to go a little over the top can't innovate anymore my ass just like that it's really just amazing it's just fantastic it's pretty awesome phenomenal can test fantastic fantastic fantastic sorry about that got a little excited there revolutionary revolutionary radical even sounds cool it even sounds cool it's not even close it's not even close a stunning stunning stunning the amazing it's unbelievable unbelievable unbelievable profound pretty great great great great great so great great great great great those words being a great deal to us and I hope they mean a lot to you it as well and joining them how to discuss the look and the feel of iOS 7 is famed designer khoi vinh koi thanks for being here thanks for having me so look you've been fairly publicly outspoken about you seem like you don't have it I'm gonna stuff you don't want me to talk about it you shouldn't have been speaking publicly then no you but you've been publicly outspoken about iOS 7 is it is it bad it's a bad design that's by the way a very loaded question yeah I think it's a mixed bag I think on the whole there's a lot of good stuff there there's a lot more stuff that surprisingly for apple doesn't work as well as it should even in a first release what are the things that you see and obviously we both seen the keynote and some of the stuff that's on the site it's it's in beta right now as a dev beta so this is not in to some degree it's not final but what is it that you've seen that isn't that isn't working the stuff that's the surprising stuff I think they've just veered so far into this area of trying to create a minimalist interface that a lot of really simple things like buttons or menus have totally reinvented just look like they'll be problematic once real people get their hands on right people who are used to a very different yes interface non-technical people people like right the proverbial moms out there like what what do you attribute this to I mean it's unusual for Apple I mean we know they've done some they've had some weird design missteps right that I mean what part of this feels like a reaction to the skeuomorphic debate the felt in the wood and they made a lot of jokes about that I mean do you feel like some of the missteps are due to this being a reaction I think they really wanted to make a break after what's it been now about six or seven years of the iphone I think they wanted to really push things forward into a whole new direction and create a new chapter for iOS so I think most of the the motivation is is great I think they've hit choppier waters than they expected to trying to make you know such a dramatic change looking at the design I mean we know that Johnny I was put in charge of of interface design is there stuff here that's kind of mistakes that a guy who's not a software designer would make does it feel like some of this is his newness to that world well I mean I hesitate to say it's because he's new to software design but to me it does feel like there's a lot of those kinds of mistakes that people are coming into software design for the first time will make I mean there's a there's an overemphasis on the graphical quality and probably not as much emphasis on the behavioral quality of the interface right what's your take on the icons I like the simplicity I I wish they were stronger overall they seem like a first pass to me and I I'd like to see them revised again okay so what do you seeing that is working from from what they've showed off and in iOS well it's a beautiful interface it really has a lot of great visual things to recommend it but the transparency the the thinness of of all the elements it just sort of feels very lightweight and I think that's something they really try to to bring home is this idea that the interface itself doesn't have to feel heavy anymore it's like the devices are getting lighter the interfaces are getting lighter right so i think it's it's done that job I I think I think where they thought you know that they might have been ninety percent of the way there they might be only be like seventy or eighty percent of the way there in terms of really making everything work right so you said on the on the typography in the interface in the case of both Apple and Google their uses of helvetica neue are so prominent that they're almost indiscriminate and as a result both of these efforts skirt that thin line between aspiration and desperation yeah can you can you elaborate a little bit on what what your thinking is behind a statement like so how about a kunai which they're using very prominently and I also mentioned Google has been using that really prominent their iOS apps that's a really beautiful typeface that traditionally or historically has been used in the fashion and beauty industries and it's meant to connote modernity sophistication and and thinness frankly for actual food actuals it is physically an extremely thin oh that's right yeah and I don't think that it's there's any accident that these companies have chosen this typeface and and really put the tightest typeface to the fore they want people to think of their devices as fashionable as as a really desirable compliment to the way you think about your own personal presentation and I think that's terrific but if you if you really look at the way Helvetica noise is used in print design magazines and publications it's used as a you know what we say is a display typeface meaning it's meant for bigger bigger uses of type headlines and titles and so forth and both Google and Apple have used it not just for display but for text labels and for you know paragraphs and at smaller sizes where where the letter forms start to run together a little bit and become harder to read than you would like yeah I mean a lot of those apps are sorry