00:00:51 ◼ ► Right, which is weird, like, because I don't even understand what the... and I'm not so cynical as to
00:00:59 ◼ ► suggest that the only reason anybody would do anything is to be remunerated for it financially.
00:01:08 ◼ ► You know, there's certainly a lot of things I've done that I just, you know, give out to the world.
00:01:19 ◼ ► rumor sites go all the way back to ThinkSecret. I mean, ThinkSecret isn't even going all the way
00:01:24 ◼ ► back. There were sites in the 90s, you know, I forget some of the names, but I think there was
00:01:29 ◼ ► one, MacRumors, which is not to be confused with Mac OS Rumors. Or no, Mac OS Rumors, not to be
00:01:36 ◼ ► confused with the current, you know, long-running site MacRumors. I don't get the leaking on
00:01:42 ◼ ► Twitter thing, like what the idea is, but I guess it's just, you know, just for fun, for kicks.
00:01:48 ◼ ► It's for the lulz. They're like young and they have this information and they want to share it
00:01:51 ◼ ► and they get attention for sharing it. So was Kang someone in addition to I Love to Dream,
00:02:09 ◼ ► summarized them. But he would come out like right before an event and basically just list out what
00:02:14 ◼ ► was going to be in the event. So it was never early, early on, like Mike Berman might start a
00:02:18 ◼ ► rumor or might report on a rumor three years before it happens. This was like a week or so
00:02:23 ◼ ► before it happened, but they were highly accurate. Right. And the idea here is that there's somehow
00:02:30 ◼ ► been a crackdown on them, but nobody is quite sure what it is. I will put a link in the show notes to
00:02:38 ◼ ► this MacRumors story talking about it, which goes back to June of last year. So it's not news, but
00:02:50 ◼ ► Is it the supply chain? Because it seems to me like some of these leaks are clearly not just from
00:03:03 ◼ ► And is it, you know, is it second level? It's not like someone in Cupertino is directing some kind
00:03:10 ◼ ► of crackdown on Twitter leaks of Apple Rumors, but that, you know, from Cupertino to the supply chain,
00:03:17 ◼ ► like, hey, this, you know, this leak seemed to know, you know, an awful lot about this component,
00:03:22 ◼ ► which we know is only sourced from you. And then the component maker is cracking down somehow.
00:03:34 ◼ ► it's part of human culture. There have been movie and TV Rumor sites and papers and rags,
00:03:40 ◼ ► like a lot of the Rumor sites started off as actual newsletters and papers for years. It's
00:03:45 ◼ ► just stuff people are interested in. Like, and the more secrecy there's around like a Marvel or Star
00:03:49 ◼ ► Wars project, the more people are interested and Apple's like that for electronics. And I think
00:03:54 ◼ ► that the main difference we're seeing here is that in the US and in North America and in Europe,
00:04:00 ◼ ► are very different kinds of protection for media because we call them leakers, but like Mark
00:04:04 ◼ ► Gurman is not a leaker. John Prosser is not a leaker. They are given information by leakers,
00:04:08 ◼ ► and then they report on it and that is protected. But in China, the laws are very different. And it
00:04:14 ◼ ► looks like one of the aspects was, I'm going to go back to the early days for a while, when the,
00:04:19 ◼ ► before the Verge was the Verge, they were, this is my next. And they published a rumor of an iPhone
00:04:23 ◼ ► 5, a report of an iPhone 5 that was teardrop shaped famously, infamously, and a case company
00:04:29 ◼ ► went and made a ton of cases for it and it never existed, but they lost everything in that. And so
00:04:35 ◼ ► one of the, one of the statements we made in these, I don't know if they're lawsuits, if they're
00:04:39 ◼ ► demand letters, is that you are not only giving away our trade secrets by releasing this information
00:04:44 ◼ ► early, but you are potentially costing people in the accessory market money because some of these
00:04:49 ◼ ► things are not accurate and they're acting on them as though they are accurate. Right. And you don't
00:04:53 ◼ ► want to, I don't want to make light of it because I mean, if it's happening in China, it could be,
00:04:57 ◼ ► it could be worse, you know, like you get like a cease and desist letter in the US and it's like,
00:05:02 ◼ ► well, you, you know, you get to sit there and think about, well, do I comply? Do I call my
00:05:06 ◼ ► own lawyer? Do I just rip it up? What do I do? And it's like, you know, worse comes to worse,
00:05:11 ◼ ► you're just going to get another letter and, you know, you face some sort of legal consequences,
00:05:15 ◼ ► perhaps, but you know, in China, you know, it could be a knock on the door and it's, you know,
00:05:19 ◼ ► not good. And I really don't, yeah, but we do have rumors to discuss. I do want to discuss them,
00:05:28 ◼ ► but before that, I was thinking first thing we could do is talk about, oh, I have some follow-up,
00:05:35 ◼ ► do you mind? Oh, no, I love it. Important follow-up. Last, my last episode was with Jason
00:05:40 ◼ ► Snell and I think I offhandedly mentioned, we were talking about Apple TV, we were talking about his
00:05:46 ◼ ► report, the whole, our Apple report cards for 2021 and talking about Apple TV and, and a sort of
00:05:55 ◼ ► limbo that Apple TV, the hardware platform seems to be in within Apple where it's not like they're
00:06:04 ◼ ► disinterested. They just updated it last year. They made a better remote, but they also don't
00:06:08 ◼ ► seem fully interested there. You know, they're somewhere in between. And I was talking about
00:06:16 ◼ ► hooking up HomePods to an Apple TV to use as your sound system and how really truly happy I am with
00:06:24 ◼ ► two home, two full-size HomePods hooked up to my Apple TV. And then I mentioned something to the
00:06:29 ◼ ► effect of not being able to do that with HomePod minis, which I kind of knew was glossing over the
00:06:37 ◼ ► details, but it's, I should get into the details because I got a couple of emails saying, well,
00:06:41 ◼ ► no, you can hook HomePod minis up to Apple TV. I will put a link in the show notes to the Apple
00:06:47 ◼ ► support document. And the gist is HomePod mini does not support Dolby Atmos 5.1 or 7.1 surround
00:06:57 ◼ ► sound. Long story short. And I also think that even without getting into the technical details
00:07:04 ◼ ► of which specs like Dolby this, Dolby that, that it does or does not support, they're just not big
00:07:09 ◼ ► enough. They, for my living room, it's less about the technical aspects maybe even than just the
00:07:14 ◼ ► sound quality. Two HomePods fill my living room with very good sound that has room to go. We can
00:07:21 ◼ ► turn it up as loud as we feel is pleasant and there's still room to go. I don't think two HomePod
00:07:26 ◼ ► minis would. And it is kind of curious to me that they, I mean, you and I can talk about it. I mean,
00:07:32 ◼ ► I don't know. I know you care about the HomePods too, but it is weird that HomePod is left in a
00:07:37 ◼ ► situation where there is a HomePod mini and there is no regular, there is, there are no other HomePods.
00:07:42 ◼ ► The only one is the mini, which doesn't really make it the mini anymore. It actually is the only
00:07:46 ◼ ► HomePod available. Yeah, it's, it's stupefying. And also Apple canceled the regular, the OG HomePod
00:07:53 ◼ ► biggie without replacing it, which is not something they typically do if they intend to make a
00:07:57 ◼ ► next-generation product, unless that next-generation product is so far out, doesn't make any sense.
00:08:02 ◼ ► And I'm exactly with you. Like with the minis, you get very little bass and they're basically
00:08:06 ◼ ► 2.0 stereo. And with the original HomePods, you get a ton of bass and they will support spatial
00:08:12 ◼ ► audio and Dolby Atmos. So you'll have everything from 2.1 to whatever, 9.1, whatever your, whatever
00:08:18 ◼ ► the source media can handle. And it's a profound difference. I think a lot of it was just Apple
00:08:24 ◼ ► started, Apple tried to do the iPod Hi-Fi again. They wanted, they realized that a bunch of audio
00:08:28 ◼ ► products, a lot of people don't have good audio solutions in all of their rooms. And they just
00:08:33 ◼ ► wanted to make a box that you could drop in any room, in any place in that room. And it would
00:08:36 ◼ ► sound good no matter where it was in the room. And then they happened substantially, added Siri
00:08:41 ◼ ► as a control mechanism, not happenstantly, but conveniently because there was no display. And
00:08:46 ◼ ► it took them five years to develop it. And in that time, Amazon and Google littered the world with
00:08:51 ◼ ► commodity smart speakers that didn't have the audio capability at all, but drove the price down and
00:08:57 ◼ ► the expectations up for what a home assistant should be. And so they basically brought a very
00:09:02 ◼ ► expensive speaker to a commodity speaker market. And it never, it never got good media, never got
00:09:07 ◼ ► good footing. A lot of people love it. They love it so much. They buy everyone they can find on
00:09:11 ◼ ► eBay, myself included. I have the same setup as you, but there was just no market for it. And the
00:09:17 ◼ ► mini sort of hits at that idealized price point, that new commodity price point of about a hundred
00:09:21 ◼ ► bucks, but nothing replaced that home pod. Like the Google version isn't as good. There's, there's
00:09:31 ◼ ► And I would love it. There's rumors of a home pod with an iPad style screen and a home pod mixed
00:09:36 ◼ ► with an Apple TV. That'd be a sort of a home theater pod, but I would also just love maybe
00:09:45 ◼ ► It's the other factor is eliminating wires, right? Like that is a very Apple like thing. And I know,
00:09:55 ◼ ► you know, the whole, it's not like Apple is the only company that is interested in making wireless
00:09:58 ◼ ► products. You know, the whole, you know, AirPods sort of burst. I know they weren't the first
00:10:04 ◼ ► wireless headphones for consumers, but they're the first ones to sort of break through into the
00:10:09 ◼ ► mainstream. And now everybody's coming out with ones that are meant for the masses. Sony has some
00:10:16 ◼ ► new ones that even have a good name. I forget the name of it, but it's no longer named like XDR 5776.
00:10:23 ◼ ► It's got like a real name, but it's, you know, home theaters notoriously. You try to keep it.
00:10:29 ◼ ► You're like, ah, we can, you know, get rid of this, get rid of that, get all the way down. Even if
00:10:32 ◼ ► you get down to one box, we're going to do everything through this, you know? And it's like,
00:10:36 ◼ ► well, but then you kind of, you know, how can you, yeah, you need a second box. We need a receiver
00:10:41 ◼ ► for the speakers and we need, or this or that, and everything's connected with wires and you've got
00:10:45 ◼ ► these wires going play. And it's like, so part of the, it's not just physical decluttering of like
00:10:54 ◼ ► your living room or wherever you have your TV set up. It's almost like mental decluttering of
00:10:58 ◼ ► simplifying things like wireless is better, right? It's, you know, it's, it goes back to
00:11:03 ◼ ► anything. Everything that goes wireless is sort of better. Like almost, I mean, I don't know what
00:11:08 ◼ ► percentage of people still connect their computers to physical ethernet, Jack, but certainly not
00:11:15 ◼ ► many. And the ones who do are doing it for very specific reasons. Wi-Fi really changed that. And
00:11:21 ◼ ► the HomePod wireless connection to the Apple TV, it's really remarkable because you think,
00:11:29 ◼ ► ah, it's going to have latency or the, you know, latency with the video, like maybe the
00:11:34 ◼ ► lips won't be in sync with the audio, or it's going to put a delay on using the remote control.
00:11:39 ◼ ► You hit pause and it'll take a frag, you know, now it's all, it all feels just as fast as any
00:11:44 ◼ ► kind of wired connection to speakers. It's, it's, you know, and, and it's pretty easy to set up.
00:11:55 ◼ ► replacement. It's kind of strange. I feel like the rumor of the one that has like, you know,
00:12:02 ◼ ► I know Facebook makes a thing. There's a couple other companies that make these speakers with
00:12:06 ◼ ► a screen that I could see maybe them making that product. It's sort of, I mean, I can imagine other
00:12:14 ◼ ► scenarios, but it sounds like a kitchen product is something that people would put on their kitchen
00:12:19 ◼ ► counter. Or a grandparent product. They just want to FaceTime with the kids and don't want to bother
00:12:23 ◼ ► with anything else. Yeah, but I don't see Apple making that. I feel like, you know, if the
00:12:28 ◼ ► grandparents have an iPod or iPad or an iPhone, it's, you know, FaceTime's already usable, you
00:12:35 ◼ ► know, like the grandparents scenario is already taken care of. Like, I feel like it's a company
00:12:40 ◼ ► like Facebook that doesn't have a device like that, like the iPad or the iPhone that wants to
00:12:47 ◼ ► make a dedicated talk to the grandparents hardware device. But that's not a living room device,
00:12:54 ◼ ► right? Like there's no way you want to get a HomePod with its own screen just to use as
00:13:00 ◼ ► speakers for your TV set, right? I mean, what would you ever use the screen for? It doesn't see me.
00:13:08 ◼ ► Anything there could be like just a HomePod dock or you put the HomePod on it, you stick your iPad
00:13:14 ◼ ► Yeah. I do feel like the, it's funny because this has been a decade long, more than a decade long.
00:13:23 ◼ ► I mean, I don't know when good old Gene Munster first started speculating on Apple making an
00:13:29 ◼ ► Apple branded TV set. When he saw the 27 inch iMac panels, he just took them for a television set.
00:13:34 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, that was a long time ago. And people have had this idea and in a broad sense,
00:13:47 ◼ ► it's certainly, it's almost like circa 2005, 2006 talking, "Well, I think Apple should make a phone."
00:13:55 ◼ ► I do. Phones are starting to play MP3s. Why carry two devices? I think Apple should make a phone.
