The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► I don't know. I feel like it's been like a weird news cycle and I feel like this show is going to be chock full of complaints about Apple products.

00:00:06 ◼   ► It's uh, yeah, I don't know if it's complaints so much as problems that would be solved and haven't been yet.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Well, let's start with a good one here's here and and I

00:00:21 ◼   ► Really like this piece because I felt like it's the sort of thing that people just don't bring up

00:00:27 ◼   ► And it's a piece you wrote an update of a two-year-old piece that you published last week on the basic gist of it is

00:00:34 ◼   ► How come all every other smartwatch other than Apple watch doesn't really have a smaller size that fits smaller wrists like

00:00:43 ◼   ► for example the wrists on an awful lot of women and I I say that because I don't I think Apple very

00:00:51 ◼   ► deliberately does not call the 42 millimeter the men's watch and 38 millimeter the women's watch because

00:00:57 ◼   ► It just I

00:01:01 ◼   ► Don't I don't think it's like even like political correctness or something like that or trying there's just no point for it, right?

00:01:07 ◼   ► because there's no reason to there are men who wear the 38 millimeter because they have smaller wrists and and there are surely

00:01:15 ◼   ► women who wear the 42 millimeter because their wrists either their wrists are bigger or they want the extra battery life or whatever

00:01:22 ◼   ► But let's face it for most women. The 38 millimeter is a more comfortable size

00:01:29 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely

00:01:32 ◼   ► and you know, I mean

00:01:35 ◼   ► What is the market out there for other non Apple smartwatches and watch like fitness bands for those sizes?

00:01:42 ◼   ► And it's really non-existent. That's the frustrating thing is I actually, I'm not against Android Wear as a platform and as a software because I think they're actually doing some really interesting things there.

00:01:54 ◼   ► And even Fitbit is doing some interesting things on the software side. But there's just nothing. There's literally nothing.

00:02:03 ◼   ► The closest you can get if you want a small quote unquote smartwatch as a woman is to get one of the

00:02:09 ◼   ► big smartwatch manufacturers

00:02:12 ◼   ► big watch manufacturers like

00:02:14 ◼   ► Connected fitness device like fossil just released one of these that's 36 millimeters round

00:02:19 ◼   ► But it's it's literally it's a watch with a step tracker

00:02:23 ◼   ► Like it's it's it's a watch with a step tracker and it buzzes if you get a text message

00:02:27 ◼   ► It doesn't actually it's not a smartwatch. I would not call that a smartwatch

00:02:31 ◼   ► I would call that a an analog watch that occasionally talks to your phone

00:02:35 ◼   ► Does it have but everything does it have a digital display or an analog display? No, it's an analog display

00:02:41 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I'm not laughing at it, but it is you know, it's I

00:02:45 ◼   ► don't know it

00:02:47 ◼   ► It wouldn't do me much good to just get a buzz knowing that I have a text because my phone is going to buzz in

00:02:53 ◼   ► My pocket if I have a text

00:02:55 ◼   ► Exactly. And I mean, the main reason like if I was to break down the reasons why I wear a smartwatch as opposed to and let's be honest, no watch. I haven't worn a watch in 12 years before I put the Apple Watch back on, you know, on my wrist. I wear a smartwatch. A because the time it's it's a faster way to check the time than pulling out my phone.

00:03:16 ◼   ► B, I want the health tracking and the real health tracking, not just step tracking.

00:03:20 ◼   ► Step tracking is not useful to me, but heart rate tracking as a, as an athlete and as somebody who's actively training right now is exceedingly helpful for me.

00:03:30 ◼   ► Um, and the third big one, honestly, is the, the contextual notifications.

00:03:37 ◼   ► Like I'm sure you do as well.

00:03:40 ◼   ► You know, I, I have a lot of different groups of people that I get notifications

00:03:45 ◼   ► from and messages from, including people from my work and my family and friends

00:03:51 ◼   ► and my roller Derby, you know, compatriots and everything else.

00:03:54 ◼   ► Um, and if I had notifications on for all of those, for my phone, my phone

00:03:59 ◼   ► basically buzzes once every 45 seconds, you know, there's, there's a lot,

00:04:03 ◼   ► there's a lot of stuff going on.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Um, and what the Apple watch does that I really appreciate is that

00:04:09 ◼   ► A, it'll only buzz me for the things I want it to buzz.

00:04:12 ◼   ► And B, if it buzzes me for something--

00:04:15 ◼   ► like I have Renee on my VIPs, right?

00:04:17 ◼   ► So Renee is going to come through whether or not

00:04:19 ◼   ► I have Do Not Disturb on.

00:04:21 ◼   ► And if I look and it's like on the screen,

00:04:23 ◼   ► it's like Renee is talking about the latest episode of Arrow.

00:04:27 ◼   ► I know that I don't necessarily have

00:04:28 ◼   ► to leave my dinner conversation and reply immediately

00:04:31 ◼   ► to Renee about Arrow.

00:04:32 ◼   ► However, if I check my watch and then it's like,

00:04:35 ◼   ► so Apple just bought Google.

00:04:38 ◼   ► That's a little bit different.

00:04:40 ◼   ► - So the VIP feature,

00:04:42 ◼   ► I don't know if I'm familiar with that.

00:04:44 ◼   ► So is that the same VIP feature as with mail alerts?

00:04:49 ◼   ► Is it the same VIP flag?

00:04:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess it's VIP for Messages,

00:04:55 ◼   ► it's not so, hold on, I'm definitely messing this up

00:04:59 ◼   ► because VIP for Messages doesn't actually exist.

00:05:02 ◼   ► But I have it set up, how do I have this set up?

00:05:07 ◼   ► Now you've got me questioning myself.

00:05:08 ◼   ► I'm like, did I just make up a feature?

00:05:10 ◼   ► No, I don't know.

00:05:15 ◼   ► Now I'm really confused.

00:05:17 ◼   ► - I'm looking at do not disturb, hold on a second.

00:05:19 ◼   ► Do not disturb.

00:05:20 ◼   ► - Do not disturb, oh, favorites, favorites.

00:05:24 ◼   ► That's what I'm thinking of, okay.

00:05:26 ◼   ► Allow phone calls from favorites, yeah.

00:05:28 ◼   ► All right, that's what I'm thinking about.

00:05:32 ◼   ► - Well, that makes sense though.

00:05:33 ◼   ► - But yeah, yeah.

00:05:35 ◼   ► But it's still, I mean, and on that note,

00:05:37 ◼   ► I would love for Apple to create a proper VIP feature

00:05:40 ◼   ► for messages and other things

00:05:42 ◼   ► because that would be very helpful.

00:05:44 ◼   ► But it's still, yeah, I think now I remember what I did.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Okay, so I have do not disturb.

00:05:51 ◼   ► I have like the snooze feature on a bunch of my messages

00:05:54 ◼   ► so that the new bubbles show up when people text me

00:05:58 ◼   ► but I don't actually get like the banner notification

00:06:02 ◼   ► Because you know just again if I have a couple of different roller derby chats from people who I'm like skidding with right now

00:06:09 ◼   ► and Team Canada and everything else and

00:06:11 ◼   ► A lot of those just I don't want to say that they're full of nonsense because it's not it's just you know

00:06:17 ◼   ► It's we have fun and we chat about you know, sometimes inane things sometimes important things

00:06:22 ◼   ► But it's not something that I need to get buzzed at about every 45 seconds

00:06:26 ◼   ► I have a lot of those on a group chat can really get active

00:06:29 ◼   ► I mean, it's just the nature whether it's you know in slack or an iMessage or whatever

00:06:34 ◼   ► and

00:06:36 ◼   ► You know, it's an interesting. I

00:06:38 ◼   ► Don't know comes it the rise of group chats is is an interesting thing because it's different than like

00:06:46 ◼   ► Mailing lists when mail was more, you know, the only real way for a group to communicate

00:06:51 ◼   ► Because it's chatty right? It's little one sentence things and emoji and real time

00:06:57 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's so many stickers and the weird thing about it is like

00:07:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean just I mean this is really really gonna date me

00:07:07 ◼   ► But like to go all the way back to like the BB I need to go back to the BBS era

00:07:11 ◼   ► you know

00:07:13 ◼   ► That that's what you know group chat is exactly what was going on in in like a forum

00:07:19 ◼   ► or you know like

00:07:22 ◼   ► IRC

00:07:24 ◼   ► But yeah, IRC is in BBS chats and things like that are things that like you're either in it right now

00:07:31 ◼   ► With your you know signed in and looking at it and active or if you're doing something else

00:07:37 ◼   ► You know if you're having this happens without you right it just happens without you whereas the difference with group chat today is

00:07:43 ◼   ► Your phone can still be going off. You know bing bing bing bing bing

00:07:49 ◼   ► You're always you're always on you're always paying attention, even if you don't want to be right

00:07:54 ◼   ► So managing that is is you know, I don't know

00:08:00 ◼   ► It's the challenge it is and I don't think that we've quite licked it yet

00:08:05 ◼   ► You know, I feel like we it should be easier

00:08:07 ◼   ► I know slack has a feature where you can say like snooze for X

00:08:10 ◼   ► But I feel like it's too hard to get to like you have to like oh you have to open the app

00:08:15 ◼   ► You have to go over to the sidebar like I feel like there ought to be a way that you could do that right from

00:08:19 ◼   ► notification center

00:08:21 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. Just have the button that's just like snooze for an hour right slide. Oh, man. I would love that for messages. Yeah

00:08:27 ◼   ► Like slide just news. Well, just slide it over and one of those buttons there

00:08:32 ◼   ► it would be you know snooze and you know, maybe you could like

00:08:35 ◼   ► 3d touch on the snooze button and get a list of how long this news it for but then you you know

00:08:42 ◼   ► You're like one slide, one hard press,

00:08:45 ◼   ► and then one more tap and you're done.

00:08:48 ◼   ► - Honestly, anything that allows me to not open an app

00:08:52 ◼   ► when I don't want to be in that app is a good feature.

00:08:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I totally agree.

00:08:56 ◼   ► Anyway, smartwatch sizes.

00:08:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, but going back to that, right.

00:09:04 ◼   ► - I also think it's true.

00:09:05 ◼   ► I think that even the Apple Watch 42 millimeter

00:09:09 ◼   ► is surprisingly small, maybe not surprisingly small,

00:09:13 ◼   ► but competitively, it's smaller

00:09:16 ◼   ► than a lot of the other smartwatches that are out there.

00:09:20 ◼   ► - Without question, I mean, if you look at,

00:09:22 ◼   ► in that article that you referenced, I have a chart of,

00:09:25 ◼   ► I went and talked to the Android Central guys

00:09:27 ◼   ► and I was like, all right, what are the biggest

00:09:28 ◼   ► like Android Wear and other associated smartwatches

00:09:32 ◼   ► that are on the market today?

00:09:33 ◼   ► And by big, I mean like well-sold, not physically big,

00:09:37 ◼   ► But it turns out that the same thing, because literally no Android smartwatch is smaller

00:09:43 ◼   ► than 42 millimeter.

00:09:44 ◼   ► And in fact, some are much bigger than 42 millimeter.

00:09:48 ◼   ► And that's the thing is in part that's because of the round wrists, the round face that they've

00:09:54 ◼   ► decided to go with.

00:09:56 ◼   ► If you want to do a round face, you have to have it be a certain diameter, just A, to

00:10:01 ◼   ► make the interface readable and B, quite honestly,

00:10:05 ◼   ► because you want to make sure that you can fit

00:10:09 ◼   ► all the components in there.

00:10:11 ◼   ► So by nature, if you have something that's 42 millimeters

00:10:15 ◼   ► tall, the width is also going to be 42 millimeters.

00:10:19 ◼   ► And 42 millimeters tall and 42 millimeters wide,

00:10:23 ◼   ► or it's a very different look than 42 millimeters tall.

00:10:28 ◼   ► And I forget what the Apple Watch is off the top of my head,

00:10:31 ◼   ► but I think it's like 33 millimeters wide,

00:10:35 ◼   ► something like that.

00:10:36 ◼   ► I'll have to look at it.

00:10:38 ◼   ► But it's still, yeah, you're right,

00:10:40 ◼   ► it's significantly smaller.

00:10:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, as somebody who's a minor league,

00:10:47 ◼   ► I don't have the addiction too bad, but a watch guy,

00:10:50 ◼   ► there's a rough, for traditional watches,

00:10:53 ◼   ► we're talking mechanical round watches, we're most around,

00:10:58 ◼   ► As a rough measure, 40 millimeters for a round watch is,

00:11:03 ◼   ► and that's measured like side to side, is about,

00:11:08 ◼   ► I think it's fair to say that's quote unquote normal,

00:11:11 ◼   ► and something for a men's watch.

00:11:13 ◼   ► And so like a 36 millimeter men's watch

00:11:16 ◼   ► would be considered small,

00:11:18 ◼   ► which is how a lot of watches,

00:11:20 ◼   ► like vintage watches from 30, 40, 50 years ago,

00:11:24 ◼   ► that watches actually have gotten larger

00:11:26 ◼   ► just as a measure of style, you know, it's obvious.

00:11:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is a stylish thing.

00:11:32 ◼   ► People like larger, slightly larger watches,

00:11:34 ◼   ► especially when they're round.

00:11:35 ◼   ► - There was a fad and I think I thankfully,

00:11:37 ◼   ► because I did not like this fad at all,

00:11:40 ◼   ► but I would say in the last 10 years,

00:11:43 ◼   ► there was a fad in men's mechanical watches

00:11:46 ◼   ► to get really big and chunky,

00:11:47 ◼   ► like 45, 46 millimeter watches,

00:11:50 ◼   ► which I just found, ugh, distasteful.

00:11:55 ◼   ► And thankfully that seems to be coming to an end.

00:11:57 ◼   ► But that's just a rough measure.

00:11:59 ◼   ► But the other thing that you learn

00:12:00 ◼   ► when you get into watches,

00:12:03 ◼   ► it's hard to just take the size

00:12:07 ◼   ► and look at the marketing pictures

00:12:11 ◼   ► and truly judge whether it's going to look good or bad

00:12:15 ◼   ► on your wrist.

00:12:16 ◼   ► Like you really do have to try it on.

00:12:19 ◼   ► And sometimes there's a watch that you would think,

00:12:21 ◼   ► oh, that's not too big for me, that'd be fine.

00:12:24 ◼   ► and you go try it on and it like,

00:12:26 ◼   ► either it like sticks up too far or it's just hard to say.

00:12:30 ◼   ► And then sometimes there's a watch where you think,

00:12:32 ◼   ► ah, 42 millimeters, that's too big for me.

00:12:34 ◼   ► And you try it on and it just works.

00:12:36 ◼   ► It's like, wow, that's not too big at all.

00:12:39 ◼   ► But one of the factors that plays into it are the lugs,

00:12:43 ◼   ► meaning on most traditional watches,

00:12:46 ◼   ► the strap attaches to these lugs

00:12:48 ◼   ► that stick up above and below the case.

00:12:51 ◼   ► And one of the reasons I think the Apple Watch

00:12:53 ◼   ► fits so well on so many people and is so small is that the

00:12:57 ◼   ► clever way that the straps attach don't have lugs at all.

00:13:01 ◼   ► Like so there is no there is no like lug penalty, you know, like the actual 42

00:13:06 ◼   ► millimeters or 38 millimeters, you know, top to bottom of the watch is

00:13:10 ◼   ► literally all there is and the strap just starts immediately.

00:13:15 ◼   ► It's like so I yeah it's I think the Apple Watch gains a couple of

00:13:18 ◼   ► millimeters in size because of that. Absolutely and I'm thinking

00:13:23 ◼   ► about like I'm wearing the sport loop right now and that's that and the Milanese are really

00:13:27 ◼   ► the only ones and I guess the leather loop are the only ones that even have like an inkling

00:13:32 ◼   ► of a lug because they have that fold over strap but you're absolutely right it just

00:13:37 ◼   ► kind of starts right there and in comparison actually it's funny when I was looking at

00:13:42 ◼   ► all the different the different smart watches of course Fitbit just recently came out with

00:13:48 ◼   ► the IONIQ.

00:13:49 ◼   ► And I don't know if you saw-- their measurements

00:13:52 ◼   ► on their site are so horribly misleading,

00:13:56 ◼   ► because they only show the screen size measurement.

00:14:01 ◼   ► So they're like, look, our screen size

00:14:03 ◼   ► is only 21 millimeters long.

00:14:06 ◼   ► And what they're doing is conveniently leaving out

00:14:09 ◼   ► the giant lug attachments that connect the band, which

00:14:14 ◼   ► make the height 44.45 millimeters.

00:14:19 ◼   ► So it's stuff like that where--

00:14:23 ◼   ► I don't want to say that everybody's doing misleading

00:14:25 ◼   ► advertising here, but it's really bothersome to me

00:14:29 ◼   ► to see how smartwatch manufacturers are--

00:14:34 ◼   ► at this point, they're like, we can't make it smaller

00:14:36 ◼   ► for whatever reason.

00:14:38 ◼   ► We've decided not to make this smaller,

00:14:40 ◼   ► but we're still going to pretend that we can compete

00:14:43 ◼   ► with the Apple Watch on size.

00:14:45 ◼   ► So look at how thin and svelte our screen is.

00:14:49 ◼   ► Nevermind the 20 millimeters of lugs

00:14:53 ◼   ► that we've attached to it.

