00:00:00 ◼ ► We have scandals to talk about now because you and I appeared on CNBC's Squawk Alley together,
00:00:07 ◼ ► Truly. Truly the outrage, the outrage that I would dare to say that the webcam is not good.
00:00:27 ◼ ► The first thing is I said I looked better on air than you, which is true, but I'm sorry I said it.
00:00:47 ◼ ► "Can I say craptastic on air?" And then they answer me and say, "Okay, anyway, that's John's word.
00:00:53 ◼ ► He used it in his review, but he's right." But I got derailed and I didn't give you credit.
00:01:00 ◼ ► So your word is craptastic. Well, it's fantastic. Your word is fantastic, but the word craptastic
00:01:07 ◼ ► is a word you used to describe the webcams in your review, and I said it on live national TV,
00:01:53 ◼ ► I'm sorry to all the listeners. I was wrong. I did not mean to apologize, actually for anything.
00:02:21 ◼ ► And they've been very politely asking me for years, because, A, I'm home and the timing works
00:02:27 ◼ ► out. Like when I'm—a lot of times over the years, they've asked me like, "Oh, there's a big Apple
00:02:31 ◼ ► event, and it's in California. Can you do a hit on CNBC?" And then it's like, "It would require
00:02:37 ◼ ► you to be somewhere in downtown San Francisco at 5.30 in the morning Pacific time." And it's like,
00:02:47 ◼ ► It's like, I'm going to be inside the event at that moment covering it. How will I be on
00:02:53 ◼ ► Right. Or I'm not going to get up at four in the morning and go do it. It's not worth it. But when
00:03:02 ◼ ► I can do it from home and I don't have to go anywhere, it's good. And the CNBC hosts are
00:03:08 ◼ ► very knowledgeable. For people who are talking about all sorts of business, anything that pops
00:03:13 ◼ ► up all during the day, the hosts on Squawk Alley like John Ford, all the questions are great.
00:03:20 ◼ ► He pulled out "Is this the biggest thing for the max since the next acquisition?" I mean,
00:03:27 ◼ ► and I don't think that's an exaggeration. I think that's actually a good analogy. But how many
00:03:39 ◼ ► And it's always—one thing I've done a lot of TV in my time, and they always want to get you
00:03:45 ◼ ► to say something, right? So you could say it and it'd be some controversial thing. And that's a
00:03:51 ◼ ► good soundbite. I never feel that way with all the CNBC shows that I'm on. And yeah, especially
00:03:57 ◼ ► Squawk Alley with Carl, John, and it depends on who else the other anchor is that's stepping in.
00:04:02 ◼ ► But this week it was Julia. And they're all wonderful. And they really know their stuff.
00:04:07 ◼ ► Yeah. And I can tell exactly that. And you think faster than I do. You're meant for video. I think
00:04:13 ◼ ► slow. And I get caught up. And I'm like, "Oh, I've been trapped. And I can't figure my way out of the
00:04:17 ◼ ► trap. And next thing I know, the hit's over and my time is gone." I don't want to get trapped into
00:04:21 ◼ ► that like, "Hey, we're trying to get you to say something, a news bite." I always get the sense
00:04:26 ◼ ► with them that they really just want to get to the kernel of truth. What's the deal with these
00:04:30 ◼ ► MacBooks? What's the deal with the new iPhone? And I really appreciate that. So I keep doing it.
00:04:36 ◼ ► But the other thing is it does go fast, right? It's so fast. You're on. They do a great job of
00:04:43 ◼ ► getting you ready to go. And it is so much more convenient doing this remotely. But it's also
00:04:49 ◼ ► sort of like doing it blind, right? You're just there. There's a little voice from a control room
00:04:56 ◼ ► person who's very professional and very nice. And they seem very keenly aware of how in the dark you
00:05:03 ◼ ► are. But it's like, they cut to a commercial. They're like, "Okay, you're on after the commercial."
00:05:07 ◼ ► But then you see nothing. It's like you don't get the watch at commercials or anything. And you're
00:05:11 ◼ ► just like, "Okay." And then- Yeah. I've gotten pretty used to it. I was doing these pretty
00:05:18 ◼ ► frequently actually before COVID. And then after COVID, I've definitely, I mean, there was a bunch
00:05:23 ◼ ► of time where they were definitely not interested in tech news, understandably. So I wasn't called
00:05:28 ◼ ► a lot, but over the last couple of months doing a lot of these and actually I'm a contributor. So
00:05:37 ◼ ► I've been completely honest. But one thing, I look like such an idiot. I'm just sitting in front of
00:05:42 ◼ ► my computer smiling for usually three minutes before these things start, which I think is just
00:05:47 ◼ ► hilarious. I mean, nobody else is around, but I don't know when it's going to really start. So
00:05:52 ◼ ► I just sit here smiling like a true asshole, just like, "Oh, you're going to talk to me yet? Are
00:05:58 ◼ ► they on me?" My dog is probably like, "What the fuck is she doing?" Right. You sit there in your
00:06:09 ◼ ► with the worst possible posture. Meanwhile, I'm sitting there, I'm on stage ready to get called
00:06:14 ◼ ► up to get an award or something, ramrod straight back, square shoulders, looking straight ahead.
00:06:29 ◼ ► dig around on my phone. I don't want to mess with my computer, but I'll sit there and like, "Well,
00:06:33 ◼ ► I've got a couple of minutes here." And then all of a sudden I remembered that with all the latest
00:06:38 ◼ ► software updates, there's the magic switching of AirPods Pro, which I was using for my audio and my
00:06:44 ◼ ► input. And I was like, "Wait, I don't want to mess this up with my phone and have the AirPods switch
00:06:50 ◼ ► over to the phone and then they're not on the Mac." And it's like, "I don't think that would work. I
00:06:54 ◼ ► think it's supposed to be smart, but you don't want to mess with it when you're supposed to go on TV."
00:07:03 ◼ ► No, you're basically in a virtual green room, except the camera's pointing at you always.
00:07:09 ◼ ► But yeah, the flying blind thing is tough because when you're used to be on set with an anchor and
00:07:15 ◼ ► some other guests, what I always really liked is they would book me with another guest. So we would
00:07:18 ◼ ► kind of maybe even tussle a little. They even said in our thing, "I've never seen two guests agree so
00:07:23 ◼ ► much." They definitely like to have some difference of opinion. In fact, there's one great one where I
00:07:30 ◼ ► just told the guys flat out wrong. And I was like, "I bet him." I was like, "You're totally wrong.
00:07:34 ◼ ► Apple is not going to announce that." But here, I can't see you. I can't see them. And I even felt
00:07:41 ◼ ► like, "Oh, I would mention John, but is John on camera with me right now? Are we a split screen?
00:07:47 ◼ ► Is it just me? Is it just him?" And you can't see the anchors. I haven't actually seen the anchors
00:07:54 ◼ ► face to face since, I don't know, February. I saw John when we were doing it. I don't know
00:08:00 ◼ ► how it worked. I don't know what they were. But two weeks ago when I was talking about the phones,
00:08:05 ◼ ► I didn't see anybody. And this time I did see John, but I didn't see you. It was all crazy.
00:08:25 ◼ ► Well, anyway, the thing that we had a hard time—we just didn't have enough time to get out—is
00:08:29 ◼ ► that we're not—it made it seem as though you and I were arguing over the camera, where you said the
00:08:35 ◼ ► camera is craptastic, trying to steal my word, but coming up with your own made up, crappular word.
00:08:43 ◼ ► And then I interjected with, "Well, I'm using it right now." And I was. And I had no idea if
00:08:50 ◼ ► it looked good or not. I wasn't trying to refute you. But I realized, in hindsight, it came across
00:08:57 ◼ ► as me saying, "Well, I'm using it, and it looks great." I didn't know what it looked like. I
00:09:01 ◼ ► tested it side by side. I knew it looked better than the old ones. But it made it seem like we
00:09:08 ◼ ► disagree. You say these cameras stink, and I'm saying, "I love them. I think it's so great. I
00:09:12 ◼ ► used it to go on TV." Whereas I think the truth is we actually, even further—here's the one point
00:09:17 ◼ ► where it seemed like maybe we had a little point of, "Hey, this is fun," on TV. But we actually,
00:09:23 ◼ ► I think, completely agree, which is that the camera still stinks overall, but it is way better
00:09:44 ◼ ► not the CNBC video, but the Wall Street Journal review video that I did, I did have a short place
00:09:50 ◼ ► where I actually used the webcam quite a bit. And I had a short place where I showed both side by
00:09:56 ◼ ► side. I think that you could really see in that frame, lighting was good. So it was a good place
00:10:01 ◼ ► to see. Both looked fine. But the difference between the—yes, I was definitely using the
00:10:09 ◼ ► 2020 Intel MacBook Air on one side and the 2020 M1 MacBook Air. And it's a little bit brighter.
00:10:19 ◼ ► You definitely can see there's less compression. And you can also see that there's just better
00:10:25 ◼ ► lighting or more even lighting, which are all the things that Apple said was going to be improved
00:10:30 ◼ ► here using machine learning and no actual upgrade to the hardware. But it's still just not as good
00:10:37 ◼ ► as a dedicated webcam. One you'd buy from Logitech, one you use on your iPhone, one that in the case
00:10:43 ◼ ► of CNBC, what happened, I want to explain here. I decided a couple of weeks ago, I needed to up my
00:10:48 ◼ ► CNBC game. I was using my iPhone using Camo, this software. I was using that on the Mac and on the
00:10:59 ◼ ► iPhone, and it was working great. I liked it a lot. But it wasn't looking as good, frankly, as
00:11:03 ◼ ► Nilay Patel, who also is a CNBC contributor. And sometimes we're on together and I'm like,
00:11:08 ◼ ► "I can't have Nilay look better than me. That's not okay." And so I decided I'm going to do what
00:11:13 ◼ ► he was doing, which is hooking up my Sony camera, my Sony RX100 to my computer. I got an HDMI
00:11:18 ◼ ► connector. I did all the things. And so I was really excited because this is my first time
00:11:30 ◼ ► So what I think happened, or I know what happened, is first of all, in Zoom, in the Zoom window where
00:11:35 ◼ ► I connect with CNBC, I looked very good. I was very crisp. You could see the full view of my
00:11:41 ◼ ► window or of my background. And then CNBC crops into that pretty significantly. Then CNBC is
00:11:49 ◼ ► running that through Zoom through their own software or some sort of, what's it called,
00:11:54 ◼ ► forget the technical name that they use in TV, switcher or something. And so that's further
00:12:02 ◼ ► compressing it. Plus, I was dumb and I didn't get the Ethernet dongle. Actually, it wasn't dumb,
00:12:08 ◼ ► honestly. The 13-inch MacBook Pro only has two USB ports, which is infuriating to me because I've
00:12:14 ◼ ► been coming from the 16-inch where I had all the things hooked up and I decided not to use Ethernet.
00:12:19 ◼ ► So I was on my not that great Wi-Fi and all those things compounded to make my video not look great.
00:12:35 ◼ ► which looked fine but definitely did not look as good as the image that was really coming out of
00:12:51 ◼ ► proving that the M1 chip and using Apple Silicon and having this pipeline where the camera feeds
00:13:00 ◼ ► directly into the M1 and it even helps with security where the M1 can electronically gate
00:13:13 ◼ ► But it goes through the... I guess there is... I think they do say there's machine learning
00:13:19 ◼ ► involved too, but I know there's an image signal processing chip that before the computer, the Mac
00:13:25 ◼ ► software ever even sees the image, the image signaling processor chip already has cleaned
00:13:36 ◼ ► And it's a great example of, "Okay, here's this real crappy 720p camera. Here's what it looks
00:13:41 ◼ ► like on Intel." And it's not like Apple spent years purposefully making it look worse because
00:13:48 ◼ ► they knew the M1 was coming. It's like, I'm sure they were trying, but now with this image signaling
00:13:54 ◼ ► processor, you get this better image. And it's definitely less noisy. It's the same camera,
00:14:00 ◼ ► but it's a lot less noisy. They're definitely, definitely white balance improvements. And you
00:14:07 ◼ ► see that more at nighttime. So one of the cheats I had for the CNBC thing is doing it at 11 AM
00:14:13 ◼ ► Eastern time, I get really nice natural light in my office and that helps a lot. When I was doing
00:14:19 ◼ ► tests for my review, I shot a lot of it at night. My office has fine office lighting, but it's
00:14:26 ◼ ► incandescent office lighting. And it's just amazing how blue you look. And it shouldn't be,
00:14:32 ◼ ► if anything, it should be warm. It just totally throws it off. The noise is off the charts.
00:14:44 ◼ ► they're cheating here." They're doing the Barbara Walters filter where they're looking for faces,
00:14:50 ◼ ► and then they just electronically smear gauze all over it. So your face on this camera doesn't look
00:14:59 ◼ ► as noisy as it did on the Intel MacBooks, which is terrible. And the color temperature is way better.
00:15:07 ◼ ► But as soon as you look for that gauze, well, they're just blurring your face. And it's like,
00:15:22 ◼ ► Yeah. And you also, I think they're using the same type of... One of the big things that I notice
00:15:27 ◼ ► on the 16-inch MacBook Pro is the reaction to light sources. Do you ever notice that it's just
00:15:39 ◼ ► And that is also much better here. So if I have a big light behind me, not like a big window,
00:15:46 ◼ ► but even just a lamp in back of me, that is less blown out. No, they made improvements.
00:15:54 ◼ ► They certainly made improvements, but it's gonna get better. It can get so much better.
00:16:01 ◼ ► And again, this is something I just keep thinking. They've put a 1080p camera on the iMac.
00:16:08 ◼ ► They're also using there some software to improve that. That's where it's headed. That's what we
00:16:14 ◼ ► should have on these brand new systems. But I'm not gonna complain too much about it because these
00:16:19 ◼ ► brand new systems are truly amazing. I feel like what they've... And I think it makes hindsight...
