The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► just kicked out the cord to my MacBook Pro.

00:00:03 ◼   ► And guess what, it's not a problem,

00:00:07 ◼   ► 'cause I'm still using a 2014 MacBook Pro with MagSafe.

00:00:10 ◼   ► - There you go, there you go.

00:00:12 ◼   ► - You know, I was thinking about this.

00:00:13 ◼   ► - Brilliant invention.

00:00:14 ◼   ► - I'm still getting feedback from people

00:00:19 ◼   ► about that Brian Chen iPhone.

00:00:21 ◼   ► I don't know if you listened to me and Nely

00:00:23 ◼   ► on the Vergecast podcast.

00:00:24 ◼   ► - I did, I did.

00:00:25 ◼   ► I mean, I enjoy the two of you always,

00:00:28 ◼   ► but I knew you were gonna tell that article,

00:00:30 ◼   ► so I made a special flight to make sure to listen to it.

00:00:33 ◼   ► - Well, I also think, wasn't that the one too,

00:00:35 ◼   ► where we sung your praises?

00:00:37 ◼   ► It was disgusting.

00:00:38 ◼   ► - I think you might have said something kind.

00:00:39 ◼   ► I do appreciate it.

00:00:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, it made me sick.

00:00:41 ◼   ► I knew you were gonna listen too.

00:00:42 ◼   ► Son of a bitch.

00:00:43 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:45 ◼   ► But anyway, one aspect of this is like the whole theory

00:00:50 ◼   ► that people like me and Neelai and other people

00:00:54 ◼   ► who write these reviews are cheerleaders

00:00:57 ◼   ► telling people to go by the newest thing by the newest thing by the newest thing

00:01:02 ◼   ► just isn't true and the fact that I'm using a 2014 MacBook Pro it's literally

00:01:06 ◼   ► five years old at this point I believe I even bought it around this time of the

00:01:11 ◼   ► year in 2014 so I'm using a five-year-old laptop right now literally

00:01:16 ◼   ► to record this show I've been typing almost everything I've written for the

00:01:20 ◼   ► last year or so on this machine I still love it it is it is I need to write like

00:01:27 ◼   ► a five-year review of this thing because I do believe that it is the single greatest

00:01:31 ◼   ► computing device I've ever purchased in my life. I love it.

00:01:34 ◼   ► I had the exact same generation and I also loved it and it was absolutely fantastic.

00:01:39 ◼   ► Then I dropped it and now I have one of the new MacBook Pros and I don't like it nearly

00:01:44 ◼   ► as much. I can promise you that.

00:01:45 ◼   ► Do you know what it has that's wrong? I don't know if you've seen this. I know

00:01:48 ◼   ► Syracuse had it and other people had it. It was a known issue that Apple had a support

00:01:52 ◼   ► page up around the display, the black bezel around the display. It is there's some kind

00:01:59 ◼   ► of adhesion that keeps the plastic surface to whatever's behind it. And at some point,

00:02:06 ◼   ► I mean, at this point, I've had it I've had the problem longer than I didn't have it,

00:02:09 ◼   ► you know, three, three years ago, maybe more. It's it looks like the screen needs to be

00:02:14 ◼   ► cleaned. Like it looks like something you could just wipe off. Yeah, I know exactly

00:02:18 ◼   ► that is. I didn't realize it yet. No, I had that for sure. My thing was unfortunately

00:02:23 ◼   ► I put on, I liked the messenger bag style. I think it's much more convenient for putting

00:02:29 ◼   ► stuff in or out. But I like carrying things as a backpack because I destroyed my back

00:02:33 ◼   ► carrying around a messenger bag back in business school. So Toomey makes this great bag where

00:02:39 ◼   ► you use it like a messenger bag but it has backpack straps and also has a little thing

00:02:44 ◼   ► to put over your carry on. It's perfect. It's a brilliant bag.

00:02:47 ◼   ► So when you're actually walking great distances, you can wear a backpack and then right before

00:02:51 ◼   ► you meet people, you can turn it into a messenger bag and look a little bit cool.

00:02:56 ◼   ► No, no, no. I don't carry the messenger bag strap, but it does have briefcase handles

00:03:00 ◼   ► so you can carry it or whatever. But I have no shame, so it's fine. But I put it on,

00:03:07 ◼   ► because the zipper's on the side, and I hadn't zipped up the computer part where

00:03:12 ◼   ► you put the computer in. So I throw it over my shoulders and the computer goes flying

00:03:17 ◼   ► out the side. And that was the end of my beloved… I think it was 2015, the last year that they

00:03:23 ◼   ► had that model.

00:03:24 ◼   ► I think so.

00:03:25 ◼   ► That was their one of my beloved 2015 13-inch MacBook Pro.

00:03:29 ◼   ► And I could even be misremembering. Mine might be a 2015. Actually, I guess I can just go

00:03:33 ◼   ► to… what about this Mac?

00:03:34 ◼   ► I think it's 2014. You've talked about it before.

00:03:38 ◼   ► Yeah, mid-2014. All right. I just psyched myself out of it. But anyway, I've had this

00:03:43 ◼   ► adhesion problem around the bezel for like three, four years even. And Apple had a page

00:03:48 ◼   ► they and it was a known defect and their thing was just bring it into the store. We'll take

00:03:53 ◼   ► one look at it as soon as we eyeball it, we will take your MacBook away and fix it. I

00:03:59 ◼   ► don't want them to fix it. I don't want to be without it for a day. And I kind of have

00:04:03 ◼   ► grown, I went through the stages of grief with, you know, some kind of physical defect

00:04:07 ◼   ► on it where now I feel like it's charming. And it doesn't affect the pixel area. So

00:04:14 ◼   ► it's not like there's a section of my screen at the right side where I'm looking at a

00:04:18 ◼   ► defect. It really is only most noticeable when the screen is off. It's like, how often

00:04:24 ◼   ► do I look at the screen when it's off? As soon as I lift the lid, the screen comes on.

00:04:27 ◼   ► So no, it's funny. You met, I totally had that problem. I like, I, now that you mentioned,

00:04:31 ◼   ► I didn't, I didn't even know what it was either. I just kind of ignored it. Yeah. Cause

00:04:34 ◼   ► You're right. It wasn't on the screen. It looked like it was dirty and it didn't really matter

00:04:39 ◼   ► So yeah, it looked like a weird stain like you spit milk on your screen or something. You know, it's like

00:04:43 ◼   ► or worse

00:04:46 ◼   ► But it really did the first time I noticed it it really looked I really was like a Lady Macbeth moment where I was sitting

00:04:53 ◼   ► There like, you know like huffing on the screen that you know and then like potty like I better go get the the serious

00:04:58 ◼   ► screen cleaner

00:05:00 ◼   ► and nothing worked and I'm like what the hell and then they're like Google it and say god known defect and then like

00:05:05 ◼   ► As soon as I found out it's a known defect and I see apples policy. They will fix it

00:05:09 ◼   ► I immediately stand up and think like well, I'm gonna walk to the Apple Store right now and then I thought about it

00:05:15 ◼   ► I don't want to be without this machine, you know

00:05:18 ◼   ► There's like I have a big and I think you subscribe to the same theory with my with my max

00:05:23 ◼   ► I have a very strong if it ain't broke don't replace it

00:05:26 ◼   ► Don't don't replace it and don't update the OS

00:05:30 ◼   ► until you absolutely have no choice.

00:05:34 ◼   ► I didn't used to have that opinion with their OS. I guess I would never update on

00:05:39 ◼   ► day one of a major new operating system, but I would upgrade quickly. But now I'm…

00:05:45 ◼   ► I don't think I upgraded to Catalina. No, not Catalina. Catalina is the next one.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Mojave.

00:05:51 ◼   ► I'm sick of these goddamn names. I'm 10-14. I didn't upgrade to 10-14 until like June.

00:05:55 ◼   ► Yeah, no, same here.

00:05:59 ◼   ► It disrupts your day for like an hour, hour and a half.

00:06:07 ◼   ► This frustrates me about the way Apple has dealt with it.

00:06:12 ◼   ► The Mac is a pure work machine.

00:06:15 ◼   ► I don't use it really for anything other than work.

00:06:17 ◼   ► I use my phone for almost everything else.

00:06:20 ◼   ► There's a certain number of things I need the Mac to do and do them very, very well.

00:06:25 ◼   ► I don't need anything else and I want them to do it perfectly and to never disrupt anything.

00:06:29 ◼   ► Like that's all I want from the computer.

00:06:31 ◼   ► Like I don't need any bells and whistles,

00:06:33 ◼   ► anything along those lines.

00:06:34 ◼   ► All I want is to see those things.

00:06:35 ◼   ► And once it's set up and it's doing those things,

00:06:37 ◼   ► I don't wanna mess with it.

00:06:38 ◼   ► - Yep, no, I feel the same way.

00:06:40 ◼   ► And I don't know, I will probably upgrade

00:06:43 ◼   ► to Catalina earlier than I did 10.14.

00:06:46 ◼   ► Because I'm stupid, but. (laughs)

00:06:51 ◼   ► But there are some things in Catalina

00:06:52 ◼   ► that I really do wanna use.

00:06:54 ◼   ► I do feel like there is one huge tent pole feature

00:06:57 ◼   ► in 10.15 Catalina.

00:06:59 ◼   ► and that is what they're calling sidecar, which is the ability to use an iPad, either

00:07:05 ◼   ► wirelessly or connected, like by a USB cable, as an external display. And then you could

00:07:12 ◼   ► like draw on it and stuff like that.

00:07:14 ◼   ► Yeah. No, I used to use Duet. I think I still have Duet. During the summer, I'm usually

00:07:24 ◼   ► back in the States most of the summer, and I will occasionally, especially during earning

00:07:28 ◼   ► season when I'm looking at spreadsheets and stuff like that. I have a 13-inch iPad and

00:07:33 ◼   ► I will use it just as a screen. Duet doesn't do the whole touch thing. It's just a secondary

00:07:39 ◼   ► display but it is very useful.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And then there's the third-party thing called Luma Display.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the one that actually does incorporate the touch stuff. That requires a kernel extension,

00:07:51 ◼   ► I think.

00:07:52 ◼   ► No, sort of. So, Luma Display is a very intriguing product. I would still encourage people to

00:08:03 ◼   ► look at it and consider it. There's a very strong chance that this sidecar thing in Catalina

00:08:08 ◼   ► is going to Sherlock them and put them out of business or at least put that product out

00:08:12 ◼   ► of business. But the idea with Luma, I think it was a Kickstarter and if it wasn't Kickstarter,

00:08:17 ◼   ► was, you know, Indiegogo or one of those similar things, but they raised money. It was a hardware

00:08:23 ◼   ► and software product. So there's two things that could go wrong. And they completely pulled

00:08:27 ◼   ► it off. I believe they were on time. And it works exactly as advertised. So it's like,

00:08:32 ◼   ► oh, yeah, they're totally wireless. Whereas Yeah, the duet required a cord. And the other

00:08:37 ◼   ► thing with duet is the duet didn't fill the screen properly. Whereas just looking at the

00:08:40 ◼   ► website of the Luna display, it Yeah, it clearly looks like a much more Yeah, a much, much

00:08:46 ◼   ► much better product than what I was using.

00:08:47 ◼   ► So it's super clever. So the hardware part is a dongle and you have to buy the one for

00:08:52 ◼   ► your machine. So they have a DisplayPort one or whatever it's called for like an older

00:08:56 ◼   ► MacBook Pro like mine and a USB-C one for the newer ones with Thunderbolt. And you know

00:09:02 ◼   ► how you can plug an actual external display into those ports. Well, this is just a little

00:09:07 ◼   ► dongle like what used to come with like a mouse. You know, like you'd plug a thing into

00:09:11 ◼   ► USB-C or like a clicker for a presentation and you'd put a little wireless thing into

00:09:17 ◼   ► your USB port and it only sticks out a little tiny bit but it goes into display port. By

00:09:24 ◼   ► which I mean lowercase d, lowercase p, display port, the port on your computer that thinks

00:09:31 ◼   ► it's for displays. So as soon as it goes in, your Mac thinks a display has been plugged

00:09:36 ◼   ► in and says, "Okay, now you have an external display." But it's just a little wireless

00:09:39 ◼   ► dongle that communicates to their app on your iPad and all of a sudden, boom, your iPad

00:09:46 ◼   ► is an external display for your Mac. The kernel extension part is without installing their

00:09:52 ◼   ► kernel extension, you don't get retina.

00:09:54 ◼   ► Chuck Liddell You don't get retina.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Jay Haynes Retina, oh, that's what it is. Okay.

00:09:58 ◼   ► Chuck Liddell So the iPad shows up with non-retina graphics.

00:10:04 ◼   ► So every pixel is actually four pixels on the display.

00:10:09 ◼   ► And in a weird way, when you have a retina display showing a non-retina thing, to me

00:10:16 ◼   ► it looks worse than an actual non-retina display.

00:10:20 ◼   ► Because if you have an actual non-retina display, like an older iPad pre-retina, the pixels

00:10:26 ◼   ► are fuzzy.

00:10:28 ◼   ► So the fact that it doesn't look as good as retina, but there's a fuzziness to it

00:10:32 ◼   ► that kind of, it's like de facto anti-aliasing almost.

00:10:36 ◼   ► Whereas when you have a retina display

00:10:38 ◼   ► and it's using four pixels to show one pixel,

00:10:42 ◼   ► the pixeliness is super sharp.

00:10:46 ◼   ► It is very pixelated.

00:10:47 ◼   ► And I just didn't, I bought it to support them.

00:10:52 ◼   ► I, you know, idiot that I am,

00:10:54 ◼   ► it's like, ah sure, I'll spend 200 bucks

00:10:56 ◼   ► or whatever it was to see if this works.

00:10:58 ◼   ► And then I saw that it worked.

00:10:59 ◼   ► And it's not that I don't trust them.

00:11:01 ◼   ► I believe that the team is like former Apple engineers. And I know people who use this

00:11:07 ◼   ► product and have the kernel extension displayed, and I've never once heard of anybody saying,

00:11:12 ◼   ► "Yeah, I crashed my machine," or anything. No problems at all. So I'm not even bad-mouthing

00:11:18 ◼   ► it. I just didn't feel like installing it. So I didn't use it.

00:11:21 ◼   ► It's $70 for the record.

00:11:22 ◼   ► There you go. $70. So it's something for people to look at. But anyway, it might be

00:11:28 ◼   ► put out of business, unfortunately. We'll see what they do. But anyway, so I'll probably

00:11:34 ◼   ► upgrade to 10.15 earlier than later.

00:11:36 ◼   ► I'm just hoping that those new MacBook Pros come out because I will be first in line to

00:11:41 ◼   ► get them. The problem for me is I've committed to a certain deadline, so I have to write

00:11:50 ◼   ► four days a week. And so to travel with the constant fear that my computer is going to

00:11:57 ◼   ► stop working. It just drives me up the wall. I feel like this current computer I have is

00:12:06 ◼   ► just like a constant low grade worry, like all the time. If I see some speck of dust

00:12:14 ◼   ► fall on it, or like, I just like...

00:12:16 ◼   ► Wait, which one do you have? What is your laptop?

00:12:20 ◼   ► I have the MacBook escape. So the one with only two ports and non-touch bar.

00:12:25 ◼   ► Is it the new one? Like the one that was updated?

00:12:27 ◼   ► No, no, it's not. It's 2017 maybe, something like that. So yeah, so it has the old, I think

00:12:38 ◼   ► it's the second generation, but it doesn't have the membrane or whatever it is. But the

00:12:45 ◼   ► other thing too is I feel, I'm just getting older, and the 13s are nice, but I feel, especially

00:12:51 ◼   ► those summers when I'm using it every day. I'm like, "Yeah, I could use a bigger screen

00:12:56 ◼   ► here." So anyway, I never fixed my screen. I don't want to now. It's charming to me.

00:13:01 ◼   ► So I'm rocking it until Apple comes out with a MacBook Pro that I feel is appealing, hopefully

00:13:06 ◼   ► soon. So maybe this beloved computer will be retired soon. I don't know. But anyway,

00:13:12 ◼   ► I kicked the cord out. And every time that happens, I think, "I wonder what the hell

00:13:16 ◼   ► I'll do when that's a USB-C thing and it's gonna like is it gonna yank my whole

00:13:20 ◼   ► table I haven't heard a lot of stories from people like like it when when Apple first went

00:13:27 ◼   ► USB-C only for power and everything and got rid of magsafe with these there was lots of people saying wow, that's a shame

00:13:34 ◼   ► I loved magsafe seems like an odd feature to do away with

00:13:37 ◼   ► but I haven't really heard stories from people like

00:13:41 ◼   ► Son of a bitching because they kick the cable and their laptop fell over the fell off the table or desk and broke

00:13:47 ◼   ► I haven't heard that so maybe the cable, you know the USB C cables

00:13:51 ◼   ► Come out easily enough. I don't know

00:13:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they do come out easier. I yeah, I've I've found to be

00:14:00 ◼   ► Less of an issue than I thought as well and actually it's nice in some ways

00:14:04 ◼   ► I again one of my biggest cases is on airplanes and

00:14:08 ◼   ► that's

00:14:09 ◼   ► it's more likely they're just gonna kind of knock out the mag safe there and

00:14:13 ◼   ► When you don't want to and in this case the fact that it's a little sturdier is is a nice thing

00:14:18 ◼   ► I could and I would imagine having it on both sides

00:14:20 ◼   ► You could plug it on either side would be pretty handy, but the one I have only has ports on one side

00:14:24 ◼   ► So it's it's kind of a moot point. Yeah, the two side thing would be nice, but you don't have it

00:14:28 ◼   ► Well, I I mean, I mean I just I have no desire for a touch bar

00:14:33 ◼   ► So but that's the that's what we'll see. Do you think the 16-inch or whatever this rumored new one is gonna have a touch bar?

00:14:40 ◼   ► That's a good question. I think yes, and I wonder though because

00:14:45 ◼   ► It seems like universally the touch bar is considered either

00:14:51 ◼   ► I don't know anyone that likes a touch bar like literally. I don't think I know a single person

00:14:55 ◼   ► I would say the range of opinion only goes from

00:14:58 ◼   ► despising it to

00:15:01 ◼   ► ambivalence

00:15:03 ◼   ► And I don't know anybody who actually likes it like to me the the best sentiment

00:15:07 ◼   ► I can I know of anybody who has about it is yeah, yeah, that's okay. You know it's yeah

00:15:13 ◼   ► It's fine. It's fine. Where's the whereas I know other people who?