00:14:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I'm rooting for Fitbit because I--

00:14:58 ◼   ► - Me too. - I like the idea,

00:15:00 ◼   ► you know, and it's the same way,

00:15:01 ◼   ► same reason I really was rooting, you know,

00:15:03 ◼   ► 10 years ago for Palm, for the WebOS,

00:15:07 ◼   ► their, you know, their smartphones to take off.

00:15:10 ◼   ► You know, I like the idea of upstart companies

00:15:14 ◼   ► and I don't think it's healthy to have a world

00:15:19 ◼   ► where only companies the size of Apple and Google

00:15:22 ◼   ► can get a platform off the ground.

00:15:26 ◼   ► Like, but I understand why that's, you know,

00:15:28 ◼   ► it's, that's why that's the most likely scenario.

00:15:32 ◼   ► But you're right, I think for a watch,

00:15:37 ◼   ► you know, like we sell laptops by,

00:15:40 ◼   ► edge to edge or diagonal screen size, right?

00:15:43 ◼   ► Like you don't, when you buy a new MacBook,

00:15:46 ◼   ► you don't buy it based on the,

00:15:48 ◼   ► they'll give you the measurements on the Tech Specs page,

00:15:51 ◼   ► but when they say it's a 13 inch MacBook Pro,

00:15:53 ◼   ► that means that the screen goes 13 inches

00:15:56 ◼   ► diagonal to diagonal.

00:15:58 ◼   ► And that's fine for a laptop that gives you a sense of what,

00:16:02 ◼   ► it's a fair measurement of how big a laptop is.

00:16:07 ◼   ► So like with the 11 inch MacBook air, uh, you know, I, I don't think anybody

00:16:13 ◼   ► who has a sense, you know, whose baseline is 13 inches, the 11 inch Mac book air

00:16:18 ◼   ► was like, yeah, this is exactly how much smaller it is. Isn't this thing adorable?

00:16:21 ◼   ► It's tiny. Um, I don't think with a watch that's, that's just not,

00:16:26 ◼   ► doesn't quite work at well, again, it comes back to bezels too, right?

00:16:31 ◼   ► Where laptops at this point, their bezels are almost non-existent.

00:16:35 ◼   ► Like they have some, but it's, you know, when you say it's a 13 inch screen, it's really like a 13.25 inch casing.

00:16:42 ◼   ► Um, it's not really that much bigger.

00:16:44 ◼   ► Um, but then when you look at a watch, you know, the, the difference between the diameter of the digital display and the diameter of the watch are going to be vastly different in some cases.

00:16:55 ◼   ► And then again, I go back to the Ionic, which actually has a wide screen display.

00:17:00 ◼   ► So despite the fact that it's showing, it's like,

00:17:03 ◼   ► oh, our display is 21 millimeters tall

00:17:07 ◼   ► and 35.99 millimeters diagonally,

00:17:11 ◼   ► but the actual picture is cut off in black bars.

00:17:15 ◼   ► So it's even thinner than that.

00:17:16 ◼   ► And they don't say, oh, this is how big our display is.

00:17:21 ◼   ► And it's the same thing with some of the round watches too.

00:17:23 ◼   ► It's like, you don't really know how big the,

00:17:26 ◼   ► like, is there going to be a bezel?

00:17:27 ◼   ► Is it going to be edge to edge?

00:17:28 ◼   ► Like some of them are edge to edge,

00:17:29 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:17:31 ◼   ► It's just like when I look at the chart

00:17:34 ◼   ► that I put up together or to put up,

00:17:36 ◼   ► it's kind of astounding.

00:17:38 ◼   ► Like if you compare it against the 42 millimeter Apple Watch,

00:17:42 ◼   ► you know, the lightest 42 millimeter Apple Watch,

00:17:45 ◼   ► the series one is 30 grams.

00:17:46 ◼   ► And that's about on par with like the Ionic

00:17:48 ◼   ► and the Gear S2 and the rest of them are much heavier.

00:17:52 ◼   ► And then the, like the sizing 42 millimeters,

00:17:57 ◼   ► The Gear S2 is 39 millimeters tall, but the rest of them

00:18:01 ◼   ► are around 42 to 48, basically.

00:18:04 ◼   ► But then you go to width, and it's

00:18:06 ◼   ► like 36 millimeters for the 42 millimeters.

00:18:10 ◼   ► And there's no one that even touches

00:18:11 ◼   ► that 36 millimeters wide.

00:18:13 ◼   ► The closest is the IONIQ at 38, and then it

00:18:16 ◼   ► jumps up to the 43.6, which is the Gear S2.

00:18:22 ◼   ► And that's just the 42 millimeter.

00:18:24 ◼   ► And you jump down to the 38 millimeter.

00:18:26 ◼   ► The 38 millimeter is only 33 millimeters wide.

00:18:30 ◼   ► So literally the next largest smartwatch after the 38

00:18:35 ◼   ► millimeter is the 42 millimeter.

00:18:37 ◼   ► There's no Android Wear.

00:18:39 ◼   ► There's no third party smartwatch manufacturer

00:18:42 ◼   ► that even comes close to that width on a smartwatch,

00:18:47 ◼   ► let alone depth.

00:18:49 ◼   ► The 38 millimeter series one is only 10.5 millimeters thin,

00:18:54 ◼   ► I guess, thick.

00:18:56 ◼   ► And the next highest is the style, the LG Watch style,

00:19:01 ◼   ► which was 10.8 millimeters.

00:19:03 ◼   ► But that thing was like a behemoth

00:19:04 ◼   ► at 42 by 45 millimeters.

00:19:07 ◼   ► It was a giant black hole on your wrist

00:19:09 ◼   ► and almost 50 grams heavy.

00:19:12 ◼   ► And that was the watch that was supposedly going

00:19:16 ◼   ► to take over the women's market.

00:19:18 ◼   ► Like the LG Watch style at the beginning of the year

00:19:21 ◼   ► was like, oh, this is the Android Watch for women.

00:19:23 ◼   ► This is the Android watch that women have been waiting for.

00:19:26 ◼   ► And literally six, seven months later,

00:19:28 ◼   ► it's been discounted so heavily

00:19:30 ◼   ► that like you can buy it for a hundred bucks,

00:19:32 ◼   ► a $250 watch.

00:19:34 ◼   ► - And again, I don't know that they've called it

00:19:39 ◼   ► a woman's watch, but just from the color choices

00:19:42 ◼   ► they used alone, they were in a palette that was,

00:19:46 ◼   ► I think, a little bit feminine.

00:19:50 ◼   ► It was clearly meant to be--

00:19:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, well they only had women female models wearing it.

00:19:56 ◼   ► - So it's-- - Which is another, yeah.

00:19:57 ◼   ► - I would say even more so than an Apple Watch.

00:20:00 ◼   ► Although there are obviously some varieties of Apple Watch

00:20:03 ◼   ► that are clearly meant for women, like the Hermes models.

00:20:07 ◼   ► And some of the-- - Yeah, the double tour,

00:20:09 ◼   ► absolutely. - And some of the band choices,

00:20:11 ◼   ► even from Apple, some of the sort of,

00:20:14 ◼   ► I forget Apple's fancy color names,

00:20:16 ◼   ► but the ones that are sort of taupe.

00:20:18 ◼   ► - Pink sand. - Right, pink sand

00:20:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I think it's way too big.

00:20:23 ◼   ► It's just ridiculously big.

00:20:25 ◼   ► And you know, why, why is that?

00:20:27 ◼   ► And I honestly think, I think the thing

00:20:29 ◼   ► that people don't want to,

00:20:31 ◼   ► some people don't want to just talk about,

00:20:33 ◼   ► like the elephant in the room, I think,

00:20:35 ◼   ► is that the obvious answer is that Apple is so far ahead

00:20:39 ◼   ► at being able-- - In silicon.

00:20:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, that nobody else can touch them.

00:20:45 ◼   ► And I think that from the point of view of,

00:20:50 ◼   ► it gets into the whole journalistic argument of,

00:20:58 ◼   ► are you pro-Apple, are you in the bag for Apple,

00:21:00 ◼   ► are you biased against Apple, that sort of thing,

00:21:03 ◼   ► that there are certain, a lot of publications

00:21:07 ◼   ► that want to try to appeal, appear above the board

00:21:10 ◼   ► and sort of even-handed and not in favor

00:21:13 ◼   ► of any particular company,

00:21:16 ◼   ► and therefore don't want to touch that

00:21:19 ◼   ► because it sounds, some people are gonna hear that

00:21:21 ◼   ► and say, well, you're just in the bag for Apple

00:21:24 ◼   ► because there's, but I think that that's the obvious,

00:21:27 ◼   ► it's not being biased in favor of Apple,

00:21:30 ◼   ► it's stating, it's the Occam's razor explanation.

00:21:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a literal fact.

00:21:35 ◼   ► There is no smartwatch out there

00:21:39 ◼   ► that even remotely comes close to this size.

00:21:42 ◼   ► And the technical challenges for making this happen are immense.

00:21:50 ◼   ► The fact that-- and this is the thing that really won me over, right?

00:21:53 ◼   ► Because when the 38 millimeter first came out in 2015,

00:21:57 ◼   ► it was definitely the subpar of the two watches.

00:22:00 ◼   ► It didn't get a full day worth of battery life,

00:22:02 ◼   ► and we kind of just dealt with it because we understood that, hey, we're

00:22:06 ◼   ► getting this technology in a tiny package.

00:22:08 ◼   ► But it was not the same watch as the 42 millimeter.

00:22:12 ◼   ► And then when the Series 2 came out,

00:22:14 ◼   ► they made a lot of significant changes to both--

00:22:19 ◼   ► they put a bigger battery in, and they really

00:22:22 ◼   ► made the 38 millimeter stand alongside its big brother

00:22:26 ◼   ► as the same watch, basically, where it didn't really

00:22:28 ◼   ► feel like you were getting a subpar experience if you

00:22:31 ◼   ► went for the smaller size.

00:22:33 ◼   ► But the thing that really stood out to me as this is Apple

00:22:39 ◼   ► basically almost showing off on their silicon expertise,

00:22:43 ◼   ► is the fact that the 38 millimeter comes in LTE.

00:22:46 ◼   ► And not only does it come in LTE,

00:22:48 ◼   ► but it is still just as good as the 42 millimeter LTE.

00:22:53 ◼   ► Like the battery isn't non-existent

00:22:56 ◼   ► if you use the 38 millimeter LTE.

00:22:58 ◼   ► And I like looking at, okay,

00:23:01 ◼   ► so the 38 millimeter with LTE is the exact same size

00:23:05 ◼   ► as the normal series three.

00:23:07 ◼   ► It's just a little bit heavier.

00:23:08 ◼   ► It's like two grams heavier.

00:23:10 ◼   ► The next, like, there are other LTE watches,

00:23:15 ◼   ► and the closest they can get is almost like 45 grams, 50 grams.

00:23:20 ◼   ► And they're all in these big giant casings.

00:23:23 ◼   ► And that, to me, says, like, not only did we figure out

00:23:29 ◼   ► how to do this, we figured out how

00:23:30 ◼   ► to make LTE in a small watch form factor

00:23:33 ◼   ► without killing the battery.

00:23:36 ◼   ► But we did it.

00:23:37 ◼   ► we actually made this device and sold it

00:23:42 ◼   ► to prove that this is possible

00:23:45 ◼   ► and that we're not looking at the small watch

00:23:47 ◼   ► as a second class citizen.

00:23:48 ◼   ► 'Cause it would have been really easy for Apple

00:23:51 ◼   ► to just be like, well, the 38 millimeter is like

00:23:54 ◼   ► what you want if you want the basic Apple Watch,

00:23:55 ◼   ► but if you want all of the features, you wanna go 42.

00:23:58 ◼   ► Like the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 Plus,

00:24:00 ◼   ► and the Plus has the better camera.

00:24:03 ◼   ► And the fact that they didn't,

00:24:04 ◼   ► the fact that they were able to put all of that technology

00:24:07 ◼   ► in the same watch, like that is a huge deal to me.

00:24:12 ◼   ► And I don't think people, like you're saying,

00:24:14 ◼   ► I don't think people really,

00:24:16 ◼   ► the average consumer really gets how big of a win that is

00:24:20 ◼   ► for that form factor and that form size.

00:24:23 ◼   ► - And it, you know, here it is, the third generation.

00:24:27 ◼   ► And I think the LTE is such a great example of it

00:24:29 ◼   ► where it's not just like,

00:24:32 ◼   ► go back two years when it was the first generation watch

00:24:34 ◼   ► and first generation Android Wear devices were coming out.

00:24:38 ◼   ► And it's just going to take the Samsungs and the LGs

00:24:42 ◼   ► and other, you know, the other companies making these watches

00:24:45 ◼   ► a few years to catch up to get a watch down to that size.

00:24:49 ◼   ► In the meantime, Apple's kept the same size

00:24:51 ◼   ► and has added extra performance, way faster CPU

00:24:56 ◼   ► starting in the second generation one,

00:24:58 ◼   ► faster CPU again in the third one,

00:25:04 ◼   ► and LTE, which is, it's just huge.

00:25:08 ◼   ► And I also think back to like the 2009,

00:25:13 ◼   ► 2010, 2011 smartphone market.

00:25:17 ◼   ► And the iPhone was so much smaller than competing phones.

00:25:22 ◼   ► And I know that we've, you know,

00:25:24 ◼   ► part of the reason was obviously, you know,

00:25:26 ◼   ► it's obvious now that there are people

00:25:28 ◼   ► who really want like 5.5 inch phones.

00:25:32 ◼   ► - Yeah. - But Apple's

00:25:33 ◼   ► the only company that was, and still even now

00:25:37 ◼   ► with the iPhone SE, that is also making a first class,

00:25:40 ◼   ► top tier, excellent performing smartphone that's that small.

00:25:45 ◼   ► I mean, and-- - That's in that package, yeah.

00:25:48 ◼   ► - And I think like the fact that,

00:25:53 ◼   ► like I see a fair number of iPhone SEs,

00:25:58 ◼   ► and I guess, you know, like if I'm out on the street

00:26:01 ◼   ► and I just see somebody who's using an iPhone SE,

00:26:03 ◼   ► I don't know for sure if it's an SE

00:26:05 ◼   ► or it could just be an old 5S,

00:26:07 ◼   ► but I've seen them, you know,

00:26:10 ◼   ► I'm just, this is what I do.

00:26:12 ◼   ► I've said this before on the show.

00:26:13 ◼   ► I'm just nosy about people's phones.

00:26:16 ◼   ► I just can't help but look.

00:26:18 ◼   ► I'm just fascinated by it.

00:26:19 ◼   ► And a lot of the ones I see lately

00:26:21 ◼   ► look like they're in excellent condition.

00:26:23 ◼   ► And I also happen to notice that it seems to me

00:26:25 ◼   ► like people who have the iPhone SE are way more likely,

00:26:29 ◼   ► way, way, way more likely than people

00:26:32 ◼   ► with bigger phones of any make to not use a case.

00:26:36 ◼   ► Like I see uncased iPhone SEs.

00:26:38 ◼   ► And I think it makes sense because it's so grippable

00:26:41 ◼   ► and so much smaller that you don't feel like you need a case.

00:26:44 ◼   ► I feel even with the 4.7 inch iPhone size,

00:26:48 ◼   ► the iPhone 7, the 6, the 6s,

00:26:50 ◼   ► it just, I think a lot of people pick it up

00:26:52 ◼   ► and as soon as they buy it, they take it out of the case,

00:26:56 ◼   ► a box, and even if they were thinking,

00:26:58 ◼   ► maybe I won't use a case, they pick it up and they're like,

00:27:00 ◼   ► I wanna get a case for this.

00:27:02 ◼   ► And I feel like you don't get that feeling with the SE.

00:27:04 ◼   ► But it's obviously the fact that Apple was behind

00:27:06 ◼   ► when the iPhone SE first came out,

00:27:08 ◼   ► it took them months to catch up to demand.

00:27:09 ◼   ► And they even admitted in a conference call that yes,

00:27:12 ◼   ► the demand for SE took us by surprise.

00:27:15 ◼   ► There's obviously a market for smaller phones

00:27:19 ◼   ► and nobody else is making them.

00:27:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, and Apple was very smart in capitalizing on that.

00:27:26 ◼   ► And the interesting thing to me comparing phones to watches

00:27:30 ◼   ► too, is that phones, I feel like the screen size is more of a--

00:27:35 ◼   ► it's more of a practical decision,

00:27:37 ◼   ► where you're just kind of like, yeah, I

00:27:39 ◼   ► can deal with the added bulk of having a bigger screen,

00:27:42 ◼   ► or no, for my iPhone, I don't need to have a big screen.

00:27:45 ◼   ► I'm not want to watch Netflix on it,

00:27:46 ◼   ► or I'm not taking a lot of video,

00:27:48 ◼   ► and I can deal with--

00:27:50 ◼   ► the SE is perfect for me.

00:27:52 ◼   ► With a watch, I feel like that decision

00:27:53 ◼   ► is less practical and more personal,

00:27:56 ◼   ► because here's the thing.

00:27:59 ◼   ► I would get more battery life and the screen size.

00:28:03 ◼   ► I mean, it is definitely--

00:28:04 ◼   ► for tapability and interactivity,

00:28:07 ◼   ► the 42-millimeter screen size is certainly easier.

00:28:12 ◼   ► I have some adjustments on my 38 where I have dynamic type

00:28:15 ◼   ► up a little bit.