not to interrupt but a lot of the apps on that that they show images of their own they're it's all text I mean it really is and it's all sort of the same font weight right in varying sizes right it does it does seem a little bit daunting for the eye I mean you no it feels like a little bit of helvetica neue goes a long way and a lot of it right it's like sort of it's one of those more is more you know yeah you know but it feels like that's a fundamental part of the new iOS that that typeface is going to be that widespread yeah I think I think they can still pull that off by using it at the larger sizes in the display text situations but but if the smaller size is I don't think there's anything wrong with using a heavier weight of helvetica and I hope they consider that because it's going to improve legibility dramatically for people especially for people who have you know like some eyesight challenges right are you so there's a story going around now that there is some apples marketing department some of the designers there somehow had a hand in designing some of this interface is that does that sound like it makes it I mean you're a designer you've worked in design for years and years and years you've obviously worked on some very big projects is this the kind of thing where you would go you would reach out to a marketing department and say to me this seems like a crazy concept especially for a design-driven company like Apple that you would go hey let's farm out some of the icon work to the guys in marketing does this sound like a situation that could be that sounds real to you realistic I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility I mean I have no first-hand knowledge you have no idea what happened at Apple but I think the idea that you want to you want to bring in different voices into the design process you want to bring in folks who who are coming at design problems from from a different background from marketing from from print from packaging design I think we're going to see more and more of that in software going forward I mean software design until fairly recently has been a pretty homogeneous kind of a field where everybody like lives and breathes software and they don't bring tons of external influences into it so the idea of bringing in marketing folks is not inherently bad it's just how you manage that process of mixing together different ideas so what if you're an apple right now they're like can I come come and be fixed our design yeah what are what are the where are the first things that yours what are the first things you're attacking how are you attacking them it's a very broad question yeah very curious yeah well I wouldn't fundamentally change the look of iOS 7 I think I think they have good reasons for going in the direction that they're going I would focus more on the lower level interactions and making sure buttons with like buttons making sure there's consistent behavior with toggles and switches and the way you know action sheets reveal and and the way you know sharing works all of those things I think there could be a lot more work to to make it more intuitive and perhaps more consistent with what's come before and I would fix some of the lower level typography as well I would keep the bigger picture Helvetica noise stuff but make sure text labels and paragraphs and smaller texts are a lot more legible so what you do what fun would you go with I would go with a different way to have like in helvetica neue I would just need like a regular or medium or in some cases a bold yeah do you think you'll have an opportunity to go to apple and fix yeah probably not after that tweet yeah right the tweet is maybe it was aggressive you know maybe yeah do you feel your reaction has been strong I had a few people pipe in and say yes I agree or no you're totally wrong I don't think that the tweet was particularly you know you know unique or controversial and that you know I don't think tons of people said wow I can't believe he said that right now and and youth do you think that and this is the i guess this is kind of the ultimate question this is abated whatever we saw as a beta do you think that it'll change in any fundamental way from a design standpoint from from now until the fall when they are presumably will release new devices and put this on their old devices yeah I mean it's hard to to speak about this up in terms of numbers but it might change ten fifteen percent twenty percent and that might be enough fight I think I think it will look more or less the same when it comes out and i think that's fine but I do I would guess based on the level of furor that we've heard that there will make some changes this week Corey thanks so much really suck at it it's a lot of fun and stick around because next we have a helpful explainer for your new best friend prism and we'll be right back you are being watched recorded spied on it all sounds like the ravings of a conspiracy theorist but those theories gained a lot of steam this week when the washington post in the guardian published reports claiming that the US government is collecting mountains of data on every citizen they can look at your emails your photos your private facebook profile they can watch your google searches in real time they claimed last night a single tear rolled down the cheek of a government employee when you used your Xbox to order pizza hut but as any of this really happening it all started when Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian broke the news the National Security Agency had ordered verizon to hand over records on all calls originating in the United States now it should be noted that this does not include the content of the calls but rather the associated metadata the imei numbers of the cell