PodSearch

The Talk Show

264: ‘Apple Is Not a 4-Star Company’ With Joanna Stern

 

00:00:00   - Ah, it's the end of a busy week, Joanna.

00:00:02   - I have no idea what you're talking about.

00:00:05   - You didn't even do Apple Watch, did you?

00:00:07   Or did I-- - No, no.

00:00:08   - I was gonna say, 'cause if you did, I missed it.

00:00:10   And on the most incompetent podcast shows of all time.

00:00:13   - No, I physically could not do it.

00:00:17   Physically, it would not be possible with what I did.

00:00:20   - And I, I'm not gonna say I phoned it in,

00:00:23   but it was like a grand relief to me

00:00:26   that to me, my take of the Apple Watch Series 5

00:00:29   was very, very simple.

00:00:31   And now that we have like some technical information,

00:00:34   like developers have hooked it up to Xcode

00:00:36   and found out the CPU and GPU are the same, et cetera,

00:00:39   that it really is, it's the last year's Apple Watch

00:00:43   with the always on screen, which to me is a huge, huge deal,

00:00:47   and the compass, which is not as huge a deal.

00:00:51   - 'Cause you're usually lost in downtown Philadelphia.

00:00:55   - Well, I wrote in my review

00:00:57   that I don't think I've ever needed a compass in my life.

00:00:59   I've never been a Boy Scout type.

00:01:02   But I realized that for walking direction,

00:01:06   so I did go back and add a sentence in the next day

00:01:09   in my review that it should be a huge boon

00:01:12   for walking directions.

00:01:14   But, you know. - Yeah, I see that.

00:01:17   - Yeah, so I, you know, and that makes sense, right?

00:01:20   It's like sometimes it's like, I don't know,

00:01:23   you get into a city you're not familiar with.

00:01:26   I mean, I'm pretty familiar with New York even,

00:01:27   but every once in a while I'll come out

00:01:29   building in New York. And if it's like noon, and there's no

00:01:32   sun to guide by, it's like, wait, wait, which way is like

00:01:34   uptown downtown? Where the hell am I?

00:01:36   You know, I actually haven't even thought about that. Like,

00:01:38   it really would help me to know which is west and east. Yeah.

00:01:41   When I come out of a subway station, and I'm like, walk a

00:01:44   block across and like, why is this not Fifth Avenue? Right.

00:01:47   Fifth Avenue,

00:01:48   right. Or for me, like, downtown, like, I'm way more

00:01:52   familiar with Midtown, because I'm just, you know, I'm like,

00:01:55   touristy app. My familiarity with New York is very

00:01:58   touristy, you know, like stay in a midtown hotel and go to a Yankees game or go see museums

00:02:03   or whatever. Like when I go downtown, like where Apple has stuff now, like at that big

00:02:08   mansion where they sometimes hold events, it the streets aren't quite so grid like,

00:02:13   you know, there's diagonal streets running around and you get off the subway and I do

00:02:17   get spun around sometimes like what, what, where's East West? What's so the watch would

00:02:22   definitely the compass would definitely help with that. So I don't want to belittle it,

00:02:25   but it really was a pretty easy review for me.

00:02:27   It's like the always on screen makes,

00:02:29   it's like a huge game changer.

00:02:31   Sign me up, I'm buying one.

00:02:33   - You're buying one from a series four to this?

00:02:35   - No, I didn't buy series four last year.

00:02:36   - Okay, so my big take is that like,

00:02:38   I mean, it's not really big take,

00:02:39   it's just like, like you said,

00:02:41   it's the same thing as a series four.

00:02:42   If you had a series four,

00:02:43   there's no reason to upgrade here.

00:02:44   Though it is really cool that you have this screen

00:02:46   that's always on and probably should have, you know,

00:02:48   you wish it was there from the start, like you wrote.

00:02:51   But I think if you've got a series three or series two,

00:02:55   Certainly, in your upgrading,

00:02:57   this is gonna make a ton of sense.

00:02:59   - The other thing that Apple told me

00:03:00   when they briefed me on it was that the compass

00:03:03   should help with indoor navigation,

00:03:06   like when you're in a train station

00:03:09   or how they have airports mapped out now.

00:03:12   And so instead of just sort of getting you that GPS,

00:03:15   you're within 10 meters or five meters or whatever,

00:03:18   and it's like all they know is you're in Terminal C,

00:03:21   somewhere in the middle.

00:03:23   Now they can tell you turn left

00:03:24   and you'll see the coffee place you're looking for

00:03:27   or whatever.

00:03:28   I don't know, but that's not a huge deal.

00:03:30   I would never tell anybody to upgrade the watch

00:03:32   just for the compass.

00:03:33   They're always on screen is a big deal.

00:03:35   - Yeah, I mean, I loved how you wrote

00:03:37   like this was the thing you had always wanted.

00:03:39   And I think for me, there are some of these

00:03:42   still little remaining things

00:03:43   that like they're the things I've always wanted

00:03:45   that Apple just hasn't done.

00:03:46   I mean, sleep tracking for me was a huge disappointment

00:03:48   at the event when they didn't announce that.

00:03:51   And I know we were tweeting about it before

00:03:53   when you were suggesting some of the apps

00:03:55   and I've been using some of the apps and they're not bad.

00:03:57   They're really not bad, but like they're not Apple.

00:04:00   - It's not the same thing as having it built in.

00:04:02   That's very true.

00:04:04   I'm curious about that rumor too.

00:04:06   And it's funny the rumors this year,

00:04:08   there were a lot of busts and some of them,

00:04:12   like the tile tracker thing, that's probably not a bust.

00:04:15   That's probably just coming soon.

00:04:17   - Yeah, I think that's like a month or two delayed.

00:04:20   - But I think the sleep tracking thing,

00:04:22   I don't think that's gonna come in a software update.

00:04:24   I think if they were gonna do it, they would do it.

00:04:26   And using the Series 5 watch with the always-on display,

00:04:31   and the battery life is probably a little bit less

00:04:35   than I was getting with my Series 3.

00:04:39   So my personal Apple watches that I've bought,

00:04:44   John Gruber has bought and used and owned,

00:04:46   are the original, way back in 2015.

00:04:49   I didn't buy a Series 2.

00:04:51   Then I bought a Series 3 when they added the cellular, which I still like having.

00:04:59   It's like I like the peace of mind, but I almost never use.

00:05:01   And every time I look – I'm one of those people.

00:05:03   I do look at my Verizon bill every month and I'm like, "Why is this $240?"

00:05:07   And I'm like, "Oh, well, I guess so."

00:05:09   Yeah.

00:05:10   Rebekah Demirel: You've just been paying for it?

00:05:11   Tom Bilyeu: Yeah, like 10 bucks a month.

00:05:12   It's like I never use it or like I use it like once a year.

00:05:16   It's a lot of money to spend for like one time a year.

00:05:18   But I kind of like the peace of mind that I could just run out and if I needed to make

00:05:22   a call or something, I could do it.

00:05:24   I probably exaggerated a little bit there.

00:05:26   I probably used it more than once a year, but I probably don't use it $120 a year

00:05:32   enough.

00:05:33   But I skipped series four last year.

00:05:35   I really like the way series four looked last year, but I didn't like it enough to upgrade

00:05:40   year over year.

00:05:42   And now I bought the series five.

00:05:43   So I will say, and I'm doing the sleep tracking thing with the third-party apps too.

00:05:47   so I wear it when I go to sleep.

00:05:49   I will say battery life is a little bit less

00:05:53   than my series three was getting.

00:05:56   So keeping the screen on in a low power mode every day.

00:06:01   Usually when I wake up in the morning for the last week,

00:06:03   I'm around 15 to 20% on the watch.

00:06:07   And I've got a, you know, I could charge it while I shower.

00:06:10   I usually charge it, I have a charger in the kitchen.

00:06:12   I charge it while I make coffee, get my day started.

00:06:15   And usually, I need a little bit over an hour.

00:06:18   I've gotta find some time during the day

00:06:19   to get the watch back up and then put it back on,

00:06:22   keep it on all day.

00:06:23   And then with my Series 3 that I had been wearing

00:06:26   for a long time, usually I was more at like 30 to 40%

00:06:30   when I wake up in the morning.

00:06:32   But that's a trade-off I'm willing to make

00:06:34   for the always-on display.

00:06:35   That is a very fair trade-off 'cause I really love it.

00:06:38   But given that I'm only waking up with 17% in the morning,

00:06:43   morning. And you kind of it's not that easy to find an eye if

00:06:49   you if you want to wear your watch all day and you want to

00:06:51   track your stand time and all that stuff. It's not that easy

00:06:54   to find an hour to an hour and a half to charge it throughout

00:06:58   the day. So I can kind of see why Apple didn't do sleep

00:07:00   tracking.

00:07:01   Well, so I've had I've been I bought the series for last year

00:07:05   and I have tried sleep tracking a couple of nights similar kind

00:07:10   of percentage to you. I think I wake up with probably like

00:07:12   closer to 20 or 30%? Is that what you said on the

00:07:15   now I get I usually wake up with more like 30 to 40. But I've got

00:07:20   the 40 you know, the the larger 42 millimeter size and I'm

00:07:24   guessing you have the 38 or the 40 millimeter now. And and I

00:07:29   find that that it's that makes sense. So I find it takes

00:07:32   shorter charging time, like I'm good at an hour, right? It's

00:07:35   like, great. And then the the other big thing that I'm sort of

00:07:41   thinking through is that, well, two things.

00:07:44   One, I'm going through the settings right now,

00:07:46   and Apple told me this would be possible.

00:07:48   Can you turn off the always on display?

00:07:52   - Yes.

00:07:53   - Where is that?

00:07:54   - So in the watch, you go to settings.

00:07:58   I think you can do it right on the watch.

00:08:00   Settings.

00:08:00   - My watch is upstairs.

00:08:02   - All right, sorry. - I'm in the app.

00:08:03   - I'll talk you through it.

00:08:04   Settings.

00:08:07   display and brightness and always on, on.

00:08:12   And you can type always on and turn it off.

00:08:14   - Yeah, I'm on the phone right now.

00:08:18   - But you can definitely do it.

00:08:19   As a tip to those listening,

00:08:22   in that same section for the always on display,

00:08:26   there is also a preference which is off by default

00:08:30   called hide sensitive complications.

00:08:33   Sensitive complications contain data

00:08:35   such as your calendar appointments, mail messages, heart rate.

00:08:39   And if you turn that on, then those won't be visible in the always on mode either.

00:08:44   But that is off by default.

00:08:46   So like let's say you have a – let's just say the calendar complication.

00:08:51   If you're like holding the wrist strap on the subway, somebody who looks at your watch

00:08:55   in theory might be able to see your next calendar appointment.

00:08:58   But you can turn that off.

00:09:00   That's been like one of the top questions that I've been asked from daring firewall

00:09:04   readers people are very concerned about, rightly so about the privacy implications of the always

00:09:09   on display.

00:09:10   Yeah, I don't have that much.

00:09:12   Yeah, I don't really.

00:09:13   But but my thought is, is well, first of all, I want to try this. I'm gonna try no, turning

00:09:19   off always on on and seeing how the battery life goes, because you could see one turning

00:09:26   it off when you're sleeping, or turning it off in general, like I like it a lot, but

00:09:30   I don't find that like it's a it's a game. It's yeah, I

00:09:33   Don't know. I'm kind of mixed like there's only a couple times in the day where I look at it

00:09:37   I'm like, okay, that's nice that I didn't have to shake my arm really hard to see this

00:09:40   Were you a wristwatch wearer before Apple watch?

00:09:44   Not in the like immediate years before but I grew up wearing watches. I think that's where I watch it

00:09:51   I think that's the big factor

00:09:53   like I've always had a I've had a watch on my left wrist since I was like 14 or 15 so like

00:10:00   It's like I even said in my review this week,

00:10:03   looking back at my original Apple Watch review,

00:10:05   I spent several hundred words complaining

00:10:08   about the lack of an Always On display

00:10:10   and all the scenarios where I was annoyed by it.

00:10:13   - It's just muscle memory.

00:10:15   As I've been wearing it this week,

00:10:16   I'm like, oh yeah, right, I don't need to tap it

00:10:18   or I don't need to touch the side

00:10:20   or I don't need to shake my arm.

00:10:22   I feel like it's now muscle memory

00:10:24   to try to turn that screen on.

00:10:27   The funny one for me is wearing it to sleep now,

00:10:31   which I've been doing for months.

00:10:32   It never really wakes up for me in bed,

00:10:36   like my Series 3, right?

00:10:38   This is not the new, you know,

00:10:39   the one I've been wearing for months.

00:10:41   So I go to bed with it, it's dark,

00:10:43   it's the middle of the night, I wake up,

00:10:44   and I'm just like, "Ah, how close to the morning is it?"

00:10:46   And I look at the watch, it doesn't turn on,

00:10:48   and there's not really anything I can do to make it turn on,

00:10:50   and I do the same thing every time.

00:10:52   I bring it up and tap it with my nose.

00:10:54   (laughs)

00:10:56   And then it wakes up.

00:10:57   Because the other thing is like in the middle of the night

00:10:59   without contacts or glasses on,

00:11:00   I really do kind of have to hold it close to see it.

00:11:02   So I bring it up, tap my nose,

00:11:04   and then I can check the time.

00:11:05   It is so nice not to have to do that anymore.

00:11:09   - That was one of the best A heads.

00:11:11   We have these front page stories at the journal

00:11:13   that are kind of quirky and funny.

00:11:15   One of the best A heads ever written was one of our,

00:11:17   our old Apple reporter now works at the Times,

00:11:19   Dai wrote about how people were using their nose

00:11:22   and tapping the Apple watches like in,

00:11:25   when they were in airports and no hands were free.

00:11:27   So yeah, I mean.

00:11:30   - That is a great story.

00:11:31   I remember when he wrote that.

00:11:32   'Cause there's a lot of people

00:11:37   who don't have an Apple Watch,

00:11:38   they're like, "What a bunch of goofs."

00:11:39   And then there's all the people with Apple Watches

00:11:41   who are like, "Yeah, me too!"

00:11:42   (laughs)

00:11:43   Right?

00:11:44   - I used to do it all the time when walking the dog

00:11:46   and holding a coffee or something.

00:11:47   - Oh, definitely. - All the time.

00:11:48   I'd be like, "I look ridiculous on the street."

00:11:51   So yeah, I'm generally just feeling

00:11:53   like the sleep tracking would be that like final health

00:11:57   feature that I'd be into.

00:11:58   Sometimes I'm not really fully sure why I want it so badly

00:12:01   'cause when I do track my sleep, I'm like,

00:12:02   don't learn a ton, but it does make me feel better.

00:12:05   But yeah, I mean, I don't know.

00:12:07   A lot of it too feels like this,

00:12:09   I think you sort of wrote this,

00:12:11   that this is the time that the watch has hit its stride.

00:12:16   This is it, right?

00:12:18   Like sort of when the iPhone hit its stride

00:12:20   and like this is what it was supposed to be.

00:12:22   And I kind of feel that way.

00:12:23   felt that way reviewing the series for last year. I just said this is this is the time

00:12:26   I have very little complaints now about this. And if you had been holding off, now's the

00:12:31   time to buy one is to try one to buy it for somebody as a gift. I don't I'm sure there

00:12:36   are more things they will do in these next generations. But this kind of feels like this

00:12:41   is what it was meant to be. Yeah. Some of the things I can think of, it's not a bad

00:12:45   idea for riffing on the on the show is what else Alright, so I say it's hit it's right.

00:12:50   That doesn't mean it's done.

00:12:51   Just like my ballpark estimation for when the iPhone hit its stride was probably like

00:12:56   the iPhone 4S I said or so.

00:13:00   That's probably what I would say.

00:13:02   Maybe even the iPhone 4.

00:13:03   The iPhone 4 is the asterisk because of the whole antenna gate thing.

00:13:08   And the big thing is put aside whether antenna gate was a real technical problem or not.

00:13:15   The reason it stands out was that the phone was still AT&T only, right?

00:13:22   At least in the US.

00:13:24   And that was solved with the 4S because they came out with the Verizon one like six months

00:13:29   in between.

00:13:30   And by the 4S, that's why I say that's when the iPhone really hit its stride because

00:13:34   then with the 4S, they were on both types of cellular networks, the CDMA and whatever

00:13:42   the other one is, GSM.

00:13:43   - GSM. - GSM, yeah.

00:13:45   - And to me, that was a huge part of saying,

00:13:48   hey, this thing is sort of fundamentally done, right?

00:13:50   Because that was a huge missing hole is,

00:13:53   like if you live in somewhere with crummy Verizon

00:13:56   or AT&T coverage, it's a real problem.

00:13:59   Or if you live in a country that doesn't have,

00:14:02   or I guess GSM was more worldwide,

00:14:05   so that wasn't as much of a problem.

00:14:06   But anyway, it was definitely necessary

00:14:09   to get Verizon support, at least here in the US.

00:14:11   So that's why I say the 4S.

00:14:13   That doesn't mean the iPhone 4S was done.

00:14:15   I mean, we've seen an awful lot of improvements

00:14:18   from the iPhone 4S, and I'm sure we'll see

00:14:21   a lot of improvements for the watch,

00:14:22   but I just feel like the big ones,

00:14:25   the big, ah, here's what I wish I could do are done.

00:14:27   But what else are we looking to see

00:14:29   in the future from Apple Watch?

00:14:30   One of them I can think of is I'd still like to see it

00:14:33   become more independent from the iPhone

00:14:36   so that both for first-party stuff

00:14:39   and especially third-party, like it is still,

00:14:42   And it's like poor Marco Arment making his podcast player,

00:14:46   I think is going insane and has been going insane for years,

00:14:51   trying to get a good watch app so that you can go out

00:14:54   with AirPods and your Apple Watch

00:14:57   and just listen to podcasts.

00:14:58   And if you have the cellular one,

00:15:00   since you're, like I was just saying,

00:15:02   since you're paying good money to have that cellular thing,

00:15:04   wouldn't it be nice to be able to download podcasts

00:15:06   right to your watch?

00:15:07   And none of that stuff really works well at the moment.

00:15:10   - Yeah, I still struggle with just running

00:15:13   with the watch and AirPods.

00:15:14   The syncing, the Bluetooth, all of it,

00:15:17   it's still, it's kind of annoying.

00:15:19   I do it, but I build in another 10 minutes

00:15:23   to get ready for a run.

00:15:24   - Yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:15:26   - It's a warmup.

00:15:28   - You have to be prepared for the fact that--

00:15:30   - I'm gonna make a warmup video.

00:15:32   A warmup with your Apple Watch running video

00:15:35   with Joanna Stern.

00:15:36   And you just, that's the warmup.

00:15:38   You're just pairing, you do some stretching as you're pairing.

00:15:42   - You just have to be prepared for absolutely nothing

00:15:44   to be ready for you to leave.

00:15:46   - No, nothing's ever ready.

00:15:48   I'm like, okay.

00:15:49   And then I'm like, you know what?

00:15:50   I'm just gonna run with my giant iPhone.

00:15:52   - Yeah.

00:15:53   So there's one I can think of.

00:15:57   I'm trying to think, what else?

00:15:59   - Yeah, I mean, I'm still super bought in

00:16:02   with this as a health device.

00:16:04   And I had mixed reactions to the video.

00:16:07   I talked about this in the live blog,

00:16:08   the video that they played at the event.

00:16:10   And there was actually been more chatter about it

00:16:13   on Twitter the next day about people crying

00:16:17   during that video.

00:16:18   And I even said, I will admit,

00:16:20   I felt like crying during this video.

00:16:22   And actually you described the video

00:16:25   'cause I feel like I'll cry if I just describe it.

00:16:27   - Well, it was really interesting in a couple of ways,

00:16:32   but it was Tim Cook introduced it.

00:16:36   and he was just talking about the people

00:16:38   who've reached out to Apple,

00:16:41   I guess not just in the last year,

00:16:43   'cause it wasn't just people with EKG monitoring,

00:16:48   which is new to Series 4, it was other health problems too.

00:16:52   But people who had incidents where wearing an Apple Watch,

00:16:57   it may or may not have saved their lives,

00:17:00   or at the very least, helped them in an emergency situation.