00:28:16 ◼   ► And I'm far from blind.

00:28:18 ◼   ► But it just makes the interface and just interactivity

00:28:22 ◼   ► a little bit nicer.

00:28:23 ◼   ► But when it comes to the actual casing size,

00:28:27 ◼   ► The 42 millimeter, I've said this before,

00:28:30 ◼   ► like the 42 millimeter looks like a smartwatch on my wrist,

00:28:34 ◼   ► which is to say like, it looks the same way

00:28:37 ◼   ► that I felt when I was carrying around a Newton

00:28:40 ◼   ► in seventh grade, where I loved it

00:28:43 ◼   ► and it was super cool technology,

00:28:45 ◼   ► but it was very obvious that I was using something tech,

00:28:49 ◼   ► tech related, right?

00:28:50 ◼   ► It's like, this is, this is not normal.

00:28:53 ◼   ► The 38 millimeter Apple Watch looks like a watch

00:28:56 ◼   ► that happens to also be a smartwatch.

00:28:58 ◼   ► It doesn't call attention to itself as like,

00:29:01 ◼   ► hi, look what I've got.

00:29:03 ◼   ► And in fact, this is like maybe a funny anecdote,

00:29:06 ◼   ► but there was a while there where I was testing

00:29:08 ◼   ► two 38 millimeter Apple watches.

00:29:10 ◼   ► I was testing the LTE version and the non LTE version,

00:29:14 ◼   ► and I had one on each wrist.

00:29:16 ◼   ► And I went out multiple times with friends

00:29:19 ◼   ► and it would take them 30, 45 minutes to realize

00:29:23 ◼   ► that I had a watch on both wrists,

00:29:25 ◼   ► because it just, it kind of just blends in as jewelry. Um,

00:29:28 ◼   ► and it wasn't until like I, I w I moved both hands up at once where someone was

00:29:33 ◼   ► like, wait a second, are you wearing two watches? But that's the thing, right?

00:29:37 ◼   ► Like if I was wearing two 45, 42 millimeters or heck any,

00:29:42 ◼   ► any of the Android wear watches, like the second you raise your wrist,

00:29:46 ◼   ► it looks like you have a star Trek communicator like soldered on,

00:29:50 ◼   ► or you have like a wonder woman's gauntlets, right? Where you're just like, Oh,

00:29:54 ◼   ► I've got stuff on my wrist and look at my technology.

00:29:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:30:02 ◼   ► I just, to me, it feels bulky, it feels weird.

00:30:06 ◼   ► And then there's the side part of it,

00:30:08 ◼   ► which I didn't even really get into a ton in my article,

00:30:12 ◼   ► but I am really concerned about it,

00:30:14 ◼   ► which is health tracking.

00:30:15 ◼   ► Like the reason that Apple Watch,

00:30:17 ◼   ► I mean, there are a lot of reasons

00:30:18 ◼   ► why Apple Watch is kind of the most currently,

00:30:21 ◼   ► according to that Stanford study,

00:30:22 ◼   ► the most reliable tracker for baseline heart rate. But a lot

00:30:27 ◼   ► of it I think has to do with the way that the sensors are

00:30:30 ◼   ► positioned. And the Apple Watch sensors are fairly small and

00:30:33 ◼   ► fairly discreet. And the like the the circle like the the

00:30:38 ◼   ► circle where that connects to your your wrist or your your

00:30:42 ◼   ► skin is fairly small. And it's built in such a way that whether

00:30:46 ◼   ► or not you wear the 38 or the 42 you're not going to run the risk

00:30:51 ◼   ► of getting a reading over the side of your wrist,

00:30:54 ◼   ► because it's really positioned right in the center there.

00:30:57 ◼   ► And I don't think that's true for a lot of the other watches.

00:31:00 ◼   ► Their sensors are kind of much bigger and much more spaced

00:31:03 ◼   ► apart.

00:31:03 ◼   ► So you can make all the arguments

00:31:05 ◼   ► you want about women want to wear big watches,

00:31:08 ◼   ► and big watches are in style, and all of that.

00:31:11 ◼   ► But either you have to wear the big watch loosely

00:31:13 ◼   ► if you want to really rock the boyfriend bangle watch style.

00:31:18 ◼   ► or if you wear it tightly,

00:31:20 ◼   ► the sensors may not even line up correctly on your wrist.

00:31:23 ◼   ► So if you're trying to get a good reading,

00:31:25 ◼   ► you may instead be getting like half skin,

00:31:28 ◼   ► half like empty space falling off of your wrist

00:31:31 ◼   ► or just not connecting properly with the blood vessels.

00:31:34 ◼   ► It's just that to me is one of those like side issues

00:31:39 ◼   ► that comes from forcing people whose wrists,

00:31:42 ◼   ► you know, maybe aren't the right size

00:31:44 ◼   ► to wear bigger watches

00:31:45 ◼   ► 'cause there's literally nothing else for them.

00:31:47 ◼   ► - This is one of those areas where

00:31:51 ◼   ► even if Apple released sales numbers,

00:31:55 ◼   ► like we sold seven million Apple watches last quarter,

00:31:59 ◼   ► which they haven't done and I suspect

00:32:02 ◼   ► are never going to start doing.

00:32:03 ◼   ► Even if they did, I don't think they would break it down

00:32:08 ◼   ► by size because even with iPhones,

00:32:10 ◼   ► they just say, "Here's how many iPhones we sold

00:32:12 ◼   ► "and here's how much money we made from them."

00:32:14 ◼   ► they give an average sale price. And so you can kind of backwards engineer a bit of that,

00:32:20 ◼   ► you know, from the average sales price, because the closer it gets to the higher price, obviously,

00:32:26 ◼   ► the more of the higher price iPhones they're selling. So I don't think they would. But

00:32:30 ◼   ► boy, I wish that they would because anecdotally, I think Apple Watch is incredibly popular

00:32:36 ◼   ► with women. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more 38 millimeter watches being sold

00:32:42 ◼   ► than 42. I mean, I see a lot to believe that 100%. And I really

00:32:47 ◼   ► think that that would if there were only a 42 millimeter size,

00:32:50 ◼   ► I think it would be I think it would be I don't think that

00:32:54 ◼   ► would be true. I think there'd still be many women who buy it

00:32:57 ◼   ► and wear it. But I don't think I think it would be far fewer than

00:33:01 ◼   ► 50%. You know, I think it Yeah, because I just think it would

00:33:05 ◼   ► look like a piece of technology on the wrist as opposed to just

00:33:08 ◼   ► looking like a nice digital watch on the wrist.

00:33:11 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:33:12 ◼   ► Um, and, and you've hit the nail on the head, a lot of women, you know, and this

00:33:16 ◼   ► includes people like my mom and just, uh, friends of mine, you know, almost, almost

00:33:21 ◼   ► all of my roller Derby friends who started off wearing other smartwatch trackers or

00:33:26 ◼   ► just, or fitness trackers have switched over to getting an Apple watch in part.

00:33:30 ◼   ► Um, because they've seen mine, but in part, because they're like, well, I

00:33:34 ◼   ► don't know if this is going to look good.

00:33:35 ◼   ► And then they go in and they try it on.

00:33:37 ◼   ► And then they find out some of the things that can do and keep in mind, like I'm

00:33:41 ◼   ► talking a lot about the positive features of the Apple Watch.

00:33:43 ◼   ► The Apple Watch still has problems.

00:33:46 ◼   ► It's not perfect.

00:33:47 ◼   ► Third party apps is a whole different discussion.

00:33:50 ◼   ► We can maybe get into it at a later date.

00:33:52 ◼   ► But for all of its flaws, it does

00:33:56 ◼   ► have some really useful features for people on the go.

00:34:00 ◼   ► And in Montreal, for example, my Apple Watch is--

00:34:08 ◼   ► I don't even know the word I'm looking for.

00:34:10 ◼   ► It's a godsend, honestly, because everywhere in Montreal

00:34:14 ◼   ► is PayPass compatible.

00:34:16 ◼   ► So I haven't had to pull out, and this is doubly important

00:34:19 ◼   ► because when you're living in a foreign country

00:34:21 ◼   ► and you have an American card,

00:34:23 ◼   ► I don't have a pin on that card.

00:34:25 ◼   ► So anytime I have to use the physical card,

00:34:27 ◼   ► I have to sign for it, which is something that isn't done

00:34:31 ◼   ► 'cause everybody else here has pins.

00:34:33 ◼   ► So they just look at you like you're a crazy person.

00:34:35 ◼   ► But with the Apple Watch,

00:34:37 ◼   ► because it has like the randomized number security system,

00:34:42 ◼   ► if I tap my card as opposed to like using my card physically,

00:34:46 ◼   ► I don't have to sign for it.

00:34:48 ◼   ► So anywhere I go in Montreal,

00:34:49 ◼   ► I just, I can use this as a payment system.

00:34:52 ◼   ► And like that alone, that is a reason

00:34:55 ◼   ► why a woman would buy an Apple Watch.

00:34:57 ◼   ► Health tracking is a reason why they do it.

00:34:59 ◼   ► - Perfect example is my mother-in-law.

00:35:01 ◼   ► My mother-in-law is not into technology,

00:35:03 ◼   ► but she has an Apple Watch and loves it.

00:35:06 ◼   ► And it's not because, oh, our technology-loving son-in-law

00:35:11 ◼   ► and my wife, who's not really an enthusiast,

00:35:15 ◼   ► but has and uses iPhone and iPad and MacBook Pro,

00:35:20 ◼   ► like we pushed it on her.

00:35:24 ◼   ► It was like she asked for an Apple Watch.

00:35:26 ◼   ► It wasn't like we were like,

00:35:27 ◼   ► "Here, you're gonna take this."

00:35:28 ◼   ► Like when we bought her an Apple TV

00:35:32 ◼   ► for like Christmas the one year,

00:35:33 ◼   ► and that was us saying,

00:35:34 ◼   ► I think, you know, I think she'll really like that. Uh, cause you know,

00:35:38 ◼   ► she was like renting movies in iTunes on her iMac and watching them on her iMac.

00:35:42 ◼   ► And we're like, this is get her an Apple TV. She has a big TV. You know,

00:35:46 ◼   ► why in the world would you watch a movie on an iMac when you have a TV in the

00:35:49 ◼   ► living room? So that was us.

00:35:50 ◼   ► Apple TV was us buying her something she would not have asked for it,

00:35:53 ◼   ► but she wanted an Apple watch cause she already had a Fitbit, which again,

00:35:56 ◼   ► we didn't buy her. She bought the Fitbit herself, uh, and absolutely loves it.

00:36:00 ◼   ► I don't think that my mother-in-law would have bought an Apple watch if it was

00:36:03 ◼   ► only in 42 millimeters because she had no she is I mean truly tiny wrists it I

00:36:10 ◼   ► just wouldn't have occurred to her you know and the fit you know it's starting

00:36:14 ◼   ► not to replace a little Fitbit band that was you know just like a bracelet yeah

00:36:20 ◼   ► exactly well if you look at the fit at the Fitbit's other heart rate trackers

00:36:24 ◼   ► until you get to the smartwatch size and actually start playing around with

00:36:27 ◼   ► smartwatches they are they're very skinny little little bands that look

00:36:32 ◼   ► like bangles. And those are you know, those there's nothing nothing against those those

00:36:36 ◼   ► are actually quite useful. If all you want to do is heart rate and sleep rate track.

00:36:42 ◼   ► Like if you don't want the other the other smartwatch features, then that's a perfectly

00:36:46 ◼   ► good alternative option. But there's a lot to be said about what the Apple Watch and

00:36:51 ◼   ► Android Wear watches can offer that and that brings me my last app related topic or Apple

00:36:56 ◼   ► watch related topic and I know we've mentioned this recently but it's it's

00:37:01 ◼   ► come up again is I cannot believe how many people out there continue to persist

00:37:07 ◼   ► in this belief that the Apple watch is a flop I I'm astounded on a daily basis

00:37:14 ◼   ► how many people I see on the street wearing Apple watch I it seems to me

00:37:17 ◼   ► like incredible and and the reason it popped up is like that there was a story

00:37:23 ◼   ► a couple of weeks ago, a month ago, a month or two ago, where the Boston Red Sox got caught

00:37:29 ◼   ► by the Yankees using an Apple Watch to receive information that you're not supposed to use

00:37:34 ◼   ► digital equipment in the dugout of a baseball game. And it turns out they weren't actually

00:37:38 ◼   ► using an Apple Watch. It was a Fitbit, supposedly, but it got all sorts of traction and I, you

00:37:46 ◼   ► know, linked to it. But the joke that was made by like 100 different people on Twitter

00:37:51 ◼   ► was the real story here is that somebody actually found a use for an Apple watch and everybody

00:37:57 ◼   ► you know and it's like 5,000 likes and stuff like that and I don't get that at all guys

00:38:02 ◼   ► like it to me and it's not it's like a mentality I think of I think it comes from a place where

00:38:12 ◼   ► where people who aren't into technology and don't have an Apple watch don't think they

00:38:17 ◼   ► don't want an Apple watch and maybe they don't maybe they're right that they that they really

00:38:21 ◼   ► really don't want one.

00:38:23 ◼   ► But I feel like it comes from a sort of a resentment

00:38:26 ◼   ► of the rise of technology, technological devices

00:38:29 ◼   ► in our lives, you know, that there are, you know,

00:38:31 ◼   ► that they themselves know I'm not going anywhere

00:38:33 ◼   ► without my smartphone, but I kind of resent that,

00:38:36 ◼   ► you know, like-- - Yeah.

00:38:38 ◼   ► - And that they don't want, they so not want

00:38:41 ◼   ► another one thing to become like an essential part

00:38:43 ◼   ► of people's daily lives that they sort of decided

00:38:48 ◼   ► it's useless and that's it, you know, and then work backwards from that wish.

00:38:54 ◼   ► JILL RILEY-CURTIS We're too connected. No more connected devices. No, I get that. And honestly,

00:39:01 ◼   ► like if you take a step back and you look at the Apple Watch from a lens of a non-technologist or

00:39:05 ◼   ► somebody who's just not interested in having technology on their wrist, they see it as,

00:39:09 ◼   ► "Oh, this is another thing that's just going to like annoy me to death with notifications or

00:39:14 ◼   ► forcing me to stand, what is this nonsense? You know, like, I understand where people are coming

00:39:19 ◼   ► from there. And then there's the other the other side of the coin where people saw the Apple Watch

00:39:25 ◼   ► in its series one days, right? Where apps took over two minutes to launch and, you know, oh,

00:39:32 ◼   ► yeah, it can use Siri, but when does Siri actually work? You know, and I do think that that in some

00:39:38 ◼   ► ways worked against it, because while Apple was still kind of figuring out the speed of this thing

00:39:42 ◼   ► and how to manufacture it, you know, there were a lot of Apple Watch apps on day one. But very few

00:39:50 ◼   ► of them were very good, because obviously, people were building Apple Watch apps without actually

00:39:54 ◼   ► having an Apple Watch in hand. And because they took forever, everybody was like, well, this is a

00:39:59 ◼   ► subpar experience and just kind of walked away. And there are, like I say that, but two years later,

00:40:06 ◼   ► there are really, really good watch apps out there. There are some really bad ones too. But

00:40:12 ◼   ► But there are some really, really smart ones

00:40:14 ◼   ► that take advantage of the size of the watch

00:40:16 ◼   ► and make sense of like, these are the things

00:40:18 ◼   ► that you would use your watch for.

00:40:21 ◼   ► And like if I just go down a list of like things

00:40:25 ◼   ► that I regularly use my Apple Watch for,

00:40:27 ◼   ► I use it for fitness tracking, right?

00:40:29 ◼   ► I use Siri on the Series 3 nonstop

00:40:32 ◼   ► because Siri is actually functional and reliable.

00:40:36 ◼   ► Not only is it much faster through the iPhone,

00:40:39 ◼   ► but now with LTE, it's almost instantaneous.

00:40:42 ◼   ► if I want to just call it up.

00:40:44 ◼   ► I use the Apple Watch.

00:40:46 ◼   ► There's an app that lets you automatically translate speech

00:40:50 ◼   ► to whatever language you want.

00:40:51 ◼   ► So if I'm walking around Montreal

00:40:55 ◼   ► and I see a word that I don't recognize,

00:40:57 ◼   ► literally all I have to do is pull up that Watch app

00:40:59 ◼   ► and say the word, or at least try and approximate

00:41:02 ◼   ► the pronunciation, and it'll give me a translation.

00:41:05 ◼   ► I use it for two-factor authentication

00:41:08 ◼   ► The damn time because offy has a an app built in that literally just gives you your two-factor codes

00:41:14 ◼   ► So instead of having to like grab my iPhone and log into offy and find the code

00:41:19 ◼   ► I literally just opened the app and it's on my wrist and I can type it out on my computer or on my iPhone without having

00:41:25 ◼   ► To switch things I use it for sports information, right?

00:41:28 ◼   ► I the at that is kind of a it's a little bit buggy

00:41:32 ◼   ► But it is really impressive the the amount of information that they want to give it to you, you know

00:41:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:41:37 ◼   ► I use it actually big--

00:41:39 ◼   ► here's a big thing that I use it for, especially on the 8 Plus.

00:41:43 ◼   ► And this is a feature that I feel like people don't really know about,

00:41:46 ◼   ► is that the Apple Watch can be used as a camera remote.