phones the time and duration of the calls the two phone numbers involved but still that metadata is powerful and telling that story is quickly followed by the revelation of another government program called prism which collects much much more as reported by both the Guardian and The Washington Post prism collects data from technology companies like Google Microsoft Facebook and Apple the exact scope of prism is still unclear as the original report claiming the NSA had quote direct access to the company's server has been partially retracted and the companies involved and the NSA have denied the majority of the claims Google's first denial was basically titled what the there's always a chance though that it's happening without the company's knowing and according to the Washington Post the NSA may have direct access to the company's servers without their knowledge or consent Google for example contends that it delivers data only after a specific court order does so via cure ftp transfer or literally by hand the company along with Microsoft and Facebook has asked for more openness and transparency so as Congress although it should be noted that President Obama has claimed every congress person has been briefed on the prison program and has voted several times to keep it running the White House has defended its surveillance and others say this is simply business as usual for the Bush and Obama administrations but the documents have made explicit what many have feared that laws like the FISA Amendments Act and the Patriot Act have allowed the US government to run roughshod over citizens privacy at this point what we need is more transparency from all sides The Guardian and posting to show us the rest of the evidence they have regarding the government spying and the government itself needs to be clear and honest about what kind of data it collects the only problem is that none of these parties will feel any pressure to do anything unless the people actually care how do you feel about the government spying on you the NSA there's no point of doing it to everyone it's just going too far it's inviting my privacy without even my consent so it's just a bad about violation of my fourth amendment see III tend to have a different opinion if there's a way that we can stop you know a terrorist attack from happening I think maybe it's something that should be used but there's there needs to be some kind of constraint towards it it's the same thing as airport security do I want them to Pat me down and put me through a machine every time no do I want them to make sure no one else has a bomb on them yeah obviously you feel like now they're getting uncomfortably close they have put the potential to be but I definitely think if it's anything on the internet then that is fair game I mean you posted it with the intention of people seeing it so I think that that would be fair are you okay with your searches being sent uh no I mean I had nothing to hide but what about it's like friday night it's like two in the morning you're on google y'all know what what we're searching it's you in the morning yeah I'm young man I mean I don't care really yeah it's not doesn't bother me but I feel like it's my privacy why should you know what I'm doing privately what if you had access to government technology where you could check in on like an ex of yours someone says it's totally legal they won't find out would you use that information to check in on your ex I mean I would some people down and figure out with the location is their specific location at the element what if it wasn't legal but this this guy pulled you aside he was like listen I work for the government don't no one will find out you can use this information would you do it even though you knew is against the law would you still check in on these people um I'm gonna say yeah I would still do because you know as I said people should be safe for mamas community every move we make they're watching out the song is more true now than ever all right y'all give it up what my beginning we are the people trust the government trust the government very very helpful and also frightening stuff from Neil I and joining me now via Skype is the Guardians US national security a deter Spencer Ackerman Spencer thank you first off for joining us I know you're extremely busy right now let's talk about prism and what we know right now there's been some confusion it seems like in particularly in mainstream a lot of mainstream press about the this story and and whether the take on prism that we've heard so far that there is some collusion between these tech companies and the NSA is accurate you do you feel that the the story has been accurate thus far right I mean this is there is some collusion happening is that right so there's a program that we know is called prism that basically monitors the online communications of a best vast amount of people as long as the NSA has some kind of suspicion we're not really sure what the standards are but has to have it like a 51-percent suspicion that the people there monitoring our outside the United States or are not United States persons so that's what prison is and there are something like nine companies involved there are nine companies involved Microsoft Google Facebook is involved um the extent of their involvement there now negotiating with the Justice Department to disclose but the NSA has been working with them they want to add Dropbox to it so that communications that they believe are outside the united states are harvested all under this program right and you say you said 51% confidence that the person they're targeting or people their target are outside the US do you know how they build that confidence i mean is this just a whim of somebody at the NSA i have no