00:17:04   There was a woman who said,

00:17:05   hey, her watch all of a sudden said her heartbeat was

00:17:07   irregular. And she was like, Oh, that's weird. And then it like,

00:17:09   said it again. And she like, got her husband to take her to the

00:17:13   emergency room. And they're like, Oh, yeah, you were about

00:17:15   to die. And it's it, but it was told first person. And it was

00:17:19   people who I guess we're sending these videos to Apple, but a lot

00:17:22   of them are just shot on FaceTime. You know, like,

00:17:25   people know, I mean, I figure what happened, and I actually

00:17:27   thought a lot about this during things that Apple got notes, and

00:17:30   then Apple called them the producers of this video who are

00:17:34   are very good producers that was just watching it.

00:17:36   I was like, wow, this is a really well produced video

00:17:38   down to like the music track changes.

00:17:41   Ben probably got in touch with them

00:17:43   and asked them to recount those moments.

00:17:45   'Cause like, it was that clever moment where the pregnant,

00:17:49   she was pregnant, but the baby gets handed to her

00:17:52   and that kind of like had to be somewhat staged.

00:17:54   And then the husband is going out to go mow the lawn

00:17:57   or whatnot.

00:17:58   Anyway, my reason for bringing this up is that,

00:18:01   well, too, there was this reaction from some people,

00:18:03   I think it was Charlie Wurzel in Times who wrote that,

00:18:06   you know, they should stop these events.

00:18:07   And then somebody said there was some bloggers crying

00:18:10   or somebody cried and I felt somewhat, I don't know,

00:18:14   not ashamed that I cried, but I mean,

00:18:17   I didn't wanna publicly admit that I cried anyway.

00:18:20   But it was this very emotional video.

00:18:22   And I thought to myself, one, it really hits home for me

00:18:25   because I have heard from so many readers in the last year

00:18:28   since doing my Apple Watch Series 4 review

00:18:31   about the falling feature.

00:18:32   I have tons of emails from elderly readers saying,

00:18:37   I bought this and I'm so happy that you tested this

00:18:40   'cause now I can feel a little bit more certain

00:18:41   about buying it for this feature.

00:18:44   I have people who have written to me saying,

00:18:46   I did fall and it did catch it

00:18:47   and I could text someone to tell them that I fell.

00:18:50   So that's one reason.

00:18:51   And then the second reason I had sort of

00:18:53   just this reaction was too, it's like,

00:18:56   it's always odd that Apple,

00:18:57   it's odd when a company is sort of selling

00:19:00   something that's life or death, right?

00:19:02   And I think for me, I had this reaction like,

00:19:05   so you buy the Apple Watch or you die?

00:19:07   Like, is that what Apple's saying here?

00:19:09   Like, is that like, you know, the marketing play here?

00:19:13   And it was done really,

00:19:15   I think it was done really tactfully, the video.

00:19:18   And I'm not sure they actually would play it on TV

00:19:22   as like a commercial spot.

00:19:24   I'm sure it's on their YouTube channel.

00:19:26   But it definitely just got me this like,

00:19:28   it's a little bit of an icky place to be

00:19:30   when selling gadgets, right?

00:19:31   Like, is it, it's also a liability for them

00:19:34   if like somebody buys one and it doesn't save their life,

00:19:37   but it's also like this other weird thing,

00:19:38   it's like spend $200 more on the more expensive version

00:19:41   'cause it'll save your life.

00:19:43   - Yeah, it is touchy.

00:19:45   I talked to somebody at Apple about it last year

00:19:48   when series four came out

00:19:50   and it was sort of a delicate balance to present it on stage

00:19:55   because they had like some typical Apple,

00:19:58   here's a video we wanna show you

00:19:59   and they showed an older woman,

00:20:03   clearly you could surmise she was the grandmother,

00:20:06   and she was in her kitchen using a stool

00:20:09   to reach a high shelf, and then her grandson

00:20:11   was ramming around the house coming by,

00:20:15   and you could see she was worried

00:20:16   he might kick the stool out from under her or something.

00:20:19   But they didn't show that.

00:20:21   They didn't show her having a fall.

00:20:23   It was like they just showed a scenario

00:20:25   where somebody might fall.

00:20:27   And then when they actually showed the falls,

00:20:29   and they were like, and I think it was Jeff Williams

00:20:31   who was doing the narrate, you know, the stage presence,

00:20:35   was saying, you know, and there's different ways to fall.

00:20:37   You can fall forward, you can fall backward,

00:20:39   and it's totally different algorithms to detect those falls.

00:20:43   They showed stick figures falling on the screen, right?

00:20:46   Like, so like, rather than show the unpleasantness

00:20:49   of hiring, like you did in your video.

00:20:52   (laughs)

00:20:53   - Yeah, I watched that, believe me,

00:20:54   I've watched that section of the presentation,

00:20:56   like 50 times, so many times to get that video right.

00:21:00   - Right, every time it came to something unpleasant,

00:21:02   like actually showing a fall,

00:21:04   they would go to like stick figures or illustrations

00:21:07   rather than show actual human beings fall.

00:21:10   'Cause it's a hard thing to sell.

00:21:11   You don't wanna, it always reminds me of the old commercial

00:21:16   that ran, I don't know if you're too young or not.

00:21:18   Remember the, "I've fallen and I can't get up."

00:21:20   - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:21:21   I watched a lot of those too.

00:21:22   I watched a lot of those for that video.

00:21:25   - The cats are so funny.

00:21:27   - That was, for those of you who are too young

00:21:29   or don't remember, or maybe it's a US-centric thing,

00:21:32   but at some point in the late '80s,

00:21:35   maybe probably early '90s,

00:21:36   there was a commercial that ran all the time.

00:21:40   It was very famous. - So good.

00:21:42   - But it was for, I think it was called Medic Alert.

00:21:44   It was, so it was a, you know,

00:21:45   it probably wasn't a bad idea.

00:21:47   It was a electronic gadget that you could get

00:21:51   for an elderly person in your life,

00:21:53   and they would wear it around their neck like a necklace.

00:21:55   And if something bad happened, like they fell,

00:21:58   there was a button they could hold

00:22:00   and it would call emergency services.

00:22:03   But it was a really cheese ball commercial.

00:22:07   (laughs)

00:22:09   But there was this old lady and she falls

00:22:13   and she just says, "I've fallen and I can't get up."

00:22:17   'Cause her son wasn't a good son

00:22:19   and didn't buy her a medical alert bracelet.

00:22:22   There's so many of these on YouTube, it's so funny.

00:22:25   - All right, I will link to them in the show notes

00:22:27   and everybody can have a laugh.

00:22:28   But anyway, yeah, and we can talk about that.

00:22:31   I think it was Jack Nickus from the Times

00:22:34   who had the sort of snarky comment about some,

00:22:39   I think he called her a blogger sitting next to him.

00:22:45   And it was in the context of Charlie Worzel's accusation

00:22:48   that Apple bloggers are cheering throughout these Apple events.

00:22:54   I was on Neelai's show.

00:22:55   I don't think it's out yet.

00:22:56   I don't think it comes out till next week,

00:22:57   but we talked about it.

00:22:58   But we can talk about it here, too.

00:23:02   I think that's such a--

00:23:04   I get why people think that, because there

00:23:07   is lots of applause during these Apple events.

00:23:09   But the thing that people don't understand--

00:23:10   and it's a reasonable misunderstanding--

00:23:12   is that these events, especially the ones at the Steve Jobs

00:23:16   theater and the smaller venues like that.

00:23:19   And the Steve Jobs Theater, in the grand scheme of things,

00:23:21   is a pretty small venue.

00:23:24   The percentage of people who are in that event who

00:23:27   are from the media is a lot smaller than most people think.

00:23:31   And the percentage who are English-speaking media

00:23:33   is really small, because there's a ton of Asian language

00:23:38   journalists there now.

00:23:40   The percentage of people at that event

00:23:41   who are English-speaking journalists,

00:23:43   whether you want to call them bloggers,

00:23:45   whether they write for the Wall Street Journal or the Times or whatever.

00:23:49   It's really small.

00:23:50   There's a ton—a lot of them—a lot of the people there, especially up front, are

00:23:53   Apple employees and invited guests who are not journalists.

00:23:58   They're just VIPs who are friends of the company or friends of people there.

00:24:05   And the people you hear clapping the loudest and the ones who are closest to the stage

00:24:08   are those Apple employees and VIPs.

00:24:10   It's really not the journalists.

00:24:12   And it's, you know, I'm not gonna say I've never clapped.

00:24:14   Like every once in a while, there'll be a, you know,

00:24:17   like I would clap for the, if I had been there,

00:24:20   I would have clapped for the people

00:24:23   getting their lives saved.

00:24:25   I mean, you know, I've got a heart.

00:24:26   I don't clap.

00:24:29   - I don't know, Jon, Jon.

00:24:30   I clapped and it was when they announced

00:24:32   the 18 watt charger.

00:24:34   - See, yeah, exactly.

00:24:35   - So, I mean, I've got a heart and I'm not sure.

00:24:40   I mean, if anyone has a heart, they're clapping

00:24:43   when they announce an 18 watt charger

00:24:44   after so many years of a five watt charger.

00:24:47   - I can see that, right.

00:24:48   So I forget.

00:24:50   - I mean, I really didn't actually clap,

00:24:52   but I was enthusiastic.

00:24:54   I was very enthusiastic.

00:24:56   I sometimes mumble to myself.

00:24:59   Like usually when I'm there with somebody else

00:25:01   who I'm from the journal,

00:25:03   and we usually sit next to each other and we're live blogging,

00:25:05   I mumble a lot of things to myself.

00:25:06   And so that was definitely a like, holy shit, finally.

00:25:10   I would have clapped for the SF camera font.

00:25:13   - Right, okay, so there we go.

00:25:16   - But the thing I found funny about Charlie Warzel's sort of,

00:25:20   and Charlie Warzel, who I'm a big fan of,

00:25:22   and does good work, and this year has been

00:25:25   on a very good beat of sort of covering privacy-related

00:25:29   issues from a consumer perspective for the Times.

00:25:33   So I'm a fan of his work, but Charlie wasn't there.

00:25:36   Charlie is not a reporter or a gadget reviewer.

00:25:39   So whatever he observed of it was remotely watching the video, you know, at home or at

00:25:45   the office or whatever.

00:25:51   Something to the effect of, you know, the laptop-lit screens of the Apple bloggers and

00:25:57   that these are the people who are applauding at all of these things and that it's unseemly

00:26:01   or whatever.

00:26:02   And it's like that sentence doesn't even make any sense.

00:26:04   You don't even have to be there to think about it because the reason that their screens are

00:26:07   laptop lit, which is true for an awful lot of the journalists who are there. Their screens

00:26:12   are laptop lit because they're either live blogging or taking notes because they have

00:26:17   to file a story very shortly after the end of the event. Everybody there is working.

00:26:22   It is hard to pay attention to everything and observe, because Apple makes a point,

00:26:27   "Oh, that's interesting. That's something to write about. I've got to take some notes."

00:26:32   And in the meantime, they're going on.

00:26:34   - They've moved on. - They've moved on.

00:26:37   And so nobody has time to clap.

00:26:38   Even if you went in and it was your first time

00:26:41   as a credentialed media correspondent

00:26:44   and you're excited to be at an Apple event

00:26:46   and you plan to clap, you don't have time

00:26:49   if you're live blogging or taking notes.

00:26:52   It really is not the case

00:26:55   that the journalists clap at these things.

00:26:59   - Yeah, I mean, I think the, I mean,

00:27:02   I don't know how many new press they're allowing in now too.

00:27:07   I mean, presumably some new publications, et cetera,

00:27:10   but a lot of us have been going for years

00:27:12   and it's, you know, the day doesn't really ever

00:27:16   get any easier.

00:27:17   - No, if anything, it's harder because they've expanded

00:27:22   the number of post-event briefings and, you know,

00:27:25   in the old days, they would only brief like, you know,

00:27:28   I'll just say a brief like Walt, Pogue, and Ed Begg

00:27:31   from USA Today and that was it.

00:27:33   - Yeah, I mean like the anxiety might be a little bit less

00:27:36   just because you've done it a little,

00:27:38   for me at least it's like maybe the anxiety

00:27:39   is a little less, I've done it so many times,

00:27:41   but it's still, it's a grueling day

00:27:44   and you just, there's a lot to write,

00:27:48   there's a lot to sort of just try to like clear your mind

00:27:51   of some of the marketing hype on stage.

00:27:54   That's usually the hardest thing for me

00:27:55   is just to take it like to clear and say,

00:27:57   what is actually gonna be important here.

00:27:59   I've done a better job also over the years

00:28:02   just to say, I'm not gonna write something today,

00:28:03   I'm gonna just save thoughts for the review

00:28:05   after I actually test these devices.

00:28:09   But this was the first year,

00:28:10   I mean, there was part of what Charlie wrote,

00:28:12   which I sort of felt, yeah, why did I come to this?

00:28:15   You actually didn't go,

00:28:16   'cause you didn't have to travel, but you couldn't travel.

00:28:19   But I kind of felt like they could have done some briefings

00:28:23   on some of this stuff and maybe been as effective

00:28:26   as getting the message across to journalists.

00:28:29   But you're right in the sense that they don't do

00:28:30   these events just for journalists.

00:28:32   - Right, and primarily they don't.

00:28:35   The primary audience is not the media.

00:28:37   These are not press events.

00:28:38   And I realize that people think that they are,

00:28:43   and most companies when they hold such events,

00:28:45   they are more like press events,

00:28:47   depending on the size of the company.

00:28:49   Like Samsung's events are, I've never been to one,

00:28:51   but they're clearly held in cavernous rooms

00:28:55   and they're stocked with hundreds and hundreds

00:28:57   of Samsung fans from around the world

00:28:59   to get that excitement.

00:29:00   But I was at a T-Mobile event a couple of years,

00:29:03   I forget why, but it was real small.

00:29:05   There were only like 50 people there

00:29:07   and they were all media.

00:29:09   That's a press event.

00:29:10   A press event usually has like a Q&A,

00:29:12   you get to talk on the record with people from the company

00:29:15   and it's not all off the record.

00:29:17   The Apple events are meant for people

00:29:21   who are enthusiastic Apple users who watch from home

00:29:25   and tens of millions, literally.

00:29:27   I mean, this is no exaggeration.

00:29:28   Like, I think it's hard to kind of comprehend

00:29:32   how many people watch these videos from home

00:29:37   'cause it just, you know, 20 years ago,

00:29:40   I mean, Apple nerds still were very excited

00:29:43   for keynotes 15, 20 years ago,

00:29:44   but the number of people who that encompasses

00:29:48   is just dwarfed in today's world.

00:29:51   I mean, the view counts on the YouTube versions

00:29:53   of these videos are just off the charts,

00:29:55   and it doesn't count the video that Apple hosts itself

00:29:58   on Apple.com and like when you go to the Apple TV app

00:30:02   if you wanna watch there or wherever.

00:30:05   I mean, so tens of millions of people,

00:30:06   no exaggeration, watch these, and that's Apple's target.

00:30:09   And what they wanna do, and you can totally understand

00:30:12   their perspective, is they want to tell the story

00:30:15   of these new products themselves.

00:30:17   here's the things we want you to understand about it.

00:30:20   It's very hard to comprehend how important that is to Apple.

00:30:27   So that's why Apple still does it,

00:30:28   even for a year where,

00:30:31   in terms of helping the world know

00:30:35   what's the main point of these phones,

00:30:37   they really could have said,

00:30:39   the camera's a lot better,

00:30:40   here's a bunch of sample photos showing how it's better.

00:30:44   they come in new colors and the battery life is a lot longer.

00:30:49   - Right.

00:30:49   - I mean, I'm not trying to belittle it.

00:30:51   I mean, I gave it a glowing review,

00:30:53   you gave it a glowing review,

00:30:55   Nilay gave it, in my opinion,

00:30:57   probably the strongest review that The Verge

00:31:00   has ever given to an iPhone in recent years.

00:31:03   These are great products and we'll get into the details

00:31:06   as this show goes on, but basically,

00:31:08   it didn't have to be an event, just for us,

00:31:11   if it was for us.

00:31:12   - No, no, good, and I'm really happy that you agree with that

00:31:14   'cause I was struggling that day, like,

00:31:16   why did we come here?

00:31:17   What did I like?

00:31:19   You know, and I did take that bigger picture,

00:31:21   especially like, given that this is the first year

00:31:23   they streamed it on YouTube, right?

00:31:25   They are very clearly trying to make this a moment

00:31:28   where Apple can talk directly to consumers,

00:31:31   directly to the people who love their products,

00:31:34   the people who are interested in their products,

00:31:38   to the broader industry who creates things

00:31:40   for their products.

00:31:41   So yeah, I think maybe it was really self-centered

00:31:44   And I just was like, why did they make this event for me?

00:31:47   Like, why just me?

00:31:49   - Hey, let me take a break and thank our first sponsor.

00:31:52   It's our good friends at Squarespace.

00:31:54   Make your next move with your own website at Squarespace.

00:31:58   Maybe you've already got a website.

00:31:59   Maybe it's old, it's outdated.

00:32:01   Maybe you know somebody who needs a website

00:32:04   and you don't wanna be on the hook for doing all the work,

00:32:09   keeping it up to date.

00:32:11   Do it on Squarespace.

00:32:12   And I'm telling you, anything you need on a website,

00:32:15   you can do at Squarespace.

00:32:17   A portfolio, like if you're a designer

00:32:19   and you wanna have a site like that.

00:32:21   A blog, host a podcast, and not just get it set up,

00:32:25   but as you post new content, blog updates,

00:32:28   new episodes of a podcast, all goes through Squarespace.

00:32:32   It's not like, oh, you set up Squarespace,

00:32:33   but then you gotta set up WordPress

00:32:35   or something like that to get a blog going.

00:32:36   No, you can do it all.

00:32:37   Squarespace has all of that built in.

00:32:40   They have a ton of professionally designed templates

00:32:45   to start with for the design.

00:32:47   And all of them work great.

00:32:50   They're responsive designs, so they work great.

00:32:52   They scale to phones, to tablets, to giant 27-inch iMacs.

00:32:56   And you can customize them to the nth degree

00:33:00   to make the branding look like your company,

00:33:05   your personal brand, the way you want it to look,

00:33:07   a restaurant or something like that, make it look like that.

00:33:10   All of that you can do through Squarespace.

00:33:12   Everything looks professionally designed.

00:33:14   Everything is really easy and WYSIWYG.

00:33:16   You just do it right there in the browser

00:33:18   and you wanna move something from the left to the right,

00:33:20   you just drag it from the left to the right

00:33:22   and no coding required.

00:33:24   You can do everything from the domain names

00:33:26   to content updates.

00:33:28   And best of all, you can start with a free trial

00:33:31   at squarespace.com/talkshow.

00:33:33   Just try it, see how easy it is, see how far you can get

00:33:37   before you give them a nickel.

00:33:39   And then when you do sign up and you start to pay,

00:33:41   just remember, go to squarespace.com/talkshow

00:33:45   and use the offer code talk show.

00:33:47   Know the just plain old talk show

00:33:50   and you get 10% off your first purchase.

00:33:53   My thanks to Squarespace for their long time

00:33:56   and continuing support of this podcast.

00:33:58   I was not there this year, but I've been to a couple

00:34:03   at the Steve Jobs Theater and it is--

00:34:05   - The wifi was great.

00:34:06   The wifi was great, yeah.

00:34:08   They, they've, you know what I think they really,

00:34:10   I feel like they, they, they flex those muscles the most

00:34:14   at WWDC because the WWDC keynote,

00:34:18   unlike the Steve Dobbs Theater,

00:34:20   is truly in like an arena sized room.

00:34:23   It's massive, you know,

00:34:24   there's like 5,000 people in the room.

00:34:27   And if they can keep wifi up then,

00:34:29   then they can definitely keep it up

00:34:31   for a bunch of live blogging, you know,

00:34:33   a hundred live blogging journalists.

00:34:36   - Yeah, I mean, it's like the wifi's the thing

00:34:37   you complain about when you really,

00:34:40   I mean, I just complain endlessly when it's bad,

00:34:43   but then when it's good, I forget to say how good it is.

00:34:46   So it was really good.

00:34:48   - Do you, were you at the event years ago?