00:41:49 ◼   ► So you can have a full screen display of your iPhone camera on your wrist.

00:41:55 ◼   ► But not only that, you can take photos with it.

00:41:57 ◼   ► And now with watchOS 4 and iOS 11, you can use it to take video.

00:42:02 ◼   ► And you can use it to take portrait mode photos.

00:42:04 ◼   ► So for the first time, even if you don't have an iPhone 10

00:42:07 ◼   ► and you're not gonna be able to take portrait selfies,

00:42:09 ◼   ► if you can set your iPhone up somewhere,

00:42:11 ◼   ► you can still take a portrait mode photo with your watch.

00:42:14 ◼   ► It's like things like that, things like the weather,

00:42:16 ◼   ► things like to-dos, there's a lot.

00:42:19 ◼   ► There is really quite a lot that you can do

00:42:21 ◼   ► with the Apple Watch.

00:42:22 ◼   ► So like what you were saying, it absolutely frustrates me

00:42:26 ◼   ► to hear people just blow off the watch as like,

00:42:29 ◼   ► oh, it's just another thing that's gonna tap you

00:42:30 ◼   ► on the wrist incessantly and make you hate it.

00:42:33 ◼   ► It's useful.

00:42:34 ◼   ► It's useful.

00:42:35 ◼   ► - And I say this coming as somebody who is,

00:42:38 ◼   ► I like my Apple Watch, but I don't wear it 24/7

00:42:42 ◼   ► 'cause I still like wearing mechanical watches.

00:42:45 ◼   ► So I'm not even the world's biggest Apple Watch fan.

00:42:47 ◼   ► And the big loss with that is that I don't really get

00:42:52 ◼   ► consistent fitness tracking.

00:42:54 ◼   ► If I don't even wear it over the weekend,

00:42:57 ◼   ► and in the back of my mind, it bugs me a little

00:43:02 ◼   ► and I can totally see how for some people

00:43:05 ◼   ► that would drive them crazy

00:43:07 ◼   ► and they would have to wear their Apple Watch all the time.

00:43:10 ◼   ► I totally get that.

00:43:11 ◼   ► I just don't have the bug

00:43:13 ◼   ► to want that complete fitness tracking.

00:43:16 ◼   ► I kinda wish I had it,

00:43:17 ◼   ► but it's not enough to make me only wear Apple Watch.

00:43:21 ◼   ► So I'm coming from the perspective of somebody

00:43:23 ◼   ► who's not the biggest Apple Watch fan in the world.

00:43:25 ◼   ► I'm blown away by how many people I see in the real world

00:43:29 ◼   ► who have them.

00:43:31 ◼   ► We had a family get together in the summer.

00:43:33 ◼   ► It was a wedding on Amy's side of the family.

00:43:35 ◼   ► And I forget how many people we had.

00:43:39 ◼   ► It was down in South Carolina and they rented a big house

00:43:44 ◼   ► at the shore for everybody to stay in for a couple of days.

00:43:49 ◼   ► And there were like, I don't know, 13, 14 people, 15 people.

00:43:54 ◼   ► Not all necessarily in the same house,

00:43:56 ◼   ► but 15 people who were gathered together

00:43:58 ◼   ► for the extended weekend of this thing.

00:44:00 ◼   ► And it was like more than half of them had Apple watch. And that's not for me.

00:44:03 ◼   ► That's not like, you know, that's not even on my side of the family.

00:44:06 ◼   ► It's just that it, I don't know,

00:44:09 ◼   ► it just kind of surprises me that it's considered not a hit.

00:44:14 ◼   ► Here's my last pervasive, my last thing. And I wrote about this, I think,

00:44:18 ◼   ► I don't think I ever mentioned it on the show, but after I wrote about it, uh,

00:44:21 ◼   ► I got so much email about it. I have to repeat it.

00:44:22 ◼   ► My favorite tip for watchOS four is that you can replace the app screen honeycomb

00:44:29 ◼   ► layout with a simple scrolling list of apps, which I find way more, way easier to navigate

00:44:37 ◼   ► alphabetically ordered. So you also get the app names. Like I feel like part of the problem

00:44:42 ◼   ► with the honeycomb isn't just that the apps are too small. Like I have a couple problems

00:44:46 ◼   ► with it. I think they're too small. They're, they are the, they're way smaller than the

00:44:50 ◼   ► minimum tap target that Apple recommends for iOS. You know, uh, too many of the icons look

00:44:57 ◼   ► the same like they just look like aren't you know like the stopwatch is an orange circle

00:45:01 ◼   ► and the timer is an orange circle and they're all orange circles it's so frustrating right

00:45:07 ◼   ► and the timer icon arguably could be a stopwatch yes it's it's it's literally the same icon

00:45:15 ◼   ► except the stopwatch has both of the hands pace right pointing to the 12 and the timer

00:45:19 ◼   ► has it right pointing to like 11 it's awful and it's like it is pretty it is

00:45:26 ◼   ► very pretty so I totally get where it came from it came from the sort of

00:45:33 ◼   ► design is how it looks side of Apple not the design is how it works but it's the

00:45:38 ◼   ► only device Apple has ever made where there's a list of apps where they only

00:45:45 ◼   ► show the icons without the name of the app with it like the classic Macintosh

00:45:49 ◼   ► showed you the icons with a name underneath current macro s10 always

00:45:55 ◼   ► shows you whether you're in list view or icon view or whatever always shows you

00:45:59 ◼   ► the name of the app the iPhone shows you the name of the app everything shows you

00:46:03 ◼   ► the name of the app because the name is actually you know even though the icon

00:46:07 ◼   ► might be the most recognizable thing it's still useful to have a name so

00:46:10 ◼   ► anyway you can switch to a list view but the way you do it is not obvious what

00:46:14 ◼   ► What you do is you go to the app view and you do a 3D touch.

00:46:19 ◼   ► You press and then you get an option

00:46:23 ◼   ► for grid view or list view.

00:46:25 ◼   ► And I had so many, so anybody with an Apple Watch,

00:46:29 ◼   ► I recommend you try it.

00:46:30 ◼   ► I think you'll like it.

00:46:31 ◼   ► When you do need to go to app view,

00:46:33 ◼   ► I think you'll like it so much more.

00:46:34 ◼   ► I think it should be the default, frankly.

00:46:36 ◼   ► - I think so too.

00:46:37 ◼   ► The other thing I really like about it

00:46:39 ◼   ► is that it takes your hands off of the screen

00:46:41 ◼   ► because you can just scroll with the digital crown.

00:46:43 ◼   ► - Right, which is what you're supposed to do.

00:46:44 ◼   ► - So you're not covering up half of the screen.

00:46:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:48 ◼   ► It's great, I love that tip.

00:46:49 ◼   ► - All right, let's take a break

00:46:50 ◼   ► and I'll thank our first sponsor,

00:46:51 ◼   ► it's our good friends at Audible.

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00:47:29 ◼   ► So when you take your ride, Ride with Audible,

00:47:32 ◼   ► you can start a 30-day trial of your first audio book,

00:47:36 ◼   ► and your first audio book is free.

00:47:38 ◼   ► You get a 30-day trial, and your first audio book is free.

00:47:41 ◼   ► Now, where do you go to find this out?

00:47:42 ◼   ► you go to audible.com/talkshow.

00:47:45 ◼   ► That's A-U-D-I-B-L-E.com/talkshow.

00:47:50 ◼   ► They like it when I include a recommendation of a book.

00:47:57 ◼   ► I'll tell you what book I've been reading lately.

00:47:59 ◼   ► It is a book by a New York Times sports writer,

00:48:03 ◼   ► longtime New York Times sports writer named Bill Pennington.

00:48:06 ◼   ► And the book is "Billy Martin, Baseball's Lost Genius."

00:48:10 ◼   ► Now, if you don't like baseball,

00:48:11 ◼   ► you're probably not gonna like this book.

00:48:13 ◼   ► But you don't have to be a Yankees fan to like it.

00:48:15 ◼   ► It's just an amazing story of a guy who,

00:48:19 ◼   ► Billy Martin, if you don't know,

00:48:20 ◼   ► played for the Yankees in the 1950s

00:48:23 ◼   ► with Mickey Mantle and those guys at the time

00:48:26 ◼   ► when the Yankees were just unbelievably,

00:48:28 ◼   ► unbelievably successful in the World Series every year,

00:48:33 ◼   ► and they won most of them.

00:48:34 ◼   ► But it was sort of a hard drinking, hard living team.

00:48:41 ◼   ► and a very interesting era.

00:48:45 ◼   ► It's sort of that Mad Men era of 20th century.

00:48:49 ◼   ► And there's so many good stories,

00:48:52 ◼   ► but Billy Martin led such an amazing life.

00:48:55 ◼   ► Ended up after becoming a player, was famously a manager.

00:48:58 ◼   ► I think he was fired by the Yankees five times,

00:49:02 ◼   ► but was hired six times as the manager.

00:49:07 ◼   ► Like imagine getting fired by the same boss five times

00:49:12 ◼   ► and then coming back for a sixth time.

00:49:15 ◼   ► It's truly, and it's a super,

00:49:18 ◼   ► it's one of the best biographies I've ever read.

00:49:20 ◼   ► It's certain aspects of some biographies

00:49:23 ◼   ► that I find dreadfully boring.

00:49:25 ◼   ► But this, it really, it's a thick book,

00:49:28 ◼   ► but it really feels like there's nothing in there.

00:49:32 ◼   ► There's no padding in there.

00:49:33 ◼   ► It really is, and you could tell that, you know,

00:49:36 ◼   ► to me, you can tell that he comes from a newspaper background where space is at a premium. So

00:49:41 ◼   ► that's my recommendation. It's a great story. I think any baseball fan, Yankee fan or not,

00:49:45 ◼   ► would really enjoy this story because it really takes baseball from the pre-modern era of

00:49:52 ◼   ► the 1950s through to the modern era of up through the 1980s when Billy Martin was still

00:49:58 ◼   ► managing. So that's my recommendation. And again, you can sign up for Audible at audible.com/talkshow.

00:50:06 ◼   ► next on our list. You know what? You were mentioning VIPs. I have just a small topic.

00:50:11 ◼   ► I use VIPs in email because I have notifications off for all of my email accounts. I may have

00:50:17 ◼   ► to change this really. And I've had it set for years now that I only get notifications

00:50:24 ◼   ► for VIPs. And then, and I've slowly but surely, every time I see an email that I didn't get

00:50:31 ◼   ► notified about and I think, "Ooh, I wish I'd been notified about that one. I really wish

00:50:36 ◼   ► I wish I would have gotten to that right away.

00:50:37 ◼   ► I add that whoever sent it to VIPs.

00:50:41 ◼   ► Well, guess what I found out?

00:50:43 ◼   ► You can only have 100 VIPs.

00:50:46 ◼   ► - I guess I'm not surprised that you of all people

00:50:52 ◼   ► hit up on that limit, but really only 100?

00:50:54 ◼   ► - 100, so once you have 100 and then you click the star

00:50:59 ◼   ► in mail to add someone, you get a dialogue box

00:51:02 ◼   ► that tells you you can't add anymore.

00:51:04 ◼   ► Let me see if I can.

00:51:06 ◼   ► So here's somebody who I would like to add.

00:51:08 ◼   ► And now I get a dialogue that says, could not add VIP.

00:51:12 ◼   ► A maximum of 100 VIPs is allowed.

00:51:14 ◼   ► Please remove any unused VIPs and try again.

00:51:18 ◼   ► OK.

00:51:20 ◼   ► This to me--

00:51:21 ◼   ► Unused VIPs.

00:51:22 ◼   ► Well, this is actually a tricky feature

00:51:24 ◼   ► because there is no go to a list of all--

00:51:27 ◼   ► there's no interface to get to just show me all my VIPs.

00:51:30 ◼   ► Surely if I could just open a window,

00:51:32 ◼   ► either in mail or in contacts or make a smart group in contacts that's only my VIPs, then

00:51:40 ◼   ► I could just scroll through the list and say, "Oh, I don't need," you know, "I'm sure I

00:51:43 ◼   ► could easily..."

00:51:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't talk to this person anymore.

00:51:46 ◼   ► Right.

00:51:47 ◼   ► I'm sure that I know for a fact that I've got people who worked for Apple PR who are

00:51:53 ◼   ► no longer with the company.

00:51:54 ◼   ► I know that they're in there, but there's no easy way to just get to a list of all your

00:51:59 ◼   ► VIPs.

00:52:00 ◼   ► the best I've found is to go to the VIPs mailbox and mail and then just scroll through past

00:52:06 ◼   ► well and go to and go to the, you know, sort by name and just start looking for names that

00:52:12 ◼   ► you don't care about anymore. But it's such a frustrating feature because I cannot imagine

00:52:18 ◼   ► that there's truly a need for a technical limit of 100 VIPs and it's such a nice even

00:52:22 ◼   ► number that I just imagine that when they were coding the feature that somebody decided

00:52:30 ◼   ► up front, well, let's, let's, you know, let's, you know, we don't want people making a ton

00:52:34 ◼   ► of them. Let's make a limit. And somebody just said, well, 100. All right. And then

00:52:38 ◼   ► somebody coded in, you know, like, I imagine there's just like one line of code where there's

00:52:43 ◼   ► like, if it's, you know,

00:52:44 ◼   ► Marie-Claire said limit to 100. Yeah. Like an 101.

00:52:48 ◼   ► Jon Streeter And that if Apple would, I mean, I guess somebody

00:52:51 ◼   ► out there is going to say, well, file a radar, I guess I should file a radar. But I feel

00:52:54 ◼   ► like somebody could just type in, change that from 100 to 500. And it's not going to, I

00:52:59 ◼   ► affect performance at all, right?

00:53:02 ◼   ► And I'm not even sure there needs to be a limit.

00:53:04 ◼   ► Is there really a limit?

00:53:05 ◼   ► Could you-- what would be the problem if--

00:53:09 ◼   ► I can't understand what the problem would be if you

00:53:12 ◼   ► were allowed to have 998 VIPs.

00:53:17 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I think that it's a--

00:53:19 ◼   ► how do we say-- a niche use case.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Because the vast majority of people

00:53:23 ◼   ► aren't really getting well.

00:53:25 ◼   ► The vast majority of, I would say,

00:53:26 ◼   ► normal computer users who just use email

00:53:29 ◼   ► for their work and maybe the occasional family email,

00:53:32 ◼   ► probably don't need more than 100 people.

00:53:35 ◼   ► But when you're dealing with--

00:53:37 ◼   ► if you work for a big company or if you

00:53:39 ◼   ► interact with a bunch of different PR people,

00:53:41 ◼   ► for example, like we do, not missing emails

00:53:45 ◼   ► from a large group of people becomes a vastly more

00:53:49 ◼   ► problematic issue.

00:53:50 ◼   ► And actually, I'm kind of surprised

00:53:52 ◼   ► that Apple didn't make that higher,

00:53:54 ◼   ► because I feel like there are a lot of people--

00:53:57 ◼   ► If you're in Apple internally, you're like,

00:53:59 ◼   ► oh, I can't miss an email from XYZ, all of these.

00:54:03 ◼   ► If Eddie ever emails me, if Tim ever emails me,

00:54:07 ◼   ► I probably need to have them set as VIPs.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:54:12 ◼   ► In my opinion, honestly, it's a workaround, right?

00:54:15 ◼   ► Because the, and I don't know how I feel

00:54:18 ◼   ► about this right now, but I'm leaning towards the fact

00:54:22 ◼   ► that our mail is gonna turn into,

00:54:25 ◼   ► like closer to Google's like auto, you know, contextual sorted mailboxes sooner or later.

00:54:32 ◼   ► Like there, Apple, Apple hasn't really experimented with this yet. Beyond like when you search,

00:54:38 ◼   ► it tries to give you top results. But I can't help but think that we're going to see core

00:54:43 ◼   ► ML used to try and really contextualize your emails. So that, okay, well, we know that

00:54:51 ◼   ► whenever you get an email from this person, you almost immediately write back. So we're

00:54:55 ◼   ► going to make sure that this this goes to the top of the list. And that's just that's

00:54:58 ◼   ► just something that doesn't exist yet in mail. So we'll we might see it down the line. But

00:55:03 ◼   ► I just I don't think that Apple in endgame wants you to have to organize your emails

00:55:08 ◼   ► or put them into folders or any of that they like the whole point of the problem of email

00:55:15 ◼   ► right now is just that it gets drowning. If you get too much, you get spam, you get everything

00:55:19 ◼   ► else. You get things that aren't spam, but basically are in the form of like 10 million.

00:55:26 ◼   ► You know, I can't count the amount of like shops that send me daily newsletters of like,

00:55:31 ◼   ► this is a sale. Don't you want this sale? And I was like, No, I bought one thing from

00:55:36 ◼   ► you once.

00:55:37 ◼   ► It's a real problem for me. I've always been bad at email. I say it on my website contact

00:55:43 ◼   ► forum that I'm a terrible correspondent. But it's it's gotten worse for me. It really is.

00:55:48 ◼   ► And part of it is that I'm a one-person company.

00:55:52 ◼   ► I mean, I guess, I mean, I've thought about it,

00:55:54 ◼   ► like hiring an assistant or something,

00:55:58 ◼   ► but it seems so decadent to me.

00:56:01 ◼   ► Like, I feel like I don't need an assistant.

00:56:04 ◼   ► All I have to do is write this website

00:56:06 ◼   ► and do a podcast 40 times a year.