00:14:02 ◼ ► And then they did. And it all made sense when we saw the iPhone. And it's like in that same general
00:14:07 ◼ ► sense, there's like a vague sense of Apple should make stuff for the living room for your home
00:14:12 ◼ ► entertainment. And yeah, that sounds good. But then when you get to the details, it's like your
00:14:18 ◼ ► living room is so, the difference is that the phone was one thing. You just, if you bought that
00:14:24 ◼ ► iPhone, then you put your cell phone number and your carrier account, you know, if you had AT&T,
00:14:33 ◼ ► You know, you buy the iPhone and then that's your phone and it's your camera and it's your iPod and
00:14:44 ◼ ► Whereas the living room, even as you get rid of boxes, you're like, "Well, I don't need a separate
00:14:49 ◼ ► DVR. I've cut the cable. I can just, you know, get like an app to get my TV service and I can
00:14:55 ◼ ► eliminate some boxes." But it's still, there's the set, there's at least one box or a stick in the
00:15:01 ◼ ► back or something. And you know, speakers, I mean, really the only way to do it as just the simplest
00:15:09 ◼ ► possible thing is to just buy a TV set. Don't hook it up to any external speakers. Don't put a
00:15:15 ◼ ► stick or a Apple TV box in the back and just use the built-in Netflix and Hulu and Disney or
00:15:22 ◼ ► whatever comes on your TV. You can do that. I'm sure there are people who do that. And the sound
00:15:28 ◼ ► coming from TVs, like we got our new LGV TV two years ago, I guess, and for various reasons,
00:15:36 ◼ ► didn't have it hooked up to any kind of external speakers for a while. The sound is actually
00:15:43 ◼ ► surprisingly good. Really, really quite usable. Like dangerously usable in so far as it inspired
00:15:49 ◼ ► laziness on my part to actually do something like what I ended up doing and hook up two home pods
00:15:56 ◼ ► to it. But it's really good. So it is possible. But then we're back to square one of Apple making
00:16:01 ◼ ► an Apple branded TV set, because that's the one thing you definitely need in any setup is the TV
00:16:11 ◼ ► Yeah, they prototyped at least two of them and it's just, it was, there was no interesting core
00:16:16 ◼ ► technologies. There was no super differentiation they could offer. The upgrade cycles are terrible
00:16:25 ◼ ► Apple TV small box. It just, it didn't make sense. There wasn't a compelling experience that Apple
00:16:29 ◼ ► thought that they could offer to the market. Right. And I heard that at least one of the
00:16:33 ◼ ► prototypes they built was sort of along, and who knows, this could be apocryphal. It's this sort
00:16:39 ◼ ► of story that is six degrees of separation from anybody who had direct knowledge of it.
00:16:45 ◼ ► But that it was like, you know, like a dream TV from Johnny Ive's team. And it was like,
00:16:52 ◼ ► I don't know, six or $7,000, you know, and I don't know what year. It's what they watched the World
00:16:57 ◼ ► Cup in in IL-3 in the old days, or IL-2 in the old days. Right. And I've, you know, I heard a similar
00:17:02 ◼ ► story years ago, you know, that there was not even a prototype. Like, I don't think that it was a
00:17:08 ◼ ► built thing that you could drive around, but at least a specked out, sketched out take on an Apple
00:17:15 ◼ ► car, and it was just ridiculously expensive. You know, when they, you know, all right, this looks
00:17:21 ◼ ► cool, and this looks like something we would put the Apple name on, and here, go figure out how
00:17:26 ◼ ► much this would cost. And then the people who figure that sort of thing out came back, and it
00:17:30 ◼ ► was, I don't know, like at least over $100,000. And it's like, well, that's, you know, that's too
00:17:35 ◼ ► much. They would never ever do it, but it would be so great to just get a version of that book that
00:17:39 ◼ ► Johnny Ive and Apple put out with the, with their history of their products, but the ones they didn't
00:17:43 ◼ ► ship that had the original car sketches in it, the original TV sketches in it, all of that stuff.
00:17:54 ◼ ► you know, and in hindsight, that book, it's, you know, you didn't have to be a genius to wonder if
00:18:02 ◼ ► Johnny was getting ready to leave Apple and the book was sort of, you know, something to sort of,
00:18:12 ◼ ► Would have been good to have the book. I wonder if that, but that book would probably be a lot
00:18:17 ◼ ► thicker, although I guess you could edit it to just the, just the ones that make your heart ache,
00:18:27 ◼ ► Yeah. Yep. All right. Let me take a break here and thank our first sponsor. It's our good friends at
00:18:34 ◼ ► Linode. Linode. Go to linode.com/thetalkshow. That's the URL. And you can see why Linode has
00:18:44 ◼ ► been voted the top infrastructure as a service provider by both G2 and Trust Radius. They have
00:18:50 ◼ ► award-winning support that is offered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year to every
00:19:00 ◼ ► level of user. Doesn't, you don't have to be like a big enterprise user to get this 24 hour a day,
00:19:04 ◼ ► seven days technical support from their top-notch support team. You could get like one of their
00:19:08 ◼ ► small plans for like five bucks, 10 bucks a month, something like that. And when you need help,
00:19:12 ◼ ► you can get in contact with them. It's absolutely from the top to the bottom. And it is,
00:19:17 ◼ ► that is why developers have been trusting Linode for projects, both big, I mean like enterprise big
00:19:24 ◼ ► and small, like just personal little pet projects since 2003. I host Daring Fireball at Linode. I
00:19:42 ◼ ► You can deploy your entire stack with Linode's one-click app marketplace or build it all from
00:19:48 ◼ ► scratch yourself and manage everything with supported centralized tools like Terraform.
00:19:52 ◼ ► They offer the best price to performance value for all compute instances, including GPUs,
00:20:12 ◼ ► L-I-N-O-D-E, linode.com/the-talk-show. Create a free account with your Google or GitHub account,
00:20:27 ◼ ► you get 100 bucks in credit. 100 bucks. My thanks to Linode for sponsoring the show and for hosting
00:20:32 ◼ ► my stuff. All right, AirTags. Before we get to the rumors, do you see Kashmir Hill's New York
00:20:44 ◼ ► columnist for the New York Times. And what she did was, with permission, she planted three trackers
00:21:01 ◼ ► she describes as a hockey puck-like GPS tracker from a company called Land Air Sea that she put
00:21:09 ◼ ► in the glove compartment of his car. And she wrote about how she was able to follow him as he went
00:21:14 ◼ ► about, you know, I think they live in the New York suburbs. She described a trip he took with
00:21:22 ◼ ► Yeah. And then he had a day of business in Manhattan. Really interesting kind of eye opening,
00:21:38 ◼ ► And it was multiple trackers because almost every other article has focused exclusively on AirTags
00:21:48 ◼ ► like, because this Land Air Sea thing has its own built-in GPS, it obviously doesn't require...
00:22:02 ◼ ► where they were on a highway and maybe not near any other Apple devices that would locate the
00:22:13 ◼ ► more available at any time no matter where it is. Whereas the AirTag was obviously more useful for
00:22:20 ◼ ► tracking her husband when he was in Manhattan, surrounded by people with MacBooks and iPhones
00:22:27 ◼ ► especially. Pretty interesting. And it coincided, I think it was totally a coincidence because I
00:22:33 ◼ ► think Apple was working on this, but like a day or two before her story dropped, Apple had announced
00:22:39 ◼ ► their updated initiatives to increase the, what would you call it, the transparency and
00:22:51 ◼ ► Yeah, the awareness of that these things exist and what happens when one is found with you. And
00:23:05 ◼ ► Pointing out specifically the conflict, like the fundamental conflict that AirTags can't do both
00:23:13 ◼ ► of these things at once, which is be privacy aware so that they try their best to alert people that
00:23:20 ◼ ► one has been surreptitiously planted on them and be used as an anti-theft device that won't notify
00:23:38 ◼ ► like you have in one side you have anti-stocking and then on the other side you have lost item
00:23:45 ◼ ► recovery and then on another side you have stolen item recovery and those are all very different
00:23:50 ◼ ► tasks and you have to optimize very differently for them. But even in the narrow focus of just
00:23:56 ◼ ► recovering lost items, if you're not careful with how you balance this out, you can't sit on a bus
00:24:01 ◼ ► or on a train without your phone popping every three seconds because other people have their own
00:24:15 ◼ ► someone else might find it who didn't steal it but they find it your camera bag, your wallet,
00:24:20 ◼ ► and because it's beeping and they have pinpoint accuracy to it they go and remove the money or
00:24:24 ◼ ► remove the cameras before you can come back and find your bag. And I think it's really,
00:24:35 ◼ ► tools technologies have problems. I'm reminded of when Apple announced the hearing aid feature
00:24:39 ◼ ► for AirPods immediately there were a bunch of stories about how people were going to use these
00:24:52 ◼ ► a huge distortion to what the actual technology can do. And Apple is I think, they were alone in
00:24:58 ◼ ► the industry in providing any form of notifications, registering devices with your with your,
00:25:05 ◼ ► sorry registering AirTags with your devices, with your Apple ID, working with law enforcement under
00:25:10 ◼ ► subpoena. We had years of tiles, we had Samsung tags for years, we've had these GPS devices for
00:25:15 ◼ ► years where there's been none of those affordances and almost zero coverage of them. But when Apple
00:25:20 ◼ ► enters a market the attention is so much that it helps, absolutely helps in bringing this awareness
00:25:26 ◼ ► to it, but I think it's also opportunistically distorted by a lot of the coverage around it.
00:25:31 ◼ ► Yeah I think that's well said and you know part of it is that they timed it right I think,
00:25:37 ◼ ► you know that they built out the Find My Network first, the privacy aware way that it works where
00:25:49 ◼ ► you're complete, you know complete strangers who are participating in the Find My Network with
00:25:53 ◼ ► capable recent Apple devices like iPhones, which is the big one because it's the most mobile right,
00:25:59 ◼ ► it puts the mobile in mobile. You know when they pick up a ping from like an AirTag or other
00:26:09 ◼ ► devices that are on the Find My Network they can report it in an anonymous way where you know
00:26:16 ◼ ► there's no way for the person whose iPhone is saying hey I just picked up a ping from an AirTag,
00:26:21 ◼ ► they don't know whose AirTag it is, they don't even know that it happened, you know that the
00:26:25 ◼ ► ping was sent, and you the person who owned the AirTag don't know that this person walked by with
00:26:31 ◼ ► their iPhone and sent a ping to update your AirTag. So they built that out first, they did the hard
00:26:39 ◼ ► work of getting you know a billion plus devices in circulation around the world which makes it
00:26:46 ◼ ► usable right like you can have all this technology in place the exact same thing as Apple's Find My
00:26:51 ◼ ► and if you only have a million devices which would be you know for many companies would be great to
00:26:58 ◼ ► have a million devices in use but that's a thousand fold decrease it would be less useful because
00:27:05 ◼ ► that was Tiles' early problem right well I think it's still Tiles I think it's the I think it's the
00:27:09 ◼ ► fundamental problem with Tiles whole concept was that they never had enough devices sending
00:27:15 ◼ ► the pings to you know to update them and I think you know going back to Kashmir Hill's story in the
00:27:22 ◼ ► New York Times I think that's why the the Tile tracker didn't wasn't as useful for tracking
00:27:26 ◼ ► her husband's whereabouts because there's just not enough it's it truly is it's like the definition
00:27:32 ◼ ► of network effects right yeah which is why Tiles partnering with Amazon now to greatly increase
00:27:37 ◼ ► their footprint right like network effects are such a bizarre concept I think Bob Metcalf the
00:27:43 ◼ ► inventor of Ethernet first defined it but it's like the fax machine is like the perfect example
00:27:49 ◼ ► it's like yeah you know it's like one person who has a fax machine it's completely useless two
00:27:56 ◼ ► people have a fax machine and it might be useful if assuming they know each other and want to send
00:28:02 ◼ ► each other faxes semi-frequently but like at the peak of faxes facsimiles you know utility in our
00:28:12 ◼ ► world almost everybody had one and there was a while where it was assumed it became so ubiquitous
00:28:19 ◼ ► that it was assumed that oh if you want to you know open up a new bank account you know you'll
00:28:26 ◼ ► just send a fax here and it's like well I'm at home I don't have a fax you know and and there
00:28:30 ◼ ► were like email to fax services and stuff like that so that you could get without having a fax
00:28:35 ◼ ► machine at home or a separate line just to have for your fax because you'd have to have a separate
00:28:39 ◼ ► phone line blah blah blah but it's like once they're everywhere they were very useful but
00:28:43 ◼ ► when there's only like a few of them they're not useful and how do you get from well this is a
00:28:50 ◼ ► great idea but we need to get you know tens of millions of them out in the world that's that's
00:28:55 ◼ ► the mystery and you know air tags have that with the find my network and tile doesn't you know it's
00:29:03 ◼ ► not useless you know people have tiles and they use them but it's clearly not as useful so the
00:29:11 ◼ ► changes apple announced one of them is that they seemingly identified I would even call it a bug
00:29:18 ◼ ► where people were getting a spurious warning that an unidentified device has been found
00:29:26 ◼ ► near you or with with you for blank and an awful lot of people I'd reasonably so assumed that that
00:29:36 ◼ ► meant there was an air tag with them and then they'd like look around like let's say they're
00:29:40 ◼ ► in their car and it says an unidentified you know tracking device or device has been found with you
00:29:46 ◼ ► you know from the find my network and then they're like huh I don't have one of those and then they'd
00:29:52 ◼ ► like tear a car apart or look around or say send a you know play a sound or something and nothing
00:29:58 ◼ ► would happen and it turned out it wasn't air tags it was like other devices like air pods yeah air
00:30:04 ◼ ► pods yeah which is yeah and that was just because the the label was not being identified if it was
00:30:10 ◼ ► air tags it would tell you it was air tags but if it wasn't it would just say it was an unknown
00:30:13 ◼ ► device which is terrifying because it's nothing more terrifying than the unknown right right it's
00:30:18 ◼ ► actually scarier yeah yeah I I've had a I had a couple people it does seem you know and it gets to
00:30:26 ◼ ► these arguments about Apple software reliability I mean for the most part this stuff works so good
00:30:31 ◼ ► and but it does seem like there are some cracks in the system like I have one regular reader who
00:30:37 ◼ ► rides his bicycle to commute to work and while he's riding his bicycle he puts one air pod in
00:30:44 ◼ ► so that his other ear can you know pay attention to traffic and everything else going about
00:30:49 ◼ ► and that almost every day or every day when he goes home from work he gets that alert on his
00:30:56 ◼ ► phone that there's an unknown device near you and it's it's his other air pod that's in or or
00:31:02 ◼ ► or he gets the thing that says you left your air pod behind he gets one or the other in neither
00:31:08 ◼ ► case is it unknown it's his other ears air pod in the air pod case in his pocket and it's not left
00:31:14 ◼ ► behind at work and it's not an unknown device so hopefully with iOS I guess it's an iOS 15.4 thing
00:31:22 ◼ ► where this fix is coming hopefully they get that straightened out but it is it's you're absolutely
00:31:32 ◼ ► interesting because Apple gets so much attention that's part of the benefit that they get anytime
00:31:36 ◼ ► they announce a new product there is an ungodly amount of media coverage on it but the equal and
