The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hey everybody, John here.

00:00:02 ◼   ► Little preface to the show.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Big dummy that I am.

00:00:06 ◼   ► I sort of botched the audio on my end of the show.

00:00:11 ◼   ► So what you're about to hear is a little less audio quality than you're used to.

00:00:15 ◼   ► And I'm very, very sorry about that.

00:00:17 ◼   ► There is no need to tell me.

00:00:18 ◼   ► I am fully aware of what I did and fully aware of the irony that my guest on the show, Paul

00:00:25 ◼   ► Kvassus runs a software company whose software probably if I had used it to record instead of what I did

00:00:31 ◼   ► Probably would have helped me avoid the mistake

00:00:34 ◼   ► So enjoy the show. Sorry about the audio quality

00:00:36 ◼   ► Won't happen again

00:00:39 ◼   ► Well, I just saw you a couple weeks ago. It's always good to say I

00:00:43 ◼   ► I also saw you

00:00:47 ◼   ► We were we were cavorting in Las Vegas beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada

00:00:55 ◼   ► and they have they've it's interesting and you're you're up in the Boston area

00:01:01 ◼   ► Philadelphia the the wind corporation I believe that's the name what's the name

00:01:07 ◼   ► of the holding it's win something you know when whatever to date has has a

00:01:15 ◼   ► casino resort in Las Vegas and then they have two in in Macau over there in China

00:01:22 ◼   ► And then they were going to add a new one in North America and it was just going to be here in Philadelphia

00:01:29 ◼   ► And they had wonderful plans

00:01:32 ◼   ► How'd that work out?

00:01:35 ◼   ► Well the city of Philadelphia decided that I forget I swear to God it came down to

00:01:41 ◼   ► The plans were super extensive and I thought it was really really wonderful

00:01:46 ◼   ► I really thought it was a very interesting plan here in Philadelphia

00:01:50 ◼   ► And then the city of Philadelphia and I swear it came down to like traffic lights like this the city of Philadelphia was like well

00:01:57 ◼   ► We're not gonna pay to have like a turnaround here

00:01:59 ◼   ► You're gonna pay and you're gonna do this and you're gonna do that and the wind company was like, you know, we're gonna do

00:02:05 ◼   ► So they're there they're on the cusp opening right I think what is it three months from tomorrow

00:02:14 ◼   ► All right, so they started booking. What's it called called the on core?

00:02:20 ◼   ► Which is a weird name for the first location.

00:02:23 ◼   ► Right.

00:02:24 ◼   ► Should we touch on it?

00:02:28 ◼   ► Yeah, we should touch on it.

00:02:30 ◼   ► So this resort in Las Vegas was originally the Wynn, then they built the second one, they built the Encore.

00:02:35 ◼   ► And it's all named after a guy named Steve Wynn, who, his real name is Steve Weinberg, so he changed his name to something very good for a casino owner.

00:02:45 ◼   ► But I didn't know that until very late.

00:02:48 ◼   ► I thought that he was just fortuitously named Steve Wynn.

00:02:53 ◼   ► But turns out, turns out to say, but Trump is a good name for a casino owner.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Oh, well, but again, not really.

00:03:02 ◼   ► It was not really, not really the family name.

00:03:04 ◼   ► Right.

00:03:05 ◼   ► They changed it to a couple of generations.

00:03:06 ◼   ► Right as a, who was it?

00:03:07 ◼   ► John Oliver went into, what was it?

00:03:10 ◼   ► Trump.

00:03:11 ◼   ► Yeah, much worse name, but much more predictive of how well his casinos would do.

00:03:18 ◼   ► Very true.

00:03:20 ◼   ► Uh, but yeah, so, so Steve Wynn starts these casinos, uh, turns out

00:03:26 ◼   ► Steve Wynn, terrible sex pervert.

00:03:28 ◼   ► Terrible.

00:03:30 ◼   ► So they're trying to, they're trying to, they're, they're planning to open this

00:03:35 ◼   ► location in Boston and they say, you know what, maybe we take his name off of it.

00:03:40 ◼   ► And so now I'm literally looking out my window at the encore

00:03:45 ◼   ► That is about as the crow flies. I think about four miles from from my house

00:03:51 ◼   ► So it's very strange to see as we were discussing when we were in Las Vegas

00:03:55 ◼   ► The the design of the building is exactly the same. So I flew out of Boston

00:04:01 ◼   ► flew over this building

00:04:04 ◼   ► Six hours later. I landed in Las Vegas and drove to the exact same building

00:04:09 ◼   ► You they you know part of the brand of the wind company is is they have a certain architectural style

00:04:15 ◼   ► You know, they're buildings. I think the two in Macau I get confused. I've never been there

00:04:20 ◼   ► So but there's the the wind palace and I think the other ones just called win. That's right. I think that's right

00:04:28 ◼   ► But they all you know, they have a very distinctive architectural style and colors

00:04:35 ◼   ► So the picture you took of the encore Boston Harbor from from the airplane

00:04:40 ◼   ► Right. It really looked like a Photoshop job. It really looked like you you went full Darth and just

00:04:47 ◼   ► building in there

00:04:49 ◼   ► Well just spent the entire five four and a half hour flight

00:04:52 ◼   ► painstakingly

00:04:55 ◼   ► Photoshopping the encore Las Vegas into the middle of Boston and Boston covered in snow

00:05:02 ◼   ► exactly covered in snow

00:05:04 ◼   ► It's something to see.

00:05:08 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to it.

00:05:09 ◼   ► I'm always looking for an excuse to go up to Boston.

00:05:12 ◼   ► It's my favorite baseball team.

00:05:15 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:05:16 ◼   ► You're a big fan.

00:05:17 ◼   ► Big fan.

00:05:18 ◼   ► So, we could go up there and maybe catch a ball game or something like that, but now

00:05:23 ◼   ► there will be gambling and all sorts of other stuff you can do at a casino.

00:05:32 ◼   ► It is funny because we were just in Vegas.

00:05:34 ◼   ► So yeah, Steve Wynn, terrible, terrible sex pervert, turns out, really a predator, maybe.

00:05:40 ◼   ► I mean, just often convicted of anything, but had all sorts of all sorts of payoffs

00:05:44 ◼   ► for truly heinous things that it's I'm glad the name is not on there.

00:05:49 ◼   ► I'll say that.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Right.

00:05:51 ◼   ► It Yeah, it's just just awful.

00:05:54 ◼   ► Just awful stuff.

00:05:55 ◼   ► But the company is sort of, you know, they're in a so that he's been forced out.

00:05:59 ◼   ► He was he was the CEO, he was the president, he was the largest shareholder.

00:06:02 ◼   ► And now he's none of the above.

00:06:04 ◼   ► He resigned as the CEO.

00:06:07 ◼   ► He resigned from the board and then he sold all of his shares in the company.

00:06:12 ◼   ► He doesn't even own it anymore.

00:06:17 ◼   ► But the company wasn't really done at that point.

00:06:22 ◼   ► They needed to de Steve, the the complex because, you know, he's very fond of his own picture

00:06:33 ◼   ► and his own voice.

00:06:34 ◼   ► Oh, right, right famously, when you used to go to the website, just just loading the website,

00:06:39 ◼   ► you'd suddenly be hearing from Steve Wynn,

00:06:44 ◼   ► which and very late on top, you know, up until like two years ago, you would go to the the

00:06:48 ◼   ► Las Vegas website and as soon as it finished loading, you would hear him talking.

00:06:53 ◼   ► [Music]

00:06:53 ◼   ► Steve Win (00;00;00;00): Hi, I'm Steve Win and welcome to the website.

00:06:57 ◼   ► We've got easy navigation. It's fast and it's convenient and we're glad you're here. Enjoy.

00:07:03 ◼   ► [Music]

00:07:03 ◼   ► Steve Win (00;00;00;00;00)

00:07:05 ◼   ► Which was a very 1996, 1997 sort of thing to do. When the web first really took off,

00:07:13 ◼   ► a lot of companies didn't really know what to do.

00:07:16 ◼   ► How a website should work.

00:07:18 ◼   ► Right. How much like TV should it be?

00:07:21 ◼   ► And so a lot of them thought, well, you know, this is ridiculous.

00:07:25 ◼   ► You're looking at a screen, that's TV.

00:07:27 ◼   ► We should talk to the people.

00:07:29 ◼   ► And turns out, no.

00:07:30 ◼   ► But we've had this discussion privately before, but you just know

00:07:37 ◼   ► that there was some sort of meeting with the website team.

00:07:43 ◼   ► And Steve Wynn was like, "Well, I think I should talk to these people. I should let them know

00:07:47 ◼   ► where they are, let them know they're at the Wynn website." And you just know that there were

00:07:53 ◼   ► people on that web team who tried to talk him out of it. Unsuccessfully.

00:07:58 ◼   ► And obviously unsuccessfully. So I'm sure that was an easy fix. They just deleted that audio

00:08:07 ◼   ► file. I'm sure that was very satisfying for somebody. But there were all sorts of

00:08:12 ◼   ► bits of Steve Wynn all throughout the complex. There's a restaurant in Las Vegas, Sinatra,

00:08:19 ◼   ► named it's in conjunction with the Frank Sinatra family. Pictures of Frank Sinatra with Steve Wynn

00:08:27 ◼   ► throughout the years. They worked together when Steve Wynn owned the Golden Nugget in

00:08:34 ◼   ► Atlantic City in the late 70s, early 80s. All sorts of pictures of him. Those pictures,

00:08:41 ◼   ► No longer there. They're gone. They're in a closet somewhere with as your wife Amy likes to say that's where the Joe Paterno statue is

00:08:48 ◼   ► Maybe the Smithsonian's Cosby sweaters. I'm sure they had some of those and those are stashed away somewhere now, too. I

00:08:55 ◼   ► Didn't think about that, but I'm sure you're right that the the Smithsonian surely did

00:09:00 ◼   ► have that Disney used to have it Disney World they had like a

00:09:04 ◼   ► TV Hall of Fame sure like sort of busts of famous TV people and and

00:09:10 ◼   ► And step one, they took away Cosby.

00:09:13 ◼   ► And then step two, they just got rid of the whole thing.

00:09:16 ◼   ► The whole attraction is gone.

00:09:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they got worried that maybe Betty White maybe had some skeletons in her

00:09:21 ◼   ► closet as well.

00:09:22 ◼   ► They're like, "We got to get rid of all of these."

00:09:25 ◼   ► Who knows what Betty White did.

00:09:26 ◼   ► That's your pick for the next one is Betty White.

00:09:29 ◼   ► Come on.

00:09:30 ◼   ► She is a treasure.

00:09:31 ◼   ► I think she was a predator.

00:09:35 ◼   ► I'm not lodging any accusations.

00:09:37 ◼   ► I'm just saying I wouldn't bet against it.

00:09:40 ◼   ► But anyway, they've completely de-steved the entire Wynn complex, other than the fact that

00:09:46 ◼   ► it is still called the Wynn.

00:09:47 ◼   ► Well, but as we've noted, his ex-wife, Elaine Wynn, who took his name and then kept it,

00:09:57 ◼   ► is now the majority shareholder of the company, right?

00:10:00 ◼   ► Right, that is true.

00:10:01 ◼   ► Well, not majority, I don't think.

00:10:04 ◼   ► She's just the largest shareholder.

00:10:05 ◼   ► Okay, okay.

00:10:06 ◼   ► Like, I don't think she owns more than 50%, but she is the single largest shareholder

00:10:10 ◼   ► in the company. And her last name is also Wynn, although maybe she also wants to change

00:10:14 ◼   ► that at this point, I don't know. Yeah, it's sort of like, it's like I think that they're

00:10:22 ◼   ► going to just turn him into like a Colonel Sanders type figure, you know? Yeah, he was

00:10:26 ◼   ► a real guy, but I feel like after Steve Wynn dies, maybe they'll bring him back as sort

00:10:32 ◼   ► of like a cartoon mascot. And he'll be a lovable, you know, non-predatory.

00:10:38 ◼   ► I would bet against that. I don't think there's any fix in this thing.

00:10:45 ◼   ► Although Colonel Sanders is still around.

00:10:48 ◼   ► As like 15 different mascots right now, right?

00:10:52 ◼   ► Did you ever hear the story where a New York Times food critic, sometime around 1977 or so, took the actual Colonel Sanders into a KFC in Midtown New York?

00:11:07 ◼   ► Oh boy.

00:11:08 ◼   ► This was after, you know, he sold this, you know, sold the, his chain to, you know, to

00:11:14 ◼   ► a nationwide company at some point, you know, 15 years before.

00:11:18 ◼   ► So, so he hadn't really been in direct.

00:11:22 ◼   ► Yeah, it wasn't really, it was a, he was a spokesperson, but he really wasn't involved

00:11:29 ◼   ► with the restaurants.

00:11:30 ◼   ► And so she took him in and, and they went back to the kitchen and he was horrified and

00:11:37 ◼   ► read everybody the riot act about how they were doing everything wrong and and it's pretty I should

00:11:43 ◼   ► see if I can find that but it's a good story in his later years he became highly critical of the

00:11:50 ◼   ► food served by kfc restaurants as he believed they had cut costs and allowed quality to deteriorate

00:11:56 ◼   ► yeah there you go yeah it was all like cost cutting and any you know like the mashed potatoes

00:12:01 ◼   ► aren't really mashed potatoes they're you know some kind of chemical recreation of mashed potatoes

00:12:06 ◼   ► and he's like how the hell can you not you just boil potatoes in there max them up

00:12:11 ◼   ► like this is not you know not tricky food anyway anyway win boston harbor not win encore

00:12:21 ◼   ► encore boston harbor yeah well what's the so there's two there's two things to this name

00:12:25 ◼   ► because it was when they were when they were applying for this and and trying to make it

00:12:30 ◼   ► happen it was the win boston harbor right and now they then they scrubbed his name from it it's the

00:12:34 ◼   ► encore boston harbor but the boston harbor aspect of it is also fallacious because if you

00:12:42 ◼   ► i don't know i don't know maybe you throw a map in the in the show notes or something but

00:12:46 ◼   ► uh i can i'm sitting in boston right now and i can see this but the actual property is in a town

00:12:52 ◼   ► called everette which is just over the line from boston and the waterfront that it will be on is

00:12:58 ◼   ► the mystic river which feeds into boston harbor again about four miles down the road down the

00:13:05 ◼   ► down the stream so i get why they didn't go with the encore everett but they're definitely playing

00:13:13 ◼   ► a little fast and loose with the name here yeah i wonder uh phillies was going to be in the city

00:13:20 ◼   ► proper uh it was going to be right right in the city city i don't want to go on a super long

00:13:27 ◼   ► tangent about it but it Philly has a weird thing where we've got two rivers

00:13:31 ◼   ► we've got the Schuylkill River which most people can't spell S-C-H-U-Y-L-K-I-L-L

00:13:39 ◼   ► the kill part is easy yeah once you get past the school right school now runs

00:13:44 ◼   ► right through the middle of the city and it divides it into you know Drexel and

00:13:48 ◼   ► Penn are on the one side of the river and then Center City Philadelphia is on

00:13:51 ◼   ► the other side and then we've got the the Delaware River which is the border

00:13:56 ◼   ► between Pennsylvania and New Jersey and it's a much bigger wider river.

00:14:02 ◼   ► It's a very wide river. For whatever reason, most cities' riverfront property is prestigious.

00:14:10 ◼   ► It's expensive real estate. People want to live on the water. In Philly, we have I-95

00:14:19 ◼   ► running right along the Delaware. It's a giant superhighway running right down

00:14:27 ◼   ► where it by most logic should be the you know some of the best real estate in the

00:14:33 ◼   ► city. Billions of dollars worth of real estate. And it's just weird and then you

00:14:39 ◼   ► know the land it's just underused and that's where Wynn was going to put

00:14:43 ◼   ► their their casino resort. And they had a really nice plan where they parking is always

00:14:49 ◼   ► an issue with a casino because people drive to the casino and they've got all these cars

00:14:53 ◼   ► and parking garages are ugly. So they had a really nice plan where they were going to

00:14:57 ◼   ► put the whole parking garage underground, everything was going to be underground. And

00:15:00 ◼   ► then on the top of it, about, you know, about one story out, they were going to build, just

00:15:06 ◼   ► put grass and make it a nice public park, it would, you know, wouldn't be like you'd

00:15:10 ◼   ► have to pay or anything. It was going to be a public park right along the river, right next to the

00:15:15 ◼   ► casino. Just as a nice thing for the city here, we're going to build this big casino. We're going

00:15:23 ◼   ► to have all these fancy restaurants and all this stuff. We'll put all the cars underground, and

00:15:27 ◼   ► then on top of it, we'll have a nice little park where anybody can come. Seemed very nice.

00:15:32 ◼   ► Instead, we- And you guys screwed up the whole thing.

00:15:36 ◼   ► We got bubkas. Got absolutely nothing. We got the sugar house.

00:15:41 ◼   ► Well, it's funny, I was looking at the the when Massachusetts legalized casino gambling,

00:15:47 ◼   ► I think they take a 25% cut right off the top in taxes. So it's a huge amount of money going

00:15:55 ◼   ► to the state, which is why they're interested in doing this. And I was looking at the estimates,

00:16:00 ◼   ► and because they're going to have an impact on multiple cities, they have to pay surrounding

00:16:06 ◼   ► community agreements and the city of boston is going to get something like 50 million

00:16:10 ◼   ► over 15 years so you know three or four million a year something like that uh the city of

00:16:15 ◼   ► everette which is i'd have to look but it's a city of under 100 000 people i think is

00:16:20 ◼   ► going to make 472 million over that first 15 years that's the estimate at least holy

00:16:28 ◼   ► crap uh and and you know this is a like i said it's a small city that that this is gonna

00:16:33 ◼   ► like it's gonna be like 20% of their annual budget they're gonna get every year just from

00:16:38 ◼   ► one casino being there.

00:16:40 ◼   ► Oh my god, it's crazy.

00:16:42 ◼   ► So yeah, I don't know, I think Philly blew it.

00:16:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I would say so.

00:16:48 ◼   ► Forty-six thousand in the population and they're gonna get something like 32 million a year

00:16:53 ◼   ► out of just having this casino be on the edge of their city.

00:16:59 ◼   ► That's absolutely crazy.

00:17:01 ◼   ► Yeah, and Philly really was going to have it right in the city.

00:17:03 ◼   ► So we've got one, I think we've only got one that's officially in city limits.

00:17:07 ◼   ► That's the Sugar House I mentioned.

00:17:08 ◼   ► Terrible name.

00:17:09 ◼   ► Which is a terrible name.

00:17:11 ◼   ► It is a terrible casino.

00:17:12 ◼   ► Although, I will say I haven't been there in several years because it's so miserable.

00:17:18 ◼   ► So you think maybe it got slightly less miserable?

