The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► How are you Renee? Happy New Year. Very good. Thank you. Happy New Year, John. We've done

00:00:03 ◼   ► this I think I think it's a tradition at this point that we've had a sort of year in a review

00:00:08 ◼   ► on the talk show with me and you Apple an Apple year in review. I mean, we can't do

00:00:11 ◼   ► the whole year for everything because we'd be here for a whole year.

00:00:14 ◼   ► The whole year. But what you know, what better way to end the new year than a look back at

00:00:19 ◼   ► the years that we do honest to God, I my memories is really flushed down the toilet. Do we do

00:00:23 ◼   ► a year in review or do we do a year ahead? I think we do a year to a year in review because

00:00:27 ◼   ► we don't know what's coming up. No. I mean, we have guesses, but they're as good as anybody's.

00:00:32 ◼   ► So here's a—let me start with a few things before we get to the year in review. I've

00:00:38 ◼   ► bought—in the last month, I have bought three personal computers for use in my home,

00:00:44 ◼   ► and none of them are from Apple. Oh, wow. And I can't remember the last time. I guess

00:00:51 ◼   ► if you count the Pixel, that would count as a personal computer. I bought a Pixel 3 when

00:00:56 ◼   ► that came out. So in the last quarter, I've bought four non-Apple personal computers.

00:01:00 ◼   ► The Pixel, though, I buy one every other year. But in December, I bought three. I bought

00:01:05 ◼   ► a gaming PC, which we set up after Christmas. I think the last episode of this show, I was

00:01:12 ◼   ► talking to Jason Snell. It was in the house, and it was packaged up. But now I've got

00:01:16 ◼   ► a Windows freaking machine running on my network. The other two, actually, one of them inspired

00:01:24 ◼   ► by my talk show last week with Jason, I bought a Raspberry Pi finally. I've never had one

00:01:31 ◼   ► before. Still haven't set it up for reasons I will get into. But I put that—do you have

00:01:37 ◼   ► Raspberry Pi? Have you ever played with this?

00:01:39 ◼   ► Jared Ranerelle I have played with them. I don't own one

00:01:40 ◼   ► currently but I keep looking at their HomeKit support and just thinking about it.

00:01:43 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Well, that's what I'm—that's Jason's

00:01:45 ◼   ► mention of Homebridge, which is an open source project that—again, I haven't gotten into

00:01:50 ◼   ► into it yet. But basically, my understanding is Homebridge is sort of—I think it runs

00:01:55 ◼   ► on Node.js, but you don't really need to know it. But you set up Homebridge, which

00:02:01 ◼   ► I think seems fairly easy to set up if you're vaguely familiar with command line stuff.

00:02:08 ◼   ► You run it nonstop on a machine on your network, and then you can set up plugins, which each

00:02:13 ◼   ► one is configured with a little text file, probably in JSON format. I haven't even

00:02:18 ◼   ► looked at it, but if it's not JSON, I'd be shocked because everything's JSON these days,

00:02:21 ◼   ► for good reasons. But then you can use it if people figure out a plug-in system for

00:02:27 ◼   ► a non-homekit-compatible Internet of Things device. Some people can figure out like maybe

00:02:34 ◼   ► it's like a plug that goes in the wall socket, but it doesn't have homekit device either

00:02:40 ◼   ► yet or it never will, but they've figured out a way to get it to do a plug-in so that

00:02:44 ◼   ► Homebridge can talk to it, then you get Homebridge on your HomeKit network, and then you can

00:02:49 ◼   ► talk to Siri and get this thing that doesn't even have official HomeKit support to work

00:02:54 ◼   ► on HomeKit.

00:02:56 ◼   ► And that's good.

00:02:57 ◼   ► It's not even important.

00:02:58 ◼   ► I don't even have a thing, but at least there's—it's like the thing that put me off on buying a

00:03:01 ◼   ► Raspberry Pi for years, even though it seems like so much fun, and it's so low-priced.

00:03:06 ◼   ► I mean, for those of you who haven't heard of it, basically it is a simple little computer.

00:03:11 ◼   ► You can literally see that you could just run it as a motherboard.

00:03:14 ◼   ► You don't even need a case for it.

00:03:16 ◼   ► It's a simple little computer with a low power ARM processor.

00:03:21 ◼   ► And I think they go as low as like $15, $25.

00:03:25 ◼   ► And the quote unquote good ones are like--

00:03:28 ◼   ► I bought a kit for like $80.

00:03:30 ◼   ► That comes with everything.

00:03:31 ◼   ► And it has Wi-Fi and more.

00:03:34 ◼   ► It runs a special version.

00:03:35 ◼   ► Well, you can probably-- there's probably dozens of versions of Linux.

00:03:38 ◼   ► But there's special versions of Linux that you install on.

00:03:41 ◼   ► an SD card and then it boots from that. You have a little computer, a little low-power

00:03:45 ◼   ► computer that you could leave running all the time. It's not going to take up a lot

00:03:48 ◼   ► of power. If you're interested in computers in general and just seeing how they work,

00:03:52 ◼   ► it's kind of fun to have a computer again where you can just look at it and see how

00:03:56 ◼   ► everything is hooked up and works.

00:03:57 ◼   ► Dave: Like the perfect hobbyist computer.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Dave: It truly, truly is. It's great. It is super great, I'm sure, I know, for education,

00:04:05 ◼   ► because as quote-unquote real computers, I mean like just take a look at the iPad Pro, right?

00:04:11 ◼   ► Maybe the most, you know, as we foreshadow the year in review, maybe the most amazing

00:04:16 ◼   ► hardware-wise personal computer, portable personal computer anybody's ever made. It is truly amazing,

00:04:24 ◼   ► but it is truly a black box. It is both literally and figuratively a black box. At least it is

00:04:34 ◼   ► Sealed up and you don't get to look at the insides and study how they work

00:04:38 ◼   ► Whereas the Raspberry Pi literally is an open box and you has no outside, right? But what a great way to learn the basics of

00:04:45 ◼   ► Systems architecture than to actually have a real system that you can play with and tinker and and do stuff like that

00:04:52 ◼   ► But I've just put it off for years because I just like well what the hell am I gonna do with it?

00:04:54 ◼   ► And now that I have like a mission like to get this home bridge thing set up it it's like now it's like okay now I

00:05:00 ◼   ► Now I can do it

00:05:02 ◼   ► And then the third one I bought based on my friend Daniel Jalkett got one for Christmas and it was on a slack

00:05:09 ◼   ► We share slack

00:05:11 ◼   ► Mentioned it and as soon as he mentioned I'd never heard of the damn thing

00:05:13 ◼   ► but as soon as he mentioned it I immediately had to go buy one is I

00:05:17 ◼   ► Didn't know this existed. I don't know how I didn't know existed a

00:05:20 ◼   ► C64 mini. Oh, yeah, I saw him tweet about that. Yep, so it's a

00:05:26 ◼   ► Commodore 64

00:05:30 ◼   ► Emulator, I guess

00:05:32 ◼   ► Yeah comes in a adorable little

00:05:35 ◼   ► fake like half-size Commodore 64

00:05:39 ◼   ► It was 50 bucks. So, okay. I'm not gonna complain

00:05:43 ◼   ► But the keys don't actually work. The keys are just sort of virtual keys, but it's it it is a looks like a door

00:05:50 ◼   ► I wish those keys worked

00:05:52 ◼   ► But I can't blame them for not because they're so tiny

00:05:54 ◼   ► But it's an adorable little fake

00:05:57 ◼   ► Commodore 64 with HDMI out and

00:06:01 ◼   ► USB in ships that the box ships with a

00:06:05 ◼   ► Joystick of the era, you know, but it's us. Okay a joystick of the era's style. Yeah

00:06:13 ◼   ► But it's USB so you can just plug it right in you could buy

00:06:17 ◼   ► Extra an extra joystick if you want to play two-player games

00:06:20 ◼   ► HDMI out is perfect because then you can plug it into you know, you know, you wouldn't in a way

00:06:26 ◼   ► It's these emulators, you know Nintendo has come out with a bunch of these type things, you know

00:06:30 ◼   ► And it's better than the actual retro hardware unless you're so serious that you're gonna keep like an old CRT display. So yeah, absolutely

00:06:37 ◼   ► and the the game the thing comes with 50 games 50 classic Commodore 64 games pre-loaded in a

00:06:46 ◼   ► you know the ROM or whatever the hell kind of storage is inside the thing so you don't have to go hunting around the

00:06:51 ◼   ► you know to find your old tape drive or the you know, the darker areas of the internet where you can find disk images and

00:06:58 ◼   ► set that up and

00:06:59 ◼   ► It's it's a real lazy way to get this working and I haven't hooked that up yet either just because it only arrived today

00:07:06 ◼   ► But I can't wait to so anyway

00:07:08 ◼   ► PC gaming on his high-end gaming machine and you'll be gaming on the Commodore 64

00:07:13 ◼   ► I I I gave serious thought to the valley. Would it have been funny on Christmas morning if I

00:07:24 ◼   ► But he wouldn't know. He's too smart. He wouldn't have fallen for it. And I'm not

00:07:27 ◼   ► like a prankster parent. I can't remember the last time I've played a prank on Jonas.

00:07:33 ◼   ► Amy's more of the prankster parent. The first time we went to Disney World 10, 11 years ago,

00:07:42 ◼   ► she woke him up. And he knew we were going to Disney World. We set up a little calendar with

00:07:47 ◼   ► like a countdown, and he was very excited. And she woke him up and said, "Jonas, we're going

00:07:52 ◼   ► going to Disney World and, "Come on, get ready." And he bolted out of bed and she

00:07:57 ◼   ► said, "Tomorrow."

00:07:58 ◼   ► I could never bring myself to do that, but I can bring myself to laugh at it. But anyway,

00:08:11 ◼   ► I'm very excited about that. I think I'm most excited about the Commodore 64.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm just glad there was no mention of a pixel slate in there John or I would have we've had a stage an intervention

00:08:20 ◼   ► Yeah

00:08:22 ◼   ► The PC is weird

00:08:25 ◼   ► I haven't used Windows honest to God haven't used it at all. I

00:08:29 ◼   ► Don't remember the last version of Windows that I used for more than a minute or two

00:08:34 ◼   ► It must have been before Windows 7 though

00:08:39 ◼   ► Well, that's I shouldn't say that I've used Windows 7 like tinkering around but only in the touch mode, you know

00:08:47 ◼   ► Like trying some of the newer devices

00:08:49 ◼   ► But like using it on like a PC and like regular GUI Windows mode I haven't used it in a while

00:08:59 ◼   ► I have a Windows 10, but it's really just a bootloader for VR

00:09:02 ◼   ► Anything with it besides that? Yeah. Well, that's effectively what Jonas is using it for

00:09:08 ◼   ► Like you're running it's a shell for steam. That's what yeah more or less. I

00:09:12 ◼   ► Will say that setting it up

00:09:14 ◼   ► I was worried because I didn't know how to set it up, but I'd done enough research and it seemed like you know

00:09:19 ◼   ► It would be alright

00:09:21 ◼   ► It it is funny we got we got it we got a PC from a company called MSI MSI tried to get X and

00:09:28 ◼   ► I

00:09:31 ◼   ► Like I liked it because it's a small it's sort of it's considered like an eSports case

00:09:36 ◼   ► It's you know, relatively small like you wouldn't call it a portable

00:09:39 ◼   ► But it's smaller and a lot lighter weight than a lot of these other ones spec for spec so that you

00:09:43 ◼   ► One could in theory easily take it to a gaming tournament or something like that

00:09:48 ◼   ► And you look on the back of it and it's got I mean it has so many USB ports and they all have

00:09:56 ◼   ► Weird cryptic labels that I don't understand like some of them have this SS. I think the SS means that it's USB 3.1

00:10:05 ◼   ► Maybe and maybe higher power. I don't know

00:10:08 ◼   ► Some of them are just for charging devices

00:10:11 ◼   ► Some of them are clearly USB 2

00:10:14 ◼   ► and

00:10:16 ◼   ► So like he doesn't have a lot of USB stuff to hook up, you know, it's like you want to

00:10:21 ◼   ► Connect the display to the US to USB so that you can then you know use the display as USB hub

00:10:28 ◼   ► I think he has his keyboard plugged directly into the the PC

00:10:33 ◼   ► But it's like you open it up and there's a nice getting started guide and all it says is

00:10:40 ◼   ► Connect the display keyboard, etc

00:10:44 ◼   ► To plug the power in three turn it on. That's that's the entire getting started guide

00:10:50 ◼   ► So I just I I just want to make sure it was set up, right?

00:10:54 ◼   ► I don't like which you know is should I be which USB port should I be using for what and I was like

00:10:59 ◼   ► Well, I don't know. I'll take my best guess everything worked

00:11:01 ◼   ► I got him a 4k display and it's nice it is a very nice display it quality wise

00:11:11 ◼   ► but like Windows 10 defaults to effectively running it in like 1x mode so

00:11:20 ◼   ► everything is truly minuscule I mean like it and with my eyes it I really

00:11:28 ◼   ► have to get about three inches away from the screen to read anything. And I'm sure I remember

00:11:32 ◼   ► from the old days with Windows that there's some way to change what the display is running at.

00:11:37 ◼   ► But I just find it humorous that it defaults to running with each pixel as an actual pixel.

00:11:43 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer:** Pixel to point, perfect.

00:11:45 ◼   ► **Ezra Klein:** Very comical. But it was actually pretty easy. I have to give them a fair amount of

00:11:53 ◼   ► credit. It was certainly easier than setting up a PC was 10, 15 years ago.

00:11:57 ◼   ► Steve McLaughlin Dip switches everywhere.

00:12:00 ◼   ► Dave Asprey No, no dip switches. Everything. It's

00:12:02 ◼   ► modern connectors that all work pretty well. USB for the input devices and then the display

00:12:11 ◼   ► connected by, I think it's called DisplayPort 1.4. But the cables that came with the display

00:12:19 ◼   ► was exactly what we needed. It was very obvious where that went and the display and where

00:12:24 ◼   ► it went into the graphics card on the PC.

00:12:28 ◼   ► One of my favorite things about other vendors is they often just include the cable in the

00:12:31 ◼   ► box.

00:12:32 ◼   ► Yes. Everything came in the box. And I'd done enough research. I told Jason last week.

00:12:38 ◼   ► I'd done a tremendous amount of research. Whatever the dollar figure is on my time,

00:12:45 ◼   ► It added very significantly to the cost of this PC. I put a lot of hours into this. It

00:12:51 ◼   ► seemed like everything came with it, but it was just my nightmare as a dad because he

00:12:55 ◼   ► didn't get to set it up Christmas Day. We went and visited family. He was a very good

00:12:58 ◼   ► sport about it. I don't think I would have been nearly as good a sport if I had gotten

00:13:03 ◼   ► an excellent gaming PC that I'd been asking for and wanted for over two years and then

00:13:10 ◼   ► You know have it in my hands and be told you can't open it until tomorrow

00:13:13 ◼   ► But I didn't feel too bad because it on the 26th he still slept in

00:13:21 ◼   ► You know his priorities are remarkably similar to my victory royale has to wait I got in first

00:13:30 ◼   ► But you know it all worked windows setting getting windows set up was pretty good

00:13:38 ◼   ► You know, I don't know

00:13:40 ◼   ► But

00:13:42 ◼   ► Here's here's my other story. So one of the other things I bought also

00:13:45 ◼   ► because I blame Jason sell is I bought the

00:13:48 ◼   ► The vortex race 3 mechanical keyboard that Jason talked about on the show last night. I'll put a link in the show notes

00:13:55 ◼   ► It's very nice. I got the

00:13:57 ◼   ► cherry

00:14:00 ◼   ► Blue switches I think no not blue Brown Brown Brown which are similar to blue in actuation force, but don't click

00:14:08 ◼   ► Yeah

00:14:10 ◼   ► And it's a fun little thing but it

00:14:12 ◼   ► It it needs a firmware update apparently to work well on the Mac

00:14:19 ◼   ► so what you can do is there's there's

00:14:23 ◼   ► So PC world it's you

00:14:27 ◼   ► Out of the box you plug it into USB and if you and there's an FN key

00:14:32 ◼   ► But the FN key on this keyboard is not the max FN key

00:14:36 ◼   ► This FN key is specific to the keyboard itself and the Mac never sees it when it's pressed

00:14:41 ◼   ► Like there's a great little utility called key codes by Peter Maurer for the Mac

00:14:46 ◼   ► That gives you all sorts of tech, you know

00:14:49 ◼   ► You can fire up key codes and then when you press and release any key including a modifier key

00:14:53 ◼   ► It tells you all sorts of stuff like developers might need to know about it like the hexadecimal

00:14:58 ◼   ► representation of that key what it represents, you know, like it gives you like the plain English like hey, it's the command key

00:15:04 ◼   ► But it also gives you like the hexadecimal

00:15:07 ◼   ► Equivalents etc, etc. Anyway, when you use that utility this FN key on the keyboard doesn't doesn't even show up

00:15:13 ◼   ► It's only for the keyboard but you hit FN on this keyboard and L and it puts you in Linux mode

00:15:19 ◼   ► Which as far as I can tell just means that the control key goes to caps lock and caps lock is control

00:15:27 ◼   ► Then you can do FNM and it puts it in Mac mode, but it's it's Mac mode is not good

00:15:34 ◼   ► Including the fact that it doesn't swap the key right next to the right side of the spacebar doesn't make it a command key

00:15:42 ◼   ► Now you can program the key. There's a programming mode and there's a PN button for that

00:15:48 ◼   ► But long story short it's it effectively what you want to do is you want to

00:15:54 ◼   ► upgrade the firmware on this thing and you can go to the vortex website and download a firmware update for the keyboard and

00:16:00 ◼   ► Then it changes it to work better on the Mac and Jason's has the upgraded firmware

00:16:05 ◼   ► So I was like chatting with Jason and he's telling me but he's had it for a while and he'd sort of forgotten what he'd done

00:16:11 ◼   ► No to upgrade it and some people apparently when they bought get open the box. It already has the upgraded firmware

00:16:16 ◼   ► But he's on his on his keyboard which is exact same as mine hardware wise you don't do

00:16:23 ◼   ► FNM to go to the Mac, you do PN, there's a PN button, PNM to go to the Mac and the command

00:16:30 ◼   ► key already works. And I know you can go to the keyboard system preps thing on the Mac

00:16:36 ◼   ► and remap, you know, like the windows key to be what you want and, and all keys to be

00:16:42 ◼   ► command keys. You can do that. But the reason I wanted it to work on the keyboard hardware

00:16:46 ◼   ► is if I plug it into an iPad to have those keys work the right way. Cause on the iPad,

00:16:51 ◼   ► you cannot do that. You can't remap the keys. Are you with me so far?

00:17:00 ◼   ► Yeah, it's just keyboards all the way down.

00:17:01 ◼   ► All right. So you go to the Vortex website, and they have a list of firmware updates.

00:17:07 ◼   ► And now here's the hitch. The hitch is the firmware can only be installed from Windows.