00:34:50   I mean, obviously it's, you know, probably like 10,

00:34:54   by definition, it's like 10 years ago

00:34:56   or close to 10 years ago when Steve Jobs interrupted

00:34:59   the keynote because their Wi-Fi

00:35:02   for the demos on stage was broken.

00:35:05   Do you remember what product announcement it was?

00:35:08   I don't remember.

00:35:09   I'll have to put it in the show notes.

00:35:11   But there was a keynote.

00:35:12   It was probably a Mac World Expo keynote.

00:35:14   I don't think it was WWDC.

00:35:16   But they had tried to demo something

00:35:18   on stage that required Wi-Fi.

00:35:20   And the demo failed.

00:35:22   And they tried again.

00:35:25   And Jobs, in addition to being so good on stage in so many ways,

00:35:30   he was also good at dealing with the demo failure on stage.

00:35:34   And he handled it gracefully and turned it into a joke and then handed over the segment

00:35:38   to somebody else for the next part of the thing and was off stage.

00:35:42   And you can only imagine his fury backstage.

00:35:45   And he came back on stage and said something to the effect of, "I talked to my tech people

00:35:49   and they figured out why this failed.

00:35:51   You people..."

00:35:52   And he looks at the media section.

00:35:55   He said, "There's 337 cellular networks."

00:35:59   And this was long enough ago where the – you remember those things you'd buy like a little

00:36:03   portable cellular hotspot?

00:36:05   Yeah, yeah.

00:36:06   You weren't tethered through your phone.

00:36:08   It was like a dedicated device.

00:36:09   Oh, yeah.

00:36:10   I would show up to events with like two of those sometimes.

00:36:12   Right.

00:36:13   Or like if it was a publication like I guess at the time in Gadget or whatever.

00:36:19   Yeah.

00:36:20   There were three or four people there.

00:36:21   You guys would have one that the whole team could share.

00:36:23   But in jobs – No, no.

00:36:24   We would all have our own.

00:36:25   Well, that's – Because we were so worried.

00:36:27   we would bring multiple networks.

00:36:31   We'd bring like one from Verizon, one from AT&T,

00:36:33   one for T-Mobile or whatever sprint at the time

00:36:36   because we were worried that we wouldn't have,

00:36:38   one of the networks could be saturated in the room.

00:36:41   - Well, that's why there were 300 of them, I guess.

00:36:44   And Jobs, I was like, so if you want this to go on,

00:36:46   you wanna see the demo, turn them off.

00:36:48   I want everybody to turn them off.

00:36:50   I want everybody to shut your laptop.

00:36:51   If somebody next to you has their laptop open,

00:36:54   give them a hard time, make them shut it down.

00:36:56   and everybody in the, some of the people

00:36:58   in the media section did it, but most didn't.

00:37:01   Everybody just sort of--

00:37:02   - Yeah, I would've been like, no.

00:37:03   - Just kept plowing ahead, and the demo did work then,

00:37:07   so I don't know if that was actually the problem or not,

00:37:09   but it was a very uncomfortable moment,

00:37:10   and it's kind of hard to imagine that happening today

00:37:14   because they've just gotten so much more,

00:37:19   it's just hard to imagine a modern Apple keynote

00:37:22   going ad-libbed like that, right?

00:37:25   - It's so true.

00:37:26   It actually would be very funny to imagine.

00:37:29   Like they don't have their teleprompter to read

00:37:31   and they're like, it's got a...

00:37:33   Pro Focus Pickle something.

00:37:37   Focus Pixels.

00:37:39   (laughs)

00:37:40   - It was, and it was, you know,

00:37:42   and you know, Jobs, everybody knew,

00:37:44   you didn't have to wait for his biography to come out.

00:37:46   Everybody knew that he had famously, you know,

00:37:47   in private, has a, you know, could have a bad temper.

00:37:51   Could be irascible.

00:37:54   His on stage demeanor was always pleasant

00:37:57   and he had something to sell and he's in public.

00:38:00   But it was like a moment where we in the real world

00:38:03   could sort of see angry Steve.

00:38:05   It was, I will put it in the show notes,

00:38:09   it's not worth looking up now mid show.

00:38:12   But it was, and in hindsight, boy, that really sticks out

00:38:15   as boy, it was a different era for Apple back then.

00:38:18   - Yeah, I mean, but you also do hear,

00:38:20   I mean, just kind of in passing

00:38:22   when you talk to the executives

00:38:23   and you hear the executives talking before

00:38:25   or after the keynote that they practice so much

00:38:30   and they think so, they've got heavy edits going into this.

00:38:35   The first thing that I sometimes ask actually

00:38:37   after when we go to meet with some of the executives

00:38:39   is what's the number one thing

00:38:40   you couldn't have talked about on stage that you wanted to?

00:38:43   I actually ask that always after WWDC

00:38:47   because to me, some of the most interesting features

00:38:49   that come in iOS, they don't talk about.

00:38:51   - Yeah, yeah, I should remember to ask that question.

00:38:56   (laughs)

00:38:57   - No, and it actually puts them on the spot

00:39:00   'cause they're like, "Oh, I think it was in the one draft

00:39:03   that we had this, but then we had to cut it for timing."

00:39:05   I mean, like it is a very heavily edited show

00:39:09   and they practice, God, I mean,

00:39:11   also I tend to sometimes work on some stories

00:39:14   going into some of this stuff.

00:39:15   And if you wanna get in touch with executives

00:39:16   or you wanna get in touch with someone from PR

00:39:19   answer questions or get statements. They're like, No,

00:39:21   no, everyone here is focused 100% on the on the show, or on

00:39:25   the presentation. Yeah. So

00:39:27   there was a link to it, I think shortly after the event, but

00:39:33   there was somebody had an interesting, I forget where they

00:39:36   posted it, but it was somebody who used to work on, I think,

00:39:39   guitar hero, or one of those games in the early era of the

00:39:43   iPhone. And it was like, what is it like to demo at an Apple

00:39:48   keynote as like a third party invited company up there.

00:39:52   And I've heard this before from other people who were invited that Apple calls you and

00:39:58   gets – doesn't quite tell you that that's what they're thinking, but that you might

00:40:03   be in the keynote, but you can kind of read between the lines.

00:40:06   And then they want you to fly to Cupertino and then they sign – you sign an NDA and

00:40:10   like sign your life away and then you go into like a – you go into like an isolation chamber

00:40:16   for days because they might have you demo your software, whether it's an app or a

00:40:24   game or whatever, but you're actually using the new hardware.

00:40:27   So now you've seen this secret new hardware so that they've got you in rooms without

00:40:32   Wi-Fi and stuff like that.

00:40:34   But you don't know if you're actually going to be on stage.

00:40:36   You go to these rehearsals and you rehearse and you rehearse and you rehearse and you

00:40:41   You don't really find out until like sometimes the night before, sometimes the morning of

00:40:46   whether you're actually going to make the cut and be one of the demos on stage.

00:40:50   So there's, you know, usually who knows how, but we don't really know how many times because

00:40:55   everybody signs NDA's and I guess they want to stick to them and they want to stay in

00:40:58   Apple's good graces because they work for these companies that partner with them.

00:41:02   But you could probably, there's a very high likelihood that every one of these keynotes,

00:41:07   There's some number of people backstage who've spent the last week rehearsing and didn't

00:41:12   even get to come on stage.

00:41:13   That's another short documentary I want to watch.

00:41:17   I would love to.

00:41:18   You know, the sorrow, the sorrow that those people feel, the deep sorrow when they're

00:41:22   like, "Oh no, sorry, you're not going to be on stage."

00:41:25   But the story of this guy demoing the game was so funny because, to paraphrase it, it

00:41:31   was like he was nervous and his hands were sticky.

00:41:36   his hands were sweaty. It's like he wasn't doing a good job with the with the iPhone.

00:41:40   And he was like practicing during the keynote. You know, like the keynotes going on, he's

00:41:44   getting ready to go on and he's practicing the game. And it's like you, it was I think

00:41:50   it was guitar, but whatever the game is, you'd finish a level and get like, one through five

00:41:54   stars. And he only got four stars, even though he worked for the company. And someone for

00:41:58   Apple came up and said, Steve would like you to get five stars. And then it was like, Apple

00:42:07   isn't really a four star company.

00:42:09   The poor guys like I can't.

00:42:13   Yeah, but for whatever reason, and this, this gets to last week's event. For whatever reason,

00:42:20   when Apple demos things like games, they really do play, they have the people play them live

00:42:25   live on stage and they always have done this. They did it last week. And I kind of think

00:42:31   that's a little weird and I don't think it is a great use of time. I thought that that

00:42:38   Frogger demo during the event was bizarrely long. And is Frogger really? And now that

00:42:46   Apple Arcade is out and we see all these titles, it doesn't seem to me like anybody, you know,

00:42:51   I haven't spent any time with that. I haven't even signed up for Apple Arcade yet. I've

00:42:54   too busy with other stuff.

00:42:57   But I have been following people's initial reactions

00:42:59   now that if you've upgraded to iOS 13,

00:43:02   you can sign up for Apple Arcade.

00:43:03   And people are saying, here's the initial batch of games

00:43:07   and what's exciting.

00:43:08   I haven't seen anybody saying anything about Frogger yet.

00:43:11   Meanwhile, in the actual keynote,

00:43:14   they spent what seemed to me like it wasn't 10 minutes.

00:43:17   But watching it felt like 10 minutes of somebody

00:43:21   playing Frogger.

00:43:23   I felt like that, hey, hey, here's what you can be excited

00:43:27   about with Apple Arcade would have been a lot better if it was

00:43:30   a tightly edited edited video of here's here's one minute of the

00:43:35   best of what's going to be on Apple Arcade and just show a

00:43:38   video. I don't know why they make people play games live on

00:43:41   stage. It's that's, it's just not compelling to me.

00:43:45   But for my sake, I hope they do not cut the demo times down,

00:43:49   because it gives me a time to break and rest and write.

00:43:52   Not that I'm not paying attention during the demos.

00:43:56   I'm not paying attention to the demos, honestly.

00:43:58   I'm never paying attention much during the demos.

00:44:00   I'm like, "Oh, okay, a moment.

00:44:01   I can write down what I need to do."

00:44:02   Like, you know, I'm like, "Okay, let me take,

00:44:03   what just happened there?"

00:44:05   - That is a good point.

00:44:06   - So please, I think the demos are built in, again, for me.

00:44:11   The entire event is about me.

00:44:14   Apple, if you listen to this,

00:44:16   continue to do these things for me.

00:44:17   Good wifi for me, the demos built in for me.

00:44:21   (laughs)

00:44:23   The ones that I always think of,

00:44:24   'cause they do it all the time,

00:44:25   is they wanna show off the graphical prowess

00:44:29   of an iOS device, right?

00:44:31   Whether it's the iPhone or whether it's the iPad.

00:44:32   And so they'll have somebody come out

00:44:34   from some game developer

00:44:35   and have some kind of 3D first person hyper-rendered game

00:44:40   where there's a hero with a sword.

00:44:43   And it's like, for all I know,

00:44:46   they keep showing the same thing over and over again,

00:44:47   'cause that's exactly when I go heads down

00:44:49   and start writing notes.

00:44:51   and go back over the last five minutes.

00:44:53   'Cause they take forever and I have no interest in it.

00:44:58   It's like, I get it, it looks visually impressive

00:45:01   and you're getting 60 frames per second with this thing,

00:45:03   but I don't need to watch this as it happens.

00:45:06   - Yep.

00:45:07   - It's always some guy with a sword slashing at a demon

00:45:11   or a monster, a dragon or something, I don't know, who cares?

00:45:15   - And then there's like a few moments built in

00:45:16   to how they got to use Apple's tools and it's great.

00:45:18   It's great, it's a great rest moment for me.

00:45:20   So yeah.

00:45:22   - Yeah, yeah, I don't care.

00:45:24   (laughing)

00:45:27   What about the actual iPhones?

00:45:29   I guess we should talk about them.

00:45:31   - I guess we should.

00:45:31   I've just been so deep with these iPhones all week.

00:45:36   It's funny, last night, my son, I'd barely been home

00:45:39   and when I have been home, I'm like testing cameras.

00:45:42   And last night before he's going to bed, he just says,

00:45:46   what did he say?

00:45:49   dark, dark, dark. And he's screaming at me, you know, lights out, lights out dark. And I'm like,

00:45:55   what? And he's like, looking at the phone, he says more phones. And I'm putting it to sleep. And I'm

00:46:02   like, you're right, we we did do test photography. And here are two nights ago, I took like, I turned

00:46:07   out the lights, I took a picture of him with him and the dog with five different phones, Pixel,

00:46:12   to the iPhones, Samsung phone. And he just keeps now asking every time he sees the iPhone.

00:46:19   He actually I tweeted it. He said, Yeah, dark or something. Lights off, lights off, lights off.

00:46:27   That's just a glimpse into like how my life goes for this week. And every time he sees me now,

00:46:35   like he's like, Mommy working, Mommy working. And I'm like, this is just killer. Yeah, in the dark,

00:46:40   In the dark is what he said in the dark in the dark and he turned off the lights and yeah

00:46:45   So he's a good tester. Yeah

00:46:47   So have you been continuing to test after the initial the reviews dropped on Tuesday morning?

00:46:53   You have you been continuing to test like the camera and stuff like that

00:46:56   No, but it's always for me

00:46:59   like after the pressure of the reviews over what phone I choose to use as my main phone is like the tests for me and

00:47:08   Like last year after all was said and done

00:47:10   I was I ended up using the 10s for a couple weeks then tilt the 10 R came out and then

00:47:15   Use the 10 R loaner phone and then ended up buying 10 R. Yeah, and this year it's like automatically back to the 11

00:47:21   Yeah, well 11 big or 11 small

00:47:24   Just 11 did I've been 11 no pro. Oh

00:47:27   So it like the the new 10 are thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I was shocked about it because I was really torn during the review testing

00:47:36   Was I gonna get was I really did I think I need to go to the 11 Pro or was I gonna just get

00:47:41   The 11 or not not upgrade the 10 R

00:47:45   because I'm thinking I'm gonna give the 10 R to my wife and then buy a new one this year and just get myself into the

00:47:51   Upgrade program because I just need to do that. Probably it it is a phenomenal

00:47:56   phone and it is if anything Apple's

00:48:01   base model pricing

00:48:04   - It just surprises how much of a value

00:48:06   the regular iPhone 11 is.

00:48:08   Because my recommendation for anybody

00:48:11   would be not to buy the base model.

00:48:14   64 gigabytes is just not enough storage.

00:48:18   And I look, it's like one of the ways,

00:48:20   one of the things I do with family members

00:48:22   and my wife is I like to, you know,

00:48:24   I'll see like, hey, how much storage

00:48:26   does a typical person use?

00:48:28   Like what is my mom's phone?

00:48:30   Like my mom, you know, got one,

00:48:31   has had one iPhone in her entire life.

00:48:33   I forget how many years old it is now.

00:48:35   It's maybe like three years old.

00:48:37   I don't know, she didn't want one until like three years.

00:48:39   She didn't want one until she got hooked on iMessage

00:48:42   on her iPad and then she's like,

00:48:43   "Would I get that on my phone?"

00:48:44   And I was like, "Yes."

00:48:45   And she's like, "I need that."

00:48:46   And I was like, "All right."

00:48:47   64 gigabytes is just not a good value.

00:48:51   And with the 11, you can spend just 50 bucks more

00:48:55   and get one with 128 gigabytes,

00:48:58   which is plenty for most people.

00:49:00   Like just looking at like my wife's phone

00:49:03   and other people's phones, it seems like 64 is pretty tight

00:49:05   just with photos, right?

00:49:07   Like photos and iMessage attachments

00:49:08   take up most of the space, and 128 is plenty.

00:49:12   Like it just seems like typical iPhone users

00:49:14   often have somewhere around 64 gigabytes of stuff stored.

00:49:17   And so if you have 128 on the device,

00:49:19   you have plenty of room, 50 bucks.

00:49:22   But if you-- - Yeah, I didn't even

00:49:23   make that point, I should have made this point.

00:49:25   - If you, I don't think I examined it enough.

00:49:28   And if you, and then on, but on the catch

00:49:33   is that if you go with a Pro,

00:49:36   there is no 128 gigabyte option.

00:49:38   You have to go all the way to 256

00:49:41   and it's $150 over the base model.

00:49:44   So to me, the phones that most people should be looking at

00:49:48   are the 256 gigabyte models if you're looking at a Pro.

00:49:52   And the, because, not because you need 256,

00:49:56   but because 64 is not enough and there is no 128,

00:50:00   and the 128 is perfect for just about anybody.

00:50:03   Just go check your settings, general iPhone storage,

00:50:06   and if you're over 128, well, then look at something bigger.

00:50:09   But you're probably well under, get that one.

00:50:12   It's only 50 bucks more.

00:50:13   And that's a $400 price difference

00:50:16   between the 128 gigabyte iPhone 11

00:50:21   and the 256 11 Pro, 400 bucks.

00:50:24   - I did not even think about this.

00:50:25   I mean, first of all, I do think that for some people,

00:50:28   64 is enough.

00:50:29   - If it is. - Especially if you're playing

00:50:31   for iCloud.

00:50:32   If you're playing for iCloud photo, you're probably okay

00:50:35   if you're like the average person

00:50:36   who doesn't take a million photos.

00:50:37   I take a million photos.

00:50:39   So I need to- - It's easy to find out.

00:50:40   Check your settings.

00:50:41   And if you're well under 64, then go get the 64.

00:50:45   - Yeah, but the 128, you're right, is $750.

00:50:49   And then versus the Pro, which I would need to go up to-

00:50:55   - 1150. - 1150.

00:50:58   - That's a lot of money.

00:50:59   I mean, it's literally more than a 50% difference

00:51:04   because $800 versus 1200 would be exactly 1.5 times as much

00:51:09   but 1150 is actually more than 1.5 times as much as the 750.

00:51:15   It's such a great value.

00:51:17   And it's got the same great regular camera

00:51:23   And most people I know only shoot with the regular camera.

00:51:25   I know people, I was talking to,

00:51:27   chatting with a guy who works at Apple,

00:51:29   literally worked at Apple as an engineer, very smart,

00:51:32   recently left and he's just been a friend,

00:51:36   you know, like an iMessage friend for years.

00:51:39   He literally didn't realize his iPhone XS had two cameras.

00:51:43   And I was like, what did you think?

00:51:45   What he didn't realize, he just, you know,

00:51:47   he knew it could zoom,

00:51:48   but he didn't really realize that it was two cameras.

00:51:50   and this is somebody who worked at Apple.

00:51:52   I looked at my wife's, I did like a thing where I,

00:51:59   with her permission, I went in and looked at my wife's

00:52:01   photos that she's taken with her 10S over the last,

00:52:07   and 10, she had a 10 two years ago.

00:52:09   So she's had two years with a camera with dual lenses

00:52:11   and I look through her photos and she never uses anything

00:52:15   other than the 1X lens.

00:52:17   - And the Y, yeah.

00:52:18   - I mean, there might be like one or two

00:52:19   - My bigger question is like, what were you worried

00:52:22   you were gonna find that I wanna ask that on the podcast?

00:52:24   - I wasn't worried.

00:52:25   I just, you know, it's, you know,

00:52:28   - Privacy, privacy. - Just being polite.

00:52:29   Yeah, it's respect.

00:52:30   It's respect for, you know.

00:52:32   - It just turned out there was just all these photos

00:52:34   of you sleeping.

00:52:34   - Yeah. (laughs)

00:52:37   - Shot at 1X.

00:52:39   Only shot at 1X.

00:52:40   Why no zoom?

00:52:41   Why no zoom there?

00:52:42   - So I really think that not having the telephoto

00:52:44   is not a big deal for most people.

00:52:47   And if you're only zooming in a little,

00:52:49   like the equivalent of 2x, the digital zoom

00:52:54   is so good these days.

00:52:56   I think that in a lot of lighting conditions,

00:52:58   it would be very hard, you know, like,

00:53:00   Neelay could tell, 'cause Neelay has razor sharp eyes

00:53:03   and really, really is keenly aware of like,

00:53:06   the 100% level pixel, you know, noise and stuff like that.

00:53:10   But for most people, especially if you're only looking

00:53:12   at your pictures on your phone,

00:53:13   doing this without the optical zoom

00:53:15   of having a telephoto lens,

00:53:16   just pinching out a little bit to zoom in a little bit,

00:53:19   will look just fine.