00:17:22 ◼   ► I forget if I've even talked about this before, but Amy and I went, I think, twice.

00:17:27 ◼   ► And the one time we went, it was the winter, and everybody had their coats checked.

00:17:32 ◼   ► They don't have a coat check?

00:17:35 ◼   ► Well, I guess they did.

00:17:38 ◼   ► And Amy and I, maybe everybody was thinking the same thing we were, where Amy and I didn't

00:17:42 ◼   ► check our coats because we're like, "I don't think we're going to see."

00:17:45 ◼   ► We want to be able to get out of here, yeah.

00:17:48 ◼   ► But even people who seem to be settled in, playing games and etc., were all wearing their

00:17:52 ◼   ► coats.

00:17:53 ◼   ► It just seemed weird.

00:17:58 ◼   ► It throws you off.

00:18:00 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:18:01 ◼   ► Atlantic City has pretty much identical climate to Philadelphia, and they've had casinos for

00:18:07 ◼   ► an entire generation.

00:18:08 ◼   ► I don't remember this problem, the times I've been to an Atlantic City casino of all

00:18:13 ◼   ► these.

00:18:14 ◼   ► Where do you put your coat?

00:18:15 ◼   ► But it does seem like a weird problem.

00:18:16 ◼   ► Yeah, coats and casinos just don't seem to go well together, like an outdoor jacket.

00:18:21 ◼   ► And again, maybe they have fixed it.

00:18:23 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:18:24 ◼   ► I haven't been there in years.

00:18:25 ◼   ► But the problem with Sugarhouse was when the Pennsylvania State Legislature legalized

00:18:30 ◼   ► gambling, they only legalized slot machines and assorted whatever, video poker.

00:18:38 ◼   ► No table games.

00:18:40 ◼   ► No table games, which seems stupid to me, A, because I don't like to play slot machines.

00:18:46 ◼   ► I like to play table games.

00:18:47 ◼   ► And B, what sense does that make?

00:18:51 ◼   ► I see the argument not to have gambling at all.

00:18:54 ◼   ► I don't see the argument of, you know, you can have slot machines, but you can't have

00:18:59 ◼   ► table games.

00:19:00 ◼   ► It seems to me like if anything, you should do it the other way.

00:19:03 ◼   ► Slot machines are the ones that seem more addictive, and people sort of zone out and,

00:19:07 ◼   ► you know, maybe play too much.

00:19:11 ◼   ► But anyway, before they opened, the Pennsylvania State Legislature came to a census.

00:19:16 ◼   ► Somebody more or less said exactly what I did.

00:19:18 ◼   ► This doesn't make any sense.

00:19:19 ◼   ► Why don't we have table games, too?

00:19:21 ◼   ► And they're like, "Okay."

00:19:22 ◼   ► And then they said, "Okay, we can have table games."

00:19:24 ◼   ► But the Sugar House had already been,

00:19:25 ◼   ► it was already under construction.

00:19:26 ◼   ► - So they had to tack this on?

00:19:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, they had a floor plan that was entirely based

00:19:32 ◼   ► on the idea that they'd only have,

00:19:34 ◼   ► the only gambling would be slot machines and et cetera.

00:19:38 ◼   ► And so they just put the table games,

00:19:42 ◼   ► like Blackjack and Roulette and craps,

00:19:44 ◼   ► they just put them in what clearly were going to be

00:19:47 ◼   ► the aisles between the table games,

00:19:49 ◼   ► between the slot machines. And so you literally like I played

00:19:52 ◼   ► some blackjack and like the back of your chair was right up

00:19:55 ◼   ► against slot machines. It was very strange. And then there was

00:20:00 ◼   ► nowhere really to walk around. It was extremely crowded. And it

00:20:04 ◼   ► was a brand new casino. It was you know, the whole thing was

00:20:07 ◼   ► built from the ground and everyone's bulked up with their

00:20:09 ◼   ► winter jackets. Everybody had puffy coats. I saw a guy I

00:20:16 ◼   ► remember this when Amy and I were there. Let's have one drink

00:20:19 ◼   ► and then we'll hit the road.

00:20:21 ◼   ► Let's get out of here."

00:20:23 ◼   ► So we went over to a bar.

00:20:24 ◼   ► And you know how in a casino, a lot of times

00:20:27 ◼   ► the bars will have video poker built right into the bar.

00:20:29 ◼   ► Sure, they got to keep taking as much of your money as possible.

00:20:33 ◼   ► Yeah, why not?

00:20:34 ◼   ► And it wasn't crowded.

00:20:35 ◼   ► And so Amy and I sat down, and there was a guy to my left.

00:20:38 ◼   ► And I looked over, and he had like--

00:20:42 ◼   ► I wasn't trying to rubberneck.

00:20:44 ◼   ► I feel like that's rude, but I looked

00:20:46 ◼   ► to see what he was playing.

00:20:47 ◼   ► He was playing video poker.

00:20:48 ◼   ► and he had like 4,000 credits.

00:20:50 ◼   ► And I was like, holy crap, man.

00:20:52 ◼   ► And I was like, what the hell is that?

00:20:52 ◼   ► And I was like, I think those are quarters, but that's--

00:20:55 ◼   ► That's about 1,000 bucks.

00:20:57 ◼   ► And he was right next to me, so I wanted to be discreet about it.

00:21:02 ◼   ► I wanted to get Amy's attention and say, hey, this guy's got like 1,000 bucks

00:21:04 ◼   ► on this thing.

00:21:05 ◼   ► But I didn't really have an opportunity to talk.

00:21:08 ◼   ► And then I look over again, and it said 6,000.

00:21:10 ◼   ► And I was like, holy crap.

00:21:12 ◼   ► And then it was 8,500.

00:21:14 ◼   ► So I was like, holy shit, this guy's making a mint.

00:21:16 ◼   ► And by the time I got Amy's attention, it was back down to like a thousand.

00:21:22 ◼   ► So this guy in the course of like 10 minutes had won over a thousand dollars in video poker

00:21:29 ◼   ► and then lost close to two thousand.

00:21:32 ◼   ► And you would never know it.

00:21:33 ◼   ► You'd never know he was playing for more.

00:21:35 ◼   ► You'd think he was playing for like five bucks or something.

00:21:37 ◼   ► It was just total robot, you know, just hitting buttons, but playing super fast.

00:21:43 ◼   ► So you're saying this casino is going to be a great thing here in Boston.

00:21:47 ◼   ► It's going to go well for everybody.

00:21:51 ◼   ► I see no problems stemming from this.

00:21:54 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:21:56 ◼   ► You're not really a gambler, are you?

00:21:59 ◼   ► No, I think we've talked about this a little bit.

00:22:02 ◼   ► Any money that I would win gambling would be, "Okay, that's nice."

00:22:06 ◼   ► And any money that I would lose gambling, I would think, "What the hell did I just do?"

00:22:10 ◼   ► You're too sensible.

00:22:12 ◼   ► Yeah, the upshot is so minimal compared to the downside for me.

00:22:16 ◼   ► Right.

00:22:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm like an evil Paul Kavas.

00:22:24 ◼   ► I think we both have equal understanding of the mathematics and how screwed you are ultimately

00:22:31 ◼   ► playing any of these games.

00:22:33 ◼   ► And I can completely disassociate.

00:22:36 ◼   ► And enjoy it.

00:22:38 ◼   ► From the math.

00:22:40 ◼   ► I feel I I don't believe it, you know, like right now talking to you in in the light of day. I

00:22:47 ◼   ► Know it's not true

00:22:50 ◼   ► But while I'm playing I feel like I get what I deserve

00:22:54 ◼   ► I feel like there are blackjack gods and and if I've been a good boy, I get good cards

00:22:59 ◼   ► and if

00:23:01 ◼   ► If I've done done the universe wrong karma comes and gets me and I get a bunch of 16

00:23:05 ◼   ► Do you believe in karma anywhere else or only at the blackjack table?

00:23:09 ◼   ► Only at, only at, well, in craps. Sure, sure. Yeah. Well, actually, let me take a break here

00:23:18 ◼   ► and thank our first sponsor. The Encore Boston Harbor. The Encore Boston Harbor is our first

00:23:24 ◼   ► sponsor. No, our first sponsor is Audible. Look, could listening, just listening, make you a better

00:23:32 ◼   ► parent, a better leader, even a better person? Could listening to motivating fitness programs

00:23:37 ◼   ► get you fit? Could listening inspire you to start something new? There's never been a better time to

00:23:43 ◼   ► start listening on Audible. On Audible, you get access to an unbeatable selection of audiobooks,

00:23:50 ◼   ► including bestsellers, motivation, mysteries, thrillers, memoirs, and more. They actually have

00:23:57 ◼   ► a bunch of comedy stuff now too. It's almost like the Netflix of comedy just for audio content.

00:24:05 ◼   ► Audible has a ton of comedy stuff that's really, really great. That's my favorite stuff that they

00:24:10 ◼   ► have, that they've grown. If you think of them just as sort of being like the bookstore for

00:24:14 ◼   ► audiobooks, they are still, but they have so much more than just like original content.

00:24:19 ◼   ► Audible members, when you sign up, you can choose three titles every month. You get one audiobook

00:24:27 ◼   ► and two Audible originals that you can't hear anywhere else. And members also get access to

00:24:34 ◼   ► exclusive audio fitness programs to start the new year off on a right foot.

00:24:40 ◼   ► A little bit late for the new year but still you can get in on it. Listen on any

00:24:45 ◼   ► device anytime anywhere at home at the gym on your commute or just on the go

00:24:50 ◼   ► you'll also enjoy audiobook exchanges so if you get a book you don't like it you

00:24:57 ◼   ► can exchange it you're not stuck with it it's really a great service so here's

00:25:01 ◼   ► Here's what you do. You get a 30 day trial when you go to audible.com/talk show or just

00:25:08 ◼   ► text talk show to 500500. You just text that code there and, and you can listen. So that's

00:25:18 ◼   ► a 30 day free trial at audible.com/talk show. Hey, it's your good friend John here. I'm

00:25:24 ◼   ► I'm a big dummy and I forgot to make a book recommendation.

00:25:29 ◼   ► And our friends at Audible always want a book recommendation.

00:25:32 ◼   ► This time it's easy.

00:25:34 ◼   ► It's Ken Kachenda's Creative Selection.

00:25:37 ◼   ► That's the book that came out last year.

00:25:38 ◼   ► Ken worked at Apple, worked on the original iPhone team,

00:25:43 ◼   ► and it is simply a fantastic book.

00:25:45 ◼   ► Anybody who enjoys this show is gonna love this book.

00:25:49 ◼   ► And the audio book is read by Ken Kachenda himself,

00:25:53 ◼   ► which I think is always great.

00:25:54 ◼   ► So there's my selection, creative selection by Ken Kaczenda.

00:25:58 ◼   ► Here, hold on one second here, Paul.

00:26:00 ◼   ► I got a special guest.

00:26:02 ◼   ► All right.

00:26:03 ◼   ► I'm Amy Jane Gruber.

00:26:04 ◼   ► And I'm Paul Kaposis.

00:26:07 ◼   ► And you're listening to Just the T—

00:26:09 ◼   ► Inside of the Talk Show.

00:26:11 ◼   ► We're totally taking it away.

00:26:13 ◼   ► What do you want to talk about today, Paul?

00:26:16 ◼   ► Anything but technology.

00:26:18 ◼   ► Oh, it's so funny because I actually had like an Apple store.

00:26:22 ◼   ► Oh, well, go ahead.

00:26:24 ◼   ► Guess who's the jackass who washed her iPods two days before the new ones come out?

00:26:29 ◼   ► Wait, isn't that- you washed your little case with the AirPods in it?

00:26:33 ◼   ► The AirPods, iPods, whatever.

00:26:34 ◼   ► And they're dead?

00:26:35 ◼   ► Well, one.

00:26:36 ◼   ► One is dead and one sounds a little squishy.

00:26:41 ◼   ► So wait, isn't that perfect?

00:26:42 ◼   ► I mean, maybe you didn't have an excuse to update before and now, well, whoops.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Yeah, but now I'm like, I'm without iPods and I'm walking around and it's so funny because

00:26:53 ◼   ► When they first came out, you thought everyone looked stupid.

00:26:58 ◼   ► You know, these little things dangling from your ears.

00:27:01 ◼   ► People with cords look so dumb.

00:27:03 ◼   ► I feel like an idiot.

00:27:04 ◼   ► - Oh, you're walking around all corded,

00:27:05 ◼   ► all tethered to your whatever.

00:27:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm all walking away from things

00:27:11 ◼   ► and forgetting to grab my phone.

00:27:12 ◼   ► It's horrible.

00:27:14 ◼   ► It's horrible.

00:27:14 ◼   ► - I, you might know a guy who could get you a new pair.

00:27:18 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:27:19 ◼   ► He might have a little bit of pull.

00:27:22 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I can walk into an Apple store, same as anybody, but I need them now and I can't buy them now.

00:27:29 ◼   ► Ah.

00:27:31 ◼   ► I need them right now.

00:27:33 ◼   ► I think you're stuck living a corded life for another week or two.

00:27:38 ◼   ► Yeah, when do they come out?

00:27:40 ◼   ► Uh, I don't know. They ship in next week, something? I don't know. You gotta...

00:27:45 ◼   ► You might be too late now. It might take weeks. You could be tethered to your phone for weeks.

00:27:51 ◼   ► Look at us talking about Apple stuff.

00:27:53 ◼   ► I mean, I call everything all the wrong name.

00:27:55 ◼   ► Uh, yeah, that's pretty much all I got in terms of stuff.

00:28:00 ◼   ► Uh, I took a tumble, uh, Scarlet took a tumble.

00:28:04 ◼   ► You took a tumble.

00:28:05 ◼   ► Tell me more.

00:28:06 ◼   ► I almost lost a tooth.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Well, no, I didn't almost lose a tooth.

00:28:10 ◼   ► I went to the dentist.

00:28:11 ◼   ► I didn't lose tooth, uh, just some, some damage.

00:28:14 ◼   ► I took a tumble.

00:28:15 ◼   ► Hold on, hold on.

00:28:16 ◼   ► It was very embarrassing.

00:28:18 ◼   ► - You took enough of a tumble that you,

00:28:20 ◼   ► was your next move to go to the dentist?

00:28:23 ◼   ► - No, because I thought I felt okay.

00:28:26 ◼   ► And then my tooth started to kind of hurt.

00:28:29 ◼   ► And then I just convinced myself

00:28:30 ◼   ► that it was going to turn black and fall out.

00:28:32 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:28:34 ◼   ► - So I went to the dentist and they're all like talking

00:28:36 ◼   ► about bruised ligaments and you know,

00:28:38 ◼   ► that I should be fine.

00:28:39 ◼   ► And I was like, just tell me,

00:28:41 ◼   ► is my tooth going to turn black and fall out?

00:28:43 ◼   ► And they said, most definitely not.

00:28:45 ◼   ► And I said, let me out.

00:28:46 ◼   ► - I'm out of here, I'm good.

00:28:48 ◼   ► Yeah, that was all I needed. That was all I needed.

00:28:51 ◼   ► Alright. Uh, but you're okay.

00:28:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm totally, totally fine. Uh, I thought I broke my nose then.

00:28:59 ◼   ► I'm a little bit of a hypochondriac, really.

00:29:02 ◼   ► Well, wait. But a hypochondriac has like a cough and thinks they have deadly swine flu.

00:29:06 ◼   ► You... it sounds like you smashed your face into something.

00:29:10 ◼   ► I don't think that's su- I don't know that that qualifies as being a hypochondriac.

00:29:14 ◼   ► I have a red dot on my nose and it kind of hurts when I smile so don't make me laugh.

00:29:18 ◼   ► No problem there. Let's keep it somber.

00:29:22 ◼   ► No problem there on this show. Should we let him play? Should we have a special guest on the show?

00:29:27 ◼   ► Oh, no, we have a rule. No guests. No guests. Sorry, John.

00:29:31 ◼   ► When we're done the show's over. So he I hope he got all his ad reads in.

00:29:35 ◼   ► Do you know how we had like a vow to say like oh this you know, not say this will all be cut.

00:29:43 ◼   ► This won't happen.

00:29:45 ◼   ► His show doesn't have that rule, so...

00:29:47 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:29:49 ◼   ► This is getting cut.

00:29:50 ◼   ► Well now wait, so this is back to...

00:29:52 ◼   ► Let's get it back on topic, Amy. Let's keep it back on track.

00:29:55 ◼   ► Did your...

00:29:56 ◼   ► Do you want to talk about my tumble?

00:29:57 ◼   ► Do you want to talk about how I just got my glasses straightened so I don't look crazy anymore?

00:30:01 ◼   ► Have you ever noticed if somebody's glasses are a little crooked, they look crazy?

00:30:04 ◼   ► They look nuts!

00:30:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I just walked in and I was like, "Unnetting Professor Me!"

00:30:08 ◼   ► Professor B, and first of all, the kid was too young to have any idea what I was talking about.

00:30:13 ◼   ► I'm probably too young.

00:30:15 ◼   ► I was totally gonna go with Jerry Lewis on that though, yeah.

00:30:18 ◼   ► That's totally the Jerry Lewis look.

00:30:21 ◼   ► Yeah, well this kid didn't know what I was talking about.

00:30:24 ◼   ► He was 12.

00:30:26 ◼   ► I mean, so, yeah, so I got those straightened out.

00:30:29 ◼   ► Alright, but you're okay.

00:30:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm totally fine. I'm totally fine.

00:30:33 ◼   ► Then we don't care about this anymore.

00:30:35 ◼   ► Your AirPods though, your AirPods I'm worried about.

00:30:38 ◼   ► Yeah, so am I.

00:30:39 ◼   ► They're upstairs in a bag of rice.

00:30:41 ◼   ► I'm walking around with the wires.

00:30:42 ◼   ► Were they in their case when they went in the wash?

00:30:45 ◼   ► Yes. Really?

00:30:46 ◼   ► Yes. See, 'cause I--

00:30:47 ◼   ► See, this all relates to my tumble because--

00:30:50 ◼   ► Oh, huh, huh, sure.

00:30:52 ◼   ► The tumble took me off my game.

00:30:54 ◼   ► Like, I don't wash things with things in the pockets.

00:30:57 ◼   ► Like, I was off my game yesterday.

00:31:00 ◼   ► I was really scared, I was convinced,

00:31:02 ◼   ► black front tooth, you know, broken nose.

00:31:05 ◼   ► I'm just gonna say this is totally false. She washes my pants with stuff in the pockets all the time.

00:31:09 ◼   ► Wait, that's on you! That's a- she just- her responsibility ends with her stuff and maybe the boys.

00:31:14 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:31:15 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I don't even- well, I steal their money. I do steal their money. But that, like, pops out.