00:15:18 ◼   ► Truly just truly despise it well

00:15:20 ◼   ► It's interesting because they did dump the 3d touch on the phone which which I really liked. I'm

00:15:26 ◼   ► I'm disappointed that it's gone

00:15:28 ◼   ► I can understand like anything that's not discoverable is just sort of fundamentally problematic so I can understand why it's gone

00:15:35 ◼   ► But I I do I really like that phone 11 if the thing to say it's a it's a great phone

00:15:40 ◼   ► The camera is obviously amazing. I feel particularly great because I have the I have the green model with the

00:15:47 ◼   ► Yellow gold leather case so it has my green factors colors

00:15:52 ◼   ► Looks very sharp very sharp

00:15:54 ◼   ► But I do miss 3d touch a lot like a lot more than I expected

00:15:57 ◼   ► well, and the shame of it is

00:16:00 ◼   ► That we should skip have iPhone 11 as an entire topic so we can

00:16:05 ◼   ► table most of this for that but but I feel the shame of it with 3d touch is that

00:16:10 ◼   ► It's like now it's gone in all of the new phones

00:16:15 ◼   ► And so the future is clear that iOS devices. It's this haptic touch going forward

00:16:21 ◼   ► But the worst part is that for devices that do have 3d touch like a year-old iPhone. It's finally

00:16:28 ◼   ► implemented the way it should have been all along

00:16:31 ◼   ► where

00:16:33 ◼   ► I've been us. I don't know if I've written strongly enough about it

00:16:36 ◼   ► But all along I have thought the the discoverability is a bit of an issue, but I feel the bigger problem is the

00:16:43 ◼   ► has always been the

00:16:46 ◼   ► overloading of similar

00:16:49 ◼   ► That's right, because you had both long press and you had 3D touch at the same time.

00:16:54 ◼   ► Right.

00:16:55 ◼   ► That's a great point.

00:16:56 ◼   ► Yeah, you should only have one of the two.

00:16:57 ◼   ► And it'd be great if the only one was 3D touch instead of the only one is long press.

00:17:02 ◼   ► So just look no further than the home screen, an aspect of the iPhone that everybody has

00:17:06 ◼   ► to deal with in some way.

00:17:08 ◼   ► And a long press on an icon put you into jiggle mode to delete or rearrange apps, and a 3D

00:17:13 ◼   ► touch got you the shortcut menu.

00:17:15 ◼   ► But that is a really fine distinction in terms of-- I have always thought that 3D Touch should

00:17:21 ◼   ► just be a faster way to do a long touch.

00:17:25 ◼   ► It's a long touch without waiting for the long.

00:17:27 ◼   ► You can just skip that delay.

00:17:29 ◼   ► And now that's what it is if you still have a phone with 3D Touch, which is awesome, which

00:17:33 ◼   ► is what it should have been all along.

00:17:35 ◼   ► And it's unified the interface, and it's the same set of things.

00:17:38 ◼   ► And I have a new iPhone, and so I'm stuck with the delay.

00:17:42 ◼   ► And it really does annoy me.

00:17:44 ◼   ► I heard the ATP guys bitching about it.

00:17:46 ◼   ► I think I'm an episode behind now,

00:17:48 ◼   ► but their second to last episode was the episode

00:17:50 ◼   ► where Casey and Marco had just gotten their new phones

00:17:55 ◼   ► and were maybe even like the day or day before

00:17:59 ◼   ► they recorded and they were both being driven nuts

00:18:01 ◼   ► by the delay on the home screen

00:18:03 ◼   ► when you press and hold on the camera button.

00:18:05 ◼   ► - Well, the lock screen.

00:18:07 ◼   ► - Lock screen, I mean.

00:18:07 ◼   ► - Lock screen is particularly annoying.

00:18:09 ◼   ► - That's what I meant, lock screen.

00:18:10 ◼   ► You kind of get used to it after you've had the phone

00:18:13 ◼   ► for a week or two, but not really.

00:18:16 ◼   ► I mean, it always seems like it should be faster.

00:18:19 ◼   ► And it is very, very strange that the phones are literally,

00:18:23 ◼   ► they literally have the fastest single core performance

00:18:27 ◼   ► of any computing device Apple has ever sold.

00:18:30 ◼   ► So on, you know, the iMac Pro is definitely

00:18:33 ◼   ► a faster computer at multi-core stuff.

00:18:35 ◼   ► And that's really what the pro workflows are optimized for.

00:18:38 ◼   ► So it's not a faster computer overall than an iMac Pro,

00:18:42 ◼   ► but on single core, which a lot of things you do

00:18:46 ◼   ► are on one thread, it is the fastest computer they sell.

00:18:50 ◼   ► It's a phone, a cell phone,

00:18:52 ◼   ► that is the fastest single core computer Apple sells.

00:18:55 ◼   ► And yet, getting to the camera takes longer,

00:18:57 ◼   ► which is very frustrating.

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00:21:09 ◼   ► Hey, speaking of new laptops, Microsoft had an event two days ago, I believe.

00:21:20 ◼   ► They did.

00:21:23 ◼   ► Where was it?

00:21:24 ◼   ► This is right.

00:21:25 ◼   ► Where the hell did they even have it?

00:21:26 ◼   ► I was in New York, in New York City.

00:21:27 ◼   ► So you were down the road.

00:21:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I should have gone.

00:21:31 ◼   ► I don't think to ask for things like that until after the event.

00:21:34 ◼   ► Right.

00:21:35 ◼   ► Oh my gosh.

00:21:38 ◼   ► But it was really interesting.

00:21:41 ◼   ► You were up late, as you are right now.

00:21:43 ◼   ► I was up early.

00:21:44 ◼   ► I was following along live.

00:21:51 ◼   ► I thought it was an interesting event.

00:21:52 ◼   ► I think they're doing some interesting stuff.

00:21:54 ◼   ► And then at the very end, I think that they blew it.

00:21:58 ◼   ► But you commented, I know we were chatting with each other, that one of the first things

00:22:03 ◼   ► they did, and I don't know which segment it was, if they were talking about their laptop

00:22:06 ◼   ► or their two-in-ones with the detachable keyboards, but they made a pointed reference up there

00:22:12 ◼   ► in front of the audience that one of the things they would never compromise on is the keyboard.

00:22:19 ◼   ► We want to make sure that it always works. It's always there for you. Your computer

00:22:23 ◼   ► is something you can trust. And then what was great is not only did the presenter say

00:22:28 ◼   ► the keyboard, but before he said the keyboard, the slide like cut to the keyboard. So it

00:22:33 ◼   ► was like, it was like first a visual reminder and then like the pregnant pause and then

00:22:38 ◼   ► the actual statement of, of for example, the keyboard.

00:22:43 ◼   ► So I mean, the only thing they could have done to make it more clear would have been

00:22:46 ◼   ► to like pause the whole thing and start winking. To know what

00:22:54 ◼   ► they're referring to. And, you know, that's fair game. You

00:22:59 ◼   ► know, Apple did this to themselves. You know, it's is a

00:23:03 ◼   ► legitimate, you know, like, Microsoft has had some ham

00:23:06 ◼   ► fisted marketing, to say the least over the years. I mean,

00:23:10 ◼   ► they held a funeral for the iPhone at one point. And they

00:23:14 ◼   ► literally had a funeral procession marching around Redmond, Washington. Turns out iPhone

00:23:21 ◼   ► wasn't dead at the time. Turns out. But this keyboard thing with MacBooks is a legitimate

00:23:30 ◼   ► issue and we can argue about the severity of it. Certainly it seems as though it has

00:23:36 ◼   ► been mitigated to some degree finally with this, the combination of the membrane and

00:23:43 ◼   ► quote-unquote material change that they made over the summer with the current keyboards if you go

00:23:49 ◼   ► in and buy one today or if you get your old one serviced but they're not great keyboards period

00:23:55 ◼   ► in my opinion i even if your key work as they are designed on your keyboard i just don't think

00:24:01 ◼   ► they're great keyboards so i feel like and to me as a writer uh the keyboard is very important

00:24:08 ◼   ► I'm also very picky about my keyboard, so it's even more important.

00:24:12 ◼   ► And there are an awful lot of people out there, maybe their business card doesn't say writer,

00:24:16 ◼   ► but there are certainly an awful lot of people out there whose day-to-day work involves a

00:24:20 ◼   ► lot of typing.

00:24:22 ◼   ► That is just what it means to be a worker in our generation, in the world today.

00:24:28 ◼   ► You send emails, you do presentations, you're in Slack, or I guess in the Microsoft world,

00:24:33 ◼   ► you're on Teams or whatever they call their thing.

00:24:37 ◼   ► doing work are doing a lot of typing. So that's fair game, good for them. And Microsoft has

00:24:44 ◼   ► always made good peripherals. We know they've always made good mice.

00:24:50 ◼   ► I have a Microsoft keyboard sitting in front of me right now.

00:24:52 ◼   ► You are a devotee of the Microsoft keyboard. What's it called? Is that the one that Marco

00:24:57 ◼   ► has too?

00:24:58 ◼   ► The Sculpt. Yeah, the same one as Marco. Yeah, the first version of the Sculpt keyboard.

00:25:02 ◼   ► It's a great keyboard. It's just a great keyboard. The keys are great. My wife has

00:25:12 ◼   ► a Surface laptop also. It's a great computer. I didn't like the look of that weird felt

00:25:21 ◼   ► sort of thing, but actually, once you actually use it, it's not nearly as bad. Actually,

00:25:24 ◼   ► she has this blue color that looks quite sharp. The keyboard is great. The hardware is fantastic.

00:25:31 ◼   ► actually, you know, Microsoft laptops, they actually have good trackpads, which is always

00:25:37 ◼   ► like a bugaboo on PCs in general. Like the hardware is really, really, really good. I

00:25:42 ◼   ► mean, obviously, it's Windows, it's not Mac OS, and that's, you know, for many folks,

00:25:47 ◼   ► a deal breaker. But as far as just the pure hardware goes, I think given this keyboard

00:25:52 ◼   ► issue, I think it's pretty safe to say that Microsoft makes the best laptops in the industry.

00:25:59 ◼   ► They do. There's nothing—they work—it's what they said. So, they look great, they

00:26:05 ◼   ► have a better port selection, they have great screens, they have great keyboards, they have

00:26:09 ◼   ► great trackpads.

00:26:10 ◼   ► It's a fair shot.

00:26:12 ◼   ► And that's a recurring theme in my writing for years, ever since I've been doing it,

00:26:17 ◼   ► that for me, the OS is primary and the hardware is secondary. And I've always said that

00:26:23 ◼   ► I would much rather, by far, without a moment's hesitation, use macOS on PC hardware than use

00:26:31 ◼   ► Windows on MacBook hardware. And the same way with iOS and Android, but it's far stronger of

00:26:37 ◼   ► a preference, Mac versus Windows, than Android versus iOS. Even now, that's a strong preference.

00:26:45 ◼   ► It's funny because in many respects, that's what a Surface is. It's basically MacBook quality,

00:26:50 ◼   ► but it runs Windows.

00:26:52 ◼   ► But I'm fully cognizant of the fact that there are many people who don't feel that way and

00:26:59 ◼   ► have either through ambivalence or through deliberate choice in the software that they

00:27:07 ◼   ► choose to use can switch between platforms rather easily. Certainly, if you have a mostly web

00:27:16 ◼   ► app workflow, it's almost trivial to switch from one OS, you know, Windows to Mac to Chrome OS,

00:27:25 ◼   ► because you're just using browser tabs. And there's, you know, people who use real apps who

00:27:32 ◼   ► still don't, you know, are fed up, you know, I get email from people who are like, you know,

00:27:36 ◼   ► I've been a Mac user for a while, and I had a bum keyboard, so to hell with it. I bought

00:27:41 ◼   ► some Windows thing, and I'm very happy with it.

00:27:45 ◼   ► So there's certainly a lot of people like that, and Microsoft is certainly pitching

00:27:49 ◼   ► them.

00:27:50 ◼   ► And it's more than just that the hardware is good, too.

00:27:52 ◼   ► The other thing that I always thought was part of the Surface appeal—and you wrote

00:27:59 ◼   ► about this this week on Stratechery and your coverage of the Microsoft event—is why do

00:28:04 ◼   ► they even make hardware, right?

00:28:05 ◼   ► It's a good question, right?

00:28:07 ◼   ► And it's certainly not important to Microsoft financially.

00:28:10 ◼   ► I always thought I thought the one thing maybe you didn't mention in your coverage was that

00:28:13 ◼   ► part of it was I think internally they were just a little fed up with all the shovelware

00:28:18 ◼   ► and crap where that all the OEMs put in that in the same way that why Google makes the

00:28:24 ◼   ► pixel hardware I feel like Microsoft makes the surface stuff as to at least have one

00:28:29 ◼   ► set of here's high quality hardware with Windows as we meant it to be used by the user.

00:28:35 ◼   ► Yep. That was definitely a part of it. And not having the crapper on it, and also just

00:28:42 ◼   ► the little stuff, like I mentioned the trackpad thing, like the, just all this small stuff

00:28:48 ◼   ► works right. There's attention to detail throughout the machine. And for sure that

00:28:53 ◼   ► was a motivation. The reason why I've always been a big critic of Surface generally, it's

00:28:58 ◼   ► a very sort of like, it's just because the origin of Surface, and this is something I

00:29:03 ◼   ► this week. I mean, it was such a delicate there. The reason we started Surface seven years ago,

00:29:08 ◼   ► and it was all total BS, because I was there at the time. And so in the day that I went back and

00:29:16 ◼   ► linked to Steve Ballmer's presentation, which was, there was all about Windows, Windows, Windows,

00:29:21 ◼   ► and Surface. Surface was a manifestation of Windows, and Windows was the center of Microsoft,

00:29:25 ◼   ► etc, etc. And that part of Microsoft needed to die. Like, it needed to not be a company about

00:29:31 ◼   ► Windows. And so that was why I was always against the Surface because in my mind, Surface existed

00:29:37 ◼   ► because it was meant to be a physical manifestation of Windows. And anything Windows related needed to

00:29:42 ◼   ► die. And now I'm like, you know, well, the Surface, honestly, it's not that big a deal. It's $6 billion

00:29:48 ◼   ► in revenue. Microsoft did what, 120 billion last year or something like that. And you know, the

00:29:52 ◼   ► margins are much smaller than the rest of the company. But you know what, Satya Nadella killed

00:29:57 ◼   ► Windows. It's one of the most incredible sort of corporate change jobs ever, the way he really

00:30:04 ◼   ► transformed the culture there. And so you know what, if they want to mess around making hardware

00:30:08 ◼   ► and very good hardware at that, and frankly, from what I can see, they seem to be pretty popular. I

00:30:13 ◼   ► mean, I see them around, fair bit, probably more than the other PCIC. That's fine. It's fine,

00:30:21 ◼   ► because like the the reason I worried about Surface's existence is gone and all those other

00:30:28 ◼   ► reasons like we want to have actually have nice PCs and we don't want to have much of crap we're

00:30:32 ◼   ► on it and we want to sort of have more control and hey we'll we'll take that extra bit of margin if

00:30:37 ◼   ► we sell into the corporate place where we get the hardware margin and the software margin that's

00:30:40 ◼   ► fine it's great I I'm glad they're doing it and and you know what I'm glad someone is up there

00:30:46 ◼   ► making fun of Apple or having for having shit keyboards because heaven knows Apple deserves it

00:30:49 ◼   ► so good for them. Yeah, and it's sort of like, in a way, you're right that what Nadella has done

00:30:59 ◼   ► is truly extraordinary because, and I think if you want to boil down what was the reason for

00:31:06 ◼   ► showing Balmer the door and switching, you know, putting Nadella in, I mean clearly there were

00:31:13 ◼   ► several strategic shifts that Nadella introduced, but I think if you really want to boil it down to

00:31:19 ◼   ► a nut, it was weird. It's no longer Windows first.

00:31:26 ◼   ► That's right. That's absolutely right.

00:31:28 ◼   ► And it's not like Windows has been put in the ash heap. They still…

00:31:32 ◼   ► No, they still make a lot of money off of Windows, right? Which is fine, but it's

00:31:36 ◼   ► not the driving force of the company like it was.

00:31:39 ◼   ► No, but in another sense, by focusing on what was important, like Office productivity apps

00:31:46 ◼   ► And the Azure stuff is certainly very important to them too.

00:31:50 ◼   ► The cloud stuff is very successful.

00:31:52 ◼   ► But like with the Office stuff, in a sense,

00:31:56 ◼   ► the strategy hasn't changed at all.

00:31:58 ◼   ► The idea, the old idea was we'll have Windows everywhere

00:32:01 ◼   ► and therefore we'll be able to have our apps everywhere.

00:32:04 ◼   ► Well, their apps are still everywhere.

00:32:05 ◼   ► And it's, in fact, there are more places

00:32:07 ◼   ► because now they're, you know,

00:32:10 ◼   ► I think when Ballmer was still there,

00:32:11 ◼   ► they were still sort of sitting on iPad apps

00:32:14 ◼   ► that for Office that they had that were like ready.

00:32:17 ◼   ► Yeah, that's right. They were built under Balmer, but he wouldn't release them until the Windows

00:32:21 ◼   ► version is ready. And so when Nadella came in, the first presentation he did is about a month,

00:32:27 ◼   ► month in, month, two months in, was Unveil Office for iPad. And it was, it was a, and yes, they were

00:32:34 ◼   ► built under Balmer. And maybe by the end, Balmer said, "Okay, fine. I'll let this sit until you

00:32:38 ◼   ► come out." I don't, I mean, who knows what the mechanics were, but it was such a perfect sort

00:32:42 ◼   ► of like coming out party for Nadella. Do you like, like, no, like Windows doesn't call the shots

00:32:47 ◼   ► anymore. Right. And you know, it was an important way of saying it was symbolic, right? And it was

00:32:53 ◼   ► sort of like, exactly. You know, Steve Jobs did the same thing when he came back to Apple in 1997.

00:33:00 ◼   ► Well, that's such a great analogy. I wish I would have made that before. You're right. It's the

00:33:03 ◼   ► exact same thing. It's the exact same thing. And what Jobs did was launch the Think Different ad

00:33:09 ◼   ► campaign. And because it was he wanted to say he wanted something

00:33:13 ◼   ► out the door that said, Hey, Apple is different now. There's

00:33:17 ◼   ► a new there's a new team in town. And a product takes too

00:33:20 ◼   ► long, right? Because it jobs and the next crew came in, and they

00:33:26 ◼   ► had years of work ahead of them. They underestimated it, of

00:33:30 ◼   ► course, because everybody underestimates how long software

00:33:31 ◼   ► is going to take. But what we now know is Mac OS X didn't come

00:33:34 ◼   ► out till 2001. It was four years ahead.

00:33:37 ◼   ► It wasn't really usable until 2003.

00:33:39 ◼   ► Yeah, and the iMac is the more important thing.

00:33:43 ◼   ► But the iMac, they had to start from scratch when Jobs came in and realized that there

00:33:47 ◼   ► was this guy named Johnny Ive and a great industrial design team.

00:33:53 ◼   ► They got working on it very soon, but they still had to wait for it.

00:33:55 ◼   ► So what could they get out the door quickly?

00:33:57 ◼   ► An ad campaign.

00:33:58 ◼   ► Well, Nadella, luckily enough, had these iPad apps there ready.

00:34:04 ◼   ► Just polish them up.