00:17:12 ◼   ► It's a .exe executable. So the funny thing is I probably would have bought this keyboard

00:17:18 ◼   ► Anyway, based on Jason's recommendation, it just scratched all the itches of maybe

00:17:24 ◼   ► I should get a nice new mechanical keyboard. I mentioned them on the show last week, but

00:17:30 ◼   ► the keycaps are in Helvetica, not Ariel. It comes with Mac command keys that you can replace

00:17:36 ◼   ► and pop them on so you're not looking at the stupid Windows key or having alt keys

00:17:40 ◼   ► next to your space bar, blah, blah, blah. I probably would have bought it anyway, but

00:17:44 ◼   ► then I don't know what I would have done to update the firmware because I don't have

00:17:51 ◼   ► Windows in the house and I don't really have easy access to it. People have done it,

00:17:59 ◼   ► but doing it through like virtual PC or what are the other things like that?

00:18:06 ◼   ► Steve McLaughlin - VMware or Fusion?

00:18:07 ◼   ► Dave Asprey - VMware. It's tricky because they don't really have direct access to

00:18:12 ◼   ► hardware USB ports, but there's a way to do it. And there's big long Reddit. You know,

00:18:17 ◼   ► Reddit is a fantastic resource for these mechanical keyboards, the mechanical keyboard nuts on

00:18:21 ◼   ► Reddit are well, no, it's I mean, it sincerely, they're excellent. Because they when they

00:18:25 ◼   ► find how to do something, they document it and they document it well, like literally

00:18:31 ◼   ► not missing a step and being very precise about every step. So there's a way to do it.

00:18:35 ◼   ► I guess that's what I would have done. But I don't have I don't have I don't have anything

00:18:39 ◼   ► set up like that because I have no need to run Windows. It seems kind of ridiculous to

00:18:46 ◼   ► set up an entire virtual machine running Windows just to update the firmware on my keyboard.

00:18:50 ◼   ► But anyway, as luck would have it, I now have a brand new Windows PC in the house. So I

00:18:57 ◼   ► go up there. Jonas has had it—this was yesterday, I think. So he's had the thing for two days.

00:19:07 ◼   ► in a lot of games, mostly through Steam. I say, "Hey, can I use your computer for a

00:19:12 ◼   ► bit? I want to set up this firmware." He said, "Okay, sure."

00:19:18 ◼   ► So I go to the Vortex website on the PC, and there's the XE, and it's got a weird file

00:19:24 ◼   ► name, Vortex something blah, blah, blah, dot XE, and I download it. It's only like three

00:19:29 ◼   ► megabytes, so it doesn't take long. Then I get prompted, "What do you want to do

00:19:33 ◼   ► with this download. You want to run it or save it or I forget what the third option

00:19:38 ◼   ► is." I said, "Run." I said, "Run it," and I got a weird error. It seemed like a

00:19:44 ◼   ► Windows error, not a browser error, a Windows error that whatever I tried to run in the

00:19:49 ◼   ► like, Jonas/download/whatever it was I tried to run didn't exist or something. I thought,

00:19:58 ◼   ► "That's weird." I thought maybe it's a safety issue for the browser. They don't

00:20:03 ◼   ► only running executables. You download it right from the browser. So I tried it again

00:20:07 ◼   ► and hit "save," and then I went to Windows, the file explorer. I went to his downloads,

00:20:13 ◼   ► and it's a brand new computer. There's only like six files in there. One of them

00:20:16 ◼   ► was the Fortnite thing, two or three others that clearly weren't in it, and then there's

00:20:24 ◼   ► one that was vortex-something-something.exe. I thought, "Well, there it is. Obviously,

00:20:28 ◼   ► There's only six files in here, and I double click it, and it launches this thing that

00:20:34 ◼   ► doesn't look anything like a firmware installer. It looks like an alternative to Steam. It's

00:20:39 ◼   ► like a sort of a Steam-like interface, except it's brown, and it's got all this stuff

00:20:44 ◼   ► about game mods and mods for Just Cause 4, which is a PC game. It's a big window, and

00:20:54 ◼   ► I hunted from the top left to the bottom right and looking for something about either keyboards

00:20:59 ◼   ► or firmware or something, and there's nothing in it. It's absolutely no way. I've got

00:21:03 ◼   ► the keyboard plugged in. I thought, "Well, maybe it just does it automatically. It's

00:21:08 ◼   ► just weird." Maybe it just installs the firmware and then they're trying to sell

00:21:12 ◼   ► you on this game mod stuff. I don't know. But I take the keyboard and unplug it. It's

00:21:20 ◼   ► the same. It's clearly it doesn't seem like I got the firmware. And I tried it again.

00:21:26 ◼   ► This was through Microsoft Edge, tried it again through Chrome, which is one of the

00:21:30 ◼   ► things Jonas had already installed. Same, same thing. It just launches this other thing

00:21:35 ◼   ► that looks like this gaming thing. And I seriously, I blew like an hour and a half on this. And

00:21:42 ◼   ► I'm looking, I'm searching the web for anybody who had this problem. And it seems like everybody

00:21:50 ◼   ► upgraded the firmware, all these Mac users who upgraded the firmware, and I guess even

00:21:53 ◼   ► Windows users want to upgrade the firmware, there's a couple other features on the keyboard,

00:21:58 ◼   ► nobody seemed to have a problem with it. And then I finally found a post where they had

00:22:01 ◼   ► screenshots of the of the firmware installer. And it looked exactly like what you would

00:22:05 ◼   ► think a Windows firmware installer would look like just a tiny little dialog box that tells

00:22:12 ◼   ► you the version number that of the firmware you're installing the version of the firmware

00:22:18 ◼   ► that's on the keyboard that's plugged in right now, and then a button that says "update."

00:22:24 ◼   ► I don't see a dialog box like that at all, and there's no mention of this other crazy,

00:22:28 ◼   ► big Steam-like interface.

00:22:31 ◼   ► So I try it one more time.

00:22:33 ◼   ► As I mentioned, it's a 27-inch display.

00:22:35 ◼   ► I've got to keep my face pretty close to it.

00:22:37 ◼   ► This time I noticed, as I downloaded, a tiny little white box in the lower right corner,

00:22:43 ◼   ► of like a notification center thing on the Mac, but in the lower right corner instead of the

00:22:50 ◼   ► upper right. It's on screen for about, I don't know, a second and a half. And it was something,

00:22:56 ◼   ► something Norton. So what was happening was I would download the Vortex thing, the firmware

00:23:06 ◼   ► updater. Norton took a look at it, which I didn't know. I guess Norton came pre-installed on his PC.

00:23:11 ◼   ► see. We certainly didn't install it. Norton took a look at it and said, "This is a dangerous

00:23:16 ◼   ► download. We're going to remove it." But this tiny little dialogue in the lower right

00:23:21 ◼   ► corner is only up for a second and a half, and it goes away.

00:23:25 ◼   ► So I go into Norton. I take that thing and say, "No, I do want—I trust this. Restore

00:23:31 ◼   ► it." And then it puts it back in the downloads. And it's an entirely different thing. I

00:23:35 ◼   ► double click it. It shows me the dialogue that I wanted to see, which is a very obvious

00:23:43 ◼   ► firmware updater. It updates the firmware and tells me everything was okay with "ok"

00:23:50 ◼   ► spelled with a lowercase "k," of course. And then my keyboard is updated to the newest

00:23:55 ◼   ► firmware. Although, of course, I had to run it twice the first time it gave me a weird

00:23:59 ◼   ► error.

00:24:00 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Wow.

00:24:01 ◼   ► Dave Asprey What had happened? Long story short, what

00:24:02 ◼   ► happened is there is an entirely separate thing called vortex which is a

00:24:06 ◼   ► Thing for gamers on the PC to install like game mods and stuff and it just so happened

00:24:12 ◼   ► Yeah, that was one of one of three things Jonas had downloaded in the two days. He's had it like what are the odds?

00:24:18 ◼   ► Like so I blew two hours

00:24:21 ◼   ► Wow two hours

00:24:24 ◼   ► Because I just assumed that with five items in his downloads folder and one of them being called vortex that that was the thing

00:24:31 ◼   ► I had just downloaded. And even though the file name wasn't exactly the same as the thing

00:24:34 ◼   ► that I saw when I hovered over the mouse in the web browser, I just figured that the thing

00:24:39 ◼   ► that I downloaded when I hovered was like a dot xe zip executable that unzipped to show

00:24:44 ◼   ► me this. I mean, it's called vortex. And there's only five things in the downloads folder.

00:24:48 ◼   ► One of them was fortnight. What the fuck are the odds that he had downloaded another thing

00:24:54 ◼   ► from an entirely separate company had nothing to do with keyboards entirely do with things

00:24:58 ◼   ► called Vortex.

00:24:59 ◼   ► Anyway, that was—

00:25:00 ◼   ► Eric Bischoff Oh, thank God you saw that Norton box.

00:25:02 ◼   ► You'd still be there.

00:25:03 ◼   ► Dave Asprey That was my day yesterday.

00:25:06 ◼   ► This is why I didn't have a chance to set up the Raspberry Pi yet.

00:25:10 ◼   ► Eric Bischoff Computers or labor-saving devices?

00:25:12 ◼   ► Dave Asprey All right.

00:25:13 ◼   ► Here's my other problem I ran into.

00:25:14 ◼   ► My other problem I ran into is Jonas had been—I had a 27-inch Thunderbolt display from Apple

00:25:21 ◼   ► that I had used until—and then I replaced that or took it off my desk when I got my

00:25:27 ◼   ► retina 5k iMac, which I don't even know it might be four years old, because I got the

00:25:32 ◼   ► first one when the retina 5k iMacs came out, I bought it. I still use it running great.

00:25:38 ◼   ► It's one of the best things I've ever bought. So the my, my Thunderbolt display went to

00:25:44 ◼   ► Jonas at the time and became his desktop thing that he'd plug his MacBook Pro into when he

00:25:48 ◼   ► wanted to use a bigger display or play games, etc. Now that he has a gaming PC with a new

00:25:52 ◼   ► display. Now that becomes a hand me down again. And so I thought vaguely, well, I could just

00:25:57 ◼   ► use that as my spare display, at least for setting up. Ultimately, I plan to run the

00:26:02 ◼   ► Raspberry Pi headless, but I could plug this in. Maybe I could use it to play the Switch,

00:26:07 ◼   ► use it as a TV when people—I don't know. I just figured I'd buy a little adapter

00:26:12 ◼   ► to let HDMI input work on the Thunderbolt display, and then I could hook up the Switch

00:26:18 ◼   ► or the Raspberry Pi or anything that takes HDMI out and use it.

00:26:26 ◼   ► I just hadn't thought it through. I didn't realize that Thunderbolt really means Thunderbolt

00:26:30 ◼   ► and there's nothing that can drive the Thunderbolt display other than Thunderbolt. And the only

00:26:35 ◼   ► adapter that exists is, um, cause it's, it's a, you need to plug it into a Thunderbolt

00:26:41 ◼   ► two port. You know, the Thunderbolt display has, has one plug and that's it. Well, there's

00:26:47 ◼   ► power and then there's Thunderbolt and then Apple has a, uh, a dongle that'll turn it

00:26:51 ◼   ► into Thunderbolt three, aka the thing that looks just like USB C. Yes. So we and we have

00:26:57 ◼   ► that dongle because, you know, we have Macs and Macbooks in the house now that only have

00:27:02 ◼   ► that that USB C and that works perfectly. There is no way because Thunderbolt like the

00:27:07 ◼   ► monitor if you think about it, it doesn't even have a power button. Like so. And and

00:27:14 ◼   ► the thing that's frustrating is that Thunderbolt two looks like DisplayPort one. Yes.

00:27:21 ◼   ► Yes, a boy will you Thunderbolt carries display. Yes, it carries display port, but it only

00:27:26 ◼   ► works one way. So you could use your Thunderbolt Mac to drive a DisplayPort display. But the

00:27:37 ◼   ► Thunderbolt display needs to go into a Thunderbolt jack and there is it's literally like technically

00:27:43 ◼   ► impossible to have a dongle that would I remember years ago there being a ridiculously expensive

00:27:49 ◼   ► dong like 300 bucks or something that split HDMI into DisplayPort and audio separately

00:27:55 ◼   ► and I guess never justify buying it.

00:27:57 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think that you could theoretically like set up an entire computer to sit between

00:28:05 ◼   ► them like you can set up like a Mac Mini.

00:28:07 ◼   ► Yeah, because HDMI carries DisplayPort as well, but who knows what the different standards

00:28:12 ◼   ► are now.

00:28:13 ◼   ► Right, but so there's another one there was another hour or two of my time gone by.

00:28:17 ◼   ► If people are wondering, people are looking at Daring Fireball thinking, "It's been

00:28:21 ◼   ► relatively quiet this week."

00:28:23 ◼   ► And they think, "Well, I'll bet John is just having a nice, relaxing vacation.

00:28:27 ◼   ► Instead, I've been chasing these rabbit holes."

00:28:31 ◼   ► But so now I've got a 27-inch Thunderbolt display that is in perfect working condition,

00:28:36 ◼   ► and I have devices that I would like to hook up to a spare display, and there is no way

00:28:43 ◼   ► to connect them together.

00:28:46 ◼   ► I had this moment where it was like, ultimately expressed in words, it was like, "Ah, fucking

00:28:55 ◼   ► Apple." It's a very Apple-y situation, and now I'm stuck with this display with

00:29:01 ◼   ► a terrific technology, Thunderbolt. But because it really only ever was a thing in the Apple

00:29:07 ◼   ► universe, it is no good for hooking up to anything other than Apple products.

00:29:11 ◼   ► I mean, it's an Intel technology, right?

00:29:13 ◼   ► It was supposed to go everywhere, but I think everyone else just looked at it and went,

00:29:16 ◼   ► "No, no."

00:29:17 ◼   ► Yeah, very similar story historically to FireWire, which was never intended to be Mac only either.

00:29:22 ◼   ► It wasn't really an Apple technology.

00:29:23 ◼   ► I think that might have been Intel too.

00:29:25 ◼   ► Or no, Intel was always behind USB.

00:29:27 ◼   ► Yeah, and Sony called it IEEE something.

00:29:28 ◼   ► Like, they'd put that weird name on the ports, but they were really...

00:29:32 ◼   ► It was intended to be totally cross-platform, but USB just sort of killed it effectively.

00:29:37 ◼   ► but we Mac users were using our iPods with FireWire ports.

00:29:42 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:29:45 ◼   ► But now I don't, and then here's the other thing of me,

00:29:49 ◼   ► it is a very unique to my Apple-centric lifestyle

00:29:52 ◼   ► is that I don't have,

00:29:54 ◼   ► I literally don't have a display in my house

00:29:56 ◼   ► that I can hook these things up to, a spare display.

00:29:58 ◼   ► I've got a TV set.

00:30:00 ◼   ► I guess I could hook it up to that,

00:30:04 ◼   ► but I'm actually thinking about buying

00:30:06 ◼   ► some piece of crap, you know, $150 Dell display, just so I have something like that. And I think

00:30:12 ◼   ► at my old house, like we moved two years ago and I got rid of a lot of stuff that I didn't think

00:30:17 ◼   ► I'd ever need again. I'm pretty sure I had something that some kind of display that I

00:30:21 ◼   ► could have hooked this up to. But like, I've, you know, I got talked into throwing a lot of stuff out.

00:30:27 ◼   ► The old server closet displayed. Do you have anything like, do you have like,

00:30:32 ◼   ► Like if you needed to hook up a Raspberry Pi to a display, do you have like a spare

00:30:37 ◼   ► display around?

00:30:38 ◼   ► I have like the LG 5K display that's only Thunderbolt 3, so I probably would be just

00:30:43 ◼   ► as crap out of luck as you.

00:30:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I bet you'd be just, I bet the Raspberry Pi would cry if it had to drive a 5K display.

00:30:50 ◼   ► Yeah, and maybe there's a USB, maybe there's an HDMI dongle, but I don't probably have

00:30:54 ◼   ► one around here.

00:30:55 ◼   ► Right.

00:30:56 ◼   ► Not for that at least.

00:30:57 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think, yeah, I think to drive 5K, I don't think HDMI will do it.

00:31:01 ◼   ► So I don't know what to do. I guess you know, it just feels like such a waste to buy a dis.

00:31:07 ◼   ► It just seems like something I should have sitting around. Right? Yes. And I'll blow

00:31:11 ◼   ► out how should come with them. I'll blow 150 bucks on anything. Yeah. But it just feels

00:31:17 ◼   ► like a waste to blow it on a display that I don't want. How was your Christmas? It was

00:31:26 ◼   ► good. I mean, I was I was dumb. I forgot to, to cancel sponsorships for the week. So I

00:31:32 ◼   ► had to just keep making videos. If I was smarter, I would have taken the week off. But no, nowhere

00:31:37 ◼   ► near that smart.

00:31:38 ◼   ► I every single year, I need to do more. I'm not really a journaler. I don't really have

00:31:43 ◼   ► an interest in journaling, but I'm sort of a note to self or I write notes to my future

00:31:48 ◼   ► self. And I really need to write one this year about how to do the holidays and that

00:31:53 ◼   ► that really get pounded through my thick head

00:31:55 ◼   ► that you're not gonna do a damn thing

00:31:58 ◼   ► after December 22nd or so.

00:32:02 ◼   ► You just don't plan on it.

00:32:06 ◼   ► Maybe a podcast, that seems like fun.

00:32:09 ◼   ► - And like real people with real jobs, they do this.

00:32:11 ◼   ► They black out periods, they take weeks off.

00:32:13 ◼   ► They manage to do all these things

00:32:14 ◼   ► that I just feel helpless looking at.

00:32:16 ◼   ► - Well, I just always have these grand plans

00:32:18 ◼   ► and I just think, oh, the whole world will be quiet.

00:32:21 ◼   ► I will get so much work done.

00:32:22 ◼   ► I'm gonna write so many great,

00:32:24 ◼   ► I have a couple of long pieces in the back of my head

00:32:27 ◼   ► that have been gestating.

00:32:29 ◼   ► They're all gonna, I'm gonna have all this time

00:32:30 ◼   ► to get them out and it's like,

00:32:31 ◼   ► no, it doesn't work that way at all.

00:32:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, no.

00:32:33 ◼   ► Everything gets in your way.

00:32:36 ◼   ► - Let me take a break.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Thank our first sponsor

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00:36:10 ◼   ► I tell you, I found this whole thing. I got worried with the keyboard thing that it was

00:36:22 ◼   ► like I knew I was in an unfamiliar territory. I knew this is why I like Apple products,

00:36:28 ◼   ► right? But I got to tell you, I got worried that I was, that this was a sign that I was

00:36:32 ◼   ► getting old, right? It seems to me like seems to me as a computer enthusiast in general,

00:36:39 ◼   ► ought to be able to figure out how to update the firmware on a device. I still… I mean,

00:36:46 ◼   ► what are the odds? He downloaded three things and one of them was named…

00:36:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:50 ◼   ► …and stupid Norton was hiding the other one. If it hadn't hid the other one, I would

00:36:57 ◼   ► have seen the two and thought, "Well, which is which?" And I would have… You know,

00:37:00 ◼   ► even if I guessed wrong first, when I opened the second one, it would have been pretty

00:37:03 ◼   ► obvious.

00:37:04 ◼   ► And whoever sold the computer probably deleted the perfectly good Microsoft built-in software.