00:31:21 ◼   ► Uh, that's a true mom move to steal all the money you find in the washer.

00:31:26 ◼   ► You gotta get paid for this somehow.

00:31:27 ◼   ► Yeah, but uh, yeah, I don't check their pockets for things.

00:31:32 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:31:33 ◼   ► That's on them.

00:31:34 ◼   ► All right.

00:31:34 ◼   ► But so you usually, you usually keep your pockets free and clear

00:31:38 ◼   ► before they go in the wash.

00:31:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:41 ◼   ► So it's, it all comes back to the tumble and, uh, I mean, it was bound to happen.

00:31:45 ◼   ► It just happened at the absolute worst time.

00:31:47 ◼   ► So I, I slide my AirPods into my, my little jeans, fifth pocket all the time.

00:31:53 ◼   ► It's the only thing I've ever used that pocket for.

00:31:55 ◼   ► And I think that's like the greatest feature that Apple has not even mentioned

00:31:58 ◼   ► is that they fit right in there.

00:32:00 ◼   ► But I, I'm a woman.

00:32:01 ◼   ► We don't have pockets at all.

00:32:02 ◼   ► pocket is also usually fake, but it was in my gym clothes.

00:32:07 ◼   ► I managed to wash mine in the case and I pulled them out and I said, "Ah, hell."

00:32:11 ◼   ► And to my knowledge, there has been no issue.

00:32:14 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:32:15 ◼   ► Do you use, you know, they've got the gentle cycle.

00:32:18 ◼   ► Were you on like the rough cycle?

00:32:19 ◼   ► Yeah, my clothes are real dirty.

00:32:23 ◼   ► Real dirty in the pits.

00:32:26 ◼   ► No.

00:32:26 ◼   ► Uh, no, I just, well, one of them, one of them works.

00:32:31 ◼   ► So, you know, it's not that bad.

00:32:34 ◼   ► - I don't know, it's pretty bad.

00:32:35 ◼   ► - No, we've got the rice.

00:32:39 ◼   ► I mean, I have faith in the rice.

00:32:41 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:32:43 ◼   ► Maybe misplaced faith in the rice.

00:32:46 ◼   ► You should see John's setup down here.

00:32:48 ◼   ► He's like in our basement.

00:32:50 ◼   ► He's staring at a wall.

00:32:52 ◼   ► This is not, I can't even tell you about his desk.

00:32:55 ◼   ► Does he do show notes?

00:32:56 ◼   ► Can I take a picture of this desk?

00:32:58 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:32:59 ◼   ► - What he's working with here?

00:32:59 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:33:00 ◼   ► - No. - Yes.

00:33:01 ◼   ► Yes you may. You can and you will.

00:33:04 ◼   ► This is terrible.

00:33:07 ◼   ► And the travesty that is his disgusting desk will be shared with the world.

00:33:11 ◼   ► This is terrible. Oh, and I'm looking at his computer.

00:33:14 ◼   ► You know he had a guy on here named Rich Mogul?

00:33:16 ◼   ► What a name!

00:33:18 ◼   ► I'm aware of Rich.

00:33:19 ◼   ► Good dude.

00:33:21 ◼   ► I am not. But...

00:33:23 ◼   ► Hell of a name though. You're right.

00:33:25 ◼   ► Hell of a name. I hope it's working out for him.

00:33:30 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I guess that's about all my time.

00:33:32 ◼   ► I feel like we've done 30 minutes.

00:33:34 ◼   ► Are we gonna be able to get our theme song here?

00:33:40 ◼   ► We can make it happen.

00:33:42 ◼   ► Just the tip

00:33:44 ◼   ► Amy and Paul

00:33:46 ◼   ► The best darn podcast

00:33:50 ◼   ► Of them all

00:33:52 ◼   ► Just the tip

00:33:54 ◼   ► Amy and Paul

00:33:56 ◼   ► The best darn podcast

00:33:58 ◼   ► Podcast of them all

00:34:01 ◼   ► If only I knew a guy really good at audio I might I might be able to make it happen

00:34:11 ◼   ► Well now he sprung this on me too early this this is how we should have ended the show

00:34:18 ◼   ► But now I got to go back and talk his nonsense. Oh

00:34:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I know. Well, you know what everyone else will be so glad that it's done. I

00:34:28 ◼   ► I don't, I don't, I think these people are going to complain.

00:34:31 ◼   ► We just got a text from Audible. They called it off.

00:34:36 ◼   ► The whole thing's off. They're not paying for that ad.

00:34:38 ◼   ► Right.

00:34:40 ◼   ► I don't remember how we used to end our show.

00:34:44 ◼   ► Just walk away. Just footstep noises walking away.

00:34:48 ◼   ► Wait. Okay, I'm gonna flip this janky desk over and walk away.

00:34:57 ◼   ► [sad trombone]

00:34:59 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:35:01 ◼   ► Who did Santa's hair blow?

00:35:03 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:35:05 ◼   ► There we go, wasn't that fun?

00:35:07 ◼   ► What a delightful treat.

00:35:09 ◼   ► It's like old days.

00:35:11 ◼   ► It's like...

00:35:13 ◼   ► just like hanging out with you two weeks ago.

00:35:15 ◼   ► We're having fun,

00:35:17 ◼   ► we're stuck there thinking about going to play Blackjack.

00:35:19 ◼   ► Right.

00:35:21 ◼   ► I'm working on my sports path.

00:35:23 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:35:25 ◼   ► Who you got in the tournament, John?

00:35:27 ◼   ► I got the same pick I've made for around 27 consecutive years.

00:35:32 ◼   ► I've got the University of North Carolina going all the way.

00:35:35 ◼   ► That's worked out well multiple times in the recent past.

00:35:39 ◼   ► But I'm sick to my stomach because you

00:35:41 ◼   ► know who's going to win?

00:35:43 ◼   ► You think Duke's actually going to win?

00:35:47 ◼   ► The best thing that ever happened to Duke-- and I hate Duke.

00:35:50 ◼   ► I've been lifelong North Carolina fan, so I hate Duke.

00:35:53 ◼   ► And I really don't like Coach K. I

00:35:54 ◼   ► I think he's a smug arrogant.

00:35:57 ◼   ► I just, there's something about that guy

00:35:58 ◼   ► that rubs me the wrong way.

00:35:59 ◼   ► I don't like his black hair.

00:36:01 ◼   ► That's fake, come on.

00:36:02 ◼   ► The guy's 70 years old

00:36:03 ◼   ► and he's got a head full of black hair.

00:36:06 ◼   ► Don't like him, but I'll tell you what,

00:36:08 ◼   ► best thing that ever happened to him,

00:36:09 ◼   ► that team this year was Zion Williamson

00:36:12 ◼   ► going down for a couple of games

00:36:13 ◼   ► and they look bad without him.

00:36:15 ◼   ► - Right.

00:36:16 ◼   ► - And then he came back and he,

00:36:17 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:36:18 ◼   ► he looks like if you made like a comedy video

00:36:23 ◼   ► where you took an NBA star and had him play against an eighth grade team.

00:36:28 ◼   ► That is what he looks like playing against elite teams in the ACC.

00:36:32 ◼   ► He came back, and it was just unbelievable.

00:36:35 ◼   ► He had one game.

00:36:36 ◼   ► His first game back, he didn't miss a shot.

00:36:39 ◼   ► He was like 13 for 13 or 14 for 14 from the field.

00:36:43 ◼   ► And they were all dunks.

00:36:45 ◼   ► He literally didn't miss a shot.

00:36:48 ◼   ► They're unfortunately dominant.

00:36:53 ◼   ► I mean, it's hopefully something terrible,

00:36:55 ◼   ► you know, not an injury.

00:36:56 ◼   ► I've never read for an injury,

00:36:58 ◼   ► but some kind of fluke, bad luck afflicts them.

00:37:01 ◼   ► - All right.

00:37:02 ◼   ► - Who do you got?

00:37:04 ◼   ► - Well, so I do a bracket

00:37:07 ◼   ► with some idiot friends from college,

00:37:09 ◼   ► and I'm including myself in that.

00:37:10 ◼   ► I'm one of the idiot friends.

00:37:12 ◼   ► But my move is to grab a celebrity bracket

00:37:15 ◼   ► and then change like three things.

00:37:18 ◼   ► So I grabbed a bracket that had Gonzaga

00:37:22 ◼   ► and I honestly couldn't tell you much more.

00:37:24 ◼   ► I've got Duke losing, I think in the final four,

00:37:28 ◼   ► 'cause I think they've had their first Gonzaga.

00:37:30 ◼   ► So I think I've got them losing there, but.

00:37:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:37:33 ◼   ► It's set up where if the favorites win,

00:37:35 ◼   ► it would be Duke and Gonzaga in the final four.

00:37:37 ◼   ► - Right.

00:37:38 ◼   ► - Here's one.

00:37:41 ◼   ► I noticed this while I was filling out my bracket

00:37:43 ◼   ► And I don't mean, if there are alumni

00:37:48 ◼   ► of this university listening,

00:37:50 ◼   ► I'm really not trying to slag on it.

00:37:54 ◼   ► But for the first time in my life,

00:37:56 ◼   ► it really struck me what an unusual name Ole Miss is.

00:38:00 ◼   ► - Is that their proper name?

00:38:03 ◼   ► - I don't even know, is it?

00:38:06 ◼   ► That's how it's listed on the bracket, O-L-E-M-I-S-S.

00:38:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, it's University of Mississippi.

00:38:11 ◼   ► I'm looking at their Wikipedia page,

00:38:12 ◼   ► colloquial colloquial II known as Ole Miss. Yeah, that is a it's a very strange name

00:38:17 ◼   ► So when you get your diploma, it doesn't say Ole Miss probably not

00:38:21 ◼   ► Unusual name

00:38:26 ◼   ► like

00:38:27 ◼   ► Particularly the oh, well, right, right. Right. It's not ol apostrophe. It's right

00:38:32 ◼   ► Right. I could even give them the apostrophe if that's what you that's how you say it, you know, like like

00:38:39 ◼   ► In that part of the country people will often use the

00:38:44 ◼   ► Collective second person pronoun y'all we're sure and you would which I believe is properly spelled y apostrophe a ll

00:38:54 ◼   ► Which is actually linguistically a much-needed

00:38:58 ◼   ► pronoun in the English language probably this in my opinion the single biggest deficiency in

00:39:03 ◼   ► standard written English is the lack of a a

00:39:09 ◼   ► Second person plural sure

00:39:11 ◼   ► You know here in Philly. We've got use

00:39:14 ◼   ► Don't don't even these don't even talk about Pittsburgh. I get sick to my stomach here in this one

00:39:19 ◼   ► I'm sorry people from Pittsburgh, but it's disgusting

00:39:23 ◼   ► Young so is it young sir years?

00:39:27 ◼   ► Yeah, oh, we should get a me background. She could tell us I

00:39:31 ◼   ► Forget what it is, but it I?

00:39:35 ◼   ► I remember the first time I went out there to see her,

00:39:37 ◼   ► which my wife Amy was both an undergrad

00:39:40 ◼   ► and then went to Pitt Law School.

00:39:42 ◼   ► The first time I went out there,

00:39:44 ◼   ► heard people say "Yinz,"

00:39:46 ◼   ► I honestly looked around like for hidden cameras.

00:39:48 ◼   ► Like I thought maybe I was on the punk show or something.

00:39:52 ◼   ► - Right, 'cause it's not something that's,

00:39:53 ◼   ► like you'll hear y'all in the Northeast,

00:39:56 ◼   ► not often, but you'll hear it

00:39:57 ◼   ► and understand what it means.

00:39:59 ◼   ► That one, I think I first heard it

00:40:01 ◼   ► when I first visited Pittsburgh as well

00:40:03 ◼   ► I had no idea what it even meant.

00:40:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:40:07 ◼   ► Pittsburgh, I've always said that Pittsburgh is the closest, in my opinion, the closest

00:40:14 ◼   ► America gets to Springfield from the Simpsons, where it is nowhere.

00:40:23 ◼   ► It's not the Midwest.

00:40:24 ◼   ► It is not the East Coast.

00:40:27 ◼   ► They have their own brand of beer that everybody drinks exactly, you know, where Springfield

00:40:32 ◼   ► has duff.

00:40:33 ◼   ► Pittsburgh has, I can't say it right, it's Iron City, but they have a very particular way of pronouncing it, Iron City.

00:40:43 ◼   ► Iron City beer. And it's everywhere. And you can't get it anywhere else. There is nowhere else to get it.

00:40:51 ◼   ► And they say things that nobody else says. It's a charming city, but it is really unusual.

00:41:02 ◼   ► All right now that we've offended all the people from Pittsburgh

00:41:05 ◼   ► And the people from Ole Miss sure

00:41:08 ◼   ► Well, I don't think we've offended them. I think even they would admit that is an unusual name

00:41:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I just did a quick look. I can't see an indication of where that originates without you know doing a deeper dive

00:41:18 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, and can you think of another school that has an old man nickname?

00:41:23 ◼   ► Yeah, well that just goes by something that is other than its real name. Yeah, huh?

00:41:28 ◼   ► I mean nobody I would you say the real name is I don't have no idea Mississippi University, Mississippi

00:41:32 ◼   ► University of Mississippi. Yeah, I think I guess I don't know. I don't know anyone who went to Ole Miss

00:41:38 ◼   ► So, I don't know if they identify as being from Ole Miss or University of Mississippi. I don't know

00:41:42 ◼   ► Yeah

00:41:45 ◼   ► Somebody let me know let me know what's on the diploma. There you go. Get a picture of that diploma

00:41:49 ◼   ► We got lots of news to cover Apple Apple had an unusual week where I

00:41:57 ◼   ► I can't think of anything else quite like it. So there's an event next week on Monday, March 25th,

00:42:04 ◼   ► which is much rumored to be about subscription services. We'll get to that at the end of the show.

00:42:08 ◼   ► I heard reliably, although not from someone at Apple secondhand, but somebody else in the press,

00:42:15 ◼   ► it was Panzareno, I'll just say it. I had heard that word was out over a week,

00:42:24 ◼   ► well over a week ago that there would be "no hardware" at the Apple event on March 25th.

00:42:30 ◼   ► Yet there were all sorts of devices and things that were rumored to be imminent.

00:42:36 ◼   ► iMacs were overdue for an update. Everybody has been thinking that there's new

00:42:45 ◼   ► AirPods coming out, which was true, and that none of this would come out at the event. Turns out it

00:42:50 ◼   ► It all came out drip by drip, day by day, this week.

00:42:55 ◼   ► Right, right.

00:42:56 ◼   ► Three straight days of announcements, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, just press release and

00:43:03 ◼   ► here's some new hardware.

00:43:04 ◼   ► Yeah, and then it got people into sort of like a fever.

00:43:08 ◼   ► People got excited.

00:43:09 ◼   ► Right, nothing came on Thursday.

00:43:13 ◼   ► Everybody was convinced that we were going to get a new Apple product every day, like

00:43:16 ◼   ► maybe for the rest of time.

00:43:18 ◼   ► At least for the rest of the week.

00:43:19 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:20 ◼   ► MacRumors even ran a story, they're like, "I knew iPod Touch is coming tomorrow."

00:43:25 ◼   ► And it didn't.

00:43:27 ◼   ► But it was a good guess.

00:43:29 ◼   ► They had a good shot, yeah.

00:43:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:33 ◼   ► No, but the other curious thing from the inside, here we go into, like I always say, director's

00:43:39 ◼   ► commentary on during Fireball.

00:43:40 ◼   ► The interesting part, which I can now say, is that on Monday, I was in New York, and

00:43:45 ◼   ► had similar briefings in Cupertino for the West Coast press, but they had press briefings Monday

00:43:52 ◼   ► in New York and Cupertino for the new iMacs and the new iPads, the iPad Air and the iPad Mini. That

00:44:03 ◼   ► was where I took delivery of a review unit of the iPad Mini. But there was absolutely no mention

00:44:11 ◼   ► Monday about new AirPods. They didn't tell us about it. They didn't have them there for

00:44:15 ◼   ► us to see. To my knowledge, nobody got review units. If somebody has a review unit, it's

00:44:21 ◼   ► not me and the reviews aren't out yet.

00:44:23 ◼   ► Right. You had mentioned that you'd gotten this iPad mini and I said, "Well, is there

00:44:28 ◼   ► any news on new AirPods?" And you said, "No, nothing else. Just the iPads and the iMac."

00:44:34 ◼   ► And then Wednesday, you look like an idiot.

00:44:37 ◼   ► Because there they are. There's the new AirPods. I think I understand their strategy. I mean,

00:44:45 ◼   ► one thing about Apple PR is they do not like to explain themselves.

00:44:50 ◼   ► For public relations and marketing, getting the silo treatment on things.

00:44:57 ◼   ► Well they love to explain their products, but they do not like to explain their strategy.

00:45:02 ◼   ► So asking them, "Hey, why did you not give us AirPods?"

00:45:07 ◼   ► They'll have an answer, but it's just some kind of nonsense answer.

00:45:12 ◼   ► But I think the thinking is twofold.

00:45:15 ◼   ► I think, one, the day-by-day strategy was just to keep Apple in the news cycle leading

00:45:24 ◼   ► up to next week's event.

00:45:25 ◼   ► So Monday, there was Apple News.

00:45:29 ◼   ► Tuesday there was Apple News.

00:45:31 ◼   ► Wait, is that right?

00:45:33 ◼   ► When was the AirPods?

00:45:35 ◼   ► Did it start with the iPads and then do the iMacs?

00:45:38 ◼   ► Is that the right order?

00:45:39 ◼   ► Yeah, is that right?

00:45:41 ◼   ► I think that is right.

00:45:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:43 ◼   ► I think the iMacs were under embargo until Tuesday, the news about them.

00:45:50 ◼   ► And then Wednesday was the AirPods 2.

00:45:52 ◼   ► They're not really calling it AirPods 2.

00:45:55 ◼   ► They're just the new AirPods.

00:45:58 ◼   ► And then Thursday was the reviews of the iMac Mini came out.

00:46:03 ◼   ► Just to, you know, that was something.

00:46:04 ◼   ► And then I guess today there's…

00:46:05 ◼   ► I pet Mini.

00:46:06 ◼   ► I pet Mini.

00:46:07 ◼   ► What did I say?

00:46:08 ◼   ► I Mac Mini, which I didn't know what that would be.

00:46:12 ◼   ► Just be like the old 17-inch flower power.

00:46:15 ◼   ► Just a smaller iMac.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:19 ◼   ► So I think that the basic idea was just, hey, let's have a little bit of news every day

00:46:24 ◼   ► of the week just to keep Apple in the news.

00:46:26 ◼   ► And then everybody will be thinking about Apple leading up to Monday's big event.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Presumably all the big stuff will be announced.