00:34:05 ◼   ► Let's get them out.

00:34:06 ◼   ► It'll tell the world, hey, there's a new team

00:34:09 ◼   ► running Microsoft, we have a new strategy.

00:34:11 ◼   ► But if anything, the let's put our office apps

00:34:14 ◼   ► everywhere strategy, everywhere includes more places now

00:34:18 ◼   ► than when it was Windows, Windows, Windows,

00:34:20 ◼   ► 'cause it's still, there's still first class apps

00:34:23 ◼   ► on Windows, of course, but now they're everywhere.

00:34:25 ◼   ► They're on Android, which we'll have more to talk about

00:34:27 ◼   ► in a moment, iOS, and of course, the Mac still.

00:34:32 ◼   ► If anything, it's more strategic.

00:34:35 ◼   ► it's almost impossible to buy a computer today where you can't run MS Office.

00:34:39 ◼   ► Well, actually, I thought that what you were going to go back to was not the campaign.

00:34:43 ◼   ► I thought you were going to go back to the Macworld Boston where Bill Gates appears on

00:34:47 ◼   ► the screen and Steve Jobs is up there saying, "Look, we can't be fighting this battle

00:34:52 ◼   ► anymore. We've got to move on." And to me, that's an even better comparison to

00:34:58 ◼   ► this because it's quite literally embracing your competitor and that's what Nadel did.

00:35:03 ◼   ► you're right. He was fortunate enough that the product had already been built. So all he had to

00:35:09 ◼   ► do was release it. And that was even more powerful than putting someone on screen or something on

00:35:14 ◼   ► those lines. But I think the the idea and the impact that has not just on the outside world,

00:35:21 ◼   ► but on your own employees and your own company. And it's like, "Shit, Steve Jobs on stage with

00:35:27 ◼   ► Bill Gates. And now it's like, "Oh, Satya Nadella's first act, our new CO's first act is to

00:35:33 ◼   ► is to walk around with an iPad in his hand." Yeah, that's a good one, too. I mean, it was,

00:35:37 ◼   ► you know, they're all of the same mentality, though. Let's, let's, let's, you know, let's,

00:35:42 ◼   ► let's show how different we are. And you're right, you know, it, I would say the Think Different

00:35:46 ◼   ► campaign was the one that was first out the door, but less important. More important was that Mac

00:35:50 ◼   ► World New York keynote where they buried the hatchet. I think very close to an accurate

00:35:58 ◼   ► quote without googling it is, "We have to let go." This is Steve Jobs. "We have to let go of the

00:36:05 ◼   ► idea that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. You have to let go." And it did not go over well.

00:36:11 ◼   ► well, there were like, I don't think he got, I think there was

00:36:13 ◼   ► booze. There were some booze and it was just like, whatever the

00:36:21 ◼   ► sound, the collective sound of an audience going, what the

00:36:26 ◼   ► fuck? That's the noise that was in the audience. It, you know,

00:36:31 ◼   ► there were some scattered booze. Because there are a lot of Apple

00:36:35 ◼   ► fans at the time who really did see this as a holy war. And

00:36:41 ◼   ► Jobs was exactly right. You know, and like I often say about

00:36:44 ◼   ► Apple, you know, they're more often than not, when they tell

00:36:48 ◼   ► you something they mean, they mean exactly what they say. And

00:36:51 ◼   ► what he said, it wasn't like subterfuge. It wasn't Yeah, I'm

00:36:54 ◼   ► just gonna say that we're burying the hatchet with

00:36:57 ◼   ► Microsoft, but I've got a secret plan where we're gonna kill him.

00:36:59 ◼   ► No, he met it. He meant every single word that he said. Yep.

00:37:03 ◼   ► And look, absolutely, you know, look at the years, you know,

00:37:05 ◼   ► look at the success that they had by letting go of that

00:37:08 ◼   ► notion.

00:37:09 ◼   ► And what he said, actually, I wrote about this a while ago. So I actually was able to

00:37:13 ◼   ► find the speech. And you said it almost perfectly. We have to let go of the notion that for Apple

00:37:16 ◼   ► to win, my chef has to lose. And then his next line, I think, is just as good, which

00:37:20 ◼   ► he says, we have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really

00:37:25 ◼   ► good job. And like, there's something very refreshing about that. Because the fact of

00:37:32 ◼   ► matter is, most of Apple's products then were kind of crappy. And certainly the operating

00:37:37 ◼   ► system was a total mess. We've talked about this before. It's liberating in a way. It's

00:37:44 ◼   ► like, you know what? We just need to do what we're good at and we will succeed. I think

00:37:49 ◼   ► it was the same thing with Microsoft. They were fighting this losing battle to try to

00:37:53 ◼   ► prop Windows up. What they needed to do was take their assets that were still valuable,

00:38:00 ◼   ► that were still effective, and the new assets that were brought online in terms of Azure

00:38:04 ◼   ► not, and let them win by being good. Don't let them win by being tied to Windows. Let

00:38:10 ◼   ► them win on their own merits, and that's exactly what they've done.

00:38:15 ◼   ► I'm not particularly interested in Microsoft's latest products because I'm not going to

00:38:19 ◼   ► use Windows, but I'm glad they're there. But I get confused by the names. The one that

00:38:22 ◼   ► I like is I like the one called the Surface Laptop because I know which one it is. It's

00:38:27 ◼   ► the laptop. They also have the Surface Pro X, I guess. So this is confusing.

00:38:35 ◼   ► So I will explain it. The Surface Pro is a regular x86 PC. The Surface Pro X is an ARM

00:38:44 ◼   ► PC, is ARM-based. So, but yeah, it is a little confusing. It looks like great hardware. I

00:38:52 ◼   ► mean, it's basically an iPad.

00:38:53 ◼   ► Yeah. Or an iPad Pro. I would say it's iPad Pro class because it starts at $1,000.

00:38:57 ◼   ► dollars. Yep. And it's got the keyboard attachment as the cool like the stylus goes into the keyboard,

00:39:03 ◼   ► which is really nifty. So you don't have like a separate thing floating around. But yeah,

00:39:10 ◼   ► and then they had the earbuds, you know, as I put them Twitter, are you a tech company if you don't

00:39:18 ◼   ► sell earbuds? And then obviously the dual screen devices, they're not gonna watch for a while.

00:39:24 ◼   ► The earbuds was the—I was on my way to a meeting at the time, and so the earbuds—which

00:39:30 ◼   ► is a very strange thing for me to say. I don't really have a lot of meetings, but I was on my way

00:39:35 ◼   ► to a meeting in New York, and I was watching the Microsoft event on my phone with my AirPods

00:39:44 ◼   ► as I was getting ready to go to the subway, and I knew I'd lose the stream on the subway.

00:39:50 ◼   ► and the earbuds was the last segment I saw. I just had to laugh because their pitch for the

00:39:55 ◼   ► earbuds was entirely based on integration with Office. I know. It was pretty funny.

00:40:01 ◼   ► Which I laugh, but maybe they know their audience. You know, like, but it was like, how did...

00:40:08 ◼   ► You know what, though? I'll tell you why I didn't mind. I mean, it was a little... I mean,

00:40:13 ◼   ► it was kind of silly. Like, who buys earbuds because they work with your favorite

00:40:17 ◼   ► Office productivity suite. And favorite probably deserves some air quotes around that. But

00:40:22 ◼   ► you know what it was? It was, that's a Microsoft with his head screwed on straight.

00:40:28 ◼   ► You know what I mean? Like, yeah, at the end of the day, in a vacuum, it's ridiculous that

00:40:32 ◼   ► you're going to try to sell AirPods because they work with Office. But if you zoom out,

00:40:36 ◼   ► like that's emblematic of a Microsoft that knows where their bread is buttered.

00:40:39 ◼   ► What matters is actually Office and Azure. And that's the cool part of the

00:40:46 ◼   ► EarPods, whatever they're called, is that they do integrate with Azure and they do this live

00:40:49 ◼   ► captioning and live translation and stuff like that. Basically, what Google promised with their

00:40:54 ◼   ► Google buds last year, but it didn't really work very well. It certainly appeared to work much

00:40:58 ◼   ► better with what Microsoft demonstrated. We'll see once it has come out. And so it's a product

00:41:04 ◼   ► that ties in with Office and ties in with Azure. And maybe that's kind of silly for the product in

00:41:09 ◼   ► a vacuum. But for what that says about Microsoft, at least their head's in the right place.

00:41:14 ◼   ► I thought it was interesting too. I enjoyed watching the event and I thought that

00:41:18 ◼   ► I feel like Microsoft has this down and I feel like they do their events like this the right way

00:41:24 ◼   ► for them. I mean they're clearly smaller and lower key than Apple's. You know they're not in a big

00:41:29 ◼   ► uh a huge room. It is it they are definitely press events like the one thing like neil and i were

00:41:36 ◼   ► quite small yeah is that apple the one thing like that not to go too far digress but like the

00:41:42 ◼   ► the Charlie Worzel column in the New York Times,

00:41:45 ◼   ► goofily arguing that Apple should stop doing events.

00:41:49 ◼   ► One of the misguided premises of that was that

00:41:51 ◼   ► Apple's events are press events, that they're media events.

00:41:54 ◼   ► They are not, they are Apple events,

00:41:57 ◼   ► and they happen to invite a small number of media

00:42:00 ◼   ► to observe them.

00:42:01 ◼   ► Whereas Microsoft's thing this week was a press event.

00:42:05 ◼   ► That was for the press,

00:42:07 ◼   ► and most of the people there were press.

00:42:09 ◼   ► But anyway, one of the things that I saw,

00:42:11 ◼   ► that struck me was how different their demos are than Apple's demos.

00:42:15 ◼   ► Apple's demos are very short, very flashy, very visual, and everything is set up.

00:42:21 ◼   ► And it's like if they want to show you the new side-by-side stuff in the iPad, it's like,

00:42:27 ◼   ► here's this pretty web page with beautiful pictures, and here's a note

00:42:33 ◼   ► that already has a couple of nice pictures.

00:42:35 ◼   ► And here's a -- we're going to drag this beautiful picture from the left

00:42:38 ◼   ► to the right and let it go.

00:42:39 ◼   ► and look at that, you can drag a picture

00:42:41 ◼   ► and then it's onto the next thing, right?

00:42:43 ◼   ► Like the demo's over, all they showed you

00:42:45 ◼   ► was a beautiful photo being dragged

00:42:47 ◼   ► from an app on the left to an app on the right.

00:42:49 ◼   ► Whereas the Microsoft demos, it's like,

00:42:51 ◼   ► you get to spend like four minutes

00:42:53 ◼   ► watching somebody work in Excel.

00:42:55 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:42:57 ◼   ► - That was actually where the low key coolest demos

00:43:01 ◼   ► was when they were writing in Excel

00:43:03 ◼   ► and then it was changing it into actual text

00:43:05 ◼   ► as they were doing it.

00:43:07 ◼   ► But yeah, but it's like you are literally watching someone

00:43:10 ◼   ► literally write to yourself.

00:43:12 ◼   ► - It is exactly like if you work in a lowercase O office

00:43:16 ◼   ► environment and you pop into somebody's cubicle

00:43:19 ◼   ► and you're just like, "Hey, what are you doing?"

00:43:21 ◼   ► You're just watching them over their shoulder

00:43:22 ◼   ► for a couple of minutes while they put together

00:43:25 ◼   ► a spreadsheet or a presentation.

00:43:27 ◼   ► And again, I laugh.

00:43:28 ◼   ► I laugh only because it's different.

00:43:30 ◼   ► I'm not saying that that's wrong.

00:43:31 ◼   ► I think that they know their audience

00:43:32 ◼   ► and it's probably the appropriate type of demo

00:43:36 ◼   ► for the audience and for the message they have.

00:43:38 ◼   ► But it is kind of comical because it really,

00:43:40 ◼   ► it couldn't be more different than Apple's.

00:43:42 ◼   ► And Apple's is, if anything, gone further over the years

00:43:46 ◼   ► into, not that it's unrealistic, but that it is really more,

00:43:50 ◼   ► it's almost edited, you know?

00:43:52 ◼   ► It's like they have the whole thing queued up ready to go.

00:43:55 ◼   ► And even watching them do it live on stage

00:43:59 ◼   ► isn't that different than what you would see

00:44:01 ◼   ► if they cut it into a 30-second commercial

00:44:02 ◼   ► to show you how it works.

00:44:04 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:44:05 ◼   ► So, the ear—I think they're just called earbuds? Surface earbuds? I don't know.

00:44:11 ◼   ► Yeah, surface earbuds.

00:44:14 ◼   ► And before I cracked wise about them, I wanted to make sure—check my bias. I showed them

00:44:22 ◼   ► to my wife, and I said, "Hey, do these look goofy?" And she goes, "They look like

00:44:27 ◼   ► an Apple Watch charger or those spacers that people put in their earlobes."

00:44:32 ◼   ► Yes, that's what I thought of. The spacers and the earlobes is exactly what I thought

00:44:36 ◼   ► of.

00:44:37 ◼   ► So I didn't want to make—I thought of that too, and I didn't want to make fun

00:44:40 ◼   ► of that. I felt like, you know, that paints me, you know, if you want to have spacers

00:44:45 ◼   ► and earlobes, you have spacers and earlobes. So I didn't want to make fun of that. So

00:44:49 ◼   ► I thought that the Apple Watch charger joke was the way to go, so I used it. And then

00:44:53 ◼   ► like later in the day—it's nice to know, see, she thought she was getting a dig in

00:44:57 ◼   ► on me. She says, "Ha, I see I'm writing for Daring Fireball now," because I used

00:45:03 ◼   ► her joke, but secretly pleased me because she often claims not to read my website.

00:45:07 ◼   ► And I know that she does.

00:45:09 ◼   ► John: There you go. Are we going to talk about charcoal at some point in this podcast? That's

00:45:14 ◼   ► the real question.

00:45:15 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:45:16 ◼   ► Dave: Well, we might as well. Yeah, we could talk about charcoal.

00:45:20 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:45:21 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:45:22 ◼   ► - All right, let me just say that for the end.

00:45:24 ◼   ► We still gotta talk about the dual screen devices.

00:45:27 ◼   ► But we could save the charcoal for the end.

00:45:29 ◼   ► - All right, let me make a note

00:45:31 ◼   ► that we'll get back to charcoal.

00:45:33 ◼   ► Do you need any charcoal?

00:45:34 ◼   ► - Do I have a choice in the matter?

00:45:38 ◼   ► - No, it's on its way, actually.

00:45:40 ◼   ► Let me take a break though,

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00:48:01 ◼   ► So the other thing, the thing that stole the show at Microsoft's event, they closed the

00:48:06 ◼   ► show with two products. They had two more things, the Surface Duo and the Surface Neo.

00:48:15 ◼   ► Which, again, I've already forgotten which one's which.

00:48:19 ◼   ► I know, I was just thinking the same thing.

00:48:21 ◼   ► I think the Neo is the tablet/courier one, the Duo is the phone, but I'm not certain.

00:48:27 ◼   ► Oh no, I think it's the other way around.

00:48:29 ◼   ► Son of a bitch.

00:48:31 ◼   ► God damn it.

00:48:33 ◼   ► Yep, no, I'm right.

00:48:35 ◼   ► Duo is the phone.

00:48:37 ◼   ► Duo is the Android and Neo is the Windows device.

00:48:39 ◼   ► See, I was thinking Neo is an N and Android has an N, but that's wrong. Oh, man. All right.

00:48:46 ◼   ► So, Duo is the phone. I don't know how I'm going to remember this. But anyway, it's a

00:48:55 ◼   ► phone. I thought Lauren Goode, she had wired, she had a preview. She got to, I guess, talk

00:49:01 ◼   ► to them a week before or a couple of days before the event and had a feature story and

00:49:07 ◼   ► an interview with, what's his name? Panaya.

00:49:12 ◼   ► - Both, I'm not sure either.

00:49:16 ◼   ► Panos Panay and Satya Nadella, both of them.

00:49:21 ◼   ► - Right, and Panos Panay is sort of the,

00:49:24 ◼   ► he's the Surface guy.

00:49:25 ◼   ► It's like Surface, the whole Surface division

00:49:27 ◼   ► is sort of his baby at Microsoft.

00:49:30 ◼   ► And she had a great story, and she's like,

00:49:34 ◼   ► whatever you do, don't call it a phone,

00:49:35 ◼   ► even though it's a thing that runs Android and can fit in your pocket and can make phone

00:49:40 ◼   ► calls but don't call on a phone.

00:49:42 ◼   ► There's a remarkable quote in here, just so we can get to the devices in a moment,

00:49:46 ◼   ► but just going back to what we were talking about before where she asked Adela if they

00:49:51 ◼   ► would ever bring back Windows Mobile and they both said no. And he says, "The operating

00:49:56 ◼   ► system is no longer the most important layer for us. What is most important for us is the

00:50:00 ◼   ► app model and the experience, how people are going to write apps, blah, blah, blah."

00:50:03 ◼   ► And just to hear, I mean, that's clearly the case, but it's still remarkable to have

00:50:09 ◼   ► a Microsoft CEO state, baldly, that the operating system is not important to us.

00:50:15 ◼   ► Right.

00:50:16 ◼   ► Well, and you know what, and it goes hand in hand with the fact that they're switching

00:50:19 ◼   ► their browser to using the Chromium engine, you know, I think it's called Blink.

00:50:27 ◼   ► It's like what WebKit is to Safari, Blink is to Chrome.

00:50:31 ◼   ► that's what Microsoft is now using for their browser, which, again, go back to like 1998

00:50:37 ◼   ► and tell somebody that and, you know, especially somebody like me who was doing web development at

00:50:41 ◼   ► the time. And it's like, it's like, you know, what are you gonna tell me next? Donald Trump is the

00:50:47 ◼   ► President of the United States? I mean, oh, man. I mean, it's crazy. That's it. That's the way they

00:50:52 ◼   ► what kind of world are you guys living in in 2019? You know, but there we are. But you're right. You

00:50:58 ◼   ► You know, they're making a phone, but it's not a phone.

00:51:01 ◼   ► It folds.

00:51:03 ◼   ► - It's definitely a phone.

00:51:04 ◼   ► It's not coming out for a year.

00:51:05 ◼   ► - I wanted to see pictures of the damn thing

00:51:07 ◼   ► next to other phones, just to get a better idea

00:51:11 ◼   ► of how big it is.

00:51:12 ◼   ► It's clearly big for a phone, even when folded up,

00:51:15 ◼   ► but some people really like these much bigger,

00:51:19 ◼   ► much bigger than even the max iPhone phones.

00:51:21 ◼   ► Some people like them.

00:51:23 ◼   ► It certainly is interesting.

00:51:25 ◼   ► It folds, but it's not a folding screen.

00:51:27 ◼   ► is two screens with a seam in between. And then they've got two of them. They've got

00:51:31 ◼   ► the phone size one and then the other one, I guess that's the Neo. So I guess the way

00:51:35 ◼   ► I'll remember it is it goes alphabetical order by size, Duo then Neo. All right.