00:53:21   It's a great camera for most people.

00:53:23   I think the screen is just terrific.

00:53:27   Neelay and I talked about this.

00:53:29   I actually think that at nighttime,

00:53:30   the color of the LCD iPhone 11 display

00:53:35   looks better than the Pro.

00:53:39   I really do.

00:53:40   I think it does whites better,

00:53:42   'cause OLED has the weird, the way that OLED works

00:53:46   with the sub-pixels is really, really strange.

00:53:49   And it's why for years before Apple had an OLED screen

00:53:53   and the early years of Android phones with OLED screens

00:53:56   had really wacky colors.

00:53:58   I mean, it was like really vibrant

00:54:01   and almost neon colored stuff

00:54:03   that wasn't supposed to be neon colored

00:54:04   'cause OLED is weird.

00:54:06   Whereas the LCD, it's just RGB,

00:54:08   red, green, blue for every pixel.

00:54:11   I actually think at nighttime that the iPhone 11 screen

00:54:14   for a white background, which is what a lot of people do.

00:54:17   You're using messages if you're not in dark mode.

00:54:20   You're reading email, you're doing stuff like that

00:54:23   with a white background.

00:54:24   I think it looks better.

00:54:26   It's a great value.

00:54:28   - Yeah, I mean, now also that you put together

00:54:30   that pricing thought for me,

00:54:32   like am I really gonna pay that much more

00:54:34   for the telephoto lens?

00:54:36   - I did, because I'm an idiot, but--

00:54:38   - I know, you're you, you know?

00:54:40   (laughing)

00:54:42   But I really do mean it sincerely.

00:54:45   And I think it's even stronger than last year.

00:54:47   Like last year there was a strong consensus

00:54:48   among reviewers that, hey, the XR is the iPhone,

00:54:52   the new iPhone for most people.

00:54:54   I think it's even stronger this year

00:54:55   that the iPhone 11 is the iPhone for most people.

00:54:57   And I think just calling it the iPhone 11 on Apple's part

00:55:01   shows that they agree.

00:55:02   - Yeah, I think that's the question for me

00:55:04   is am I most people?

00:55:05   And I think I am.

00:55:06   I think I've just realized I'm most people.

00:55:09   - Yeah. (laughs)

00:55:10   - I mean, also the battery life.

00:55:11   For me, when I did this,

00:55:12   just tried to do as much battery life testing as I could,

00:55:15   I think the order I really do feel certain is,

00:55:19   is you get the most with the Max,

00:55:21   then you step down a little bit to the 11,

00:55:23   and you get like, maybe it's an hour or hour and a half,

00:55:27   maybe two hours shy of what you would get from the Max,

00:55:30   and then below that is the Pro.

00:55:32   And so even though I like having the telephoto on the Pro

00:55:36   and the smaller size of the Pro or the 11 Pro,

00:55:39   I think I'm still better with the longer battery life

00:55:42   of the 11.

00:55:43   - Yeah.

00:55:45   Let me take another break here

00:55:46   and thank our next sponsor and circuit friends at Linode.

00:55:48   L-I-N-O-D-E.

00:55:50   Looks like line-ode, but it's pronounced Linode

00:55:52   because they specialize in Linux server hosting.

00:55:56   Look, you can build it on Linode.

00:55:58   Dedicated CPUs, distributed applications,

00:56:01   hosted services, websites,

00:56:03   anything you need to build that you require a server,

00:56:06   you could do it at Linode.

00:56:08   Everything they offer features native SSD storage.

00:56:12   All of their data centers around the world--

00:56:14   and they have like 11 or 12 of them now--

00:56:17   feature 40 gigabit networks and industry leading processors.

00:56:22   And they have additional data centers opening all the time.

00:56:26   They've just opened in Mumbai, India.

00:56:28   They have one in Toronto that opened earlier this year.

00:56:31   That's important not just for you and your team.

00:56:34   If you're in Canada, you want to be closer to your server

00:56:37   to get lower latency and stuff like that.

00:56:38   Sometimes it's even a legal requirement where maybe the country you're in or the business you're in needs to host the

00:56:44   data within the country that you're in so having these

00:56:48   11 or 12 data centers around the world is a big deal

00:56:51   And here's the thing you pay for what you use with hourly billing across all plans and add-on services

00:56:57   So if you only need a burst

00:56:58   Let's say you have a big product announcement or it's a new version of something coming out

00:57:02   You have a day where you're gonna have excessive traffic. You can pay more to get more bandwidth, etc

00:57:08   ramp up to more processors on the day you need it and then go back down to what you normally need automatically

00:57:13   Really really convenient

00:57:16   And they have a new cloud manager that Lenard has written featuring an improved user interface at cloud

00:57:22   Leno calm you can go check it out

00:57:24   it's open source even and

00:57:27   Really, it's just people. I know who use Linode and and developers, and I'm a customer, too

00:57:33   I'm a customer and I would tell people to use it even if they weren't sponsoring the show

00:57:37   That's how much I like this company.

00:57:40   Headquartered right here in Philadelphia, by the way.

00:57:42   Their headquarters is actually the building

00:57:46   that used to be the house where the real world Philadelphia

00:57:49   was shot, just a little behind the scenes stuff.

00:57:52   Anyway, for listeners of the show,

00:57:53   if you need web hosting and you're interested

00:57:55   in trying this out, they've got a phenomenal deal for you.

00:57:59   Use the promo code, talk show 2019, all one word, no space.

00:58:03   talk show 2019 and you get $20 a credit. Their hosting starts at just five bucks a month and

00:58:10   the five bucks a month plan is totally credible, very usable for a lot of things. So you can get

00:58:16   four months of free service right off the bat just by going to linode.com/thetalkshow. That's

00:58:22   at the URL linode.com/thetalkshow and use that code talk show 2019 when you sign up, get $20

00:58:30   of credit, four months of free service. Unbelievable. So my thanks to Linode. Great web hosting

00:58:36   service. I'm a happy customer. Go check them out.

00:58:40   I might use Linode. It's a really great company. Do you ever watch

00:58:44   The Real World? I never watched. I told Amy this though. She used to be on MTV.

00:58:49   Yeah, the MTV. Of course I did. You didn't watch? Where were you? Where were you in the

00:58:53   90s? I don't know. I guess I watched in the early

00:58:55   years. I watched a series or two. And then I did watch the Philadelphia one for a couple

00:59:00   shows until I got annoyed by all the cast members. But anyway, that's where Linode is,

00:59:04   their headquarters is a big old grand mansion type building where the real world Philadelphia

00:59:10   kids used to live. They're probably like all my age. They're probably all 50 years old

00:59:15   now.

00:59:16   Marie-Claire I'm like, what does Linode have to do with

00:59:18   the real world? I'm like, did one of the founders end up where they…

00:59:22   Dave Asprey No, they took over the building. It was the

00:59:24   that's their head Philadelphia. Yeah, their Philadelphia headquarters is the building

00:59:28   is that I'd say a weird building in old—we call it old city Philadelphia. Old city meaning

00:59:33   it's—that's like the part of the city that was vibrant back when the Declaration of Independence

00:59:38   was written, et cetera, et cetera. They have a big old grand building down there that looked like

00:59:43   a mansion when the real world kids lived there. And now it's an office for a vibrant web hosting

00:59:48   company. Yeah, I mean, I definitely—I watched San Francisco, New Orleans, Hawaii. I can't remember.

00:59:57   Did I watch Philadelphia? I need to go back and see what that was

00:59:59   anyway

01:00:01   Anyway iPhones iPhones so your review you did

01:00:06   You always of course have to do video because that's part of the that's part of the that's part of the

01:00:12   Part of the job at the Wall Street Journal

01:00:14   You have a you have a column to write and then it goes in the newspaper goes on a website

01:00:18   But you actually wrote two reviews this year, which I thought was really interesting and you know

01:00:22   I'm sure it would made it all all the easier for you

01:00:26   - Yeah, you know, I was struggling too

01:00:29   because I thought I wanted to make,

01:00:31   I wanted to write one piece with sort of that angle

01:00:33   of the second piece, which was really from, I mean,

01:00:36   I haven't actually gotten to the final count yet,

01:00:39   but I think we're closing on like,

01:00:41   near 400, 500 reader emails.

01:00:44   - Wow.

01:00:44   - Which is always amazing

01:00:47   because people really think they can just write to me

01:00:49   and I can write back and give everyone personal tech advice,

01:00:52   which I wish I could.

01:00:55   But so many people this year seem to be writing in

01:00:57   about iPhone 6s and iPhone 7s or iPhone 6s,

01:01:01   I would really just kind of say the 6 model

01:01:03   and the 7 model are one.

01:01:05   And I was like, okay, so this year,

01:01:07   I'm not gonna do a review.

01:01:08   I'm just gonna, I'm gonna do a review,

01:01:10   but I'm gonna contextualize it this way,

01:01:12   that like, if you're upgrading after three years,

01:01:14   here's what you're getting,

01:01:15   here's how to decide on these.

01:01:17   But then I realized as I was writing that

01:01:19   or trying to write that,

01:01:20   that I was sort of leaving out a lot of the guts

01:01:22   of what people may wanna know.

01:01:23   if they do want to upgrade from a year before, you know, probably

01:01:28   much more of your listeners or readers or maybe they're in the

01:01:31   one or two year range. So I decided to write these two

01:01:34   pieces.

01:01:35   I thought that it was interesting. I thought both were

01:01:38   interesting. And I thought that your technique with the because

01:01:43   one of the things and again, I say this every year, I don't

01:01:46   mean to complain, because this week, iPhone week is one of the

01:01:50   highlights of my year professionally. I enjoy it. It's like playoff time for people in

01:01:55   our business. I know people are – I get – my iPhone reviews are some of the most

01:02:03   read things I write all year long. I enjoy doing it. It's a privilege to do it. If

01:02:08   you would have told me 20 years ago, 15 years ago that, "Hey, you're going to get to

01:02:13   write reviews of the most anticipated Apple product of the year a week before they come

01:02:18   out, I would have been like, wow, that sounds that's terrific. That's exactly where I want

01:02:22   to be, you know, it's a thrill. So I don't, I want to preface all of this. But getting

01:02:27   the same way, yeah, getting three iPhones at once. And being told, you know, that everybody's

01:02:33   reviews are going to come up in six days. It's like, it is hard. It's, I mean, it is

01:02:41   even harder when you really think about how much has changed from last year, you know,

01:02:46   being able to say, okay, I wanna focus on these changes,

01:02:49   but I also need to contextualize for people

01:02:52   who may not care about these camera updates

01:02:55   or may not care about these processor updates

01:02:58   what they should do.

01:02:59   And no, I'm in the same boat.

01:03:02   And like, I always, like,

01:03:05   it's always an exhausting couple of days.

01:03:07   Like there's truly no sleep.

01:03:08   There's truly no time for anything outside of making videos,

01:03:12   writing, testing, battery testing,

01:03:14   taking photos of anything that moves, even stationary object.

01:03:17   I just I'm like a nuts. I'm just a complete crazy person. To the

01:03:22   point where actually, I am working with a new video

01:03:24   producer this year. And he's like, sort of, maybe we should

01:03:26   just capture you doing this stuff. And I was like, No, I

01:03:29   don't, I don't want anyone to see me like, he's like, let's

01:03:32   just capture you know, you're making these phone calls, you

01:03:34   do it this way. No, I don't want anyone to see me like this.

01:03:38   One of the ways I took the same shortcut last year is I, I

01:03:43   evaluated I knew that they were supposed to be the same last year's 10s 10s max

01:03:48   this year's 11 Pro and the 11 Pro max are supposed to be the same phone same

01:03:54   processor same screen technology same exact three cameras and same three

01:04:00   camera sensors everything is the same except for the very obvious difference

01:04:05   that one is bigger than the other it has a bigger screen and therefore has a

01:04:09   a bigger battery. So because I was so camera focused in my reviews, I did set up all the

01:04:16   phones and I verified that yes, these cameras are identical. If I take the same photo from

01:04:21   the same setup with any of these three lenses, I cannot tell the difference. Okay. So I put

01:04:26   the max aside from that point forward because I didn't do extensive battery testing. I was

01:04:34   mostly focused on the camera. So why bother shooting with that third one when it's going

01:04:38   to be exactly the same.

01:04:39   So I mostly focused on the 11 and 11 Pro,

01:04:43   and then comparing it to last year's phone.

01:04:45   But you, with the battery focus,

01:04:48   the lead of your review is,

01:04:50   like I wrote when I linked to you yesterday,

01:04:52   it entertains me, and this is why I like reading

01:04:55   other people's reviews and love reading your reviews,

01:04:57   is that you and I sort of had the inverse review,

01:04:59   where you were like, look, the battery life is better,

01:05:02   and as icing on the cake, the cameras are better.

01:05:04   And my take was, hey, the cameras are so much better,

01:05:06   And as icing on the cake, the battery life is better.

01:05:09   - Which are both very good takes.

01:05:11   I mean, I'm right, obviously.

01:05:13   And you are wrong.

01:05:14   - Well, you're probably right

01:05:16   in terms of applicability to more people.

01:05:19   - Well, I mean, Neil and I had this fight too.

01:05:23   Like, his big thing is you can't buy better pictures

01:05:26   after the fact, right?

01:05:28   Like, we didn't actually talk about this,

01:05:30   but like he's like, you can do other things

01:05:31   to save the battery life, right?

01:05:33   You can do other things, you can buy chargers,

01:05:35   You can keep charging, you can do all these things.

01:05:37   But cameras like, and we talk about taking photos

01:05:39   of our kids all the time, and he's obsessed

01:05:41   with taking great photos of his daughter

01:05:43   and they're amazing photos.

01:05:44   And I'm always happy when he comes over

01:05:46   and takes photos of my son, 'cause it's like,

01:05:47   these are amazing photos that I just, you know,

01:05:49   just take photos of with my, not crappy camera on my phone,

01:05:52   but it's the one that I have with me, right?

01:05:55   And so you can't throw money at that.

01:05:56   So yeah, everyone should buy a better phone

01:05:59   with a better camera.

01:06:00   And they shouldn't, you know, do things,

01:06:02   have to go out of their way to take better photos.

01:06:05   And I hear that, but I also hear the fact that like,

01:06:07   I see, I don't know, everyone walking around

01:06:10   with a battery pack in their pocket

01:06:13   and have a lightning cord on them,

01:06:15   or you can pretty much know that anywhere you go,

01:06:17   you can find a lightning cord because people

01:06:18   are drowning out of battery life.

01:06:23   And so, I mean, for me, and also, you know, it's funny,

01:06:25   I read back my iPhone 6s review, which was, you know,

01:06:29   for me, probably a career maker,

01:06:31   or it was a highlight of one of the bigger highlights

01:06:33   of something I've written in my career

01:06:34   because it got a lot of notice at the time

01:06:37   'cause this was supposed to be an S update

01:06:39   and just a simple spec update for Apple.

01:06:42   And I kind of took that moment to write about

01:06:44   how Apple wasn't addressing some of the biggest issues

01:06:46   we were having with our phones.

01:06:48   And the number one thing I said in that review,

01:06:50   three years, what was it?

01:06:51   That's three years ago, was battery life.

01:06:55   That there had been no improvements to battery life

01:06:57   in the last number of years

01:06:59   and that the phones were getting thinner,

01:07:00   but Apple hadn't been adding battery life.

01:07:03   - Yeah, and it's funny, it's very clear

01:07:06   when you listen to the way Apple talks about battery life,

01:07:09   which is always, it's funny, it's a hard thing to measure.

01:07:13   There is no way to put one number on it.

01:07:15   And if you were gonna put one number on it,

01:07:18   people put on the milliamp hours,

01:07:21   the actual technical specification of the battery.

01:07:24   But that doesn't tell you the story, right?

01:07:27   You can't just say Apple's phone has a 3,133 milliamp-hour battery,

01:07:34   and here's a Samsung phone with a 3,600 milliamp-hour.

01:07:39   So therefore, the Samsung one has a better battery.

01:07:41   Well, it does have a bigger battery, but that

01:07:43   doesn't mean you're going to get better battery life.

01:07:44   You have to use it.

01:07:45   And you can't-- you know, like, Apple does these things now

01:07:48   where they have, like, audio playback.

01:07:50   Eli and I were laughing about it, because, like, the audio playback

01:07:53   is, like, 65 hours.

01:07:55   And it's like, who is just like,

01:07:58   I'm gonna set up my iPhone, play some music

01:08:00   and just let it go, not plugged in for 65 consecutive hours.

01:08:05   But it is a measurement, you know,

01:08:07   and they do video playback, streaming video.

01:08:09   So it's like you can get 17 or 18 hours

01:08:11   of continuous Netflix video playback.

01:08:15   - Yeah, and actually I had to change.

01:08:17   So I've been doing battery testing for like,

01:08:19   I don't know, 10, 15 years now

01:08:21   because of when I used to test laptops.

01:08:23   And I went through many, many years of using

01:08:26   video rundown tests or even streaming audio tests.

01:08:29   And then there were times where I had worked with engineers

01:08:31   to create web surfing tests.

01:08:35   When I was at the Verge, I worked with an engineer.

01:08:37   It was like, when we first started the Verge,

01:08:39   my big thing was like,

01:08:40   I'm gonna make our own industry battery test.

01:08:43   And Neelai or Josh Sapolsky at the time said,

01:08:46   okay, fine, here's some money, go hire a engineer.

01:08:48   We made this site, it would cycle through different websites.

01:08:52   I was obsessed with it and it didn't,

01:08:54   it had a lot of issues, it would always crash.

01:08:57   I mean, battery life testing is one of the worst things

01:08:59   as a reviewer.

01:09:01   And that's why this year I kind of just said,

01:09:03   I'm gonna go through my normal routine,

01:09:05   which each of these phones, I got to do each day

01:09:08   and I did two days with the 11.

01:09:10   No, I did two days with the 11 Pro

01:09:14   because that was the one I was really trying to figure out

01:09:17   how much better did this thing get.

01:09:19   And yeah, I mean, look,

01:09:22   Part of me feels like Apple's,

01:09:23   and I said this in the piece,

01:09:24   they've admitted that they needed to do better there.

01:09:27   They're slightly thicker.

01:09:28   I mean, you really wouldn't even really be able

01:09:30   to tell the difference, but they're talking about it too.

01:09:33   Part of me also wonders how much of this is just

01:09:37   to preempt next year when they likely do add 5G

01:09:40   and that does likely take somewhat of a hit at battery.

01:09:42   - Yeah, I wonder.

01:09:43   Well, I loved your approach.

01:09:46   So basically for people, if they haven't read

01:09:48   your main iPhone 11 review,

01:09:51   and shame on you if you haven't read Joanna's review.

01:09:53   - Or watch the video, please just watch the video.

01:09:55   More video views, please.

01:09:56   - But it's a brilliant technique,

01:09:59   and it parlays or it builds on the trust you have

01:10:03   with your readers, because ideally what you would wanna do

01:10:06   is what you said you'd like tried to build at The Verge,

01:10:08   and build like a scientific rig where you could do,

01:10:11   somebody could say, here's what we did.

01:10:13   We did these 26 steps.

01:10:15   If you do the same 26 steps,

01:10:17   you'll get the same results, right?

01:10:18   That's science, right?

01:10:19   that you're supposed to have reproducible results.

01:10:22   It just, that's not a good way to test phone battery life

01:10:26   in the real world.

01:10:27   So what you did was you set up all three new phones

01:10:29   and went through a typical work day with the same commute

01:10:33   and going into, I guess you went into

01:10:36   the Wall Street Journal office every day.

01:10:38   And Manhattan remains a battery killer.

01:10:41   I had to go, 'cause I didn't go to California this year,

01:10:43   I had to go to New York to get the review units.

01:10:46   And it was a real quick trip.

01:10:47   I was like, I went up early in the morning on the train,

01:10:49   my briefing with Apple, got the phones, and I was back on a train to Philadelphia by like

01:10:53   1230. I was looking at my iPhone XS, my real phone at the time, and I was like, "Holy

01:11:01   crap, I'm at 50%!" I wasn't on the phone. I was just talking to people at Apple. I was

01:11:08   like, "My God, Manhattan is a battery killer." So you went through your typical day with

01:11:12   all three phones and just recorded, "Here's when I came home and went to bed. Here's

01:11:16   was left. I think that's useful. And I think that's a it's more

01:11:20   useful to real people to find out how these things hold up in

01:11:23   the real world. But you can't reproduce it. You can't say I'm

01:11:26   going to I'll reproduce Joanna's results and live a day as

01:11:30   Joanna Stern. Well, you can't do that, right?

