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The Talk Show

318: ‘Holes in the Blast Door’, With Matthew Panzarino

 

00:00:00   Tell me something about cooking.

00:00:03   Tell me what you've got, like an oven that my wife,

00:00:07   I think, is gonna at some point kidnap you

00:00:09   and have you come out here and install

00:00:12   some kind of high-capacity outdoor grill type thing.

00:00:15   (laughing)

00:00:16   - Yeah, you know, I kind of, I mean,

00:00:18   I've always loved cooking to some degree and loved food,

00:00:22   but only during the pandemic did I really have time

00:00:25   to start to drill down and start working

00:00:28   on a handful of things that I had always wanted

00:00:30   to actually learn to do-do, you know,

00:00:33   not like wing it once in a while.

00:00:36   - Right.

00:00:36   - And one of those was pizza.

00:00:38   And so I got one of these Ooni pizza ovens,

00:00:41   which is, the one I have is a gas,

00:00:44   they make the combo wood gas ones too,

00:00:46   but the one I have is a gas pizza oven.

00:00:49   And it, you know, it's great.

00:00:52   It's actually extremely usable.

00:00:55   It has a really nice kind of wide opening

00:00:59   you can slide things in and out of.

00:01:01   It takes a little bit of practice.

00:01:02   You know, my first pizzas were burnt on one side,

00:01:05   several of them calzoned themselves unintentionally.

00:01:07   You know, you go through the whole learning process.

00:01:10   But you really need like a continuous set of time

00:01:13   to experiment with that stuff.

00:01:15   'Cause pizza is very much like software.

00:01:18   Like, you know, you go through 1.0 of your dough

00:01:20   and then you go like, no, no, that's not right, right?

00:01:22   And you're, you know, a few percent here, a few percent there,

00:01:26   you know, another 1.2 of your dough.

00:01:30   And you just, but you have to have contiguous time.

00:01:33   And I was stuck in the house

00:01:34   and like, I would get done with work and was like,

00:01:36   hey, we're not going anywhere, doing anything.

00:01:37   So I'm gonna fire up the oven and play a little bit,

00:01:41   you know, and so I learned to do that better.

00:01:44   And then along with that is bread, you know,

00:01:46   so they kind of go side by side.

00:01:47   - In the same oven.

00:01:50   - You know what, I do some flat breads in the oven,

00:01:52   but the uni gets to like 800, 900 degrees,

00:01:56   which is not bread temperature.

00:01:58   You need about 500 degrees for most breads.

00:02:00   Then you need that temperature on the uni

00:02:02   because the stone needs to get ultra hot

00:02:06   to bake the bottom of your crust

00:02:07   so that you don't have a burnt top and raw dough.

00:02:10   But with bread, you need roughly 500 degrees

00:02:14   and an enclosed environment with a lot of steam

00:02:17   to promote that spring.

00:02:19   So that bit of the bread that you love,

00:02:22   that's the fluffy inside with a lot of holes and aeration

00:02:25   and all of that, that spring, that loft to your bread,

00:02:27   that comes from steam.

00:02:29   And most European ovens have steam built in,

00:02:33   or not most, I should say,

00:02:34   but let's say it's much more common

00:02:36   and you'll have steam built in.

00:02:38   So you'd be able to fire up your oven, say,

00:02:40   hey oven, I'm making bread.

00:02:41   Could you put a little steam in here for me?

00:02:43   And it keeps it nice and humid in there

00:02:45   and you get a nice spring on your bread.

00:02:47   But in America, most of our ovens do not have steam at all.

00:02:52   So you have to create an artificial steam environment

00:02:56   by enclosing either, you know,

00:02:58   you pour boiling water in a skillet down below in your oven

00:03:02   and you trap it in there, or you use a Dutch oven,

00:03:05   which is, you know, a pot with a lid to try and trap steam,

00:03:08   the steam coming naturally from the water in your bread,

00:03:11   to cook it and to spring it.

00:03:13   And so like, they're really two different operations,

00:03:15   but all of the base preparations, all flour, yeast and water.

00:03:19   So you start learning a lot about how yeast and flour

00:03:24   and water interact with one another and salt to some degree,

00:03:27   and getting an idea of how all that stuff works

00:03:30   and they feed into one another.

00:03:31   So if you start doing pizza,

00:03:33   it's a very short hop to making bread and vice versa,

00:03:36   you know, because pizza is bread.

00:03:38   It just happens to have some garnishes.

00:03:42   - So, and this Ooni oven is something you can,

00:03:45   you cook with it right on your kitchen countertop,

00:03:48   or you have to cook this outside?

00:03:50   - No, Ooni's an outdoor oven.

00:03:51   I mean, if you wanted to do an inside,

00:03:54   I'd say you're probably risking death.

00:03:57   I mean, it's a--

00:03:59   - That's well, it makes sense though.

00:04:00   It's eight or 900 degrees.

00:04:02   I mean, that makes sense.

00:04:02   - It is, and it's propane, so you don't, you know,

00:04:04   you really don't want to do that.

00:04:05   Now they make a wood burning version of it,

00:04:08   and one that does both as well.

00:04:11   And there are other ones out there, there are other brands.

00:04:13   The Rock Box is a very popular one

00:04:15   made by a company called Gosney.

00:04:17   And the Gosney Dome is a brand new one they have coming out

00:04:20   or is already out, but already sold out.

00:04:22   And so there are a handful of these,

00:04:24   the entire sort of enthusiast,

00:04:27   home enthusiast pizza oven market

00:04:29   exploded during the pandemic, right?

00:04:32   For a lot of the same, I mean, you know,

00:04:33   I'm very basic in that regard.

00:04:34   Like a lot of the same reasons, people are like,

00:04:36   "Oh man, I want to make pizza at home.

00:04:38   You know, I always wanted to,

00:04:40   I always wanted to have those tasty pizzas.

00:04:41   How do I do that?"

00:04:43   And pretty much every oven sold out.

00:04:44   And I'll tell you, like early in the pandemic,

00:04:46   May to June, July 2020,

00:04:50   it was impossible to find even flour.

00:04:52   - Yeah, I know.

00:04:53   It was crazy, the flour situation.

00:04:56   I mean, it's, 'cause I have a couple of other pals

00:04:58   who were pizza makers and you know, it was such a big deal.

00:05:02   - Yeah, I had to buy 50 pound bags

00:05:04   from a restaurant supply stores, yeah.

00:05:06   - Even going into the grocery store

00:05:08   and just looking at the flour aisle, like,

00:05:09   "Hey, I heard flour is short."

00:05:11   And you look and they're just have like,

00:05:12   it's not just like empty shelves.

00:05:14   They have like apologies taped up.

00:05:15   They had like apologies taped up.

00:05:17   No, we don't have any flour, sorry.

00:05:19   - Right, exactly.

00:05:20   So, you know, that whole market exploded.

00:05:23   Most of these ovens are not meant for in-home use.

00:05:26   You got to put them outside.

00:05:27   So they're like a barbecue.

00:05:28   You know, I have mine next to my barbecue

00:05:30   just on a little, you know, cheap Costco table.

00:05:33   It works fine.

00:05:35   And you fire it up with propane.

00:05:37   It takes about 15 to 20 minutes,

00:05:39   maybe 30 minutes to get up to temp.

00:05:41   And then once you have it up to temp,

00:05:43   you pull out your dough

00:05:44   and your pizza's done in 90 seconds, right?

00:05:46   It's a very, I call this like a,

00:05:48   I call the process violent, right?

00:05:51   Because you've got flame and you've got toppings

00:05:54   and you've got dough and it's a dance, right?

00:05:56   It's a sort of ballet that you're doing with violence.

00:06:00   You know, the flame is in your face.

00:06:01   It's hot.

00:06:02   Your pizza's burning.

00:06:03   You're trying to turn it.

00:06:04   It's a little floppy.

00:06:05   You don't have the technique quite down.

00:06:07   It actually is quite, you know, you look at,

00:06:10   I'll tell you, there is nothing, I mean,

00:06:13   on Instagram and YouTube and all this stuff,

00:06:15   I'm sure at some point scrolling through Instagram,

00:06:18   everybody has seen some sort of pizzaola,

00:06:22   a pizza guy in a pizza place,

00:06:24   throwing pizzas in and out of an oven, right?

00:06:26   Like at some restaurant somewhere.

00:06:27   You go to the explore page.

00:06:28   At some point you're gonna come across it.

00:06:29   It's popular content, right?

00:06:31   People love pizza.

00:06:32   But there is nothing that will give you an appreciation

00:06:35   for how amazing the muscle memory and skillset

00:06:38   of these people that do it day in, day out for decades

00:06:41   than trying to do it literally once yourself.

00:06:43   Because the amount of frustration and anger

00:06:47   and sort of like fear that it, you're like,

00:06:50   oh my God, I spent so long.

00:06:51   I got this dough ready.

00:06:52   I had to start the dough yesterday.

00:06:54   And how my toppings, I sauteed all these toppings in advance

00:06:57   and I made this sauce.

00:06:59   And now I'm gonna throw this pizza in the oven

00:07:01   and it's gonna turn into a brinkeled mess

00:07:03   and melt all of the stone, you know?

00:07:06   And like, it takes a while.

00:07:08   I like it though.

00:07:08   It's a challenge and it's fun.

00:07:10   And the cool thing is, is that once you could be

00:07:12   on the initial kind of wave of,

00:07:14   hey, I can get a pizza off of a peel and into this oven

00:07:18   and like sort of start to turn it

00:07:19   to try and cook it evenly,

00:07:21   most of your failures are edible,

00:07:23   extremely edible and tasty, you know?

00:07:25   So it's always a nice bonus.

00:07:27   - I wish I had developed a habit like that

00:07:29   or a hobby like that, but I didn't.

00:07:32   I got better.

00:07:33   - I told you this, I got better at cooking steak,

00:07:34   at grilling steak.

00:07:35   - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:07:36   Mm-hmm.

00:07:37   - But nothing.

00:07:38   - What was your process there?

00:07:39   - It's charcoal grill and just getting my seasoning down

00:07:44   and getting really, really good at the temperatures

00:07:48   that me and Amy and Jonas all like,

00:07:51   which are all slightly different.

00:07:53   Amy goes really, goes very rare.

00:07:55   I'm a true medium rare and Jonas likes sort of

00:07:58   a medium rare plus.

00:08:00   And-- - Okay.

00:08:03   Like a slightly thicker rind,

00:08:04   like eating into that pink in the center.

00:08:06   - Yeah, and the other thing that we were doing

00:08:08   for the pandemic was we were buying our steaks

00:08:12   from our favorite steakhouses,

00:08:15   a couple of them here in Philly,

00:08:16   just to help support them.

00:08:18   At first, that was what we were thinking,

00:08:19   like, let's just, you know, they're selling like,

00:08:22   you know, steaks to cook at home.

00:08:24   - Right, like kits or whatever.

00:08:25   - But then we figured out that they were actually

00:08:28   the best steaks we could buy.

00:08:29   Like, we, you know, the places where I thought

00:08:32   I was buying good butcher steaks,

00:08:35   I was like, you know what, the steakhouses actually

00:08:37   are really great butchers, like, fantastic.

00:08:41   And maybe, maybe because, you know,

00:08:43   the two places we were buying them from were regulars at,

00:08:47   maybe we were getting like choice cuts, I don't know.

00:08:49   But Amy and Jonas both agreed,

00:08:52   and they're not easy with compliments to me on anything.

00:08:55   They both agreed that I, that my steaks were comparable

00:08:59   to the steakhouse.

00:09:00   And I was like, that's pretty good.

00:09:02   - Yeah, I mean, I would argue, obviously,

00:09:06   all sensitivity to non-meat eaters,

00:09:08   but I would say if you can cook, you know,

00:09:10   if you can sear a good piece of meat

00:09:13   and manage to cook a piece of chicken that's not dry at home,

00:09:16   you've got 90% of what you would go to a restaurant for.

00:09:20   And I mean like, you know, a really good steak,

00:09:22   a really good piece of chicken.

00:09:24   People spend years trying to get that right, you know?

00:09:28   And you go out to restaurants,

00:09:29   and once you do cook a really good steak at home,

00:09:32   as I'm sure you've found out,

00:09:34   you start to really judge the steaks

00:09:37   that you eat at restaurants.

00:09:38   - Well, you know what the other thing is?

00:09:40   I don't remember if you know this.

00:09:41   I know longtime listeners of the show will remember this.

00:09:44   Ben Thompson finds it endlessly,

00:09:46   endlessly hilarious.

00:09:49   It was like two years ago, maybe it was three years ago,

00:09:52   I forget when, two or three years ago,

00:09:54   Amy somehow misordered charcoal from Walmart.

00:09:59   And we got like, instead of--

00:10:02   - You got an enormous amount of it, right?

00:10:03   - Yeah, instead of like 36 pounds of charcoal,

00:10:06   we got like 36 18-pound bags of charcoal.

00:10:09   (laughing)

00:10:10   Like truly, truly a like, you know,

00:10:15   like if you were running a small-sized supermarket,

00:10:20   it would be plenty of charcoal

00:10:21   to carry you through the weekend selling to customers.

00:10:24   (laughing)

00:10:25   But, and so I, you know, she made an Instagram post about it

00:10:30   and it was funny and it's hilarious.

00:10:32   And we have a big basement and we just still have it.

00:10:34   We're actually getting low.

00:10:35   I think we're down to like eight bags.

00:10:38   - Nice.

00:10:39   - But here's the thing that's not funny about it,

00:10:41   is that one of the things about having all that charcoal

00:10:44   is I just got real generous about how much charcoal

00:10:47   I'd put on the grill before lighting it,

00:10:49   and I found out that I was definitely not using

00:10:51   anywhere near enough charcoal before.

00:10:53   You know, like they, and you would think,

00:10:56   you would think the bag of charcoal,

00:10:58   and it's just like Kingston regular.

00:10:59   It's not like any kind of like deluxe charcoal.

00:11:01   It's just good old Kingston red, white, and blue charcoal.

00:11:05   And you would think, you know, like with toothpaste,

00:11:09   the commercials for toothpaste make it seem like

00:11:11   you should put about a half a tube of toothpaste

00:11:12   on your toothbrush before you brush.

00:11:15   - Of course, right.

00:11:16   - They do like a curly QS, like goes over,

00:11:19   and then over the top again, and then back over.

00:11:22   'Cause you know, use all the toothpaste at once.

00:11:24   - Photogenic, yeah.

00:11:25   - You would think the charcoal people would tell you

00:11:27   to use a lot of charcoal, but they just tell you

00:11:30   like enough to cover the grill,

00:11:32   and then put it in a pile and light it.

00:11:35   I found that you want more than that.

00:11:36   Not a lot more, but like one and a half times

00:11:40   what I was using, and it gets the grill hotter,

00:11:44   it keeps it hotter, and the difference between

00:11:48   grilling a steak at like 400 degrees versus 500 plus degrees

00:11:53   makes all the difference in the world.

00:11:55   Less time, better char, it all works out.

00:12:00   Anyway, that was my cooking adventure,

00:12:03   just getting better at grilling the one thing

00:12:05   I was okay at grilling before.

00:12:08   - Yeah, I mean, look, there's a pleasure,

00:12:10   there's a genuine pleasure in getting better at cooking

00:12:13   that I love, and my adventure has gone beyond pizzas

00:12:17   and bread and into a wide variety of dishes,

00:12:20   sort of worldwide dishes, dishes from outside of the US

00:12:25   that I'd always wanted to learn to cook

00:12:27   because I loved eating them, but I felt intimidated

00:12:30   by either the spice or my technique or whatever.

00:12:33   And so I started delving deeper into Indian cooking,

00:12:37   into a variety of Asian cuisines, whether it be Thai

00:12:41   or like just one Chinese or other types of cooking

00:12:46   that for many people around the world, obviously,

00:12:51   is just home cooking, but for me and for many people

00:12:55   in the US requires specialty spices

00:12:57   that you may not have in your cabinet.

00:12:58   And so you feel like every dish, for a while,

00:13:01   you feel like every dish is such a cliff,

00:13:05   it's such a hill to climb because you're like,

00:13:07   I don't have this, I don't have that,

00:13:08   I don't have this, I don't have that.

00:13:09   You're going to the store endlessly

00:13:11   for the first couple months, right?

00:13:13   But then after a while, like right now,

00:13:15   I can walk into my kitchen and cook up a stir fry

00:13:18   with like a nice like tingly mouth numbing sauce

00:13:20   and all of the flavors that I love to eat out

00:13:23   at like a nice Chinese restaurant.

00:13:25   And I have all that stuff on hand.