00:51:40 ◼   ► Oh, there you go. All right. And then Pro. Then laptop kind of screws it up. Yeah. I

00:51:47 ◼   ► mean, it's interesting because in some respects, if you want to go with the whole, like, this

00:51:52 ◼   ► is all symbolism and none of it really matters. Then like, you know, I think as you know,

00:51:57 ◼   ► Microsoft launching a phone that runs Android is like the tombstone on the Windows grave.

00:52:04 ◼   ► I mean, it doesn't get any more sort of extreme than that. That noted, I don't know,

00:52:08 ◼   ► I kind of wish, like I thought the Neo was a great sort of one more thing. Microsoft,

00:52:14 ◼   ► there's this, there's this product called the Courier, this sort of legendary product

00:52:20 ◼   ► that was that was never released. And everyone's like, Oh, it's so

00:52:23 ◼   ► amazing that that was this two screen product. And and you

00:52:26 ◼   ► bring this on, it's like, Oh, I remember they were gonna do that

00:52:29 ◼   ► one time. And it's like, it's something new and interesting

00:52:31 ◼   ► and innovative. And you can even get the I can understand where

00:52:34 ◼   ► you're saying this, you know, announcing this a year early,

00:52:36 ◼   ► because you want to rewrite, we want developers to write

00:52:39 ◼   ► programs for two screens and stuff on those lines. And I

00:52:43 ◼   ► thought that was fine. Like the phone, it's like, I guess I

00:52:47 ◼   ► guess I get it. I don't know, I guess I feel like the Neo was

00:52:51 ◼   ► fine. The duo's like, okay, that's the way if we're, this is

00:52:56 ◼   ► all about symbolism, then by all means, launch, you know,

00:52:59 ◼   ► announce it all you want. I'm a little unsure about what they're

00:53:03 ◼   ► trying to accomplish there. But hey, they announced they

00:53:06 ◼   ► announced an Android phone. So there you go.

00:53:08 ◼   ► That's not coming out until the end of 2020 by there. It's

00:53:12 ◼   ► Right. It's, I don't know. And then I went to put these show

00:53:17 ◼   ► notes together. And and for, you know, for the me and you talking

00:53:21 ◼   ► here, and it was actually hard to find links to the other

00:53:24 ◼   ► products, because all of the stuff, like, yeah, everyone

00:53:28 ◼   ► talks about that. Everything like on the entire front page of

00:53:31 ◼   ► the verge is is about the duo in the Neo. Do you have to go to

00:53:35 ◼   ► like page two to find the stuff that you know, is actually

00:53:38 ◼   ► shipping?

00:53:39 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. And like, I don't know, like the way I mean, again, if you do just the Neo, it's like,

00:53:46 ◼   ► okay, yeah, Windows, hardcore Windows developers, I could see them spending time in the next year

00:53:50 ◼   ► is to be the hot device in Windows world. And you know, they'll adapt their applications. I mean,

00:53:56 ◼   ► but the duo what Android developers going to put in special support for the duo? Like,

00:54:01 ◼   ► what are we accomplishing by announcing a year early? No one's gonna go out of their way to

00:54:04 ◼   ► support it. I mean, I don't know. Like I said, I can buy the Neo and announcing it a year ahead of

00:54:10 ◼   ► time because you want developer support, but that doesn't actually make sense for the duo. It kind

00:54:15 ◼   ► of felt like they just, they, they, they're making it an Android product and they wanted to announce

00:54:20 ◼   ► it and say, huh, look at this. And, um, yeah, I, I didn't quite get it, but whatever. Like I said,

00:54:26 ◼   ► it doesn't really matter. So. All right. Well, so we got here, uh, I guess that's enough Microsoft

00:54:34 ◼   ► Let's talk iPhone.

00:54:36 ◼   ► So what'd you get?

00:54:37 ◼   ► You got the iPhone 11 Pro.

00:54:40 ◼   ► - iPhone 11 Pro, I think it's the perfect size.

00:54:42 ◼   ► With the old version, when they had the WIPs,

00:54:46 ◼   ► I thought it was too small,

00:54:47 ◼   ► and so I did do a couple years of the large ones,

00:54:51 ◼   ► which I didn't like, it was a little big,

00:54:52 ◼   ► but I just found the screen too small on the other ones.

00:54:54 ◼   ► Once the X came out and it went edge to edge,

00:54:57 ◼   ► it got the screen size that I wanted, fit in the hand,

00:55:00 ◼   ► so I'm very happy with the size.

00:55:03 ◼   ► So no need to change and I'm very pleased with it.

00:55:08 ◼   ► - And you got the yellow leather cover?

00:55:10 ◼   ► - I have the yellow leather cover with the green case.

00:55:13 ◼   ► It really is very, very Greenbit Packers like.

00:55:15 ◼   ► I think the yellow looks great when it's just sitting

00:55:18 ◼   ► on the table with the screen up,

00:55:21 ◼   ► it's this yellow edge around it.

00:55:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm pretty pleased with it.

00:55:25 ◼   ► - And how's your battery life?

00:55:27 ◼   ► - I did get the clear case originally.

00:55:29 ◼   ► I ordered it with a clear case.

00:55:30 ◼   ► So like, oh, finally they actually have a color

00:55:32 ◼   ► for the high-end phone.

00:55:33 ◼   ► I always liked the colors. But of course, I'm gonna get the high-end phone because I'm fortunate to

00:55:40 ◼   ► do that. But I've always gotten the weather cases previously. And I was not a fan of the clear case.

00:55:50 ◼   ► I felt it ended up looking grimy on the back. I didn't like the feel of it. The buttons were

00:55:54 ◼   ► terrible. So it lasted about a week. And then I went to the new Apple store here in Taipei. And

00:56:02 ◼   ► I actually didn't know there was yellow and

00:56:04 ◼   ► And was pleasantly surprised to find this yellow and and I am a happy camper

00:56:10 ◼   ► I have a friend who has the clear case. He likes it a lot. I think it's you know

00:56:17 ◼   ► Polarizing though it you there like it or you don't it. Yeah, I mean, I'm used to the weather

00:56:23 ◼   ► So yeah, so it's probably more just a habit thing than anything. Yeah, I have a real problem with cases is that I

00:56:31 ◼   ► I spend probably over the years, in the 11 years of iPhone, I've probably spent close

00:56:38 ◼   ► somewhere in the very high 90s, 98% of my daily use without any case at all. I mean,

00:56:45 ◼   ► certainly in the early years, we didn't even have cases, right? Nobody put cases on like

00:56:48 ◼   ► the iPhone 3G that I know of. Cases didn't really come into a thing until like around

00:56:54 ◼   ► the iPhone 4. I guess maybe people did have iPhone 3 cases and that's why Apple made the

00:56:59 ◼   ► the bumpers, I guess I'm wrong that people did have iPhone 3 and 3GS, 3G and 3GS cases,

00:57:08 ◼   ► because that's when Apple, when the iPhone 4 shipped, they had the bumper. And it turned

00:57:12 ◼   ► out, you know, in the whole Andenikate thing where they were like, "Here, we'll just

00:57:15 ◼   ► give you the goddamn bumper." But I thought that the reason that they made the bumper

00:57:20 ◼   ► with the iPhone 4 was that Apple was, now I recall this, it seemed very clear that Apple

00:57:25 ◼   ► was sort of appalled that people were covering up the entire back of the iPhone for the case.

00:57:29 ◼   ► So they're like, "Don't do that. We spend a lot of time, especially with the iPhone

00:57:33 ◼   ► 4, we spend a lot of time to make this glass back very pretty. Don't cover it up here.

00:57:38 ◼   ► Just put a bumper around the edges if you just want to give it some protection."

00:57:42 ◼   ► No, the fact remains, I just popped my case off mine, I mean, these phones in the hand

00:57:46 ◼   ► are beautiful, they're great to hold, it's a fantastic experience. The problem is that

00:57:52 ◼   ► I went caseless with the iPhone 7 and within about two months, I actually had a large chunk

00:57:58 ◼   ► of the front screen missing because it had been dropped multiple times. And you could

00:58:03 ◼   ► see into the phone. And ever since then, I have kept the case on for... I would like

00:58:11 ◼   ► to not use the case. I just do not trust myself at all.

00:58:14 ◼   ► I chipped the front corner of my iPhone XS last year, early. I forget when. It was probably

00:58:21 ◼   ► like around December, so maybe like two, three months into owning it. I was getting out of

00:58:26 ◼   ► of an Uber after dinner and had like dress slacks on,

00:58:29 ◼   ► which is unusual, you know, usually I'm either wearing jeans

00:58:32 ◼   ► or jean-like pants that, you know,

00:58:36 ◼   ► your phone doesn't fall out of--

00:58:37 ◼   ► - And large pockets.

00:58:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, your phone doesn't fall out of jean pockets.

00:58:39 ◼   ► And most of the slacks that I own are more like jeans

00:58:42 ◼   ► or are jeans, but I had dressier slacks on with the,

00:58:46 ◼   ► you know, with the pocket where the phone can come right out

00:58:48 ◼   ► and just sliding out of the Uber,

00:58:51 ◼   ► just boop, right on the street,

00:58:52 ◼   ► and it just put a little thing in the corner.

00:58:54 ◼   ► and it just barely didn't reach the pixels.

00:58:59 ◼   ► So it's just, the chipped part was just,

00:59:02 ◼   ► and the iPhone XS has a very small black bezel

00:59:05 ◼   ► around the screen, so it was,

00:59:06 ◼   ► the entire chipped part was in the black area.

00:59:09 ◼   ► So I didn't get it fixed, and it didn't spread at all

00:59:12 ◼   ► in the subsequent nine to 10 months

00:59:14 ◼   ► that I used it every day.

00:59:16 ◼   ► So again, sort of like my MacBook Pro

00:59:19 ◼   ► with the adhesion problem, it was just sort of like a scar

00:59:23 ◼   ► that I came to like.

00:59:24 ◼   ► If it had covered the pixels at all, I would have been at the Apple store in the morning.

00:59:29 ◼   ► One pixel had been covered by it, I would have been at the Apple store to pay for a

00:59:32 ◼   ► replacement.

00:59:33 ◼   ► But—

00:59:34 ◼   ► Justin Perdue I actually just got my tennis fixed because—oh,

00:59:36 ◼   ► sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

00:59:38 ◼   ► Dave Asprey But I did use a case last year afterwards,

00:59:41 ◼   ► because I find—I've personally found the glossy glass backs to be slippery.

00:59:48 ◼   ► And sometimes they're not, depending on the moisture of your hands, they're tacky.

00:59:53 ◼   ► But there are other times when it's like a bar of soap.

00:59:57 ◼   ► So I did use a case last year, but my problem is that I'm not satisfied with any of them.

01:00:01 ◼   ► So I wound up buying like 10 cases.

01:00:03 ◼   ► That I very seldom…

01:00:04 ◼   ► I know.

01:00:05 ◼   ► That's exactly what happens.

01:00:06 ◼   ► I very seldom use any of them.

01:00:08 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I was traveling, and I'm in the middle of a conversation, this group chat

01:00:17 ◼   ► and WhatsApp or whatever, and suddenly my phone just stops.

01:00:21 ◼   ► It's not working.

01:00:22 ◼   ► And so I'm trying to restart it and finally I had to do the force quit with the volume

01:00:26 ◼   ► buttons and the power button.

01:00:27 ◼   ► I turn it back on and I can't get it to function.

01:00:31 ◼   ► And like there's a dead part of the screen.

01:00:34 ◼   ► Basically what happened was there was this vertical strip on the touchscreen that just

01:00:38 ◼   ► stopped working.

01:00:39 ◼   ► And it was so perfectly placed that I couldn't accomplish anything on my phone.

01:00:43 ◼   ► There was a part of the keyboard that wasn't working.

01:00:45 ◼   ► I couldn't slide the thing to turn the phone off because it would hit the dead part of

01:00:49 ◼   ► the screen.

01:00:50 ◼   ► And it was really quite bizarre. And then the weirdest thing was, I finally sent it

01:00:54 ◼   ► in to get it fixed. And I get it back and I have the sheet that says, "Oh, we sent

01:01:00 ◼   ► me your phone, we fixed this." And not only did they fix the touchscreen, they put a new

01:01:04 ◼   ► camera in the phone. Apparently my camera had gotten broken too. I have no idea. I was

01:01:09 ◼   ► actually always very dissatisfied with the XS camera. Maybe it was broken all along and

01:01:13 ◼   ► I had no idea. But now I have basically a brand new XS and my 11. But it's funny,

01:01:21 ◼   ► I should sell it because it's now in beautiful, pristine condition. But it turns out traveling

01:01:29 ◼   ► and having your phone die is devastating. I mean, it's like, so I'm actually going

01:01:35 ◼   ► to keep this. I'm not going to sell it. And I'm going to keep it charged up and

01:01:39 ◼   ► I'm going to put in my bag when I travel. It's the same thing. It's like, with this

01:01:44 ◼   ► stuff's your wife and it's like, yeah, I do buy new phones because I get paid. I

01:01:50 ◼   ► need to be online all the time. I need to be reading stuff. I need to be knowing what's

01:01:53 ◼   ► going on. And I destroy my batteries because I'm using my phone all the time. But that

01:01:58 ◼   ► means I need backups. And you have to think about this all the time. Actually, you mentioned

01:02:02 ◼   ► about applications. I could switch to Windows because one of the things I did a few years

01:02:07 ◼   ► ago was I made it, I will not use any application in my day to day work that does not have a

01:02:13 ◼   ► web service component to it. Because my feeling is if my computer dies tomorrow, I need to

01:02:18 ◼   ► be able to walk, get any computer in the world, Windows or Mac, and be up and running and

01:02:23 ◼   ► get my work done. And so like I won't use, and it's actually it's a very interesting

01:02:29 ◼   ► way to think about some of your computing things. Probably the application I was the

01:02:33 ◼   ► saddest to give up was OmniFocus, or not OmniFocus, OmniOutliner. Brilliant Outliner. I use Workflowy

01:02:40 ◼   ► instead which is not nearly as fully featured as good, but it has a web component. It's

01:02:47 ◼   ► a solid line for me. I have to be able to have access to my stuff no matter what.

01:02:51 ◼   ► Pete: Who knows? Maybe there will be an online component to OmniOutliner because they actually

01:02:56 ◼   ► did it for OmniFocus.

01:02:58 ◼   ► Jon: For OmniFocus. They did and I actually switched back to OmniFocus once they did it

01:03:01 ◼   ► because I switched away for that reason. And once they added it, I was back because it's

01:03:06 ◼   ► -- I mean, I love their products in general, but I've been a long-time user of OmniFocus

01:03:11 ◼   ► in particular.

01:03:12 ◼   ► Pete: Yeah. Sponsor of the live episode of the talk show this year at WWDC and I loved

01:03:16 ◼   ► -- I love my blurb about it where we're all bitching about companies that only make

01:03:21 ◼   ► web apps and shovel them into a Mac wrapper and call it a Mac app and Omni did it.

01:03:27 ◼   ► Justin: They shoveled a Mac app into a web wrapper.

01:03:30 ◼   ► which is just so totally Omni. I love it. So maybe OmniOutliner is next. I have friends

01:03:37 ◼   ► there but I don't know any such thing, so maybe not. Maybe OmniFocus as a—the nature

01:03:43 ◼   ► of OmniFocus sort of suits it to being web appified in a way that the other productivity

01:03:49 ◼   ► apps don't. But anyway.

01:03:50 ◼   ► Justin: Yeah, that's right. Because I mean, with OmniOutliner, you could say stuff to

01:03:54 ◼   ► a shared folder or whatever, which is fine. It's more a matter of—actually, because

01:03:58 ◼   ► I used to work at Microsoft and when I was at my, I remembered a very formative moment was I needed

01:04:04 ◼   ► a particular document that I knew I had made. And so I go into my Dropbox and I'm like, "Where's

01:04:09 ◼   ► this document?" And the document was in pages format. And the problem was I was on a Windows

01:04:13 ◼   ► computer. There was no pages online at that point. And so I remember I had to literally go into my

01:04:19 ◼   ► car, drive home, get my Mac, open up this document, and then come back. And I'm like, "Never again.

01:04:25 ◼   ► I'm never going to be stuck in a situation again where I can't access something I need.

01:04:30 ◼   ► Well, good for you, Ben.

01:04:32 ◼   ► But I'm very extreme. No need to copy me.

01:04:40 ◼   ► Well, what the hell were we talking about? Oh, the iPhone.

01:04:42 ◼   ► The iPhone 11. The camera is, like, you can't say enough about it. It's consistently fun

01:04:51 ◼   ► to use. I was taking pictures of—I ran over to a friend's house before, I was taking my dog with me,

01:04:57 ◼   ► and she knows that we're going to this particular house because they have a yard,

01:05:01 ◼   ► which is relatively rare in Taiwan. They have a couple dogs. And so she sees the neighborhood

01:05:05 ◼   ► and she's getting super excited. And I've taken pictures of her and it's relatively dark and you

01:05:10 ◼   ► get these really cool pictures of her with her paws out the window, all pumped up. And it's just

01:05:17 ◼   ► a whole new world that was not accessible as far as having my phone with me before. And I find that

01:05:25 ◼   ► coming up all the time, and just all the—like, the Deep Fusion thing or whatever hasn't even launched

01:05:30 ◼   ► yet. But it's really remarkable. Like, just, it's very tangible in the way it makes me feel about

01:05:37 ◼   ► the phone and enjoy having the phone. Like, it's so noticeable.

01:05:41 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's just it's rather startling just as somebody who's been a

01:05:45 ◼   ► photo enthusiast. Now, I'm certainly not professional caliber in any way,

01:05:51 ◼   ► but I've been a photo enthusiast for 20 years and it's just remarkable sometimes the images

01:05:59 ◼   ► you get out of it in the dark with the night mode. It's and you know that even when you're not using

01:06:05 ◼   ► night mode. It's just a great camera. And I noticed with the XS, and this is clearly

01:06:13 ◼   ► a better camera, but I was on a family vacation. We went on a cruise with my family and my

01:06:17 ◼   ► sister and her family in August. And I took my Fuji X100S and took a bunch of photos with

01:06:26 ◼   ► it, but also took a bunch of photos with my phone. And then I was like looking at them

01:06:31 ◼   ► in photos after the trip. And I was like, "Oh, this one I had to shoot with the Fuji." And I'd

01:06:36 ◼   ► like do the Command-I on the Mac. You can get the Command-I to see the metadata about the phone.

01:06:43 ◼   ► I was like, "Nope, that was the iPhone." There were a couple of shots with the Fuji where I was

01:06:49 ◼   ► like, "I'm 100% sure that was the real 'real camera.'" And it was. So I'm not saying that

01:06:54 ◼   ► they're indistinguishable, but there were some where I was like, "What the hell camera did I

01:06:59 ◼   ► I use for this and I was totally blown away that it was the iPhone. Like you really can

01:07:03 ◼   ► take camera, camera quality photos with it. And in the dark, it's better. It is actually

01:07:09 ◼   ► a better camera in low lighting in like a dark restaurant or something like that than

01:07:15 ◼   ► a $5,000 SLR. It really is. It's unbelievable.