00:46:33 ◼   ► JEFF DEIST Because otherwise, people aren't thinking

00:46:34 ◼   ► about the biggest company in the world.

00:46:36 ◼   ► They just—if they don't do something every single day of the week, people won't pay

00:46:42 ◼   ► any attention.

00:46:43 ◼   ► JAY P. HENRY People will forget about Apple.

00:46:45 ◼   ► And I think that maybe the reason they didn't see review units of AirPod, the new AirPods,

00:46:51 ◼   ► that they, at least according to their website, they require the very latest version of MacOS

00:46:58 ◼   ► and iOS.

00:46:59 ◼   ► >> Newer than we currently have right now, you mean?

00:47:02 ◼   ► >> Right.

00:47:03 ◼   ► Like, it's iOS 12.2 and MacOS 10.14 point whatever, which are currently in beta as we

00:47:12 ◼   ► record and this week, and presumably will come out on Monday, I guess after the event

00:47:18 ◼   ► and before people start getting these AirPods.

00:47:20 ◼   ► Um, and I guess the, I, you know, it makes sense to me that they, it, for whatever

00:47:24 ◼   ► technical reason that is that, that they require these very latest Mac OS and iOS

00:47:30 ◼   ► versions, they don't want reviewers to have to install beta versions of, you

00:47:34 ◼   ► know, Mac OS and iOS just to test AirPods.

00:47:36 ◼   ► So I, I don't know.

00:47:38 ◼   ► But if they gave you an iPad, what's the iPad mini running?

00:47:40 ◼   ► That's a good question.

00:47:42 ◼   ► I don't have it handy.

00:47:43 ◼   ► Uh, I guess it's running 12.1 point, whatever.

00:47:50 ◼   ► I don't know, I should look. I don't have it handy though. It's not running 12.2 though.

00:47:56 ◼   ► You're sure it's not?

00:47:57 ◼   ► Pretty sure.

00:47:58 ◼   ► Because, I mean, they certainly, if they give you, I mean, I guess that's risky. If you

00:48:02 ◼   ► give out a review unit with a beta OS and there's some sort of an issue, then you don't

00:48:06 ◼   ► know whether to ascribe it to the hardware or the software.

00:48:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm trying to think if they've ever done that before. Not really. I don't think

00:48:14 ◼   ► They tend not to do that.

00:48:18 ◼   ► The weirdest thing they've ever done, in my experience, is AirPod-related, where back

00:48:22 ◼   ► whatever year it was when the AirPods came out, they gave us "prototype" AirPods after

00:48:29 ◼   ► the…was it the September event?

00:48:31 ◼   ► I think so.

00:48:32 ◼   ► It was 2016, yeah.

00:48:33 ◼   ► It was like September or October of 2016.

00:48:36 ◼   ► So they gave the people who got the phones for review, they gave them AirPods, but they

00:48:40 ◼   ► these are prototypes and we will need these back when we ship the real air pots and then like and

00:48:47 ◼   ► they're usually very lax about like asking for review hardware back like every once in a while

00:48:52 ◼   ► you get I get like a reminder that says like here's you know here's the inventory of the stuff

00:48:56 ◼   ► that's sitting somewhere in your house sitting somewhere in my office here's all the stuff you

00:49:01 ◼   ► have that's sitting in your office that you should send back and then I just send it you know I put

00:49:05 ◼   ► it all. Like I tend to do it in a terrible dump. Just throw it all in one rubber made

00:49:11 ◼   ► crate and slap a shipping label on there.

00:49:13 ◼   ► Yeah, and just ship it all back to Apple all at once. But they're very nice about it. It's

00:49:19 ◼   ► all very lax. But with those AirPods, the day that the real ones came out and they're

00:49:25 ◼   ► like, "Okay, we're now shipping AirPods," they were like, "Please send us back the

00:49:27 ◼   ► prototypes. Here is a FedEx prepaid label. We need this tomorrow."

00:49:33 ◼   ► So how many weeks did it take you to get them back to them, John?

00:49:37 ◼   ► No, I sent it-- it was very clear that they wanted them back immediately.

00:49:40 ◼   ► And so I actually sent them back right on the day.

00:49:42 ◼   ► I was like, I don't know why they have such a, you know,

00:49:46 ◼   ► ants in their pants on this issue.

00:49:47 ◼   ► But whatever it is, I'll send it back.

00:49:49 ◼   ► And the funny thing is, I know I had them.

00:49:52 ◼   ► Panzareno had them.

00:49:53 ◼   ► Renee had them.

00:49:54 ◼   ► A bunch of people who were regular guests on the show had those.

00:49:58 ◼   ► And all of us agreed.

00:49:59 ◼   ► They were-- there was no way to tell that they were not AirPods.

00:50:02 ◼   ► That's what I was going to ask. Was there any physical difference that you could see?

00:50:05 ◼   ► No physical difference. No functional difference. I have no idea what made those

00:50:11 ◼   ► "prototypes" and what the difference was. The experience of using them was exactly the same.

00:50:18 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:50:18 ◼   ► But anyway, what do you want to talk about first?

00:50:23 ◼   ► Well, we're talking AirPods. Should we talk battery life on the AirPods?

00:50:27 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. So that's a good topic.

00:50:31 ◼   ► So this was interesting.

00:50:33 ◼   ► I sent you an article and then I can't remember if it's from this article or yeah.

00:50:37 ◼   ► So the article talks about how two years ago, this guy heard everybody on podcast raving

00:50:42 ◼   ► about AirPods and so he decided to buy a pair.

00:50:44 ◼   ► And now two years later, you know, early 2017, he buys them early 2019.

00:50:50 ◼   ► He's had them for a couple of years and that the battery life on them is crap.

00:50:54 ◼   ► And that now he hears all sorts of people on podcasts complaining about a similar issue

00:50:58 ◼   ► with poor battery life on their AirPods. And I know you and I have had discussions with several

00:51:04 ◼   ► people who've run into this exact same issue. Yeah, Amy's got that issue. And it didn't do it.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Before they went through the watch. Before they went through the watch.

00:51:13 ◼   ► Let's set that aside as a caveat. Yeah. And I've noticed too, because I tend to,

00:51:19 ◼   ► like one of the things I do, I listen to long podcasts, I listen to like ATP. And I listen to

00:51:27 ◼   ► a long enough podcast and I get to the point where they start playing that sad little beep

00:51:33 ◼   ► boop boop. Right. Yeah. So I use them, I have them with me most days, but I use them for

00:51:39 ◼   ► brief phone calls and maybe a little bit of music listening. I almost never hit this.

00:51:44 ◼   ► So I have not had any complaints about the battery life, but it's very clear that, you know, battery,

00:51:50 ◼   ► we all know batteries degrade over time. And these do not through cycles, right? Not just time,

00:51:56 ◼   ► But you know as as you charge and discharge and charge and discharge that the battery deteriorates

00:52:03 ◼   ► So I and and these these devices have really no way for somebody to replace the battery

00:52:10 ◼   ► so, you know the iPhone obviously famously had issues with batteries and an Apple Institute of replacement plan and

00:52:17 ◼   ► You had to go to Apple to do it and you still have to go to Apple to do it

00:52:21 ◼   ► But it is possible to do to my knowledge

00:52:23 ◼   ► Apple does not have anything for the batteries in the AirPods. Is that right?

00:52:26 ◼   ► No, I don't think so. No, they definitely right

00:52:30 ◼   ► So so if you if you two years in if your AirPods if their batteries are so crummy that you know

00:52:37 ◼   ► They're unusable or you're not getting enough use time out of them. Your option is pretty much

00:52:42 ◼   ► Throw them away or hopefully recycle them with Apple I think but not

00:52:46 ◼   ► Not not get a new battery for 50 bucks or even you know any amount of money

00:52:52 ◼   ► Yeah, there's no replacement for it. And it does seem wasteful now. You really think about it.

00:52:58 ◼   ► They're $160. They still sound great, right? It's just the battery, right? There's nothing

00:53:05 ◼   ► wrong with mine, which I've had since December of 2016, I guess now. Absolutely nothing wrong

00:53:12 ◼   ► with them. I've never lost one, amazingly, yet. And my battery life is okay, but I can definitely

00:53:18 ◼   ► tell it's not as good as it used to be because when they were brand new I never heard that sound

00:53:22 ◼   ► right I remember people saying it and I was like well I got to like keep these out of the case

00:53:26 ◼   ► because I that one of the ways that I've never lost one you put it right back in the dance right

00:53:32 ◼   ► I'm very very very religious about like it's either in my ear in my hand or in the case

00:53:38 ◼   ► absolutely never put them anywhere else and so but you keep putting them in the case and they

00:53:42 ◼   ► keep charging through cycles right right it was only you know I would say only in the last year

00:53:48 ◼   ► have I started hearing that sound and I don't my use isn't any different so they clearly don't get

00:53:53 ◼   ► as good a battery life as they used to. And as you said it's interesting because these are,

00:53:59 ◼   ► Amy noted that when these first came out people said well they look dumb and I have definitely

00:54:05 ◼   ► noticed in the past six months that it is very rare to see somebody using headphones that are

00:54:11 ◼   ► not AirPods. I shouldn't say very rare but it's very common to see them the same way 10 or 15

00:54:16 ◼   ► years ago you'd see the white corded headphones for iPods. AirPods have become that which is

00:54:22 ◼   ► incredible. But if they have a two year or even even a three year lifespan and then they're

00:54:29 ◼   ► literally just trash that's pretty bad for a high-end product. The iPod headphones were

00:54:36 ◼   ► 20 or 30 bucks which was probably too expensive for what they were but they were cheap by

00:54:40 ◼   ► comparison and you know if those got disposable because the cord frayed or whatever not the end of

00:54:46 ◼   ► end of the world, but when you're paying $160 for a pair of headphones, it's not unreasonable

00:54:51 ◼   ► to think, "Hey, these should last me, I don't know what the right number is, but five or

00:54:55 ◼   ► ten years, and if I have to pay a little bit to replace the battery, okay."

00:55:00 ◼   ► But Apple has obviously moved away from any sort of replaceable battery.

00:55:04 ◼   ► I don't think there's, just off the top of my head, I can't think of any product where

00:55:08 ◼   ► you can replace the battery short of taking it to Apple at least.

00:55:13 ◼   ► Yeah, it seems like a shame.

00:55:14 ◼   ► I mean, I get it.

00:55:15 ◼   ► You know, there's just these little things that are glued together.

00:55:19 ◼   ► But it's one of those things that I feel, they're very futuristic, right?

00:55:25 ◼   ► Like if you could go back in time and say, "Oh my God, you're going to have these wireless

00:55:28 ◼   ► headphones with practically no latency, and they run for hours, and they stay in perfect

00:55:35 ◼   ► sync even though they're not connected to each other at all."

00:55:39 ◼   ► You'd be like, "That's an amazing futuristic product."

00:55:41 ◼   ► But I can't help but think that like 10, 20 years from now, we're going to look back and

00:55:45 ◼   ► say, "My God, what a waste.

00:55:46 ◼   ► We're spending $160 on these things that only lasted three years."

00:55:50 ◼   ► Right.

00:55:51 ◼   ► Well, and it's funny because I haven't hit this battery issue yet, but sooner or later

00:55:55 ◼   ► I will, and I'll want to replace them.

00:55:58 ◼   ► And I feel bad saying it, but I'll probably buy another pair of AirPods.

00:56:03 ◼   ► And like I said, I hope they recycle them.

00:56:05 ◼   ► I hope you can turn them into Apple.

00:56:07 ◼   ► I haven't looked to see if you're able to do that.

00:56:08 ◼   ► I assume so.

00:56:09 ◼   ► But even that's a pretty poor way to handle it as opposed to throwing a new battery in

00:56:16 ◼   ► there or some sort of upgrade that currently isn't possible.

00:56:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:56:23 ◼   ► So the new ones, they have a new chip, the H1 chip, which when I first linked it up,

00:56:29 ◼   ► I was like, "I wonder why?"

00:56:31 ◼   ► Because the other ones had the W1 chip, which I thought was wireless.

00:56:37 ◼   ► I guess that's what the W was.

00:56:39 ◼   ► But now the watches still have W chips.

00:56:42 ◼   ► Their system chips are the S. So it's like the S3 or the S2.

00:56:46 ◼   ► And then they have the W chip for their wireless communication.

00:56:49 ◼   ► But these headphones, the new AirPods have the H1.

00:56:53 ◼   ► And I wondered about it.

00:56:54 ◼   ► And then I got an answer from somebody who would

00:56:56 ◼   ► know that the H is for headphones.

00:56:57 ◼   ► That was certainly the assumption.

00:56:59 ◼   ► But yeah, you've confirmed that.

00:57:02 ◼   ► Right.

00:57:02 ◼   ► I have confirmed that the H is for headphones.

00:57:05 ◼   ► Somebody speculated-- another good guess

00:57:08 ◼   ► was that the H was for Hey Siri.

00:57:10 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:57:11 ◼   ► - Which I guess I always try not to say on the show,

00:57:14 ◼   ► so sorry.

00:57:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:57:16 ◼   ► There's my iPad.

00:57:17 ◼   ► - Lighting up.

00:57:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, Hey Dingus.

00:57:20 ◼   ► Which is a good guess, but it's not, it's for headphones.

00:57:24 ◼   ► And they get, you know,

00:57:26 ◼   ► supposedly they have longer talk time.

00:57:28 ◼   ► Talk time was always sort of the,

00:57:31 ◼   ► it seems like that microphone really drains the battery.

00:57:34 ◼   ► - But the nice thing about the,

00:57:35 ◼   ► so there's two things here,

00:57:37 ◼   ► but the nice thing about the talk time,

00:57:38 ◼   ► even when it was, I think it was two hours

00:57:40 ◼   ► and now it's three hours, is that right?

00:57:42 ◼   ► - Something like that.

00:57:43 ◼   ► - Well, but the thing is when you're using it as a headset,

00:57:45 ◼   ► it's easy enough to just use one.

00:57:48 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:57:49 ◼   ► - Because they both have a microphone

00:57:50 ◼   ► and obviously you won't hear out of both ears,

00:57:52 ◼   ► you won't hear your conversation,

00:57:53 ◼   ► but the person on the other end won't really know

00:57:56 ◼   ► that you only are using one at a time.

00:57:58 ◼   ► So even if you have a long phone conversation,

00:58:00 ◼   ► it's possible to swap those.

00:58:02 ◼   ► Whereas if you're listening to music,

00:58:03 ◼   ► you really probably want both those headphones in your ears.

00:58:06 ◼   ► Yeah. But the thing that I noticed with this was that none of the other battery life was

00:58:11 ◼   ► any better.

00:58:12 ◼   ► No. It doesn't seem like it. It seems like, you know, or at least, I mean, if it is better,

00:58:17 ◼   ► they're not…

00:58:18 ◼   ► They're not touting it as better. Yeah.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Right. Right. Yeah. And it's funny that they're not calling them AirPods 2. They're

00:58:23 ◼   ► just sort of… It's sort of a quiet announcement. They're just sort of, you know, "Hey,

00:58:28 ◼   ► we've refreshed them," you know, even though it seems like it is an all-new chip.

00:58:32 ◼   ► now they have the optional wireless charging case, which is what is extra 40 extra bucks

00:58:39 ◼   ► for it. So yeah, I use a wireless charging pad for my phone at night. It's easy to just

00:58:46 ◼   ► toss down on. But I don't think I'd pay the extra 40 bucks for that case.

00:58:51 ◼   ► I, it's a close call for me because it's like, I, I kind of, I'd like to have the functionality,

00:58:58 ◼   ► 40 bucks is quite a lot for

00:59:00 ◼   ► You know something you certainly don't need

00:59:03 ◼   ► Yeah, and they charge so fast right like the nice thing about you know like your phone

00:59:09 ◼   ► Typically at the end of the day my phone at least is always under 50%

00:59:13 ◼   ► So it needs a you know a lot of charge and so overnight

00:59:17 ◼   ► Yeah, just put it on the bedside pad and fall asleep, and then assume. It'll be full when you wake up

00:59:23 ◼   ► It's fine

00:59:23 ◼   ► But with the AirPods, it really is true that if I feel like they're low, I can just plug

00:59:29 ◼   ► them into a lightning cable, and a couple minutes later, they're 100%.

00:59:32 ◼   ► Right, right.

00:59:33 ◼   ► So if it were $10 more, I'd say, "Yeah, sure, I'll buy it just in case I ever want that."

00:59:38 ◼   ► But they've managed to find a price point where, like you said, I'm sort of on the fence

00:59:42 ◼   ► about it.

00:59:43 ◼   ► And I don't think I'd buy it, but maybe I'd convince myself that I should get it.

00:59:47 ◼   ► And I don't know, they seem to have some science there with those prices, I think.

00:59:52 ◼   ► The other thing that is nice is that the case is available by itself for $80.

00:59:59 ◼   ► I'm trying to train myself to round that.

01:00:03 ◼   ► You're rounding up on the 9s?

01:00:05 ◼   ► On the 99, like, you know, $49.99 is $50.

01:00:09 ◼   ► $49, I'm okay with calling that $49, but whatever.

01:00:14 ◼   ► Alright.

01:00:15 ◼   ► Well, it's $79.

01:00:16 ◼   ► Right, right.

01:00:17 ◼   ► AKA $80.

01:00:18 ◼   ► But you can buy it as a standalone case and it is it's compatible with the original AirPods

01:00:24 ◼   ► So if you have existing AirPods and you really want that case you can

01:00:28 ◼   ► Spend 80 bucks to get the case and it'll work with your AirPods

01:00:31 ◼   ► So it seems very nice that was interesting

01:00:33 ◼   ► But then going back to what we were talking about with battery life if you've had those AirPods already for a year or two

01:00:39 ◼   ► You may well be better served just getting a whole new pair

01:00:42 ◼   ► like I

01:00:45 ◼   ► You're you're describing your AirPods is not having great battery life. It'd be pretty foolish for you to just buy the case at this point

01:00:51 ◼   ► Yeah, but on the other hand, I'm loyal like I feel like these are my AirPods

01:00:55 ◼   ► You know, I mean like I you know, I mean like I'm not gonna ditch them just cuz they're old, you know

01:00:58 ◼   ► You know, you don't want to be sticking new things in your ears. I

01:01:01 ◼   ► Don't know it's I

01:01:04 ◼   ► Don't know. I feel like I have a sense of loyalty to them like with the phones

01:01:10 ◼   ► I don't you know as soon as the new phone comes out. I'm like this old phone is garbage. Eric put it on shelf

01:01:14 ◼   ► But with my AirPods, I feel like they're, you know, we've been places together.

01:01:20 ◼   ► I'm not going to abandon them just because the battery life is sunk.

01:01:24 ◼   ► You know, it's not bad.