00:13:26   So like once you stock, and obviously,

00:13:29   people like different kinds of cooking.

00:13:31   And so for different kinds of cooking,

00:13:32   you'll have different kinds of spices.

00:13:34   But the kinds of things that I'm interested in

00:13:35   and that I love to eat, I can actually now go

00:13:38   into the kitchen and not, I'm nobody's master chef,

00:13:41   obviously, and my dishes are whatever they are.

00:13:44   But I can confidently go, hey, I know what mix of spices

00:13:47   belongs in this kind of dish.

00:13:49   And I know that I have them on hand.

00:13:51   And I know that the rough techniques,

00:13:53   like the chopping and filleting and other basic techniques

00:13:58   that they drill into chefs at French culinary schools

00:14:02   and kitchens and all that stuff.

00:14:03   I'm nowhere near any of that, obviously.

00:14:05   But you just sort of have to do the time.

00:14:07   You have to chop 100 onions or 1000 onions

00:14:12   before chopping onions feels like, oh, I got this.

00:14:15   I can dice it, I can chop it, I can rough chop it,

00:14:18   I can slice it.

00:14:20   What do you need out of this onion?

00:14:21   I can do this for you.

00:14:22   And that part of it is extremely calming for me.

00:14:25   Like I find it relaxing and calming.

00:14:27   And there's a joy in that at the end of it,

00:14:30   I get to serve it to people.

00:14:32   And like that to me is like the big awesome part.

00:14:34   Like you go out to your grill, you sear up that steak

00:14:37   and you come back in and Jonas and Amy

00:14:39   have a delicious steak.

00:14:40   And like you're the hero, man.

00:14:41   You got that steak done.

00:14:42   You found joy in perfecting your technique

00:14:46   and they get nourishment and enjoyment out of it.

00:14:48   That's why I think cooking is such a like a powerful,

00:14:51   more than a hobby, but a powerful sort of therapeutic thing

00:14:56   to do at home.

00:14:57   I like it a lot.

00:14:58   - The other thing we did,

00:14:59   and I have to give credit to Amy for the idea,

00:15:01   but it worked out great.

00:15:02   It was we learned to cook prime rib at home, which we--

00:15:05   - Oh, nice, that's hard.

00:15:06   Now I know you and I both enjoyed the prime rib

00:15:10   or the house of prime rib in San Francisco.

00:15:13   And Amy loves prime rib.

00:15:16   And it's our favorite form of like a steak type product.

00:15:19   And we had just always,

00:15:21   we have a good prime rib place here in Philly

00:15:24   and we're regulars there.

00:15:25   And we'd always just thought,

00:15:27   and she's the chef of the family,

00:15:30   but she'd always just heard that you need like

00:15:32   a special oven to do it right, blah, blah, blah.

00:15:35   Her grandmother on her dad's side

00:15:38   was in a restaurant family growing up.

00:15:42   And they had special prime rib ovens at the restaurant.

00:15:45   And she just thought, well, there's no point,

00:15:47   you know, if you have good taste in prime rib, you're not,

00:15:49   but we're like, let's try it.

00:15:51   - If you can't do it the right way.

00:15:52   - A, you know, we got the expensive stuff

00:15:54   from Snake River Farms,

00:15:56   which is very expensive for like meat shipped to your house

00:16:00   in a pandemic, but like not really expensive

00:16:03   compared to like going to a prime rib place,

00:16:06   you know, like the house of prime rib.

00:16:09   No, it came out great every time.

00:16:10   And the secret, it's the same thing with grilling steaks.

00:16:12   The whole secret is you need a thermometer in the meat.

00:16:16   And you cannot eyeball it.

00:16:17   Do not try to eyeball it.

00:16:19   It's impossible, you have no idea.

00:16:20   You just put the thermometer in, get an exact reading,

00:16:23   cook it to the temperature you want, season it the hell up

00:16:26   with salt and pepper before you put it in,

00:16:28   start with a good piece of meat and it's delicious.

00:16:30   And the best thing about,

00:16:31   we would do the prime rib on like holidays in the pandemic.

00:16:36   So like Mother's Day or Easter or something like that.

00:16:38   Leftovers forever and just delicious.

00:16:43   Just like in feeling like, well,

00:16:45   I don't know if this is good to eat prime rib

00:16:47   five nights in a row, but it's really good leftover.

00:16:51   - Right.

00:16:52   Yeah, yeah, that's cool.

00:16:53   I haven't actually tried prime rib.

00:16:55   - It's much easier than I was led to believe.

00:16:57   And to me that the whole secret is,

00:16:59   yeah, you just need a thermometer.

00:17:01   And we've got some kind of oven that has like a thing

00:17:04   that you can plug, it's like connected to the oven.

00:17:07   So it looks like a speaker cable.

00:17:10   Like you plug it into the oven inside

00:17:12   with something that looks like a headphone jack.

00:17:15   And then the other end is just a typical meat thermometer

00:17:19   thing, you stick it in the prime rib and you set it

00:17:22   at whatever temperature they tell you to,

00:17:23   which is pretty low, low and slow, but not crazy slow.

00:17:27   It's not like you have to cook it all day.

00:17:28   But it was a fun sort of holiday thing.

00:17:31   Like early afternoon I'd help her out.

00:17:34   I'd be like her little sous chef,

00:17:36   helping her out lifting stuff.

00:17:37   And it was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

00:17:40   And then like two hours later, delicious prime rib.

00:17:43   - Nice.

00:17:44   - Anyway, that leads me directly,

00:17:45   what a great segue to my first sponsor.

00:17:48   HelloFresh.

00:17:49   Hey, we got you hungry for cooking at home.

00:17:51   HelloFresh.

00:17:52   I swear to God, I didn't really set this up.

00:17:55   I actually, because it wasn't gonna be the first sponsor,

00:17:58   but I just ran through the sponsors.

00:17:59   I was like, you know what, this is a good segue.

00:18:01   Anyway, HelloFresh gets you fresh pre-measured ingredients

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00:18:10   and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy,

00:18:12   fun and affordable.

00:18:14   That's why it's America's number one meal kit.

00:18:16   HelloFresh cuts out stressful meal planning

00:18:22   and grocery store trips so you can enjoy cooking.

00:18:25   The meal planning part is so great

00:18:26   'cause they just, every week,

00:18:28   they have meals to choose from.

00:18:29   You can go through, you look at the ones

00:18:32   that appeal to you, that you think or you know

00:18:34   would appeal to your family.

00:18:36   You order those and then they show up in a nice box

00:18:40   with some dry ice to keep everything fresh.

00:18:42   Everything you need in the right portions

00:18:45   so you don't have extra stuff.

00:18:47   And a lot of them, they have some

00:18:49   that are just 15 to 20-minute dinners

00:18:51   that really are 15 to 20-minute dinners.

00:18:54   It's not like, oh, you can make this in 15 minutes

00:18:56   and 45 minutes later you still haven't started cooking it.

00:18:59   No, it's really, when they say 15 to 20,

00:19:01   it's 15 to 20 minutes.

00:19:03   They've even got stuff like breakfast on the go now.

00:19:06   A lot more options than they did when they first started.

00:19:09   They have over 50 menu and market items each week,

00:19:12   including ready-to-eat salad, sandwiches and soups too.

00:19:15   So there's something for everyone

00:19:17   with recipes designed and tested by professional chefs,

00:19:20   nutritional experts to ensure deliciousness

00:19:23   and simplicity.

00:19:24   Great instructions.

00:19:27   The recipes really do tell you everything to do.

00:19:30   The produce is exquisite.

00:19:31   It's exactly like the sort of produce,

00:19:33   like if you went to the grocery store yourself

00:19:35   and you were picking out the nicest-looking tomato

00:19:38   or the nicest-looking green pepper.

00:19:40   It's what shows up every time in the box.

00:19:43   It's delivered from the farm to your front door

00:19:45   in under a week and it's contact-free.

00:19:49   So if you're still concerned about COVID and stuff like that

00:19:51   you don't have to worry, it all comes sealed up.

00:19:54   It's really great.

00:19:55   And they're saying, HelloFresh is saying

00:19:58   that it can be up to 28% cheaper

00:20:00   than shopping at your local grocery store.

00:20:02   And it's 72% cheaper than a restaurant meal

00:20:04   without sacrificing the quality.

00:20:06   And their source for that is the Zagat Dining Survey.

00:20:09   So where do you go?

00:20:14   Go to hellofresh.com/talkshow14.

00:20:19   That's hellofresh.com/talkshow14.

00:20:24   And the promo code talkshow14,

00:20:30   what's the deal with the 14?

00:20:32   Gets you up to 14 free meals plus free shipping.

00:20:36   That's amazing.

00:20:38   So use that code talkshow14 and that URL,

00:20:41   hellofresh.com/talkshow14,

00:20:44   get up to 14 free meals plus free shipping.

00:20:48   My thanks to them.

00:20:49   We use them here and they're great

00:20:51   and we always feel very happy with them.

00:20:54   Real topics.

00:20:57   Let's start nice and easy.

00:21:00   How about the Apple MagSafe battery pack finally shipped?

00:21:05   - Yeah, yeah, that shipped.

00:21:07   - I have been obsessed with iPhone battery packs

00:21:11   for I guess ever since they were invented.

00:21:14   I own, I think if I went through my office

00:21:17   and all the boxes in the basement

00:21:19   that I've packed up from previous things,

00:21:22   I'm afraid to guess how many battery packs

00:21:26   I've bought over the years.

00:21:28   Yet I don't really live a lifestyle

00:21:31   where I frequently need one.

00:21:33   It is a hoarder mentality.

00:21:35   - It's like safety blankets.

00:21:37   - Well, and I guess also that I've never found one

00:21:40   I truly love.

00:21:41   Like I've never found a perfect one.

00:21:42   Years ago, Mophie had one that opened up

00:21:46   a little bit like a book.

00:21:48   It had like an aluminum case and inside was like,

00:21:52   inside that cover you'd flip out

00:21:55   was a built-in three or four inch lightning cable,

00:22:00   which was one of my, it was probably my favorite of all time

00:22:03   because then you didn't ever have to worry

00:22:06   about having the cable to charge your phone

00:22:09   from the battery pack.

00:22:11   If you had the battery pack with you

00:22:13   and the battery pack had some level of charge in it,

00:22:16   you'd have built-in cable and you could plug it in

00:22:20   and it was relatively small.

00:22:22   My taste in battery chargers is ones

00:22:24   that just give you enough,

00:22:26   the worst case scenario for me is even like WWDC

00:22:31   or something like that where I'm on my phone all day,

00:22:33   I need a little bit at the end of the day.

00:22:37   I don't need some kind of 10,000 milliamp hour

00:22:40   mega battery pack for taking camping or something like that.

00:22:44   But they're never satisfying.

00:22:48   So now Apple's got their MagSafe battery pack

00:22:51   that finally shipped.

00:22:53   It's weird timing, right?

00:22:57   'Cause it's like--

00:22:59   - You mean in the middle of the cycle?

00:23:00   - Well, or like the end of the cycle.

00:23:01   - Like after the iPhone 12 or end of the iPhone cycle?

00:23:04   Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:23:05   I mean, you have to maybe, look, if they're introducing L,

00:23:08   that means they're making no significant changes

00:23:10   to MagSafe, obviously for the next model of iPhone.

00:23:14   So you can infer that, that seems pretty straightforward.

00:23:17   So my guess is because of the modularity of MagSafe

00:23:20   and probably whatever supply chain,

00:23:23   look, you gotta assume that for an accessory,

00:23:26   for a new iPhone, they wanted to ship it day in and day.

00:23:29   And so if they didn't, they ran into some sort of problem.

00:23:31   If this was not an intentional,

00:23:33   let's wait nine months and ship this.

00:23:35   - I think though that they've always had

00:23:38   a weird relationship with the battery packs,

00:23:40   because, or the battery cases, right?

00:23:43   The Apple branded ones.

00:23:44   Because they never ship them day and date.

00:23:47   There's never been one that shipped as a day one peripheral.

00:23:50   Like the earliest they've ever shipped

00:23:52   is like two months after the iPhone.

00:23:55   And they never make a big deal out of it.

00:23:57   And I think it's just the obvious optics of,

00:24:02   oh, if Apple is selling you a battery case,

00:24:04   that means even Apple thinks the iPhone

00:24:06   doesn't have a big enough battery.

00:24:09   Right? And they want to sort of avoid that.

00:24:12   - Oh, I see.

00:24:13   So they're just putting some air in there.

00:24:15   So that they don't have to go like,

00:24:17   hey, here's your new iPhone.

00:24:18   Oh, and here's the thing that makes it usable.

00:24:20   You have to buy this too.

00:24:21   - Right.

00:24:22   'Cause don't you think that--

00:24:23   - Although they already do that with chargers,

00:24:24   but let's not talk about that.

00:24:26   But yeah, yeah.

00:24:27   Yeah, I think so.

00:24:29   I think you're absolutely reasonable assumption there.

00:24:31   I would buy into that.

00:24:32   - It was exactly the case with the infamous iPhone

00:24:36   4 bumper cases, right?

00:24:39   Where the iPhone 4 comes out and six weeks after it ships,

00:24:44   there's this scandal that if you hold the phone wrong,

00:24:48   it doesn't make phone calls or loses its attenuation.

00:24:52   And they had to hold an emergency press conference.

00:24:56   And Steve Jobs had to fly back from vacation

00:24:58   in Hawaii to do it.

00:24:59   And it's still, it's the most unusual Apple event ever.

00:25:04   I mean, at least in modern Apple history.

00:25:08   And they were like, you know what?

00:25:10   We'll just give everybody one of these bumper cases

00:25:13   we're making 'cause the bumper case solved

00:25:15   the attenuation issue 'cause it would keep your skin,

00:25:17   no matter what you did then,

00:25:18   you wouldn't connect the two parts of the antenna

00:25:20   that would cause the problem.

00:25:22   But then the result was Apple says you need a case

00:25:25   to use the iPhone 4,

00:25:27   which wasn't what they were saying at all.

00:25:29   - Mm-hmm, yeah.

00:25:33   Yeah, interesting.

00:25:35   I mean, there's definitely the allegory there for sure.

00:25:38   This one is pretty late though.

00:25:41   - Yeah, it is, right.

00:25:42   - Like, I think you're absolutely right

00:25:45   if you're referring to it in the frame of reference

00:25:46   of say three months out, right?

00:25:48   Or two or three months out.

00:25:49   Something happened here

00:25:51   and maybe it's just supply chain, COVID,

00:25:53   you know, all that stuff, I don't know.

00:25:55   I do feel that this is probably the best that they've done.

00:26:01   You know, the best job that they've done with this,

00:26:05   with a battery pack for a while.

00:26:07   I mean, I was never the kind of person

00:26:09   who crapped on the original design

00:26:12   that they came out with for their battery pack.

00:26:15   - The humpback design.

00:26:16   - The humpback, yeah.

00:26:17   I actually thought, I was like, look,

00:26:19   it's, in many ways, it's refreshingly honest.

00:26:23   It's like, look, we're putting a battery on here.

00:26:25   We're not gonna put empty air in here

00:26:28   just so you don't know it's a battery or whatever.

00:26:31   You know, and like, I, as someone who did from day one,

00:26:36   immediately need this, right?

00:26:38   'Cause I travel a ton for work, right?

00:26:40   I mean, or did at one point.

00:26:43   And travel a lot for work around the world

00:26:45   where I did not know where my next outlet would be.

00:26:48   You know, oh, here's an outlet in the airport.

00:26:49   Just kidding, it doesn't work, right?

00:26:51   Here's an outlet on the airplane, psych, right?

00:26:53   So I definitely would never travel without battery backups.

00:26:57   And even though I would always keep a battery backup

00:27:00   of some sort that could say,

00:27:02   at least partially charge a laptop

00:27:04   or charge my phone several times over,

00:27:06   for ease of use running through an airport

00:27:09   or walking around a city or whatever,

00:27:10   I didn't want the dongle.

00:27:12   So I loved the Mophie clip-on cases

00:27:14   that were just essentially an iPhone case,

00:27:16   clamshell style.

00:27:18   And then you would clip them on

00:27:20   and they would charge your phone

00:27:21   and they had a little indicator in the back

00:27:23   that showed you how much juice was left in your Mophie

00:27:25   and all of that.

00:27:26   But those Mophies were like 60% air or 45% air

00:27:31   or something like that,

00:27:32   because they just conformed to this idea that,

00:27:34   hey, you want this smooth shell back and all of that stuff.