00:37:09 ◼   ► stuff just to put Norton nonsense on there anyway.

00:37:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know what to do about that. That's that's the

00:37:13 ◼   ► other thing I still find windows I find it to be if anything, in

00:37:17 ◼   ► some ways better, like the first run experience was better than

00:37:20 ◼   ► ever. But ultimately just sort of poking around the start menu.

00:37:23 ◼   ► It is so what's the word Baroque? It is. Yes, it just

00:37:30 ◼   ► seems like a labyrinth of levels of what the hell is going on?

00:37:35 ◼   ► where and why and where does it all go? It just seems like to

00:37:41 ◼   ► make to create the facade of this being simpler. They've just

00:37:45 ◼   ► continued to build scaffolding on the old stuff that's always

00:37:50 ◼   ► been there.

00:37:50 ◼   ► feels like digging in ancient Greece or ancient Rome and

00:37:53 ◼   ► knowing there's just like, infinite amounts of other cities

00:37:56 ◼   ► that have been buried underneath you.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Yeah. I do vaguely worry that Apple is going a little bit in

00:38:01 ◼   ► that regard too. You know, like, I get it. Like what you're like with Safari extensions,

00:38:09 ◼   ► like I get it that you don't really want to be, they don't want people dealing with the

00:38:14 ◼   ► finder to do it and download a thing and then go to home library, Safari extensions and

00:38:23 ◼   ► put it there, you know, but I worry that it's, you know, that there's too much magic behind

00:38:29 ◼   ► the scenes with where stuff actually is in the file system now.

00:38:34 ◼   ► Well, it's like that poke apocalyptic future where one guy dies and no one knows how to

00:38:38 ◼   ► maintain anything anymore, like web objects.

00:38:40 ◼   ► Right.

00:38:41 ◼   ► And it's, you know, it is similar with the past, the actual honest to God, what is on

00:38:48 ◼   ► the file system path to stuff in iCloud, you know, where it's all in these weird long

00:38:55 ◼   ► directories.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Abstracted containers.

00:38:57 ◼   ► Right.

00:38:58 ◼   ► I get the I get the desire for the user experience of abstracting that but I

00:39:04 ◼   ► Don't know there was it's it kind of irks me

00:39:08 ◼   ► That the whole thing isn't as clean as it used to be right like when Apple com thing, right?

00:39:15 ◼   ► Like these the URLs are all perfectly human readable and other sites have all these crazy URLs that no human could possibly parse

00:39:21 ◼   ► And you just want iCloud stuff super give it to me. But let me go to slash user slash iCloud and see all my files

00:39:28 ◼   ► Right, exactly, right. That is really what I I there must have been a debate inside but

00:39:34 ◼   ► I really do feel like it should have been just been, you know, slat, twiddle slash,

00:39:40 ◼   ► Gruber slash iCloud slash, and there's all the stuff and maybe even, you know, and the

00:39:46 ◼   ► one thing that they've done in recent years that I you know, maybe is what they should

00:39:49 ◼   ► have done with that is like the way that they made the library folder invisible by default.

00:39:54 ◼   ► Sure.

00:39:55 ◼   ► So, okay, you, Jane or Joe, typical user, buy a new Mac, and you open up your home folder,

00:40:02 ◼   ► you don't see the library folder, and you shouldn't need to.

00:40:04 ◼   ► But if you're vaguely interested in, you know, tinkering with stuff in there manually, you

00:40:12 ◼   ► could Google and quickly find out that, you know, starting in version, whatever, the library

00:40:16 ◼   ► folder is invisible, you can make it visible with this simple, these simple steps, it will

00:40:22 ◼   ► stay visible afterwards and there you go. Now you have easy, visible access to your

00:40:28 ◼   ► library folder. I think they could do the same thing with iCloud.

00:40:30 ◼   ► Jared: Everything on the Mac should be like that because that's the whole virtue of

00:40:33 ◼   ► having a Mac.

00:40:34 ◼   ► Tom Bilyeu: Right. And then it's nice, clean, simple directory names and structure. I always

00:40:45 ◼   ► say, like I like to say, I like to use the term, you know, like when Apple bought Next

00:40:51 ◼   ► at the end of 1996. I mean, I guess that anniversary just passed. It was right around Christmas.

00:40:58 ◼   ► Because effectively, because of that, you know, like we said, like this week is sort

00:41:02 ◼   ► of a dead week. It really didn't take effect till January 1997. And the joke, half joke,

00:41:08 ◼   ► has been that it was a, you know, reverse that it was Next that acquired Apple. Because

00:41:14 ◼   ► And certainly, ultimately with Steve Jobs and Devanian and Scott Forstall and a whole

00:41:19 ◼   ► bunch of other people, the senior leadership of the company largely came from the next

00:41:23 ◼   ► side and wiped out most of the Apple side.

00:41:28 ◼   ► Especially technology-wise.

00:41:29 ◼   ► But I like to call it a reunification.

00:41:34 ◼   ► Like to me, I do.

00:41:35 ◼   ► And I mean this sincerely.

00:41:36 ◼   ► I really do think that when you look at it historically, that when Jobs was exiled from

00:41:40 ◼   ► Apple and founded next. He founded a company with very Apple like sensibilities. I mean,

00:41:50 ◼   ► well, he and you know, maybe it's just jobs, you know, that Apple was founded with jobs like

00:41:54 ◼   ► sensibilities and next was founded, but it attracted people. It's not just Steve Jobs,

00:41:59 ◼   ► but it's, you know, it's an attractive people who want the file, the folder names at the root

00:42:05 ◼   ► level of the hard disk to be sensible. Yeah. Right. You know, to have it's not just technologists,

00:42:13 ◼   ► right. And to have like a graceful level and and and like the next idea of having

00:42:20 ◼   ► system slash library slash all this stuff for the everything that affects all users.

00:42:27 ◼   ► And you shouldn't be messed with because it's the system level, then a root level library folder

00:42:34 ◼   ► that also affects all users. So you could install fonts in there. And then two users on the same

00:42:40 ◼   ► computer would have access to the same fonts because they were in slash library slash fonts,

00:42:45 ◼   ► and then home slash library for stuff that's just for that user. What a graceful, beautiful system,

00:42:54 ◼   ► so easily understood, makes perfect sense, even the words they choose, like system for the ones

00:42:59 ◼   ► ones that you really shouldn't be messing with. I couldn't think of a better word for

00:43:04 ◼   ► it. What a great Apple-like sensibility. It all felt very Apple-like when it became Mac

00:43:10 ◼   ► OS X. It was the extension of their dependence on file name extensions, which I won't get

00:43:18 ◼   ► into here. I'll wait for John Siracusa to return to the show.

00:43:23 ◼   ► Anyway, Windows doesn't have that.

00:43:27 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:43:29 ◼   ► All right, year in review, where do you wanna start?

00:43:32 ◼   ► - Yes, I mean, we started last year

00:43:34 ◼   ► coming off the performance issues,

00:43:39 ◼   ► like that sort of dominated the holidays

00:43:42 ◼   ► where people were talking about the iPhones

00:43:44 ◼   ► being slowed down or--

00:43:46 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, that was last year.

00:43:48 ◼   ► Boy, that seems like a long time ago.

00:43:49 ◼   ► - That was holiday, that's why none of us

00:43:51 ◼   ► had a holiday last year.

00:43:52 ◼   ► Right. Right. Right. Some reason I had that is two years ago, but now that you mention

00:43:56 ◼   ► it. Yeah, that was last year. So that was the big gate was that Apple and then you know

00:44:02 ◼   ► what the worst part is, is it's kind of stuck with them, right? It's just one of those things

00:44:06 ◼   ► that once it's out there, you know, this idea that Apple purpose, purposefully slows your

00:44:12 ◼   ► iPhone down so that you'll buy a new iPhone. Yes. When in fact, what they were doing was

00:44:17 ◼   ► slowing your iPhone down so that it would continue to function at all.

00:44:20 ◼   ► Yeah, it wouldn't spike and it wouldn't turn off the bat. It wouldn't overcharge the battery and turn off the the phone

00:44:25 ◼   ► You know

00:44:27 ◼   ► And I think I recall you and I were of similar mind that there that the mistake they made wasn't the throttling the mistake

00:44:33 ◼   ► They made was the lack of transparency

00:44:35 ◼   ► And that they didn't say they didn't present an alert, you know

00:44:40 ◼   ► And and I've been on this for years that a big problem with modern Apple is the silent failures, you know, and

00:44:48 ◼   ► You know say what you want about the old

00:44:50 ◼   ► Classic era, you know when something would go wrong and you'd get an error

00:44:54 ◼   ► It's something hopefully you'd get something with a nice human description of what went wrong, but a lot of times you'd get error negative

00:45:01 ◼   ► 69

00:45:03 ◼   ► And at least you had something that you could search for right?

00:45:07 ◼   ► Yes, you did you at least know and at least you'd recognize that the computer knows that something went wrong, right?

00:45:13 ◼   ► You'd feel validated or vindicated or something.

00:45:15 ◼   ► Right.

00:45:16 ◼   ► Just imagine printing.

00:45:17 ◼   ► You have a document and you've printed, you've used this printer before and you hit

00:45:22 ◼   ► Command P and then you hit return and you see something and then the dialogue disappears

00:45:28 ◼   ► and nothing ever comes out of your printer.

00:45:31 ◼   ► Right?

00:45:32 ◼   ► Your computer doesn't say anything and the printer doesn't say anything.

00:45:35 ◼   ► That is really—it's harder to fix, and it is unsatisfying.

00:45:45 ◼   ► It's frustrating if you get an error that says, "I don't know, something's wrong

00:45:49 ◼   ► with the printer driver," or something, or whatever.

00:45:52 ◼   ► It's frustrating, but at least you have something that you know where to start.

00:45:56 ◼   ► Silent failure is very, very frustrating.

00:46:01 ◼   ► throttling of your performance is similarly frustrating right like you can

00:46:08 ◼   ► tell your iPhone is slower but you don't know why it's it's frustrating and I

00:46:14 ◼   ► think the worst part is that people's guess as to why is wrong was wrong I

00:46:19 ◼   ► don't think people people guessed exactly at the reason I think people

00:46:23 ◼   ► guessed that it was sort of like and especially people who aren't most iPhone

00:46:27 ◼   ► users aren't longtime Mac users I think you know most people their experience

00:46:31 ◼   ► with computers is with Windows, and Windows rots over time. You use a Windows computer

00:46:36 ◼   ► for a couple of years. I don't know if it's still true, but at least for a long time.

00:46:41 ◼   ► Right? It gets slower because also accumulation of cruft. That's just what happens. Whereas

00:46:50 ◼   ► the actual answer—

00:46:51 ◼   ► Eric Meyer This was the opposite. People were just immediately

00:46:53 ◼   ► assuming that Apple was slowing down your phone to try to trick you into buying a new

00:46:56 ◼   ► phone, where Apple was slowing down your phone to try to make that phone last as long as

00:46:59 ◼   ► possible so you wouldn't have to go right and the solution that if you could take it if you took it

00:47:05 ◼   ► in and got a replacement battery would cost a lot less than a new phone and would restore the phone

00:47:11 ◼   ► to its peak performance because that was the whole thing the whole problem was that the battery would

00:47:19 ◼   ► would you know over time it's it's the nature of all batteries or at least all lithium ion batteries

00:47:26 ◼   ► you know, that once they deteriorate, they deteriorate inevitably, and when they deteriorate

00:47:31 ◼   ► to a certain level, they can no longer sustain the performance that's necessary for the peak

00:47:36 ◼   ► performance of the hypothetical peak performance of the system. Yep, absolutely. Well, my thing is

00:47:42 ◼   ► that if you if something changed, like Apple likes to just manage everything, they don't,

00:47:45 ◼   ► they believe they should be doing all this, you shouldn't have to worry about it. But when a state

00:47:49 ◼   ► changes, people are going to notice it, or they have no information, they're going to think the

00:47:52 ◼   ► worst. And I always thought that Apple should just let the phone fail once if it was going to,

00:47:56 ◼   ► Let it fail once and when it comes back up say your phone has been your phone is now under performance

00:48:01 ◼   ► Managing if you don't like for more information or to turn it off go to settings

00:48:04 ◼   ► Then you'd have exactly what they ended up shipping later in the year. Yeah. Well and your battery is at

00:48:09 ◼   ► 78% yeah or whatever, you know

00:48:12 ◼   ► And therefore it's in performance throttling and you know, yeah exactly

00:48:16 ◼   ► Because throttling became like a dirty word and but throttling has always been necessary with chips because they're in a constrained space

00:48:23 ◼   ► They're hot and they've always had to make carefully manage them to make sure they didn't overheat to make sure all sorts of other things

00:48:28 ◼   ► Didn't happen to them throttling is what you do with chips

00:48:31 ◼   ► Super dirty work right totally because and you know in the old days, you know

00:48:36 ◼   ► 15 20 more years ago you turn on you power up a computer and the CPU would run at it

00:48:43 ◼   ► Whatever its clock speed is and that's yeah, that was it. You know, so if it was a

00:48:47 ◼   ► 266 megahertz computer it ran at 266 megahertz and that was it

00:48:52 ◼   ► Then we started getting liquid-cooled computers.

00:48:54 ◼   ► Doesn't work like that anymore and it couldn't work like that anymore

00:48:57 ◼   ► unless

00:48:59 ◼   ► We had ridiculously slow, you know computers like

00:49:02 ◼   ► ginormous well-ventilated computers, right exactly

00:49:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess I had to have played out over the last year I don't know I

00:49:13 ◼   ► Seems like it's you know

00:49:15 ◼   ► It seems like it's a non-issue other than the fact that there's still this vague misconception that people need

00:49:20 ◼   ► You know people that Apple does this on purpose. Yeah

00:49:23 ◼   ► I mean I was listening to some big mainstream podcasts and they were talking about that in exactly those terms

00:49:28 ◼   ► Which was heart-rending

00:49:29 ◼   ► but I think the only thing we've seen lately was a

00:49:32 ◼   ► couple of people couldn't get a they waited till like the literally the last minute to like New Year's Day almost and they couldn't get

00:49:37 ◼   ► An appointment at an Apple store and we're super angry that you're gonna have to pay 20 bucks more

00:49:40 ◼   ► next week because they didn't make an appointment Oh, right because of the

00:49:45 ◼   ► The program that Apple started yeah, you know to replace these batteries at a substantially lower price. Yeah

00:49:52 ◼   ► Right. There was a long wait when they first announced it and then and I guess there was a backlog at the end of it

00:49:58 ◼   ► I took mine in I made an appointment it took them in they swapped them out to about an hour and then I left and they

00:50:03 ◼   ► Were great. Yeah, I probably should have I don't know why I didn't because I keep all my old iPhones

00:50:08 ◼   ► But I don't really use them, but why not?

00:50:13 ◼   ► Well, so what's funny is that I checked because I always buy the book the plus and the non plus version for the last few years

00:50:18 ◼   ► Anyway, but I've only ever used the plus one

00:50:20 ◼   ► So those were at like 80 percent

00:50:22 ◼   ► 79 percent the normal ones were at 100 percent battery health because they just never used them for long enough to damage it. I

00:50:28 ◼   ► Guess the other you know year in review aspect of this is the promise

00:50:35 ◼   ► back in June that I have a big focus of iOS 12 was

00:50:42 ◼   ► Performance yeah, including performance on

00:50:44 ◼   ► Going back to all of the systems that iOS 12 supports. You know, I think that was Federighi's bit on stage

00:50:52 ◼   ► and I think it I think there was you know a fair amount of skepticism on that front because a

00:51:00 ◼   ► Side B of the coin that Apple slows down

00:51:03 ◼   ► iPhones to get you to buy them is the specific theory that they the way they do it is by

00:51:11 ◼   ► programming these slowdowns into the new versions of iOS, right?

00:51:15 ◼   ► It's, it's hilarious, because every year, Apple doesn't give

00:51:18 ◼   ► you every feature, and they're withholding features to get you

00:51:20 ◼   ► to upgrade. So you demand those features, and then you feel like

00:51:23 ◼   ► your iPhone is slow. So they're, they're adding extra features to

00:51:26 ◼   ► slow down your iPhone to get you to upgrade. Right. So those

00:51:29 ◼   ► things are always true.

00:51:30 ◼   ► So the credibility bridge that Federighi and Apple needed to to

00:51:33 ◼   ► to federal the gap they needed to bridge with that is not only

00:51:40 ◼   ► they saying we're going to make it faster on older devices than

00:51:45 ◼   ► iOS 11? That people already suspected that they were going

00:51:50 ◼   ► to try to make it slower. Right? Like, no, we're not. So

00:51:53 ◼   ► they've been saying that for years, and I didn't really

00:51:55 ◼   ► believe them anymore. Like, iOS nine was supposed to make it

00:51:57 ◼   ► faster. I was 10 was supposed to make it faster.

00:51:59 ◼   ► But damned if they didn't do it. Yeah, I haven't seen. Yeah, I

00:52:04 ◼   ► really haven't seen anybody even disputed. I know ours. Technica

00:52:07 ◼   ► had a story where they, when iOS 12 first came out and they installed it on a bunch

00:52:11 ◼   ► of older devices that still supports and their conclusion was, yeah, this is better.

00:52:17 ◼   ► Even in beta, it was significant when iPhone 5S and iPhone 6, it was apparent that it was

00:52:22 ◼   ► running better.

00:52:23 ◼   ► Yes, I remember and I specifically remember that because, and the reason a lot of it popped

00:52:28 ◼   ► up right away at WWDC is a lot of people install it on older devices. That's what they bring

00:52:33 ◼   ► them to WWDC to put the first Daredevil beta on. No, I would have to say that's a real highlight

00:52:41 ◼   ► for Apple of this year. Yeah, and they maintained it through the release because some people were

00:52:45 ◼   ► kind of skeptical. Yeah, the beta is good, but is the release going to be good? And no, it was

00:52:49 ◼   ► great through the release. And I'm reminded of—and I don't know if it's still the case. I wonder,

00:52:57 ◼   ► because I haven't seen anybody talk about it lately, but I'm reminded of the WebKit

00:53:03 ◼   ► policy. I don't know if Don Melton instituted it, but from the very earliest days before

00:53:09 ◼   ► WebKit—yeah, I think before—while it was a secret project within Apple, before it even

00:53:14 ◼   ► shipped, they had a policy that you couldn't check anything into WebKit that slowed down.

00:53:21 ◼   ► They had like some benchmarks.

00:53:22 ◼   ► Zero regression.

00:53:23 ◼   ► performance-wise. So every time you made a change to WebKit, you would have to run—there's

00:53:30 ◼   ► some kind of benchmark they had for showing the performance of it. And you were not allowed

00:53:35 ◼   ► to check anything, and it slowed anything down. With the idea—and I think largely

00:53:39 ◼   ► informed by Melton's experience at Mozilla—that you engineers would say, "Well, now we support

00:53:48 ◼   ► blank, whatever new web features. And you say, "Well, this really slowed everything

00:53:55 ◼   ► down now." And they're like, "Well, we'll fix that later." And it turned out it didn't

00:54:03 ◼   ► happen that way. So there's no regression policy. Can you prove that you need that policy

00:54:10 ◼   ► to keep a web rendering engine fast? Of course not. Of course, in theory, you could check

00:54:15 ◼   ► something in that is slow and fix it later. You could. There's absolutely no computer

00:54:21 ◼   ► science principle that would say that can't be done. It's more of a human nature problem,

00:54:27 ◼   ► not a scientific problem. But I'm reminded of that with iOS and I'd sort of like to see

00:54:34 ◼   ► Apple. Hopefully, it wasn't like a one-off with iOS 12. I think that the lack of something

00:54:40 ◼   ► like that is sort of how they got into that situation in the first place.