01:01:25 ◼   ► My battery life isn't terrible.

01:01:26 ◼   ► That's the other thing.

01:01:27 ◼   ► Well, but it's not, you know, it's, if you know it's going down, you know,

01:01:30 ◼   ► it's getting worse over time.

01:01:31 ◼   ► Right.

01:01:32 ◼   ► The other thing too is, is to charge them overnight, you really kind of need the air

01:01:41 ◼   ► power.

01:01:41 ◼   ► Which doesn't appear to exist at all.

01:01:44 ◼   ► Right, because my at least I have a couple of these Qi compatible phone chargers.

01:01:50 ◼   ► And they're all small enough. They only hold a phone, right?

01:01:53 ◼   ► They only hold a phone. There's no there is no room on any of the ones that I own for a second device,

01:01:59 ◼   ► even just a tiny little AirPods case.

01:02:01 ◼   ► Right, and not only I think the way that they're built, they could only charge one device,

01:02:07 ◼   ► even if there were physically, you know, space to drop the case on there,

01:02:11 ◼   ► It still wouldn't work because they can only charge one device at a time. I think right there's some kind of communication, you know handshake

01:02:18 ◼   ► It's like hey, I'm a charging pad and your device is like I'm a device that wants to charge on you

01:02:23 ◼   ► And then they're like, you know, nice to meet you. Here's some power

01:02:26 ◼   ► But that's it, you know, I like you said I don't think you could do another one

01:02:30 ◼   ► It's like they only have one hand for handshaking. So we were we were talking about this as far as

01:02:35 ◼   ► Where is the airpower Matt now now that they have finally shipped this?

01:02:40 ◼   ► Qi compatible wireless charging case

01:02:42 ◼   ► And I don't think we have a very good answer here, right?

01:02:46 ◼   ► No, the Wall Street Journal just reported this week that it is entering production and

01:02:52 ◼   ► there have been a whole bunch of people that found stuff in the

01:02:55 ◼   ► iOS 10.12. I'm sorry 12.2 beta that there was indication the indication that it's coming

01:03:02 ◼   ► There have been a few images found on like for an Apple websites like Apple Australia or whatever

01:03:09 ◼   ► But it's it's very strange that on Wednesday. They say here's the new air pods with a wireless charging case and

01:03:15 ◼   ► Obviously the obvious question is well, what do I charge these with?

01:03:19 ◼   ► They say G. Yeah, right, right

01:03:23 ◼   ► I mean I can charge it on a mat that I already have maybe but

01:03:25 ◼   ► You remember when you told me a year and a year and a half ago

01:03:30 ◼   ► When did they announce it was it was fall of 2017, right? Yeah a year and a half 18 months ago wolf

01:03:36 ◼   ► This is really late. And they did say at the time it would be later that year. So it's, you know,

01:03:44 ◼   ► maybe we should only, you know, the clock should only start from December of 2017.

01:03:48 ◼   ► Did they I thought no, no, they said 20. They said it was coming 2018. Right?

01:03:52 ◼   ► No, no. Originally, they said it was coming later in that year. Really? It was it. Yeah,

01:03:58 ◼   ► it was it was definitely supposedly, at first it was coming in 2017. It was it was a lot like,

01:04:06 ◼   ► The air pods were the year prior where they announced him along with the phone

01:04:11 ◼   ► And they came out two or three months later right at the end of December, right?

01:04:14 ◼   ► That was like right before Christmas as I recall. I remember I got him on like December 21st. I ordered him

01:04:20 ◼   ► I think right it was it was cutting it as close as theoretically possible to the holidays, right?

01:04:25 ◼   ► All right, well hold on I got a fact-check you here because

01:04:30 ◼   ► the Apple PR from September of 2017

01:04:34 ◼   ► Says coming next year on the airpower. Oh

01:04:36 ◼   ► Maybe I'm wrong. All right, we we it says quick coming in 2018

01:04:42 ◼   ► That's all it said which that's in the actual press release from September of 2017

01:04:47 ◼   ► I love well, I'm glad you corrected me so I don't have to listen to people

01:04:51 ◼   ► Well, but so so when do we count it from because if you say in September of 2017 in 2018, this will be coming

01:04:58 ◼   ► Obviously, it's at least at this point three months late

01:05:02 ◼   ► But realistically you figure before Christmas of that year and maybe halfway through that year

01:05:07 ◼   ► And so yeah in my mind this should have been here almost a year ago at least

01:05:12 ◼   ► And and as we said doesn't still doesn't exist and and so interesting that it's potentially in production

01:05:19 ◼   ► But then what's their strategy as far as announcing this goes? I?

01:05:22 ◼   ► Can only assume it'll be the quietest release

01:05:29 ◼   ► ever. Like I don't even know.

01:05:31 ◼   ► It'll just show up in the store. There won't even be a press release.

01:05:33 ◼   ► Right. Will there even be an article in Newsroom?

01:05:36 ◼   ► I guess they have to put an article in Newsroom.

01:05:39 ◼   ► But whose name? Will Phil Schiller have a quote that says, you know,

01:05:42 ◼   ► because like most of the stuff this week has a quote from Phil Schiller

01:05:45 ◼   ► saying how great the new iPads are or how fast the new iMacs are.

01:05:50 ◼   ► Like is anybody going to want to put their name on this?

01:05:53 ◼   ► AirPower. Press release. I don't know.

01:05:56 ◼   ► It's it is a damn curious thing. I mean the whole thing is strange because

01:06:02 ◼   ► Why did they announce this at all in?

01:06:06 ◼   ► 2017 because when they when that event happened that was the first wireless charging phones qi charging phones

01:06:12 ◼   ► iPhones and they gave you a phone and they gave you what like a

01:06:17 ◼   ► Belkin charging pad, right? Yeah, there were two that they half of the reviewers got a white one from Belkin

01:06:25 ◼   ► which I did and then the other half got a

01:06:28 ◼   ► What brand was it Mophie did I want to say it was a Mophie I remember I think it's a Mophie and

01:06:34 ◼   ► I think it's the one I actually have it my dad

01:06:36 ◼   ► I actually paid for it to get it because I didn't like the I didn't like the Belkin one at all

01:06:41 ◼   ► huh if the Belkin one had like a

01:06:43 ◼   ► Really is a really ugly plug that goes in the socket, you know the electrical socket. It's a really ugly plug and

01:06:50 ◼   ► It just seemed way too finicky in terms of getting the phone

01:06:54 ◼   ► perfectly positioned and oh and the light was driving me nuts it has like a

01:06:58 ◼   ► bright green light that faces up as it's charging you yeah so you put it on your

01:07:04 ◼   ► bed and you've got like this weird green light whereas the mophie has a very

01:07:08 ◼   ► subtle off-white light that points down towards the table or whatever it's

01:07:14 ◼   ► sitting on which is exactly what I want I want it you know I like to see that

01:07:18 ◼   ► light because then I know the phone is on it properly but it is so subtle that

01:07:23 ◼   ► it doesn't you know distract when you're trying to sleep. So now does that one stay on as it's

01:07:28 ◼   ► charging though? Yes. Okay because I got I don't know I got like a $20 one on Amazon and the

01:07:33 ◼   ► feature that it has it's a subtle light like you're describing you put the phone on it it lights up

01:07:38 ◼   ► and then over 10 seconds it fades down which is it's perfect for the inside yeah. Right all you

01:07:45 ◼   ► want is you want you just want that light to just like note that it's working it's charging all right

01:07:50 ◼   ► Yeah, so they did give us charging. So they could have a different charging pad.

01:07:54 ◼   ► The airpower was not going to exist for or be available for sale for at least

01:07:59 ◼   ► three months at that point. But they did have them. They did have them backstage,

01:08:04 ◼   ► like when I had my briefing to get, you know, the little press briefing where I got the

01:08:09 ◼   ► what were the iPhones of that time? I guess it was the the 10 s or no, the 10. Yeah, so I got the

01:08:19 ◼   ► the iPhone 10 in in the room they had you know they always have every

01:08:24 ◼   ► everything that's new set up so you can see it you know pretty you know just just

01:08:29 ◼   ► see everything all that they have I just all the new cases and everything they

01:08:33 ◼   ► had an air power set up and I tried it you know like I even you know took a

01:08:39 ◼   ► phone off put it back on it was you know there was a functioning prototype of the

01:08:43 ◼   ► air power there that I could play with or they just shoved a mophie one inside

01:08:46 ◼   ► of a…

01:08:47 ◼   ► No, because I remember it because they had it set up where it had a watch on it too.

01:08:52 ◼   ► I think what I did… because my phone at the time wouldn't have been Qi charging.

01:08:58 ◼   ► Your personal phone wouldn't have been, yeah.

01:09:00 ◼   ► No, but I think I had my Apple watch on and I took it off and put it on and it charged

01:09:05 ◼   ► and everything worked.

01:09:07 ◼   ► It was nice.

01:09:08 ◼   ► So, I mean, I guess they obviously thought this was going to be done sooner than it was,

01:09:14 ◼   ► but probably much sooner than it was.

01:09:16 ◼   ► But it still to me does not make sense why they bothered to pre-announce it, because

01:09:20 ◼   ► this is not something people were clamoring for.

01:09:24 ◼   ► And now they look foolish 16 months, 18 months on, where it still is not available.

01:09:31 ◼   ► Yeah, if they had just kept their mouths shut about it and hadn't pre-announced it, we would

01:09:36 ◼   ► have all just been, "Well, I don't know why Apple doesn't make a first party charging

01:09:40 ◼   ► that."

01:09:41 ◼   ► But, you know, whatever.

01:09:42 ◼   ► I'll get one of the other ones.

01:09:43 ◼   ► dude. You know, I mean, how many key chargers if you search on

01:09:46 ◼   ► Amazon, there's like 500. Well, and even beyond that there are

01:09:50 ◼   ► now ones that will do a phone and a watch and lightning or an

01:09:56 ◼   ► AirPods case rather. So there there are there are alternatives

01:10:01 ◼   ► to the air power already. If you really feel that's the other

01:10:06 ◼   ► thing too is. So digit times there's a story on Mac rumors

01:10:10 ◼   ► today that Digitimes is reporting that the journal says they're in high production. Digitimes

01:10:16 ◼   ► says they will be made available in quote "late March." And so as we record, it's already

01:10:21 ◼   ► March 22nd. The event is the 25th on Monday. So presumably that means if Digitimes is correct,

01:10:28 ◼   ► that's next week. But if Digitimes is correct, it's a big if. I have a friend texted me right

01:10:36 ◼   ► before we started recording. A friend at Apple texted me and said, "More and more I see

01:10:43 ◼   ► reports from Digitimes." And I think, "I hope that's true, but I know it's not."

01:10:47 ◼   ► I wish that were true.

01:10:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I wish it were true. And this isn't somebody who knows whether the AirPower is

01:10:53 ◼   ► shipping or not. They want it to ship and they're disappointed because they feel like

01:10:58 ◼   ► Digitimes saying it's going to ship means it won't.

01:11:02 ◼   ► Well, here's the big question is how much is the thing going to cost because most of

01:11:06 ◼   ► these third party ones are relatively cheap. They've and they've really come down in price

01:11:10 ◼   ► over the last year. Like, how ridiculous is it going to be if this thing is like 100 bucks?

01:11:17 ◼   ► Well, I think I think 100 might be viable. I think over the net over that will be Yeah,

01:11:23 ◼   ► just not not at all in line with the market. Right. I mean, you know, the backstory on

01:11:29 ◼   ► this is that they faced engineering problems with these multiple coils to support multiple devices.

01:11:34 ◼   ► And you know, that, you know, you can't have these pads get hot, they can't, you know,

01:11:39 ◼   ► catching fire is bad. You know, and presumably, you know, you say, why did they pre announce

01:11:45 ◼   ► presumably, but I guess the backstory is somebody, you know, whoever makes that decision, whether it's

01:11:51 ◼   ► Phil Schiller, or Tim Cook, or some combination of the, you know, executives voting, okay, let's

01:11:58 ◼   ► announce it or let's not not announce it. Somebody in engineering on airpower obviously convinced

01:12:03 ◼   ► them. Okay, we haven't solved all the problems yet. But we've got it right. You know, like, it's,

01:12:09 ◼   ► it's, you know, sometimes you just, you know, like, when you're doing a math problem, and it's

01:12:13 ◼   ► like, you don't have the answer yet. But you know, you, you know, you know how to get the answer.

01:12:18 ◼   ► And somehow they convinced the decision makers. We're not done yet. But we've got it. And they

01:12:25 ◼   ► They obviously did somebody was wrong. Well, I mean, that's the thing. Like I don't fault engineering for running into issues with this

01:12:31 ◼   ► I don't I don't know enough about the air power itself. But like you said there's there's all sorts of issues with

01:12:36 ◼   ► Fires and and and having enough energy to charge multiple devices and and making it work

01:12:42 ◼   ► But I certainly can question the marketing decision to say hey this thing is coming when no one no one asked for it

01:12:49 ◼   ► And no one would bat an eye if they had never announced this

01:12:52 ◼   ► so I think instead they wind up obviously with with some egg on their face and

01:12:56 ◼   ► it'll be very interesting to me if this does ship next week because

01:13:00 ◼   ► Why not do it this week if they're doing this week of hardware?

01:13:05 ◼   ► And presumably they won't do it at the event itself if it really will be a no hardware event

01:13:11 ◼   ► You know, there's no way they're gonna do it on stage. There's I mean

01:13:14 ◼   ► There's just no way no

01:13:19 ◼   ► stage this thing that is months or years late and yeah right and then the only

01:13:24 ◼   ► thing you would be able to demo are the things they demoed a year and a half

01:13:27 ◼   ► ago right there's nothing done right the demo is already done so you know the

01:13:33 ◼   ► best you can hope for is a press release I guess I wouldn't be surprised if they

01:13:37 ◼   ► do it alongside the air pods you know make maybe when reviewers get these new

01:13:41 ◼   ► air pods they'll get an air power to next week oh that's an interesting idea

01:13:45 ◼   ► Yeah

01:13:47 ◼   ► Because a sort of oh and by the way, this is ready - yeah, that's my guess is that it'll be this is ready - but they

01:13:55 ◼   ► Just didn't want to talk about they wanted nothing but good good stories about Apple this week

01:14:00 ◼   ► Because the final ease will be justified as much as I get all these publications

01:14:06 ◼   ► Guff over the use of finally in headlines, you know when airpower does ship or if if it should

01:14:14 ◼   ► Find the finally's will be completely justified

01:14:17 ◼   ► That's why it's worth complaining about the misuse of finally because then when there actually is a good finally

01:14:25 ◼   ► It take you know takes away from that. Yeah, absolutely takes away from

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01:15:46 ◼   ► sprint is now used by every major tech company to validate new product ideas. The other host is

01:15:51 ◼   ► Jonathan Courtney. He didn't invent anything, but he runs one of the world's most well-known product

01:15:55 ◼   ► design firms, AJ and Smart. AJ and Smart. So together, these two guys have helped companies

01:16:02 ◼   ► like Mercedes, New York Times, Google, Adidas, even the United Nations bring new products to

01:16:08 ◼   ► market. They do not take themselves seriously. The show is always meant to make you laugh. It's a very

01:16:13 ◼   ► fun show. I've listened to it. They recommend here's their recommendation for listeners of

01:16:18 ◼   ► this show. They recommend that you start with episode 47. Episode title is big product decisions

01:16:24 ◼   ► gut feeling or test this episode after much rambling, which I think talk show listeners

01:16:30 ◼   ► will appreciate digs into Apple's unique product design philosophy and why it seems to clash with

01:16:36 ◼   ► everything people seem to know or think they know about user-centered design. Jake and Jonathan are

01:16:42 ◼   ► both longtime listeners of this podcast and they believe Product Breakfast Club will feel right at

01:16:47 ◼   ► home with your other podcasts. I love this idea. So what do you do? Subscribe wherever you get your

01:16:53 ◼   ► podcast. You can just tap the link in the show notes or you can search for Product Breakfast Club

01:16:58 ◼   ► in your podcast app of choice, whether that's Apple podcasts or Overcast or Pocket Casts or

01:17:04 ◼   ► Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. So go listen to Product Breakfast Club. Episode

01:17:09 ◼   ► 47 is the one they recommend. I love the idea of a podcast sponsoring a podcast.

01:17:16 ◼   ► That certainly makes sense to me. But I'm interested by starting at Episode 47. That's

01:17:22 ◼   ► not advice you usually hear when sometimes maybe skip the first season or something.

01:17:27 ◼   ► But 47 is very precise.

01:17:29 ◼   ► Right? It would be like if you told somebody, "You know what? You never watch The Sopranos?

01:17:34 ◼   ► Oh my god, you gotta watch that episode."

01:17:37 ◼   ► Season 3, episode 7.

01:17:39 ◼   ► Season 7. Yeah. That would be terrible. Oh my god. Well, podcasts are very different

01:17:46 ◼   ► than serial drama. So how about the... we'll go backwards here. We can talk about the new

01:17:54 ◼   ► iPad. I've been using the iPad Mini all week. So they updated the iPad Air and Mini. They now have

01:18:03 ◼   ► the A12 system on a chip. They both have True Tone displays, laminated displays, which is the

01:18:09 ◼   ► physical process that puts the pixels closer to the surface. Pretty much everything state of the

01:18:18 ◼   ► art with the displays with the lack of, the only thing missing really is ProMotion, which is Apple's

01:18:23 ◼   ► brand name for having 120 hertz refresh rate instead of 60 hertz, which of all the things

01:18:31 ◼   ► that the iPad Pro has on their display would be my pick as if you had to leave one off.

01:18:38 ◼   ► That's what I would say.

01:18:39 ◼   ► The least important of the features on the chip.

01:18:41 ◼   ► It is nice. I can kind of tell side by side, but when you're actually using it,

01:18:45 ◼   ► you don't really see it. Whereas True Tone has been, for me, really painful when I go

01:18:50 ◼   ► back to using devices that don't have it.

01:18:52 ◼   ► Like I've really gotten used to True Tone.

01:18:54 ◼   ► And when you have one, like your phone with it,

01:18:57 ◼   ► and then it's like nighttime and you're looking at it,

01:18:59 ◼   ► like an iPad that doesn't have True Tone,

01:19:03 ◼   ► it just looks so wrong to me.

01:19:05 ◼   ► What are your thoughts on it?

01:19:06 ◼   ► What do you use?

01:19:07 ◼   ► I don't even know if you use an iPad.

01:19:09 ◼   ► - Well, it's interesting.

01:19:10 ◼   ► I read your review of them and I think,

01:19:13 ◼   ► I don't wanna misquote you or anything,

01:19:14 ◼   ► but basically you said,

01:19:15 ◼   ► if you had to pick an iPad and just from scratch,

01:19:19 ◼   ► the new mini would be your iPad, right?