00:27:38   So when the humpback thing came out,

00:27:40   I was like, hey, look, they deleted the air,

00:27:41   which I thought was very Apple and kind of funny.

00:27:44   And I didn't mind it.

00:27:45   And I think a lot of people hate it, right?

00:27:46   Which is fine.

00:27:47   You know, it's a taste thing at that point.

00:27:49   It's not really a functionality thing.

00:27:51   But I think this design, this modular design,

00:27:54   I have actually, so I obviously don't have the battery pack.

00:27:56   Apple didn't send me like any advanced units or anything,

00:28:00   but I do have the Anker version of this.

00:28:04   And Anker has had one for a few months now.

00:28:06   And it's this sort of modular,

00:28:09   I don't believe that they're actually MagSafe certified,

00:28:12   but it is a MagSafe, you know,

00:28:14   magnet array in the back of it

00:28:16   that clips it to the back of your iPhone

00:28:19   or to the back of a case attached to the iPhone,

00:28:21   which I find as the best option.

00:28:23   And I love it.

00:28:25   It's exactly as you said,

00:28:27   this kind of thing where it gives you just enough

00:28:30   to get to where you need to go.

00:28:32   So it is not like,

00:28:34   hey, I'm gonna charge my iPhone three times over

00:28:35   with this thing, right?

00:28:36   It barely charges an iPhone 12 once, barely, you know?

00:28:41   And especially if you're using it

00:28:42   or if it's hot or whatever,

00:28:44   it's gonna struggle to keep up,

00:28:46   but it's just enough to sort of get you over the hump,

00:28:50   you know, that next half mile to where you need to go.

00:28:53   And I think it's absolutely fantastic to have it

00:28:55   in this modular design

00:28:58   where you can easily pop it off and back on,

00:29:00   depending on your use case,

00:29:01   if you need to furiously text something out, you know,

00:29:04   or put a big chunk of text in

00:29:06   and you don't want the lump on the back,

00:29:07   you can just take it off, right?

00:29:09   And then type it out and then pop it back on, you know?

00:29:12   And I think that's really, really great.

00:29:14   And you have the option to use it on a cord,

00:29:16   which charges it very quickly, you know,

00:29:18   because it's over USB-C.

00:29:19   So I actually like,

00:29:20   I think it's a pretty nice little arrangement.

00:29:22   - Yeah, I just bought the Anker and I have,

00:29:24   so I'm in the same situation as you.

00:29:26   I have the Anker.

00:29:27   I have ordered apples,

00:29:28   but it's not coming until sometime later this week.

00:29:31   I think I got like a shipping notification yesterday,

00:29:34   but, or like overnight, you know, while I was sleeping.

00:29:38   I completely agree.

00:29:44   And the nice thing about it compared to the cases

00:29:47   is that the big problem with the cases is,

00:29:49   okay, I think they were like 100 bucks too,

00:29:52   maybe even more.

00:29:53   I know Apple's battery pack is not as 100 bucks.

00:29:57   And the big problem with the cases is

00:29:59   if you get a new iPhone, then it doesn't fit anymore.

00:30:02   And you've got this case,

00:30:04   you've got this $100 battery pack case that doesn't fit.

00:30:07   And whereas this, you know,

00:30:11   I think it's pretty safe to assume

00:30:13   that Apple isn't going to change MagSafe

00:30:15   for a couple of years.

00:30:17   And even if they do,

00:30:18   maybe it would only be to make it a little bit faster

00:30:22   if they can, and it would be backwards compatible,

00:30:25   one would hope, you know,

00:30:26   with the charger stands and stuff like that.

00:30:28   - And even if they do, even if they delete the magnets

00:30:31   or really change them dramatically,

00:30:33   you have the option to still use this as a plug-in battery.

00:30:36   - Right. - You don't in other ones.

00:30:39   - Right, well, and I don't think Apple's

00:30:40   works that way either.

00:30:41   So I kind of feel like the Anker one that's 50 bucks

00:30:45   is thicker.

00:30:48   I don't have them side by side,

00:30:50   and Apple conspicuously doesn't have

00:30:53   like tech spec dimensions of theirs,

00:30:55   but you can tell from the picture how big it is.

00:30:58   - Right.

00:30:59   - It's sort of defined by the shape of the iPhone 12 mini,

00:31:03   just like the wallet attachment.

00:31:08   - Can't be bigger than the mini.

00:31:09   - Yeah, you know, like the little credit card wallet

00:31:12   that they shipped last year.

00:31:14   - Right, it kind of floats on an iPhone 12 or 12 Max.

00:31:17   - Right, but it's exactly the dimensions of a 12 mini.

00:31:21   It is perfectly tailored to both the width

00:31:26   and like the corner, even the corner radius.

00:31:29   That's the thing that makes me feel like for 50 bucks,

00:31:34   this Anker is probably the way to go,

00:31:36   because like you said, then all you need is a USB-C

00:31:39   to lightning cable, and you can charge your iPhone from it

00:31:44   at double the speed, 10 watts, just like you would

00:31:48   a non-magnetic battery pack.

00:31:50   And I think you're exactly right,

00:31:52   that the Anker One is MagSafe compatible,

00:31:56   but not MagSafe certified.

00:31:59   And so therefore it works great with all the MagSafe iPhones

00:32:04   and connects very securely to MagSafe iPhone cases.

00:32:09   Like if your phone is in a regular case,

00:32:11   and then you want to plug this Anker thing in,

00:32:13   it actually seems to stick better in my experience

00:32:16   when I put one of these cases on.

00:32:18   It's like there's more--

00:32:19   - Definitely sticks better on the case.

00:32:20   I think the case magnet is closer to the surface of the case

00:32:24   than the magnet in the back of the iPhone

00:32:26   because of the glass back.

00:32:27   - Yeah, I think--

00:32:27   - And so you end up with like more adherence

00:32:29   and better registration.

00:32:31   - Yeah, but that, you know,

00:32:33   and I'm not normally a case person,

00:32:34   but that's another thing that every year

00:32:36   I end up spending $200 on various iPhone cases

00:32:40   to try them out, even though I know,

00:32:43   I don't really have an active YouTube channel.

00:32:45   I don't review iPhone cases,

00:32:47   but I buy them thinking, well,

00:32:49   I should buy like two or three of these

00:32:50   and find one I really like,

00:32:51   and then tell everybody which iPhone case I like the best,

00:32:55   and then I never get around to it.

00:32:56   And all of a sudden it's September

00:32:57   and there's new iPhones that are out

00:32:58   and none of my cases fit anymore.

00:33:00   - Yeah, yeah, I mean, I buy like two a year,

00:33:06   approximately one to two a year cases.

00:33:10   And I usually buy them just because I like the grip

00:33:12   a little bit better, right?

00:33:13   Just a little bit of grip.

00:33:14   I don't buy anything extravagant,

00:33:16   just the regular iPhone, you know,

00:33:17   the Apple rubber cases typically.

00:33:20   And I buy them seasonally for the color, right?

00:33:24   Like I'll buy a bright one for spring and summer

00:33:26   and I'll buy kind of like a, you know,

00:33:28   more folly one or whatever.

00:33:29   - And I like them too when I'm going on a vacation

00:33:33   for two reasons.

00:33:34   I like to use a case,

00:33:35   even though I'm not normally a case person.

00:33:37   One is the grip and on vacation I'm taking more photos.

00:33:41   And there's a reason why, you know, cameras often,

00:33:44   you know, like professional cameras often have like,

00:33:47   if not leathers, like some kind of rubber type thing

00:33:50   on the part you're supposed to grip.

00:33:51   Like you don't want your camera

00:33:52   to slip out of your hand, right?

00:33:55   So making it more grippy as a camera is useful.

00:33:58   And then number two, I've picked up more scratches

00:34:02   on my phones without a case,

00:34:03   like when I'm away from home than when I'm home,

00:34:07   even though 95% of the time in a normal non-pandemic year,

00:34:12   I'm at home and I think it's just like the,

00:34:15   I'm out of my usual patterns

00:34:17   and I'm putting my phone down on surfaces

00:34:19   I don't usually put it down on.

00:34:21   And you know what I mean?

00:34:23   Like when I'm home, I do the exact same thing every day.

00:34:25   And so I never put my phone face down

00:34:27   on anything that might scratch the glass.

00:34:29   And then I'm away from home, I'm out of my element

00:34:31   and next thing you know,

00:34:32   how'd I get this big scratch on my glass?

00:34:35   What'd I do?

00:34:36   And you know what, I typically will,

00:34:39   so I run without a case and have for years and years

00:34:42   and years, almost 90% of the time I've run without a case.

00:34:45   But I will say my behavior has changed a little bit

00:34:48   over the years because I do value that being able

00:34:52   to set it down on any surface thing,

00:34:54   because without a case, I'm always subconsciously going,

00:34:58   well, this is gonna scratch my phone.

00:35:00   - Yeah, right. - When I set it down

00:35:01   on something, is this gonna scratch?

00:35:02   There's that little mental check that you do,

00:35:05   just like a little loop process

00:35:07   that your brain runs through, I'm setting this down.

00:35:09   Is it a surface that's gonna scratch my phone or not

00:35:12   or damage it?

00:35:13   And if so, then don't do that, right?

00:35:16   Put it in your pocket instead or whatever.

00:35:17   And so it is nice to be able to just toss it around.

00:35:20   It is good for kids in Disneyland and various other things,

00:35:23   just other people touch my phone more, you know?

00:35:25   - Yeah.

00:35:26   - And then I have to say the addition of MagSafe,

00:35:31   because the tackiness of the rubber back

00:35:34   and the magnet strength of the cases

00:35:37   actually makes MagSafe accessories work better.

00:35:40   I have actually been wearing it more for that reason too.

00:35:43   So it's not just, hey, protect the phone.

00:35:46   It's also that actually makes MagSafe accessories

00:35:49   work a bit better, in my opinion.

00:35:51   I just bought this little,

00:35:53   I had been wanting one for a while that worked for travel

00:35:58   and for casual use, and I hadn't found one,

00:36:00   which is an iPhone stand.

00:36:03   And I had, which I think you have as well,

00:36:05   a little plastic credit card style.

00:36:07   And it's sort of cut out and you twist it

00:36:11   into a stand shape, but it's sort of cut and packed flat,

00:36:14   almost like those little metal models

00:36:18   that you get and pop out and--

00:36:20   - Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:36:21   - Almost like that.

00:36:22   - Yeah.

00:36:23   - But I don't like it for writing reasons,

00:36:26   most of which is that it's fragile.

00:36:27   It's already cracked in a couple of places

00:36:29   and still kind of barely works.

00:36:31   So I put out on Twitter, I asked people,

00:36:34   hey, does anybody know a credit card sized iPhone stand

00:36:39   that's MagSafe compatible, right?

00:36:41   That I could just put on the back of my phone,

00:36:43   or if I'm not, I don't need it on the back

00:36:45   of my phone permanently, I can just tuck it away

00:36:47   in a pocket in my bag and not even know it's there

00:36:49   until I sit on a plane or go somewhere

00:36:51   and I wanna prop it up and watch a movie

00:36:52   or prop it up and have the screen visible to me or whatever,

00:36:56   or you can take a picture, right?

00:36:58   And somebody recommended the MOFT cases or MOFT stands

00:37:02   to me, M-O-F-T.

00:37:03   And I think Craig Hockenberry recommended it,

00:37:06   a couple other people recommended it on Twitter.

00:37:07   And so I bought one and it's actually quite nice.

00:37:10   It's a foldable, like origami style case

00:37:14   that is as flat as maybe two to three credit cards stacked

00:37:18   when it's folded.

00:37:19   And then when you pop it out, it does a little origami

00:37:22   and it can stand either vertically or horizontally

00:37:25   at one single angle, you know, nothing special,

00:37:27   nothing, no adjustability or anything like that,

00:37:30   but it does stand the phone up,

00:37:32   which is all I really wanted.

00:37:33   And I've been pretty happy with that.

00:37:35   But I think this speaks to the modularity of MagSafe

00:37:38   and what Apple's hoping to see long-term from the ecosystem.

00:37:43   And I think that people are taking advantage of it

00:37:45   and creating some pretty neat stuff so far.

00:37:47   So I'm anxious to see how this develops over time

00:37:50   as people go like, "Hey, there's real utility here."

00:37:52   And I think the battery case is part of that,

00:37:54   you know, that story, people have been waiting for it.

00:37:57   - I got one of those, yeah,

00:37:58   I had one of those credit card cases.

00:38:00   I don't know how you even know that though,

00:38:01   'cause I know I got it while you and I have been apart

00:38:03   for the pandemic, but I do have one.

00:38:05   It was one of those stupid damn things.

00:38:07   - I know everything, Jon.

00:38:08   - I bought on Instagram and mine cracked too.

00:38:10   And I never really used it and I was never rough with it.

00:38:14   I didn't like put it in my butt pocket

00:38:16   and sit all the time on it and that's how it cracked.

00:38:19   It just sort of cracked while I was playing with it.

00:38:21   And I think the fundamental problem with that,

00:38:23   I don't know the name brand,

00:38:24   I don't wanna throw anybody under the bus,

00:38:26   so I'm glad I don't remember it,

00:38:27   but the problem I figured out with it

00:38:30   is they tried to make it way too adjustable.

00:38:32   Like it's like once you have it in position

00:38:35   and it's folded and you put the iPhone in,

00:38:37   then it's like you can rotate this part of it.

00:38:42   And it's like, no, that's the part that broke

00:38:44   is playing with that, it's too much.

00:38:46   It's like, just give me something I can fold to prop it up

00:38:49   and then I'll figure out how to get the angle right.

00:38:51   Like if I have to prop up the whole thing somehow, you know?

00:38:56   - Yeah, it should be one click, right?

00:38:59   That kind of thing should be you take it out of your wallet

00:39:02   or wherever and you twist it once

00:39:04   and then it stands the phone up.

00:39:06   It should not, they did try to do too much.

00:39:09   They've got these little cutouts

00:39:10   that allow you to adjust the angle to a,

00:39:13   they even have degree measurements on it.

00:39:14   - Yeah, it's the same one, I got the same one.

00:39:15   - It's just like a stand or a sextant, you know?

00:39:17   Like what is this?

00:39:18   - That's the word I was looking for, sextant.

00:39:20   I couldn't, I couldn't, which sounds dirty, but it's not.

00:39:26   - Yeah, you don't need to measure the angles of the sun

00:39:28   and your astrological sign with it.

00:39:30   You just need to stand your iPhone up.

00:39:32   - Right.

00:39:33   - This MOF one works for that, for me.

00:39:35   - If you're shooting a serious video with your iPhone

00:39:38   such that you really need to know

00:39:39   that it's exactly 30 degrees,

00:39:41   you're not using a credit card stand, you know what I mean?

00:39:44   Like if you're using something that folds up

00:39:46   to a credit card, you're not,

00:39:48   you don't really care if it's 25 or 30 degrees.

00:39:51   You're just framing it by eye.

00:39:53   - It's over-engineered and under-delivers, right?

00:39:56   Which is pretty standard

00:39:57   for third-party accessories sometimes.

00:39:59   - It did occur to me though,

00:40:00   'cause I just got this Anker one a couple of days ago

00:40:03   in anticipation of maybe having it and the Apple one

00:40:07   by the time I did the next show, but I don't have 'em both.

00:40:09   But it occurred to me, and then I was doing some,

00:40:13   taking some notes before we recorded

00:40:15   with the specs of the batteries and the prices

00:40:20   of comparing the Anker and the Apple and blah, blah, blah.

00:40:22   And it just occurred to me of how many magnets now

00:40:25   or like when you're in the Apple gadget reviewing spectrum,

00:40:30   how many of the, everything has a magnet now, right?

00:40:33   'Cause the MacBooks have snapped shut

00:40:36   with a magnet for years to close the lid.

00:40:40   The iPads have the craziest magnet system

00:40:44   all over the back of them now

00:40:46   for connecting to the keyboards and various things.

00:40:50   Now the-- - And the pencil.

00:40:50   - The pencil is magnetic now.

00:40:53   It's magnets all the way down.

00:40:56   And it's so crazy because for decades,

00:41:00   one of the cardinal rules of using a computer,

00:41:03   like one of 'em was like,

00:41:05   don't kick the power out of the wall.

00:41:07   Don't lose power while it's writing to disk.

00:41:10   And the other one is don't even get a magnet

00:41:13   in the same room as your computer.

00:41:15   - Yes. - Don't even--

00:41:16   - If you bring a magnet in this room, I will kill you.

00:41:18   I will slaughter you.

00:41:19   Do not bring a magnet in your mic.

00:41:21   I don't care if you work in a big open office space.