01:11:33   I mean, I did do I did do the battery, the video rundown

01:11:37   tests, I did end up using, I used to use this video on

01:11:41   Netflix, that was 11 hours long, and I would run that down. I did

01:11:46   I could find the same video on YouTube.

01:11:48   So I did do that test just to see the gap

01:11:51   between last year's model and this year's model

01:11:53   and to also see, just give it a benchmark

01:11:55   from each of these phones around the same test

01:11:58   under the same conditions, what are the gaps between them?

01:12:01   So we could kind of see like, yes,

01:12:03   the Max really does get the most battery life.

01:12:05   It ran for 14 and a half hours.

01:12:07   The 11 ran for 12 or 13 and a half hours or 13 hours.

01:12:11   And then the 11 Pro ran a little bit less.

01:12:14   So I still think that's a worthy test

01:12:16   and no one, I don't think most, no one's gonna do that.

01:12:18   I mean, like, I just do that because I feel like,

01:12:22   let me just add some more testing.

01:12:23   I just do that to make my life more of a living hell,

01:12:25   honestly. (laughing)

01:12:27   There's no real reason I do it otherwise

01:12:29   than just to hate myself.

01:12:31   - But I think you're right to go back to the iPhone 6S.

01:12:34   I think you were right and nailed it

01:12:36   when you wrote that review that up until that point,

01:12:40   it was very clear that what Apple was doing every year

01:12:43   was saying, "Our battery life is good enough."

01:12:46   It was like 10 hours or something.

01:12:48   It was like 10 hours of X, I don't know, video.

01:12:51   So they say 10 hours of video playback.

01:12:53   And it was very clear that year after year,

01:12:55   they were saying, "Well, 10 hours of video playback,

01:12:58   that's our goal."

01:13:01   And then the team would like,

01:13:02   "So let's see how thin we can make a new iPhone

01:13:04   that still gets 10 hours of battery life

01:13:07   and see if we can make it lighter

01:13:09   and still get 10 hours of battery life year after year."

01:13:12   And I really think, I think you called them out on it,

01:13:14   and in hindsight, you were very much right.

01:13:16   And I think Apple clearly internally had a,

01:13:18   "Hey, I think we've got the wrong,

01:13:20   "this holding onto this amount of battery life is wrong.

01:13:23   "We need to improve battery life."

01:13:25   People are using these phones more and more.

01:13:27   And the interesting thing is that I think the 6S

01:13:30   is the thinnest iPhone that was ever made.

01:13:33   If not, it was the 6, it's very close.

01:13:35   But somewhere around the iPhone 6, year after year,

01:13:38   or at least not counting the S generations

01:13:42   that were the same thickness,

01:13:43   the phones got thinner and thinner and thinner.

01:13:46   And then from the 6 forward,

01:13:48   they've gotten thicker every time they changed the hardware.

01:13:52   The 7 was slightly thicker.

01:13:54   I mean, every time it's gotten thicker, it's been slight.

01:13:58   But you add that up over a couple of generations

01:14:01   and the phones this year are actually quite a bit thicker

01:14:04   than an iPhone 6.

01:14:06   - Yeah, and I think it was very telling

01:14:08   as I also remember thinking,

01:14:09   okay, maybe I'm onto something with calling them out on this.

01:14:13   When they, it was 2015, same thing,

01:14:16   same year as the 6S released,

01:14:17   it was the first year they released the smart battery case.

01:14:20   And I thought that was a big admission too,

01:14:22   that we know that people are strapping giant batteries

01:14:26   to the back of our phones

01:14:28   because we're not giving them enough here.

01:14:31   And I mean, that's what I said last year

01:14:32   in the 10R review, this was the first year

01:14:35   that I thought they designed a battery of an iPhone

01:14:38   that could keep up with us.

01:14:39   Though, I mean, the Plus models had been doing

01:14:41   quite a bit of that for a while,

01:14:43   but between the XR last year and the Max,

01:14:46   it was like, this is the first year

01:14:48   that there were phones that could keep up with a heavy user.

01:14:51   - Yeah.

01:14:52   I think, and I wrote about this in my review,

01:14:55   one of the changes this year

01:14:58   is that they've dropped 3D Touch across the board.

01:15:03   And last year, the iPhone XR was already,

01:15:07   where all of this year's phones are,

01:15:09   already didn't have 3D Touch

01:15:12   and used what they now call Haptic Touch instead.

01:15:15   I think that's one of the reasons

01:15:18   why the XR got so much better battery life

01:15:20   than the XS and XS Max last year,

01:15:24   was that it was already had a bigger battery

01:15:27   and the LCD screen is lower,

01:15:31   uses less power than the OLED screens.

01:15:34   - So you're thinking is that because the chip inside

01:15:37   that was enabling the 3D or the layer on the screen.

01:15:39   - Yeah, it's the layer.

01:15:40   It's the layer, removing that layer.

01:15:43   And nobody at Apple,

01:15:45   I mean, nobody told me anything on the record,

01:15:48   but off the record in my briefings,

01:15:50   I wasn't told, hey, getting rid of 3D Touch

01:15:55   allowed us to make the battery thicker.

01:15:57   But reading between the lines, that's what I heard,

01:15:59   is getting, you know,

01:16:01   I really do think that like the,

01:16:03   I'm sure they're out by now, the eye, I didn't look,

01:16:05   but the iFixit teardown.

01:16:06   I do think that the battery definitely got to use up

01:16:10   some of the volume that the 3D Touch,

01:16:12   'cause it was, it was a full layer underneath the screen,

01:16:16   corner to corner, because you could do 3D Touch presses

01:16:19   anywhere on the screen, and it was a full layer.

01:16:22   I don't know how thin it was.

01:16:23   It was probably, I'm sure if you took it apart and said,

01:16:26   "Here's the actual 3D Touch layer,

01:16:28   "it probably looks like a sheet of paper."

01:16:31   It's like, well, that didn't take up much space.

01:16:33   But every single little bit of volume matters

01:16:36   in these phones, they're so densely packed with components.

01:16:40   And I think the evidence is there

01:16:43   that going from the XR to the 11 this year,

01:16:47   in Apple's measurements, you get one hour

01:16:49   of extra battery life, which is a good year-over-year change.

01:16:52   But the pros are, yeah, the pros get four to five hours

01:16:56   of extra battery life, and I really think

01:16:59   that removing 3D Touch was a big part of that.

01:17:02   That they, you know, and kudos to Apple,

01:17:06   I think for being willing, I'm not gonna call it a mistake,

01:17:09   but they were willing to go back and rethink

01:17:13   how we're gonna do these long presses and force presses.

01:17:17   And sure, in and of itself, 3D touch is definitely better

01:17:20   than the haptic touch, but the trade-off

01:17:22   for extra battery life, I think,

01:17:23   is absolutely the right trade-off to make.

01:17:26   - And funny enough, they introduced that in the 6S.

01:17:29   - Yeah, yeah, yeah, which put the 6S even further back,

01:17:35   I guess from where it could be battery life wise.

01:17:38   - Obviously, the funny thing in this all too

01:17:40   has been that I've heard from so many success owners

01:17:43   who have been so happy with their phones.

01:17:45   - Yeah, I'm curious about that.

01:17:47   And it's, you know, and I try to emphasize it.

01:17:51   I know my audience at Daring Fireball

01:17:53   is definitely the enthusiast crowd.

01:17:55   And so you're right.

01:17:57   I'm sure there are way more people

01:17:58   who are on the annual upgrade plan

01:18:01   and do get new iPhones every year,

01:18:02   or at least get them every two years.

01:18:04   And the journal audience is obviously truly mainstream.

01:18:08   I mean, it's this massive newspaper

01:18:11   that is popular all across the country, if not the world,

01:18:14   and you're gonna get people from all sorts of levels

01:18:17   of technical acumen, and you're gonna get a lot of people

01:18:19   who are just using an iPhone 6 or 6S,

01:18:23   and just because that's what normal people do.

01:18:25   They use their phones until they break.

01:18:28   - Right, as I said in my piece,

01:18:31   Sir Upgrades a lot, those are your readers,

01:18:33   And I think I have some of those readers,

01:18:36   but I also have a lot of these, as I said,

01:18:38   sort of Sixers who were just like coming out of the woodwork

01:18:41   and not sure what to do about, you know,

01:18:43   well, I think the main thing for them

01:18:45   is that their phones are old and they're falling,

01:18:47   you know, it's time to upgrade,

01:18:49   but also they're not gonna get iOS 13.

01:18:51   - Right.

01:18:53   - Which to me is a reason to upgrade to a new phone.

01:18:56   - Yeah.

01:18:58   Yeah, and there's a lot of things that won't work

01:18:59   without iOS 13.

01:19:01   I mean, it's still not out.

01:19:04   I guess we should talk about the disaster of the iOS 13

01:19:07   rollout before we wrap the show.

01:19:09   But there's features that you need to-- like the shared

01:19:14   folders in iCloud Drive and stuff like that only work

01:19:16   if you're up on the latest version.

01:19:18   Yeah, and for me, it's always security updates.

01:19:24   Yeah, security.

01:19:26   I wrote a big piece about sign in with Apple.

01:19:28   I think it's a reason, it is the reason to upgrade.

01:19:32   - Also the new emoji.

01:19:33   And everybody agrees, it sounds funny,

01:19:35   but everybody seems to agree

01:19:37   that it really is a big motivator for normal people

01:19:39   to keep their iPhones up to date

01:19:41   is to get the latest emoji set.

01:19:43   - I actually believe that might be the biggest reason.

01:19:46   - I do too. - I have never thought of that,

01:19:47   but you'll end up with the little box

01:19:49   and you'll have no idea what somebody's trying to say to you.

01:19:52   - Right, and somebody will, you'll say, what is that?

01:19:54   And then they'll tell you,

01:19:55   and it sounds like a fun emoji to have,

01:19:57   And then you want it, right?

01:19:59   Oh, I want that.

01:20:00   Why don't I--

01:20:02   - That's actually a very funny story.

01:20:03   - Yeah, no, security researchers,

01:20:06   I follow a couple of them on Twitter.

01:20:07   They're deadly serious people for the most part.

01:20:11   Some of them are rather humorless, really.

01:20:13   It's just the mentality of being a security researcher.

01:20:16   They absolutely believe that it's a great,

01:20:19   it's a boon to security

01:20:22   because it really does motivate people to,

01:20:27   it, you know, effectively it's like good hygiene for your phone, keep it up to date with the

01:20:31   software updates. Well, the emoji is what makes people want to do it.

01:20:34   Rebekah: It's amazing.

01:20:36   Adam: Especially like teenagers because, you know, they probably – most of them probably

01:20:39   don't even type anything other than emoji.

01:20:42   Rebekah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the iOS 13 rollout has been a disaster in my opinion.

01:20:50   Adam Well, let's hold off on that. Let's hold

01:20:52   off on that. The other thing I want to talk about and I don't want to, you know, badmouth

01:20:56   off of a fellow member of our tribe.

01:20:59   But I thought the other thing that was really interesting

01:21:01   about your second review, your,

01:21:04   here's a iPhone 11 review for those with older iPhones,

01:21:08   was a fascinating contrast to Brian Chen's New York Times,

01:21:13   his only review of the 11s,

01:21:14   which I wrote about it during Fireball.

01:21:18   I thought it was a terrible review.

01:21:20   'Cause I don't think it was helpful.

01:21:21   I thought that he, again, you know,

01:21:25   I'm not asking you to slag on Brian here on the podcast other than – let me do it.

01:21:30   But I thought his review was terrible because I really don't think it was helpful to people

01:21:34   with older reviews and saying things like, "Hey, these new phones take great pictures

01:21:39   in low light and maybe your success takes terrible pictures in low light, but you could

01:21:44   just turn on the flash."

01:21:47   I called it technical malpractice.

01:21:48   Like that's terrible advice.

01:21:50   Like really, I think a great premise for a mainstream tech columnist would be a column

01:21:55   like how to get good pictures in low light with your existing camera without using the

01:21:59   flash because the flash is terrible.

01:22:01   Thank you for these great column ideas here.

01:22:05   Yeah, that would be a great column idea, in my opinion, how to get good pictures in low

01:22:10   light, you know, balance, you know, keep your hands still, etc, etc.

01:22:15   And your column was your second review of the phones was exactly this basically the

01:22:20   same premise.

01:22:21   You're somebody with an older phone and you might want to hang on to her or maybe not.

01:22:24   Here's how to evaluate whether now's the time to upgrade.

01:22:27   And yours was like entirely helpful.

01:22:29   It was like here's how you can make a rational judgment like that's that to me is our job

01:22:34   as reviewers.

01:22:35   You know your audience and write to the audience and you know like I said my audience is a

01:22:39   little different than yours in some ways but know your audience and my goal is look I've

01:22:44   got this phone before any of you do, let me try to help you understand it. Here's what's

01:22:49   new. Here's what's interesting. Here's what's good. Here's what's bad. Here's what's missing.

01:22:53   Here's, you know, maybe why you don't want it. But I want you to understand it. And I

01:22:58   yeah, and, and I had the, I mean, it was it was very helpful to have this body of emails,

01:23:06   which my editor Wilson helped me kind of go through, he went through many of them, and

01:23:11   We sort of organized them based on issues people had

01:23:15   with the new phones, why they were upgrading,

01:23:17   what they were scared of.

01:23:18   I mean, I have so many people very scared of Face ID.

01:23:21   It was very interesting.

01:23:23   - That's what I wanted to, I just about to ask you that.

01:23:25   Yeah, so how many people, I have this theory that,

01:23:29   so I forget if it was, I think it was last year.

01:23:32   It was last year when both of the new phones.

01:23:36   So two years ago, the iPhone X came out with the,

01:23:38   you know, Face ID, no home button.

01:23:40   and they go hand in hand. Last year, both of the new phones had

01:23:46   no home button face ID. And there was this. And I don't get

01:23:50   into the finance stuff with Apple as much, you know, you and

01:23:52   I like to talk about the products, the software and the

01:23:55   hardware. But there, you know, there was this hiccup where it

01:23:57   seemed like the first quarter of sales of new iPhones was a bit

01:24:01   disappointing, less than Apple expected less than analysts

01:24:03   expected. And the stock took a hit in January when they had to

01:24:06   announce this. My one of my theories, I can't prove it. I

01:24:09   I don't know how you ever could prove it,

01:24:10   but one of my theories is that there's so many people

01:24:13   out there who are spooked by the change.

01:24:18   They're used to having a home button.

01:24:22   You click the home button and that's how you go back

01:24:25   to the home screen and they're used to touch ID

01:24:27   and face ID seems a little scarier

01:24:30   and maybe like maybe it wouldn't work

01:24:32   or maybe there's a privacy thing to be spooked about.

01:24:34   It somehow seems a little weirder to people

01:24:38   than a fingerprint reader,

01:24:41   that I think that sales were hurt by that.

01:24:42   I really do think that there was X number

01:24:45   of million people out there out of hundreds of millions

01:24:47   who might buy an iPhone who put it off.

01:24:49   So I'm curious to hear what the readers

01:24:52   of the journal were writing about that.

01:24:54   - I mean, I've gotten,

01:24:55   I'm looking through a lot of the emails now.

01:24:57   I mean, there's a lot of confusion from people.

01:24:59   They don't really quite understand

01:25:00   that they can use Face ID to get into apps

01:25:03   and things like that.

01:25:04   So there's that.

01:25:05   Some people are just scared of it.

01:25:06   They don't wanna use their face to log in.

01:25:09   They prefer the fingerprint sensor.

01:25:11   Face ID for scanning, this person saying,

01:25:15   would the face scan work automatically

01:25:17   in the fingerprint scan's place?

01:25:19   I like the fingerprint access,

01:25:22   and obviously the 11 doesn't have this.

01:25:23   Does facial recognition also work to get into apps?

01:25:26   - Right, see? - I mean, just a lot

01:25:27   of confusion around a lot of it, but also some,

01:25:29   I mean, there was one here,

01:25:31   I was really hoping for fingerprint unlock

01:25:34   on the new phones.

01:25:35   - Yeah, see?

01:25:36   want to easily unlock with my thumb, I guess I'll keep

01:25:38   waiting. Yeah, I see you're gonna be waiting for a long

01:25:41   time. I think. I mean, though there's rumors that they'll put

01:25:44   it in the screen.

01:25:45   Yeah, but that's a weird rumor. And I wonder whether it would be

01:25:49   an alternative to face ID or like in addition to face ID,

01:25:53   like, hey, if you want extra security, you could use both.

01:25:56   Yeah. When do you expect Apple Apple spell drawing to offer in

01:26:01   in screen fingerprint scanning? I have two phones and I need to

01:26:03   upgrade but I'll wait I don't like face ID see ya see you're

01:26:08   you're you're proving my theory. I know I know this has been a

01:26:11   theory since last year. I mean, not a theory I heard from I

01:26:13   mean, if I really go back, you know, I searched fingerprint

01:26:16   scanner in my inbox here and I'm going all the way back to 2000

01:26:19   Well, these are probably from 2017 I organize all my reader

01:26:25   emails into a file and try to

01:26:26   and apples in a weird position where I don't know that you can

01:26:32   make a fun commercial that let's just say you could come up with a script for a 30 second

01:26:36   TV commercial that that helps convince people that face ID is something they can trust and

01:26:41   they will like the the other problem that Apple has is they still sell older iPhones

01:26:48   that have the touch ID they can't really slag on touch ID because they still sell iPhone

01:26:54   eight and yeah, I mean, I recommended iPhone eight to these people. I don't think that's

01:26:58   a bad recommendation, especially since like, you know, they'll they'll they're going to

01:27:03   continue to update with iOS for a number of years out on that. Why not? Did I actually

01:27:08   keep in the line? Like you should stockpile them if you're really that worried? I don't

01:27:11   think you did. But maybe. Yeah, get a couple spares. Yeah, get a couple spares as I feel

01:27:19   like this phone's going away. I mean, the other big thing, let me type in se. So many

01:27:23   people emailing about the smaller size. So many people I

01:27:28   mean, oh, yeah, look at it just this last couple of weeks of

01:27:31   scrolling down and so many when I search for se in my inbox. You

01:27:37   know, they upgrade the smaller phone. I love the se my hands

01:27:41   are small. I

01:27:43   that's unfortunate. I even I get that because I don't think

01:27:48   that's just that has nothing to do with your nerdiness. It's

01:27:53   It's people, you know, and there are definitely, I know people who are, you know, super nerds and,

01:27:58   you know, developers who just love the SE size for that one handedness and, you know, compactness

01:28:06   and size in your pocket and etc, etc. The rumors that they might do an SE like mid cycle update

01:28:13   this year don't, are going to disappoint those people because the rumors are that it's going to

01:28:18   to be like an iPhone 8 size device with, I guess, the A13 chip and probably a better

01:28:25   camera and something.

01:28:26   Rebekah Demirel They should do that for these people.

01:28:28   They will still sell…

01:28:29   Michael Scott Yeah, but that's – I don't think that's

01:28:30   small enough to please the SE people though, right?

01:28:33   So like the iPhone…

01:28:34   Rebekah Demirel I mean this was an email from a – I'm

01:28:35   quite tempted by the new 11 but it's huge.

01:28:37   My priority is a better camera and I've even toyed with getting a Samsung and leaving

01:28:41   the Apple family.

01:28:42   Should I just go to an 8 or should I wait until they may update the SE?

01:28:45   Michael Scott I don't think Samsung makes a smaller phone

01:28:48   Samsung's phones are all huge. No, well that the new Galaxy s 10. He is that what it's called? Oh,

01:28:56   yeah, it's about the same size as an eight. Yeah. And the pixel the smaller pixels are,

01:29:04   are smaller and definitely lighter. They're gonna write this woman back. She's very nice.

01:29:09   But I think the people who really want so nice people who really want that se sized phone,

01:29:14   though I think are out of luck.

01:29:17   I don't know what Apple is thinking on that front because it really does seem like demand

01:29:20   is out there.