00:54:44 ◼   ► where things are. - Yeah, it's interesting,

00:54:46 ◼   ► though, because in order to get this,

00:54:48 ◼   ► they took a lot of A-list engineers,

00:54:51 ◼   ► people who work on the core functionality

00:54:53 ◼   ► for UIKit and Springboard,

00:54:55 ◼   ► and instead of them making new features,

00:54:57 ◼   ► which is what they do any other year,

00:54:59 ◼   ► they had them work on making everything

00:55:00 ◼   ► from auto layout to collections

00:55:02 ◼   ► to all of those things much more performant.

00:55:06 ◼   ► But now this year, they're gonna have to go back

00:55:07 ◼   ► to working on new features again.

00:55:10 ◼   ► So I'm hoping Apple has a system

00:55:11 ◼   ► where they're gonna bring other guys in underneath them

00:55:14 ◼   ► to sort of take care of all this stuff going forward.

00:55:16 ◼   ► - Well, hopefully the answer, you know,

00:55:17 ◼   ► the answer to me would be something similar

00:55:19 ◼   ► to a WebKit type policy where if you're working

00:55:21 ◼   ► on a new feature and it should be,

00:55:24 ◼   ► and you know, a new feature for iOS 13,

00:55:27 ◼   ► and there's a list of here's the devices

00:55:29 ◼   ► we're planning for this OS to support.

00:55:31 ◼   ► It should be tested on the lowest of those devices

00:55:34 ◼   ► from the get-go, and it should be acceptably usable

00:55:39 ◼   ► on the lowest device before it's accepted as,

00:55:42 ◼   ► "Okay, this is gonna be part of iOS 13."

00:55:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's sort of my concern here

00:55:47 ◼   ► because they've had a performance team for years

00:55:49 ◼   ► and performance team is one of those few teams

00:55:51 ◼   ► like security, which can take your code away

00:55:53 ◼   ► and say, "No, you're not gonna get away with this.

00:55:55 ◼   ► "This has gotta work better."

00:55:57 ◼   ► And they've also had engineers who carry older devices

00:55:59 ◼   ► because their families use older devices and they don't want,

00:56:01 ◼   ► which is also why that whole thing was bullshit

00:56:03 ◼   ► about Apple slowing down devices.

00:56:04 ◼   ► Their moms and their sisters and their brothers

00:56:06 ◼   ► and their kids use those devices

00:56:08 ◼   ► and they don't want to give them a bad experience.

00:56:10 ◼   ► But then you'd get down to crunch time

00:56:11 ◼   ► and you'd have to ship.

00:56:12 ◼   ► And it's that one time a year

00:56:14 ◼   ► and just anything that wasn't a keynote headline

00:56:17 ◼   ► temple feature sort of fell by the wayside.

00:56:20 ◼   ► But this year performance was the number one

00:56:22 ◼   ► headline feature so it couldn't.

00:56:24 ◼   ► And I just want to make sure that happens every year.

00:56:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, and I really do think the way to do it

00:56:29 ◼   ► is to make it, you know, make sure it's running well

00:56:31 ◼   ► on the lowest common, lowest device from the get go.

00:56:35 ◼   ► And don't assume that you're going to be able

00:56:36 ◼   ► to fix it in July.

00:56:37 ◼   ► Yes. We shall see. I don't know. So anyway, I think iOS 12 was a big hit of the year.

00:56:49 ◼   ► I think it's been a very good release. What else do you want to do? I have this organized.

00:56:54 ◼   ► I have this note organized by product line. I don't know if we should go chronological

00:56:57 ◼   ► or by product line. I say product line. Yeah, perfect. I have Mac first. So thank God you

00:57:05 ◼   ► adjusted this with all the lakes. I can't keep them straight.

00:57:11 ◼   ► There's so many and I feel like every time I go to sleep, I wake up and there's another

00:57:14 ◼   ► one.

00:57:15 ◼   ► You know what? Can I tell you something? So for example, here's what we have in the

00:57:18 ◼   ► show notes from the Mac hardware this year. So we have no iMacs and the Mac Pro hasn't

00:57:28 ◼   ► shipped yet. Although we were told this year that the Mac Pro would be a 2019 thing, thanks

00:57:35 ◼   ► Matthew Panzerino's report earlier in the year. So it's all portables and the Mac Mini. We had the

00:57:42 ◼   ► MacBook Pro Coffee Lake in July. New updates to all the MacBook Pros except for the MacBook Pro

00:57:47 ◼   ► Escape, the one without the touch bar. The MacBook Air came out in October with Amber Lake, Mac Mini

00:57:56 ◼   ► Coffee Lake in October, and then MacBook Pro with the Vega Pro in November. That's a graphic card

00:58:03 ◼   ► update. I don't think that the CPU even got speed bumped. It was just new graphic card

00:58:11 ◼   ► options.

00:58:12 ◼   ► Jonathon Smith Yeah, the CPU stayed the same. It was just

00:58:14 ◼   ► the two higher-end Vega Pro, the mobile Vega graphics cards.

00:58:18 ◼   ► Dave: Yeah. I will say this. I thought it was interesting while I was shopping for Jonas's

00:58:23 ◼   ► gaming PC and I read a bunch of really good, thoroughly written reviews with benchmarks

00:58:29 ◼   ► from actual games. I was fascinated. I mean, I kind of knew that the GPU is by far the

00:58:34 ◼   ► most important thing for performance on games. But I was kind of shocked at at at some of

00:58:39 ◼   ► the benchmarks, how almost identical they were between like core i7 and a significantly

00:58:45 ◼   ► more expensive core i9. But if they had the same graphics card, the performance of the

00:58:49 ◼   ► game was identical, or so close to identical that it human I wouldn't notice you'd really

00:58:55 ◼   ► need to fire up the actual frame rate thing and look at the actual numbers. I thought

00:59:00 ◼   ► that was fascinating, just how almost—not inessential. I know CPU isn't completely

00:59:06 ◼   ► inessential, but that it's so secondary.

00:59:08 ◼   ► They're GPU-bound so much more than CPU-bound these days.

00:59:11 ◼   ► Yeah. But that Apple—and Apple shipping a graphics-only update to the MacBook Pro

00:59:16 ◼   ► shows that it's true in the non-gaming world, too. I think we all know that Apple doesn't

00:59:22 ◼   ► lightheartedly do speed bumps anymore.

00:59:27 ◼   ► But here's the frustrating thing.

00:59:30 ◼   ► What is better, Coffee Lake or Amber Lake?

00:59:32 ◼   ► I guess Coffee Lake, right?

00:59:33 ◼   ► Well, so this is the super frustrating thing.

00:59:36 ◼   ► So previously, there wasn't any of this BS.

00:59:37 ◼   ► It was like Broadwell and Haswell, and there was supposed to be Sky Lake and Cannon Lake.

00:59:41 ◼   ► They just couldn't get their 10-nanometer process done.

00:59:43 ◼   ► So then they went from Sky Lake to Kaby Lake, which was yet another architecture tweak and

00:59:47 ◼   ► optimization they call it now, and then from Kaby Lake to Coffee Lake.

00:59:52 ◼   ► But instead of, previously they had these M series,

00:59:54 ◼   ► M3, M5, M7, and they decided to rename the M5

00:59:58 ◼   ► and the M7 to I5 and I7, which sounded like

01:00:01 ◼   ► the bigger processors and was all super confusing.

01:00:04 ◼   ► And now they give them their own name.

01:00:05 ◼   ► So all that Amber Lake is, last year,

01:00:07 ◼   ► those were just the Kaby Lakes

01:00:08 ◼   ► that were in the 12 inch MacBook.

01:00:11 ◼   ► They didn't have any different name.

01:00:12 ◼   ► But now they're classifying those sort of

01:00:14 ◼   ► super low power chips as a different lake altogether.

01:00:17 ◼   ► And then you have like Ice Lake and Whiskey Lake,

01:00:20 ◼   ► because they want to call something else,

01:00:21 ◼   ► Like the server ones have to have a different name now.

01:00:23 ◼   ► - But how are you supposed to know

01:00:25 ◼   ► which ones are better than the other?

01:00:26 ◼   ► See, one of the things that I liked

01:00:27 ◼   ► about Nvidia's line of graphics card as I shopped for them

01:00:30 ◼   ► is that if the number is higher, it's better.

01:00:34 ◼   ► It's that simple.

01:00:35 ◼   ► So like the--

01:00:36 ◼   ► - Amber Lake and Coffee Lake are both eighth generation.

01:00:38 ◼   ► It's just Amber Lake is meant for the more portable,

01:00:40 ◼   ► lower power computers

01:00:42 ◼   ► and Coffee Lake is meant for the usual computers.

01:00:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, but you can get an eighth generation CPU

01:00:47 ◼   ► that's better than some of the ninth generation ones.

01:00:50 ◼   ► Like just being ninth--

01:00:50 ◼   ► - I think these are a refresh.

01:00:51 ◼   ► I think those are what?

01:00:52 ◼   ► Those are, 'cause there's Kaby Lake refresh as well,

01:00:55 ◼   ► and then there's Coffee Lake refresh.

01:00:57 ◼   ► I mean, it really is a mess.

01:00:58 ◼   ► - There's no way to look at the names

01:01:01 ◼   ► and decide which one's better than the other.

01:01:03 ◼   ► There's no way to look at the generation numbers.

01:01:05 ◼   ► I mean, it's, you know, in theory,

01:01:07 ◼   ► new generations are better overall,

01:01:09 ◼   ► but it doesn't necessarily mean that this one

01:01:11 ◼   ► from the ninth generation is better than that one

01:01:14 ◼   ► from the eighth generation.

01:01:15 ◼   ► It's really, really hard.

01:01:17 ◼   ► - For a human, no.

01:01:17 ◼   ► Like if you go to a Nantec or a DoraTV

01:01:19 ◼   ► or some of the YouTuber or blog channels that only focus on chips, they know all the part

01:01:24 ◼   ► numbers.

01:01:25 ◼   ► Oh, no, no.

01:01:26 ◼   ► They know exactly where they slot.

01:01:27 ◼   ► But there's no way to figure it out from the names, right?

01:01:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:30 ◼   ► You can't—whereas with the NVIDIA graphics cards on the PC, you really can.

01:01:34 ◼   ► You can just figure out, okay, if—

01:01:35 ◼   ► They're human readable.

01:01:36 ◼   ► Yeah, a 1070 is cheaper and not as powerful as a 1080, and the 2080 is better than the

01:01:42 ◼   ► 1080 and the 2080 Ti.

01:01:45 ◼   ► And if you know Ti's titanium, you know, well, and you look at the price, well, obviously

01:01:48 ◼   ► it's better.

01:01:49 ◼   ► Seriously, you know, yes, just looking at the names you can figure out which one's better than then than other ones, you know

01:01:57 ◼   ► Yeah, just put numbers on that goddamn things and make the numbers go higher

01:02:00 ◼   ► So like what is yeah, I mean they do

01:02:03 ◼   ► Still like now it's m3

01:02:05 ◼   ► I 5i 7i 9 and then you have amber lake on the lower end coffee like on the on the normal end. Yeah. Well anyway

01:02:12 ◼   ► Mac the Mac portable lineup has been completely refreshed this year with the exception of

01:02:19 ◼   ► of the non-touch bar MacBook Pro, 13-inch MacBook Pro.

01:02:23 ◼   ► - And the 12-inch only got a color,

01:02:25 ◼   ► like the gold got changed. - Oh, right, that's right.

01:02:26 ◼   ► - The shade of gold was changed.

01:02:27 ◼   ► - Right, and the 12-inch, right.

01:02:29 ◼   ► And that is-- - They didn't get Amber Lake.

01:02:30 ◼   ► They got, they're still on KV Lake.

01:02:33 ◼   ► - I feel, I still feel good about the future

01:02:35 ◼   ► of the 12-inch MacBook, 'cause I feel like they're not,

01:02:40 ◼   ► they're not going to switch the smallest ever,

01:02:44 ◼   ► you know, cutest ever MacBook to be the,

01:02:49 ◼   ► the new MacBook Air size.

01:02:50 ◼   ► Like, I think that that size, you know,

01:02:52 ◼   ► and the fact that it's still there

01:02:53 ◼   ► and people are still buying it, there's demand for it.

01:02:55 ◼   ► I just think that Intel screwed them, honestly.

01:02:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, there's two problems.

01:02:59 ◼   ► One is the Intel problem.

01:03:01 ◼   ► The other one is that they marketed themselves into a corner

01:03:03 ◼   ► because the MacBook Air was never a low-priced Mac.

01:03:06 ◼   ► It was, I think, was a 1799 when the first one came out,

01:03:09 ◼   ► 1299 when the second one came out.

01:03:11 ◼   ► Now it's 1199, but because for a while it dropped down to 999,

01:03:15 ◼   ► people expect it to be the low-priced MacBook.

01:03:18 ◼   ► So not just the lightest, but also the lowest price.

01:03:20 ◼   ► In a normal world, this would be the MacBook.

01:03:22 ◼   ► And then if you wanted to pay extra for the ultra light,

01:03:25 ◼   ► you'd get the MacBook, the 12 inch.

01:03:27 ◼   ► And if you wanted to pay extra for the pro version,

01:03:29 ◼   ► you'd get that.

01:03:30 ◼   ► And this would be the baseline.

01:03:31 ◼   ► But because of that weird marketing inversion now,

01:03:33 ◼   ► everyone is just confused about

01:03:34 ◼   ► why they're named those things.

01:03:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, the MacBook Air no longer means thin and light.

01:03:39 ◼   ► The Air now means that's the one I want.

01:03:42 ◼   ► - Yes, yeah, it really does.

01:03:44 ◼   ► - Because it's a little, it's good enough and it's cheaper.

01:03:47 ◼   ► And I like the wedge shape.

01:03:51 ◼   ► There you go.

01:03:52 ◼   ► - It's the everyday computer, everyday Mac for everyone.

01:03:53 ◼   ► - Right, it's really what the air has come to mean.

01:03:57 ◼   ► And it is what it is, but I think that it's not worth

01:04:00 ◼   ► overthinking that.

01:04:01 ◼   ► The state of the MacBook lineup overall.

01:04:07 ◼   ► I think it's a decent year for the MacBook,

01:04:14 ◼   ► but I still feel like the keyboard situation

01:04:17 ◼   ► is a significant thing.

01:04:19 ◼   ► And I do think that, what are we,

01:04:21 ◼   ► six months after the third generation keyboards

01:04:24 ◼   ► with the membrane started shipping,

01:04:26 ◼   ► I think that's enough time that it certainly suggests

01:04:29 ◼   ► that the membrane solves the pieces of dust

01:04:33 ◼   ► under the keys can get them stuck problem.

01:04:35 ◼   ► 'Cause it does not seem, that does not seem to be

01:04:38 ◼   ► the problem that it was before.

01:04:39 ◼   ► It was a significant problem before,

01:04:41 ◼   ► significant enough that Apple launched the repair program,

01:04:44 ◼   ► which is a explicit acknowledgement

01:04:47 ◼   ► "Yeah, this is Apple. This is a real problem, and we'll do our best to make it right for

01:04:51 ◼   ► the people affected by it." And the third generation keyboards don't seem to have it.

01:04:55 ◼   ► Yeah. The 2016 one seemed to be the worst. It trended down in 2017,

01:04:59 ◼   ► then it trended way down in 2018. Here's my fundamental problem, though,

01:05:03 ◼   ► with Apple's lineup as it stands today. I don't—and I do realize that there are some

01:05:09 ◼   ► fans of these keyboards. I do realize that. But I feel like the number of people who think,

01:05:15 ◼   ► this is not my favorite keyboard a ever and be on the market today across laptops is far outweighs

01:05:27 ◼   ► the number of people who consider the third generation MacBook keyboard their favorite or

01:05:32 ◼   ► and or the best on the market today and to me I think Apple the the ever since the first power

01:05:40 ◼   ► books has been up there as arguably this is the best slash favorite keyboard in the laptop

01:05:47 ◼   ► market today. And it's of course not ever in your keyboards. Do a whole show on keyboards.

01:05:53 ◼   ► Of course, it's super subjective. And of course, there are people who love the ThinkPad keyboard

01:06:00 ◼   ► keyboards and that there are differences. You're never going to have one keyboard that

01:06:03 ◼   ► everybody agrees this is the best. This is my favorite. But I feel there are way too

01:06:08 ◼   ► few people, way too many people who don't think this is an improvement over the previous

01:06:13 ◼   ► keyboards before the butterfly switch. And I think that's a problem.

01:06:16 ◼   ► No, that is the biggest problem. I've gone on record saying I love these keyboards. I

01:06:20 ◼   ► vastly prefer them to the previous generation keyboards. But there are people who really

01:06:24 ◼   ► hate them. And that shouldn't happen. Neither of us had a problem with the previous generation

01:06:30 ◼   ► one. I was fine with it. The people who hate this one were fine with it. And when you have

01:06:33 ◼   ► a single vendor making a product, you cannot have that product be divisive.

01:06:37 ◼   ► Yeah, and when you buy a premium product there are certain things that

01:06:42 ◼   ► You know have to be nice when you buy a premium car

01:06:46 ◼   ► The steering wheel has to feel nice and the it has to feel good when you push the pedals that the interface the actual parts

01:06:53 ◼   ► That your body

01:06:54 ◼   ► touches

01:06:56 ◼   ► Matter they have to be satisfying they matter more than other things, you know, like

01:07:00 ◼   ► you know like the the window what's the the

01:07:05 ◼   ► the sunscreen above your eyes in the car. All right, if that flips down and doesn't have the

01:07:10 ◼   ► best feel, you'd be annoyed if you spend a lot of money on like a BMW or something and it didn't have

01:07:14 ◼   ► a great feel. But how often do you flip that thing down? Yeah, but like the steering wheel,

01:07:18 ◼   ► he has to feel great. The shift Yeah, it has to it has to be perfect, right? The keyboard on a on a

01:07:25 ◼   ► MacBook has to be great. And I honestly, even though I feel like this third generation thing

01:07:30 ◼   ► is better solution. It's the best version of this design ever. It's not great. And I feel like it's

01:07:37 ◼   ► a fundamental failing on Apple's part. And I really, really hope weird though, because like

01:07:41 ◼   ► the touch bar, there are people deep inside Apple who were absolutely convinced that they nailed it

01:07:46 ◼   ► with this, right? I can't help but think that they wouldn't have shipped it otherwise, you know,

01:07:50 ◼   ► that. And I know they remember we went to the event and they were so happy like, what you can't

01:07:56 ◼   ► wait till you see it like they had these big grins on their face like they were really going to

01:07:59 ◼   ► to surprise us with something spectacular.