01:07:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's fun. It's a feature that is enjoyable and fun to use. And at this stage

01:07:30 ◼   ► of the smartphone evolution, it's nice. The XS was--the biggest thing for me with the

01:07:39 ◼   ► XS relative to the X--and I know this because I was using the X when my XS was broken--is

01:07:43 ◼   ► the face IDs was just so massively better. I mean, face ID on the X, go back--I mean,

01:07:49 ◼   ► again, we're the most... we are the people that Brian Chen in the New York Times hates

01:07:54 ◼   ► because we buy a new phone every year. But going back to the 10, the face ID was miserable.

01:08:01 ◼   ► It was painful to use. But the rest of it was like, "Eh, yeah, there's really not much

01:08:08 ◼   ► difference here from using it." But the 11, I don't know, both the 10 and the 10S camera,

01:08:15 ◼   ► I was actually not a big fan of either of them. I just felt they looked very phone camera-ish

01:08:21 ◼   ► in a lot of situations, particularly with any harsh light in them. And the 11 is just

01:08:25 ◼   ► like taking photos for fun in a way that I haven't done in a long time.

01:08:33 ◼   ► My son still has an iPhone X and we were out to eat last week and I just shot a little

01:08:39 ◼   ► bit of video using his two-year-old iPhone X and my new phone. And the video difference

01:08:44 ◼   ► is, it's under-heralded how good the video is on these phones. And I was talking with

01:08:50 ◼   ► Joanna Stern on the last episode of this show about my family looking back at some like

01:08:57 ◼   ► 14, 15-year-old video of my son when he was a baby, which I had to shot on a mini-DV camera,

01:09:05 ◼   ► which was, I thought was tiny at the time. I loved it.

01:09:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, well my daughter, I think I had the Flip camera.

01:09:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, we talked about that.

01:09:12 ◼   ► Yeah, Joanna and I talked about that too.

01:09:14 ◼   ► We have a lot of footage of Jonas

01:09:16 ◼   ► from about three or four years later in the Flip era.

01:09:19 ◼   ► It's just, it's not heartbreaking quite,

01:09:21 ◼   ► 'cause it's great that we have the video.

01:09:23 ◼   ► And when I was a kid, me and Amy,

01:09:25 ◼   ► and it's probably true for you too.

01:09:27 ◼   ► Is there any video of you from when you were a kid?

01:09:30 ◼   ► - No, not at all.

01:09:31 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, my parents never,

01:09:33 ◼   ► I don't know if they even owned a video camera ever.

01:09:35 ◼   ► - No, I mean, video cameras weren't even a thing

01:09:37 ◼   ► until the 80s and my parents never bought one.

01:09:39 ◼   ► And in the 70s when I was a baby,

01:09:42 ◼   ► you had to shoot Super 8 film.

01:09:45 ◼   ► So there is some footage of me.

01:09:47 ◼   ► I have it in a closet.

01:09:48 ◼   ► I actually should pay the price

01:09:50 ◼   ► and send it somewhere to get it digitized.

01:09:52 ◼   ► I do have some reels of Super 8 film

01:09:55 ◼   ► that my uncle, my mom's brother shot of me and my sister.

01:09:58 ◼   ► There's like a combined,

01:10:00 ◼   ► and like Super 8 was fun.

01:10:02 ◼   ► And when I was in college,

01:10:03 ◼   ► I made short films shooting Super 8.

01:10:05 ◼   ► And it was kind of fun because it looked so much better

01:10:08 ◼   ► than video in a weird way, 'cause it was,

01:10:10 ◼   ► Super 8 is film, and so you, you know,

01:10:13 ◼   ► but it was really hard to shoot and it didn't have sound.

01:10:16 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:10:18 ◼   ► And because it was so expensive shooting film,

01:10:20 ◼   ► even Super 8, 8 mil, you know, it's called Super 8

01:10:23 ◼   ► 'cause it's eight millimeter,

01:10:23 ◼   ► this tiny little frame of film.

01:10:25 ◼   ► It was very expensive to get developed

01:10:27 ◼   ► compared to, compared to photos.

01:10:30 ◼   ► And so most consumer Super 8 cameras

01:10:33 ◼   ► would shoot 18 frames per second instead of 24.

01:10:37 ◼   ► Just so you could save-- - It's like stop motion.

01:10:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, so you could save money.

01:10:40 ◼   ► So you kind of get like that Charlie Chaplin

01:10:43 ◼   ► silent film effect,

01:10:43 ◼   ► even though you might've been shooting color.

01:10:46 ◼   ► But anyway, there was no video.

01:10:47 ◼   ► So it's great that we have hours of video of Jonas

01:10:49 ◼   ► when he was a baby,

01:10:50 ◼   ► but the footage, the quality is just horrendous.

01:10:54 ◼   ► It's just absolutely appalling.

01:10:56 ◼   ► But it's just unbelievable to me that just two years,

01:10:59 ◼   ► iPhone X, which was a thousand dollar cell phone,

01:11:03 ◼   ► Two years ago, the video quality in low light

01:11:06 ◼   ► with shooting video compared to the iPhone 11

01:11:09 ◼   ► is just astounding.

01:11:10 ◼   ► It's just hard to believe it's two years.

01:11:12 ◼   ► Looking back, my point is looking back

01:11:14 ◼   ► at 15-year-old mini DV footage, well, 15 years, of course.

01:11:18 ◼   ► Of course the difference is striking and it's stunning.

01:11:20 ◼   ► It's cool that you can get this not just

01:11:23 ◼   ► with a dedicated video camera now, but with your phone.

01:11:26 ◼   ► Your phone shoots it, but 15 years is 15 years.

01:11:28 ◼   ► But two years, it's insane.

01:11:30 ◼   ► It's absolutely insane.

01:11:33 ◼   ► how much better the video is on the iPhone 11.

01:11:35 ◼   ► I guess the other thing I should touch on

01:11:40 ◼   ► in the director's commentary,

01:11:42 ◼   ► what have I written about this week

01:11:43 ◼   ► during Fireball aspect of the podcast is the,

01:11:45 ◼   ► something has not sat right with me all month long

01:11:51 ◼   ► regarding night mode

01:11:56 ◼   ► and which cameras on the Pro it applies to.

01:12:03 ◼   ► I was left talking with Apple off the record with you know, when you get these review units, you know

01:12:09 ◼   ► You talk to Apple throughout the week that you're reviewing them and you get phone calls and you can't quote them

01:12:15 ◼   ► They're off the record

01:12:15 ◼   ► but they answer all your questions and they're usually very forthcoming and very very accurate and

01:12:20 ◼   ► While from a marketing standpoint, I totally get that they want to keep it very simple

01:12:25 ◼   ► And they don't get into technical details

01:12:28 ◼   ► but like with people like me and Matthew Panzareno and Neelai Patel who like to write about

01:12:35 ◼   ► the camera stuff and explain how it works as best we can, they're remarkably forthcoming. But with

01:12:43 ◼   ► the night mode stuff, when I'd ask questions about like, okay, so it doesn't work with the super wide

01:12:50 ◼   ► angle, the ultra wide 0.5x lens, and I know the night mode doesn't work. It's, you know,

01:12:56 ◼   ► The sensor doesn't have any focus pixels, so can't do it.

01:13:00 ◼   ► When I talk, and you know, obviously works with the standard 1x lens.

01:13:06 ◼   ► And I asked questions. I was under the impression that on the iPhone Pro that when you go into 2x,

01:13:12 ◼   ► you can get night mode because there's a 2x button and it looks like it.

01:13:16 ◼   ► And I asked questions about it and about like, well, why does it work with these lenses?

01:13:22 ◼   ► with these lenses and the answers were weird.

01:13:24 ◼   ► I don't think I was lied to at all

01:13:27 ◼   ► and I've, you know, Neelay and I have chatting about this,

01:13:30 ◼   ► you know, behind the scenes.

01:13:33 ◼   ► But the answers just were,

01:13:35 ◼   ► the best word I can come up with is obfuscutory.

01:13:38 ◼   ► They just weren't, it was just weird word.

01:13:40 ◼   ► It's just, it just was, I was like, all right.

01:13:43 ◼   ► And then it turns out that it doesn't use the 2X lens

01:13:47 ◼   ► in night mode.

01:13:48 ◼   ► When night mode kicks in and you're at the 2x zoom level, it uses the 1x camera to take

01:13:55 ◼   ► a night mode shot and then crops to a 2x zoom and just does a digital zoom to go up.

01:14:04 ◼   ► That happened in low light with iPhone dual camera systems all the way back to—I forget,

01:14:10 ◼   ► what was the first one?

01:14:12 ◼   ► Some of the—like the iPhone 6s Plus.

01:14:14 ◼   ► When did they first add the second camera?

01:14:15 ◼   ► I forget even.

01:14:16 ◼   ► - I think it was the iPhone 7.

01:14:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe iPhone 7.

01:14:20 ◼   ► Yeah, that makes sense.

01:14:21 ◼   ► So like the iPhone 7 Plus had two cameras

01:14:23 ◼   ► and the regular smaller iPhone 7 only had one.

01:14:27 ◼   ► And the dual camera was what they call telephoto.

01:14:31 ◼   ► It's 2X zoom.

01:14:32 ◼   ► And in low light, even then--

01:14:34 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, that's right.

01:14:35 ◼   ► 'Cause I think that's one of the first time

01:14:36 ◼   ► I got the larger phone one.

01:14:37 ◼   ► - Right, 'cause you wanted the best.

01:14:38 ◼   ► Right, you wanted the best. - That's right, yeah.

01:14:41 ◼   ► - Even if you didn't like the size, a lot of people.

01:14:43 ◼   ► I didn't do that, but I'll let you,

01:14:45 ◼   ► it was a tough decision.

01:14:46 ◼   ► But anyway, even back then, all throughout that in low light, the iPhone would make a

01:14:52 ◼   ► decision that, and it's, you know, again, there's nothing scandalous about it.

01:14:56 ◼   ► They were doing this because they, it was to get the best image that in low light, because

01:15:00 ◼   ► the sensor for the telephoto lens is less sensitive, you know, it's not as good as the

01:15:06 ◼   ► one X sensor, and especially in low light, they would, they concluded that in certain

01:15:11 ◼   ► lighting situations, it would be better to just use the one X camera and digital zoom

01:15:16 ◼   ► as opposed to the true optical 2x camera.

01:15:20 ◼   ► Turns out it still works like that in night mode.

01:15:23 ◼   ► And again, there's nothing scandalous about it.

01:15:26 ◼   ► They're doing what gets the better image

01:15:28 ◼   ► and everybody loves night mode,

01:15:30 ◼   ► including when you're zoomed in.

01:15:31 ◼   ► Like people are taking 2x shots with night mode

01:15:36 ◼   ► and loving the images they're getting.

01:15:39 ◼   ► So it's not scandalous that they're using

01:15:42 ◼   ► the 1x camera to get them.

01:15:44 ◼   ► They're doing what gets the best shot.

01:15:47 ◼   ► But there was all sorts of confusion about night mode.

01:15:50 ◼   ► Did it require 100% focus pixels?

01:15:54 ◼   ► And the Panzorino was told something like that.

01:15:58 ◼   ► And then we concluded, okay, so the 1x and 2x cameras have 100% focus pixels, but that's

01:16:03 ◼   ► not true.

01:16:04 ◼   ► And there's like a, you know, Phil Schiller had a slide when he was on stage that the

01:16:10 ◼   ► One X camera sensor does have 100% focus pixels on the sensor, but the 2X camera just has

01:16:16 ◼   ► quote "focus pixels," so has some focus pixels. The 0.5X ultra-wide has no focus

01:16:23 ◼   ► pixels. So in a sense, putting it all together, what Apple told us behind the scenes was kind

01:16:30 ◼   ► of true, that apparently night mode does require 100% focus pixels because it only works.

01:16:36 ◼   ► means they're only using one camera.

01:16:38 ◼   ► Right. But then the thing that still confused me was, "Well, why didn't they make this

01:16:46 ◼   ► clear to us?" And then I figured it out. Like a day after writing, it was like I was

01:16:50 ◼   ► chatting with Nilay, and I literally had like a light bulb moment. Like the closest you

01:16:56 ◼   ► could get to an actual light bulb popping over my head and turning on was, "Oh, I

01:17:02 ◼   ► get it, it's uncomfortable for them to talk about because it means the regular iPhone 11 takes the

01:17:09 ◼   ► exact same 2x zoom level night mode shots as the $400 more iPhone 11 Pro. That's the rub, and that's

01:17:20 ◼   ► what makes it the whole thing a little uncomfortable for them to talk about. And there's no 2x button

01:17:26 ◼   ► on the iPhone 11. To get to 2x zoom, you have to pinch or use the little scroll wheel that they

01:17:34 ◼   ► added in the camera app. But when you get to 2x zoom and night mode kicks in, the iPhone 11 takes

01:17:41 ◼   ► the exact same night mode shots that the iPhone 11 Pro does because neither one is using the

01:17:45 ◼   ► telephoto lens because the iPhone 11 doesn't have a telephoto lens and the iPhone 11 Pro

01:17:49 ◼   ► doesn't use the telephoto lens for night mode. So anyway, that was like my big light bulb moment

01:17:56 ◼   ► of the week. Well, that's interesting. I have to say, I mean, it's only been a few weeks, but

01:18:04 ◼   ► I definitely enjoy and use the wide-angle lens more than I feel like I ever use the telephoto

01:18:09 ◼   ► lens. It really opens up an entirely sort of new sort of photo, whereas the telephoto lens,

01:18:16 ◼   ► it's like it's not telephoto enough to be really particularly useful. It's this weird

01:18:22 ◼   ► sort of middle ground. Yeah, and like I was talking to a friend whose kids are really talented

01:18:30 ◼   ► young baseball players. I mean, and so their family is always, you know, going to Little League

01:18:36 ◼   ► baseball games. They have two sons and baseball games all the time. And he was asking, you know,

01:18:43 ◼   ► if they should get the 11 Pro or the 11. His wife needs a new phone. And I said, well, you guys,

01:18:48 ◼   ► you know, like for shooting baseball games, the telephoto is better, but it's still not like—you're

01:18:55 ◼   ► not going to get a close-up of your kid in the batter's box from the bleachers, you know what

01:18:58 ◼   ► I mean? Like, it's not as—you still might—if you really want to get good pictures of something

01:19:04 ◼   ► like a sporting event or like your kid on stage in a school performance or something like that,

01:19:09 ◼   ► you still want a real camera that has a real zoom lens that's longer focal length than the tele—quote

01:19:16 ◼   ► quote unquote telephoto on the iPhone 11. I think you're right. And I think that I

01:19:20 ◼   ► think they made the right decision with like the iPhone 11 where, okay, we're going to

01:19:25 ◼   ► go to three lenses on the more expensive Pro, but the 11, which is going to be significantly

01:19:30 ◼   ► lower price is going to have two lenses. Should it get a telephoto or should it get a wide

01:19:34 ◼   ► angle or ultra wide? I think the ultra wide is more useful.

01:19:38 ◼   ► Jared Polin Yeah, we haven't talked since the presentation,

01:19:41 ◼   ► But to me, this was my big takeaway from the whole thing,

01:19:45 ◼   ► is that Apple cut prices.

01:19:47 ◼   ► Like they cut, and they cut prices pretty significantly.

01:19:49 ◼   ► And it was, it's a bit hidden

01:19:51 ◼   ► because the high end is the exact same.

01:19:53 ◼   ► - Right.

01:19:54 ◼   ► - But the, you know, the bit about the iPhone 11

01:19:58 ◼   ► being cheap, cheaper than the 10R was last year.

01:20:03 ◼   ► And then also the 10R being reduced in price

01:20:07 ◼   ► by much more than phones had been reduced in price

01:20:10 ◼   ► or previously. To me, I think it's a pretty big deal. And I

01:20:13 ◼   ► think the what I sort of discussed at the time was, you

01:20:17 ◼   ► know, that's what a company that actually is focused on services

01:20:23 ◼   ► should be doing because you actually do want to have, you

01:20:26 ◼   ► know, the way those those sort of businesses work is you're

01:20:29 ◼   ► putting in a lot of expense up front, but then you're trying to

01:20:33 ◼   ► spread it out over the maximum number of folks, you know, on

01:20:37 ◼   ► the back end. That's why you know, Google is fine to have $50 Android phones that that's that many

01:20:42 ◼   ► more people that can sort of, they get leverage on their services for and, and this is Apple at least

01:20:48 ◼   ► sort of hinting at actually changing their their pricing strategy in a way that favors this sort of

01:20:56 ◼   ► services approach where services isn't just something we sort of backed into because of this app

01:21:00 ◼   ► store and we can, you know, have this narrative, but our strategy hasn't changed. Here is a hint

01:21:05 ◼   ► that the strategy has actually shifted a bit. And the 11, to your point, I mean, it's

01:21:10 ◼   ► an incredible phone. I mean, even particularly with by having that wide angle lens, you know,

01:21:16 ◼   ► it's even more competitive than the XR was. The XR was already extremely competitive.

01:21:21 ◼   ► And I really, Joanna and I talked about this, I really think, and I got a little pushback

01:21:25 ◼   ► on it from some people, but I really think that for the most part, people should get

01:21:31 ◼   ► the one level up from base storage.

01:21:33 ◼   ► So both phones start at 64 gigabyte storage.

01:21:35 ◼   ► - Completely agree.

01:21:37 ◼   ► That's not enough.

01:21:38 ◼   ► - And some people it is, and that's the, I get it.

01:21:41 ◼   ► And there are, for those of you who sent me email

01:21:43 ◼   ► and tweets saying, hey, I'm only using 38 gigabytes

01:21:47 ◼   ► on my phone, so 64 is plenty for me,

01:21:49 ◼   ► and I use the cloud storage for everything.

01:21:52 ◼   ► So I get it.

01:21:54 ◼   ► But that's an informed decision.

01:21:56 ◼   ► And the people who listen to this show

01:21:58 ◼   ► know that they really can fit their life comfortably in a 64

01:22:02 ◼   ► gigabyte base model storage. That's, you know, you know what

01:22:06 ◼   ► you're doing. I think for typical people, though,

01:22:08 ◼   ► especially if you want to shoot lots of, you know, 4k video and

01:22:12 ◼   ► stuff like that. It, you should go up a level but that's where

01:22:16 ◼   ► the pricing difference is really stark. And I'll just emphasize

01:22:20 ◼   ► it again, because the 11 goes to 128. And it's only 50 bucks

01:22:24 ◼   ► more. So for 50 bucks, you can double your storage from 64 to

01:22:28 ◼   ► 128. And it's it's, it's nothing like the old days where we

01:22:32 ◼   ► complained so vociferously about the 16 gigabyte base model

01:22:37 ◼   ► storage. It was unbelievable, right? And it kept going on year

01:22:41 ◼   ► after year after year, right. And you have to remember that

01:22:44 ◼   ► it that that 16 gigabyte needed to include the system software.