01:19:21 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:19:22 ◼   ► - You've got an iPad Pro that you're using

01:19:24 ◼   ► and so this won't necessarily replace that,

01:19:26 ◼   ► but just picking from starting from Go,

01:19:30 ◼   ► you'd start with the mini.

01:19:31 ◼   ► I've got a bunch of test devices.

01:19:34 ◼   ► I've got an old, I think I've got the first iPad

01:19:37 ◼   ► that had retina, which I think was the iPad 3.

01:19:40 ◼   ► That's ancient at this point,

01:19:41 ◼   ► but it's still useful for some testing.

01:19:43 ◼   ► And I've got an iPad mini that I use basically at random.

01:19:48 ◼   ► During the baseball season, I use it to watch baseball games

01:19:51 ◼   ► if I'm out on the deck or something.

01:19:54 ◼   ► But so day to day, my iPad sits,

01:19:57 ◼   ► I'm looking at it in a cabinet where it's behind a door

01:20:00 ◼   ► 'cause I don't use it.

01:20:02 ◼   ► So I read this review and I said,

01:20:04 ◼   ► "Okay, that sounds really nice."

01:20:05 ◼   ► And I also like the mini size that's been the iPad

01:20:09 ◼   ► that I got the most use out of,

01:20:11 ◼   ► but I don't have personally any need to purchase it

01:20:14 ◼   ► because I just don't use the device frequently enough

01:20:17 ◼   ► that I should upgrade what I already have.

01:20:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm only buy an iPad once every couple of years

01:20:27 ◼   ► person because I just don't use it enough.

01:20:31 ◼   ► And what I do use it for is so,

01:20:33 ◼   ► I don't need like the latest chip.

01:20:36 ◼   ► - The top of the line, right, exactly.

01:20:38 ◼   ► - Right.

01:20:38 ◼   ► And personally, me personally,

01:20:42 ◼   ► without going on long digression about my eyesight,

01:20:45 ◼   ► The other problem I have with the Mini is whether it's big enough.

01:20:49 ◼   ► And trying to make a very long story short, for like two years

01:20:53 ◼   ► I needed reading glasses.

01:20:56 ◼   ► And it's very strange, because usually once you need glasses--

01:20:59 ◼   ► You're done.

01:20:59 ◼   ► Your eyes don't get better.

01:21:01 ◼   ► But my right eye has actually gotten worse.

01:21:05 ◼   ► And because it's gotten worse at distance,

01:21:08 ◼   ► it's actually gotten better up close.

01:21:10 ◼   ► And so I've got like this-- I forget what they call it-- but it's a strategy.

01:21:14 ◼   ► Even if you have good eyes, if you have contact lenses,

01:21:17 ◼   ► when you get older and you need reading glasses,

01:21:19 ◼   ► some people will get a contact lens in the one eye

01:21:23 ◼   ► that is for distance and the other eye for up close.

01:21:26 ◼   ► And you're, you know, at first it's weird, they say,

01:21:29 ◼   ► and then your brain sort of works it out.

01:21:31 ◼   ► And all of a sudden, you know, it just works.

01:21:33 ◼   ► I've sort of stumbled my way into that strategy

01:21:36 ◼   ► where my left eye is, you know,

01:21:39 ◼   ► sees 20/20 for distance and my right eye does not,

01:21:42 ◼   ► but it can see up close without reading glasses now.

01:21:45 ◼   ► So like if I had reviewed this iPad Mini a year ago,

01:21:50 ◼   ► the same device, I really would have--

01:21:52 ◼   ► - It would have been too small.

01:21:53 ◼   ► - --needed reading glasses to use.

01:21:53 ◼   ► It would have been too small

01:21:54 ◼   ► and I would have needed reading glasses.

01:21:57 ◼   ► But I sort of needed the reading glasses

01:21:58 ◼   ► even with the bigger iPad.

01:21:59 ◼   ► But now in 2019, my eyes have changed

01:22:03 ◼   ► and now I can read the Mini again without reading glasses.

01:22:07 ◼   ► I really, I used the heck out of it all week.

01:22:10 ◼   ► That's what I try to always do when I do these reviews.

01:22:13 ◼   ► But will that change?

01:22:14 ◼   ► The older I get, the more likely,

01:22:17 ◼   ► it's almost certain I'm gonna need reading glasses again.

01:22:19 ◼   ► And having a bigger iPad where,

01:22:22 ◼   ► one of the interesting things about

01:22:26 ◼   ► what they've always done with the Mini

01:22:27 ◼   ► is it's pixel for pixel the same as a bigger iPhone or iPad.

01:22:31 ◼   ► They just shrink the pixels

01:22:32 ◼   ► and there's more of them per inch.

01:22:34 ◼   ► It's the same interface, but everything is smaller.

01:22:38 ◼   ► And so as a mid-forties person rocketing towards needing reading glasses permanently, the bigger iPad size is more readable to me.

01:22:46 ◼   ► So that's just a personal thing.

01:22:47 ◼   ► But if like five years ago when my eyes were a lot younger and I didn't need reading glasses, the mini would be my iPad for sure.

01:22:54 ◼   ► But now let me ask you, do you read much on the phone?

01:22:57 ◼   ► I do.

01:22:59 ◼   ► I read a lot on the phone.

01:23:00 ◼   ► Because the phone's smaller, right?

01:23:01 ◼   ► I mean, there's everything on there is smaller.

01:23:04 ◼   ► So how is that better than,

01:23:06 ◼   ► how is the mini potentially too small and the phone isn't?

01:23:09 ◼   ► - Just because it's,

01:23:12 ◼   ► when I switched back to the bigger, my 11 inch iPad Pro,

01:23:15 ◼   ► it's just, my eyes just feel more relaxed.

01:23:16 ◼   ► - I see, it's just the comparison between the two iPads.

01:23:19 ◼   ► - Right, right.

01:23:20 ◼   ► I will say this, people have been saying for years,

01:23:23 ◼   ► is part of the reason the lack of,

01:23:27 ◼   ► I mean, I think it was three and a half years

01:23:29 ◼   ► between iPad mini updates,

01:23:30 ◼   ► and they've never really quite been on like a,

01:23:34 ◼   ► you know, it's obviously the odd iPad out.

01:23:39 ◼   ► - Right, they're not concerned with making it

01:23:41 ◼   ► the top of the line iPad.

01:23:43 ◼   ► - Right, and they're not concerned

01:23:44 ◼   ► with updating it every year, et cetera.

01:23:47 ◼   ► But, you know, and so people wonder,

01:23:49 ◼   ► is the iPad, you know, once it goes two, three years

01:23:52 ◼   ► without an update, people who are iPad mini fans

01:23:55 ◼   ► start to worry reasonably so that maybe, you know,

01:23:58 ◼   ► this is it, they're not gonna update it again.

01:24:00 ◼   ► Um, and part of the thinking behind that is, Hey, phones have gotten so big, you

01:24:07 ◼   ► know, has the, do people who like an iPad mini type thing is, is something like an

01:24:12 ◼   ► iPhone tennis max, the, the reason that they don't need doesn't yeah.

01:24:18 ◼   ► And I would, I find the iPad to be such a different interface and experience.

01:24:23 ◼   ► And it's, even though the mini is obviously the closest iPad to a big

01:24:28 ◼   ► phone size, it's so much bigger.

01:24:30 ◼   ► Right.

01:24:30 ◼   ► Right. There's no possible way that you could make a phone that big. You could not call an eight inch diagonal screen a phone

01:24:37 ◼   ► It wouldn't fit in any pants, I don't even think it would fit in Craig Hockenberry's pants

01:24:43 ◼   ► Now it's just wondering I bet Samsung has a phone that's that big that they call a phone

01:24:48 ◼   ► I'm not saying you're wrong. I think they're wrong, but I think that someone out there is calling a device that big a phone

01:24:57 ◼   ► it is just more like, like I said in my review, it puts the pad on an iPad. It just feels like a

01:25:06 ◼   ► pad in a way that even a big phone doesn't. I think it's a really delightful size. I really

01:25:12 ◼   ► like it. I know it's not their most popular iPad because if it were, they'd update it more

01:25:17 ◼   ► frequently. But it's obviously popular enough because they're keeping it around for at least

01:25:20 ◼   ► another generation though. Yeah. It sort of makes me wish that they made two minis. If they made

01:25:28 ◼   ► this one, that could start at a $399 price. And if they also made an iPad Pro mini that had all of

01:25:35 ◼   ► the new stuff in the Pro, the edge to edge display, the pencil to support the better speakers. I mean,

01:25:42 ◼   ► I don't know if that might actually be a problem with the size, that speakers actually take up a

01:25:48 ◼   ► - There's a significant amount of space.

01:25:49 ◼   ► - Physical space.

01:25:50 ◼   ► - Well.

01:25:52 ◼   ► - In theory though, that would be great.

01:25:53 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, this is the same,

01:25:55 ◼   ► every year I feel the same way about the phone.

01:25:57 ◼   ► I want a top of the line phone that is smaller

01:26:00 ◼   ► than what they're putting out there.

01:26:02 ◼   ► And they do not want to make that apparently.

01:26:05 ◼   ► - No.

01:26:07 ◼   ► Well, I guess not.

01:26:07 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:26:09 ◼   ► That would have been another announcement this week.

01:26:10 ◼   ► - That's right.

01:26:12 ◼   ► - The iPhone.

01:26:13 ◼   ► - It might've just happened.

01:26:14 ◼   ► Should we check?

01:26:14 ◼   ► - Well, I know.

01:26:15 ◼   ► - While we're recording.

01:26:16 ◼   ► and make sure the iPhone SE 2 did not come out.

01:26:20 ◼   ► Well, so you mentioned the pencil.

01:26:22 ◼   ► I think it's worth touching on that briefly because as I said, this is a weird week.

01:26:28 ◼   ► And I think it's also really weird that this new, two new iPads use an old Apple pencil.

01:26:36 ◼   ► And you explained why and your explanation of why makes sense.

01:26:39 ◼   ► But I think it's very strange to walk into an Apple store, buy a brand new iPad.

01:26:44 ◼   ► I guess to the shelves now stock both pencils

01:26:48 ◼   ► They must right because the old pencil is still a current pencil

01:26:54 ◼   ► yeah, and there's and it's

01:26:57 ◼   ► It is it's unfortunate. I would say it is an unf and I certainly don't think they planned it this way

01:27:05 ◼   ► I think it's just sort of the way things worked out

01:27:08 ◼   ► you know, it there's just no way to get pencil to support on this older device without doing

01:27:16 ◼   ► Adding X Y & Z that all would have made it significantly more expensive right defeats the whole purpose

01:27:22 ◼   ► Right like a big part of this is that the new mini starts at $400 and the new iPad air starts at

01:27:30 ◼   ► $500

01:27:32 ◼   ► Which is a lot less money than the the 11 inch iPad pro just starts at $800

01:27:38 ◼   ► Um, it's, you know, it's, it's not a stretch to say the, you know, the

01:27:42 ◼   ► mini is literally half the price and the iPad air is almost only half the price.

01:27:46 ◼   ► I think, I think, I think unfortunate is definitely the right word, but, uh, I,

01:27:52 ◼   ► so I, I understand why it is this way, but at the same time, it's very strange

01:27:57 ◼   ► for Apple to be saying, here is a brand new device and use it not with the brand

01:28:02 ◼   ► new pencil that came out, what last fall, I think, uh, and if you have that pencil

01:28:07 ◼   ► that pencil for some other reason it won't it doesn't even work with it right no definitely

01:28:12 ◼   ► it does not work not only not only can it not charge it it does not even physically right on

01:28:16 ◼   ► the device right old well because you can't pair it right because it doesn't mean the only way

01:28:21 ◼   ► the only way to pair it is with the uh the inductive charging port on the new ipad pros

01:28:28 ◼   ► and the only way to pair the old pencil is through lightning like to pair it with a new ipad which is

01:28:34 ◼   ► really clever. Like I because I have an old pencil that I've had

01:28:38 ◼   ► for a long time with the lightning port and just plugged

01:28:40 ◼   ► it into the new iPad Mini. And as soon as I plugged it in, it

01:28:43 ◼   ► was like, Okay, now now I'm paired with this iPad. But you

01:28:46 ◼   ► can't do that with the new iPads because iPad pros because they

01:28:50 ◼   ► don't like lightning. Yeah. So that Yeah, there's there's

01:28:53 ◼   ► that's the other question people have is, hey, how come if they

01:28:57 ◼   ► moved to USB C, why didn't these move to USB C? And I think one

01:29:01 ◼   ► of the answers is the pencil.

01:29:03 ◼   ► Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. If it's needed to pair it and to sync up with that, yeah,

01:29:08 ◼   ► absolutely. And to charge it. Well, so it's very strange that-

01:29:12 ◼   ► If I mentioned it in my review, I probably should have. One of the nice little things I just should

01:29:16 ◼   ► add is the new iPad Mini comes with a 12-watt charger. And I believe, I don't remember what the

01:29:24 ◼   ► fourth generation Mini came with, but I think the fourth generation still came with the little

01:29:28 ◼   ► tiny phone size 5 watt charger. So at least they're giving you a nice charger with it now.

01:29:33 ◼   ► John "Slick" Baum: It came with the very smallest one? It didn't come with a slightly bigger 10

01:29:37 ◼   ► watt one? John "Slick" Baum; No, last I remember, I don't know if the fourth generation did,

01:29:42 ◼   ► but at least the third generation mini still came with the phone charger, the little 5 watt.

01:29:45 ◼   ► John "Slick" Baum; The little cube looking one. John "Slick" Baum; One that looks like a dice.

01:29:48 ◼   ► John "Slick" Baum; Yeah, right. Yeah. Huh, interesting. John "Slick" Baum; Can't believe

01:29:51 ◼   ► I just said a dice. John "Slick" Baum; What kind of gambler are you, John?

01:29:54 ◼   ► Oh, here's my thinking. I would like to imagine. It's all about cost cutting.

01:30:03 ◼   ► To make these minis and airs.

01:30:06 ◼   ► Right. So they didn't have to do a new industrial design. It's the same physical footprint as the

01:30:12 ◼   ► old iPad mini, and the iPad Air looks like an older Air. It doesn't have the edge-to-edge

01:30:18 ◼   ► display with the round corners, which is nicer, but also more expensive. It doesn't have that

01:30:24 ◼   ► inductive charging port for the new pencil, which again is more expensive.

01:30:28 ◼   ► Somebody told me after I published my first look at it that it's definitely

01:30:33 ◼   ► that that little charging thing is definitely fairly expensive.

01:30:36 ◼   ► Like it wasn't going to make the cut on a $400 device.

01:30:43 ◼   ► It doesn't have Face ID because Face ID is more expensive than Touch ID sensors.

01:30:49 ◼   ► So you know this that the other thing to get these prices down now you're stuck

01:30:53 ◼   ► with the old pencil. I will say, and one of my favorite things about reviewing Apple products,

01:31:00 ◼   ► my favorite things to do is use the new thing for a while, like a week or two, and then go back to

01:31:06 ◼   ► the old thing. Like go back to my, you know, if I get a brand new iPhone, use the new review unit

01:31:12 ◼   ► for a week or two weeks or something like that. And then go back to my personal one from a year

01:31:18 ◼   ► ago and see what I noticed. Is there anything slower, you know, and in the old, in the original

01:31:22 ◼   ► days like five, six, seven, eight years ago, it would always be like, I'd go back to my

01:31:28 ◼   ► year old iPhone and typing would always feel so slow.

01:31:31 ◼   ► Everything was just lower.

01:31:32 ◼   ► Yeah, it just felt, it was like, wow, this is unbelievable.

01:31:36 ◼   ► You notice that like you get used to the speed of the faster speed of a new thing and it

01:31:41 ◼   ► just becomes normal.

01:31:42 ◼   ► And then the way to really tell is to go back to the old thing.

01:31:45 ◼   ► So after having the new Apple Pencil with my iPad Pro since, what, October?

01:31:54 ◼   ► Going back to the old Pencil, it was really, eh.

01:31:57 ◼   ► It really, it feels a little, it almost feels like greasy in your hand.

01:32:00 ◼   ► Right, you mentioned that, and it's also round, so it just rolls everywhere.

01:32:05 ◼   ► Right, and it's weighted.

01:32:08 ◼   ► There's some kind of way that it's weighted so it supposedly stops rolling, and it's a

01:32:13 ◼   ► clever design and but everything that everybody ever complained about the

01:32:17 ◼   ► pencil it's all magnified once you're used to the newer right right and right

01:32:21 ◼   ► that the matte finish is definitely better so much better it just feels

01:32:27 ◼   ► better in every way the flat side is so much better right to stop rolling the

01:32:32 ◼   ► charging is obviously so much better it's certainly more graceful yeah I mean

01:32:37 ◼   ► it you know I've never been a hater of the hey stick it in the iPad it looks

01:32:43 ◼   ► silly sticking out but for 15 seconds right it literally needs 15 seconds to charge so

01:32:49 ◼   ► yeah you don't need to do it for all um likewise i'm not a hater of the the the magic mouse with

01:32:55 ◼   ► the lightning port on the belly right that you can't use while doing it because you don't have

01:33:01 ◼   ► to charge it for that long right i get it that it's it's not great but it would be such it would

01:33:06 ◼   ► The design doesn't have room for a lightning port on the outside.

01:33:12 ◼   ► But boy, that old pencil seems...

01:33:17 ◼   ► And the other thing is, man, those caps are so fiddly.

01:33:20 ◼   ► So my strategy with the old pencil was always, I don't even know where the actual cap cap is.

01:33:28 ◼   ► I think I lost it on a train at one point.

01:33:31 ◼   ► And yeah, that's what yeah now that I think about it

01:33:33 ◼   ► I was on an Amtrak train and it fell between the seats and I I like took out my the iPhone flashlight

01:33:39 ◼   ► And look down there and it was a nightmare. I didn't see it

01:33:43 ◼   ► If I saw it, I might have tried to fish it fish it out, but I looked down there and it was so gross

01:33:48 ◼   ► I was like I was like that cap is gone

01:33:51 ◼   ► but what I usually did is I kept the the

01:33:55 ◼   ► Female to female lightning thing on it as the cap so that I could charge it

01:34:00 ◼   ► Just by plugging it into like a lightning cable

01:34:04 ◼   ► Oh, I see and I just just I used that as a cap and but it going back to that like just having a cap

01:34:11 ◼   ► It's so fiddly it just feels like you're constantly at risk of losing this little tiny delicate thing, right?