00:16:28 ◼ ► In hindsight, it makes a lot of sense, but they honestly changed nothing that they didn't have
00:16:34 ◼ ► to change. I mean, it is externally, and I had one side by side. There is no physical difference.
00:16:55 ◼ ► Let me look it up. I had slightly better than the 999 because it has the eight-core CPU.
00:17:02 ◼ ► Oh, the GPU, you mean? Yeah. Yeah, sorry. The eight-core GPU, but still had eight gigabytes
00:17:07 ◼ ► of RAM. So it's a little bit of an odd config, but it's like the second bump up on your site.
00:17:13 ◼ ► But physically compared side by side with the Intel versions that are the latest and greatest,
00:17:21 ◼ ► you really have to turn them on to see that there's anything unless you happen to know the
00:17:25 ◼ ► model number and the model number is literally printed in the smallest type on the bottom plate
00:17:31 ◼ ► that you could possibly read. And you just have to know that like A2338 is, "Oh, that's an M1
00:17:37 ◼ ► MacBook." Otherwise, the hardware is like the same. It's the same trackpad, the same keyboard,
00:17:50 ◼ ► screen and the Air is 400-nit. The same bezels that by today's laptop standards are maybe slightly
00:17:58 ◼ ► dated, the same color options, the same webcam, it's all internal. And I know people are
00:18:04 ◼ ► disappointed by that. And there's a part of me that was like, "Well, why couldn't we have
00:18:08 ◼ ► everything? Why can't this just be the greatest day in MacBook history and we get new form factors
00:18:12 ◼ ► and new cameras and everything?" They're thinner and lighter and they look just plain look cooler.
00:18:18 ◼ ► But now that it's out, it's like, "Oh, this seems pretty obvious." They had so much to change just
00:18:23 ◼ ► by changing the architectures. Why take a chance changing anything else? And it's, pun intended,
00:18:32 ◼ ► with this, it's an apples-to-apples comparison. And that's what made this review, I think,
00:18:37 ◼ ► so spectacular or the testing of this so spectacular. So sitting next to me, I've got a
00:18:42 ◼ ► huge stack of MacBooks, right? I had the Intel version, pretty much the exact Intel version of
00:18:47 ◼ ► both systems. I had the Intel version of the Air that was released back in March. And I had the
00:18:53 ◼ ► Intel version of the 13-inch Pro that was released, I believe, back in April or May. And I tested side
00:19:00 ◼ ► by side and I'd used those systems over the last number of months. And again, because you had the
00:19:06 ◼ ► same hardware and basically, I believe the same battery and the same sort of external other things
00:19:14 ◼ ► that they didn't change, you could make this crazy comparison. You could run battery tests side by
00:19:19 ◼ ► side and actually see eight hours difference. You could run side by side the same exact tests like
00:19:26 ◼ ► I did with opening 100 Chrome tabs or playing the same game. And I would actually just shoot the
00:19:32 ◼ ► thermometer gun at the M1 chip and see it was 10 to 15 degrees cooler than the Intel version.
00:19:41 ◼ ► And so it truly was like a reviewer's paradise in terms of testing these things, as I said,
00:19:48 ◼ ► apples to apples. I really wish that I had thought of the thermometer trick. I still haven't even
00:19:52 ◼ ► tried it because we bought—I don't have the gun, but we have a little Nokia thing that we bought at
00:19:59 ◼ ► the beginning of this coronavirus thing, which is amazing. It is just this amazing little thing. And
00:20:05 ◼ ► it's the coolest thing I've seen from Nokia in like, I don't know, since then. It's like the
00:20:09 ◼ ► little curved— Yeah, like it almost looks like a suction cup, like a Nerf dart top. And you just
00:20:16 ◼ ► wave it over the forehead for a wave or two. And it looks like a thermometer from Star Trek. And
00:20:20 ◼ ► then it just gives you a number. And we've just been sitting here taking our temperatures
00:20:54 ◼ ► for a long time from my old laptop testing days. It's probably not that old, but I've upgraded it.
00:21:00 ◼ ► But sometimes now, there was that whole debate about what kind of thermometer should you really
00:21:04 ◼ ► be using, like surface thermometers. And in a couple of photos, and this one I have is very much
00:21:11 ◼ ► a equipment thermometer. It's meant for measuring surfaces of objects, not people, not skin. But
00:21:19 ◼ ► I've seen in some photos Getty Images types of things, people using these types of thermometers
00:21:25 ◼ ► to measure skin temperature. And that's just completely wrong. You don't get a very accurate
00:21:30 ◼ ► reading. So maybe I shouldn't have used my Nokia. Yeah, I don't think that would be, I mean, you
00:21:36 ◼ ► could try. I mean, look, what you really need is a baseline, right? Like I didn't even really report,
00:21:40 ◼ ► I did report some of the numbers. But like what you really want to see is the delta, right? Like
00:21:44 ◼ ► the M1 is 70 degrees and the Intel is 90, right? You're like crazy 20 degree difference.
00:21:52 ◼ ► Well, we know where to pick this back up. I'm going to take a break here and thank our first
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00:22:40 ◼ ► $100 just because you listen to the show at linode.com/thetalkshow. They have 11 global
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00:23:35 ◼ ► to Linode for sponsoring the show and for hosting Daring Fireball. So anyway, that is one of the
00:23:41 ◼ ► little things. That's like one of those things that using this and all right, Apple makes their
00:23:46 ◼ ► announcement and then we have some press briefings and then they ship it. That's the weird part.
00:23:52 ◼ ► Usually it's like you get in person, they give you these things in hand and they're all, you have to
00:23:57 ◼ ► sign away an NDA and stuff. And now you can't do any of that. They have to ship them to you.
00:24:02 ◼ ► But we're talking about it before we get to like play. We have no hands on time with these things.
00:24:08 ◼ ► We're talking to them. And the one thing that I was told by a couple of people at Apple was like,
00:24:12 ◼ ► just these things run so cool. It is amazing. And it's like, okay, that sounds great, but
00:24:22 ◼ ► I tried so hard. I mean, that was the whole basis of my video because when I started trying,
00:24:28 ◼ ► I was like, you know what I think I need to do, document this in visual form because I was trying
00:24:34 ◼ ► so hard to get these things warm. I mean, it started with the air because it's like, okay,
00:24:39 ◼ ► it's fanless. It's got to hit some point where it gets really warm. And we should talk about that,
00:24:46 ◼ ► but that doesn't really happen because it just tamps down on the performance versus like,
00:24:49 ◼ ► get really warm. But still it's amazing what you can do with that thing before it starts to
00:25:00 ◼ ► Everything from gaming to running the hundred Chrome tabs to video calling. And with the Pro,
00:25:12 ◼ ► tons and tons of tests. And when I finally got it to go on, I couldn't, and I was doing this,
00:25:19 ◼ ► I mean, you watch the video, I was trying, I actually recorded the fan noises. That wasn't
00:25:25 ◼ ► fake. That wasn't like, we're going to just go find some fan noise on the internet, like sound
00:25:28 ◼ ► effects. I recorded that. And when it finally went off, when the fan on the Pro finally went off,
00:25:34 ◼ ► I had to like scurry around to find my good mic, plug it in, start running, like to record it. And
00:25:40 ◼ ► I was like, thank God I got it. Like, and it stayed for long enough. But actually the fan
00:25:45 ◼ ► noise itself is quite quiet on the Pro compared to the Intel systems. Bottom line is I tried really
00:25:53 ◼ ► hard, John. It is so quiet compared to the Intel systems. And like, I even mentioned it in my
00:25:58 ◼ ► review, like to set up my M1 MacBook Pro, I used migration assistant to move over a setup from,
00:26:05 ◼ ► that I had on a 16 inch MacBook Pro from just last year. It's still a review unit that I had here
00:26:12 ◼ ► waiting for this to compare head to head before I send it back. And just running migration assistant
00:26:20 ◼ ► on the 16 inch MacBook Pro, which I think is like a $3,600 configuration, maybe closer to 4,000. I
00:26:28 ◼ ► mean, it's got gobs of RAM and a huge SSD. And it's the Intel with the most cores on a MacBook
00:26:37 ◼ ► Pro. Just running migration assistant, the fans go on on the 16 inch MacBook Pro and they're not on
00:26:43 ◼ ► the other thing. And they're so loud. And it's like, you're just, and when you're running
00:26:48 ◼ ► migration assistant, everything else quits. It's like, you know, it's almost like putting the Mac,
00:26:53 ◼ ► it actually is putting it into a special mode just for migration assistant. So it's not like,
00:26:57 ◼ ► oh, well, migration assistant's running, but you've also got a bunch of Safari tabs or whatever.
00:27:02 ◼ ► No, no, everything else quits. And it's just migration assistant from this machine to migration
00:27:07 ◼ ► assistant on this machine. And the 16 inch MacBook Pro is like a hairdryer. The other one is dead
00:27:14 ◼ ► silent. And it's like, oh, this is going to be interesting. And you know, it's so well,
00:27:18 ◼ ► like I work on that system. I've honestly worked on that for a lot of quarantine for a lot of like,
00:27:24 ◼ ► just because like the bigger screen and I can be on the couch and have a 16 inch screen and
00:27:27 ◼ ► do work and come back to my desk and dock and have just so much screen. And I love that
00:27:31 ◼ ► machine hardware wise, but the fan and the heat on that, that like, if I'm cold, I can physically
00:27:40 ◼ ► warm my whole body with the top of that keyboard. Like you just rub your whole body on top of that
00:27:45 ◼ ► keyboard and you can get you can warm yourself. I don't know why they don't sell it as like an
00:27:49 ◼ ► actual space heater. So the, I think by the letter of the NDA, you're not supposed to talk, you know,
00:27:56 ◼ ► you're allowed to talk to like your people you work with and the people in your family about the
00:28:00 ◼ ► review unit before the embargo. But you know, there's a circle of us who know each other. And
00:28:05 ◼ ► we know I knew Matthew Panzorino was going to have some I knew Jason Snell. I knew you would have
00:28:11 ◼ ► some, you know, and so we we commit a little I mean, and we're not, you know, it's all it's not.
00:28:16 ◼ ► It's not a cutthroat business reviewing these things. You know, we're not trying to undercut
00:28:21 ◼ ► each other. You know, it's not like we're being super sick for yourself. John. Yes, I know.
00:28:26 ◼ ► I'm talking to you. It's trying to be please, please. But I really did. I got to the point where
00:28:36 ◼ ► I was running out of time I was, you know, and I was like, I was like, this is amazing. This MacBook
00:28:42 ◼ ► Pro, it has a fan. Everybody is thinking, well, they made such a big deal that the air has no fan,
00:28:48 ◼ ► that they must mean that this one has a fan. And it's sort of like MacBook Pros that you know,
00:28:54 ◼ ► from the past in terms of coming on and making noise and, you know, getting hot. And hey,
00:29:00 ◼ ► if you want a machine to run silently, you should get the air. And I'm like, this is amazing,
00:29:04 ◼ ► because you can get the this MacBook Pro and it'll you can trust it to run silently. Because I've
00:29:10 ◼ ► never heard this thing come on. I don't feel any air blowing. And then I was like, this would be
00:29:13 ◼ ► a big angle of my review. And then all of a sudden, I just thought popped into my head, what if I got
00:29:18 ◼ ► a lemon and the fan just doesn't work? I don't want to make a jerk of myself. And yeah, you know,
00:29:25 ◼ ► write 2000 words in this review about how the fan never comes on. And so I like started reaching out
00:29:32 ◼ ► to people and I'm like, Hey, did you have the MacBook Pro? And they're like, yeah, and I mean,
00:29:35 ◼ ► does the fan ever come on? They're like, No, or it's like, almost never. And I'm like, Oh, thank
00:29:40 ◼ ► God. I will admit, I mean, maybe I shouldn't admit it here. People listen, people. It's fine.
00:29:48 ◼ ► I did the same with Neil I Patel. I was like, I can't get the fan to go off. Like it's what is
00:29:54 ◼ ► going on. And like at that point, I decided to do this whole video on it. And I was like, I can't
00:30:03 ◼ ► Right. He did tip me to one benchmark. But then finally, actually, when I decided I was like,
00:30:10 ◼ ► I'm going to try Premiere. Premiere, if you're doing a long enough export, that will do it.
00:30:16 ◼ ► The issue was when I was testing, I was just doing like, I was exporting three to four minute videos,
00:30:20 ◼ ► and that wasn't long enough for the system to go like in overdrive or to be exporting for that
00:30:24 ◼ ► long. So I finally got it through Premiere and running a bunch of Chrome tabs in the background.