00:56:09 ◼   ► It just seems ridiculous to me

00:56:12 ◼   ► that I can't answer my own email.

00:56:14 ◼   ► But I find that on days where I commit myself

00:56:17 ◼   ► like at least read every email that comes in and you know have like a my

00:56:21 ◼   ► today I have a smart mailbox that says like today and it's just every email in

00:56:26 ◼   ► these from these three accounts that's come in and last 24 hours and the days

00:56:32 ◼   ► where I'm like I'm gonna commit to zeroing out that not not like inbox zero

00:56:35 ◼   ► like forget that I mean just today's inbox zero the days when I do that I get

00:56:41 ◼   ► so much less done writing for daring fireball I really do like it just turns

00:56:46 ◼   ► it into like like a day where I have you know it just keeping up with my email

00:56:51 ◼   ► feels like a day where I have like a doctor's appointment and I need to pick

00:56:56 ◼   ► the kid up from school and or like there the kid has a basketball game after

00:57:01 ◼   ► school or something like that like it just feels like you know just email

00:57:05 ◼   ► alone it ruins my day really it literally does and then there's days

00:57:09 ◼   ► where I just like ignore it and like don't even look at my mail and I get so

00:57:13 ◼   ► much more done. Mm-hmm. No, absolutely. I at this point, I kind of and even I slack

00:57:20 ◼   ► is starting to go into that category for me too because I now have like seven

00:57:23 ◼   ► slack groups. But honestly the the only thing that I feel like I'm really

00:57:28 ◼   ► present and able to answer going back to our original conversation is messages

00:57:32 ◼   ► is these real-time notifications. Yeah. Because I'm like if it's real time then

00:57:36 ◼   ► I either have to answer it right this second or I just don't answer it. Yeah.

00:57:40 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:57:41 ◼   ► - And you know, I don't mind that.

00:57:43 ◼   ► - No, iMessage has changed, you know,

00:57:45 ◼   ► it's so essential to me, it really is.

00:57:47 ◼   ► It's because my iMessage is always at zero

00:57:51 ◼   ► or if it's not, it's like at three, you know?

00:57:54 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:57:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like, it's, oh,

00:57:58 ◼   ► I just haven't read this in the last hour.

00:58:01 ◼   ► I'm gonna go check it.

00:58:02 ◼   ► - Speaking of email, I got a great email.

00:58:05 ◼   ► I mean, I'm over the moon.

00:58:07 ◼   ► I got a great email yesterday from Amazon.com.

00:58:10 ◼   ► I got my settlement in the Apple eBooks antitrust settlement.

00:58:16 ◼   ► Did you get your credit yet?

00:58:17 ◼   ► - I found a thing.

00:58:21 ◼   ► Is this the one that says your App Store credit?

00:58:23 ◼   ► - I don't know about that.

00:58:25 ◼   ► This one's from Amazon.com and it says--

00:58:28 ◼   ► - See, I didn't get it.

00:58:29 ◼   ► - Dear John Gruber, you have a credit of $1.52

00:58:33 ◼   ► in your Amazon account.

00:58:34 ◼   ► Apple Incorporated funded this credit

00:58:36 ◼   ► to settle antitrust lawsuits brought

00:58:38 ◼   ► by state's attorney general and class plaintiffs

00:58:41 ◼   ► about the price of electronic e-books.

00:58:43 ◼   ► That's-- - Oh my lord.

00:58:47 ◼   ► - Fantastic, I got $1.52, thank God this--

00:58:50 ◼   ► - A whole dollar.

00:58:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't, ugh.

00:58:55 ◼   ► - I have a friend, I do have a friend

00:58:57 ◼   ► who when these emails first started coming out,

00:59:00 ◼   ► I have a friend in the one Slack group I'm really active in

00:59:03 ◼   ► who I think is truly a voracious reader,

00:59:06 ◼   ► and he got like $7.30.

00:59:08 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:59:11 ◼   ► - It's so ridiculous.

00:59:14 ◼   ► - Above and beyond the merits of that ebook case,

00:59:18 ◼   ► and my argument, again, I just think that,

00:59:22 ◼   ► I think that US antitrust law is, I've written about this,

00:59:26 ◼   ► but I think it's hopelessly distorted in the--

00:59:31 ◼   ► - It's convoluted.

00:59:32 ◼   ► but the basics of modern U S antitrust law and they come from actually, uh,

00:59:36 ◼   ► like the main theorists behind them was they actually, what's his name?

00:59:39 ◼   ► Robert Bork,

00:59:40 ◼   ► the infamous Reagan nominee to the Supreme court who got rejected.

00:59:45 ◼   ► Oh man. Um, but he, he, it'll like it in the seventies,

00:59:50 ◼   ► 1970s or there about, I could get to have the decade wrong.

00:59:52 ◼   ► They U S antitrust law become,

00:59:55 ◼   ► became solely focused on consumer prices and that the idea is that it's not,

01:00:01 ◼   ► This is how you tell if a monopoly is being abused,

01:00:03 ◼   ► if the prices consumers pay are unnaturally raised.

01:00:08 ◼   ► So a perfect example of that,

01:00:13 ◼   ► where it actually was, I think,

01:00:14 ◼   ► in the interest of both the market and consumers

01:00:18 ◼   ► and just fair, was breaking up AT&T.

01:00:23 ◼   ► Where, when I grew up, a long-distance phone call

01:00:28 ◼   ► cost like a dollar a minute.

01:00:31 ◼   ► And even as late as when I was in college,

01:00:35 ◼   ► like Amy was in Pittsburgh, I was in Philadelphia,

01:00:39 ◼   ► and the best way, you know,

01:00:42 ◼   ► the only ways we really communicated

01:00:43 ◼   ► were either on the phone or like there were terminal-based

01:00:48 ◼   ► text chatting things that we could do.

01:00:52 ◼   ► There was no, you couldn't talk over the internet.

01:00:57 ◼   ► You know, there wasn't anything like Skype.

01:00:58 ◼   ► It was impossible.

01:01:00 ◼   ► And it was like my biggest monthly cost,

01:01:03 ◼   ► even like up there with food was my phone bill.

01:01:08 ◼   ► Just from talking an hour once or twice a week

01:01:13 ◼   ► to Amy from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia.

01:01:15 ◼   ► It was ridiculous.

01:01:16 ◼   ► So there's a case where the phone companies,

01:01:21 ◼   ► the prices we paid for telephone calls were ridiculous.

01:01:24 ◼   ► And once they got broken up, it very, very quickly,

01:01:27 ◼   ► just not quickly enough for someone

01:01:28 ◼   ► went to college in the mid 90s, dropped to the point where nobody even thinks about long

01:01:32 ◼   ► distance anymore, right?

01:01:34 ◼   ► It doesn't really matter.

01:01:35 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like a fraction of a cent if it's not automatically included.

01:01:41 ◼   ► How far away the person is doesn't really even matter, let alone that we're using cell

01:01:45 ◼   ► phones that don't really…

01:01:47 ◼   ► It's just breaking it up was good for consumers.

01:01:52 ◼   ► I think it's ridiculous that…

01:01:54 ◼   ► I don't want to re-litigate the case, but I think it's ridiculous to argue that Apple

01:01:58 ◼   ► with iBooks was the antitrust violator

01:02:02 ◼   ► and Amazon with the Kindle,

01:02:05 ◼   ► which sells like 75% of all eBooks was the victim.

01:02:10 ◼   ► But anyway, the other thing,

01:02:12 ◼   ► and I forget who wrote about this,

01:02:14 ◼   ► I don't know if it was Ben Thompson or who,

01:02:15 ◼   ► but there's a good case to be made

01:02:17 ◼   ► that class action lawsuits in general are a racket,

01:02:21 ◼   ► a true racket, and the only people

01:02:24 ◼   ► who truly benefit from them financially ever

01:02:26 ◼   ► are the lawyers who take like 20% or something like that.

01:02:30 ◼   ► So there's lawyers who brought this case against Apple

01:02:34 ◼   ► get like 20% of the settlement,

01:02:36 ◼   ► which is a windfall because it just goes to like one law firm

01:02:40 ◼   ► and the actual quote unquote victims,

01:02:42 ◼   ► us the consumers who were buying Kindle books

01:02:45 ◼   ► that cost $11.99 instead of $9.99.

01:02:48 ◼   ► I got $1.52.

01:02:50 ◼   ► - One whole book, congratulations, John.

01:02:54 ◼   ► - Thank God.

01:02:55 ◼   ► I can't buy a book for $1.52.

01:02:58 ◼   ► No, the difference in one book.

01:03:01 ◼   ► You didn't get one of these?

01:03:05 ◼   ► I have a different email in my box.

01:03:09 ◼   ► I have an email that says something about--

01:03:11 ◼   ► hold on-- e-book settlement credit redistribution of funds.

01:03:15 ◼   ► You previously received credits in your Apple account resulting

01:03:18 ◼   ► from settlements in the case titled In Re-Electronic Books

01:03:21 ◼   ► Antitrust Litigation.

01:03:22 ◼   ► We are happy to inform you that a supplemental distribution

01:03:25 ◼   ► credits has been approved by October 18th you will have a new automatic credit in your apple account

01:03:29 ◼   ► you can use your credit online for products or services sold by apple so apparently i got

01:03:35 ◼   ► something to use on the iBook store i got the same email i only found it though by searching

01:03:41 ◼   ► it went to my junk it's from ebook settlement at uh qg email qg email no i wonder why that went

01:03:49 ◼   ► - I wonder why that went to spam.

01:03:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, hmm, I wonder.

01:03:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I didn't check my junk.

01:03:56 ◼   ► Maybe my Amazon credit.

01:03:59 ◼   ► Or maybe it's just 'cause I don't buy books on,

01:04:01 ◼   ► I actually am one of the few people who buy books on iBooks.

01:04:05 ◼   ► I vastly prefer it.

01:04:08 ◼   ► - I tend to buy 'em on paper, to be honest.

01:04:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's fair.

01:04:14 ◼   ► - I really do.

01:04:15 ◼   ► - That's fair.

01:04:16 ◼   ► I buy, you know what, this is a,

01:04:17 ◼   ► maybe this is a little bit of a digression,

01:04:19 ◼   ► but I feel like if it's a book that I'm going to pulp through, you know,

01:04:23 ◼   ► like it's the kind of thing that I want to just read in the summer or I reading

01:04:27 ◼   ► on a plane or something,

01:04:28 ◼   ► or if it's the start of a series where I know I'm going to have to buy like 12

01:04:32 ◼   ► books, I buy it all online. Cause I'm like,

01:04:34 ◼   ► chances are I don't really care enough about these books that I want them in my

01:04:38 ◼   ► personal library, but things like children's books, which I collect and,

01:04:42 ◼   ► or if I read a book online that I love, I will buy that in paper.

01:04:47 ◼   ► But I've, I don't know, I've moved too many times, John.

01:04:49 ◼   ► I feel like I've moved house way too many times

01:04:52 ◼   ► to buy paper copies of all these books.

01:04:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I just moved.

01:04:58 ◼   ► We moved earlier this year, but just last weekend,

01:05:02 ◼   ► we were rearranging, we still, you know,

01:05:05 ◼   ► we still have the one room in the house

01:05:06 ◼   ► that's just full of boxes that we haven't unpacked yet.

01:05:09 ◼   ► And we decided it would be better

01:05:10 ◼   ► to move them down the basement.

01:05:11 ◼   ► And so I moved these boxes down the basement.

01:05:15 ◼   ► And I was reminded A, of just how out of shape I am,

01:05:23 ◼   ► and B, just how goddamn heavy one box of books is.

01:05:28 ◼   ► It really is the heaviest goddamn thing.

01:05:32 ◼   ► When I was in high school, I had a job.

01:05:35 ◼   ► We-- my high school in between 10th and 11th grade

01:05:42 ◼   ► moved from one building to another.

01:05:45 ◼   ► It was, we used to, when I was a small kid,

01:05:47 ◼   ► we had the district I was in had an elementary school,

01:05:50 ◼   ► a middle school, and a high school.

01:05:52 ◼   ► And it was a very small public school.

01:05:54 ◼   ► Shrunk enough that to save money,

01:05:58 ◼   ► they closed the middle school.

01:06:00 ◼   ► And then instead of having one to four in one school,

01:06:04 ◼   ► grades five to eight in the middle school,

01:06:06 ◼   ► and then nine to 10, they split it to,

01:06:08 ◼   ► one to six was in the elementary school,

01:06:10 ◼   ► and seven to 12 was at the high school.

01:06:12 ◼   ► Long story short,

01:06:15 ◼   ► they hired a bunch of kids for the summer

01:06:17 ◼   ► to help move the school.

01:06:20 ◼   ► And so that was my summer job that year,

01:06:23 ◼   ► was working as a mover.

01:06:25 ◼   ► And it was hard labor.

01:06:30 ◼   ► I mean, moving is hard.

01:06:33 ◼   ► But I played basketball and I was athletic

01:06:36 ◼   ► at that point in my life.

01:06:39 ◼   ► And so it was sort of like getting a summer job

01:06:42 ◼   ► lifting weights.

01:06:43 ◼   ► I mean, it wasn't, you know, that's how I saw it,

01:06:45 ◼   ► but no air conditioning, moving,

01:06:49 ◼   ► and you know, everything is hard to move.

01:06:51 ◼   ► Desks are hard to move.

01:06:53 ◼   ► All sorts of things are hard to move.

01:06:54 ◼   ► - Books are worse to move.

01:06:55 ◼   ► - The goddamn library was the worst.

01:06:58 ◼   ► It was just hell.

01:06:59 ◼   ► And the worst part about it was that the library

01:07:02 ◼   ► was one of the last things that we moved.

01:07:04 ◼   ► - So you were already all exhausted.

01:07:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it was one of the last things we moved

01:07:11 ◼   ► in August, but the kids, it was, you know, I don't forget how many of us they hired.

01:07:16 ◼   ► They hired at least like a dozen of us. But all of my friends, all the kids who played

01:07:21 ◼   ► soccer quit because soccer practice started and I didn't play soccer. So it was like there

01:07:27 ◼   ► were fewer of us. This is a true story. This is… So, now I told you I played basketball.

01:07:37 ◼   ► And my basketball coach, who I loved, truly, truly loved, it's, you know, everything

01:07:44 ◼   ► you'd ever want in a coach.

01:07:46 ◼   ► A true inspiration for life more than just sports.

01:07:50 ◼   ► His day job was a construction worker.

01:07:52 ◼   ► And just by coincidence, the company he worked for was hired to do the construction work

01:07:57 ◼   ► to renovate the middle school to turn it into the new high school.

01:08:02 ◼   ► And so at one point, the library, one of the reasons we moved it last was that the new

01:08:07 ◼   ► library was physically one of the last things to be finished. And so we moved a whole bunch

01:08:14 ◼   ► of the library books from the old high school to the new high school, but we put them in

01:08:18 ◼   ► the gym. So we're going to have to move them again from the gym to the library.

01:08:23 ◼   ► Oh no.

01:08:24 ◼   ► And so I, I constructed a giant pile like six to eight feet tall and made more or less

01:08:31 ◼   ► like a little igloo with a little way to crawl in. And then I, I'd crawl in there and take

01:08:36 ◼   ► a nap.

01:08:41 ◼   ► You know what?

01:08:42 ◼   ► I would live in a book here.

01:08:44 ◼   ► I would be okay with that.

01:08:45 ◼   ► Well, the one time I'm in there taking a nap and I wake up and I hear, "Groomer!"

01:08:49 ◼   ► And I thought, "Oh, shit.

01:08:50 ◼   ► I'm in trouble.

01:08:51 ◼   ► Somebody's caught me."

01:08:52 ◼   ► And I look up and there's my coach staring at me through there.

01:08:56 ◼   ► And he's like, "What the fuck are you doing in there?"

01:08:58 ◼   ► And I said, "I was taking a nap."

01:09:01 ◼   ► And he just muttered like, "Jesus Christ."

01:09:05 ◼   ► I just walked away.

01:09:07 ◼   ► - Oh my gosh.

01:09:10 ◼   ► Well, did you dream of literature at least?

01:09:12 ◼   ► - No.

01:09:13 ◼   ► Have I ever told you that I've never really held a job

01:09:15 ◼   ► for very long?

01:09:16 ◼   ► - I wonder why.

01:09:20 ◼   ► Oh man, it just sounds like you're better working

01:09:26 ◼   ► on your own time with your own book naps.

01:09:29 ◼   ► - I think that's probably true.

01:09:31 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break here.

01:09:33 ◼   ► And speaking of naps, let's talk about Squarespace.

01:09:37 ◼   ► That's the worst segue ever.

01:09:38 ◼   ► There's nothing, there's really nothing related to naps

01:09:40 ◼   ► with Squarespace.

01:09:41 ◼   ► - Maybe if you're starting up a new mattress reviewing book.

01:09:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, there you go.

01:09:45 ◼   ► - Perhaps. - Yeah, yeah.

01:09:46 ◼   ► - You could do it on Squarespace.

01:09:48 ◼   ► - I've heard that that's a thing.

01:09:49 ◼   ► Squarespace, look, next time you need to make a website,

01:09:55 ◼   ► start with Squarespace.

01:09:56 ◼   ► Make that, it's where you got,

01:09:58 ◼   ► you can do everything at Squarespace.