01:29:21   When the SE did come out two or three years ago, whenever that was, they were in short

01:29:26   supply for months and there was a quarterly analyst call where Tim Cook even admitted

01:29:32   that SE demand had outstripped their expectations and so they were going to catch up soon.

01:29:39   you know, yes, for the debut quarter, you couldn't get one.

01:29:44   You know, you had to order it and wait 10 days

01:29:47   for it to show up.

01:29:48   - I bet they do.

01:29:49   I mean, the interesting thing you're saying

01:29:51   about the eight makes sense.

01:29:54   Maybe they could cut it down a little bit.

01:29:56   I mean, I don't know.

01:29:59   - I don't know what they're gonna do,

01:30:00   but I think people, there's definitely demand.

01:30:03   I mean, whether there's enough demand

01:30:04   to justify it on Apple's part, I don't know,

01:30:06   but there are definitely people

01:30:07   who really want something the physical size of an SE.

01:30:11   I mean, I'm sure they'd love it

01:30:12   if it went corner to corner with the display

01:30:14   and you could get a bigger display

01:30:16   by getting rid of the chin and forehead,

01:30:18   but they really want that physical size

01:30:20   that is the size basically of an iPhone 5S SE.

01:30:25   - Well, for the 15 people in my inbox, they should make it.

01:30:29   I mean, this is 15 in the last,

01:30:30   since September 11th have written about the SE.

01:30:33   - Yeah, there you go. - Which is not that many,

01:30:35   but they're all like pretty lengthy emails.

01:30:37   - Tim Cook, if you're listening,

01:30:39   you can sell 15 of these things.

01:30:41   - 15 to these Wall Street Journal readers.

01:30:44   It's pretty good, it's a pretty good deal.

01:30:48   - All right, let me take a break here

01:30:49   and thank our third and final sponsor.

01:30:50   And then we can go into the,

01:30:51   we can finish up without after worrying

01:30:53   about another sponsor break.

01:30:54   Hey, this is another company that I love.

01:30:57   Longtime sponsor of the show, Fracture.

01:31:00   Fracture is where you go with your photos,

01:31:03   talking about photos of kids and dogs and stuff like that.

01:31:06   Hey, get 'em off your tiny little phone screen.

01:31:09   Print them out, put 'em on something

01:31:11   you can hang on the wall.

01:31:13   And guess what, fracture is the best way I know to do it.

01:31:16   Because what fracture does is they take,

01:31:18   you send 'em your photos, you pick a size,

01:31:21   and they print your photos directly on glass.

01:31:24   Corner to corner, you don't need a frame.

01:31:27   It's just corner to corner, edge to edge,

01:31:31   right on the glass, looks like it's right

01:31:33   on the surface of the glass.

01:31:34   It's amazing, it looks so much better.

01:31:36   I don't know how to explain it unless you've seen it

01:31:38   in person, a fracture print.

01:31:40   It looks so much better than a printout on a piece of paper

01:31:45   that is put behind a piece of glass.

01:31:47   I don't know how, I don't know why.

01:31:49   I think it's a lot like the visual effect

01:31:51   of when they first started putting the screens laminated

01:31:55   right on the iPhone and getting rid of that air gap

01:31:58   between the touch and the glass and the pixels behind it.

01:32:01   It just looks amazing.

01:32:03   These are great.

01:32:04   They are fantastic gifts for anybody in your family.

01:32:07   Everybody loves getting pictures.

01:32:10   And everything you need to use them comes in the box.

01:32:13   If you wanna hang them on the wall,

01:32:14   if you wanna prop them up on a mantle or your desk

01:32:17   or something like that, everything comes in the box.

01:32:19   They are fantastic.

01:32:21   They are made, handmade, in Gainesville, Florida

01:32:26   from US source materials.

01:32:28   And they are a green company, Fracture,

01:32:31   operating a carbon neutral factory down there in Florida.

01:32:35   Really great people, great company, and a fantastic product.

01:32:39   Everybody I know who's ever gotten fracture prints

01:32:41   is like, "Why did I wait so long?

01:32:43   "These are great.

01:32:44   "Why didn't you tell me about them?"

01:32:45   And I'm like, "Hey, if you listen to my show,

01:32:46   "I've been telling you about them for years."

01:32:48   They are fantastic.

01:32:50   They have a special offer for listeners of the show.

01:32:53   Go to fracture.me, that's their website, fracture.me,

01:32:57   and you can get a special discount

01:33:00   on your first fracture order.

01:33:02   You don't even need a code, you just go there,

01:33:04   you get the discount on your first order.

01:33:06   And here's what they want you to do.

01:33:08   When you place an order, at the very end,

01:33:10   they ask a one question survey,

01:33:12   which is where did you hear about fracture?

01:33:15   They want you to fill in my show, the talk show.

01:33:17   That way they know that their sponsorship money

01:33:20   is well spent.

01:33:21   So go to fracture.me, go get some of your photos,

01:33:24   print it out, I really recommend it.

01:33:26   I do it. Well, not right now. Wait till the show's over.

01:33:30   Nah. Right now. I took so many good photos with the 11, just testing it with my son and

01:33:37   dog that I'm doing it.

01:33:39   You know what's funny? I guess you, your son and Nili's daughter are about the same age.

01:33:45   They're pretty close, right?

01:33:46   They're like, they're six months, a little bit more. When we've gotten them together

01:33:51   to play, they don't have a ton of interest in each other just yet.

01:33:54   - Yeah, but soon enough, that'll seem indistinguishable.

01:33:58   - They went swimming together this summer

01:34:00   at my parents' house and they,

01:34:01   I mean, he was spraying her with the hose

01:34:04   and she seemed to like that.

01:34:06   - So my son is 15, could be 16 in January.

01:34:11   So it's a decade and a half difference almost.

01:34:15   But I just stumbled across a folder of old video

01:34:20   that we had when my son was actually

01:34:24   around the age of your kids. He was about a year and a half. And back then, 13 and a

01:34:32   half years ago, my video camera was a mini DV camera. So it's standard def, four to three.

01:34:41   Low light performance was pretty crummy. But it was a video. I have a bunch of them. I've

01:34:46   gotten them digitized. So they're on my computer now. And I don't have to worry about, you

01:34:50   hooking up a mini DV thing and you know you got to get it but it what a pain in

01:34:55   the ass it is it's like I had to pay money to somebody to take these tapes

01:34:59   and turn them into files that I could actually play but I've got them but oh

01:35:03   my I mean it's not heartbreaking I don't want to say that because it's like you

01:35:08   know I've got we've got hours and hours and hours of video of when Jonas was a

01:35:13   baby and a toddler and a little kid and they're great and you know it just

01:35:19   seeing them and hearing him say funny things is all that matters. But it's like there's

01:35:22   also and we're all laughing the three of us, you know, me and my wife and Jonas were watching

01:35:26   this together and he's hilarious. And, you know, you just have that nostalgic feeling

01:35:34   that that like, wow, this is, you know, like, we're tearing up my God, look at this kid.

01:35:38   He's so tall. And he's, you know, his 10th grade. And, you know, he's like a little man

01:35:42   now and here he was when he was a baby. And in some ways, he was the same. And it's so

01:35:45   great that we have all this video. Like when I was a kid, we didn't have video. It's great.

01:35:49   But then there's the tech nerd part of me who's looking at this and thinking, Oh my

01:35:53   God, I wish I had an iPhone back. Look at this low. Look at this low light performance.

01:35:58   Oh my God, this is absolutely horrible.

01:36:00   Yeah, I mean, I think about even I like to do I tried when he was first born to take

01:36:09   like video every day and just realized like, okay, no normal person who has a job can do

01:36:13   But anyway, I go back and watch that stuff even now and I'm like, "This was not a

01:36:19   very good video."

01:36:20   And I had an iPhone 7, right?

01:36:22   Like it was two years ago.

01:36:23   JEAN-MARIE LIEBERMANN Well, let me tell you.

01:36:25   A mini DV camera from 2004 really doesn't hold up today.

01:36:30   AUBREY SAKAMOTO At least you got it digitized.

01:36:32   I mean that's another column I should write.

01:36:33   JEAN-MARIE LIEBERMANN Yeah, that's a great column really in terms of how…

01:36:36   AUBREY SAKAMOTO I'm trying to do that this year.

01:36:37   JEAN-MARIE LIEBERMANN Get them before they're even…

01:36:41   The longer you go, the harder it's going to be to get older formats or older tape formats

01:36:46   digitized.

01:36:47   Yeah.

01:36:48   And then there's – I did a piece a couple of years ago which is still a very popular

01:36:51   piece on how to do that with your old photos.

01:36:53   You can send them to a company and they'll just scan them all and do it.

01:36:58   The other thing we have a lot of clips of and we didn't have to digitize them because

01:37:01   they were digitized but they're – Jonas, in between that mini DV era and then before

01:37:07   iPhones became great consumer video devices was that flip camera era.

01:37:14   Oh yeah.

01:37:15   Which was in hindsight a weird blip technology wise.

01:37:19   But we had a couple of these flips and I'd buy a new one.

01:37:22   It was like the iPhone of the time for video because it was like a year later you could

01:37:25   get one that shot HD instead of SD and had better low light and stuff.

01:37:29   So we have tons of like flip camera footage of them too because it was a great thing to

01:37:33   to just throw in your pocket and going about your day and something cute happens and you

01:37:37   can take a clip.

01:37:38   But again, technically speaking, looking at that footage now, it is very crude.

01:37:45   It is extraordinarily crude.

01:37:47   So it's…

01:37:48   Cheryl Kane-Piasecki That poor company.

01:37:49   I remember having two of those and I would bring them to, I think it was probably one

01:37:56   of the iPhone events and then even the early Android phone events and I would shoot video

01:38:02   on there and loaded onto my computer and edited it real quick and uploaded to Engadget.

01:38:07   Right.

01:38:07   Yeah.

01:38:09   Well, it's just astounding to think about. I know Bill Gates has been credited with it,

01:38:17   and I don't know if it's original to him, but I'll give credit to good old Bill Gates. But something

01:38:21   to the effect of we as human beings always overestimate what we can do technology-wise

01:38:31   year over year and always underestimate the profound changes that happen after a decade.

01:38:40   Every 10 years it's like, "Wow, it's just astounding."

01:38:43   And every year, like when the new iPhones come out, we're like, "This isn't that exciting

01:38:47   from last year's phones."

01:38:49   But then all of a sudden you do that, you have one of those updates every year for 10

01:38:52   years, and all of a sudden you're like, "Oh my God, that thing was a piece of crap 10

01:38:56   years ago."

01:38:57   No, I mean, one of the pieces that I've probably loved working on the most in the last five

01:39:01   years was the 10th anniversary of the iPhone. I tried to live with the original iPhone for a day.

01:39:05   Yeah, yeah.

01:39:06   And I mean, first of all, I put in a SIM card. It didn't have, I used 2G service

01:39:12   on that original iPhone on T-Mobile. And it was that was for me, like eye opening. It was like,

01:39:19   even if everything was the same, but you had 2G service. Gosh, like that to me, just like,

01:39:28   remember how slow it was.

01:39:29   You can't even remember how slow it is.

01:39:31   We blocked it out.

01:39:32   - Right, when you had a very strong 2G signal,

01:39:35   it would take like a minute and a half to load a webpage.

01:39:38   And that's not- - You have that blue bar,

01:39:41   the blue highlight in the top of the Safari browser

01:39:44   trying to load and you just like,

01:39:46   maybe it's gonna load today, even get to the end

01:39:50   and nothing would show up.

01:39:51   (laughing)

01:39:53   Yeah, and I mean, camera quality,

01:39:55   Even in the piece that I did for the Upgraders,

01:39:58   the review this year, I took some shots with the 6S

01:40:01   and comparing that low light shot,

01:40:03   there's a picture in the review,

01:40:05   both in the video and in the review.

01:40:07   The 6S low light shot to the 11 is amazing.

01:40:10   - Yeah, it really is.

01:40:12   And video difference is night and day.

01:40:15   - Video difference even over last year is night and day.

01:40:18   I definitely did, I do poke hard at them in the video,

01:40:21   the beginning of the videos,

01:40:22   kind of like, you know, it's still not a pro camera. You

01:40:25   know, I kind of like, I had a lot of ideas on how to approach

01:40:30   this video. And one of the ideas was like, let's shoot a pro

01:40:32   movie with this camera. And I started shooting with it. I was

01:40:34   like, this still looks like an iPhone. But it's it's still like

01:40:39   put him side by side with a 10 s and it is far better.

01:40:43   In talented hands, you know, like Apple paid those guys to do

01:40:47   that black and white movie that they showed during the event,

01:40:49   you know, and when they talk to the guys talking about the filmic app that can shoot simultaneous

01:40:55   footage from two of the cameras at once so that you could get like if you're doing an

01:40:59   interview you could get a close up and a wide shot of your subject using just the one camera.

01:41:04   In the hands of a pro, people are getting astounding results out of iPhone cameras.

01:41:08   I mean Steven Soderbergh has shot two feature films using iPhones as the camera which and

01:41:12   they look, they look more like real movies. They don't look like, you know, like the Blair

01:41:17   which project where it's supposed to look like it was shot on a consumer camera. They

01:41:21   look like movies, but you've got to put a lot of work into it.

01:41:27   And I thought your footage of the nights at the Renaissance Fair, here's footage from

01:41:32   the real pro camera we're using to shoot this video and here's the footage from the iPhone

01:41:36   11 camera. It was fair. I mean, it's certainly still amazing for a cell phone camera, but

01:41:43   surprise, surprise shooting with a truly professional $1,000

01:41:47   multi $1,000 camera setup is still going to get better

01:41:49   results.

01:41:50   Yeah, and and I I should also say and we were thinking about a

01:41:54   different review where I was like, I would have to be very

01:41:56   clear to say I'm not a pro photographer, I can, you know,

01:41:59   think about a shot maybe better than the average person, but I

01:42:03   still don't think of shots or setting up shots or way to light

01:42:07   shots like like a pro. So

01:42:11   you are you did you what made you pick the Renaissance Faire

01:42:14   as a as a as a destination for this? Are you a Renaissance Faire

01:42:17   person?

01:42:18   Or I'm definitely I'd never been to the Renaissance Faire before

01:42:22   and now I just want to quit my job and go live with the

01:42:25   Renaissance Faire folk that travel around the country

01:42:28   because it was just mind blowing to me. But the way I had a

01:42:33   completely separate idea that I tried to really orchestrate and

01:42:39   I have this new producer, his name is Kenny.

01:42:40   He's so creative.

01:42:41   I'm like, I've met my creative match

01:42:43   and he just wants to push me to do some even more crazy

01:42:46   things, which I'm super excited about.

01:42:48   So we had this idea, we were trying to do it,

01:42:49   we're trying to get together.

01:42:50   On Saturday, we had all these things set up

01:42:52   to shoot this other video idea

01:42:54   and it just completely fell apart.

01:42:56   And I just started doing some searches for, you know,

01:42:59   places where photographers want to go in the New York area.

01:43:03   And this came up as a place where they had a photo contest

01:43:05   every year.

01:43:06   And I just said, we're going to the Renaissance fair.

01:43:09   We're gonna shoot there all day.

01:43:11   We're gonna make a video about it

01:43:12   'cause I'm sure these people are just gonna be amazing

01:43:14   to shoot photos and video of.

01:43:16   And I've actually never turned around a video

01:43:19   with so little idea of what it was gonna be

01:43:22   and so little time before.

01:43:24   Yeah, we did it all in like 48, less than 48 hours.

01:43:27   - That's interesting that it was a plan B

01:43:29   because it was a very,

01:43:30   I'm not just saying it 'cause you're on my show.

01:43:32   I thought it was a very entertaining video

01:43:34   and a good, good camera tests. It was because there were wide

01:43:38   angle, super ultra wide angle things you could shoot and then

01:43:42   all sorts of interesting people to shoot. And there was even

01:43:45   like a tent where you took a couple of people to try out the

01:43:48   portrait mode in low light, which turned out great. And now

01:43:54   I can't believe that I was playing B because it came across

01:43:56   very sad. Like I was like distraught on Saturday. This is

01:43:59   like, not only have this like pressure of writing these

01:44:02   reviews, as you know, very well. But I'm like, I want to do

01:44:04   something creative. I always like want to be, you know, do

01:44:07   something a little bit different in the videos and other people

01:44:09   are going to do. And like, it all fell apart on Saturday. And

01:44:12   I was like, just so devastated. And I was like, I cannot go on,

01:44:17   I cannot go on. And then the Renaissance woman got back to

01:44:19   me. And I was like, Okay, this is you know, it's meant to be

01:44:22   we're gonna be meant to spend Sunday, all day Sunday, at a

01:44:26   Renaissance Faire, not writing my review, but playing with

01:44:30   cameras in the Renaissance Faire and meeting the queen. And so I stayed up all day and then I stayed

01:44:34   up all night Sunday writing. Well, meanwhile, you have two column two reviews that you're planning

01:44:40   to do for Tuesday morning. I stayed up like pretty much all day Sunday. And even even Monday morning,

01:44:46   my editors like where's the other piece that you wanted to write? I was like, I haven't written it

01:44:49   yet. He's like, I think that's going to be I mean, Wilson has been working with him for five years

01:44:53   now. Wilson Rothman is just an incredible editor. And he just was like, sit down, write your thoughts.

01:44:58   I really think that story that you're that you've been talking about is the one to write.

01:45:01   And I wrote it down on Monday. And he's like, Okay, this is good. Let's print it both on

01:45:06   Tuesday morning. So yeah, it must be kind of lonely, though, for you. And I kind of think

01:45:12   about you sometimes in the in this process of you, when you're doing this, like I texted you

01:45:16   at some point. So you know, how are you doing or whatever, but you must get like, do you get lonely

01:45:20   when you're writing these? No, maybe, I don't know. I text you and panzerino with questions.

01:45:28   or Neelai, you know, so that I know the other people who have phones and we can talk about it. Like, didn't you and I

01:45:34   do Memojis when they first came out? Because it's like, who are, if you're one of the only people outside Apple who has a phone

01:45:41   who can do it, who are you testing it with? Like, you know. So I've got, you know,

01:45:46   I've got friends in the, I don't have colleagues at Daring Fireball,

01:45:49   but I've got friends in the racket that I can do. So I don't feel lonely about it.

01:45:53   I mean, obviously, like, what always strikes me is actually like your your pieces, there's like,

01:46:00   they're just as simple as they are, right. And they're at your site is so simple, though,

01:46:05   I really appreciated the photos this time. There's so much still creative work that goes

01:46:10   into your writing, right? There's still so much that you that you have to structure and think

01:46:15   about as you write those reviews, and I read them very carefully. And I said, like, this is not just

01:46:19   like a first draft of something. I mean, if it is, then you're an incredible writer, and you don't,

01:46:23   you know, need an editor. But I still think you're a very incredible writer. But you know,

01:46:29   having that process of kind of going back and forth over text with somebody is a,

01:46:34   I don't know, is important to me.

01:46:37   Yeah, I don't have that.

01:46:38   Yeah. But what is your process? Like, do you you write it and you kind of then go back and

01:46:46   read it and move some things around or delete some sentences or

01:46:49   My process is crazy. And I think that, you know, hopefully, the end result reads as very,

01:46:57   the opposite of scattershot, you know, like my, my intended writing style is to come across as very

01:47:05   precise and organized, but my process is the complete opposite. My per remember,

01:47:10   did you ever watch 60 Minutes when Andy Rooney was on?

01:47:13   I've watched episodes.