00:31:40 ◼ ► opposite of that is that anytime they introduce a technology even if it's not new like they introduce
00:31:44 ◼ ► touch id and people hammered on it even though you know Samsung and HTC had been storing fingerprint
00:31:49 ◼ ► photos and world readable directories for years they just they just didn't have the attention
00:31:53 ◼ ► gravity that Apple did but I do worry because the like I hate the word fake news I hate when people
00:32:05 ◼ ► news coverage is like is the one of the only defenses that we actually have between us and
00:32:10 ◼ ► the world around us but there's also and I don't know if it's just post OJ Simpson or or when it is
00:32:16 ◼ ► where news got distorted into this continual sensationalization like this complete thirst
00:32:21 ◼ ► to the point where it's now trying to shape the story like it's no longer these are the facts what
00:32:26 ◼ ► are the narratives that can be drawn from these facts how likely are each of those narratives
00:32:31 ◼ ► but it's more like I want to make a story like Neil Neil Sybart was joking um but only a little
00:32:36 ◼ ► bit where he said you know iMessage is so popular with us teens we're not going to report that oh we
00:32:41 ◼ ► could say that they're bullying teens yeah go run with that right but I think a lot of the times you
00:32:45 ◼ ► look at the coverage and it is that and if you look at air tags absolutely they're way more popular
00:32:49 ◼ ► way more attention than any of the previous versions of the product but the coverage has been
00:32:54 ◼ ► almost universally that these are a stalking device even though if you are a criminal you have
00:32:59 ◼ ► to be the dumbest criminal in the world to want to use air tags because of all the tattletale
00:33:05 ◼ ► features that apple built into them that don't exist at all in any other version including the
00:33:10 ◼ ► better ones like the GPS ones that yes do require an account but give you all of like the benefits
00:33:15 ◼ ► with none of the drawbacks and that's that except for this article when we're talking about the New
00:33:20 ◼ ► York Times none of that has been presented consistently or in context at all over the last
00:33:24 ◼ ► few months right you can't set up air tags like if you you know go to the apple store buy some factory
00:33:30 ◼ ► fresh ones and you want to start tracking some something you know for good purposes for bad
00:33:37 ◼ ► purposes whatever you just want to start using it to track something you can't get it activated
00:33:42 ◼ ► onto the find by network without associating it with an apple id and if it's your appled id
00:33:51 ◼ ► which apparently has happened because of you know like you said for lack of a better word dumb
00:33:56 ◼ ► criminals who aren't really thinking about it um aren't really thinking about the fact that they
00:34:02 ◼ ► just set it up with their own apple id and that it works both ways and that if the person finds
00:34:07 ◼ ► it and contacts law enforcement and law enforcement gets in touch with apple that they could say oh
00:34:11 ◼ ► yeah this is you know so-and-so's air tech they have they confirmed that they've been working
00:34:16 ◼ ► with law enforcement on it um you know and it's it in theory i guess you know somebody with with
00:34:24 ◼ ► the bad intentions could create a throwaway apple ids to do that and and i'm not they have so much
00:34:32 ◼ ► telemetry like apple has so like the locate like there's so much telemetry that can be drawn off
00:34:36 ◼ ► even just metadata that that probably won't help obscure you very much well and i'm also presumably
00:34:42 ◼ ► you know like anybody who gets to be a sufficiently large service like that especially if you can if
00:34:48 ◼ ► there's a free tier of any service like there is with apple ids you know these companies have built
00:34:55 ◼ ► up inordinately complicated systems to try to keep people with not even criminal intentions but just
00:35:02 ◼ ► who are looking to abuse abuse the system um like let's like what if you wanted to just i guess it's
00:35:08 ◼ ► sort of criminal to send spam but if you just wanted to make a new uh whatever at icloud.com
00:35:14 ◼ ► account just to send spam or harassing emails or something like that they have systems in place i
00:35:20 ◼ ► don't know what they are i haven't tried to create throwaway icloud accounts but it's not as easy as
00:35:27 ◼ ► you would think and there's other ways that that they can try to track it but it is a problem right
00:35:32 ◼ ► like that's the other thing especially with location-based devices right so let's you know
00:35:37 ◼ ► it's not like oh nobody should be worried about it it's you know we definitely should i yes there
00:35:43 ◼ ► were widespread reports and you know you mentioned john prosser i think prosser amongst the rumor
00:35:50 ◼ ► rumorists whatever you want to call them yeah had air tags pretty early and they did not actually
00:35:58 ◼ ► get announced and shipped until much later and it's partly speculation and partly you know
00:36:05 ◼ ► whispering through the grapevine that the problem wasn't the hardware which was completed relatively
00:36:12 ◼ ► early um earlier than when it shipped but working through the systematic ways of well how how should
00:36:22 ◼ ► this work from every step of the way like the person who owns it how do we protect their privacy
00:36:29 ◼ ► and and make this work for them and how do we protect this from being abused and that it was
00:36:35 ◼ ► thinking through all of those issues that took longer than expected or at least took longer than
00:36:40 ◼ ► it did to develop the hardware yeah no and absolutely i also think there's a benefit of
00:36:45 ◼ ► apple entering these markets and that it does raise awareness and now like people were not
00:36:50 ◼ ► talking about this before and it's been a problem like this a problem with stalking people using
00:36:53 ◼ ► technology every two-bit procedural show on television is shown someone throwing a phone
00:36:58 ◼ ► into someone's bag or car to track them with um and with but and that's like by the time tv gets
00:37:03 ◼ ► to it it's been a problem for a decade already and in way more serious form so at least uh this
00:37:09 ◼ ► has always been a serious problem the stalking the abuse harassment is a huge problem and this
00:37:13 ◼ ► has raised a lot of awareness around that and hopefully other technologies and laws and
00:37:17 ◼ ► regulations will be updated like if you commit a felony when possession of a firearm you get it you
00:37:22 ◼ ► get a much higher increased sentence maybe we have to have a stronger sentence for people who commit
00:37:27 ◼ ► crimes using location tracking technology some form of disincentive but you you you i was going
00:37:33 ◼ ► to say if they'd known what they knew now they'd become a watchmaker they already make watches but
00:37:43 ◼ ► well and i think that that's there's there's i forget the exact name of it i'll try to look it
00:37:49 ◼ ► up but there's a great twitter account that i follow like the internet pessimists archive
00:38:04 ◼ ► but all sorts of technical achievements or perhaps every technical achievement throughout history was
00:38:15 ◼ ► telegraph and the telephone and oh my god now with the telephone i know recorded music like
00:38:20 ◼ ► the phonograph like being able to play a record was bemoaned by i think john philip susa in
00:38:26 ◼ ► particular that this was going to completely pervert people's love for live music and yeah
00:38:32 ◼ ► even things like bizarre things like novels you know which which when we grew up was like oh my
00:38:38 ◼ ► god stop reading uh comic books and watching tv you should read a book right reading books was
00:38:44 ◼ ► good but like when novels first became mass market things that people could afford like with
00:38:50 ◼ ► paperbacks and stuff in the late 1800s it was like oh this this novel fad is ruining you know
00:38:56 ◼ ► that's all people are doing is reading these novels this is you know it's turning everybody's
00:39:01 ◼ ► minds to mush everything is like that there's always trade-offs you know ubiquitous cameras
00:39:07 ◼ ► are obviously one that is fresh fresh in them like change like changing rooms there was a huge
00:39:13 ◼ ► uproar about camera phones and changing rooms for a long time right and i i even mentioned this a few
00:39:18 ◼ ► episodes ago i forget who was on the show but i mentioned uh the the the fact that in japan it
00:39:24 ◼ ► was a real problem because they had that they had camera phones earlier than most people you know
00:39:30 ◼ ► that they were they were sort of ahead on using your phone for things like getting on the subway
00:39:35 ◼ ► and stuff by just waving your phone at it with you know wireless technology and stuff but that
00:39:41 ◼ ► they had a real problem with uh let's face it men using their camera to try to shoot surreptitious
00:39:48 ◼ ► photos up up yes up the skirts of women on the subway and stuff like that and so the it's
00:39:56 ◼ ► i actually i wish i had a better note i actually i think i said on the show that it's the law
00:40:01 ◼ ► that every camera in japan has to make an audible shutters down at all times and i think oh man this
00:40:11 ◼ ► will be follow up for my next show but i think somebody told me that it's not actually a law
00:40:15 ◼ ► but that everybody voluntarily complies with it including apple and so even if you have like your
00:40:21 ◼ ► iphone mute switch on or have the volume turned down when you take a photo it always makes a click
00:40:26 ◼ ► which is super annoying because the reason for it is this idea in japan that you'd want to do that to
00:40:33 ◼ ► to make everybody around you aware that you're taking a photo for privacy sake but everybody
00:40:38 ◼ ► can imagine various scenarios where you don't want your phone to make a camera click right like
00:40:44 ◼ ► yes let's say you're at the baby whistleblower sleeping baby your kids play like a quiet dramatic
00:40:50 ◼ ► moment in your kid's school play and then there you are click you know it's it you can imagine
00:40:56 ◼ ► the parental controls too like people complained they were no potential parental controls and then
00:41:00 ◼ ► when they established them there was a problem with abusive people in relationships using
00:41:04 ◼ ► parental controls to control the devices or mdms to control the devices of the people they were
00:41:09 ◼ ► abusing it's it's incredibly complicated and non-trivial yeah uh and you know tracking is
00:41:15 ◼ ► obviously one of these things you know it's it's obviously only going to become more common i mean
00:41:21 ◼ ► we're it's it sounds like science fiction but it's like a lot of what we have now in our pockets
00:41:29 ◼ ► people the devices that people are listening to this show me and you talk on are you know
00:41:34 ◼ ► were the things of science fiction not that long ago you know within our lifetimes uh and as as
00:41:40 ◼ ► dakota's little brother right as stuff shrinks it's going to become you know uh more of a problem
00:41:48 ◼ ► i mean we're not even getting into drones becoming silent and much smaller and much cheaper you know
00:41:56 ◼ ► i mean that's sort of not the nightmare scenario but there there are nightmare scenarios that stem
00:42:03 ◼ ► from ubiquitous silent little insect-sized drones right it's you know it how in the world do you
00:42:10 ◼ ► remain private when something that looks like a housefly might be something somebody's using to
00:42:15 ◼ ► spy on you with you know and john they sent us the terminator they sent us the matrix and we're here
00:42:20 ◼ ► anyway like we do this to ourselves yeah so it's coming we already have these other devices that
00:42:26 ◼ ► do know our location uh so do it to ourselves we are bugging and tracking ourselves now
00:42:32 ◼ ► so i thought it was a little pessimistic when like the story came out there was one you know
00:42:37 ◼ ► high profile story of like a model a woman who's like a model or an actress or something in new york
00:42:43 ◼ ► who's who was out with her friends and got the notification on her phone and found an air tag in
00:42:50 ◼ ► her purse that you know seemingly some creep put in there but she'd already gotten home so maybe he'd
00:42:57 ◼ ► know he found out where she lived and you know she went to the police and the press and it got highly
00:43:01 ◼ ► publicized and the pessimistic take was that hey i and i saw a couple people you know both privately
00:43:07 ◼ ► and publicly people who emailed me and people i saw on twitter speculating hey maybe apple should
00:43:11 ◼ ► just scrap this whole air tags thing and you know just say you know what this was a bad idea and
00:43:17 ◼ ► and stop selling them because this this is no good and i say that's pessimistic because i think it's
00:43:24 ◼ ► inevitable anyway even if apple were to get out of it this this problem isn't going away someone
00:43:28 ◼ ► else is just going to make them and yeah samsung tags aren't going anywhere uh you know it's
00:43:34 ◼ ► something we also do you remember like in the early day like for years on instagram every photo
00:43:40 ◼ ► you could tap on the location it would show you exactly where it was and there was a huge
00:43:44 ◼ ► controversy when a bunch of models found out that they had been posting pictures from home
00:43:47 ◼ ► and like people have been stalking and creeping them for months and months just by tapping that
00:43:52 ◼ ► little button on instagram there wasn't the kind of coverage there was of air tags but that was
00:43:57 ◼ ► that was an incredible invasion or location disclosure and it just went on and on and on
00:44:02 ◼ ► this technique there's you have to i don't want to be a pessimist about it but this stuff exists now
00:44:07 ◼ ► and we have to sort of figure out new rules for humanity on how to deal with it yeah that that
00:44:12 ◼ ► metadata in the photos is so useful right and and that's part of how a lot of these problems happen
00:44:18 ◼ ► and and you know i think it's happened with with apple products in a lot of ways because i think
00:44:23 ◼ ► it's more natural for most creative people to think of wouldn't it be cool if blank like
00:44:29 ◼ ► wouldn't it be cool if we could embed the gps data in the photo itself and then your photo
00:44:37 ◼ ► collection you could say show me all the photos from when i'm in uh cazamel mexico and it'll show
00:44:42 ◼ ► you all of the photos from your trip to cazamel mexico and if you broaden the gps you know even
00:44:48 ◼ ► if you took like a a boat trip or something like that you know in the general vicinity you could
00:44:54 ◼ ► find them all you know it's super and wow that would be super useful but then it's like there's
00:44:59 ◼ ► all of these oh but and then it's like everywhere you send it you know where you wouldn't want your
00:45:05 ◼ ► location you've got to either strip that data yourself which most people aren't going to do
00:45:11 ◼ ► because most people don't even know how to do that or trust the tools and services you're using
00:45:17 ◼ ► to strip it for you right like and so i think as far as i know every popular social media site now
00:45:24 ◼ ► automatic you know including facebook you know maybe facebook stores the information on their
00:45:28 ◼ ► own like you submit a photo with geolocation and they remember it but they don't share it publicly
00:45:34 ◼ ► you know and so your photos on instagram don't have location data by default anymore i think
00:45:39 ◼ ► you have to add it um but it's you know you just don't think of stuff like that when you're just
00:45:44 ◼ ► trying to make something cool yeah absolutely so it's that classic ian malcolm thing from
00:45:49 ◼ ► drastic park where you're just so busy trying to figure out how to do it you never stop and
00:45:52 ◼ ► think about whether you should or not right or whether somebody you know making those dinosaurs
00:45:58 ◼ ► is probably a bad idea in general but yes uh you know you just don't think of it often don't think
00:46:03 ◼ ► of all the trade-offs and it seems like with air tags it's a case where apple really tried to and
00:46:11 ◼ ► i think did a good job of anticipating all of the nefarious ways they could be used and it's just a