01:10:00 ◼   ► You can register your domain, you can pick a template,

01:10:02 ◼   ► You can modify the template. You can create a blog,

01:10:06 ◼   ► you can host a podcast,

01:10:08 ◼   ► you can create a store and have all the e-commerce stuff taken care of by

01:10:12 ◼   ► Squarespace.

01:10:12 ◼   ► You don't have to sit there and sign up for SSL certificates and stuff like that

01:10:17 ◼   ► and, and compliance with all the things you have to do to take credit cards and,

01:10:21 ◼   ► and payments over the web. Nope.

01:10:22 ◼   ► You get it right there with Squarespace when you want to put a store or what,

01:10:26 ◼   ► if you're a designer and you want to create a portfolio for your work,

01:10:29 ◼   ► show off your work, guess what you could do it with Squarespace.

01:10:31 ◼   ► Really, there's no other way, there's no reason not to start with Squarespace and see how

01:10:37 ◼   ► far you can go and whether you can take it.

01:10:40 ◼   ► I keep saying this over and over again.

01:10:42 ◼   ► The number one thing to me in the back of my mind about Squarespace, if I didn't know

01:10:46 ◼   ► better is I would think that it was the sort of thing where sure, there's a dozen templates

01:10:52 ◼   ► to choose from, but then your website's going to look like one of these 12 Squarespace websites.

01:10:58 ◼   ► That's not the way it works at all.

01:10:59 ◼   ► It's so customizable.

01:11:01 ◼   ► ridiculous. I swear you'd be shocked at how many websites you could visit on a regular basis are

01:11:07 ◼   ► actually backed by Squarespace. I don't even know what led me to do it, but I did a view source on

01:11:12 ◼   ► the homepage at Pixar.com and their Squarespace tags are in there at the top. That's how good

01:11:19 ◼   ► Squarespace is. And that's one of the other things too about Squarespace is that you never ever, ever

01:11:24 ◼   ► have to worry about your site getting too popular, getting fireballed or something like that. Like

01:11:30 ◼   ► the performance of their sites is just top notch.

01:11:32 ◼   ► They really-- it's engineering-wise top notch.

01:11:35 ◼   ► And they have unbelievable technical support

01:11:40 ◼   ► when you do need help with something.

01:11:42 ◼   ► You can just call them up on the phone,

01:11:43 ◼   ► and a real person answers and will talk you

01:11:46 ◼   ► through whatever you need to do.

01:11:49 ◼   ► So your sites look professionally designed,

01:11:51 ◼   ► regardless of your skill level.

01:11:52 ◼   ► No coding technical knowledge of HTML, CSS, or JavaScript

01:11:56 ◼   ► required.

01:11:58 ◼   ► But if you do have those sort of skills, you can dig in and modify it.

01:12:03 ◼   ► Intuitive, easy to use tools.

01:12:04 ◼   ► And if you sign up for a year, you get a free domain.

01:12:09 ◼   ► So start your free trial today at squarespace.com.

01:12:12 ◼   ► And if you do decide to sign up for Squarespace,

01:12:14 ◼   ► make sure to use the offer code talk show,

01:12:17 ◼   ► and you'll get 10% off your first purchase.

01:12:19 ◼   ► You can save 10% off your whole first year, save the 10%,

01:12:22 ◼   ► and get the free domain.

01:12:23 ◼   ► So just go to squarespace.com.

01:12:24 ◼   ► No special code, just squarespace.com.

01:12:27 ◼   ► And the only thing you need to remember is that offer code talk show at and that's when you purchase it. So my thanks to Squarespace for their continuing support of the talk show and Daring Firewall.

01:12:37 ◼   ► I made my wedding website with Squarespace.

01:12:40 ◼   ► There you go. You probably wouldn't have had it any other way.

01:12:43 ◼   ► No, you know what, it was a whole heck of a lot less painful than what I was originally going to do, which was hand code it myself.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Smart. When are you getting married?

01:12:55 ◼   ► Uh, 10 days? 11 days?

01:12:58 ◼   ► I didn't know that. Holy hell, congratulations.

01:13:00 ◼   ► What the hell are you doing doing a podcast? You've got stuff to do.

01:13:03 ◼   ► I do have stuff to do.

01:13:05 ◼   ► You don't have time for this.

01:13:07 ◼   ► Holy smokes.

01:13:10 ◼   ► I make time. Yeah, I've got a reminders list of like 32 things.

01:13:15 ◼   ► Holy smokes, Serenity.

01:13:16 ◼   ► I got the website done. I just finished writing a giant run around puzzle poem,

01:13:24 ◼   ► which I may have overdone this a little bit, but--

01:13:27 ◼   ► - You? - No.

01:13:29 ◼   ► Yeah, me?

01:13:30 ◼   ► Yeah, October 29th, it'll be fun.

01:13:33 ◼   ► - That's congratulations, wow.

01:13:35 ◼   ► - Thank you, yeah.

01:13:37 ◼   ► I'm really also excited by the way

01:13:39 ◼   ► that the iPhone 10 pre-orders are coming out

01:13:41 ◼   ► like right around that time.

01:13:43 ◼   ► So I'm just not gonna sleep for two weeks, it'll be great.

01:13:47 ◼   ► - I am so curious about how that is going.

01:13:51 ◼   ► 'cause we have heard collectively as far as I know,

01:13:55 ◼   ► absolutely not one word from Apple

01:13:59 ◼   ► about the iPhone X since the event.

01:14:02 ◼   ► Like, you know, we have a date

01:14:04 ◼   ► and we haven't heard anything that the date isn't going to,

01:14:08 ◼   ► is gonna be delayed, but there's been no,

01:14:10 ◼   ► I mean, just nothing.

01:14:11 ◼   ► It's sort of weird, you know?

01:14:13 ◼   ► It's just sort of like a,

01:14:17 ◼   ► here's this amazing phone that we've been anticipating

01:14:20 ◼   ► for an entire year.

01:14:22 ◼   ► Here's a date two months from now.

01:14:24 ◼   ► And in the meantime, nothing.

01:14:27 ◼   ► Other than I guess--

01:14:28 ◼   ► - Have fun sitting on your hands.

01:14:29 ◼   ► - Right, I guess the only thing we've really heard

01:14:31 ◼   ► from Apple about this since the event

01:14:33 ◼   ► are the developer guidelines for how to deal

01:14:36 ◼   ► with the rounded corners and the notch.

01:14:39 ◼   ► But even that was obviously prepared

01:14:41 ◼   ► in advance of the event.

01:14:42 ◼   ► It just was rolled out to the developer channels

01:14:45 ◼   ► in the week afterwards.

01:14:46 ◼   ► I mean, you know--

01:14:49 ◼   ► We can't even make a topic out of it.

01:14:52 ◼   ► It's not something, there's nothing we know about it.

01:14:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's literally, so there's a new iPhone coming

01:14:58 ◼   ► in about a week and a half, Jon.

01:15:00 ◼   ► Do you think that they'll actually ship it

01:15:03 ◼   ► on the day that it is available?

01:15:05 ◼   ► Like, is there going to be stock?

01:15:07 ◼   ► - I don't know.

01:15:08 ◼   ► I would guess that if it was delayed,

01:15:10 ◼   ► that they would announce it as soon as they knew

01:15:13 ◼   ► it was gonna be delayed, because the later,

01:15:16 ◼   ► get the bad news out of the way.

01:15:18 ◼   ► So I guess it's going to go on sale on time and we'll ship,

01:15:21 ◼   ► but in what quantity, who knows?

01:15:23 ◼   ► Is it gonna be, there's like 10 of them available,

01:15:25 ◼   ► and if you're like one of the lucky people

01:15:27 ◼   ► who get your order in at 12.00 and three seconds,

01:15:32 ◼   ► three seconds after they flip the switch at the store

01:15:34 ◼   ► that you're one of the lucky ones who gets one,

01:15:36 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:15:37 ◼   ► Is it, are they successfully going to pump 15 million of them

01:15:42 ◼   ► into people's hands on November 3rd?

01:15:45 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:15:46 ◼   ► But as far as I know--

01:15:47 ◼   ► - Apple pencil, O'clock.

01:15:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

01:15:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know nothing.

01:15:53 ◼   ► - All right, one of the other big topics

01:15:54 ◼   ► that have come up this week was the reliability

01:15:58 ◼   ► of modern MacBook keyboards, the new low travel,

01:16:02 ◼   ► I think the new ones are the butterfly,

01:16:05 ◼   ► or is butterfly the old?

01:16:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a variation on the butterfly.

01:16:10 ◼   ► - And this week was prompted by an absolutely, to me,

01:16:15 ◼   ► outstanding story that Casey Johnston wrote for the outline about her like six

01:16:22 ◼   ► month or so old MacBook Pro which she you know I love that I just love the

01:16:28 ◼   ► lead of the story where it's just you you know the you are there style of

01:16:31 ◼   ► she's at the Genius Bar and the guys running like the third of three like

01:16:36 ◼   ► half-hour software diagnostics on her MacBook because this it's like the space

01:16:42 ◼   ► bar doesn't work or every time she hits the space bar she gets two spaces is the problem

01:16:47 ◼   ► and the guys says it could be a piece of dust and it's the third time she's had to take it in for

01:16:53 ◼   ► the same problem and it's the third time that the genius you know a different third different genius

01:16:58 ◼   ► to say it could be a piece of dust and and it's like she's incredible like the first time it

01:17:03 ◼   ► happened she just thought she got a dopey genius you know because how could it be a piece of you

01:17:08 ◼   ► you know, how could a piece of dust break your actually do this,

01:17:12 ◼   ► break your brand new, uh, you know, Mac book, uh, keyboard. Uh,

01:17:17 ◼   ► but now that it's the third, it's sorta like, huh,

01:17:21 ◼   ► I guess this is the standard answer and wow.

01:17:25 ◼   ► And I just know anecdotally, you know, uh, I've heard from, you know,

01:17:30 ◼   ► I hear from a lot of people cause I, you know, people,

01:17:33 ◼   ► random readers will write in with the problems or listeners of the show,

01:17:37 ◼   ► But even just friends, I have friends who've had problems with these keyboards.

01:17:42 ◼   ► And again, separate the subjective, like when the keyboard is operating perfectly as designed,

01:17:51 ◼   ► whether you like it or not, which is debatable.

01:17:54 ◼   ► And I'm almost infamous for having very picky taste in maybe even eclectic taste in keyboards

01:18:01 ◼   ► with my preference for mechanical ones at the desktop, like the Apple Extended Keyboard 2.

01:18:06 ◼   ► put aside that subjective opinion of the keyboard objectively. It,

01:18:11 ◼   ► it seems obvious that there is a severe problem with the reliability of these

01:18:15 ◼   ► keyboards, that they break free keys, get stuck. Uh,

01:18:19 ◼   ► yeah. And it's, I just had a friend the other day,

01:18:25 ◼   ► just the day I linked it and he was like, amazing.

01:18:26 ◼   ► I cannot believe that you posted this this day and he sent me like a video and

01:18:30 ◼   ► it's like his cue key, like every other time he presses it, it stays down.

01:18:34 ◼   ► Like it's so it's not even like a key that is you need all the time.

01:18:38 ◼   ► Like somebody told me that somebody on Twitter said that their I key was stuck

01:18:42 ◼   ► and the goal and the genius suggested, uh,

01:18:45 ◼   ► just not using the letter I and uh, until it gets fixed or something.

01:18:51 ◼   ► I, I, and it's like, how, how can you, you know,

01:18:53 ◼   ► if you don't want to send it away for three days, uh, you know,

01:18:57 ◼   ► just don't use the letter I and he'd like looked at him like, are you serious?

01:19:01 ◼   ► Is this, I mean,

01:19:02 ◼   ► like, right? Like, maybe if it was like the tilde key, you

01:19:08 ◼   ► know, the one with the backtick? Yeah, maybe you could actually

01:19:10 ◼   ► get by for a while, unless you're like writing Perl code or

01:19:13 ◼   ► something. There's a key that maybe you don't need all that

01:19:18 ◼   ► often. But it's like, there's a real problem here. I mean,

01:19:22 ◼   ► there's, I don't think there's any question about it. I mean,

01:19:24 ◼   ► it obviously doesn't affect everybody. That's the other

01:19:26 ◼   ► thing, too, is it's like, there's some people who it's

01:19:28 ◼   ► It's like, I so want to not believe anything bad about Apple

01:19:33 ◼   ► that they're like, well, I have this keyboard

01:19:36 ◼   ► and none of my keys are stuck,

01:19:37 ◼   ► so they must be doing something wrong.

01:19:40 ◼   ► And it's like, no, it's--

01:19:41 ◼   ► - It's just, it literally, I don't know.

01:19:46 ◼   ► I think it comes down to A, do you eat near your computer?

01:19:50 ◼   ► B, do you use your computer in an area where debris

01:19:55 ◼   ► or other particles might get under it?

01:19:57 ◼   ► and see how often do you use your computer.

01:20:01 ◼   ► Like those three things, I think,

01:20:04 ◼   ► make a huge difference in how that keyboard works.

01:20:06 ◼   ► Because I didn't have any problems with it

01:20:08 ◼   ► up until September when we went out for the iPhone launch.

01:20:14 ◼   ► And when I was sitting down after we'd done the event,

01:20:17 ◼   ► and we were hanging out at the visitors center

01:20:20 ◼   ► and writing some things, and I made the mistake

01:20:24 ◼   ► of eating a sandwich next to my computer.

01:20:27 ◼   ► And I don't normally do this.

01:20:28 ◼   ► I think we've had this discussion before.

01:20:30 ◼   ► I don't really eat near my computer.

01:20:32 ◼   ► But I ate a sandwich, and two little tiny crumbs somehow

01:20:36 ◼   ► got stuck under the R key and the space key, respectively.

01:20:40 ◼   ► And therein, I spent probably five days hammering

01:20:45 ◼   ► both of those keys to try and break down

01:20:48 ◼   ► whatever molecule got stuck in it to make it unresponsive.

01:20:53 ◼   ► And that was miserable.

01:20:54 ◼   ► And since then, I've had occasional problems

01:20:56 ◼   ► with the space bar.

01:20:57 ◼   ► I was just like, what is going on?

01:20:59 ◼   ► - It's a design problem on Apple's part though,

01:21:01 ◼   ► because you can't design for what people should do

01:21:05 ◼   ► if you believe people should never eat near their computer

01:21:09 ◼   ► or use their computer in a dusty environment.

01:21:12 ◼   ► You have to design for what people do do

01:21:15 ◼   ► and people do eat near their computers.

01:21:17 ◼   ► I mean, my son, I don't, but my son does.

01:21:20 ◼   ► 'Cause my son's MacBook,

01:21:21 ◼   ► my son and I have the exact same MacBook.

01:21:23 ◼   ► We have a three-year-old mid-2014 13-inch MacBook Pro.

01:21:28 ◼   ► And we didn't quite buy 'em at the same time.

01:21:33 ◼   ► I got mine first,

01:21:33 ◼   ► and then he got his for Christmas that year.

01:21:36 ◼   ► Mine is in better condition than his,

01:21:41 ◼   ► but his is in good condition for a 13-year-old kid.

01:21:45 ◼   ► I think with a three-year-old--

01:21:47 ◼   ► - With a MacBook.

01:21:48 ◼   ► - At his school, starting in seventh grade,

01:21:52 ◼   ► the kids are expected to take a notebook to school every day.

01:21:55 ◼   ► So it's not just like an around the house type thing.

01:21:58 ◼   ► But around the house, it's his TV, because he watches--

01:22:03 ◼   ► his TV is like YouTube and Netflix.

01:22:08 ◼   ► And his preferred device by far is his MacBook.

01:22:13 ◼   ► He has an iPad that's practically unused.

01:22:15 ◼   ► And he uses his phone, but the MacBook has the bigger screen.

01:22:19 ◼   ► and the fact that it's always probable up

01:22:23 ◼   ► compared to an iPad is a huge, you know,

01:22:26 ◼   ► it's a huge appeal to him.

01:22:28 ◼   ► But that means he eats with it, it's, you know,

01:22:31 ◼   ► again, it's not a messy, it's not like it's smeared

01:22:33 ◼   ► with food, but he's definitely got crumbs under it.

01:22:36 ◼   ► And his space bar got stuck.

01:22:38 ◼   ► The space bar on his three-year-old MacBook Pro

01:22:40 ◼   ► got stuck recently, and he just lived with it.

01:22:44 ◼   ► Even though it was stuck, it still worked,

01:22:46 ◼   ► which is, it was amazing.

01:22:48 ◼   ► Like it didn't really feel like it was going down, but when you hit it, it was almost like

01:22:52 ◼   ► the space bar on an iPad keyboard, you know, on the screen, right?

01:22:56 ◼   ► It was like a touch space bar.

01:22:58 ◼   ► Like you'd touch it, it didn't click, but a space would appear where you're typing.

01:23:03 ◼   ► So he was like, "Yeah, it's fine."

01:23:04 ◼   ► And I was like, "No, I can fix this."

01:23:06 ◼   ► And I, you know, used like a little prying tool to pop the space bar off.

01:23:12 ◼   ► And I didn't see anything in particular, but there was, you know, just some schmutz, got

01:23:16 ◼   ► the air can of air out, blew it around, popped the space bar back on, clicked properly into

01:23:22 ◼   ► place and good as new. Like I didn't even have to take it to an Apple store and it was

01:23:28 ◼   ► totally fixable. And that's an extreme condition. This is a kid who eats a lot of sandwiches

01:23:33 ◼   ► near his keyboard. So it's not just the fact, like the problem with these new MacBook keyboards

01:23:38 ◼   ► isn't just the fact that the keys get stuck uncommonly easy, it's that the fix for it

01:23:45 ◼   ► is incredibly inconvenient.