idea the NSA has not disclosed that it's a fascinating question that would be a really excellent subject for a public so there's been a lot of talk about this doing this direct access debate versus a lockbox versus you know the companies have basically denied that there is a direct any kind of direct relationship can you explain a little bit about your understanding or how this is working that these companies seem to be not dancing around and they're flat-out denials they say we haven't heard about prism so how would this work or how does it appear to be working in a technical manner we're waiting to hear the specifics about how well this gets ironed out with the companies the companies are right now because you're worried about their business asking the Justice Department to disclose what they can about requests for information they get from the government there's a lines from from the slide deck that we have that suggests the companies can go in themselves so we're really waiting to hear what the Justice Department will let the company say about their cooperation the slides are seem very direct and what we've seen at least so far about how they describe the access to data does it does it seem to you that there is that these companies are could be more involved in that there's a reason why they're not able to speak on that um yeah for years through the Patriot Act through an expansion 2008 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act recipients of these government requests for information from telecommunications companies from Internet service providers and so on have been under very serious restrictions about what they can say publicly recipients of the administrative subpoenas like National Security Letters from the FBI under Section 215 of the Patriot Act which is distinct I want to clarify from a prison that relies on something called section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act but under 750 under sorry under 215 of the Patriot Act recipients of these requests for information cannot publicly disclose to their clientele or to anyone else that they've been turning over these these records so it is very difficult for these companies to talk about in public what they've been turning over to the government right so so and there has been this I mean the government is obviously very outspoken saying look we're not doing anything that isn't completely within our rights completely within the law as established by in the Patriot Act uh the the there seems to be you know Harry Reid is saying look I don't know why anybody is surprised about this we've been doing this for years Dianne Feinstein is is is defending the use of this this type of surveillance does it does this seem like is there a turning point here where we need to take a look at the Patriot Act and what it allows you know obviously there have always been critics of the patriarchy since day one is this a point where you feel like there's need to be real scrutiny and real oversight about what the Patriot Act allows so a couple things first to be really clear a prism is not about the Patriot Act the collection of millions of Americans phone records telephony metadata as that as the term of art goes basically you're your phone number the duration of your calls possibly the location so forth that is something that the NSA is justifying under Section 215 the so-called business provision of the Patriot Act that's something that already you're starting to see senators like Jeff Merkley and Tom Udall say needs to really be reviewed on and on the broader point um most senators who you know aren't on the Intelligence Committee most members of Congress aren't on the House version of the Intelligence Committee so most of Congress is in the dark about how these programs actually operate and what um two senators Ron Wyden and and mark Udall have been warning about for two years now is that the administration with the blessing of the FISA Court a secret surveillance court has been allowing a completely in private without any public review very broad interpretations of both the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 that they've argued allow for vastly more surveillance than most legislators thought that they were authorizing under these public was and they've called for the declassification of these laws of these interpretations of these laws because they feel that they can't responsibly legislate surveillance information they can't responsibly legislate the surveillance rules of the road for Americans to protect Americans privacy if in private the administration with the blessing of a secret court will essentially rewrite those laws okay so look I know you need to go you're a busy guy but what is what's next in this story I mean there's more to come right and I know you don't want to talk about is more of yours morning but but can you can you can you can you guarantee I mean are we going to see some DEET more detail on beyond those four slides are there more slides to come that the public is going to have access I oh I like I told you before dude I really appreciate your diligence I respect that as a reporter up we are not going to talk about sourcing we're not going to talk about that I can tell you that there's going to be a more information from Guardian about the balance between civil liberties in the online era up then you've seen so far okay Spencer thanks so much i really appreciate you taking the time that is our show i want to thank spencer ackerman khoi vinh nilay patel nathan psych art and of course you the viewer for going on this very special very magical journey with us we'll be back with more on the verge next week and until then there is no until then you you 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