00:46:18 ◼ ► matter of filling in the cracks in their implementation of those plans that that that they're
00:46:26 ◼ ► you know that they couldn't quite anticipate and it'd be kind of nice if we if the media
00:46:31 ◼ ► bent some of their will onto getting the other companies like tile and samsung to to implement
00:46:36 ◼ ► similar protections i think the most recent thing they did is just turn on a bluetooth scanner so you
00:46:41 ◼ ► can see if there's like a bluetooth device around you which is better than nothing but not quite so
00:46:45 ◼ ► helpful i would personally love it if at an os level both ios and android built in something
00:46:56 ◼ ► beyond tile like i said like people for years have been dropping cheap phones in people's bags
00:47:00 ◼ ► but they could also you could drop your like air pods or samsung buds or google buds or what a cheap
00:47:04 ◼ ► anchor buds or something that has any sort of location availability on them and follow people
00:47:08 ◼ ► so just have it at an os level you don't need a specific phone or app and it just alerts you when
00:47:13 ◼ ► something has been with you for a while that your phone doesn't know yeah it would be good i mean
00:47:17 ◼ ► you know something like that you know something so you could like just sweep the area you know
00:47:27 ◼ ► opposite because it's good opposite yeah we're sweeping sweeping for bugs kind of needed don't
00:47:32 ◼ ► talk yet don't talk yet bb bb bb okay it's safe uh all right let me take another break here and
00:47:38 ◼ ► thank our second and final sponsor of this episode our good friends at memberful memberful is where
00:47:45 ◼ ► you can monetize your passion your creative endeavor with memberships they allow you to
00:47:51 ◼ ► build a sustainable recurring revenue and it's the easiest way to sell memberships to your audience
00:47:56 ◼ ► no matter what it is that you do and it is used by some of the biggest creators on the web they
00:48:00 ◼ ► have everything you need to run a membership program including custom branding gift subscriptions
00:48:05 ◼ ► apple pay support free trials private podcasts and tons more they seamlessly integrate with the tools
00:48:13 ◼ ► you already use like wordpress and mailing list software and anything else you can think of they
00:48:19 ◼ ► really do um and you keep full control and ownership of your audience your brand and your
00:48:27 ◼ ► memberships so that if you ever do you know it's not like oh you're all uh you know it's all obvious
00:48:34 ◼ ► that you're a memberful site no your your your members may not even know that you're a memberful
00:48:38 ◼ ► site it's so seamless and your branding is so in front and if you ever do change your mind and want
00:48:43 ◼ ► to go elsewhere you can take your whole membership database your whole whole list with you when when
00:48:49 ◼ ► you want you can get started for free with no credit card required they have a world-class
00:48:55 ◼ ► support team that is ready to help you simplify your memberships and grow your revenue they only
00:49:00 ◼ ► succeed when you succeed that memberful only makes money when you're selling memberships and your
00:49:06 ◼ ► memberships are only going to stay active while your members are happy with them so it's win win
00:49:12 ◼ ► win it is a totally virtuous cycle uh and like i said you can get started for free visit memberful
00:49:20 ◼ ► dot com slash talk show today to get started that url is memberful.com slash talk show all right
00:49:31 ◼ ► rumors here's the first one i got the uh some but some poor some poor engineer at apple
00:49:38 ◼ ► checked in like a uh like a software update with the the name reality you know like a version
00:49:51 ◼ ► that's not new i mean i don't think anybody really reported it as new but i think you i think you're
00:49:59 ◼ ► the first person i heard mention the name and i think like two years ago i mean and again it it's
00:50:05 ◼ ► possible you know i mean it would be a you know it's the sort of thing where like you know it
00:50:10 ◼ ► greg jaswiak decides you know we're not going to call it reality os yes some poor engineer has to
00:50:16 ◼ ► go through and change on all of the code to to change that or maybe not maybe the code just
00:50:22 ◼ ► keeps calling it reality os even if the actual marketing name of the os is something different
00:50:27 ◼ ► yeah that's the weird thing to me and i think mark ermin has been reporting on ros for a long time
00:50:32 ◼ ► but the like usually apple doesn't use product names in this stuff like famously like ios was
00:50:38 ◼ ► purple and there was purple restore and everything like they didn't like we're not gonna forget like
00:50:44 ◼ ► we're not gonna put the new version of ios on this we've got the purple restore and someone in apple
00:50:48 ◼ ► to this day like they don't know what ios 15 is like they barely remember because they're they're
00:50:53 ◼ ► using whatever the ski slope name or now i forget what it is like ucon or something yeah they live
00:50:58 ◼ ► on those names and they don't often remember which version is which like what's in public
00:51:01 ◼ ► they're living like two years in the future so to me like if this was like orange or if it was like
00:51:06 ◼ ► cantaloupe or something marzipan that would make a lot more sense to me than to have anything close
00:51:11 ◼ ► to a marketing name in a in a commit yeah but somehow it seems like that's you know i wouldn't
00:51:16 ◼ ► be surprised but i i would bet i would bet a small amount of money that the actual name of the os is
00:51:21 ◼ ► going to be reality os but you know we shall see but is is it really you know is it news that
00:51:28 ◼ ► they're working on this i mean it it would be i i just wrote about uh before we started recording
00:51:36 ◼ ► today about a leaked slide from intel that says they have plans to be performance per watt
00:51:42 ◼ ► competitive with the m1 pro by the end of 2023 and like i wrote it would be it would be more shocking
00:51:48 ◼ ► if you knew everything there was to know about intel's internal roadmap it would what would be
00:51:51 ◼ ► shocking is if they didn't have some sort of team and a plan to do that now whether they'll achieve
00:51:57 ◼ ► it or not who knows but you know it the bar's been set so fascinating because like they announced
00:52:04 ◼ ► they had they publicly announced at their investor event which went on for like four hours like some
00:52:08 ◼ ► people think wwc is long this one like it was an investor event went on for four hours they
00:52:13 ◼ ► announced four process i think it was five process shrinks for four years including going beyond
00:52:18 ◼ ► nanometer and into angstrom because it's smaller than nanometer and those are just marketing names
00:52:22 ◼ ► they're not actual physical measurements so you can't compare the sizes directly but at this point
00:52:27 ◼ ► it's just like shut up and ship and it reminds me that apple doesn't do this they don't announce
00:52:31 ◼ ► what the next four generations of apple silicon are going to be they just come out and show you
00:52:35 ◼ ► what they've done and then let you benchmark it to see if if it holds up i had i had a friend who
00:52:40 ◼ ► no longer works at apple but was there for you know a number of years as a software engineer and
00:52:47 ◼ ► they uh they sent me that link to the leak of reality os and said that they they had been in
00:52:53 ◼ ► a position before and and so many apple engineers are where you're you're privy to something upcoming
00:53:00 ◼ ► and you're trying to write code that's as clear and descriptive as possible but you you know
00:53:07 ◼ ► you don't want to check anything into the shipping version of whatever it is that has the you know
00:53:13 ◼ ► that's there for like gee rambo to decompile or something like that and oh there's the thing
00:53:18 ◼ ► happened right and he said it is like there is there's just nobody's going to you know maybe
00:53:24 ◼ ► someday if anybody were going to do it and like build it in as a first class feature of xcode
00:53:29 ◼ ► i guess it would be apple but that it's really just sort of like you're just making like a house
00:53:34 ◼ ► of cards of like you know if def statements to like make sure that when you compile this
00:53:40 ◼ ► for that version it doesn't include any of this and when you compile it for the upcoming secret
00:53:47 ◼ ► project thing it is there and that it's just so easy to make a mistake you know especially
00:53:54 ◼ ► it's so easy if there's you know 500 engineers working on this and they have a 99.9 success rate
00:54:02 ◼ ► at keeping things that aren't supposed to be mentioned in the shipping product out well you
00:54:08 ◼ ► know that one in a thousand mistake it's going to happen right it's every couple years yeah every
00:54:16 ◼ ► couple years but it's you know it's like somebody had a bad day and again it's not like apple apple
00:54:21 ◼ ► is not i don't even think back when steve jobs was around it's not like it's you know he he had
00:54:27 ◼ ► a reputation as a tyrant but i don't think that he was vindictive and like hunted down individual
00:54:34 ◼ ► engineers who made a mistake i think famously that the poor kid who lost the iphone 4 at a at a
00:54:46 ◼ ► no because of that but had had a bad couple of weeks right it's certainly a bad certainly had
00:54:54 ◼ ► a bad day no absolutely so it's not like oh the poor engineer who checked in a code commit with
00:55:02 ◼ ► reality os mentioned but didn't comment it out or if if def it out so that it wouldn't be in the
00:55:07 ◼ ► thing not like they're fired but still it's a bad day and you feel like you let everybody down and
00:55:12 ◼ ► it's like ah and i'm sure it was the silliest possible mistake you know like oh i know exactly
00:55:18 ◼ ► what i did and they look at xco and it's like you know you make two quick changes and all of a
00:55:22 ◼ ► sudden it's you know back to back to hidden uh yeah yeah well to your point i mean for years
00:55:27 ◼ ► blogs every every november would say oh we discovered in our logs people from cupartino
00:55:32 ◼ ► are browsing our site in the next version of ios apple must be working on another version of ios
00:55:37 ◼ ► or apple is working on a new iphone it's like no they've had enough they're done with the iphone
00:55:41 ◼ ► they're based they're just dropping it they're gonna get it to hot tubs now it's gonna be yo
00:55:44 ◼ ► serie bubbles for the next three years yeah we just like we used to get the screen dimensions
00:55:49 ◼ ► from that right because you could you know a lot of a lot of analytics packages for websites
00:55:54 ◼ ► will do a test to see what the display size is and if you get a user agent string that says it's
00:56:00 ◼ ► an iphone and the screen dimensions are not what the existing iphones have it's like oh new screen
00:56:09 ◼ ► you know you know and then people would start spoofing them and like you can't tell it's just
00:56:12 ◼ ► it's hilarious uh i remember for a while mark german was getting the names of new iphone models
00:56:18 ◼ ► from the strings it was like iphone like seven comma eight and at one point apple just put
00:56:22 ◼ ► 32 numbers in there to play with them it was just hilarious like iphone one comma hamburger or
00:56:27 ◼ ► something um i don't think though speaking of reality os i don't think any of that is imminent
00:56:33 ◼ ► you know the german report was that maybe they were hoping to ship the first headset this fall
00:56:40 ◼ ► maybe it's early next year now maybe it's been pushed back it's not this is not something we're
00:56:45 ◼ ► talking about for this march 8th event that is supposedly forthcoming um yep wouldn't be
00:56:51 ◼ ► surprised i think one thing that gets unremarked upon because they do it so seldom they're so
00:56:55 ◼ ► seldom a new product and i think you just talked talked about this in one of your videos about how
00:57:02 ◼ ► the one exception to apple not talking about future products is they'll they'll be surprisingly
00:57:06 ◼ ► loose-lipped about new products because they they don't risk cannibalizing themselves right
00:57:12 ◼ ► so like famously tim cook answered like hey you guys making a watch and he said well the
00:57:17 ◼ ► wrist is an interesting spot for us you know which you think whoa whoa williams said the car is the
00:57:22 ◼ ► ultimate mobile device right right right and it's like well wait why would he do that well it's
00:57:28 ◼ ► because if he if it what's the worst thing that could happen you know like if he started talking
00:57:33 ◼ ► up uh you know then this year's iphone 14 models you know the idea is that you would uh what's the
00:57:41 ◼ ► famous example the osborne the osborne effect right the osborne effect from the early early
00:57:46 ◼ ► early pc era of like the early 1980s where this poor company osborne was selling personal computers
00:57:52 ◼ ► with some degree of success and went to a like a big convention and all they could do is talk up
00:57:57 ◼ ► their next one and everybody stopped buying the one they were already selling and then the next
00:58:02 ◼ ► one was late and they went out of business yeah uh so you don't want to apple is doesn't want to talk
00:58:09 ◼ ► up this september's new iphones because they're still selling last september's iphone 13 models
00:58:15 ◼ ► and you know all the ones underneath it in the in the product chain whereas talking about the watch
00:58:21 ◼ ► before they were selling any watches didn't hurt them you know if anything it only kept people
00:58:31 ◼ ► um so the other thing is like the technology is like tim cook has been very happy to talk about
00:58:37 ◼ ► automation and uh augmented reality and artificial intelligence because those aren't actual products
00:58:44 ◼ ► it's like steve jobs talking about lcd like yes the i the iMac has to go lcd eventually but
00:58:49 ◼ ► if there is no lcd that you literally can't make an iphone but then lcd isn't the iphone because
00:58:54 ◼ ► you also make the ipad and the watch and i think cook is the same it's like ar and vr there will
00:58:59 ◼ ► be products that use those but it's going to be as ubiquitous as lcd and oled are on products today
00:59:04 ◼ ► yeah and i i think it's really interesting as time goes on there's two big uh upcoming who knows you
00:59:12 ◼ ► know whether either both or will ship or on what form but that there's project titan at apple where
00:59:17 ◼ ► they're making a car or some kind of vehicle or self-driving technology or something along the
00:59:22 ◼ ► lines of a car vehicle and the ar vr stuff where they're either making uh i mean vr at a technical
00:59:32 ◼ ► level is clearly closer to reality than ar yeah but it could be a mixed thing where it is a
00:59:39 ◼ ► technically a vr headset but it combines a camera so you can see through and see the world around
00:59:45 ◼ ► you not just what's you know you're not just in a total blackout and that eventually they do want
00:59:50 ◼ ► to make ar glasses you know where you you'll get effectively like eyeglasses but then you know you'll
00:59:57 ◼ ► have like a heads up display and your lenses are projected onto your retinas or whatever the
01:00:01 ◼ ► technology they want to use to me one of the interesting contrasts between those two big
01:00:06 ◼ ► initiatives right the ar vr stuff on one side project titan on the other is that project titan
01:00:13 ◼ ► has been we know just through leaks and just through the public exodus and return of executives
01:00:22 ◼ ► right like some of this stuff can't you know we don't know what they're working on but all sorts
01:00:25 ◼ ► of people have come and gone from project titan and come from tesla left from tesla gone back
01:00:32 ◼ ► come from qnx right there's all sorts of the drama and shake-ups and stuff like that and the ar xr
01:00:43 ◼ ► vr stuff it's just seemingly at least as far as we know from the outside steady as she goes right
01:00:49 ◼ ► it's still mike rockwell heading it up uh you know and hasn't been a lot of news you know it was just
01:00:56 ◼ ► a couple years ago where rockwell was on my show at wwc after a bunch of vr and ar specific apis