00:30:29 ◼ ► But that like the Chrome test when that first when I did that myself, I was like, truly freaking out
00:30:35 ◼ ► by myself here in my, my like office. It's, this is kind of the sad thing. I mean, I know you always
00:30:40 ◼ ► sort of work alone. But like, I just wanted somebody to like hug, you know, like, I was like,
00:30:47 ◼ ► it's, I there's 100 tabs open in Chrome, I can move around in each of them. I'm writing in docs
00:30:55 ◼ ► at normal speed, everything is just working. Like, is this a miracle of God? And like, no,
00:31:01 ◼ ► I had no one to share it with. And no beach ball, right? Because that's the thing with the older
00:31:06 ◼ ► systems is if you have a bunch of tabs, sure, you could switch between these, you know, one, two,
00:31:11 ◼ ► and three, one, two, and three, and it all just works, even though you have them all open, but
00:31:14 ◼ ► then you go to like tab 47, which hasn't been used in a while. And that's the one that's been swapped
00:31:20 ◼ ► out to disk, and then they have to bring it back, the system has to bring it back, and you get the
00:31:24 ◼ ► beach baller just pauses. And you're waiting and you're like, wait, trying to scroll and this page
00:31:29 ◼ ► won't scroll. It just takes you out of your flow, you're out of your flow. And you're like, oh, and
00:31:34 ◼ ► you know, especially for me with browser tabs, you never know is like, wait, is the whole thing going
00:31:39 ◼ ► to reload? Did something happen? And then it catches up, you're like, oh, there it is. But
00:31:43 ◼ ► now your flow's broken. That never happened with the system. It's like, and I know, even though my
00:31:48 ◼ ► test machine had 16 gigs of RAM, not eight, I was looking at it in activity monitor, and I was just
00:31:54 ◼ ► opening goofy stuff in the background, like, oh, I'll just leave a big photograph open in
00:32:05 ◼ ► just just so that it's being used. And I can get the system to use more than 16 gigs of RAM,
00:32:16 ◼ ► Yeah, I did. I did the same thing. I did the same thing. And it's funny, because this summer,
00:32:20 ◼ ► I did this piece on Chrome, and Chrome versus Safari and Microsoft Edge, honestly, it was,
00:32:26 ◼ ► was a big part of the piece. And this was all brought on because over, you know, quarantine,
00:32:31 ◼ ► working on my systems more than I ever had before, the fan was going crazy. It was always going
00:32:38 ◼ ► crazy. And that in a combination with Google Meet, which is another issue with RAM, and especially
00:32:43 ◼ ► working in other browsers, other than Chrome, is just a disaster of eating cram, uh, cram,
00:33:00 ◼ ► They did this video and during the summer of this Chrome, I animated this guy who was eating a
00:33:04 ◼ ► Chrome guy, or I didn't, but I hired an animator to do it. I was like, I want you to make Chrome
00:33:14 ◼ ► in this piece, like I basically was like, Chrome is unusable on Macs, we need to all stop using Chrome.
00:33:20 ◼ ► And we should do that for privacy reasons, too. I made that argument. But like, it is just devouring
00:33:25 ◼ ► the RAM, not, and Safari, brand new Safari on a big server is amazing. And it works really well.
00:33:31 ◼ ► And they've got the favicons, we could talk about that, Gruber, we can, we can talk about how you
00:33:35 ◼ ► won that fight. I should just retire after that one. You really should have, yeah, just like me
00:33:40 ◼ ► with the keyboards. It's like, why do I keep working, honestly. But now, it's a horse of a
00:33:47 ◼ ► different color. Like, and they've released the, you know, Google's released an M1 Intel,
00:33:52 ◼ ► a non Intel optimized version. And I kind of want to go back to Chrome, but I made a big thing about
00:34:02 ◼ ► how I wasn't. I'm also obsessed with Edge for a different reason. But yeah, the Edge collections
00:34:09 ◼ ► is amazing feature for a browser. I was kind of glad that the Chrome update to run natively on
00:34:15 ◼ ► the M1 didn't come out until yesterday, which was a couple days after the reviews. So that while I
00:34:21 ◼ ► was writing my review, I could open a bunch of stuff in Chrome and know that it was running
00:34:25 ◼ ► through Rosetta. Because I was like, well, this should be a good test. And I know that it's a good
00:34:30 ◼ ► test that's applicable to lots of people, because Chrome is the thing lots of people use. And I
00:34:35 ◼ ► figured, you know, not that Chrome in particular would be a good long term test, because I without
00:34:41 ◼ ► even asking anybody or looking on the chromium message boards, it was like, there's no way they're
00:34:46 ◼ ► not going to have a native version out within weeks at the latest, you know. But just, you know,
00:34:52 ◼ ► it has a test of Rosetta. And it was like, I can't even tell I really can't. I was like,
00:34:57 ◼ ► that's the other, you know, the other like, miracle in this to me is and and I'll admit,
00:35:09 ◼ ► my last minute predictions, it was like, everybody kind of knew that they were going to announce this
00:35:14 ◼ ► transition. But nobody really knew what the details were going to be. And I made the prediction that
00:35:20 ◼ ► maybe they wouldn't have any emulation for old Intel software, because it would be so much easier
00:35:26 ◼ ► for, you know, compared to a decade ago or two decades ago transitions, developers should be
00:35:32 ◼ ► ready for this to just recompile. Not only was I wrong that they, I said, I don't think they're
00:35:38 ◼ ► going to have emulation. They do. It is amazing. It is just it is the best and I went through the
00:35:46 ◼ ► transition in the 90s with the Mac going from the Motorola 68000 series to PowerPC. And I was here
00:35:53 ◼ ► for the PowerPC to Intel. This is the just absolutely flabbergasting how you just don't
00:36:00 ◼ ► know you really have you can just recommend these machines to normal people. And if they say, Do I
00:36:06 ◼ ► have to update all my software and it's like, yeah, just do whatever you normally do, you know,
00:36:09 ◼ ► you'll be fine. And that was my biggest like question mark, you know, whether it was the
00:36:14 ◼ ► summer after WWDC or even after the announcement a couple of weeks ago, I just, you know, was very
00:36:19 ◼ ► careful with readers to say I would not pre order just yet. Let's see what happens with the software.
00:36:24 ◼ ► I had giant concerns about it. Not only because of the Mac history, but back then I was a Windows
00:36:32 ◼ ► fan and so still like Windows in many shapes and forms. But, you know, having seen the Windows RT
00:36:39 ◼ ► disaster, I was just like, there's, you know, this is not an easy thing to do. And it definitely
00:36:46 ◼ ► can have big consumer impact and people who depend on certain apps, you know, my readers, they love
00:36:51 ◼ ► Quicken. You know, they've got it. You want a Quicken fan, you read the Wall Street Journal.
00:36:56 ◼ ► And like, you know, I had no issues. I mean, there's nothing that doesn't work on here,
00:37:04 ◼ ► even with just to prep for this podcast, because I'm now using the pro and I had done a lot of
00:37:08 ◼ ► testing on the air, I needed to download like five things really quickly. You know, Skype, Audacity,
00:37:16 ◼ ► yes, no problem. Yeah, it's really impressive technologically. And again, not getting into
00:37:22 ◼ ► details, just the fan doesn't come on. I was so relieved. Again, I cannot emphasize the moment of
00:37:28 ◼ ► panic I had that maybe I got a bum machine years ago, my first the original Apple Watch,
00:37:34 ◼ ► the review unit, I got the taptic engine broke. And it broke very quickly. I clearly had a lemon.
00:37:43 ◼ ► It was like I tried it on. And immediately I was like, wow, these taps for the thing do not feel
00:37:50 ◼ ► like they did months ago when I was at the event. And we had you remember the first Apple Watch came
00:37:55 ◼ ► out. You know, a long time after the event. I was like, that's not how I remember it all. I can
00:38:02 ◼ ► barely feel this. And then with like 10 minutes later, it I didn't get any taps at all. And I'm
00:38:07 ◼ ► like, shouldn't I be getting a tap for this is like, I'm not getting taps for alerts. I'm not
00:38:11 ◼ ► getting and I like contacted Apple. And they're like, Oh, that sounds like a bad unit. Let us
00:38:16 ◼ ► replace it. And they like sent somebody down from New York with a unit the same day, like hours
00:38:22 ◼ ► later. And it was the exact, you know, look like the exact same thing. And it had none of the
00:38:25 ◼ ► problems. So I was like, Oh, and they were like, Yeah, give us that one. We'll take a look. You
00:38:28 ◼ ► know, it was clearly a bad unit. I think that they sent back Eric from New York, like he's actually
00:38:34 ◼ ► just been waiting outside your house. I know. They said he was waiting out. Yeah, he's still waiting
00:38:39 ◼ ► out there. You know, but it happens, you know, and it you know, in terms, you know, they really do
00:38:44 ◼ ► send reviewers the actual unit, you know, if anybody, you know, to me, it was like confirmation
00:38:49 ◼ ► that they're not like special, like, hey, we're going to pre test all these units before we give
00:38:53 ◼ ► them to reviewers. You know, they're sealed up just like consumer units, and they give them to
00:38:57 ◼ ► you. And I just thought, Oh, my God, what if I got the M1 MacBook Pro with a broken fan, and it mostly
00:39:03 ◼ ► works, because clearly the air is supposed to work without a fan. So it works. But right, but you're
00:39:09 ◼ ► not getting like the performance leap. Yes, it's just not getting there. Yeah. And I'm like, I don't
00:39:15 ◼ ► know, I gotta check with somebody. And everybody was like, No, it's, it's either a like me, they
00:39:19 ◼ ► couldn't get it to come on or be like you, they could get it to come on. But like the most dire
00:39:24 ◼ ► circumstances, you know, and premieres a good test. I know Jason said, Jason Snell said that
00:39:28 ◼ ► video export was was one way he got it to come on. And and not to throw premiere under the bus,
00:39:34 ◼ ► but premiere because it's cross platform, isn't necessarily optimized, like the way Final Cut
00:39:39 ◼ ► Pro is specifically for Apple stuff and to channel stuff through the special chips. It's going through
00:39:44 ◼ ► the CPU to export video. So it's going to heat it up. You know, it's like a stress test of the CPU
00:39:51 ◼ ► in a way that maybe Final Cut Pro isn't for the same export task. Yeah, I think at this point,
00:39:57 ◼ ► it's it's got to be a mix of the GPU and CPU really being hammered for it to come on because
00:40:03 ◼ ► gaming can do it too for longer periods of time. The cinebench test, which also is is a GPU test.
00:40:11 ◼ ► I think it's a combo of that because I did video calling is another place where the you know,
00:40:17 ◼ ► the fans are always coming on on the Intel system, especially in which is horrible, right? Because
00:40:23 ◼ ► horrible. I mean, that's what's so relatable about this right now. Like the timing could not be better
00:40:28 ◼ ► for this machine. Like, you know, in my video, I had it taking off for outer space. And the Intel
00:40:35 ◼ ► version because it is a constant joke in our company. Like, people will be like, is it normal
00:40:39 ◼ ► that like, they'll text me like is the normal the fans and I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's normal. Like,
00:40:43 ◼ ► your computer's going to take off for outer space. It's fine. It's always like a like a little fun
00:40:47 ◼ ► joke about it. But everyone knows it now because we're in zoom or Google Meet all day. And with
00:40:53 ◼ ► this that that was a huge turning point in my review. I've been working on a long video 30 minute
00:40:58 ◼ ► short documentary. And we did a viewing of it last week in Google Meet because it was the best
00:41:04 ◼ ► platform for this external editor I have. And we watched this video for 30 minutes through Google
00:41:11 ◼ ► Meet. It was a little bit choppy just because of bandwidth. The three of us all running their video.
00:41:16 ◼ ► The computer was completely cool. And I had other things going in the on in the background. This was
00:41:22 ◼ ► the air. Right. And, and then I also was like, okay, I actually want to switch to the pro. We
00:41:27 ◼ ► did it the next day again, just like a mild test, but into the full 30 minute run of the video.
00:41:32 ◼ ► Still nothing like the 16 inch MacBook Pro, the Intel version would be sweltering. Right. If I did
00:41:40 ◼ ► that, and noisy, right? It's so noisy, right? Yeah, it's an assault on two senses. It really is.
00:41:49 ◼ ► Yeah. And it is true that timing wise, you know, with everybody professionally dependent on video
00:41:59 ◼ ► conferencing, it really has elevated video conferencing to the level of I mean, what were
00:42:04 ◼ ► like the old standbys of Well, what are the things everybody does on a computer, email, web,
00:42:16 ◼ ► running, I mean, not anymore. But you know, what used to be for me when I was reviewing laptops,
00:42:21 ◼ ► right, open up a big Word document or open up a spreadsheet or something like that, and, you know,
00:42:26 ◼ ► resort the columns. You know, and web browsing is clearly the one that that is the most, you know,
00:42:32 ◼ ► everybody who doesn't use the web, so you can run tests and stuff like that. But now video
00:42:37 ◼ ► conferencing has to be part of that discussion of well, this is just table stakes for what people do
00:42:42 ◼ ► on their laptops. And, oh, yeah, it doesn't really matter which platform you're using, if it's Zoom or
00:42:48 ◼ ► Skype or Google Meet or whatever. Yeah, it's gonna sound like a hairdryer going on, and it's gonna
00:42:54 ◼ ► get real hot. And that's just the way it is. And it's like, now it's like, no, and it's like, part
00:43:00 ◼ ► of and what's cool about it is like, okay, so like, Google Meet is clearly it's not like they
00:43:07 ◼ ► optimized it for the M1, right? It's not, oh, well, it's FaceTime, you know, and Apple got to optimize
00:43:14 ◼ ► it and do whatever they could to take advantage of it. It's just Google Meet doing whatever they
00:43:18 ◼ ► were doing before, but now it's running on this new system, and it just doesn't get hot.
00:43:22 ◼ ► Yeah, it was, I mean, that call last week, I was like, I kept interrupting. I was like,
00:43:47 ◼ ► and you're in a long typing session, and I'm in the flow, the words are coming out. It's like,
00:43:51 ◼ ► don't interrupt me. And here I go. And it's so nice when the palm rests are nice, cool aluminum,
00:43:58 ◼ ► as opposed to, you know, making your palms sweat aluminum. And it's like, that is it. It can't
00:44:11 ◼ ► the way it should be. And add in the battery life. And it's just like, right. And I love
00:44:18 ◼ ► it. And you said that on CNBC, I feel like, which was really, um, just such a good point. I mean,
00:44:30 ◼ ► what we've seen in laptops in 10 years. I really think that that to me is the takeaway for
00:44:36 ◼ ► the consumer audience mass market, should you get this? And it's like, if you were going to get
00:44:42 ◼ ► a 13 inch laptop, um, and you, you know, yeah. All right. There are people who need four ports. We
00:44:51 ◼ ► can get into that in a bit, but if you were just going to get like a roughly, you know, $1,200 ish,
00:44:57 ◼ ► 13 inch, and you should get this one because it is the bat. It runs cool, runs silent and the
00:45:04 ◼ ► battery lasts noticeably longer. Like not like, Oh, every year the iPhone gets a little better.