01:22:48 ◼   ► So however many gigabytes iOS and the apps that you include,

01:22:53 ◼   ► And Apple likes to give you, you know, every time you upgrade, they stick you with GarageBand

01:22:57 ◼   ► again, which is a great app.

01:22:59 ◼   ► It's a fantastic app.

01:23:00 ◼   ► But I have no musical inclination at all.

01:23:03 ◼   ► And GarageBand is like a 380 megabyte app.

01:23:07 ◼   ► And I guess that they load some of that stuff on demand, so it's not really taking up the

01:23:10 ◼   ► space.

01:23:11 ◼   ► But anyway, the 16 gigabyte phones included the OS.

01:23:15 ◼   ► The 64 gigabytes do too.

01:23:16 ◼   ► And it's not, you know, you get most of that 64, I guess, to use.

01:23:20 ◼   ► when you go from 64 to 128, the entire extra 64 you get to use. That's not used by the phone.

01:23:26 ◼   ► But the iPhone 11 Pro is just like the previous high-end, the X and the XS, at that $1,000 plus

01:23:37 ◼   ► price tier, you have to go all the way to 256 from the base model, and it costs $150 to go

01:23:43 ◼   ► from the base model to that. So to me, it, there's a $300 difference at the 64 gigabyte base model

01:23:51 ◼   ► tier, but there's a $400 difference between the 11 and the 11 Pro if you just go from the usable

01:23:58 ◼   ► tier. Yeah. And again, it's not apples to apples because the 11 is 128 and the Pro is 256. But that

01:24:04 ◼   ► 128 is so, so much good enough for most typical people. So to me, it's a $400 difference. And I

01:24:12 ◼   ► I think that's significant. I do question, I question how much of it that this lowering

01:24:18 ◼   ► the prices, I think you're exactly right, that the 11 is $50 less than the comparable

01:24:24 ◼   ► 10 our models were last year and the 10 are and I think this is really I think it's

01:24:28 ◼   ► a huge deal. And really does justify calling the overall lineup as being lower price is

01:24:35 ◼   ► that the 10 are really dropped in price. I forget what it's cost but $150 Yeah, I've

01:24:40 ◼   ► And it used to only drop 100.

01:24:44 ◼   ► Not just that, but the iPhone 8 dropped 152.

01:24:46 ◼   ► So the iPhone 8 went from $599 to $449.

01:24:51 ◼   ► So, yeah, so basically everything other than the top-end model went down by price by at

01:25:01 ◼   ► least $50 more than it did previously.

01:25:05 ◼   ► I just wonder, I don't question it, but I wonder how much of it is strategic and how

01:25:09 ◼   ► much of it is just that they didn't really want the XR to cost as much as it did last

01:25:17 ◼   ► year, but that's what it cost if they were going to maintain their margins.

01:25:21 ◼   ► There might be something to it, particularly for memory pricing. Because I remember when

01:25:25 ◼   ► the iPhone 8 jumped up to $699, that was at a time when DRAM pricing was through the roof.

01:25:32 ◼   ► And so actually Apple's margin on that phone wasn't that much greater because a huge

01:25:37 ◼   ► part of that increase was eaten up by memory pricing. And right now, DRM prices are very

01:25:45 ◼   ► low. So you may be right. It may be that the memory, this is driven more by the cost of

01:25:52 ◼   ► their components. And that's one of the biggest costs in the phone and it's one

01:25:57 ◼   ► that changes the most. I mean, memory is notorious for it goes to these peaks and valleys. And

01:26:02 ◼   ► been doing that for 50 years, gonna be doing it for the next 50 years. So that might be part of it.

01:26:09 ◼   ► But at the same time, once they raised the price, they could have kept it that way. Exactly. And

01:26:16 ◼   ► just taken the extra margin. And they didn't. They brought it back down. And to me, that's a good

01:26:21 ◼   ► sign. There's always been the vague sort of concern that does Apple care a little too much

01:26:31 ◼   ► about their margins and not enough about sort of the the ecosystem viability and it turned out with

01:26:36 ◼   ► the iPhone that the the market was so large that there was enough room for two there you know both

01:26:41 ◼   ► iOS and Android and particularly with iOS you know customers willingness to buy and whatnot

01:26:46 ◼   ► but but when it comes to services and stuff that you invest in and you need to sort of spread out

01:26:53 ◼   ► those costs and the maximum number of people this isn't really an ecosystem question iOS is a viable

01:26:57 ◼   ► ecosystem without question, but at this point, from Apple's perspective, every single extra

01:27:04 ◼   ► iPhone that's out in the market just makes the rest of their company's business that

01:27:08 ◼   ► much—the profit, you make it up in volume, in a very real sense.

01:27:16 ◼   ► Yeah, and I do think that the—DRAM is certainly part of it. I think that the Face ID versus

01:27:22 ◼   ► Touch ID is a little bit more expensive and I know that the XR and now the 11 don't have

01:27:28 ◼   ► the super fancy and clearly expensive OLED display.

01:27:33 ◼   ► Oh yeah, that's crazy expensive.

01:27:34 ◼   ► But I do think it has to be more expensive to make the 11's LCD with the round corners

01:27:44 ◼   ► that goes close.

01:27:45 ◼   ► Again, the bezels are slightly larger than on the Pro models, but compared to the old

01:27:51 ◼   ► forehead and chin iPhones, it's more expensive. So the display, even though it's only quote

01:27:56 ◼   ► unquote only an LCD, I think it's a wonderful display. It's still it's got to be a little

01:28:00 ◼   ► bit more expensive. I think face ID is clearly a little bit more expensive than touch ID.

01:28:04 ◼   ► So I think it was a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B where the 10R

01:28:08 ◼   ► had to be a little more expensive. But I think you're right that that once they bit the bullet

01:28:12 ◼   ► and raise those prices, they could have kept them there. And they clearly chose not to.

01:28:16 ◼   ► I think it's great for consumers, I really do.

01:28:20 ◼   ► It's just, as these 11s settle in,

01:28:24 ◼   ► I just think that the value proposition

01:28:27 ◼   ► of the regular iPhone 11 is just phenomenal.

01:28:30 ◼   ► It's, you get the great 1X camera that's exactly the same.

01:28:35 ◼   ► You get the ultra-wide, which is probably more useful

01:28:38 ◼   ► for more people than telephoto.

01:28:40 ◼   ► Same exact A13 chip, you get a,

01:28:43 ◼   ► It's not the same display, but it's a great display.

01:28:46 ◼   ► You get great battery life.

01:28:47 ◼   ► It's just a great phone,

01:28:48 ◼   ► and now it's a little bit less price.

01:28:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think it's great for Apple too.

01:28:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, so the rumor, it's rampant now,

01:28:55 ◼   ► and Ming-Chi Kuo had a report

01:28:58 ◼   ► that was circulating this week.

01:29:00 ◼   ► I was gonna say confirming it,

01:29:02 ◼   ► but as close as we can get to confirming

01:29:04 ◼   ► that Apple's full steam ahead on this rumored SE2

01:29:09 ◼   ► for early in 2020, which will look like supposedly an iPhone 8, but will have the A13 chip from

01:29:20 ◼   ► this year's phones, which is exactly what Apple did with the SE years ago when it came

01:29:27 ◼   ► out. They used previous generations hardware design, which was the iPhone 5 5S design.

01:29:36 ◼   ► But when the iPhone SE came out, it had whatever the A-series chip was from the iPhone.

01:29:41 ◼   ► I guess it was the iPhone 6.

01:29:45 ◼   ► And for the record, the iPhone 5S was the pinnacle of iPhone design.

01:29:49 ◼   ► You know, I spent a day with my iPhone.

01:29:51 ◼   ► I don't have an…

01:29:52 ◼   ► I never bought an SE, so I don't have an SE to use, but I still have my iPhone 5S.

01:29:57 ◼   ► And I do it every year.

01:30:00 ◼   ► I put my SIM card in it and spend a day with it, and it's like, "Man, this is…

01:30:05 ◼   ► an easily pocketable, lightweight design. Oh, it's just gorgeous. It's absolutely gorgeous.

01:30:11 ◼   ► It also feels so sturdy. It feels like I don't know why anybody ever put a case on it. It

01:30:15 ◼   ► just feels like you could literally throw it against a wall and it wouldn't crack.

01:30:19 ◼   ► Yep. Yeah, no, I don't think I used a case then. I think I switched the cases once they

01:30:23 ◼   ► got too big to sort of keeping your hand. Because the iPhone 4 was incredible, but that

01:30:29 ◼   ► That glass back was—once they went to the all-metal enclosure, that's where it really

01:30:37 ◼   ► hit its stride.

01:30:38 ◼   ► So spending a day with my iPhone 5S, in addition to the size, which I want to come back to,

01:30:44 ◼   ► because I think that's the thing that is most going to upset people about the rumored

01:30:49 ◼   ► iPhone 8 size of this SE 2.

01:30:53 ◼   ► But the other thing that really struck me—it's size and weight—unbelievable.

01:30:56 ◼   ► The fact that it's so light makes it feel so,

01:30:58 ◼   ► it just feels like you could,

01:30:59 ◼   ► if it fell off your desk, it would be no problem.

01:31:02 ◼   ► The fact that it's aluminum instead of glass on the back.

01:31:04 ◼   ► But that's what struck me about that aluminum on the back,

01:31:08 ◼   ► is I do have a Qi charger on my nightstand.

01:31:12 ◼   ► It is not that much more convenient

01:31:17 ◼   ► than just plugging in a cable or having a dock,

01:31:19 ◼   ► especially if you have a table, you know, bedside dock

01:31:22 ◼   ► where you can stick your phone overnight

01:31:24 ◼   ► to charge overnight.

01:31:25 ◼   ► Like, I do have the wireless charger from my phone.

01:31:29 ◼   ► I use it, but I would probably happily trade

01:31:33 ◼   ► to have an aluminum back on my iPhone 11 Pro

01:31:36 ◼   ► and give up Qi charging.

01:31:39 ◼   ► And there's still rumors that maybe in a software update,

01:31:43 ◼   ► Apple's going to enable the iPhone 11s

01:31:46 ◼   ► to charge your Apple Watch if you put it on the back

01:31:49 ◼   ► or something like that,

01:31:50 ◼   ► that there might be a two-way charging.

01:31:52 ◼   ► That's all nice, it's neat,

01:31:54 ◼   ► But I would honestly trade it for an aluminum back.

01:31:57 ◼   ► Just I like the way it feels and I like the durability.

01:32:01 ◼   ► I mean, have you seen the prices?

01:32:02 ◼   ► If you crack the back on your iPhone 11 Pro,

01:32:05 ◼   ► it's like a $399--

01:32:06 ◼   ► - It's like $600 something, is it?

01:32:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, is it $600?

01:32:08 ◼   ► Or maybe it's $399 if you have AppleCare+ and it's more.

01:32:11 ◼   ► It's like $600.

01:32:13 ◼   ► It's like you honestly might be better off

01:32:15 ◼   ► just keeping it and buying another one.

01:32:18 ◼   ► It's ridiculously expensive.

01:32:20 ◼   ► I don't even understand how that can be

01:32:22 ◼   ► it's not the display, but it's very expensive. As far as I know, the whole reason they've gone to

01:32:31 ◼   ► glassbacks is for the Qi charging. I just can't. I'm so sick of it. The problem is that, at least

01:32:40 ◼   ► for me, whitening cables always go bad over time. And that time when you wake up and you grab your

01:32:46 ◼   ► phone and it's not charged because the cable like is not just kind of starting to not work

01:32:51 ◼   ► here it got jiggled or whatever it might be and what I like about the Qi charging is you

01:32:57 ◼   ► sit on there it buzzes and it's going to actually charge and it's not going to like your wake

01:33:01 ◼   ► up and find a dead phone so uh the I have a Qi charger on my desk too I could plug it

01:33:07 ◼   ► in there that'd probably be fine I'd plug it in half time I have a cord here also but

01:33:11 ◼   ► honestly just for that peace of mind that I know the phone's gonna be charged for sure

01:33:15 ◼   ► when I wake up. I am pro-cheat charging. But there's also an argument that I should get

01:33:23 ◼   ► my shit together and have working cables. So I could go in both directions.

01:33:28 ◼   ► It just occurred to me, just using the 5S for a day, it just occurred to me that glass

01:33:32 ◼   ► is a very odd substance to make a $1,000 to $1,500 device out of.

01:33:38 ◼   ► It is. It is.

01:33:39 ◼   ► - It's like you go into the Leica store

01:33:42 ◼   ► and they're selling $5,000 cameras

01:33:45 ◼   ► and it's like, I mean, I guess they have an LCD display

01:33:49 ◼   ► on the back now, so that could crack,

01:33:50 ◼   ► but they're not gonna make the majority of the frame

01:33:54 ◼   ► out of glass.

01:33:55 ◼   ► Like, it's just, when you think about it,

01:33:58 ◼   ► it's just an odd, it's just odd that we have these

01:34:01 ◼   ► very expensive cameras that are made out of glass,

01:34:04 ◼   ► front and back.

01:34:05 ◼   ► I mean, the front being glass is obvious

01:34:07 ◼   ► because it's all display, it kinda has to be.

01:34:09 ◼   ► It's just kind of odd that the back is glass

01:34:11 ◼   ► when you think about it.

01:34:13 ◼   ► Size, so I know that,

01:34:16 ◼   ► I guess I should write about it,

01:34:19 ◼   ► but in a way, I know that there are people

01:34:21 ◼   ► who love that 5S eyes.

01:34:23 ◼   ► And you called it the pinnacle of iPhone design.

01:34:26 ◼   ► People love it.

01:34:27 ◼   ► And what people really want Apple to do,

01:34:29 ◼   ► people who love that size, is keep the size

01:34:32 ◼   ► and just get rid of the chin and forehead

01:34:34 ◼   ► and put an iPhone XR style LCD display in

01:34:39 ◼   ► with rounded corners that takes up the whole front surface.

01:34:43 ◼   ► So you'd get more screen area,

01:34:46 ◼   ► but you would still have that same basic,

01:34:49 ◼   ► entirely pocketable design.

01:34:51 ◼   ► And by all of the accounts, that is not what Apple's doing.

01:34:56 ◼   ► They're going with an iPhone 8 form factor

01:34:59 ◼   ► with touch ID and the chin and forehead,

01:35:04 ◼   ► - Which is disappointing if you love that small size,

01:35:06 ◼   ► but it should be, to me, unsurprising,

01:35:08 ◼   ► 'cause in a way, what they're doing,

01:35:10 ◼   ► like I said a couple minutes ago,

01:35:11 ◼   ► they're doing exactly what they did with the SE.

01:35:15 ◼   ► And the SE, I don't think, was defined by the size,

01:35:18 ◼   ► from Apple's perspective.

01:35:19 ◼   ► It was for people who were fans of the size.

01:35:22 ◼   ► But from Apple's perspective,

01:35:23 ◼   ► it was let's just take our previous generation form factor

01:35:27 ◼   ► and update the internals to the latest and greatest

01:35:30 ◼   ► and sell it at a low price.

01:35:32 ◼   ► Apple's not going to invest in a completely new industrial design for what's going to

01:35:37 ◼   ► be a very inexpensive phone. It's just not going to happen. So yeah, they're going to

01:35:43 ◼   ► use what they have. And again, I can see the allure. I have no desire to use a 5S. I'm

01:35:51 ◼   ► glad that they're getting rid of it, probably for our developer friends. They don't have

01:35:54 ◼   ► to worry. Hopefully, you stop worrying about that size sooner rather than later. But yeah,

01:35:58 ◼   ► fundamentally an economic issue. The reason they're doing that is because switching

01:36:05 ◼   ► out the processor is relatively painless. While the other components are going to stay

01:36:09 ◼   ► the same, making the case can stay the same, those assembly lines are still alive because

01:36:16 ◼   ► they're still making the iPhone 8 and they're just going to change out the processor, which

01:36:24 ◼   ► it a much more future-proof phone even though the industrial design is old and it makes a lot of

01:36:30 ◼   ► sense. So I don't know. I would guess since they're replaying the strategy from the SE, I would guess

01:36:37 ◼   ► that if you look back, I forget exactly when they announced the SE. I think it was either very late

01:36:42 ◼   ► in March or very early April, if I recall correctly. I would guess that they'll announce this new

01:36:48 ◼   ► iPhone SE, whatever they're going to call it, around the same time next year because it just

01:36:53 ◼   ► feels like they're just replaying that strategy exactly. And I don't, like you just said,

01:36:59 ◼   ► production-wise, I can't see how this would be a problem. I don't think there's going

01:37:02 ◼   ► to be any kind of delay. I think it'll come out.

01:37:05 ◼   ► Well, and there never was an iPhone 8S. So the name is available.

01:37:10 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe that's what they'll call it. That's actually a very good guess. I'm

01:37:13 ◼   ► going to steal that. The iPhone 8S. Yeah, I like that. I'm writing that down. iPhone

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01:40:07 ◼   ► What else we got here Ben?

01:40:09 ◼   ► Just waiting on charcoal

01:40:13 ◼   ► I'm gonna talk about the Boeing 737 max saga briefly

01:40:19 ◼   ► It's fascinating I know we've been sharing

01:40:23 ◼   ► Messages about this that I'm generally like like I think a lot maybe a lot of techy's

01:40:29 ◼   ► I'm an AV geek like I love following the airline industry generally

01:40:34 ◼   ► My favorite blog is a thing called the cranky flyer

01:40:37 ◼   ► Great blog another guy John Ostrore

01:40:40 ◼   ► Runs a subscription site called the air current. Yeah, so I love reading about this stuff in general and have for a long time

01:40:47 ◼   ► But this whole 737 thing has been has been I mean, it's incredible. It's incredible on multiple dimensions

01:40:54 ◼   ► It's starting to it's starting to say

01:40:57 ◼   ► When it first happened the first crash

01:41:01 ◼   ► Was the one in I think Indonesia I forget which one was first but there were two deadly crashes tragedies

01:41:08 ◼   ► First one it's sort of like fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me, you know

01:41:15 ◼   ► It's like the first one it's like I don't know who knows what happened. Maybe it's a fluke the second one

01:41:19 ◼   ► Everybody was like hey what something is wrong with this plane, right?

01:41:22 ◼   ► That just doesn't happen and it would they were both weird crashes that it's just

01:41:28 ◼   ► Very weird the details start coming out and this whole story about them

01:41:33 ◼   ► It just it just read like bad leadership of that

01:41:39 ◼   ► Basically when a new plane comes out with new controls and a new flight, what do they call a flight?

01:41:46 ◼   ► envelope envelope

01:41:50 ◼   ► Pilots, you know, this is seems like a good good rule pilots have to be retrained on this

01:41:57 ◼   ► Yes, because if a new plane flies differently than what the pilot is used to, all the pilots

01:42:04 ◼   ► need to train on it.