01:01:04 ◼ ► that were announced that year for ios he's still there it's it's seemingly where there's smoke
01:01:09 ◼ ► there's fire it seems like there's been a lot of fires at project titan it seems like everything's
01:01:13 ◼ ► going pretty well with the ar vr stuff but i wouldn't be surprised sign of our times like
01:01:18 ◼ ► the reporting is way more active than it was now and i've talked about this before but like can you
01:01:22 ◼ ► imagine if this kind of reporting was done back during the iphone era where it's like steve jobs
01:01:30 ◼ ► project tony fidel and scott forestall in blood war for steve jobs's affection right now project
01:01:35 ◼ ► purple delayed room smell like pizza like like the whole thing would have been like much more like i
01:01:42 ◼ ► feel like that's what we get with titan now is that everything we never used to hear about
01:01:44 ◼ ► until they shipped like there'd be rumors and stuff but now like every little personnel move
01:01:48 ◼ ► is is broadcast for various reasons i i'm actually researching a lot about the creation of the the
01:02:06 ◼ ► things like becoming steve jobs which was the other biography of of steve jobs ken kashenda's
01:02:14 ◼ ► creative selection kurt i think his name is kurt vogelstein's i forget the title of his book now i
01:02:20 ◼ ► can't believe it it's on my it's on my desk as i speak but it was like about the creation of ios
01:02:25 ◼ ► and android i'm just reading a bunch of these and uh fred vogelstein what's the name of the book do
01:02:31 ◼ ► you have it no i can't find it hold on fred vogelstein up got it dogfight is the book it's a
01:02:40 ◼ ► very yeah yeah with the android stuff it's amazing yeah it's it's uh can't believe i couldn't think
01:02:44 ◼ ► about but anyway good book anyway but i'm like trying to figure out the the timeline of the
01:02:53 ◼ ► creation of the iphone which i don't think i've ever seen quite spelled out combined with like
01:02:59 ◼ ► the rocker and stuff and the one thing and it so it's like i'm sort of like the the guy at the the
01:03:07 ◼ ► cork board with a bunch of tacks and yarn yeah and i'm stringing all this stuff all around and
01:03:12 ◼ ► i've got all these books with like three four or five bookmarks each in all of them and a bunch of
01:03:18 ◼ ► older articles from the era and blah blah blah and the one thing that where i'm going with this is
01:03:23 ◼ ► the one thing that keeps coming up over and over again to a surprising degree is that steve jobs
01:03:29 ◼ ► wanted something that he could read his email on the toilet and yeah i think imram imram tweeted
01:03:35 ◼ ► that a while ago too yeah the uh the founder of humane the secretive startup yes uh yeah uh yeah
01:03:43 ◼ ► great computer history museum has a whole bunch of interviews with scott forestall and indonatra and
01:03:47 ◼ ► just um so many of the people who like built all that stuff like why they named it you like it
01:03:52 ◼ ► it's it's amazing amazing lore i don't know that i don't know the story of why they named it ui kit
01:03:57 ◼ ► other than the fact oh it was it is yeah i'm blanking on his name now scott it was scott hearse
01:04:03 ◼ ► who came up with the name eventually because it wasn't abkit and it wasn't uh webkit right right
01:04:08 ◼ ► it's a good name um but it's so funny because you read these things and there are conflicting
01:04:14 ◼ ► reports you go through and there's a lot of you know you kind of have to start making some
01:04:18 ◼ ► editorial just if you want to say this is what i think the timeline is what happened in early 2005
01:04:24 ◼ ► what happened in late 2005 when was this bake-off between like an embedded linux versus a stripped
01:04:31 ◼ ► down mac os 10 to be the iphone os yeah um and you get conflicting reports about what was early
01:04:37 ◼ ► 2005 what was late 2005 what was the middle what might have even been in early 2006 like within
01:04:44 ◼ ► you know like 11 10 months you know the clock is ticking to where where where they want to announce
01:04:49 ◼ ► this at macworld 2007 but there's other things that come up over and over and over again from
01:04:54 ◼ ► the various sources both like books that came out years later extemporaneous stories and the one
01:05:01 ◼ ► thing that keeps coming up is that steve jobs wanted to read email on the toilet yeah i just
01:05:07 ◼ ► love it you just know that it was that and this the story of steve his wife having her friend
01:05:13 ◼ ► over who had the husband from microsoft he was talking about how bill gates and tablet pcs were
01:05:17 ◼ ► going to dominate the future of computing and then steve goes and finds scott the next day and we have
01:05:22 ◼ ► to put a stop to this yeah screw him yeah uh so anyway i wouldn't be surprised if if reality os
01:05:32 ◼ ► follows the pattern that watch the apple watch did where they announce it this fall at you know
01:05:41 ◼ ► maybe alongside the iphone which is usually the bigger event in september but say this is a product
01:05:48 ◼ ► here's the product we're making here's what it does here's what it's good for and it's coming
01:05:54 ◼ ► early next year and that's what they did with the watch back in 2015 2014 whenever it was 2014 yeah
01:06:02 ◼ ► 2014 would be the announcement 2015 is when the original apple watch shipped like in april and was
01:06:08 ◼ ► in short supply you know until up until closer to wwdc like it was kind of hard to get your hands on
01:06:15 ◼ ► one um and again they don't do that with any other new product there if something terrible happened
01:06:22 ◼ ► with the iphone's 14 and they could not release them by the end of the year this year they're just
01:06:29 ◼ ► not even going to announce them until next year and you know i mean that would be highly unusual
01:06:34 ◼ ► i'm not saying that like hey the stock market you know like if september comes and goes and apple
01:06:39 ◼ ► hasn't said anything about a media event uh you know or if they have a media event in october and
01:06:46 ◼ ► it's there's no mention of new iphones yeah you know like people are going to notice and we're all
01:06:52 ◼ ► going to talk about it but they're not going to pre-announce the iphone 14 and say it's coming in
01:06:58 ◼ ► six months whereas no only the first one right with a vr headset they might and in fact it might
01:07:04 ◼ ► make a lot of sense right it's like you know it why not pre-announce it you know and then you can
01:07:09 ◼ ► get developers to start working on stuff uh if you want them to if there's going to be you know
01:07:16 ◼ ► a day one app store sdk story like you know which they insisted on for the watch probably
01:07:28 ◼ ► watch kit was for worse um yes but presumably i think they want to get it like they want to be
01:07:35 ◼ ► the ones who disclose it and as like when we talk about the rumors we'll talk about like how the
01:07:38 ◼ ► different fcc's in the different countries pre-announce stuff way early for them all the time
01:07:43 ◼ ► but it's never the first one so like the original apple tv was or itv back then was announced and
01:07:48 ◼ ► then like it actually debuted with alongside the original iphone but then the original iphone was
01:07:52 ◼ ► announced in january shipped in june ipad was announced in january shipped in april apple watch
01:07:57 ◼ ► was announced in september switched shipped in march it's just they don't ever want that to be
01:08:02 ◼ ► in the fcc price and you know go back to the iphone right we were just talking about the
01:08:05 ◼ ► original iphone announced in january definitely not finished famously and you know when you talk
01:08:11 ◼ ► to people who worked on it there was like yeah that was like the hardest part was after it was
01:08:15 ◼ ► announced and we had to finish the damn thing uh but didn't ship until literally six months later
01:08:20 ◼ ► the like june 29th uh 2007 but the same thing where they don't have to submit to the regulatory
01:08:26 ◼ ► bodies and don't have to worry about it leaking so if they're on pace for it to ship in early
01:08:34 ◼ ► 2023 like a year from now let you know more or less yeah uh it would actually to me be almost
01:08:42 ◼ ► surprising if they don't announce it in september a little bit surprising just because it you know
01:08:50 ◼ ► and then you know and and if for competitive reasons it inspires some number of people not to
01:08:56 ◼ ► buy an oculus for christmas because they want to wait for apple's thing well that you know i'm sure
01:09:01 ◼ ► that'll just break poor tim cook's heart you know yeah it'll pivot his tables so anyway what is
01:09:10 ◼ ► coming march 8th i i have not heard anything i'm not juiced in i don't ask anybody i don't know i
01:09:15 ◼ ► know all i do is i just listen to mark german and mark german says march 8th we know that apple
01:09:21 ◼ ► likes to have a spring event uh march 8th is a tuesday that sounds as good as as anything to me
01:09:27 ◼ ► i do think that's earlier it is an earlier date than usual for them um i just think last year was
01:09:34 ◼ ► april yeah well and i just know that that week i don't know i haven't been to south by southwest
01:09:39 ◼ ► in years but i know south by southwest is always right around like if not the first week of march
01:09:44 ◼ ► it's like that second week of march around those dates and back when i was going to south by
01:09:50 ◼ ► southwest i never it was never a conflict with apple events um yeah but you know if it's ready
01:09:55 ◼ ► it's ready and why not um what do we expect german says the 5g iphone se which is fascinating
01:10:04 ◼ ► a new ipad air and he says at least one new mac that day but doesn't say what it would be so let's
01:10:12 ◼ ► take them one at a time well number one do you think that's a do you think that's a good list
01:10:16 ◼ ► of things that they might announce early early in market yeah and we've talked about this before
01:10:20 ◼ ► it's always odd to me when you have sources good enough to tell you dates and products but not
01:10:24 ◼ ► exactly like not more specifically because this stuff was decided like those products were decided
01:10:29 ◼ ► years ago and the release dates were decided weeks if not months ago so like all the stuff is known
01:10:34 ◼ ► it's just fascinating to me how much of it gets out well and the mac one in particular right
01:10:38 ◼ ► because he's pretty specific about the other two you know a 5g new iphone se that's pretty specific
01:10:43 ◼ ► a new ipad air i mean and again we don't know the details i mean maybe is it going to have face id
01:10:48 ◼ ► now just face id trickle down to the non-pro ipads i mean but he doesn't say but that's you know we
01:10:54 ◼ ► know what the ipad air is it's it's apple's mid-range you know not the low one not the pro
01:10:59 ◼ ► one but it's sort of the the sweet locks yeah the goldilocks sweet one right in the middle
01:11:04 ◼ ► and then some sort of mac well we're waiting yes we're that and that's the worst part for me because
01:11:09 ◼ ► i'm more excited about the mac than the other products and it's like i need to know i want to
01:11:13 ◼ ► know which one it is am i should i start getting excited to get a new iMac i mean what's what's
01:11:18 ◼ ► going on the the 5g iphone se is interesting because 5g makes sense because you know the
01:11:24 ◼ ► carriers love getting all the phones on on the new network yes um you know and they're turning
01:11:30 ◼ ► you know literally as we speak atnt i think just this week i think they already did it turned off
01:11:35 ◼ ► their 3g network we had to deal with that because our home alarm system was on 3g and and uh
01:11:46 ◼ ► you know but we had plenty of notice from the company that we use that we you know that hey
01:11:52 ◼ ► this is you know this is going to be end of end of service and you know it's part of your plan
01:11:57 ◼ ► would you just have to schedule somebody to come in to upgrade you know the box on the wall to
01:12:02 ◼ ► support 5g or 4g i don't even know what they upgrade hopefully it was five i should have asked
01:12:06 ◼ ► because 5g would give us more years before the 4g stuff gets turned off um so it makes sense i mean
01:12:14 ◼ ► and if you watch tv like i watch sports and there's all you know you cannot can't watch
01:12:19 ◼ ► sports without seeing ads for cell phones from the carriers and all the i they always talk about 5g
01:12:25 ◼ ► 5g 5g i mean that's famously two years ago at the iphone supercut 5g 5g 5g 5g 5 5g iphone
01:12:35 ◼ ► yeah 12 supports 5g 5g um so it makes sense you know that they'd want to get the se on there but
01:12:42 ◼ ► to me the more interesting thing is that the rumors are that the se would other will otherwise
01:12:47 ◼ ► still look like the se we have today that's the iphone 8 casing right with the home button with
01:13:08 ◼ ► speed still are over lte so like when you do like a speed test don't be surprised that your 5g speed
01:13:14 ◼ ► for upload is exactly the same as it is when you turn off 5g because it actually doesn't use 5g
01:13:19 ◼ ► for anything but downloading um and i just i still after two two years of 5g i still you know it might
01:13:28 ◼ ► be maybe it's better as years go by it'll be more efficient and better on battery and stuff like
01:13:33 ◼ ► that but i still don't know any use case where i want to do blank but uh lte geez you know too slow
01:13:43 ◼ ► you know it's it is yeah it's more like um you're gonna get people who are on the original iphone se
01:13:48 ◼ ► sorry like the iphone se2 onto a qualcomm modem and for some people especially in edge areas the
01:13:54 ◼ ► intel modems were never as good if you had low reception or low signal in those areas so it's
01:13:59 ◼ ► just it's it's a better modem and for people who were underserved by lte like especially in rural
01:14:04 ◼ ► areas where they just never had maybe any signal or good signal the low band of 5g is slower than
01:14:10 ◼ ► lte but it's got way way better coverage and the mid band is faster and has roughly as good coverage
01:14:17 ◼ ► so for people who always had problems with lte it's going to be it's going to vastly improve a
01:14:22 ◼ ► lot of people's experience yeah so you know that's good right i i think i think what's more
01:14:27 ◼ ► interesting is that they're they're keeping the se models on that old industrial design
01:14:34 ◼ ► um and the the cynical take would be that it is market differentiation it's sort of like keeping
01:14:44 ◼ ► the iphone or the apple watch 3 around right where it's a little bit clunkier looking on your wrist
01:14:50 ◼ ► and it certainly has a clunkier screen with the the non-rounded corners and doesn't really go edge
01:14:56 ◼ ► to edge and it you know gets customers in the door looking for the se for the price and then
01:15:02 ◼ ► they see how much cooler the new phones are and then they buy one of those more expensive newer
01:15:07 ◼ ► phones instead but i think there's something else i think that it is apple trying to and i don't
01:15:14 ◼ ► know how much of this is their gut feeling you know jaws's gut feeling and how much of it is
01:15:20 ◼ ► actual market research which i think at the stakes they're playing at you know apple famously people
01:15:27 ◼ ► think they don't test anything but they that's not true they do they do test things you know they
01:15:32 ◼ ► just don't make the decisions based entirely on the results of asking you know doing like uh
01:15:38 ◼ ► consumer surveys and stuff like that yeah but i think there's got to be a huge factor of
01:15:43 ◼ ► the iphone is so popular as so many hundreds of millions of users that it spans the gamut from the
01:15:51 ◼ ► people like us who are complete nerds and really couldn't wait to play with the brand new iphone
01:15:58 ◼ ► 10 and this new interaction model to people like my mom and dad well my dad hardly uses the iphone
01:16:05 ◼ ► so i'm i'm throwing my mom out here not because of the canard that it's the you know it's your mom
01:16:12 ◼ ► who doesn't understand technology but my dad literally doesn't even he uses an ipad but for
01:16:16 ◼ ► whatever reason won't use my mom's iphone but my mom wanted the se when she got a new phone a year
01:16:23 ◼ ► ago or so because she wanted one that worked exactly like her old phone that she felt like