01:47:15   But his office was like he had like 40 years of junk in his office like piles of paper

01:47:20   like my office is actually a mess too, but

01:47:22   My process is like Andy Rooney's desk

01:47:26   I should see if I can find a picture of it and put it in the show notes, but I it's it's actually crazy

01:47:30   It doesn't even make any sense. I keep notes

01:47:33   I carry like a little field notes notebook with me wherever I go and you know in my back pocket little little pocket notebook that

01:47:39   Fits in the back pocket. I take notes in there

01:47:42   I keep notes in my iPhone that you know

01:47:46   I'll make a new note for the review and keep notes in my iPhone in the notes app

01:47:50   And then I have like a larger notebook, you know, maybe you know, I forget what size it is, but

01:47:54   You know more like an iPad mini size notebook and I keep notes in there

01:47:59   That's the one I usually use to take notes during events

01:48:01   So I've got like notes in two different note physical notebooks notes in the notes app

01:48:06   and

01:48:09   they're

01:48:11   somewhat organized by topic like camera battery whatever but I just have this jumble of notes in three different sources and

01:48:18   then I just sit there and sort of

01:48:21   Think about it and then usually and you know

01:48:24   There's always a moment of panic where it's like I don't have an angle on this

01:48:26   Like I can't just publish a bunch of bullet points

01:48:29   I've well, what's the what's the story and then at some point it comes to me, but it's

01:48:34   It's the pressure of the deadline that squeezes it out

01:48:37   Like I'd my all-nighter is the night before the embargo and that's why I like this. So I usually don't hit the embargo

01:48:43   like I

01:48:45   Did for the watch and I am I?

01:48:48   The iPhone I think I got up at about it was 6 a.m. Eastern was when the embargo dropped

01:48:55   I think mine came out at like 9 so I was like 3 hours late

01:48:59   But you it probably looked to most people like I hit it because who's reading who is reading the reviews at 6 in the morning

01:49:05   on the east, let alone three on the west coast. So I came close. But it just comes to me. I don't

01:49:13   know. There's usually, you know, eventually I panic over the weekend, like Sunday was I was,

01:49:17   I was really in despair about it. Because I just I was like, I should, you know, and every year,

01:49:23   I think, you know, every time I do these reviews, I think I should get started early. And then I

01:49:27   won't have to stay up all night. And I just couldn't think of an angle. I couldn't think

01:49:31   think of a way to start. Yeah, that's, I mean, usually, like,

01:49:34   that's what I said this year is like, I can't write two pieces

01:49:36   writing two pieces is harder than writing one long one,

01:49:39   because I gotta think of two ways to start. Yeah. leads is

01:49:42   harder than one. The other and the other thing this year was I

01:49:45   went back and I had this sense of deja vu, that, hey, I think

01:49:49   that what this the angle I'm thinking of here, feels like

01:49:54   what I wrote last year. And I read my review from last year.

01:49:56   And I was like, shit, this is exactly what I wanted to say

01:50:00   this year. I even used the lead I wanted to use, which was talking, I used this last year

01:50:09   with the XS that one of the years when Phil Schiller was on the talk show at WWDC, I asked

01:50:15   him whether he, you know, that it seems to me, and this was like four or five years ago,

01:50:19   maybe like four years ago, and I said, you know, the camera really seems like an area

01:50:23   of intense interest at Apple. You guys, the iPhone camera is getting better. It seems

01:50:29   like every year it seems like that's a main area of interest. Do you see Apple as a camera

01:50:34   company like one of the leading if not the leading and before I even got to the end of

01:50:39   the question he interrupted me on stage and just said the like Phil Schiller sees Apple

01:50:46   as the leading camera company in the world and it was emphatic and I know Phil enough

01:50:56   And I know he's competitive and I know that he's very serious about this stuff.

01:51:00   It's, you know, like his reputation within Apple is he's very serious person.

01:51:04   And you better be on your a game when you have a meeting with Phil on anything.

01:51:08   But his on-stage demeanor is friendly and, and his on-stage demeanor when he's been

01:51:13   on my show is very funny and he's very loose and casual.

01:51:17   And you know, it's him, you know, and he's, he's just a natural at it.

01:51:21   It's just funny cause he doesn't do a lot of public stuff, but he comes on my show

01:51:25   And it's like it seems as though he does people's live podcast every week. He's so natural at it, but when he said that the

01:51:32   That the like Apple is the leading camera company it actually took me aback because he got like he would all of a sudden

01:51:39   it was like a shark smelling blood in the water like I

01:51:42   Just it just really was like that

01:51:45   It's like one of the most memorable moments of me doing anything live on stage in my life because it was so emphatic

01:51:51   And I used it as my lead last year to emphasize how serious Apple is as a camera company

01:51:57   And then that's what I wanted to write this year. I was like I blew it

01:52:00   I used my lead last year and so I just was the year to do it. Well, I went meta

01:52:04   So I just went meta and just reference the fact that I you know

01:52:08   This is how I started my column last year and you know

01:52:11   You could say the same thing this year and just fill in the new phone names

01:52:14   You know that it's another and then once I had that and I was like, you know what I'm gonna do

01:52:19   I'm just gonna go meta and just reference that I wrote about the camera last year

01:52:23   I'm gonna write about the camera this year

01:52:24   Then as soon as I had that's the other thing about my writing style for these even these big reviews

01:52:29   I need to have my lead first. I

01:52:32   Can I cannot write the middle section? I can't move on I can't I have to have the beginning

01:52:40   I and and then once I have the beginning it's all of a sudden

01:52:43   It's like I've peddled my bike up the steep hill and now I'm just going downhill and everything pours out after it

01:52:49   Yeah, yeah, I'm the same way. But in theory, in theory, somebody who is less, I was gonna say,

01:52:57   crazy, but I don't know, but just stubborn. I just it's just a stubborn writing trait that if

01:53:05   I don't have the lead, I can't go on. In theory, I should be able to say, write the entire camera

01:53:11   section. I knew what I was going to show. I knew which pictures I wanted to look through of all the

01:53:16   ones I did I could have written that before I had the lead but I couldn't I

01:53:19   I just personally couldn't bring myself to do it I'm the same way same way like

01:53:25   I can't look past that I'm just like I've got to get this I've been have to

01:53:28   be okay with it and the rest of the piece will write itself yeah so if I

01:53:31   have the lead then I can go and if I don't have a lead I just sit there and

01:53:35   stare. Yeah, yeah.

01:53:39   I was 13. What a weird, weird, weird. I don't even know where

01:53:48   to start. It's just such a weird release that so what what's your

01:53:51   take? Why did they have to release 13 before 3013 dot one

01:53:55   and why didn't 13 dot one just become 13 and release it two

01:53:58   days later. So four days later, I wish that I had better sources

01:54:02   to tell me and I don't.

01:54:04   And sometimes I know people at Apple

01:54:06   and they can tell me things and I can say,

01:54:08   little birdie said something.

01:54:09   I don't have any little birdies on this.

01:54:11   The best that I can put together

01:54:13   is there's a couple of factors.

01:54:16   So one of them is carrier certification.

01:54:18   And with the new phones,

01:54:20   and the new iPhones are debuting around the world,

01:54:24   not just in the US, and all the carriers

01:54:26   have some kind of certification

01:54:29   of operating systems, et cetera.

01:54:30   They need to have whatever is going to ship out of the factory on the brand new phones,

01:54:38   they need to have that in the carrier's hands at least weeks in advance.

01:54:43   So it probably needs to be locked down at the end of August, at the very least, probably

01:54:46   like mid-August, somewhere around there.

01:54:51   And iOS 13 was just buggier than most of these OS releases over the last few years.

01:54:57   Certainly iOS 12.

01:54:58   was like remarkably unbuggy. It was really, even the betas last summer were remarkably

01:55:03   stable. I mean, they were like indistinguishable from regular iOS releases for the most part.

01:55:08   iOS 13 was sort of the opposite, especially on the iCloud front. iCloud changes in particular

01:55:14   were really buggy and people who were using them on their main phones all summer really

01:55:17   got bit sometimes by syncing problems and lost data. So, I think part of it is they

01:55:24   to lock down 13.0 to come out of the box when you unload your new iPhone when it comes early

01:55:31   for this carrier certification. But it truly is buggy. I mean, did you encounter a bunch

01:55:40   of bugs?

01:55:41   Yeah, I wrote a short piece yesterday saying that most people should just wait till 13.1

01:55:45   on Tuesday. Yeah, I mean, my big things, I encountered, I had been using 13. I don't

01:55:53   I don't know, it wasn't the GM release,

01:55:55   but whatever the other release on my XR for a while,

01:56:00   because I was testing sign in with Apple.

01:56:02   - Right, right.

01:56:03   - And I was having a ton of just like small bugs

01:56:05   and messages.

01:56:06   - Yeah, messages really was buggy, has been buggy for me.

01:56:10   - Yeah, like have you seen this flickering thing?

01:56:12   And then sometimes the cursor gets stuck.

01:56:14   - Yeah, I've seen the flickering thing.

01:56:16   And the one for me that I hit a couple times

01:56:17   is the keyboard just disappears.

01:56:19   - Yeah, I had that too.

01:56:20   I had that too.

01:56:21   But, so in other words, where the keyboard should be

01:56:25   on screen in messages is just a white rectangle

01:56:27   and you can't, but you can still type.

01:56:31   So like, it's like when you hit where the S key is,

01:56:34   you get an S, but you can't see it.

01:56:37   So it is, it's unusable and force quitting and relaunching

01:56:40   tends to fix it.

01:56:41   - I've had the same kind of thing, but with the,

01:56:44   I've had the keyboard issue, I think on the XR,

01:56:46   but on the iPhones, I've had the cursor just get stuck

01:56:49   in the middle of the type in the text box.

01:56:52   And you can still type.

01:56:53   But the cursor's just stuck there.

01:56:57   - I saw that once, yeah, yeah.

01:56:59   There's something I've seen.

01:57:02   I do a lot of, a fair amount of text editing in Safari

01:57:06   because if I wanna update Daring Fireball,

01:57:10   I don't really post from my phone much,

01:57:12   sometimes short pieces.

01:57:13   But if somebody sends me a typo and I wanna fix a typo,

01:57:18   I'd log into the CMS, I'd log in through Safari.

01:57:21   I don't have an app for it, I just go in through Safari.

01:57:23   And what I usually do is, if it's a long piece, right,

01:57:28   like my iPhone review, I don't wanna scroll

01:57:30   to find where this is, I'll just search for it.

01:57:33   You can go to the share menu and find on page,

01:57:36   and I'll type the word that I misspelled

01:57:38   or the missing word, and then it finds it,

01:57:41   and then I select it and fix the typo

01:57:45   and hit save and it goes on.

01:57:46   I, for some reason in Safari on 13.0,

01:57:49   when you use the find feature,

01:57:52   you can't see what you're typing.

01:57:54   You know how I get highlights in yellow?

01:57:57   Instead of selecting it, it's like highlighted in yellow.

01:57:59   Here's, if I search for Joanna, and here's the match,

01:58:02   and Joanna is highlighted in yellow.

01:58:04   If you tap on it, it's like you type, and it is typing,

01:58:08   and if you hit save, whatever you type is there,

01:58:10   but you can't see it.

01:58:11   It doesn't reflect on screen, which is not helpful.

01:58:15   (laughs)

01:58:16   There's just all sorts of little bugs like that.

01:58:18   Anyway, that's 13.

01:58:19   - Yeah, I mean, the big one is that just like

01:58:21   apps are randomly crashing.

01:58:23   - Yeah, well for me--

01:58:24   - And the camera app on the 11,

01:58:28   or maybe it was the 11 Pro.

01:58:29   I mean, both has been just small little things

01:58:33   opening up to the black screen,

01:58:35   not being able to hit the shutter button sometimes.

01:58:37   - Yeah, and editing photos sometimes.

01:58:40   'Cause they added a lot of editing features.

01:58:42   They've added--

01:58:44   - So many features in there.

01:58:46   - Yeah, like it's stuff like adjusting brightness

01:58:50   and contrast and stuff like that.

01:58:51   And they added all of those same features for video,

01:58:54   which is all brand new to iOS 13.

01:58:56   So you can apply their filters,

01:58:58   like the dramatic filter and the vivid filter.

01:59:00   You can apply it all to video and it applies live.

01:59:03   And you can rotate video.

01:59:05   So like if you shoot a video that's two degrees

01:59:07   off the horizon, you can rotate it to fix that.

01:59:11   Which is--

01:59:14   Well, it's gonna crash if you're on 13.0.

01:59:16   I got it to lock up. I thought maybe it actually corrupted the video file. I was playing with

01:59:25   it and it just went green. The video clip just turned completely, 100% corner to corner

01:59:30   green pixels. Which I think is often a test pattern for video that hasn't started yet.

01:59:39   It was just a complete, I thought, oh my God,

01:59:41   I think it just corrupted a video.

01:59:43   Forced quit, went back in, and there it was still there.

01:59:46   The video clip was fine, but all my edits were lost.

01:59:48   Anyway, it's buggy.

01:59:51   - It's not crashing, but I had no idea this was here.

01:59:54   This is awesome.

01:59:54   - Yeah, well, it was crashing for me, I don't know.

01:59:57   But yeah.

01:59:58   - We'll see, let's see.

01:59:59   - A lot of this stuff is hard to reproduce too,

02:00:00   and I can see why maybe there are hard bugs to fix,

02:00:02   because you think like, and then all of a sudden

02:00:04   I'm like making a list of bugs, and I'm like,

02:00:06   okay, I'm gonna restart the phone

02:00:07   and do the same thing again,

02:00:08   and this time it didn't crash, or this time it worked.

02:00:10   I was like, wow. - Wow, the turning

02:00:12   of the video's kind of like just a thing

02:00:14   you did not think you needed.

02:00:16   - Nope, but I do because it turns out

02:00:18   I have a very poor sense of what's level. (laughs)

02:00:24   - I mean, I just flipped this one.

02:00:26   Like I shot of Noah last night,

02:00:27   I had no idea that like now it's completely,

02:00:30   it's really straight now.

02:00:32   - Yeah, it's-- - I mean, until he like

02:00:33   slams into me and the phone falls, but it's--

02:00:35   - It's a great feature.

02:00:36   It's also, you know when it's a really great feature too,

02:00:38   is when something random happens out on the street,

02:00:41   you know, like, and you're like,

02:00:42   "Ooh, I gotta capture this on video,"

02:00:44   like, you know, some kind of incident or something,

02:00:46   and you just quick whip out your phone

02:00:48   and get to the camera as quick as you can.

02:00:51   It's like the last thing you're thinking of is this level,

02:00:54   and now you can fix it.

02:00:55   So it's a great feature.

02:00:57   Anyway, back to why did they ship 13.0?

02:01:00   So I think they needed to ship it

02:01:02   because it was carrier certified.

02:01:05   And here's the X factor, Dieter, Bone and I

02:01:08   were going back and forth in this yesterday.

02:01:10   'Cause my first thought was,

02:01:11   if they moved up the 13.1 ship date from September 30th,

02:01:15   which is what they told us two weeks ago,

02:01:18   to all the way to next Tuesday, the 24th,

02:01:20   which they just announced yesterday,

02:01:22   if it's gonna come out five days later

02:01:26   and it should be more stable,

02:01:29   why not just have everybody wait for that?

02:01:31   One of the factors that has to come into play

02:01:35   is that the new Apple watches require iOS 13.

02:01:39   So if you get a Series 5 Apple watch,

02:01:41   your paired iPhone has to be on iOS 13.

02:01:45   That's just the way Apple ties new hardware

02:01:49   to the latest OS.

02:01:51   And so if they were gonna start shipping the watches today,

02:01:55   the 20th, they had to ship iOS 13.0

02:01:59   so that people who get a watch can actually set it up.

02:02:03   Like, it would be no fun if you got like, you know,

02:02:06   ding dong, UPS comes, here's your new series five

02:02:08   Apple Watch you just spent a couple hundred bucks on.

02:02:11   Please keep it in the box for five days

02:02:13   until iOS 13.1 comes out, right?

02:02:17   I guess that's why, I don't know.

02:02:19   But my advice to everybody is just wait for 13.1.

02:02:24   I know that people wanna play the Apple Arcade

02:02:27   and there's, you know, and if you really have to

02:02:29   or if you're willing to, you know, treat it as a beta,

02:02:32   If you were willing to put a beta on your phone, then you might as well install 13.0.

02:02:36   But know that it's effectively beta quality.

02:02:38   Yeah, I had a lot of you know, what I considered nerd Twitter users, you know, kind of yelling

02:02:44   at me yesterday saying how Why are you saying that I put it on my phone?

02:02:47   It's fine.

02:02:48   It's like, you probably had the beta, like my readers are not the people that had the

02:02:52   beta.

02:02:53   They're going to get this, they're going to wonder why the camera doesn't, you know, is

02:02:55   slow or whatever.

02:02:57   You know, like, just it's four days, four days.

02:03:00   Yeah.

02:03:01   And the other thing that I don't know and I haven't installed it on I have an older phone that had that

02:03:06   Was testing the 13 betas on but I never put it because the betas never seemed fully baked to me all summer long

02:03:12   I never put it on my regular day-to-day iPhone my in my personal iPhone 10s still has iOS

02:03:18   12.4.1 or whatever the latest 12.4 version is still has because I just I don't want to put 13 on it

02:03:25   And I still like having it to compare like hey, what's new from iOS 12 to iOS 13?

02:03:31   But I don't – I can only assume that internally at Apple, their focus with this 13.0 release

02:03:43   was very specifically on the new iPhones, right?

02:03:46   Because they're the ones that have to have it.

02:03:48   And so I can only – my guess – I can't prove it.

02:03:51   My guess is it's least buggy on the iPhone 11s because they're the ones that they were

02:03:57   focused.

02:03:59   Yeah.

02:04:01   But what a weird release.

02:04:02   I mean, the fact that 13.1, not 13.0.1,

02:04:05   like a minor bug fix, but like a pretty serious bug fix

02:04:09   and feature additions, right?

02:04:11   Like the shared folders are shipping.

02:04:13   There's a whole bunch of the features of iOS 13

02:04:16   are shipping too, five days later, which is kind of nuts.

02:04:21   - Right, the big, I thought they'd hold those

02:04:24   for another release.

02:04:26   But when I spoke to Apple yesterday,

02:04:27   like no, directional air drop is gonna be in there

02:04:32   and the audio sharing for AirPods is gonna be in there.

02:04:37   - Yeah, and the shared folders, I forget what else,

02:04:40   there's a couple others, but there's still other stuff

02:04:42   that is coming later, like the deep focus camera feature

02:04:45   is still coming.

02:04:46   I presume 13.2, probably late October, maybe November

02:04:50   or something like that, but there's still other stuff

02:04:54   that's coming, but a lot of stuff is coming Tuesday.

02:04:57   I worry and it'll be interesting to see

02:04:59   and it'll give us stuff to write about

02:05:01   if 13.1 is still relatively buggy

02:05:04   compared to what we should expect

02:05:06   from a non-beta release of the OS.

02:05:08   Some of my developer friends are still a little skeptical

02:05:12   that 13.1 is in good shape.

02:05:14   - Yeah, I mean, it's a good release too.

02:05:19   I like that it doesn't actually have that many new features

02:05:23   and it kind of concentrates on some of the things

02:05:25   that people have wanted or have, I mean, dark mode,

02:05:28   I guess, being the biggest one.

02:05:29   But for me, the sign-in with Apple,

02:05:32   so I'm super excited about that.

02:05:34   - Yeah, what have you been able to test that with?

02:05:37   - So Apple gave me, or some of the developers gave me access

02:05:40   to some of the first apps that are gonna use it.

02:05:42   Admittedly, they're very small apps.

02:05:45   I used the bird scooter app.

02:05:46   I used the Life Cake photo sharing app.

02:05:49   But it was just interesting to see

02:05:52   the onboarding experience,

02:05:54   experience of going in to hide your email, going in to actually hide your name. And it's all very,

02:05:59   very quick. And even better, it's like, it just is very seamless to log into all of these apps

02:06:05   using face ID, or whatever other way you've set up, you know, a second form of authentication on

02:06:10   the iPhone. Yeah, my, you know, I wrote this in the piece and did this in the video, I think

02:06:16   there's so many privacy benefits, I just really, it seems from speaking to some developers, you

02:06:22   certainly they're gonna be sort of forced into this by Apple,

02:06:25   but they definitely don't seem eager to use it.

02:06:28   - Yeah, I wonder why.

02:06:30   Like, I don't understand why developers

02:06:32   are not eager to use it,

02:06:33   but I can see why the marketing people at companies

02:06:35   that want to have your real,

02:06:38   the people's real email address

02:06:40   so they can send them all sorts of email

02:06:42   right to their real email want that.

02:06:44   But I'm not sure why developers are so loathe to do it.

02:06:48   I guess it's just like, ah, 'cause you're just adding,

02:06:51   because they're not going to get rid of the sign in with Facebook, they're going to add

02:06:54   the sign in with Apple. And now it's just one more thing to keep working.