01:34:16 ◼   ► And that's why I say that the pencil - is so obviously superior

01:34:22 ◼   ► That it's strange to me for them to ship a new product that only uses the pencil one

01:34:26 ◼   ► And again, we discussed why but it once once you've made these advances like touch ID is not so much worse than face ID

01:34:34 ◼   ► But the pencil one seems so much worse than the pencil -

01:34:38 ◼   ► Yeah, it really does and and so it is it is like the unfortunate aspect

01:34:43 ◼   ► I get why they've done this and it's great that they have pencil support at all because the iPad mini

01:34:48 ◼   ► didn't have pencil support until now, but

01:34:50 ◼   ► But it is an unfortunate situation.

01:34:55 ◼   ► I don't know how else to say it.

01:34:59 ◼   ► I think it would be interesting.

01:35:00 ◼   ► What I think is interesting is to imagine the alternate universe where Apple had decided

01:35:09 ◼   ► it was worthwhile to do the equivalent of a… for the iPad, do what they did with the

01:35:14 ◼   ► the iPhone XR, which is, okay, we're gonna make some sacrifices for cost to hit a significantly

01:35:22 ◼   ► lower price point, but let's move these iPads to the new world, right?

01:35:28 ◼   ► Because the new iPad Pros are clearly the equivalent of the iPhone X for iPad.

01:35:34 ◼   ► But they only did that in the second year.

01:35:38 ◼   ► So that's almost what the next...

01:35:40 ◼   ► Well, I guess these aren't updated every year, so that sort of flies in the face of that.

01:35:43 ◼   ► that's almost what the next iPad update should be. Yeah, maybe they will. Maybe next year,

01:35:49 ◼   ► there will be the equivalent of a, you know, the mid range iPad Air and iPad Mini will be updated.

01:35:55 ◼   ► But I don't really have faith that they're going to do a mini update in one year. Like after going

01:35:59 ◼   ► three and a half years, I feel like we're looking at like two or three years down the road. Right.

01:36:03 ◼   ► Now, I think I think that's probably right. But it's interesting to see what happens there. Yeah,

01:36:08 ◼   ► But I just think it would be so…

01:36:13 ◼   ► And I almost feel like the flip side too might have proved popular.

01:36:18 ◼   ► Where let's say the iPhone XR didn't exist and they went with an iPhone 9 that looked

01:36:25 ◼   ► like it still had touch ID.

01:36:28 ◼   ► Everything that these iPads have that still had a rectangular screen without the round

01:36:32 ◼   ► corners, still had touch ID, and maybe hit an even lower price point, but had the A12

01:36:38 ◼   ► processor and the new camera and stuff like that.

01:36:42 ◼   ► I've written about it and I think it's underappreciated that I still feel like there's an awful lot

01:36:47 ◼   ► of normal people out there who are not quite rational, but it's just a natural resistance

01:36:55 ◼   ► to not having a home button and touch ID.

01:36:57 ◼   ► To the newer phones, right? They're just sticking with whatever they whatever the style is they have yeah, right?

01:37:03 ◼   ► I really do feel that and because that's how people that's how regular people think they don't think oh, this is cool

01:37:09 ◼   ► I can't wait to relearn how I use my phone, right?

01:37:11 ◼   ► right they think oh my god, how about how would I use my phone without without a home button and

01:37:16 ◼   ► They think you know and it's a natural suspicion to think that I don't know this face

01:37:22 ◼   ► I'd you can't possibly work as well as touch ID. I love touch ID, you know

01:37:26 ◼   ► So right adding adding touch ID didn't really change anything

01:37:29 ◼   ► You could still use your phone exactly the same way you used to right

01:37:33 ◼   ► And then if you figured out touch ID you realized oh, this is much better, but yeah switching to face

01:37:37 ◼   ► ID is a big difference yeah, and it's it's the amazing aspect of

01:37:42 ◼   ► To me it was just brilliant of making the home button the touch ID sensor instead of writing on the back like a lot of

01:37:49 ◼   ► Android phones do

01:37:50 ◼   ► Because it totally you didn't have to buy into it at all like it could have been

01:37:56 ◼   ► a terrible experience. It could be like touch ID was just awful. And you'd be fine because

01:38:00 ◼   ► it still worked exactly like your phone, iPhone did before. Right, exactly. You just put your

01:38:05 ◼   ► passcode in and just click the button to make it make go.

01:38:09 ◼   ► All right, I'm broadcasting. Sorry, I'm recording from a MacBook and I can either have my microphone

01:38:17 ◼   ► or power. So we're on like a 90 minute clock right now just FYI. All right, let's keep

01:38:23 ◼   ► moving in. So while we're, we can, what else is on the agenda here? We got the new iMacs. I don't

01:38:30 ◼   ► really have much to say about it. I was gonna say there's, you have this note and it makes perfect

01:38:34 ◼   ► sense. They announced these, there's some speed bumps. Was there anything to them that is

01:38:40 ◼   ► extraordinary the way, you know, the iPads have been really updated? These are just incremental

01:38:46 ◼   ► updates to the iMac, right? It's a true speed bump in the traditional sense of the word where

01:38:50 ◼   ► the physical form factor is exactly the same, the displays are unchanged, but there's no reason to

01:38:58 ◼   ► update those displays. They're wonderful displays. 4K on the 21 inch and 5K on the bigger one.

01:39:06 ◼   ► Twenty-seven, yeah.

01:39:07 ◼   ► It's very hard to find PCs with 5K monitors, especially all in one design.

01:39:14 ◼   ► And the color is wonderful on them.

01:39:17 ◼   ► Everything's great about them.

01:39:19 ◼   ► You know, so they just, you know, they were just overdue.

01:39:22 ◼   ► I think they were up at like 600 days since the last update, which is,

01:39:25 ◼   ► that's my only complaint would be, I don't think it's unreasonable for Apple to

01:39:30 ◼   ► update things like the iMac once a year.

01:39:32 ◼   ► Do you think it should be, does that sound frequent enough or people, people think

01:39:40 ◼   ► that it should be more frequent or less frequent?

01:39:41 ◼   ► I think once a year is about right.

01:39:43 ◼   ► I think that they should update all of the Macs once a year.

01:39:47 ◼   ► Right.

01:39:48 ◼   ► As as so so this this is, you know, worth touching on.

01:39:52 ◼   ► Last fall, when they finally updated the mini and the air, it

01:39:56 ◼   ► had been for the mini, it had been literally years since an

01:40:00 ◼   ► update in the air had people thought the air was dead.

01:40:03 ◼   ► And and now suddenly, it's actually probably the best

01:40:06 ◼   ► laptop for the most number of people.

01:40:10 ◼   ► but I don't need that type of update every year.

01:40:13 ◼   ► This type of speed bump where you say,

01:40:15 ◼   ► hey, we're gonna charge the same price,

01:40:16 ◼   ► but you're gonna get more functionality out of it

01:40:19 ◼   ► than you would have from the version last year.

01:40:22 ◼   ► That's great.

01:40:23 ◼   ► And doesn't take, I don't wanna dictate Apple's time,

01:40:27 ◼   ► but takes a whole lot less time than a brand new design does.

01:40:30 ◼   ► - Right.

01:40:31 ◼   ► - And it seems like at least for a while,

01:40:33 ◼   ► up until last year,

01:40:34 ◼   ► they had sort of gotten away from

01:40:37 ◼   ► doing those updates frequently.

01:40:39 ◼   ► So, you know, this type of update I actually really like to see because they should do

01:40:44 ◼   ► this every year.

01:40:45 ◼   ► And the Mini that was updated last October, this October, hey, throw a slightly faster

01:40:50 ◼   ► chip in there and charge me the same price.

01:40:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:40:53 ◼   ► The Mini is now SSD only, right?

01:40:56 ◼   ► The Mac Mini?

01:40:57 ◼   ► Uh, yes.

01:40:58 ◼   ► So this is, I think the, is this the last spinning hard drive they're shipping?

01:41:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:41:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:41:06 ◼   ► Pro is SSD. The Mac Pro is ancient.

01:41:09 ◼   ► Well, forget the Mac Pro. We're not even counting that.

01:41:13 ◼   ► The iMac Pro is SSD only. These new iMacs are the last spinning disks. And hopefully

01:41:19 ◼   ► the last—this is the last generation where they will be. Because that's the big knock

01:41:24 ◼   ► on them.

01:41:25 ◼   ► That's got to be—I mean, the only reason for that is price.

01:41:28 ◼   ► The only reason is price. And, you know, it certainly is easier, you know, they didn't

01:41:33 ◼   ► re-architect them. They're not like a new system architecture. The iMac Pro truly is,

01:41:38 ◼   ► it's not just a name. It's not like they just made it dark aluminum and put the pro name on it.

01:41:44 ◼   ► It is truly an entirely different system architecture. It has an entirely different

01:41:49 ◼   ► set of chips. It uses Intel Xeon chips. It has an entirely different cooling system,

01:41:55 ◼   ► which is amazing. I know Stephen Hackett in particular had replaced a very nice iN iMac,

01:42:04 ◼   ► like the previous generation iMac, with an iMac Pro just because of fan noise. Because he does

01:42:10 ◼   ► a lot of video and I guess probably podcast audio stuff. Stuff made his fan run on the iMac, and on

01:42:16 ◼   ► the iMac Pro it doesn't. I don't own an iMac Pro, but I've seen Apple demo it and do really, really

01:42:24 ◼   ► stressful stuff and then you get behind it and you don't hear anything. It's truly an amazing thing.

01:42:29 ◼   ► These iMacs don't have that. And spinning disks, I mean, they suck. I mean, they're terrible. They're

01:42:36 ◼   ► unreliable. They're slow. But again, they're also cheap. And anybody who says these, I've seen it,

01:42:48 ◼   ► people argue, hey, these new iMacs should be SSD only. But if you're going to argue that,

01:42:53 ◼   ► that you also are implicitly arguing that the starting price

01:42:56 ◼   ► should be significantly higher.

01:42:59 ◼   ► Like you can't have both.

01:43:00 ◼   ► You can't, you can say your gut feeling is that for,

01:43:03 ◼   ► hey, for 1300 bucks, you should be able to get an SSD,

01:43:06 ◼   ► but you know, you're spending Tim Cook's money.

01:43:09 ◼   ► - Well, I'm looking at them right now.

01:43:11 ◼   ► They also all start with one terabyte drives.

01:43:15 ◼   ► So I mean, you could definitely put a smaller SSD in there.

01:43:18 ◼   ► The SSD cost goes up with the storage space, obviously.

01:43:23 ◼   ► So I don't know that everyone who's buying an iMac

01:43:26 ◼   ► needs a terabyte drive.

01:43:27 ◼   ► You could potentially put a 512 SSD

01:43:31 ◼   ► or even a 240, whatever, 240, 480 in there

01:43:35 ◼   ► and have these prices.

01:43:38 ◼   ► The other thing to note is that SSD prices

01:43:40 ◼   ► in the past like six to 12 months have crashed.

01:43:45 ◼   ► Flash memory prices have crashed.

01:43:47 ◼   ► So maybe this is an example, like you said,

01:43:50 ◼   ► this is probably, hopefully the last ones

01:43:52 ◼   ► that have a spinning hard drive.

01:43:53 ◼   ► And it's potentially something where

01:43:56 ◼   ► when they were looking to make these,

01:43:59 ◼   ► they said, all right, we can do this

01:44:00 ◼   ► and then re-engineer the back,

01:44:03 ◼   ► the internals of it to better support an SSD

01:44:06 ◼   ► now that they're cheaper.

01:44:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think that the iPad Pro

01:44:12 ◼   ► is going to trickle down.

01:44:14 ◼   ► Like I don't think they're ever gonna sell consumer iMacs

01:44:16 ◼   ► with Xeon chip architecture.

01:44:19 ◼   ► But obviously a lot of the stuff that the iMac Pro has

01:44:22 ◼   ► should be in the iMac eventually.

01:44:24 ◼   ► You know, and the other big thing is the T2

01:44:26 ◼   ► probably will be like the T3 or T4

01:44:28 ◼   ► by the time the iMacs get it.

01:44:31 ◼   ► But to have like that little iOS--

01:44:33 ◼   ► - Secondary chip in there.

01:44:34 ◼   ► - Secondary chipped and running all of the security

01:44:37 ◼   ► related features, maybe by the time the iMacs

01:44:40 ◼   ► get this next update, maybe there'll be face ID on the Mac.

01:44:44 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, could be.

01:44:45 ◼   ► - That would be cool.

01:44:46 ◼   ► And now obviously that would go through the T2 subsystem.

01:44:49 ◼   ► But who knows, maybe by the time the iMacs get a major thing, it won't really be a T2

01:44:54 ◼   ► subsystem, it'll just be an entirely iOS or ARM-based computer.

01:44:58 ◼   ► Like maybe the main processor will be Apple's ARM thing from the much-rumored,

01:45:03 ◼   ► you know, Apple doing its own chips for the Mac.

01:45:06 ◼   ► But the one thing I'm 99.9% sure is that Apple has never shipped an iOS computer

01:45:16 ◼   ► that that touches a spinning hard disk. So like, why doesn't the new iMac have a T2? I'm sure

01:45:26 ◼   ► there's other reasons hard to write but it's there's iOS doesn't have any support for spinning

01:45:31 ◼   ► hard drives and the T2 needs some kind of boot partition to boot up and need storage. So the iMac

01:45:37 ◼   ► Pro gets it because the iMac Pro is SSD only so we can have a T2 chip but our poor new iMac still

01:45:45 ◼   ► have to even if you get one that's SSD only still, you know,

01:45:48 ◼   ► has an architecture that supports spinning hard disks.

01:45:51 ◼   ► Do you ever think about spinning hard disks? They're kind of

01:45:56 ◼   ► crazy when you think about it.

01:45:57 ◼   ► Do you remember the original iPod had a spinning hard disk?

01:46:01 ◼   ► Yes, absolutely. For years, right?

01:46:04 ◼   ► I mean, a desktop computer having it. Okay, it sits there.

01:46:07 ◼   ► And yeah, it spins, but it's on its own. The iPod you would walk

01:46:11 ◼   ► with I ran with it,

01:46:13 ◼   ► Right. You run, you go work out at the gym, and you have a crazy spinning hard disk playing music all the time.

01:46:20 ◼   ► I mean, I always think of it, you're old enough, I'm, you're not really old enough, I'm just barely old enough, but you know, I recognize a record player when I see it.

01:46:29 ◼   ► And I always sort of think of a spinning hard disk as a obviously shrunk down record player.

01:46:34 ◼   ► And yeah, so to think that there's one of those inside of an iPod is insane.

01:46:39 ◼   ► And that the quote-unquote slow ones spin at 5,400 rotations per minute.

01:46:45 ◼   ► Like they're spinning at these crazy fast speeds reading ones and zeros.

01:46:50 ◼   ► With a tiny little needle.

01:46:52 ◼   ► Right. It's insane when you think about it. But I would have to think,

01:46:58 ◼   ► I really hope that these would be the last, by the time the IMAX get updated again,

01:47:02 ◼   ► and let's face it, probably 600 days. Maybe not. Although maybe. Maybe the thing is,

01:47:08 ◼   ► is that if Apple does a switch to ARM on the Mac,

01:47:10 ◼   ► maybe everything will get an update faster.

01:47:13 ◼   ► - Every year or so, yeah.

01:47:15 ◼   ► - Right.

01:47:15 ◼   ► That's one of my big hopes with the switch to ARM.

01:47:19 ◼   ► I think we'll get better battery life.

01:47:21 ◼   ► I have faith that their performance is gonna be excellent.

01:47:24 ◼   ► I mean, our phones already benchmark faster than MacBooks.

01:47:27 ◼   ► It's crazy.

01:47:28 ◼   ► - Right.

01:47:29 ◼   ► - But that it's, you know,

01:47:31 ◼   ► maybe it really is Intel's problems

01:47:33 ◼   ► hitting their roadmaps on a predictable schedule

01:47:36 ◼   ► that's keeping Apple from updating these things.

01:47:38 ◼   ► I mean, I was told off the record, but point blank,

01:47:41 ◼   ► that the reason the MacBook Air took so long

01:47:45 ◼   ► to get to this new thing was Intel.

01:47:49 ◼   ► For whatever reason, they didn't really have a chip

01:47:53 ◼   ► that Apple saw as suitable for this new Air design.

01:47:57 ◼   ► And that's why there is no CPU upgrade.

01:48:01 ◼   ► - On the Air itself?

01:48:02 ◼   ► - Right, there's no build to order

01:48:03 ◼   ► to get a faster chip or something.

01:48:05 ◼   ► Intel has one chip that Apple deems usable for the air,

01:48:09 ◼   ► and it took them a long time to get it out.

01:48:12 ◼   ► - I mean, I can see something there,

01:48:15 ◼   ► but at the same time, something like the Mini,

01:48:17 ◼   ► where they were selling the same computer for four years

01:48:20 ◼   ► with the same chip, there were faster chips in the interim.

01:48:24 ◼   ► They might not have been that much better,

01:48:26 ◼   ► but they were a little faster

01:48:27 ◼   ► and a little more energy efficient.

01:48:29 ◼   ► And it's not that hard to just slot in a new chip

01:48:33 ◼   ► and sell that as an upgrade

01:48:34 ◼   ► instead of charging the same price for four years

01:48:37 ◼   ► for a now four year old chip.

01:48:39 ◼   ► - Well, that's the other thing is when they,

01:48:41 ◼   ► I get the strategy, I totally get it,

01:48:44 ◼   ► but Apple considers these prices as like part of the brand

01:48:47 ◼   ► of the device, you know, that iMac is a 1299 starting point.

01:48:52 ◼   ► I mean, the Mac Pro is the most ridiculous one, right?

01:48:56 ◼   ► I mean, the Mac Pro is 10 years old at this point,

01:48:59 ◼   ► practically, and it's still at the same price

01:49:01 ◼   ► because they don't wanna lower the price

01:49:02 ◼   ► 'cause when they do come out with new Mac Pros,

01:49:04 ◼   ► want those same prices higher price. Right. They don't want to say all of a sudden now the Mac Pro,

01:49:08 ◼   ► here's the new Mac Pro. It's amazing, but it's double the price because they were steadily

01:49:12 ◼   ► lowering the price over the years based on the reduction in components. I mean,

01:49:18 ◼   ► who knows what the profit margin is? Like if you're, if you had to buy a Mac Pro now,

01:49:23 ◼   ► if you're putting about 10% of the price value, right? Like if you depend on a Mac Pro

01:49:29 ◼   ► and you accidentally run it through the washing machine.

01:49:33 ◼   ► Sure.

01:49:35 ◼   ► And then putting it in a giant bag of rice doesn't bring it back to life and you need to replace it.

01:49:40 ◼   ► And so you're like, I know this is a bad time to buy one, but I need it. You're probably giving

01:49:46 ◼   ► Apple insane margins on a Mac Pro today. I mean, it's got to be crazy because it's.