00:41:24   It's like no magnets in here because you could,

00:41:26   you know, this is, this, there.

00:41:28   (laughing)

00:41:29   - Our hard drives, think of the hard drives.

00:41:31   - Yeah, don't, it was like a 50/50 call

00:41:34   whether you'd wanna get a magnet near it

00:41:36   or spill water on your keyboard.

00:41:38   It's like, I don't know, if I spill water on my keyboard,

00:41:41   I won't lose data.

00:41:42   I could just get a new keyboard, right?

00:41:43   - Right, right.

00:41:44   - Whereas a magnet would wipe out your data.

00:41:47   And now we've got magnets all the way down.

00:41:49   And I'm sitting here playing around

00:41:51   with how strong the magnet is.

00:41:53   And you know, like I'm holding this iPhone 12

00:41:56   with the anchor case.

00:41:57   - Thank you, solid state memory.

00:41:58   (laughing)

00:42:00   - One other new gadget I wanted to get your thoughts on.

00:42:04   I just, ordinarily maybe not quite daring

00:42:07   Fireball material, but this new Steam Box

00:42:10   handheld gaming PC from what's Steam's parent company, Valve.

00:42:15   - Valve, yeah.

00:42:18   - So for anybody who hasn't seen it,

00:42:19   I think it was announced at the end of last week.

00:42:21   It is effectively a gaming PC

00:42:27   in the form of a Switch, a Nintendo Switch.

00:42:32   But without, with, but you know,

00:42:34   the big difference from the Switch form factor

00:42:37   is that the paddles don't disconnect from the sides.

00:42:40   They're permanent, the controllers.

00:42:42   But you know, I think it's a fair description

00:42:45   that in a form factor that Nintendo pioneered

00:42:48   with the Switch, sort of a horizontal,

00:42:51   you know, like a Knight Rider steering wheel

00:42:57   type form factor, that you can also connect via a dock

00:43:02   to a TV or a display and then play

00:43:07   like you would on a normal TV or display

00:43:11   or something like that, that you can both use

00:43:13   as a console style gaming and handheld style gaming.

00:43:18   But it plays regular PC games for Steam.

00:43:23   400 bucks to start.

00:43:24   The $400 config seems really weak.

00:43:27   And I don't blame them 'cause I get the product marketing

00:43:30   that you kind of want to hit the 400.

00:43:31   - Yeah, you gotta get the price point.

00:43:32   - Right, and then I've seen so many articles say,

00:43:37   you know, Valve's new $400 handheld gaming.

00:43:40   And I'm like, huh, successful.

00:43:42   Even though nobody who knows what they're doing

00:43:44   would ever buy it.

00:43:45   I think you need to spend like 550.

00:43:47   I saw a lot of people buying the mid-level,

00:43:49   which I think is totally reasonable.

00:43:51   You know, and then of course you have the people

00:43:53   who just buy the Macs on everything

00:43:55   and that's why you offer the upgrades.

00:43:56   The same reason Apple offers the high level,

00:43:58   high tier iPhones, right?

00:44:00   They're like, people are just gonna buy

00:44:01   that biggest one, right?

00:44:02   They're gonna, these e-suckers like me and you come in

00:44:04   and they're like, just make a bigger one too, just in case.

00:44:08   And we're like, sure, oh, it's good.

00:44:12   Is there a bigger one?

00:44:13   Oh, okay, I'll take that one.

00:44:16   - Yeah, it's an interesting piece of hardware, right?

00:44:18   So Valve's experiments with this,

00:44:21   I mean, there's a lot of water under the bridge

00:44:23   with Valve and Steam and trying to get into

00:44:26   like the living room and the hand, you know?

00:44:29   It's a, the Steam, many people will remember the Steam Box,

00:44:34   which they launched in like 2013.

00:44:39   And at that time, Gabe Newell said that Linux

00:44:43   is the future of gaming, right?

00:44:45   And everybody was like, ha ha, ha ha ha, right?

00:44:48   And then the Steam Box didn't really go anywhere.

00:44:50   You know, it made some, it was interesting,

00:44:52   it was an interesting experiment.

00:44:55   But the Steam Deck runs on Linux, right?

00:44:59   So, and they definitely have something there

00:45:01   because they can package custom drivers

00:45:04   and custom operators and a custom layer, essentially,

00:45:08   to interpret PC games for the Steam Deck.

00:45:11   It just opens the door so much better than say,

00:45:14   going on Android with an emulation layer or going on,

00:45:18   you know, I mean, just,

00:45:19   it maximizes the performance of the device.

00:45:21   It gives them the ability to write their own software layer

00:45:25   for the hardware in-house.

00:45:27   And I think that it was the right choice, I think.

00:45:30   So in the end, they got their last laugh

00:45:32   'cause I do feel that this is actually

00:45:33   a pretty compelling device.

00:45:34   Now, whether it is good and, you know, lasts

00:45:37   and whatever else, I don't know,

00:45:38   but it is a pretty compelling device on the face of it.

00:45:41   And I honestly, I think the biggest complaint anybody

00:45:44   has had with it so far is the controller placement,

00:45:47   which seems a little top heavy.

00:45:50   - Yeah.

00:45:51   - You know, the actual D-pads, or not D-pads,

00:45:55   the thumb sticks are too high.

00:45:58   And the D-pad and buttons are actually quite high as well.

00:46:01   And they have put these two touch-sensitive controllers

00:46:04   down below those.

00:46:05   And Valve's been obsessed with touch sensitivity

00:46:07   for a long time, actually,

00:46:08   with a lot of their controllers and things.

00:46:11   So it remains to be seen how usable it is,

00:46:14   especially over long gaming sessions.

00:46:17   But overall, the package seems pretty compelling.

00:46:20   I mean, up to 512 gigabytes of storage.

00:46:23   They use NVMe, I believe, memory, which is incredibly fast.

00:46:28   It's a Zen 2 CPU.

00:46:30   It's got an AMD graphics chip with a good 16 gigabytes

00:46:34   of memory in the graphics chip, which is great.

00:46:37   'Cause at that resolution, it should work just fine.

00:46:41   And I think that people in this arena will buy this stuff.

00:46:47   They do wanna play their games

00:46:48   in pretty much every venue possible.

00:46:53   And the interesting thing is about this,

00:46:55   this dovetails with a movement going on in gaming overall

00:47:00   that even what you would call like AAA titles

00:47:04   or high-tier titles in gaming,

00:47:06   and I'm sure you've seen this with Jonas,

00:47:08   are much more about socialization and being with friends

00:47:12   and existing in the same world with friends virtually

00:47:15   than they are any sort of like hardcore gaming apparatus.

00:47:20   And so, yes, there's the pro-cod players

00:47:23   and the streamers and all of that stuff.

00:47:25   But in many ways, those are the broadcasters, right?

00:47:28   And many more people watch those broadcasters

00:47:30   then play those games at that level.

00:47:33   And many more people play those games

00:47:35   to hang out with their friends

00:47:36   and do funny stuff and just mess around

00:47:40   with the gaming environment and just exist together.

00:47:44   And so if you have a portable device,

00:47:45   I actually think it dovetails nicely

00:47:47   with this overall feeling

00:47:49   because they can be with their friends

00:47:51   wherever they are virtually.

00:47:52   They're not tied to a desktop or to a console.

00:47:55   And I think that's very interesting.

00:47:57   - And it's gonna be way more compatible

00:48:00   than trying to do it on your phone,

00:48:01   whatever kind of phone you have.

00:48:02   - Yeah. - Right.

00:48:03   Yeah, that was Jonas's take on this.

00:48:06   I think that the, it's the,

00:48:09   and again, I don't wanna judge the controller placement

00:48:11   without ever having even seen the damn thing in real life,

00:48:14   but just eyeballing it, both the, like you said,

00:48:17   the thumbsticks seem really high.

00:48:19   The A, B, X, Y buttons, the action buttons,

00:48:23   which is sort of universal now on game controllers,

00:48:26   are way up in the upper right corner.

00:48:28   It just seems like an odd placement.

00:48:30   And Jonas's first thought was,

00:48:33   it seems like they moved everything way up high

00:48:35   just to make room for these touch pads

00:48:37   that who knows what you're supposed to use them for?

00:48:40   Like, it doesn't seem like this is an ergonomic placement

00:48:44   of thumbsticks and action buttons.

00:48:46   It seems like this is the best option we have

00:48:49   if we're going to put these track pads on both sides.

00:48:52   - Correct.

00:48:53   It seems like a concession to the track pad,

00:48:55   not some sort of usability decision

00:48:57   that was driven by user comfort first, right?

00:49:01   And we could be wrong, as you said, right?

00:49:04   Like you're judging it without having any hand.

00:49:05   We could be wrong.

00:49:07   Maybe the touch pads have an immense amount more utility

00:49:09   than we think.

00:49:10   Maybe they're just as good as a thumbstick.

00:49:13   They're not, but maybe they are.

00:49:15   Maybe they are.

00:49:16   And we'll see, right?

00:49:17   And that's the part of it where you're like,

00:49:19   okay, you know, we'll see.

00:49:21   We'll judge it once we have it in hand.

00:49:23   But absolutely, it does send the message.

00:49:26   We think these touch pads are much more important

00:49:28   than your thumbsticks, so enjoy.

00:49:30   Now I will say this.

00:49:31   You can't put those thumbsticks above,

00:49:34   or excuse me, those touch pads above the thumbsticks, right?

00:49:36   That's not gonna work, period, from a usability perspective.

00:49:39   So there's some part of it that's like,

00:49:41   they kinda have to be where they are, but--

00:49:45   - Unless you just didn't have them.

00:49:47   - Unless you, correct, correct.

00:49:48   There's a choice.

00:49:49   There's a definite choice being made here,

00:49:51   and it's just a matter of time and usability and testing

00:49:56   to see whether that choice was the right one.

00:49:58   - I probably could have had Jonas on the show this week,

00:50:00   'cause the other related topic is--

00:50:02   - I'm interested to hear what he had to say.

00:50:03   - Jonas has thought on the new Switch OLED.

00:50:08   I think that's actually the name of the product.

00:50:10   I don't know.

00:50:10   - It is, I think it literally is, yeah.

00:50:13   - Which is--

00:50:14   - Nintendo's brilliant about that kind of stuff.

00:50:15   They're just like, I don't know, just call it this.

00:50:17   - They have a new version of the Switch coming out

00:50:20   for the holiday season that has a much improved screen

00:50:23   that is, of course, now, surprise, surprise, OLED.

00:50:27   But all the other specs are the same,

00:50:30   and he's baffled by that.

00:50:33   And he's like, I don't understand why they would do that.

00:50:35   And he loves his Switch.

00:50:36   He's PC gamer first, but he loves his Switch.

00:50:38   He really, and when we travel, he loves to take it,

00:50:40   and he really enjoys the action.

00:50:43   But he feels the Switch has always been

00:50:45   just barely fast enough to run the games

00:50:49   that Nintendo wants you to play on Switch,

00:50:51   so why not give it a spec bump?

00:50:53   And I tried to explain that from Nintendo's perspective,

00:50:56   while they have a thriving platform

00:50:59   that hasn't really gone into decline in popularity yet,

00:51:03   the precise compatibility is a feature, not a bug,

00:51:07   that you know that if the game says

00:51:09   it's a Nintendo Switch game,

00:51:11   you might have the low-cost Switch,

00:51:14   you might have the classic Switch,

00:51:15   you might have the Switch OLED,

00:51:17   but you're gonna get the exact same performance,

00:51:19   and there's no game that's gonna run better

00:51:22   just because you bought the latest and greatest one

00:51:24   from 2021, and that's a feature, not a bug,

00:51:27   but he just doesn't get it.

00:51:29   Whereas--

00:51:30   - It's also a feature of the App Store, right?

00:51:31   Like, you know, the iPhone shirt,

00:51:34   the more powerful iPhone is gonna do things,

00:51:35   but if you're using the native frameworks,

00:51:38   you're gonna get roughly the same performance

00:51:39   out of any iPhone, 'cause it's gonna scale it automatically.

00:51:42   - Right.

00:51:42   But it's, you know, it is still good,

00:51:46   and my other thought on that is it warms my heart,

00:51:49   and as somebody who is very pessimistic

00:51:52   about Nintendo's prospects five, six, seven years ago,

00:51:56   a couple years before the Switch came out,

00:51:58   it warms my heart that they have another hit platform

00:52:01   that even my 17-year-old gaming PC-obsessed son

00:52:06   cares enough about to drag me up

00:52:10   and chew my ear off about.

00:52:12   - Right, that's great, I love it.

00:52:14   Yeah, it's fantastic.

00:52:15   And, you know, it's, yeah,

00:52:17   you only care enough about, I mean, like, he cares, right?

00:52:22   That's why he's like, "Wait, what?"

00:52:24   You know, like, and that's what you want.

00:52:25   You want people, enthusiasts going like,

00:52:27   "Wait a minute, are you sure this is the right move?"

00:52:29   You know, you don't want people going, "Who cares?"

00:52:31   Right, like, that's the worst case scenario,

00:52:32   is people going, "I don't care, do whatever you want."

00:52:36   But the Switch is very interesting too,

00:52:38   because I really do believe that this is like,

00:52:42   if Nintendo is smart, and they have been dumb

00:52:45   and have been smart, alternatively, throughout the years,

00:52:48   you know, very smart in many things like game design,

00:52:50   obviously, very dumb in things like online play

00:52:52   and other areas, but they, if they are smart,

00:52:57   the Switch is sort of the future of all Nintendo consoles.

00:53:01   Right, like, this is not a, "Hey, we had the Switch,

00:53:04   "and now we're gonna have the, the Poomerang," right?

00:53:08   Enjoy your new Nintendo Poomerang with these new things,

00:53:12   right, and I know that they love to play,

00:53:14   and they love to create new ways to play,

00:53:17   but I do feel that the Switch is so potent,

00:53:20   like it's so good in its form factor,

00:53:23   they nailed it so hardcore, that they really need to focus

00:53:26   on creating more Switches, you know, not new paradigms.

00:53:31   Like, this Switch could be the Nintendo console

00:53:35   in perpetuity, and yes, they will increase

00:53:38   hardware capability or add accessories

00:53:41   or change the performance levels or, you know,

00:53:44   even tweak the form factor to some degree,

00:53:46   but this idea, this concept that they had,

00:53:49   the removable controllers, the portability,

00:53:51   the fact that the console is in your hands

00:53:53   and, you know, on your dock, and there is no two separate

00:53:57   consoles and all that stuff, all of that,

00:53:59   they just nailed it, and they need to double down on that.

00:54:02   - Right, just a nice, unobjectionable dock

00:54:05   that you can keep plugged into your TV,

00:54:06   and all you need to, and it'll both charge your Switch

00:54:09   and let you play on your TV, it is, it's a hit.

00:54:14   But anyway, I thought it was fascinating that Steam,

00:54:16   you know, sort of took the idea and ran with it

00:54:18   in the PC direction.

00:54:19   All right, let me take a break here, thank my next sponsor.

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00:56:16   Next on my list of breaking news is this sort of slow,

00:56:20   drip-by-drip leak from a bunch of publications

00:56:24   about this investigation into the NSO Group

00:56:27   and their Pegasus software, which I know, it's a summary.

00:56:32   So the NSO Group is a crackerjack team of top,

00:56:37   maybe the top iPhone hackers, or phone hackers,

00:56:44   'cause probably they hack computers too,

00:56:46   but obviously phones are the big target these days.

00:56:48   Computer hackers, they're from Israel,

00:56:52   they're an Israeli company.

00:56:53   They claim that they only sell their product and service,

00:56:57   they're not like an underground team,

00:56:59   they're on the up and up, they're a commercial organization,

00:57:02   a company that charges a lot of money,

00:57:04   but they supposedly only sell their services

00:57:08   to legitimate law enforcement agencies

00:57:14   in countries that supposedly can be trusted around the world,

00:57:19   and that their terms that they claim

00:57:22   they require law enforcement agencies to use

00:57:25   is that their software will only be used

00:57:27   to target criminals and terrorists,

00:57:30   and I guess bad guys, to use a phrase.

00:57:34   And they're at the forefront of the cat and mouse game

00:57:42   with Apple in terms of NSO Group seeks and finds

00:57:47   and uses exploits in iOS to take control of iPhones,

00:57:53   and Apple seeks to close exploits and vulnerabilities

00:57:59   and entire classes of vulnerabilities

00:58:04   to keep this from happening.