02:06:59   Yeah, I mean, it's that I think one of the interesting responses I heard was from Tinder,

02:07:04   which was saying they're more worried about how they can not have anonymous users and

02:07:12   having people who abuse the system and go back and make new accounts when they're trying

02:07:16   to either abuse the system or whatnot.

02:07:18   And how do they keep track of those people

02:07:21   when they don't have any information about them?

02:07:24   So those are some smaller details

02:07:28   that they seem to be trying to work out with developers.

02:07:30   Yeah, I don't know.

02:07:33   I mean, they all certainly just don't get as much information

02:07:37   as if you're logging in with Facebook.

02:07:38   I mean, Facebook, I had gone back and looked

02:07:40   and talked a lot about this in the video.

02:07:42   You go back and you look and you're like,

02:07:44   you didn't even realize what kind of info you were giving

02:07:47   to some of these app developers.

02:07:49   And it's there in small writing,

02:07:51   but everything's turned on default.

02:07:52   So everything from birthdays to likes to photos,

02:07:56   just it's not something you thought about.

02:07:58   - No, it really,

02:07:59   why in the world would they share your likes?

02:08:03   Like it just is crazy. - I don't know.

02:08:06   Likes, birthday, I mean, there's a whole list of thing.

02:08:09   I mean, like, I guess,

02:08:10   because they wanna wish you a happy birthday,

02:08:12   but there's a lot of other stuff they could do with that.

02:08:14   I mean, it's like they're one step away from sharing the last four digits of your social

02:08:18   security number, like everything that they would need to like impersonate you.

02:08:23   I love what we did that you should watch the video we hired these comedians and we just

02:08:27   let them sort of riff on like what Facebook would need to get you in the door.

02:08:30   We should do this video that I did and they the woman is just hilarious.

02:08:34   She's like, Do you have any water birth photos?

02:08:36   We'd like to see those.

02:08:38   I can't wait to see it.

02:08:39   I will look for it.

02:08:41   All right, I guess that's a wrap.

02:08:43   I mean, is there anything else you wanted to talk about?

02:08:45   I mean, that's a long show, right?

02:08:47   Are we over two hours?

02:08:48   We can't go under two hours.

02:08:50   Oh yeah, we're over two hours.

02:08:50   - We're over two hours.

02:08:51   Yeah, I only set aside this amount of time for you

02:08:54   three times a year.

02:08:55   - Well, I enjoy it very much.

02:08:58   - I enjoy it too.

02:09:00   - No, and it's a good time of the year.

02:09:02   I know, I cannot let you go.

02:09:04   Thank God I thought of this.

02:09:05   Cannot let you go.

02:09:06   I saw on Twitter the other day that you,

02:09:11   You were in the Apple store with your MacBook.

02:09:13   Yes, it's so funny.

02:09:15   I'm sorry.

02:09:18   I'm sorry.

02:09:18   It's so funny that during this week where I needed to write, I was like, I finally cannot

02:09:23   take it any longer.

02:09:24   So how was the so you took your MacBook Air in to get the keyboard swapped?

02:09:29   Yeah, you know, I wrote the big piece and it was in when did I write it in April?

02:09:35   Were you was that when you were on my show?

02:09:36   or were you on before that? Because by the way, I you know what you were on before. So you're,

02:09:43   can you tell people for those who don't remember the gimmick,

02:09:47   the gimmick of your column on the MacBook keyboards?

02:09:50   Actually, you know what I had told you, I was writing this piece, we saw each other in New York,

02:09:55   and I told you, I'm, I got to write something, I'm planning something big. So in March,

02:10:02   of this year in March, I did a piece on how my butter my MacBook Air butterfly keyboard,

02:10:07   the air that I had been bought from the company in 2018, the one the air that I recommended,

02:10:12   and was so happy to I think that was the last time I was on the show. I talked about my review

02:10:16   of the air, the retina, the retina MacBook Air that that the whole world had been waiting for,

02:10:20   for a couple of years. Yeah, and I fell in love with it. And I recommended the shit out of it.

02:10:25   And so I would say it was probably in early March,

02:10:30   end of February, the keyboard just started to go.

02:10:34   Like certain keys were sticking, they were double pressing,

02:10:37   and I just couldn't believe it.

02:10:38   So I started doing some research and I was like,

02:10:39   this is happening again, this is happening again.

02:10:42   I contacted lots of people who had the issues.

02:10:44   I tried to get in touch with Apple engineers

02:10:46   who ended up ratting on me and went to Apple PR.

02:10:49   I mean, I was really trying to dig into this.

02:10:51   And I just had this idea,

02:10:53   I'm gonna write this column with the way my keyboards writing and that's with missing letters

02:10:57   and so

02:10:59   But it was so brilliant because it wasn't just that you wrote it with misspellings and missing letters

02:11:06   There was JavaScript code and sliders where the reader could

02:11:10   Adjust it. Like how did you know about that? How did you make that happen? I

02:11:15   Well, I told Wilson my editor. He's like, okay sounds like an idea. I don't know Joanna

02:11:19   typically he says these things to me just knowing like, I'll

02:11:22   figure out a way and come back soon with a better idea. And I

02:11:25   went over to our graphics desk and I said, guys, I just I want

02:11:27   to remove the ease. I want to remove the ease from my my my

02:11:32   column, but if I do it, then no one will be able to read it. So

02:11:35   we need a way to like, you know, they get to the page, there's no

02:11:38   ease, maybe there's no Rs. And they can't read it. But then we

02:11:42   let them turn on the ease and the Rs. And the guy was like,

02:11:45   Oh, look around, I'll see if I can find somebody to do it.

02:11:47   but Elliot Bentley works on our graphics desk

02:11:49   and he's like, nobody can do this, but I wanna do it.

02:11:52   It sounds hilarious.

02:11:53   And so he just coded up this page and then he's like,

02:11:56   and I also told him that there were these double presses

02:11:58   and he's like, let's put that in too.

02:12:00   Let's give people that option too.

02:12:02   And I mean, I did hear from a lot of people

02:12:06   who didn't realize they could turn them on

02:12:07   and they said, this is a bullshit article, I can't read it.

02:12:11   How am I supposed to read it?

02:12:12   And I tell people that you could turn it on.

02:12:13   But yeah, so then after that, a month later,

02:12:17   I like to think I take some credit, not all the credit.

02:12:19   And I also take your piece or linking to me as some credit.

02:12:23   Apple said, "Okay, we gotta do something about this."

02:12:26   And they improved the amount of time to repair in stores.

02:12:29   They rolled out the generation 3.5.

02:12:34   They knew this was a big PR disaster.

02:12:37   And so I sort of said, "Okay, I'm gonna get it replaced."

02:12:39   But I just was dragging my feet on it.

02:12:41   I don't know why.

02:12:43   I also installed this unshaky app extension on my MacBook

02:12:48   and it kind of got rid of the double presses.

02:12:50   So I was like, okay, I can live with it.

02:12:52   And then end of summer is like,

02:12:54   I can't live with this anymore.

02:12:55   So I need to get this fixed

02:12:56   by the time I go to the Apple event.

02:12:58   I went to the store, the Wall Street store here in New York

02:13:03   and they said they didn't have the part.

02:13:06   (laughing)

02:13:08   So I really, really felt like I affected much change.

02:13:11   It also, it's like amazing.

02:13:12   I go in and they have no idea who I am, right?

02:13:14   So they're like, oh, how do you know it's broken?

02:13:16   - Well, I was gonna ask if you thought you got recognized.

02:13:19   Sometimes I do at an Apple store and sometimes I don't.

02:13:22   - I have been recognized at Apple stores.

02:13:24   Like two years ago, I did this piece on iCloud

02:13:26   and I just snuck into the iCloud learning session, you know?

02:13:31   And the guy just said to me, he's like,

02:13:33   what are you doing here?

02:13:33   And I was like, I'm learning about iCloud.

02:13:36   He's like, I doubt it.

02:13:37   And I was like, no, no, I'm here just learning about iCloud.

02:13:40   I don't know what you're talking about.

02:13:43   But no, they had no idea.

02:13:44   And it's just fun.

02:13:45   You know, like I play along

02:13:45   and I don't want to tell them who I am.

02:13:47   And I don't want to like, you know, I'm just like,

02:13:49   oh, I'm just pretty sure it's broken.

02:13:51   I'm actually, I'm pretty positive.

02:13:54   I'm pretty positive it needs to be replaced.

02:13:56   And they're like, oh, okay, we have to go look.

02:13:58   And I was like, if you look in my records, I was here.

02:14:00   And back in March, you guys, you know,

02:14:01   replaced one or two keys.

02:14:03   This thing needs to be replaced.

02:14:04   Okay, we got to look at it.

02:14:05   And then they went in the back and they said,

02:14:07   we're sorry, we don't have the part here.

02:14:09   We got to order it.

02:14:10   to take a week. So bring, you know, we can hold on to it. I said, Okay, well, I'll bring

02:14:15   it back when you have the part. And I came back another time dropped it off and then

02:14:18   took about 48 hours for them to swap it out and then finally got it back this week.

02:14:23   I can I tell you, I cannot believe I almost let you get off the show without telling you

02:14:28   this. I, I do have little birdies sometimes. And one of the things that I heard was the

02:14:35   Was it July where they came out with new hardware for the back to school season with new MacBooks?

02:14:45   The Air got rejiggered, but it still has the same CPU and everything.

02:14:50   They really just updated it so that it ships.

02:14:53   Somebody who bought a new Air in August would get the one with the new 3.5 Gen keyboard.

02:15:01   I know for a fact that your column was influential in that,

02:15:05   in that Apple rejiggered their hardware schedule

02:15:08   to get that half generation hardware thing out.

02:15:12   I don't think that the explanation was,

02:15:14   well, because of this one column from Joanna Stern

02:15:16   in the Wall Street Journal, we need to do this,

02:15:18   but it was like maybe the straw that broke the camel's back.

02:15:21   Like internally, your column was a,

02:15:25   let's actually change our plans.

02:15:27   This is, that's how bad, this is how bad it's gotten.

02:15:30   we actually need to change our plans.

02:15:32   Because Apple doesn't really do half-gen updates

02:15:36   on MacBooks anymore.

02:15:37   And back in the day, they would be updated

02:15:40   for random components here and there,

02:15:42   but for the most part now, they're more sweeping updates.

02:15:47   And your column in particular was like,

02:15:50   this got escalated to the highest levels of the company,

02:15:53   and this is bad.

02:15:55   - Yeah, and I actually, the column,

02:15:59   look, it was a clever way to do it.

02:16:01   I did not think it would get as much attention as it would

02:16:03   until I had the statement from Apple, which was sorry.

02:16:08   And I got that statement in my email

02:16:11   and I just jumped up and down.

02:16:13   I was like, they're fucking saying they're sorry.

02:16:16   That's where I kind of knew that this was,

02:16:19   and I had known from my reporting,

02:16:21   from talking to so many people

02:16:22   and seeing that this was happening again

02:16:24   on this specific model.

02:16:25   I mean, I made a spreadsheet of 20 people at least

02:16:28   that I had been emailing back and forth with,

02:16:29   asking what letters were, what were breaking.

02:16:31   I mean, they're like, I actually did true reporting

02:16:34   to figure out that this was really happening.

02:16:37   - Well, and the hell of it is really that it wasn't random.

02:16:41   It really was seemingly for the most part based on usage.

02:16:45   So the most likely keys to have problems

02:16:47   were the ones you use the most.

02:16:48   Like your gimmick of the column

02:16:51   of having the ease disappear wasn't just to make it

02:16:57   as unreadable as possible, it was fair.

02:16:59   That's partly what made the column so powerful

02:17:02   is that the Es and Rs and the spacebars

02:17:04   are among the most common keys to have problems

02:17:07   because it seemingly is usage-based.

02:17:10   That it's by hitting the E key more frequently

02:17:13   than every other alphabet letter on the keyboard

02:17:16   that it caused the problem.

02:17:19   So the fact that it was scathing

02:17:22   and really made Apple and the keyboards look bad

02:17:26   is one thing, but the thing that really to me resonated

02:17:29   is that it was fair.

02:17:30   - Yeah, and I still to this day,

02:17:32   I would love some actual technical explanation from Apple,

02:17:36   what's going on with these,

02:17:37   because they thought they fixed it with the,

02:17:41   I like to call it the condom,

02:17:43   they put the condom on the top,

02:17:46   they thought that was gonna fix it,

02:17:48   and they still just have not really fully explained

02:17:51   what's happening here.

02:17:52   And it's just like, are these things too delicate?

02:17:54   Only so many times they can speak to engineers

02:17:58   and I fix it about what they think is wrong.

02:18:02   - And what's their explanation?

02:18:03   They say something to the effect of that they have made

02:18:05   a material change, whatever that means.

02:18:08   And that could mean like multiple things like art.

02:18:11   Does that mean you're using a different material

02:18:13   to manufacture certain components?

02:18:15   Or do you mean material in the other sense

02:18:18   where it's like a meaningful change?

02:18:21   And it's like--

02:18:22   - No, no, I think they actually mean material,

02:18:23   like physical something.

02:18:26   - They did clarify for that for me off the record

02:18:29   that yes, we mean that there are parts of the keyboard

02:18:31   that are using a different material

02:18:33   in the manufacturing process that should be more durable.

02:18:36   And it seems to me that it anecdotally that it is,

02:18:41   like I still don't think it's great.

02:18:42   I think that I really do think that my belief is that

02:18:46   I don't know if it's gonna happen later this year

02:18:48   or next year or whatever,

02:18:50   but that there will be a new keyboard design in MacBooks.

02:18:53   - Yeah, this thing's done.

02:18:55   - Talk about when we in the audience might applaud.

02:19:01   - Oh, I will stand up.

02:19:04   I will stand up a standing ovation.

02:19:06   - Well, let's sit.

02:19:07   I'll try to sit next to you.

02:19:09   We'll be our own little standing ovation.

02:19:11   - Please, tell my bosses at the Wall Street Journal

02:19:17   I got up and clapped.

02:19:18   I mean, really.

02:19:19   Well, let's just get up and go to run down the aisle and storm the stage.

02:19:24   Give out hugs.

02:19:26   But I really do think it's going to happen.

02:19:27   And I really do think, though, in the meantime, as a stopgap measure, this 3.5 Gen hardware

02:19:34   update really was, I know, it was influenced by your column because it was just so devastating.

02:19:39   And I mentioned it this week.

02:19:40   I mean, I'm sure I'll win the Pulitzer for this.

02:19:43   That it's, you know, it's the holy grail of column writing, right?

02:19:46   that your column has an effect on the world, right?

02:19:50   - It absolutely does.

02:19:52   - Right, it's what you want.

02:19:53   And sometimes the best way to do it isn't to be literal.

02:19:56   Like if you had just written that column straightforward

02:19:59   and said, written a column that said,

02:20:01   "Hey, my E's and R's don't work sometimes,

02:20:03   and sometimes I get double letters,"

02:20:05   it would not have had the effect

02:20:06   that the gimmick had, right?

02:20:11   It's-- - Yeah.

02:20:13   And like, honestly, for me, it was just like,

02:20:15   I started writing and I was like,

02:20:17   people won't be able to read this,

02:20:19   but this is how it's really writing for me.

02:20:21   - How did it run in print?

02:20:23   - We just read that, I think the first graph,

02:20:27   and then we just said, you know,

02:20:29   we re-corrected it and the graph down had it.

02:20:32   And then we had the headline.

02:20:33   I mean, the headline too was huge.

02:20:35   That was also, that was totally,

02:20:37   yeah, that was the way I wrote the headline.

02:20:40   - What was the headline?

02:20:42   - All the Es were missing.

02:20:43   - Oh, right.

02:20:45   So it's like Apple with no E still hasn't fixed, no E, MacBook and keyboard has no E.

02:20:50   Oh, and no R. Oh wait, no.

02:20:52   We actually missed the R in the – whoops.

02:20:55   I'm looking at it now.

02:20:57   Darrell Bock It was.

02:20:58   It was a devastating headline.

02:21:00   It really was.

02:21:01   Oh, anyway.

02:21:02   Dr.

02:21:14   I think looks like it that this breathe I've been I still think I can't say too much but I

02:21:20   Supposed to speak with the company soon. Yeah, I don't know

02:21:24   I still think they're gonna run out the clock and then come out with a different folder, you know

02:21:28   I think they're gonna run out that I

02:21:30   Maybe they'll ship it but I I think they're gonna I part of me thinks that they're just gonna run out the clock and tell

02:21:34   People they're coming out with it delay delay and then come out with a new an entirely different folding phone

02:21:40   There's no doubt in my mind they're gonna ship a folding phone that will actually work

02:21:44   I don't know whether it would be good

02:21:46   But I don't think that the one that they were going to ship is going to ship but we'll see

02:21:51   I mean they announced last week or two weeks ago all these

02:21:54   Improvements that they've made and they're shipping. I actually think they're starting to ship in Korea. Yeah, maybe well then maybe I'm wrong

02:22:01   anyway, anyway

02:22:03   Congratulations. I mean it sincerely column of the year

02:22:06   - Oh, I appreciate that.

02:22:08   - It really was.

02:22:09   It was so great and really had the effect

02:22:12   on the actual world, so.

02:22:14   - Yeah, I mean, mostly I got those butterflies,

02:22:17   the real butterflies in.

02:22:18   - Yeah. (laughs)

02:22:18   - And that was, I felt, the biggest accomplishment

02:22:20   of my life.

02:22:21   You don't know what it's like to order butterflies.

02:22:22   (laughs)

02:22:24   - Everybody, of course, can read your fine work

02:22:26   at the Wall Street Journal and on Twitter,

02:22:28   you're just Joanna Stern, the most obvious

02:22:31   and easiest username to remember of all time.

02:22:33   Thank you for coming back on the show.

02:22:36   I guess I should thank my sponsors,

02:22:38   Squarespace, Linode, and Fracture.

02:22:41   And I hope to see you soon.

02:22:44   Hopefully I will see you at a MacBook event

02:22:47   later this fall and we can sit together

02:22:49   and do our standing ovation.

02:22:50   No, my guess is I do think they're gonna have an event.

02:22:56   'Cause we know the Mac Pro is coming.

02:22:58   I can't believe that they would do it without an event.

02:23:00   Although I guess with the iMac Pro,

02:23:02   they didn't have an event when it shipped.

02:23:03   They had us, they did like those demos.

02:23:06   Did you go to that?

02:23:07   It was like-- - Yeah, New York.

02:23:08   - Yeah, and they had just,

02:23:09   so maybe they'll do something like that.

02:23:11   Instead of having an audience event, maybe they'll do,

02:23:14   I think they're gonna do something though.

02:23:16   'Cause the Mac Pro is definitely coming.

02:23:18   They're gonna wanna show it off.

02:23:19   I think that there will be new iPad Pros,

02:23:21   'cause I think that they've got the iPad Pros

02:23:23   on the same schedule as the iPhone now,

02:23:25   where like six weeks after iPhones

02:23:27   with the A whatever number,

02:23:29   the iPad Pros come out with the A13X,

02:23:33   and it's insanely fast.

02:23:35   - Yeah, I think they're also probably gonna do

02:23:38   this little tracker, this title tracker thing.

02:23:41   It just feels like it's gonna come before holiday.

02:23:43   - I think so too, and so I kind of feel like late October,

02:23:47   and you know, when they do a second event,

02:23:49   they usually do like October 20-something,

02:23:52   and they often pick a unique locale.

02:23:55   Remember, like two years ago,

02:23:56   they had the event at the Chicago High School,

02:23:58   and last year it was the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

02:24:01   I hope it's New York.

02:24:04   I don't really hope it's California.

02:24:06   Joanne: Yeah, I have a conference in California on the 21st, so if anyone's listening, make

02:24:11   sure the Wi-Fi is good on the 28th some place.

02:24:14   Darrell Bock Anyway, Joanne, I hope to see you then.

02:24:16   And if not, thanks for being here.

02:24:18   Thanks.

02:24:19   Joanne

02:24:19   listening to anyone who listened to this all. Oh, people do listen to it all. Trust me. I know

02:24:25   they do. I know. All right, I'm going to stop recording. Okay, I'm going to stop recording too.

02:24:31   All right.

02:24:32   [BLANK_AUDIO]