00:45:10 ◼ ► And you know, it goes from 10 hours of whatever they, you know, audio playback to 11 hours. And
00:45:15 ◼ ► it's like, Oh, that's cool. That's 10% year over year. Like this is like twice as much or one and
00:45:20 ◼ ► a half of maybe with the air or something like that. But it really is the difference between
00:45:24 ◼ ► you plug it in overnight. And if your spot where you're working at home, probably right now,
00:45:33 ◼ ► isn't near a power outlet, don't worry about it. Just sit there. You can work all day long.
00:45:37 ◼ ► You don't have to turn the brightness down on your screen. You don't have to worry about quitting
00:45:40 ◼ ► background apps or anything like that. Just use it. And it'll easily last all day long.
00:45:46 ◼ ► Yeah. Yesterday, actually, I went to the office to finish recording some stuff in our studio.
00:45:52 ◼ ► And I left home and I was like, I'm not, I'm not bringing the charger, even though like I knew I
00:45:58 ◼ ► could find a charger at the office. But like, I was like, I'm just it. I can do it. I can make
00:46:04 ◼ ► it the entire day and actually left at like 7am and didn't come home till 7pm. I probably still had
00:46:14 ◼ ► I thought that the one that really made like, I had to double check, like I pinged him. I was like,
00:46:20 ◼ ► let me make sure I'm reading this right. I was reading Panzarino's review. And he had the
00:46:24 ◼ ► bright idea of downloading the WebKit open source project and compiling it from scratch. And it's a
00:46:37 ◼ ► And the M1 was like competing very admirably on time with like iMac Pro and the Mac Pro,
00:46:46 ◼ ► you know, $1,000 desktop workstations was beating the 16 inch MacBook Pro at compile speeds,
00:46:54 ◼ ► which is great if you're a developer and developers know that waiting for the compiler is
00:47:05 ◼ ► But the biggest difference was starting at 100%, the MacBook, the M1 MacBook Pro compiled the
00:47:12 ◼ ► whole thing. And when it was done, it had 91% battery life left when the Intel 13 inch MacBook
00:47:19 ◼ ► Pro, not 16 inch, but 13 inch, but with, you know, head to head comparison, it only had 24%
00:47:25 ◼ ► battery life left. It used 76% of the battery life to do what the M1 did 9%. Like, so even if you,
00:47:33 ◼ ► if the times were the same, which they weren't, the M1 was faster. That's insane. Like 24%
00:47:39 ◼ ► battery life means you've got to start looking for a charger right now. And 91% is like, well,
00:47:57 ◼ ► I don't know, chugging along to do whatever it had to do. It used all of its energy to do that
00:48:02 ◼ ► versus the M1 that just, it's like, okay, I'll just sit around and do it. And I'll use half the
00:48:07 ◼ ► energy and I won't, I'll just be cool. And that to me is just a huge reason to buy it, even if
00:48:12 ◼ ► you don't really understand and don't want to understand any technical aspect of what it means
00:48:17 ◼ ► to go from Intel's silicon to Apple silicon. Totally. Battery life lasts longer, runs cool,
00:48:22 ◼ ► runs faster. There you go. And the compatibility, you don't have to worry about compatibility.
00:48:26 ◼ ► There you go. The whole story is over. It's, you know, but yeah, like we've spent how many
00:48:31 ◼ ► minutes talking about it now and all, it's all I've thought about all week. But, I think for me,
00:48:36 ◼ ► there was, I had, I really loved the air maybe now it's like eight years ago. It was like a thing,
00:48:48 ◼ ► right? The 2011, yeah. The 2011 I think was the one that everybody, it was like the high watermark.
00:48:52 ◼ ► Yeah. And I was working at the Verge then and I even tweeted it today because Dieter Bone cited
00:49:00 ◼ ► it in his newsletter, but I was a Windows laptop reviewer at the time. I mean, really that was my
00:49:05 ◼ ► was my job. And I, well, I would say Windows, but I also had reviewed the air of that year. And
00:49:11 ◼ ► my long running thing was, but you know what, for $200 more than this Ultrabook from ASUS or from
00:49:18 ◼ ► Dell or HP, like I reviewed them all, but everyone would basically say, in every review, I would
00:49:23 ◼ ► basically say, you know, for $200 more, though, you can get this air, this MacBook Air, which
00:49:28 ◼ ► runs for, I think at the time it was like 12 hours, which was like double the amount of time
00:49:37 ◼ ► Windows on it. And this was like the long thing. That year, I probably converted many people from
00:49:43 ◼ ► Windows systems to the air because the air was just the best. And then like between that point
00:49:49 ◼ ► and now really, you know, Apple did a good job on the air, did the refresh three years ago with
00:49:55 ◼ ► the horrible keyboard, which we don't have to get into right now. But it was fine, right? The
00:49:59 ◼ ► battery was fine. The performance was fine. It definitely got hot, it got warm, but it was really
00:50:04 ◼ ► no better than some of the Windows Ultrabooks. And honestly, Dell has been doing a great job on that
00:50:09 ◼ ► Ultrabook, their XPS 13 for years, you know, I always was able to get probably like two hours
00:50:15 ◼ ► more battery life out of the Dell than I was out of a Mac. And now it's just like night and days,
00:50:23 ◼ ► like this is the best laptop ever. Like I mean, I said that in my piece, I was like, this is these
00:50:28 ◼ ► laptops are the best ever. And they're they're better than any Windows system you could buy.
00:50:32 ◼ ► Yeah, and there's, there's an aspect to this where and I'm sort of stealing from my friend Ben
00:50:39 ◼ ► Thompson here. But there's a there's a way that the typical productivity has moved very largely
00:50:47 ◼ ► to the a lot of its stuff is just on the web. And people are just doing their work in browser tabs,
00:50:56 ◼ ► you know, from Windows to Mac or something like that. And a lot of their stuff just works, right?
00:51:00 ◼ ► If you do your Gmail in gmail.com, you go anywhere and get your email. And in some ways,
00:51:09 ◼ ► that works against Apple, because like, what's, what's the point of getting a Mac if it's in
00:51:25 ◼ ► it's great. These are great apps. And they work well together. And there's just, you know, there's
00:51:31 ◼ ► there's just great advantages to it. But you kind of have to buy into this. And some people don't
00:51:38 ◼ ► want to do that. Some people don't want to break their habits. And then a lot of people can't
00:51:41 ◼ ► because they're they don't get to make those choices. They work at a place and their work says,
00:51:46 ◼ ► well, we're going to use Google Docs. And that's what we're using. And you're doing it. You know,
00:51:55 ◼ ► because it's in the Apple ecosystem. That's just the way it is. These machines are great
00:52:02 ◼ ► for people in that boat, because the runs cool runs fast and battery life is way longer. Yeah,
00:52:11 ◼ ► sold. Right. That is absolutely great, even if you're not really heavily or even at all into the
00:52:22 ◼ ► And I think that's right. I think when you look at what does and I've been thinking about it this
00:52:29 ◼ ► week, what does Adele, I said that like, as I said, like Adele, like the singer, what does
00:52:36 ◼ ► Adele the singer do? What is she going to do about these Macs? Like, is she is she just gonna keep
00:52:44 ◼ ► selling what she's been selling? But really, like what I was just looking at the Dell XPS specs,
00:52:51 ◼ ► same price as these same price to get more storage. But it's just a no brainer to me. Like,
00:52:59 ◼ ► like, they're the battery life is going to be longer, it's kind of these systems run cooler,
00:53:04 ◼ ► they're faster. You buy the Dell if you need Windows. And of course, that's the big question
00:53:10 ◼ ► mark right now is how's Windows gonna run on this? It will, you know? Yeah, but I wonder I wonder
00:53:17 ◼ ► about that. To your point, how important is it? Yeah. How important is it? Because if, if, you
00:53:24 ◼ ► know, the old argument was it well, I'm not really into the Mac or not, my company is not in the Mac
00:53:28 ◼ ► ecosystem at all. Therefore, we need to run Windows. Whereas it not with any one particular
00:53:37 ◼ ► moment in history, but just general attrition over the last 10 years, stuff that of that
00:53:44 ◼ ► general cross platform, big company sort of stuff has just moved to the web. And, you know,
00:53:52 ◼ ► and even Microsoft is part of that, like to to Satya Nadella's credit, you know, they're no longer
00:53:58 ◼ ► everything on Windows all the time, you know, they've they've got a great cloud infrastructure
00:54:06 ◼ ► own stuff that runs in browsers, or, you know, is a cross platform app like Skype and stuff like
00:54:14 ◼ ► that. So they're part of it, too. It's not like they've been left behind. But I just don't feel
00:54:19 ◼ ► like people need to run Windows. And then even if they do, I mean, clearly gaming would be a reason
00:54:24 ◼ ► and it'd be interesting to see how that works. But Windows just isn't Windows on ARM, just isn't
00:54:30 ◼ ► a thing like the way that Apple made it possible where you don't even have to worry about it and
00:54:36 ◼ ► everything just recompiles like it. I just don't know that that matters. And will people you know,
00:54:44 ◼ ► if they announce it and like, Oh, finally, I can install Windows on this M one MacBook and you do
00:54:50 ◼ ► it. I don't know that it's going to make you happy in the way that you think it was because
00:54:54 ◼ ► you may not have Oh, the games don't run it. The games I want to play don't run on ARM anyway.
00:54:59 ◼ ► Well, and I think you're bringing up the the big part of this review, which wasn't so positive. And
00:55:07 ◼ ► you know, it's maybe just for now as as apps start to make their way more into the App Store into the
00:55:12 ◼ ► Mac App Store, iOS and iPad apps make their way into the App Store. But those are just not great
00:55:18 ◼ ► to use right now. And that might be again, well, there's two points to that one, I didn't really
00:55:25 ◼ ► care that much. Like it was a place to ding Apple and say, these apps don't resize here. And you
00:55:32 ◼ ► definitely want you want to have a touchscreen. Oh, you're talking about the iPhone apps running
00:55:37 ◼ ► on the on the Mac, right, right. But I didn't it wasn't something to dwell on. A because the system
00:55:43 ◼ ► was so good and made so many improvements in other places. But be you have the web, as you mentioned,
00:55:50 ◼ ► and actually I reached out because I started doing a search, I just decided, okay, let me go through
00:55:55 ◼ ► my my popular iPhone, my iPhone apps and see if they're in the Mac App Store. And really, none of
00:55:59 ◼ ► them were there. So I reached out to Instagram and Snapchat and Tiktok. And I don't have them just
00:56:04 ◼ ► said, Oh, well, we have we have web apps, which, you know, feels like a little bit of a cop out of
00:56:08 ◼ ► an answer to me. But it was true, I could just use all those things on the web, which is the argument
00:56:14 ◼ ► you're making, which is, well, maybe the operating system doesn't fully matter. So much. It's like
00:56:18 ◼ ► the Chromebook argument. But also, then when I look at the apps that I really use on my Mac,
00:56:24 ◼ ► they're all things I do use on my iPhone, which are the Apple native apps. So I message which
00:56:31 ◼ ► works so much better in Big Sur notes, Apple music. I'm looking down across my toolbar right
00:56:40 ◼ ► now. Those are my main ones FaceTime. And all those work. You don't use mail, use like Gmail
00:56:47 ◼ ► or something like that. I use Gmail. Yeah. Let me take another break. And we'll come back because
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00:58:50 ◼ ► But I don't know, it just, it feels very un-Apple-like to me to ship something that is so
00:58:56 ◼ ► pointless. Well, that's sort of, I guess what I was trying to make the point of it just like,
00:59:01 ◼ ► does it matter? Does it even matter that some of these apps are there? What is the killer iPhone app
00:59:07 ◼ ► that you want on your Mac? Right. And some people, and I've, you know, I mentioned this to people at
00:59:12 ◼ ► Apple and like, well, my bank has an app and it's better than their website. And it's like, oh,
00:59:17 ◼ ► all right, maybe, I don't know. But my bank has a website and if I'm on my computer, I'd rather just
00:59:34 ◼ ► I see it for some like utilities, right? Like I kept thinking like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't mind
00:59:40 ◼ ► having the Nest app because I'm constantly trying to adjust the thermometer in the basement.
00:59:44 ◼ ► I also want to say that if you do hear a fan noise in this episode, I am running my space heater
00:59:52 ◼ ► underneath my desk right now. My feet are very cold and I am constantly adjusting my thermometer
00:59:59 ◼ ► upstairs or sorry, it's not thermometer. It's my, what is the thing called? Thermostat. Thermostat.
01:00:05 ◼ ► That's the, that's the third word, the thermostat. So if you do hear it, it is not the computer.
01:00:13 ◼ ► It is the actual space heater under the desk. The weather here in the Northeast has been crazy
01:00:19 ◼ ► this week too. Right now, my watch says it's 63 degrees outside, which is nice. But like two days
01:00:25 ◼ ► ago, it was like 29 degrees here in Philadelphia. It was freezing, literally freezing. I know. And
01:00:30 ◼ ► that's why I turned the heat off this morning. I was like, why are we running the heat at 60
01:00:34 ◼ ► degrees out? But now I'm freezing in the basement. We've been, we've been manning the thermostat like
01:00:38 ◼ ► that nonstop because it's like all of a sudden we're all freezing and we look and we're like,
01:00:42 ◼ ► oh, the house is actually is freezing. We're not nuts. But anyway. Anyway, good weather break.
01:00:49 ◼ ► I could see that the, you know, we have a Nest too and the Nest app is kind of nice, you know,
01:00:55 ◼ ► on the phone. It really is like when you're sitting on the couch and it's like, you know,
01:01:00 ◼ ► it does feel like when I was a kid, like I grew up in the era when the TVs still didn't have remote
01:01:06 ◼ ► controls and it was like the greatest thing ever. We could switch the channel without getting up.
01:01:14 ◼ ► Well, I did just launch what I think is the most impressive iPhone app that you can get on the Mac,
01:01:24 ◼ ► the Dunkin Donuts app. It's funny, I had a line in my review, but it's true because I started just
01:01:32 ◼ ► doing a search of like, what apps can you get? I don't know what I typed in to the Mac App Store.
01:01:37 ◼ ► But it turns out every fast food app you can get on the Mac, like every single one of them is there.