00:58:06   And this investigation, somehow a list of, I think,

00:58:10   hundreds, maybe a thousand phone numbers leaked

00:58:15   that had been attacked by the NSO Group,

00:58:17   and Amnesty International, which is an unusual group

00:58:20   to be sort of spearheading and funding the investigation,

00:58:23   or at least seems to be,

00:58:26   'cause you don't think of Amnesty International

00:58:27   as being at the forefront of computer security journalism,

00:58:31   but if you think--

00:58:33   - Yeah, and there was 50,000 phone numbers.

00:58:34   - 50,000 phone numbers, okay.

00:58:36   So, but that's it, and it was too many

00:58:38   for the investigators to really thoroughly,

00:58:40   they had to pick swaths. - Pick stuff, yeah.

00:58:43   - Yeah, pick stuff.

00:58:44   But if you think of Amnesty International's overall goal

00:58:48   of supporting human rights protesters and organizers

00:58:53   around the world who often, because of the nature

00:58:58   of what they're hoping to bring about change,

00:59:02   are in danger themselves of being targeted by countries.

00:59:08   - Yeah, you really can't concentrate on human rights

00:59:10   without talking about digital rights

00:59:11   and concentrating on that as well.

00:59:13   It's just part and parcel of being a human these days, yeah.

00:59:16   - Right, and this investigation showed that,

00:59:19   some of it's surprising, or I guess none of it, to me,

00:59:24   was shocking, but it's,

00:59:28   like the most interesting tidbit of the news,

00:59:31   and Washington Post had a story,

00:59:33   and The Guardian had a story today,

00:59:37   it's one of these stories where a bunch of organizations

00:59:39   have sort of collaborated and seemingly,

00:59:42   not schemed, but plotted out a, okay, you'll publish this,

00:59:47   and then we'll publish that on the next day,

00:59:50   and it's sort of a drip, drip, drip.

00:59:51   - Yeah, I mean, these stories often get too big

00:59:53   for any one team, and so if a centralized organization

00:59:57   says, hey, we've got all of this data,

00:59:59   they'll often involve multiple newsrooms,

01:00:01   and the newsrooms will chew over the data themselves, yeah.

01:00:06   - I spoke about this on Dithering, I guess,

01:00:08   on the show that came out today.

01:00:10   I thought the Washington Post story was,

01:00:12   it's one of my pet peeves, is a overly sensational headline,

01:00:17   and then comparing it with the webpage title,

01:00:21   which might have been the original headline,

01:00:23   and then they juiced it up, but the original title

01:00:27   of the Washington Post story, or at least the one

01:00:31   that you see in your browser tab,

01:00:34   unless you're using Safari 15, where you don't get

01:00:36   to see webpage titles in your tabs anymore.

01:00:40   But the non-sensational headline in the browser tab

01:00:43   is Apple iPhones were successfully hacked

01:00:46   by NSO's Pegasus surveillance tool,

01:00:50   which is a terrific headline that would grab my attention

01:00:53   and would get me to read it, but then on the actual page,

01:00:56   the headline is, despite the hype, iPhone security

01:01:00   no match for NSO spyware, which is true.

01:01:05   I can't say there's a false word in that headline,

01:01:07   but it paints a very different picture as to the scope of it.

01:01:13   And then the sub headline, which I think tells you

01:01:16   the scope is International investigation

01:01:20   finds 23 Apple devices that were successfully hacked.

01:01:24   - Right.

01:01:25   - Your thoughts.

01:01:28   - Yeah, I mean, 23 is out of over a billion is pretty good.

01:01:33   Even 23 out of 50,000 is pretty good,

01:01:37   you know, in terms of percentages.

01:01:40   But in reality, you go into these things looking at,

01:01:44   I feel like the most important things to look at

01:01:45   are the technical realities.

01:01:50   And so the technical reality of the situation is that NSO,

01:01:53   some of NSO's zero clicks worked on versions of iOS

01:01:57   up to 14.6.

01:01:59   And so it's really a matter of,

01:02:01   hey, are there current vulnerabilities?

01:02:04   - Which was literally just for historical context

01:02:07   in case anybody's listening to this podcast,

01:02:09   not in July, 2021, was literally the current version of iOS

01:02:13   until yesterday.

01:02:15   - Right.

01:02:16   And so if for me, it's not really about the number.

01:02:19   I mean, the number is really how you,

01:02:21   that's all about positioning.

01:02:22   And as you mentioned, you know, kind of choosing how you

01:02:26   sensationalize or scope the headline, right?

01:02:29   And so you go like, hey, this is a big problem

01:02:34   or is it not a big problem?

01:02:35   Well, the fact of the matter is it is a big problem

01:02:38   for anybody who's in this kind of work

01:02:40   and that scope is much smaller than a billion users, right?

01:02:44   So in terms of overall users affected,

01:02:46   it's incredibly tiny.

01:02:47   And that's why I think, you know,

01:02:49   you can point to the iPhone being in general

01:02:52   kind of affected, effective in terms of general security

01:02:55   because it requires this hyper-targeting

01:02:58   by a very intense and well-funded and effective organization

01:03:03   to properly and in a very targeted kind of nasty way,

01:03:09   utilize these vulnerabilities, right?

01:03:14   So it's a little bit of both in that scenario.

01:03:17   You've got, even amongst their scope,

01:03:20   you have a relatively small number of devices

01:03:22   that seem to have been compromised,

01:03:24   but those are targeted, that's what targeting is all about.

01:03:27   You know, those single people could be the voice

01:03:30   of 10,000 or 10 million individual citizens

01:03:35   because they're reporting on an area, you know,

01:03:37   on a regime, in an area where they don't wanna be

01:03:40   talked about and if they could silence a handful of voices,

01:03:44   they'll silence a good amount of the dissent

01:03:46   and the exposure of their, you know, the goings on.

01:03:49   And so that's why it's like a big deal.

01:03:52   I think that in the aggregate, it's like,

01:03:56   whether you position it as something

01:03:59   that everybody needs to worry about it or not

01:04:00   is really the big deal, you know?

01:04:03   And I think it, and the second thing,

01:04:05   the second part about it is how long did these persist?

01:04:09   And as you said, we've got some evidence

01:04:11   that these bugs persisted up until

01:04:14   the next to latest version of iOS at this point.

01:04:16   - And in fact, I wouldn't-- - It's a pretty big deal.

01:04:18   - I wouldn't be surprised if they still persist

01:04:20   because I would think if there's any clues

01:04:24   in what's been unveiled in this reporting

01:04:26   that would give Apple a hint as to what,

01:04:29   whoa, we should look at this,

01:04:31   iOS 14.7, which just came out yesterday, might be too soon.

01:04:35   I wouldn't be surprised if, maybe not all, you know,

01:04:38   but some of them still persist.

01:04:41   And it is interesting, like one of the things

01:04:44   that's interesting about this overall reporting

01:04:46   is that both Amnesty and I think, what is it,

01:04:51   Citizen something or another,

01:04:55   but two, at least two of the people involved in it,

01:04:58   Citizen Lab. - Citizen Lab.

01:04:59   - Citizen Lab. - Yeah,

01:05:00   at the University of Toronto.

01:05:01   - Right, and they both confirmed witnessing

01:05:04   iPhones running iOS 14.6 be exploited

01:05:09   with zero-click vulnerabilities.

01:05:11   So there's two things that are very interesting

01:05:14   about that to me because most of the times

01:05:17   when news about the NSO Group's abilities

01:05:20   or the GrayKey people, is GrayKey the box

01:05:24   or GrayKey the company?

01:05:25   - I always forget. - Doesn't matter.

01:05:28   Well, whatever they are.

01:05:29   But that's the outfit that sells law enforcement.

01:05:33   It's a very different sort of thing,

01:05:35   although from Apple's perspective, it still is--

01:05:38   - GrayShift, I think, is the company.

01:05:40   - GrayShift, they sell the GrayKey device,

01:05:42   and that's a device that they sell

01:05:44   to law enforcement agencies who are in physical possession

01:05:49   of somebody's phone and they connect it by USB

01:05:53   and do something that takes control,

01:05:57   or unlocks the phone and gives them access

01:05:59   to the contents of the phone.

01:06:01   Very different in terms of what your risk,

01:06:06   if you're like, hey, I don't want these people

01:06:10   to have access to the contents of my locked iPhone.

01:06:12   With the GrayKey, they have your phone

01:06:15   and they connect it to this box.

01:06:16   With NSO Group, it is all remote,

01:06:19   and they just send you an iMessage.

01:06:22   This is the part that clearly, judging from the email

01:06:27   I've gotten from daring fireball readers so far,

01:06:29   some of them find it hard to believe,

01:06:30   and so it's worth talking about,

01:06:33   but that it's not like you get this message

01:06:36   from an unknown phone number,

01:06:39   and it has a sketchy-looking URL, and you get hacked

01:06:43   if you tap the URL in iMessage,

01:06:46   which I'm sure is probably an easier exploit to do,

01:06:49   and they probably have ones like that.

01:06:50   - Yeah, that's a fish.

01:06:51   - Right.

01:06:52   That does happen, but if you've been thinking,

01:06:57   well, I would never tap a fishy-looking URL

01:07:01   in an iMessage from an unknown person,

01:07:04   and I might even be savvy enough

01:07:07   that if a message looked like it came from somebody I knew,

01:07:10   but the URL was weird-looking, I still might not tap it,

01:07:14   but this is nothing like that.

01:07:16   This is a message that shows up on your phone,

01:07:19   contains a corrupted GIF image or JPEG,

01:07:24   and the image process, and there might be other exploits too.

01:07:30   Maybe just URLs with weird strings or binary bytes

01:07:36   can trigger it too, but apparently a lot of these bugs

01:07:39   are in the image I/O subsection,

01:07:42   and just by trying to parse the image

01:07:45   so that it can show it to you, the exploit gets to run--

01:07:49   - Executed, yeah.

01:07:50   - Executed and can see the contents of your phone

01:07:54   and do things on your phone.

01:07:55   It's obviously real.

01:07:59   These people have confirmed it.

01:08:01   Pretty scary, but the thing to keep in mind,

01:08:05   and I think Apple's statement on this is very truthful,

01:08:08   that these exploits cost millions of dollars

01:08:11   for NSO Group to develop.

01:08:13   They charge, obviously, more than that,

01:08:16   tens of millions of dollars for these countries to use them,

01:08:20   and they target specific individuals,

01:08:21   but that's not great.

01:08:22   That's still bad.

01:08:23   The publicity is terrible, right?

01:08:25   Apple wants to protect everybody,

01:08:32   and I said this on Dithering 2.

01:08:34   It's like even selfishly, Apple's senior executives

01:08:39   have to think that they might be targets too, right?

01:08:42   Wouldn't Tim Cook be a legitimate target

01:08:46   of a high-level, somebody with tens of millions of dollars,

01:08:49   maybe? - Of course.

01:08:50   - And getting Tim Cook's phone number probably isn't easy,

01:08:56   but it's probably a lot easier

01:08:58   than attacking Tim Cook in any other way.

01:09:01   - Yeah, exactly, right.

01:09:04   And you have a scenario where you could easily see

01:09:07   like Tim sending an email about security,

01:09:11   potential security updates, or being briefed,

01:09:13   probably the inverse, right?

01:09:14   Being briefed about security updates

01:09:16   or changes to, say, iCloud encryption or anything like that,

01:09:20   and getting access to his phone

01:09:21   would give people access to that,

01:09:23   which would give them a leg up on iPhone updates.

01:09:26   I mean, there's an enormous array

01:09:28   of potential attack surfaces there,

01:09:29   so they have to be worried about it.

01:09:31   And for the last four years,

01:09:34   the President of the United States was using an iPhone,

01:09:38   and everybody knew it, and he used it all the time.

01:09:40   And supposedly, from what I've read,

01:09:43   they tried to swap it out as frequently as possible

01:09:46   with a new device.

01:09:48   But it's like a new era in communications,

01:09:53   where even prior to Trump, even with Obama,

01:09:59   it was like Obama had like a specially hardened--

01:10:02   - A hardened phone, yeah.

01:10:03   - Blackberry that the NSA had put together.

01:10:07   Whereas my, I don't think, unless, if they do it,

01:10:12   nobody in public has ever publicized it,

01:10:14   nobody's heard it.

01:10:15   Like if Apple has like a special private secret program

01:10:18   to give hardened iPhones to somebody

01:10:21   like the President of the United States

01:10:22   or other leaders of that stature around the world,

01:10:28   I mean, if that program exists,

01:10:29   nobody has ever even whispered about it.

01:10:31   So I don't think it does.

01:10:33   I think, you know, I think Tim Cook uses the same iPhone

01:10:37   that I use, and you use.

01:10:39   - Yeah, I mean, I do believe that there is a lot,

01:10:41   and there is a lot done, I have heard,

01:10:44   that there's a lot done with provisioning

01:10:48   to lock down the phone.

01:10:49   So in that way, there are special precautions taken,

01:10:52   but as far as like a special high-security model

01:10:55   that runs a different version of the OS, no.

01:10:57   Not that I've heard of.

01:10:58   - Right, and there is, the other thing too is that

01:11:02   it's like security by obscurity is famously

01:11:05   not a great strategy if it's your only strategy,

01:11:08   but it actually does help, right?

01:11:10   Like whatever the phone is on the desk of the president

01:11:15   in the Oval Office, and how that phone is connected

01:11:21   to the standard phone lines so that when the president

01:11:25   calls up somebody, they actually can hear each other.

01:11:29   A lot of that is secret, and that's not enough,

01:11:33   and I'm sure that it's actually using actual encryption

01:11:36   so that when he calls another senior leader

01:11:39   of another G7 country around the world,

01:11:41   there's actual encryption that doesn't have to be secret.

01:11:46   Like that's end-to-end encryption,

01:11:49   what part of the part that's beautiful about it

01:11:51   is that you don't have to be secret about it.

01:11:53   You can tell people exactly how it works,

01:11:55   publish it to see if anybody spots any errors

01:11:58   in your algorithm or your math,

01:12:00   and it's just the fact that it's the way

01:12:04   that it's supposed to work is, requires computing power

01:12:08   that doesn't exist today.

01:12:10   But the secrecy is a nice other layer.

01:12:13   If you don't even know the details of,

01:12:15   well, how exactly is that phone connected

01:12:17   to the phone network, and what is the connection

01:12:19   from A to B?

01:12:21   If you don't even know that,

01:12:22   that's just an added layer of security.

01:12:24   The fact that everybody, a billion people around the world

01:12:27   are running the exact same version of iOS

01:12:30   on a handful, relatively speaking,

01:12:35   handful of hardware devices that anybody can just buy

01:12:40   and take apart and study with anything

01:12:42   they can get their hands on is sort of unprecedented

01:12:46   in electronic communication history.

01:12:49   - Yeah, it is.

01:12:51   I mean, they do, they have the additional layer of,

01:12:55   in all reality, they know that Apple is going

01:13:00   to be chasing these bugs hard and fixing them hard,

01:13:04   so they have this, there's an additional layer

01:13:05   of scarcity which has created the market.

01:13:09   It's almost like if there were a ton of bugs

01:13:11   in the iPhone at all times, everybody would assume

01:13:13   that everything was compromised and not really worry

01:13:15   about that and not really commit themselves

01:13:19   to doing any sort of high sensitivity comms over the iPhone.

01:13:24   But there isn't, instead there's a reputation

01:13:27   for it being hardened, there's a reputation

01:13:29   for it being hard to hack, and there's a reputation

01:13:33   for Apple being all over it and on it

01:13:35   and fixing bugs very quickly,

01:13:38   so there is an enormous market, right?

01:13:41   And that's why groups like the NSO group even exist

01:13:43   and are able to charge tens of thousands

01:13:45   or hundreds of millions, or hundreds of thousands

01:13:47   or even millions of dollars per target, you know,

01:13:52   that a government wants to target, to tackle,

01:13:57   because they know that without this special,

01:14:00   without these very secret and very fresh bugs

01:14:05   and vulnerabilities, there's no way

01:14:07   they'll be able to target them.

01:14:09   So all of their efforts in making the iPhone

01:14:13   as secure as possible has actually created the market

01:14:16   for this kind of thing.

01:14:17   - Right, and it also creates a market for the story

01:14:19   to be made a big deal out of, right?

01:14:22   Like, if there's somebody,

01:14:25   I'll make mathematically extreme hypotheticals,

01:14:30   but if there's two basketball players

01:14:32   and one player is an 80% free throw shooter

01:14:36   and there's another player who's a 99% free throw shooter

01:14:39   who hasn't missed a free throw all season,

01:14:42   the first player misses a free throw at the end

01:14:44   of a big game and it's like, well, that happens,

01:14:46   but if the player who hasn't missed a free throw all season

01:14:50   misses one at the end of the game, it's, oh my God,

01:14:54   they missed a free throw at the end of the game.