01:23:49 ◼   ► They send it away and replace the entire top of the bottom

01:23:53 ◼   ► of the computer.

01:23:54 ◼   ► It takes like three days to turn around.

01:23:56 ◼   ► Yeah, that's not fantastic.

01:24:02 ◼   ► So how did you pop the key off?

01:24:03 ◼   ► Did you just use a spudger?

01:24:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I just used a spudger.

01:24:06 ◼   ► I actually did some--

01:24:08 ◼   ► this is one of the areas where YouTube is so cool.

01:24:10 ◼   ► Like just search YouTube for stuck space bar on a MacBook

01:24:15 ◼   ► and you'll find videos of people who, you know, doing it.

01:24:21 ◼   ► So you can gain the experience

01:24:23 ◼   ► of seeing somebody do it properly.

01:24:25 ◼   ► The way I did it and the way some of the videos that I saw

01:24:27 ◼   ► that looked to me like the safest way of doing it were

01:24:30 ◼   ► is to go from the bottom of the space bar

01:24:33 ◼   ► and pop the bottom up first and then very carefully,

01:24:39 ◼   ► you know, unclip the rest of them.

01:24:40 ◼   ► And it's, you know, you study it, if you look at it,

01:24:43 ◼   ► and you can look at the videos,

01:24:44 ◼   ► it's pretty easy to see how it goes back on

01:24:47 ◼   ► and where it connects.

01:24:48 ◼   ► And now again, this is not the current keyboard,

01:24:50 ◼   ► this is the last generation keyboard.

01:24:52 ◼   ► Before doing that, before popping the key off,

01:24:57 ◼   ► I tried just blowing air without popping it off.

01:25:00 ◼   ► You know, it's sort of like,

01:25:01 ◼   ► do the least invasive thing first,

01:25:03 ◼   ► just sort of try to blow, and that didn't fix it.

01:25:06 ◼   ► but just popping it off, blowing air,

01:25:09 ◼   ► just rubbing anything off and making sure

01:25:11 ◼   ► the little rubber thing in the center

01:25:12 ◼   ► that's actually where the key press registers was clean

01:25:16 ◼   ► and then popping it back on and it was good as new.

01:25:19 ◼   ► It seems ridiculous to me that to get an unstuck key fixed,

01:25:21 ◼   ► they have to send your computer away for three days.

01:25:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, it shouldn't be that hard.

01:25:26 ◼   ► It really shouldn't.

01:25:27 ◼   ► - And when I wrote about it,

01:25:29 ◼   ► it's like the keyboard has to be,

01:25:32 ◼   ► again, feel a bit aside,

01:25:33 ◼   ► whether you like the way this new keyboard feels or not,

01:25:36 ◼   ► or whether you think the sound is weird,

01:25:38 ◼   ► the sound is a little clickier.

01:25:40 ◼   ► In my testing of the new MacBook Pros last year,

01:25:46 ◼   ► within a week I got to like it.

01:25:48 ◼   ► And I do see, I love the way that the keys

01:25:51 ◼   ► don't wiggle around at all.

01:25:52 ◼   ► Like in a sense, it does feel more premium

01:25:55 ◼   ► when it's working properly,

01:25:56 ◼   ► 'cause the keys are sort of like,

01:25:58 ◼   ► and the way the whole key goes down at once.

01:26:00 ◼   ► I think if I owned one and it worked properly,

01:26:04 ◼   ► I'd get used to it quickly.

01:26:05 ◼   ► and grow to like it.

01:26:10 ◼   ► I think all laptops... I've never had a laptop keyboard, any laptop keyboard that

01:26:13 ◼   ► to me feels as good as

01:26:15 ◼   ► as a extended keyboard to mechanical keyboard or even

01:26:19 ◼   ► even just the the current Apple modern

01:26:22 ◼   ► you know wireless keyboard just because there's more room for the keys to travel.

01:26:26 ◼   ► But your keyboard on your laptop has to be reliable, it has to be.

01:26:32 ◼   ► Like it's, you know, and again, every everybody's computer, you know, or some number of every computer is going to have problems and have to go in, you have to send it to the store and be without it for a few days.

01:26:43 ◼   ► And it's a first generation, you know, the touch, the touch bar Mac is still technically a first generation product as annoying as that is, it's still, you know, it's the caveats of early, you know, early adopter apply,

01:26:56 ◼   ► But it really does seem like the nature of this keyboard is that you

01:26:59 ◼   ► I don't know that you can expect to go three years without having the keyboard get stuck

01:27:05 ◼   ► And that's a huge problem. Like I don't know. I just feel like I want my MacBook to be ready to go

01:27:12 ◼   ► with complete reliability

01:27:15 ◼   ► All the time every day, you know non-stop and the things that have to be reliable the keyboard

01:27:21 ◼   ► The screen and the trackpad have to be completely reliable

01:27:25 ◼   ► Those are the three, you know, and anything else like how fast it is, how much RAM it is, that's all, you know, configuring.

01:27:32 ◼   ► But the things you actually interface with, the thing you look at is the screen and the two things you touch are the keyboard and the trackpad.

01:27:40 ◼   ► They have to be completely reliable. The fundamental nature of the device is what you see and what you touch.

01:27:47 ◼   ► Yeah, and if it's, if you get stuck keys or if you get a trackpad that's glitchy or doesn't

01:27:54 ◼   ► move smoothly, I mean it's the same thing as the early, you know, like the resistive

01:28:00 ◼   ► touch screens, right?

01:28:02 ◼   ► Which were just so awful to use.

01:28:05 ◼   ► And it's like if your main interaction point with a device is not great, you're not going

01:28:11 ◼   ► to want to use the device.

01:28:13 ◼   ► Or you're going to get frustrated with it.

01:28:15 ◼   ► That's a perfect example. It really is. Just as a semi-recent example, we had the Wii U,

01:28:24 ◼   ► which the one that came—that's the Wii that—the successor to the Wii that came

01:28:28 ◼   ► with a controller that had a touchscreen on the controller. And the touchscreen was so—I

01:28:35 ◼   ► don't think it was resistive. I think it was capacitive, but it was so bad, and it

01:28:39 ◼   ► had lag, that it just made it feel unreliable. It just felt like—and once you were used

01:28:47 ◼   ► to iPhone and Android caliber touch screens, it's just unacceptable to ship one that

01:28:53 ◼   ► had lag. But that's exactly true. Like, airline seatback touch screens, right? They're

01:29:05 ◼   ► terrible. They're absolutely terrible because every once in a while your touch doesn't

01:29:09 ◼   ► It has to be completely reliable.

01:29:12 ◼   ► And I really do worry.

01:29:14 ◼   ► I worry about what this says about Apple's priorities.

01:29:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, in this, I am of two minds on it because, again, this is a first generation

01:29:27 ◼   ► product and I feel like Apple has probably gotten enough complaints about the keyboard

01:29:32 ◼   ► at this point that they're going to have to figure out how to fix it for the next version.

01:29:38 ◼   ► But it's definitely them saying, the keyboard needs to be this big and it needs to be pretty,

01:29:45 ◼   ► make it work.

01:29:47 ◼   ► And not actually realizing that you can't just say, make it work on one of the core

01:29:54 ◼   ► features of your product.

01:29:57 ◼   ► It needs to have the same, you know, they put so much care into this darn trackpad,

01:30:01 ◼   ► right?

01:30:02 ◼   ► Like the trackpad is a work of art in some ways.

01:30:06 ◼   ► For them to just be like, yeah, I know that more people are using touch at this point

01:30:09 ◼   ► And they're probably not using keyboards that much but we still write on them

01:30:12 ◼   ► Like until until you can give me a haptic capacitive keyboard on a touchscreen

01:30:18 ◼   ► That actually feels like writing on a keyboard. I'm still gonna be using my macbook pro keyboard like the way

01:30:23 ◼   ► So that Macbook trackpads or even back to the power book era, you know, I've always been the gold standard of trackpads for

01:30:32 ◼   ► everything for their accuracy for you know doing what you want happening and something you don't

01:30:39 ◼   ► want not happening right like every time you move the cursor it moves every time you click it clicks

01:30:44 ◼   ► every time you're just typing you know it resists you know your touches from your palm or something

01:30:49 ◼   ► like that right like and infamously i mean i think it's gotten better because i think it's just one

01:30:55 ◼   ► of those things that slowly over time people you know the other computer makers have gotten better

01:31:00 ◼   ► but infamously for a very long time, PC laptops, even when you bought like a

01:31:06 ◼   ► premium one, had track pads that were just crappy. A friend of the show and

01:31:11 ◼   ► guest on the last episode, Joanna Stern, used to write about it all the time

01:31:15 ◼   ► and she's a great person to write about it because she's not really a

01:31:19 ◼   ► die-hard Apple user, you know, she's sort of a very, what's the word?

01:31:26 ◼   ► She's just, she's universally tech savvy. Right. And, and, and has used, you know,

01:31:31 ◼   ► you've used Blackberry and Android phones for years before getting an iPhone and had used PCs

01:31:37 ◼   ► and windows sort of open-minded. I don't know what you want to call it. A poly, poly, whatever.

01:31:42 ◼   ► There's some kind of word that can come after the poly prefix. But so she's, you know, like I would,

01:31:48 ◼   ► I'm in a very poor position to judge a PC track pad because I am so lost in windows and despite

01:31:56 ◼   ► windows that I you know, um, it's I'm not a good position for but she is and she wrote so many good

01:32:03 ◼   ► columns about why can't other people make a good trackpad sort of like why can't other people make

01:32:07 ◼   ► a 38 inch a 38 millimeter small Apple watch it in the same way I think Apple's keyboards should be

01:32:15 ◼   ► the gold standard of keyboards I did you know that's what you get what why you know when when

01:32:22 ◼   ► when you sell a line of laptops that start at $999,

01:32:27 ◼   ► which is like three times the starting price

01:32:28 ◼   ► of most other companies.

01:32:30 ◼   ► Like if your laptop-- - Yeah, and they were.

01:32:33 ◼   ► That's the frustrating thing.

01:32:34 ◼   ► They were for a long time.

01:32:36 ◼   ► - So I find it very worrisome because I feel like,

01:32:39 ◼   ► and this is one of my favorite themes,

01:32:42 ◼   ► is that your priorities are not an unordered list.

01:32:47 ◼   ► They're an ordered list, right?

01:32:49 ◼   ► It's not like you can say our priorities are a bullet list and the bullets are

01:32:54 ◼   ► You know the device looks good

01:32:58 ◼   ► There's lightweight is thin feels good works fast

01:33:02 ◼   ► it matters what order you put these things in and I worry that

01:33:08 ◼   ► The Johnny I've side of Apple that wants devices to be as thin and elegant as possible has elevated

01:33:16 ◼   ► thinness above

01:33:19 ◼   ► above the keyboard should be the best keyboard on the market. You know, I think

01:33:25 ◼   ► that they should start with let's make the best keyboard on the market. We'll

01:33:29 ◼   ► make it as thin as we can while keeping it the best keyboard on the market. Like

01:33:34 ◼   ► that should be the goal. Make the keyboard as thin as they can while

01:33:37 ◼   ► keeping it as as good or better than any keyboard on the market and then decide

01:33:42 ◼   ► how thick the overall device has to be after that. Mm-hmm. Well and my

01:33:47 ◼   ► frustrating thing is that they do do this for things like laptop screens, right? The

01:33:52 ◼   ► arguably the 13 inch and 15 inch MacBook Pro have beautiful wide color laptop screens.

01:33:59 ◼   ► And they're very thin and they've they've packed a lot of technology into it. Same thing

01:34:04 ◼   ► goes for the trackpad. So it's not like they're abandoning those core principles. It's just

01:34:10 ◼   ► for whatever reason the keyboard seems to have fallen off the importance list.

01:34:15 ◼   ► No, it's very true. Yeah another one that to me it the one of the main reasons the main thing

01:34:21 ◼   ► I love about the new MacBook Pros compared to my previous generation MacBook Pro that I own is the hinge

01:34:28 ◼   ► the the hinge for the display is

01:34:31 ◼   ► So much nicer on the new MacBook Pros. It's absolutely amazing

01:34:36 ◼   ► And so even though the device is thinner somehow even while making it thinner

01:34:40 ◼   ► They designed a way better hinge and part of it is that the whole top that whole display is thinner and it's lighter weight

01:34:45 ◼   ► But it's like you can move it with just one finger with so little effort, but wherever you leave it it stays

01:34:52 ◼   ► There's no looseness to it. It doesn't like droop or anything, but you you you move it so lightly

01:35:00 ◼   ► It's so great and and to me it's one of those things that you can really see how much more care

01:35:06 ◼   ► Apple puts into the design of its products like the hinges on competing laptops are never as nice as apples

01:35:12 ◼   ► Mm-hmm without a question because they will again

01:35:15 ◼   ► It's something that they've decided that this is important to put effort into

01:35:21 ◼   ► It makes sense, right because they've put so much effort into the screen in recent years that of course

01:35:26 ◼   ► You're gonna want a hinge that's going to properly support and display that screen at whatever angle you want to look at

01:35:31 ◼   ► And I can see it where you know

01:35:35 ◼   ► It is kind of funny and I don't think people would have predicted in fact people didn't really predict. You know like it going back like

01:35:43 ◼   ► 50 to 60 years of science fiction of what a computer would look like in the future people didn't really expect them to be sort of

01:35:51 ◼   ► fundamentally based on this late

01:35:53 ◼   ► 19th century technology of the typewriter, right?

01:35:57 ◼   ► Like it is kind of funny that this device that you know came of age in like

01:36:02 ◼   ► 1870

01:36:04 ◼   ► is that that keyboard is still like a basic part

01:36:09 ◼   ► of the human interface of modern computers,

01:36:16 ◼   ► or at least of PC style computers.

01:36:18 ◼   ► But it is, and it's,

01:36:21 ◼   ► for Apple not to prioritize that is foolish.

01:36:26 ◼   ► And they have this whole other line of computers,

01:36:29 ◼   ► iPads, that skip that.

01:36:32 ◼   ► If you want to make a device that is,

01:36:34 ◼   ► let's skip the keyboard because the keyboard, you know,

01:36:36 ◼   ► there's all sorts of use cases where a physical keyboard

01:36:40 ◼   ► is not important.

01:36:42 ◼   ► They've got a whole line of computers

01:36:44 ◼   ► where they can do whatever they want in that direction.

01:36:46 ◼   ► But for certain people and some tasks,

01:36:50 ◼   ► a hardware keyboard is essential.

01:36:52 ◼   ► And you know, that's why the MacBooks

01:36:55 ◼   ► and MacBook Pros still exist.

01:36:57 ◼   ► It's why, you know, Phil Schiller swears up and down

01:37:00 ◼   ► every time he speaks about it in public

01:37:01 ◼   ► that the Mac has a bright future as far as Apple can see,

01:37:04 ◼   ► because they see these use cases

01:37:06 ◼   ► where this form factor has a future.

01:37:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I don't know if it's just Apple

01:37:14 ◼   ► is not interested in building keyboards

01:37:17 ◼   ► because they don't, or building fantastic keyboards

01:37:19 ◼   ► because they don't see it as the quote unquote future

01:37:22 ◼   ► of the platform, because clearly, yes,

01:37:25 ◼   ► there are still people who use them

01:37:26 ◼   ► and I still use them and you still use them.

01:37:28 ◼   ► But I can't help but wonder if they're just like,

01:37:30 ◼   ► we're so focused on the technology that's going to be in our computers five years from now

01:37:34 ◼   ► that we're just kind of making do and oh look we made this new butterfly mechanism for your

01:37:40 ◼   ► keyboard but we really only made it so that we could make the keyboard thinner we could make a

01:37:43 ◼   ► thinner laptop like i don't i that's the pessimist in me i really i don't think that that's truly

01:37:48 ◼   ► their internal voicing but it it does worry me it absolutely worries me and it's frustrating because

01:37:56 ◼   ► with the exception of the reliability problems, I actually quite like this keyboard. I really

01:38:02 ◼   ► like this laptop. And it's, you know, I didn't think that I would ever like a laptop after

01:38:07 ◼   ► they, you know, more or less discontinued the 11-inch MacBook Air. And I really, really find

01:38:14 ◼   ► myself enjoying this computer. I have the 13-inch Pro. It's perfect.

01:38:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was just curious if you had the MacBook One.

01:38:25 ◼   ► But no, I-- - No, I've got that Touch Bar,

01:38:28 ◼   ► Touch Bar 13. - No, no, no.

01:38:30 ◼   ► And you know, a couple people have chimed in about,

01:38:32 ◼   ► well, then why didn't,

01:38:33 ◼   ► why'd you give it such a good review?

01:38:35 ◼   ► And I didn't run into any stuck keys on any of

01:38:39 ◼   ► you know, the MacBook, the new MacBooks I reviewed.

01:38:42 ◼   ► You know, although I primarily reviewed the exact model

01:38:45 ◼   ► you're talking about, the Touch Bar 13-inch,

01:38:47 ◼   ► 'cause that's the one that I would buy

01:38:49 ◼   ► if I were to buy one today.

01:38:51 ◼   ► I didn't run into any problems with it.