01:02:04 ◼ ► Yeah, so the gist of how it works is if you're the developer of an iOS app that doesn't have a Mac
01:02:13 ◼ ► app, just iPhone, maybe iPad, you know, nowadays, hopefully most of those apps support both because
01:02:18 ◼ ► they're the same app and they just scale to the screen. If you didn't do anything, then
01:02:23 ◼ ► your app would be available in the Mac App Store for Macs running on the M1. And then you can search
01:02:31 ◼ ► on the App Store for a name. And by default, it still only shows real Mac apps, but then you can
01:02:37 ◼ ► switch a little tab to say show iOS and iPad apps. And then they'll show up there too, and you can
01:02:42 ◼ ► download them. But if you don't want your app to appear like that, you can opt out of it. And
01:02:48 ◼ ► that's what you said, like Instagram opted out and TikTok and others. There apparently is a trick
01:02:55 ◼ ► though, where if you just download the app, I'm not even, I should know how to do this, but I've
01:03:01 ◼ ► forgotten how without iTunes. Remember you used to be able to back up your apps to iTunes,
01:03:05 ◼ ► and you'd have a copy of the IPA files on your Mac. If you just double click those or something
01:03:12 ◼ ► on your M1, you can run them even if they're not authorized to run. I don't know if it's
01:03:17 ◼ ► this is like a... Where do you get that from? I don't know. I'll put a link in the show notes
01:03:22 ◼ ► on how to do it, but there's a trick you can get to get like Instagram to run on your M1 Mac book,
01:03:28 ◼ ► but it's not meant for it. It doesn't, there's things that are missing. It doesn't work right.
01:03:42 ◼ ► Just search fast food. Everyone who listens, if you have an M1 Mac, just search fast food and
01:03:48 ◼ ► you will just see this is why they wanted to run iPhone apps on Mac, I think. So we could get our
01:03:54 ◼ ► fast food apps. Shake Shack. Oh, that's a good one. I don't want to start an East Coast, West
01:04:00 ◼ ► Coast argument with Shake Shack versus... What's that? No, not Five Guys. That's East Coast too.
01:04:16 ◼ ► Yeah. It's funny because Dunkin' Donuts is all over the place. I mean, not even talking about
01:04:24 ◼ ► the Boston area where they're literally... I think it's like state law in Massachusetts where every
01:04:30 ◼ ► 500 feet there has to be a Dunkin' Donuts. But New York, Philadelphia, they're all over the place
01:04:37 ◼ ► here. But I was talking to a friend who's been in California for years and he's never had Dunkin'
01:04:42 ◼ ► Donuts coffee. And I'm like, I'm not a huge Dunkin' Donuts fan, but I like their coffee. But the
01:04:47 ◼ ► miracle of Dunkin' Donuts coffee is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, if they're open. Any Dunkin'
01:04:54 ◼ ► Donuts, anywhere you go, the coffee is exactly the same. It is always 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
01:05:13 ◼ ► You know what they should make? They should make an Intel version of a Dunkin' Donuts coffee. It's
01:05:23 ◼ ► Yeah. But it always tastes the same and it always tastes pretty good. And it also doesn't taste
01:05:29 ◼ ► quite like anybody else's coffee. It's very clearly, I could Pepsi Challenge it any day of the
01:05:34 ◼ ► week. And it's always good. It's always Dunkin'. It's not the greatest, but it's just plain. And
01:05:40 ◼ ► when you order it, you don't have to order the light roast or the dark roast or that roast.
01:05:45 ◼ ► You just get coffee and it's great. I get the iced coffee there, so I don't know really that
01:05:51 ◼ ► much about the hot. They have great iced coffee. And again, I like the Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee,
01:05:56 ◼ ► always tastes exactly the same. I'm really happy it could be on the show to get you a Dunkin'
01:06:14 ◼ ► McDonald's French fries, right? They should have thrown them out and replaced them. But it's like,
01:06:18 ◼ ► Dunkin' Donuts, you're never going to get a cold coffee. That's true. Whenever I'm on a road trip
01:06:23 ◼ ► or whenever we drive upstate, I always am like, "We'll just go to the Dunkin' Donuts on the road
01:06:27 ◼ ► because I know it will be reliable and good." Yeah, it's always good. And they have very sturdy
01:06:32 ◼ ► cups, you know? And it's all good. Dunkin' Donuts, very good. They should expand to the
01:06:38 ◼ ► West Coast. Move some of those Massachusetts ones up there. Are we done with the sponsor break?
01:06:42 ◼ ► Oh, yeah. Yeah, Dunkin' Didn't sponsor. This is all free. I just give away good words to
01:06:48 ◼ ► Dunkin' Donuts. I don't get it. I don't get the thing. But I knew I wanted to do the break and
01:06:56 ◼ ► talk about this because I feel like the next controversy would be if we did not have an
01:07:07 ◼ ► And it's related to the iPhone app thing, right? Because the people who want to see touch screens
01:07:13 ◼ ► on Apple MacBooks also are saying, "Well, wait, if you're going to let these phone apps run and
01:07:20 ◼ ► the phone apps assume you have a touch screen, why shouldn't the Mac also have a touch screen?"
01:07:25 ◼ ► Right. And I don't want to bring up Dunkin' Donuts again, but I'm going to because I'm looking at
01:07:28 ◼ ► this app on my screen right now. And it sucks to navigate this with the mouse. And I just want to
01:07:36 ◼ ► click on this thing right here that says, "Locate my closest Dunkin' Donuts." And that would be a
01:07:41 ◼ ► lot easier than clicking around to it. My example, and I didn't choose this to be a jerk and try to
01:07:50 ◼ ► find a bad app. It's like Apple themselves have shown the HBO Max. Why don't they just call it
01:07:59 ◼ ► HBO? God almighty, it's the dumbest thing in the world. Right after Rudy Giuliani's shoe polish
01:08:13 ◼ ► I don't know. Somebody, nobody's... There's a lot of... Yeah. Somebody said it was mascara,
01:08:23 ◼ ► and you can touch them up before a TV hit with mascara. It's funny. I saw it running. I was in
01:08:29 ◼ ► the city yesterday and I was in an elevator and I saw it and I was like, "Oh, it must be like a
01:08:34 ◼ ► crack in the screen." That's what it looked like. I didn't realize. It was a quick fleeting elevator
01:08:41 ◼ ► ride and you see it and I'm like, "Huh, maybe the screen is cracked. It looks like something is
01:08:46 ◼ ► dripping down his face, but it must be a television crack." And then I just saw it on Twitter last
01:08:54 ◼ ► night and I was like, "Oh my God, it was a screen crack. It's actually something screaming down his
01:08:58 ◼ ► face." It's one of the great mysteries of the world. All right, now I've got this HBO Max.
01:09:09 ◼ ► differently, but I've got it. I'm literally using it as I speak to you right now and it's on the
01:09:16 ◼ ► iPad. And when I scroll a list on the iPad by touching the screen and flicking, it scrolls like
01:09:23 ◼ ► the way you would think an iPad app would scroll. It has momentum and you can zip. If it's a long
01:09:29 ◼ ► list, you can flick your finger and it goes real fast. When I ran the HBO Max app on my Mac,
01:09:35 ◼ ► and again, the mystery of the world is why in the world they didn't just call this new service HBO,
01:09:46 ◼ ► Yeah, and it's got a bunch of crap that's not HBO thrown in. The scrolling is horrible.
01:09:53 ◼ ► It feels, it actually, and it's, you know, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It feels
01:10:02 ◼ ► well, this, you know, is a good PC laptop for X, Y, and Z, but the trackpad is horrible. It doesn't
01:10:10 ◼ ► That's what, that's what the HBO Max app running on the M1 MacBook was like. And, and for me,
01:10:18 ◼ ► I have HBO Max, but we get it through our, we have, we still have cable TV and we pay for HBO.
01:10:24 ◼ ► And if you pay for HBO, then you get a free account on HBO Max, but you have to sign in
01:10:30 ◼ ► through your cable provider. Well, guess who my cable provider is Xfinity. Guess where Xfinity is
01:10:36 ◼ ► on a list of cable providers in North America. And they have all of them. There's a lot of
01:10:42 ◼ ► cable providers in North America. Mine is at the bottom of the list and I'm just sitting there with
01:10:48 ◼ ► two fingers on the trackpad scrolling and scrolling and it's like moving two names at a time. And I
01:10:55 ◼ ► was like, Oh my God. And I was like, well, wait, maybe I can type, you know, X because, you know,
01:11:17 ◼ ► really like, thank you for making that error sound so nice to me. Like I'm pissed. Like I'm
01:11:22 ◼ ► pissed that that thing won't do what I asked, but thank you for making it sound so gentle and nice.
01:11:27 ◼ ► Yeah, it's very nice. I'll sit there and hit the delete key when you can't delete anything.
01:11:35 ◼ ► It just made me so angry. And the icing on the cake, of course, is that Xfinity is owned by
01:11:43 ◼ ► Comcast and it's just, they rebranded their cable service as Xfinity because they thought it sounded
01:11:49 ◼ ► cool. And maybe the name Comcast started having negative connotations in people's heads, but if
01:11:54 ◼ ► they had still been named Comcast, I would have gotten to it so much sooner. And I'm like, well,
01:12:01 ◼ ► wait, this is insane. Like why would their scrolling be so bad? And then I looked on the
01:12:07 ◼ ► iPhone and when you're using actual touch on the actual iPhone, the scrolling is very fast. And
01:12:13 ◼ ► when you're somehow, whatever's going on with the interaction where the trackpad gestures are faking
01:12:22 ◼ ► touch, it works terribly in HBO Max, but that's not universal across all apps. Like, so I use
01:12:28 ◼ ► Marco Arman's Overcast podcast player and his app, you know, Overcast is written like with standard
01:12:36 ◼ ► UI kit controls and scrolling a list of podcasts in Overcast on the Mac works exactly as you'd think.
01:12:43 ◼ ► You know, it feels like you're scrolling in a Mac app and it has momentum. And when you flick your
01:12:48 ◼ ► fingers fast, it goes fast. Like something about the HBO Max app is doing something custom that
01:12:55 ◼ ► works for real touch on a real iOS device and does not work here. But Apple's the one telling me that
01:13:03 ◼ ► HBO Max is a good example of an app to try. The window isn't resizable and it's like a little,
01:13:09 ◼ ► it's like a little postcard size window. And are the windows resizable on any of these? I haven't
01:13:14 ◼ ► found one to be resizable. Overcast is if you try it. Yeah. Even if you don't use Overcast,
01:13:19 ◼ ► normally you just download, you can download it for free and try it. Yeah. And I guess that's
01:13:26 ◼ ► some tweaks that Marco and his team made. Yeah. Because like all of the ones I've been using are
01:13:32 ◼ ► mostly iPad apps and those are not resizable. And I went to go play like Subway Surfers
01:13:38 ◼ ► and it's so on and they're, I guess, written their apps it's like vertical on iPad orientation because
01:13:47 ◼ ► it actually intersects with the toolbar at the bottom of the dock and you can't resize. So you
01:13:54 ◼ ► have to shrink your dock to play. Because it's covered up. Right. It's a very good experience,
01:14:02 ◼ ► I have to say. It all works and you understand, you know, this is the way there's been technology
01:14:08 ◼ ► companies that have, well, if it works, ship it, has been a mindset ever since technology has been
01:14:15 ◼ ► a thing. But it's certainly not, it's the opposite of the Apple way. Apple's way has always been,
01:14:20 ◼ ► well, we'll do a lot less, but what we do is going to work really nice. And we'd rather not do a
01:14:25 ◼ ► thing at all than do it in a half-assed way. And these apps are just half-assed. And the ones you
01:14:33 ◼ ► really want, like Netflix, not there. Not there. Right. TikTok, not there. I mean, this is, so this
01:14:39 ◼ ► is why I ask, why not just put a touch screen on? And I guess your argument's going to be that that's
01:14:46 ◼ ► not an Apple thing to do. But let me just say, I spent quite a bit of time on the, on a Pixelbook
01:15:05 ◼ ► it's like, I reach up, I scroll, I tap, and this is with Android apps on there. I'm out.
01:15:16 ◼ ► I think that's the model that should be on the Mac. And I just ask, why not? Why don't they
01:15:25 ◼ ► So it, my argument, I think I speak to why they haven't. Well, number one, maybe they will,
01:15:32 ◼ ► right? And I definitely am not betting that they never will. I mean, I guess I want to get in on
01:15:39 ◼ ► our bet. We have a bet me, Dieter and Eli. I probably should get in on it. I don't know how
01:15:45 ◼ ► do we make a four way bet though? We haven't really figured out the rules. We just all said
01:15:49 ◼ ► when we think it's coming and then how much money? I would still wager against them doing it, but I
01:15:54 ◼ ► would not wager, I like to bet lots of money, but I would not bet a lot of money on it. I would bet
01:15:59 ◼ ► a little bit of money that they were never going to ship touch screen Macs. Or maybe, you know,
01:16:05 ◼ ► by some definition of never, that's like, let's say five years. Because who knows, five years from
01:16:11 ◼ ► now, who knows what the heck is going on? I think they won't. I think that I get it. I get that if
01:16:20 ◼ ► you just want to scroll, like you have a big old browser window and you just want to touch the
01:16:25 ◼ ► screen and flick it and scroll up that if you could just reach out and touch your screen the
01:16:29 ◼ ► way you touch the iPad, it should just work and people want to do it. My argument against it is,
01:16:37 ◼ ► and if that's all Apple did, if they said, don't change anything else, we're just going to make
01:16:43 ◼ ► the screen respond to touch, then that would, to me would be the, okay, I can live with that
01:16:50 ◼ ► way of Apple adding touch to Mac OS. I wouldn't use it personally very often. When I have my iPad
01:17:05 ◼ ► See, and I think Big Sur, I mean, I said this in my review, is just like, it is asking for
01:17:12 ◼ ► a touch screen. Like these widgets and these swipeable notifications are just screaming out,
01:17:23 ◼ ► swiping away these notifications all the time. Now, I'm not saying I always want to be reaching
01:17:27 ◼ ► up to swipe away those notifications. I'm just saying touch for swiping away notifications or
01:17:41 ◼ ► The control center or notification center. I don't even know what they call it in the Mac.