01:14:55   But it's, you know, nobody's 100% free throw shooter,

01:14:59   you know, and so it's a bigger deal when a platform

01:15:03   that is more secure, not just considered more secure,

01:15:06   but by all objective measures of outsiders

01:15:09   is truly the most secure computing platform for use.

01:15:13   The fact that it still isn't perfect

01:15:16   means that the publicity-wise, when we can prove

01:15:20   that it's been taken advantage of and exploited,

01:15:22   it's a bigger deal and it's just human nature,

01:15:25   it's more interesting.

01:15:27   - Yeah, Android devices insecure,

01:15:29   or Android devices have bugs, news at 11,

01:15:32   you know, that's a much different ring.

01:15:35   And not even because Google doesn't do their best,

01:15:37   I mean, they have security teams

01:15:38   and some of the best security researchers in the world,

01:15:41   but we all know that because of the fragmented nature

01:15:43   of Android, people are running all kinds

01:15:45   of different versions, they have hardware

01:15:47   and special versions of Android later on top of it

01:15:49   by the manufacturers who may not have

01:15:51   the same rigor as Google.

01:15:52   So like, this is not a Google bashing exercise, right?

01:15:55   But, 'cause their security teams are top notch.

01:15:57   But you just know that there is more of a chance there.

01:16:01   There's much more of a chance

01:16:03   that those things could be compromised, and maybe.

01:16:06   And it's just not as big of, it's just not news, you know?

01:16:09   Or at least not huge news.

01:16:11   And in, you know, maybe news on a specific individual,

01:16:14   especially if something, you know,

01:16:15   unfortunately were to happen to them,

01:16:16   or if there was some action taken by a government,

01:16:18   and the news comes out, oh, they had an Android device,

01:16:21   it was broken into, and blah, blah, blah.

01:16:23   But you attach it to the iPhone,

01:16:24   which has a completely different reputation,

01:16:26   and the security teams, you know,

01:16:28   sort of are able to ensure that the bug fixes

01:16:31   as they do put out are, they end up on people's devices

01:16:35   very quickly, within weeks or months

01:16:37   of it being published, versus years or never.

01:16:41   Then it becomes news.

01:16:42   That's part of that why it's news formula.

01:16:46   - The other thing that's pretty interesting

01:16:47   about this particular method of exploit,

01:16:50   sending a corrupt image carefully constructed

01:16:53   to exploit a bug in image processing in an iMessage,

01:16:56   is it something Apple specifically addressed a year ago

01:17:00   with a new technology they called Blast Door,

01:17:04   which is exactly what you think, which is sort of,

01:17:07   okay, any sort of, and it's in iOS 14,

01:17:11   it was announced at WWDC last year.

01:17:14   An image comes to you in iMessage,

01:17:16   iMessage doesn't try to decode the image right there itself,

01:17:21   it puts it in this Blast Door technology,

01:17:25   which is like a sandbox in the sandbox,

01:17:28   where the image is processed,

01:17:30   and then only after it is processed there

01:17:33   does it come out of the Blast Door,

01:17:36   and it's supposedly safe.

01:17:37   Obviously there's holes in the Blast Door, apparently.

01:17:41   - Yeah, apparently there's a little too much kiloton,

01:17:46   future kilotons.

01:17:46   - Right, but it'll be interesting to see,

01:17:49   I mean, and again, you don't really expect Apple to,

01:17:52   if they can figure out what's going on here

01:17:54   and they close it, you don't really expect Apple

01:17:55   to be forthcoming about the exact details of this,

01:17:58   both A, because they're Apple

01:18:00   and they don't wanna talk about it,

01:18:01   but B, because it's part of the actual security

01:18:06   is not tipping their hand so much

01:18:10   to the people they're trying to keep out.

01:18:12   But it is interesting.

01:18:13   - Yeah, their vulnerability disclosures

01:18:15   and their bug fix disclosures are typically,

01:18:18   hey, we fixed a bug in this particular subroutine

01:18:20   or this particular framework.

01:18:21   - But it's an interesting idea, though,

01:18:24   to encapsulate the entire idea

01:18:27   of a corrupt image coming into iMessage,

01:18:32   and let's just encapsulate the whole thing

01:18:35   into a safe sub-sandbox,

01:18:38   is an interesting meta-strategy,

01:18:41   as opposed to let's hire security experts

01:18:44   to pour through our source code line by line,

01:18:48   looking for possible buffer overflows

01:18:52   in our C++ code that does the image processing,

01:18:57   tens and probably hundreds of thousands of lines of code,

01:19:00   line by line, and trying to figure that out

01:19:03   and fix the bugs one by one.

01:19:05   It's like, instead of playing whack-a-mole,

01:19:06   it's an attempt to put the whack-a-mole game into a cage

01:19:11   and say, well, who cares?

01:19:13   It's all in the cage.

01:19:14   - Yeah, if it doesn't execute, then we can let it in,

01:19:18   and if it does, then we sequester it, yeah.

01:19:21   - All right, let me take another break here.

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01:21:33   I guess the next topic I'll talk about

01:21:36   is the Safari 15 user interface in Broglio.

01:21:41   (laughing)

01:21:43   - Yes.

01:21:44   - Which is, I wrote about, I wrote,

01:21:49   and I'm really happy with the way that piece came out

01:21:52   because I wanted to be careful,

01:21:54   'cause I didn't wanna come across as an angry crank,

01:21:57   but I also didn't want to pussyfoot around the fact

01:22:01   that I thought, this is a mistake,

01:22:03   and I don't wanna live for a year with this UI.

01:22:07   I mean, it was so bad, like on the phone,

01:22:11   when I installed beta one of iOS 15 on a spare iPhone,

01:22:15   that I was genuinely thinking, if they stick with this UI,

01:22:19   I genuinely have to think about not getting

01:22:21   a new iPhone next year and keeping my iPhone 12 on iOS 14,

01:22:26   and hope that they fix it.

01:22:29   - And it's no vulnerabilities at all.

01:22:32   - Right, right, well, and hopefully they will,

01:22:34   well, I guess with iOS, it's hard to,

01:22:36   yeah, you don't really get to do that.

01:22:37   It's like with macOS, you can skip a major update

01:22:40   and still get minor updates to the older version,

01:22:42   but with iOS-- - Yeah, for security

01:22:44   and other things, yeah.

01:22:45   - Right, but with iOS, if you don't upgrade to the iOS 15,

01:22:48   you're running an outdated OS.

01:22:51   - Yeah, in my opinion, too, by the way,

01:22:52   this is hearkening back to our earlier discussion about NSO,

01:22:55   but they really should divorce security updates from that.

01:23:00   I know they do put out minor patches all the time

01:23:02   for security patches and updates,

01:23:04   and they have, in the past, if it's a vulnerability

01:23:08   that's a big problem, come out with security patches

01:23:11   for older versions of iOS.

01:23:12   You've seen this happen in the past.

01:23:14   But I feel that they should be wholly divorced from it,

01:23:18   and they should be just like it happens on macOS,

01:23:22   where you get a little security update,

01:23:23   and maybe it's automatically applied.

01:23:24   Maybe you manually apply it, depending on your settings,

01:23:27   but it's just like a blip, and it updates,

01:23:29   and maybe you restart, maybe you don't,

01:23:30   and you never have to worry about it, right?

01:23:32   I think they should update the update system for iOS

01:23:37   to support immediate security updates,

01:23:41   and maybe they're already working on this,

01:23:43   but it should be near real-time, hey, we've got a fix.

01:23:47   We validated it.

01:23:48   It's ready to ship.

01:23:49   Okay, cool, wait for six weeks.

01:23:51   No, you know, ship it now, immediately.

01:23:54   It'll go out to everybody's phone tonight,

01:23:55   and tomorrow morning, they'll wake up,

01:23:57   and they'll be like, hey, we patched it.

01:23:58   It's a little security update.

01:23:59   Don't worry, everything else is the same.

01:24:01   Like, in my opinion, it should be separate from it.

01:24:04   - Well, a lot like the way the Mac does it,

01:24:06   where you don't get divorced

01:24:08   from pretty steady security updates

01:24:13   just because you're running last year's version of macOS,

01:24:16   or two years ago's version of macOS,

01:24:19   and there's a limit to it.

01:24:20   I think two years,

01:24:21   if they keep all these systems on an annual schedule,

01:24:27   two major versions is pretty good.

01:24:29   One major version, I think, would be the minimum,

01:24:32   because I think there's a lot of people, I'm sure of it.

01:24:34   I mean, I'm an idiot, and I get new phones every year,

01:24:37   and I'm already running the iOS 15 beta on a spare phone,

01:24:41   and if so far, it's pretty,

01:24:43   I like iOS 15 overall on the phone,

01:24:46   so if it wasn't for Safari,

01:24:47   I'd be very tempted to put beta three,

01:24:50   or maybe the next beta, on my regular day-to-day phone.

01:24:54   End of July is often when I start running

01:24:59   the summer next big version of iOS on my daily phone

01:25:03   just to get used to it,

01:25:05   but I realize that there's an awful lot of people out there

01:25:07   who are much wiser than I am,

01:25:11   and they're just genuinely

01:25:15   conservative about it, right?

01:25:17   iOS 13 shipped, and it was sort of a disaster.

01:25:20   I mean, disaster's overstating it,

01:25:22   but that was the version two years ago

01:25:24   where the new hardware came out with iOS 13.0.

01:25:28   13.0 never shipped to people as an upgrade.

01:25:32   13.1 did, like three days after the phones

01:25:37   started shipping to people.

01:25:38   - And then they shipped a bunch of updates

01:25:40   sequentially after that. - Yeah, and even iOS 13.1

01:25:43   was, by the standards of a non-beta iOS release,

01:25:48   was extremely buggy.

01:25:49   It just was.

01:25:50   I mean, was it unusable?

01:25:51   No, it wasn't like people's phones

01:25:54   were breaking left and right,

01:25:55   but lots of crashes and just weird stuff.

01:25:57   It was just a collision of Apple's annual hardware schedule

01:26:02   with the, ooh, the software's not quite

01:26:06   on the same schedule, but the hardware can't run iOS 12,

01:26:09   so we have to ship iOS 13, whether it's ready or not.

01:26:12   And so there's people who very reasonably

01:26:14   would look at that situation and think,

01:26:17   well, I'm never going to update to iOS new dot whatever

01:26:22   until it gets to like new point two,

01:26:24   maybe like the first update that comes out in November.

01:26:28   That would be like a reasonable rule of thumb,

01:26:31   but that shouldn't leave them exposed to bugs

01:26:33   that are discovered in August or September.

01:26:36   - Yeah, exactly.

01:26:38   And you get that, once you get a reputation,

01:26:41   that's the difficulty of having this reputation

01:26:44   for solid software updates,

01:26:45   is once you ship one rough one,

01:26:49   you kind of lose years of rep and years of progress

01:26:53   around this idea that everybody can and should update

01:26:56   immediately to get all the latest security

01:26:58   and patches and updates and all of that.

01:27:00   That's why iOS adoption has been so high,

01:27:02   because the reputation has been,

01:27:04   hey, you may not like every feature,

01:27:06   and there may be a bug or two here and there,

01:27:07   but mostly it's going to be fine.

01:27:09   Just update immediately, right?

01:27:10   And in this case, if you create this reputation

01:27:13   for every once in a while we have a hiccup,

01:27:15   because X, Y, or Z, scheduling conflict,

01:27:19   basically, with hardware, that's okay.

01:27:21   You're still going to get the security updates, right?

01:27:23   Like that should be the state,

01:27:25   rather than having to rely on your perfection

01:27:29   in shipping new software every year,

01:27:31   day in, year in, year out,

01:27:32   because every once in a while,

01:27:34   some shit's going to happen, you know?

01:27:35   And when it happens, you don't have to worry about people

01:27:38   not updating security patches,

01:27:40   because those are on a separate track.

01:27:42   - And then there's the emoji track, right?

01:27:45   You and I have talked about this on the show before,

01:27:47   but I know it sounds like a gag,

01:27:49   but it really is true that there's an awful lot of people

01:27:53   over the years who will silence their iOS update alerts,

01:27:58   but then as soon as they get a message from a friend

01:28:01   that has an emoji that shows up as a square with an X in it,

01:28:05   and they're like, "What's that?"

01:28:06   And they're like, "Oh, you don't have the new emoji

01:28:07   "for whatever?"

01:28:08   And they're like, "New emoji?"

01:28:10   And it's like, immediately leave the chat,

01:28:13   go to settings, general software update.

01:28:15   - Yeah, I can tell you from personal experience

01:28:18   that we publish like, "Hey, there's a bunch of new emoji

01:28:20   "in iOS," those articles, boom, people love that.

01:28:22   - But they do, I don't think it's a coincidence

01:28:24   that those, "Hey, here's this year's new emoji,"

01:28:27   usually come out in the point two release, right?

01:28:30   It's like, this is when the OS is really solid,

01:28:32   we really do want-- - Juice the numbers a bit.

01:28:34   - Yeah, let's get everybody on it, you know, get the new--

01:28:37   - I love it, yeah.

01:28:39   (laughing)

01:28:41   - What was your take on the Safari UI changes?

01:28:46   - Yeah, I don't know, I mean, so I always try to resist

01:28:50   having like, violent reactions to these things,

01:28:54   simply because I do feel it's human nature, right?

01:28:57   And you're gonna look at it and you're gonna go,

01:28:59   "Oh, this is new, and it's terrible, and God dang it,"

01:29:02   you know, and it doesn't work the way it used to.

01:29:05   And so you have to kind of get past that.

01:29:07   So I've been trying to get past that a bit.

01:29:08   Now, some people are probably more sure of themselves

01:29:11   and more able to distance their thinking from, you know,

01:29:15   that immediate reaction, but I know myself, right?

01:29:17   And so I know that I'll have the hot take in my own brain,

01:29:21   right away, and I need to let the hot take pass

01:29:23   and kind of live with it a bit.

01:29:25   And so like, on iOS, there are a few things,

01:29:28   I think that a hybrid of the old and new models,

01:29:31   it will actually be better than what they currently have.

01:29:34   So like, the current new model doesn't really work,

01:29:37   I don't think, and I think they need to tweak it

01:29:40   in many small ways, but I don't mind certain things about it.

01:29:44   I actually do like the bottom bar, I think it's fine,

01:29:48   but the tab switching is really funky.

01:29:51   The new tab handling, I think, is really awkward,

01:29:53   and I don't know why anybody would ever want

01:29:55   to manage their tabs this way,

01:29:58   but the bottom bar is nice, the bottom navigation is nice.

01:30:02   I like that aspect.

01:30:03   It's way too finicky, and once again,

01:30:06   beta software, caveats included, et cetera, right?

01:30:09   But it's way too finicky right now about what happens

01:30:13   when you're trying to enter a URL,

01:30:15   and when you enter a URL, it goes back to the old way.

01:30:20   Like, you enter it, so you enter a search term or whatever,

01:30:24   it looks just like iOS 14 does, once you enter it.

01:30:28   And I think that that's confusing, the mode switching,

01:30:31   it's like, which one is it?

01:30:33   And so you have to kind of get that,

01:30:35   wrap your head around that.

01:30:37   When that model, though, is translated from iOS to macOS,

01:30:42   in addition to the things that you mentioned,

01:30:45   like page titles, which I rely heavily on,

01:30:48   variety of other things, like the clothes icon

01:30:51   being hidden behind the icon, the--

01:30:54   - The favicon, right.

01:30:55   - The favicon, yeah, like why?

01:30:57   You should never destroy a brand.

01:31:00   (laughs)

01:31:01   You know what I mean?

01:31:01   Like, that's not, Apple above all should understand

01:31:04   the power of like, I'm gonna click on this to delete it.

01:31:07   You know, that doesn't, don't do that.

01:31:08   You know, you should never click, do that.

01:31:10   - You think you're clicking on the little green

01:31:12   TechCrunch logo, and you didn't realize it

01:31:15   because your mouse, you're good and accurate with the mouse,

01:31:18   and you've just closed the tab.

01:31:20   - Right, right, and then it's split second,

01:31:22   you know, that it changes over to the close,

01:31:24   you didn't notice, and boom, you know, you've closed it.

01:31:27   So there's things like that.

01:31:28   I don't like at all on the iPad,

01:31:32   and even on Mac OS to some degree,

01:31:35   well, not to some degree, it happens all the time,

01:31:37   but this floating bar that goes across multiple tabs

01:31:42   and windows is awful, in my opinion.