01:38:54 ◼   ► And I could tell within a few days that it was just a,

01:38:58 ◼   ► for me, it was just a getting used to thing

01:39:00 ◼   ► with the keyboard difference,

01:39:01 ◼   ► which has always been the case for me

01:39:04 ◼   ► when Apple ships a new style keyboard.

01:39:06 ◼   ► Right, like you never immediately start touching it

01:39:10 ◼   ► and feel right.

01:39:10 ◼   ► It's always sort of like--

01:39:12 ◼   ► - No.

01:39:13 ◼   ► - You gotta break in, you know?

01:39:14 ◼   ► - The first time I touched it,

01:39:17 ◼   ► I thought I was gonna hate it.

01:39:18 ◼   ► I didn't I had an order in for the for the MacBook Pro and I'm like, I don't know if I want to do this

01:39:23 ◼   ► I've been using my my iPad Pro for almost the better part of a year as my like sole computer

01:39:28 ◼   ► And I was like, maybe I'll just get another MacBook Air until I they release something but no I got used to it. I

01:39:34 ◼   ► Don't know. I've just never

01:39:37 ◼   ► Never it's totally news to me that last time like I wrote like the only other I have to go all the way back to

01:39:44 ◼   ► 2001

01:39:45 ◼   ► To think of an Apple laptop that had a problematic keyboard and that was and it was a device

01:39:50 ◼   ► I owned it was the iMac g3 that had the the 12 inch computer that had like see-through keys

01:39:56 ◼   ► But it wasn't even that it wasn't really reliability it was that they were they just didn't feel good

01:40:03 ◼   ► They were sort of squishy and and yeah

01:40:05 ◼   ► I bought it because I couldn't afford the g4 at the time which was

01:40:08 ◼   ► So gorgeous that I'm at the 12 inch g4 with the keyboard that went right up to the edge of the screen

01:40:15 ◼   ► But the other problem with the I I didn't really run into this problem

01:40:18 ◼   ► But it was sort of notorious that that after a year or so certain people who had the iBook

01:40:23 ◼   ► G3 the keyboard would start to smell like the the rubber. I swear to God you can like google it the rubber

01:40:29 ◼   ► Under I don't remember this

01:40:32 ◼   ► You know and it's just one of those things where Apple, you know, maybe they had they didn't know either

01:40:38 ◼   ► You know right because it's like how do you test what this rubber smells like in a year?

01:40:42 ◼   ► Like how do you artificially age it by a year? I don't know how that's possible

01:40:45 ◼   ► But you know, but that's the closest I can think of but even that I'd still rather have a keyboard with a funky smell

01:40:51 ◼   ► Then I have a keyboard that had a spacebar that didn't work

01:40:53 ◼   ► Yeah, or a spacebar that worked intermittently

01:40:57 ◼   ► I think that's the the worst problem is that it goes from not working to working to not working

01:41:02 ◼   ► So you never know when you open your laptop whether or not you're gonna have a functioning keyboard, right?

01:41:05 ◼   ► And it's just you know

01:41:06 ◼   ► It does not feel like you own a premium device if like on a regular basis

01:41:12 ◼   ► You have to like bang on your R key a couple times really hard to unstick it

01:41:16 ◼   ► Like that seems like the sort of thing you expect from like a $300 Chromebook, right?

01:41:20 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. So I I don't know that's to me is worrisome

01:41:24 ◼   ► Hopefully Apple will get it together

01:41:26 ◼   ► I mean one thing you know is that there's a ton of people within Apple probably I would guess a vast majority of the company

01:41:34 ◼   ► overwhelming majority of the company who uses MacBooks on a daily basis either at home or at their desk

01:41:39 ◼   ► So they must be aware of it. I

01:41:42 ◼   ► Assume that we will see a

01:41:46 ◼   ► Tweak to the keyboard with the next generation of MacBook pros

01:41:50 ◼   ► Like I I mean this has been an issue Casey's article was excellent, but I mean I first heard people talking about this issue

01:41:56 ◼   ► I think it was like Stephen Hackett was talking about it way back

01:41:59 ◼   ► You know right after the the max were introduced and like last last December

01:42:03 ◼   ► I'm just being like have you guys notice if your keys are sticking it like my keys are sticking is kind of so

01:42:08 ◼   ► This has been a like I have no doubt that the people inside Apple discover. This is a problem pretty early on

01:42:14 ◼   ► But what can you do really short of saying we're gonna recall all of the MacBook Pros and put in new like that's not gonna be

01:42:21 ◼   ► possible like they're there it's basically just a here's your

01:42:26 ◼   ► awkward and Jonathan Mann's video is very funny, you know, hold the hold the Mac at 90 degrees and try and spray

01:42:33 ◼   ► compressed air at 45 degrees and maybe that'll work or if not go to a genius and get your top case or like that

01:42:39 ◼   ► It's a pain. It's a pain and

01:42:41 ◼   ► That's early adoptership for you. So hopefully it'll be fixed in the second generation

01:42:45 ◼   ► I have faith and I do you know, I know for a fact Apple even talks about it that they have a dedicated

01:42:50 ◼   ► Keyboard engineering team, you know, they do take keyboards seriously

01:42:55 ◼   ► So, you know, hopefully those guys are hard at work.

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01:45:15 ◼   ► I don't have much time left, but the other thing I wanted to talk about, I don't know

01:45:19 ◼   ► you have anything you want to bring up and I want to talk about my iOS 11 battery life

01:45:23 ◼   ► seems to me seems to me every single year every year new version of iOS hits and some

01:45:31 ◼   ► sizable percentage not a majority but some you know 10 15 I don't know percent of users

01:45:38 ◼   ► in upgrade their old iPhone which may only be a you one year old iPhone and all of a

01:45:42 ◼   ► of a sudden their battery life plummets. And it's absolutely a real phenomenon. I know

01:45:49 ◼   ► it. I haven't really experienced it. I think, and I've since gone back, I'm not using the

01:45:55 ◼   ► iPhone 8 review units anymore. I've since gone back to my personal year old iPhone 7.

01:46:02 ◼   ► My battery life on a daily basis is just about roughly the same as it was on iOS 10. I get

01:46:10 ◼   ► into the yellow as I call it at the end of the day. But that's on days when I use my

01:46:14 ◼   ► phone a lot. I've always gotten into low power mode at the end of the day if I don't trickle

01:46:19 ◼   ► charge. You know, it's the, I, you know, a day of heavy use on an iPhone seven, not plus

01:46:24 ◼   ► typically, you know, that's about what I get one day of battery life. Uh, and that's about

01:46:29 ◼   ► where I am with iOS 11, but it does seem, you know, I get emails and I don't know if

01:46:33 ◼   ► I'm getting, it seems like I might be getting more from today during fireball readers this

01:46:37 ◼   ► year than typical about them, you know, like literally like a year old iPhone 7 and now

01:46:44 ◼   ► they have to charge it at lunch because they're running out by like 1230 in the afternoon.

01:46:51 ◼   ► I'm curious what you've heard from from iMore readers, what your sense of this is.

01:46:58 ◼   ► So I've definitely heard some complaints about battery life, although mostly coming from

01:47:02 ◼   ► folks on older phones, on SEs or older, for me personally it's really hard to judge because

01:47:10 ◼   ► I think I am an atypical iPhone user which is to say two thirds of the day I end up using

01:47:17 ◼   ► my iPhone 8 Plus as like a, first of all it's my primary computer up until about 11am because

01:47:24 ◼   ► I'm walking around the house or doing whatever so I'm doing a lot of work, legitimate work

01:47:29 ◼   ► my phone and using it the way that I would a laptop. And then on top of that, I often

01:47:35 ◼   ► am filming 4k video on it, whether that's at practice or whether that's for iMore. So

01:47:41 ◼   ► I tend to only get like two thirds of a day, or half of a day off of my off of my phone

01:47:47 ◼   ► without plugging it in. Because of the way I use it, I don't use it like a normal human.

01:47:51 ◼   ► And I'm okay with that. But it makes it really hard to sort of take a look at what other

01:47:57 ◼   ► people are saying about battery life and be like, yeah, I've seen that. Because I can't

01:48:01 ◼   ► like my my experiences are not going to line up. But you're right. And then I have seen

01:48:06 ◼   ► a quite a few people on Twitter, responding about battery life and concerns about battery

01:48:11 ◼   ► life. And I'm not sure whether that's whether that's just when you upgrade, you know, you

01:48:16 ◼   ► might choose to turn on iCloud backups or whatever. And that that might cause some some

01:48:21 ◼   ► interference, it could just be on it, like, I don't know.

01:48:26 ◼   ► That's the, it's kind of mysterious.

01:48:31 ◼   ► I like, it's kind of obfuscating what goes on

01:48:34 ◼   ► behind the scenes in an upgrade, especially when it's,

01:48:37 ◼   ► you know, there can be upgrades where everybody's battery

01:48:39 ◼   ► life takes just a nose dive, but this doesn't seem to be

01:48:43 ◼   ► what's happening here.

01:48:44 ◼   ► It just seems to be like little anecdotal, like people,

01:48:49 ◼   ► bits and pieces here and there.

01:48:51 ◼   ► And it's not like all the same phone either.

01:48:53 ◼   ► Some people with new phones, some people with old phones.

01:48:56 ◼   ► It's just odd.

01:48:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, and like I had a friend who emailed me to ask

01:49:02 ◼   ► if I've heard anything, 'cause he's somebody

01:49:05 ◼   ► who's having to charge his phone at lunch,

01:49:09 ◼   ► that it's running down that quickly.

01:49:11 ◼   ► And looked in the battery section of the preferences

01:49:15 ◼   ► or the settings where it gives you a list,

01:49:17 ◼   ► like the blame list of what apps have been using your battery over the, you know, where's

01:49:22 ◼   ► your battery life gone over the last 24 hours or the last seven days or whatever.

01:49:29 ◼   ► And you know, it was like messages was at 7% and he was thinking, you know, thinking

01:49:34 ◼   ► like wow, maybe messages is to blame and it was over.

01:49:37 ◼   ► And I said to him, I was like, you know, I looked at mine and messages was at 6%, you

01:49:41 ◼   ► know, like it seems like 6 or 7% from messages with background use is actually, you know,

01:49:46 ◼   ► normal.

01:49:47 ◼   ► There was nothing in there that really looked suspicious, you know, and even like his Facebook was low, you know, like, you know

01:49:54 ◼   ► It I don't know but it's it didn't look like you could tell what it was where it was going from that blameless

01:50:01 ◼   ► I think though the more dangerous part is it fuels the

01:50:05 ◼   ► Widespread conspiracy theory that Apple purposefully makes battery life bad

01:50:10 ◼   ► I I mean a lot of people believe this on upgrades on upgrade

01:50:14 ◼   ► Yeah to force people to force people to upgrade to a new machine

01:50:16 ◼   ► Which is so it's crazy for a couple of reasons one it

01:50:22 ◼   ► Why would you

01:50:26 ◼   ► Wouldn't wouldn't that lead if your battery life is bad on your year-old phone

01:50:30 ◼   ► Wouldn't that be a main reason for you to consider switching to Android like?

01:50:35 ◼   ► It's counterintuitive to me

01:50:38 ◼   ► I mean, I know that there are some people who would never can you know?

01:50:41 ◼   ► They're so so tied to Apple that they're gonna do it

01:50:44 ◼   ► But if it literally was the case that you thought the company was sabotaging your device, wouldn't that make you reconsider your allegiances?

01:50:50 ◼   ► To personally I know people who work at Apple

01:50:54 ◼   ► I don't know a sing

01:50:55 ◼   ► I I don't know a single engineer who I know at Apple who if they were told

01:50:59 ◼   ► Put something in here to make to make you know

01:51:02 ◼   ► Everything other than the iPhone 8 and iPhone 10 run slower or use more battery life. They would quit

01:51:09 ◼   ► I mean, I swear to God they would quit and oh, yeah because they're the people I know at Apple

01:51:15 ◼   ► You know are there to do good work and guess what in?

01:51:18 ◼   ► California if you're you know good enough to work as an engineer at Apple you can you be hired

01:51:23 ◼   ► By the time you get to your car after you packed up your office to quit you'd have job offers in your hand

01:51:29 ◼   ► So it's not like they feel like they you know

01:51:32 ◼   ► Like they're trapped at Apple because they can't get a job somewhere else

01:51:35 ◼   ► But literally I mean the people I know who work there would refuse to do it

01:51:39 ◼   ► They'd probably go above their supervisor and report them for you know

01:51:43 ◼   ► Suggesting something so idiotic

01:51:47 ◼   ► So it's certainly not purposeful

01:51:49 ◼   ► No, and it actually makes me think about

01:51:53 ◼   ► The watch OS 4 and the fact that series 0 like original Apple watch owners didn't get

01:52:01 ◼   ► one of the features which is the first time this has happened in a watch OS update where they didn't get the

01:52:06 ◼   ► All of the heart rate tracking features that have that have come to watch OS 4

01:52:11 ◼   ► And a lot of series zero people are you know, I saw some complaints about that, but then right next to it

01:52:17 ◼   ► I saw some I feel like my watch is slower now that it's on watch OS 4 and I'm like

01:52:22 ◼   ► I just I wish she would connect these two things and

01:52:26 ◼   ► understand that like the only reason why features get or at

01:52:29 ◼   ► least I would think the primary reason why features get taken

01:52:32 ◼   ► away on older devices is not because Apple wants you to

01:52:35 ◼   ► upgrade to a new device. Like they might want you to but that's

01:52:39 ◼   ► not that's not the right way of going about it. What they're

01:52:41 ◼   ► doing is making sure that the feature performs correctly.

01:52:45 ◼   ► Right? It's like you don't want you know, it's the opposite.

01:52:47 ◼   ► Right? It's they're actually like, we're not going to give

01:52:49 ◼   ► you this feature that's going to run your battery down.

01:52:51 ◼   ► Exactly. Right. Like there's certain photography features

01:52:55 ◼   ► that are only in the new ones because to get the performance Apple needs, they depend upon

01:53:00 ◼   ► the new digital image—what do you call it?

01:53:06 ◼   ► The ISP, yeah.

01:53:07 ◼   ► The ISP.

01:53:08 ◼   ► The image signal processor.

01:53:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:53:10 ◼   ► In other words, the new silicon.

01:53:11 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:53:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:53:13 ◼   ► So I don't know.

01:53:14 ◼   ► I'm curious.

01:53:16 ◼   ► My best guess as to what the blame is, and maybe this is why it's a yearly thing, is

01:53:21 ◼   ► that they're all a bunch—it's a bunch of edge cases, right?

01:53:24 ◼   ► that didn't turn up. That's why it doesn't affect everybody. And it's the nature of the

01:53:30 ◼   ► fact that the new version of iOS has to ship in mid-September, come hell or high water.

01:53:37 ◼   ► And so I'm curious whether people out there—I'd love to hear from you if you've had bad battery

01:53:42 ◼   ► life with iOS 11.0 and the point one update was just a minor bug fix. But when the next

01:53:52 ◼   ► update to iOS 11 comes out. I'd be very curious to hear how many people have their battery

01:53:57 ◼   ► performance issues fixed because I suspect it's just a whole bunch of bugs and that's

01:54:02 ◼   ► the sort of thing that once it's out in the wild and everybody who's opted into sending

01:54:07 ◼   ► Apple the diagnostics, Apple can fix all those bugs thanks to the diagnostics that get sent

01:54:14 ◼   ► in. That's my guess.

01:54:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I agree.

01:54:18 ◼   ► I think it's because it's so widespread on the,

01:54:22 ◼   ► or not necessarily widespread,

01:54:23 ◼   ► because the device options are so widespread,

01:54:26 ◼   ► I tend to agree.

01:54:28 ◼   ► I think it's a bunch of educations

01:54:29 ◼   ► and a bunch of people who are,

01:54:30 ◼   ► God, all I wanna say is you're using it wrong,

01:54:34 ◼   ► but that's not true.

01:54:35 ◼   ► - I have one more thing I'd like to talk about very quickly.

01:54:39 ◼   ► Is there anything you wanted to bring up?

01:54:42 ◼   ► - No, I mean, I think, yeah.

01:54:45 ◼   ► Let's talk another time about Apple Watch apps,

01:54:48 ◼   ► 'cause I do have a lot to say about that,

01:54:49 ◼   ► but another time. - Yeah, that's too deep

01:54:51 ◼   ► a topic. - That's another show.

01:54:52 ◼   ► - This one's quick, this is quick.

01:54:53 ◼   ► Is the question of, this is a debate that Jason Snell

01:54:57 ◼   ► and I and a couple other people had on Twitter

01:54:59 ◼   ► that was pretty interesting last week,

01:55:00 ◼   ► is how is Apple going to distribute their original content?

01:55:03 ◼   ► Meaning the TV and movies that they're producing.

01:55:07 ◼   ► Like the, I'm so looking forward to it

01:55:09 ◼   ► that they signed a deal with Steven Spielberg

01:55:11 ◼   ► to reboot Amazing Stories. - Amazing Stories.

01:55:14 ◼   ► which is one of my all-time favorite shows from the 80s.

01:55:16 ◼   ► So good.

01:55:18 ◼   ► And basically I see the options as

01:55:23 ◼   ► that they just include them with Apple Music.

01:55:25 ◼   ► So you pay for one subscription service,

01:55:28 ◼   ► it's called Apple Music, and it includes TV and movies,