01:08:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, I will say I'm still, my personal MacBook

01:08:06 ◼   ► is still a 2014 13-inch MacBook Pro.

01:08:09 ◼   ► And ultimately, the number one reason is the keyboard,

01:08:12 ◼   ► honestly, and I really, really, I used the new one

01:08:17 ◼   ► as a review unit for like six weeks

01:08:19 ◼   ► and did everything on it.

01:08:21 ◼   ► Didn't use my iMac or anything, just used it.

01:08:23 ◼   ► And I got used to it.

01:08:24 ◼   ► I mean, I could definitely live with it.

01:08:25 ◼   ► And in the hypothetical future where they stick

01:08:29 ◼   ► with something basically like this. I will switch eventually, but it's not as good.

01:08:37 ◼   ► And it's, I don't know.

01:08:39 ◼   ► And again, like I said, I like this better and I still want them to change it because

01:08:43 ◼   ► it's not just about me. It's about everyone who uses a Macbook.

01:08:46 ◼   ► And I realize I'm at the far end of the spectrum on how much I care about the feel

01:08:52 ◼   ► of keyboards. But it really is a fundamental aspect of why people buy a notebook computer

01:09:03 ◼   ► in the first place.

01:09:04 ◼   ► Right?

01:09:05 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer:** Seriously, it's your connection to the machine. That is the one thing that

01:09:08 ◼   ► is connecting you to what you are doing.

01:09:09 ◼   ► **Scott

01:09:09 ◼   ► Yep, it really it is, you know, and you know,

01:09:12 ◼   ► having a bad game controller just can't do it.

01:09:16 ◼   ► Right. And so we don't, you know, there are no touch screens on the Mac. And so the touch

01:09:22 ◼   ► actually is it's entirely through the keyboard and the trackpad. And conversely, the trackpad,

01:09:28 ◼   ► to me, the new trackpads are the best they've ever made. And Apple famously is, to me,

01:09:35 ◼   ► is well known for making the best track pads in the industry. And I think that's still true.

01:09:40 ◼   ► I think the Force Touch track pad is just perfect. I think it's tremendous. I love the fact that

01:09:49 ◼   ► I think that the fake or haptic feedback, you know, the fake clips, the set of lie. Yeah. Using

01:09:56 ◼   ► haptic feedback instead of an actual as a, what was her name on stage? She introduced the new

01:10:04 ◼   ► MacBook Air and called it a seesaw.

01:10:06 ◼   ► Oh, I'm blanking on her name. I want to say Laura, but I don't think that was it.

01:10:11 ◼   ► Yeah, but the old seesaw, we're using an actual lever to make an actual click, meant

01:10:16 ◼   ► that at the top of the trackpad, it was much less clicky and harder to click than at the

01:10:20 ◼   ► bottom of the trackpad, whereas the new one is equally clicky everywhere, and the clicks

01:10:25 ◼   ► feel great. It's actually hard to believe it's not a real click. It's so good.

01:10:30 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. When you turn it off and it goes dead, you think it is wrong.

01:10:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, it instantly triggers a part of your brain

01:10:36 ◼   ► that says this is broken.

01:10:38 ◼   ► - Your reptile brain just thinks it's broken.

01:10:40 ◼   ► - Right, 'cause if you've ever had a laptop

01:10:43 ◼   ► where the trackpad's broken, that's what it feels like.

01:10:45 ◼   ► And it's like, uh-oh, and that's not an easy repair.

01:10:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, and we used to, at least I used to think

01:10:50 ◼   ► that Windows trackpads were horrible,

01:10:53 ◼   ► and it bothers me deeply that people think

01:10:56 ◼   ► the MacBook keyboard is horrible in the same way.

01:10:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, so they do a great job on trackpads,

01:11:00 ◼   ► but I feel like they've gotta recommit themselves

01:11:04 ◼   ► to making the world's best laptop keyboard.

01:11:06 ◼   ► - I think that if they had an opportunity,

01:11:07 ◼   ► like when they go to the new design,

01:11:09 ◼   ► 'cause there's gotta be a new design coming with face ID

01:11:11 ◼   ► and with like very, you know, very small bezels.

01:11:13 ◼   ► And I think they could have an opportunity there

01:11:16 ◼   ► to redefine the keyboard again

01:11:18 ◼   ► and just find something that works better for everybody.

01:11:20 ◼   ► - I wonder, I do wonder how much,

01:11:23 ◼   ► and again, I'm not familiar,

01:11:24 ◼   ► I guess I could go to iFixit

01:11:25 ◼   ► and sort of familiarize myself with it,

01:11:27 ◼   ► but I do wonder how much smaller the internals

01:11:32 ◼   ► of a future, a whatever, you know, arm based Apple chip MacBook lineup could be than what

01:11:41 ◼   ► they have now. Right? Because obviously, the reason they want to make they wanted to make,

01:11:46 ◼   ► I mean, obviously, how did they get into the situation with the keyboard, it's obvious,

01:11:49 ◼   ► it's about thinness, right, they wanted to make the computer thinner, but they still

01:11:53 ◼   ► need to maintain minimum battery life, and they still have all these components that

01:11:56 ◼   ► need to go in there. And, and, you know, however many ports they get away, do away with the

01:12:01 ◼   ► The ports that they keep do take up some amount of space, and therefore they're left with

01:12:07 ◼   ► less room for a keyboard with more travel, right?

01:12:12 ◼   ► Because the travel takes up space depth-wise.

01:12:14 ◼   ► Well, either Microsoft and Google managed to give better travel on keyboards that look

01:12:18 ◼   ► every bit as thin to me.

01:12:19 ◼   ► Yep.

01:12:20 ◼   ► And say what you want about the Slate tablet.

01:12:28 ◼   ► Their keyboard feels better than Apple's.

01:12:30 ◼   ► with those stupid round keys, which are a gimmick that they shouldn't have done. But

01:12:35 ◼   ► just in terms of clickiness, it feels better. I don't know. I absolutely would wager that

01:12:42 ◼   ► people who've tried both would agree that Microsoft makes a better feeling keyboard

01:12:46 ◼   ► right now than Apple. That should not be the case.

01:12:48 ◼   ► Steve: That's why this reminds me of—the keyboard reminds me of the Mac Pro, the cylinder

01:12:52 ◼   ► Mac Pro, where somebody had an idea that this could be the future, that they were solving

01:12:55 ◼   ► real problems. They were making these more stable, more uniform, wider keys, and that

01:13:00 ◼   ► this was the direction, and it just turned out to not be the direction. And the same

01:13:05 ◼   ► way they're making a new Mac Pro, they've got to just refigure out this computer, this

01:13:08 ◼   ► keyboard.

01:13:09 ◼   ► Right. I mean, but my hope is that basically as Apple continues to get better at making

01:13:14 ◼   ► computers smaller and smaller—I mean, and the watch is the perfect example of that—that

01:13:19 ◼   ► they can make a completely performant MacBook Pro with such a tiny computer that the base

01:13:25 ◼   ► of it really only needs room for keyboard and trackpad, that the keyboard and trackpad

01:13:31 ◼   ► can use as much space as they want to be as clicky and pleasant feeling as necessary because

01:13:40 ◼   ► the computer parts are so tiny that they don't really take up a lot of internal space.

01:13:44 ◼   ► Right?

01:13:45 ◼   ► Because you wouldn't need a T2 chip. That would all be built into the Apple chip.

01:13:49 ◼   ► Right. Right. I mean, look at how thin the damn iPad Pros are.

01:13:54 ◼   ► I know it's like a piece of paper right and surely a significant amount of the depth that's there is

01:13:59 ◼   ► For the display yeah display plus battery is pretty much. I think all you have in terms of depth and that thing right

01:14:07 ◼   ► So if the display was on a hinge like on a MacBook imagine how small the computer part would be of iPad pro based

01:14:13 ◼   ► MacBook Pro yeah, I mean I it's you know fascinating and you know including the battery right yeah

01:14:20 ◼   ► right and nobody wing is

01:14:23 ◼   ► Nobody complains about the battery life of an iPad Pro. No, no, no, no

01:14:26 ◼   ► I mean, I guess the battery life would be a little worse because Mac OS

01:14:30 ◼   ► Consumes more battery life than iPad

01:14:32 ◼   ► iOS does but still basically it's it's clearly 15 inch device like 13 inch device. You have a lot of room

01:14:40 ◼   ► it's clear that from a hardware perspective Apple could make a

01:14:44 ◼   ► tremendous I

01:14:48 ◼   ► arm based

01:14:50 ◼   ► MacBooks, it's entirely a software issue at this efficiency to be like they wouldn't right now

01:14:55 ◼   ► They're using Intel generic chipset and that's got to support Microsoft and a whole bunch of other stuff

01:14:58 ◼   ► They're not gonna put any DirectX baggage right in an Apple chip. All that kind of stuff is gonna go away, right?

01:15:03 ◼   ► So anyway

01:15:04 ◼   ► I just hope that they take whatever space they can to make the keyboard if they need more space to make the keyboard better

01:15:09 ◼   ► Take more space to make the keyboard better. That's a big hope for the future

01:15:17 ◼   ► Mac mini, I don't know what else to say about that. I'm glad they did it

01:15:20 ◼   ► It's you know

01:15:20 ◼   ► certainly one difference between us talking in late 2018 versus late 2017 is at least we've answered the question of whether Apple is

01:15:28 ◼   ► You know whether the Mac mini is doomed or not, right? It is. Yes, most definitely not doomed it seemingly has a bright future

01:15:36 ◼   ► yeah, and it's curious because

01:15:38 ◼   ► That that is like I think the worst-selling Mac

01:15:42 ◼   ► I mean it's tied for the Mac Pro do not not people don't love it or not

01:15:45 ◼   ► that it's a great machine, but just in terms of volume.

01:15:47 ◼   ► It's all MacBooks, and then it's all iMacs,

01:15:49 ◼   ► and then it's Mac Pro and Mac Mini.

01:15:52 ◼   ► And some people argue that Apple should

01:15:55 ◼   ► be getting rid of the computers they don't sell very much of,

01:15:58 ◼   ► but Apple really invested in it.

01:15:59 ◼   ► And I know some people were super upset because it's not

01:16:01 ◼   ► an entry level computer anymore.

01:16:03 ◼   ► It's not the $499 cheapest Mac you can buy.

01:16:06 ◼   ► Now it's aimed squarely at server side, developer side,

01:16:10 ◼   ► and more pro use.

01:16:11 ◼   ► But they still made a pretty cool little box

01:16:14 ◼   ► of that thing. Yeah, very much so. They don't still sell old Mac minis, do they? They just

01:16:20 ◼   ► got rid of them? I don't think so. Yeah, they were so old. Yeah, but that would have been interesting.

01:16:25 ◼   ► But they still sell the MacBook Air, the 2011 MacBook Air. I think that for the people who want

01:16:31 ◼   ► to do something super low performance-wise, you know, like if you just wanted to do like what

01:16:41 ◼   ► what I was talking about getting a Raspberry Pi to do, and you just want to have a headless

01:16:45 ◼   ► server in your home running, serving as a media server, running Plex or any of that

01:16:51 ◼   ► type stuff that really isn't CPU intensive because everything's already transcoded to

01:16:55 ◼   ► where you want it to be and it's just more or less putting bits on the internet, on the

01:16:59 ◼   ► Ethernet. And so even $800 would be overkill, or way overkill. I still think that market,

01:17:09 ◼   ► If you really want it to be running Mac OS X, I think that market is sort of well served

01:17:13 ◼   ► by the eBay market.

01:17:15 ◼   ► I mean, it would be nice if Apple had something in that lineup, but I kind of see why they

01:17:20 ◼   ► don't because it really would be so different than these new Mac Minis, and it would be

01:17:25 ◼   ► confusing why there's this one that's 400 and it jumps to 800 or whatever.

01:17:28 ◼   ► Dave: And they also said that people who are entry-level now, they aren't the same people

01:17:32 ◼   ► who were buying these computers 10 years ago.

01:17:34 ◼   ► They want the screen and they want the trackpad and they want the keyboard, and they're

01:17:36 ◼   ► buying MacBook Airs. They're not buying Mac minis anymore.

01:17:40 ◼   ► Yeah. But that was good. So, you know, and we've got the promise of a Mac Pro for 2019.

01:17:49 ◼   ► So I guess before we leave the Mac, we can look ahead and try to guess when that might

01:17:52 ◼   ► be.

01:17:53 ◼   ► Yeah, and we still need the updates for the iMac and the 12-inch MacBook if they're

01:17:57 ◼   ► going to do that. And iMac seems like—I'm surprised we didn't get a Coffee Lake iMac.

01:18:01 ◼   ► I mean, maybe it wasn't a huge deal in terms of how much new performance Intel offered,

01:18:06 ◼   ► Or maybe they're still resource constrained, they just don't have enough people to—because

01:18:09 ◼   ► I think some people think it's just like Intel announces a new chip, it should automatically

01:18:12 ◼   ► be in the Mac. But it takes a while for the specific versions that Apple to use to come

01:18:16 ◼   ► out, like sometimes months and months and months. And then Apple works with Intel to

01:18:19 ◼   ► do things like Power Nap and all these different features and to integrate it with the T2 and

01:18:23 ◼   ► all this other stuff. So it takes engineering hours to get that done, and they might just

01:18:27 ◼   ► not have had them.

01:18:28 ◼   ► Yeah, and I have the distinct impression that sometimes they're working on it, and while

01:18:33 ◼   ► doing that with a specific thing in mind because they're building this intricate, this entire

01:18:39 ◼   ► integrated system that depends on all of this Intel's scheduled changes. And the one that

01:18:44 ◼   ► they were waiting for for the system is now behind this other one. And you can't just

01:18:49 ◼   ► plop it in like, you know, the way that happened a couple of years ago, and they had to ship

01:18:53 ◼   ► the 21.5 with an older chip because it just Intel didn't have it ready. Right. I think

01:18:57 ◼   ► It happens more often than you think. I truly and firmly believe the answer to the question

01:19:05 ◼   ► of why did it take so long to ship the Retina MacBook Air? That's the reason that what

01:19:11 ◼   ► they were planning to ship, they couldn't ship. I think it's also maybe why they only

01:19:15 ◼   ► have one CPU option in the MacBook Air. I kind of like it as a simplicity thing. I love

01:19:21 ◼   ► fact that when you shop for a new iPad Pro, you don't have to pick a CPU config. Trust me,

01:19:29 ◼   ► coming from just buying a gaming PC, to me, I actually think the two areas where it's most

01:19:37 ◼   ► interesting would be the gaming PC world where you can pick anything, right? You've got literally

01:19:44 ◼   ► maybe dozens and dozens of CPU and GPU options and types of RAM, and you can pick the type of

01:19:50 ◼   ► motherboard and you can pick it all, right? Or the Apple route where they make decisions for you,

01:19:56 ◼   ► and you just pick how much storage you want and that's it.

01:19:58 ◼   ► Jared Ranere>> Yeah. No, I think you're like the M3 is… sorry?

01:20:03 ◼   ► Michael DeMuth>> Well, I just think that the MacBook Air in particular exemplifies that.

01:20:07 ◼   ► There's only one… there is no CPU upgrade option.

01:20:09 ◼   ► Jared Ranere>> And when you look at it like the M3, which they do do in the 12-inch MacBook,

01:20:14 ◼   ► it's just anemic. It's so bad compared to the M5 version. And I think Intel intentionally

01:20:19 ◼   ► cripples the chip too. I don't think the chip has to be that bad. I think they do it because of their

01:20:22 ◼   ► SKUs. And then the the i7 version was probably thermally beyond me Apple was to your point,

01:20:28 ◼   ► Apple was betting on 10 nanometer Intel chips, right to fit into all of these new computers. And

01:20:32 ◼   ► now all everything from the MacBook Pro to the MacBook Air are running chips that are much bigger

01:20:37 ◼   ► and hotter than Apple anticipated. Yeah, I don't know this specifically, I have been told,

01:20:44 ◼   ► basically that the answer to why the MacBook Air took as long as it did was

01:20:48 ◼   ► Intel. So that's the short version. I think like two years later, two and three years

01:20:53 ◼   ► late now. I think the slightly longer version is that they were banking on 10 nanometer

01:20:58 ◼   ► chips and Intel hasn't gotten it and it left Apple in the lurch. I really do. And I really

01:21:04 ◼   ► definitely I think the MacBook Air, it's like your argument just a couple of minutes ago

01:21:09 ◼   ► that with the Mac mini selling in probably the lowest quantities of any Mac, there's

01:21:14 ◼   ► the question of why Apple should care at all, whereas the MacBook Air is and remains the

01:21:19 ◼   ► most popular Mac. So if they're going to make Macs at all, of course they're not going to

01:21:23 ◼   ► leave that one lagging. I don't think anybody at Apple involved in it was anything other than

01:21:31 ◼   ► both furious and embarrassed at the delay it took to get a retina MacBook Air out.

01:21:39 ◼   ► I think they took it seriously at the very highest levels of the company.

01:21:43 ◼   ► And they never say it, like in the briefings they will never tell you, they are nothing

01:21:47 ◼   ► but cordial and polite about it until when you talk to them.

01:21:49 ◼   ► Right.

01:21:50 ◼   ► You can just feel this evening.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Correct.

01:21:52 ◼   ► Correct.

01:21:53 ◼   ► Because they're professionals and they're not going to throw anybody under the bus.

01:21:56 ◼   ► Up until the point when they switch to their own chips and can put up a graph comparing

01:22:01 ◼   ► the price per—the performance per watt of what they're going to compared to what they're

01:22:07 ◼   ► leaving behind.

01:22:09 ◼   ► And even then, they won't slag--

01:22:12 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:22:13 ◼   ► I think they'll do it in a way where they're slagging

01:22:15 ◼   ► the chip and not the company.

01:22:17 ◼   ► Yeah, it'll be performance per watt, right?

01:22:20 ◼   ► Right.

01:22:20 ◼   ► Same as it was with the PC.

01:22:22 ◼   ► I just linked to it a couple of weeks ago.

01:22:24 ◼   ► I linked to Steve Jobs's introduction

01:22:26 ◼   ► of the Intel transition at WWDC in 2006, I think,

01:22:32 ◼   ► or maybe 2005.

01:22:34 ◼   ► And it's remarkable because the thing that's most remarkable

01:22:38 ◼   ► that word for word what he's saying I think is what the argument Apple will make when they switch

01:22:44 ◼   ► from Intel to ARM chips. I did a video re-editing that over an ARM transition and it works perfectly.

01:22:50 ◼   ► Oh, let me get a link to that. Put a link to that in the note and I will make sure it gets in the

01:22:56 ◼   ► show notes. Yeah, it's absolutely, you know, and it including graphs that show the performance per

01:23:03 ◼   ► watt. And the argument, it's like, "Oh, it's just so Steve Jobs. Man, this guy was great."

01:23:09 ◼   ► He was like, "We have ideas for devices that we think you'll love, and we can't make them based

01:23:16 ◼   ► on the power PC, the chips coming in the power PC roadmap. And we can make them with the ones on the

01:23:22 ◼   ► Intel roadmap." There it is. We can make them, we have ideas for future devices that will be great.

01:23:28 ◼   ► you're going to love them, but we need to switch to our chips from these chips to make them real.