01:42:06 ◼   ► And the major airlines have a lot of pilots, and so in the aggregate, a new plane would

01:42:12 ◼   ► require an aggregate large number of pilot training hours.

01:42:18 ◼   ► So you can see why the airlines would like to buy planes that pilots don't need to retrain

01:42:23 ◼   ► on because that would save them money of, you know, they'd rather have to be paying

01:42:28 ◼   ► their pilots to fly flights than to train. But you can also see why there is a law that

01:42:34 ◼   ► if the plane flies differently, the pilots need to retrain, right? Both things make perfect

01:42:39 ◼   ► sense. And what happened with the 737 MAX is it flew differently. And Boeing knew that

01:42:44 ◼   ► would be a bad, hard sell to the airlines. And so they use software to try to make it

01:42:51 ◼   ► fly like previous 737s and it turns out that's exactly as bad an idea as it sounds.

01:43:01 ◼   ► Jeff

01:43:17 ◼   ► it's the pilot's plane. And so it's in a weird sort of way, it's almost like this would have

01:43:25 ◼   ► been better off on an Airbus plane where you kind of expect the plane to be in control. But the fact

01:43:32 ◼   ► that a Boeing plane, you expect the pilot to be in ultimate control, and it turned out they weren't,

01:43:39 ◼   ► like almost made it even worse, because it was against sort of the ethos and understanding of

01:43:43 ◼   ► what these planes sort of mean.

01:43:45 ◼   ► Yeah, and it really shines a spotlight on the rot at the center of Boeing's company culture.

01:43:53 ◼   ► And you know, this is all old hat to you. I'm a way less of a aviation nerd than you or Dan Frommer,

01:44:01 ◼   ► but I'm kind of into it. And it's interesting. And Boeing has always been a fascinating company. But

01:44:05 ◼   ► basically, long story short, Boeing was always known as an engineering driven company. And

01:44:11 ◼   ► And the record speaks for themselves.

01:44:16 ◼   ► The 737 came out in the end of the '60s

01:44:20 ◼   ► and was their best-selling plane until recently.

01:44:23 ◼   ► It had three decades at the top.

01:44:26 ◼   ► - Oh, it still is.

01:44:27 ◼   ► I mean, it still is, yeah.

01:44:28 ◼   ► - It's just a phenomenal design.

01:44:31 ◼   ► That doesn't happen

01:44:32 ◼   ► without truly great engineering and design.

01:44:35 ◼   ► And secondarily, Boeing traditionally always had

01:44:40 ◼   ► a firewall between their commercial aviation division and their military division. And the

01:44:48 ◼   ► military stuff, for obvious reasons, is much more bureaucratic and not as engineering-driven because

01:44:55 ◼   ► all sorts of, you know, you end up with, you know, everybody knows the pork barrel stuff,

01:45:01 ◼   ► where somebody, some senator from Montana wants to have something in the state, you know,

01:45:08 ◼   ► let's make the screws for the wings in Montana, whether that's the best decision or not.

01:45:13 ◼   ► It's a political decision, not an engineering decision. And then in the '90s, Boeing

01:45:20 ◼   ► acquired McDonnell Douglas, which was primarily, ostensibly a competitor at the time, but was much

01:45:27 ◼   ► more focused on the military stuff. And however it came about, the McDonnell Douglas leadership

01:45:34 ◼   ► wound up in charge of Boeing. It's sort of like one of those "reverse acquisitions,"

01:45:38 ◼   ► like when Apple acquired Next and Steve Jobs and the Next crew wound up running the company.

01:45:44 ◼   ► But definitely a bizarro version of that.

01:45:46 ◼   ► A bizarro version because with Apple and Next, it was terrific leadership that was focused

01:45:51 ◼   ► on exactly the right thing, which is great products. And the McDonnell Douglas thing

01:45:57 ◼   ► was the opposite. Instead of focusing on making great airplanes, it was like squeezing money

01:46:01 ◼   ► out of pinching corners and making decisions like the 737 MAX, which—

01:46:06 ◼   ► Justin: Well, the thing is, before the 737 MAX was the 787, which was an absolute disaster.

01:46:11 ◼   ► And there they tried to outsource everything and were trying to put the costs on everyone else,

01:46:19 ◼   ► and they were getting pieces that were coming together that didn't even fit together,

01:46:23 ◼   ► and there was—they forgot to design, to specify how the wires would connect with each other.

01:46:29 ◼   ► just an absolute disaster. They ended up spending way more than they would have otherwise,

01:46:34 ◼   ► and delayed hugely, which also led to the 737 MAX, where instead of building a completely new

01:46:40 ◼   ► plane like they probably should have, they said, "Well, let's re-engine sort of the venerable

01:46:46 ◼   ► 737 one time." So it's not just this, it's a cascading series of decisions over years,

01:46:53 ◼   ► And it's amazing that these same folks are, yeah, I mean, it's a, this is a mess Boeing that is in

01:47:03 ◼   ► right now that has been building for like 20 years, 25 years. And there's lots of other stuff in there

01:47:07 ◼   ► like Weber and Ress, they built a new factory down in a non-union state and there's been apparently

01:47:14 ◼   ► a ton of problems with those, and this is in a union commentary, so they've always built their

01:47:19 ◼   ► their airplanes in Washington. And they moved away from that, not for engineering reasons,

01:47:24 ◼   ► to your point, but for other reasons. And that's led to a lot of problems. And they

01:47:28 ◼   ► moved their headquarters to Chicago, which is stupid. I mean, it's literally been like

01:47:35 ◼   ► 25 years of ineptness, but all those decades of engineering leadership have carried them

01:47:42 ◼   ► through because the 737 was been selling the 777 was an absolutely brilliant plane. I think

01:47:49 ◼   ► like the most profitable plane ever that has carried them through. But everything since then

01:47:55 ◼   ► has just been a total mess. And it's just sort of heartbreaking because a great company, a company

01:48:02 ◼   ► that has a decades-long record of being a great company is like a great thing to appreciate,

01:48:09 ◼   ► you know? And it's just sort of a sad thing to see it. And it wasn't like, you know, sometimes

01:48:17 ◼   ► a great company fades away because what they do fades away. You know, like maybe Kodak is a good

01:48:23 ◼   ► example. And you can, you know, certainly you can make the argument that Kodak should have seen the

01:48:27 ◼   ► digital thing coming and they had some great bet they invented the digital camera. That's the crazy

01:48:32 ◼   ► thing about it. Right. And, and, and instead of, uh, uh, obsoleting themselves, yeah, obsoleting

01:48:42 ◼   ► their own film business with their the up-and-coming digital business they you know tried to stick

01:48:47 ◼   ► their heads in the sand and say film isn't going away um so that i guess kodak is sort of a not the

01:48:55 ◼   ► best example because that's sort of i think i do think it's a good example though because like

01:49:00 ◼   ► to your point a lot of companies go away because their industry and their place in the industry

01:49:05 ◼   ► goes away through technological change. And with Boeing, actually, airplanes and commercial

01:49:11 ◼   ► airplane sales are a bigger and more important industry than ever. It's completely self-inflicted.

01:49:17 ◼   ► Right. That's, yeah, that's my point. Yes, it is completely self-inflicted, and that just is hard

01:49:23 ◼   ► to watch. That is just sad. And what sucks about it, the 787 is a perfect example. Boeing, like,

01:49:31 ◼   ► if they would have just developed the 787 the same way they developed every plane previously,

01:49:36 ◼   ► and built it the same way previously, and did most of the work themselves in Washington like

01:49:40 ◼   ► they did previously, they would be in phenomenally better financial shape than they were, than they

01:49:45 ◼   ► ended up being. And so it's not only, it's like one thing if you cheap out, but at least you saved

01:49:52 ◼   ► money, even though it might not have been as good as it would have been otherwise, they cheaped out

01:49:56 ◼   ► and ended up spending way more in the long run. It's really a phenomenal run of mismanagement

01:50:08 ◼   ► over literally a couple of decades.

01:50:11 ◼   ► Dave: Yeah, and self-inflicted is just exactly—that just gets to the core of what I wanted to talk

01:50:17 ◼   ► about, and it's just a bit sad. Hopefully they can turn it around. I don't know. It

01:50:21 ◼   ► It feels to me like this MAX situation is going to be a legal nightmare for them.

01:50:26 ◼   ► I mean, because the news that came out this week was that there was a whistleblower within

01:50:30 ◼   ► the company in the engineering division whose report, more or less before any of these planes

01:50:38 ◼   ► crashed, more or less said that this is all a disaster and management has ignored our

01:50:46 ◼   ► warnings about this, that they pretty much ignored warnings from within the engineering

01:50:53 ◼   ► division that the problems that we now know are real were going to be real, which is probably

01:50:59 ◼   ► not good in terms of their liability for these things.

01:51:04 ◼   ► Speaking of self-inflicted, you've been writing a bit about the Apple in China and

01:51:11 ◼   ► Hong Kong and whatnot stuff. And I think there's a meta point to be made here. I've been writing

01:51:20 ◼   ► about Apple in China, basically, ever since the Trump election, I think. And maybe before

01:51:29 ◼   ► that, I'm trying to remember when exactly I was horny on this point. But it's very,

01:51:34 ◼   ► very interesting. And what's interesting is Apple was by far the most successful sort

01:51:41 ◼   ► of consumer tech company in particular in China. And the reason is because they had

01:51:45 ◼   ► the right perfect business model. They weren't a service which could be blocked by the great

01:51:50 ◼   ► firewall. They weren't pure software which could be pirated like Microsoft software is

01:51:54 ◼   ► pirated. Because they sold software differentiated hardware, they could go into China and make

01:52:01 ◼   ► the exact same margins in China that they were making everywhere else and be tremendously

01:52:05 ◼   ► profitable doing so. It turns out though, that what goes around comes around. And after

01:52:14 ◼   ► several years of China being a huge profit center, now it's a huge problem. And obviously,

01:52:23 ◼   ► Apple's sort of exposed on both sides where they have the manufacturing there and they

01:52:28 ◼   ► have the huge market there to sell, and they are more than any other tech company by, you know,

01:52:34 ◼   ► at least U.S. tech company, you know, stuck in this trade war. And not just a trade war,

01:52:40 ◼   ► but, you know, to the extent there is a sort of ideological war, it's a very tough place to be.

01:52:45 ◼   ► Uh, yeah, because the other tech giants don't have physical goods. I mean, Apple, you know,

01:52:52 ◼   ► Facebook, I mean, I get the they make stuff Facebook has these gadgets and and Amazon makes the

01:52:59 ◼   ► Gadgets and Google's makes gadgets and words. We just talked about beginning of the show Microsoft makes gadgets

01:53:05 ◼   ► They all do make their own gadgets

01:53:07 ◼   ► but for all of those other giants that gadgets are a side business and for Apple, it's the inverse that the

01:53:14 ◼   ► You know the vast overwhelming majority of the company's revenues and profits come from selling

01:53:20 ◼   ► iPhones in particular but gadgets, you know overall the services are the

01:53:24 ◼   ► Again, they're growing. They're they're right to focus on it

01:53:27 ◼   ► We don't have to talk about it

01:53:28 ◼   ► But it's you know

01:53:29 ◼   ► Apple services revenues dwarf compared to the hardware stuff and the hardware stuff the iPhone in particular. They're all made in China

01:53:35 ◼   ► And so they're completely square in the middle of the trade war with the Trump administration. I

01:53:40 ◼   ► Think it's always been hmm

01:53:43 ◼   ► this seems a dangerous place to put all your eggs in one basket because

01:53:48 ◼   ► It's a communist dictatorship.

01:53:53 ◼   ► I want to dwell on that because it's the most interesting about this. The whole Apple

01:54:00 ◼   ► doctrine and the Cook doctrine talks about this idea of we need to control our most important

01:54:06 ◼   ► technologies. And it turns out, maybe the most important Apple skill set and capability

01:54:14 ◼   ► is its ability to manufacture massive numbers of devices that are very highly engineered

01:54:22 ◼   ► and are manufactured at an extremely high level of quality. And it turns out that they

01:54:27 ◼   ► don't have control of that. Like, they don't have control because it's in another country

01:54:34 ◼   ► that follows a different value system than the one that Apple does, broadly speaking.

01:54:41 ◼   ► I mean, there's certainly, you know, the whole thing about Apple privacy is a human right.

01:54:46 ◼   ► Like it rings a bit cello when, when, when, you know, given their, their position in China in some

01:54:53 ◼   ► respects, and also they're stuck in the middle of this trade war and, and we weaving aside it,

01:55:01 ◼   ► which is extremely difficult to do. So bear with me here, but leaving aside the Trump sort of angle

01:55:07 ◼   ► here. This collision of the US and China, I think in many respects is bigger and broader

01:55:14 ◼   ► than Trump. And it was probably there was a degree that was inevitable is going to happen

01:55:20 ◼   ► at some point. And I think what is a little concerning from the Apple perspective is it

01:55:26 ◼   ► kind of feels like they didn't see it coming at all. And they're stuck and they really

01:55:32 ◼   ► have no good options.

01:55:33 ◼   ► Right, and there was a bit of news last week where Apple officially announced that the

01:55:37 ◼   ► new Mac Pro, just like the previous trash can Mac Pro, will be manufactured in Austin,

01:55:43 ◼   ► Texas, and that there's some kind of exemption from the tariffs that will allow them to import

01:55:52 ◼   ► some of the components from China without paying tariff, blah, blah, blah.

01:55:56 ◼   ► But the Mac Pro is literally the most niche hardware product that Apple makes.

01:56:01 ◼   ► it might as well be called the Mac niche.

01:56:03 ◼   ► I mean, it's by definition.

01:56:05 ◼   ► I mean, it starts at five,

01:56:06 ◼   ► and there's nothing wrong with that.

01:56:09 ◼   ► But it's a $5,000, and really,

01:56:11 ◼   ► in the configurations, most people who want

01:56:14 ◼   ► and need a Mac Pro are gonna cost a lot more than $5,000.

01:56:17 ◼   ► It's the price of a compact car.

01:56:21 ◼   ► - You mean 128 gigabytes of hard drive is not sufficient?

01:56:25 ◼   ► - Well, probably not.

01:56:26 ◼   ► It's like, oh, yeah, I work at Pixar,

01:56:29 ◼   ► here I've rendered one frame. I've got one frame of the movie here on my Mac Pro.

01:56:37 ◼   ► I can, you know, yeah probably not. But they are in no position, I mean so, you

01:56:43 ◼   ► know, that news I'll mention it, but I mean they are in no position to move

01:56:47 ◼   ► iPhone production out of China. I mean it's really staggering. I would love

01:56:51 ◼   ► to, you know, and it just must be an amazing thing to behold, you know, with

01:56:58 ◼   ► how many, you know, to be able to produce 70 million or however many tens of million iPhones

01:57:06 ◼   ► in a quarter with a brand new design and stuff like that, it's just staggering when you do the

01:57:11 ◼   ► math and just think about how many they're making a day, you know, that there's like a million of

01:57:15 ◼   ► them literally and how many million shipped on Friday, September 24th or whatever the day was

01:57:23 ◼   ► when people who pre-ordered the minute that the pre-orders went available got their iPhones.

01:57:29 ◼   ► Just staggering to think how many of these things come out. They're in no position to move that

01:57:33 ◼   ► elsewhere or diversify. I mean, if… Yeah, and people are going to email and say, because they

01:57:38 ◼   ► have set up factories like Brazil and India primarily to get around really restrictive

01:57:42 ◼   ► sort of import controls in those countries, but they're not remotely capable of scaling to

01:57:48 ◼   ► servicing the rest of the world the way China is. And they're stuck. Apple's really fundamentally

01:57:55 ◼   ► stuck. They are not really capable of going elsewhere. And at the same time,

01:58:01 ◼   ► as you've been writing about, it's kind of getting to be an increasingly untenable position,

01:58:08 ◼   ► particularly in the context of Apple's rhetoric around the sort of company they claim to be and

01:58:13 ◼   ► and the things they claim to believe in.

01:58:15 ◼   ► - Right, and privacy is a human right.

01:58:17 ◼   ► Literally, that's words that come out of their mouths.

01:58:22 ◼   ► Tim Cook has said, "Privacy is a fundamental human right."

01:58:26 ◼   ► China is a surveillance state.

01:58:29 ◼   ► I don't mean to laugh, it's actually not funny at all.

01:58:33 ◼   ► It's tragic.

01:58:35 ◼   ► It is difficult.

01:58:38 ◼   ► Now, I'm of the opinion that the fact that Apple

01:58:40 ◼   ► in the Chinese market and and sells you know iPhones and you and I have talked

01:58:46 ◼   ► about this a lot about how they're there we don't have to rehash it now but that

01:58:51 ◼   ► their their success in the Chinese market has waxed and waned significantly

01:58:56 ◼   ► more significantly than they have in other markets because the Chinese market

01:58:59 ◼   ► is unique and the people you don't get locked into the Android or iOS

01:59:07 ◼   ► ecosystems in China the way you do in other countries,

01:59:11 ◼   ► 'cause China has its own stuff,

01:59:13 ◼   ► and you just use that stuff on an iPhone,

01:59:15 ◼   ► or you use it on an Android phone,

01:59:16 ◼   ► and if you wanna switch to a Huawei phone,

01:59:18 ◼   ► you just switch and your stuff moves over.

01:59:20 ◼   ► And you've talked about how,

01:59:23 ◼   ► so that stuff like having a new rose gold color

01:59:26 ◼   ► is very much more important in the Chinese market

01:59:28 ◼   ► than elsewhere, because being able to signify

01:59:30 ◼   ► that you have the new top of the line iPhone

01:59:33 ◼   ► is more important, 'cause that might be really

01:59:35 ◼   ► more than iOS or any part of the ecosystem. That's why people are doing blah, blah, blah.

01:59:40 ◼   ► I don't think it's a problem. I think it's very, it requires a nuanced discussion to

01:59:45 ◼   ► talk about Apple selling iPhones in a market that with politically difficult leadership

01:59:53 ◼   ► like China. Because in some ways it's good if you're in China and you are as a Chinese

02:00:01 ◼   ► citizen concerned with your privacy. Isn't it better that if you're fortunate enough

02:00:06 ◼   ► to be able to afford an iPhone, isn't it great that you have the option of buying a phone

02:00:12 ◼   ► that probably is more private than most of the other phones in the Chinese market and

02:00:17 ◼   ► that protects your stuff? And whatever sacrifices Apple had to make to host Chinese iCloud accounts

02:00:24 ◼   ► on servers within mainland China, we don't know what's going on with that and what sort

02:00:30 ◼   ► of access the Chinese state has to that. But if it's as private as Apple would suggest

02:00:35 ◼   ► that it is, it's better than if Apple just said, "You know what? We don't support

02:00:40 ◼   ► China. We're pulling out. We're not going to sell our products in China." There's

02:00:47 ◼   ► people who want Apple to do that, who think that if Apple's actions match their rhetoric,

02:00:53 ◼   ► they should take a stance and say, "We won't sell our products in China because we support

02:00:57 ◼   ► privacy in China's government is anti- privacy. I don't know. I get how that would please

02:01:04 ◼   ► people who want Apple to make a stink about this, and it would certainly raise a ruckus

02:01:09 ◼   ► and draw a lot of attention. But would that actually be good for the people in China who

02:01:14 ◼   ► want iPhones and want the most privacy they can get? I would say no, it's not good.