01:16:28 ◼ ► she'd mastered the old one she wanted a home button she just was and i was like okay fine
01:16:33 ◼ ► this is a probably a great phone for you anyway personally you know it regardless but i i don't
01:16:51 ◼ ► and that apple and the options are good and like apple family like they you're right like they
01:16:56 ◼ ► they don't do the same kind of market uh research that other companies do but they do a lot of
01:17:00 ◼ ► demand forecasting and try to figure out because like compared to samsung for example they sell very
01:17:05 ◼ ► very few phones and it looks like they sell a lot of phones now because there's five models but
01:17:09 ◼ ► still five miles is like what samsung has for lunch and so they have to make sure that those
01:17:13 ◼ ► phones cover as wide a gamut of potential users as possible those segments are really really large
01:17:19 ◼ ► and they're interesting like the original iphone se was both small and cheap and they got the benefit
01:17:23 ◼ ► of both those markets and i think they were surprised by how many people just wanted the
01:17:27 ◼ ► cheaper iphone so much so that they they under they under report they under forecast on it but
01:17:32 ◼ ► then they had a separate iphone mini and a separate iphone se in 2020 and they could sort of suss out
01:17:38 ◼ ► where people's interests were and i think that was really informative for them and in general that the
01:17:43 ◼ ► the original se came out in 2016 se2 came out in 2020 which means se3 would probably be 2024
01:17:50 ◼ ► in an iphone 11 style casing but because we're only halfway there i think otherwise they wouldn't
01:17:57 ◼ ► update it now they would just keep it on the market the way the original se was but 5g is so
01:18:01 ◼ ► important to carriers and how they're moving things over um and apple has this other strategy where
01:18:06 ◼ ► like the like the ipod touch is probably the most infamous example but it's the device you love with
01:18:11 ◼ ► new internal so that you can keep on loving it just a little while longer you know before we end
01:18:16 ◼ ► of life it this this will get unlike the apple watch s apple watch 3 which didn't get any
01:18:21 ◼ ► improvements like they just kept it on the market this will have a new processor it'll have better
01:18:25 ◼ ► camera it'll have a better modem i'm worried about the battery life because it was already not good
01:18:31 ◼ ► on the se2 and that has way fewer demands than a new processor and a new modem but in general it
01:18:36 ◼ ► just means it's that that really inexpensive entry-level iphone that's more useful to people
01:18:40 ◼ ► who still want it yeah i think that maybe but i think if they follow the pattern of previous
01:18:47 ◼ ► se's it will have the a a what are we up to a14 what's the bionic well a15 it is the current one
01:18:55 ◼ ► is 15 a15 all right so we're we're two above the iphone model i i would expect it to have the a15
01:19:01 ◼ ► because that's the se's have always come out with like you know they come out in march or april
01:19:07 ◼ ► but they've got the top of the line a series chip from six months prior and the battery life gains
01:19:15 ◼ ► from the a14 to a15 my favorite example i've never stopped repeating it is that the iphone 13 mini
01:19:22 ◼ ► gets better longer battery life than yes the full size regular size iphone 12 from the year before
01:19:30 ◼ ► so yeah you know so that would also explain to me why they didn't do the 5g iphone se last year
01:19:37 ◼ ► right that now is the year where it all adds up the battery life story is resolved um because
01:19:44 ◼ ► it would be a bigger device than the iphone 13 mini so i i would think battery life would be
01:19:51 ◼ ► fine even with the 5g and the new modem is more efficient right the iphone 12 was as well it's
01:19:56 ◼ ► just a whole in general and this will come up again we talk about the next macbook air but
01:19:59 ◼ ► that architecture the a15 is a much cooler architecture in general yeah yeah it def it's
01:20:05 ◼ ► you know it's been proven over the last you know what five months since we've been using them four
01:20:10 ◼ ► months whatever um but the other thing that's that's missing in the se lineup right the se is
01:20:16 ◼ ► clearly built on the the physical form factor of the iphone 6 7 8 iphones but those phones all came
01:20:28 ◼ ► in regular and plus sizes and the iphone se that we have is only in the regular size not plus
01:20:35 ◼ ► and i think according to the rumors but who knows you know they could surprise us but it sounds like
01:20:41 ◼ ► that's just they're just going to replace the same size four point whatever inch you know uh
01:20:55 ◼ ► which some people would obviously buy right some people we now know just want bigger screens whether
01:21:00 ◼ ► it's the laptop yes yeah tablet or the phone and there if they still don't come out with an iphone
01:21:08 ◼ ► se plus to me that's that's product marketing saying if you want a big if you would like a
01:21:15 ◼ ► big screen iphone you've got to upgrade to one of these more expensive models with the newer form
01:21:20 ◼ ► factor yeah it's that and it's also there's some element of demand forecasting again because like
01:21:25 ◼ ► when they segment you have to supply two like it's it's like a running the math doing the doing the
01:21:31 ◼ ► math and like how much does it cost us to put two mark two phones in the market how many of each do
01:21:35 ◼ ► we think will sell how much more does it cost us to have two models instead of one if we just sold
01:21:39 ◼ ► one would we get 75 of the se customers anyway so it really doesn't behoove us to have it like in an
01:21:44 ◼ ► ideal world they would absolutely do not like like samsung again with every quarter inch of sizing for
01:21:49 ◼ ► whatever your preference is but they would do multiple products i just think they um they they
01:21:55 ◼ ► know they don't want to over commit to any one market anymore they want to they're going to be
01:21:59 ◼ ► more conservative in how they do especially the lower end entry level where really price is the
01:22:04 ◼ ► most important feature for people yeah there's been reports that they were working on it for
01:22:08 ◼ ► years but that they keep canceling it like there were reports about the se plus i think going back
01:22:12 ◼ ► two three years already yeah yeah i'd uh i definitely remember seeing rumors about it and it
01:22:18 ◼ ► makes logical sense you know to have it but it's it to me it leads to the next segment which is the
01:22:24 ◼ ► mystery which mac are are they which mac or max are they going to announce next month which to me
01:22:31 ◼ ► is the the the biggest missing mac in the lineup by far is a bigger consumer priced macbook right
01:22:42 ◼ ► like so the macbook pros are now on 14 inch 16 inch but with foot or with footprints that are
01:22:58 ◼ ► have gained an inch by going edge to edge and you know some minor tweaks to the footprints
01:23:04 ◼ ► but you know it in in ballpark descriptive terms i would describe the 14 inch macbook pro and the
01:23:16 ◼ ► macbook air of today which is the 13 inch screen as regular sized laptops and the 16 inch macbook
01:23:26 ◼ ► pro as a big laptop not the biggest you know apple used to make the 17 inch lunch tray the battleship
01:23:32 ◼ ► right which i i actually was just looking up like i said my trip down memory lane of circuit 2005
01:23:41 ◼ ► 6 7 apple history steve jobs when he had his first surgery uh and announced that you know he'd had his
01:23:47 ◼ ► pancreas operated on for cancer wrote a letter to the company you know saying team i wanted you to
01:23:53 ◼ ► hear this from me i've you know the doctors found this thing and they i just had operation i'm
01:23:58 ◼ ► writing this from my hospital bed on my 17 inch macbook pro and it was because like he knew it
01:24:05 ◼ ► was going to leak and he was like well he had to mention he had to mention an apple product in there
01:24:11 ◼ ► and i always wondered was he really writing it on a 17 inch macbook pro or was it that's just the
01:24:18 ◼ ► newest thing that he wanted to promote and he said he did i mean i'm not accusing steve jobs of being
01:24:23 ◼ ► a liar but he could be an exaggerator but it also seems like prototype ipad he couldn't talk about
01:24:28 ◼ ► but uh you know big laptop regular size laptop and you know in years past they've had small laptops
01:24:37 ◼ ► like the uh long ago uh 11 inch macbook airs and then the gone but not forgotten just plain no
01:24:46 ◼ ► adjective 12 inch macbook um you know small medium large some products i i think when apple is has
01:24:54 ◼ ► a product at its best they either have two sizes an apple watch is a perfect example of that right
01:25:01 ◼ ► and putting aside the idea that there might be a rugged apple watch or something like that
01:25:05 ◼ ► you know for the apple watch as we know it two sizes seems just just right i think for the phone
01:25:11 ◼ ► i really like you know and i know the rumors say there's no more mini and whatever but i
01:25:23 ◼ ► laptops i kind of wish they had mini regular max um but even if at the two tiers pro lap macbooks
01:25:33 ◼ ► and non-pro macbooks two seems good right like 14 and 16 inch for the pros but i i feel like the
01:25:49 ◼ ► macbook whether it's called large screens get conflated with premium when they don't they're
01:25:53 ◼ ► not really an overlap in those features because there are a lot of people for a lot of reasons
01:25:56 ◼ ► who want a bigger screen but don't need a pro right device and you know it's nice to have a
01:26:02 ◼ ► big screen right and if you have the desk space and you know you don't mind the extra weight in
01:26:07 ◼ ► your backpack or whatever and you know lots and lots of people hardly ever move their macbooks
01:26:13 ◼ ► from their desks you know they buy a macbook so that they have a portable when they need it
01:26:18 ◼ ► but they keep it on their desk 90 some percent of the time maybe high 90 percent of the time
01:26:24 ◼ ► and so getting the biggest screen they they feel is within their budget makes a lot of sense because
01:26:29 ◼ ► a big screen is nice and it's there even people right now who are concerned that the m1 imac
01:26:36 ◼ ► is going to only be 24 inches and that if you want a 27 inch it's going to have to be an m1 pro or m1
01:26:41 ◼ ► max when they really just want a bigger screen again right right oh i i think i do think again
01:26:46 ◼ ► no inside knowledge but just judging by the way they did the macbooks i think that's going to be
01:26:52 ◼ ► the case right like where the only way to get a big screen macbook for years for all along has
01:26:59 ◼ ► been to buy the macbook pro 16 inch or 15 inch back and when it was 15 inch and it's not just
01:27:06 ◼ ► paying for the bigger screen because the bigger macbooks have also had like you know sometimes
01:27:12 ◼ ► faster chips and faster graphics and and for thermal reasons compared to the smaller versions
01:27:18 ◼ ► you end up paying a significant mark uh you know minimum price like i think that the cheapest
01:27:25 ◼ ► 16 inch macbook pro right now i think it's two thousand dollars 1999 yeah i guess i should look
01:27:30 ◼ ► it up uh which is way more than the 999 here it's twice the price you know whereas and it's
01:27:37 ◼ ► it to me epitomizes the difference between the apple ecosystem and the broader windows slash
01:27:47 ◼ ► linux chromebook pc ecosystem which is that whatever your budget you can find a pc laptop
01:27:56 ◼ ► you know if you really want like a 16 inch screen but you don't want to spend a lot of money you can
01:28:00 ◼ ► definitely find you'll you'll be you know you'll have an arm's length list of choices from various
01:28:06 ◼ ► companies del will let you build it from parts definitely right it is it and it's such i don't
01:28:14 ◼ ► know so it are they going to deal with it it seems like there's an awful lot of you know with the
01:28:20 ◼ ► rumors for what apple is doing with the consumer macbooks as they go to the m2s and do their second
01:28:26 ◼ ► revision um you know i i talk about this this is why it's great to have a podcast because it's
01:28:33 ◼ ► i have nothing to write about because i know nothing but i have lots of ideas but i don't
01:28:38 ◼ ► think what it's interesting because like the larger macbook air mark german reported on that
01:28:41 ◼ ► too but said that that had been either delayed or scrapped as well so like it's not that apple
01:28:45 ◼ ► isn't thinking about it it's just that they don't seem to think that it's that they want they need
01:28:48 ◼ ► to bring it to market uh yeah i guess uh the the to me the product that two product a product that
01:29:00 ◼ ► doesn't make sense anymore is what's currently known as the 13 inch macbook pro and yes to me
01:29:06 ◼ ► it's always been ever since it was announced as sort of in that time when we were waiting for
01:29:14 ◼ ► a retina macbook air and phil shiller did the spiel and sort of said like hey you know if if
01:29:22 ◼ ► what you're looking for is something with the footprint of a macbook air with a retina screen
01:29:27 ◼ ► this low-end 13-inch macbook pro compares very nicely and put them up side by side and the price
01:29:34 ◼ ► was only a couple hundred bucks more and the footprint is the same and the weight was very
01:29:38 ◼ ► good because they'd made it thinner even though it's not teardrop shaped and ahead of retina screen
01:29:42 ◼ ► um but you know and what were the trade-offs compared to the more expensive 13-inch models
01:29:48 ◼ ► well they had two ports instead of four ports and was you know had yeah some sort of intel
01:29:54 ◼ ► you know lower lower price bar which right no touch bar right right which for a lot of people
01:29:59 ◼ ► was a feature there i know people firsthand who were torn because they would rather have the
01:30:03 ◼ ► faster macbook pro but didn't want the touch bar and so they're like i guess i'll just buy the one
01:30:08 ◼ ► without the touch bar to me that would clean this up quite a bit and again are they going to keep
01:30:15 ◼ ► the name air it seems like macbook air has sort of stopped meaning air meaning thinner and lighter
01:30:22 ◼ ► and it's just sort of taken on it just it's like kleenex you know it it's just a brand name macbook
01:30:29 ◼ ► air it's just people know it that's the macbook they want right what macbook do you want i want
01:30:34 ◼ ► the air it's also become conflated with cheapest like the cheapest mac and that's never been the
01:30:38 ◼ ► case at launch it's always launched it way more than 999 and then gone down to 999 but now when
01:30:43 ◼ ► when they try to introduce new ones and they're more expensive people get really upset yeah
01:30:48 ◼ ► definitely um and by the way i have to i i need to uh clarify this i did i did the research the 16
01:30:56 ◼ ► inch macbook pro starts at 2500 not 2000 it's the fourth the 14 inch starts at two thousand dollars
01:31:04 ◼ ► so there's there's a lot of room in that thousand to two thousand dollar range for more macbooks
01:31:11 ◼ ► and from people who absolutely positively or would be over served by the m1 pro and m1 max
01:31:19 ◼ ► chipsets right the that that that is the the the absolute blessing of the tremendous performance of
01:31:27 ◼ ► the current apple silicon that the regular m1 is just terrific and the m2 will be even better
01:31:34 ◼ ► um they don't need it but there's so much room in there and calling the 1400 ish macbook the pro
01:31:45 ◼ ► is to me just confusing i i i so i kind of hope that they go away from that and leave the pros
01:31:53 ◼ ► be what we now know as the 14 and 16 inch macbook pros keep the pro name for those make them very
01:32:01 ◼ ► distinctive just like how with the iphone the pros are so distinctive right shiny stainless steel
01:32:08 ◼ ► bigger camera pro yeah brushed aluminum yeah smaller camera regular you know so there's
01:32:16 ◼ ► nothing like in the old iphone x body that's called the iphone pro minus or something that's
01:32:26 ◼ ► even if they just did it follow the lead of the iphone right so the pros have two sizes
01:32:33 ◼ ► regular 14 inch big 16 inch and the regular ones would have two sizes mini go back to 12 inch