01:49:52 ◼   ► I've heard that they don't sell a lot of them, but that is actually the majority of the company's

01:49:58 ◼   ► profit is just Mac Pros. They only sell a few but it's a $3,000 plus machine and

01:50:04 ◼   ► they make $3,000 on each one. I'm sure that the aluminum is probably the most

01:50:09 ◼   ► expensive part. It's just it's just like really just the case is the most

01:50:15 ◼   ► expensive thing. It's crazy. But hopefully that would be the point. I mean and you

01:50:20 ◼   ► know there like the iPhone is certainly I mean there's a the iPhone makes all

01:50:27 ◼   ► money. So of course, the iPhone is the one that's on the most rigorous schedule. But their chip team

01:50:31 ◼   ► year in, year out does incredibly impressive work. They've never had a bad year for the chips. There's

01:50:36 ◼   ► never been a year where this year's a... - Whatever is not that much better.

01:50:42 ◼   ► - Right. It's always, even when the phones themselves are like, "Ah, this one's really

01:50:46 ◼   ► just an S year," or whatever you want to say, the chips always show a nice improvement,

01:50:53 ◼   ► especially in recent years on the GPU front. So hopefully they could bring that to the Mac.

01:50:57 ◼   ► Well, and I also think there's a profit component there where obviously they're paying Intel for

01:51:04 ◼   ► these chips, and then they resell them. But if you're making the chips yourself,

01:51:08 ◼   ► it makes a lot more sense to say every year, "Hey, we've got a new chip, let's upgrade these Macs."

01:51:14 ◼   ► And there'll be a speed bump that we can charge for because we're making all the profit on that.

01:51:21 ◼   ► So yeah, I certainly have a similar hope if we if we switch to to

01:51:26 ◼   ► Their ARM processors that will see more Mac updates

01:51:29 ◼   ► yeah, and the other thing too and I think it's sort of a foreshadowing is that the the high-end iPads for years have had like

01:51:37 ◼   ► An X behind their name, you know, there's like the a 10x and whatever

01:51:41 ◼   ► But the a 12 X this year is so much more powerful and because it has it's more cores

01:51:47 ◼   ► It's not just slightly faster than the regular A12.

01:51:50 ◼   ► I just ran the benchmarks when I was benchmarking these iPads.

01:51:55 ◼   ► The multi-core stuff is insane.

01:51:59 ◼   ► I have total faith that that chip team, Johnny Cerucci's team, can walk and chew gum and

01:52:05 ◼   ► can design new chips every year for the incredibly power-conscious phone while at the same time

01:52:13 ◼   ► making incredibly fast ones that don't have to be so power conscious for a Mac laptop.

01:52:19 ◼   ► I mean, I would just take the A12X in a laptop.

01:52:23 ◼   ► Throw it in a laptop.

01:52:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:52:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:52:25 ◼   ► All right.

01:52:26 ◼   ► Let me take a break.

01:52:26 ◼   ► Last break.

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01:52:28 ◼   ► Our good friends, best friends, honestly, they sponsored the show so often.

01:52:32 ◼   ► I love them.

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01:54:04 ◼   ► year if you use that code. My thanks to Squarespace for their continuing support of the talk show.

01:54:10 ◼   ► I hear you typing. I hear your little MacBook clicking. I don't want to speculate too much

01:54:19 ◼   ► about next week's event. I mean, it'll be what it'll be, but it certainly sounds like there's

01:54:23 ◼   ► no hardware. And if there is hardware, it'd be shocking. At this point, yeah. Right. Because

01:54:29 ◼   ► what would it be? What's left? Here's my—the one thing I want to say is everybody is widely

01:54:33 ◼   ► acknowledged I mean there's a bunch of leaks because the news these people are

01:54:38 ◼   ► all it's not Apple that's leaking it's their partners but they're gonna do a

01:54:41 ◼   ► news subscription thing and so you you'll pay one fee maybe it's ten bucks

01:54:47 ◼   ► and you if you subscribe to Apple news you will get subscription content from a

01:54:52 ◼   ► whole bunch of publishers who currently have you know either everything's behind

01:54:57 ◼   ► a paywall or they have some paywall content you'll get it all supposedly the

01:55:02 ◼   ► New York Times and Washington Post are not in yet, but the Wall Street Journal is, which

01:55:07 ◼   ► is interesting. I forget how many subscriptions I have. I pay for the New York Times. I pay

01:55:13 ◼   ► for the Wall Street Journal. I pay for a couple of smaller things. But I also am a subscriber

01:55:18 ◼   ► to the Washington Post as well. I forget what I pay. Do you subscribe to the Wall Street

01:55:24 ◼   ► Journal?

01:55:25 ◼   ► I don't. The Post I know, I want to say, is either $2.99 or $3.99 a month because I have

01:55:30 ◼   ► that. And then I have Boston Globe, which I don't remember what it is, but the journal,

01:55:35 ◼   ► the journal is the one that I run into. There are often, not often, but there are often enough that

01:55:40 ◼   ► I notice it. Articles that I think, oh, I want to check that out. And then I hit their paywall.

01:55:44 ◼   ► And then I either give up on it, or I think there's a workaround where you can search Twitter

01:55:49 ◼   ► and get a link that works at least some of the time. But I, that's, that's the paywall that I

01:55:55 ◼   ► hit the most that I at least remember so that that's the most interesting one of

01:55:59 ◼   ► the possible candidates that are supposedly in this service if if it's 10

01:56:05 ◼   ► bucks a month it wouldn't take much for it to be worth easily worth 10 bucks a

01:56:10 ◼   ► month right if you you know three four right so this how much is the journal on

01:56:14 ◼   ► its own looks here like I don't know if this is for paper though like is this

01:56:21 ◼   ► I'm looking at their website says it's $15 a month and that's with the 60% off that's only good for the next 43

01:56:29 ◼   ► So, I don't know I don't know though if they're if they're trying to give me a paper subscription now

01:56:36 ◼   ► I don't you know the way these newspapers still want you to you know, try to trick you into getting this

01:56:40 ◼   ► Get a physical copy that goes right into your recycling bin

01:56:45 ◼   ► It's still my favorite. It's still my favorite story of all one of my all-time favorite. I'm old stories

01:56:51 ◼   ► I know I've told you this. I know I've told it on the podcast, but it must have been three or four

01:56:55 ◼   ► years ago. It must have been. But I was at Starbucks and I was waiting for a beverage to

01:57:02 ◼   ► be prepared. And there were two young women, college-aged, maybe 21, 22 years old, talking.

01:57:09 ◼   ► I believe it had the Sunday paper, but they had the Philadelphia Inquirer. And the one girl was

01:57:16 ◼   ► explaining to the other girl that they, you know, she really

01:57:21 ◼   ► was genuine, genuinely unfamiliar with the concept of a

01:57:24 ◼   ► newspaper. And, and she was saying, and they print this,

01:57:28 ◼   ► they do this every day. And she said, Yes, every single day. And

01:57:32 ◼   ► the other girl said, Why would they do that? I don't think you

01:57:36 ◼   ► have told me. I almost burst out laughing. Because on the one

01:57:42 ◼   ► hand, I do kind of feel like you, you're she's a bit of an

01:57:45 ◼   ► an idiot, right? I mean, there's how would you I mean, like you

01:57:48 ◼   ► said, record players, like, right, you should at least be

01:57:50 ◼   ► aware of this. She's she's also not wrong. Right? That's the

01:57:54 ◼   ► thing is it when you think about what is in a printed newspaper

01:57:58 ◼   ► every single day, 365 days a year, or 100, you know, some of

01:58:04 ◼   ► these papers have been around, you know, 100, 150 years. It's

01:58:07 ◼   ► insane. It is absolutely insane. They print out all of the news,

01:58:13 ◼   ► whether you want to read it or not. I, you know, but anyway,

01:58:18 ◼   ► these these publications still want you to get your dead tree

01:58:21 ◼   ► version. So I don't know.

01:58:22 ◼   ► Well, you do know you do know the reason why they want that,

01:58:26 ◼   ► right?

01:58:26 ◼   ► Because it boosts their circulation, and they boost

01:58:29 ◼   ► their ad sales, right? That they're still they're still

01:58:32 ◼   ► selling, you know, they still make a dangerous amount of their

01:58:35 ◼   ► money dangerous in terms of the long term health of right

01:58:38 ◼   ► things. Great word for it, right? They they're dangerously

01:58:42 ◼   ► dependent on print advertising and print advertising goes by circulation. And so environment be

01:58:48 ◼   ► damned, these publications are happy if you have a print subscription that you never use

01:58:54 ◼   ► if you just let the newspapers pile up on your porch.

01:58:59 ◼   ► I mean, something's got to lie in the birdcage, right?

01:59:02 ◼   ► My grandfather, my mom's dad, he died when I was in first grade. But I have very fond

01:59:07 ◼   ► memories of him. He was a very, very nice man, very kind. My little he was my little pop pop. He was

01:59:14 ◼   ► also, you know, the genes are there. He was also a bit eccentric. And one of his eccentricities was

01:59:21 ◼   ► he he didn't throw away his newspapers. He kept on God. He had like a his chair, there was pop pops

01:59:29 ◼   ► chair that was his, you know, his like Barca lounger. And behind his chair, he I guess, you

01:59:36 ◼   ► it wasn't like he kept them for years, but he'd had months of newspapers at a time. And he kept

01:59:41 ◼   ► them in mint condition. Like when he read the newspaper, he very carefully refolded it. And

01:59:47 ◼   ► when he was done with the paper of the day, you could have still sold it at the newsstand.

01:59:53 ◼   ► And so the stack of them was very neat. I guess his thinking was if he had thought of it,

02:00:01 ◼   ► you know, it was like his version of Google. Like, I read an article a couple of days ago.

02:00:06 ◼   ► Let me dig through this pile of newspapers.

02:00:10 ◼   ► The stacks were so neat. It's a very vivid memory, because you would think it would be a mess,

02:00:15 ◼   ► but it really looked like as neatly organized as like the stack of newspapers at a newsstand

02:00:22 ◼   ► to start a day, you know, where they're all the today's newspaper.

02:00:25 ◼   ► Right. Well, so there's two, it's not at all clear what's going to happen next week.

02:00:31 ◼   ► and i don't really like speculating on this stuff either but there's two different things that we're

02:00:35 ◼   ► talking about this would be a news service that potentially makes sense because there is no real

02:00:41 ◼   ► to my knowledge is there any there's no major service that says hey give us x amount of dollars

02:00:47 ◼   ► and you'll get access to all the news you could you could want from the journal the new york times

02:00:52 ◼   ► the post right now you really have to subscribe to the new york times you subscribe to the wall

02:00:57 ◼   ► street journal you subscribe to the washington post you give three different payments to three

02:01:01 ◼   ► different companies if you want all of the content. And infamously with the New York Times,

02:01:07 ◼   ► if you want to unsubscribe, you need to call them on the telephone, talk to a friendly operator

02:01:14 ◼   ► somewhere in Iowa or something like that. Infamously very difficult to unsubscribe from

02:01:20 ◼   ► the New York Times to get out of that. But so that service, if that service exists,

02:01:25 ◼   ► and let's just assume it does, that's at least interesting depending on the price and depending

02:01:29 ◼   ► on what different papers are included in there. The other one that's I think getting more publicity

02:01:37 ◼   ► is some sort of video movie tv service. And this is the one that I... you asked me about it before

02:01:46 ◼   ► the show and I basically said, "Eh, I don't care." Because, well, and for a reason. One,

02:01:55 ◼   ► Tell me how many subscription services for TV do you have right now?

02:01:58 ◼   ► Too many.

02:02:00 ◼   ► Right. I've got Netflix.

02:02:03 ◼   ► I've got Netflix.

02:02:04 ◼   ► I've got HBO through AT&T. So that's actually free-ish. It's paid, you know, indirectly.

02:02:10 ◼   ► We still have a cable subscription.

02:02:12 ◼   ► Okay, so you still have proper cable.

02:02:13 ◼   ► So I have proper cable.

02:02:15 ◼   ► I've switched to streaming cable, which saved me a bunch of money.

02:02:19 ◼   ► I've got Amazon Prime, which gives me Prime Video.

02:02:23 ◼   ► I do have that.

02:02:25 ◼   ► this year got hulu for they had like a 12 for 12 months deal it's the crummy ad version but i wanted

02:02:32 ◼   ► to test it out anyway so i have i have hulu and i pay for the i pay for the ad free version because

02:02:38 ◼   ► the good version their ads are horrible they really are uh so you've got so just hulu and

02:02:44 ◼   ► netflix are two services that are effectively the same thing yeah and that you're paying a

02:02:50 ◼   ► a monthly subscription fee for net-- sorry, Amazon on top of that, I view that as just

02:02:56 ◼   ► coming along for the ride with a Prime subscription.

02:02:59 ◼   ► But already having Netflix and Hulu, what is Apple going to do differently?

02:03:05 ◼   ► I think the only answer is, and the reason that I'm sort of annoyed by this whole thing

02:03:09 ◼   ► is that they're going to have different content.

02:03:12 ◼   ► And that, I mentioned that the thing that happened with music is that it doesn't matter

02:03:18 ◼   ► what music subscription service you subscribe to.

02:03:21 ◼   ► If you have Apple Music, you get all the music.

02:03:23 ◼   ► If you have Spotify, you get all the music.

02:03:26 ◼   ► You know, there's a few of them that are at least on par with one another.

02:03:30 ◼   ► And by and large, you don't need to go to a specific service to get a specific artist.

02:03:36 ◼   ► Tidal is sort of the exception there where they were trying to have exclusives and things

02:03:39 ◼   ► like that.

02:03:40 ◼   ► But I think a lot of that stuff is temporarily exclusive.

02:03:43 ◼   ► And then three months later, it shows up on Spotify and Apple Music.

02:03:47 ◼   ► now if you wanted if you said hey I want to have access to streaming all movies

02:03:51 ◼   ► you'd have to sign up for five or ten different services to get it yeah and

02:03:56 ◼   ► adding yet another service doesn't do anything no it makes the problem worse

02:04:01 ◼   ► well the rumor is that they are going to bundle it make it like a TV package you

02:04:07 ◼   ► know where they're gonna have a bunch of cable channels and you'll get regular

02:04:10 ◼   ► what we consider regular TV through this Apple TV subscription thing like but

02:04:16 ◼   ► But what if you don't need that?

02:04:18 ◼   ► What if you just want to watch Apple's original shows?

02:04:20 ◼   ► Do you have to pay and get, as somebody who still subscribes to cable, or you who already

02:04:26 ◼   ► has your...

02:04:27 ◼   ► YouTube TV.

02:04:28 ◼   ► YouTube TV.

02:04:29 ◼   ► Or if you have the Sony one, which looks very good.

02:04:32 ◼   ► If you already have the Sony one, is your only option to give Apple 10 bucks a month

02:04:37 ◼   ► or $15 a month or whatever it's going to cost to get a whole bunch of channels you already

02:04:42 ◼   ► have some other way?

02:04:43 ◼   ► all you really want to do is watch the original shows that Apple's making.

02:04:47 ◼   ► I don't know.

02:04:47 ◼   ► To me, that's the most interesting thing that they'll announce next week.

02:04:51 ◼   ► It's not necessarily what, but just how much, how are they going to charge for this?

02:04:54 ◼   ► Right.

02:04:55 ◼   ► And, and yeah, I think there's, there's definitely questions there that I I'll

02:05:01 ◼   ► be interested to see answered, but I don't see any way in which this will be sort of

02:05:07 ◼   ► what Apple Music was, or even the iTunes Music Store was to music, where this is

02:05:13 ◼   ► the one solution you need. Right. And that's it. Right. And that's frustrating to me because

02:05:18 ◼   ► I don't need to pay for yet another subscription. I would like to pay more money even for one

02:05:23 ◼   ► subscription and just be done with it. And just have everything. Just give me everything.

02:05:28 ◼   ► I don't think we're going to get that. Probably not. Last but not least, I want to talk a

02:05:38 ◼   ► little bit about Mac software. I don't know if you know, do you know anything about the

02:05:42 ◼   ► indie Mac software market?

02:05:43 ◼   ► I have a passing knowledge of it. Yeah.

02:05:47 ◼   ► There was an article that you I actually saw it. But I didn't read it either. But then

02:05:51 ◼   ► I read it. There's a profile of longtime Apple executive Sean Pruden, who maybe

02:05:58 ◼   ► I wasn't familiar with her before.

02:06:00 ◼   ► Well, she co hosted the Apple design awards for years, right? Okay. Okay. That's probably

02:06:07 ◼   ► where she's best known outside the company. It's an interesting profile. She's been at

02:06:11 ◼   ► Apple for 30 years. But there's a part of the article that caught your attention and

02:06:18 ◼   ► caught mine too. I don't know if I want to paraphrase or if I should just read it.

02:06:23 ◼   ► I guess I should just read it.

02:06:25 ◼   ► I'm trying to find it in the article, but now I don't know.

02:06:28 ◼   ► Yeah. And she works for the App Store. But here's the quote. She says, "I don't know

02:06:36 ◼   ► if you remember, but the way you used to buy software was in a box at a store. There was

02:06:40 ◼   ► no way you could come up with an idea for an app and create it and put it in a shiny

02:06:44 ◼   ► disk and sell it yourself. It just wasn't going to happen. So the app store really democratized

02:06:49 ◼   ► software. And it has democratized software, but there's an entire still thriving business.

02:07:00 ◼   ► almost like she's forgetting something and I can't quite put my finger on it

02:07:05 ◼   ► there's it's like you went from retail stores selling software and then and

02:07:10 ◼   ► then the App Store and it's was that was there something called the web in

02:07:15 ◼   ► between there John so when when did when was rogue amoeba started I believe it's

02:07:22 ◼   ► the same year as daring fireball 2002 2002 and you guys have never put

02:07:26 ◼   ► software on in a box have you? We have never needed to. Early on there were a couple bundles

02:07:33 ◼   ► that other companies made that we put Audio Hijack in briefly but it was it was basically a

02:07:39 ◼   ► flirtation because growing up getting software in a box was something to aspire to maybe or you know

02:07:46 ◼   ► that's how you bought software as she said. But yeah so essentially no our software has for 16,

02:07:51 ◼   ► 17 years, been sold online exclusively. You enter your credit card number, you download the software

02:07:58 ◼   ► from our website, and you get a license key in an email and you unlock it that way.

02:08:03 ◼   ► Again, I'm not slagging on the App Store. And certainly, it certainly made writing

02:08:12 ◼   ► software for phones a democratized thing prior to the iPhone. The idea that one person or a two

02:08:19 ◼   ► person team or something like that would write phone software was crazy. I mean, it was just

02:08:24 ◼   ► You had to go through the carriers, you had to be a big business to do it. That's 100% true.

02:08:28 ◼   ► Right. But in terms of software in general, especially for the Mac, and even for Windows,