02:01:21 ◼   ► I think that requires nuance. But I do think though that, like you said, it's starting

02:01:26 ◼   ► to come to a head and it's starting to become untenable.

02:01:31 ◼   ► I think the point that you're driving at is, yeah, the sell of iPhones is one thing.

02:01:38 ◼   ► The reason why Apple is in a no-win position is the manufacturer of iPhones.

02:01:44 ◼   ► That's the part that like, they're just like, it's literally where else can they go, and

02:01:52 ◼   ► are paying the price for decisions that were made many, many years in the past. And yeah,

02:02:02 ◼   ► it's, I mean, I think they, my feeling is they need to start in making the sort of investments

02:02:11 ◼   ► and pushing out into other countries and whether it's India or Brazil or they go to Vietnam

02:02:17 ◼   ► or wherever it might be, like figuring out ways to start building out. But the problem

02:02:20 ◼   ► is it's going to be, it's going to take years, but if it's going to take years, no better

02:02:25 ◼   ► time to start than now. And my concern is that there's just a hope that this is going

02:02:31 ◼   ► to blow over. And you talk about the Mac Pro and Apple getting the exemption. I mean, it

02:02:35 ◼   ► kind of feels like Tim Cook played Donald Trump like a violin. I mean, I don't think

02:02:42 ◼   ► they're making production decisions about the Mac Pro in October of the year it's going

02:02:47 ◼   ► to ship, right?

02:02:48 ◼   ► Right. Yeah, they were going to make that in Texas no matter what. So that, right.

02:02:53 ◼   ► So I worry though that it's going to embolden Apple to be like, look, we can muddle through

02:02:59 ◼   ► and it's all going to be okay. And I'm not sure in the one where it's going to

02:03:03 ◼   ► be okay. Like, like, and so there's some really serious decisions that Tim Cook is

02:03:09 ◼   ► going to have to make. And this is absolutely a CEO level, CEO level Tim Cook decision.

02:03:14 ◼   ► He's the one that got him into China in the first place. And if they need to get out,

02:03:17 ◼   ► the one that needs to get them out. And it's going to be really tempting to say, "This

02:03:22 ◼   ► is all going to blow over. It's going to be fine." And I don't know. I don't

02:03:26 ◼   ► know if it's going to be fine.

02:03:28 ◼   ► It's interesting that Samsung is now out of China. I guess it does—the two sides

02:03:34 ◼   ► of the coin go hand in hand in a way that I don't quite understand, that people are

02:03:40 ◼   ► at least drawing the connection. Where China—or Samsung at one point had 15 percent just like

02:03:45 ◼   ► six years ago had 15% of the Chinese phone market and with the rise of the in China brands

02:03:53 ◼   ► like Huawei and what's the other one? Zee or what?

02:03:59 ◼   ► ZTE.

02:04:00 ◼   ► Yeah, there's a couple, but there's a couple of up and coming companies making truly impressive.

02:04:05 ◼   ► Yeah, Xiaomi is the one I was thinking of. Well regarded high end hardware within and

02:04:14 ◼   ► those companies have eaten Samsung's lunch. Samsung is under 1%, effectively zero in the

02:04:19 ◼   ► Chinese market. And they've now just this week, pulled out of China for all assembly and

02:04:24 ◼   ► manufacturing. So it's obvious, you know, the interesting part of that to me is like,

02:04:29 ◼   ► it's proof that a company that Samsung makes more phones than Apple per year. So obviously,

02:04:36 ◼   ► it's possible to make 100 million phones without making a single one of them in China.

02:04:42 ◼   ► But, again—

02:04:43 ◼   ► John: That's a great point. It's a great point. And it's mostly in South Korea, but

02:04:48 ◼   ► yeah, it's a great point.

02:04:49 ◼   ► Trevor Burrus It's not like China alone can do it, but

02:04:53 ◼   ► it's not, again, like you said, to borrow a Chinese proverb, "A journey of a thousand

02:04:58 ◼   ► miles starts with a single step." It's not like all of a sudden Apple can snap its

02:05:02 ◼   ► fingers and make all of its phones outside China next year. This would take years. This

02:05:07 ◼   ► is a long, long thing if they're going to do it. Anyway, the other news this week was

02:05:12 ◼   ► a, you know, there's these protests, democracy protests in Hong Kong, the politics of which

02:05:19 ◼   ► we don't have to touch upon, but you know, it's certainly interesting. It's been months

02:05:25 ◼   ► long, it is certainly significant. And the Apple angle is that there is an app, a service

02:05:31 ◼   ► called HK Map Live. And basically it is a map that shows police activity and other information

02:05:44 ◼   ► that apparently is very useful for people, even people not just for the protesters. It's

02:05:51 ◼   ► useful for people who are trying to avoid the protests. And there are, you know, it's

02:05:55 ◼   ► all sorts of stuff. It's useful information. They have an app that they, it's available

02:06:00 ◼   ► for Android, they submitted it to Apple, and Apple's App Store review process rejected

02:06:05 ◼   ► it on the grounds that it was—I forget the exact words—but basically that Apple accused

02:06:12 ◼   ► it of trying to circumvent law enforcement, which really does not seem to be the case.

02:06:16 ◼   ► I mean, and again, maybe somebody's politics are such that they, you know, because the

02:06:21 ◼   ► Hong Kong protesters are on the side of democracy, and then the other side is the Chinese communist

02:06:26 ◼   ► dictatorship that Apple should allow it anyway. But it really just, it's just information.

02:06:31 ◼   ► It's effectively, you know, like traffic, you know, that this police activity is a real

02:06:37 ◼   ► thing. The police don't even want people, you know, in some regards, I don't even think

02:06:40 ◼   ► the police would object to this app. It's not, it just seems very, it seems like a very

02:06:46 ◼   ► strange wrongheaded rejection. And it raises the question, the obvious question, you know,

02:06:51 ◼   ► A lot of people seem to jump to the conclusion that Apple rejected it, for lack of a better

02:06:57 ◼   ► word, kowtowing to the Chinese government that they just don't want to have anything

02:07:01 ◼   ► that looks like Apple is siding with the protesters in Hong Kong.

02:07:07 ◼   ► I think, again, the Hanlon's razor argument that never attributed to malice, that which

02:07:12 ◼   ► can be attributed to stupidity, often is the case with the App Store, unfortunately.

02:07:19 ◼   ► Even the HK map developer seems to think that might be the case. Give Apple a couple of

02:07:25 ◼   ► days to relook at this and maybe it'll go through. Apple can't screw up stuff like this

02:07:34 ◼   ► with China. Of course, it's perfectly reasonable for people to jump to the conclusion that

02:07:40 ◼   ► Apple is doing this for politics, not for some kind of bureaucratic snafu within the

02:07:45 ◼   ► App Store process that could have happened to any app?

02:07:47 ◼   ► It's a fair point. But I do think, I mean, frankly, I don't

02:07:53 ◼   ► know why there's any reason to give Apple the benefit of the

02:07:58 ◼   ► doubt with anything China related, other than sort of our

02:08:01 ◼   ► hope that they're going to do the right thing. Because the

02:08:04 ◼   ► reality is, is every time they've had to make a decision,

02:08:06 ◼   ► whether it be pulling VPN apps on the App Store or things on

02:08:09 ◼   ► those lines, they've done what China wanted them to do. And to

02:08:13 ◼   ► be totally clear. I've defended them on that. That's the reality of being a multinational

02:08:18 ◼   ► corporation and being in different countries is you have to follow the law in those countries.

02:08:22 ◼   ► So this isn't a condemnation of them. But the reality is, maybe this is the cynic in

02:08:34 ◼   ► me, but I have a hard time seeing Apple pushing back on China in any sort of meaningful way.

02:08:42 ◼   ► If China doesn't want this app, I don't think this app is going to be in the App Store.

02:08:46 ◼   ► And yeah, maybe it is Hanlon's razor.

02:08:48 ◼   ► I'd like to propose Thompson's razor, which is that this shit's super complicated, right?

02:08:53 ◼   ► And like, oh, you see this again and again, whether it's Apple or Facebook or Google or

02:08:58 ◼   ► all of these companies, anytime you think that a decision a company makes is absolutely

02:09:04 ◼   ► 100% wrong or absolutely 100% right, you almost by definition have not fully thought through

02:09:09 ◼   ► all the trade-offs and the issues that are at hand, because almost all these decisions

02:09:15 ◼   ► are like 51-49 decisions. It goes back and forth. I don't envy Apple in this situation.

02:09:22 ◼   ► I don't envy them being in the middle. But I do really hope that they're thinking about

02:09:29 ◼   ► ways to not be in the middle five to 10 years from now.

02:09:32 ◼   ► I guess that's my point, is that I don't think Apple deserves the benefit of the doubt

02:09:35 ◼   ► on this. I think, you know, and it's not like China is some obscure country. You know,

02:09:42 ◼   ► like if it were, if it were, you know, there was some weird law in Ecuador and there's

02:09:48 ◼   ► an app and it's like, "Oh, that's a really strange law that seems contrary to the values

02:09:52 ◼   ► of, you know, Apple." You could see how maybe, you know, that wouldn't have, that

02:09:58 ◼   ► that might be overlooked in the app store. Like China is not, you can't overlook China.

02:10:02 ◼   ► I mean, it's the most populous country in the world.

02:10:05 ◼   ► Everybody knows that Apple's in a weird situation there.

02:10:10 ◼   ► It absolutely, there's no way to excuse,

02:10:14 ◼   ► if this was a mistake, so either way,

02:10:16 ◼   ► it makes Apple look bad, right?

02:10:19 ◼   ► If they're doing it to kowtow to the Chinese government,

02:10:21 ◼   ► that's a bad look, and it seems contrary

02:10:24 ◼   ► to Apple's rhetoric on privacy

02:10:26 ◼   ► and Apple's stance on various social issues.

02:10:31 ◼   ► And if it happened through ineptitude,

02:10:35 ◼   ► well that doesn't make Apple that look good either.

02:10:37 ◼   ► How in the world can you be inept on a decision

02:10:40 ◼   ► related to China and something as high profile

02:10:42 ◼   ► as these Hong Kong protests?

02:10:45 ◼   ► - Oh, let me tell you about the last 10 years

02:10:47 ◼   ► of the App Store. (laughs)

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02:12:21 ◼   ► Try it yourself. All right, charcoal's on the list. Anything else?

02:12:26 ◼   ► We're here for charcoal.

02:12:29 ◼   ► Let me double check that there's nothing else real on my agenda for this show.

02:12:34 ◼   ► No, I think that's about it.

02:12:38 ◼   ► I want the minute-by-minute breakdown, because as I understand it, you're the one that

02:12:44 ◼   ► answered the door. Is that correct?

02:12:47 ◼   ► Well, so we have a roof deck, we have a charcoal grill.

02:12:51 ◼   ► No, I want the door opening.

02:12:54 ◼   ► Then we can backtrack.

02:12:55 ◼   ► Just give me a few contacts here.

02:12:57 ◼   ► Well, we've been out of charcoal for a couple of weeks.

02:13:00 ◼   ► And you live in the city and I could buy it at the corner store,

02:13:04 ◼   ► but the amount of charcoal you can buy and walk home with is not a lot.

02:13:08 ◼   ► So I mentioned it to Amy and I said, "We should Amazon some charcoal.

02:13:14 ◼   ► That's what we should do."

02:13:15 ◼   ► and she said that she would take care of it. And then she said charcoal is on the way.

02:13:19 ◼   ► And what was it, Tuesday, two days ago, three days ago? It was actually part of it was—it's

02:13:25 ◼   ► early October in Philadelphia, but it was over 90 degrees. We had a very hot streak.

02:13:32 ◼   ► Doorbell rings, and there's a man—he's a very large man, and he's sweating profusely.

02:13:37 ◼   ► He's carrying what looks to be a very heavy box. I would say it's, you know, I don't know,

02:13:45 ◼   ► almost like a chest-sized cardboard box. And behind him is a—you know those hand trucks

02:13:57 ◼   ► they have at the airport? Like if you come to the airport with a lot of—like you're

02:14:00 ◼   ► going with your whole family on a long trip and there's a curbside porter who will take

02:14:04 ◼   ► your luggage with him. It's like a push cart.

02:14:07 ◼   ► It's got like four wheels on it. Four wheels and a push cart. And it could

02:14:11 ◼   ► take maybe a family of sixes luggage to the to the check-in counter he's got one of those behind it

02:14:17 ◼   ► also just stuck stuffed with six boxes like this and then he's got a colleague behind him

02:14:24 ◼   ► in the street with another push cart with six similar boxes and he hands me the first box and

02:14:34 ◼   ► it is very heavy uh i can tell you i i actually opened it up and checked it is it weighs 36 pounds

02:14:41 ◼   ► Each box. And I guess—

02:14:45 ◼   ► In a way, you have 12 boxes? Is that right?

02:14:47 ◼   ► Twelve boxes, each of them 36 pounds. So it's 432 pounds.

02:14:52 ◼   ► 32 pounds.

02:14:53 ◼   ► Charcoal. I guessed right away that it was charcoal. I had no idea why it was so much.

02:14:58 ◼   ► And I thought, well, maybe. And then I thought—I realized that the first six boxes were definitely

02:15:03 ◼   ► mine. The fellow behind him, I actually asked—I asked, I said, "Is that mine, too?" Because

02:15:10 ◼   ► In my mind, I thought, "We can't possibly have this much charcoal."

02:15:13 ◼   ► And I thought, "Well, somebody else must have bought a lot of charcoal."

02:15:16 ◼   ► And as soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized, "Well, what are the odds

02:15:19 ◼   ► that somebody else in my neighborhood..."

02:15:21 ◼   ► About six large boxes.

02:15:23 ◼   ► Boxes of...

02:15:24 ◼   ► About 216 pounds of charcoal.

02:15:26 ◼   ► Right.

02:15:27 ◼   ► I, as soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized it was maybe the dumbest thing

02:15:30 ◼   ► I've said in months.

02:15:32 ◼   ► And he goes, "No, that's yours too, buddy."

02:15:34 ◼   ► Did he actually drop the buddy?

02:15:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

02:15:40 ◼   ► And he says, "We've got more on the truck for you." And I was like, "More charcoal?" He goes,

02:15:45 ◼   ► "Nah, it's other stuff." Because I thought, "Oh my God, there's more." So somehow my wife wound up

02:15:53 ◼   ► buying 432 pounds of charcoal from Amazon. And she thinks what happened is that she—it sounds like

02:16:03 ◼   ► like a good theory. It will number one, I opened a box, it's

02:16:08 ◼   ► Kingsford charcoal. It's not just any bag, though, it is

02:16:13 ◼   ► their new 18 pound bags that they are advertising is the

02:16:16 ◼   ► biggest ever. So each bag, it's not just bags of charcoal, it is

02:16:21 ◼   ► the biggest bags of charcoal that Kingsford has ever sold.

02:16:24 ◼   ► Each box contains two of them. She thinks what happened is that

02:16:31 ◼   ► she started buying it on one of her, like maybe her iPad,

02:16:36 ◼   ► maybe her Mac or whatever.

02:16:38 ◼   ► But she didn't finish the transaction.

02:16:41 ◼   ► She bought one, meaning one two-pack,

02:16:45 ◼   ► which would be a combined 36 pounds of charcoal.

02:16:49 ◼   ► - Which is very sensible.

02:16:51 ◼   ► You go in the city, it's hard to get charcoal.

02:16:52 ◼   ► You get a bunch of charcoal at once.

02:16:54 ◼   ► - That would be a fine amount.

02:16:55 ◼   ► Kingsford advertises that one of these bags,

02:16:58 ◼   ► One of these 18-pound bags is enough for nine grillings.

02:17:02 ◼   ► And that she went to a next device and thought,

02:17:07 ◼   ► you know what, why don't I buy two?

02:17:08 ◼   ► 'Cause then we'll be set for a while.

02:17:10 ◼   ► And that on her iPad, on the Amazon website,

02:17:13 ◼   ► it's not a pop-up menu for quantity, it's a text field.

02:17:16 ◼   ► And that she poked it and typed a two.

02:17:20 ◼   ► And that turned, instead of changing to two,

02:17:23 ◼   ► it changed one to 12.

02:17:25 ◼   ► This actually makes perfect sense.

02:17:27 ◼   ► I believe that she has nailed the how in the fuck did this happen? I forget if I forget

02:17:33 ◼   ► which devices which but that she started it on one went to the other and on the other.

02:17:38 ◼   ► It's a text field not a pop up for quantity and she changed one to 12 instead of one to

02:17:44 ◼   ► two and just banged her way through one click their way through the whole process and bought

02:17:50 ◼   ► $240 or something worth of charcoal. So now we have $400.

02:17:57 ◼   ► So what are you going to do with all the charcoal?

02:18:02 ◼   ► I don't know. I really don't know.

02:18:09 ◼   ► There needs to be odds in Vegas on the chances of this charcoal still being in your house

02:18:14 ◼   ► like four years from now.

02:18:16 ◼   ► Now the other funny thing, my wife owned up to it, well sort of. I mean, she tweeted by

02:18:22 ◼   ► saying "Let he who has not ordered 432 pounds of charcoal cast the first stone" or something

02:18:28 ◼   ► like that. And my reply to her was "He?" Because there was no "he" who inadvertently

02:18:35 ◼   ► ordered all of this. And she posted a picture.

02:18:37 ◼   ► My response to her was to link to that New York Times article about how it actually may

02:18:42 ◼   ► not be a problem to eat lots of red meat. So that was good news. Good timing.

02:18:47 ◼   ► Well, if Kingsford is correct that each bag is good for nine grillings, and you would

02:18:53 ◼   ► think that, you know, much like the way that the toothpaste industry would have you believe

02:18:57 ◼   ► that you should put, you know, like a big S-shaped longer than your toothbrush amount

02:19:02 ◼   ► of toothpaste, you know, on your toothbrush each time you brush your teeth, I would imagine

02:19:06 ◼   ► the Kingsford people encourage you to use plenty of charcoal each time you grill.

02:19:10 ◼   ► That's like you burn through all the charcoal like there's no reuse or anything, right?

02:19:14 ◼   ► so let's assume that they're accurate with their nine grilling spur bag with

02:19:19 ◼   ► 24 bags we would be 9 times 24 would be what 180 plus 36 would be

02:19:26 ◼   ► 260 216 grilling

02:19:36 ◼   ► So I think we're set well

02:19:38 ◼   ► I think I think that you started talking about the number of grilling's and you expected that number to be much smaller

02:19:44 ◼   ► Yeah, and then you actually go