01:32:43 ◼ ► and regular 14 inch and and have two two machines like that uh and so if you really want a tiniest
01:32:52 ◼ ► tiniest macbook that apple has ever made uh you could get the new 12 inch macbook air or whatever
01:32:58 ◼ ► they would call it you know maybe they just call it the macbook again i don't know and if you want
01:33:04 ◼ ► a you know a mid-size macbook at a consumer price bump it up to 14 inches which would be a you know
01:33:11 ◼ ► a nice increase from 13 uh and keep it a lower price that's what i hope they do i have no idea
01:33:16 ◼ ► if that's what's in the works but it would make a lot more sense than using the names new low-end
01:33:24 ◼ ► macbook pro and you know and talking about the macbook air as though it's definitely only one
01:33:31 ◼ ► size because it doesn't have to be yeah yeah no it's super interesting because what apple when
01:33:37 ◼ ► apple does those those uh you want to fano snaps those bezels there's two ways it does it one is
01:33:42 ◼ ► like the smaller ipad pro where they made the an 11 inch screen in the previous 10.5 inch enclosure
01:33:50 ◼ ► and the other is like the 12.9 inch ipad pro where they just removed as much device size around it so
01:33:56 ◼ ► it was the same screen size but a way smaller package and we've seen them do that now like the
01:34:01 ◼ ► 16 inch macbook pro is just a little bit thinner than even the previous 16 inch model but they got
01:34:05 ◼ ► a 14 inch display now in in the new 14 inch model and my guess is that the next the m2 um macbook or
01:34:14 ◼ ► macbook air is not going to be a direct replacement for the current m1 macbook air they're going to
01:34:18 ◼ ► keep that around at 999 but they're going to go back to what the the old macbook was and that is
01:34:24 ◼ ► a premium ultralight model with an m2 chip and even smaller bezels so if i don't think it'll be
01:34:30 ◼ ► 12 inches but i think it'll it'll be the same physical size as the 12 inch it just won't have
01:34:34 ◼ ► any bezels so the screen will still be like third and there was 13 point something or 12 point
01:34:38 ◼ ► something like it's never as rounded off as the marketing but it'll be a much bigger screen in
01:34:42 ◼ ► the same size body for more money because like mini it's a bill of goods things mini led is
01:34:47 ◼ ► expensive and the chipsets are going to be expensive at first and apple wants to recoup
01:34:51 ◼ ► they want to pay that down as fast as possible and then they'll leave the existing m1 on the market
01:34:56 ◼ ► at 999 until they can replace it but i think that's the same thing that's sort of damning that
01:35:00 ◼ ► 13 inch macbook pro because the current one the m1 is going to it's 18 months old already it's going
01:35:06 ◼ ► to be 24 months old by the end of the year they could put it inside they could have a lower end
01:35:11 ◼ ► version of the 14 inch that has an m2 in it but if m2 is like m1 it won't have enough usbc and
01:35:17 ◼ ► thunderbolt controllers for all those ports and it would be they'd have to like make an enclosure
01:35:22 ◼ ► that paves over some of those ports which would be weird like they would totally do it but it would
01:35:26 ◼ ► be weird and they also have like even though apple is like one of the biggest companies in the world
01:35:30 ◼ ► they have such little bandwidth this one id team was one industrial design team and the mac team
01:35:35 ◼ ► seems only able to push out you know two new macs a year and they have to pick and this year it
01:35:40 ◼ ► sounds like that's going to be the macbook air the mac pro and a variation of the of the imac and
01:35:46 ◼ ► there's just not enough time or bandwidth to make something else so that's why i think it's it's it's
01:35:51 ◼ ► it's wrong for all the wrong reasons but they're going to just slap that m2 in the existing macbook
01:35:57 ◼ ► pro 13 inch chassis the macbook air pro or pro air whatever you really want to call it and let that
01:36:03 ◼ ► slide for another year and make that 2023 problem the other thing that's very clear from the iphone
01:36:09 ◼ ► marketing is that the pro name only goes on the latest and greatest so they sell and i know that
01:36:15 ◼ ► if you go to carriers around the world you can still get like a iphone 10r and stuff like that
01:36:22 ◼ ► but what apple will sell you is the iphone 13 pro iphone 13 regular iphone 12 regular two sizes
01:36:30 ◼ ► the iphone se and the iphone 11. pro means latest and greatest and i again i think that clarity
01:36:38 ◼ ► would be so much better for the macbook branding just get rid of that low-end macbook pro and make
01:36:44 ◼ ► kick-ass macbook airs that completely satisfy anybody's need who wants that that that you know
01:36:52 ◼ ► price range of macbook totally agree i think the difference is with the mac market specifically
01:36:57 ◼ ► since 2016 is that apple saw that there was a large and growing group of people who self-identified
01:37:04 ◼ ► as pros but we're pros in the traditional context and that they were willing to give extra money
01:37:09 ◼ ► just to have the pro branding so it became like airpods pro more than iphone pro and just making
01:37:14 ◼ ► that product really swell is swelled up their sales well then let them spend two thousand
01:37:19 ◼ ► dollars to get to get the 14 inch and again tim cook can thank us for it uh well me and you we
01:37:25 ◼ ► can send we can send them a consulting bill you know it's it's only going to make tim cook uh
01:37:31 ◼ ► like you said uh pivot his tables yes all right the the other big mac that we're obviously all
01:37:38 ◼ ► waiting for and i alluded to it is the big iMac do we think that's coming in uh which i presume
01:37:46 ◼ ► will simply have the the m1 pro and max guts of the the macbook pros that were just announced at
01:37:55 ◼ ► the end of last year uh in the same way that the 24 inch iMac had the same m1 guts as the first
01:38:04 ◼ ► round of m1 macbooks and the mac mini from 2020 2020. yeah do we think it's coming in early march
01:38:15 ◼ ► i don't think so i think the there was three max that were registered in the and i'm blanking on
01:38:21 ◼ ► which version it was was an eastern european i think it was yeah it was like it was like russia
01:38:25 ◼ ► i think i i i mean ecc yeah of all the you know countries you know that i don't know if you've
01:38:30 ◼ ► heard they're in they're in the news uh yeah yeah like the russian regulatory agency leak leak these
01:38:37 ◼ ► things whether that means they're imminent or just somehow they were filed months in advance
01:38:41 ◼ ► i mean presumably the 27 inch or 30 whatever it's going to be the bigger iMac with the m1 pro and m1
01:38:50 ◼ ► max inside i presumably it would come at WWDC at the latest yeah right i mean i alongside a preview
01:38:58 ◼ ► of the m1 pro mac pro or whatever right right i that's it whether they that's what they're you
01:39:04 ◼ ► know that's the schedule that they're going to announce it at WWDC in june or they're going to do
01:39:10 ◼ ► it uh next week or two weeks from now in early march or whether they're planning on one more
01:39:18 ◼ ► event in between this march 1 and WWDC you know like a late april type of thing uh we don't know
01:39:27 ◼ ► it's hard for them given how much prep there is for WWDC every year yeah and it's it yeah exactly
01:39:34 ◼ ► it just seems easier to do one event with more devices packed in than two and i know and i'm
01:39:42 ◼ ► sure you remember but like because i you and i had a really funny conversation in 2017 when they did
01:39:47 ◼ ► the mother of all WWDCs and not only did they do every operating system but they did new mac pros
01:39:52 ◼ ► new iMacs the home pod new ipad pros and you were just like i'm not i'm not taking any of this stuff
01:39:58 ◼ ► back with me right there's way too much and i went there i talked to one of them and they're like
01:40:03 ◼ ► Gruber's not coming uh what else might they announce there's also the pro level mac mini
01:40:12 ◼ ► which you know and the mac mini is has been split basically in in rough look you know description
01:40:18 ◼ ► like the 13-inch macbook pros were where there's the pro pro one with more ports and better
01:40:28 ◼ ► performance and then the sort of ads just sort of the basic one with two ports and you know this and
01:40:34 ◼ ► that yeah well they got rid of that right like originally the the mac mini came out as the 500
01:40:40 ◼ ► you swap it in you rip out your pc you put this in and then they didn't update it for a long long
01:40:45 ◼ ► long long time and then famously in 2018 they came out with like a real strut and saying now it's a
01:40:51 ◼ ► pro level product it's more expensive but it's got all these pro features and they discontinued
01:40:55 ◼ ► the low end model and then again in 2020 they came out with it made it silver again because it had
01:41:00 ◼ ► gone to space gray and only made a low end model and they've left the intel model like with the
01:41:05 ◼ ► like previously with the macbook pros and currently with the iMac they've left the intel one that's a
01:41:09 ◼ ► high-end pro version right i mean you could still go in the apple store and buy a 27-inch iMac
01:41:13 ◼ ► that's got an intel chip in it i that's my gut and again just sort of my you know i can kind of
01:41:20 ◼ ► smell the way you know i i sniff test the way apple thinks my guess is that the pro tier mac
01:41:28 ◼ ► mini will be space gray right and with the apple silicon right so if you see in a mac mini you'll
01:41:34 ◼ ► be even you'll even be able to know is it a consumer level apple silicon mac mini or a pro
01:41:39 ◼ ► level one is it regular gray or space gray how much great the rumors are also that it's going
01:41:45 ◼ ► to get a redesign and that the consumer version might be like the iMac where it's going to have
01:41:50 ◼ ► this this new top on it and and size that are going to be colored like multi-colored as well
01:41:54 ◼ ► right yeah that would be interesting uh what else displays people think that pros don't like colors
01:42:00 ◼ ► because like they don't make the pro stuff in color but if you're actually a pro and you're
01:42:03 ◼ ► working on color correct material you can't have like red or green or blue blowing out the cones
01:42:08 ◼ ► in your eyes while you're trying to do your your color sensitive work so that's why those are always
01:42:12 ◼ ► gray yeah but your mac mini you could just you could just put a throw it in the closet yeah yeah
01:42:16 ◼ ► throw it in the closet put a put a handkerchief over it or something you know it's not not hard
01:42:22 ◼ ► to hide i mean as opposed to the the iMacs right there's no getting away from the color on the
01:42:28 ◼ ► yes on the the colorful iMacs um and then that leads us to standalone displays right like what
01:42:34 ◼ ► do you hook up the thing and you know uh i don't believe the rumors that they're working on multiple
01:42:40 ◼ ► sizes of consumer grade uh you know there's rumors that spit you know 24 inch 27 inch a new
01:42:47 ◼ ► xdr an updated version of the xdr that actually would have like apple silicon chip inside to do
01:42:54 ◼ ► some sort of whatever you know processing properly mini led because that one was just before mini led
01:42:59 ◼ ► it's still it has way more uh discrete display zones but it's it's not it's still regular led
01:43:04 ◼ ► to me i think the best we can hope for i mean i i would love it i because i i i really think apple
01:43:11 ◼ ► has been disappointed by the third-party display market picking up the slack uh if apple doesn't
01:43:19 ◼ ► do it it's apparently no one's going to do it and it does get into the different i know i've spoken
01:43:24 ◼ ► with this spoken about this on the show probably with you at some point but it does get into like
01:43:29 ◼ ► another fundamental difference in the pc market and the mac market where in the pc market retina
01:43:34 ◼ ► is not as big a deal and a huge part of the pc market of of people who are willing to spend
01:43:40 ◼ ► let's say you know a premium for a really good display are gamers who don't definitely don't
01:43:48 ◼ ► want retina right they want frame rate and brightness and other things and retina would
01:43:53 ◼ ► actually defeat the purpose of getting the highest possible frame rate that they can get
01:43:58 ◼ ► um well it's also they'll take a 4k display if you give it to them but they have no need for
01:44:02 ◼ ► color management where people who are working on a mac they want to take advantage of the end-to-end
01:44:06 ◼ ► color management it'd be ridiculous not to and reference modes and all those things right and
01:44:10 ◼ ► you know all the various features that apple has across all their displays and yeah true tone and
01:44:14 ◼ ► etc um and a decent looking enclosure that doesn't destroy your wi-fi or fritz out or something that's
01:44:21 ◼ ► plagued all the lg versions of the exact same panel or wobble yeah like it's just like it's
01:44:27 ◼ ► the exact same panel as the imac that they just put it in the worst possible enclosure i don't see
01:44:32 ◼ ► how i know some people you know i don't i forget what's german and what's not but some people
01:44:36 ◼ ► have speculated maybe it's just the pro mac mini that's coming in march and not the imac i don't
01:44:43 ◼ ► that to me is a hard announcement because to me there's more people waiting for the imac and it
01:44:49 ◼ ► and it's a more exciting thing to show right it's going to be good looking and exciting to look at
01:44:57 ◼ ► in the way that last year's consumer grade 24-inch imacs work whereas no matter what they do with the
01:45:02 ◼ ► mac mini form factor right it it it's it's a mini it's just a little it's a little square you know
01:45:10 ◼ ► the only like interesting thing they could do is if they wanted to announce dual die m1 max but
01:45:14 ◼ ► then you ruin that for an imac pro or a mac pro announcement later right like they specifically
01:45:20 ◼ ► didn't announce a15 with the ipad mini because they wanted to do that with the iphone and like
01:45:24 ◼ ► that's the exact same problem with announcing a mac mini without announcing my mac pro or a mac pro
01:45:28 ◼ ► all right so i don't know you know i guess i i would guess what of the mac mini with pro you know
01:45:37 ◼ ► m1 max m1 pro silicon and the bigger pro max imac if we don't hear about them in early march
01:45:46 ◼ ► we'll get them at wwdc or before but it would be a little weird to have another event before but
01:45:52 ◼ ► we'll see what do you think about like because a lot of people are concerned that if they are now
01:45:56 ◼ ► like they they conflate the number with the capabilities so that an m2 comes out it suddenly
01:46:02 ◼ ► makes m1 pro and m1 max seem obsolete and why would apple do this and the whole branding is bad
01:46:08 ◼ ► and it reminds me of when the a12z ipad pro came out six months after the a13 in the iphone and
01:46:15 ◼ ► people had the exact same issue with it and you know you could explain to them it's way more
01:46:20 ◼ ► massively multi-core so even though each single core isn't as fast you have so many more cores
01:46:26 ◼ ► but they just see a number on a package do you think that's gonna affect m2 versus m1 pro or max
01:46:31 ◼ ► well i think it's going to be interesting because i do i would expect then that when they do this
01:46:36 ◼ ► that the m2s will have better single core performance right i mean and we're that's going
01:46:43 ◼ ► to rub people the wrong way even though that's the way the intel world has worked it's just that it's
01:46:48 ◼ ► no it's it's so that the nomenclature is so less clear right like so for example the xeon chips in
01:46:55 ◼ ► the imac pro that the slate you know the space gray imac pro that was based on the intel stuff
01:47:01 ◼ ► had you know i i think even when it debuted had worse single core performance than some certain
01:47:07 ◼ ► other models it's the multi-core thing right so especially the high core count ones they
01:47:11 ◼ ► was went really right down right like so like the the basic story of how you know these pro multi uh
01:47:19 ◼ ► you know with an emphasis on the parallel processing right like having 20 cpu cores or 40