01:17:57 ◼ ► Like those are slider that like that wants me to swipe that wants my finger to be used,
01:18:04 ◼ ► put my finger on it right now I'm doing it, I'm touching the screen and pull it down the
01:18:18 ◼ ► sun and some of the stuff is cross platform, like the the widgets that you get, you know,
01:18:25 ◼ ► like you can say, Oh, give me a calendar widget over there in the, the notification center thing
01:18:30 ◼ ► are written cross platform with the new thing Apple has called Swift UI and the same Swift UI
01:18:37 ◼ ► that makes a widget that you can put on your desktop on your phone is the same code you use
01:18:42 ◼ ► to make one that runs on the Mac. And therefore, yeah, it does look like they're laid out to be
01:18:48 ◼ ► friendly for touch. But most of the Mac interface isn't right. And I and and so many people seem to
01:18:55 ◼ ► think all of Big Sur was redesigned and respaced for touch. But it wasn't like the menu bar is
01:19:00 ◼ ► still tiny. The distance between regular menus, like when you go down, you know, like the file
01:19:05 ◼ ► menu, and it's file edit view, you know, whatever. Those those items are all like half the height
01:19:12 ◼ ► that they would be for touch to be touch friendly. Like when you look at something that's
01:19:16 ◼ ► true, I'm looking at all that right now. You're right. It's Yeah, you know, I wouldn't want to
01:19:20 ◼ ► touch any of that it. The red, yellow, green buttons that close. I always forget what yellow
01:19:28 ◼ ► yellow minimize. It's like, nobody uses yellow, people close people zoom, for old yellow in the
01:19:34 ◼ ► middle. I just I always use a keyboard shortcut for that. But they're not spaced for that. There's
01:19:41 ◼ ► some and there's all sorts of apps with toolbars that are, you know, pro apps that and the argument
01:19:47 ◼ ► is so what, okay, just leave all the spacing the same. And people with touchscreen Macs will learn
01:19:54 ◼ ► well don't do that. Don't try to touch the yellow button in between red and green because it's so
01:19:59 ◼ ► small. Just use the trackpad for that. But then you can use touch when you do want to reach a
01:20:04 ◼ ► thing that is a big fat target like oh, there's a big notification that just came in the upper
01:20:08 ◼ ► right corner. I just want to flick it away. I get it. And if they did it that way that like I said,
01:20:14 ◼ ► that would be my I could live with it way. But that's not really the Apple way like the Apple
01:20:19 ◼ ► way is if they're going to support touch, they're going to make it a touch friendly interface. And
01:20:23 ◼ ► if they're going to make it a touch friendly interface, then everything has to be bigger
01:20:26 ◼ ► and spread apart like the iPad. And that to me would take away from the information density of
01:20:40 ◼ ► the argument that I really do here and I think is very, is very realistic that they wouldn't do it.
01:20:46 ◼ ► But on the other hand, on the other hand, it is and you know, it's a marketing point, you know,
01:21:04 ◼ ► people do reach up, I know, you know, and so I'm not I am against it. But I'm not like,
01:21:09 ◼ ► this isn't a zealot tree thing for me. And as long as they don't ask developers to rejigger
01:21:16 ◼ ► everything to make it touch friendly, which to me would really take away truly take away from Mac.
01:21:22 ◼ ► Fine. You know, if you want to just say we have a touchscreen and it's good for scrolling and
01:21:37 ◼ ► because it's not, you know, the iPad is definitely touch first, and the pencil does lots of things.
01:21:43 ◼ ► But it's not a stylus driven interface. And if I remember when when the pencil first came out,
01:21:58 ◼ ► right. So like, if you had like a notification came up and with an OK and a cancel button,
01:22:06 ◼ ► right, you needed to use your finger, right. And it wasn't a bug. That was how it was designed.
01:22:16 ◼ ► a touch interface, it should be touch. And if we were going to make a pencil stylus driven
01:22:22 ◼ ► interface, everything would be stylus first across the board. And eventually, I think they kind of
01:22:28 ◼ ► realized, well, this is kind of annoying when you have the pencil in your hand and just want to tap
01:22:32 ◼ ► the button. So that would be the way that if they add touch to the Mac, I, I hope that it would go
01:22:39 ◼ ► where it's like, sure, the pencil still even today, pencil still doesn't do everything.
01:22:43 ◼ ► It's definitely not a pencil first interface on the iPad. But now it's like, okay, we'll give in,
01:22:48 ◼ ► we'll let you tap buttons and stuff like that with the pencil. Yeah, I guess I see it as like,
01:22:54 ◼ ► I mean, the Magic Keyboard has come so far for the iPad, and it really does serve, it's better
01:23:01 ◼ ► than just an accessory at this point, right? You can really do use that as like, a primary mode of
01:23:07 ◼ ► input. And I think that that's not what it would be here, it would be a secondary mode of input that
01:23:16 ◼ ► you would sometimes use and have at your disposal for these interactions. But I really do hear that
01:23:25 ◼ ► that's a tough marketing point to make. And also, if Apple is going to do it, it's got to say it's
01:23:30 ◼ ► doing it for a reason, because that's what they do. And there's got to be something behind it that
01:23:35 ◼ ► makes it magical or special. Yeah. So I would say I think that if these apps were better,
01:23:45 ◼ ► I would be more inclined to say they really need to do it. So maybe it's also a wait and see thing.
01:23:52 ◼ ► Let's see how the iPhone and iPad apps make their way and if they do make their way and if they're
01:23:57 ◼ ► better. But yeah, I'm with you. I'd like that sort of HBO Max situation or the resizing of these
01:24:04 ◼ ► games. Or I also tried Among Us, which is great to have on here if you on the Mac if you love playing
01:24:12 ◼ ► that game, but it's not ideal for playing. Yeah. Does it does that have a resizable window? My son
01:24:20 ◼ ► plays that game. And if anybody, you know, who's like me and is out of touch with the state of the
01:24:25 ◼ ► art of gaming, Among Us is this really cool collaborative game. Do you want to describe it
01:24:29 ◼ ► because you've played it? I've watched my son play it. I was like, Oh my god, I would be so into that
01:24:34 ◼ ► if I were your age. I'm told that I just turned it on and all I hear is blasting music. How do I
01:24:39 ◼ ► turn the volume down on it? I don't know. No, you can't resize it. I just opened it to make sure but
01:24:45 ◼ ► at least that one fits within like the screen window. So you're not like having to resize other
01:24:50 ◼ ► windows to play it. I don't know how the best way to describe it. It's basically like a murder
01:24:56 ◼ ► mystery game. It's right and you play it, you know, get a group of friends or maybe you play
01:25:02 ◼ ► with strangers, but then one of you is randomly assigned to be the killer, but nobody else nobody
01:25:06 ◼ ► knows who the killer is. You just know if it's you or not and then you have to run around this
01:25:11 ◼ ► game and try to figure out who the killer is. Right? Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it. And I
01:25:15 ◼ ► actually only played it for the first time on here and then me and my wife, I was like, we were just
01:25:20 ◼ ► trying to test. I was trying to show her I was testing all these apps and then she became really
01:25:23 ◼ ► into it and so now she's playing on her iPhone all day long. Yeah. My son plays with his friends and
01:25:29 ◼ ► it's like it's one of those games where it's like this actually sounds healthy and this sounds like
01:25:33 ◼ ► healthy gameplay. Like some of the stuff like when he's shooting people, it's like, maybe we should,
01:25:39 ◼ ► maybe he's 17, but it's, or he's almost 17, but it's like, maybe we should. Yeah. Can you believe
01:25:43 ◼ ► that? Geez. You met him when he was like four, right? Yeah. Wow. Every time we podcast, you
01:25:48 ◼ ► always like tell me, I'm like, how did he just get five years older? I know he's 16 going on 17 and
01:25:54 ◼ ► it's like, but when he's playing Among Us, it just sounds, and it really warms my heart because it's
01:26:00 ◼ ► like, Oh my God, to be 16 and not be able to see your friends. And it's like, Oh, they're all just
01:26:04 ◼ ► having fun. And everybody can play whether they have PCs or Macs or people are, some of those
01:26:09 ◼ ► friends are playing on phones and it's, uh, but they're just, do they FaceTime like when they're
01:26:13 ◼ ► playing or something? Yeah. I don't know what I, I, I forget. Discourse. I think that's, what's
01:26:19 ◼ ► nice about it. Yeah. Discourse. Like it's like, it's, it's social in the sense that like there
01:26:24 ◼ ► isn't a social layer built into the game. You kind of have to go through a different route and then
01:26:28 ◼ ► communicate. And, um, yeah, I did it play with some random people, which was funny, but yeah,
01:26:34 ◼ ► but it's a really great game. But yeah. And so, yeah, now you can play it on the Mac if you have
01:26:39 ◼ ► a Mac and it's great and it's, you know, it's, I, but a lot of this stuff touches, not a magic,
01:26:45 ◼ ► if, if they had, if they just secretly said, you know what, guess what? Surprise. These M1 Mac
01:26:50 ◼ ► books do have touchscreens. We were just waiting for big Sur 11.2 and now it's, we've enabled it
01:26:57 ◼ ► and there it's on, um, it wouldn't magically make these iOS apps running on big Sur better.
01:27:03 ◼ ► It might make some things better. I'm guessing the H my HBO scrolling thing would, would work. Um,
01:27:10 ◼ ► but a lot of it would be better, but a lot of, and a lot of the iPhone games in particular
01:27:18 ◼ ► are specifically, it's not just that they're designed for touch. They're designed to be a
01:27:22 ◼ ► little thing in your hand, you know? Yep. Uh, I don't know. I mean, most of the, the most of
01:27:32 ◼ ► they're iPad apps. And that's likely because those developers already had done, made some tweaks for
01:27:39 ◼ ► keyboard and mouse. Um, and this was just the easiest way. And if you've got an iPad Apple,
01:27:44 ◼ ► yeah, you've got a bigger screen here anyway, so why not use the iPad app? And Facebook has their
01:27:48 ◼ ► iPad app, uh, iPad app in store and it's actually pretty good. Um, I've been using that and, you
01:27:55 ◼ ► know, besides from the little frustration that it keeps telling me to open iOS, the messenger app,
01:28:00 ◼ ► which doesn't exist, um, it's pretty good. You know, it's a nice way. What does it, does it like
01:28:07 ◼ ► keeps telling me install and then I go to hit install and then it tells me that's not available
01:28:12 ◼ ► for your Mac operating system. It's a nice, it's just a loop that goes around and around every day
01:28:18 ◼ ► and I can't get it to go away. It's maddening to have the like two little dots that say have
01:28:21 ◼ ► two messages in there. All right, let me take a break here and thank our third and final sponsor
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01:29:59 ◼ ► Just remember that though, when you do go to pay, remember to go to squarespace.com/talkshow
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01:30:21 ◼ ► talk show when you pay. What else do we want to talk about? I know that it's weird. I'm doing
01:30:44 ◼ ► they sent Jason Snell all three. They sent him an Air. And again, this is sort of like to open the
01:30:50 ◼ ► curtain a little. It's like they just send you stuff. They don't really ask. It wasn't like,
01:30:56 ◼ ► "Hey, which one do you want, John?" They were like, "We'll send hardware tomorrow. Here, sign
01:31:01 ◼ ► this NDA." And I signed the NDA. And then the next day, ding dong, here's FedEx. And I had a MacBook
01:31:05 ◼ ► Pro. They sent Jason Snell all three. I wouldn't have even opened the other two. I just don't have
01:31:12 ◼ ► time. Right. I have to say I was very happy to have both, mostly because I think it was important
01:31:19 ◼ ► for me to tell consumers, "Here's the difference, the $200 price difference. Here's the difference
01:31:26 ◼ ► for you." But it was a lot more work, for sure. And yeah, I've just been exhausted, really, is all I
01:31:37 ◼ ► have to say here. And four phones... Four phones was just too much. It was just too much. With
01:31:44 ◼ ► radically different... Not just like, "Oh, four different colors." I mean, and I know we've got...
01:31:51 ◼ ► I'll do a phone show next episode of this show. But I had to talk about the Max first, and I had
01:31:57 ◼ ► to have you on because you're like my... That's why they put us on CNBC together. We're partners in
01:32:05 ◼ ► this. We're laptop partners. By the way, I meant to say $300 difference, price difference. I'm very
01:32:10 ◼ ► tired. I'm so tired. I'm so sick and tired. I am so excited about next week. I was like to not have...
01:32:17 ◼ ► I mean, it's hard to complain because these have been so fun to do. It is fun. It is super fun.
01:32:22 ◼ ► But it is so much work. And back to back to back. And it was like... And everybody knew...
01:32:28 ◼ ► Apple announced to WWDC that they're doing this big transition later this year, which is Apple speak
01:32:34 ◼ ► for the end of the year. But they've had Mac events in the last few years in December. And the Mac
01:32:42 ◼ ► Pro, which everybody had been waiting for for so long, came out the very end of the year. And
01:32:47 ◼ ► I think the iMac Pro the year before or two years before, whenever that was, was in December. So the
01:32:54 ◼ ► idea that maybe we wouldn't hear about these things until after Thanksgiving was definitely
01:33:07 ◼ ► of November because they couldn't have had the event two days ago because then the reviews would
01:33:13 ◼ ► all be coming out Thanksgiving weekend. That doesn't work. And so it was like, oh, exciting.