01:23:33 ◼   ► Jared Ranerelle That's a great presentation.

01:23:35 ◼   ► Pete Turner Oh, it's unbelievable. It's

01:23:37 ◼   ► unbelievable how short some of his things were. It's like he announced like, complete

01:23:42 ◼   ► architecture, architecture transition that was going to up, you know,

01:23:47 ◼   ► up heave all hardware and all software for the entire platform. And it took like five minutes.

01:23:53 ◼   ► Jared Ranerelle Yeah, and even he was even funny about like,

01:23:55 ◼   ► Mac OS has been leaving a secret double life right Google Maps into the building. All right, he circled the building

01:24:00 ◼   ► We've had it running in here all along. Oh and then the great the greatest part is it he's like

01:24:05 ◼   ► Oh, by the way this whole keynote so far. Yeah, it's been running on an Intel Mac right here here

01:24:09 ◼   ► It is because of course it was right. Yeah, just so perfect

01:24:11 ◼   ► So 2019 Mac should be a big year, right? It's like it's good. It's pretty good year for the mobile

01:24:21 ◼   ► You know the the MacBook lineup, but you know

01:24:23 ◼   ► I feel like the Mac Pro is coming. We have no idea what it is other than it should be a monster

01:24:29 ◼   ► graphically

01:24:32 ◼   ► But no, you know it nothing is leaked out of that project

01:24:37 ◼   ► IMAX are need of an update. I think we need an answer to

01:24:42 ◼   ► Hey, how frequently are I Mac Pro great device? Yes, very popular

01:24:47 ◼   ► Super successful every you know, did you know it is what everybody was hoping it would be

01:24:53 ◼   ► But how often are they going to update it?

01:24:55 ◼   ► Right?

01:24:56 ◼   ► Was it a one-off?

01:24:57 ◼   ► Like they focused some attention on a Pro iMac and came out with something that looked

01:25:01 ◼   ► cool and performed great and then, you know, that's it.

01:25:05 ◼   ► We're done with that one.

01:25:07 ◼   ► Or…

01:25:08 ◼   ► I was even just looking like I was trying to figure out what Intel chip came out because

01:25:11 ◼   ► those are still running Xeon Skylake because there was no Xeon Kaby Lake yet and we're

01:25:15 ◼   ► already on Coffee Lake on the desktop version.

01:25:17 ◼   ► Trying to figure out what the hell chip they'd even put in that to update it.

01:25:20 ◼   ► Right.

01:25:21 ◼   ► That's very much in need of an update.

01:25:23 ◼   ► It would be interesting if they updated it alongside the Mac Pro and then explained.

01:25:32 ◼   ► I think they could.

01:25:34 ◼   ► Hopefully they would.

01:25:35 ◼   ► It would be interesting to me because they could do a significant update to the iMac

01:25:38 ◼   ► Pro and then unveil the Mac Pro and then explain why they see a need for both to exist.

01:25:47 ◼   ► Here's the new iMac Pro.

01:25:48 ◼   ► We've had it.

01:25:49 ◼   ► It's over a year old.

01:25:50 ◼   ► great if people are using it for X, Y, and Z. Now, here's the Mac Pro. Here's why

01:25:55 ◼   ► we made this even though the iMac Pro is great for these other things, right? Because I feel

01:25:59 ◼   ► like they need to answer that question. That Mac Pro needs to answer why does it exist

01:26:04 ◼   ► in a world where the Mac Pro exists and gets updated semi-regularly.

01:26:07 ◼   ► Michael Scott: When they put it next to whatever that new

01:26:10 ◼   ► product, I feel like the expectational debt on that new Pro display is ridiculous. You

01:26:14 ◼   ► look on the web and people are saying, "Oh, is it going to be OLED? Is it going to be

01:26:17 ◼   ► 8k

01:26:19 ◼   ► Display

01:26:20 ◼   ► That is just gonna be ridiculous unless it's something concrete

01:26:23 ◼   ► Well, I like it. I did one thing to looking at the gaming PC world and trying to get Jonas a 4k display

01:26:30 ◼   ► That would work for gaming. I realized the iMac display doesn't have refresh rates that are good for gaming

01:26:35 ◼   ► And that's part of the thing but price wise the fact that you can get a really beautiful

01:26:41 ◼   ► 5k display and an iMac with you know

01:26:46 ◼   ► HDR and a tremendous color response.

01:26:55 ◼   ► And 4K displays for PCs are more expensive than the base model iMacs.

01:27:02 ◼   ► I mean, it just shows that it's different needs, but it's—boy, the display you get

01:27:11 ◼   ► with your iMac is a hell of a bargain, from what I can see on the market.

01:27:15 ◼   ► Yeah, even if you just look at the LG 5K display, which is essentially the same panel, it's

01:27:20 ◼   ► a thousand bucks worth of display right there.

01:27:22 ◼   ► Right.

01:27:23 ◼   ► It's truly…

01:27:24 ◼   ► And so, yeah, the expectations for a standalone Pro display from Apple are, well, high.

01:27:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:27:31 ◼   ► And then you've got to put the iMac Pro next to that, and it's got to hold up.

01:27:34 ◼   ► So we'll see.

01:27:35 ◼   ► Yeah, we'll see.

01:27:38 ◼   ► And what do we expect for the MacBooks?

01:27:43 ◼   ► Do we expect a new MacBook Pro design next year?

01:27:46 ◼   ► Like something significantly different,

01:27:48 ◼   ► not just a speed bump?

01:27:50 ◼   ► Is that too soon?

01:27:51 ◼   ► - It feels like Face ID has got to be coming to the Mac

01:27:54 ◼   ► at some point because it just makes so much sense.

01:27:56 ◼   ► - But the problem with the Face ID coming to the Mac

01:27:58 ◼   ► that I see is that part of the newest generation

01:28:02 ◼   ► of MacBooks, the modern generation of all MacBooks,

01:28:05 ◼   ► is that they've gone to this new thinner top panel

01:28:08 ◼   ► and that is great in every single way

01:28:13 ◼   ► in terms of how light it is, how thin it is,

01:28:16 ◼   ► and just how easy it is to tilt it because it's so light

01:28:20 ◼   ► and it has a tremendously improved hinge,

01:28:23 ◼   ► even though the old hinge was probably better

01:28:25 ◼   ► than anything else on the market.

01:28:26 ◼   ► The new hinge is like the most unheralded,

01:28:29 ◼   ► genius part of physical engineering in these MacBooks.

01:28:32 ◼   ► But the downside is it's so thin

01:28:37 ◼   ► that A, it doesn't have the Apple logo backlighting anymore. And B, it means that because it's

01:28:44 ◼   ► so thin, there's no room for a good camera. And so the, you know, like the FaceTime camera

01:28:48 ◼   ► that's in it right now is really kind of a turd of a camera.

01:28:51 ◼   ► And the 12-inch, it's 480p. It's okay. It's an ancient.

01:28:55 ◼   ► I didn't even realize that.

01:28:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:28:57 ◼   ► Right. Yeah. It is like something from 15 years ago. I think even the original iSight

01:29:03 ◼   ► camera with 720p, the one that looked like a little canister of film. So there's laws

01:29:10 ◼   ► of physics involved there of how thin can they make a sensor array that does—even

01:29:15 ◼   ► if it—in theory, I could imagine they could do a Face ID sensor that works up to their

01:29:20 ◼   ► standards but still doesn't allow for a really great camera.

01:29:24 ◼   ► you know, the photographic part of it, right? But yeah, ultimately, it really, really, it

01:29:32 ◼   ► once you get used to face ID, it's really tough in the same way that we were all craving

01:29:36 ◼   ► touch ID on our Macs for a couple of years. It's kind of like weak sauce. Like, here

01:29:43 ◼   ► you go, you have touch ID on your new MacBook now, but you don't even want it anymore.

01:29:47 ◼   ► You want face ID.

01:29:48 ◼   ► Yeah, but that's totally it. Like, we finally came to the MacBook Air, like, what is it,

01:29:52 ◼   ► five years after it came to the iPhone.

01:29:53 ◼   ► Right. So, I don't know. Hopefully, I would guess. I don't know.

01:30:00 ◼   ► Yeah, and it just makes sense because you want to get that technology across as many

01:30:03 ◼   ► of your products as possible.

01:30:05 ◼   ► Yeah, we need an answer to what's the update to the 12-inch MacBook. Is that waiting for

01:30:12 ◼   ► the switch to ARM or are they going to, you know…? And I guess that's the other big

01:30:16 ◼   ► question is, is this the year when they announced the ARM transition at WWDC? Because I can

01:30:22 ◼   ► only imagine that that would be a WWDC announcement, but then it's funny, too, because we all

01:30:27 ◼   ► sort of expect them to do this. There are some reports with sources, you know, Germin—

01:30:33 ◼   ► Jared: Familiar with the people who have the situation.

01:30:35 ◼   ► Dave: Right. You know, Germin has said that they're working on it. Of course, they have

01:30:40 ◼   ► it working in theory, right? Of course, there's a secret lab running Mac OS X or Mac OS, whatever

01:30:46 ◼   ► we call it these days.

01:30:47 ◼   ► Jared Ranerelle Well, they had Marklar in the closet for what,

01:30:50 ◼   ► like three, four, five years before we saw it.

01:30:52 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Well, all along. No, they never stopped. According

01:30:55 ◼   ► to the jobs, and it makes sense, based on Next Step's cross-platform nature, they

01:31:01 ◼   ► had it cross-compiling all along.

01:31:03 ◼   ► Jared Ranerelle And you hear stories about the ARM Macbooks

01:31:06 ◼   ► and the iOS laptops going back four, five, six years still, which is when they launched

01:31:10 ◼   ► the A4 chip. So I'm guessing it's going to be similar to the same. There's a way

01:31:13 ◼   ► that speech fits so well to this day.

01:31:18 ◼   ► But it's funny in terms of like, "Ooh, this could be an interesting year," is it's

01:31:24 ◼   ► funny to think of them maybe hypothetically in March or April unveiling—they could unveil

01:31:33 ◼   ► new long-awaited Mac Pro and updates to these Intel-based high-end workstations, and then

01:31:39 ◼   ► months later say we're moving away from Intel? What's the answer to that?

01:31:45 ◼   ► In the past two transitions, from 68K to PowerPC and then from PowerPC to Intel, they were

01:31:51 ◼   ► complete transitions. It was within a year to a year and a half. All Macs moved from

01:31:59 ◼   ► the old architecture to the new architecture.

01:32:02 ◼   ► And in theory, one way around this is that maybe the Mac,

01:32:06 ◼   ► it will remain Intel and ARM,

01:32:09 ◼   ► and it'll be Intel based on the desktop

01:32:11 ◼   ► and ARM based on the portables.

01:32:15 ◼   ► And there's no reason not to do that, really.

01:32:17 ◼   ► - They're already hybrids.

01:32:18 ◼   ► Like they're using the T2 chip not just for security,

01:32:20 ◼   ► but they're using it for the HEVC ENCODE decode

01:32:23 ◼   ► because Intel simply can't keep up

01:32:24 ◼   ► with what they're doing on ARM.

01:32:25 ◼   ► And that's what makes it so much faster

01:32:27 ◼   ► than other computers.

01:32:28 ◼   ► And you can see sort of a tipping point

01:32:30 ◼   ► where you have an Intel chip with an ARM coprocessor,

01:32:33 ◼   ► and then you have an ARM chip with an Intel coprocessor

01:32:35 ◼   ► just to handle backwards compatibility

01:32:37 ◼   ► and some of the higher end stuff that they--

01:32:39 ◼   ► some of maybe the Xeon stuff or some of the stuff

01:32:41 ◼   ► they need on a pro workstation.

01:32:42 ◼   ► Yeah, so I'm not saying I would bet on that,

01:32:44 ◼   ► but I wouldn't be surprised if that's the answer to how do they

01:32:48 ◼   ► spend all this time working on a brand new Mac Pro architecture

01:32:53 ◼   ► based on Intel technology.

01:32:56 ◼   ► and then at the same time announced this major switch

01:33:00 ◼   ► away from Intel.

01:33:01 ◼   ► And I wouldn't be surprised if it's just a portable

01:33:06 ◼   ► versus desktop dichotomy,

01:33:07 ◼   ► and for at least for the foreseeable future

01:33:09 ◼   ► in the next few years, it just stays that way.

01:33:11 ◼   ► And users don't have to worry about it.

01:33:14 ◼   ► You don't have to know.

01:33:15 ◼   ► Every app just ships as a fat app

01:33:18 ◼   ► with both Xcode just spits out both versions.

01:33:22 ◼   ► And when you're on a MacBook, it runs the ARM,

01:33:25 ◼   ► and when you're on a desktop, it runs the Intel.

01:33:28 ◼   ► - And it's also just assuming that Suruji

01:33:30 ◼   ► hasn't figured out a way to run multiple ARM cores

01:33:32 ◼   ► in a way that just blows you out of the water.

01:33:34 ◼   ► - Right, but I don't expect though that the Mac Pro

01:33:37 ◼   ► that they've been working on would be that.

01:33:39 ◼   ► I mean, although it would be, if it were,

01:33:41 ◼   ► that would be the shock of a lifetime.

01:33:44 ◼   ► - Another great presentation.

01:33:46 ◼   ► - Right, if it's all along, it has been, you know,

01:33:49 ◼   ► that they never had any intention of the new Mac Pro

01:33:51 ◼   ► being Intel-based if it was always, you know,

01:33:54 ◼   ► some kind of 18-core ARM thing. That would be damn cool. I don't expect that, but it

01:34:01 ◼   ► would be pretty cool.

01:34:02 ◼   ► What I like about Apple is one of these few companies, no one's having these specular

01:34:05 ◼   ► discussions about what Dell's next workstation is going to be.

01:34:08 ◼   ► Right. No. So it's—

01:34:10 ◼   ► Or HP or whatever.

01:34:12 ◼   ► And then, you know, yeah, that's the Mac. What else is on my list here? I got the iPad.

01:34:23 ◼   ► Is there a regular iPad update this year?

01:34:24 ◼   ► Yeah, there was the added pencil support to the 9.7-inch at the March education event.

01:34:30 ◼   ► That's right, right, in Chicago.

01:34:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:33 ◼   ► Right.

01:34:34 ◼   ► But it was a little weird in hindsight, like the whole thing where like it didn't really

01:34:39 ◼   ► work with the Apple Pencil.

01:34:40 ◼   ► It only worked—or does it work with the Apple Pencil?

01:34:43 ◼   ► Yeah, it works with the Apple Pencil with the new crayon.

01:34:45 ◼   ► All right, but the crayon doesn't work on the iPad Pro.

01:34:48 ◼   ► No, the crayon uses this really different technology that's really meant for education

01:34:52 ◼   ► until the teachers just throw a bunch of them out at students and have them willy-nilly

01:34:55 ◼   ► pick them up and use them.

01:34:56 ◼   ► Right.

01:34:57 ◼   ► So, the 9.7-inch iPad does work with Apple Pencil, but it also works with the Crayon,

01:35:01 ◼   ► but the Crayon only works with the iPad.

01:35:04 ◼   ► Yes.

01:35:05 ◼   ► Nice update. I don't know how well it is. It's like the conversation this year has

01:35:12 ◼   ► been dominated by the new iPad Pros because in the enthusiast community, it's by far

01:35:17 ◼   ► the more interesting device. But it's, you know, it truly—the 9.7-inch iPad truly is

01:35:24 ◼   ► Apple's computer that is priced for people who, you know, think $1,000 is too much, right?

01:35:31 ◼   ► It's amazing. So that's one of the things, like all the price complaints that we've

01:35:34 ◼   ► been getting this year, and, you know, I can certainly sympathize with a lot of them. Apple's

01:35:37 ◼   ► also been pushing some of their best technologies down to really like the pencil on a $350 iPad

01:35:43 ◼   ► that you could often find on sale

01:35:45 ◼   ► for like 80 bucks less than that.

01:35:47 ◼   ► Takes a lot of the stink out of that price curve.

01:35:50 ◼   ► - Right, it doesn't, I don't know.

01:35:52 ◼   ► Obviously, they wanted us to think of it

01:35:55 ◼   ► as a solution for the education market.

01:35:58 ◼   ► I mean, they held the event at a school.

01:36:00 ◼   ► Whether they've done anything to stem the tidal wave

01:36:05 ◼   ► of the K-12 education market going all Chromebook,

01:36:10 ◼   ► all Google, I don't know.

01:36:12 ◼   ► I'm not close enough to judge that, but I'm not sure that they have.

01:36:16 ◼   ► And…

01:36:17 ◼   ► No, I don't think they've done anything.

01:36:18 ◼   ► I don't think Apple is institutionally equipped.

01:36:20 ◼   ► I mean, a lot of people want them to do it because they want the same level of privacy

01:36:23 ◼   ► and education that Apple is delivering to the consumer sector.

01:36:27 ◼   ► But I think it's the same as Enterprise was 20 years ago, where they just never stopped

01:36:31 ◼   ► the onslaught of Microsoft.

01:36:32 ◼   ► It's just that the company is not built that way.

01:36:34 ◼   ► But what they've done in education that I really like this year is just all of…

01:36:38 ◼   ► They spent hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in courses.

01:36:43 ◼   ► Everyone can code.

01:36:44 ◼   ► Everyone can create all the Today at Apple stuff, the field trips, the Hour of Code,

01:36:50 ◼   ► the summer camps.

01:36:51 ◼   ► They just give that away to anybody who has to own Apple stuff.

01:36:54 ◼   ► You can just go to an Apple store and learn all that stuff.

01:36:56 ◼   ► And it's a fundamentally different education model than Google and Microsoft.

01:37:00 ◼   ► And it's not about the classroom.

01:37:01 ◼   ► It's about direct to children learning.

01:37:04 ◼   ► But it's still a pretty amazing investment on Apple's part.

01:37:07 ◼   ► Yeah. iPad Pro, on the other hand, different market.

01:37:14 ◼   ► Yep.

01:37:15 ◼   ► It's probably, in my opinion, the Apple hardware device of the year.

01:37:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:22 ◼   ► I'm trying to think.

01:37:23 ◼   ► Watch, I think, would be a close—because of all the cool health stuff would be the

01:37:27 ◼   ► other one for me, but yeah.

01:37:29 ◼   ► Yeah. I don't know, though, that the watch is—well, maybe it is as much better as the

01:37:35 ◼   ► iPad Pro is over the previous iPad.

01:37:37 ◼   ► - 64-bit, the ECG, there's just a lot in there, I think,

01:37:41 ◼   ► but those two definitely stand way above the rest for me.

01:37:44 ◼   ► - Well, let me take a break and thank our next sponsor,

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01:40:29 ◼   ► of the talk show. What else about iPad? I guess we can't, we can't stop talking about iPad without

01:40:39 ◼   ► talking about the, to me, maybe the debate of the year, which is the dichotomy between

01:40:44 ◼   ► the brilliance of the iPad Pro hardware and the limitations of iOS 12 as a workstation

01:40:56 ◼   ► OS for work. I mean, we could obviously do a whole show on this. We can't, but probably have.

01:41:03 ◼   ► But I really do feel like there is something about this year's hardware

01:41:11 ◼   ► and maybe the meager improvements of iOS 12 on the iPad Pro front in terms of features

01:41:18 ◼   ► that really sort of brought this to a head, that the hardware has gotten ever better.