01:31:45   Like, this sort of like, you've seen this thing, right?

01:31:48   This super, superseding bar that sort of hovers

01:31:51   over the top of say, two side-by-side Safari pages.

01:31:55   I find that to be enormously distracting.

01:31:58   I think they should be, it should be on the active window,

01:32:01   right, like, you know, if you tap into one Safari window,

01:32:05   the bar should be there, if you tap into the other one,

01:32:07   it should move over, right?

01:32:08   Animated, have fun with that, but don't, you know,

01:32:11   don't make it, what bar am I entering text into?

01:32:13   That doesn't make any sense,

01:32:14   or what window am I entering text into?

01:32:16   It's the same old active window shit

01:32:19   that we've dealt with for years on desktop,

01:32:21   like you need to know which window's active.

01:32:23   You know, even Chrome, every third-party app

01:32:26   will tell you which window's active

01:32:28   by a slight change in UI,

01:32:30   and that's what's missing there for me.

01:32:32   - Yeah, it's a lack of physicality, you know?

01:32:37   It's, there's like the traditional interface for tabs

01:32:42   is very, it is analogous to physical paper

01:32:47   or cardboard tabs on folders, right?

01:32:49   There's like a connection, and then there's,

01:32:52   even though there's much less three-dimensional depth

01:32:56   in our user interfaces today across all operating systems,

01:33:00   I mean, that's a trend that is simply decade-long everywhere

01:33:05   that there's less fake 3D depth,

01:33:07   but there's still, it's like in Safari 14,

01:33:12   it's like there's a connection.

01:33:13   The active tab is connected to the stuff above it,

01:33:16   and it tells you, oh, this is the one that's active,

01:33:19   and all these other tabs I might have open

01:33:21   are behind it a little bit,

01:33:25   little bit of depth behind it,

01:33:26   and if you do click on one of those,

01:33:28   then they get the, the line disappears,

01:33:31   and it looks active, and it's,

01:33:33   you don't even have to think about it, right?

01:33:35   It's like the more you talk about it,

01:33:36   you feel silly because it seems so obvious,

01:33:39   but it's like, it's this whole affordance that you,

01:33:44   because it's the way our brains work,

01:33:46   you don't even have to think about it,

01:33:48   whereas this new interface is something that no matter,

01:33:53   they could tweak it and make the contrast

01:33:55   more between the active one or something like that,

01:33:58   but it's still something you have to think about

01:34:00   because it's not analogous

01:34:02   to the way anything works in the real world.

01:34:04   - Yeah, you're forced with either hoping that it's correct

01:34:09   or adding an additional step, right,

01:34:12   to every action that you take

01:34:14   to make sure that you're typing in the right window

01:34:16   or that you're acting on the right thing,

01:34:18   and so if you, if you're gonna do that,

01:34:22   if you're gonna bet on that model,

01:34:24   then you had better either guess

01:34:26   what the user wants to do right 99.999% of the time

01:34:31   or make it easier for them to see at a glance,

01:34:35   and I don't think they're capable of guessing

01:34:37   which window I wanna type in at all times.

01:34:39   I just don't, so you need to make sure

01:34:42   to make it extremely evident which one I'm in,

01:34:45   and right now, the current design does not do that.

01:34:48   - I think more interesting, though,

01:34:51   has been the fact that a month,

01:34:54   or five, six weeks after WWDC,

01:34:57   Apple has clearly taken the public criticism of it to heart

01:35:04   in a way that people, I think, has taken,

01:35:08   I think as surprised as people who care

01:35:10   about the Safari user interface might have been

01:35:13   by what they saw from what was shown at WWDC,

01:35:17   people seem more surprised

01:35:18   that Apple is immediately taking the feedback

01:35:21   and tweaking what they're shipping,

01:35:25   and that they've changed the tabs in Mac Safari to be,

01:35:29   again, there's a lack of a physical analogy

01:35:34   to the visual style of the tabs,

01:35:36   but there is a tab bar now

01:35:37   where there wasn't in the version in June,

01:35:41   and the iPhone one has seen some significant tweaks,

01:35:44   and though the iPad version hasn't changed,

01:35:47   they off the record told me,

01:35:50   and they told other reporters and journalists

01:35:53   that it just didn't make it into Beta 3.

01:35:56   iPad OS Safari is going to see changes

01:36:00   much like what we've seen with Safari for Mac already,

01:36:05   and emphasized to me that they're listening to the feedback.

01:36:10   This is why they're doing the Beta.

01:36:12   This is why they have the public Beta program

01:36:15   for non-developers for these versions,

01:36:18   and they really are listening,

01:36:21   and there are a lot more changes to come,

01:36:24   even though it doesn't seem like

01:36:25   there's a lot of time for it,

01:36:26   and I guess part of that too is that

01:36:29   they don't necessarily have to make all the changes

01:36:31   by 15.0 shipping probably in September with new iPhones,

01:36:36   that they could ship even further ones in 15.1,

01:36:42   but there's a sense of hustle on their end

01:36:46   of okay, let's address this,

01:36:47   and I kind of get the feeling,

01:36:49   both from private conversations I've had

01:36:53   with some friends at Apple,

01:36:54   and the background discussions I've had semi-officially,

01:36:59   putting it all together,

01:37:02   I kind of get the sense that,

01:37:04   and this is so not surprising,

01:37:08   but we just never know about this,

01:37:09   but that this design was not universally popular

01:37:13   within Apple before WWDC, right?

01:37:17   That there's, a lot of this stuff comes together

01:37:20   in the weeks leading up to WWDC,

01:37:22   and the final decision of okay,

01:37:24   what are we gonna put in the keynote,

01:37:26   what are we gonna emphasize,

01:37:27   what are we gonna make a five-minute segment about,

01:37:29   and what is even gonna make it into iOS 15?

01:37:32   Maybe, I'm sure there are various projects

01:37:35   in various apps around iOS and macOS.

01:37:38   Maybes for this year's OSs,

01:37:41   and we're like, well, not ready yet, let's hold it,

01:37:43   and maybe we'll ship it mid-year,

01:37:45   like they do with a lot of stuff now,

01:37:47   like in a 15.5 update,

01:37:49   but we won't even talk about it now

01:37:50   'cause we don't wanna promise it,

01:37:52   or maybe we'll wait 'til next year, who knows?

01:37:54   And then all of a sudden in May,

01:37:57   there's a lot more Apple employees internally

01:38:00   who are running the pre-beta builds of what's iOS 15,

01:38:04   and a lot of them, when they saw the new Safari,

01:38:08   were like, what, what is going on?

01:38:11   Not just like this is bad, but this is confusing.

01:38:15   Like, I work at Apple, and I'm an engineer,

01:38:19   or a designer, or somebody,

01:38:20   and I consider myself a pretty savvy web browser user.

01:38:24   I'm confused by Safari now,

01:38:26   and Safari is supposedly, and historically,

01:38:29   an exquisitely well-crafted user interface for a browser.

01:38:35   Like, all arguments about web standards,

01:38:39   and Chrome being on the leading edge of supporting,

01:38:44   for lack of a better catch-all phrase,

01:38:47   application development within the browser

01:38:50   as web technology, as apps,

01:38:52   versus Safari's more conservative stance

01:38:55   on embracing new standards as they come out,

01:38:59   or are proposed even.

01:39:01   Putting all that aside, just the browser engine aside,

01:39:05   Safari is known for having a terrific user interface

01:39:09   for a web browser, and then all of a sudden,

01:39:11   there's a version, and people are lost,

01:39:14   and don't even know what tab they're on,

01:39:15   and where do I see the page title?

01:39:19   How do I get to my book, Mike?

01:39:20   How do I get to my bookmarks is the weirdest problem to me.

01:39:24   - Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of things.

01:39:26   I mean, you outlined some of them,

01:39:27   so it's not like we need to re-litigate ad nauseum,

01:39:29   but there's a bunch of stuff about it

01:39:31   that is just really confusing,

01:39:33   like having every action on Safari,

01:39:38   even mobile Safari, especially mobile Safari,

01:39:39   where it needs to be quicker than anything.

01:39:44   Having every action disappear under one, two,

01:39:47   or even three layers of disambiguation.

01:39:49   You gotta drill down several layers

01:39:53   to get to just the standard share sheet,

01:39:55   two layers at least.

01:39:56   There's just a bunch of stuff like that.

01:39:59   The bottom bar, famously, famously,

01:40:01   Safari has been a browser across all platforms

01:40:04   that has honored web content the best that it can,

01:40:08   and rendered it extremely well.

01:40:10   And then on mobile Safari especially,

01:40:14   it has done, and famously, was the first browser

01:40:18   to treat web content as native content,

01:40:21   and to get out of its way,

01:40:23   and to maximize screen real estate, all of this.

01:40:26   And then you have now this bottom bar,

01:40:28   which I actually really like in terms of like,

01:40:30   hey, I'm gonna smash into this and type something,

01:40:33   and get it going.

01:40:34   But then it acts weird.

01:40:36   Like you type on it to tap, and now it's at the top.

01:40:39   Okay, that was just at the bottom,

01:40:40   but now it's at the top, and you're typing.

01:40:41   And then you type at the top.

01:40:43   Okay, fine, and I hit go.

01:40:44   But now it goes back to the bottom,

01:40:46   and if there's a piece of content

01:40:47   at the bottom of the screen that I wanna read,

01:40:48   I have to scroll down a little bit to make it go away.

01:40:50   But not too much, 'cause if I scroll too much,

01:40:52   then now it pops back up.

01:40:55   It's just really weird.

01:40:57   It really is a little flighty at the moment.

01:40:59   And speaking in terms of a browser

01:41:02   that you expect to treat screen real estate with respect,

01:41:06   and be extremely crisp and conservative

01:41:09   in taking over parts of the real estate,

01:41:11   that floating bar is really cool for input,

01:41:16   and not so great for reading, and output,

01:41:21   I guess you'd call it.

01:41:22   And that is the part of it

01:41:24   that needs to be figured out, I think.

01:41:26   - Yeah, it feels, for lack of a better term,

01:41:28   it feels a little dishonest,

01:41:30   because the floating bar creates the illusion

01:41:33   that because it's floating,

01:41:35   and it doesn't take up the whole bottom of the display,

01:41:39   it's letting you see more content behind it.

01:41:42   But there's a drop shadow,

01:41:44   and there's the system bar to get to the home screen.

01:41:49   And there's a drop shadow.

01:41:52   Did I say drop shadow?

01:41:53   But there's a drop shadow, and there's this bar,

01:41:54   and there's not much room.

01:41:56   So you can't read that text anyway.

01:41:59   It might as effectively,

01:42:01   so at a glance, it creates the illusion

01:42:04   that it's letting more content

01:42:06   at the bottom of the screen show through,

01:42:08   but it's absolutely unusable and untappable,

01:42:11   and it's just a bit weird.

01:42:14   But I'm heartened by the fact that Apple is hustling

01:42:17   to address the criticism,

01:42:19   and maybe just showed their wildest version of a new idea,

01:42:24   and are quickly backtracking on it.

01:42:27   The thing I'm reminded of was the iOS mail,

01:42:30   the iPhone mail redesign, I think two years ago,

01:42:33   that took five buttons at the bottom of mail

01:42:37   and turned it into one button

01:42:39   that just looked like the reply button.

01:42:42   And when you hit that reply button,

01:42:44   it opened up something like a popover,

01:42:47   like the sharing sheet,

01:42:48   that had all the stuff you could do with the message.

01:42:52   And they had all this room.

01:42:54   So in the name of minimalism,

01:42:56   it's kind of cool to just say,

01:42:57   "Well, we've simplified mail down to one button."

01:43:02   But you haven't really.

01:43:03   You've just simplified it to a junk drawer

01:43:05   where you've put all the buttons,

01:43:06   and you had this room to put the other buttons.

01:43:09   And they eventually put those buttons back,

01:43:11   and mail is a lot more like it used to be,

01:43:14   but it didn't happen immediately.

01:43:17   It didn't happen in July after WWDC.

01:43:20   I find that to be a positive sign

01:43:25   that they're immediately taking action

01:43:32   and considering criticism.

01:43:35   Not reacting.

01:43:36   It's not like a knee.

01:43:37   I don't think there's anything knee-jerk about it,

01:43:39   but they're just considering criticism.

01:43:42   And truly, must be a lot of it is internal,

01:43:46   just internal people at Apple who are like,

01:43:47   "Yeah, this is what I was saying.

01:43:49   This looks cool maybe, but isn't actually usable,

01:43:53   so therefore it's not a great design."

01:43:55   - Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of it really boils down to that.

01:44:00   It's like, in concept, this idea that you have less

01:44:05   on the screen that isn't content is a great idea.

01:44:10   Right, that's a theological statement that rings true

01:44:15   with how, I'm just being a mobile safari at this point,

01:44:18   but this applies to iPadOS as well.

01:44:20   But if you go from that philosophical standpoint,

01:44:25   it sounds legit.

01:44:26   It sounds like you know what's up.

01:44:28   You are following the plan.

01:44:30   You are, yes, what you're doing right now

01:44:33   is exactly what we've always done.

01:44:36   But then when you actually use it,

01:44:38   you realize that it actually clutters the screen more

01:44:40   and makes it a little more confusing

01:44:43   and doesn't really give you much more screen real estate

01:44:47   unless you take action, like scrolling.

01:44:49   And that makes it kind of weird

01:44:51   and makes the execution a little bit subpar.

01:44:55   - Let me take one last break here

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01:46:43   Last topic, here's the last thing I wanna talk about,

01:46:45   and this is, I don't have a lot to say about it

01:46:48   'cause we don't have new,

01:46:49   there's no new hardware since the iMacs,

01:46:51   but in some sense, post WWDC,

01:46:55   we're one year into the Apple Silicon era for the Mac,

01:47:00   because that's where they announced it last year.

01:47:03   I think it is very, very clear now

01:47:07   that any new Macs models that will go from Intel

01:47:12   to Apple Silicon are gonna happen in the fall

01:47:17   at the earliest.

01:47:18   I would be, I would truly be surprised

01:47:22   if they did Mac hardware in August.

01:47:25   It just, especially coming out of 2020.

01:47:28   I'm curious to your thoughts now that it's settled in

01:47:34   and we at least have a sense of the consumer Mac hardware

01:47:37   on Apple Silicon, where you see this.

01:47:40   I would say starting from that round table

01:47:44   that you and I were at a couple of years ago

01:47:47   to where they are now.

01:47:49   - You mean in terms of where the ecosystem is?

01:47:55   - Yeah. - Like what the status is?

01:47:56   - And what it means for the Mac's position in the industry.

01:48:00   - Yeah, it's an interesting one.

01:48:03   I mean, I find it, one thing I find interesting

01:48:08   is the timing of the Mac Pro and the M1, right?

01:48:11   So you have the Mac Pro being,

01:48:13   you mentioned the round table

01:48:14   and you mentioned the kind of state of play.

01:48:18   I think a lot of people are very interested

01:48:20   to see how the M1 plays in more pro contexts, right?

01:48:23   Because we've already established

01:48:24   that it's actually incredibly powerful

01:48:26   and for developer work, existing memory configurations

01:48:30   and existing power configurations already are quite capable.

01:48:34   But a lot of people want more, which is understandable, right?

01:48:38   People just want more RAM, they want more juice

01:48:40   and all of that stuff.

01:48:41   This next era of like Pro tier M processors,

01:48:48   there's the potential, there's two potentials that I see.

01:48:52   One, they enter into this era,

01:48:55   introduce a bunch of M1 hardware and memory configurations,

01:49:00   which will be fixed

01:49:01   because of the nature of the M1 architecture, right?

01:49:03   These are not gonna be upgradable configurations.

01:49:06   And they underwhelm from a memory standpoint,

01:49:11   but over time, software manufacturers, you know,

01:49:18   are able to sort of tweak and massage their software

01:49:23   to work on the M1 and to work in a more efficient way

01:49:29   with unified memory, right?

01:49:31   Which is the Apple's big flag plant

01:49:34   that UMA is the future of memory architecture

01:49:38   and that people should just get on board, right?

01:49:40   That's their big statement.

01:49:42   Beyond the, you know, M1 being their own chip,

01:49:46   the idea that it has this unified memory pool

01:49:49   and that speed of memory is much more important

01:49:52   than any other thing, you know,

01:49:54   or than capacity, I should say.

01:49:56   And they get on board with that

01:49:58   and they tweak their software over time slowly

01:50:00   and people come around to it.