01:33:20 ◼ ► They're going to have the Mac event on November 5th or whatever the date was. And it's like,
01:33:26 ◼ ► well, wait a minute. I just got done writing about all these iPhones. I'm not even done. I've got
01:33:33 ◼ ► reader comments to go through and follow up on their questions. I haven't even had a chance. And
01:33:38 ◼ ► now I've got to do this thing. It's terribly exciting, but it's been an avalanche of stuff
01:33:48 ◼ ► luckily the watch was not such a leap this year. You know, I'm going to say like, thank you. Thank
01:33:55 ◼ ► you, Apple, honestly. Right. Blood, blood, blood oxygen level. Okay. There you go. Yeah. Screen.
01:34:02 ◼ ► Right. Right. Actually, I just wrote our, we were writing our holiday gift guide and I was like,
01:34:06 ◼ ► the best thing about the watch this year is the solo loop band, the end. Yeah. That's what I
01:34:11 ◼ ► wrote most about too. And I don't think that's because they ignored it. I think the watch is in
01:34:16 ◼ ► such a good place and that, you know, don't mess with success. We added another sensor and we've
01:34:21 ◼ ► got a loop and that's great. And it's like, oh, thank God I can move on to these other products.
01:34:26 ◼ ► But the phones were so significant though. I have to say, I thought there would be much bigger
01:34:32 ◼ ► interest in some of the phones. At least, you know, just from readers, it's always very interesting to
01:34:37 ◼ ► me to see which products readers really gravitate towards. You know, the 5G upgrade was news. It was
01:34:45 ◼ ► big news. They focused a lot on it. That was like a lot of testing work. They had a different size.
01:34:53 ◼ ► I mean, it was such a significant iPhone upgrade. And then they also had the HomePod in there,
01:34:58 ◼ ► which was, you know, that was big too. A $99 HomePod, a $99 anything from Apple's pretty big
01:35:03 ◼ ► deal. And then these laptops, which are just like really spectacular. It's just like, it was
01:35:11 ◼ ► exhausting. So I agree. I still haven't written about it. And like the, my, my, I'll spoil it. My
01:35:18 ◼ ► bum thumbs down review of the season is for the, the MagSafe Duo charger. Oh yeah. Same. I haven't
01:35:26 ◼ ► written. I haven't even taken it out of the box. Oh, it's, but it, it, it works fine, I guess,
01:35:31 ◼ ► but it's $130 and it doesn't come with a wall adapter. So it, and it wants the 20 watt adapter
01:35:45 ◼ ► the iPhone at the full 15 Watts that the standalone MagSafe cable does. So you're still not getting,
01:35:52 ◼ ► and again, if it's, I don't know what it is. I saw a thing on Mac rumors about it. And, and if
01:35:57 ◼ ► you're charging overnight, who cares if it's at the full 15 Watts, if it's close, you know,
01:36:01 ◼ ► and, and if you're really into, I need to charge fast, you shouldn't be using the wireless at all.
01:36:07 ◼ ► The wireless at all. But still it's $130 and needs a $20 adapter. It's 150 bucks. And why not just
01:36:16 ◼ ► use the, the watch, the watch thing that came with your watch and the $40 MagSafe thing and that's it
01:36:24 ◼ ► and you're done. I can't believe it's $130. Even the $40 MagSafe thing to me seems like a ripoff,
01:36:29 ◼ ► frankly. It feels like it should be cheaper because it feels like it's just a cable. And I
01:36:35 ◼ ► know it's not just a cable. And the cable is short. I have to say I made a point of this in
01:36:39 ◼ ► my iPhone 12 review. The cable is very short and is really not usable to put next to the side of
01:36:44 ◼ ► your bed unless your nightstand is super short. And if you have a short nightstand, that's great
01:36:49 ◼ ► for you, but I don't have a short nightstand. It's not a tiny nightstand. Okay. I have a
01:36:53 ◼ ► gigantic nightstand. It's beautiful. No, it's like to use my phone while I'm in bed, I have to like
01:36:59 ◼ ► stick my hand out over the side. Right. Right. I'm like huddled on the side of my giant nightstand,
01:37:05 ◼ ► apparently. Oh, and then the other thing, have you done this where it's like, if you try to,
01:37:10 ◼ ► if you pull it a little bit further to get a little bit closer to you, it won't yank out of
01:37:15 ◼ ► the wall. Of course, what happens is the magnetic connector separates, right? I mean, because what's
01:37:20 ◼ ► the, you know, it is MagSafe, you know, so you, you pull the phone a little bit closer. And of course,
01:37:27 ◼ ► it's this big, heavy, I mean, by the standards of you're in bed, it's this big, heavy disc and it
01:37:40 ◼ ► But what you've also just described is like, it actually should just plug into the wall.
01:37:44 ◼ ► Like it just is a normal plug into the wall. Because that's what you have, you're using it,
01:37:49 ◼ ► you're using it as if it's plugged in. But anyway, 140 for that plus a charger. The HomePod Mini is
01:37:57 ◼ ► 99 bucks and comes with the 20 watt charger. Can you believe it? It comes with the charger right
01:38:02 ◼ ► in the box for $99. People should just be buying HomePod Minis for the chargers. It is.
01:38:13 ◼ ► To me, they perfectly, uh, it's like the two counter, counter ends of the Apple value chain
01:38:22 ◼ ► for this year's products is on the one end, you've got this really nice little speaker,
01:38:28 ◼ ► um, that to me sounds great. I, you know, I've, I've seen people who've reviewed more of all of
01:38:34 ◼ ► the various products in this space who have slightly different rankings of which ones sound
01:38:40 ◼ ► best, but at the very, nobody says it sounds bad. It sounds pretty good. The base isn't shockingly
01:38:46 ◼ ► good. You know, if there's anything that's short of its base, but it sounds good. 99 bucks. And it
01:38:51 ◼ ► comes with a 21 charger. On the other hand, the duo charger thing for charging your watch and
01:38:56 ◼ ► your phone at the same time is $130 and doesn't come with the charger. And all it does is charge
01:39:02 ◼ ► two things that, ah, it just feels so much more expensive than it should be. It's, and I don't
01:39:09 ◼ ► want to go back to the max, but the max do ship with the charger, but those are gigantic chargers
01:39:15 ◼ ► for what they do. Yeah. I did this. I did a piece a couple of months when the charger thing happened
01:39:22 ◼ ► when Apple stopped shipping the chargers. And this is, I mean, I don't know who is in charge of
01:39:28 ◼ ► Apple's charging ecosystem, but my assumption is that actually the teams don't talk, right?
01:39:34 ◼ ► And so the team that does the chargers for the max are doing the chargers for the max. And then
01:39:38 ◼ ► the team that's doing the charger for the watch and the phone, maybe they talk because they worked
01:39:44 ◼ ► on your really wonderful product, the $130 MagSafe Duo project. They must've worked on that together.
01:39:50 ◼ ► But these things don't work together. And what needs to be made is a central Apple charger,
01:39:58 ◼ ► a corded charger that can power all of these things and is a smaller charger, a GAN charger,
01:40:04 ◼ ► which is the, you know, the new, the new hype around chargers and has a couple of USB-C spots
01:40:11 ◼ ► in it. That's right. Right. That's right. So that's what I'm using. I'm using an anchor or no,
01:40:15 ◼ ► an AUG key, a hundred watt charger. That's the size of, um, something in between one of the
01:40:22 ◼ ► Mac chargers and the 20 watt Apple charger. I got it. I got it. I'll send you this link. I
01:40:29 ◼ ► recommended this. Um, but I, you know, look, am I applying to be the head of Apple chargers? Maybe.
01:40:35 ◼ ► Um, but like, it's time to do some work here. There, there, you know, if we're going to wrap
01:40:40 ◼ ► up on something chargers is it, cause you did a deep dive on it. Um, right before these things
01:40:45 ◼ ► came out, which is welcome. Right. Like, and I know you and I have a past appearance on this
01:40:50 ◼ ► show. We, I got you, I got you, uh, revved up on cables. Remember I sent you over to monospace.
01:40:57 ◼ ► And I feel like we've got the cable situation more under control these days. Um, now that it's,
01:41:04 ◼ ► you know, everything is USB-C or the phone is lightning and that's, um, not to derail this on
01:41:11 ◼ ► whether the phone should also be USB-C, but at least we've got it down to two things. We know
01:41:22 ◼ ► we need chargers that are smaller. Why is Apple's 20 watt charger so big compared to the Aukey and
01:41:28 ◼ ► Anker ones? It's ridiculous. The Aukey and Anker ones are almost, and by prac, I think practically
01:41:34 ◼ ► speaking, you can say they're the same size as the classic Apple five watt dice charger. Right.
01:41:41 ◼ ► And also what's still happening is that this is, this is what's baffling to me. They're still
01:41:50 ◼ ► Which is nuts. It's still $19. They should give them away. Remember when they first took out the
01:41:58 ◼ ► headphone port and then they, you could like go in the Apple store and they, it was like,
01:42:01 ◼ ► it was like $5. It was the literally famously, the cheapest thing Apple has ever sold in its
01:42:07 ◼ ► retail stores were those headphone to lightning adapters. Um, it was as close as they're ever
01:42:13 ◼ ► going to come to giving something away. That's what they should do with those five. But the
01:42:17 ◼ ► margins, like I just picture whenever they sell one of these five watt chargers, a man or woman
01:42:22 ◼ ► in Cupertino just cheering every time they sell one, they're like the margins, the margins.
01:42:29 ◼ ► Like they're just, there's some little old accountant looking guy who's got like one of
01:42:34 ◼ ► those green eye shades on and it's like his whole job is just making money on these incredibly,
01:42:39 ◼ ► you know, and they've probably got like 50 zillion of them that they already made, you know,
01:42:44 ◼ ► and they're just sitting there and they just keep shipping them off and they're the smallest thing
01:42:48 ◼ ► ever. The only thing, no one, no consumers have really ever understand, I mean, people that are
01:42:53 ◼ ► into phones and understand, get that like this five watt charger has been horrible. And I,
01:42:58 ◼ ► you know, I definitely dramatized the killing of this thing and the video that I did, but I've had
01:43:05 ◼ ► such hate for this thing for many years because people just assume this is like the way they
01:43:10 ◼ ► should charge their phone with this tiny little charger that is, oh, like that is now that could
01:43:16 ◼ ► be that same size, could charge your phone five times as fast if it was, had the right technology
01:43:23 ◼ ► in it. And I, for years, I was less critical of it still being included by default than most people,
01:43:32 ◼ ► you know, like you, most of the fellow tech press, because I know, I heard from people who said that,
01:43:38 ◼ ► you know, I wanted one, but my wife loves the size and, you know, and people who say, or even people
01:43:44 ◼ ► who know the tech, they're like, I have to charge at, you know, wherever they go. There's, there's
01:43:50 ◼ ► this one little spot in the wall and that's it. And a big charger won't fit. And this is perfect.
01:43:56 ◼ ► That's, but that argument is over now because these 20 watt chargers from Anker and Aukey,
01:44:03 ◼ ► just to name two brands, I've bought both of them and love them both. And they're both also 20 bucks.
01:44:08 ◼ ► So you, it is another one of these things like, just like I said about these Mac books,
01:44:12 ◼ ► where it's like, have your cake and eat it too. It's the same price or cheaper. They're like 16 to
01:44:18 ◼ ► $17. They are the same size as the classic five watt charger and they charge at 20 watts. And
01:44:30 ◼ ► It charges MagSafe at the full speed. There's no loss. You pay even a dollar or two less than what
01:44:39 ◼ ► Apple charges. You get a way smaller charger than the Apple 20 watt charger and you get the full
01:44:44 ◼ ► speed. It's, but no brainer, but it makes me wonder. I've been, you know, I wrote about it.
01:44:49 ◼ ► They're not using those little 21 ones. Aren't using GAN, G-A-N. No, right. They're doing
01:44:57 ◼ ► something else, but why isn't Apple doing it? And, you know, I don't know, maybe somebody could take
01:45:02 ◼ ► it apart and figure that the Apple one is over engineered for safety or something. But like,
01:45:15 ◼ ► If you do notice what happened is Apple changed. So the current 20 watt charger used to be 18 watts.
01:45:24 ◼ ► Yes. Right. And so they upped it to 20 watts. So it's not like they didn't do anything to
01:45:28 ◼ ► that charger this year. I just think they really want to push the MagSafe. Yeah. And there's
01:45:36 ◼ ► something with that though, like you said, that their charging teams aren't communicating.
01:45:41 ◼ ► Like, yeah, they're definitely not communicating. Well, some, the 20 watt and 18 watt from last year,
01:45:48 ◼ ► this year's 20 watt Apple charger and last year's 18 watt, you have to have good eyes to see the
01:45:55 ◼ ► difference. The new one does say 20 watt. The 18 watt doesn't even say 18 watt. It has like a
01:46:02 ◼ ► blank spot on the underside where the new one now says 20 watt. The only way you could really tell
01:46:08 ◼ ► that it's 18 watt is to read the tiny little fine print that is A, tiny and B, like 3% gray
01:46:16 ◼ ► text on a white background. And it says like two amps times nine volts. And you have to know that
01:46:22 ◼ ► you multiply volts times amps to get. Yeah. I mean, the main, the big question for anyone
01:46:31 ◼ ► working in Apple's charging unit, which I'm not sure is even a real thing is why not one charger
01:46:38 ◼ ► to charge all the Apple gadgets? Well, or at least all of them up to MacBook Pros, right? Because the,
01:46:47 ◼ ► so like the MacBook Air comes with a 30 watt charger and 30 watt is, you know, like 30 watt
01:46:52 ◼ ► to me is the dividing line between consumer technology and the chargers that are over 30
01:46:58 ◼ ► watt. I forget what the new MacBook Pro comes with. I think it's a 45 watt charger. Maybe it's
01:47:03 ◼ ► 60. I don't know. It's funny. I never, I, all I did was open the box to see the size of them and
01:47:07 ◼ ► then I laughed at them and then I use my new anchor, no, my AUG Key 100 watt charger, which is
01:47:13 ◼ ► like one of the best gadgets I bought of the year. But that's the other thing is that why,
01:47:16 ◼ ► why does an Apple make a bigger one that has a couple of USB spots in the back? Cause I,
01:47:21 ◼ ► I bought my wife, my wife got the new iPhone 12 Pro Max, the big one. Really? Yeah. She likes the,
01:47:34 ◼ ► thinks they're all too big and she didn't want, I was like, well now they have the main, she's like,
01:47:38 ◼ ► I, I was already boring her. She was like, just get me the one I'm used to. I was like, all right.