01:41:22 ◼   ► It is undeniably, to me, the best portable computing hardware anybody's ever made,

01:41:29 ◼   ► and the software is, to me, frustrating. Frustratingly limited.

01:41:33 ◼   ► **Ezra Klein-Mann, "The

01:41:33 ◼   ► I think it's a little bit nuanced because this was not the software that was supposed to ship with it

01:41:38 ◼   ► We you know in order to get all those performance improvements with iOS 12

01:41:42 ◼   ► Roughly half of the features were pushed back to iOS 13

01:41:45 ◼   ► Including the new springboard and a bunch of other stuff that might have made a lot more sense

01:41:49 ◼   ► With this hardware any other year, but then also a lot of people's solution was like I just put finder on there

01:41:56 ◼   ► Which is exactly the opposite right Apple Apple doesn't want to copy over like cut and paste Mac features

01:42:02 ◼   ► They want to find the intent behind those features and implement in a way that makes sense for the future not the past

01:42:07 ◼   ► Yeah, but it's tough. It is it's a challenge and this to me

01:42:12 ◼   ► The fact that it is difficult to solve these problems with without

01:42:17 ◼   ► While keeping the iPad what it's great at already and always has been right

01:42:22 ◼   ► It it's a tough design challenge really tough it is, you know to me the most exciting

01:42:30 ◼   ► Area of user interface design going on today

01:42:32 ◼   ► But that's what Apple's always been good at is solving these problems

01:42:36 ◼   ► They had some I mean the past was hard for them because I think in the Steve Jobs Scott Forrestal era

01:42:41 ◼   ► There was a real feeling that iOS 6 was like the pinnacle and that iOS should never get more complicated

01:42:47 ◼   ► It should remain an incredibly easy to use accessible operating system for everyone and if you don't like it get a Mac

01:42:52 ◼   ► But then when Craig Federicki came on board

01:42:54 ◼   ► He skews way nerdier and he started doing things like airdrop and continuity and extensibility and all of those things

01:43:00 ◼   ► that made the operating system so much more powerful with such bigger potential, but they

01:43:05 ◼   ► had so much to recover then. They had to do the size classes, they had to do the—they

01:43:09 ◼   ► had to build out a whole infrastructure, the headless apps, everything, and that put them

01:43:13 ◼   ► even further, like, years behind. And now they still have to—to your point—they

01:43:16 ◼   ► have to catch up the software to where the hardware is.

01:43:19 ◼   ► Dave: Yeah, and there's things that are as pleasing as touch interface can be and

01:43:26 ◼   ► as accessible as that makes it. I think it explains the great success that just regular

01:43:31 ◼   ► people have using an iPad and thriving on it and getting more done and doing more than

01:43:36 ◼   ► they ever did on a Mac or Windows machine because it is conceptually simpler. There is a sense—I

01:43:45 ◼   ► mean, the Mac in particular goes out of its way to try to make it hard to mess up your system

01:43:51 ◼   ► by using it, right? But the iPad makes it impossible, really. You can't really do anything

01:43:58 ◼   ► or install anything on your iPad that messes it up. But there are inherent limitations.

01:44:04 ◼   ► Every time I try to use iOS on an extended basis, it really, really bothers me now that

01:44:09 ◼   ► they've added drag and drop, which in theory is better because it didn't have drag and

01:44:14 ◼   ► drop and the Mac did and drag and drop is good. But now that it has drag and drop, when

01:44:18 ◼   ► I hold my finger on a link in Safari and I want to get the contextual menu with a bunch

01:44:25 ◼   ► of options of things to do with the link, I have to wait because when I first touch

01:44:30 ◼   ► on it, it raises the link as a drag and drop object. Whereas on the Mac…

01:44:35 ◼   ► Jared Ranere: It's overloaded. The gestures are overloaded at this point.

01:44:37 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Right. And it is an area like in terms of

01:44:40 ◼   ► being conceptually simpler, touch is better, but a mouse pointer with a click is more powerful

01:44:51 ◼   ► because you don't have to wait for either. You put your mouse on the link and right-click

01:44:56 ◼   ► and the contextual menu opens instantly. When you put your mouse over the pointer and click

01:45:03 ◼   ► and drag, you drag the URL immediately. There's no wait for either. It conceptually can support

01:45:10 ◼   ► both things as an instantaneous action, whereas with touch, one of them has to be something

01:45:16 ◼   ► you wait for. And I personally feel like they maybe made it the wrong way, that maybe the

01:45:23 ◼   ► contextual menu should have opened first, and then if you keep holding, then you can

01:45:27 ◼   ► drag.

01:45:28 ◼   ► Or in a world where there was pressure on an iPad, you'd be able to just touch it

01:45:31 ◼   ► to have the contextual menu and then press it to do the drag and drop or vice versa.

01:45:35 ◼   ► or maybe make the

01:45:37 ◼   ► Contextual menu open right away, but at the top of it is a grippy strip where you yeah

01:45:42 ◼   ► You can use that to drag the link. I mean there's other ways to do it

01:45:46 ◼   ► I mean again, I I can that's just those are just things off the top of my head

01:45:50 ◼   ► But the way things stand today

01:45:51 ◼   ► It is frustrating to me every single time and it's not one of those things that I get used to it's one of those things

01:45:57 ◼   ► Where my frustration grows over time because I never want to wait for the computer and it's absolutely ridiculous that I'm waiting

01:46:03 ◼   ► For the fastest Apple portable I've ever I've ever owned

01:46:06 ◼   ► It's a far faster computer than my 2014 MacBook Pro and yet I'm waiting for it

01:46:12 ◼   ► Just to give me a link to copy the URL

01:46:14 ◼   ► And you shouldn't have to think about like how they should implement it

01:46:17 ◼   ► I mean, this is a problem that we have and it's their job to fix these problems

01:46:20 ◼   ► Right, and you know, I think that there's the sure I think the shortcut is a two-finger tap on a URL

01:46:24 ◼   ► We'll open it in a new tab. Yeah, that's a good shortcut that I didn't know about for a while

01:46:28 ◼   ► But sometimes links are only on one word and there's not enough room to two-finger tap on it

01:46:33 ◼   ► You know, it's those things aren't that discoverable

01:46:35 ◼   ► Well, it's not discoverable at all, but it's good to know but you literally can't you know

01:46:39 ◼   ► Like one of the other inherent limitations of touches it requires

01:46:42 ◼   ► Significantly more space because your fingers are fat and if somebody just links on the word here

01:46:47 ◼   ► Which is bad hyperlinking style frankly, but it happens

01:46:51 ◼   ► There's no room for two fingers to touch it or you have to be so incredibly precise that you're waiting anyway

01:46:58 ◼   ► Yeah, no, absolutely. Like you want the instant state to be the the drag with you so many other again, it's just overloaded

01:47:05 ◼   ► There's only unless you start drawing spells on the screen. Let's do a whole bunch of different things, which isn't human accessible at all

01:47:11 ◼   ► There's only a limited amount of things that are really big juicy gestures

01:47:14 ◼   ► If you sink your fingers into and all of those I just think how how many different things you're swiping up from the bottom of

01:47:19 ◼   ► The screen to do or swiping up from different corners of the screen and all of that stuff is now massively overloaded

01:47:24 ◼   ► But it's not the worst idea in the world

01:47:25 ◼   ► I've written a bunch recently in the last couple months about Undo and how Undo kind

01:47:30 ◼   ► of sucks on iOS. The fact that the standard interface thing for Undo is still Shake to

01:47:36 ◼   ► Undo is A) undiscoverable, B) makes people look silly, and C) is theoretically a little

01:47:44 ◼   ► dangerous. It certainly has accessibility problems.

01:47:50 ◼   ► Like, it's a great gag, but it's a great usability feature.

01:47:53 ◼   ► Right. And it's like if you search Twitter and stuff like that, you can find people every day

01:47:57 ◼   ► who are discovering that that's how you undo and they can't believe it. And drawing apps have come

01:48:03 ◼   ► up with a sort of—well, even Apple supports it where you're in Notes when you're in the

01:48:09 ◼   ► markup mode. There's a little sort of backward-looking arrow that you can tap to do it,

01:48:14 ◼   ► but that's only when you're drawing. Whereas on the Mac, undo is a solved problem. Command-Z,

01:48:19 ◼   ► Edit menu undo has been there since 1984 and they've you know

01:48:24 ◼   ► They work in every single context for every type of app and every type of action

01:48:29 ◼   ► You know other vendors have solved this like you just swipe backwards a little across the keyboard because the keyboard is not real

01:48:37 ◼   ► It's you can do anything you want on it swipe backwards on the keyboard it undo swipe for is on the keyboard redos

01:48:41 ◼   ► There's all these different things that can implement it. Yeah, and you know, it doesn't have to be

01:48:45 ◼   ► You know the fact that it could there could be shortcuts for it, you know

01:48:49 ◼   ► that aren't discoverable doesn't mean you shouldn't use them. There should be

01:48:53 ◼   ► something that's discoverable and there should be—there could be shortcuts that

01:48:56 ◼   ► are more convenient, you know.

01:48:57 ◼   ► Like the procreate double finger.

01:49:00 ◼   ► Yeah, right. That's—which is sort of widely adopted. What is it? A two-finger tap?

01:49:05 ◼   ► Yep.

01:49:06 ◼   ► Yeah, a two-finger tap to undo. But again, there's sort of an overloading. You know,

01:49:11 ◼   ► there's only so many ways you can tap. And, you know, like I just said before, Apple has

01:49:15 ◼   ► use two-finger tap in Safari to mean open the link in a new tab. So it's kind of weird.

01:49:20 ◼   ► It would be like if Command-Z opened a new tab in Safari.

01:49:24 ◼   ► If you were hovering over a link. If you weren't hovering over a link.

01:49:29 ◼   ► Undo sort of needs to be universal. Again, I've mentioned many times before that the

01:49:34 ◼   ► Newton gets a bad rap, but the Newton had it down. You took the pen and you scribbled

01:49:39 ◼   ► up and down, up and down, up and down, and it was undo. Or was it side to side? I forget

01:49:43 ◼   ► which way. I don't know. But there was a little back and forth motion you could make,

01:49:47 ◼   ► and then had a nice little poof animation. I guess that was delete. I don't know. Maybe

01:49:52 ◼   ► that wasn't undo. Maybe it did like a Z for undo. I'm sorry, people who remember

01:49:56 ◼   ► the Newton vividly. But there was a standard undo. And there was an undo button built into

01:50:00 ◼   ► the thing underneath the screen. That's how important undo was on the Newton. I guess

01:50:04 ◼   ► the scribble was how you deleted shit. Now I've got to get my name out. Please don't

01:50:12 ◼   ► in. But anyway, Newton had system-wide undo, had system-wide delete. And the gestures,

01:50:19 ◼   ► you know, I don't know. I feel like, anyway, 2019, looking forward to it on the iPad, I

01:50:24 ◼   ► really, really, really, really, really will be disappointed if there aren't major structural

01:50:29 ◼   ► interface, conceptual interface changes that effectively make iOS on iPad more of an iPad

01:50:36 ◼   ► OS.

01:50:37 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely. I mean to your point about zero regression

01:50:40 ◼   ► The only way to have consistent progress with iPad is if you have a separate team like there's an Apple watch team and an Apple TV

01:50:47 ◼   ► Team and they get their own segments at WWDC and that means they have to have something to present

01:50:51 ◼   ► But there's nothing for iPad. So we have years where there's almost nothing for iPad

01:50:55 ◼   ► But if they had their own team and their own segment that they're their own tent poles every year if we get something for iPad

01:51:00 ◼   ► Yeah, and you know, there is nothing wrong

01:51:03 ◼   ► I also don't think there's anything wrong with the fact that maybe even a majority almost certainly a majority of iPad happy iPad users are

01:51:10 ◼   ► Literally using the iPad as a big iPhone

01:51:13 ◼   ► And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that's I think that's that's the main reason why the iPad is sold in the

01:51:19 ◼   ► Aggregate quantities that it has and there's no reason that that should be law

01:51:24 ◼   ► you know for the people who really want to use it in a very simple way with one app at a time and a way

01:51:29 ◼   ► to go home and then tap another app and then the app takes the whole screen. That's great,

01:51:36 ◼   ► but it just needs to scale to power usage in the way that the Mac did. The Mac could

01:51:43 ◼   ► be used in—if anything, some of the simplicity of the Mac has been lost. There's a lot

01:51:49 ◼   ► of stuff going on in a default Finder window as opposed to System 6 era. The Mac could

01:51:58 ◼   ► be used in a very simple way back then and yet supported all sorts of things that you

01:52:04 ◼   ► could do while holding down keys on the keyboard and installing third-party software that supported

01:52:10 ◼   ► extremely advanced power use for advanced users. It scaled directly from simplicity,

01:52:19 ◼   ► not being familiar with the mouse, to being a power user with one hand on the keyboard

01:52:22 ◼   ► and one hand on the mouse at all times.

01:52:24 ◼   ► I have family members who seriously only use their iPhone to play music take photographs and answer the phone and maybe text and that's it

01:52:30 ◼   ► And they don't know or care

01:52:31 ◼   ► But anything on that device and it's wonderful because they can do that and I can use Siri shortcuts and we don't get in each

01:52:36 ◼   ► Other's way. Yeah, exactly, you know Siri shortcuts is probably

01:52:40 ◼   ► One of the highlights of the year for me for iOS. I still don't use it as much as I probably should although

01:52:48 ◼   ► I have a couple it's it's like with Apple script and keyboard maestro

01:52:52 ◼   ► I make my own things on the Mac. Whereas on Siri shortcuts, I'm using shortcuts made by others.

01:52:57 ◼   ► Not because I can't, but because I mean, Syracuse, I talked about this on ATP a few episodes ago,

01:53:05 ◼   ► but it's like, if you are a programmer, it feels like you're, it's very frustrating to go into the

01:53:10 ◼   ► limitations of shortcuts for making something adept or in depth. But, and, you know, like I've

01:53:17 ◼   ► said before, like I think I said in a recent episode, like Automator is similar where you

01:53:22 ◼   ► have these steps that you stack visually. But when I use Automator, it's effectively like

01:53:27 ◼   ► just one thing. And then I have like a Perl or AppleScript program in the second step. And it's

01:53:33 ◼   ► just a way to make a service where it takes the selection as input and replaces the selection as

01:53:37 ◼   ► output. And everything I'm creating is in the middle step, which is either written in Perl or

01:53:42 ◼   ► AppleScript. And there is no step like that, like that's what I kind of want for shortcuts. And I

01:53:47 ◼   ► I know that that language would be JavaScript in the iOS world, and I'm fine with that.

01:53:51 ◼   ► It's not my favorite language, but I could live with it. But I kind of want there to be a

01:53:55 ◼   ► JavaScript step that you can make just to program if you want to program. But anyway,

01:54:02 ◼   ► it's been a success, and I think some of the things people are making with Siri shortcuts are

01:54:08 ◼   ► almost shocking to me how powerful they are and app-like the experience can be.

01:54:13 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it's been great. It's the first iteration. I know you had it in your notes,

01:54:20 ◼   ► and I don't know when you want to talk about it, but just Apple seems to have suddenly

01:54:22 ◼   ► started taking all of that stuff far more seriously this year than they have in previous

01:54:27 ◼   ► years.

01:54:28 ◼   ► Well, like what stuff?

01:54:31 ◼   ► The AI, just making Siri and making the voice interface part of iOS, almost like starting

01:54:37 ◼   ► to build it back up to being an equal citizen.

01:54:39 ◼   ► Well, let's hold on that thought. Let's go through watch and iPhone first.

01:54:43 ◼   ► Yep, I don't want to give short shrift to the watch. I

01:54:46 ◼   ► Didn't buy a watch series for though just because I already have the series 3 and

01:54:52 ◼   ► As much as I like the series 4 for what and when I wear my Apple watch

01:54:57 ◼   ► Doesn't seem like a buy a new one every year thing and maybe if I were spying the aluminum models

01:55:02 ◼   ► I would but I bought this space black stainless steel one. Yeah the year before

01:55:06 ◼   ► and

01:55:09 ◼   ► on

01:55:10 ◼   ► While I think the new watch hardware is clearly better looking I was really the gist of my entire review

01:55:15 ◼   ► I actually think that the watch faces the classic watch faces look better on the old Apple watch and only the new watch faces look

01:55:22 ◼   ► best on the new Apple watch and I like I like the I

01:55:26 ◼   ► Still like of all the faces. I like utility the best and I think utility looks best on the old Apple watch

01:55:31 ◼   ► Yeah, no, that's fair

01:55:33 ◼   ► I mean, they're finally starting to add back some of the missing complications like messages and mail to the new watch face

01:55:38 ◼   ► Yeah, which was which is a big improvement for me. Yeah, and I wonder I actually have to fire

01:55:43 ◼   ► I still have the review unit

01:55:45 ◼   ► I got to send that back but I want to fire it up with the latest version of watch OS on it and see if

01:55:49 ◼   ► They've also fixed it to me was a sign that they were a little

01:55:52 ◼   ► Late is that a lot of the area a lot of the watch faces?

01:55:57 ◼   ► I have this thing set to use bold font everywhere, which isn't even an accessibility thing for my eyes

01:56:02 ◼   ► I just think it looks better, but it was all the new watch faces

01:56:05 ◼   ► cases, they didn't use the bold font anywhere and all the complications. It was like they

01:56:09 ◼   ► didn't get around to supporting that. It's like the thin version of San Francisco everywhere.

01:56:13 ◼   ► I don't know if they fixed that. Let's take a look.

01:56:17 ◼   ► But I do think it's a remarkable—I think it's also interesting that the watch is

01:56:21 ◼   ► the only other hardware that is clearly on an annual cycle compared to the phone. Everybody

01:56:25 ◼   ► knows the phone is on an annual cycle. Everybody knows that the phone is, by the books, at

01:56:30 ◼   ► least 65 percent of Apple's profits. But you can make the argument that because you

01:56:35 ◼   ► have to have a phone to get a watch and how much of Apple services business goes through

01:56:40 ◼   ► people who have a phone that it's arguably, you know, maybe 75 or 80% of Apple's business,

01:56:46 ◼   ► you know, that at least at all, if it's not directly through iPhone sales, it is things

01:56:50 ◼   ► that rely upon the iPhone. Yes, everybody knows the iPhone, you know, and that's why

01:56:54 ◼   ► the iPhone is on a religious annual schedule. You know, I, I would be shocked as shit if

01:57:00 ◼   ► in early September next year, there is not an Apple event on a Tuesday or Wednesday where

01:57:06 ◼   ► they introduce brand new iPhones. But it's interesting to me that the watch is seemingly

01:57:10 ◼   ► on that same schedule.

01:57:11 ◼   ► Steve: Yeah, I think it's just so early as a product, like in the early days of iPad,

01:57:16 ◼   ► that there's just so much they can iterate that they're doing those iterations.

01:57:19 ◼   ► Dave: Yeah, and one rule—I don't know if—there will come day eventually. I mean,

01:57:28 ◼   ► knows how many years from now. It's hard to imagine. It certainly isn't the foreseeable

01:57:31 ◼   ► future, but there will come a day when there's no longer an annual iPhone every year. I don't

01:57:35 ◼   ► know if it's a 20—

01:57:36 ◼   ► I have an iPod, remember?