01:47:27 ◼ ► up to 40 which we might get in in the the highest end mac pro with apple silicon 40 cpu cores you
01:47:36 ◼ ► know who even knows i mean how many fingers you need to count all the gpu cores they're going to
01:47:41 ◼ ► have but that the way that this works is you come out with the consumer version with fewer cores
01:47:49 ◼ ► with the latest and greatest process and you get the greatest highest single core performance and
01:47:55 ◼ ► then it's like an 18-month window before it filters down to the multi-core people i think
01:48:02 ◼ ► will just have to deal with it i do think that there will be a media freak out of holy crap
01:48:08 ◼ ► they're selling they're selling this mac pro for you know what forty thousand dollars whatever is
01:48:15 ◼ ► going to go up to it right put a crazy price tag on a maxed out mac pro with apple silicon with
01:48:22 ◼ ► 40 cores and uh you know 100 gpu cores and gobs and gobs and gobs of ram and this huge price tag
01:48:30 ◼ ► of like a luxury car and they're like hey and it you know it loses on single core geek bench to
01:48:36 ◼ ► a you know a 1200 MacBook air with an m2 i deal with it that's the you know you know then then
01:48:43 ◼ ► then luck if you're impressed by that then lucky you spend the 1200 comes to my house and hits my
01:48:50 ◼ ► computer with a baseball bat right i do think though that that's clearly going to be the case
01:48:54 ◼ ► i mean that's just the way it's clear the way it works it's just that you know and apple's
01:48:59 ◼ ► naman nomenclature of calling it the m1 and then the m1 pro and m1 max and then we're going to have
01:49:04 ◼ ► the m2 and the m2 max and m2 pro yeah you know by putting simple numbers on it it's it's easier
01:49:11 ◼ ► to understand than all the various lakes and the core i d nines and core i sevens and i mean we've
01:49:17 ◼ ► had core i sevens and i nines and i fives for a decade right like the five and the seven and the
01:49:23 ◼ ► nine don't correlate to whether they're newer or older they're they're tears and it's you know i'm
01:49:31 ◼ ► sure it makes sense to somebody at intel and you know and there are enthusiasts who have it all
01:49:35 ◼ ► memorized but you can't figure it out just from the names whereas with apple's names they're so
01:49:40 ◼ ► much more clear it certainly seems as though the pro computers should have faster everything than
01:49:48 ◼ ► the consumer ones but that's just not the way the silicon world works today and if they actually
01:49:53 ◼ ► they're smart they mitigate it because like when you look at the m1 pro and the m1 max they're
01:49:57 ◼ ► broken up into two zones so that you have half the cpu's in each of the zones and then one side could
01:50:02 ◼ ► be flat out with single core while the other side is the frequency is stepped down for multi-core so
01:50:07 ◼ ► you don't lose as much as you would in like just a generalized cpu environment but the the m1 is
01:50:13 ◼ ► based on the a14 from the iphone 12 and if it comes out anytime before the end of the year m2
01:50:17 ◼ ► will be based on the a15 and so you get a little bit better performance but way more efficient
01:50:22 ◼ ► performance cores way more performant efficiency cores way way better graphics cores pro right like
01:50:28 ◼ ► you get all of these things bundled into it that core for core is going to be better but you're
01:50:32 ◼ ► still not going to compete with 32 gpu cores on an m1 max yeah it's you know i i think we see the way
01:50:40 ◼ ► the pattern's going but it's definitely like i think for the foreseeable future going to be this
01:50:45 ◼ ► 18 month at least cycle between the latest you know and and i guess even more maybe it's more
01:50:53 ◼ ► like a a a 30 month cycle if you count the a series chip from an iphone a year later becoming
01:51:03 ◼ ► the m plus one integer for the mac consumer and then 18 months after that before it filters to
01:51:11 ◼ ► the mac pro where it has 20 to 40 cores and etc etc you know it's which was the pattern right like
01:51:17 ◼ ► they had the a5x a6x no x no a7x a8x a9x a10x no a11x then a 12x 12z no 13x but then m1 is
01:51:27 ◼ ► essentially 14x so they were on like a 15 an 18 month cycle with the the extended versions of the
01:51:32 ◼ ► chips anyway right right so i don't know what do you think are they going to do a standalone
01:51:36 ◼ ► display at a consumer price i hope so i mean there have been rumors of it for a while and i
01:51:42 ◼ ► know everybody is like talking about custom apple silicon but apple has been making their own tcon
01:51:46 ◼ ► controllers for those displays like for the imac going back till 2014 or something so to me apple
01:51:52 ◼ ► silicon just sounds like they're going to have a display engine and something that'll minimize the
01:51:55 ◼ ► impact of the graphics on the card so that all makes a lot of sense to me if they could bring
01:51:59 ◼ ► that in for a thousand dollars it would certainly you i love this joke you made back at the event
01:52:03 ◼ ► where you're like 6k for 6k is that the price or the resolution you know and that's true though
01:52:08 ◼ ► like it's out of the reach of almost every consumer and that makes sense if you want to
01:52:12 ◼ ► bring a new technology to market but if you don't bring that technology down it doesn't help anybody
01:52:17 ◼ ► well and it's technically overkill right it's it you know it's the same thing as like buying a
01:52:21 ◼ ► 40 core mac pro right like i i literally have no need there's nothing i do that's even vaguely that
01:52:28 ◼ ► parallel i know some people do right there's all sorts of people who do need it but the pro display
01:52:34 ◼ ► xdr costs so much because it does things that you really have to be like a color pro or video editing
01:52:42 ◼ ► a pro to you're supposed to save you money on a 40k display not cost you money on a 1k display
01:52:46 ◼ ► yeah it's the the issue of how much would an apple standalone display cost is is tough i would love
01:52:53 ◼ ► it if it was 999 and if you know if the iMac is like two thousand dollars to start it's you know
01:53:02 ◼ ► could you get the display from the iMac for half the price maybe you know if if it were 1,500 for
01:53:10 ◼ ► the display does it make sense that the display is three quarters of the cost of the iMac you know
01:53:16 ◼ ► you start running well that was the old joke is that you got the free you got the free computer
01:53:20 ◼ ► when you bought the iMac right but you never ever lose you never ever lose by betting the over
01:53:24 ◼ ► on how much blank from apple going to cost yeah and for everything like air tags where it's like
01:53:30 ◼ ► hey 29 bucks that's not bad you know that's a reasonable price there's all sorts of products
01:53:35 ◼ ► you know like the pro display xdr and the thousand dollar stands yeah the wheels how many wheels do
01:53:41 ◼ ► you want uh but it's oh boy ed and i you know i know that we you even mentioned that apple has a
01:53:47 ◼ ► rejuvenated they even announced it explicitly a rejuvenated interest in the mac mini as a product
01:53:54 ◼ ► and and want to support the people who depend on it for various reasons begging for a display
01:54:00 ◼ ► because it needs a display but even if you want to be a little cynical about how much apple cares
01:54:06 ◼ ► about the mac mini customers who need a display and that they think that people who are going to
01:54:11 ◼ ► spend five six seven eight ten thousand dollars on a mac pro they can just cough up the dough
01:54:17 ◼ ► for the pro display xdr yeah um to me the market for the big market for a standalone nice apple
01:54:26 ◼ ► display are the tens hundreds million users of macbooks who would like to have a standalone
01:54:32 ◼ ► display on their desk to connect their macbook to so and so desperate that a lot of us have said
01:54:37 ◼ ► we'll just take an imac just bring back target display right because we lost that when they
01:54:41 ◼ ► started making their own tcons because they couldn't sync to right 4k streams to make the
01:54:44 ◼ ► 5k display when they haven't brought it back so you can't even you can't even give 1500 bucks for
01:54:48 ◼ ► a good imac and make that your display so hopefully they do it it would make for a better uh to me it
01:54:55 ◼ ► as i would imagine it makes for a better unveiling to be able to show the the new you know updated
01:55:03 ◼ ► mac minis connected to an apple display that doesn't start at six thousand dollars because
01:55:07 ◼ ► like why are you buying a mac mini if you have a six thousand dollar display um and you know it
01:55:13 ◼ ► would be cohesive to announce it alongside the new imac and say it's the same great display you know
01:55:20 ◼ ► whichever one they announce first i don't know maybe they announced the standalone display first
01:55:24 ◼ ► and then the imac or the imac and that but either way whichever one comes second they could say it's
01:55:28 ◼ ► the same great display with all the great mini led features and the every blah blah blah you know
01:55:34 ◼ ► then they could skip that whole part you know just say same great it's one case where like
01:55:39 ◼ ► because they did announce airplay but like that that's one case where wireless isn't as good
01:55:43 ◼ ► right like it just doesn't work as well as a cable at that point right uh i know we've gone a little
01:55:48 ◼ ► over the hour i was hoping for but uh a little bit a little bit but we still have to the rumor
01:55:54 ◼ ► is that there's going to be a new ipad air do we care yeah well so a lot of people kind of snickering
01:56:00 ◼ ► at the announcement it's going to be the iphone se and the and the air but those are huge like
01:56:04 ◼ ► not nerd like i think we forget sometimes at tech twitter and tech youtuber a very small percent of
01:56:09 ◼ ► apple's market like maybe 10 and there are a lot of people who just they would i don't know if they
01:56:13 ◼ ► care that much about an event but they really want updated or they want new iphone se's and new ipad
01:56:18 ◼ ► and so i think they're good products i don't know if they'll make particularly exciting event but
01:56:22 ◼ ► if they're there along with a couple other things like i could see them getting in the old days it
01:56:26 ◼ ► would be a couple slides like you know so we put up a couple and we're also updating this and we're
01:56:30 ◼ ► also updating that because the mac but the ipad air got its new redesign in 2020 but it didn't
01:56:36 ◼ ► get 5g the way that the mic the mac mini the ipad mini update got last year so just putting in the
01:56:42 ◼ ► new chip and putting in the new the new 5g radio brings it back up to par it's just not it's not
01:56:47 ◼ ► super thrilling yeah it sort of sets 5g as the baseline right like everything everything that
01:56:52 ◼ ► has a cellular modem from apple supports 5g or it's by some definition i don't i don't think the
01:56:58 ◼ ► watch does yet i don't know i i doubt it yeah i actually don't even know what the cellular watch
01:57:04 ◼ ► does no it's it's barely got what's got like uh piggybacked lte right but nobody i mean nobody's
01:57:09 ◼ ► using their you can't even use your watch as your only cell phone you know it's it's only a peripheral
01:57:14 ◼ ► to your phone so i i'm gonna say that doesn't count so yeah you know uh you know it it sticks
01:57:20 ◼ ► out a little bit that the brand new or brand new from the end of last year ipad mini is in some
01:57:26 ◼ ► ways technically superior to the ipad air so at least bring the ipad air up to that ipad mini
01:57:32 ◼ ► level and make it bigger it just does not seem like a you know it i'm sure they'll send cell
01:57:36 ◼ ► gobs of them i'm sure it'll be a great product it's good to get everything on 5g cannot see this
01:57:42 ◼ ► as uh if it were the only thing they had ready to go i don't think they'd have an event i think
01:57:47 ◼ ► that's the sort of thing where they would uh again covet times are weird you know but pre-covid times
01:57:52 ◼ ► they would just invite the media to new york or cooper and or cupertino yeah for briefings last
01:57:58 ◼ ► time with the new air right it really makes sense and how they do that sort of release in the covid
01:58:05 ◼ ► era uh even if if we're just at the tail end of it you know but some kind of do it by press release
01:58:10 ◼ ► maybe have some briefings a day in advance with the you know an nda you know this will be announced
01:58:17 ◼ ► you know tomorrow or something like that i just can't see how the ipad air makes for an event
01:58:21 ◼ ► i really don't because i because it's super interesting because like last year april was
01:58:25 ◼ ► an actual product event but the two previous ones uh 2018-20 2018-2019 2018 was an education
01:58:32 ◼ ► event in chicago 2019 was in cupertino but it was a services event and they did announce products
01:58:37 ◼ ► like new airpods and new macbook airs new mac new ipad airs new ipad minis but those were all
01:58:44 ◼ ► dropped in press releases in new york trips right to your point those weren't part of the event
01:58:48 ◼ ► well and and then you know to to cycle back to the same idea it's is is a brand new iphone se
01:58:56 ◼ ► demoable right if it looks the same as the iphone se we know and it just it looks the same has the
01:59:02 ◼ ► same starting price but has the a15 chip we already heard about six months ago and 5g which
01:59:08 ◼ ► has been out for you know almost two years how do you demo that right like there has to you know the
01:59:14 ◼ ► whole point of these shows whether they're actual on-stage events you know with in-person media
01:59:21 ◼ ► broadcast out there or these tv style shows that they've been doing since 2020 they have to show
01:59:27 ◼ ► something there has to be a story to tell and something to demo and to me the iphone se just
01:59:37 ◼ ► how do you demo that so that to me so they've done it like they jaws did a really good se demo
01:59:43 ◼ ► back in 2016 with the first one but the second one never got a demo because that event was
01:59:47 ◼ ► cancelled for coven so we just got we just got a press release for the iphone se 2 but the only
01:59:52 ◼ ► parallel i can think of is that entry level uh now it's 10.2 inch ipad where every year every
01:59:59 ◼ ► september they've been updating that and i try to think of that slide at the end that has all the
02:00:03 ◼ ► boxes on it that shows all the new features and how could you possibly fill that out and that's
02:00:07 ◼ ► the only thing that comes close because they spend two seconds talking about the new processor and
02:00:11 ◼ ► radio and then they recapitulate new features in ios and then they put the slide up at the end
02:00:16 ◼ ► but it's like a three minute long segment right and you know and they can do things for demos
02:00:21 ◼ ► that just show people using it you know like with the mini with the ipad mini they love showing it
02:00:26 ◼ ► with pilots you know who can put it in their big cargo pants side pocket you know and people use
02:00:31 ◼ ► it in this place in that place but there's only so much of that you can do i mean it's it there's
02:00:36 ◼ ► like a minimum length to an event which i would peg at about 45 minutes i mean yeah like if it's
02:00:44 ◼ ► you know only half an hour why why have the event so long story short that just it just fills me
02:00:49 ◼ ► with optimism that there's something exciting mac related yes to anchor this march 8th event
02:00:56 ◼ ► which to me would have to be the the bigger iMac because i just don't see the iphone se with 5g or
02:01:06 ◼ ► an ipad air with 5g as being uh you know how do you fill half out within a couple slides right
02:01:13 ◼ ► it's put them in the first 20 minutes and then you know yeah have some mac related boom you know to
02:01:21 ◼ ► go with it boy that that that's much more exciting yeah that's what i'm hoping for all right thank
02:01:27 ◼ ► you renee uh i would also like to thank you sir thank our our excellent sponsors we had memberful
02:01:33 ◼ ► where you can monetize your passion with membership at uh memberful.com slash talk show
02:01:39 ◼ ► and of course our good friends at linode right here in philadelphia linode.com slash the talk
02:01:46 ◼ ► show congrats to linode too on a 900 million dollar acquisition from akamai which which broke