01:47:42 ◼ ► But I got her the MagSafe charger too. And I was like, ha, this will surprise her. Cause this is
01:47:46 ◼ ► so much more convenient overnight than plugging in lightning. And then I went to her side of the bed
01:47:52 ◼ ► and she doesn't have any spots open anymore. So what I need is I need a, I need a, I need a plug
01:47:57 ◼ ► with two USB things. Cause she also wants to charge her iPad and Apple doesn't make it. Yeah,
01:48:02 ◼ ► the AUG Key ones are good. The new GAN chargers, they're like six, 60 Watts for like, I don't know,
01:48:08 ◼ ► 30 bucks. Crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. They're so much better. It's, it's really, um, but I,
01:48:14 ◼ ► and I do worry and I, I feel like you might have a better sense of this is how many people
01:48:23 ◼ ► and that, that, that there's something right or magical about it. Um, and for the most part,
01:48:30 ◼ ► I don't think you can ever like break a product by plugging it into the wrong outlet. It's just
01:48:36 ◼ ► that like, for example, I tried this with the new HomePod mini, which ships with the 20 watt
01:48:41 ◼ ► charger, right? A $99 speaker that ships with a charger that costs $20 charger, but I plugged it
01:48:48 ◼ ► into the 18 watt charger from last year and it doesn't work. It turns on, but it just glows.
01:48:54 ◼ ► It pulses orange on top because it actually needs 20 Watts. And that's where I'm, that's where I'm
01:49:00 ◼ ► thinking. I actually talked to Apple about it and they're like, yeah, that's, you know, we knew that
01:49:03 ◼ ► and that's why, you know, it recognizes that. Yeah. Um, but that just to me says that they weren't all
01:49:10 ◼ ► on the same page a year ago. Like somebody a year ago should have known that they were going to come
01:49:17 ◼ ► out with these products that needed 20 Watts and therefore not come out with 18 Watts because now,
01:49:23 ◼ ► even if you have an 18 watt, cause you bought an iPad last year and it came with it, it doesn't
01:49:28 ◼ ► charge the HomePod, you know, and now you've got it's or an iPhone or an iPhone pro and iPhone pro
01:49:34 ◼ ► last year's iPhone pros shipped with the 18 watt. Right. Right. And it does it won't charge the
01:49:40 ◼ ► MagSafe at full. It will work with MagSafe, but won't charge it at full speed, but it won't charge
01:49:44 ◼ ► a HomePod even though it looks exactly like the charger for the HomePod and the whole thing. Yeah.
01:49:49 ◼ ► You know, and I think the move to not put the charger in the box was a fine one. I was actually
01:49:54 ◼ ► fine with that, but I do think they should have done that. They should have last year or two years
01:49:59 ◼ ► ago, gone from the five watt to the 18 watt USB-C because the real issue is that, and this is what I
01:50:04 ◼ ► heard from a lot of my readers is I don't even have a USB-C charger. Right. Right. They had
01:50:10 ◼ ► bought phones years ago. They have a USB-A, they've got tons of the little bricks, right. But they now
01:50:17 ◼ ► got a phone with a core that has USB-C and they didn't have anything to plug that into.
01:50:22 ◼ ► Yeah. I, and I... So that's where that, you know, that's where Anker and Augie sold a bunch of these.
01:50:27 ◼ ► Yeah. And I have to say, I was just looking for a USB-C to, you know, USB-C on both sides,
01:50:32 ◼ ► cable of the right length. And I, you know, I don't, I guess I overspent on cables over the
01:50:39 ◼ ► last few years, but like I bought, I have an awful lot of cables with the old rectangular USB-A on
01:50:44 ◼ ► the one end that I don't really need anymore. Whether they go to USB-C or go to lightning,
01:50:49 ◼ ► it doesn't really matter. I want USB-C on, on the charging side end. Same, same. Yeah. I mean,
01:51:01 ◼ ► micro USB to USB-C, but that's a whole other story. Yeah. So anyway, I do think you're right that for,
01:51:06 ◼ ► for a number of years, Apple should have been shipped before they stopped including chargers
01:51:11 ◼ ► in the box. They should have been using, including chargers with a USB slot in it. And it's crazy
01:51:18 ◼ ► because even if you bought the iPhone 11 last year, it came with the five watt charger, which
01:51:24 ◼ ► A is wimpy wattage wise, but still had the old, the old port, which means you couldn't plug in
01:51:34 ◼ ► a new cable to it anyway. All this is true. Yeah. And I think the, the big question becomes like,
01:51:41 ◼ ► is this transition to MagSafe just a step towards, you know, the full wireless feature,
01:51:46 ◼ ► which has been rumored. It's just not a good foot to get off on. Like just, just this MagSafe stuff
01:51:54 ◼ ► is I love the idea in theory and I love the MagSafe wallet. I have to say that's like best,
01:51:59 ◼ ► one of the best accessories Apple's ever made. But. See, I'm glad you mentioned that because
01:52:05 ◼ ► I feel like I've, the people I've spoken to about it, it's not for me. I don't really have a need
01:52:11 ◼ ► for it, but I think it's very clever and I can see why people would like it. But yet most of what
01:52:16 ◼ ► I've heard from people is, ah, it doesn't stick firmly enough. It would come off in my pocket.
01:52:21 ◼ ► And it's like, I don't think that's the use case is so I did. I, I maybe have perpetuated that
01:52:27 ◼ ► cause in my review, I showed it sliding off, but, um, that was on the 12th and now I've been using
01:52:36 ◼ ► the mini and it actually is, it doesn't fall off as much on the mini, maybe cause the covers the
01:52:41 ◼ ► entire surface area of the back. Um, it's like the perfect size for the mini. Like that was one of
01:52:48 ◼ ► exactly the same size as the mini. Oh, we were in that briefing together. I know. I don't think I
01:52:52 ◼ ► was. Oh, maybe I was. Yeah, maybe I was in there with you. Yeah. But I found it out on my own at
01:52:58 ◼ ► some point and I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. It's like the exact radius of the,
01:53:07 ◼ ► And it doesn't fall off as much on the mini as well. Say, see, no, there's a team that was
01:53:13 ◼ ► clearly working together. The wallet team, the wallet team clearly had access to the full iPhone
01:53:19 ◼ ► 12 industrial design and came up with a clever wallet. Yeah. I feel like the, the whole in this
01:53:25 ◼ ► whole, the, the idea of, and I've been, this is what I've been saying is I don't think the iPhones
01:53:31 ◼ ► are ever going to have USB-C ports. I feel like they're going to have lightning ports until they
01:53:35 ◼ ► have no ports. That the next step is no ports, not USB-C. I believe that. And, and, you know,
01:53:43 ◼ ► it's there, I know there's people already rumouring that the, you know, next year or the
01:53:48 ◼ ► two years at some point, there's already phones in the pipeline that don't have ports. I believe it
01:53:54 ◼ ► from a technical standpoint, but I don't believe it from a pricing standpoint, right? If, if the
01:53:58 ◼ ► cheapest thing to charge it with is a $40 cable with a puck on the end, that doesn't come with
01:54:04 ◼ ► the power adapter. That's a hell of an expensive way. I mean, I guess they would just include that
01:54:10 ◼ ► with the phones, but that's 40 bucks, right? I mean, if it's, well, it'll come down in price and
01:54:16 ◼ ► I don't know. I, the whole thing would be so much more compelling if the, the mag safe charging puck
01:54:23 ◼ ► was 19 bucks. Cause then it would be, man, that's a no brainer. Buy two of them, put them everywhere
01:54:28 ◼ ► you use, you know, you need to charge your phone. It's just 40 bucks feels like too much for what's
01:54:34 ◼ ► effectively just a cable. It just happens to use a clever magnetic connection thing. And the
01:54:40 ◼ ► cleverness is awesome. And it's way easier to connect and disconnect and you can pull on it
01:54:45 ◼ ► and it just falls off and it won't break in the, in the port. And you don't have to worry about
01:54:50 ◼ ► getting dust in there and cleaning it out with a toothpick anymore or whatever else could happen.
01:54:54 ◼ ► That's all great, but you shouldn't have to pay 40 bucks just for a cable. I mean, that's a lot of
01:54:58 ◼ ► money. It's I it's really interesting that you think about it as just a cable because it really
01:55:03 ◼ ► is what it is. Right. You know, you kind of pull away the, like, it is a wireless charger,
01:55:08 ◼ ► but it's not the pad. And it's really just this, this inductive or yeah, it's just a cable, but,
01:55:15 ◼ ► but even to that point, I don't know. I mean, you've got the fact, the fact that it charges
01:55:22 ◼ ► slower. The fact that, I mean, I guess my biggest two issues are like it charges slower and the
01:55:27 ◼ ► cable is too short. Right. If they fix those two things, I'd be cool with it. Yeah. And that is the
01:55:32 ◼ ► thing. And I run into it. I mean, for me this year, at least I never run into the, Oh my God,
01:55:38 ◼ ► I need to quick get a charge because we're leaving and my phone's almost dead. Cause I'm not leaving
01:55:43 ◼ ► anywhere, but I have run into the, Oh, I'm reviewing the pro max and the mini and Oh my God,
01:55:49 ◼ ► the pro max is finally almost out of battery life, but I need, I need to keep using it.
01:55:59 ◼ ► like a 20 watt charger with a cable. It's like, wow, that really does get back to like 50%
01:56:09 ◼ ► in addition to the cost of the MagSafe cables, there is that it's hard to go back on that.
01:56:13 ◼ ► Right. Like that at the very least, Oh my gosh, if you find out your phone is down to 10%
01:56:18 ◼ ► and you're leaving for work or something, or going out to dinner, when we can go back out to dinner
01:56:24 ◼ ► again, you'd quick need to charge it. MagSafe doesn't cut it. Yeah. And I did a lot of speed
01:56:32 ◼ ► testing on the chargers even before the MagSafe, but when MagSafe came, I did the charge tests and
01:56:38 ◼ ► it was slower than what Apple was saying it would charge at. I mean, they were saying 15 watts
01:56:43 ◼ ► delivery doesn't necessarily mean it's charging at 15 watts. And it took upwards, like close to
01:56:50 ◼ ► an hour to get to 50% on some of the iPhones. I mean, you know, it's like, it is, I agree with
01:56:58 ◼ ► you. It depends on the case. Like I don't really care if I'm charging overnight. Right. Right.
01:57:03 ◼ ► But what I do care is that like it's MagSafe is certainly better than the wireless charger I have
01:57:07 ◼ ► next to my bed, which forgot, like I didn't line up right last night and didn't charge.
01:57:12 ◼ ► So true. You know, that actually happened to me last night. I woke up this morning. I was like,
01:57:15 ◼ ► why is my phone dead? Oh, it's now I'll never go back to that. Yeah, I gotta, I gotta change those
01:57:21 ◼ ► all out. Anyway. Well, it's, we're two hours on the button. I don't think we've hit bedtime.
01:57:27 ◼ ► It's true. We haven't hit bedtime. It is Friday though. So maybe I will just, maybe I will take
01:57:34 ◼ ► a nap. Always a pleasure to have you back on this, on the show, Joanna. What an exciting time.
01:57:40 ◼ ► What an exciting time. And I'm sorry again, John, I did not mean to take the word craptacular
01:57:45 ◼ ► stat-tastic from you. And I did not mean to say you didn't look great on air. You, you looked
01:57:52 ◼ ► wonderful on air. And actually, in fact, a lot of people on Twitter were commenting on how good your
01:57:55 ◼ ► hair looks. So I thought the same thing. I really, I think quarantine has been kind to your hair.
01:58:00 ◼ ► Yeah, it did. Thank you very much. It's very kind. And I will say, I will add just the one to go back
01:58:06 ◼ ► to why I agree to go on CNBC. It does make me take a shower. Well, I feel like it's like, yeah, this
01:58:13 ◼ ► is a good start. I feel like here's a fresh start to a weekday. I mean, I have to say I stopped
01:58:19 ◼ ► wearing, I wear pants, but I stopped like when I first started doing these during quarantine, I was
01:58:23 ◼ ► like, okay, I'm gonna put on my whole outfit and put on jeans or put on nice black pants. And now
01:58:27 ◼ ► I'm just like sweatpants and a nice shirt on top. So clean shirt and a shower. I will, will try.
01:58:35 ◼ ► All right. Well, I really I always love having you on the show. I can't wait to see you again.
01:58:40 ◼ ► I don't know, hopefully soon. But hopefully on CNBC, and we won't be starting camera date again.
01:58:47 ◼ ► Well, you know what, that's my next step. Now that I've, this is my next, this will probably
01:58:51 ◼ ► be the last time. Well, who knows when I'm next beyond but my next project for me now that I've
01:58:56 ◼ ► caught up is trying to figure out a truly a real camera camera home webcam thing. So I don't know
01:59:04 ◼ ► what I'll do, but it probably won't be on a MacBook camera again. Well, use the I use camo.
01:59:09 ◼ ► Camo has been great. And or you can hook up a good camera. I love also there's a lot of commentary on
01:59:16 ◼ ► Twitter that like, you really care about cameras. And so you really worked on your lighting setup.
01:59:21 ◼ ► And I was thinking to myself, what? Like, yeah, John has like, thousands of dollars in lighting
01:59:26 ◼ ► gear in his house. Like, no, he doesn't like, I don't have anything. I have a window. Yeah,
01:59:35 ◼ ► know how to work cameras better than me and that you know a lot more about camera webcams. And I
01:59:40 ◼ ► was like, Okay, all right. Yeah. But I'm happy. I thank you for having me on to defend and to