01:57:37 ◼   ► Right. All of a sudden, there isn't an iPod. I do think, though, that with the watch, it

01:57:44 ◼   ► follows—I know you've heard it. I've heard it. We talked to people at Apple, and

01:57:50 ◼   ► one thing that they are very serious about is they don't want to make changes just

01:57:54 ◼   ► to make changes. They only want to make changes where they can provide meaningful improvement

01:57:59 ◼   ► to the product. Why does the iPhone 7 look so much like the iPhone 6, even though it

01:58:06 ◼   ► was two years after? Because they weren't ready to make something that was meaningfully

01:58:12 ◼   ► better. Then there was the iPhone 10, and yeah, all right, here's our meaningfully

01:58:17 ◼   ► better. Yeah, and I think they are improving so much and it's so underestimated outside

01:58:25 ◼   ► the Apple media community just how good Apple is uniquely at making ever ever smaller, tinier

01:58:31 ◼   ► computers and the watch exemplifies that, right?

01:58:34 ◼   ► The first…

01:58:35 ◼   ► It was so evident this year because Qualcomm had their huge event and they were going to

01:58:38 ◼   ► show off their competing chip and their first watch chip was a rehash of their old phone

01:58:42 ◼   ► chip and this year's watch chip was a rehash of that old phone chip with like a coprocessor

01:58:47 ◼   ► on it. It struck me at just how far behind everyone else is at making wearable silicon.

01:58:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it's, you know, and how quickly Apple's gotten better at it, right? It's, it has,

01:58:58 ◼   ► you know, the first one was underpowered, but it was probably the right time to ship

01:59:01 ◼   ► it, right? Like, it was at the thermal limit of the casing of that device at the time.

01:59:05 ◼   ► Right. And it had, you know, and it had, you know, the worst, it had significantly worse

01:59:10 ◼   ► battery life than you get now. Like I regularly go days now where I, you know, put my Apple

01:59:15 ◼   ► Apple Watch on in the morning, wear it all day, go to bed, and keep it on and wake up,

01:59:19 ◼   ► and it's still at 49%. I'm like, "Well, that's good." Because if I'm just 24

01:59:23 ◼   ► hours in and it's 49 hours, I can wear it all day and put it on a charger tonight.

01:59:27 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know what you would have had to do with the original Apple Watch to

01:59:32 ◼   ► do that. I mean, stay completely motionless. Keep your hand over the display. I mean, the

01:59:41 ◼   ► power consumption, the speed, you know, I mean, it's pretty remarkable. And as you

01:59:46 ◼   ► mentioned a bit ago, the way that they're moving, pushing forward with the health monitoring

01:59:53 ◼   ► stuff is, you know, I think clearly the tip of the iceberg so far. But it's impressive.

01:59:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's great. Like, I bought them for my family members, you know, especially

02:00:03 ◼   ► because of the fall detection and because of the heart rate monitor. But my friend,

02:00:09 ◼   ► She was she was home

02:00:10 ◼   ► She was walking down the stairs and she fell and she fell hard and it went off and her husband hurt her

02:00:16 ◼   ► She fell so hard her husband hurt her and rushed downstairs to get her

02:00:19 ◼   ► But if she'd been home alone that watch was like saying are you okay?

02:00:22 ◼   ► We're gonna start calling 911 and she was so happy that that feature existed in that moment

02:00:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I haven't heard I've you seen any stories that have

02:00:29 ◼   ► You know, we've the stories that I've seen over the years are people who've been in car crashes and have you you know been pinned

02:00:37 ◼   ► behind the wheel and have used the call 911 feature of the watch to get help when if not

02:00:43 ◼   ► for that feature they you know couldn't reach their phone or you know could you know literally

02:00:48 ◼   ► could only reach the rest or whatever you know thankfully thankfully it's the type of

02:00:53 ◼   ► thing you don't want to see a lot of those stories you don't see people totally hurt

02:00:56 ◼   ► but I haven't seen anybody saved by a fall yet I did see a story of somebody who got

02:01:01 ◼   ► one and it the the irregular heartbeat thing yes was or when that feet it wasn't when they

02:01:08 ◼   ► got the watch it was when the feature ecg yeah yeah and the feature didn't ship until

02:01:12 ◼   ► a couple of weeks ago as promised you know they did say it would ship late in the year

02:01:17 ◼   ► and it did ship late in the year i did see the i saw the story about the one guy he was

02:01:21 ◼   ► again he was it was like going off for him and he thought it was buggy and his wife wife

02:01:25 ◼   ► put the watch on and it didn't go off and then he put the watch back on and it went

02:01:28 ◼   ► off again. She was like, "Shit, I guess I've got to go to the doctor." He went to the doctor,

02:01:31 ◼   ► and the doctor was like, "Yeah, good thing you came in. You've got a real problem."

02:01:35 ◼   ► Jon Moffitt You should buy some applesauce. That thing just saved your life.

02:01:38 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Yeah. I haven't seen any stories about the fall detection yet,

02:01:42 ◼   ► but I'm sure it'll happen. I have seen reports. The anecdotal reports I've seen are like your

02:01:48 ◼   ► friend Georgia's, where it's people who've fallen, and they weren't significantly hurt,

02:01:51 ◼   ► but the fall detection worked exactly as you'd want it to.

02:01:54 ◼   ► you. Yeah. Yeah. Or she was hurt, but in her case, again, her husband was there. She didn't

02:01:59 ◼   ► need the watch. But otherwise, if she'd been alone, she would have really needed that

02:02:01 ◼   ► feature. Yeah. Anyway, good year for Apple Watch. I would expect another one, though.

02:02:08 ◼   ► Another annual update. I feel like that they're still really, really pushing ahead, and there's

02:02:12 ◼   ► so many ways to improve in that product. Yeah, absolutely.

02:02:17 ◼   ► We got to go fast. We're running short on time, and we've still got an iPhone to talk

02:02:20 ◼   ► about. I really butchered this by spending so much time talking about a keyboard. What

02:02:29 ◼   ► is there to say about the iPhone XS, XS Max, XR that we haven't before? I think it's

02:02:35 ◼   ► a good year for the iPhone. I think if last year's scandal was the battery thought-rottling,

02:02:42 ◼   ► this year's is the even earlier than usual claims that sales are underwhelming. In the

02:02:49 ◼   ► past years, that's always seemed like a January thing, and now it was like an early

02:02:53 ◼   ► December thing, and I think it is—well, we'll see, but I think it's nonsense,

02:02:59 ◼   ► frankly.

02:03:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, there's two ways to think about it. One is that people like you, people

02:03:05 ◼   ► like me have been talking about bringing up the old Jim Cramer clips and all those things

02:03:09 ◼   ► that show just how utter bullshit it is, and that they have to go even harder at the rumors

02:03:13 ◼   ► to move the market, because I still think a lot of it is just pure market manipulation,

02:03:17 ◼   ► and just trying to get people to sell shares

02:03:20 ◼   ► so they can short them and make a lot of money

02:03:22 ◼   ► and then Apple reports its earnings

02:03:23 ◼   ► and they can make it all back.

02:03:25 ◼   ► And I think that's probably criminal.

02:03:26 ◼   ► I don't know why it's never been investigated.

02:03:28 ◼   ► It sounds criminal to me.

02:03:29 ◼   ► But, or, you know, that this is another case

02:03:32 ◼   ► where the iPhone X, and I think you mentioned this too,

02:03:36 ◼   ► the iPhone 8 was comforting, the iPhone X was enticing,

02:03:40 ◼   ► and people either stuck with the iPhone 8

02:03:42 ◼   ► or bought the iPhone X and there's no iPhone XS supercycle.

02:03:46 ◼   ► you know, they pulled upgrades forward,

02:03:48 ◼   ► or people are gonna stick with the old version,

02:03:49 ◼   ► and this is gonna be just a normal iPhone year.

02:03:52 ◼   ► - Yeah.

02:03:52 ◼   ► But it seems crazy that people are so willing

02:03:57 ◼   ► to bite on this when it's,

02:03:59 ◼   ► there is no, there seemingly is no boy who cried wolf factor

02:04:04 ◼   ► to the fact that this has happened years in a row

02:04:07 ◼   ► and has never panned out, and then each time,

02:04:09 ◼   ► it's as though it had never happened again, right?

02:04:12 ◼   ► Like, I don't know what makes this annual cycle

02:04:15 ◼   ► of Apple has severely cut supply orders

02:04:20 ◼   ► from somebody in Asia, and it's,

02:04:25 ◼   ► just suggesting that this is the year

02:04:29 ◼   ► where people stop buying the new iPhones,

02:04:31 ◼   ► and then it never pans out, but it's,

02:04:35 ◼   ► I mean, the whole stock market is a mess at the time,

02:04:38 ◼   ► at this time, but Apple's stock has taken a serious hit.

02:04:41 ◼   ► And again, I've said this before,

02:04:42 ◼   ► I'm not really in this for the finance angle.

02:04:45 ◼   ► I'm not, people don't listen to the show or follow me

02:04:48 ◼   ► for my advice on Apple stock.

02:04:49 ◼   ► I'm mostly interested in their products,

02:04:53 ◼   ► but where this affects the products is it affects retention

02:04:57 ◼   ► because the Apple stock is a huge motivation

02:05:02 ◼   ► for people to continue work.

02:05:04 ◼   ► It's important to the people who are there.

02:05:06 ◼   ► It can act as a draw for people who they want to hire.

02:05:09 ◼   ► And so like a significant hit to Apple stock can,

02:05:13 ◼   ► as like a butterfly flapping its wings in China eventually lead to a decrease in the

02:05:20 ◼   ► quality of Apple's products if it becomes a retention problem because the stock is suppressed

02:05:26 ◼   ► or depressed, whatever you want.

02:05:27 ◼   ► And the thing for me is like we live in an era where words like "fake news" are being

02:05:30 ◼   ► weaponized and they're being used to destroy legitimate reporting. And I think that the

02:05:35 ◼   ► only answer to that is to be even better in your reporting. And we keep seeing these terrible

02:05:40 ◼   ► supply chain reports, but also Bloomberg's big hack, which is like months later now,

02:05:44 ◼   ► and they say we've done complete audit, and they've still not said anything about

02:05:47 ◼   ► it. And to me, that just destroys the credibility of something that requires that credibility

02:05:52 ◼   ► more than ever. And I think that's a tragedy.

02:05:54 ◼   ► Yeah. And, you know, they seem to me clearly to be hoping that we just forget about that

02:06:00 ◼   ► story. And I don't think we should. And I think at this point, and again, it's not

02:06:05 ◼   ► entirely fair, but I mean, at this point, when other reporters come out with stories

02:06:11 ◼   ► from Bloomberg about Apple, it has to be mentioned alongside that this is the publication that

02:06:17 ◼   ► printed a completely, a seemingly discredited, jaw-breaking story about Apple.

02:06:23 ◼   ► And other publications in these situations, they've done their own internal audits and

02:06:26 ◼   ► they've published their results, and Bloomberg seems to have no willingness to do that.

02:06:29 ◼   ► They really don't.

02:06:32 ◼   ► They're handling this very poorly, in my opinion,

02:06:36 ◼   ► and I don't think it's going to work.

02:06:37 ◼   ► I don't think people are just going to forget about it.

02:06:39 ◼   ► - No, it's gonna taint all the,

02:06:40 ◼   ► like you said, it's gonna taint the reporting

02:06:41 ◼   ► for the foreseeable future.

02:06:43 ◼   ► - Yeah.

02:06:44 ◼   ► What else?

02:06:45 ◼   ► Did you see the, what's that, DxOMark came out

02:06:49 ◼   ► with their rankings right before Christmas.

02:06:52 ◼   ► - They buried it.

02:06:53 ◼   ► It was like, yeah, it was a take out the trash lot.

02:06:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was like right before Christmas,

02:06:57 ◼   ► Dxomark who comes out with these camera ranking phone camera rank ends every year and I've

02:07:01 ◼   ► been calling bullshit on them for years whether Apple comes out on top or somebody else comes

02:07:06 ◼   ► out on top it's not about whether the iPhone is the top ranked camera or not it's that

02:07:10 ◼   ► you it just makes no sense to say that the iPhone 10 s camera is a 97 and the pixel three

02:07:18 ◼   ► is a 93 that doesn't make any sense it does not make any sense to assign one numeric integer

02:07:23 ◼   ► value to a camera. And if anything, as time goes on and the cameras in our phones are

02:07:30 ◼   ► less about the physical camera, the lens, the sensor, and more about the computational

02:07:37 ◼   ► photography that happens after the photons hit the sensor, after going through the lens,

02:07:44 ◼   ► the idea of assigning an integer to that is ridiculous. I mean, that's really what the

02:07:49 ◼   ► difference between the Pixel 3 and the iPhone XS camera are. It's really not about the

02:07:54 ◼   ► physical cameras. It's about what the systems do with the image afterwards, what they sharpen,

02:08:01 ◼   ► what they do to certain color tones, and stuff like that. It's very highly subjective,

02:08:06 ◼   ► and it's ridiculous. But…

02:08:07 ◼   ► And the worst part is that they're also a consulting company, which they don't discuss.

02:08:11 ◼   ► Right.

02:08:12 ◼   ► But apparently this year, Google didn't pay the usual consulting fees, which gets

02:08:15 ◼   ► some early access and advice on how to do better on the things, so they didn't get

02:08:19 ◼   ► a good mark and they put it out late. To me, you can't—you could never talk about this

02:08:24 ◼   ► company again if that's the situation.

02:08:26 ◼   ► Well, I don't know. But last year when the Pixel came out on top, a lot of Pixel fans

02:08:31 ◼   ► did crow about the DxO marks. This year, the Pixel 3 came out significantly below the iPhone

02:08:39 ◼   ► XS and XR and a couple of other Android phones. And I don't hear anybody talking about it.

02:08:45 ◼   ► No.

02:08:46 ◼   ► Again, I think it's bullshit. I think it's complete bullshit, but I think it's the

02:08:48 ◼   ► the lesson to be learned is that everybody should treat this company as bullshit.

02:08:51 ◼   ► Yeah. This display mate, I think it's all very similar.

02:08:56 ◼   ► Oh, God, we're running short, but I don't really have much else to say about the iPhone

02:09:03 ◼   ► XS and XR. I think it's a good year. I think the XR is a great product. People are concerned.

02:09:10 ◼   ► I guess the thing that people are concerned about is the way that Apple is promoting the

02:09:14 ◼   ► as a $449 device with an asterisk,

02:09:19 ◼   ► and then the asterisk leads to a footnote

02:09:20 ◼   ► that says with a trade-in of an iPhone 7 or something.

02:09:24 ◼   ► Like to get it for $449, you have to trade in an iPhone

02:09:28 ◼   ► that still has significant resale value,

02:09:31 ◼   ► which makes sense 'cause if you don't trade anything in,

02:09:33 ◼   ► it's a $750 phone.

02:09:35 ◼   ► So-- - Yeah, I get it,

02:09:37 ◼   ► but for years, they were saying it was $199 phone asterisk

02:09:40 ◼   ► with a 24-month contract.

02:09:43 ◼   ► I mean, right and I think has changed, you know, I get it that in some ways we'd like Apple to be above that sort of

02:09:48 ◼   ► shenanigans

02:09:50 ◼   ► But it's really hard when everybody else is selling things with prices that have asterisks for various reasons

02:09:57 ◼   ► I mean the whole car industry in last ten years has switched from telling you how much cars cost to how much how much it

02:10:04 ◼   ► Costs per month to lease them like absolutely they used to tell you in the car commercials

02:10:09 ◼   ► You know here this card, you know, the new Mercedes C class starts at forty seven thousand dollars or something now

02:10:14 ◼   ► It is entirely about monthly lease prices

02:10:17 ◼   ► You know it is what it is it's you know and you know and in terms of being well

02:10:24 ◼   ► They should be above it all Apple has always I mean, I don't even I don't know when they haven't been a 99 pricer

02:10:31 ◼   ► Right. Everything is for 99 799. I mean if we really want to hold them to the highest regards

02:10:36 ◼   ► they should be pricing these things. You know, they should say that it's $750 not $749.

02:10:42 ◼   ► It's a human trait where we're always, we're always very careful how we want other people

02:10:45 ◼   ► to use their money and we don't care at all about how we use ours. Right. Like we don't

02:10:49 ◼   ► hold ourselves to these standards, but Apple, you know, they better do a lot of stuff that's

02:10:52 ◼   ► just not in their best interest because we happen to think so. Right. But, uh, and I,

02:10:56 ◼   ► you know, I'll say that and I, I've been tinkering this year on my writing with, with adding

02:11:02 ◼   ► the extra dollar and saying that it's 800 or 1400 instead of 1399. It gets complicated

02:11:09 ◼   ► though because there's times when you really do want to be precise and so it's hard to

02:11:12 ◼   ► mix and match. But I will say this, if I took a job at Apple and my job was to set the prices

02:11:19 ◼   ► for products, that's my entire job, but I was going to be measured by how well sales

02:11:23 ◼   ► were, I would price them at 799, 1399.

02:11:26 ◼   ► I used to work in product marketing and you do that because that's how humans work. That's

02:11:31 ◼   ► That's really how our brains work.

02:11:32 ◼   ► Right.

02:11:33 ◼   ► So, you know, I don't think it's great that the XR is being advertised at 449 asterisk,

02:11:38 ◼   ► but I'm not aghast at it.

02:11:40 ◼   ► And I certainly don't take it in any way as a sign that the XR was selling poorly.

02:11:44 ◼   ► I think this was the plan all along.

02:11:47 ◼   ► I think that part of the reason, part of the idea of having the iPhone XR looks so much

02:11:55 ◼   ► like the iPhone XS and XS Max.

02:11:58 ◼   ► Hmm, but you know my when there was rumors first came up my question was well

02:12:02 ◼   ► How are they gonna sell these higher-end ones, you know, if this is so good. Yeah

02:12:07 ◼   ► And you know, I think the answer is that they were gonna market it this way

02:12:11 ◼   ► You know that it's it's it's very it's the 10 R is being

02:12:14 ◼   ► Marketed this way because the 10 R is the one that's meant to sell to people who are concerned about things like this

02:12:19 ◼   ► You know most price conscious

02:12:21 ◼   ► You know it is what it is

02:12:24 ◼   ► I think people look at it both ways to like you could think Oh apples desperate

02:12:27 ◼   ► So they're doing all these sales tactics,

02:12:28 ◼   ► but you can also say Apple really wants to crush it

02:12:30 ◼   ► with this phone and has always wanted to crush it

02:12:33 ◼   ► with this phone and they were always gonna do anything

02:12:34 ◼   ► they could to sell as many of these phones as possible.

02:12:37 ◼   ► - Yeah.

02:12:38 ◼   ► All right, I'm gonna take a third break right here.

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02:15:21 ◼   ► I could tell you a lot more, but they can do it a lot better. Just go to omni focus.com

02:15:27 ◼   ► and right at the top they've got a one minute video showing you everything new and omni

02:15:30 ◼   ► focus three scroll down the page and they have just a terrific illustrated guide to