01:50:02   The other possibility is that they go into this era

01:50:05   with a similar kind of massive performance advantage

01:50:10   to where the M1 is now in comparison to other processors.

01:50:17   In other words, I'm interested to see

01:50:20   whether this next layer of hardware

01:50:24   that they have laid down

01:50:26   is of a similar kind of leap over existing pro hardware

01:50:31   that it would ostensibly compete with

01:50:34   from other manufacturers.

01:50:36   And this would put them,

01:50:37   they're already maybe two years ahead to three years ahead,

01:50:39   and this would put them like five, six years ahead

01:50:42   of Intel and anybody else.

01:50:44   And I'm interested to see what happens there.

01:50:47   So in other words, will it be really good

01:50:50   but needs cooperation from software manufacturers

01:50:53   or so enormously powerful that it really doesn't matter

01:50:57   whether software manufacturers wanna keep up or not,

01:51:00   it's still gonna be the best computer for the dollar

01:51:03   that you can buy on the market, regardless of brand.

01:51:06   And I think that's the two, you know,

01:51:08   sort of outcomes that I'm interested in seeing,

01:51:11   which one happens.

01:51:13   And I think the M1, the current M1,

01:51:15   already almost takes scales into that second category.

01:51:18   It's so powerful that most applications

01:51:20   did not need to be updated at all and still ran faster,

01:51:24   under Rosetta or Rosetta 2.

01:51:26   And so if you're in a market

01:51:28   where you can take any pro application,

01:51:30   especially those in the academic worlds

01:51:33   and/or big processing house effects worlds and video worlds

01:51:38   and say, "Hey, you know that current video app that you use,

01:51:44   they don't need to touch a single-ended code

01:51:46   and the performance of this machine

01:51:48   will still blow away anything else.

01:51:49   And when they get their shit together, it'll be 5x."

01:51:52   Then you've got this just unbeatable lead ahead of them.

01:51:57   - Yeah, the thing that, when I look back at it,

01:52:02   is like, let's say this is year one,

01:52:06   the thing that becomes more clear strategically is that,

01:52:11   and maybe I'm off base here,

01:52:12   'cause it's pure speculation,

01:52:14   but it just seems to me that Apple's chip-making prowess,

01:52:19   Johnny Ceruggi's entire division,

01:52:23   has just sort of spread like liquid,

01:52:29   that it starts somewhere and you think,

01:52:32   "Oh, it's spilt over there."

01:52:34   And then it just keeps spreading,

01:52:36   but it keeps spreading in a pro direction.

01:52:40   And by pro, I specifically mean people

01:52:42   who need the absolute utmost of performance,

01:52:46   the very fastest CPUs and GPUs and the most cores

01:52:51   and the most RAM and the highest I/O performance

01:52:55   writing to disk.

01:52:56   And it almost seems like, well, duh, yeah,

01:53:00   'cause they started making phone processors, right?

01:53:05   They started with three and a half inch screen.

01:53:07   I forget which iPhone had the first Apple Silicon.

01:53:12   Or maybe it was the iPad that had the A4 chip.

01:53:15   And at a time when the iPad really was clearly

01:53:21   just a big iPhone,

01:53:23   and then the same chip was in the iPhone that year,

01:53:27   and they've spread from these phones,

01:53:30   which clearly were less powerful computing devices

01:53:34   than desktop or 16-inch pro laptop computers,

01:53:39   because of course, of course they are, right?

01:53:41   And then they got to this crazy point where,

01:53:44   no, that wasn't true anymore.

01:53:45   And your phone actually was not just like,

01:53:49   hey, this is actually in the ballpark.

01:53:50   It was like, no, it's actually,

01:53:52   like run this benchmark, that benchmark.

01:53:55   And it's like, no, it's just faster.

01:53:57   It's faster at single core, faster at multi-core,

01:54:00   or faster at multi-core up to a ridiculous number of cores

01:54:05   in like a Intel Xeon type thing.

01:54:07   But there's nothing, and that they've just,

01:54:10   year by year, why did it take them so long to switch

01:54:12   when just going by pure benchmarks?

01:54:15   Clearly they could have had very performant Macs

01:54:19   running on some hypothetical,

01:54:23   instead of the M1 could have come out three years earlier,

01:54:26   and it would have been performant enough to be worth buying.

01:54:30   It just wouldn't have been so blowaway good.

01:54:32   And it's like, oh, of course you have to wait another year

01:54:35   to get to the pro hardware.

01:54:36   And that's sort of what makes it a different transition

01:54:40   than the previous transitions Apple's gone on there,

01:54:43   specifically the Intel one, right?

01:54:45   When they went from 68K to PowerPC, PowerPC was all new.

01:54:50   Apple was one of the founding partners,

01:54:55   it was with what, Apple, IBM, and Motorola.

01:54:58   But it was designed as, from the get-go,

01:55:02   from when the partnership was announced,

01:55:04   PowerPC was intended to span the gamut

01:55:07   from consumer PCs like G3 iMacs

01:55:12   to what were then called workstations,

01:55:16   like a word that just isn't really tossed around anymore.

01:55:19   But that's like what today's Mac Pro is,

01:55:21   it's a Unix professional workstation.

01:55:24   But Intel, when Apple switched to Intel,

01:55:29   was already long established, and the idea was,

01:55:33   look, Steve Jobs phrased it so gracefully,

01:55:37   so it didn't look like Apple was throwing in the towel.

01:55:40   But yet, that's what they were doing.

01:55:41   They were like, you know what, if you can't beat 'em,

01:55:43   join 'em, and we're just gonna have

01:55:45   the performance of Intel.

01:55:46   And so of course, some of the first Intel iMacs

01:55:49   were truly pro configurations,

01:55:52   because the designs were already there.

01:55:55   Whereas, I just think that the simple explanation

01:55:58   for why did Apple ship Mac Mini and MacBook Air,

01:56:03   and the two-port 13-inch MacBook Pro,

01:56:06   and a consumer-sized 24-inch,

01:56:11   but beautiful super-thin iMac

01:56:14   as the first Apple Silicon Macs,

01:56:16   it's because it's simply that their chip design abilities

01:56:21   are expanding from phones to pro workstations.

01:56:26   And it's that simple, and of course it took another year,

01:56:29   or will take another year, before we start saying it.

01:56:31   - Yeah, and it's basically like a ripple.

01:56:35   They're rippling outwards from the phone,

01:56:36   and then towards the pro market.

01:56:38   I do think that the decade of concentration

01:56:45   and prioritization of performant software,

01:56:51   and I know that Apple executives will be the first people

01:56:56   to tell you, oh, it's our combination

01:56:58   of software and hardware that allow us to do what we do.

01:57:02   Yes, true, it's true, right?

01:57:04   And it's hard to say anything like it

01:57:07   without sounding like a marketing brochure, unfortunately,

01:57:10   because they do lean into that, because it is accurate.

01:57:12   They write the software, stack,

01:57:14   they have that whole shebang going for them,

01:57:16   and so when they create hardware or move into hardware,

01:57:20   they're gonna have an advantage.

01:57:21   But I do feel that that advantage

01:57:23   is informing how they expand these things

01:57:25   and what shape they take,

01:57:27   because I do believe that UMA, for instance,

01:57:30   as an example, is an enormous bet.

01:57:34   It's a gutsy, like hubris-flated bet, right?

01:57:39   That this is a, that a sea change in architecture

01:57:45   of the way that processors and memory interrelate

01:57:50   is gonna happen at the same time

01:57:53   that a massive change in actual processor architecture

01:57:56   for desktop computers and mobile computers is being affected.

01:58:00   It's not just that they're changing

01:58:02   from Intel to Apple Silicon to ARM.

01:58:06   It's also that they are introducing UMA

01:58:10   as the way of the future of all computing.

01:58:14   And if software manufacturers buy in,

01:58:17   and if the systems keep advancing in power as they do,

01:58:22   they could effectively change

01:58:24   the way all computers are made, and probably will, right?

01:58:27   You're already seeing Intel fainting in that direction

01:58:31   and moving in that direction and other ARM processors.

01:58:34   And the fact is that they could not do this

01:58:37   without a decade's worth of experience

01:58:41   living in an oxygen-thin environment, right?

01:58:45   Like the ARM processors were not

01:58:47   the most powerful processors in the universe

01:58:48   when they started, right?

01:58:50   They worked for them because they worked

01:58:53   at a low power level

01:58:54   so that the battery actually would last, right?

01:58:57   They worked in a power-constrained environment

01:59:00   for a decade.

01:59:01   So even if you say,

01:59:02   hey, an iPad is just as powerful as a MacBook,

01:59:04   yes, but it's still a battery-powered device, right?

01:59:07   - That goes in your pocket so it can't get hot, right?

01:59:10   - Yes, yeah, the phone that goes in your pocket,

01:59:12   the iPad goes in your bag.

01:59:14   There's all kinds of limits and constraints.

01:59:16   And it really is, it's like,

01:59:19   they've been coning at the wheel of pain, right?

01:59:25   Like walking around in circles for a decade,

01:59:30   growing from like this scrawny kid

01:59:32   into this beastly barbarian,

01:59:36   but they still have the chains on, right?

01:59:37   They're still attached to the wheel of pain,

01:59:39   AKA batteries, right?

01:59:41   And then when they're able to move off battery power

01:59:45   or into a much larger battery,

01:59:47   which is a much larger room in a MacBook,

01:59:50   I think that in, when you talk about the Mac Pro

01:59:54   or iMacs or iMac Pros or whatever models they come out with

01:59:57   in that regard, no battery even in sight, right?

02:00:01   So no constraints whatsoever there.

02:00:03   I think we're going to see an enormous explosion

02:00:06   of computing power here,

02:00:07   and that the current M1s have just given us the taste of.

02:00:11   I really do feel that there are levels to this,

02:00:14   and that we haven't seen nearly as much of it

02:00:16   as people think we've seen.

02:00:18   'Cause I think people view this as a snapshot,

02:00:19   and they're like, "Hey, the Pro models

02:00:20   "are gonna have more memory, that's great.

02:00:22   "Maybe a slight bump."

02:00:23   No, I actually think they're gonna be much more powerful

02:00:26   because I do feel that UMA is multiplicative.

02:00:29   It's not additive, right?

02:00:32   It's not a scenario where it's like,

02:00:33   "Hey, I'm gonna add an extra 32 gigabytes of RAM to this,

02:00:36   "and so we're gonna get 2X capability out of it."

02:00:40   No, I actually think it's gonna be much more

02:00:43   because of the way that the memory

02:00:44   is able to be paged so quickly.

02:00:46   I really feel it's gonna be a huge, huge jump.

02:00:49   So it's a risk, it's a huge risk,

02:00:52   and it's a huge bet on all of this stuff,

02:00:55   but I think they've had enough proving out

02:00:56   of all these years of paucity has taught them

02:00:59   how to have the system talk to this architecture

02:01:03   in a way that gets the most out of it.

02:01:05   And I think they're about to pay all of it off

02:01:07   in a really, really big way.

02:01:08   - Yeah, I really, I feel the same way.

02:01:11   I kind of feel like, so the whole idea

02:01:15   of a system on a chip was a new idea 10 years ago,

02:01:18   or 10 plus years ago.

02:01:20   And it was easier to conceptualize as a layperson,

02:01:24   which I would even, I'd certainly consider myself

02:01:26   when it comes to chip design

02:01:27   and hardware system architecture.

02:01:29   But you can just kind of understand,

02:01:31   it's like, oh, you put what used to be

02:01:32   a bunch of separate components on a motherboard

02:01:34   all on one chip, and because it's all on the same piece

02:01:37   of silicon, they can talk to each other faster,

02:01:39   and it's more efficient, and we can make it a lot smaller,

02:01:42   and it doesn't get hot, and we can put it

02:01:43   in a tiny little phone that goes in your pants pocket.

02:01:46   I kind of feel like UMA is that big of a change.

02:01:50   It's just harder to conceptualize

02:01:53   because the idea of just making a little slide and keynote

02:01:57   and drawing a chip and saying, here's the CPU and the GPU

02:02:01   and the RAM, and it's all on a chip.

02:02:03   The unified memory architecture is that big of a change

02:02:08   where it's like, no, this memory just belongs to everything.

02:02:10   And the neural engine, we haven't even mentioned

02:02:13   a neural engine, which I think is another

02:02:15   massive hubristic bet that we're going to expand.

02:02:20   And I know Syracuse always mentions it

02:02:24   when ATP talks about the chips and stuff like that,

02:02:26   but it's, and you can't quite go by their slides

02:02:28   'cause their slides and a keynote are sort of

02:02:30   artistic representations of the actual chips,

02:02:34   but the neural engine takes up a huge amount of the space.

02:02:38   I mean, it is--

02:02:40   - Well, it's layered into everything too, right?

02:02:42   So the neural engine is not this thing

02:02:44   that handles specific tasks, whereas that's sort of

02:02:47   the way it was marketed and the way it originated, right?

02:02:50   It's like, hey, if we call specific functions,

02:02:52   the neural engine's gonna help you out, right?

02:02:55   But, or, you know, initially it was,

02:02:58   if Apple calls specific functions, right,

02:03:00   we're using it for this feature or that feature.

02:03:02   And then it was, hey, guys, you can run models on device

02:03:06   because the neural engine's open to you now, right?

02:03:08   Remember they opened it up.

02:03:09   But it's beyond that, it's actually woven into

02:03:12   everything they do now, like every part of,

02:03:15   or not every, I should, that's an absolutist term, right?

02:03:18   But many parts, many, many parts, and more every day,

02:03:22   every iOS release of iOS are tied into the neural engine

02:03:27   or assisted by it.

02:03:29   So it's a sort of springboard, steroid shot, whatever,

02:03:34   to the performance levels and more importantly,

02:03:37   the efficiency levels of many frameworks in iOS now.

02:03:42   Whereas originally sort of, hey, it's for this thing, right?

02:03:44   Or these two things.

02:03:46   And I think that's where the neural engine is important.

02:03:49   And that's why it's such a focus for them

02:03:51   is because they can get additive benefits across the system

02:03:55   from one, you know, from working on one particular component

02:03:59   and improving that one component.

02:04:01   Because there are more and more and more tasks in computing

02:04:06   that really rely on this sort of ML framework system, right?

02:04:12   Just look at the progressively generated maps, right?

02:04:15   In Mac OS or in iOS now.

02:04:18   That's all ML, you know?

02:04:20   And like the tasks that can be utilized for this

02:04:25   are going to proliferate throughout all of computing.

02:04:30   I remember, you know, a couple of years ago,

02:04:31   it was like a big, like, wow, really?

02:04:34   When like Mike Matta started up that, you know,

02:04:36   little ML startup that he did, right?

02:04:38   It's like, hey, you know, anybody can run models

02:04:40   and build models quickly.

02:04:41   And it got snapped up.

02:04:42   It got acquired really quickly.

02:04:43   - Microsoft, Microsoft bought it, right?

02:04:45   - Yeah, yeah, exactly.

02:04:46   Because it's huge.

02:04:47   And I mean, you know, Mike,

02:04:48   just like many other people in computing,

02:04:50   saw the future of ML as like a tool

02:04:54   that is woven into everything.

02:04:56   It'd be like, if somebody is like,

02:04:57   hey, I came out with this new spatula.

02:04:59   And you're like, oh, I could use this spatula

02:05:01   to, you know, to walk my dog.

02:05:03   And I can use this spatula to, you know,

02:05:05   to take off paint and I can use it to cook.

02:05:07   And it works for everything.

02:05:09   You know, it really is a universal tool.

02:05:11   And that I think is why the neural engine

02:05:14   is so additive to all of their systems.

02:05:16   - Yeah, Lobe was the name of the--

02:05:19   - Yeah, Lobe, Lobe.

02:05:20   - Yeah, I think that's it.

02:05:22   We could tie a bow on this episode.

02:05:24   Thanks for being here.

02:05:26   - Oh yeah, my pleasure.

02:05:27   - Have a good rest of your summer.

02:05:28   Enjoy your pizzas.

02:05:30   - Yeah, will do.

02:05:31   - I'm now hungry. - I'm hungry.

02:05:32   (laughs)

02:05:34   - And of course, everybody can find you at TechCrunch

02:05:37   where you head up a crew of terrific writers.

02:05:41   And of course on Twitter, you're @panzer, P-A-N-Z-E-R,

02:05:47   even though your last name is Panzerino,

02:05:49   but I get it, I get it.

02:05:51   That's how it's pronounced.

02:05:52   (laughs)

02:05:54   Thanks for being here.

02:05:55   Let me thank our sponsors, our sponsors this episode.

02:05:58   Let's see if I can do it from my head.

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